WHY PEOPLE ARE QUITTING CS- A Discussion

[macintalk]

I’ve been keeping up with this thread for a bit and I just want to put in a suggestion. Anyone can tell me if they like or hate the idea or if it would be too hard to implement.

Basically I have seen from a lot of people on a lot of threads that when their trades are canceled, they get rude messages and people being insanely mean.

I think it’s fine to reply for an accepted or suggested trade, but if you cancel maybe instead of the message box we should just have a drop down list with a few basic options that say things like-

🔘no thank you
🔘this is not fair to me, sorry
🔘I’m not interested in that, but thank you anyway

Just basic stuff that’s not opening the doors for people to be mean and unnecessarily rude and gross to other players.

I want to reiterate my original suggestion. I have been getting a few people confused! What I meant by this suggestion was not to say that it is MANDATORY to reply with one of the options listed, but that if you CHOOSE to reply to a canceled trade, you can only CHOOSE one of the drop-down or listed options, which are polite, concise replies.

Replying in the message box has always been optional. You can cancel a trade without replying at all, and that should still be an option. I simply think that you would stop a lot of the private and personal bullying problems people seem to have in the trading area of the site if the only replies you could send on a canceled trade were automated. You can cancel silently with no message, or you can choose one of a few options that are easy to understand and remain polite.

I hope this clears any confusion for anyone! <3

i'm not sure how to feel about this suggestion. while it's an amazing idea in theory, i also wonder how this would end up long-term, since "this trade is not fair" is such a broad cancel message, it would be hard to know what you're doing wrong, since no one would be able to explain to you how the trade you are sending to them is not fair. i wonder if this could cause more issues in the long run, because while it would get rid of the unnecessary rudeness of the trading scene, it would also most likely leave more people alienated/confused when the majority of their trades get cancelled with no one explaining what they are doing wrong, i feel?

[manhunt]

agreeing with everyone who's said that the stafff need to be more lenient on board warnings. got a board warning a few years back for stating that i was over a certain age (wasnt even a specific age! just "age+") and having f2e art in my signature that was never stated to need credit. should i have credited the artist in the first place? for sure! but thats something i should've been nudged in the direction of instead of punished for, especially considering that i was in my young teen years when this happened, i was still little.

in addition to this, i think a SERIOUS overhaul with the way staff handle feedback on the site is needed. ive seen good suggestions more often than not being pushed under the rug, excused, or hust flat out ignored. i remember there being a call for a dark mode theme before the defacto one we have now, and the mod response to it being to use a chrome extension for dark mode. i once suggested there be posting deafults so that those who have posts that use bolds, italics, or different characters at the front (for example, ive seen undertale systems in specific begin there posts with * like in the game, and the feature would automate that process so that the person woudnt need to remember to type the * everytime.) and the suggestion was rejected for "encouraging people to make their posts hard to read, yet fancy fonts are allowed to be used despite them proving to be harmful to those with screen readers. (granted, there is a feature to disable all of these fancy fonts, but i should not have to be told where and how i can find an accesibility feature, let alone one that makes fonts on a forum where you are meant to read, readable.) there was an instance where a rather controversial update was released, and anyone who protested it had their posts removed and in the case of me and a friend of mine, even got warned for being disrespectful on posts which obviously were not that, yet posts which agreed with the mods and even were hostile towards those who disagreed were allowed to stay. instaces like this make the site moderators come across as unfriendly, and i was scared of them at some point because i was worried that i would get banned if i were to so much as blink the wrong way.

also real quick, because this was posted while i was typing this, but if board warnings arent meant to be severe infractions, i feel like the dms for them should be toned down. when i recieve one, i always feel like im a second away from a ban or mute if i do something wrong.

this may be long winded and wordy, and i pray to god this doesn't get taken down. i mean no disrespect with my words, and they are meant to be a respectful critique and me relaying things i personally found to be true. if the mods would like to disagree with me, whether publically or otherwise, they are free to do so. but i ask that i'm not warned for posting my genuine opinions about the team and their actions.

yeah sorry for the long rant, but if cs wants to keep a userbase some serious improvements have to be made here

[blues clues]

i feel like this discussion has strayed a little off topic. i dont think people are quitting cs bc of how the moderation team handles board warnings.. i dont see the correlation at all. this seems like a dogpile of "well one time i got a warning abc" when the mods are employed to do that exact thing. i think it has everything to do with old users plateauing and new users never being able to climb the rarity hill. i would say that this is a problem that at its core can only be fixed by whoever is currently making all the site decisions. staff continues to be stretched thin and changes roll out at a snails pace. we need to employ a second coder. its unreasonable for us to make all these demands with 1 coder running the whole site. someone in the higher ups needs to recognize that the playerbases expectations cannot be met with such a small team. until whoever is in charge addresses that issue nothing we say matters

we've def covered the need for another coder lol ^^;
we're aware all of these requests may not get touched even and if they do it'll be a while until they're fully implemented!
this threads title is a little misleading but it was always for discussing improvements that the site could use.

to say nothing we say matters is a bit unfair as multiple mods have already responded to this thread alone and we have a list being made just for reference point on the sites updating! this is not us demanding that nick does all of these asap, just an easy and manageable way to see what the community is talking about.

[Fierce Wings]

I guess this is my chance to express my dissatisfaction for the site?

Chickensmoothie has felt like a ghost town for a while now. I don't know exactly when it happened, but ARPGs, user-made adoptables, and forum games all just... died out at some point. Any attempts to gather a community here feel pointless.

I think a big problem with CS is just how hard it is to get anywhere. If you want a super old pet, good luck! Your best chance at getting it is to win the lottery on december 18th, or to do a ton of art for enough c$ to buy it off of another user.

More re-releases would be amazing. Something akin to Roundsey's Roulette from FlightRising could do a lot to revive the site, and the idea of a pound event where the whole thing gets emptied out would also be amazing. Reviving the trading side of the site would just make everything function again, and I think it's the only real way to get CS out of the rut that it's been in for years.

In all of my years on this site, I don't think I've ever seen it this dead. This thread, discussing why people are leaving the site and the grievances users have with it, is the most active thing I've seen in ages. That says more than I ever really could.

I hope CS gets some sort of revival. This site and the people who love it deserve that much.

I heavily agree with this. I absolutely love this site and have for years now. I joined in late 2010 and have been here ever since because it's honestly just my favorite site. Even though I'm an adult now I just can't bring myself to leave.

The idea of more re-releases is actually a cool one but I seriously doubt it'll actually be implemented. I fully support the re-release gift on your birthday/join date and believe that if we had more than just Dec. 18th once every year we could kick back up with the activity, as we can see a significant increase in interest and activity every Dec. 18th but as soon as it's over it just goes dead again. It could possibly even straighten out some horrendously high demand on the trade side of things. I hate to admit it but for quite a few years now I've been seriously despising what trading has become. Demand. That's all that matters now and nearly nobody can keep up with it anymore. It's absolutely impossible to get the pets you want. Even attempting it is stressful and if they don't like your offer not everyone is nice about it. It's just not fun anymore. My dream pet has stayed the same all these years and I'm still no closer to getting it then I was when I joined 11 years ago. And the so called "worth" just keeps skyrocketing each year.

I've been in denial about it for a while now because of how much I love this site but the decline in activity depresses me. I hope something can be done to rejuvenate CS to it's former glory. I know I've only been talking about trading in this post but it's one of CS's biggest problems at the moment and I'm afraid it's only going to get worse. I know the reasons people are quitting vary from outgrowing the game, irl stuff, not having the time anymore, and other more important things but I wouldn't be surprised if some people are quitting just because they don't want to deal with it anymore.

[woes]

someone in the higher ups needs to recognize that the playerbases expectations cannot be met with such a small team. until whoever is in charge addresses that issue nothing we say matters

unfortunately you're entirely right. the heads of this site have been practically entirely out-of-the-picture for a while, now, and it doesn't seem like they have any interest in coming back. i remember seeing several people suggest a while ago that tess sell the site to someone more engaged and willing to manage it, and i can't help but feel that nothing has changed since then.

cs will continue to stagnate until major changes are made. major changes cannot be made without the input of tess and whoever else is in charge of it all. the people in charge don't care about the site's stagnation, so no changes will be made.

i'm not really sure how this can be fixed, but making a massive thread like this seems to be on the right track. the playerbase is clearly getting tired of not being listened to or cared about by the site owners, and really speaking up and being consistent with voicing our discontent is likely the only way any change will come about.

[Beefy]

i'm not sure how to feel about this suggestion. while it's an amazing idea in theory, i also wonder how this would end up long-term, since "this trade is not fair" is such a broad cancel message, it would be hard to know what you're doing wrong, since no one would be able to explain to you how the trade you are sending to them is not fair. i wonder if this could cause more issues in the long run, because while it would get rid of the unnecessary rudeness of the trading scene, it would also most likely leave more people alienated/confused when the majority of their trades get cancelled with no one explaining what they are doing wrong, i feel?

^

[Lex.]

someone in the higher ups needs to recognize that the playerbases expectations cannot be met with such a small team. until whoever is in charge addresses that issue nothing we say matters

unfortunately you're entirely right. the heads of this site have been practically entirely out-of-the-picture for a while, now, and it doesn't seem like they have any interest in coming back. i remember seeing several people suggest a while ago that tess sell the site to someone more engaged and willing to manage it, and i can't help but feel that nothing has changed since then.

cs will continue to stagnate until major changes are made. major changes cannot be made without the input of tess and whoever else is in charge of it all. the people in charge don't care about the site's stagnation, so no changes will be made.

i'm not really sure how this can be fixed, but making a massive thread like this seems to be on the right track. the playerbase is clearly getting tired of not being listened to or cared about by the site owners, and really speaking up and being consistent with voicing our discontent is likely the only way any change will come about.

100% true.

[tiredddd]

unfortunately you're entirely right. the heads of this site have been practically entirely out-of-the-picture for a while, now, and it doesn't seem like they have any interest in coming back. i remember seeing several people suggest a while ago that tess sell the site to someone more engaged and willing to manage it, and i can't help but feel that nothing has changed since then.

cs will continue to stagnate until major changes are made. major changes cannot be made without the input of tess and whoever else is in charge of it all. the people in charge don't care about the site's stagnation, so no changes will be made.

i'm not really sure how this can be fixed, but making a massive thread like this seems to be on the right track. the playerbase is clearly getting tired of not being listened to or cared about by the site owners, and really speaking up and being consistent with voicing our discontent is likely the only way any change will come about.

This. This is exactly why I created this thread.

[blues clues]

I’ve been keeping up with this thread for a bit and I just want to put in a suggestion. Anyone can tell me if they like or hate the idea or if it would be too hard to implement.

Basically I have seen from a lot of people on a lot of threads that when their trades are canceled, they get rude messages and people being insanely mean.

I think it’s fine to reply for an accepted or suggested trade, but if you cancel maybe instead of the message box we should just have a drop down list with a few basic options that say things like-

🔘no thank you
🔘this is not fair to me, sorry
🔘I’m not interested in that, but thank you anyway

Just basic stuff that’s not opening the doors for people to be mean and unnecessarily rude and gross to other players.

I want to reiterate my original suggestion. I have been getting a few people confused! What I meant by this suggestion was not to say that it is MANDATORY to reply with one of the options listed, but that if you CHOOSE to reply to a canceled trade, you can only CHOOSE one of the drop-down or listed options, which are polite, concise replies.

Replying in the message box has always been optional. You can cancel a trade without replying at all, and that should still be an option. I simply think that you would stop a lot of the private and personal bullying problems people seem to have in the trading area of the site if the only replies you could send on a canceled trade were automated. You can cancel silently with no message, or you can choose one of a few options that are easy to understand and remain polite.

I hope this clears any confusion for anyone! <3

i'm not sure how to feel about this suggestion. while it's an amazing idea in theory, i also wonder how this would end up long-term, since "this trade is not fair" is such a broad cancel message, it would be hard to know what you're doing wrong, since no one would be able to explain to you how the trade you are sending to them is not fair. i wonder if this could cause more issues in the long run, because while it would get rid of the unnecessary rudeness of the trading scene, it would also most likely leave more people alienated/confused when the majority of their trades get cancelled with no one explaining what they are doing wrong, i feel?

tbh, you can't please everyone in the end. no change is going to make every single person happy and it won't be able to fix every problem. i think the suggestion is still really good and should be used for the intention of making trade declines less daunting

[macintalk]

i personally like the idea of a system to report trades that someone suggested earlier, as opposed to just "block player" on every trade. it would be great if there was a trade reporting system, and maybe if a certain user gets enough strikes on their trades, they can eventually be banned from leaving messages and instead have to use the automated replies? this would still leave some rude traders, but i feel like people would be a lot more discouraged because it'd be a lot easier to directly report their trade message, and they would get specific consequences for it regarding trading as a whole.