[urgent] this site really is actually dying

[Reiemye]

The reason why this is a rule is to help protect minors. Sadly, anywhere on the internet isn't safe including CS; you never know who's a predator, so allowing an age to be identified could be really bad.

A predator could lie about their age or a predator could possibly prey on someone who says they're under the age of 18.

I forgot to say when it's about adults. I'm an adult, I have my age somewhere because "adult" is a very vast range, and I also generally don't want to interact with children. It's overall a part of my identity.

But re: what you said, isn't it just about being a minor or not, not about age? I've seen people mention they're an adult on CS, how is that really different than saying your age?
Also, idk about the casual discussions here or on the Discord server, but wouln't your age range show in what you talk about, like school and just life in general (for example mentioning living with parents and parental authority)? Tbf, I don't know if these subjects would also be forbidden as they'd be deemed too revealing, maybe they are.

Overall I just don't see how asking adults to not post their age would protect anyone. And yeah, all those restrictions doesn't make me want to socialize on CS or in CS communities following the same rules, I talk a lot about my personal life lmao

[miko.]

-snip-

- Re-releases: special events with big re-release from older years would be great, if not newer players will never be able to collect the majority of the pets, leading to them getting frustrated and probably leave in a short time. Also a lot of old pets are just left to take dust in accounts that are not playing anymore
- Hoarding: should be put some sort of limit to hoarding. It makes the game very unpleasant for players that are unable to collect because houndreds of the same pets are hoarded in few accounts

Just putting my thoughts here since this is a discussion so I'm free to share what I want with others.

1. Re-releases
There is December 18 for that. They basically put every rare-omgsr pet on the site into a box that day and you get to adopt 3 random pets, except for store pets, and you'll get at least a rare from a previous year. But the more that the pet collection increases, mayhaps the staff could increase the adoption limit for this day as well? Not sure but it would be nice as a way to help the newer players.

2. Hoarding
Hoarding is one of the biggest contributors of keeping the trading system alive. There are rat hoarders out there who will overpay so much good demand species for your rats that aren't even wanted by a lot of people and imo, that's a win win to everyone. Hoarders tend to overpay a lot for their hoard and it's a good way to get all those overlooked omgsc-commons that people don't even want to users who care for them because hoards may often times have sentimental value to a person. People who hoard the bigger rarity pets shouldn't even be a problem because it's not like they took it out of person's accounts like magic. They would pay fairly and even overpay so much for that pet.

My point is, this is a pet collecting site with thousands and thousands of pixels to adopt and trade for.

So if someone is offering a fair, even overpay trade for your pets, what's the harm?

[Purgatory K9]

-snip to shorten the post-

First off, I don't think you were being offensive or anything at all. I believe critiquing in this way is absolutely respectable.

I definitely agree on the whole fan base being mostly adults; I had mentioned that a few pages back even. What child now thinks "Oh boy, I can't wait to play on Chickensmoothie when I get home from school"? I don't think there is any, and if there is, it's a very small group. Most kids would rather be playing Roblox, Fortnite, etc. and it's understandable; it's just how that generation works now.

I also agree and disagree on the site not being improved on. I feel like there are some things that are definitely worked on, however, there's only one coder...which said coder I'm sure has a life and full time job outside of CS lol. The staff team really needs to revamp the site as a whole and hire more coders, I believe a couple more coders would help things drastically.

Many of us here definitely have thrown around ideas about having mini games, daily quests, and other similar ideas like those ones. I'm really hoping staff is reading this and discussing this!

The reason why this is a rule is to help protect minors. Sadly, anywhere on the internet isn't safe including CS; you never know who's a predator, so allowing an age to be identified could be really bad.

A predator could lie about their age or a predator could possibly prey on someone who says they're under the age of 18.

I forgot to say when it's about adults. I'm an adult, I have my age somewhere because "adult" is a very vast range, and I also generally don't want to interact with children. It's overall a part of my identity.

But re: what you said, isn't it just about being a minor or not, not about age? I've seen people mention they're an adult on CS, how is that really different than saying your age?
Also, idk about the casual discussions here or on the Discord server, but wouln't your age range show in what you talk about, like school and just life in general (for example mentioning living with parents and parental authority)? Tbf, I don't know if these subjects would also be forbidden as they'd be deemed too revealing, maybe they are.

Overall I just don't see how asking adults to not post their age would protect anyone. And yeah, all those restrictions doesn't make me want to socialize on CS or in CS communities following the same rules, I talk a lot about my personal life lmao

Like Lanaryu had pointed out, you can't forbid one group and allow the other group one thing, including the age thing.

Mentioning you're adult is a very vast age range, ranging from 18-99+, whereas mentioning you're a minor is under the age of 18. I believe mentioning you're a minor is forbidden here as well.

Talking about how your school life is and whatnot isn't banned as long as you don't mention anything super revealing. You can take a guess on someone's age by the way they speak about things for sure but it's just a simple guess; it's not an immediate answer.

I do agree with you on the rules thing, I also feel like some of these rules are either too strict or too vague in a way, it's definitely something that makes me not want to interact as much because it just isn't as fun.

[SmaugTheGolden]

Been on this site for just over a decade now, and I definitely agree that the site is completely dead compared to what it used to be. I originally joined the site because I was looking for a place to RP and there were new and exciting RPs being made everyday that people could join. I recall spending much of my teenage years on this site writing away, drawing, and just interacting with the community in general. I made so many good friends, all who have since left the site behind.

I was never able to get my "Dreamies" on the site back when I was on the site regularly, since I wasn't too focused on collecting at the time. Now that I'm back, I've realised it would be impossible to actually get any of them with the trading system as it is. I've resorted to trading C$/FR Gems for near enough all of my Dream pets since I'm lucky enough to be in the situation where I can set aside some extra cash for spending on fun things like digital pets haha.

I can't imagine only just starting out on the site, especially if they can't afford to "buy their way" in the game thanks to the current state of the trading system.

I also agree that I've never once seen any sort of advertisements for the site at all and I only happened to stumble across the site when I saw someone have a link to one of their pets over on another site.

[rileypillow]

I agree with the users a few pages back who mentioned a lot of the discussion has moved to Discord. I don’t want to join Discord unless I have a good reason to, such as to talk to friends, as it doesn't really interest me. I wish that something more would be done about this. Sometimes I see an artist or adopt that I like, but then the artist only shares the rest of their art on Discord, or the character can only be adopted if you’re on Discord. A lot of the staff litter discussion, general discussion, and freebies have also moved to Discord, which is frustrating.

I also agree with having games on site! I don’t agree that the site is dead or even close to it, just a little quiet outside events, but it would certainly help increase the activity on site. This is one suggestion I genuinely hope to see added, I’d definitely go on CS more if there were activities outside of the events to join in with! Maybe also one-off events like the Summer Event, but during times where more users are active and not on holiday.

I also agree with adding more Dec 18 boxes. Sometimes I manage to get good stuff from the boxes; if I don’t, nobody seems interesting in trading for it and I have to wait until the next year before I can try again. I'm not upset over what I have got from the boxes, it's just if it doesn't have good demand, and I don’t want it myself, it can be exceptionally hard to trade off.

[rileypillow]

snip

Honestly, I'm not going to chat on forums the same as I do on discord, no matter what. It's the same any site I'm on. Even games, I prefer discord. There's no delay and it's highly accessible to a lot of users. It's easy to move chats and channels, mobile friendly, and easy to access a lot of information. I also chat with other people outside of CS on discord as well.

CS has hundred thousands users. The discord only have a small percentage of that. That helps me feel a bit safer when I'm chatting, sharing art/images, etc. I feel comfortable in the CSTM discord. Oh, and a lot of artists only share their adopts/art on discord because you can only accept irl currency offsite.

I don't mean this, I’m fine with users using both Discord and CS to chat even if they prefer Discord! What I meant is, some people only use Discord to talk about CS, and that means that a lot of the discussion about the site is happening offsite. I didn’t notice a problem in previous years and the Discord was still active, but now a lot of things have moved over to Discord rather than happening both on site and Discord, including a few artists I follow who moved to selling adopts only on Discord despite there being many different sites where you can discuss real currencies (I understand that it's private and secure but not every potential buyer wants to use it), or sometimes to move previously onsite closed species to Discord. This is what bothers me, it's fine if users would rather use Discord to chat but not fine if most of the users are using it, as it excludes everyone else. I enjoy like the community feel of CS and don't want it to disappear.

It's also not just Discord, but people are now trading a lot through Flight Rising due to the currency being cheaper than C$, because it's really the only way to get old rares besides spending C$ unless you overpay. I don't know if much can be done, but Dec 18 at least helps this problem a little.

In short, the problem is that CS is still very active, but not on CS itself.

[axes]

I don't really see this as an issue. nobody is excluded from joining discord--it's entirely free and afaik available in any country that cs is available in, so if you don't want to join it's not you being excluded, it's a conscious choice you make. it's not a bad thing for people to use one site instead of the other if that's how they prefer to chat, especially with the artist thing you mentioned. it's nobody's "right" to commission an artist, having that ability is a privilege, and if the artist only wants to conduct business on one specific site, that is entirely up to them. I don't really talk about cs on cs at all, I only really discuss things in the discord. why? it's easier for me, and it's what I like. and there is nothing wrong with that! just like there is nothing wrong with you wanting to chat in the forums. but, especially for the younger demographic, forums are a dying site form. they're not nearly as popular as they were when CS started, whereas chatrooms have becoming increasinly popular. this isn't the fault of chickensmoothie discord servers, but a shift in internet culture in general.

[sunnysnake]

i don't think it's anyone's fault, but there is certainly truth in the statement that moving the important/interesting conversations of a forum to a different platform does hurt the activity of the forum. there's nothing wrong with new people wanting a more modern form of chatting online! but imo it is silly to complain about older members on cs being rather inactive and holding on to a ton of valuable pets (i don't remember if you specifically were part of that lol a lot of people have commented) and then in the same breath acknowledge that convsering on cs itself is outdated and most of the draws of the site beyond adopting official cs pets are no longer found on the actual website but rather something else entirely [that you either have to create a new account for or tie to an existing profile that maybe you don't want combined with the strict rules of cs].

paying artists through cs is definitely a contributor. i can see the logic behind not wanting to deal with real currency transactions via cs, that creates a whole complicated legal thing, but having to create and maintain and routinely check a full profile on a different platform to accept real money (which most people on cs prefer because the main demographic is no longer little kids) does nothing to help draw people to chickensmoothie. i know several artists that did characters, etc, on here but have come to abandon the site entirely because they'd rather just find other ways to spread their work while taking real payment without having to maintain their stuff on cs as well as discord/toyhouse/whatever. you can't even say your email to handle transactions on cs and again i can sort of see the reasoning but if emails aren't allowed then i don't understand why other social platforms are encouraged? /gen. unless it's a closed species running on oekaki bases or something like that, there's simply no reason for new artists looking for comms/sales to go out of their way to use cs or even, to a certain extent, for old artists to stay.

not specifically blaming anyone but those things are certainly a huge contributor to a decline in cs usage.

(also completely unrelated but i read your carrd and thank you for the information regarding lakes in antarctica i knew they existed but had zero details lol)

edit: by definition, requiring someone to maintain a new profile on a completely different platform to participate in discussions does exclude people. talking to people about an online game is not some crucial human right that everyone must receive, it's not the end of the world lol, but not everyone has the time for doing an extra thing and therefore some people are excluded. that's just the way things go.

(tone is not my strong point so my apologies if anything comes off like i'm trying to be rude!! i'm not)

[Aaron✦]

Please keep in mind that trade rant posts are against the rules. If your post has no other contribution than to rant about a trade or traders, it will be removed.

In my own opinion (just mine, not the opinion of CS as a whole): I'm not an artist, but I've noticed with the pets/items that I've made that in recent years sometimes nobody will post anything at all. I've definitely found it disheartening for my stuff to go up and see zero posts. I'm aware that people are often just posting a quick "I like this!" in discord, but it may help to know that from my perspective, if it's not on CS I never see it! I think it's quite easy to forget that all the content for the site is made by real people who probably do like to see what others think of it.

[*~*PenderGhasm*~*]

In my own opinion (just mine, not the opinion of CS as a whole): I'm not an artist, but I've noticed with the pets/items that I've made that in recent years sometimes nobody will post anything at all. I've definitely found it disheartening for my stuff to go up and see zero posts. I'm aware that people are often just posting a quick "I like this!" in discord, but it may help to know that from my perspective, if it's not on CS I never see it! I think it's quite easy to forget that all the content for the site is made by real people who probably do like to see what others think of it.

I for one love the birds you do Aaron, internet event robototoro was adorable and my favorite. I do think we need more design appreciation than rarity worship. Some of the most gorgeous pets on CS are uncommon and below! The largely unsung heroes of CS are the ones making the new monthly designs!