Oh gosh please don’t get rid of the CC shop.  ;-;  It’s the only way I’ve been able to have any kind of access to customs, and I know I’m not alone in that. 

The only thing I can think of would be to… somehow prohibit buying things with CC when the shop is closed, but that’s virtually impossible to enforce, and also pretty restrictive. :\

A couple thoughts that could work instead of closing the CC shop:

1. Reduce the amount of CC users can buy at once/over a period of time, therefore spreading out the distribution of new CC.

2. Open the CC shop for a fixed window-say, 24 hours once a month or so, providing the amount of CC on the site was low enough already.

I’d be really sad to see the CC shop closed, because I know there’s really no other way I’d buy customs or sprouts. :/ I don’t feel comfortable trusting myself with amounts of money like that haha

Perhaps limiting how much someone can buy at once for someone else? Or like, if you buy say, 50CC, you have to wait a couple of days before you can buy more. It would at least space it out some and give more of a fair chance to others.

I haven’t gotten to utilize the CC shop yet but I hope it sticks around so I could. Otherwise I doubt I’d ever get a custom because I can’t justify dropping that kind of money all in one go. It’s a really nice concept and it just needs some tweaking in how it operates imo.

I think CC is a good idea. Perhaps though, it might be best to change it from an account locked credit to either items like custom tokens or an actual tradable custom currency similar to gems. It really is a shame. Last time the shop opened it stayed open for a few days and it seemed we were finally getting the balance down of people buying credit and the two queues burning though the credit already on hold. I really hate to think this might get canned. It’s such a good idea there has to be some way to make it work.

**edit** thinking on the tokens perhaps the site could sell custom tokens for each species at the base price. $40 for cat lines, $50 for dog, etc. Edits would still be charged at time the order was accepted because you’d have to wait for the artists final price quote. But having the base lines paid for would be a big help for a lot of people, and they could be traded among players like actual items

Same with a sprout token, since sprouts are already a set $100 regardless of edits

1. Personally, I think things worked well when it took 70-75% to open. The shop opened relatively quickly afterwards, and it stayed open for 2-3 weeks after that. The lower the percentage it has to dip before reopening, the more debts people generate.

2. Another option is possibly lowering the CC per account to 150CC or maybe even 100CC. That way people who want to get extremely edited customs will have to pay some real money. Some people might be against this, but for the most part, I think customs stay under 150CC.

3. It could also be an option to not allow people to make deals involving CC unless the shop was open. This rule would be hard to enforce, but it would solve the problem of huge amounts of debt having to be paid.

4. You could also limit the amour of CC purchasable to75-100CC per day. While 100CC is still a large amount, there are plenty of users who amassed debts that far exceeded that amount, or were selling massive amounts of CC for other forms of currency.

5. I don’t know if this is possible with legal issues, but perhaps raising the amount of CC available to the site at any one time? Example: if the amount of CC to 100% was $5,000, then raise it to $6,000? A large part of the current problem is there are more and more users joining the site and looking for/buying CC and there isn’t enough to go around.

6. More artists would certainly help with the growing demand, however I am aware that hiring new artists isn’t something to be done lightly and does cost the site money.

Could someone explain why the CC shop ever has to close? I mean, alternative to something like closing customs when the queue is too large or something? Is there a reason beyond a vague uneasiness with a bunch of limbo currency?

Other than that, I agree with one of Arintol‘s points that putting a hard cap on the amount of CC per account would work as well. If there MUST be a hard cap on the amount of CC in the system, then it would make sense (from a “fairness” perspective) to make sure that hard cap is at least somewhat distributed among players. I’m not privy to the actual stats, but from my POV it certainly seems like there’s a small handful of users that have most of the CC, which kind of defeats the purpose of allowing people to slowly accrue enough for a custom.

To be honest, I’d be fine if CC was phased out. I’ve never been able to use it, even when I wanted to “put a little away” for a custom, because the shop’s been closed pretty much 100% of the time I’ve been on this site (since Feb). It’s hard to miss something you have no hope of ever getting.

Honestly why isn’t cc tranferable? It’s never really made sense to me - is there a reason?  I mean, I guess if people were just holding cc for others…?  But with the account cap that doesn’t really do anyone any good.  I think making cc tranferable would be a really good option. For people like me, who had 15 left over after my last custom, that just rots on your account until you get another custom or…. forever.  Which skews the available cc for everyone else and is also just a waste of money for the purchaser.

I really like the idea of opening the shop for a fixed period of time.  There might be an overwhelming amount grabbed at that point, but ideally it would happen when the amount Onsite is fairly low already.  At least then it wouldn’t be wildly unfair.  People might also be less prone to making tons of deals for cc because there wouldn’t be, like, a bar they could look at and plan for when the shop would open up.  Obviously there should be some heads up, but it won’t be like a constant status update.
(Also I think I agree that lowering the threshold to 66% might have been a mistake this time.  So much time passed and so many deals went through that most people didn’t have a chance when it opened.)

Also adding that I’m hoping there’s a way to continue to allow people to buy customs with CC or a currency/token system similar to it. ; u; I wouldn’t have a custom at all if I hadn’t been able to gather small amounts of payment from various users - and my next custom has been paid for the same way (just waiting for the queue to get to my order atm)... and I know I’m not the only one.

I do think CC should be transferable. $10-15 leftover CC here and there can really add up, and a lot of people may end up with that much excess CC when buying customs, and may never intend to buy another custom just to use it up. Making it transferable would at least allow that site debt to be shifted to someone who can actually use it, and would keep people from being completely dependent on the shop being open to get CC.

I also think the reason people make deals for CC ahead of time is out of fear that they won’t be able to get any before it closes. I think having a set time for it to be open would help with that. I think having a cap on how much CC a person can have at once already helps keep people from hoarding it, and that the customs and sprouts have been coming out at a pretty decent rate - so making CC transferable and having the shop open a set amount of time might solve the problem?

I really can’t say for sure though, since I can’t see the numbers myself - like the amount of CC debt the site currently has (if that’s still a problem), or the amount of orders in the queue, or how the CC is split (if most of the CC is spread out in small, unusable amounts, or if it’s mostly just in usable amounts on accounts with orders in the queue)

I think putting a limit on how much CC one user can buy at a time would really help. There are people making deals for HUGE chunks of CC, and whilst I’m not saying that’s a bad thing (please don’t get me wrong people who do this ono!) limiting purchases would allow the shop to stay open longer?

Plus that makes it way more fair for those in different time zones, the shop was open for me at 4am, and it was open for what? Two hours? I was receiving 5CC at the time, but if I was buying I’d basically be screwed because I was asleep.

I like the token idea, as then the money itself technically isn’t being held, since the user is buying an item. If I am correct anyway. However just the base line arts aren’t great, since a lot of people get CC in very small increments. Maybe we could have edit tokens of varying increments as well? $5, $10, etc.

I don’t know, I’m just lending support to previous ideas haha…

i have to admit that i too would be completely unable to buy customs if the CC shop was done away with. while that’s upsetting on a personal level, i have another observation… it seems to me that the site would lose a LOT of its income if CC was no longer an option. sure, users will always buy gems with USD, but without the ability for the more affluent of us to spend money buying customs on the behalf of other people, MC will no longer be getting that influx of currency…

now, perhaps i’m over estimating the impact of CC-sales on the site’s income, but it seemed worth mentioning.

and, on a more selfish note, i LIKE being able to buy customs through hard work and selling my onsite stuff to people who actually have disposable income. it would sting if that option was removed. i would completely understand why, but it would sting. :(

Hina
I guess I don’t really understand how the tokens would effectively be any different than CC? I mean, they may legally meet some loophole on paper but for all intents and purposes they’re serving the same purpose as CC and would likely be treated the same way in a bad scenario. In the example used before, of the site shutting down unexpectedly, people aren’t going to be less angry/put out if they lose hundreds of dollars worth of art, whether you call it “CC” or “Tokens”. They’re still basically serving as promissory notes, right?

“Though that would shift the problem onto the token shop, unless it were expressly stipulated that you are paying to own the token, as an item…”

Hina, I think she was saying that unless the wording for buying tokens is specific to imply that they’re a currency-item like gems, and everyone understands that clearly, it would fall into the same legal issues as CC currently has… But going on the assumption that admin would make that nice and clear, you’re right, there would be no problem anymore. (Well, aside from custom queue time length, but that’s a different issue.)
Edit: Though also, having them be an equipable item, it could in fact be argued that you’re buying the equip for a legal standpoint, and it just so happens that, if you so choose, that equip CAN be exchanged for a custom… Ergo skimming the legal loophole with ‘promissory note’ issues much more clearly and plainly.

Also for my 2 cents on the matter, I think it would be pretty cool to show off a custom token as an equipable! I know I’ve forgotten about CC a few times when I had teency amounts, but an item would help me remember by seeing it on my pet, opposed to having to click through a few pages to find my CC total… >.> Plus maybe after it was spent, it could ‘break’ and disintegrate into a really neat little broken rock fragment foreground item or something to represent rock crumbles from the carving process for your new custom?

I dunno, it would be totally unnecessary to have it be equipable, but it would be really NEAT, and a cute way to show off one’s progress with saving and all that… But I could be in the minority of wanting a better method to show off my custom savings progress, since 2 of my 3 customs are only mine due to friends gifting me with 10-20cc at a time as they can afford it when the shop was open. It took months and months, sure, but I NEVER would have been able to afford them any other way. (And as such, it would be nice for them to have a way to see an item or status bar of some kind to know how much I had saved up without having to login and update every day.

Though if the coolness of an equippable item doesn’t go over well, I suppose a optional display bar players can enable on their profiles that shows a # of tokens, type, and any additional ‘edit tokens’ they own could be more simple and work well, too. (Again, OPTIONAL, meaning if you don’t want people to see such details, just don’t enable it.)

I personally do really like the idea of switching CC into “Custom Tokens” though… And perhaps having “Edit Tokens” that can be bought and gifted as well! (And of course, yes, making them tradeable would be much easier with that system design.)

also, i’m a bit confused as to why there’s all these legal problems with CC but not with gems? they’re both currencies that are bought with real money and can only be used on specific things on-site. so… why is it that one has a bunch of issues, and the other does not? (not trying to say this in an accusatory manner, i’m genuinely confused.) i’m not sure why CC is considered you having a bunch of money tied up, when gems is not? if you pay for CC, you’ve paid to get a currency on site, just like gems.

i haven’t been on there in ages so i can’t give you the nitty gritty details, but i know subeta has a “cash shop” and you have always been able to buy “cash shop credits” (CSC) and it has never had a limit on it. (quick log in shows me it’s still a thing) i know the way it worked there was that you could buy “gift cards” of certain amounts of CSC, which would be a physical item on your account. those items could then be traded and sold around the site, and then redeemed for CSC. would something like that work here?

EDIT: just realized this was already pretty much suggested/thought of XD oops… lol

Suggestion for Transferring CC:

To Prevent Abuse of Cap (having people hold CC for you): if CC could be purchased in pack of like 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, and it could be viewable as an item, each little pack could have an ID# just like other items do. a system could be set up so that CC you send to someone cannot be sent back to you. in the event of a scam/trade issue where you need to get it back from someone, staff would have to be involved. i don’t see that being a big issue though since it wouldnt happen often and its not all different than the current system - if you gave someone cc for a pet you cant get it back and if theres an issue with the trade staff would have to be involved.

the only issue i can see is the user cap, i’m not sure how that would be coded? because you’d have to code an item limit somehow and its more complicated because multiple items. (unless there were just packs of 5, then you could make the item limit 40/person which might be easier)

Jacq tokens would be no different them gems. You pay cash for site gems for the purpose of what? The actual gems themselves do nothing. But you can use them to purchase pets/items from the OotS shop, or you can trade them with other players. Tokens would be the same. The token itself just sit in your inventory. But you could turn it in at the custom/sprout shop to buy your custom/sprout, or you could trade them with other players. The site has provided you with a virtual item/currency, where as CC is just currently a note on your account saying “we have this much of your money” that is non transferable/tradable

Skye I’m still not understanding why it would be confusing that an item/currency you could go into trades and actually trade with another player, that you could move about your inventory or in and out of a bank account, is an actual item/currency as opposed to a note saying “you have $000 credit” that you can’t transfer/cashout/do anything with?

I’ve only skimmed through some stuff, but I wanted to comment on some things? And my comments may be silly in retrospect and I may have just totally overlooked something/I could easily be repeating something that has already been explained away, so I’m sorry about that…

But anyways, on tokens: Tokens would be different than gems though, wouldn’t they? Gems can be readily exchanged for items, nuggets, or pets at any time, there is never a wait. (Also, baekhesten, maybe this is why gems aren’t a problem and CC is? That might help? Or someone else can explain it better/give the actual reason ahh) With tokens, it’s just a shiny-er representation of how much money you have to spend on a potential custom that you will still have to wait in line for, and that could (maybe? If this were the reason behind why so much CC on site is such an issue) be left without the intended promise it held if something were to happen to the site. Hence potentially the same legal problems? I’m not sure.

Tokens being tradeable is great, and that would make them similar to gems yes- however, why bother with that if CC was made tradeable, as other’s have already suggested? I didn’t read enough to see if this idea was dismissed, but now that there are more precautions set up so that other’s cant trade customs right after purchase, is there a big reason why CC can’t become tradeable? If it’s a legal reason, that’s understandable… The only thing I can see if someone reaching the 200 CC cap, and having a friend hoard more CC for them to get at a later date. Basically just cheating the cap system. I don’t know if that would really be a big problem though… Especially if trading CC could allow those with “unusable” amounts (less than $40, unless they’re getting edits/trying to get more) that they can’t use to trade them to someone else that can then finally jump in to queue and set up to use 40 CC + on a custom, and work on getting ride of some of the CC on site that is waiting in purgatory.

Umum, I guess if CC were tradable, the main issue might also then be that there is no on-site conversion to nuggets atm that could control the price. Although I feel it’s pretty stable at around $5 = 20k nuggets right now… But some on-site direct conversion could be implemented also, to help people get rid of CC and get nuggets in return. Or items, or something like that, all of which I have seen other people suggesting here. I don’t know if that would blend with CC being tradeable, or if that would overall be the route to take instead of ever making CC tradeable…

I’m going to… Shush up now and just. Post this before I get too nervous to attempt a post here ahah.

(I think this was touched on by someone in this thread but I don’t know if the entire explanation was posted? If it was then sorry ignore me, I didn’t want to reread the entire thing when I was only trying to respond to the last few posts I guess oops SORRY)  CC is different than gems because:

When you buy gems, you spend USD, get gems, and the transaction is complete. Which is why you can toss them around as you please.

When you buy CC, you’re buying an IOU from the site. CC isn’t the product you’re looking for, it’s the promise of work from the artists on site.

This is the gist of what a staff member explained in chat today? Yesterday? I can’t remember now, but it’s basically what differentiates CC from gems, as far as I know. I don’t know any of the specific legal reasons of why, but I think this is part of it? SHRUGS LOUDLY I just wanted to add something I thought was useful >.>

sorry

Also while talking to people in live chat about this topic, it kinda turns into a thousand solutions with a thousand and one problems. Everything either has a legal obstacle or a practicality obstacle. A lot of “but that doesn’t really SOLVE the problem"s later and it just feels like the only way to SOLVE the problem is to just…get rid of it entirely?

But then that also causes problems so wat do??

Blemy

wouldn’t a one-way conversion to gems solve that problem, then? CC would be usable to obtain gems at any time, with no wait. you still can use it on things that require a wait, but if you don’t want to wait you can convert it.

[@queen elsa]

but when you buy gems, gems aren’t the product you’re looking for? gems themselves are entirely useless, they’re just used to buy other things from the site or from other users—just like CC. i understand that CC is framed as an IOU, but i’m just trying to figure out if it has to be framed like that.

[@queen elsa]

CC could easily become the same thing. you buy CC and that’s all you’re buying. you can use the CC on custom orders, but what you’re buying is the currency. it doesn’t have to have an IOU attached to it if it just became a currency. like i mentioned before, that’s how it works on subeta and it doesn’t seem like they’ve had any issues. o:

baekhesten

I’m just repeating what a staff member has said. ^_^;;

gems are what youre paying for, gems are what you get
in the case of CC its custom pet is what youre paying for, but an IOU is what you get

I don’t know the legality of these things when it comes to Mycena Cave so I can’t pinpoint the exact problem. All I know is this.