[urgent] this site really is actually dying

[DisneyLuv]

i quit this website back around may for good after eight years of playing through this and a previous, now deleted, account. if you don't start out with 20 nons worth, you're screwed. there's no way to profit on here without being a total scumbag, or being a god at art, and flight rising gems and C$ are inflated to the point that a non will set you back $100. there's rarely any new players, driven away by the toxicity, greed, and generally closed-off, elitist nature of traders.

this game is becoming unplayable, to say the least, and this comment will come off as rude and abrasive, but i'm hoping people will see that i care about this site, even though i can't see a light at the end of the tunnel, unfortunately. without art and closed species this website would be entirely, completely, and irredeemably dead, and big closed species themselves are always funneling themselves offsite anyways.

I agree. I’ve had to use FR gems to get valuable pets recently, because they are cheaper to buy than Chicken Dollars. If I’m being honest, I’ve spent a lot more money than I should and I still feel that I’ve made no progress.

[Wookieinmashoo]

I don't know if this would be helpful or not, but I started looking up item numbers a year ago. I spent so much time on it, got burned out and as it turns out, people weren't that interested in it. I never finished it, but I did come across some numbers on "current players". take what you will of this information.

At the end of November November 2011 CS celebrated 200,000 members, accounts numbered up to 274,000
In 2017 a member made a comment that the site had 501,000 members, probably referencing the number at the bottom of the page. There were over 900,000 accounts at that time made
Last year I wrote down the "total members" and I'll continue doing that.

Total accounts, all numbers taken between September - November (excluding 2008)
2008 69,006 for Christmas big pack
2009- 52,000
2010 - 139,000
2011- 173,000 (200k members items)
2012 - 353,000
2013 - 556,000
2014 - 673,000
2015 - 760,000
2016 - 826,000
2017 - 901,000 (501,000 members)
2018 - 948,000
2019 - 978,000
2020 - 1,000,000
2021 - 1,024,000 ("total" members 584,000)
2022 - 1,048,880 ("total" members 595,570

Accounts just mean accounts made, nothing else. Total Members, at the bottom of the page does not include deleted accounts. I took a random sample of 100 accounts in 2011 and got these statistics:

User doesn't exist: 53%
player "quit" (active 1-2 years then none): 17%
no pets, no items: 7%
some pets, no items: 15%
some pets and some items: 8%

"User doesn't exist" is a deleted account

[copper1123lol]

i quit this website back around may for good after eight years of playing through this and a previous, now deleted, account. if you don't start out with 20 nons worth, you're screwed. there's no way to profit on here without being a total scumbag, or being a god at art, and flight rising gems and C$ are inflated to the point that a non will set you back $100. there's rarely any new players, driven away by the toxicity, greed, and generally closed-off, elitist nature of traders.

this game is becoming unplayable, to say the least, and this comment will come off as rude and abrasive, but i'm hoping people will see that i care about this site, even though i can't see a light at the end of the tunnel, unfortunately. without art and closed species this website would be entirely, completely, and irredeemably dead, and big closed species themselves are always funneling themselves offsite anyways.

Just hopping on to say I totally agree. Trading anymore seems impossible. Nobody wants to trade anymore unless for crazy overpay.

[AlphaLex]

I also agree with trading and toxicity, i may be new but ive already had my fair share of rudeness and bad trades, as well as the fact of almost always having to bold my rules as people dont listen or i ask a question which gets answered with passive agressiveness which was my first block.
Its a shame to see on an otherwise great site and its the only thing that puts me off.
The pricings and values and changes also confuse me as im a rather simple person.
People also hoard a tone of pets instead of 1 at a time so that also makes it 10x more difficult for anyone else.

[Bunnybee]

Yeah, I’ve felt it die. I only joined in late 2019, yet things seem to have changed a lot within the past few years. The trading community makes up such a large chunk of CS, yet it is so difficult. Coming back for after about a year, why are the recent store pets going for so much? Why is it so hard to trade for a normal rare dog, or a very recent event pet?

When I first joined, I wanted to collect all the store pets. It wasn’t so hard to trade normal rares for store pets, but now? It feels impossible! Collections are so hard to complete and trading has become difficult and boring. Not to mention what someone else did here, the auctions are completely dead. I don’t remember having to wait almost a full day to bump my posts in there. The most active it really gets is at rollover for a short amount of time, while I’m asleep or during events, and it’s a shame when I really loved my time on this site

I agree about the auction threads, nobody seems to be bidding. I’m currently auctioning a popular OMGSR, but nobody has bidded on it and it’s been a couple of days. I feel like a lot of users will feel the same way.

As for a store pet collection? You’re correct, it’s very much improbable. You also have to include the Skelebun which is worth like 12+ nons now. No wonder you can’t bid on that, nobody has nearly enough pets to cover that gap.

i think the auctions are dead because a bid is basically just a normal trade because of overpaying

[Falco]

I was surpeized December 18th wasn't as busy as it usually is. I agree. I've noticed the game slowly dying over time. A lot of members who I remember talking to aren't active at all anymore.

I think part of the reason is that the majority of the players now are older now, and we cant make much time with work, collage, life styles, etc.
The same thing happened with animal jam too. Kids seem to be less interested in browser games now

[good vibrations]

i quit this website back around may for good after eight years of playing through this and a previous, now deleted, account. if you don't start out with 20 nons worth, you're screwed. there's no way to profit on here without being a total scumbag, or being a god at art, and flight rising gems and C$ are inflated to the point that a non will set you back $100. there's rarely any new players, driven away by the toxicity, greed, and generally closed-off, elitist nature of traders.

this game is becoming unplayable, to say the least, and this comment will come off as rude and abrasive, but i'm hoping people will see that i care about this site, even though i can't see a light at the end of the tunnel, unfortunately. without art and closed species this website would be entirely, completely, and irredeemably dead, and big closed species themselves are always funneling themselves offsite anyways.

I agree. I’ve had to use FR gems to get valuable pets recently, because they are cheaper to buy than Chicken Dollars. If I’m being honest, I’ve spent a lot more money than I should and I still feel that I’ve made no progress.

very common issue. this website can be horribly addicting for how "casual" it's purported to be. won't say how much i've spent on here just to have to give valuable stuff away that nobody wanted, and thankfully i translated some of that money back in my flight rising account so it isnt a total loss, but for what? rarely any improvements for this website from upper management. not going to say my full thoughts on that particular issue but it is clear as day that, though many staff do care, there is also no real incentive for them to do so once they burn out.

[Lavish ❀ Lioness]

This site better not die lol I just got heavy back into it lol

[rileypillow]

I don’t really agree that the site is “dying”, I feel more that the value of rares is inflated beyond their worth.

I am a recent user, so I can’t say much about what the site was like pre-2020. During 2020 and early 2021 the site felt really dead, catching rares/very rares from the Pound even if late was easy due to the fact that user activity was so low, the Pound could stay open for hours, lots of monthly outcomes were uncommon, and nearly every post on the front page was about quitting users hosting giveaways.

Now in 2022, it feels much more active, especially when you look at how similar pet sites are doing activity-wise. However, I feel that the value of rares is pushing people away from the site. I’ve struggled to get any rares from 2018 and before unless they are low demand or you offer C$. I get and have seen crazily high offers for recent rares, far beyond their worth. I think I’ve got about 10 rares from trading (and sometimes overpaying for them) and the rest were all free, Pound caught, raffle prizes, or bought with C$. Trading for rares+ feels stagnant. I feel like this is the problem, and not user inactivity.

Edit: Another problem I have encountered is FR currency, it seems to be the only way to buy rares nowadays? I don’t like how an offsite currency has overtaken CS’s own pets and C$.

[skyline]

i've been reading people's comments about the current trading issues, and they're so right. if you're new and don't start out with 15+ nons worth you're screwed, and as the trading community shrinks, it becomes harder and harder to find those pets let alone obtain them. i got lucky back then. i have all the pets i want, so i just don't really have a reason to trade anymore. i haven't traded a nons+ worth in probably over a year. there's a reason all i do is hang out on forums now lol, luckily there's still a semi decent amount of people to chat with around here, but that's not to say it definitely hasn't also experienced a crash in the past few years.