Something Needs to Be Done About C$ Inflation [POLL ADDED]

[okapi,]

support!

while this might be controversial and I'm not sure if this had been said somewhere, i think a big way to get c$ value up is to stop allowing offsite trading. this makes rarer pets even harder to get because huge hoards of rare pets are locked behind a gem (or other) pricetag, meaning users will spend money on other sites which makes pets on this site harder to get only further driving inflation. i'm not targeting anyone but I've seen huge groups of even "regular" rare pets locked behind a fr/offsite only trade tag. i'm guilty of buying gems to get pets on here as well, but i really think it's harming the c$ economy

I think this is an extremely important point - because now people are taking their currency to a game that has shown to be consistent. There are some accounts that have extremely rare pets that they're asking 30,000+ gems for, which is over 300 USD. Why allow off-site trading in the first place? That in itself lowers the values of the pets on the site because then people can make up whatever they want for the pet in another site's currency.

Also, I think that part of the reason inflation has gotten so bad is because of the rarity scale. I think there needs to be clear lines for rarities. I'm not 100% sure how they do it, but the rarity scale using a normal distribution does not make sense when there are so many pets on the website. I think they need to give away less pets for free, less items for free, and make the rarities more clear. For example, the rarities are not based on dates, which I think they should be. Why can a dog from 09 and a dog from 2023 both be labeled as rare? As time goes on, there is a reason why CS players are valuing older pets as more rare, so they should have a different label. Continuously adding more and more rarities, however, is not going to work with the amount of pets we have on the site. The lines for rarities need to be drawn more clearly. Who cares if it follows a normal distribution curve or not.

[CanisCoyote]

Honestly, this is a culture problem. And its not going to have a solution. The C$ "prices" for all the old rare pets is entirely community created. You can't buy them for C$ and they were never for sale for C$. The prices are made up by users and other people follow them. If someone sells a [insert rare here] for 200C$, someone else is going to see if they can get 220C$. Then someone else is will see that that guy sold it for 220C$, so they'll try to get 240C$. It is endless.

[Squecca]

CS trying to "fix" inflation by increasing the cost of the store pets but actually just worsening the problem

[answrs]

CS trying to "fix" inflation by increasing the cost of the store pets but actually just worsening the problem :|

a single store has increased in price a full 50% in the span of one year (20→25 last sept, 25→30 this month). I do not look forward to what this rate of change implies going forward. it's just gonna punish people that have a few bucks to spare and get the stores/people that scrape by to get one or two sets every two months. anyone with thousands of c$ isn't gonna blink or spend it for anything but the lists they have that c$ for. :l

[BlueEyedKite]

Someone tell me if this is crazy... but what if you could sell your Very Rare+ pets to the CS store for c$. And then the c$ store can list that pet for sale for c$(at a profit of course)?

So instead of c$ being passed around from user to user. Some of that c$ goes into the website.

The plus side would mean anyone could sell a "low demand" pet like an omgsr rat for c$. And the cs store would be raking in the c$ when they sell the high demand list pets back to users. Bet those would sell out like hot cakes but give people the reason to f5 the shop all day xD

This idea would not include store pets (even though I WISH it would) since staff said they will never release store pets again -_- so just regular old Very Rare+ pets.

Now tell me how this will never work lol

[iHolli]

{ I 100% agree that the increasing store costs are doing more harm than good rn. I also buy almost all my own C$ and it's only getting harder to be able to afford enough to get a set of pets and a set of items, much less multiples bc I do use multiple store sets in my own dressups. it's frustrating and I have no doubt that it's doing nothing to actually put a dent in the inflation-- the people with tens of thousands of C$ aren't buying stuff from the store, at least not enough to make a difference, at the end of the day.

Someone tell me if this is crazy... but what if you could sell your Very Rare+ pets to the CS store for c$. And then the c$ store can list that pet for sale for c$(at a profit of course)?

So instead of c$ being passed around from user to user. Some of that c$ goes into the website.

The plus side would mean anyone could sell a "low demand" pet like an omgsr rat for c$. And the cs store would be raking in the c$ when they sell the high demand list pets back to users. Bet those would sell out like hot cakes but give people the reason to f5 the shop all day xD

This idea would not include store pets (even though I WISH it would) since staff said they will never release store pets again -_- so just regular old Very Rare+ pets.

Now tell me how this will never work lol

{ but this ??? I absolutely love this idea. can I see it actually being implemented? no. but I think it would really help. someone like me could toss lucky Pound catches into the store to get enough C$ to buy the limited item set, and someone who wants random VRs for, say, an art payment, can just make that easy exchange. it's a win-win. I think it could be implemented with rares, too, honestly. anything to hit the inflation a little harder.
{ the main problem I see happening with this is actually setting the C$ values. there's already no set price for any of these "standard release" pets, and CS has said they don't want to set a price either [a la "no official list"]. so I just don't know how it would work. but regardless I really love the idea and if it somehow could be done, I think it would genuinely help the problem. ♡

[lil rascal]

Honestly I think the main problem with C$ inflation stems from the general site inflation issues. While I’m all for more store pets and items, I don’t think it will really have much affect on the inflation.

With the trading situation like it is there are many older players like me who have a lot of older and valuable spares but have pretty much given up on trading due to the equations and inflation sucking any fun out of it. As we come on to collect monthlies and participate in other things our accounts are counted as active and our pets are counted as in circulation even though we might have not traded a VR+ in years. I don’t think CS really accounts for this with their rereleases.

In my opinion what needs to be done is to break the bubble by putting a lot more of the really rare higher demand pets into circulation. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the plan come Dec 18 as from what I can see it’s the only way to stop the spiral. There would of course be some players who would complain about their pets losing “value” but on the whole I think the vast majority of the site would prefer non-store pets remain obtainable and trading become enjoyable again, which is after all the point of Dec 18 re releases and these rarity overhauls.

[Blueberry]

4. Tentative suggestion but I’d love to see some kind of gacha machine implemented that would cost C$ to use, and in return users would get an item or pet from an exclusive set that would be made specifically for the gacha. This doesn’t have to be that complicated- it can just be a randomized trade-in as used in events, though I understand that it’s easier said than done. [EDIT] ive since been informed of the fact that this may have legal complications, i do still like the idea but perhaps the gacha would require a non-USD purchased currency that can be won organically and C$ could also be exchanged for that currency



I won’t pretend to understand the semantics/legalities behind why this may not be possible, but holy hell, it’s a good idea for old store pets.

This (in my opinion) may just be the one and only way we could potentially bring back old store pets.

The communities ongoing argument regarding the rerelease of store pets is that it’s unfair to individuals who have spent their own money to purchase store pets. As someone whose also invested their own money into CS, it’s a logical and understandable perspective. For someone to receive a store pet from Dec 18 after dozens of people had to spend their hard earned money to purchase their own sets is nearly deceptive.

A wheel, though… well, that’s a little different, innit?

Let’s say we introduce a wheel. The most obvious concern would be the immediate abuse it would receive. People (myself included) would spin it until it broke. Then we’d tape it back together and spin it again! So, obviously, it would have to be regulated - heavily, mind you. Either we could…

A) Pull a Neopets Lavapool and make a wheel that’s open for a single minute a day, in which a user would have to be both present for the single minute increment and pay a small C$ fortune to spin and win a random store pet

Or

B) Allow all users (applying the same rule from Dec 18th where a user must be — old to participate) the ability to spin the wheel at a somewhat lucrative cost, but the ability to spin the wheel is either bi-yearly or once a year.

Sorry for the offhanded tangent! I recognize that there probability of this happening is literally zero, but I got excited :’)

[♥Princess of Lions♥]

I noticed some people advocated for a ban of offsite trading and I have a counter argument for why that would actually be more harmful than helpful.

Most people who sell their pets for FR do so because they aren’t interested in CS anymore and prefer FR. If offsite trading weren’t allowed most people would probably just keep their pets and go semi inactive. Offsite trading reintroduces old rares to the trading population. If it were banned and people kept their pets, old rares and list pets would actually become more difficult to obtain, not less.

Keep in mind that at one point, C$ WAS super valuable and hard to find and just 20 C$ could go an extremely long way. The reason that changed is because some people are extremely wealthy IRL with the means to make massive purchases of C$. If you make C$ more “valuable” or “useful” it’s not going to make any difference because it won’t impact people’s IRL money they have available to spend on the game.

[Spacekkng]

I noticed some people advocated for a ban of offsite trading and I have a counter argument for why that would actually be more harmful than helpful.

Most people who sell their pets for FR do so because they aren’t interested in CS anymore and prefer FR. If offsite trading weren’t allowed most people would probably just keep their pets and go semi inactive. Offsite trading reintroduces old rares to the trading population. If it were banned and people kept their pets, old rares and list pets would actually become more difficult to obtain, not less.

Keep in mind that at one point, C$ WAS super valuable and hard to find and just 20 C$ could go an extremely long way. The reason that changed is because some people are extremely wealthy IRL with the means to make massive purchases of C$. If you make C$ more “valuable” or “useful” it’s not going to make any difference because it won’t impact people’s IRL money they have available to spend on the game.

I think is is a good take, I haven’t thought on it too much, but I will challenge it a bit.

My argument against allowing off site trading is for people like me, who really don’t the have time or interest in grind currency/items/whatever on other websites to achieve my goals on CS.

It’s a bit annoying to see people offering the older/more valuable pets and only wanting either a) cray amount of C$ or b) off site currency. They’re likely putting a C$ option because there has to be one, but will wait to see if they can get offers for offsite currency instead.

I’d also like too argue that if off site trading was banned, people who are losing interest in CS and moving to another website would be more likely to put a majority of old/high value pets into the “Free CS pets/items” or “Looking for Art” forums or even the pound and move them that way. If they don’t, then really it does the same harm as I did when I fell off CS for 8 years. The pets just weren’t in circulation.

Side tangent: I’m curious if CS would be willing to implement a “inactive account” rule, where if your account stays inactive for x-amount of years, your account gets archived and pets / items go into the pound. As someone who was inactive here for 8 years, I was genuinely surprised that I managed to get access to my account back (thank you staff) and while I was overjoyed, I would have been understanding if my account would have no longer existed.

I highly doubt that either of these options (no off site trading/inactive account changes) would go over well with the community, but at the rate things are going it feels like CS is digging itself into a hole that it may not be able to climb out of for the sake of not upsetting members that has little/no interest in staying on CS anymore.

Overall, it’s hard to support the idea of continuing to allow off site trading at the cost of active CS users.