Lycan, I actually asked glitch that same question yesterday!

If you and user x win with pair a, then your & user x’s tickets get removed from the raffle.
If you and user y then also have pair b, user y’s tickets could still win for pair b (but your tickets could not because they’ve been removed) :)

Ah, great, thanks Juney!
So it basically comes down to “one user can only win one baby regardless of how many pairings” correct?

Well, that I don’t know — only that your tickets get removed, so you cannot win for pair b anymore. If your friend wins for pair b, you may or may not -also- still get a baby from that pairing?

I think the ‘amount of babies’ dependency is based on the amount of users in the ‘rass (being one, or two), and not on how many people participated with tickets for that pairing in the raffle.

@Lycan- “I’m not sure how hard it would be to write a code for something like this, but is there a way to make sure those particular $10 pets can be traded, but if someone tries to add more than 3 gems to the trade (for one-way trade purposes) it won’t go through?”

I can see a problem here- Any extra payment could just be gifted to the seller, or put into another trade. I’m assuming that’s why they made the initial decision to just lock the pets.
It also rubbed me the wrong way and I brought it up to glitch and Myly last night. For right now I’m content to wait and see what final decision they come to.

Ah yeah, that’s very true, Sapphy.
I suppose I’m just… too honest in thinking that I wouldn’t ever do that and I’m too trusting of people at time to think someone on here would be that underhanded ;;

Ah well, it’s an idea, though.
Maybe we could have a way that the trade has to be alerted to a mod, and then the two accounts will be on watch for x amount of time unbeknownst to the user? I know that’s a bit… extreme… but considering that the most likely reason someone gives their recreation away is because they would be leaving, they most likely wouldn’t be logging on to anything major after they possibly sold their other pets/items? Mmm, but I know that comes with some pretty big stipulations of privacy at the same time, even though I realize staff can see everything we’re doing anyway x’D

@Lycan- that’d be a lot of work on the Mods’ part. On top of that, it probably would be announced that was part of the stipulation. Meaning the point of ‘secretly watching’ would..sorta be null and void because they could just.. wait for the time period to be over and then just throw the stuff at the other party then.
=\

Like Glitch said- It’s complicated.

@Akira, Juney: following the description here, a single user may indeed receive two babies under the following circumstances:
- user X and user Y have have pets in karass A
- user Y and user Z have pets in karass B
- one of user X’s tickets gets drawn, she chooses karass A
- all tickets belonging to users X and Y are removed
- one of user Z’s tickets gets drawn, she chooses Karass B
- all tickets belonging to users Z and Y are removed (Y didn’t have any left though, so really just Z’s tickets)

—————————————-

@Corvani, Ishy and Sapphy, Akira: while in theory we could “watch” users like you describe, we respect your right to privacy and will not do so without strong suspicion of dishonesty or rulebreaking. I think not having a strong policy against “snooping” would be very detrimental to this community: I am a strong believer that surveillance begets self-censorship, self-censorship limits free-thinking and creativity, and that’s pretty orthogonal to what we’re trying to accomplish here.

Ordinarily I would be tight-lipped about this until we’ve reached a final decision, but since this involves things that many of you are emotionally attached to, I think perhaps I should make an exception. I’m very much of two minds about this. On the one hand, your things should be yours to do with as you please, and anything else undermines the notion of ownership (I am staunchly against things like laws that say you can’t jailbreak your phone, etc) and how you acquired them should be irrelevant. On the other hand, envision this scenario in your real life: you spend hours hand-making a gift (well, almost-gift anyway) something you would normally sell, for someone you care for in the hopes of cheering them up; in some cases, you spend more than a week getting it just right just for them; then you watch them turn around and sell it on ebay for a tidy sum. Customs are one thing — they’re a thing that we sell, the artists are reasonably rewarded, so do with them as you please — but the recreations effort was an enormously taxing endeavor for our artists, who got very little besides the gratitude of the people receiving them as reward.

I don’t know how best to handle this.

I have enormous respect for you collectively as a community — I honestly think we have the best and most thoughtful members anywhere. So I am opening this topic up for debate. I’ve laid out my thoughts, and will accept whatever consensus you reach.

Please bear in mind that this is an emotionally charged issue for many, and so responses might not be as level-headed as they would otherwise be. As such, (a) please be mindful about how what you say might be interpreted by someone who is already on-edge, and (b) if somebody says something that rubs you the wrong way, please be extra-forgiving <3.

I respect you more than you would even know, glitch, for giving us the full right to privacy and anything that could be deemed censorship. Taking that into consideration is really important, which is why when I was explaining possibilities I labeled them as extreme. It’s more or less brain storming, and I apologize if I offend anyone whatsoever with anything I say about this topic — it’s merely just discussion.

Being staff for a variety of sites throughout the year and seeing the interactions between the community and staff and how the rules were carried out is really interesting. I have a firm belief that if absolutely possible, intervening as little to allow the users to say most anything as they please if they are being respectful, letting people express their thoughts and creativity to the utmost and listening to the community firstly because that’s what petsites come down to. Even if you like forums and interact with people or if you only want to play by yourself for any reason, it still depends on the player for the success of the site. But you also have to understand that *sometimes* rules are there for a reason and are necessary.

But I digress. I guess the main issues is with how the artists feel about it. How do they feel about being able to trade your pets away if you end up leaving so other people can enjoy the recreations? I know the artists have put A TON of work for little than gratitude, but I’m intrigued about that aspect of it. I do agree that selling it off like that is… how do I say this… perceived as “disrespectful” considering the circumstances, but at the same time, I really hate the idea of letting something that hours of work was put into it sit on a dead account, if we are speaking about it theoretically. I’m curious to hear the honest opinion of the artists that worked on these to get a better sense of this matter. 

As I’ve stated, I’d prefer to have the liberty to do what I’d like with my pets. If there are restrictions, I’d like the option to be able to give away a pet to another user* or to “surrender” them to admins, where they could introduce the pet back into the site however they pleased (whether it’s making them a monthly coat, an event coat, or keep it a unique custom & raffle it off).

I do understand that you guys made the recreations for people to bring their valued characters onto the site. It’s unfortunate that people are selling their customs all ready, but I’d prefer seeing any pet on any account where people will value them. When the recreations were opened, it was a hard decision on who I wanted to bring on there (aside from having many customs, I really like them, lol). I decided to bring Miel over here because my other pets are “darker” & I figured, based on her character, she would be the easiest to mold to fit into canon roleplay on here.

The reason why I’m mentioning this is because Miel wasn’t designed by me, but Kyu Love. It was my favorite female custom on the site, so when I saw her for sale, I was thrilled to get the opportunity to own her. Since Kyu sold her to me, she didn’t leave my account. I wanted her because it was a design I would’ve never came up with on my own. I’ve seen people buy customs, keep them, & value them.

I guess I’d rather just see these recreations in active accounts than for them to be locked in an inactive account.

I’ve already spoken to you, glitch and Myly, though rather indirectly about the subject. So I’ll try to be brief here. But as someone who has attempted and contemplated selling a recreation custom, I thought it’s important to understand why and how I came to that decision.

On digis, I had one coloration that I liked more than any of the others. I never even guessed that I’d get one, since it was extremely rare, but through a raffle I got extremely lucky. I created a character for her that I loved significantly. I got lots of art for her, as I’m sure many of you already know, and I somewhat paraded her about whenever I got the chance, because I adored her that much.

I was hesitant to bring any pets over to Mycena through the recreation channels because at the time I was still on the fence about the site. Ultimately I ended submitting her on the last possible day, because I did love her dearly and I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to get her here as soon as possible. I had no intent to abuse the system, to get a cheap pet and turn around for massive profit. I was just getting a character that I loved who, by all means, I would have likely gotten through the normal custom channels were those open from the beginning.

Unfortunately, I have had a falling out of sorts of the person I intended to RP her with. Her character had been mostly developed entirely for that pairing and that situation, so ultimately her character can no longer exist to the capacity that it did. The collaborative effort between me and the other individual about her storyline makes it so that I can not effectively reuse it on my own. And this event has come at a poor time in my life where it is not easy for me to just accept and move on. In effect, the entire entity that was my character is no longer available to me, and looking at the pet that represented something I loved so much but can’t have anymore makes me very uncomfortable.

Thus, I came to the decision to sell her. I attempted to for FR currency while I was still on shaky ground and wasn’t really sure where I’d end up, but at the moment FR has me quite concerned so I decided against that. I was lured back regarding another pairing with a different individual, but my first recreation was still there. She did not suddenly cease to exist.

So after having very little say in her recreation to begin with, and then having a very unavoidable falling out, I am also losing the right to trade/sell her freely so that she could go to someone else who might love her more than I can right now. With this rule, I feel like I have lost the right to my pet. I have the utmost respect for the artists for doing these recreations, because they didn’t have to. But I have been presented with the option of ‘keep her or delete her’ which seems even more disrespectful as the hard work that was put into her recreation would disappear rather than go to someone else who could love her.

Were this rule part of the stipulation regarding recreations to begin with, I wouldn’t have pursued that route whatsoever. Rather, I would have waited for the regular avenue for customs so that I would have some rights to them, both in creation and ownership. I am very much against adding rules to purchases after they have already been made.

I feel the reason this restriction was implemented is because the recreation customs were obtained for a ‘mere’ $10 each for a good 3-10 hours of artist work each; they were restricted to two per account because there would already be an insane amount to be redesigned and it was a massive undertaking.

To then, for whichever very good reason, see those customs being sold for a much, much higher value than the $10 that was paid for them, just stings.

I would personally suggest
a) make sales of recreation customs have a price cap for the first 1-2 years after obtaining and make this moderator-involved,
b) after that period, lift the cap

or alternatively,

c) restrict the re-sale of recreation customs for 1-2 years, after which the sale ban is lifted.

The price cap/sale restriction would ensure that recreation customs are not sold ‘just for the profit’, which is subjective and cannot be checked by any system. After a grace period, it can be certain that there are definitely good reasons to sell a custom. I realise neither of these are ideal either, especially if you’ve built up an aversion for a character, but it’s a compromise.

I understand both sides of the arguments, including ‘growing apart from’ a custom, wanting to be able to leave fully, and it being odd to change the rules after the fact. Also including the artist effort and ‘turning around and selling for a fortune more’ sting.

Otherwise, the outcome will not in any way affect me, as my customs will always stay on my account except if I at some point move in with Kris, when they would be moved to her account. If I ‘leave’ them, she will be the only one I would ever allow to reuse them, and I would feel incredibly uncomfortable with any stranger reusing my designs :)

-x-

Another suggestion would be to charge an extra fee for the first year (e.g. end around December 31st, 2014) to those that want to sell their recreation customs, for example in the shape of $20 extra or a ~15 gem/60k nugget transfer fee.

After a year, that could then be dropped.

It seems the easiest to implement, and the softest compromise. If you can no longer stand the sight of a custom on your profile, it should be worth spending that amount, as you got the custom cheap initially anyway.

Well, since it was requested I drop in my opinion here…
My pet recreation was a Generation 2. I have no intention of ‘quitting’ or being ‘inactive’ on here anytime soon. But it pains me to have something that’s nothing more than a personal burden to me now. I honestly had no intentions to sell her when I first got her. Heck, she was pet was the pet I drew the most ever since I got her as a custom recreation! I even used her as the main character for the Halloween Event, so no one can say otherwise about me not caring about her. Since she was a Gen 2, I had full intent on raising her with her family and the whole roleplay was meant to be moved here.

Unfortunately, there was a… ‘problem’ ... that set in between me and my partner and our friendship ended. I did leave her old Digis version’(along with a lot of other things) with her ‘family’ and quit the website without looking back. I had even debated on just giving the recreation to them but ahahah… The reason why I didn’t is personal. Because of this, I spent two weeks debating on what to do. I am someone who has the tendency push things that remind me of someone out of my life and I never did anything like this before, on a pet site that is. It was very hard for me.  I didn’t have close enough friends to leave her with. Or I do, but neither of the two possible people weren’t active on here. And I actually do want her to go to an active home with someone who might do something with her.

One of my first intentions was to raffle her off. But I came to remember how people on Digis (sorry for using this as an example) sold off what was given to them as charity was not something I wished to happen to her. I settled for selling her off with a cost so at least someone would be serious with keeping her. It wasn’t to make ‘a quick buck’ off her, it was more of finding a small piece of hope she’d get a decent home with someone with better intentions. (Also no, I wouldn’t have expected the person who bought her to keep her forever or do something with her on the spot. Because I understand these scenarios too much.)
A friend suggested I used a mushroom to change her but, honestly, would it please any of the artists if I went that route?

The idea of having her stuck to my account forever legitimately horrifies me because it means there’s nothing but bad memories seeping out of her and her character. The idea of keeping people pinned to pets feels really unjust to me. Because you never know how it is for someone. I would have understood if this was a rule implemented to begin with, but it wasn’t. I suppose we were ‘given the benefit of a doubt’. But, honestly, things aren’t going to go right for everyone one of us. Especially the ones who have/had broken relationships. So it feels like a battle about hard work against emotional suffering.

If my Gen 2 isn’t going to down the path I intended for her: She needs a new home. Period. I can’t even make a new character for her, and trust me, I tried.  I also don’t think i’d like her to become a ‘site color’. Because it’s just going to hurt me more seeing something similar floating around. I guess it’ll seem ‘selfish’ or ‘childish’, but whatever.

I may or may not have grazed over most of this debate in case a lot of what I read came off too bitter for my taste. So sorry if I might have ignored anything. I’m still upset over this and really don’t need the stress after managing to come out the depression I went through last month.

Although I’d like to thank Siren for her earlier input. Especially since she’s one of the few people who knew about the details. And i’d also like to thank Glitch for hearing me out in our echo!

I had no intentions on upsetting the artists/admins and I apologize deeply if it seemed like that. I never meant any disrespect at all. I don’t want to seem like I was taking the recreation custom option for granted. Especially since I was tight on money and even fretted over bringing my Gen 2 here. I do appreciate that the option was made but I am also sorry my standpoint with my recreation changed as time went by or ‘so soon’ as implied earlier.

On a site like this customs will sell for a lot regardless of how much was spent on their creation, Diglett.

I think what this boils down to is that the agreement was already made. Mycena didn’t put any restrictions on the discount recreations at the time of sale, and that means you don’t have control over what happens to these pets in the future. If people want to disrespect your gift and resell their pets for profit, then that’s how it is. And if people want to generously gift these pets to their friends without intending any disrespect to the artists, then I think Mycena should be happy you have such an amazingly friendly userbase.

I was surprised to read the announcement yesterday, but I can see where it is coming from. $10 dollars was an amazing price for the recreations, especially considering Aria and I each spent well over $100 dollars on digis for each of the customs we brought over here. Priscilla especially couldn’t have been easy to recreate.

However, I definitely see the other side - especially since this is coming after the recreations have already been completed. I’m lucky enough to share a cave with the only person I’d consider giving one of my customs too (I’m possessive and would leave them on my account if I quit, not try to sell or give them away), but my situation is unusual. I like Juney’s idea of maybe “no sale allowed” without admin/moderator approval for a period of a year or two; that way users who have a need to part with a customs have an avenue to do so.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there is an easy answer. Allowing them to be sold is understandably probably disheartening for the artists and not allowing them to be given away/sold is disheartening for the users since it wasn’t in the original terms of the offer. I don’t know. It is really tough situation.

— Stevie

I suppose I didn’t quite consider enough on the artists’ end and for that I do feel bad. But as others have stated, wouldn’t they feel better seeing their hard work live on then be deleted? I don’t know. I understand it’s a very messy and complicated situation. I am very glad that you’ve opened it for more discussion, though. Thank you!

Juney’s ideas aren’t bad. Although, I feel a period of 1-2 years is a bit… excessive? Something like six months to a year tops seems more palatable to me. I suppose I would prefer allowing people to sell or gift them with mod/admin interaction for a set period of time and then lift the “ban”, so to speak.

I don’t know. I honestly still feel this should have been hammered out prior to the recreation sale and no matter what you do at this point it’s is bound to ruffle feathers (which is completely understandable!). It’s a tough spot… I’m not quite sure how I feel about any of these ideas even, but it seems a lot fairer than saying “no you can’t ever trade this”. Honestly, though, in situations such as Ishy’s and Yuni’s it seems… unfair that they would have to carry around a bunch of bad memories for a set amount of months or years simply because they happened to remake their customs rather than pay for them full-sale (which was not open at the time, regardless!). I suppose I just really sympathize with those two in regards to their situations. I’ve been there. I’m still there right now. Often I think I would have been better off completely scrapping my characters and selling off their pet representations. I totally get where they’re coming from.

Really though, I’m still pretty staunchly for allowing people to do as they wish, but… well, yeah. I’d rather see a compromise worked out than never being allowed to trade my recreations if I was ever so inclined.

Just chiming in here and keeping it super short so as not to steer the discussion too much:

Regardless of what happens, if a time-frame is involved there would need to be a way around it. A couple people have already posted in this thread that their custom causes them a certain degree of unpleasantness when they see it, and telling them “sorry, you have to hold on to your pet for X more months, deal with it” isn’t something I want to do.

Thanks, and carry on!

Auswren - It’s attitudes like this that make it even harder to have this sort of discussion. Being labeled as disrespectful when I have done everything I can to avoid such is infuriating. It’s why I addressed Myly and glitch privately before ever posting here. I have been stewing over this decision for weeks, and you can ask anyone who I talk to with some frequency. they’ll tell you that it hasn’t been easy. Most conversations about it wind up in tears on my part, so no, it’s not that I want to slander a gift that I’ve been given.

Ultimately, I paid for a product. Yes, it was a very generous and unnecessary offer on the Mycena admins and artists, but it was an offer they made in exchange for payment. I paid that fee, many times over as I paid for a couple other users to get recreations as they couldn’t afford them themselves, with the understanding that the pet I received would be the same as any other custom. The fact that this is changing is what upsets me.

I am not trying to disrespect the artists, as I have made clear to the artist who worked on my recreation. She of all people knows how hard this time has been for me. In fact, I am very much trying to avoid disrespect by finding my pet a home rather than simply having her be deleted and the art that was worked on wasted. But I am also attempting, at least in part, to receive compensation for the fee I did pay for said recreation.

I would very much appreciate if you could keep your accusations private, because you don’t know the situations that people are going through that ultimately lead to decisions like these. Feel free to be as rude as you like in private, but for the sake of keeping the discussion as civil as possible, I’d thank you to keep it off the forum for now.

(Eeeee, happy birthday Tiddles!!!! <333 Those nails are awesome, Foxcat)

Sorry for sliding off the topic a little, but for the people using the linearts for mockups and custom planning, I updated the ineki lineart earlier today.  The lineart available is now slightly larger and has the correct relative canvas size for those people planning edits.  I also included winged versions of all of the ineki.  The link is here in case you missed it in the original post!

Happy birthday Tidda! :D

***

I can’t say much on the artist side of things since I was only just hired as an artist, but I want to first state that I understand both sides of this coin; user and artist.

Characters are something that you cherish and wish to keep with you, but there might come a time when something happens; there’s a fall-out, disagreement, or something else unpleasant happens that then becomes attached to the pet. Looking at, seeing, hearing about, or otherwise thinking about that character then becomes a burden/pain and makes it hard to see them. However much it pains you, that character was precious to you, and always will be precious to you. Even if it causes you pain, you still want to see that character/coloration go to a good home where they would be cared for just as much as you cared for them.

However...I also see an artist standpoint. While no, I wouldn’t want to watch something I worked on be deleted/mushroomed over, that is the user’s decision. I respect a user’s decision to sell off/trade their character since it is their character.

But what if we capped them? For example, what if there was a stipulation written into the Customs in general that you cannot sell them for more than you paid. That way custom recreations cannot be sold for more than 10 gems or 36k nuggets. Customs made regularly would be capped by gem/nugget value of what the user pays for them. That way, should the user decide they no longer want the pet and would like to sell/trade them, they can, but cannot go over the price of what they paid for them.

I make this suggestion because it sounds like the only reason someone would want to sell a custom would be because they’ve lost interest or can’t handle seeing the character any more for whatever emotional/personal reasons. Users shouldn’t be looking to make a profit, but may want to get their monies-worth back on what they paid for. This would eliminate the ‘bound’ rule, and would also give the users the right to sell/trade the pets since they paid for them.

I think that, at least with the recreations, they would probably be selling and/or trading to someone they know - at least that is what it sounds like on this discussion. Bearing that in mind, if they want to give/trade or sell that custom to someone they know will care for the character and not go through official sales threads, they wouldn’t have a problem. If they decide to open it up to the entire user based…it may sound harsh but that would be something they would need to figure out. I personally would probably resort to the old Neo style of running through an adoption application of sorts, where users come up with a character for that pet and submit it. Whoever they think would take care of the pet the most would then be chosen.

It is hard to think about, since I personally would be overwhelmed, but I also have a hard time thinking about trying to sell a custom without personally knowing what the user would then do with him/her. Again, you’re giving up your rights to that custom - that new owner could then do whatever they want with it - so it really doesn’t matter…

Coming from a personal, user standpoint, I would probably end up selling and/or trading my custom to someone I know will take care of them. At which point I wouldn’t be concerned about making a profit instead of getting my money back for what I’ve spent. In such a case, it would be a private sale rather than a public one.

I’m sorry to heard that two of you are going through that much because of your characters. I can’t relate however, I’ve never had an issue where one of my characters brought me pain or made me cry. I’ve also never been impacted by a person so much that ending my friendship caused me to disregard the character completely. Any time I’ve let go of characters it was because they were under-developed, my interests changed, or I was frozen on neopets.

I wasn’t suggesting that you would be forced to give up a pet to admins, it would be voluntarily. If it brings you that much pain, I understand why you wouldn’t want that pet showcased by being “reused” as a monthly, event, or otherwise. I also don’t like the idea of putting price ceilings on all customs. I thought the issue here was the recreations and not customs as a whole.

We’ve read everyone’s responses, considered them carefully, and would like to propose the following idea:

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If you add a pet to a trade, IF it is a $10 recreation that is less than a year old and has never been traded before, a confirmation screen will pop up with a message saying something along the lines of “hey, this pet was a $10 recreation - if you’re making a profit, please consider using a portion of it to commission something nice for the artist that made it: [recreation artist]”. Clicking ‘OK’ dismisses the message, and actually complying with it will be entirely at the seller’s choice. Whether they do so will not be monitored, but we hope they will ^^

Additionally, if a pet (any custom, not just the $10 recreations) is causing you unpleasant feelings, contact an admin and they can move it to the Bone Monster’s profile while making a note that it is actually yours. You can then deal with it in whatever way you would like in whatever timeframe you would like, while having it not on your profile.
———————————————————

Does anybody have concerns that this does not address? Is there anything anybody would change about it?