Pound "very rare drought" discussion

[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.

Why tho

It's right there in the quote "You would be surprised how often people return to very old accounts"

[nickjr]

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.

As someone who has been trying and failing to return to accounts elsewhere after 10+ years, I'm grateful CS's top brass is still firm about this.

[betulacarelica]

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

hi!! i just returned after a ten year absence and im extremely happy that i was able to with all my pets still here. im now more active in trading than i ever was before. im not sure but id guess a lot of people returned during covid and a lot of the people ive seen around recently mention returning after hiatus. theres not really a length of time you could put on it that wouldnt be arbitrary and upset someone who wanted to come back one day and realised they'd just been deactivated and lost their pets.

i havent scanned this whole thread but one suggestion (altho im sure therell be reasons why this couldnt work) could maybe be to have special infrequent rerelease events for the pound. like december 18th but the pets are being generated for the pound and in higher numbers. it could maybe even be unannounced or at irregular times so people cant wait and snipe??

i think sites like this will always eventually run into a wall with rarer pets. its true that many older users are inactive and that locks up older, rarer pets, but its also true that those who are still active will usually be seasoned and often have massive collections themselves that theyre not looking to trade. i think most folks would be disappointed if they were pretty much told they just have to resign themselves to never getting those more valuable pets, but i do have a feeling the only COMPLETELY fair way to solve that problem may be to just generate more. then the real value comes in true dates (more so than it is already i suppose) because people will always put higher value on the less common thing.

[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.

Maybe there could be an option? Like if i were to dissapear for a decade i think i would like my pets to be sent to the pound to make someone else's day.

[bwainrot]

i dont know if this has ever been brought up before, but it popped up in my mind the other day and i just feel the need to ask: what about pets that were adopted without an account? since they have no owner, and can never be traded, why not send them to the pound so they can be reintroduced into circulation? my apologies if this is already something thats been shot down before, im just curious ^_^

[winx]

Then people could just make like 50 accounts and just absolutely fill each pound with like 90% of this month's pets
All it takes is one person lol

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.

Maybe there could be an option? Like if i were to dissapear for a decade i think i would like my pets to be sent to the pound to make someone else's day.

like why not

[bubblegumjello]

^^^ i was inactive 2018-2023 which granted wasn’t 10 years but im glad my account wasn’t wiped. i think if i came back and saw all my stuff was gone i wouldn’t have gotten active again. i understand both sides of the become but i do think that moving pets off inactive account is not the answer. thats why not - because its scummy

and yeah people can make a bunch of accounts and donate pets to the pound, im sure people already do tbh. ive said this like a billion times: realistically the only way to solve the larger issue of old pets becoming ever rarer is to re-release more pets; its only a matter of time til the site breaks (though imo i dont think its anywhere near that yet). as for the pound, i think moving as many of those pets that aren’t owned by users into the pound is a could be an idea. ofc, not ALL of them, still enough to keep the rarity as it is (if that makes sense). but hey, the pound has been sustained for 17 years, i dont see it closing soon but i do think it needs a lil tlc (though i dont have any suggestions for that rly)

[ButterflyChaser]

I think I stumbled upon a possible way people have botted the pound.

This was by accident! I picked up an item from the lost and found, but left it on the page. I refreshed the page to try for an egg token and came up with a dialogue asking if I wanted to resubmit information. I said okay and refreshed. I noticed the page said I already adopted from the lost and found.

Now had the lost and found been open again in a second round, my guess is that I would have accidently picked that object I picked last time.

I don't plan to do this. Just pointing it out so it can be resolved. My guess is the people who do this modify the link to the pets' unique id, so that when the pound loads, all they have to do is refresh the page and it would auto adopt the pet.

I cannot confirm this. I will not try it out, but I am throwing this out as a possibility that could be causing pets to be instantly gone even before the images load.

[ShorahNagi]

i dont know if this has ever been brought up before, but it popped up in my mind the other day and i just feel the need to ask: what about pets that were adopted without an account? since they have no owner, and can never be traded, why not send them to the pound so they can be reintroduced into circulation? my apologies if this is already something thats been shot down before, im just curious ^_^

You know. That's not a bad idea - but I think there would need to be a limit on how many 'off account' pets could be sent per person (maybe by IP address) just to prevent people from doing a mass dump of pets to the pound and skewing numbers

For example: I have one of the ER Christmas Zebras I got as an off account adopt that's just in my bookmarks serving no purpose. It would be nice if there was a way to at least let someone get him as opposed to just sitting there.

Anyhow, I think the main problem of rarity drought for pound pets also comes from donations and the like. Sure, people who are quitting may donate their Rare+ pets. At te same time however, I suspect a lot of people probably also use the pound as dumping ground to get rid of excess commons OR pets they just don't like.

One other thing - I see a lot of players with a giant wish list of just rares+ with notes in their trade rules as being 'Just for pound' for the purpose of being able to quickly identify a rare (as pound pets have the ☆On your Wishlist note similar to browsing a person's trade group).

In theory, it's possible that it's not a true drought, but rather players with wish lists like that are quicker to snap up the Rare+ pets because they can tell quicker than those of us who don't have every pet bookmarked. [Suspected unpopular idea: remove the Wishlist tag from pound pets to give people who genuinely know what a rare+ Wishlist pet they want looks like a chance versus those just watching for that ☆Wishlist tag to get trade fodder]

TL/DR: The pound isn't exactly broken, or having true droughts of rare+ pets, but it does need some refining now that there's more pets than ever

[Erinmc]

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

It's right there in the quote "You would be surprised how often people return to very old accounts"

Just wanted to chime in as a mostly (formerly) inactive user who just started playing CS regularly after having my account since 2008! You can even tell when I've logged in by looking at my ungrouped pets group, and frankly it isn't much given how old my account is. Typically I'll log in once every few years, get the monthly pets, and then not log back in for year(s). I've never been an active trader but for some reason, this last time I logged in I started to actually trade and I've gotten really into the site since then! Honestly it never even crossed my mind to be worried about whether my account still existed after multiple years being inactive, but I'm happy it always has.