Changes to the pound

[EncyOf]

Whoawhoawhoa,
am I reading this right?
Only 3 hours of wait time to be able to adopt again?!
(I mean, if the pound is open, of course)
AWWWWWW YEEEAAA!

[werewolfmaddy]

OMG YESSSSSS THANKS!!!

[Imzadi83]

Wow, that's great, thanks!

[Akivaq]

This is going to be Cool!

[Sylea~]

What a great change! I'm sure some pets have been sitting in the Pound's huge group for a long time.

[re·le·vé]

This is fantastic news! Thank you so much!

[Aleigh]

I was really confused when I saw it at first (before I saw this thread), but now it makes sense. This is great! It also may stop a few people from making multiple accounts just to get more than one pound pet a day.

[Cherry]

Speaking as someone that has been a member of this site since 2009 I absolutely hate this change. The pound opening used to be something special that my friend (Whom I recently introduced to this site) and I would look forward too. He and I would check back here multiple times a day to see if it was going to open. We'd remind each other and lament when we missed it by a few minutes.

Though It wasn't a big deal if we missed it, there was always next time and we didn't mind waiting because to us it was something worth waiting for. We thrived on that thrill of getting there on time and knowing we'd made it. It held a sense of urgency.

Now, however, it isn't special at all. It basically lost its meaning to us, and there's no longer that feeling of anticipation or excitement. It's just like, "Oh.. the pound is opening. it doesn't matter if we miss it it'll be open in a couple more hours anyway." we don't kick ourselves as much as we would have regularly and we don't have that sense of disappointment.

The reason for this change is purely because economically speaking, it is taking away so many pets and if anything is one of the sole reasons that demand of pets are increasing because there is a huge lack of pets in circulation, and that is because over 2.5 million pets are in an active, yet locked account which is screwing with the economic system of pets. If it wasn't for the pound being active, a lot of pets would most likely go up in rarity because of how many of them there are in the pound that aren't actually available for users to accumulate until they are released.

To fix this, because there are more and more people giving to the pound than ever because of more and more people are breaking rules and loosing pets, the rate of pet accumulation in the pound is incredible. It's negative to say but 2009 pound days are over, and have been over for a long time purely because of the pet accumulation rate that has grown on the site over the 7 years since the '09 pound days. Economically speaking, this is the best move because the idea is to keep pets out of the pound, not take them in.

I never really saw the pound with that much symbolism, but ethnically speaking I can see where you are coming from and I am sure that many have the same sort of sentiment as you do too. Admittedly, it is still a surprise to see the Pound open, especially commonly and for those who have busy lives and aren't always online. It still has that symbolism for my pov.

You make a good point, Zey. When I first saw this, I was worried that it would actually mess up the economy, but that's not really very likely. The thing that people are already forgetting is that the pound won't be opening every three hours, and that it always has the potential to open multiple times per day, we just couldn't take advantage of it in the past. ^^
Fenrir, I totally understand that you're upset about it losing meaning to you, but the pound will still be random and mysterious, you'll just be able to hunt for the opening more often! I really see this change as positive, because I have a 15 page wishlist, and I can count on two hands how many times I've seen wishlist pets in there in the past two years. If I didn't have a few hoards, I'd hardly ever get any pets from the pound at all! And that's even when I'm there right as it opens, on top of things.

I understand the thought of it "cheapening" the pound (I'm pretty sure this might be how some people feel but haven't seen anyone say it), but I don't agree with it. Because it's difficult to get pets. A lot of new players don't want to stick around, especially after they've adopted for the month and realize that there isn't much they can do in the meantime. The pound having a shorter limit is a perfect way to keep people interested!

[Foxxy101]

This is really good news! i can finally save all the pets from the pound

[Erwin Smith]

Speaking as someone that has been a member of this site since 2009 I absolutely hate this change. The pound opening used to be something special that my friend (Whom I recently introduced to this site) and I would look forward too. He and I would check back here multiple times a day to see if it was going to open. We'd remind each other and lament when we missed it by a few minutes.

Though It wasn't a big deal if we missed it, there was always next time and we didn't mind waiting because to us it was something worth waiting for. We thrived on that thrill of getting there on time and knowing we'd made it. It held a sense of urgency.

Now, however, it isn't special at all. It basically lost its meaning to us, and there's no longer that feeling of anticipation or excitement. It's just like, "Oh.. the pound is opening. it doesn't matter if we miss it it'll be open in a couple more hours anyway." we don't kick ourselves as much as we would have regularly and we don't have that sense of disappointment.

The reason for this change is purely because economically speaking, it is taking away so many pets and if anything is one of the sole reasons that demand of pets are increasing because there is a huge lack of pets in circulation, and that is because over 2.5 million pets are in an active, yet locked account which is screwing with the economic system of pets. If it wasn't for the pound being active, a lot of pets would most likely go up in rarity because of how many of them there are in the pound that aren't actually available for users to accumulate until they are released.

To fix this, because there are more and more people giving to the pound than ever because of more and more people are breaking rules and loosing pets, the rate of pet accumulation in the pound is incredible. It's negative to say but 2009 pound days are over, and have been over for a long time purely because of the pet accumulation rate that has grown on the site over the 7 years since the '09 pound days. Economically speaking, this is the best move because the idea is to keep pets out of the pound, not take them in.

I never really saw the pound with that much symbolism, but ethnically speaking I can see where you are coming from and I am sure that many have the same sort of sentiment as you do too. Admittedly, it is still a surprise to see the Pound open, especially commonly and for those who have busy lives and aren't always online. It still has that symbolism for my pov.

You make a good point, Zey. When I first saw this, I was worried that it would actually mess up the economy, but that's not really very likely. The thing that people are already forgetting is that the pound won't be opening every three hours, and that it always has the potential to open multiple times per day, we just couldn't take advantage of it in the past. ^^
Fenrir, I totally understand that you're upset about it losing meaning to you, but the pound will still be random and mysterious, you'll just be able to hunt for the opening more often! I really see this change as positive, because I have a 15 page wishlist, and I can count on two hands how many times I've seen wishlist pets in there in the past two years. If I didn't have a few hoards, I'd hardly ever get any pets from the pound at all! And that's even when I'm there right as it opens, on top of things.

I understand the thought of it "cheapening" the pound (I'm pretty sure this might be how some people feel but haven't seen anyone say it), but I don't agree with it. Because it's difficult to get pets. A lot of new players don't want to stick around, especially after they've adopted for the month and realize that there isn't much they can do in the meantime. The pound having a shorter limit is a perfect way to keep people interested!

It's hugely unfortunate that the pound did become this big in the first place. It's probably accurate to say up to half of all active list pets are in the pound and that really screws with the availability to rarity ratio. There are a ton of ways to fix this but they all have problems and I think the option that happened here is the best one to go with.

But for the sake of it, why not toss out some additional ideas:

• One idea / option is by making the pound fill up with with more pets, which at this point it time I don't think would work because it takes a long time to get pets into the pound as is I am guessing, especially choosing random ones by hand. In addition, the number has been pretty much constant for the majority of what I remember of the pounds life, and there probably is a reason for this to be the case somehow. But with that said, this could still be a possibility somehow. (Since the pound is run by a computer)
  
• Two is making the pound open more commonly which risks the specialty and uniqueness of it a lot more if it is open more commonly. 4-8 times a week is plenty, but having it open more regularly would be interesting to see. This was somewhat confirmed here as well to happened which is nice.
• Three is to minimize the time to adopt pets from the pound which is the option that is done here. Lately there are pound sessions that last over 24 hours which is crazy. This upgrade will hopefully minimize this from happening because all pets need to go and need to go fast.
• Fourth option is to increase the amount of pets you can adopt at once to two, but this doesn't help with fairness at all, as it makes pets go quicker with every session, but it doesn't typically speed things up and make things overly fair for all users to have a shot at the pound first.
• Fifth and final option would be to disable the pet rarities in the pound until the pets are no longer in the pound. This would cause a lot of problems code wise and considering the amount of time that was taken to code this as is, I am guessing it would take a lot longer for this to be coded and if it does, would it work properly without glitches?

The main idea is to balance out the obtained for the pound per day / week / month ratio with the amount of pets released ratio(x2? I mean they would want to get rid of all of these pets so a ratio of 1:2 might not be a bad thing here?) which is similarly to what was explained in the url link Tess made. (I wasn't aware this was said, so this is an edit.)

In any case, with the above examples option 3 is the fairest, easiest to code and overall more convenient one to do. Maybe option 2 might appear later on but for now, definitely the right move which is why I commend the move so much. To be honest, if the above options were made otherwise, it wouldn't mess up the economy at all, all it would do is make the people who organize the rares list irritated because the availability factor is dwindling and they might need to change placements of some pets and consider others, which isn't that big of a deal when the general understanding of pet rarities is taken into consideration.

And in addition, making more pets available would help the economy become damp instead of dry again, since more pets are available, this means less likely one would need to submit to the overpay culture we are in when it comes to auctioning pets and or otherwise, especially those whom are store pets. It would help a ton to get these pets out of the pound, since they never really left the economy in the first place.

I don't mean to sound like a generic know it all here though I do admit I observe a lot of trades and auctions and pet availability when it comes to the whole trading community of CS and the information made based on observation is incredible. I mean, the mathematical statistic of it all is amazing to see, and a huge dent in the mathematical structure of this is the pound.