baekhesten Subeta’s CSC is actually the equivalent to Mycena’s gems, rather than CC. Like gems, CSC can be used to immediately purchase a variety of pre-made items/services from the CSC shop (like the OotS shop). CC is different from gems and CSC because there is no immediate return- you have to wait to use it, whereas you can buy gems (or CSC) and immediately turn those gems into items/pets.

It is confusing when you just think “well, they’re both currencies that are useless when they’re just sitting on your account.” Hopefully it makes more sense now?

Hi everyone!

Thanks for all of your brainstorming :) Much of it reflects ideas we’ve thrown around already, but some of it is new and fresh and certainly worth considering. I’d like to take a moment to address a few comments specifically and answer a few questions that have come up:

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(paraphrased from many): If Mycena Cave goes out of business, it is legally required to refund CC or provide at least some form of recompense

This is actually not true. If Mycena Cave goes out of business, we would not be liable for existing CC. When a company goes bankrupt its debts, to a large extent, go unpaid (this is what bankruptcy is). For example, if Amazon went out of business all of a sudden, your Amazon giftcards would become worthless overnight.

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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.

and

TBH, I don’t think people trading for CC before the shop is open should factor into any decisions. They made deals knowing the CC was unavailable at the time, and knowing the shop has a purchase limit when it is open (it says so on the shop page regardless of being open), so that was their risk.

It seems that IOUs and CC debt played a large factor in having the shop close so quickly again this time around. As you point out, such a rule would be almost entirely unenforceable, but not necessarily without merit. Right now, if we permanently close the CC shop we put a number of people who are owed CC in a bind: they have traded away something possibly on another site in return for a promise of receiving CC at some later date. While it’s true that we don’t guarantee such transactions and that this was a risk that the seller willingly took on themselves, it does put people into the situation where a buyer who wants to do the right thing is literally incapable of holding up their end of the agreement, through no fault of their own. This is a situation that I would like to make every reasonable attempt to avoid. Were we to enact such a rule, enforceable or otherwise, would place this responsibility squarely on the shoulders of sellers who may choose to violate it in the future.

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Why does there have to be a limit?

It would certainly be in our best “business sense” interest not to have a custom credit limit: we cash in now, and you get to hold all the risk! This is in fact what most companies do. But while its true that we would not be legally liable for the sum, that doesn’t change the fact that on a personal level, we feel that not recompensing you in some way for promises that you paid for would be a really scummy thing to do. This is why we ensure that the sum of all custom credit on Mycena Cave stays below what we could (if necessary) afford to pay out of our pockets without drastically impacting our standard of living. This is also why the limit has not been scaling up with the number of players here.

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If you buy a certain amount of CC, you have to wait a couple of days before you can buy more.

This idea is a very attractive one, as it would certainly even out the ability for everyone to have an opportunity to buy CC. The reason we haven’t already done this is because it also incentivizes bad behavior: as someone who wants to buy more CC, you have an incentive to open a second account — as someone who wants to sell things for more than the max-per-amount-of-time CC, you have an incentive to pressure buyers (who may not be MC members and thus have “nothing to lose”) to open multiple accounts. But maybe the benefit outweighs the risk. It would certainly help to curb some of the enormous IOUs that crop up which result in many large purchases as soon as the shop opens. Definitely an idea to consider.

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Honestly why isn’t cc tranferable?

CC would be a much more attractive instrument to have if it were transferable, as it provides you with a much larger purchasing power than it does when you can only use it for customs / sprouts after waiting in the queue for X amount of time. While we have not tried it to be sure, I am certain that were CC transferable it would be the only currency worth trading for. We love the notion of CC being a method by which payments for a custom can be split, or players who will not spend their own money on Mycena Cave may yet acquire customs of their own, but we have no desire for CC to become the “master currency” of Mycena Cave. We are probably least likely to budge on this front than on any other relating to CC.

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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…

I don’t think that would be the case — we can really only count CC as “secure income” once the order that it gets used on has been paid for, because the flip-side of selling CC is then creating customs for less or no money on a 1-to-1 basis. So in terms of income for Mycena Cave, CC has close to a net of zero — it moves income from one month to another, but in the long run no additional dollars are spent. It’s true that were there no CC, there are players who would not place orders and thus there would be fewer custom orders, but as evidenced by the wait time we already have more of those than we can easily handle.

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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.

I don’t think that’s selfish at all, and to be honest that is my favorite aspect of CC (that it was an unplanned / unexpected side-effect just makes it even nicer!). If it were not for this aspect of CC we would likely have phased it out long ago. I just completely love the fact that, while we cannot commit to making customs and sprouts in return for activity (or without charging money — which is why customs or instrument by which customs can be bought from the site will never be sold for nuggets), it can still be possible for people who can’t spend money and who can participate primarily through activity to acquire them.

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The idea to have CC one-way tradeable for gems is also a decent idea.

I’m actually all for this. On the one hand, I do not believe it would have a significant effect on custom credit, as the fraction of CC owned by people who have small amounts of CC is pretty small: if every single player who has 20 CC or less decided to convert all of their CC to gems, the amount of CC on Mycena Cave would go down by about 3%. On the other hand, there really isn’t much of a reason not to do this, and if it gladdens people with small amounts of CC that they can’t spend then it seems like a great idea. This wasn’t implemented originally because we wanted to limit the scope of CC as much as possible — we don’t want gems to be a “second class citizen” on trading boards — but I don’t see this as having much of an effect on things either way, so if it would make people happy then it’s probably a good idea.

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CC could be unlimited if it was an equippable token with no liability that just happens to also reduce the price of your customs etc

It seems to me the purpose of this would be to (a) have tradeable CC and (b) limit MC liability. See the various responses above on both of these counts. Would having “equippable token cc” provide any other benefits that I’m missing? Other than being totally cute to be able to equip it :D

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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:

This is technically how CC operates already. However, while I’m not familiar with how Subeta operates and may very well not have a cap, we do for the reasons I pointed out under why there has to be a limit above: while legally speaking there’s nothing preventing us from happily taking all your money and leaving you to hold all the risk, we don’t feel like that’s a “good” thing to do. So we’re keeping things manageable to the point where, if the worst should happen, we can make good on informal social obligations even though we are not legally required to. Just something that helps us sleep better at night :)

Thanks again for all of your discussions on this topic, we really are reading every post and we appreciate all of the ideas you’re bringing to the table.

glitch The equipable item idea is just cute. Something beyond inventory or currency clutter if a token system is implemented. Without a “physical” token they would still be just IOU’s if their only purpose is customs, regardless of if they’re trade-able (yes, I know it could be argued that their only purpose isn’t customs because you can then trade it for other currencies and items, but I still view it as such because it’s a currency that you can’t immediately use by itself for the service it would be intended for).

That is the one difference between this idea and what Wajas has: You can use Wajas tokens (and some other pet site “custom” tokens) and see immediate results (i.e. You use it and then immediately create your own custom from a database of genes, patterns, and colors). Here you have to wait months for an artist to get to you.

I’m just posting a suggestion and some opinions, though. I don’t know why I bother anymore since what I have to say is seemingly unpopular or unintelligible.

I’m just not understanding why it needs to be equipable to constitute as a “physical” item. Aywas has a ridiculous number of custom and breeding items they sell for cash. None of them equipable. Take their platinum breeding coin. That item is used how you seem to be implying: use the item to submit breeding then wait however long for an artist to finally get to you, make your offspring from scratch and get them back to you.

That and how many items do we have on site that are not equipable? Do they not count as items either then?

This would not be a “use and wait” type thing since you don’t know what the price of your custom is going to be till an artist accepts your order and sets the final price. It wouldn’t be used till you are paying for your custom/sprout. That and this isn’t meant to be the only way to get a custom. You would not be required to have a custom/sprout token/curency to order a custom or sprout. You could still just pay with RL funds if you wanted to. This would just replace the CC option.

Other people might like an idea of making it equipable, I just don’t personally see the need to give the artists more work finding a way to make an item to go on all the pet lines for something that is basically just another form of currency. I don’t need an item to showoff when I can just show off my custom/sprout.  If people are interested in achievements that would be a different discussion

Hina, No one is saying it “Needs” to be anything. End. A suggestion saying “This would be cool” doesn’t mean saying “it NEEDS to be this way”... It could very well just be standard inventory clutter no one else can see! (JUST like unused coat mushrooms, unopened containers, or the Recipe items) However, we’re merely saying “This would be neat”. No more no less.  We’re throwing suggestions and ideas WE find interesting around, that’s all. It would be interesting, unique and new… But it could very well just be a little coin icon only you can see in your inventory.

Also, actually the things about not knowing the price of your custom until it’s accepted isn’t true. Every custom I’ve gotten, and some I haven’t yet, I ask the artists for a price check on first so I know how much I need, I could be the only person that does this, I suppose, but it can be done, and I have known other people to do it. (Asking for a price check is also how I know the next custom I want will cost 100$ exactly. Fox base + edits.)

And again, there’s no “Need” to make the artists do anything… Though I know some artists on the site REALLY prefer working on items above all else… And while, yes, showing off the custom/sprout DOES speak clearly for itself, I feel, personally, that it would be cute to have something to show off while I’m waiting the 60-80-100+ days or whatever for that custom or sprout to be accepted and completed. Especially with the LONG wait times we have currently for them. And while I FULLY understand why it takes so long and am not disputing that at ALL, it is still a very long time to be sitting on nothing but a promise. To me, a token, be it an equip, or inventory clutter, would make that wait feel that much more comforting and less like I have nothing to show for the money for a 1/3rd of a year. (And I know _I’D_ sleep better during the wait if I had something vaguely more tangible to hold onto until I could show off my custom or sprout!)
(And no one’s even saying what the item would “have” to look like… It could be as much or little work as the artist wants, IF the idea ever even has anything done with it. For example, it could be as complicated as any equippable, or as basic as a background/foreground item. Or, heck, maybe even just something that can ONLY be seen in the avatar box background like our current ones, that would be REALLY easy/basic.)

But again, I don’t fully understand why the notion of a simple idea needs to be attacked so strongly like this… It’s just an idea, mere suggestions for ways people would like to see things go, or cute random interjection.  *shrug* Just my 2 cents. They’re just suggestions.

Also, my 2 cents on glitch‘s comment about not wanting CC to become the “master currency”... To a degree, as has been heatedly debated in the past about CC, it kinda unofficially already is. Even with the condition of the CC shop lately, CC is the most dominantly used currency in the trade threads. Almost no one likes gems anymore for how the value has fallen on them, And generally from what I’ve seen 5$ CC is valued at over 6 gems, or 22-25k nuggets… And that’s a pretty big discrepancy for something that “shouldn’t” be as major of a currency factor as it’s become. (But that’s also because EVERYONE wants/loves customs, but not everyone can actually afford to get them any other way but by paying for them in full with CC.)

At this point, really, getting rid of it entirely would do FAR more harm than good for the site, in my opinion… But also clearly something needs to be done with how the system for it is working, because since the site has grown, it’s not working quite ‘as intended’ anymore… But getting it back to that “Working as intended” zone IS going to be tricky, and regardless of what’s done, as I’ve said before, once a playerbase gets to a certain size, there’s no way to keep everyone 100% happy with every change. It’s just a trick of figuring out how to fine tune changes and decisions that affect everyone down to ‘tolerable’ levels of upset or discomfort. Sometimes these kind of changes take everyone taking a step back and re-assessing just what sort of changes would be better for the community, and then finding a way for all involved to be comfortable with them and sleep easier knowing it was the ‘best’ thing to do for the community… Growing pains are just as uncomfortable for communities and their leaders as they ever were growing up, you know. :) Sometimes as we grow, we have to re-adjust our comfort zones a bit and see what happens! Sometimes it turns out not as bad as we thought, and sometimes we have to take a step back and go “whelp, that didn’t work, let’s try another way.”

*bows out* But enough wall of text from me. Feel free to Echo me if any of you have any questions/want to talk more.

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glitch
If I’m reading this part correctly…

if every single player who has 20 CC or less decided to convert all of their CC to gems, the amount of CC on Mycena Cave would go down by about 3%.

Doesn’t that kind of mean that CC isn’t working as intended (to split costs/allow people to save up incrementally)? If most of the CC is tied up among a handful of players at their cap, then its relative value is, in essence, controlled by those players.

It’s possible I’m just straight-up missing the point of having three currencies. There’s a free currency, a premium currency whose inflation is controlled by the site, and now an “ultra premium” (or “master”) currency that’s controlled by the market - in this case, the users that can afford and manage to grab it when it’s available.

This isn’t meant to be an attack on the “CC-havers” or anything. It’s just what ends up happening when someone with disposable income realizes their money is worth “more” as CC versus gems. Even if you don’t WANT a custom, if you’re looking to put money into the site anyways, your $5 is worth “more” as CC (6 gems/22k nuggets) than gems (5 gems/18k nuggets) with minimal overhead (time, to convert via a forum trade). I’d probably have done that were I around when the CC shop opened.

Here is my radical, probably unintelligent and possibly nerve-wracking idea:
Announce the closure of the CC shop. Far in advance (a month?) set a date to have the CC shop open for 48-hours or a week or whatever so everyone can square away their debts. You could even implement the “one-way-tradeable for gems” aspect here too to reduce the pool somewhat. After that, let people pay for customs with the remaining CC, out of pocket, or organize split-payments offsite (e.g. via paypal) or paying people in gems or whatever. Stragglers can possibly be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. It certainly means having a LOT more money tied into the site for the short term, but eventually that liability goes down until it disappears (or mycena does, heaven forbid).

Also, for what it’s worth, I had no idea you could buy sprouts with CC. The sprout page lists them as “USD Only.”

“it is still a very long time to be sitting on nothing but a promise”

“Without a “physical” token they would still be just IOU’s”

^ This is what I am trying to understand. What promise is being made by the site in the act of purchasing what amounts to virtual currency? What promise are you sitting on? With the current CC yes, you are sitting on a promise that the site will owe you something towards a custom. But of that credi is changed to a transferable item or currency that is no longer the case. It will essentially go back to the system pre CC shop where there is nothing agreed on until a custom order is accepted and paid for with the token/currency/cash. Until that time you’d be well within your rights and abilities to cancel any order or to just buy the tokens/whatever and sell them for fun and profit. No one - site or player - would owe each other anything. Even now people get in the queue putting no money down, and have the right and ability to back out of their order even after an artist contacts them if they can’t pay, change their mind, whatever because there is no agreement or promise forcing either party to do anything.

I don’t understand the nitpicking either. I thought the intention of the tokens and/or making it a transferrable currency has been explained by myself and several others multiple times but somehow something that would be almost exactly the same thing as gems are except used solely for the custom and sprout queues instead of solely for the OotS shop keeps becoming an IOU. That is what I’m trying to figure out how it’s being misinterpreted

I am unsure how the queue looks to artist, but I wonder if it would be more manageable if there were separate queues? Such as; a queue where only edits being added to already made customs get submitted to. So artist who only want to do edits could focus on this section. Or perhaps a queue dedicated to basic customs with no edits. Or an item queue as I see some users suggesting. Again, I am unsure of how artist can view orders, but if some artist have a preference on what they would like to work on, this may help organize the work? So instead of having one custom queue that is a first come first serve basis, it could be separated in several ‘smaller’ queues, which may -in theory- help move through the queues faster, and in turn use up CC faster. -shrugs- I personally do not use CC, but I would hate to see it go, because I know a lot of members use it. :C

I’m wondering if the CC shop closes, will players still be allowed to make deals with other users to get customs? Or will customs become exclusive to those that have money or are lucky enough to win one in a raffle?

Ally that’s my concern as well. i’m not going to say that customs are the ONLY reason i like being on mycena, but if i weren’t able to get them anymore (because as a chronically ill college student i will never have the disposable income to afford a custom out of pocket) the value of mycena would go down a lot to me. :/ i have a lot of plans for characters and such and while some work as site colors, i really like being able to have pets that actually reflect my characters instead of “sorta kinda making something work” like i have to do on most sites.  customs are one of the things that make mycena unique (though there are many things! this is just a particularly prominent one), and if that were reserved only for rich players i think it’d lose a lot.

Even with the condition of the CC shop lately, CC is the most dominantly used currency in the trade threads. Almost no one likes gems anymore for how the value has fallen on them, And generally from what I’ve seen 5$ CC is valued at over 6 gems

Maybe that’s part of the problem — if 5 CC is worth 6 gems, and 5 gems costs $5, perhaps a better valuation of CC would be $6 for 5 CC? It does seem like it would go a long way to fixing a lot of things that are problematic about CC: reducing pressure on the CC shop by making an “$x worth of gems” offer on par with an “$x worth of CC” offer, discouraging buying CC for yourself, reducing demand for CC in general, etc. Naturally a CC-to-gems-conversion would need to follow suit as well, where 5CC would transform into 6 gems (which also seems like a fairer conversion).

Just so that we’re completely clear: we have no intention of actually doing this. The above paragraph is just the extension of a thought, not any kind of indication of a plan, and we don’t particularly like the idea of charging more for CC. It’s just there to point out that in a healthy economy, it shouldn’t be the case the “$x worth of A” has a significant difference in value from “$x worth of B”.

Doesn’t that kind of mean that CC isn’t working as intended (to split costs/allow people to save up incrementally)? If most of the CC is tied up among a handful of players at their cap, then its relative value is, in essence, controlled by those players.

You’re absolutely right, CC is not working as intended. That said, their relative value isn’t really controlled by the players who have a lot of it because they can’t trade it. But you’re also right that the relative value of CC is a problem, a kind of a thorn in the side of MC’s economy, which I guess is a natural extension of the fact that it wasn’t part of our economic structure to begin with and was just sort of incompatibly tacked on later as a convenience measure. The incompatibility is evidenced by the $1-value-paradox currently in effect (which was, in fact, the primary thing we sought to avoid when designing MC’s economy).

Our economy is designed such that the purchasing power of $1 fluctuates healthily with the current state of Mycena Cave trading pressures — a measure to allow the playerbase to collectively decide how much a dollar should be worth, ensuring that spending IRL money on Mycena Cave would never be worth too little or too much. This works with gems (as it was designed to do) but CC remains an artificially fixed point. Right now the purchasing power of $1 on Mycena Cave is about 3,400 nuggets, but CC offers the ability to artificially increase the purchasing power of $1 to 4,400 nuggets. It isn’t really any surprise that people opt for the latter whenever possible.

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So now that I’ve rambled a bit and thought about things, it seems pretty clear that CC is largely incompatible with the free-floating nature of the rest of MC’s economy. The detrimental effect this has already had is particularly visible in the trading forums, where it’s very hard to buy anything of significant value from another player unless you can spend IRL money on the transaction — precisely the situation we sought to avoid via a free-floating economy, and a direct consequence of the fixed-value nature of CC. The more I’ve thought about this, the more I wonder if we need to replace CC with something else that provides the benefits we like without skewing valuations. CC has been a great (if imperfect) experiment which allowed us to really understand the needs of our playerbase with respect to customs — but perhaps it’s time to do it “right” in a way that is actually compatible with the rest of the site mechanics?

EDIT: I’d just like to clarify that at this point, we have no immediate plans in any direction on this issue. Any change to CC or the devising of a replacement is something that would need to undergo an extensive planning first. The above are just some thoughts that are in my noggin, and since some people have touched on some of the ideas in their posts I felt it might be helpful to post them here.

In that hypothetical situation, wouldn’t that just… raise the value of CC?  People would want more for it because they’re spending more irl for it.  Right?

Either way, as long as current CC debts have a chance to be paid off and people like me still have a chance at customs (and I don’t see ‘wow I won a gcs!!! I’m gonna sell it for a custom!!’ as a chance - if that’s my only option then that’s crappy), y’all do what you gotta do.  I do wonder what the ‘right’ way to do this would be if it doesn’t involve CC.  I have faith that you guys can work something out though. ouo

i’m not sure if this would address all of the problems, but i am curious: have you ever considered having something like a cash shop, similar to subeta? something that would hold rare items and such that could be bought with USD or something like CC. part of the shop would also be the custom shop. in that way people could get rid of smaller amounts of CC, have an instant way to use it, and it wouldn’t become an “IOU.” no idea how feasible this is but there you go.

There have been several good/interesting points made in there, made me think a bit. I am one of many people that could not afford to whole cloth pay for an entire custom/sprout out of pocket (living expenses, y’know), so I like the idea of CC, but it has come to indeed seem like the only way to buy things in the market is through CC any more too, which is…problematic. I certainly agree that increasing the cost on CC would simply make the value disparity grow even worse, so I’m glad that the staff isn’t considering that as a real option. :)

Anyhow, I don’t know if it’d help, because I see a LOT of potential reasons that it could go wrong or troublesome… but if part of the problem stems from the fact that Gems and CC are supposed to theoretically be about the same value and they’re not (in part due to the limited nature of CC and desirability of customs), well. What if an option to buy CC with Gems in some fashion was created?

Before people shout it down, yes I see where that might be able to cause an income problem for Mycena, since Gems can be bought entirely with in-game currency and so that takes real money out of the equation entirely in some cases. However, limiting it in some fashion like allowing a purchase of, say 5-10 CC with Gems a day (when the shop is open, of course) might be a way to bring the value of Gems back up into further consideration. Or perhaps a cap of 40-50 CC purchasable this way in a six month period or something. Either way, if Gems can be exchanged for CC when the shop is open, even in small amounts, it might help boost the value of Gems back up to being more equal.

Or something. I don’t know. I know this notion still is definitely got it’s problems and would need a lot more thought put into it, but there might be some way to work it out that makes it more viable that I’m not clever enough to figure out myself. *shrugs* Just thought I’d throw it out there as food for thought, as it were!

By its very nature of only being purchasable by USD, CC will always be inherently different that gems.  But say you didn’t have CC and customs had to be bought in a lump sum payment, then the user who could pay for the custom could demand a premium in exchange.  This really is no different and will continue to exist so long as customs are tied to USD.  Doing away with CC won’t change the underlying issue that people want to buy customs and value them more than the site suggested nugget/gem to USD value.

I think the site cap for CC needs to go away, and hear me out now: 

The site cap exists because staff wants to limit the number of customs owed to an amount they feel comfortable with, right?  But I think a large problem is how many users that CC amount is spread out over.  Why not put a cap on the custom queue if that is the issue? (Not actually suggesting this, just making a comparison)  I mean all the CC cap is doing is limiting users ability to obtain funds.  I mean,I can’t really see the problem if people want CC to sit in their account?  There is a 200 limit per user which I find reasonable given the price of customs; and its non transferable so they can’t use it as a currency exchange.  Customs take too long to make and can’t be transferred for awhile so its not advantageous to sell your ability to make a custom.

But here is the best thing about CC and why it can still work and it doesn’t really matter if the gem/CC ratio isn’t equal:  CC is for customs and nothing else.

Maracianiasa

“Why not put a 1-2 per user cap on the custom queue instead or a total cap?”

If you’re talking about a cap on how many custom orders a user can have at a time, this already exists o: You can only hold one place in the queue at a time.

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the reason CC is valued above gems or nuggets is because it is the only currency that can obtain something that is highly valued by the users. getting rid of CC won’t change the fact that users value customs higher. you’ll still have the same problem. say you make a deal, and you can either buy $90 gems and pay with that, or pay for someone’s $90 custom. it’s the same amount of money, but since users value customs more, your dollar will always be worth more buying someone a custom than buying someone gems. getting rid of CC just means users won’t be able to do it in smaller increments.

Roan drop what? What am I dropping? My last post was trying to understand why you keep insisting currency is an IOU. I didn’t even mention your suggestion. I only quoted your line where you insisted it’s an IOU and where Skye mentioned waiting on a promise. I don’t know what you think I’m latching onto asking why you keep interpreting currency as an IOU

Gems are not an IOU. You are not promised anything with gems. Making CC into some transferrable form is basically the same thing. A cashiers check or a money order is not an IOU. It is not a “I will pay for this eventually”. They are a banking instrument that is backed with cash. You give the bank the cash and the cut the check for that value specifically to the recipient who then receives that cash. You cannot put a down payment on a house with an IOU, but you can with a cashiers check because IT IS THE FUNDS. A regular check is more of an IOU because you don’t know if the money is there to cover it. The check can bounce or be canceled and then the recipient gets nothing. That doesn’t happen with a cashiers check because it is a guaranteed instrument of currency

[@Queen Elsa] Thanks, edited my post for clarity.

I am confused there are many staff online but this conversation has clearly derailed from a civil discussion in the past few hours, why hasn’t any staff stepped in?? Amaterasu Firkasa Paradoxical

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MylaFirkasa Thank v much ;^;

Tarot:  Staff has stepped in; we generally will message users privately in order to resolve a situation if possible.  Since we do not want the conversation to further deteriorate, one of our moderators has been working on a post as well.

If anyone has any concerns, please echo one of our moderators.

Hello everyone!

There has been some great conversation regarding the matter of how we can handle CC in the future. However, some posts were not adding to the overall conversation in a productive manner. In light of this we’ve decided to delete some those posts.

Many different points and suggestions have been made in the thread. Even though we may not not agree with each other’s ideas, they are still ideas the staff are happy to look over. Even the smallest idea can contribute to the bigger picture! While this will take some time, the staff will take all these ideas, maybe add some of our own, and deliberate how we wish to proceed with the CC shop.

In the mean time, please try and keep the discussion productive to the main topic. Thanks. :)

glitch sorry you must be getting a million pings xD

“CC would be a much more attractive instrument to have if it were transferable, as it provides you with a much larger purchasing power than it does when you can only use it for customs / sprouts after waiting in the queue for X amount of time. While we have not tried it to be sure, I am certain that were CC transferable it would be the only currency worth trading for. We love the notion of CC being a method by which payments for a custom can be split, or players who will not spend their own money on Mycena Cave may yet acquire customs of their own, but we have no desire for CC to become the “master currency” of Mycena Cave. We are probably least likely to budge on this front than on any other relating to CC.”

so I was one of the people who suggested the CC token idea. the idea behind it being to make trade possible without abuse of the system.  i think trading would be helpful because:
1. it would lower the number of IOUs
2. it would allow people with small amounts leftover to trade
3. it would make trading for CC safer and easier to keep track of because you’re not just going on blind trust in someone
—-
I don’t think it would affect the desire for gems. I think gems are already the least preferred currency most of the time. seems to be CC>nuggets>gems (although it obv depends). however, i’ve never noticed it to be a drastic preference. the reason behind all the currencies being valuable is that each one allows you to purchase different things. there is nothing that can be bought with multiple kinds of currencies. OOtS is only gems, Customs are only CC, shops are only Nuggets. since that isn’t changing, I don’t see how allowing CC to be trade-able would affect the desire for gems. Gems would still be desirable because of OOtS shop and the level of desire for CC would stay the same because it can only be used for Customs. also CC would still have the cap per person and for the site so it would still be a limited commodity and gems would remain the main currency.

I’ve been wanting to post, but I’ve been caught up with personal issues (my cat was missing for five days, but we finally found her today).

I’ve read through the posts and suggestions, I don’t have anything new to add. When this was first opened to discussion, I was thinking along the same lines of another user; limit buyers on how much they can purchase at a time. Since the limit is 200, I figured that’d be a good price to limit buyers as well. The tokens are an interesting concept too, but I don’t think it’d be much different from the CC shop (aside from it being an item).

I don’t think that the CC shop has been a complete disaster. The last two times the shop was open (before it was opened a few days ago), didn’t it stay open longer? I could be remembering wrong because I wasn’t personally trying to get CC then.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of CC. Honestly, I don’t think it matters what you call it — whatever currency you place on the customs will be valued the most. USD items, currency and pets are always more expensive/valued more on pets. Gems aren’t as valued on here because they’re obtainable through exchange. I think the only reason why nuggets are highly valued is because of the bank interest. If they were only used to buy shop items, they wouldn’t be as valuable. My point is that CC is USD exclusive & customs are higher valued. It doesn’t matter whether you value 1 CC:2 gems, there will be people willing to pay it in order to get a custom.

My main concern is the ability to earn customs without paying IRL cash. Having CC gave the ability for users without the funds a chance to earn customs. I’m one of the users who doesn’t have the extra money to buy customs. I can’t justify paying ~$100 for an art piece, especially when I plan on moving again by next summer. I wish I had the spare money, I would gladly give it to you guys — only because I support this site & want to be with you guys as it grows & changes. I’m hoping within a few years I’ll be at that point where I have the extra means. I know there are other players on this site that would like the opportunity, aside from winning raffles.

Customs are personally my favorite aspect of the site. I’ve put in a lot of time in order to be able to afford customs in lieu of real money. Please just give us alternatives & not have customs become only available to people with the means. Even if we can just make independent agreements with other users to pay for the custom when it comes up — kind of like how it was before the CC shop came to be.

So, I’ve read most of the replies (or at least skimmed) and I have a couple pieces of advice as well as a couple comments.

First piece of advice/question, does staff have a good financial person managing their books? In particular glitch‘s comment about not wanting to owe out more than you could pay for out of pocket leads me to believe that maybe you guys don’t. There are ways to set up separate accounts to manage something like CC where all of that would be completely separate from the rest of the site’s income and so when it came time to pay the artists should CC be used for a custom, the money comes out of that account as opposed to the rest of the site’s money. I am, by no means, a good financial person but I happen to be literally sitting next to someone whose went to school for financial stuff and she seems to think there are ways that could be handled that would limit concern in that area.

Second, and I’m sure this comes up often enough, but it seems to me that hiring more artists would help alleviate this problem. Even if they were only part time artists, having a few extra people who can be called on to bring down the queue would mean customs going out faster and thus CC being spend faster.

Also Glitch, expressed a concern about CC becoming the master currency. The big reason why nuggets and gems still have value (not as much as CC but some) is that CC can only be used for customs. Likewise, you can only get fodder and monthlies with gems. And also likewise, you can only buy certain items and shrooms with nuggets. So long as there continue to be things that you can only purchase with one form of currency that are valued by most players, all of the currencies will retain their value. I think the biggest reason that CC is valued higher than gems isn’t because of the limited amount of CC but because you can buy gems with nuggets. I like that and am not suggesting that you get rid of that feature but the same holds true for GP on Aywas. There are ways to get GP that don’t involve spending cash (quite a few actually) and so GP isn’t worth as much as some site’s paid currency. FR gems are even easier to get without spending cash and so they’re not worth as much. That having been said, gems here are still worth getting but have taken a backseat to nuggets because nuggets can always be turned into gems pretty easily so it’s more flexible of a currency. All that having been said, as far as pet site economies go, MC has the healthiest I have ever seen. There are ways for users with lots of time to earn enough nuggets/gems to get most the things they want. There are ways for users with a lot of excess real money to buy the things they want from other users. I think you might just need to either tweak the CC shop’s numbers or hire more artists so that the current issue is less of a thing.

Someone (name escapes me now) suggested a USD shop. While I can’t imagine MC taking this route, in just about every site I’ve seen USD shops added, it’s always ends up destroying the economy. Gaia is the perfect example of this. On Gaia, the site currency is basically Zimbabwee dollars. Unless you’ve got trillions, you’re not getting anything of value. On the other hand, you can buy items now that are worth as much as, if not more than some of the earliest collectible items. Even on Aywas, the USD site has had a detrimental effect on the value of other currencies. If you guys are considering this suggestion, please be really careful. As I said, the economy here on MC is the healthiest I’ve seen on any pet site and I’d hate to see a USD shop ruin that.

Someone (and again, I forget who) suggested instead of a cap on how much CC is on the site and opening the CC shop when that’s full, having a single day out of the month when CC is sold. I’ve seen this done on a couple sites and it worked out really well. While it would likely mean a lot more CC initially going into the system (and I know that concerns staff) I think it would also give staff a much better idea of how much CC people are willing and able to purchase right now. I think everyone was surprised by how quickly it sold this go round because we’ve got some players who are either new or newly able to put a lot more money into the site than when the CC shop had previously been open. Every site will eventually get players like this but having a good idea of how many there are and just how much they’re willing to put into the site can help staff plan for the future. The site is going to keep growing because you all have amazing art and a wonderfully run site. Between the healthy economy, the wide variety of pets, items and activities and the variety of events that appeal to every type of user, it’s just bound to keep growing. As such, the desire for customs and the prevalence of people who can sink a lot more money into the site is going to increase. This brings me back to my earlier point, the only way I think this can really be effectively dealt with is hiring more artists.

edit: also, apologies for how long that got.