What's wrong with Rarity? We want to explain

[Nick]

Please help me gain insight because I'm really quite frustrated (because I do a lot of C$ trading and now I feel cheated)

2012 Summer Event pet;

Is now uncommon (was rare)

2013 Summer Event pet;

Was rare, is still rare.

These were roughly the same difficulty to obtain.

I. Do. Not. Understand.

The rarity system can't measure "difficulty to obtain", it just counts pets on accounts. There are nearly twice as many of that first pet on accounts compared to the second pet, so it is marked as more common. Actually, that first pet is at the top end of the "uncommon" range, so it has only just barely now dropped down from being marked "rare".

The only real way for the rarity of pets to fall is for the number of "active players" to drop, since this is used to work out how many people are competing to collect pets. That's the number of accounts that have logged in within the last year. In 2013, we had a huge number of accounts sign up and then not do anything in May, June and July (possibly caused by spambots, about 2-3x as many as normal). So when the rarities were updated in the last couple of months, the number of new people who had joined the site in those months this year was about 50% less than the number of accounts that had gone inactive in those months in the previous year, so the count of the number of "active players" over the past 12 months fell for three months in a row. This meant that the "rarity" displayed on all pets fell slightly in those months.

[Nick]

This stinks. Payment and contest prizes I had have gone from rare to uncommon. Why mods?

There's just as many pets available to trade for as there were before, only the labels have changed.

[raey]

This stinks. Payment and contest prizes I had have gone from rare to uncommon. Why mods?

There's just as many pets available to trade for as there were before, only the labels have changed.

thanks for the reply I would say =)
But I still can understand most of the people. Even there are haven't changed anything in the pets that are available most peoples judges the pets after the labels and therefore it makes a huge difference if a pet is labelled as uncommon or as a rare. If a pets only says rare it is immediately worth more in the eyes of the users. Even the pet-amount hasn't changed the label still reduce the pet.
It is quite interesting. Pets that had been rare you could trade of for pets worth more as when the same pet is labelled as uncommon - just because the people see the labels - therefore I can understand the rage of the many users (I'm myself pretty annoyed because half of my rare-trade fodder was dropped down and I won't get as good trades as before with the pets).

But thank you very much for explaining

[RavenclawHobbit]

Thanks, Nick! That makes a lot of sense.

[Shian]

I don't see how the rarity labels makes much of a difference when trading.
Rarity changes only seem to affect people that count and care about "how many rares they have" rather than "trade value of the pet".

Would you trade a 2013 common for a 2010 common? No! There's years difference!

Would you trade away your Shima long tail as a 2009 uncommon if it was still labeled uncommon? No. They're selling for rares list pets because they are harder to find despite having the exact same rarity as its littermates.


"I don't like it when rarities change! They should stay the same always so I don't lose anything!"

You're not losing anything. It's just a label that tells you roughly how many pets there are in the game. Not how many are tradeable. Rarity updates help gauge this though in this example:

"Oh, hey I have a rare!"

No you don't. It's not really rare. It's only labeled rare because there's thousands of spambots messing up the count by creating accounts and not adopting anything. Making the pet rarer than it really is. In reality, nearly everyone has this same pet you do and don't want to trade for it. Do you really want "false rares" like this where everyone has one but it's marked rare?
You'd still have a hard time trading it away no matter what it's rarity label is.

[raey]

@Shian: true words. I think the same - but sadly most people don't
Means - they still think the pet lost it's worth and even they are still the same value many won't see it the same way.
It doesn't matter if you try to explain. They see "uncommon" and treat it like one even it's valued more.
A devils circle...

[Minimanta]

Ahh, so it's a possible spam bot problem that caused this sudden drop in rarities? Makes sense.
So I guess we should see the rarity updates back to normal soon? =3

[Lufi]

I don't see how the rarity labels makes much of a difference when trading.
Rarity changes only seem to affect people that count and care about "how many rares they have" rather than "trade value of the pet".

Would you trade a 2013 common for a 2010 common? No! There's years difference!

Would you trade away your Shima long tail as a 2009 uncommon if it was still labeled uncommon? No. They're selling for rares list pets because they are harder to find despite having the exact same rarity as its littermates.


"I don't like it when rarities change! They should stay the same always so I don't lose anything!"

You're not losing anything. It's just a label that tells you roughly how many pets there are in the game. Not how many are tradeable. Rarity updates help gauge this though in this example:

"Oh, hey I have a rare!"

No you don't. It's not really rare. It's only labeled rare because there's thousands of spambots messing up the count by creating accounts and not adopting anything. Making the pet rarer than it really is. In reality, nearly everyone has this same pet you do and don't want to trade for it. Do you really want "false rares" like this where everyone has one but it's marked rare?
You'd still have a hard time trading it away no matter what it's rarity label is.

yeah i agreed with you... I don't have any problem that went that pets down in rarity and I'm very happy for some
I was just extremly confused it's all

also what are spam bots? its members which join and never are online? or it's that google "accounts"?

[nickjr]

I don't see how the rarity labels makes much of a difference when trading.
Rarity changes only seem to affect people that count and care about "how many rares they have" rather than "trade value of the pet".

Would you trade a 2013 common for a 2010 common? No! There's years difference!

Would you trade away your Shima long tail as a 2009 uncommon if it was still labeled uncommon? No. They're selling for rares list pets because they are harder to find despite having the exact same rarity as its littermates.


"I don't like it when rarities change! They should stay the same always so I don't lose anything!"

You're not losing anything. It's just a label that tells you roughly how many pets there are in the game. Not how many are tradeable. Rarity updates help gauge this though in this example:

"Oh, hey I have a rare!"

No you don't. It's not really rare. It's only labeled rare because there's thousands of spambots messing up the count by creating accounts and not adopting anything. Making the pet rarer than it really is. In reality, nearly everyone has this same pet you do and don't want to trade for it. Do you really want "false rares" like this where everyone has one but it's marked rare?
You'd still have a hard time trading it away no matter what it's rarity label is.

yeah i agreed with you... I don't have any problem that went that pets down in rarity and I'm very happy for some
I was just extremly confused it's all

also what are spam bots? its members which join and never are online? or it's that google "accounts"?

Spambots are the reason that new members must have their first post approved before they can communicate. They're automated (hence the "bot" in their name), and their sole purpose is to post ads, spam, inappropriate content, etc. wherever and whenever they can. More information can be found via your preferred search engine and on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spambot

The bots like the google bot, etc. are harmless as far as I know; their purpose is to collect information to help their search engine.

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Thank you for the explanation, Nick. It'd be great if spambots weren't counted from the start, but I'm not too sure how that would work and it sounds like the problem wasn't expected xD But thanks again for explaining.

[Firedancer77]

Ah, okay Nick.

And the main reason I'm upset is because, while the worth may still be the same to me, people looking to enter might not be as appealed.