Sunfang wrote:I've been playing CS since it pretty much began. I don't come on here much because of this issue by and large. Most games at some point come across inflation issues, and they either adapt and implement ways to lessen the impact of inflation or they burn like Gaia or flounder in infinate drama over pet values like Neopets.
I want to say firstly, a C$ gashapon is a horrible and disgusting idea. Gambling with real life money has no business in a kids game, or any game that isn't explictly a gambling game that is regulated like a gambling game. The more countries to outlaw these lootboxes, the better. I don't support businesses that prey on vulnerable people for quick monitary gain and neither should you. There are 'surprise mechanics' in almost every game, but there's a huge difference between being given weeks to participate in a site wide event where you are freely given tokens or awarded them through regular gameplay to trade in for prizes, and selling you a chance at the cost of real world currency. Gambling ruins lives.
Before I get on to my suggestions to fix the value of C$, I want to address the bloated elephant in the room.
Chicken Smoothie needs to release older content more often than one day a year. That's just what needs to happen. I have watched far too many games drown in a pit of acid over devs trying to maintain some rediculously high value for objects to appease a small group of collectors while the player base at large has to continuously scrape more and more together for said objects, leading to inflation crises that CAN'T be fixed because the tipping point had too long gone.
This is the number one reason my own game is not completely user controlled, where we watch the values of items for things that plummet too low and offer questing or other iniatives to increase demand - or watch items skyrocket and introduce more of those in batches so that players can still profit but those items don't become unobtainable for others. Just releasing items and expecting 10+ years laters for the economy to be ok with little interference will only make a select group of people very happy. Goals and dreams are fine, but when people are asking for 1kC$ for a single pet you've got a huge gigantic problem, and like that giant paint bubble from Spongebob it's gonna explode but you won't be able to lick this one to fix it.
I can't speak of items, because I know the value of items is a bit wonky unless they're sought after items like the older cake kit - heck even some older tokens have gained value for dressup and they will never be recycled in due to their token status and they will only ever climb in value even if slower than other items. The item values are even more wonky than pet values, because it was only some years ago items really started to gain their traction and with more and more reasons to dressup pets and more items to dressup pets with, older items will only continue to raise in price because that's the nature of being able to customize.
Given the number of pets on the site (and I don't mean total, I mean every unique pet) I don't think a single day of the year for a chance at something marginally worth value is helping as it used to, but I think that is something that the devs need to look into, and make a hard decision without the -total- influence of collectors AND traders so that speculated value can be maintained but obtainability is prioritized. And I mean, looking at hard data to see what pets and items are the offenders when it comes to objects that simply have too much demand and too little supply.
I also know they have said that 'old store pets won't be rereleased' but this is absolutely baffling, as every single uber predatory mmo cash shop lootbox exclusivity gambling heaven I've ever purchased from or played has recycled their older store goods years down the line because it is benificial to the user economy, their banks, and for user enjoyment. New users are the ones paying the price for these stubborn ideals of not rereleasing old content more; older cash shop pets shouldn't be selling for 100x their original price with neither YOU profiting from this nor new users.
You can say it's because it's not fair to people who bought them way back when - and I say as someone who bought store pets when they first were introduced that I simply don't care and want new users to be able to have them without being, for lack of a nicer word, scammed. You can say it's not fair to users who bought them at secondary market value for higher costs, but you can say that about ANY pet on the site and adressing the cost of older store pets now will only spare future users from paying even more horrifically inflated prices. Find a the cost of C$ that these problem pets and items are going for, and directly sell them to users for either player market value or a lowered value, or a mix over time. Seperate reintroduced pets on a new list, keep the current archives as a 'vintage' list and create an 'modern' list for ALL rereleases like a card game, the kings of collect-a-thons.
When you address inflation, people who bought at inflated prices will be sore that's true to any market on Earth - but no one's going to go on a riot because now the populous can actually afford things again or at least have a realistic goal. Rare chasers will moan, but frankly, rare chasers and hoarders are a big part of the issue when the player base at large isn't out here to 'catch them all' or play the CS exlist/list trade game. What will you do where there's hardly any of said store pet in circulation anymore - be it for one reason or another? Just ignore it? That's EXACTLY what Gaia did until their only single digit in existance item broke their entire market so hard that their fix only broke it more.
And for prosperity, I consider myself a rare chaser, I know how to play the long con and sit on value and I know the tricks to buy up premium currency - trade it from site to site for better value until I manipulate it to get what I want. I've bought the borderline useless currency here, to trade for Flight Rising gems, to then trade for Wajas customs because it was the cheapest route to go. I also, more often than not, spend real cash on FR/Wajas to get THEIR premium currency to buy your pets from users here because their currency is worth something - and that should be a horrible red flag because ik so many people who do the same. I am the problem.
But nobody wants to drop over 200 on your currency for a few rares, when they can drop a 20 for Gems or a 30 for CWP and get better rares here for less. And it's gross that it's so bad here that people like me are the ones being catered to while some newbie who just wants a skeletal rabbit stares in disbelief at the horrifying cost of some bunny on a kids site.
You say no gatcha mechanics and other things like subs because it's a kids site, yet you have these same children working some 'sigma grindset late stage capitalism' long game to get a single pet on what should be a relaxing kids collect-a-thon. But instead it rivals the grindset for the worst mmos I've played, and feels more like a job. How in the world is that any better? I can hear fellow rare chasers becry 'but you should have no work up to x!' And yeah, but you do that in ANY game at reasonable rates whereas here trading is no longer reasonable or a friendly enviroment, it's the toxic tirefire Springfield keeps burning for no discernable reason. You're worried for users in the past who will find it unfair, but it's unfair to too many people NOW. I bought a microwave the other day for 60 dollars, when 5 years ago they were only 30. Yet if they went on a flash sale or lowered the prices to something more reasonable for the average consumer I wouldn't be crying that people can afford microwaves now.
And I want to clarify, it's not that offsite trading is the issue. It's that once you figure out the conversion rates between the currencies, you know who's so cheap you can buy in bulk to manipulate to get better goods - or who to buy less of to get the best absolute trade value. You trade around premium currencies from site to site. Compared to virtually every other site I play/ed, CS is the most worthless currency. I can spend hardly anything on FR and exchange my gems for a boatload of C$ or CS pets, and that's ideal for Sunfang. Not idea for CS. Because it greatly undervalues your currency. Likewise, I can exploit the cost of inflated uber rare pets on this site and get extremly expensive things on other sites like customs on Wajas. Which, isn't good either because now we're creating some weird cross site dystopian inflation. The biggest offenders for this are old store pets. They're the easiest to trade, they might as well print money for like minded people like me who are trading high value stuff for offsite premium currency or premium items. This isn't what you should want. You shouldn't be a cheap tool to 'exploit'.
I think that CS needs to make a hard call when it comes to the growing value of the older content on its site, because Gaia didn't, Foopets didn't, and many other sites didn't and they chose to keep fantastical objects at inflated values to appease a group of collectors or because of stubborn 'exclusiveness'. Rerelease content more often, bring their values to an obtainable realm instead of keeping them in a grindset realm. You don't need to tank value. But one older store pet should not be the cost of my monthly gasoline expense. People are only going to trade older uber valueable pets for astronomical C$ amounts and even then I question why because there's nothing to do with it other than watch funny number go up. Which is what they're doing unless they're playing cross-site hot potato like I did.
They didn't [trade it] much when I was a teen buying and trading C$ more easily in 2013, and they most certainly aren't now in 2022. The longevity of this site is more valuable than the inevitable crash from skyrocketing prices of pets. I no longer play much because none of my goals are obtainable. This place is a buffer to things I want on others sites because I can milk the inflation to my own selfish benefit while new users fail to even complete 2011 dream pet goals. I gifted a single Warrior Cat back in 2014 to a user who wanted her to simply dressup because Sandstorm was their fave Warrior and that one damn cat has been a pipedream since. I can't imagine what any new user must be thinking with all the thousands of unique pets. Why do I come back? The art forums, and the art community. The pet aspect of this place is just gone for me, but CS will always be a great art community in my eyes. I just wish the pet aspect was still fun, as the two worlds seem so far apart.
If you don't like my brutal honestly, then I don't know what to say. I don't know how to help you understand it's ok to tell people like me to stifle themselves because overall userbase happiness and expanding economic opportunities for a larger net audience is more important that someone who wants a sparkledog monopoly in a kids game. The inflation here is a fun means of manipulation for rare chasers like me, and it shouldn't be, because it hurts EVERYONE and people like me who chase value, profit, and rarity shouldn't be coddled. We will ALWAYS find a way to milk profit, but the users in the middle and bottom won't. They will set goals, see they are unreasonable or impossible, and move on or just not care about your pet trading at all leaving it all to people like me to continue to create insular bubbles. I don't think that will be addressed, I've seen no indication it will be, and the vocal minority of top traders have been dead-set against helping this issue when this has come in years in the past. I want to be wrong. So what, oh what, can we do to raise the value of C$ so that it does have trade value and users can get a foot in the trade game with it and people can actually use it?
I wanna say again, C$ has never been ALL that valuable. I've bought it since it was first introduced, and aside from then, it's not been popular because there C$ store is stagnated, and because it's stagnated nobody wants C$. Since a lot of the art here is volunteer work, I can't be too sad at that. And I would assume that they wouldn't be into selling volunteer art for cash. So, let's leave the idea of new items in the cash shop out of this.
I have some ideas on how to fix this, but firstly I'd like to say NO CASH FOMO. FOMO is JUST as bad as lootcrate mechanics. I think CS's time limit on their store pets right now is fine, because users have ample amount of time to trade for C$ or purchase it. I'd argue C$ pets should always be recycled (perhaps at christmas, 4 random store pets return for a week to be bought at a slightly higher price), even the worse FOMO games like ESO do this, but that's akin to my argument to simply rerelease older content more often.
1. Intergrate C$ directly into the Oekaki.
Something as simple as allowing artists to set prices for their works in C$ and allowing players to bid on or purchase artwork and designs this way would be the easiest and fairest way I could imagine use for C$. While this doesn't solve the issue of stagnation in the shop itself, it does allow uses a new and more novel use for C$ itself.
Maybe users can even set up C$ donations on their artwork, similar to kofi or patreon where donators get notifications on new designs or art that the user they are donating to has just posted. I'm sure there are more options that just these, but since art is and always has been so big on CS I think finding a way to mesh the Oekaki with C$ will be the biggest help to increase the value of C$.
An argument against this is users can already just trade, but streamlining this as an artists tool where users need only set a price and sell will make it far easier for artists to sell. Perhaps a bidding feature could be implemented as well for an art auction house? However, we still need reasons to spend that C$ and ultimately drive down the costs.
2. Direct purchase of older pets and items.
"This is one weird trick! Rare chasers hate him!" I can hear the cries of horror, so bare with me. I understand that CS and most games are collect-a-thons with a purely user driven economy with minimal aid from higher powers, so the stipulations would be as followed to keep the peace:
A) These pets/items are locked to the buying users account and have a special 'untradeable' tag on their image similar to 'gen 2'.
B) These can only be purchased in a certain quantity, such as you can only buy 2 'super booper orange cats'.
C) Unreleased, Zebra, store pets/items and similar would not be in this pool given their unique natures of obtaining.
D) These would be rotated monthly, giving users the a decent amount of time to buy.
E) These do not count towards completion - ie 'super booper orange cat' in the archieves will still read as not being owned.
Users who would be using this would likely never be customers for 'list' traders in the first place, and as these pets do not count towards your collection completion and nor are they tradeable and nor are they even guranteed to cycle back in at any given point (given the total of unique pets) the value of the tradeable ones should still remain. However if this causes the value of 'super booper orange cat' real tradeable version to go down a tiny bit - that's good because now it's a little bit more obtainable for people wanting it for collection or trading purposes. The target audience at large for this is the casual player who just wants to dressup pets and or rp/draw their few dreamies.
3. Allow users to purchase custom item slots for pet dressup by implementing a special new Oekaki board.
Create a new Oekaki board, where users can purchase Oekaki templates (background, body part, accessory, foreground) and design their own items for their pets. A user can buy one of these, can be equipted to one pet like a normal item, and can be edited and changed infinately. When a user goes to dress their pet up, they can 'import item from Oekaki' and select the Oekaki board image to import as an item. This has further uses that could:
- Allow players to express their creativity more with their pets and flesh out characters.
- Sell custom items to other players (either being able to transfer ownership via C$ purchase OR allow your paid artist to edit your Oekaki like on all other Oekakis)
- Keep the demand on more items in the C$ store down so that artists aren't rushed to create more and more to combat C$ inflation.
- Addresses the issue of items being dog biased.
Of course like the cash shop, 1 'board' = 1 item. So a user would buy 1 'body part' board Oekaki for like 10C$, get to create a single body part board Oekaki similar to if they bought a wig. This should be priced so that if a user creates an item similar to, let say the Blonde Afro, CS has taken no loss in them not buying the Blonde Afro and the user doesn't get in trouble for 'copying' a cash shop item because there was no monitary loss on the part of CS.
For more elaborate items, such as event items, and other unique items that aren't as generic we can of course add rules against creating 'clones', however this goes back to the issue of those items probably being sought after and needing rereleased in the first place so I would argue given these items aren't really tradeable (only buyable in the sense you can comission artists and sell your Oekaki creations) and they aren't a part of any official CS archive that it doesn't matter.
You can argue everyone will just make big tower cakes and it will drive down the price of the uber wanted buildable bday cake - I'd argue why you want to monopolize birthday cakes when people just want to put their tiny rat on top of a big cake.
4. Allow users to create ads that show on the site.
Allow users to purchase ad space on CS. User driven ad space is used on MANY other games to generate a good amount of income for their websites, internal ads are ALWAYS more favourable to users than seeing 'buy this shoe this is a cool shoe, this random shoe model says this is the best shoe only 59.99 for this shoe.' This would allow roleplayers, artists, writers, coders, traders, and gifters and clubs and heck even boards to advertise their communities and services and goods.
You can allow users to set their internal ad preferences to fine tune what they want to see - such as allowing users to limit internal ads to 'adopt Oekaki ads only' and similar. Or no ads at all and just allow them to keep the google adsense ads you currenly use. A lot of places I play users create user ads to just be goofy and make people smile, you'd be surprised that people would pay you a fiver to just create a silly meme ad and let it run for a few days to get a giggle out of the playerbase.
Linking offsite would probably be based on a whitelist. Back when user made adoptable grownable communities were huge, I would have loved to see people's ads for their cute onsite growable games.
5. Allow for user customization.
Allow users to create custom layout for their user page and pet catagories. Provide users with a special area in user settings and pet group settings that allow users to input the URL of their custom images (not hosted by CS unless the cost of hosting these images can be recooped in the purchase cost of customization.) The layout and each group, and even trades, would need to be purchased seperately. So if you have 10 pet groups that you want all custom layouts, you'd buy that ability for each group. Once they buy the ability to custom a group, your profile, or trade landing the user would always be able to customize it.
I don't know how popular this actually would be, but I could see some enjoying this.
6. 'Different' things.
Instead of items for pets in the store, perhaps get a little more outside the bun with what you can sell for C$. Those board smilies? Sell a few packs of new ones. They hardly cost anything to host, and are simple enough to create. A screaming, shaking, angry Totoro would be quite enjoyable for when you just can't express your rage with the current 2000s AIM looking emoticons. People loves emoticons. They do. Look at emojis. Now imagine, packs of CS emojis. A nice freebie starter pack, then some cool C$ ones. You could even sell C$ ones at events, and for other events, just have them be obtainable for tokens! Heck, make them placeable in your stamp signature. Heck, make them tradeable. Now there's a novelty, tradeable emoticons.
More complex stamps or custom stamps in the C$. Do you know how many cute ratties there aren't as stamps? Animated flashy luxury stamps that scream 'I'm a real high class fellow'? The lack of MY dog on one? No? You could take my $ right now CS. You could. For a square with my own picture of my pet dog to put in my stamp collection signature. I'm a simple man. I don't want to code a signature. I want to play tetris with your nice stamps and stickers.
Allow users to buy 'favourite pet slot/s' that either go on their profile or go under their user info on their forum posts (such as a 100x100 or smaller shrank images with their pet name under it and a little quote from their pet) a-la Wajas/Subeta/Neopets/Flight Rising/etc. Allow users to toggle this off like they do with avatars so users with little data or other restrictions don't have to use/see it.
Auction off custom pet slots, at certain times of the year, making it so users can bid in pets AND C$ and that previous winners can't win again. This is probably the messiest suggestion I have, as this can get dumb quick. They're be untradeable naturally.
A literal C$ pit. You throw C$ in, and it stops going brrr. You get some arbitrary user profile/forum profile swag. People like swag CS. Even when it's pointless. I should know. I go to arcades.
C$ donation drives, where users donate C$ similar to the C$ pit, only it's working towards a specific number and when the community reaches that number, EVERYONE gets to adopt some special one off pet. One off similar to, let's say the pride pets or St. Patrick's day, or etc. one off celebration adopts.
I don't think a CS Subscription service would work. CS has no official Discord, extra adopts or tokens would be way too broken in an economy like this, there are no 'real' ads to turn off (CS ads are the most tame of any site I play rn I honestly forget they exist), there are no currencies outside of C$ to give bonuses to, and there is no text space to bump up. Unless CS creates a reason for a subscription to exist, there is no reason for a sub.
Lastly, I know CS is a small team. So I'll say this. If it's between implementing a big new way to use C$ like a custom item Oekaki board, or etc, make that your yearly priority and not a big summer event. It's not anywhere near the same game, but I've been playing ESO for far too long. However, my husband and I have both skipped these past two expansions because the devs keep prioritzing new content over QOL updates and revamps. They do this, despite the community at large screaming for them to just skip a yearly expansion to fix the game and make big QOL improvements. Users don't always want something big and shiny and new, more often than not we just want to know you're still looking back on older content, squashing bugs, tweaking things, and giving new life to old stuff. I'm sure the users here are no different, so if need be, have your summer event be the introduction to big QOL updates and have a slightly bigger or longer Halloween and Xmas. Maybe give us some funny 'I survived the year of improvements' stamps.
I love you Chicken Smoothie. I know I wasn't the only trans/autistic kid who could only be themself here, forced to hide away irl. I don't think your time is up, there's just some things we need to fix like with anything as time goes on.
oh wow. I'm so glad I read this today
Very needed.
