Ah, I am a little disappointed that I can’t make a bunch by sitting around collecting interest anymore.

It makes sense to me that this needed to happen to control the number of nuggets in the economy… but doing this to encourage people to spend? Won’t that just flood the economy with money as rich players dump their fortunes everywhere? Hmm…

It also makes sense that people shouldn’t be able to make a ton of money by doing basically nothing! I think this change is reasonable in theory. That said, when it comes to income, I personally am not a fan of grinding out the games and would hate if I had to do that all the time!

I am also aware that RP is an option, but I dunno…. I haven’t been that interested in roleplaying here so far. Finding people to roleplay with seems like a hassle! For me, something that would fix this would be having an “adventuring party” sort of thing where I can react to a prompt without needing to form a specific party for it, and have characters interact with each other from there. (Maybe I should look into running something like this myself. Now there’s an idea.)

I don’t have more thoughts on this at the moment, so I’ll watch the thread and see where the conversation goes. Maybe I’ll make another post later when I can think more clearly.

Either way, I’m curious as to what the end result will be. Personally, I don’t think this change will get me to spend more. But I’ve always liked hoarding money, it’s just the type of player I am.

I personally don’t have a horse in this race. I’m apparently in the weird category to have thought about using the interest and then deciding it was still too much work to remember to click that every day, while still being (I would think?) a reasonably established player with 300+ pp being spent on my orders. 8D; I just also tend to have only a few k nuggets in my bank. My initial reaction to this was “oh, okay?” and then I saw all the responses. (Also, I can easily max on the games if I wanted to, I usually just don’t have an incentive to.)

I think the interest in the bank benefitted only a certain playstyle—those willing to create that capital and then not spend it. I do like how the new login bonus sounds, but I’m envisioning an automatic banner notification that awards the nuggets, no effort on the part of the user other than logging in. Ideally one of those disappears as you go to a new page banners (or please, at least a toggle for this?).

That aside, from the start I’ve always taken the statement on the front page as the spirit of the site.

Mycena Cave is a community that encourages creative expression through writing, art, and storytelling. You can play games, collect many different pets, and focus on developing your own original characters.Currently on the Site Entry Page

I can’t understand why people are asking for an economy simulator/adventure/battle system. If you want those, then why not go play on any of the myriad of pet sites that do offer those? That’s not what Mycena Cave is.

If we have to use the general terms, I would say Mycena Cave is more a site that facilitates creativity by providing a place where characters can be centralized along with an astounding number of tools to organize your own characters and facilitate collaboration and communication with other users.

This site has literally the best private messaging system I have ever seen. Multiple users can be pulled into an echo—that has the newest posts on top!—it’s like a better email chain that supports coding, is easier to search, and it’s aesthetically pleasing. What does it matter if the forums are dead? People can have all these private hangouts that send you notifications if there’s something new in. Forum activity is not the sum and total of site activity.

Also, maybe unlike some other users, I think we’ve gotten new features recently. Specifically, I love the item organizing system (which isn’t really new, per se, but still, more efficient!). More importantly, though, the pet organizing is amazing. I hit a point where I was willing to hide most of my pets (including customs) away because I thought they were starting to be an eyesore on my profile. The profile pockets not only help me keep characters and worlds separate, they allow me to freely change my mind about what I want to do with my site assets with minimal fuss. (Something I also appreciate about the pets themselves.) If I decide to replace one coat with another, I can just copy paste a bit and move the pets. The closest I can think of to this would be Toyhouse and I just flatly hated the ToyHouse interface. For example, on FR, when I changed my mind about something I was usually stuck with a several months long rebreeding project. (That is, of course, partly because of my playstyle on FR. Someone less picky may just pick up another dragon and be done with it.)

tl;dr: This site is a platform for your creativity, not a standard “pet site.”

A couple other disjointed notes:
1. I’ve always considered the “quality over quantity” aspect of this site to be why pets are harder to get than on other sites. This way you’re focusing on completing one before gathering a bunch you never do anything with.
2. That said, the grinding gets boring sometime, and I’d like to echo everybody else in asking for all the event games we sometimes get as regular games (or…you know, at least a reason why we don’t?). I’m under the impression they’re usable from what’s already there? I loved basically all the games from the Pirate event and would play even without a nugget reward.
3. Is doing a second set of images for some of the games too much work? I think echolocation especially would benefit from not having wasps as an option. 8D; (Since we’re mentioning the pirate event.)
4. Can I suggest two things to make echo threads even better? The options to toggle all the messages into one page instead of however many pages they’re currently in (or something like RES suites infinite scroll) and the ability to hide (and unhide) messages in an echo thread.
5. A day/night mode toggle? So much of this site is text-based it would be easier on everyone’s eyes I think.

I think there was originally more in my head but I’m going to end this here because I’m sleepy. @@;

Lala
Just popping back here to say what I meant by “give me adventure was that I’d love to see a text-based single-player “adventure” RPG like during the crystal catalyst event. It got me doing creative writing for the first time in maaany years, and actually prompted a character rework spree. To be able to earn nuggets through something like that would feel very appropriate for this site. We do need nuggets to be able to buy pets and items for characters, and a role play game technically makes more sense for an RP/creativity site than the mini games we have now. I don’t need any systems like FR (I.e. coli), I want something creativity based where my characters can actually thrive and grow without relying on other users. I’ve tried really hard to grind out nuggets via the current games but I just can’t- it’s physically tiring for me (lots of clicking), and just…. unstimulating enough that they’ll literally put me to sleep some days (granted, not everyone ends their days having wrangled insane children), which leaves me with fishing, interest, and event/offsite sales.

And of course this means interest isn’t what makes up my income, I’ve been mostly broke up until very recently, I just mean to point out that affording pets can be difficult with lack of variety in the methods to obtain nuggets, and being a single parent, I can’t just buy nuggets, as much as I’m sure glitch would love. ><

I definitely wasn’t expecting this much of a reaction over the issue though >< interest doesn’t seem to be much more than 1k/day for most people. I genuinely don’t mind seeing it go. I just want that event rpg, or a single-player creativity-based less-grindy feature.

Gotta say I’m disappointed for my own selfish reasons. But I can’t exactly blame you guys for making the change. I’m glad you guys at least gave us a way to earn nuggets through the bank instead. You always got some creative solutions, glitch!

I can’t understand why people are asking for an economy simulator/adventure/battle system. If you want those, then why not go play on any of the myriad of pet sites that do offer those? That’s not what Mycena Cave is.Lala

tl;dr: This site is a platform for your creativity, not a standard “pet site.”Lala

You have a fair point in what you say; Mycena Cave is an RP-centric site.  The problem is that it actually is a standard pet site to some degree.  You log in to play games to be able to afford pets and accessories for the pets.  You could say this was all done to monetize the site to make it sustainable/profitable to run and if that hadn’t been necessary all the items would have been free and there wouldn’t have anything other than a pure focus on creativity and storytelling.  But that didn’t happen and that’s not where we actually are.  You buy and sell with other users….it IS an economy simulator.  Maybe MC wanted to avoid sliding into the pet site paradigm.  But it didn’t.  It’s a pet site.

So if Mycena Cave is necessarily a standard pet site, it quickly becomes a severely limited one.  Do you want to know why I have been mentioning a battle system off and on for years?  Because I REALLY like Mycena Cave.  I like the lore, I like the art, I like the coding.  But I want better for it.  I want it to become a better, more full site.  You can counter with that’s not the vision of the site and that’s fine, but with a site this well-made in an industry like this, you are fooling yourself if you think the niche/limited nature of the site hasn’t been the major factor in the lack of growth/player retention/financial stability.  The 3K grinding is the immediate cause but the lack of anything to do for non-RP people was always the ultimate one.

Erm, frieza, you might want to look up they history of both mycena and its admins before you make broad accusations like that. Mycena Cave was not built like Flight Rising or the myriad of other pet sites that have those mechanics that resemble, lets be frank, neopets. To understand Mycena and its history, you have to go to a very small petsite nowadays. Digis. Almost all of the sub 500(?) users like myself came from there. And digis’ history is an interesting one. It was created as an offshoot of a Gaia.. art shop?, so to speak. While glitch has definitely done things to change it because I know he (and the rest of the admins) hasn’t wanted to be in digis’ shadow. But the fact is that.. it still has a bit of that feeling here. And I’m sure you will argue that it has changed over the years. And in some cases you’d be right. But I think how people are responding to you shows that the ideas that you have of this place may not be the majority.

Also, I would really appreciate it if you did not take bits of my post, quote it, and try to argue that specific sentence. If you are going to argue, please argue against my idea as a whole. I’m not an expert debater and I cannot make every sentence perfect against scrutiny. I feel you will lose my point if you try to argue it in pieces. Thanks in advance!

Shima  I won’t quote anything specific, then.  I do that because it makes things way more manageable.  Like I specifically quoted Lala in parts I wanted to reply to.  No features added, the echo system etc. weren’t topics of note for me.  I don’t feel that I am making a broad accusation, if you mean the standard pet site or not standard pet site stuff.  I think, practically speaking, you have to treat MC as a pet site.  Even if its aim is something above that.  And I think that viewed as a pet site (whether how unfair or inaccurate you may feel that is), MC is lacking.  If I misunderstood your post please clarify.  But if it’s a difference of opinion we can just leave it at this. 

I can’t say I’m that fussed over the 3k cap one way or another.  I think my deeper concern is the discussion of how MC is gifting $700 via the bank interest monthly.  It concerns me if they are getting their servers paid, money for updates, maintainence, paying staff etc.  My characters and customs live on MC, so I’m worried for their ‘home’ so to speak.  I happen to love it here, and love the lore, so I don’t want it to go poof!

It’s not like it matters one way or another regarding the bank interest. They’ll do away with it in July, and we’ll see what happens.  That’s what happens with real life economics.  You put the theory in a real world setting and just see what the results are.

Hi everyone!

We’re glad to see that this thread has garnered a lot of interesting discussion and ideas, and that in spite of some discomfort, many players have voiced an understanding of the long-term necessity of this change. We’re also particularly pleased to see the constructive nature of the discussion in this thread between people who hold opposing viewpoints.

We would like to reassure those players worried about our financial state that we are not in danger of needing to close our doors.  This is one of the first (and, thankfully, the least pleasant) of many steps being taken to help revitalize and refocus Mycena Cave’s economy and our community, and we’re very excited about where we’ll be taking things over the next several months!

My view on this change is really as an outside observer. However, I feel it holds some relevance to myself as I do continue to support this site through gem and PP purchases, which go solely to players who actually play this game. I am curious to see how this will affect the value of gems and PP, mostly PP, when it comes to valuation.

I joined in 2016 for the purpose of offsite trading. On average, by exchanging MC paid currency for offsite paid currency I can make 50-60% over what I would get in paid currency if I bought gems on the site I do play. With my newest trades about to go through, the running total for money iv spent (by consequence) on MC is about to shoot well past $500 USD. However, even if a handful of players spend this amount of money on a regular basis, what I took away from the announcement is that the devs need money. Giving out $700 a month in paid currency for a site that is not supported by ad revenue, I would imagine, is a rather large concern. This is effectively allowing players, especially the 9% who are a powerful economic force on the game, to by-pass supporting the site though real-world currency purchases since nuggets to gems is a site supported feature. I know supporting the site through real-world currency purchases is not a requirement for anyone, but since there are no ads on MC, the income has to be generated some how.

Personally, even though I try to do the 3k grind to save for nugget to gem conversions, I tend to usually only do 1k or so worth because the time it takes to get the cap isn’t as profitable when compared to grinding on the game I do play. Iv considered becoming more involved with MC as a playable game, but I probably won’t do that. The site pace is slower and feels like more a glorified forum RPG, and that just isn’t the style of game that hooks me. That coupled with what seems like a slow trickle of new items and events will probably keep me from investing time in MC as a played game. That aside, on a personal note, as long as offsite trade valuations either continue to be stable or rise in worth I will continue to support MC though USD purchases.

What does it matter if the forums are dead? People can have all these private hangouts that send you notifications if there’s something new in. Forum activity is not the sum and total of site activity.Lala

I was struck by this comment, because it seems to highlight the conflict between the interests of the players who are still active and satisfied and the (presumed) interest of the admins in bringing in more money. More money could be obtained by getting established players to spend more RL currency on the site, but it’s more common and probably more feasible to draw in more money via making the site interesting to new users and retaining the interest and activity of more existing users. To me, the interest revocation announcement makes it sound like the latter strategy is what the admins are going for, so it makes sense that folks are suggesting ways to make the site more engaging for people who are not currently engaged. Private hangouts, however beautifully executed, at best do not solve the problem of the site being unwelcoming to new users, and at worst exacerbate the lack of visible activity.

I definitely see that people want MC to remain what it is at core, but I also think more experimentation with making the site more fun for more people would be helpful to increase activity.

Glad to see confirmation that this is a step in a bigger plan. I’m excited to see how the economy is tweaked and grows. Thanks Myla :)

OregonCoast See, that is my worry about this announcement too. If MC needs help keeping the servers up or the base site working then I’d be happy to donate to a fund or something and I wouldn’t need anything in return. I did it for the Soquili shop when photobucket went south and we needed an image hosting database. The actual number of dollars ‘lost’ is probably much smaller as we don’t know that players would have bought gems instead. They may have just decided not to get the pet.

Ironically, this may help the pet market. If less people are buying the monthly OotS because they can no longer afford them then it will create a scarcity and hopefully will mean they will be woth more down the line…

I suppose all this boils down to what MC’s goals are and how it chooses to implement its game philosophy. When I first came here I thought “cool, an RP site with multiple avatars (pets).” For me that implies a slow-moving site with minor amounts of “stickiness” associated with games—it’s designed around giving a framework for storytelling/player interaction. The currency only exists to support and flesh out the stories while giving players a non-pay way to acquire stuff. It’s low-key on both the player and development sides.

Acquiring “stuff” with currency isn’t that much of a goal since there’s really not a lot of need to spend it on according to what I thought this game was about. It just takes a lot of time given how currency is earned here so in the first few years people short-cutted their way via buying from the site and making offsite trades. Having interest seems to have whittled down that need a lot for players who banked nuggets early.

I admit, knowing interest is going away is convincing me to not only play Spellstones again but also to stop selling my fishing finds. Not only is there no point to it if there’s no interest rate but they might be useful for upcoming content. I’ve been holding onto recipe bottles forever waiting for new recipes.

frieza

*waves*

I remember being knocked out of the top few spots in Spellstones—the last week of the month could get interesting. I actually quit going for gem-worthy scores because it takes so long to get a viable board for it. I just started playing again and trying to hit 3k in under 5 minutes is my new goal. I think my average time was around 10-15 minutes so it’s going to be a while. If I need to grind for nuggets I’m definitely doing it in the fastest possible time.

I picked the 1k nugget daily interest since it seemed to be the mental goalpost—enough to feel okay about not grinding through the games and enough to spend more or less freely. I hadn’t thought to attach it to the PP rate since I’m not involved in that aspect.

Mistral  Hmm I guess 5 minutes is possible if you are just super fast the whole time.  My fastest times for Spellstones land in the between 9 and 10 minutes time frame.  By the way, hitting 3k in about 10 minutes is a strong predictor of that board being worth 15k+ points.  Something to keep in mind.  And yeah I normally just play boards until I get the 3k, though I will stretch that final board as best I can.  Even just seeing on average 1-2 boards a day, I will score above 10k up to 5 times a month.  Strive for excellence and the high scores will find you.  See you on the high score boards. 

Pet sites try to balance their income (however it comes in) with whatever they want to encourage gameplay-wise. Insanely clicky Neopets gets its revenue from ads since the cross-marketing died (bonus content or games specifically to advertise). It built a lot of games to encourage players to stay…which they did for years until the new games stopped coming and app games…well. Death knell.

Furvilla needs ad revenue and premium currency sales but seems to be both actively punishing players for playing (gamplay is built around constant maintenance/sickness/charges/expiration) and not playing (maintenance/expiration/daily check-in). The daily check-in is the most ridiculously weighted thing I’ve ever seen. It’s weird but the art started out adorable.

Flight Rising needs some ad revenue but it mostly relies on premium currency sales. It offers a variety of interests but relies too heavily on battling and niche skills for non-paying players to acquire premium currency. The long-promised new activity (adventure mode!) is still way out in development somewhere. I’m hoping for the next site anniversary but not too much.

FV needs to figure out where it wants to get RW currency and how to encourage new and old players to stick around to do it. Ending interest is a good first step to focusing on that goal.

frieza

Really? I found most boards max out around 9k if hitting 3k is fast. Once I have the time I’ll give it a try again. I’ve got to give up some of the pet sites I’m on. Even though I’m not on most for very long it adds up and Spellstones requires a solid chunk of time.

I’ve been reading the posts & staying in the background, but I thought I’d pop out to give my two cents. In regard to the bank interest, I’m all for it. I actually suggested this a long while back (i.e. capping or eliminating it); I knew that it’d eventually become a problem. Bare in mind that I was (& still am) one of the users that benefited from this feature from pretty much the start. At the time though, I don’t think it was seen as much as a problem because there were few users with as much nuggets as I had at the time.

I do agree with users who are suggesting sink holes for nuggets. Eliminating interest isn’t going to change my hoarding mentality to keep my nuggets safe guarded. Established & veteran players have amassed so much, we basically have everything we want all ready. Taking this away isn’t going to make everyone spend their wealth, & I hope staff comes up with ideas that will make us with hefty accounts part with some of our fortunes.

Edited for coherency.

Mistral  Neopets makes a good amount from premium and the NC Mall as well.  And the death knell of Neopets wasn’t so bad.

Uh yeah it can vary a bit, but I’d say it trends more towards 15k and up than 9k in those scenarios.  Of course if your speed is much faster than me, we might be talking about different things.  If a board takes me 15-20 minutes to hit 3k and you would hit the 3k in 10 minutes from being faster… then we would have a communication problem.  All I can say is that when boards yield 3k for me at my speed in 10 minutes, it is often a very good board.  You might be at the point in your career when you need to switch off of speed and try for maximum score.  I pushed speed for a while myself until I realized I was good enough at it, with many between 10-20 minutes and some under.  There wasn’t anything to prove anymore for speed.  So I decided to switch focus and squeeze as many points out of each board as I could.  It’s a good way to practice and experiment with letter strings to see what works.  Always train and improve for when the great boards come.

Popping in as a retired/non-player to say that even though I have no personal feelings towards the loss of bank interest, no recent changes make Mycena Cave feel any more usable or approachable. I have to agree with Frieza on a lot of points and empathize with Malis. Being a member for a little over a year, no major events or new mechanics have really caught my eye. After the new-ness of it all wore off, there’s very little incentive to log into MC, grind for nuggets, or even collect interest. The Quest For The Lost Chamber event was probably the one that turned my head the most, and that was because of the dice-roll/D&D elements.
While the site is RP-heavy and feels like a hybrid of pet sites and adoptable OCs, it also feels like it does neither to any great effect. The pre-built lore is interesting and flexible, but friend’s RP discords are much more organized and TH has the option to post in-character. The coats are gorgeously illustrated, but DA artists sell off-base customs for cheaper AND I can resell some for USD directly. The reason I left is because when I didn’t have enough time for MC, TH, and DA, TH and DA were much more gratifying.

As for the interest/grind/level cap debate, I do like Mycena’s games, but not enough to log in and grind when I’m working so many hours IRL that toasting a bagel is still too much effort. On the days off where I can drop a good 3 hours into it? The earning cap too freakin’ low to justify the wasted time. I really only use 2 of the 4 that make money, and that gets real old real quick.

The items that are for sale are nice and come in a pretty good pricing scale, but nothing that I wanna grind and earn and save a week for. I don’t want to drop $50+ on an custom that can only be kept and used on one site and one specific community when regular adopts can be carried across all social media with proper credit. I’m even past the phase where I even want to spend half that on an old seasonal coat. Taking away interest doesn’t incentivize me to drop USD on Mycena or grind for nuggets myself. If the site needs more money for new features, I’d happily drop some money in, but this doesn’t feel like it’s for new OR old players…

Altogether, everything here feels very “ride or die”. You’re committing to 3 Quest encounters in a month’s span or nothing. You’re dropping $90 on a sprout or nothing. You’re deep into a year-long RP with your Mycenians or nothing. Frankly, I don’t have the time for all-or-nothing. Real-life demands my all so I’m a filthy, filthy casual. Peace.

To echo the sentiments of Riaa and a few others, I like the idea of reconfiguring or capping interest (like Malis’s 1k cap suggestion). Like others have mentioned, my main monetary interest in saving up nuggets is custom pets; my primary involvement on the site lies in the events and the Creative Collective. I’m concerned that this removal of the bank incentive is, like others have said, going to decrease incentive for people to buy/sell PP because there won’t really be much to do with those nuggets. Interest is one of the biggest nugget-saving incentives since we don’t have any recurring nugget sinks. I have a tendency to hoard items/nuggets, and that feeling of stability that interest provides has helped me feel much more comfortable with spending nuggets after I recently hit the 1k interest mark for the first time. I’m definitely enthusiastic about supporting newer players, and I like the concept of adjusting the interest system, but without other substantial nugget sinks, it seems like this planned change will decrease the incentive for people to buy PP and spend money on the site (and earn nuggets in general). Like Jacq and Vely said, despite the positive intentions of this change, this might hurt the economy more than help. (Or maybe I’m reading into things too much.)

I agree with Purr’s latter two sentiments and Chandelure’s comments, too; I really enjoy Mycena Cave, and I want to see it succeed and flourish. I think a bit more transparency and communication with the larger user base could help some of these changes go over more smoothly, and then maybe the community can collaborate to improve the site rather than feeling blindsided by some of these sudden changes. One of the things I love about Mycena is the tight-knit community. Giving the players a more active role in brainstorming ideas for growth could lead to a happier, more involved player base who wants to bring more people into the site because of its cohesive, loyal community.

And on that note, thank you for letting us know that there are other changes in the works, Myla! I look forward to seeing what else emerges in the next few months. :)

“We would like to reassure those players worried about our financial state that we are not in danger of needing to close our doors.  This is one of the first (and, thankfully, the least pleasant) of many steps being taken to help revitalize and refocus Mycena Cave’s economy and our community, and we’re very excited about where we’ll be taking things over the next several months!”  Myla

 

Thank you SO much for the reassurance Myla!!! ^,^  sounds like there are many fun new things on the horizon for the Cave.

Diglett Oh. Yeah, I was thinking of the flash-based FR Coli/Neopets Quest games/Dappervolk adventuring thing. I have never played D&D but I really liked the system. I thought it was a super neat way to actually RP solo.

frieza Shima’s brought up the history I hadn’t originally wanted to touch. From its roots, this is an amazing, interesting, and useful progression. However, I will add the pared-down nature of this site is one of the main reasons I like it so much and am willing to put real-life money into it. If it became more like a standard pet site, I probably wouldn’t put any personal money into it (trading offsite if I still wanted pp and easily losing interest).

I’m of the opinion a few others have that the games/nuggets are really auxiliaries to help people afford things without spending rl money. Let’s be honest here, with the pp count on this account averaging out to $300+ a year (I don’t know how much of that is my own money vs how much I traded though) I’m probably a bit on the higher end of the scale. I probably treat this a little like a subscription service I think. This site provides me tangible benefits hobby-wise, so I tend to spend on it like I do my other hobbies.

(Just in my personal case, the changes your advocating would drive me away from the site, even though you think it would bring in new users—which it probably can! It’s just those mechanics are so saturated in the pet sites online already.)

This sort of ties into what jinian was mentioning though, I am one of the users happy with the site. However, I am far from one of the only users who get customs/sprouts, which, I have to imagine, is most of the what the revenue of the site comes from (and then is paid out to the artists with a bit taken by the site for the administrative costs I imagine). This brings us into this—there’s a small-ish group of users who are responsible for a lot of the pp. Trying to expand the user base is fine, though I’m not convinced that your changes are not really more geared towards changing the user base instead. (As we are here on this site, I count us as part of the existing base that contributes to the current status quo.) I think we’re also dealing with the issue that the site gems, as glitch once said, is a pessimum, a pessimistic premium currency that will always be a set price or less. With nuggets no longer more of value than gems, even with pp still by far the preferred currency, I wonder if things will equalize a bit. If the site has revenue issues, I would think it’s more because pp is so disproportionately the most desired currency, no one really buys gems. (I think glitch also mentioned this before too though.) It should be the gem sales supporting the site’s day to day costs, with the pp basically being the artists’ pay. With the sales so disproportionately towards pp, it’s actually the other way around, with whatever percentage the site takes from the pp helping with they day-to-day.

This is already getting way too long, but long story short, I’ll wait to see what else is in store first, because this is a really tiny change in the scheme of things. With Myla’s post though I’m wondering if we’re talking about the recolor shop because I have been eyeing a lot of those items in the list, ngl.

Lala _{tbh i kind of never thought we’d see eye to eye on anything again but i’m glad i ended up being wrong O:} i am fully in agreement with you here; your input is pretty much exactly what i’m feeling, but worded better;

the petsite model frieza is envisioning is definitely on the side closer to neopets, fr, cs, the bustling ‘economy simulator’ sort. there are people on sites like fr (which i continue to reference because it’s familiar to a lot of people and huge) who play solely for the trading/business aspect of it because that’s how they enjoy it — and that’s fine and totally their decision. there are also people who play it for collecting and training and decorating their pretty dragons — also fine and totally their decision. but, fr is equipped and oriented towards both of those types of gameplay but leans far more towards the economy sim aspect as it lacks a lot of lore/character dev features like ways to link pets together and is far more limited in terms of customization. since i remember (i think?) you saying you never were on fr, neopets is a pretty close comparison since they have a similar grind and flip based economic model.

mc, on the other hand, is geared way heavily towards the character creation/worldbuilding aspect and i’d actually go as far as calling it closer to a more structured/mechanically sophisticated adopt community on dA or something; like i mentioned in my previous post it’s more of a creative community with petsite elements than a traditional petsite. (i say this in the same way i’d say “turn-based RPG with puzzle elements”.)

implementing RPG/gaming elements like a battle system, especially if that had significant benefits for use would not only bring the site basically to being “fr lite” (eliminating what makes it unique in an age brimming with petsites built on similar models), it would be a huge site revamp and actively distance users who enjoy it for what it is now — a character and worldbuilding community site, as lala said.

i’m not a digis transplant so i don’t have the history of it, but even without, what i am sure of is that i’d hardcore oppose any suggestions that push for grinding/gameplay to have the biggest payout. it’s what drove me away from dappervolk as a petsite; if i wanted to play pokemon, i’d pick up my DS or something.

all that said, even as mostly a character/worldbuilding community venue it is a petsite, so there has to be ways for f2p players to ‘make it’ so to say. because of what it is — a venue that pays its artists what they should be earning (maybe if one thinks about mc as an art buying/commission platform, while not really…accurate, it’s close?), it’s in a weird place because customs and sprouts when it comes down to it, are essentially commission based artwork and that’s a really weird line to be straddling as an f2p petsite.

i forgot who said it earlier, but there’s definitely the elephant in the room being the major split between the frequent fliers of the custom/sprout market and people struggling to save up enough to buy their first custom/sprout. i feel like customs/sprouts have ended up for a lot of people as the ultimate endgoal of mc, and it’s frankly because there is simply far more character customization (one of mc’s biggest draws!) available on custom pets than on site pets. obviously the solution is not bringing down the price or customization possibilities of customs/sprouts. pp goes mostly straight to the artists anyway; from what i understand mc as a site makes it revenue off of gems.

for all my postulating, idk what the solution to this is either, but it’s probably got something to do with bridging the gap in attractiveness between customs and site pets/items. i’m not feeling all that coherent right now so i can clarify anything questionable in the morning, probably ; w ;)\

For whatever it’s worth, my push for a more Neopets/FR-based model is one part nostalgia but a huge part pure pragmatism.

The fact is that MC’s user retention is bad bordering on completely worrisome. As I’ve stated before, the fact that the usercount IS so low makes finding RP partners extremely difficult, especially if, like me, you’re more on the picky side. And how long do any of the 16k ID new players actually last?

I am not asking MC to give up RP as a major feature; I am asking the site to think about why it can’t keep the users it is drawing in. To be completely honest, as it stands, Neopets and Flight Rising both have much stronger, omnipresent lore. Both of them explored their worlds through little tidbits with every item, every update, every event. Heck, I’d even rate Furvilla and Aywas’s lore presence as higher than MC’s, and we all know what raging fires those sites ended up being.

You may argue with me that every OOTS and seasonal and event has So Much Writing, and So Much Character, and therefore so much lore, but the fact is, because there are no actual site updates to go along with them, because there’s no intermediary meat to connect these ideas together, they end up being extremely isolated. (Compare with how the mayors in FV, poorly written as they may be, announce updates for their specific towns and justify each update’s existence in-universe, or how the exalting mechanic is clearly tied into the lore in FR).

I can’t speak for frieza, but the reason I push for a bigger, more dynamic economy is because…obviously, whatever the site is doing now isn’t working. RP isn’t a big enough niche, or else is not a big enough draw for the site, for it to be viable as a means of attracting and keeping new members.

The argument essentially boils down to two questions: is the site failing to retain users because RP is not a big enough niche in the first place, or is the site failing to retain users because the site’s RP, lore, and worldbuilding are not attractive enough?

I do want to make it clear here that I am not criticizing the quality of the writing on the site, which is quite good. The issue I take is with the way it’s been integrated into the game’s design, which is nearly not at all. Once the events are over, the shopkeepers involved in them may as well be dead, for all they matter and all users can interact with them. The site’s lore is tucked away behind a little tab and generally doesn’t seem to have much to do with anything else on the site. Etc., etc.

The features being suggested by frieza and I are not designed to “take away” from the site’s current RP focus. In fact, I’m drafting a proposal for an adventure system that fully integrates the current lore. They are simply easier methods - possibly cheaper - to attract and retain users than beefing up the RP aspect, because that is MUCH more niche, MUCH less proven-successful, and, though I may catch flak for saying so, the better creative communities (at least on the visual arts side) are on DV and FR. A stronger general gameplay is the faster, easier path to a larger, more dynamic userbase, and that larger, more dynamic userbase will also automatically lead to more RP.

In the end, I do respect people who want the site to stay niche and creative-community focused, but for that niche to exists, there has to be a stronger framework holding up the site. Whether that framework is a beefed-up RP system and a stronger shift toward that, or whether it’s the implementation of a gameplay that will attract and retain users, which necessarily includes some form of dynamic economy, as things stand, I think the greatest risk MC can take right now is staying the same.

Just to expand on Chandelure‘s point (if I may). When I joined one of the coolest things that drew me into the site was the way user input during events had an effect on the lore. I saw users thanked and credited in the Lore Chapters and I was totally enamored. That’s still probably one of the absolutely coolest things about Mycena in my head.

Except… that hasn’t happened since I joined in early 2015. :(

There’s been a single update to the lore in the last three years (Chapter 6) and that one didn’t include any user input at all. The introduction of the Kelph isn’t even in the lore - they just show up some time between chapters 5 and 6 without explanation, even though we had an entire event surrounding their discovery. If anything, it seems like the past updates have actually worked against the idea of a focus on collaborative storytelling, as even the creative events here become kind of a closed loop (e.g. the new creative collective puts the burden of creation and feedback on users, creative events are based on completion and as far as I can tell don’t need to be read beyond confirming they hit the minimum requirements). Heck, when was the last time there was a Gold Medallion event that wasn’t an automated “First Player to Echo the Bone Monster with the correct answer”? Was it the Cave Cuisine contest way back in 2015?

I don’t mind a site that’s focused on creativity and RP, in fact I dig it and that’s why I stick around. But I do feel like, sometimes, there’s only so much effort I want to put into something canon that I know no one (not even the creators of that world) will read or care about, you know?

Chandelure  I’m going to let your post stand in for most of my response to the recent pings, if that’s okay.  I’m not very interested in circling back around on this petsite or not petsite discussion.  Despite the niche, in my view, it functionally is one.  And either way, the niche affects user growth and retention.  And I’m not looking to take away the essence of MC and make RP some side element.  I never even said battling, if implemented, should have “significant benefits.”  They could actually be kept pretty minimal.  People who like an activity anyway will do it for little to no reward.  Everything else I want to say is probably in Chandelure’s post in some form. 

So disappointing.
Was just getting into this whole thing and then this happens. Hah.

I get it, but at the same time the bank was kinda my whole, selfish reason for being here.
Upping the amount of money I got in interest was very rewarding.
And getting up to maybe 100 nuggets is really… not worth it for me.

Plus, in relevancy to the current conversation, I didn’t join for the RPing at all. I joined for the pet site attributes and the ability to have custom characters and all that. It was an exciting idea at the time, but… Without RPing my only good source of income was bank interest and the occasional event, so I couldn’t do the things I came here for very well, haha…
I mean, I guess that’s my bad, but it’s kinda hard to make money on here if the RPing just isn’t something you’re into.

I’ve been reading and kinda re-evaluating my opinion since and just wanted to poke in with some more thoughts. There’s a lot of really good discussions in here. o:

However, I’m confused as to why anyone thinks that an rp-focused or character-focused site must remain small, slow, and niche and removed of all other trappings pet sites entail? And I’m appalled that people seem to think that dead forums and chat are of no consequence because that’s what echoes and discord are for. That’s… a huge problem? That was my initial problem with the in-site chat: forums dried up while chat prospered. Anyone who didn’t visit chat was out of the loop. Heck, there was even a lurkers-based echo started by staff to address the concerns of people who didn’t use chat/forums much forever ago because of this very problem. It’s incredibly discouraging to see threads dated months and years ago with no replies. That’s the norm for every subforum. It’s incredibly discouraging to find a new, seemingly active thread and get zero replies back. It definitely impacts new users. No one is going to want to stick around if there’s no one to engage with.

You can have a niche site while still pulling and maintaining newbies. You can still have your friend groups and discords, but you should still want to see MC grow, I think? Nobody is saying we need like 100k+ users, but it’d be nice to have a solid 500. 1k+ even would be…. incredible. lmao. Because like Chandelure repeatedly pointed out: you can’t even find anyone you might rp with with user numbers so small. And even like 1k regular or so users is still small in the scheme of things. I just think anything would be better than the like…. 50-100 we cap out at on a good day, barring events.

I think Jacq & Chandelure have excellent points re: lore, as well. I love the MC lore, but it is under-utilized especially for a site that pushes the creative aspect. I know users have said for years they feel uncomfortable making canon characters because there’s simply not enough to go off of. We want some more ideas to pull from so we’re not constantly breaking unspoken rules. I miss when events directly tied into the backstory. My little shout-out in the Halloween chapters is one of my most beloved accomplishments on here tbh. I’d love to see more of that!! It wasn’t until the recent rp adventure that I even made canon characters again because up until that point I had lost interest. I didn’t know what to do with any should I make them. Not to mention, few users even have canon characters to play off of. For all the outcries of we want a lore-centric site, I’ve seen very few actually readily create and push canon-specific characters and stories.

I also don’t get how increasing site activities pulls away from the character focus? Implementing old event games, releasing the adventure mechanic from the past event, additional dailies, etc would give new and old users something to do. We don’t need anything huge and action-packed, but it’d still be nice and give some much needed variety. Plus, it’s not like the addition of these features means you have to use them? There seems to be a lot of going around in circles as if these ideas are mutually exclusive and, imo, they’re not? You can have both!

The more users that actually stick around the better the economy will be. That’s as simple as it gets. Like y’all have said: older users often have no goals beyond customs/sprouts so they don’t buy much. New users find it difficult to stick around so they never even get to the point they engage with the economy, even if there’s plenty of really cool things they’d love to buy. Plus, the more users we have means more people willing to sink money into the site which means more gem & pp sales thereby making those things more accessible.

Again, I’m okay with the loss of interest in the end. But I definitely agree it would’ve been best to bundle this with other features or games like people have said. At the very least, the promise of more on the horizon is something to look forward to. And I know we have the upcoming restock shop and adventure mechanic and I’m excited about them, but… we’ll see.

I’ve been reading this thread off and on the past few days, but I’ve been in a bit of a haze, so I’m sorry if I rehash someone’s point and/or am incoherent!

Speaking as a new player, especially as one who makes their money mostly through off-site trading, a 50-100 nugget a day bonus wouldn’t be that different from my current bank interest. I can choose to spend a week’s earnings from FR here and still not be able to afford anything. And to be honest, my interest in FR is really diminished due to a lot of administrative actions they’ve taken (and a lot of administrative actions they haven’t lol) so that’s quickly becoming a non-option. Plus, it’s starting to feel like I’m only playing it to earn MC cash, which is a shame.

Ultimately, I like the idea of making an interest cap, but with a limitation. I like the idea of rewarding older players by increasing the cap with account age (say, a base cap of 100 nuggets * number of months on the site), but also by allowing newer players to catch up by doing either raffles or other events (like for Spring Jubilee, you can have the option of permanently increasing your interest cap with seeds, and it can be a high-tier reward separate from things like the golden can!)

Another interesting idea is incentivising logins by increasing the cap by a certain amount per day you collect interest. this could also scale with account age, so if you’ve been here for 5 months you could potentially earn 5 more nuggets every day. or something!

either way, it could be in the form of a daily bonus that’s automatically added to your savings.

I don’t know. I really am saddened by the lack of meaningful ways to get involved here. Everyone I’ve interacted with has been super nice, but the forums are dead and even with the nugget bonus, there’s no real reason to post if no one’s going to even read. tbh I really only use them for off-site trading which, again, is becoming a non-option. I know there’s more in the works but I don’t feel like using the site when I have to look at it in terms of “oh, there’s this thing I want, but to get it I have to save for the better part of a month.” that’s so incredibly offputting and as cute as this site is, as wonderful as the profile and bio coding is, it seems like either a major timesink or moneysink, and I don’t really have either.

I understand this whole thing is coming off as “entitled millennial” and maybe I am but…this isn’t exactly an easy site to integrate into if you’re new, and I’m hoping that the new things you’ll be rolling out will help change that.

TW: I’m very, very tired after spending hours reading through every post on the thread (aaallll offff theeeeeemmmmm) and not sleeping when I should’ve since I need to be awake in like an hour and a half. So beware of lots of spelling & grammar mistakes! And probably a slightly loopy way of wording things. Soz.
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After reading through the thread and thinking some, my list of ideas is as follows:
-Instead of resetting, missing a day could slowly lower your count back down one level so it’s not as devastating if you accidentally miss one.
-New games would be nice
-Once the adventure system is completed, have mod-made adventures that offer nuggets for going down certain branching paths, and can only be played like once a month or somesuch. Or with some sort of trophy tracker so you can’t earn the nuggets for the same path twice.
-Offer new players a single-use discount on the first OoTS pet they buy.
-New ‘forever’ or ‘annual’ pets that are far more expensive than the monthly or seasonal ones.
-More expensive things to spend nuggets on to help siphon nuggets out of the economy. Rikur’s was a nice shot at it, but the items generally start at an absurd price for what they are and it takes a long time for them to become desirable.
-Day/night theme toggle (Thanks Lala)
-We need something repeatable/consumable to spend nuggets on. Mushrooms don’t count, since you buy one you’re done.
-Leaving the current income system and just tweaking the numbers to drastically cut the effective max nuggets earned. (The income system can actually be an incentive to keep earning nuggets and playing the site longer term, as CatFood pointed out.)

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Spoiler contains some comments re:frieza’s viewpoint, but it was mostly written after their first couple posts. Since then they’ve said more things, some that might’ve shifted my words a bit but it’s 7am and I should be asleep rn so I’m not in the mindset to revise it. Mostly I’m saying this as a sorry to them, since they’ve explained their viewpoint better and I’ve probably miffed a bit of it in this. Oops!

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For me, something that would fix this would be having an “adventuring party” sort of thing where I can react to a prompt without needing to form a specific party for it, and have characters interact with each other from there. (Maybe I should look into running something like this myself. Now there’s an idea.)Drav

There was one at one point-Jacq hosted a game of forum mafia a while back that people RP’d for. It ended up being quite fun and had a fairly decent amount of people playing at once with the simple premise of it being a game/potentially not canon to your character’s story arc, if you had one. Plus since we had an actual game to focus on as well as the RP it helped drive it forward similar to how the events tend to do from what I can tell.

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TastesLikeCatFood
Welp. Thanks for throwing your hat into this round of ‘oh god what is this update’. Always nice to see new players voice their opinions, especially on things that affect them. I largely joined for upping my interest rate and thinking I’d be able to afford cute pates later as well, though I’ve since gotten very interested in the RP side of things. Anyway, yes, thank for post.

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inkharpy
Oh yay another new player voice! Your post didn’t come off as ‘entitled millennial’ at all, dw. I’ve unfortunately felt the same pang of uselessness where what I say isn’t going to get read. There is, however, at least one place you can go to get such. The Creative Collective’s scribe circle lets you write stories and optionally say that you’re fine with critiques. Saying that you are prompts users to go read it since doing such can reward them as well. (I find it odd someone was harping on that…)

The increasing cap over time sounds interesting, but as it stands would probably lead to the same problems the current interest system does where old users who work at the games a lot are just generating way more than new users. Perhaps the cap increase could also have a cap? Every day you log in goes to a counter that increases your max nuggets/day very slowly, log in for something like 365 days and it caps. Or something.

Also would recommend finding friends on the site to talk about lore stuffs with. It helped me a lot to have someone to share character backstories with and get each other excited to read each other’s stories since then we both had someone who was reading them.