Something's up with the pound

[Falco]

Coming back to suggest something!
The lost and found normally has 1000+ items, and it takes a long time for everything to be taken. The pound now normally has 600 pets, and it takes just a few minutes for everything to be taken. What if there where fewer items in the list and found, and more in the pound?
I do agree the problem is with the bot mixed with the fewer pets though.

[homura]

Stay with me because this is gonna be a bit long, but I don't think the bots are a problem. I think it is the large capacity of pets are able to be viewed before refreshing to check if there might potentially be more that you like. For example, ~10 pets are able to be seen at a time, and it takes however many seconds to get the refresh in, which definitely gives you more options, but at the cost of a split second decision.. if your page decides to load in to pick a pet in time to begin with.

I think that if this were reduced to 3 or 4 pets per viewing before refresh, this could help with the almost instant clearout of the pound. In my opinion, this would additionally help for keeping retention, as it would make users stay on for longer rather than just getting ANY pet due to knowing the pound will close in less than a minute, and immediately scooting offline.. which is also certainly an issue. The most people I saw on for the recent pound opening was about 1200 people, which as of right now is currently sitting at HALF of that, at around 630 people.

In my opinion, the amount of pets able to be seen at a time is certainly an issue that is exacerbating the problem of it clearing out almost instantly. I think if retention was somehow incentivized (I genuinely don't know how that could be solved. Throw ideas at me if you want), that would also help with pet circulation in general rather than people Struggling to pick from the pound and immediately leaving until next opening or those outright hoarding their pets. I'm sure people have noticed the ever increasing issues with trading and circulation, so if both can be solved at relatively the same time, I'm sure the active userbase would be appreciative. However again.. I really think retention and lack of user interaction is also fueling the pound issue, so any ideas on incentivizing would be helpful.

adding to this… I don’t think the rarest/oldest pets should always be the first ones available and all at once. randomizing would allow for more people to have a chance at getting rarer pets and would also let people grab something (potentially just as valuable) from the pound without needing to be online the very second it opens.

[Veradana]

I genuinely never payed enough attention to notice that the oldest pets were all on the first page _(:з)∠)_

Tbf, I haven't been playing long enough to know what's rare and what's not, so I've mostly just grabbed what I thought looked nice.

It's probably a good idea for them to scramble the pets more, so the rarities and ages are more mixed throughout the pages. I don't really care about the bot thing though; I've forgotten about an opening when it's coming up within half an hour, so the idea of making a timer is something I want to keep in mind for myself.

[nyandalorian]

something id like to add as someone who had been on here since ~2013 (on a different account) is that the pound used to be more spaced out with where the rare pets were. it wasnt uncommon for me to get rare+ pets from the 3rd or 5th refresh.
ive only noticed the issue with the pound having their rare pets on the first page recently (partially because i came back recently) but its made it almost impossible to get anything other than an uncommon pet even the same second the pound opens, especially because of everyone coming on suddenly just for the pound each time it opens.

[joe cool]

Stay with me because this is gonna be a...

adding to this… I don’t think the rarest/oldest pets should always be the first ones available and all at once. randomizing would allow for more people to have a chance at getting rarer pets and would also let people grab something (potentially just as valuable) from the pound without needing to be online the very second it opens.

Definitely agree with this, there should be a bit more randomization with the pets that show up on the first page in addition to the smaller viewing pool that I mentioned. I think that some people have gotten into the habit of clicking on the first pet they see on the front page because they know it is rarer due to this observation, which fuels the "long on-pound click-log off" phenomena. I think that the smaller pool and increased randomization would help with both the issues of retention and pound clearout.
The next problem then is the massively smaller pool size of the pound in comparison to lost and found. It is objectively unfair that there are 600 pets available with a 1200+ user login for the pound, which inevitably means that half of the people logging in won't even get anything to begin with, which I'm sure is putting people off in regards to, again, retention. In stark contrast, the lost and found stays up from anywhere between 20-30 minutes from what I've noticed, and clearly isn't prioritized by people if the 1 minute pound clearout is anything to go by. I think that if there was some sort of reward for actually collecting from the lost and found outside of the actual item itself, this would also help with login rates and keeping people online, even if it's a couple of times per day and not actually being.. active on the site otherwise.

However, I am going to reiterate a previous point here, but there needs to be a serious update in regards to incentivizing users to stay online, because the pound problem is definitely tied to this. I don't mean to go far off topic, but I really think that retention is the overarching issue that ties the pound and lost and found problems together. There should be a daily login bonus (and no, we can't consider the pound a login bonus if not every person is getting a pet) and a further login bonus for doing something, like posting on a forum or sending out a trade to someone (which kills 2 birds with one stone). I think that along with previous pound changes mentioned would help with further pet circulation, keeping the pound up, having people active, and overall better experience with the website.

[Falco]

something id like to add as someone who had been on here since ~2013 (on a different account) is that the pound used to be more spaced out with where the rare pets were. it wasnt uncommon for me to get rare+ pets from the 3rd or 5th refresh.
ive only noticed the issue with the pound having their rare pets on the first page recently (partially because i came back recently) but its made it almost impossible to get anything other than an uncommon pet even the same second the pound opens, especially because of everyone coming on suddenly just for the pound each time it opens.

I joined in 2016, yet I’ve noticed the same thing! I’d often get rare pets on later refreshes but now it seems like the rares go quicker.

[nyandalorian]

man i wasnt even that late to the opening earlier and there was only 5 pets left... 💀

[All Hallows Eve]

Here are 200 of my pound results:
Forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4657032

Almost done with the next set of 100 (18 to go), with a bit more detail, and will post.

Some ideas I had on the pound:
Forum/viewtopic.php?f=119&t=4804718

[simplydriftingalong]

Love this discussion! After reading through, I'd like to add on. I think jumbling the years so oldest pets do not appear first & thus are arranged in a random order is a fantastic idea. Making it so the date ID on the pet is not viewable until after its adopted either with the jumble or without could also make it feel more of a fair game of true chance rather than "good/old/rare" pet if you get lucky on the first refresh & click or "bad/new/common" pet if you don't feeling like your only options. I also think that making a smaller amount of pets you can view to adopt, say 5 instead of the current what, 20?, could also make it more of a fair game of chance / encorage people to wait & refresh rather than feeling like they have to click on something on the first page.

I don't know how they ration the number of pets they have in the pound or what the idea behind it is, but sometimes I wonder... isn't the idea of a true pound to adopt out all of the pets? Isn't an empty pound with all of the pets finding homes the goal? Of course these questions apply to a real pound with real animals, not a virtual pound. Maybe the true goal of the pound is to be sure it can have enough pets to open however many times a week with x margin of error or maybe because of the imbalance of year / rarity (for example, I'm sure there are thousands more newer, more common pets in the pound than there are older, rarer pets.) Maybe theres a threshhold to the # of pets from certian year &/or rarity bracket & so they can only open the way they do to ensure there are some older/rarer pets & not just newer/more common. I have no idea! The pound is a bit of a mystery, & I trust the admins have a good idea as to what they're doing. That being said, I'm sure they would love to make changes if they thought it'd be worthwhile & improve the site!

And finally, about the discord:
It seems (to me) that the reason people don't like the discord bots are mainly because they didn't know how they work. The term "pound-bot" can be misleading if you don't know what it is; my first thought when I first heard the term "pound-bot" was that they were set up to auto-refresh the pound the instant it opened & auto-click (which would undoubtedly be faster than any manual "spam-click", even with the fastest internet connection) & I'm pretty sure would be considered cheating, but that is not what they are. I there are two, a timer reminder for the opening & a compilation list of the rare & vr pets that will be adobtable when the pound opens. I didn't know you could view the adobtable pound pets before I joined the discord, and the discord is not for everyone; it can feel very exclusive. (I personally left the discord shortly after joining.) Even if people do know how the discord bots work, it can still feel like cheating to the users who don't use discord or aren't a part of the server, but I do not think they actually are cheating in any way.

[joe cool]

I didn't know you could view the adobtable pound pets before I joined the discord, and the discord is not for everyone; it can feel very exclusive. (I personally left the discord shortly after joining.) Even if people do know how the discord bots work, it can still feel like cheating to the users who don't use discord or aren't a part of the server, but I do not think they actually are cheating in any way.

To add on, part of this is that you can view which pets are in the pound even without using the bot, believe it or not. The group that holds the pets is available to everyone and can be found here. Of course, not everyone knows this, but anyone can access it to see which pets are there for the upcoming opening, even without using the bot.

In my opinion, using the bot isn't cheating for this reason-that its readily available to all. The people arguing that it is cheating because people can see what pets are in there and using a timer are misguided-the bot is more of a quality of life thing than actual cheating. I don't use the bot myself, nor will I because I'm content with logging onto the site and checking the timer myself (I'm on here anyways most of the time, what's a couple clicks more?). If I remember correctly, the bot doesn't let you select pets to claim for your own while being offsite, so there is no cheating in that regard either.

I think the "bots are cheating" argument really just comes from the frustration of not being able to get a good pet from the pound most of the time and/or the fact that there are overt issues when attempting to access the pound due to login influx, lag, and overall lack of updating. I've already made my points in other posts on this thread so I won't reiterate to sound like a broken record, but I think I can speak for most people when I say that the userbase would be appreciative if there were some changes made overall.