WHY PEOPLE ARE QUITTING CS- A Discussion

[Palimpsest]

Staff(ish) opinion on coders: Nick is a site owner. If he wants more coders that is within his power.

Re: limited store items -- this was a user suggestion we implemented as a response to the C$ inflation discussion.

Honestly, while all the suggestions that would require a coder are fun to discuss, it might be good to turn the discussion to what users can do. If you want a better site guide or trading rarity list that is something you can work on, especially because as regular users that is something you have a better perspective on than mods, in my view. If you want to revitalize the roleplay boards, start some RPs. If you want new users to come to the site, invite some from another site or discord you're on and offer them mentorship if you're able, or just friendship. If you want to have a guild of people who collect dog lineart pets, start one in the clubs board. It can be cathartic to express yourself on a thread like this, and it is helpful to have all the user suggestions organized, but that is not your only power.

Thank you for this.

I really love CS. I don't have answers to what people are expressing, and I might not always understand y'all's experiences. Last time I was active, I struggled with much of what is being discussed here, and the general feeling that the site could improve to better support its community. I think everything changes, and everything is changing, and shouldn't the things we love evolve with us as well?

Right now I feel a little similarly and a little differently. I came back more for the summer event, and as the last two months in my life have been difficult, I've enjoyed the experience of the event. I've enjoyed getting excited about freshwater pets and items, I've enjoyed joking about the cabins and caring about a mystery, I've enjoyed sitting back and not being involved at all sometimes. I come back to CS when I want to, when I need to, when I happen to, and that's okay too.

I've always felt a level of uncertainty when collecting, trading, or browsing / posting on the forums (the activities that I participate in). I know that people want to enjoy this game, and I want to enjoy it with them. Sometimes it really stresses me out wondering if I'm being too much one way, or too little another way... recently I've experimented just trading commons for commons, and it's been a little wild, and I hope that everyone left those interactions satisfied? I do think that the values of pets can be really stressful sometimes, even just in the most low stakes interactions. Eventually I fade out of interest, and leave the cite for a while.

I think what I'm trying to get to, though, is that right now when I think about people maybe leaving CS, or not joining, I think about what I've been doing and how we are participating in this cite together, and what level of influence I do and don't have in that. Ultimately? I'm hanging out for the summer event because I'm tired and have had a rough month, and I'm trying to make some low stakes trades more accessible cause those sounded fun to me, and sometimes I talk about fish and learning to scatter hoards. Those are the parts of the cite that matter to me right now. I'll probably fade out of that after a while, then come back a few months down the line, and I really enjoy that CS can be that too.

Thanks to everyone for sharing experiences / opinions on this thread, it's been interesting to read this evening. /genuine

(I'll start a fish club with y'all, if you're fine with me only being there every few months /lighthearted)

[tirocat]

idk if it's been said before but honestly i just think games like chicken smoothie are simply going out of style. that's not to say i don't see the appeal, OBVIOUSLY i adore this game and have for years, but people are a lot more video game oriented nowadays, and may not want to START playing. people have always quit, maybe the problem really lies in the fact that we just aren't gaining new players like we used to?

edit typo lol

i agree with this! the appeal of an html based pet-collecting forum is just not that strong anymore. in fact, i'd say forums in general do not appeal to the average internet user anymore. i joined back in 2016 because i totally admired a person that i used to play w/ in a flash game and saw the fanart they drew of one of the pets here. but that early-mid 2010s fun forum flash beat isn't around like it once was! regular people just use the internet for socmeds, and you will never have to interact with websites like these on your surface-level internet browsing. as for users quitting, i'm not totally sure. i have my own reasons for fluctuating in activity though vv

i find it difficult to stay active because it's hard to stay motivated to use this website (i didn't even know there was heavy off-site discussion!). i look at the average discussion thread and ponder how most of them actually serve anything in regards of user-to-user discussion. i know it does sometimes happen, but for the most part, users just answer the thread question and leave. the club thread dedicated to my big fandom right now was last posted in 8 months ago and i am FAR too shy to attempt resuscitating that poor thing. i'm not big into RPing or trading (not like the latter is discussion heavy) so i just pop into forum games, adopt pets, and leave. point is, i find it very difficult to have discussions and meet people on here. i'm sure i could take more initiative myself but it's hard to find the right places to do so.
with that being said, 95 pages in a little over a day??? WOW!!!!!!
edit: also a few typos lol

[manhunt]

funny enough youre the second person today whos told me that theyve seen me lurking around haha o/ ive been pretty passionate about the site's issues for a while but i never voiced them publically due to fear of being banned so ofc i had to pitch in here and help out a bit :]

I believe they may have been talking to Seasonal, as Seasonal has been lurking and hasn't said anything until now. ^^"

oh thats embarassing in my part o7 my bad i only saw my massive stamps

[FERALMACHINE]

idk if it's been said before but honestly i just think games like chicken smoothie are simply going out of style. that's not to say i don't see the appeal, OBVIOUSLY i adore this game and have for years, but people are a lot more video game oriented nowadays, and may not want to START playing. people have always quit, maybe the problem really lies in the fact that we just aren't gaining new players like we used to?

edit typo lol

i agree with this! the appeal of an html based pet-collecting forum is just not that strong anymore. in fact, i'd say forums in general do not appeal to the average internet user anymore. i joined back in 2016 because i totally admired a person that i used to play w/ in a flash game and saw the fanart they drew of one of the pets here. but that early-mid 2010s fun forum flash beat isn't around like it once was! regular people just use the internet for socmeds, and you will never have to interact with websites like these on your surface-level internet browsing. as for users quitting, i'm not totally sure. i have my own reasons for fluctuating in activity though vv

i find it difficult to stay active because it's hard to stay motivated to use this website (i didn't even know there was heavy off-site discussion!). i look at the average discussion thread and ponder how most of them actually serve anything in regards of user-to-user discussion. i know it does sometimes happen, but for the most part, users just answer the thread question and leave. the club thread dedicated to my big fandom right now was last posted in 8 months ago and i am FAR too shy to attempt resuscitating that poor thing. i'm not big into RPing or trading (not like the latter is discussion heavy) so i just pop into forum games, adopt pets, and leave. point is, i find it very difficult to have discussions and meet people on here. i'm sure i could take more initiative myself but it's hard to find the right places to do so.
with that being said, 95 pages in a little over a day??? WOW!!!!!!
edit: also a few typos lol

yeah, it sucks when I see a thread for one of my interests, but I’m much to scared to revive it lol,,, also, role playing on here has sadly just been,, dying you know?

[tirocat]

yeah, it sucks when I see a thread for one of my interests, but I’m much to scared to revive it lol,,, also, role playing on here has sadly just been,, dying you know?

honestly i haven't been keeping tabs on the RPing part of CS since my gosh 2017 or something, but i wouldn't be surprised if this was the case. it looks like the 1x1 RP section of CS is still doing well, but the other sections seem to only get a couple new posts weeks apart! so much slower than i remember.
also LOL i wish i could round up the 6 something homestucks on here and revive that thread even if it's just us bantering with each other hahaha

[CHINARIZING]

NINETY-FIVE PAGES OF DISCUSSION ON A POST DAYS OLD? This is more than event discussion threads get. And that's saying so much.
Anyways love the spreadsheet (and the cell artwork.) Yay my suggestion is there. I am going to make virtual pet site history

CS holds a special place in my heart. I'm glad I got back into it. However, I was shocked to see nothing change except pet value skyrocketing. Oh, and the Lost and Found was added. I wouldn't exactly call CS fun right now, but I definitely enjoy the art of the pets and collecting my favorites.

Here's some of my gripes.

- Trading economy is impossible unless you are somewhat active on forums (any) for the chances of getting gifted, or you get good Pound catches semi-frequently, or you have stocked up enough older pets as an older user

- Staff seem to care more about said trading economy over the wellbeing of users (solutions by staff to the Pet Exodus of June-July 2023 prioritized the economy from being hurt by duplication of rare+ pets)

- Disconnected staff (Mods+), even more disconnected and inactive administration (Nick and Tess are the most visible)

- Distrust/no communication between community and mods+. After seeing how the staff handle some stuff around queerness I have lost what little of the trust I had in them.

- Lack of updates. I went to delete one singular PM and still had to mark it and delete it as if I was mass-deleting messages. This is just one recent small example that I feel shows the age of CS.

- CS seemingly trying to be "better" than other games by actively reinforcing COPPA and making it kid-friendly, refusing gambling mechanics, etc. But the mere existence of C$ and "limited never coming back FOMO-inducing" store pets makes CS predatory in that way.

I would have more reason to be on here if CS could choose between being 100% kid-safe no predatory tactics or embracing its grown userbase, and a staff team that users perceive as hostile.

[Artemystery]

OP did such a great job archiving everything and spreading spreadsheets of information and stamps.
this is very organized

[ferrari]

ope nothing to really note here, but marking to follow!

[pizzas and scream]

idk if it's been said before but honestly i just think games like chicken smoothie are simply going out of style. that's not to say i don't see the appeal, OBVIOUSLY i adore this game and have for years, but people are a lot more video game oriented nowadays, and may not want to START playing. people have always quit, maybe the problem really lies in the fact that we just aren't gaining new players like we used to?

edit typo lol

i agree with this! the appeal of an html based pet-collecting forum is just not that strong anymore. in fact, i'd say forums in general do not appeal to the average internet user anymore. i joined back in 2016 because i totally admired a person that i used to play w/ in a flash game and saw the fanart they drew of one of the pets here. but that early-mid 2010s fun forum flash beat isn't around like it once was! regular people just use the internet for socmeds, and you will never have to interact with websites like these on your surface-level internet browsing. as for users quitting, i'm not totally sure. i have my own reasons for fluctuating in activity though vv

i find it difficult to stay active because it's hard to stay motivated to use this website (i didn't even know there was heavy off-site discussion!). i look at the average discussion thread and ponder how most of them actually serve anything in regards of user-to-user discussion. i know it does sometimes happen, but for the most part, users just answer the thread question and leave. the club thread dedicated to my big fandom right now was last posted in 8 months ago and i am FAR too shy to attempt resuscitating that poor thing. i'm not big into RPing or trading (not like the latter is discussion heavy) so i just pop into forum games, adopt pets, and leave. point is, i find it very difficult to have discussions and meet people on here. i'm sure i could take more initiative myself but it's hard to find the right places to do so.
with that being said, 95 pages in a little over a day??? WOW!!!!!!
edit: also a few typos lol

I miss forums. I don’t even know how I found the ones I was on in the 20 aughts.sure Reddit has its perks. But nothing beats a good forum. How do we save forums?

[macintalk]

-snip-
I would have more reason to be on here if CS could choose between being 100% kid-safe no predatory tactics or embracing its grown userbase, and a staff team that users perceive as hostile.

i 100000% agree with you. i just genuinely don't see the point of keeping CS as kid-friendly as it is. i completely understand there shouldn't be anything inherently inappropriate on the site or linked through it, and things like that, to monitor the kids which play the game, but i'd like to point out it is also the parent's responsibility to monitor what their child is doing on the internet. the majority of the CS player base are adults now and i feel like that should be acknowledged and that the rules should be revamped to account for this. i understand there are still some children playing the game, but there are so few that i feel the rules should be changed around to better fit the userbase as it is now. 10+ years ago, i'm sure the majority of the site were minors and coppa users, considering the fact a lot of the people who still play are those same children who played when they were 12, 13, etc. in response to my post mentioning how off-site links should not be monitored as strictly as they are, i gave an example of an adult having their age linked a few links away from cs on their twitter or something like that, and a mod responded stating that because an adult might have their age linked a few links away from cs, that would let a child who stumbled upon it to believe it is ok to do that. which, to some extent i understand, but realistically, how many children are going to be sifting through links in people's signatures and finding ages and deciding it's ok to do that? plus, wouldn't mods snipe the age out of the child's account, if they put it anywhere on their CS?
i'd also like to mention that none of this is a rant, or vent, and i apologize if it seems like that to mods. i'm just stating my thoughts on this topic specifically, as it's something that genuinely doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. i just personally don't understand why some of these rules are as strict as they are. it's the parent's job to monitor a child's internet access, as well. maybe there could be parental restrictions put into place? like a specific account settings page only accessible by a parent with a specific pin or something along those lines, that they could set specific restrictions for, including not being able to click on off-site links, not being able to edit certain things, send messages, view forums, etc.