WHY PEOPLE ARE QUITTING CS- A Discussion

[Purgatory K9]

Oops didnt know!! Thank yall, youre very fast haha

All good! This thread is extremely fast moving and lowkey has been lagging my phone from all the traffic lol. I love how this thread is going, though. I really have been enjoying the engagement from everyone!

[darkspawn]

i feel like this discussion has strayed a little off topic. i dont think people are quitting cs bc of how the moderation team handles board warnings.. i dont see the correlation at all. this seems like a dogpile of "well one time i got a warning abc" when the mods are employed to do that exact thing. i think it has everything to do with old users plateauing and new users never being able to climb the rarity hill. i would say that this is a problem that at its core can only be fixed by whoever is currently making all the site decisions. staff continues to be stretched thin and changes roll out at a snails pace. we need to employ a second coder. its unreasonable for us to make all these demands with 1 coder running the whole site. someone in the higher ups needs to recognize that the playerbases expectations cannot be met with such a small team. until whoever is in charge addresses that issue nothing we say matters

[Ravens-Folklore]

I’ve been keeping up with this thread for a bit and I just want to put in a suggestion. Anyone can tell me if they like or hate the idea or if it would be too hard to implement.

Basically I have seen from a lot of people on a lot of threads that when their trades are canceled, they get rude messages and people being insanely mean.

I think it’s fine to reply for an accepted or suggested trade, but if you cancel maybe instead of the message box we should just have a drop down list with a few basic options that say things like-

🔘no thank you
🔘this is not fair to me, sorry
🔘I’m not interested in that, but thank you anyway

Just basic stuff that’s not opening the doors for people to be mean and unnecessarily rude and gross to other players.

I want to reiterate my original suggestion. I have been getting a few people confused! What I meant by this suggestion was not to say that it is MANDATORY to reply with one of the options listed, but that if you CHOOSE to reply to a canceled trade, you can only CHOOSE one of the drop-down or listed options, which are polite, concise replies.

Replying in the message box has always been optional. You can cancel a trade without replying at all, and that should still be an option. I simply think that you would stop a lot of the private and personal bullying problems people seem to have in the trading area of the site if the only replies you could send on a canceled trade were automated. You can cancel silently with no message, or you can choose one of a few options that are easy to understand and remain polite.

I hope this clears any confusion for anyone! <3

[Synerie]

I'm not going to say much and please do not take my word as a staff member, but rather as a member of the community, just like you.

I've been on CS for almost 12 years now.

I say this as a veteran CS player, but I truly hope this site can be reformed to its former glory, or better. For the sake of our past, present, and future site members. It pains me to see this thread and see how your guys' experiences differ from the ones from past site members years ago. I love CS. I have grown with it over the years, just as it has grown with us. I want it to get better, just like all of you do. I've made many close friends thanks to this site, regardless of if we've strayed over the years. Over the last 12 years, I've been on this site daily, whether it be just to check forums or to do my previous moderating duties. I've seen the changes in the userbase, watching you guys get older alongside me, watching the site change with each new staff hire or veteran staff retiring. It's unfortunate things change as we get older, isn't it?

It makes me incredibly happy to see you all banding together to discuss ideas to reignite the fire that lays dormant.
Please do not give up on Chicken Smoothie. It makes me brings me joy to see users, veterans and newly joined, fighting to help it.
But, just remember, please stay civil with us staff, especially those on this thread. We can only do so much and only know so much.

[skeleton-monarch]

I was actually thinking about this the other day but personally I'd love a bit of a tutorial, as parts get completed users could get rewarded with some older pets, tutorial exclusive pets, and items as well.

Something like "adopt a pet" and the new player goes and figures out how to adopt pets as well as how random litter generation works.

In this case though it would be a mini litter with 2 results and 3 adopts. And when one of those ends up a double it encourages the player to trade with an npc so they can get a feel for how trades feel and they can be rewarded with a random common pet from the last year or so.

Idk this was all just daydream stuff while I was driving to work but encouraging and guiding players through the site while also presenting new players with more than just that particular months pets that end up taking an entire month to fully grow.

Maybe something like mini games with rewards like set items or maybe a new free currency (something like tokens even) that lets you buy rotating older pets.

But this is literally just all daydreaming and a lot of hard to work to actually implement.

It's all stuff that's been done in events, but I think using specific elements from them and making them permanent fixtures could probably increase engagement and shake the site up in a big way.

I think this is an excellent idea as well! Adding onto the daydream, I think it would also be nice if there was a mini tutorial on how to use the forums, like a thread that only they could see filled with pre-generated messages that they would get rewarded for replying to. I think the biggest issue with forum engagement is honestly that no one knows how to use forums anymore and people are nervous to do so. Totally understand that this may be unrealistic, just wanted to put the idea out there though

And I just wanna say, thanks staff for all the work you put into running, bettering, and moderating the sight ♡. Even though some of the comments here are harsher than I think is appropriate, I am glad seeing people with have constructive ideas or who just genuinely want to see chicken smoothie get better. It's nice seeing that people care about this site as much as I do.

[Bellarocks123a]

Alright, here goes. Unpopular thoughts/opinions below.

I've been on this site since 2012. I took a couple long (greater than 1 year) hiatuses, and I have to say, this age of CS is much different than when I first started.

(I have not been able to keep up with all comments. I saw this post when it was first posted, and tapped back every once in a while to see what is happening. My comments are regarding the topics from the spreadsheet linked on OG post)

In terms of the site being friend oriented and having limitations with discord etc:
This is not how it used to be. When I first started playing, it was with my friends from school, and once I had gotten comfortable, I joined RPs. RPs used to be how you made friends. The amount of warrior cat RPs I was in/created/did one on one spin offs from was astounding. That's how you made friends, you have a common interest, write stories on forums, and connect that way. I got gifted the whole warriors pet set from a user who was quitting because they saw my name come up so often on warrior RPs, they recognized me and wanted to give the set to someone who would appreciate it. I joined dreamie centers (rip) because of fellow role players who were a part of them, and was able to help people achieve their dream pets and spread joy.

With role playing not being nearly as popular as it was back in 2014, I feel that this is a big reason why folks don't feel like it's easy to make friends on here. Social media progressions have made society, as a whole, more comfortable on things like Discord and allows added convenience for other things, such as calls and channels for different groups/games. It's simply easier to communicate through one platform for everything. That's not CS's fault.

As for why role playing has decreased in popularity, well, who truly has that sort of time or attention span anymore? Those of us who are adults with full time jobs, families, or college courses to worry about aren't going to keep up with pages and pages of RP progression that they missed because well, life happened first. I feel like a lot of the newer generation of CS users don't feel the need to get into RPs because, again, discord is more convenient. You don't have to worry about catching up on details missed, you can pop in for a few minutes at a time, you can get direct notifications to your laptop/phone when someone is referencing you in a chat (so yes, I do fully support the pinging users from forums as that would help with this). Discord and other platforms like that are just more convenient than the old school ways of getting to know people.

More detailed rarity system
For people who are saying they would love to know exact pet count numbers, this would fluctuate so much, it wouldn't even be of use. Dec 18th would change the whole system. You'd have to re-familiarize yourself with every single pet every single year to know how many are in circulation. Add on top of that people who are inactive and have the pets, that creates an inaccurate number. Or people who have hoards of the pet and do not trade them at all. A more helpful system, in my opinion, would be to have some sort of centralized database in which users can say "yes I have this pet", "yes I have this pet for trade", or "I'm looking for this pet" (for reference, perhaps not the best example, but pinpics, a database for disney pin collectors, has this feature. You search the pin you want, which in this case would be pet, and there's a little box underneath with the own/for trade/have options). The months and months it took me to find the halloween moon tree dog to finish one of my collection sets was insane because I would go through the "who's online" and open every single user profile and hope to find that they owned the pet so I could trade for it. A system like the one on pinpics would make it easier to trade, and bonus, it's completely optional. You wouldn't have to say "yes I own this pet" if you don't want to, or advertise it for trade if you don't want to get flooded with trades for it if it's a very high demand pet.

Limit C$ Inflation
Inflation happens everywhere. Other sites, the real world, everything. There's no way to control it unless you were to prohibit off-site trading. I know personally, I also pop in on wajas every once in a while, and they have black Friday sales on their currency where you get extra for buying during that time. Buy there, get more for your buck, trade to CS for pets. Or both wajas and FR have a free to earn currency that can be traded to paid currency. Dedicate time to earning free currency, trade to paid currency, trade to CS. You've spent no money and gotten pets. That's just kinda how it is. I have no idea how to fix it.

Increased Pound Capacity/WL Pound Page
The pound currently has over 800,000 pets in it. Yes, I think it would be beneficial to add more pets to each pound release. But, I think it would be more beneficial for any pet that there is more than say, 50+ of in the pound, just get deleted. All those very common rats that sit there and are always the last to get adopted during pound openings, people just take them because they missed the start of pound open and want to get something. Then they sit in their trade fodder for months or years without doing anything (I am guilty of this). Purge the "filler" pets, delete something like 50% of the ones that have excessive multiples. That limits the frequency that they show up in pound openings, and leave open more spots for better pets.
WL pound pages would make the pound even more unfair. Even now, some users only WL rare+ pets so they can see them easier in the pound. If a WL page came up during pound opening to show them just all the rares? It's hard enough as is with the oldest pet always being at the top of pound opening. Don't complicate it further.
I do think pound pets should populate in a random order, not age order, as that would force users to actually look through all the pets, rather than spam click pet #1 on their screen.

Newbie Exclusive Pound
Many users make "free adopt" boards for specifically new users. If you make a "newbie exclusive pound" run from CS, guess what, you get folks making second accounts and getting banned. Or, let's say this is implemented and staff somehow are able to keep up and deter folks from making new accounts. "Pets are for users who have joined in the last year". Person B who joined a year and a day ago is mad that they never get to receive pets. Person C who joined 6 months ago is mad that they only get to pick pets from the pound for 6 months since it just released now. Person D who joined 3 days ago gets access to a bunch of potentially high value pets, has no idea how to trade them, and as soon as they post a "hi there! I'm new to CS, introducing myself here!" They get flooded with unfair trades they can't navigate through.

Hire additional coders/Increased admin activity
The only way I can see this happening is if CS starts charging a membership fee for access. CS is not, from my understanding, a profitable website. The only way of bringing in cash is through C$ sales, which as mentioned above, cross site trading makes for easier attainability of C$ and does not bring any profit to CS. It's a free to play site, with minimal ads that most of us use ad blockers against anyways.


My Final Thoughts
The CS community is what has made this site successful. Not the art (no offense to the artists, yes the pets are gorgeous and beautiful and you find the ones that you like, but there's nothing flashy about these pixel pets now a days that draw in new users), not the forums (which have minimal personal interactions now a days), not oekaki (aspiring artists have those new fancy tablets with all sorts of higher tech features than oekaki), it's the fact that CS community as a whole is actually a community. Trading isn't one sided. Event hype isn't one sided. Problem solving isn't one sided. CS has always been full of truly beautiful and kind souls and that is what makes this website worth coming back to time and time again. If you make drastic changes that make the site more flashy, more event oriented, whatever else, you invite in new people who may not match the current quality of smoothians we have now. You invite jealousy, anger over not getting the fancy new thing, people who think they can be slick and pull a fast one on others. Guys, people quit games all the time. They did here even back in 2012. Are more people quitting per year now than back then? Yes, but that's because there's how many more users? Life gets in the way. People prioritize. People lose interest. Don't change things so much to try and retain or gain users that you destroy the foundation on which the site was built.

[Loelya]

feel like this discussion has strayed a little off topic. i dont think people are quitting cs bc of how the moderation team handles board warnings.. i dont see the correlation at all. this seems like a dogpile of "well one time i got a warning abc" when the mods are employed to do that exact thing.

I think 'dogpile' is maybe a bit of a harsh word to use, I think users were just chiming in and genuinely only intending to make a suggestion about a potential problem. my original message made it onto the thread before Lacuna's initial explanation and I didn't even realize how many people would quote me. I think it's very helpful for users to feel able to receive some answers directly from a staff member like this so I don't know that's invaluable or should be dismissed out-of-hand. it's good to be able to communicate like this with someone.

[tiredddd]

i feel like this discussion has strayed a little off topic. i dont think people are quitting cs bc of how the moderation team handles board warnings.. i dont see the correlation at all. this seems like a dogpile of "well one time i got a warning abc" when the mods are employed to do that exact thing. i think it has everything to do with old users plateauing and new users never being able to climb the rarity hill. i would say that this is a problem that at its core can only be fixed by whoever is currently making all the site decisions. staff continues to be stretched thin and changes roll out at a snails pace. we need to employ a second coder. its unreasonable for us to make all these demands with 1 coder running the whole site. someone in the higher ups needs to recognize that the playerbases expectations cannot be met with such a small team. until whoever is in charge addresses that issue nothing we say matters

I have previously stated, these are not set in stone but they are simply ideas on how to fix existing issues driving people away. Issue number one is get more coders as I have previously stated only having one is unfair to nick and the community.

[Nexius]

i feel like this discussion has strayed a little off topic. i dont think people are quitting cs bc of how the moderation team handles board warnings.. i dont see the correlation at all. this seems like a dogpile of "well one time i got a warning abc" when the mods are employed to do that exact thing. i think it has everything to do with old users plateauing and new users never being able to climb the rarity hill. i would say that this is a problem that at its core can only be fixed by whoever is currently making all the site decisions. staff continues to be stretched thin and changes roll out at a snails pace. we need to employ a second coder. its unreasonable for us to make all these demands with 1 coder running the whole site. someone in the higher ups needs to recognize that the playerbases expectations cannot be met with such a small team. until whoever is in charge addresses that issue nothing we say matters

Agree. I understand that some people can have issues with mods but this doesn't feel like the place for that discussion.

Still waiting for some kind of response to this concern about HOW any of these changes suggested in thread are even able to be implemented when Tess and Nick are MIA:

This was years ago, so I could be mistaken, but I do believe Tess made an announcement in which she said that she was kind of stepping back from CS. I think it may have been a Q&A where she said that her and Nick made this site for fun and never expected it to get as big as it did and (once again, this was years ago so I could be mistaken) that she was not planning to be super involved, and may have said the same of Nick as well.

I believe there was also an announcement where she clarified that CS was not her or Nick's full-time job and the store pets basically just covered server costs and staff salaries. But again, this was a long time ago. I will look for the post and if I find it I will link it. If I find out I am incorrect about my info I will quote and say so so that no one is left with misinformation

they said this and didn't follow up with anything about handing the site over to other staff ? are they lettin it run free ??

i believe the higher-up admins (seasonal, lacuna, nick) pretty much handle things onsite

Unless things have changed recently it seems they dont. See other suggestion threads where this has been the response:

-snip-

Another issue is that many suggestions have already been denied by Tess, so all we can do as staff is parrot this information to you. I don’t think that denied suggestions should necessarily be set in stone, but regular staff can’t offer anything more since we do not have the power to do so. I know that my title has admin in the name but I have zero control over what is implemented; that falls solely on Tess and Nick. -snip-

Honestly I I love that everyone here is trying to give suggestions on how to improve but are any of those even ABLE to be implemented? It seems like Tess and Nick have mostly abandoned the site without any direction or leadership or giving real authority. Like, what's going on? How can things actually change if the staff who are most involved don't have any control over the actual website?

[Lex.]

I’ve been keeping up with this thread for a bit and I just want to put in a suggestion. Anyone can tell me if they like or hate the idea or if it would be too hard to implement.

Basically I have seen from a lot of people on a lot of threads that when their trades are canceled, they get rude messages and people being insanely mean.

I think it’s fine to reply for an accepted or suggested trade, but if you cancel maybe instead of the message box we should just have a drop down list with a few basic options that say things like-

🔘no thank you
🔘this is not fair to me, sorry
🔘I’m not interested in that, but thank you anyway

Just basic stuff that’s not opening the doors for people to be mean and unnecessarily rude and gross to other players.

I want to reiterate my original suggestion. I have been getting a few people confused! What I meant by this suggestion was not to say that it is MANDATORY to reply with one of the options listed, but that if you CHOOSE to reply to a canceled trade, you can only CHOOSE one of the drop-down or listed options, which are polite, concise replies.

Replying in the message box has always been optional. You can cancel a trade without replying at all, and that should still be an option. I simply think that you would stop a lot of the private and personal bullying problems people seem to have in the trading area of the site if the only replies you could send on a canceled trade were automated. You can cancel silently with no message, or you can choose one of a few options that are easy to understand and remain polite.

I hope this clears any confusion for anyone! <3

while this is a cool idea, I think just having a report option after a message so that it can be reported if it's inappropriate is enough, rather than limiting the speech of the entire userbase.
I often say "have a great day/night" after my messages so it would just feel too robotic.

@Bellarocks123a [More detailed rarity systems]
Not really, thats what the numbers are for. Yeah it fluctuates, but even now, demand does too. We already do this every year, the new URS get uber popular at first, then settle.