WHY PEOPLE ARE QUITTING CS- A Discussion

[deepseaolive]

Hi! I just wanted to share my thoughts on this topic, although I’m sure it’s all been said by other users already.
I joined CS 11 years ago, and simultaneously so much has changed and yet so much has stayed the same. Unfortunately some of those changes may be contributing to people leaving. I myself have had large breaks/hiatuses due to life getting in the way- but not only that, also feeling as though there has been a decline in community involvement. As others have said, RPs seem so much quieter now than they used to be, as well as assorted topics. Another thing I’ve noticed after being away for chunks of time over the years and then almost completely for 2021 & 2022, I can’t believe how much has changed with trading. Not just rarities/value (which has gone up by so much, it’s insane! I feel fortunate to have collected a large chunk of my dreamies back in 2012-2015, I don’t understand how newer players are able to do it now) but also the rudeness of players trading now. The site used to feel friendlier imo.
I also feel like people aren’t really looking for these types of forums/pet collecting games anymore? I keep coming back for things like pet collecting, art & nostalgia, but new players don’t really seem to stay long. A few communities have also moved offsite haven’t they? Like some of the closed adoptables moves to other sites like dA etc.

I 100% agree that Nick could use the support of more coding specific staff so that workload isn’t just on him. And I’d love for CS to bring back more community involvement like competitions (writing competitions etc.) or the CS birthday cake entries from 2011.

I absolutely love the pets & items, and the staff put an incredible amount of effort into not only the events & seasonal/holidays, but also just the monthly adopts. Like I said before, CS is super nostalgic to me and that’s why I always come back. But sometimes I do miss the old days.

Something else I’ve been thinking of- even with all of the warnings leading up to dec. 18th, there still seem to be so many people ninja trading with new players. It’s really fun to see the older pets grow, however it means many people (esp. young users who don’t understand rarities or trading very well) can lose valuable pets. Would there ever be a way to maybe lock dec 18th pets from being traded until grown? I don’t even know if that’s something that’s possible. But I’m glad to see how much effort the staff put into warning players to wait or check their pet outcomes before trading away Dec 18th pets.

Re: the mod warnings, maybe an overhaul (if they are in fact pre-set responses) would be good, or if there was some way to better indicate tone. There just seem to be a lot of people in this thread commenting on mod hostility (which I haven’t experienced myself so don’t have anything to contribute) and so maybe there’s a solutions somewhere that could help avoid possible negative experiences and splitting everyone into an ‘us vs. them’ mindset.

[Lanayru]

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I am autistic and I have had that in my signature for a long time. It is incredibly common for people to bash my communication style because I do not use emojis and I'm not very emotionally demonstrative, and it sucks. I just read through a lot of posts that talked about it. I just want to say I always do my best to be fair and understanding, but I know people see the way I speak as rude and I don't know what to do about it, and it's very possible something I say here will come off that way because I want to say something so people don't insist that they're being ignored.

while the negative feelings associated with rejection can suck, i don’t think it’s ever okay for us to criticize the way that other people communicate online or demand they change that for our own comfort. at the end of the day, the staff are just doing their job, and their hard work and dedication to the wellbeing of this community is more than enough proof that they have good intentions and don’t want to hurt anyone. ultimately, our feelings are our own responsibility. we can express them, and we can do what we need to cope with them, but we shouldn’t demand that the world caters to them. i say this as someone who gets overly emotional from receiving warnings myself. and, as neurodivergent people, we should never make other neurodivergent people feel like they’re doing something wrong for being the way they are and communicating the way that feels natural to them. so no, i don’t think policing the tone that staff use when they give warnings is a fair or practical request, i’m sorry.

I'm actually going to gently disagree with this. Even though the CS staff positions are unpaid volunteer ones, there should be a certain level of expectation when it comes to how they conduct themselves and communicate with the userbase. The mods ultimately represent CS itself, and when multiple people have concerns with staff being unkind and cold that should be taken seriously because it reflects negatively on the whole site.

While it sucks to have to put extra effort to how you communicate (I'd know, I do it everytime I post and then still stress that I'm coming off cold lol) that is unfortunately just a part of the deal of being in a higher ranking position. I agree that we as users need to take some personal responsibility too in managing our feelings (sometimes a warning is justified as much as it feels bad), but it's a bit unfair to dismiss the entire issue because "we can't cater to everyone".

[JayBae333]

Staff can sometimes sound like robots/monotone & that can come off as unwelcoming for nuerodivergent users or even users with anxiety & other things like that. It costs absolutely nothing to be a bit more gentle when someone breaks the rules & it costs nothing to give verbal warnings rather than suddenly giving someone a strike or whatever - I understand that they've likely seen some of the stuff that breaks the rules many times before but that's no excuse to be rude.

okay so… i don’t want to invalidate this at all, because it’s absolutely valid to feel that way. as someone who’s neurodivergent myself (ADHD with pretty intense Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria), i understand how bad it can feel to be told you did something wrong and i empathize with other people’s discomfort here. i see why people would want the extra reassurance of a more “gentle” message. however, if we’re going to be talking about the needs of neurodivergent users/users with anxiety, i think it’s important to remember that there are many types of neurodivergence and sometimes the needs of some neurodivergent people clash with those of others. i’d like to reiterate something lacuna said earlier, which got kind of buried in the thread (hope it’s okay to bring this back up!):

I am autistic and I have had that in my signature for a long time. It is incredibly common for people to bash my communication style because I do not use emojis and I'm not very emotionally demonstrative, and it sucks. I just read through a lot of posts that talked about it. I just want to say I always do my best to be fair and understanding, but I know people see the way I speak as rude and I don't know what to do about it, and it's very possible something I say here will come off that way because I want to say something so people don't insist that they're being ignored.

while the negative feelings associated with rejection can suck, i don’t think it’s ever okay for us to criticize the way that other people communicate online or demand they change that for our own comfort. at the end of the day, the staff are just doing their job, and their hard work and dedication to the wellbeing of this community is more than enough proof that they have good intentions and don’t want to hurt anyone. ultimately, our feelings are our own responsibility. we can express them, and we can do what we need to cope with them, but we shouldn’t demand that the world caters to them. i say this as someone who gets overly emotional from receiving warnings myself. and, as neurodivergent people, we should never make other neurodivergent people feel like they’re doing something wrong for being the way they are and communicating the way that feels natural to them. so no, i don’t think policing the tone that staff use when they give warnings is a fair or practical request, i’m sorry.

I understand where you're coming from however, staff are in a position of power - I and many users don't want them to do a complete 180 overnight or change their whole entire personality - as someone who's been taught to pretend in order to appease others I know how unhealthy and self destructive that is. It's completely okay AND HEALTHY to communicate how you naturally would. (I encourage it since pretending to be someone who you absolutely arent, destroys you from the inside.) Staff simply have a bit more responsibility on this site.

I'm not asking for sugar coating. I'm asking for understanding I suppose - even just one line of additional reassurance could make a difference to some people like "this probably was just a mistake and that's okay but just needed to let you know" or something along those lines because it's that acknowledgement that can provide reassurance - it shows the user that the staff member understands that the user didn't mean any ill-will. And I don't think a single line of text will completely change someone's way of communication.

And as previously stated by another user it's possible that warning messages are pre-set anyhow - so just alter those copy & paste list of messages.

Furthermore, we're not talking about ALL the staff members.

[JayBae333]

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-snip-
While it sucks to have to put extra effort to how you communicate (I'd know, I do it everytime I post and then still stress that I'm coming off cold lol) that is unfortunately just a part of the deal of being in a higher ranking position. I agree that we as users need to take some personal responsibility too in managing our feelings (sometimes a warning is justified as much as it feels bad), but it's a bit unfair to dismiss the entire issue because "we can't cater to everyone".

You put it perfectly, probably better than I did.

[Bridgy1234]

as someone who relies on tone tags and so knows a lot of lesser known ones, im gonna have to agree w lanayru here, tone tags are not going to be a universal fix.

i do agree with making the text sound a bit less blunt as iwannabefriendswithya suggested. saying something like "just a heads up that text without art is not allowed on the oekaki!" instead of "the oekaki is for drawing, not writing." makes a complete difference ! its not sugar coating either since it gets the point across in a nicer and frendlier tone.

anyways @ forest's post, while lacuna in specific may sound blunt due to their autism, the issue is most, if not all the active mods right now sound extremely blunt and rude. we're not policing anyone, we're just asking for the mods to sound a bit kinder, especially when a lot of them have shown themselves to show some emotion on other threads, even if it's just by using an exclamation point. one mod cannot speak for all mods of the site.

I think the bluntness of mods has been an issue for a long time, I have been contacted by mods on a small handful of occasions over the last 9 years on cs (oh god has it been that long?) and reading their messages gave me anxiety. I usually would reply back apologizing and explaining why it happened or how I miss interpreted what ever rule I broke and usually one of three things happened.
No response
The rule section linked and something along the lines of saying it’s clearly stated
Or something along the lines of make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Now the last time I had a mod contact me the initial message was as per usual, but when i responded to it and then they responded, it was like talking to an actual person.

I know that there is probably a lot for mods to do on cs. A lot of reports to respond to so they try to streamline things. But I think if it were more personable users on cs might be more willing to help out around here? Wether it be reporting things better or on smaller violations just giving the user a heads up that it is in violation of cs rules.
It might bring around a better sense of community, which I think lacks when there isn’t an event going on and you are not apart of a species group.

Or maybe, as stated a few times, it’s a lot to ask the kids to change their behaviors, non mod members just on their own start trying to pick up the slack a little. Like what all can we do to help change the form and drive a better cs community?

[dragonstars]

As someone who's been on the site since 2017, and dipped for while because of how...Boring the site has gotten with its events and other things?...Its so saddening to see this site slowly dwindle in playerbase, im really only on here for Closed species communities and collecting some of the pets. I grew up with this site when i first got my computer in middle school, and its been such a comfort game. I love collecting tiny little creatures, reason why I play dragon adventures and other creature collecting games. I have always loved chicken smoothie and its one of the childhood games i played and it will always have a special place in my heart. But...

I wish trading wasn't so confusing, everything has sky rocketed and its so hard to get anything rare at this point. Im so confused on what rarities are worth now, it keeps changing and changing and I cannot keep up with it. Everything is so hard to get that you have to trade a LIMB just to get something good. I have actively stopped trying to get anything rare because of how confusing and hard it is to get there, nothings changed and everything keeps increasing and increasing year by year, and the only chance you can even get anything good is from Dec 18th, and even then, its such a slim chance to get any lists or high tier pets.

I feel as if things need to be changed with the pet collecting side, and that they desperately need changing. If things keep up, its gonna become increasingly harder to get list pets or other high rarity pets year by year. I. The pet trading shouldn't be this confusing and impossible to get. I just wish everything wasn't so confusing, Ive always been confused abt trading things, even in other games, including dragon adventures but at least i have a better time understanding values in that game because events get rereleased every year their event comes back.

I do wish that things change in the future, even if just a small change, because at least we're getting somewhere and things will change for the better. I want to get back into chicken smoothie fully but if things don't change i might not.

I do hope what im saying makes sense?? Im not good with explaining things most of the time and i may have restated what i said in before, but at least this is my opinion on the subject ^^.

[winx]

I agree that the staff can come off as hostile sometimes, and I really do think that they should start using tone tags so that they don’t accidentally upset people.

This is a really awesome game and I actually love the forums a lot, especially during events.

[manhunt]

I think the bluntness of mods has been an issue for a long time

picking out this blurb specifically to respons to because i cannot agree more (also because im quite tiredn groggy n didnt understand the rest of the post well because of that..)

i remember getting blunt messages from the mods as far back as 2016, and at that point i was so young that i had to beg my mom to sign the premission slip that lets coppa members speak on the forums, and i even got one of these blunt responses before my mom signed that slip because of a pet i had named "this user is not allowed to trade me." was it against the rules? hell yeah, but once again, it came off as super blunt to me and i was still a coppa player, it was intimidating.

i just find it difficult to excuse stuff like this when clearly so many people have an issue with it and have been negatively effected by it (including myself)

[parx]

this topic was pages and pages ago so forgive me if something similar has been said already, but i'm saying this now bc i didn't get a chance to yesterday: i've seen some talk of things like live chat rooms, group chats, etc, but personally i think we just need more forum threads that allow casual chatter. i'm super active in the casual chat threads during events bc i really enjoy being able to discuss the event and pets in a very casual setting. obviously things still have to be organized to avoid chaos, but maybe something like a specific section of the boards for casual chat threads could work? there r things like the general discussion and chicken smoothie discussion boards, but i feel like that's rlly not the same. idk this is just my very late two cents on the live chat thing — i don't think something like that would be feasible bc of how difficult it would be to moderate, but there r ways to make it easier to Just Talk without needing constant intense moderation.

[ShorahNagi]

My thoughts:

I have zero friends who I know IRL on this site and it hasn't stopped me one bit from getting the pets I want - so I really don't think friends are a factor.

And speaking of pets, at the end of the day - they're pixels and numbers and any value is perceived by the owner(s) of said pets [is my Christmas Eve December 18th redo Rainbow Mane anymore valuable than a regular Dec. 18th one? And is a true date RBM really more valuable than either of the other two?]

It's this "value" that makes it hard for people to join in and start collecting, as they don't have enough to trade for the 'higher value' pets they might want. Something that could be a turn off to a lot of players with a 'collect them all' mindset and make them stop playing as they can't make any progress.

That aside, I think the big problem with CS is there's just not enough to keep people interested. Yes, there's the forums for things like roleplaying, art, fandom discussions. Etc...but there's hundreds of other sites and forums offering the same thing.

Not to mention, other than a dress up feature (which stinks to use on mobile - my main way of playing)...there's nothing to do with the pets beyond adopt them and watch them grow.

Dragon Cave - another site I've been on longer than CS at least lets you breed them to make lineages (and occasionally throws you the curveball of getting a hybrid* or the wrong color* when making a pattern). It's some level of interactive that you just don't get here on CS.

In regards to Mods:
I was once a moderator for Howrse. Sometimes, we had no choice but to be blunt to make players understand why they were warned, banned, etc. I tried to be polite, but at the end of the day when you have 20+ trolls spamming the same thing...you just start copy-pasting the same reply and locking the topics, sending the PMs. It can get a little taxing and the tone may come off different than intended.

Not to mention the occasional language barrier even with a translator. On top of all that, It's not easy sometimes to make the call if a post is really harmful or not (ex. Person 1 posts a picture they drew asking how people like it. Persons 2 and 3 say its nice. Person 4 says they don't like it because of the thick outlines and saturated colors, and advises 1 to avoid that in future works. Person 4 gets reported by 1 for their response as 1 sees it as 'bullying'. To me, no - 4 did nothing wrong and just offered their opinion and some constructive criticisms to help 1 with future works)

All that aside

TL/DR: Chicken Smoothie needs more than just forums and a dress up game to keep people enticed and attract new players

*I am well aware its only certain breeds that have hybrids and/or breed only color variations and that these issues can be avoided by not using those brreds for lineages but where's the fun in that?