The proliferation of many items on the site is not necessarily a bad thing, but as you said, that may be an interesting avenue to take to spice things up with some of the more stagnant items. There's a certain sense of a curiosity that having new items brings to the average user, and although usability may be only high on more elevated levels of play, having multitudes of filler stuff is important.
The cooking pot comes to mind when you mention item combining, and there are some really awesome items out there with unique properties; like NCB working only against chia's. However, other items like spoppy, mixed petpets, etc. only serve as much usefulness as their ingredients, but are neat in how you create them anyway.
Yeah, I guess theres nothing too bad about having less useful or useless items.
I've also been thinking, I think it's important that this site offers something that neopets doesn't offer.
I think that it would be wise to aim the site towards teens and adults, still make the game accessible for kids/everybody.
Don't let it look like it's made for 5 year olds though. Neopets wasn't originally created for kids anyways
Totally agreed. However, it should still be approachable by all audiences... For example, people shouldn't just be able to throw out profanities and such all over the boards. Yeah, the rowdy users will like it, but it'll darken the community as a whole. Improvements I can see over a neopets-style set of rules really just requires moderation that isn't completely ridiculous.
Honestly, to start out, there shouldn't be much problem with a user base... If it is enough like the old neopets, people will just come streaming in for no pretense other than nostalgia's sake. Past that it'd have to be good enough to where people told it to their friends, etc. etc.
Yeah neopets is controlled to the extent where people are scared to do anything, People are frozen for everything and nothing.
Also responsive staff would be nice!
Incorporating good user suggestions into the game similar to what was done when Neopets first started would be awesome as well.
I agree, all audiences should be able to play. It just needs to appeal to older audiences visually right?
I really really like the customization aspect of neo, but I also think it became the only thing they cared about. It's a good way to generate profit for your site, and I'm fairly sure it's one of the only reasons neo still works. They have to generate googobs of money, and it's ridiculously addictive. I'm not saying it should be a HUGE part of a new site, just saying that it's definitely something to consider. Everyone on neo has their own niche. I personally love customizing, collecting avatars, battling, and restocking.
Restocking on neo is a fantastic system. I like that they have both things like the attic and things that are random, I think having a method of clearing out backlogged shops would be beneficial however, because that's one of the bigger issues with neo now.
I don't think there necessarily have to be human avatars, although I love dressing up mine on Subeta... which could be because I like customization in general.
For the most part I think like @(you need an account to see links) said, looking at neo for good ideas is the best place to start. They have to have something going for them to still be surviving after all of this. Creating an atmosphere of being better than your neighbors and competition is why people keep coming back. Things like kadding, restocking, battling, avatars etc are all different niches people like to fill.
I also LOVE chatting in guilds/on boards, so I would love if this was implemented, along with Plots. Things like that build community.
I would love to help out/etc. I'm sure you could really find some amazing support, and as long as you're not stepping on any licensing toes, you have a lot of potential. Clraik has some amazing artists already, and you could always draw the attention of more. Content is definitely something that draws people in, both through restocking/prizes. I think looking at Subeta/Neo and seeing what works & what doesn't work is an excellent place to begin.
I think older audiences are important, but keep in mind, the only older people willing to start taking care of a virtual pet are people that are from neopets. It's a very inherently childish idea behind the whole premise of the site, but it does work; however, it'd have to be able to retain younger people or else be nothing due to a lack of players.
Definitely evolving pets with branching evolutions would be nice in my opinion but make them hard to achieve to be actually worth something.. like unconverted pets I guess sorry I can only really compare to neo, also I think having a player character and customization would be best but maybe add some stuff for customizing pets later on... anyways as long as the player avatars don't look like Gaia I wouldn't have much to complain about
Also live chat rooms in certain parts of the site would be great since neoboards are the worst thing ever invented... I miss the ones they had in the shops back in the day
if you could just make a new neopets website that followed all the same plots etc that would be great I'm sad there are things that I'll never be able to get namely plot/retired trophies and avatars
^don't do this
Also... if you do implement a shop like system, definitely make it so auto-buyers etc. can be used from day one even if it means entering a captcha on each purchase. This means more people will spend more time actively playing on your site and also make it so there's less of a chance of a small group of people.. namely us, being in possession of the majority of useful and desirable items.
Lemme know if and when you start alpha/beta testing
---------- Post added at 12:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:53 AM ----------
Just thought of something else... instead of having so many useless boring flash games
Maybe make something reminiscent of pokemon where you use your creature to gather items and battle against other creatures.. this could be supplemented with the same kinds of luck games and wheels/scratchcards etc and it would probably be a lot of work but I'd definately rather play a decent version of neoquest/pokemon than petpet battles or hannah and the pirate caves etc.
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