[urgent] this site really is actually dying

[FriedApplePie]

Perhaps a way to fix the Dec 18th issue would be to add specific year boxes? You get one ‘08, two ‘09/‘10, and three ‘11/‘12 or something along those lines?

That way you’re guaranteed to get something older and more valuable.

I know I got a lot of meh stuff for Dec 18th this year. I got a rat I’m unsure of, and something else that I don’t even remember. It was just a random rare that went straight to my trade folder. I did get the UR dragon, but I honestly don’t know what to do with it. It’ll probably just rot in my trade folder lol

Previously, before it was separated into boxes, you could just randomly get a combination of rares and up. Of course there wasn’t a guaranteed very rare or anything like we do now with the boxes, but I felt like I always pulled better pets back then. Back then, you could get multiple very rares and URs. Ever since the box system, I have been really disappointed with the pets I receive. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still glad I’ll get some trade fodder material, but I have just noticed the difference. Like someone else suggested, maybe doing this multiple times a year will help people stay motivated and help the trading economy. I know Dec. 18 has always been a big deal, but perhaps having it multiple times a year, or even twice a year, will help.

[Pear]

Perhaps a way to fix the Dec 18th issue would be to add specific year boxes? You get one ‘08, two ‘09/‘10, and three ‘11/‘12 or something along those lines?

That way you’re guaranteed to get something older and more valuable.

I know I got a lot of meh stuff for Dec 18th this year. I got a rat I’m unsure of, and something else that I don’t even remember. It was just a random rare that went straight to my trade folder. I did get the UR dragon, but I honestly don’t know what to do with it. It’ll probably just rot in my trade folder lol

Previously, before it was separated into boxes, you could just randomly get a combination of rares and up. Of course there wasn’t a guaranteed very rare or anything like we do now with the boxes, but I felt like I always pulled better pets back then. Back then, you could get multiple very rares and URs. Ever since the box system, I have been really disappointed with the pets I receive. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still glad I’ll get some trade fodder material, but I have just noticed the difference. Like someone else suggested, maybe doing this multiple times a year will help people stay motivated and help the trading economy. I know Dec. 18 has always been a big deal, but perhaps having it multiple times a year, or even twice a year, will help.

I love the idea of having the rereleases occur multiple times a year. Even if it's a monthly raffle for a pet. I know they just started doing the writing prompt competitions, but I think having something available for all users who may have a barrier to entering those contests, that is very simple to enter, may be beneficial. There's so many rare+ pets on this site, I doubt adding a rare+ or even 3 per month will affect the economy. It's pretty much the equivalent of an old user returning x') It also gives users an incentive to at least stick around a little outside of events.

[Eltons]

It is so incredibly hard to be a newer or returning user to this website. Same goes with a lot of other games a frequented as a kid.
I have recently came back to this website after YEARS of hiatus and it’s impossible to gain Trades or general conversation on forums. I remember when I was a young kiddo 10 something years ago you’d get sent some things here or there from other generous users to get you started & there was a lot more focus on community! Now I don’t need anyone sending me free gifts as a returning player but it’s definitely pushing the newer players away due to the lack of interaction. It’s simple. If you don’t have rare pets you won’t get trades and it’s sad.
Even as a returning player mg idea of the rarity system is flawed. I don’t understand what MA and NON means off the top of my head and I sure have sent some unfair trades. People are very rude about it and it’s stopping me and others from being able to enjoy the game. NO you don’t have to accept unfair trades but please provide us with advice & criticism! Not just rude comments.

I’m conclusion the community has become way less welcoming to newer and returning players. There’s a huge influx on account duplication (double accounts) and it’s hard to gain traction on pre-existing posts.

[BlueEyedKite]

It is so incredibly hard to be a newer or returning user to this website. Same goes with a lot of other games a frequented as a kid.
I have recently came back to this website after YEARS of hiatus and it’s impossible to gain Trades or general conversation on forums. I remember when I was a young kiddo 10 something years ago you’d get sent some things here or there from other generous users to get you started & there was a lot more focus on community! Now I don’t need anyone sending me free gifts as a returning player but it’s definitely pushing the newer players away due to the lack of interaction. It’s simple. If you don’t have rare pets you won’t get trades and it’s sad.
Even as a returning player mg idea of the rarity system is flawed. I don’t understand what MA and NON means off the top of my head and I sure have sent some unfair trades. People are very rude about it and it’s stopping me and others from being able to enjoy the game. NO you don’t have to accept unfair trades but please provide us with advice & criticism! Not just rude comments.

I’m conclusion the community has become way less welcoming to newer and returning players. There’s a huge influx on account duplication (double accounts) and it’s hard to gain traction on pre-existing posts.

For what it is worth, I know I am one person, I still scroll the newbie introductions thread and gift new users. I remember what you were talking about. It wasn't uncommon every few days to get a "free trade!". Some of my oldest pets came from trades like this. I have tried to pass the tradition on.

I will say It's discouraging lately. I go back and check on the new users. Sometimes they have quit after only a month or two and sometimes they have traded all the pets I gave them to other players, and not fair trades mind you. It's disheartening to gift new users not knowing if they will stick around, not encouraging to give the valuable pets needed to get decent trades =/

For example, I went back in my trades and saw 5 newbies I gifted at the beginning of the year. 2 had quit and gave away all pets/items. 2 were no longer active. And 1 was still active and got to experience their first 12/18. 5 trades that I tried to recreate the experience I had with generous users gifting me, only one remaining :c if only the community stuck around I would be a lot more generous! We need something to keep the new ones around because I can only imagine how daunting collecting is! Some people above have talked about appeasing the oldies, but I am concerned about our growth from the bottom--the new kids!

[Evaus]

I have been here since 2009, and I can agree, the difficulty in the economy is keeping people away. It's also a super steep learning curve to learn pet values, and even then, with the concept of "overpay" being accepted, it makes finding goals even more difficult. I am someone who has never left her beloved browser pet sims, and on Neopets right now, the Advent Calendar has been giving out a decent amount of rare, difficult to attain items which has helped deflate the economy even if just a little bit, and it's been genuinely a lot of fun to log in every day. With Chicken Smoothie, the DRAW to the site is the forum format, and the pet designs. With a hostile community environment, and difficulty in attaining pets, that can cause issues. There's also SUCH a massive amount of pets out there, which has to be causing the servers to stress a little bit. What if there was implemented a reward for donating pets to the pound? Say you donate a certain number of pets to the pound, ten maybe, you get a random pet from before 2015 or something. That could get some of those older pets back out there, and a lot of the bulk pets people have cleared out? That's just a suggestion off the top of my head and is only something to start ideas and iterations, not a final plan for sure, but if something akin to that could be implemented it might be good. And like it was said earlier, more older pet releases apart from December 18th.

I'm not sure how to resolve hostility in the community. I've been here for years and while I have logged in every month for the past 13 years, I've been very off and on in my activity in the boards because 1) i am shy and 2) i am nervous, and 3) there is an intimidating energy to the boards.


Maybe if there was an area where folks could have throw away conversations it might be easier? Like, remember how old, old, old forum sites used to also contain a little chat room where folks could text chat live with each other? If people could just send little short messages without having to "draft a response" maybe that would foster more community? It's easier to be like "good morning guys!" in a chat room than in a forum where you have to pull up a specific topic, and then a specific post, and it might not have folks in it. If there was a chat room on the main page, that would bring the community interaction to the home page, and it's easier to build those casual interactions.

It would need to be modded of course, but it could help even shy, low interaction people like me reach out and send a casual "good morning! hello! LOVE the pets this month!" you know? Sometimes you can post on the forums and get lost in the post format and no one responds so you feel awkward and choose to not engage further.

[korok]

Player since 2012 (Technically 2011 when I had an old account I deleted because I took my year 4 teacher's "you guys are going to have to stop playing games as much and do homework......")

I haven't been able to enjoy chickensmoothie as much for years.
Instead now I play flight rising and am only active in some small window of around the 18th where I get my random 2010 rares and get hit with a nostalgia wave and think "It's time to finally achieve my dream pets!", then quickly give up.

The main issue I have with this site is the trading system:

Esentially the advertised way we see again and again on here is to adopt the monthly pets and trade them up. But how on earth are you meant to trade a bunch of 2022 commons up for that big 'list pet' of your dreams? Esentially the only way to get 'more' value out of your pets are from giveaways, unfair trades to the other person and, well, ninja trading- something that is extremely common to new players especially around this time of year.

I have had two out of the four real life people I know ninja'd out of their valuable pets they got from the 18th. This site isn't very welcoming to casual players. You can't get the dog you want because you're not going to browse the adopts forums for that extremely small chance of getting a rare. You need to get lucky from the pound (which is also a system which guilt trips you for trading those pets you adopted away). You need to get lucky from the 18th, a once a year system which leaves a majority of the site rather bitter. I have been getting random useless 2010 rares since 2014 and stopped caring for it a long time ago. The unfortunate thing is the 18th is the lottery draw of whether you get to go from having a bunch of random uncommons and an occasional rare to actually being able to trade.

In 2014 I was extremely lucky and got the new UR bengal which made me for once recieve so, so many trades. I was able to trade it, then trade those high lists, then trade those, and those! I could trade for the pets I actually wanted because I was lucky and landed a high list. It's a fun site when you have money, but not great fun when you don't.

Which leads to so many scammers. A couple years ago I posted a trade on the fair trade thread that was heavily unfair to me, as I was unaware ;) of my lion tail's value (which had gone from 1 mid advent -> 3 nons). Then immediately, I got dozens of trades of people trying to scam me. And not just random players- many 'big' players, players with hundreds of list pets, players that bump their threads every five minutes, and players that you have most likely traded with because they have all the pets you want. I was so disappointed in the community of the site.

Now how can you prevent so many ninja traders/scammers? Mod posts aren't exactly scaring them off. As I mentioned, to get more value out of trades and move up, the other user must be overpaying, aside from getting extremely lucky from giveaways, the pound and the 18th.
This brings in why I play flight rising- there are just so many ways to make money daily such as from daily tasks and the various games that you can play which can esentially let you play and earn as much money as you want each day. Whilst there are chances of you getting lucky and getting tons of money out of luck, you can also just earn currency and feel like you're achieving something- rather than sending about 50 trades in a day and getting all of them cancelled.

This is likely why you see activity only during the events- there is something to actually do actively on the site.
Chickensmoothie really needs to add something to do on the site daily, a way to actively move up in the trading system than to screw over other players. Something fresh would likely bring back players to the site.

But another thing to consider is that the site is potentially making more money than ever. Less users from ad revenue, but now culture around spending money on virtual pet games had changed and many people are putting their real life $$$ towards the game. It may be unlikely for the site to be urgent to change because they are making so much money from the few that buy tons and tons of store pets every month to trade them off.

That might've sounded ranty but this is how I see the site as an older player and I wanted to cover my points.

-

I'm not sure how to resolve hostility in the community. I've been here for years and while I have logged in every month for the past 13 years, I've been very off and on in my activity in the boards because 1) i am shy and 2) i am nervous, and 3) there is an intimidating energy to the boards.


Maybe if there was an area where folks could have throw away conversations it might be easier? Like, remember how old, old, old forum sites used to also contain a little chat room where folks could text chat live with each other? If people could just send little short messages without having to "draft a response" maybe that would foster more community? It's easier to be like "good morning guys!" in a chat room than in a forum where you have to pull up a specific topic, and then a specific post, and it might not have folks in it. If there was a chat room on the main page, that would bring the community interaction to the home page, and it's easier to build those casual interactions.

It would need to be modded of course, but it could help even shy, low interaction people like me reach out and send a casual "good morning! hello! LOVE the pets this month!" you know? Sometimes you can post on the forums and get lost in the post format and no one responds so you feel awkward and choose to not engage further.

I second this!! It is intimidating making forumns because it feels like to have a thread you need a very specific unique idea, it feels too formal.

[Evaus]

I agree, it is hard for casual players. I think with such a LARGE pool of different kinds of super rare pets, it's really hard to move up when people are very date focused. I think if there are a higher quantity of rare pets released, and more often, it would improve morale and also make things more accessible. The higher the (for the lack of a better anaolgy) "wage gap" there is between users, the more resentment is built. If the experience of acquiring pets was easier and more exciting and enjoyable, more folks would play.


Also - an easier way to navigate initiating trades. For years I honestly just click on random people who are online and see in their rules if they're open to trades. If there was a more visual, non-forum based trading hub perhaps, that would make things easier? Trading is central to the function of the game, so a more focused vision for that may help.

[iHolli]

Maybe if there was an area where folks could have throw away conversations it might be easier? Like, remember how old, old, old forum sites used to also contain a little chat room where folks could text chat live with each other? If people could just send little short messages without having to "draft a response" maybe that would foster more community? It's easier to be like "good morning guys!" in a chat room than in a forum where you have to pull up a specific topic, and then a specific post, and it might not have folks in it. If there was a chat room on the main page, that would bring the community interaction to the home page, and it's easier to build those casual interactions.

It would need to be modded of course, but it could help even shy, low interaction people like me reach out and send a casual "good morning! hello! LOVE the pets this month!" you know? Sometimes you can post on the forums and get lost in the post format and no one responds so you feel awkward and choose to not engage further.

{I love your suggestion, especially this part! I remember being in one of these for a species back in the day and it was a fun way to actually get to know other community members without having to dedicate entire posts.}
{I know someone is going to come in here countering this with "oh just join the Discord" and no. That is not the same thing. Discord is 13+ only, leaving out the entire userbase CS is aimed at [little kids, not 13+]. Discord servers have hundreds of members and tons of confusing channels and are generally not user friendly in the sense of this suggestion. Having a nice little chatbox with one area only is easy to moderate and even easier to participate in! For someone like me who loves participating in the monthly discussion threads a chatbox would be so up my alley especially to interact with the other discussion thread regulars. Thanks for suggesting it, I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner XD}

{I agree something needs to be done about scamming. I'm almost positive staff can see every trade that goes through on site. Around the 18th maybe they can put more heavy moderation on trades to catch scammers, for an undisclosed timeframe...at least start banning some ninjas. Or a strike system perhaps, to ensure it's not just a one time thing that both people were happy with? Something like that. Maybe we need more clarity for newcomers to report trades that scammed them but they didn't know until after the fact. I've been hearing way too much about people getting scammed this year yet no one reports it or staff doesn't step in.}
{Or like...what if it could be set up so you can't trade growing pets in December or pets adopted December 18th? I mean, that would upset a lot of people, I know everyone likes buying risk pets and such, but they could just arrange to trade after the temporary hold is lifted. A bar on trading would not only prevent scanners from sending unfair trades but also give new users [and returning ones] time to ask about the value of their new pets without feeling the pressure of accepting one of the hundreds of trades for their valuable pet. I don't know how possible it would be to code something like that but,,, it's a thought}

.Holli.

[CHINARIZING]

Heya folks, see a lot of ideas and discussion again which is always nice. There are some suggestion threads for some ideas here:

Getting rid of the guilt trippy Pound PMs
My own about more rereleases
Idea for the Pound that makes it less biased towards PC users, and less "who's there the fastest" or "who has the fastest PC"
Unfortunately, chatrooms have been declined for being "hard to moderate," as it used to have one in the past

[blueberrycat]

Hi all, happy holidays! If this is rehash, i’m sorry!
I decided to post because a thought popped in my head:
i’ve gotten my best pets from offsite trading or quitting users or gifts.
None of my VR pets came from Dec18 as I have bad luck oop (except for ones I offsite traded for and the one I got this year from the designated VR box). Only a few of my rare and VR pets came from trading up. I have not been able to achieve any dreamies or collections. BUT i love this community and this site because I play casually. I would be stressed if i were a new player trying to collect all pets [*^*]

I recently returned but joined almost 10 years ago (0.0) Some changes I have noticed is C$ inflation, overpay is expected, and general anxiety around trading. I am still figuring out pet values. As someone said earlier, I would be happy with more Dec18 boxes. Maybe a box for 2008-2010. Maybe a box for old Summer Event pets, another box for old Christmas pets, Halloween. Each event could get a box? But I don’t know how that would affect rarity.