Pound "very rare drought" discussion

[Wintersham]

That would violate the sites own rules on adoption centers giving out prizes to people who donate I think??

if it's a site event to help a site feature, i'd think it's a little different?

I agree with odin. I get where Lex is coming from though.

Leaving Adoption Center prizes up to the player can easily be "rigged" to make anyone win. Whether it's friends, a high donator, anything. That's what makes it unfair for anyone else. Plus they can easily keep any pets they want if they want to be dishonest.

The Pound is luck based in writing (ignoring bot/faster computer/etc). It can theoretically be any "prize" given, but making it fair to all players would be tricky. Maybe it could be stamps, banners, anything cosmetic? Doesn't strictly have to be pet/item related in the end. Again, not sure on this one!

You may be right in the end though, it could just be against the site rules in the end. No ifs, ands, or buts. That's why it's just a loose suggestion in the end :3

[LadyoftheGeneral]

the "botting" thing keeps coming up more and more frequently, and while i can personally recall maybe 1 or 2 staff acknowledgements of this theory, i don't think very much has been said or done to ease these concerns. would be nice to get some insight, because my thought is that if the issue is as prominent as some of us assume, there's no way it's ALL going under the radar. my opinion is that there is likely a handful of users utilizing something like this, if any at all, and the problem probably leans more toward outdated servers than a large amount of users using a software for grabbing rares. i toyed with the botting theory for a while, but i realized that A. my thoughts on the issue fluctuated based on my own luck and B. i only post my rare+ grabs on the pound pets thread, which wasn't even something i was conscious of for a while, and it probably has looked at times like i get something valuable every opening, which is Very Far From True. sometimes our perception of another user's activity simply isn't the truth. that doesn't mean the concern isn't real and valid about cheating.

the registered online user count usually goes up about 1k, within a minute or two, each opening. discord bots skim the pound pets page to create an image of everything in it, and send reminder pings right before it opens. people who may otherwise miss the pound by not checking the site constantly are now able to make each opening. more people are paying attention to the pound. is that making the difference? maybe.
that's sorta my theory, but hopefully soon we'll get a real idea of what can be seen from the coding end and we'll know what's causing the random lag issues. it gets bad at very strange times

imo the pound should close completely and recover for a while. we've made it through long lost and found periods before events many times, knowing exciting pounds are just on the other side of our wait. i wouldn't mind the pound being below rare only, either, though. it would be refreshing

I’m inclined to agree with this. The pound just opened, and I immediately noticed all pets older than a certain year are IMMEDIATELY grabbed. I clicked on a 2018 pet on my wishlist, literally the moment it spawned, and it was already taken. It’s pretty clear that people are diving for older dates too because it’s a lot more likely that older dates will be higher rarities. Some people are clearly able to click faster than others. It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s bots and cheating, but the date visibility makes it much more likely that people are going to go for older dates in the hopes of getting rarer pets. I think the pound needs a break, and it needs to come back without dates.

[Unbeknownsk]

Can' they just like return pets that were from users that havent been online for over 10-15 years cuz its likely theyll never come back

[=Kitty=]

I’m inclined to agree with this. The pound just opened, and I immediately noticed all pets older than a certain year are IMMEDIATELY grabbed. I clicked on a 2018 pet on my wishlist, literally the moment it spawned, and it was already taken. It’s pretty clear that people are diving for older dates too because it’s a lot more likely that older dates will be higher rarities. Some people are clearly able to click faster than others. It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s bots and cheating, but the date visibility makes it much more likely that people are going to go for older dates in the hopes of getting rarer pets. I think the pound needs a break, and it needs to come back without dates.

yess!! I wouldn't mind having Lost and Found for a long while, because, as much as we don't want to point fingers, there definitely is some autoclickers going on. If the rare pets aren't shoved just into the top left corner, it'd be randomized and more exciting when you get a rare

[Raire]

I’m inclined to agree with this. The pound just opened, and I immediately noticed all pets older than a certain year are IMMEDIATELY grabbed. I clicked on a 2018 pet on my wishlist, literally the moment it spawned, and it was already taken. It’s pretty clear that people are diving for older dates too because it’s a lot more likely that older dates will be higher rarities. Some people are clearly able to click faster than others. It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s bots and cheating, but the date visibility makes it much more likely that people are going to go for older dates in the hopes of getting rarer pets. I think the pound needs a break, and it needs to come back without dates.

yess!! I wouldn't mind having Lost and Found for a long while, because, as much as we don't want to point fingers, there definitely is some autoclickers going on. If the rare pets aren't shoved just into the top left corner, it'd be randomized and more exciting when you get a rare

I don't know, I always aim for top left. While sometimes im slow (its probably just bad ping aa) i am quite fast clicker and thats how i got my rare pet too. I think the chances of getting any good pet would be very low, and less on skill and more on chance.


A trick i use is not the be the first into the pound, meanign i refresh after i count about 3 seconds after its started. that makes it such that the first row of pets wont be immediately taken andi have a chance.

[soonerthanlater]

I agree with some of the people who have suggested that pets from users who've been inactive for 10+ years should be put into the pound. One of those users was me -- I've only been active on this account since August 2024, but I had another account from way back around 2012 or so. (Yes staff knows, couldn't get into my first account, created this new one, asked staff to delete my first account, I'm complying with the 1 account rule now).

I think I'm kind of an outlier in the sense that I did return to the game after so much time had passed, but I think I'm the exception to the rule. And if I had came back to my original account and it had been wiped clear and my pets had been donated to the pound, that's something I would've expected to have happen since I hadn't logged on a single time in almost a decade. I can't even imagine how many hundreds or even thousands of accounts filled with pets are just kinda rotting away when they could be put back into circulation

[Luna Lux]

I agree with some of the people who have suggested that pets from users who've been inactive for 10+ years should be put into the pound. One of those users was me -- I've only been active on this account since August 2024, but I had another account from way back around 2012 or so. (Yes staff knows, couldn't get into my first account, created this new one, asked staff to delete my first account, I'm complying with the 1 account rule now).

I think I'm kind of an outlier in the sense that I did return to the game after so much time had passed, but I think I'm the exception to the rule. And if I had came back to my original account and it had been wiped clear and my pets had been donated to the pound, that's something I would've expected to have happen since I hadn't logged on a single time in almost a decade. I can't even imagine how many hundreds or even thousands of accounts filled with pets are just kinda rotting away when they could be put back into circulation

As someone else who returned after a very long break (didn't play between 2013 and 2023) - if I came back and found that all my pets were gone, I would have been kind of disappointed, maybe assumed that I did a quitting giveaway a decade ago, and wouldn't have bothered getting back into the game. I wouldn't have been completely destroyed or heartbroken, because there wasn't much emotional attachment to anything beyond my dreamies, and even that was just a faint nostalgia after 10 years' absence, but I also wouldn't have wanted to play again if I'd lost my entire 2011-2013 collection.

I think that if Staff wanted to do something like that, it would be fair to send out an email to all the long-time inactive users to the degree of "You have x amount of time to log back in before your pets run away" and give them a reasonable amount of time to reclaim their accounts. This would let them recirculate pets from people who are completely disinterested, or people like you who lost their login info and need to start fresh, but it wouldn't be taking pets from people like me who would (and did) come back to their old collections.

[Wired]

I agree with some of the people who have suggested that pets from users who've been inactive for 10+ years should be put into the pound. One of those users was me -- I've only been active on this account since August 2024, but I had another account from way back around 2012 or so. (Yes staff knows, couldn't get into my first account, created this new one, asked staff to delete my first account, I'm complying with the 1 account rule now).

I think I'm kind of an outlier in the sense that I did return to the game after so much time had passed, but I think I'm the exception to the rule. And if I had came back to my original account and it had been wiped clear and my pets had been donated to the pound, that's something I would've expected to have happen since I hadn't logged on a single time in almost a decade. I can't even imagine how many hundreds or even thousands of accounts filled with pets are just kinda rotting away when they could be put back into circulation

As someone else who returned after a very long break (didn't play between 2013 and 2023) - if I came back and found that all my pets were gone, I would have been kind of disappointed, maybe assumed that I did a quitting giveaway a decade ago, and wouldn't have bothered getting back into the game. I wouldn't have been completely destroyed or heartbroken, because there wasn't much emotional attachment to anything beyond my dreamies, and even that was just a faint nostalgia after 10 years' absence, but I also wouldn't have wanted to play again if I'd lost my entire 2011-2013 collection.

I think that if Staff wanted to do something like that, it would be fair to send out an email to all the long-time inactive users to the degree of "You have x amount of time to log back in before your pets run away" and give them a reasonable amount of time to reclaim their accounts. This would let them recirculate pets from people who are completely disinterested, or people like you who lost their login info and need to start fresh, but it wouldn't be taking pets from people like me who would (and did) come back to their old collections.

I second the email thing, give ample warning before actually doing it

[Simon]

Popping in to say we will never remove pets from inactive accounts, that's something we are firm about. You would be surprised how often people return to very old accounts.

To give a bit of an update regarding the VR pet supply, we are about half way to the point where we can start releasing VR pets again (at a more realistic drop rate than before of course), so we are getting there slowly but surely. Banned accounts are getting cleared out constantly but as I've mentioned before there are many cases where we can't empty accounts for a while based on the circumstances of the ban.

[Unbeknownsk]

Popping in to say we will never remove pets from inactive accounts, that's something we are firm about. You would be surprised how often people return to very old accounts.

Why tho