Analog With the previous CC system, custom credit was essentially a ‘debt’ the site owed. Outstanding CC balances were customs that we would have to expect to make at some point, and that debt could quickly spiral to an unmanageable amount when unlimited. Previously, we enforced a site CC cap as a way of keeping that debt at a manageable level. However, this became very stressful for our users because the shop was closed for weeks at a time while the artists worked through the CC orders in the queue after the cap was reached, and the shop would also close again very quickly whenever it was reopened (thus, many users who had made trades for CC IOUs while the shop was closed were unable to pay off their debts).

Another way this became a problem was because players would ‘collect’ CC for periods of time towards more than one intended order, or had small sums of CC lying around unused that would contribute to this site total and cap.

With the new system, we did not want to have the option for orders to be held indefinitely in order to prevent large quantities of PP sitting around not being used (such as when users go inactive). Unfortunately, situations like this contribute and build up to a large quantity of floating USD.

Gabriel

you’re not the only one, i can’t get it straight either… but i have trouble with numbers in general lol. if i understand it correctly, it’s because you can only buy it in increments of 5 at a time anyway, so it makes the most sense to just be 1 instead of 5, since that 5 can’t be split up anyway.

Jacq To answer your statement about edit prices; certain edits will still cost the same amount of PP as they would have upon initial custom creation. Things such as editing the base coat for a custom or reworking markings were things not charged in the custom creation but must be charged for the editing process. With the new pricing system, a lot of edits that were previously not charged for now are, such as things that need to be redrawn for the avatar lines, and since the edit queue always falls under the new pricing system, the prices may differ depending from the original custom pricing and the amount of work that goes into the editing process.

People who don’t want to put a PP limit on an artistic freedom custom will have a much easier time if they are willing to pay for it themselves, since then you don’t risk going over or under. Users can collect at least the base price of the custom from other users via PP since that amount will never change. However, users may acquire extra PP throughout the course of their wait and inform the artist of at least a lower limit from the amount of PP they have on hand to avoid the artist creating something less than the amount of PP they have. :)

Gabrielbaekhesten:

I agree that it is a little bit more confusing with the conversion in place now.  We will try to list the USD value by things as well to help alleviate some of the need to convert things yourself!  It made more sense to have 1 PP to 5 USD rate since we always do edits in values of 5 USD anyway which is why we made the switch.

To get the USD value from a PP value, you multiply by 5.  So 5 PP would cost $25 USD, since you take 5 x 5!

Similarly, to get a PP value from a USD value, you’d divide by 5.  If you have $100 USD to spend, that would buy 20 PP (100/5).

I hope that will help!

Gabriel You are definitely not the only one… lol.

I’m still not sure how I feel about the hold time. Although 6 months is definitely preferable to 3. I just feel like this may still cause concern for the sprout queue in particular as orders go much quicker. With the custom queue you still have to get through the queue and adding edits to existing customs maxes out at $30. But sprouts are accepted very quickly and are pretty pricey; you also can’t piecemeal a sprout over time like a custom (ordering an ‘incomplete’ custom and adding edits later).

I also have a question that I don’t think has been addressed ( please forgive me if it has; I’ve been reading the last few pages on mobile), but what happens if say you enter the sprout queue but even with the 6 month hold you don’t meet the $100 goal. For the sake of this example say you get $70 total. Is there anyway to switch from one queue to the other? Like then hopping to the custom queue to put that money towards a custom? Currently you have to delete an order to swap queues, but with this new system doing so would negate your PP and convert it to gems correct…?

If that’s true… That seems like an awful waste. :c

Corvani  It is true that being able to pay for your own orders is advantageous because you don’t have to worry so much about queue wait times, but hopefully with the ability to save up nuggets/gems before creating an order, the 6 month hold time, and the queue wait time, many players who are not able to spend USD will have a better chance of being able to obtain a custom.

Like the current system, if you want to switch “type” of order (custom > sprout), you first need to cancel your order.  This would mean PP would be converted to gems for that order.  We did think about allowing users to switch their order type, but that would currently be a lot of added coding complexity on top of a lot of coding already needed for the new system, and also presents loopholes we’d need to close (it’d need to put you back into holding, and you wouldn’t be able to switch more than once otherwise this would allow you to hold your order indefinitely).  That being said, the option is something we may consider in the future since it would be useful for a scenario where you aren’t able to save up enough for the current queue you’re in!

Myla

thank you for the help! it’s probably not actually that complex; i’m learning disabled so the numbers being confusing for me don’t mean anything. :P 5 + 3 is confusing for me so like i totally don’t blame you guys for me having difficulty with it xD

I hadn’t thought about sprouts before because I’d never really considered getting one, but that doubles my worries from customs. Just because someone saves up enough nuggets or whatever prior to submitting their order doesn’t mean that there will people enough people in the time frame of the hold period selling CC to get enough to order their pet, especially in the case of sprouts or expensive customs that are over 100 bucks.

Because this system, for people who can’t pay for their pets themselves, is entirely reliant on other users, instituting a time period makes it incredibly stressful. Even if I am to save up enough nuggets (for some theoretical exchange rate since the system hasn’t even been released yet), and find one person to sell me $10 worth of paws, and someone else to sell me $20 worth of paws, it could still easily take a long time. And then all the nuggets and all the money both I and the other users puts in, if we’re so much as 5 bucks behind (which in the case of sprouts is non-negotiable), gets turned into the least desired currency on-site at a decreased exchange rate.

Even in six months, it can be hard to accumulate 100 bucks. And then the possibility of it just getting turned into virtually worthless gems makes the whole thing such a massive gamble that I think I’m going to sit this one out. I don’t like the idea of people working hard and people spending money only for them to get told they weren’t fast enough and so they get basically nothing.

Editing to mention: If I could spend money on this system, I likely wouldn’t, because I don’t like purchasing a product only to have that product change to something else. If I wanted to buy gems, I’d buy gems. But if I’m buying CC or Paws, I want to be buying CC or Paws.

Corvani the thing with the “hold” before you get into the queue, this should actually cut back on a lot of the wait time currently holding up the queue. This is how I’m understanding it: If players who are paying for their order with nuggets and in game trades plan well and save up as glitch recommended BEFORE they place their order, they are able to by pass the hold and go right to the queue. Same with any player that can purchase their PP themselves. The hold is to get orders that currently cause logjams in the queue out of the way of orders that can be processed smoothly, and put them off to the side so that players who need time to get things in order but need a place to hold their PP while they purchase it/receive it in bits and spurts.

Think of how many times the past month or so we’ve heard people in chat and in complaints about the CC shop being closed voicing their concerns that they wouldn’t have the funds they needed in time, or that the CC shop would close before they could get what they needed and might have to cancel their orders? Order in the queue that don’t end up being fulfilled hold up everyone; the people waiting behind them, the artists who can’t do any work without knowing if the order is going to get paid. Creating a hold at the start gives players time to figure out their finances and orders, allows orders that are funded to go through, and lets the artists do their jobs so they can bang out more finished customs/sprouts/edits.

Thinking about it more I understand why it’s set up like it is and don’t think cashing out the PP to gems if you cancel is really that terrible. It’s just a matter of people being reasonable with themselves about how long it’s going to take to get funds together and what they want, working towards that goal, and then jumping into the queue at a point they know they’ll have everything covered in time instead of trying to scramble frantically closer to acceptance.

Sandhill given how many players I see continuously selling gems in the exchange I’m sure a lot of them will be happy to start offering PP once the shop opens, and it’s not going to be restricted to random times either since it’ll be open all the time now. People want nuggets on this site. If someone is offering them for PP I’m sure someone will step up and sell them

Plasma Yes that’s right. In addition to the $0-on-creation/$10+-charge-on-edit stuff like the horn rotation or tail swap you mentioned, or “simple” scales that alter shading being $10 on creation but i think $15 in the edit queue, etc. I guess my point was the artists would never “lose” anything doing edits at a later time, so the concern seemed a little misplaced. But I probably shouldn’t have said anything at all.
I don’t really think I should comment more about the artistic freedom customs, either, since I’m not really effected by the PP issue there. :/

Overall I’m much much much happier with this system than the previous one. But I don’t think I was ever very reliant on CC in the first place so those are possibly empty words.

edited to add: I think allowing people to change queues is something that should absolutely be implemented. What about allowing people currently “holding” their order to switch queues, but not after they’re actually “in” the queue? That way people are still limited to a 6-month total hold, but are still given the opportunity to get something else with their hard-earned PP (like an edit or a base $50 recolour) rather than being guaranteed to lose it all?

edit 2:
At least if you don’t have enough for a sprout, you can switch to a simpler custom, which doesn’t inherently lose value the way the PP->Gem conversion would. You can also sell customs really easily at a later time to soften the blow of missing out on the thing you *really* wanted. AND, if I’m being over-the-top, I think more custom pets getting sold and traded throughout the site would be good for the economy. Maybe I’m looking the the wrong places, but I don’t see a single unedited custom in the first 2 pages of the directory (the first one I spot is Lavender Melody), and even after that hey’re pretty sparse until you go way back. If people end up buying (and trading/selling) customs around $50 you’d make customs more accessible for free players, and be more likely to see people trading stuff like rare items and lucky changingshroom pets for customs and I think that’s a good thing.

Sandhill If you refer back to my post to baekhesten here, users are allowed to put a custom through the queue with minimal edits if need be to avoid their total PP being converted to gems. After their custom is created with the amount of PP they have available (as long as it equals the base coat), they can enter the edit queue to add on edits they desired on the original custom up to the limit permitted in one order. Artists can always flex to less edits if the amount of PP on hand does not allow for the full custom. You can pick and choose the edits you want and add the others later via the edit queue if you do not have enough funds. There are ways around avoiding the conversion of PP if you do not have enough. As long as you have enough for the base, you will not find yourself being struck with a full PP conversion to gems. :)

Plasma

If you’ll notice, my post primarily deals with sprouts, which are a non-negotiable priced item. Since it’s been stated users aren’t allowed to switch between queues, transfering to a base custom isn’t an option in this case.

i think perhaps my only concern with this so far(that would be applicable to myself anyhow) is the uncertainty of being able to pull off trades for the needed PP in time. i have no idea what the market is going to look like in the far future after i do save up the needed nuggets(or gems, but that currency is only valuable for one shop) to trade for PP, perhaps there will be a surplus of people willing to buy me small amounts of PP to add to the order or perhaps there will be one person, idk. it is more reassuring to have six months in addition to the queue time(although i thought staff wanted to decrease the queue time from its current length…?), so there is a good likelihood that im going to find people in that time to buy it for me.

not that i have any custom plans, but you know. speculating.

Sandhill Sorry about that! I had thought you were throwing Sprouts and Customs all in one (because you had included expensive customs in the $100 statement). As stated previously in thread, if you start saving before entering the hold/queue, you could sell items, pets, et cetera, for nuggets and later trade those nuggets for PP once you do enter the queue. There is no ‘limit’ to collecting funds/items/pets to trade for PP once you do. Nuggets especially are always a wanted commodity and probably the safest route to deal in when looking for trades. You may also want to watch the market to see how many/how frequently users are selling PP for nuggets before creating an order.

If you are worried about not having enough funds and the resulting exchange rate, you should only enter the queue, whether via the holding period or otherwise, when you are certain you can obtain the funds necessary to pay for the order you are requesting.

Phage Users that are holding customs during the sixth-month period are holding themselves out of line. They are not in the queue yet. Once they submit their custom to the queue they step into the order line. This should help to reduce the queue time as users who are saving for their orders may be holding their orders in that niche outside of the actual queue instead of holding a ‘spot’ in the queue line.

that’s what i mean as part of the problem though, shortening of the queue means taking away the additional time for saving PP once the hold time is up. it kinda adds to the uncertainty a bit. is there a way of seeing the queue length before placing an order so as to have a better idea of how much time one would have?

Phage You can currently see what the average length of time users in the queue have waited to have an order accepted! That should give an idea of how long you can expect to have after leaving the hold period. :)

Plasma That’s my problem, though. There’s no way to know if you’ll have enough PP to get a custom until you do it, regardless of how many nuggets you have saved up. Because the system is totally reliant on sellers, there’s no guarantee. You could save up millions of nuggets, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to find someone selling $100 Paws worth of custom credit. There’s no way to know unless you find someone willing to sell you the total amount (which from what I’ve seen in the selling threads is unlikely) or until you go about starting to collect those Paws.

But because once you open an order, you risk losing all the paws you collect through having your order on hold and through the queue (which is much shorter for sprouts than customs), there’s this incredibly awkward period of not knowing if you can get enough in the time period, and there’s nothing you can do about it. No about of saving will miraculously generate people selling Paws. A lot of users seem confident that there will be plenty, and there may be, but the idea that I can’t be sure of that, and if I’m wrong, I lose everything I’ve put into getting that sprout is infuriating.

It’s impossible to know if you will be able to get enough Paws unless you purchase them yourself, and no amount of saving can guarantee getting them. This is why not being allowed to switch queues, or even back out of a hold without losing all of your paws is ludicrous.

I haven’t had the excess funds to spend money here, but with this current system, I know for sure I won’t be spending any. I don’t enjoy gambling, and this seems just that, a massive gamble.

ah, ok! i totally missed that on the page while i was looking for the queue length.

edit: also i think i find myself sharing the same concerns sandhill is expressing. i haven’t bought or sold anything from/to other users on this site in a while, so it’s hard to get a picture of what the frequency of users selling PP will be, and i certainly haven’t been keeping track of CC sales either. i think there is a certain amount of personal responsibility involved with this for sure, but there is also a bit of a gamble.

I’m going to throw something out that may not be an option to all users, and I’m not saying it should be. But there is always offsite trading to get PP. I know with the CC system, there was a user who posted on the FR trade forums that they were looking to buy a flat 100cc = $100 = 20PP. And within 5 minutes of posting, they had 4 people offer to make that trade with them, and had to turn 3 people away. I know not everybody is rich enough on other sites (some don’t even frequent other sites), but it is something to think about if you want to save up for PP thag badly.

Thank you to all the staff for being on top of everyone’s questions! It really means a lot to have a team who doesn’t leave us hanging or trying to discuss it amongst ourselves. :)

Sandhill My advice to you would be to watch the marketplace before creating an order. There is no guarantee you will be able to trade your commodities for PP in the sixth-month timeframe, that’s true, but if you plan ahead and save your commodities and wait till you see you can trade for a larger portion of the PP you need, there should not be a high-risk gamble in then creating an order for that PP to go towards if you think you can then obtain the remaining PP. From there you will have six months from creating your order to then collect the rest of your necessary funds, but if you do not think you can acquire that PP during the hold/queue time, then save your commodities and continue to watch the market while saving more. There is no gamble in saving till you are certain you can afford PP—such as when there is an unexpected boom in the PP marketplace that you can then trade for to obtain the amount you do need for your order.

If saving and watching the marketplace are not suited toward your tastes, perhaps customs are not the route you want to go, and you should invest your time and money into personalizing oots/event/other obtainable coat-pets with items instead. It may be a less frustrating option and make your experience on Mycena Cave more enjoyable.

personally, i think it’s kind of unfair to turn customs into basically a gamble. turning the system into one that’s a lot more risk-based seems… iffy, to me. i understand the problem of people hoarding PP, but i kind of feel like this creates more problems than it solves.

I actually have one question that is unrelated to any discussion so far (at least I think so?)

What about secure trading for PP?
I know pp cannot be transferred from order to order. What I’m asking is if I offered to trade 1pp nuggets for 20k. User x puts the nuggets in a trade, so I send the PP. User x then cancels the trade and keeps both the nuggets and the pp. I know this was just as likely to happen with cc trades. I’m wondering if the new system means more security? (All the people I trade with I already trust, so I don’t think it will be an issue for me personally.) In the event it does happen though, will we be able to provide the staff with a transcript of the deal and get it reversed (Provided the conversation happened on the mycena cave web site)?
Also, since pp is always purchasable, this is less likely to happen, but if I were paying nuggets for pp, and I sent the nuggets first (or accidentally accepted the trade for the nuggets) and the person I’m buy pp from takes the nuggets but never pays, will that be protected even though it’s technically an oversight on the part of the person who sent the nuggets?

edit: I think it’d be cool if there was a way to add PP to trades (not moving it from one order to another, but when the USD paymet for PP was being made, you could add it to a trade so shoe you’d made the transaction), and if the trade didn’t go through, then the credit card/paypal transaction was reversed, but I understand that’s too much of a nightmare when it comes to EU users and a coding nightmare as well.

I would also like to remind everyone that while we understand that customs and sprouts are a very desirable aspect of Mycena Cave, they are similar in nature to “cash shop” options found on other sites, i.e. site items or pets only purchasable through USD. Originally, the CC system was created as a means of assisting players who wanted to split payments on customs with friends. However, in practice, it developed into a means for players who were unable to spend USD on site to acquire customs for themselves. With this new system, we made adjustments based on your feedback to try to best accommodate both of these uses.

At the end of the day, customs and sprouts are an extra perk to our gameplay for those who are able to acquire the funds to afford them, and not a standard feature of the site. We are doing our best to aid players who are unable to support the site directly with USD, but cannot guarantee that every player will be able to obtain a custom or sprout. We sincerely appreciate everyone who assists in maintaining Mycena Cave either by purchasing PP directly or indirectly, and wish all of you the best of luck in your trades and savings!

I actually really like this update, it seems a good way to keep Mycena afloat…! One day I hope to purchase my own custom with a mix of my own money and PP, so this seems okay to me.

I’m not sure how this is any more of a gamble then the old system where people were setting up trades on nothing more then a promise that in two months if/when the CC shop opened someone was going to try and buy you CC before the shop closed again. This way the shop is open all the time. There is no risk you’re going to be stuck not getting paid for your trade because of a cap and an unpredictable opening. It’s just my opinion but I really think we should try to be optimistic and at least give this a chance before just dismissing it. It’s a lot to take in, but once it’s in action it might work out better then you think

ArintolPP trading like you describe was another feature (along with the queue switch & a few others) that we discussed about adding to this release, but when it came down to choosing the group of features that were essential, that was something that was not included because of the extra coding required! That being said, I don’t think anyone could find flaws with adding a similar feature, so it’s an idea we’d be willing to implement in the future.

We do support PP trades for custom orders you currently have open, and we definitely encourage you to keep trade agreement records on site through echoes or the forums. In the case that a trade partner was ever to attempt to scam you in that sort of exchange, staff will definitely step in to support you as long as you have some documentation of the agreement.

Dove
well i would like to point out that on other sites you can usually a) trade cash shop currency with other players, and b) you don’t have a time limit on your currency.

that said i understand the point you’re trying to make. i just am iffy on the idea of a “cash shop” currency basically timing out.

Hina
that was inherent to the previous system though; you didn’t have to build up iou’s to get a custom. with this though, you have to gamble, and you have the chance of losing all the work you put into it.

edit: i’m not trying to dismiss the system either, i am just trying to consider some of the flaws and potential problems and see if we can work that out.

It’s unfortunate that my primary concern with CC has not been addressed. As an international player, the additional step required to get a PayPal receipt both confuses and concerns me somewhat. Is there any reason that PayPal isn’t used on-site, and we (Non-US players) have to go through Glitch?

Myla Ah, I had not taken into account coding difficulties.. In any case, if you guys are open (& able) to allowing the option of switching between queues without the loss of PP - even if it’s like a once per order type of thing - I would really, really appreciate it (as I’m sure so would others!). It might take some of the sting out of the more… ahh.. gambling nature of PP as it stands now.

I think maybe setting certain “allowances” of switches per order, even if it’s only once, would help eliminate loopholes? Perhaps removing the hold time, too? Like.. say you were in the sprout queue and you already used up your 6 month hold time, but you still came up short. You’re offered one queue change. You would then use that to hop into another queue, but without the option of a hold time since you already used it while waiting in the sprout queue? That way you can’t jump around forever using up wait periods indefinitely, if you’re against that idea. So, you’d be afforded the same amount of time as everyone else you’d just be losing your chance at a sprout and then jumping to the back of the custom queue?

I know most people tend to have a few orders planned out at a time, so this might help out with that. Some people are also just… kinda indecisive and jump between queues as it stands right now. I know I’ve done it. haha.

Hina Just wanted to address your post at me real quick, sorry I’m kinda behind! haha.

You do raise a good point I hadn’t considered. This should help alleviate queue wait times. However, I definitely think the custom queue will always be quite a bit lengthier than the sprout queue in particular due to the 4 month cooldown on sprouts, etc. So, custom orders will still likely have an extended wait time over sprouts, thus giving people more time to make PP for those orders.. is what I was trying to get at? Even if the custom wait time was cut in half that’s still over a month of extra wait time to rack up PP, y’know? That’s mostly what I was getting at with my worries about the hold time. But.. there’s really not much you can do about that either way, I suppose! o: /ramble

Actually you did have to build up IOUs if you were counting on others to purchase the CC for you because the shop wasn’t open and you couldn’t receive what you were trading for. That is exactly what CC was turning into, with people this last opening complaining of not being able to “pay off/collect on debts” because they had to cap how much people could buy to make sure people could have a chance.

And if you wait till you can buy your PP you don’t have to worry about it “timing out”. You don’t have to start an order before you start saving nuggets/things to trade. With a 6 month hold before you even have to get in the queue, plus however long the queue time stabilized you have over half a year to get your order and payment worked out. It puts responsibility on the players yes, and requires some work. But it’s not impossible.

Corvani no problems, and I understand. But hopefully this will help saw off a good 30 days or so. I might be a little too hopeful on that on, but a girl can dream right? xD