WHY PEOPLE ARE QUITTING CS- A Discussion

[Charliechalky]

Hi!
I've been lurking for a bit, I created this account in 2020, but I actually joined in 2016. I lost the previous account because I made it with my school email....and forgot the password lol. I don't post in the forums often, but I wanted to contribute my thoughts and ideas to this thread. THIS IS A BIG POST!! I didn't know how much I had to say. but yikes.

I am mostly a collector, I've only recently gotten more confident in the trading aspects of this game, in that I'm old enough to stick to my boundaries about what I'm willing to trade and why. (I.e Give me all of your uncommons, rares and event rares combined for this ugly looking dog, no I don't take suggestions.)
When I get trades like this I ignore them unless theres a polite and well intentioned message included, where I can start a discussion with the person about their valuing system. In the end it comes down to setting your own value system and sticking to it, which can be hard when you're young and new to the game.

the C$ to actual currency rate is quite fair imo, at around $1 AUS for 10 C$. As an adult with disposable income, I'm more attracted to the store pets now that I can afford them! I think that store pets should be in a seperate trade category, because they likely aren't nearly as rare as pets from pre 2010. CS is the only site I spend actual money on, and I'd be upset if the pets I spent irl $ to get were suddenly valued as common due to excess, but I also feel like the current system is far too easy to exploit if you have money to spend on this game.

I really appreciate the new artists and staff, and the mid month staff updates. The pets being released for the current event are all really cool, and beautiful to look at, which means that newer players can still get cute pets to add to their collections, or rp with.

I also play flight rising, and I agree that an auction house type system, and a form of virtual currency that could be built up reasonably over time akin to treasure, would really be a boon for this site, FR is also growing at a slower pace then it used to, but it is growing.

I suspect that a part of the reason chicken smoothie seems to be struggling atm (apart from lack of exposure) is the struggle for newer, younger players to find enjoyment in the trading aspects, as well as the forum system. I have only just learnt enough to feel confident about formatting and I've been using the internet since primary school! The idea of newer players being given the benefit of access to donated rares for the first few months on the site is a really good one, but it would put a pretty heavy strain on the staff having to weed out fake accounts made in bad faith.

Maybe a built in tutorial phase? Where a new account gets introduced to the monthly litters, the pound, and the store and how they work. Then gets access to the forums with a tutorial on how to format posts, how topics work, and the rules and etiquette around conduct and behaviour.

For example, a 13 year old makes an account to play with their friend, who's been playing for a month,
the first thing they see is a welcome message from the staff, and the option to get the tour(torial), or a "welcome back party" option for returning players. They choose the tour, get lead through the different ways to adopt pets, how events work, how the store works, and an overview of post formatting and forum etiquette.

Then they get introduced to trading, with a twist. To mitigate exploitation, either by people creating multiple accounts, or bad actors making unfair trades, I think that for the first twelve months a new player can only trade with accounts that are also under a year old.
So this player could trade with their Irl friend and could chat with older accounts through the forums, but they couldn't give pets or items away unless that account was also new.

This would allow a newer player to enjoy the fun parts of trading pets, and also get used to how the system works. Any trade regret they felt wouldn't be totally demodivating. And I know this might feel too restrictive, but in the current trading economy its already impossible for new accounts to get older pets through the trade system outside of gifts from kind players, and the free pet forums. Keep in mind I'm not thinking too hard about this rn, I've only just thought of it.

Nick and Tess have been running this website for longer then some of its members have been alive, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're starting to run low on energy for it. I think that this site could benefit from a similar system to Ao3s donation drives, if a lack of income and time is the reason so many of our suggestions go unaddressed, more paid staff means more time dedicated to maintaining the site and building new features, and less strain on the volunteer admins and mods, who give their time out of love for the site and its community.

Super sorry for the long post, I had a lot to get off my chest apparently. Round of applause if you made it this far lol.

[gamer]

I just skimmed over the first few pages and the last one as of writing this, so I apologize for being a bit out of the loop here. Why are we suggesting incentives to donate to the pound? As far as I'm aware, the pound has no shortage or pets, as I believe it has ~800k at the moment. Is that a way to increase circulation of rares? Genuine question.

If that is so, I don't personally think we need to give reasons to donate to the pound. I feel like there are better ways we could go about distributing pets more. The pound already provides ample opportunity for any user to get a new pet, and it opens far more than it did when I first joined (iirc it would open a few times a week at max, but I could be wrong, it's been years). Adding in a compensation for donating to the pound would either further inflate c$ - if the compensation were to be in c$, which is highly unlikely given it's a paid currency - or would become basically a method to swap pets you don't want for ones that might be in higher demand, which is something I doubt would be good for the economy. Some users have hundreds if not thousands of pets, and they would quickly and easily be able to trade in hundreds of useless commons or very commons to get rarer pets. This would only work in favor of veteran users, rather than distribute rares to newer players as intended. I doubt items as compensation would really do much of anything. I guess it depends on how it works, but most people would likely do their donations until they get whatever item and then stop completely.

I feel like an alternate suggestion might be a "newbie box" of some sort. Maybe users who joined recently enough have an opportunity to open a box with a certain amount of random rares. There are even issues with that though, as too many of a certain rare put into circulation would make it uncommon and that would defeat the purpose. I don't think there's such an influx of new users that a box like this would destroy the economy or anything, but it doesn't really seem all that plausible. I don't know. I'm better at thinking about what's wrong with an idea rather than coming up with new ones.

This is mostly my own pessimism, but I feel like the economy was doomed the moment we had a user run rares list. I wasn't here before its creation, but the aftermath of such a thing even existing in the first place is too far reaching at this point to fix anything. It would always be subject to people modifying it for their own personal gain. And there will always be people who abide by it as if it's law, no matter what happens, even if it's not. And at this point, it basically is law. If you don't go by the list, well, good luck trading anything at all lol. You can hardly even fix the inflation of the c$ value unless you mass toss c$ into the void, which is obviously not feasible. I personally think there is no way the administrators can implement something that would fix the economy. I feel like it's up to the users at this point.

One thing I've noticed (and I may be wrong on this because I'm not really active there) is that on Flight Rising, their paid currency (gems) seems to have a relatively stable value. Dragons still seem to cost roughly the same amount of gems on the auction house as they did years ago when I first joined. I feel like to curb some of the inflation it would've been better to have had a secondary currency that's earnable through other means than just buying it. This would also have helped with distribution of rares to newbies (they can simply play games to earn this currency like the games on Flight Rising) and the inflation as mentioned (there would be less of a reason to buy tons of c$ if there was another currency to use). However, at this late of a stage, implementing a new currency would be nearly impossible. It would throw everything off balance.

I actually agree with an auction house idea, if we're looking at ways to fix the economy. I feel like that's genuinely our best bet. The continual lowering of prices as people try to get others to buy their own pets would help bring down pet c$ values to more normal numbers. While it's not really much in the Chickensmoothie spirit per se, it's really one of the only ways (in my opinion) the economy could be fixed.

In any case, I feel like no matter what happens, there will be angry users. Either people who are mad nothing is being done, or people who are mad something got changed in a major way. There's no way to make everyone happy.

[.Kira Nightblade.]

Hi!
I've been lurking for a bit, I created this account in 2020, but I actually joined in 2016. I lost the previous account because I made it with my school email....and forgot the password lol. I don't post in the forums often, but I wanted to contribute my thoughts and ideas to this thread. THIS IS A BIG POST!! I didn't know how much I had to say. but yikes.

...


Maybe a built in tutorial phase? Where a new account gets introduced to the monthly litters, the pound, and the store and how they work. Then gets access to the forums with a tutorial on how to format posts, how topics work, and the rules and etiquette around conduct and behaviour.

For example, a 13 year old makes an account to play with their friend, who's been playing for a month,
the first thing they see is a welcome message from the staff, and the option to get the tour(torial), or a "welcome back party" option for returning players. They choose the tour, get lead through the different ways to adopt pets, how events work, how the store works, and an overview of post formatting and forum etiquette.

Then they get introduced to trading, with a twist. To mitigate exploitation, either by people creating multiple accounts, or bad actors making unfair trades, I think that for the first twelve months a new player can only trade with accounts that are also under a year old.
So this player could trade with their Irl friend and could chat with older accounts through the forums, but they couldn't give pets or items away unless that account was also new.

This would allow a newer player to enjoy the fun parts of trading pets, and also get used to how the system works. Any trade regret they felt wouldn't be totally demodivating. And I know this might feel too restrictive, but in the current trading economy its already impossible for new accounts to get older pets through the trade system outside of gifts from kind players, and the free pet forums. Keep in mind I'm not thinking too hard about this rn, I've only just thought of it. . . .

(cut just so it doesn't clog up everything<3)

A tutorial phase is a GREAT idea! Honestly I have no idea how I would have navigated this site if I didn't have friends who had joined first who helped me around, I tried introducing CS to a younger friend a few months back and the reason they didn't continue was because they found the whole setup overwhelming and a bit confusing

Although I will respectfully disagree about the year trade thing, maybe a few weeks or even months, but I feel like it would be extremely frustrating to wait a whole year to have trade freedom haha

[leopia]

i've been typing and deleting this for hours so apologies if this is off-topic now lol, i just gotta post it bc i need to go to bed OOF



yeah! i personally love CS so much, but there are things that could be done to improve it and make the site a more friendly and fun experience. i think its fun in its current state but more could be done..


really the reason this thread was made in general was out of love for this game and peoples desire to see it thrive, yeah? :] id love to contribute more but unfortunately words fail me sometimes lol. point is that this thread is BECAUSE people love this site and want to see it improve and be fun for them the same way it was years ago!


this really resonated with me. i love cs. i joined in 2012, when i think the site was still really thriving. it was a huge comfort to me when i first joined, and it has continued to be a beloved little hobby into my adult years. i've watched a lot of other pet/forum sites change drastically or close down/die out altogether, from the perspective of both a player and a staff member, so i am glad to have cs, and i am so so grateful to the staff for all the work they continue to put into the site, with the new pets and events and everything else. this summer event has been one of my favorites, for sure.



Chicken smoothie is a forum game and a pet site. I feel that a lot of users have outgrown CS and want it to change with them, but that doesn't need to be the case. Chicken Smoothie is a game the us as users can do what we want with within the capabilities of what the site allows. If there is a forum game you want to play, make one. If you want to roleplay, there is a wonderful place on the forums to do that. We have CS paint to do Oekaki, you can make UMAs. You can post a topic of discussion whenever you want. A lot of the issues that people have is with these are the restrictions that CS has on what you can post, but that is because it is very much a children's game still. You have to work within the parameters of the game you are playing.



while i agree with this for the most part, there are definitely some QoL things i'd like to see made for the forums, and i think a lot of the suggestions in the spreadsheet/doc are still well within the parameters of a child-friendly game. there are a lot of improvements that can be made to the site without taking away from what it is at its core, which is a pet/art/forum site.

i really love seeing activity in the forums. there is a very noticeable lull in activity during the months between events, so seeing everyone coming together here reminds me that there is still very much a beating heart to this site. ♡

oh ALSO i think the oekaki/chickenpaint program is a little hidden gem of chickensmoothie and needs to be advertised to potential new players more because it's such a good asset for new digital artists!

[SabrinaB]

I have seen some suggestions about the pound and i wanted to share my opinion.
Having a notification when it opens is fine, tho you can also check the pound. "The pound opens in 3 hours" is also a reason to check afain in 1,5 hour. You can also set an alarm on your phone, i do that for the banner hunt as well. So a timer: fine with me, tho.i dont really see the use of it.

A reward for donating: no. The pound opwns more than it used to. Now its open a few times a day, but it used to be open once a day, sometimes once in a few days. They started with more openings because the pound was overflowing with pets
More came in than the amount that was adopted. Rewarding people for donations would make it even worse. That way the pound has to be open 24/7 at some point.

There could be some special currency for completing some sort of missions, but that might change cs too much from what it was. It might be hard to add this to the system. Like rewards for adding items for a pet, completing a trade, draw in oekaki etc. But they recently added this sort of thing to flightrising as well, wouldnt that risk being accused of copying? I dont really need a second currency.

[Charliechalky]

.......This would allow a newer player to enjoy the fun parts of trading pets, and also get used to how the system works. Any trade regret they felt wouldn't be totally demodivating. And I know this might feel too restrictive, but in the current trading economy its already impossible for new accounts to get older pets through the trade system outside of gifts from kind players, and the free pet forums. Keep in mind I'm not thinking too hard about this rn, I've only just thought of it. . . .

(cut just so it doesn't clog up everything<3)

A tutorial phase is a GREAT idea! Honestly I have no idea how I would have navigated this site if I didn't have friends who had joined first who helped me around, I tried introducing CS to a younger friend a few months back and the reason they didn't continue was because they found the whole setup overwhelming and a bit confusing

Although I will respectfully disagree about the year trade thing, maybe a few weeks or even months, but I feel like it would be extremely frustrating to wait a whole year to have trade freedom haha

I absolutely get that! ur right in that a year is probably too long if you're playing regularly. I was thinking of my own experience, I know that when I first got into the game, even in 2016 it was a steeeep learning curve. I only adopted one of each pet lol, I didn't even know there were different outcomes! I was too shy to really interact with the forums, never really understood the user-made trade rules and stuck with common sense trading. This made the overall experience much more pleasant, if a bit lonely.

I don't know when the option to private certain pet groups was implemented, but I've found I get fewer trade requests that ignore my trading rules now that my "most valuable" pets aren't visible. It just sucks that some people will only trade a 22 uncommon for a 22 uncommon if the pet is easy to trade up.

Honestly I really like the pound system as it is right now. A kind of luck of the draw mad dash for your wishlist pets. It would be interesting to implement a "lucky banner" that would appear rarely and give the user a wishlist pet or item when clicked, with the items being from the LaF or Pound. That way, the people who miss the pound when it's open, or don't know what times its open, could still be rewarded for being on the site at the times they can get there. Idk tho, Frankly I think that the site needs to evolve a bit. I'm just not sure how.

Also! No one site has a monopoly on trade/reward mechanics for their game. FR and CS are similar in some ways and fundamentally different in others. CS is like a trading card game, and FR is like a TTRPG, both have microtransactions built in to the systems, but the trending and valuable items/avatars are much more fluid in FR due to the amount of choice and control the users have over how their dragons look. There is no value set on the dragons by the site, its all determined by the users. A lot of websites like CS and FR are implementing reward systems for user interaction. Thats kind of what the events are.

[yharnam boy]

i will not quit because of my large collections, because it would be pretty stupid to quit after so many years, and because this is one of the only sites on which i can still play forum games like back in the early 2000s.

i have thought about quitting, but i'll not discuss the reasons, anyway, these thoughts were never really fleshed out and more impulsive, and i have to take care to not do stupid things impulsively, which often leads to me not doing anything, and that's really better in that case.

[SabrinaB]

Dont get me wrong, i never said cs would be copying fr. I said because fr added the reward system very recently, people could accuse cs of copying. I know very well they dont have the monopoly for it.
But i think it would change cs too much and it might also have a bad effect on the server. I am.not sure how ych it can handle, but if they need a bigger one, they also need more money to keep it online, which isnt cheap, so they will have to look for ways to let the members spend more money.

[Panne]

First off, this is a LOT to read, so apologies if I'm repeating things or missing some points that have been made. I dont think I'd be able to read as fast as this thread is growing, lol

As a background, I've been on this site for a LONG time. Since 2009 or 2010 depending on what timezone you are in, haha. Thats 13 years. I played my heart out for years and years. I made so many friends just being silly around the forums, and I loved interacting with a lot of the sites communities. After about 7 years, I took a long hiatus because life got very busy and hectic. When I came back, most of the people I knew had also moved on, though some still remain to this day and I still keep contact with them.

That actually reminds me of a sentiment I saw on this thread and that I've seen countless times. Giving away inactive accounts pets should never be done, and I'm glad that staff seem very firm in their decision to not allow it. I left the site for 5 years, and for many of you, that hiatus is longer you've been a member. Most people would have assumed that I probably won't come back. But I'd be devastated if I logged back in to find out that due to inactivity, all 7 years of my hard work had been taken away from me. I just don't see a good reason for this. Yes, the pet economy does need help, but I don't think taking pets away from people is the right solution. Even if they truly will never come back, there is no way to know for sure, and it's just not worth the risk There are other solutions to stimulate the economy that don't involve taking pets away, and there have been plenty of great suggestions on this thread and this forum that would be much better.

When I came back, the site did feel different. But if I'm being completely honest, it wasn't exactly the rules, staff, or anything that caused this change. Sure, staff came and went, new rules and guidelines were implemented as well as some new features, but at it's core, it's still the same game that I used to (and still) love. But the community as a whole has shifted a lot since then, and I can only throw out guesses as to why. I think a very large part of it is how online communication in general has changed, as well as social media and instant gratification becoming such a staple in our daily lives. Chicken Smoothie is a forum based community, and is not built for the type of communication and content sharing that most of us are used to today. It is slower by nature, and the internet is shifting away from slow. It also seems like people are less willing to participate in forum discussions as a whole, which kind of causes a neverending loop of users not wanting to engage in topics that won't get a lot of traction anyways. I really don't know how this could be changed or fixed, though. Or if it even could? This thread is one of the more notable outliers, and it warms my heart knowing so many people feel strongly enough about the site to discuss ways we would like to see it grow!

That being said, as happy as I was to be able to come back and still feel familiarity with the site, I do think that it would greatly benefit from some things to shake it up a bit. I definitely recognize that CS is not without its flaws. I wholly appreciate the staff that are active and are willing to step in and join in on discussions like this, and can see that they do care about making CS a safe and fun place. But I do also recognize that the staff responsible for making things happen need to be more present in the community, or at the very least reach out for help. I understand life is more important and that CS was never supposed to be as big as it is now. It is just disappointing as a long time member seeing users and staff alike wanting change, but holding no power over the final decision.

I read a lot of great suggestions to liven up the site. I'd love to see a lot of them implemented in one way or another! I love how lively the forums and site get during big events like this one! It's very obvious the userbase enjoys the time and creativity put into events like this. Even small "International Day" events and awareness litters like the endangered species one we recently had are great to see to keep things feeling a little more fresh. Things like the staff and GH litter give us something to look forward to every year. Having more impactful activities like this would help liven things up and keep users coming back.

Some ideas I see though that I personally do not agree with is changing the pound in any way that either makes it easier to adopt rare pets, or to compensate donators etc. I understand the sentiment and I know very well the feeling of seeing a very rare pet only to find out you were too slow. But to put it bluntly, the pound is not here to be a source of guaranteed valuable trading fodder. It is a way for people to get a free pet that they didnt have before; that's it. I know the sheer amount of pets on the site make it hard for people to trade for the pets they want, but there is no feasible way for every person to get a good pet from the pound every time. The pets are not created out of thin air; they come from donations and confiscations. If the balance of rarities were to be skewed in favor of rarer pets, the pound would be left with only the most common and recent pets that no one would really want to adopt, and the problem repeats itself. If the number of pets in an opening was increased majorly, the pound would not be able to keep up it's stock of pets. I think the pound is fine as it is - as a convenience to grab a free pet or item every once in a while. It is not another December 18th box or a guaranteed gift. The changes to cooldown were warranted for sure (I remember when I could only adopt once a day, and sometimes the pound would not even open every day), but as someone with chronic insomnia who is up until early in the morning (it is 3am as I speak), there is an opportunity for everyone in all timezones to catch the pound and grab a free pet. I do, however, support and see no harm in randomizing the dates that pets appear so that users are not at as much of a disadvantage for having slower connections or reflexes.

Anyways, I don't really know what point I was trying to make or if I even made one. I was just airing my thoughts on the matter, maybe someone will find it useful as a discussion point!

[Sanivisu]

I am quitting after many years and it was never about the economy in the past, it was easy to get good pets for art as example. Plus if you had CS and old store pets, you were a lucky ones.

I was selling art, one day created a character to make art trades possible and we had a great artist community (10 years ago)

People grow up and move on - now I trade all my pets before leaving for art but it also got hard nowadays. You get old and busy irl.

So I quess a lot of ppl leave and forget about their pets, because there is nothing to do with. Its also hard to donate xxxx pets to the pound because you have to click every single one. I donated some k to the pound, it took a lot of time.

CS is still cute but its also hard to keep the interest after X years. I had all CS rats, this was my collection and stqrted hoarding stuff later. But since 2020 no one wanted to trade them even for overpays of WL pets so... I quess, as always, its about users and not the site.