This Needs to be Discussed.

[SunstonePhoenix]

Post by SunstonePhoenix » Tue Oct 17, 2023 2:45 pm

I would like some clarification tbh, one of the things I like about monthly releases is that I DON'T have to spend hours in trade threads getting "trade has been canceled due to pet being moved" messages. I can just casually trade with others. It's low stakes and fun. Why are people assuming that they're going to actually get a rare and not just have an ugly blue square in their monthly log for an eternity? I am so frigging tired of having to play "refresh thread and try to find the pet before 6097 other users who are also trying to do the same thing" in event threads; why would you WANT that in monthlies? There's no way to earn another shot at a monthly pet, unlike some event pets where you can strategically put your resources into trying for the one you want. I already am trying to save what older pets I have for trading up, I can't afford to use them for new monthly trades.

Wow, look, that thing I said would happen

[The Muse]

oh wow i didnt know someone had wholeheartedly predicted this happening……im so shook right now

and its still gonna be going to, so if you have green monkeys dont swap them too soon

[13kaitiecat13]

I see your point however as a collector myself, I actually find it disappointing to have the rarities released and see everything super common. The only pet I haven't been able to chase so far is the ladybug snake and I'm sure I'll be able to get one once the hype dies down. I personally think having a rarer outcome makes the game more fun trading wise.

Honestly, even back in 2012 people would wait to trade until rarities were visible.

[RoseCrystal]

As a new player, this is very interesting to read, as I had no idea this was a thing. Well, the feeling I got from this site by playing for few months, I would say the problem indeed may be in the players attitude and not in the system. I was surprised how many players are rude, not capable of basic respect when trading...never expected my block list will be filling so quickly lol.
Just my two cents, feel free to ignore my opinion since I am aware that new players may have an inaccurate view of situation.

[The Last Raven]

I said this would happen when they made the original announcement but no one wanted to listen. I mentioned the case of the August PPS and how awful that was and people just kept saying "no that won't happen again" or "that was a special case". Yet here we are every single month with people driving up prices and trying to get insane prices for a pet that usually ends up EUC at most

[cowboyzest]

i agree with this as a fellow collector! im actually having that problem right now with this month's pps caterpillars. what sucks is that i usually don't really have much in my trade groups to be able to get these outcomes, and on top of that, even though i'm technically an og player, i never really understood trading to its full extent. now that i actually make money of my own, i sometimes drop $5-10 to purchase outcomes from c$ stores, but i never had to do that until now, where some pets seem almost impossible to obtain. my last swap thread before i went inactive was the 2021 cave event swap thread-- so coming from that, to this, has been a little jarring. please let me know if im misunderstanding anything btw!!

[Lex.]

I agree with the above, these exorbitant prices for regular and often non-rare outcomes in c$ is like,, crazy.
how it works
pet release -> people all want the same pet -> people realize and find others who will trade that pet more easily than others -> sell it around 20-50c$ if not more
like i feel BAD pricing any of my art past 50c$ sometimes and that takes me WAYYYY longer than like a few trades
i understand like.. trading up to get rares to sell THOSE but doing this for under rare pets and taking advantage of a strained 'market' is like
weird but thats just me.
I collected that one euc xmas dog from likeeee 2023 and I only just NOW put them in a trade group bc I wanted more trade fodder. the fact that I could've gotten away with selling them for around 20c$ without people just like throwing tomatoes at me is fascinating to say the least. then again idk what the "yields" are for people who use this method of sorts to farm c$ but shrug

[joe cool]

i agree that this is something that needs to be talked about and discussed. back in 2023 when this was being tossed around as an idea, i had already spent the majority of the year trying to collect every released pet (...minus stores and urs. they dont count to my personal collection lol) and immediately saw how this could impact trading. already harder to get pets then such as the valentines lion, april pps rainbow lion, and banner pets were already being traded for rares within a few days of their releases/growths. now you have pets like the cny pps snakes, pps ladybug, and (what im predicting will be) the secretary bird fox back to back to back for 2025. it doesnt give people who are even mildly interested in the pets a chance (without even KNOWING about the supposed increased demand) to get the previous litter's star before people trade for it en masse and then flip it for 20+ C$ a pop like its nothing. by then its already far out of reach for casual players who (by unfortunate luck) didnt get it when initially adopting

let me don my tinfoil hat of shame for a second but imo this issue on monthly trading also ties into how list pets have doubled in value despite having the same value and demand. lets take the zodiac dog series for example. zodiacs have stayed at 0.5 MA between 2023 and 2025, yet the pricing for them is vastly different in the admittedly short two year span of time. back in 2023, 0.5 MA was consistent with previous years being 3-4 old rares or around 150 C$. now in 2025 despite zodiacs being the same in value, the measurement for 0.5 MA has changed to 5 old rares or 200 C$. despite the guide, i see people selling them for 300 C$ or 5+ rares without it being TD. pardon the rhetorical but how exactly could it happen that in 2 years the price of both list pets AND monthlies have doubled in price? two years to DOUBLE a value and to then have it accepted as STANDARD is crazy. can literally anyone else see the writing on the wall?

the reason why i mention the paragraph above is because i believe this issue of trading at large is intertwined with both monthlies and list pets (but more apparent now with monthlies since it affects casual players the most). it is relevant to this conversation and ties into (what i believe) how this problem started since list inflation happened well before monthlies did. how on earth could the average user even begin to keep up with this? they cant!

the more pressing issue is that harder-to-get monthlies are impossible to get if you dont have more than 15 C$ to your name is... 😃 not good!

[strawberry_dolly]

mm in my opinion/experience i think this is blown a little out of proportion, mostly by people panicking and overpaying. costs dont go up that much unless people are reliably willing to pay that much, so if you dont want to massively overpay for a missed outcome, just dont trade with people overpricing them?
i dont mean to sound dismissive, i understand thats easier said than done, but i have never had an issue finding rarer outcomes, and never paid more than like, a rare from the previous year. you just have to put a bit more work in combing through active users! seriously, its been discussed before and the way to stop upcharging is to just not pay that much - eventually, everyone willing to overpay has the pet, and you can find someone offering one for a more reasonable amount!
also, i dont think its unreasonable for people to not trade until rarities are out. if youre like me, and dont check every thread right away, its easy to accidentally swap the super sought after pet for just another missed outcome. it may mot be rare, but it does suck to swap a VUC for a VC, especially during events when you could have gotten another dought after outcome for it instead.
thats the same reason i personally only swap for things on my wishlist at first - id be happy to litterswap a rarer outcome for a more common one *if i need the common one* but if i dont, its better to hold onto the rarer one so that i *can* get later missed outcomes. for a similar reason, if say i have 3 of outcome a and 1 of outcome b, it feels bad to swap my spare outcome b for *another* outcome a - i want to keep as much variety as possible to give me the best chance of being able to swap for later missed pets!
i dont know how much sense that makes, but thats how i personally like to trade, and then ill offer litter swaps at the end of the event/month when i have everything. i really think a big part of the issue is the need to have outcomes *now*. with a little patience, or waiting until the rarity is out, you *can* get fairer trades, it just takes more work. and honestly, wasnt that sort of the point? it gives collectors a little more of a challenge, and gives new players some better fodder (even without overpay, having a couple more vuc pets at the end of the month gives new players much better fodder for trading up, or for future events)
i understand it could be frustrating, i just dont personally think its as awful or destructive as everyone keeps making out

[gnosiphobia]

mm in my opinion/experience i think this is blown a little out of proportion, mostly by people panicking and overpaying. costs dont go up that much unless people are reliably willing to pay that much, so if you dont want to massively overpay for a missed outcome, just dont trade with people overpricing them?
i dont mean to sound dismissive, i understand thats easier said than done, but i have never had an issue finding rarer outcomes, and never paid more than like, a rare from the previous year. you just have to put a bit more work in combing through active users! seriously, its been discussed before and the way to stop upcharging is to just not pay that much - eventually, everyone willing to overpay has the pet, and you can find someone offering one for a more reasonable amount!
[snip]
i really think a big part of the issue is the need to have outcomes *now*. with a little patience, or waiting until the rarity is out, you *can* get fairer trades, it just takes more work. and honestly, wasnt that sort of the point? it gives collectors a little more of a challenge, and gives new players some better fodder (even without overpay, having a couple more vuc pets at the end of the month gives new players much better fodder for trading up, or for future events)
i understand it could be frustrating, i just dont personally think its as awful or destructive as everyone keeps making out

seconded. though it does cause a lot of headaches.

it used to be frustrating enough to consistently collect pets that i would stop playing for months at a time - there just didn't seem to be hope to get anywhere close to a full collection when one of the only free-to-play ways to have more valuable pets to trade with was getting extra rares from events, and i was already struggling just to get one of each

the things that have made it feel less like a struggle recently have been 1. getting back into art and doing adopts for pets, which isn't feasible for everyone, and 2. treating it more like a waiting game. unknown rarity pets going for C$20 or C$40 or even higher will go down to normal prices once they gain their rarities. i always wanted to play cs for hours at a time but that's just not the kind of game that it is. i've started trying to play for just an hour at most every day and most of that is drawing, and it feels a lot less stressful.