Does anyone else feel like Demand is killing CS?

[spirit • daydream]

The store pet rule is one of the reasons why I kind of get annoyed with CS because it's like what's the point in trying to complete your collection if you will never get the store pets you need because either the people who have them are hoarding them or they are looking for extreme overpay because they overpaid an excessive amount and it just becomes a cycle of people wanting more and more overpay.

I feel like there should be some sort of store pet December 18th kind of thing once a year and instead of it being a free release you'd pay a certain amount of C$ to adopt from the box. You'd get a randomly generated older store pet or something I dunno and it being a type of December 18th thing you can only adopt once. At least I feel that it wouldn't be as unfair to users as it would be and it would help more of the store pets to go around, isn't that why URs are rereleased every year? I feel like it would help with demand and it would help the site gain more money since people would want to buy C$ more.

I dunno I feel like newer users are being punished for not being on the site when it first started so they won't ever get the store pets if they are looking for a dreamie or just hoping to complete their collection. I get that it seems unfair to those who were actually there at the start but it's kind of unfair to the newer users too, at least that's how I feel.

[Kleinkat]

There already is a cap to collecting though. It was introduced in '08 lol

[NocturnalPanda]

I believe Tess also said at one point that store pets are not actually part of a complete collection so they should be thought of more as a bonus if you manage to get all of them. Perhaps this statement could be reinforced if there was a separate archive for store pets so people feel less obligated to collect them for a so-called “complete” collection.

^^ this.

While I mostly agree Asougi and florida man, I think a lot of the frustration comes from the feeling that we should be able to obtain a full collection - including Store Pets. Yes it may have been said that Store Pets are not required for a full collection, but it's also always been said 'oh don't worry if you can't buy C$ yourself, you can always trade for it so you don't miss out' (paraphrasing). The Store Pets are still on the main archives alongside all the regular releases with no distinguisher, except for a tiny little 'C$' sign on their artwork which is so small that I regularly overlook it, and tbh didn't even notice it for years!

If they are saying the Store Pets are like semi-customs, then they should actually treat them as such. Make a completely separate section for them in the archives and wishlists, (and tbh a separate store archive/wishlist might be a good idea anyway), have special icons on them that distinguish them properly. The link on them saying they were bought from the store just takes you straight to the store, giving the idea that you should still be able to buy them - once they are no longer available in the store it should take you to a FAQ page explaining about them.

I do wish store pets had a special rarity tag, perhaps under their normal one or in place of the normal one, that only said "store pet" I think it would make the store pet craze chill down a bit since it's become a horse race of which store will turn OMGSR next

^^also this.

Maybe even have little banners for people that obtain a full collection - that you get once you have a full collection that doesn't include Store Pets.

I've also been watching a post in the Site Suggestions forum which is campaigning for more things to spend C$ on, because I think that is also part of the issue with Store Pets. As there isn't much for people to spend C$ on, it's all just floating around the site and constantly being devalued. Which just doesn't line up with how highly the Store Pets are being valued, as the thing they were bought with seems so easy to obtain.


I agree that the Store Pets were bought with real money, they should be special and exclusive and hard to trade for. But I don't think enough of a culture has been fostered around them that supports that, mainly for the two reasons I mentioned above.

So I think either you reinforce that, by making efforts to properly separate the Store Pets from the idea of a complete collection, or you give in to the culture that has been set up for them, and put some sort of rerelease feature on. (I can't remember if it was here or the other forum where I suggested a Dec 18th box for the store, you pay x amount of C$ to open the box and get 1 past Store Pet. The randomiser could be staggered so that the older Store Pets are given out with the least frequency.)

I think I would prefer if Store Pets were just made more of a separate thing, and a culture was fostered that supported that idea, but currently for the most part there isn't. So as the site currently stands I am fully on board with everyone clamouring for some kind of rerelease, or something that will help with the demand of them for people working towards their collections.

[PandoraDiskenth]

I do wish store pets had a special rarity tag, perhaps under their normal one or in place of the normal one, that only said "store pet" I think it would make the store pet craze chill down a bit since it's become a horse race of which store will turn OMGSR next

^^also this.

Maybe even have little banners for people that obtain a full collection - that you get once you have a full collection that doesn't include Store Pets.

I've also been watching a post in the Site Suggestions forum which is campaigning for more things to spend C$ on, because I think that is also part of the issue with Store Pets. As there isn't much for people to spend C$ on, it's all just floating around the site and constantly being devalued. Which just doesn't line up with how highly the Store Pets are being valued, as the thing they were bought with seems so easy to obtain.


I agree that the Store Pets were bought with real money, they should be special and exclusive and hard to trade for. But I don't think enough of a culture has been fostered around them that supports that, mainly for the two reasons I mentioned above.

So I think either you reinforce that, by making efforts to properly separate the Store Pets from the idea of a complete collection, or you give in to the culture that has been set up for them, and put some sort of rerelease feature on. (I can't remember if it was here or the other forum where I suggested a Dec 18th box for the store, you pay x amount of C$ to open the box and get 1 past Store Pet. The randomiser could be staggered so that the older Store Pets are given out with the least frequency.)

I think I would prefer if Store Pets were just made more of a separate thing, and a culture was fostered that supported that idea, but currently for the most part there isn't. So as the site currently stands I am fully on board with everyone clamouring for some kind of rerelease, or something that will help with the demand of them for people working towards their collections.

This right here is perfect.

I think both the idea of a reward system for achieving a full "non store pet" collection and the idea of more ways to use C$ would be exactly the revamp this site would need to make it relevant again and bring back the excitement and the liveliness this site oozed in it's heyday. I certainly believe Tess was right to say store pets would never rerelease. Its the initial structure and integrity of the site, the people who supported the site from the beginning and helped it take off like it did earned their pets and shouldn't be punished in a way for the unforeseen consequences of the influx of players. Nor should new players feel punished for not discovering CS sooner. I feel like having other ways to spend C$ would draw some interest away from the store pet conundrum and would in turn help stabilize the basic economy here. It could potentially create an easier trade tactic to get those super valuable pets back in circulation again without having them lose their value while also making them slightly more accessible to newer users, all while creating a healthy middle ground between rarity and demand values.

Yes this post initially may have come across at "complaining about demand" but it was a thought I have seen passed around and a feeling shared by so many users. This thread has become an excellent tool for some people to express their doubts and concerns involving the site and honestly more than a few comments have yielded some great user-friendly ideas to possibly create more interest in CS itself and potentially greatly increase player enjoyment in general. I love CS, it's why I've stuck around since 2009 but times have changed and I believe it's time to make some positive changes here, especially after the discontinuation of "The List" to help stabilize the trading economy.

Thank you guys for your valuable opinions no matter which way it leaned. We all just want to have fun here on CS and to see it through the years.

[Asougi]

While I mostly agree Asougi and florida man, I think a lot of the frustration comes from the feeling that we should be able to obtain a full collection - including Store Pets. Yes it may have been said that Store Pets are not required for a full collection, but it's also always been said 'oh don't worry if you can't buy C$ yourself, you can always trade for it so you don't miss out' (paraphrasing). The Store Pets are still on the main archives alongside all the regular releases with no distinguisher, except for a tiny little 'C$' sign on their artwork which is so small that I regularly overlook it, and tbh didn't even notice it for years!

If they are saying the Store Pets are like semi-customs, then they should actually treat them as such. Make a completely separate section for them in the archives and wishlists, (and tbh a separate store archive/wishlist might be a good idea anyway), have special icons on them that distinguish them properly. The link on them saying they were bought from the store just takes you straight to the store, giving the idea that you should still be able to buy them - once they are no longer available in the store it should take you to a FAQ page explaining about them.

Just a side note, the little C$ tags haven't been a thing for too long so don't feel bad for not noticing them lol

Effort to separate stores would be a good course of action one hundred percent, I agree that for whatever reason there's this sense that you should be able to get a full collection + store collection, despite the thousands of pets in the archives and all of the OMGSRs. I don't know if that's because people lack perspective, or because this site is geared towards kids as well as adults, but there's this weird sense of being able to achieve anything and that you should be able to achieve anything. Even for the adults on this site there's a culture of feeling like you should be able to achieve all of your lofty goals, and it probably doesn't help that a lot of the older users joined when they were younger and more optimistic, and also when there were fewer users and things were easier to get. So it makes sense to me that the pervasive culture is like that, when it affects both younger/newer players and older players alike.

As for rereleasing store pets, I think this has been said already but it would encourage gambling, so I feel it would have to be extremely limited, like the Dec 18th box, to work. Maybe even one box per person, because stores should remain very rhard to find.

To bring it back to FR, they started doing a raffle where you could buy tickets for treasure, and they rerelease older items and familiars. I don't do the raffle too often but I assume that's where the old, retired familiars were rereleased that ZEL was talking about. While that would theoretically be a good idea on CS, it's important to note that treasure isn't the premium currency in FR, gems are. They don't require you to pay gems to get raffle tickets, they only take treasure. I don't know how that would work on CS, because CS only has premium currency. If it were completely free but limited to one box per user, I'm not sure how I feel about that. It would still keep stores limited I suppose but when the staff has explicitly said stores won't be rereleased, I see no reason why they should go back on their word, since there's plenty of good reason to not rerelease them. Some things stay rare and retired, it's pretty normal, and we should count ourselves lucky that we even have rereleases of rares

Also this is far pettier, but I can't stand the blaming of everyone's problems on hoarding. It makes no sense to me. I personally don't want the staff to completely go back on their word and change the entire system of store pet releases to cave to the demands of people who think rich CS players and those who hoard valuable pets are the worst, and only care about themselves, as if they're worse than any of the countless users who want/have a full collection. Unfortunately that's what I see a lot in this thread too, though I don't want to get into hoarding discourse because I'll go on a rampage.
There may be a cap on the number of pets you can adopt, but there's never been a cap on collecting, except for the pure numbers, and with so many pets and so many users there's way more of each pet on the site than people seem to realize. CS is a big place. You might have to dig through the list on online users for days on end to find someone who even has the pet you want, but that's inevitable if you want a pet that's rare and/or sought after

[milk-sharks]

-store pets are on a different page in each year but i can see the benefit of them going on a different tab in the archive, like before 2008? i agree that they should be considered separate from a regular pet collection.

your dreamie may be someone else's dreamie/fave pet, and they don't have to trade you the pet, even if you offer a fair trade or overpay for it. demand exists because that pet is popular and people want overpay because they like that pet. pets may have low demand because that design/species isn't popular, and more people are willing to trade them away, rather than seek them. because nobody is seeking them, they offer lower and lower "prices" for those low demand pets, meaning: they are valued less.

for example: an OMGSR rat isn't valued the same as an OMGSR bee. why? people are actively seeking bees, and it will take overpay to trade their favorite pet away. it will take underpay/regular pay to trade away an OMGSR rat because they aren't actively being looked for. i didn't want mine, and was happy to trade it away for something that was less rare, because i liked the design.

rarity is a number, demand is popularity. rarity + demand = a pet's value, and you can't have one without the other!

edit: hopefully this all makes sense, i think that demand for some pets are pretty crazy, but there really is no way for CS to re-release more new pets without making rarity obsolete, and there is no way for you to change what a person feels about a pet design. some suggestions: set a timer for the pound's releases, offsite trades and art for pets, entering competitions + giveaways! don't forget, we all started out as new and "poor"!

[ElementalInsanity]

Perfect time for me to swoop in and drop this link for my suggestion I made a year ago:
A Separate Archive for Store Pets
And another suggestion for more ways to use C$ was made here:
more ways to spend c$
Show your support on these threads and maybe they can both gain some traction!
I don’t have much else to add other than I like to keep up with this thread and stalk what’s said. ^^

[Angelx3]

I agree with the idea of more ways to spend C$ would be good. Even necessary for the future.
Currently the fast majority of chicken dollars get spent on store pets and with a growing community we see those "very rare" special pets turning frequently into Rares and it seems like it will be only a question of time until they become uncommon.
Which I see as a far bigger problem than older store pets turning omgsr, after all if in the future you're spending money on a pet that will be effectively everywhere, the chicken dollars will get even lower demand/worth, and older pets will need skyrocketing amounts of c$, till it isn't sustainable anymore.

Shortening the time a pet remains in the store from 2 to 1 month might help or just putting more pets at a time in the store forcing people to chose and not buy all.
The cons being that people who spend money on a full collection and keep it up will be forced to spend even more.
As it is I see people buying the current set five times, and this is only increasing as people join.

[Guest]

the thing is, you just can't get rid of demand or force people to like a pet. while i really love rats, ultimately they're one of the most commonly unwanted pets from players. even when they're omgsr or store pets, unfortunately most people just aren't interested in them. the inverse applies as well; if everyone is looking for a certain pet, the price of said pet is going to rise as more people permie them. i understand people being upset over having near-unachievable goals, as i have them too; but how are we ever meant to fix it? are we supposed to force hoarders to gift out their pets? and reselling store pets has been turned down multiple times. giving other options for C$ is the only real option for change, imo. otherwise certain pets will permanently remain unattainable for most save for a select few.

[Velvetmemory]

I guess demand is never really gonna go away, but I do feel like it's taken a little too far...and I mean way too far, because I typically go to this thread when I'm trying to buy pets with C$ from people but apparently the zodiacs are upwards of $150 when according to the thread a pet of that date and rarity would really only be worth like 20-40C$, and I've been trying to collect those guys for awhile now but paying $150 just seems a little ridiculous for me 🤷🏼‍♀️. that's my take on this whole thing