[urgent] this site really is actually dying

[Oddity-Lad]

i don't see a problem with blocking mods as long as infos, warnings and announcements are exempt from it.

The issue is that many people who are asking for the ability to block mods wish to do so because of warnings they have recieved that left a bad taste in their mouth.
-snip for length-
On the flip side the rules are posted everywhere. Each forum has their rules and any changes are posted as updates. If a rule is broken and a user receives a warning that's something that has to be accepted regardless of who you are and wanting to block a mod because you broke a rule and didn't like that you received a warning isn't going to work. Yes a mod can be gentle about saying you broke a rule but at the end of the day it is something that has to be said. You can't dance around it with "well yeah technically you broke a rule but it's okay. Everything's fine. Keep being awesome" because then nothing really changes.

I generally agree with some points but again - what about those of us uncomfortable with individual mods for whatever reason? Why are mods granted the permission to curate their experience by blocking users they don't wish to see but we aren't? While again people blocking every staff member is on paper an issue... how are mods meant to be able to moderate properly if they have half the site blocked? Either both parties should be able to block mutually or neither party should be allowed to, why are the staff getting special treatment on this?

Ideal solution would just be to make warnings, announcements etc go through a separate, unblockable channel while allowing BOTH mods AND individual users to block freely if they wish.

OMG! I had never considered that! A warnings account accessible by staff so warnings can be issued without having to connect to specific staff member's interests and profiles while still being able to freely communicate with everyone

[huskyhiccups]

OMG! I had never considered that! A warnings account accessible by staff so warnings can be issued without having to connect to specific staff member's interests and profiles while still being able to freely communicate with everyone

I love this idea! If someone makes a separate thread for this, please link it so I can support!! <3

[Asinine]

OMG! I had never considered that! A warnings account accessible by staff so warnings can be issued without having to connect to specific staff member's interests and profiles while still being able to freely communicate with everyone

I love this idea! If someone makes a separate thread for this, please link it so I can support!! <3

Would also love to support this idea.

[Oddity-Lad]

OMG! I had never considered that! A warnings account accessible by staff so warnings can be issued without having to connect to specific staff member's interests and profiles while still being able to freely communicate with everyone

I love this idea! If someone makes a separate thread for this, please link it so I can support!! <3

Would also love to support this idea.

I'll put something together when I get home from work if someone hasn't already

[×Seven of Nine×]

Sorry, I'm back again. It seems kinda strange that, back when store adopts were introduced, there is no forum proof of the no rerelease policy. there's evidence of really early FAQs existing, but who knows what they had in them.

I don't know, it just struck me as weird. /Gen for the whole post btw

[sky,]

I was reading through some of the posts and I guess I will give my input. I originally joined in 2014-2015 ish through 2016 played for a bit and deleted my account because I thought I wasn't going to be playing anymore. But I rejoined in 2017 with this account and was most active in 2017-2019. I did a lot of coding, which is how I fulfilled my collection. I wasn't much into trading and never tried to complete a full collection, but only collected the pets I wanted. But regardless, I remember the auction threads being super lively. You would get 10+ bids in days and it was rare that auctions ran up to the "end date". This made it easily accessible to users first starting out to complete collections. That was also back when the list was still in effect though, which I felt like, created a good structure in trading and allowed users who wanted to overpay to "beat out the others," a lot of success because everyone traded by one relative guideline. During that time, I was more of an observer and focused a lot more on the coding aspect because I never had time to do anything otherwise. I loved the community and hype with the up and coming coders and how popular it was. (When I recently came back on, I reunited with some of the old dusty coders like me and we all had about the same opinion that things have changed. There are not as many users anymore who would like to customize their profile in a way that it was before. It is rare to see the "Signing Off" Thread even be posted on. And it was super popular back then.)

I came back after leaving in 2019 (for personal reasons not regarding CS at all) in 2020 because I had a ton of pets and I figured I should give back. So I made my account one big SS account. Which was super epic. But that was when I really started noticing the change in the community and trading. It wasn't as bad then as it is now. But, correct me if I'm wrong, that was around the time the list discontinued, and values started flailing. I had to overpay crazy amounts to get the pets I needed, but that wasn't completely abnormal for those particular pets. I left after December, I think, and had been gone till the end of 2022.

Now that I'm back, I started coding again. It took me longer than ever before to get my shop running steadily. But I charge around 40-45C$ for a signature, which is around what I was charging back in 2019. I can code relatively fast but it sometimes takes hours. Now, I can take that C$ and buy one '09 rare. Which is okay, but I am trying to rebuild my collection and one 09' rare versus one 09' very rare has such a disconnect in value with Horrors list. Don't get me wrong, I agree a lot with the basis in which pets are valued on that particular list. But by making the October list, now almost every VR is now a "list pet" which means that just with that label, people will expect people to trade the same amount as the advent list. The 2:1 rule rarely applies anymore for the year 2009 in particular... and although that's annoying, it's not NEAR the problem with storepets.

I don't know what happened between the years 2021-2022, but I can only assume that without a trading guideline, users started valuing their own pets. Or the older users took advantage of the fact that the new users would never truly know the list and the way pets used to be traded. So they inflated the heck out of their pets. I think this stuck. Because you find a lot of people who use Horrors list, but I also see people on the regular who will hoard a ton of the more valuable pets (storepets in particular) and sell them for twice the price they bought them. I see on the "buy and sell" thread that there are users asking almost three to four times their worth. Same thing with basic VRs. It makes no sense to me. It is entirely frustrating, and I believe that's what's driving inflation up because the more the prices go up, the more C$ people buy just to compensate. I also believe that there are a lot of users who have been inactive for years that still have a lot of the older more valuable pets in their accounts, so there is less in circulation. I haven't seen a UR tiger since I've been back. I have only seen a couple of drink mes and I rarely truly see some of the other lists. I have been around for a minute, but even I am getting used to the new value of C$... and even buying commons/ uncommons can be a nightmare. I don't know what's going on but it is rare to find users that are willing to work with other users to complete trades. It is usually cancellation with no message or "sorry! This isn't what I would like! Feel free to offer again" with no guide as to what they would like for that pet or anything. But I am not trying to rant.

I don't necessarily agree that this site is dying. It is changing a lot, yes. But not dying. I think the old culture is being shoved out the door and this new one is replacing it. Personally, I just feel bad for the new users that have to start off right now.. it probably takes so long to even acquire rares. Much less list pets. I don't know what needs to be done, but I do think there are flaws to the new list as well as users who hustle this site. This is supposed to be a community. But that's my two cents c: Sorry for the long post

[megapolis]

adding on as someone with a similar history as @sky, (also. hi! i remember you from my coding days, glad to see you back!), i completely agree that back then the coding community felt very robust! i remember big, fancy sigs and character profiles being a huge part of site culture. i remember seeing amateur coders frequently posting on the digitally distinct/signing off thread for feedback. me and my friends ran two coding shops together, both of which received frequent - even repeat - orders. i coded so much for myself and others back then, because all the people i looked up to/my friends/my peers were too! something i miss about old internet culture is the web literacy and customization aspect - i know BBcode can barely be called "real code", but outside of CS, HTML/CSS was really easy to learn/common to know back when websites gave you more freedom over your profiles. i loved seeing people's janky self-hosted websites, blogs, deviantART profiles, etc. people just don't have the same incentive to learn/apply these skills anymore. i've seen coders on toyhou.se, a character storage wesite, reminisce about how many people do not even know how to edit/change basic aspects of a pre-made template. new users on tumblr still don't customize their blogs/adding a theme to their website, in spite of it being a unique feature/draw-in that other social media websites lack. i think the dying aspect of BBcode/customization in general can sadly just be attributed to changing internet trends beyond CS.

i can't say how the site culture is like now - i still consider myself inactive on here, after all - but a large part of why i unofficially "left" back around 2018-2019 was that i felt the communities that made me stay on the site, despite having outgrown the pet collection aspect a while ago, were dying. i've never came close to finishing a roleplay, but back then, the ones my friends and i hosted could easily rack up a hundred posts in total before fading off - and new ones would quickly spring up to take their place. seeing repeat faces, making detailed character storages, and sending/seeking out roleplay invites were commonplace back then. the RP community was one of the best parts of my time on here! i don't know what changed for me or why - i suppose it's only natural people will move on, myself included - but it makes me a little sad to see how sparse the forums are in comparison to back then. i don't think my nostalgia is making me biased, either - one of my friends tried to host/join a roleplay around the time i left and it barely took off and died at only 2 or 3 pages. the latest thread in the semi-lit/lit animal roleplay board, where i used to frequent, has a thread with its last post from 2020 on the front page! two years ago!

it's hard to sustain a community, when ultimately, being a web browser pet collection game/forum board is pretty much an obsolete function in modern internet usage. it's a hard sell. i don't know what the site growth is like, but... how many new, young users, who are the target demographic for CS, are joining the site? and how many are staying? making the most out of all the site has to offer? spending money? i don't know! but the kids i know, who are currently the same age as i was in the peak of my CS days, just aren't on the websites that i was on or familiar with using them.

[CHINARIZING]

Someone else on a thread about C$ inflation described it well—the site "coddles" rare-chasing, older, and dedicated trading users. Rereleasing of store pets is decried as "unfair" to those who paid real money when the entire concept of Chicken Smoothie is "unfair." Unreleases are unfair, Dec. 18 is unfair, outcomes are unfair, store pets are unfair. What about those who pay real money to get C$ only to realize that C$ has been inflated to hell and back, making it so that you have to buy the highest amount available in the top-up section multiple times over to get a non pet? What about those who paid 5 bucks to get a set of store pets in the old days, only to realize that pet is being resold at multiple times its USD value?

If it's unfair, why don't we apply the "unfair" argument to everything else? Or is this to keep things rare enough to satisfy hardcore players in the rarity game, but far enough so that casual players have zero chance of obtaining it without joining hardcore ranks?

I personally think that CS needs a big update. Whether it be at the cost of a big summer event, I think that's okay for the long-term. It's something CS needs to survive. I understand if this is harsh. But I do think CS needs a lot of change. Because I want to see it living. Not surviving; living.

[sky,]

"What about those who pay real money to get C$ only to realize that C$ has been inflated to hell and back, making it so that you have to buy the highest amount available in the top-up section multiple times over to get a non pet? What about those who paid 5 bucks to get a set of store pets in the old days, only to realize that pet is being resold at multiple times its USD value?"

"If it's unfair, why don't we apply the "unfair" argument to everything else? Or is this to keep things rare enough to satisfy hardcore players in the rarity game, but far enough so that casual players have zero chance of obtaining it without joining hardcore ranks?"



I agree with this. It inflates not only the value of C$, but the value of the dollar. I understand that the older pets get, the more valuable they are. But for the adults on this site, does 340ish dollars sound reasonable for some of those 5.5 non pets? At the end of the day it is just a game but for those who like to collect, it is no longer leisure, it's a full investment. And for those who don't have the means for that will never have a chance. My sister recently joined and I didn't even realize how insane it would be for her to obtain any level of a collection without starting off with a ton of rares.




"I personally think that CS needs a big update. Whether it be at the cost of a big summer event, I think that's okay for the long-term. It's something CS needs to survive. I understand if this is harsh. But I do think CS needs a lot of change. Because I want to see it living. Not surviving; living."



Agreed.

[×Seven of Nine×]

Rarities went UP instead of down this month. That's kinda sus if you ask me.

Rarity of pets is dependent on accounts active, and there's less accounts active this month than there were last month. Last year account activity went up for December.

Thought I'd offer this insight to the table.