Pound "very rare drought" discussion

[Pyca]

About a week ago (to the creation of this topic), Simon brought up that very rares have completely dried up inside the pounds adoption group (source). This is concerning for many users including myself. Other than the post Simon made in a similar topic (Pound rarity odds.), there has been no transparency about the future of the pound. I'm making this thread so users have a proper place to discuss the recent pound rare odds change, and perhaps give suggestions as to how the staff can help with this problem.

I know for myself, the pound (and L&F) is(/are) the main reason(s) I come on the website daily. It gives me something to look forward to in-between events, ESPECIALLY during the slow season of January-late March (when the Easter Egg Hunt begins). Trading, forum games, and discussions can only do so much to keep one occupied on the site. With the rare stock of the pound lowering, I've noticed it's become less interesting to get online to participate. I'm also noticing the pound is staying open longer. Which isn't inherently a bad thing, but just shows that the interest in the site is going to dwindle during this drought.

I know I sound a bit snobby when I say this, but I have every extremely uncommon and under. At this rate, trading and the pound are just about the only two ways to continue working on my wishlist. Trading isn't easy either; finding people who actually have what I want & want what I have is like finding a needle in a haystack. Or... a rare in a pound opening. Okay jokes aside, this is really the only way I can also get trade fodder to work on completing my collection.

On the topic of trade fodder and collection completion, I know that the pound is basically the only way newer players can get higher valued things. Sure, free adoptions exist and there's December 18th... but with the free adoptions you have to get insanely lucky and December 18th is 3 whole adoptions ONCE a year. Waiting that long is tiring and I'm sure doesn't help with player retention. Those two things aside, the only thing players can look forward to is the pound.

Some will say that the goal of the pound is to get it emptied. Which, yes, that is the goal of real life pound for real life pets. However, I believe without a pound this site could die a lot sooner than it would with one. I don't want this site to start slowing down.

As of right now my thoughts are that we should probably close the pound in some form for the time being. I know that is probably a hot take, but I'm serious when I say it. I think that letting it sit for a while to get more pets in the pound would be a good move. Another way you could interpret this is; make it extremely uncommons and lower only for a while. No rares+. I know that contradicts a lot of what I said above, but I do believe it can be a big help with getting it stocked back up with rares+. Also if you go the no rares+ route, make it open less often? As of February 19th, there have been 26 pounds and 16 L&F. That's since the 4th February (Source: Orpheus on the Chickensmoothie Discord Server in #pound. They went through and counted all the opening pings (so this isn't even all of them due to not every opening being pinged)). A mix of more L&F and less pounds could be good. Plus, I can't even imagine the amount of items in the pound account. I imagine there's at least 3x the amount due to items being released in bigger abundance.

I'm sorry for the yapping. but thank you for reading. I'll likely edit this first post as people suggest more ideas to make a "master post". Basically what I'm asking for is some alteration for the pound to allow more rares to make its way into the pound, and for more staff to comment on what their plan is. This site means a TON to its players and we want to see it continue to grow.

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Helpful links/similar topics for those interested:
-Pound rarity odds.
-Address the pound lag + C$ sales transparency
-Pound account
-Pound "Adoptions" group

[skywalker]

support, the pound definitely needs to close until things are sorted out

[LadyoftheGeneral]

Agreed. And with the very real possibility that people were botting the pound, if admins have their eyes on certain users as being suspicious and then those users suddenly go inactive on the site because the pound has shut down, that’s just one more piece of evidence to have against them. I know at least one person in the other thread noted someone with a genuinely suspicious number of rare+, all from the pound, all over a certain age, despite being a relatively newer user who only joined within the last few years.

[lyney]

support. i don't really know what route would be best in the poll and i don't have a strong opinion on what we should do going forward, but i just think that something needs to be changed from the current state of the pound. it's unfortunate to lose the only viable way for new players to have any chance of getting rares aside from events in this game's forsaken economy, and i'm almost positive that this is going to be a big killer for the already dwindling activity on this website.

but the current formula seems to be just as disheartening. it's nice to have pounds, and i guess it's nice to have like a small percent chance of getting a rare over nothing. but i'd much rather have the pound heal itself for a short period, rather than deal with the small rare pounds for a long time period.


i just wish we could get transparent answers on this if they were to keep the current small-rare opening formulas. what would the time frame be for the pound be like this? is this a permanent change going forward?

though i do have to say: rip to the old pounds, i never appreciated you as much as i should've.

[duckblind]

support some kind of change being made. i think having a few more updates about where the pound is at and current plans would help with what exactly might need to be done- i chose the ‘more l&fs and commons only pound’ option but would totally be open to something else, whatever is doable for the current admins’ situation.

[slasherfilms]

some people have been tossing up the idea of the L&F only thing, but im honestly against the idea unless free items are removed from the pool. its incredibly annoying opening up the L&F and being blasted with a page full of items that you can literally go get for free from the store at any time 😭 it makes grabbing an item from the L&F feel like a chore instead of anything fun

[Cloverstream]

The pound won't restock rare+ no matter how long it is closed. The reality is that most of the valuable pound pets were taken from banned accounts, and they haven't cleared banned accounts in years.

[LadyoftheGeneral]

The pound won't restock rare+ no matter how long it is closed. The reality is that most of the valuable pound pets were taken from banned accounts, and they haven't cleared banned accounts in years.

I’d agree with you if I didn’t see several people say they just went and donated rare+ pets to the pound in the original thread. Users leave every day and some may choose to donate rather than give away.

On top of that, there are literally THOUSANDS of pets in the pound account, but only so many cycle into the adoption pool at a given time. You have absolutely no idea how many rares are in that pool of 606,491 pets. How many of those rares may have been scraped from banned accounts. Presently there are no pets in the adoption pool, I guess because the pound must have just run? But they cycle repeatedly. And there are store pets and ‘list pets’ and other limited releases among them.

[Cloverstream]

I’d agree with you if I didn’t see several people say they just went and donated rare+ pets to the pound in the original thread. Users leave every day and some may choose to donate rather than give away.

People are donating as novelty right now to see what the bot does. Yes some people donate but not nearly enough to keep up, or else we would not have run out. Most players with valuables translatable to 100s of dollars in premium currency don't just toss them in the pound when they quit. they offsite trade. There are no players with lists quitting every day putting them in the pound or else running out of VR would not be happening.

You have absolutely no idea how many rares are in that pool of 606,491 pets.

I know for a fact they are completely out of vr pets which is the issue at hand.

[Dove<3]

It took me a couple days to get used to it but honestly i'm fine with the pound the way it is. I wish there was a better way to get trade fodder and rarer pets, but also at the same time I'm pretty sure the pound wasn't created with the intent to trade away the pets you adopted (although many users do this, myself included). I've been having more fun just adopting pets that I like vs trying to get a rare pet. I started a group with all of my pound pets and I've been looking forward to the pound openings ^^

Id be open to euc-omgsc pounds for awhile but I don't think that's gonna fix much, I'm not sure where CS would find thousands of rares out of nowhere yk?

Idk this is just my pov