Neopets

[bell02+]

... :-D
Okay, since this is about a website (even if not directly) I assume it goes here..

I'm trying to get information on Neopets form former (especially) users and current users, also people that may even never heard of it until now. I don't think there are many users here anymore, but any input from current and former users would be really appreciated! ^_^;

Okay, this is what I really want to know:

1. 
   
   [*]Did you ever have an account at Neopets? How long have you had the account? Any In game Achievements? (hi scores? a lot of money? awards? strong pets?)
   [*]Do you still use it? If not, what made you stop? What made you stay?
   [*]What is it that you like about Neopets?
   [*]What do you not like about Neopets?
   [*]What would you want to be improved about Neopet's Site?
   [*]Would you be open to trying other game sites with a similar set up? What is one thing you may want to see?
   

Please note if you had any deal breaking or bad situations that have happened to any of you or your friends, anything that you feel makes the game boring or why you come back to the site.

Also how do you feel about immersion advertising? (such as billboards in/ or sponsored games or advertisements in the form of in-game items) Is it wrong or subliminal to you? Why? Also what is your view on merchandising? Where would you draw the line and what would you like?

Also, do you have any issues on how much children should be protected from. For example, the word "Myspace" is considered vulgar at Neopet's website (XD) and people are restricted on many things such as displaying outside images and talking about/displaying issues of sexuality or religion. However, try to keep in mind that 9 and 10 year olds may be a user on this site, although their accounts are more restricted. Should they be kept from the gambling mini-games? Many franchises for kids have casinos and gambling as a predominate feature, like in Pokemon, Mario, and Sonic series.

The second part of questions isn't required to get a response from, but I know there are a lot of intelligent members on this site that can discuss and debate some of the issues of morality from the site.

The reason for this sudden burst of interest is that I recently returned to the site after a long while reactivating an old account (bell02alpha) and I was shocked to see that nothing had really changed from about 5 years (or more) ago! I thought the site could really kick off when I was younger, but I am severely disappointed in this site! Other than my old accounts being hijacked or frozen I been trying to like it again, but it doesn't seem like it tried to fix any problems.

(please take no offense to this, fans!) It still features monsters that aren't creatively designed (although their artists have gotten significantly better). It still is built to be difficult and time consuming to ever achieve anything (getting a strong monster or getting enough money)! Also, the games still don't seem fun and the Neopets world games (battling and such) are still boring and uninspired.

So I am taking it on myself to try to make my own web-based monster-raising game (as a side project). I can't make any promises about it ever coming out, but I can see it as a place to dump mini-game ideas as with learn flash scripting and improve my PHP P) I've been waiting for Neopets to blossom into something great and I think it may be time to make it evolve or die.

It's really early in its stages and I want to see if it is worth it to look into. Also don't see myself having the time to seriously work on this outside of art and concepts until maybe mid to late summer 07, but if I am able to take this further, bulbagarden will be the first to know about it.

Also, if you have any tips on web-based security, let me know too. I know the larger the site the more prone it will probably get to hackers. Any tips on players cheating is also good for input.

geez, this kind of feels like an ad..
*crosses fingers for many responses*

 

[Joey]

1/2: I used to play. My main account will be 5 years old in June. My main achievements would be some old articles that I wrote for the Neopian Times. I guess I'm pretty rich too, close to 8 mil in the bank with another million invested in stocks. I've got an original draik too, which is pretty awesome. And I had a scary high solitaire score, like 1.3 million.
3: I occasionally log in to buy and sell stocks if I remember, but I'm not too serious about it. I quit playing when I had a bunch of accounts frozen for having too many, and lost a whole lot of expensive pets.
4: Honestly, not much. I played out of addiction. I enjoyed creating lots of pets that I could paint, but that got me frozen. But that was more my imagination making it fun, not the pets themselves. I do like that one Wocky from the game though. Magax. He was cool.
5: Pretty much everything. The art is lackluster, the 4 pet per account rule is b/s, the entire management system was shoddy in everything they did, from unfair freezings to handling plots. Even solitaire, which I played massively, had horrible coding and fudged up in firefox. 99% of the users are idiots or assholes. I could rant for hours but I don't know how much good it will do.
6: I think the site is so far gone there's nothing that can be done to improve it. Back in the day I was hoping that they would actually stop the raging inflation. Put and end to the ridiculously high prices for paintbrushes and morphing potions.
7: I tried another one that became popular with my circle, but I'm honestly done with pet sites. So I don't have any advice for what I'd like to see from other ones.

My main issue was with the mass freezing. I completely understand that I was breaking the rules because I was way over the account limit, and that they had every right to freeze me. I'm cool with that. It just made me realize that the site itself wasn't working for me if I couldn't enjoy it without rule breaking. So I quit. For the record, I had the spare accounts for neopets only, no extra money was being made or any of that cheating stuff. I still accept that it wasn't allowed though.

I wasn't bothered by the advertising. Mind you, I left before it got really bad with them adding that top banner. I used to just roll my eyes and ignore it. Occasionally playing the sponsor games if they paid well. The merchandising was ok until it started taking priority over the site.

I'm personally very sick of the save the children mentality. Sometimes neopets felt like a nazi state with all the censorship and protections. It's the parents job to filter what their children see on the internet. The internet isn't a babysitter. So no, I don't feel like neopets should bend over backwards just to protect the children.

So yeah, I'm not a fan of neopets. I hated it a good deal even when I was playing a lot. Though I must say I met a great group of friends via neopets, and I still spend a good amount of time on a neopets based forum. It's one of the reasons I still keep an eye on the stocks, so that I can randomly donate neopoints to friends when they least expect it.

Hope this isn't as rambling as I think it is.

 

[Zeta]

I'm 23 and I played from age 16-22, I guess. The site went downhill really fast after they started to get popular. A ridiculous amount of the site got censored (BIKINI IS A CURSE WORD! OMG!) in an insane amount of overprotection towards children, the gambling games got restricted to adults, the art quality went down, the amount of new colors went down. They stopped adding content to worlds (Maraqua and Kreludor are pretty much non-existant), their pets were all designed to be way too cutesy (it's like how Pokemon would be if all 497 of them were Jigglypuff), and the economy is crap - it takes thousands to get even a decent item, and millions to get anything you'd actually want. And yet playing games only yields you 3000 per game per day and ONLY if you get perfect scores. Security also gone insane, since I can't get into my side accounts since I can't remember what random birthday I put while I was rushing through the signup process.

I could go on, but yeah . . .

In general, Neopets virtual pets sites really suck. There's no actual interaction with the pets. They're just 2-D images with 3 poses if you're lucky and treating them differently has no effect on anything, and they don't do anything. You can't even really get enjoyment out of fighting, since the "strategy" involves saving up for the best weapons and tossing them all at your opponent.

 

[bell02+]

No, Your responses are absolute perfection!! This is really helping my decision along because people seem to have the same opinions on likes and dislikes that I do!　Also, over all it is very informative!　Thank You very much for the input so far!

 

[fuzzball288]

1/2. I had my account ever since I was 9. That's... over 6 years now. I have 3 limited edition pets (1 of which wasn't limited when I got it), the lab ray (costed 200k at the time, now it's probably worth billions), and a painted pet (via lab ray). I have maybe 500k, but I doubt that's rich anymore. I have trophies for participating in every war since the Tyrannian one except Maraquan and any new wars if they had any. I think they stopped having those, though. I trained my pets, but I don't think they're strong really.

3. I no longer play Neopets. I check on it every once and a while, but that's it. It just got boring to me. There was too much censorship and too many n00bs. I never won anything and I could never get enough money. I spent a year saving up 500k for a Maraquan paint brush. By the time I got enough, it was worth 1.2 million NP. I also entered the Beauty Contest for years but never won. It's just a popularity contest...

4. I like the pets, even though they're all top cute now. I also like the idea, (some of) the games, the places, and... the pets. I say pets twice because that's really the only reason I kept playing. I love my pets, I'd cry if they got deleted. Even now that I don't play. I've had them for 6 years, after all. I also liked running my shop. I specialised in plushies, and I knew the value of every one. I made a ton of NP that way.

5. I don't like that it's flooded with n00bs. Also the economy is way off, there aren't enough wars anymore, the battling system is plain, there isn't enough pet interaction, and they cutified all of the pets. Grarrl used to be cool, but they... mutated them. Also they ruined Pterattack and Volcano Run, my favorite games. I remember playing Pterattack with my friends during computer class in 4th grade... Oh, and I almost forgot. The worst part is the censoship and freezing. I was afraid to say anything on the forums in case I was banned.

6. Neopets needs to stop banning people like crazy. Maybe do temporary bans. They shouldn't censor as much either. You need to be 13 to use forums, right? So if a kid fakes his age and gets in, its his fault! Not the site's! Also, they should have lots of big wars and plots and such. As far as I could tell, the last few were just comic book stories. And pet interaction. Like pets actually need a house, and their happiness goes up when you add furniture. Pets should die if you don't feed them. My pets are always happy even though I never play with them or feed them. And there should be more random events so paint brushes aren't so expensive. And they should restock more. When I kept my shop running, the shop was empty 1 minute after it stocked. That... shouldn't happen.

7. I love pet sites. Neopets is just a bad one. I actually had a pet site 3 years ago. It sucked, and it was on a cheap make-your-own site. I would like a site where you have to find pets in the wild (though you can get the first one for free). And you can breed pets and sell them. And battles are more like Pokemon battles but with weapons. And pets age and die naturally and if you don't feed them. And you change pets' appearance with items, but not just the color. Gender differences would be cool. Pets could have food preferences and actually grow differently depending on how you care for them. And a pet would get sick if you only fed it burnt bugs (unlike Neopets >_>).

My favorite pet site right now is Rescreatu. You can live on 4 different planets and pick a different class. You can sell, pets, open a normal shop, or do other such things. And the pets age. The admins actually listen to people, too. It's definitely an improvement over Neopets, even though it's not nearly as old or developed. Some other sites that I liked were (please note these aren't all alive anymore) Celosplanet (catch pets in wild, breeding), Zetapets (aging pets, nice community), and a site I can't remember the name of (gender differences, pets had preferences and personalities).

If you were to open a pet site, I'd probably join. You should have people pick a 'starting' pet then make them have to search for additional (rarer) pets in the wild. Give the battling system strategy, advantages/disadvantages, and luck. Like a pet with a shell resists physical attacks, or dry-skinned pet gets hurt by fire more. And make people run stores. It always bugged me that pets run all of the stores on most sites. XD

 

[bell02+]

Yes, those are some good ideas. I was already thinking of making people choose one among basic and go out in the world and find others. I'm still thinking of how to implement that because through HTML images, exploration is boring, and it may be resource intensive to do the way I may want in flash, so I'm still thinking of that.

Also, I'll give a little more info on some things I have planned, I just don't want people to be hyped for this until I actually have something running (locally at least). For the battles, I was already planning to build sprites for each with a set-up similar to classic final fantasy gameplay and a type system similar to pokemon red and green. Although I was also adding simple evolution that would resemble Digimon's branching style.

 

[Juputoru]

1/2) I did, and I had it for a year or two. No clue if it's still around, but I made it when I was 12-ish and I'm 17 now, so that's five years ago.
3)No. I got bored after a while since you didn't get to do much of anything other than play random flash games and lust after really expensive items that you'd never get unless you had a connection speed of God and refreshed every nanosecond.
4)It has a lot of time-killing games in one place.
5)The pets are really just decoration. The items you can use on the pets are also decoration. The games are pretty much the same sorts of things you can find on other sites with large collections of flash games, with the added annoyance of most of the Neopets games being thinly veiled advertisments. The economy was hell. The administration is highly unfair. Player shops could easily be filled with images and *gag* MUSIC that make them take forever to load, even on a fast connection! Although bits of this might have changed since I left all those years ago, from what I hear it's pretty much the same stuff. Which brings up another point, really. The game doesn't really CHANGE. Sure, they randomly add new pets and new worlds and whatnot every once in a while, but 99% of the new things are just for show and don't really impact the game.
6)More focus on the pets(such as, say, actual penalties for letting them starce). Fairer administration. A more sensical shop system. More of a point to the game in general than "play generic flash games and get stuff to brag about." Also, more pets that aren't cute please. Yes, the cute pets tend to be the extremely popular ones while stuff like Lennys and Skeiths get ignored. But maybe that's because people see that most pets are cute and don't want to be weird by picking a fierce/ugly/plain one? The playerbase IS mostly little kids, after all.
7)Not unless they actually focused on the pets. I love virtual pet games, really I do, but all the internet ones I've seen suck.

As for the other questions...
The immersion advertising is sickening. Advertisers KNOW that most of the people who play Neopets are kids, and it's neigh impossible to escape the ads. There's no telling how well it works, but I'm guessing that it works on some level or else advetisers wouldn't waste their money doing it. As for merchandising the game itself, some merch is understandable(plushies of the pets, shirts, etc.), but...well, I really don't know what sorts of Neopets merchandise there is other than a video game and some plushie-ish things of pets.

It's sad that Neopets tries to protect kids from so many things things(especially some that are non-issues, imo), but I see it as them trying to cover their asses in case a parent objects to what their children are reading. Typical huge children-friendly website fare. You'd think that there'd be forums open to older Neopets users where they could discuss more mature subjects, though. And if a kid lied about their age and saw stuff their parents didn't approve of, it's the kids fault for lying. Of course, the Neopets admin team is notorious for being a bunch of pricks, so the chances of any of that happening are nil. :/

 

[Hikari-chan]

Did you ever have an account at Neopets? How long have you had the account? Any In game Achievements? (hi scores? a lot of money? awards? strong pets?) Yes (username:Alyssachanpc) , over 34 months.
Do you still use it? If not, what made you stop? What made you stay? Not anymore, because it's boring and I don't have time for it.
What do you not like about Neopets? It's like have too many ads and it like promotes fast food chains, etc and it loads soooo slow even on broadband...

 

[The Dude]

1/2. Once about three years ago. Mainitained it for three months. It died after a month or so of neglect. Got another. Lasted even less time, as I got fed up with the site.
3. I don't still use it, because their servers are crap, and the site has more traffic than it can handle.
4. Cool games, cute pets.
5. Too much traffic, frequent crashing, trying to buy something, and finding that the page is ten seconds too old, as that itme is really all sold out.
6. GET MORE SERVERS TO HANDLE THE TRAFFIC, make the site much bigger, frequently prune old accounts to get rid of clutter.
7. A more mature version, with less cutesy and more kickass might attract my interest.
Neopets refuses to improve, and yet continues to be popular. I am baffled.

 

[fuzzball288]

This inspired me to check Neopets for changes. And I found that, ironically, yesterday was my 6th anniversary on Neopets. XDD Happy anniversary to me, I guess.

I never answered the advertisement question, so I'll do that now. I don't have much of a problem with their ads. Though, I guess they make a lot of money through merchandise, so they don't really need them. As long as they don't use pop-ups, I'm ok.

I like Neopet's merchandise. I collected the plushies at one point, and I now have over 40. (Yeah, I'm weird >_>) Nothing's too far in my eyes. I do wish they focused more on their t-shirts, though.

 

[bell02+]

Thanks for all the input so far! It's been very useful to read up-on everyone's opinions.

Personally, I don't see much of Neopets advertising anymore than Cartoon Network's Website, Nick's, or any other kid's site. (I'm assuming that I am wrong though) I want to know about the advertising (for obvious reasons) to tell what degree is annoying. I don't believe I'm one to want to clutter a page with that, however, from what is said, I am under the impression that:
1) Banners that take up a majority of the screen or take to long to load. (also flash pop-up banners, something that very much annoy me)
2) Exclusive items though advertising purchase campaigns.
3) Games with blantant advertising, like Neopet's Adver-video (were you watch kid's ads for neo points)

I do want a little clarification as Pokemon does the second, even recently with Manaphy and needing Pokemon Ranger. Also the third for games by sponsors in general, (I don't see this ever happening, but I like to know the boundaries of what you'd consider acceptable (those that disapprove of them)

I also see that people are wanting a balance of cute, cool, and strangely charming monsters. I also hear what people are saying to be realistic, I've been trying to think of how to handle death as I don't see it as something I want to include. I agree that consequences should be made for those who starve their pets, but having them disappear may not be the best answer as it may make those who leave and comeback unhappy.

 

[Zeta]

I also see that people are wanting a balance of cute, cool, and strangely charming monsters.

Yeah, generally the biggest complaint about the Neopets art is that all the available pets are too cutsey. The only way to get a cool or fearsome pet is to shell out millions to get Darigan or something. The sort of pets people want are almost the same as the Pokemon contest categories: Cool, cute, beautiful, weird, and fearsome.

I also hear what people are saying to be realistic, I've been trying to think of how to handle death as I don't see it as something I want to include. I agree that consequences should be made for those who starve their pets, but having them disappear may not be the best answer as it may make those who leave and comeback unhappy.

Recently, Monster Rancher had a cool idea of how to handle monster death - they stop growing permanently. They don't die, persey, but they can't level up anymore or be changed. You don't loose your progress, but it's sort of frozen in time. Of course, in MR you're supposed to breed monsters together to get new ones which can grow further, so that dynamic sort of discourages you from playing through the whole game with a single mosnter.

Most virtual pet sites are item collection sites really, since you hardly do anything with the pets except color them. Battle systems, if implemented, are almost always broken. And they're once again, all based around items instead of the abilities of the individual pets or monsters.

If I were doing a monster site, I'd make sure to make the competition between raised monsters the focus of the site - none of the virtual pet sites have really done that. It's more of a competition in minigames or item collecting. So I'd build up a series of competitions affected by various monster stats and aspects. Battle is the most obvious one. But you could also have a trick show, beauty contest, intelligence contest (a puzzle game whose difficulty changes depending on how the pet is), race, or other such stuff.

I'd also make it a bit like an MMORPG, with adventure areas where you could explore and engage in PvE combat, at least via HTML or something where strategy would be important. Then you could implement leveling up and quests and rewards and have reasons to raise different pets. Also, the ability to own a lot of pets and switch them in and out of an active party would be nice. I'd also include different content for different ages, so kids could play the site and not see anything dirty and adults could play and enjoy a lot of black humor and injokes and such. Generally though the site should be skewered age 14+, because there's not a lot of virtual pet or free gaming sites aiming at that audience.

Basically, a cross between Nintendogs, Pokemon, Kingdom of Loathing, Neopets, and WoW. At least that's all I ever wanted to see done.

 

[fuzzball288]

With the ads, I'm ok with 1 or 2 on the side. Ads that make noise or take a long time to load annoy me, as do pop-ups. Fit them in the layout where there's space, and there shouldn't be a problem.

You should have a shop where you pay real money to buy credits, or you subscribe to get access to special areas of the site and such. People pay for those types of things if you keep the prices low. More pets is always good, if you have a limit. Have an alternative, though. Like you can buy credits with site currency, but it costs a LOT. That way people don't feel pressured to pay.

The ad games on Neopets sucked, so I never played them anyway. No comment.

A balance of pets attracts a larger audience of people. If your pets age, make a way to keep them young. People like babies. Have a balanced choice for 'starters', too, if you use them. The pets available at the start should be the most varied so people are instantly attracted. Pets are one of the main judging points of a pet site, even if they usually don't play a big part.

Pets should either be sent to the pound when they starve, run away (and you can find them again in the wild), or die and be able to be revived. Make it so they can be recovered, but make it so you have to put effort into it.

I agree with Zeta, put the focus on the pets. Not many pet sites do that. You should make it so each individual pet is different. Like how Pokemon have IVs. If you add breeding, the parents could pass those down. That might be hard to program though... On another site I went to, you filled out a survey of your pet's personality first. The results determined the stats. Anything to make pets unique is good. And give them a lot of stats, so they can do other things besides battling. Like how Neopets added fishing (not that it takes much skill, but I'm just using the stat as an example).