What has happened to the community?

[Cookie1992]

This is a bit of a rant/discussion but something that I can no longer deny. Ive started here late 2008, meaning I did see how people were in the first years of this site. Back then there was no list and the oldest pets were hardest to trade for; but by no means impossible to trade for. If you wanted someones september '08 rose dog then you simply offered stuff they still needed even if it was a bit more recent.

Halfway through 2011 I had enough of it all, a few pets were too elusive and I was rather unlucky with my draws from all december 18th boxes but also with the general monthly outcomes. I missed out on several rare ones and after just one more denied trade request for one of those missed montly outcomes I simply couldnt care coming on to adopt, but I didnt felt like giving away everything to random people either; so there my account sat frozen for about 5 years. Early december 2016 I thought about CS and decided to take a look. The advent was fun enough to keep coming back and I started trading for the dogs I missed in the 5 years of my absence. Within 2 weeks I had traded for just about all the dogs I had missed out on, besides a hand full of the harder pets including several older store pets, the UR tiger, UR holly, UR cookie, Purple swirl and july pps.

It didnt took me long to realize stuff had changed. With my account that had been frozen in time I had plenty of old stuff to offer for the less old stuff that I missed out on. But heck what did people turn out to be a pain to deal with these days. "but my pet is on the list!" was a commonly heard phrase, while I offered them a ton of old rares/very rares that were all on their wishlist and missing from their collection. And even a few nice people declined my trades because I was too generous towards them. Ive actually had people decline trades for commons and uncommons because their pet was 3 months older....

These days people feel like a bunch of greedy asses around here. Having a freaking pet on some fan made list doesnt mean you have the right to ask for about 1000+ rare/very rare pets. What ever happened to everyone just wanting to complete their collection and helping eachother along? Of course I get that a pet from 2009 is worth more than one from 2015, I get that a pet that is very rare and wanted is more valueble than just a pet labled very rare and by all means you should try to get a good deal but people get real.

People should care less about what is on that stupid list and think more about what THEY want. If you want that september '08 rose dog and you have a september '08 leopard dog then you dont need to swap that leopard for someones 1000 very rares just cos they dont own the freaking rose dog... Honestly I for one gladfully "overpay" someone so we both get out a trade happy, I dont care the slightest about giving you a 2009 rare for your 2014 rare if that pet is what I want to add to my collection at that moment especially if that person wasn't around in 2009 and doesn't have the riches to get those kind of pets. But the richer people get around here the more greedy they become. And I truely wonder how many extra accounts those rich people have (or else how many new players they had to scam) to be as rich as they are today.

And Im pretty sure about 90% of the rich people (meaning having at least 5-10 spare high mainlist pets/ 5-10 spare UR pets they are looking to trade) will yell at me for this, but Im pretty sure most of the poor people understand this rant very well. It is plainly impossible to get anything, I have 7 OMG so rares on my wishlist and Im pretty sure I'll never get em all unless I for a change get lucky in a december 18th draw or very very lucky at the pound.... (aka Ill settle for never XD)

Im someone that joined right at the beginning, but now almost 10 years later I feel Im still that new person that joined a few weeks ago... Just because Ive been unlucky in the 4 or 5 chances I had to get UR or any other list pets on december the 18th and I have too much decency to rip off the new players of theirs.

[andreá]

Agreed indeed.

[jaguarstar16]

sadly, that's all too true

[minizerkah]

too true

[beastly.]

i'm relatively new to the game as i joined november of this year, and when i first joined, i remember perusing the archives and thinking how much i wanted certain pets simply because i liked they way they looked. i was optimistic and thought that getting a pretty pet would be possible, until i learned that said pretty pet was on some articulate list designed with complex math on a child's forum game. i understand that the players here are no longer children most of the time, but i simply find it ridiculous that there is such a big to-do about certain pets. i understand that older pets are more rare, but the list blows it out of proportion and it just becomes a battle of who can be the most unfair to suit their own needs.

i can't count how many unfair trades i've been sent. and then once i fix them and make them fair, they are cancelled. thankfully, i've not been scammed yet as i always consulted the fair trade threads and my girlfriend who has been playing since 2012 but i know many new players who were preyed upon by older players simply because they are greedy and indecent. they take joy away from someone else for their own benefit, and it's sad since they are mostly older, wealthier players who really don't need to scam someone out of a pet that they already have multiple of. people even refuse fair trades because they don't want anything that isn't overpay because to them, profit outweighs the humanity of helping someone else out.

i am always considering quitting simply because i know that i, as a newer player, have very little chance of ever getting the pets i really want because i don't have the fodder for them and no way to even get it. many of the valuable pets i have are from kind strangers, the pound, or gifts from my girlfriend. i am also sick of the rude messages i am sent if i accidentally offer something unfair since i am not entirely educated, being new. also hoarding seems rather selfish to me, especially since many hoards get to ridiculous numbers and may include pets that are very rare, and i think it's just another show of greed. i get that it sets a nice goal, but the goal should be reasonable, not to own so many of one pet that finding them becomes impossible.

overall, i am not impressed with the community, and if not for the very kind people intermingled among all the not-so-kind, i would have quit a month ago. sorry to rant about your rant, but i'm glad to see someone questioning this when i had noticed it myself but didn't want to speak up!

[nickjr]

Any chance we can turn this into a discussion? After several years of really nasty rant threads (given many, many chances to prove that they couldn't turn nasty, but they always turned nasty, even under the supervision of global moderators, admin assistants, and admins), CS no longer allows rant threads..

Kitchen sink up ahead.

I'm a 2008 user and I feel like my best chances BY FAR at getting List pets now are by doing offsite trades and improving my art enough to do art-for-pets trades. (Or I could ninja people, but that would leave an awful taste in my mouth. At least I found CS early, so I have a lot of pets! The idea of taking away what little new users have makes me feel awful, so I don't do it. My conscience is clean. But I absolutely cannot deny the temptation that is there. They haven't been frustrated for as long as I have been, I'm tired of struggling, easy way out--that kind of feeling. Especially since I'm a person who does, in fact, get satisfaction from achieving something the easy way--whenever people say "but you wouldn't feel accomplished if you got it easily!" I kinda want to scoff and say "lol you don't know me") I feel like it's disproportionately harder to do List trades with CS pets and items.

The List was used okay for a while, but then users started misusing it and now it's just... terrible. The List wasn't supposed to be used like this. At all.

We're trying to make a rarity-only list but unfortunately a lot of us who were working on it got swamped by real life. It was heavily discussed from December 2016 to February 2017, then more trailing discussion and some work done afterwards. Then we got some nice hard data in July/August 2016 and then real life cracked down. :'D We're hoping that the rarity-only list will inform people that some of the pets they think are worth a ton really aren't THAT rare and that some low-demand pets are actually pretty darn rare you better pay up, man. A few users combed through the Rarity Changes thread and based the draft of the list off of that. Hope they're doing okay in real life; I haven't seen one of them in a while.

I've always felt that as CS grows, we get more users on both ends of the spectrum: more rude users and more angels. i.e. the raw number of rude users goes up (and so does the raw number of angels). So it definitely feels like there are more rude users, impatient users, etc. It's harder to gauge the %. And we find the rude users and the angels find us, but the angels are still human, so... I think we naturally end up running into waaaay more rude users than angels.

As a 2008 user with a reasonably good memory I sometimes want to flip tables when I see incomplete answers/advice that I think is misleading. But I'm only one person and I'm busy IRL. So I don't give comprehensive answers/advice very often... so I feel like I'm just helping the spread of misleading answers/advice that can feed into the growing nastiness in the CS community -cries-

Just recently we were talking about how much more relaxed trading was in this thread (discussion goes on for several pages)

[Cookie1992]

Any chance we can turn this into a discussion? After several years of really nasty rant threads (given many, many chances to prove that they couldn't turn nasty, but they always turned nasty, even under the supervision of global moderators, admin assistants, and admins), CS no longer allows rant threads..

Kitchen sink up ahead.

I'm a 2008 user and I feel like my best chances BY FAR at getting List pets now are by doing offsite trades and improving my art enough to do art-for-pets trades. (Or I could ninja people, but that would leave an awful taste in my mouth. At least I found CS early, so I have a lot of pets! The idea of taking away what little new users have makes me feel awful, so I don't do it. My conscience is clean. But I absolutely cannot deny the temptation that is there. They haven't been frustrated for as long as I have been, I'm tired of struggling, easy way out--that kind of feeling. Especially since I'm a person who does, in fact, get satisfaction from achieving something the easy way--whenever people say "but you wouldn't feel accomplished if you got it easily!" I kinda want to scoff and say "lol you don't know me") I feel like it's disproportionately harder to do List trades with CS pets and items.

The List was used okay for a while, but then users started misusing it and now it's just... terrible. The List wasn't supposed to be used like this. At all.

We're trying to make a rarity-only list but unfortunately a lot of us who were working on it got swamped by real life. It was heavily discussed from December 2016 to February 2017, then more trailing discussion and some work done afterwards. Then we got some nice hard data in July/August 2016 and then real life cracked down. :'D We're hoping that the rarity-only list will inform people that some of the pets they think are worth a ton really aren't THAT rare and that some low-demand pets are actually pretty darn rare you better pay up, man. A few users combed through the Rarity Changes thread and based the draft of the list off of that. Hope they're doing okay in real life; I haven't seen one of them in a while.

I've always felt that as CS grows, we get more users on both ends of the spectrum: more rude users and more angels. i.e. the raw number of rude users goes up (and so does the raw number of angels). So it definitely feels like there are more rude users, impatient users, etc. It's harder to gauge the %

As a 2008 user with a reasonably good memory I sometimes want to flip tables when I see incomplete answers/advice that I think is misleading. But I'm only one person and I'm busy IRL. So I don't give comprehensive answers/advice very often... so I feel like I'm just helping the spread of misleading answers/advice that can feed into the growing nastiness in the CS community -cries-

Well its actually a bit of both, its a bit of a rant of something that has been bothering me for over a year now (and partially made me leave in the first place) but its also a place for cevil discussion. I just hope that somehow greedy people start to see what they are doing.

I think something of a list is perfectly fine (although there is a rarity meter on each pet and using common sense people should know naturally that if something is purple 2008 its gonna be rather more rare than a red 2014 or an orange 2010 XD) but as you already say; people abuse it. "This pet is worth 25 nons, if you dont have that i just want EVERYTHING in your rare and very rare trade groups and all the lists you have else I wont give it. But trust me its a great deal for you!" Ive heard that time and time again from people litterly asking for just about every pet of any worth I had. Including a ton of november 08 hearts etc. Or when I ask for something they put more pets on my side, put something thats lower on the list on their side and call it an amazing deal; even when the thing they offer isnt even something I want.

Pets are worth what someone will give, not what this made up list tells you you should get. I mean I had a freaking apple and smiley and they never gave me anything cos no one cared about getting either. I eventually ended up getting rid of em as part of a trade for something bigger; but those 2 UR's didn't add anything of value to the trade.

I too could have ripped of plenty new players but I rather give them something overpay from my side to get them started than ripping of someone to get what I want. Its just inhumane to do so. And by the look of things the average rich person rips off about 5 players each christmas by the number of december 18th pets they own...

[Hiia :mrgreen:]

One thing I have the most trouble with is demand. While I can agree the rares list can be a bit of an annoyance, but what's even worse is half the time people are trying to get way too much for their pet just because it looks pretty. Pets on the same tiers aren't worth the same, even though they are on the same tier?? Don't even get me started on the certain storepets that go for easily 10x their worth, making them nearly impossible to obtain without extreme overpay. Sure, I get that people get attached to their pets and want a bit more than it's worth for it, but expecting truckloads of rares that takes some players months- or even years- to obtain is ridiculous! I really dislike "demand", and even though its supposedly all based on user-preference, it's very rare to find a user willing to trade that high-demand pet fairly. Of course, for the ones who do want to trade fairly, they are pushed into following the ridiculous demands just so they don't get ripped off. Who wouldn't want to get a bunch of nice pets for a single rare-very rare pet? A lot of users, though, just take it a step further...

tl;dr-A rare should just be that- a rare. Just because it has a long tail doesn't mean it should be worth high advents -.-


Edit: Just wanted to mention that I really don't care much for the rares list, and I'm trying to collect every non-list pet on C$! Currently at 2015

[Cookie1992]

Well one thing i do get is that older store pets are a pain to get. The other pets all get released again each year but store is a one time offer and only the number of people buying them decides how many of them will be around. Sadly os I still want a freaking skellebun; which sadly is about the rarest of all store pets >.<

[myth;]

I'm sorry you've had such a bad restart into CS, sadly the community has been massively bent by greed, it's awful what some people have done using that gosh awful word "demand". I understand how you feel in a way, I went on a break 2013-15 time and when I finally got back into the game, what I found.. its awful. So many people are rude, undermining, lie and cheat.. its immensely difficult sometimes, but I promise there are some true users here who care about each other and general happiness and well being than greed. They're out there, I promise. :'3