sparrowvolk - Tumblr blog

[sparrowvolk]

in further neopets discord news, oh boy is there drama in my awful virtual pet game website today. strap in if you want way too much information on neopets’ broken economy

for some context, an event has just launched called the faerie festival. this is the first event to be run by the ‘new’ TNT (aka. the neopets team aka. the staff) since the leadership change, and they've said in recent editorials that this year’s faerie festival is going to be a combo of two previous popular events:

the faerie quest event, wherein people can get a free quest from a faerie every day in exchange for a reward (something that’s normally limited to random special events and therefore quite rare)

the charity corner, a highly requested event that hasn’t run since 2020, where you can donate random items to get points that can then be exchanged in a prize shop

there’s a LOT of ultimately worthless items on neopets that people gather from doing dailies and things, but charity corner actually gave a use to hoarding all of these, so people have wanted it back for ages. people have been going out of their way to hoard extra junk items for like 2 months now, after TNT teased the event in an editorial

this event was originally meant to start on 20th august, but got delayed 2 weeks, presumably because of issues behind the scenes. people were generally a bit disappointed but relieved if this meant they were going to get a proper, well prepared event without bugs

flash forward to 2nd october, the actual start of the event. nothing actually opens up for several hours on the day- that’s somewhat waved off by the fact that staff presumably need to be in the office to launch everything, a midnight launch isn’t expected

but, eventually, it opens!

well… kinda. there’s one page with one dialogue scene available and a link to an event page for spending neocash (the premium currency that costs irl money). the faerie quest page is giving out free daily quests, which is nice, but literally just the same as they did back in 2020. where’s the item recycling part? did this really need 2 weeks of delay?

the next day, the FAQ page for the event is published neopets support site (but not announced via news). still no sign of the actual event starting- seems like that might not be until moday?

as well as multiple grammatical errors, the FAQ had a few… concerning elements. most notably:

only 10 items could be donated per day

points would be awarded based on the rarity of the item, with the maximum rarity being r200-500, worth 15 points each

this meant people's hoarding of junk items for months was... essentially useless

r200-500 items basically means either hidden tower items (rare, expensive items that can only be bought in an account age locked shop with a purchase limit of 1 per day) orrrr….. neocash items. In other words, players could either spend an exorbinate amount of their in-game currency to buy up items to donate, or they could just hand over their credit card and pay to win

people were Not Happy about this

not long after info spread and the outcry started (and a sizeable number of people cancelled their premium membership in protest), the FAQ was quietly updated to remove mention of donating neocash items. that took away to pay to win element at least

however, now there was a new problem. a tombola man problem.

i mentioned already that the highest rarity items are pretty rare and expensive. one of the least expensive of these is an item called the Squeezy Tombola Guy Toy. you can probably see where this is going already

because you can only buy a maximum of one tombola guy per day from the hidden tower, your only option if you want to buy more than that in a day is to go to user shops. however, in light of the event, people had already started buying and hoarding tombola guy toys. equally, others were buying them purely to sell at a profit. this made the perfect storm and caused the price of the tombola guy toy, which was normally 110k NP, to explode up to 500k, 600k, even 700k within just one day

BUT THEN THE FAQ GOT UPDATED AGAIN. surprise, you can now donate 30 items per day! also they just got rid of the highest rarity tier altogether. the maximum you can get for an item is now 8 points, for rarity r102-r179.

this has now made the squeezy tombola guy toys useless. unless you’re a collector they don’t serve any function beyond that of a normal neopets toy (of which there’s thousands of much cheaper options). the price has now plummeted down to BELOW what it originally was and many users now have piles and piles of the dolls sitting in their inventory, mocking them

so what now? well, because no one ever learns, everyone is now flocking to what is now the cheapest high-rarity item eligible for donation. most are going for omelettes, which have a few different options at r102+. these have also inflated by like 400% from before the event, but unlike the squeeze tombola guys, these are only worth a few thousand neopoints, so not as bad a potential loss in comparison

it’s worth noting that while all this is going on in preparation for the recycling event, neopets is also experiencing insane inflation in a lot of other items right now, including those required for people to complete faerie quests. for example, a Griefer, which cost 5000 np just last week, is now worth selling for 1 MILLION

So yeah. 3 days into the event and that’s where we are so far. who knows what tomorrow might bring

[sparrowvolk]

Dragons arrive at the Silk-Strewn Wreckage to help mitigate the damage of invasive glow-worm swarms in today's update!

[sparrowvolk]

*releases this thing in your house*

[sparrowvolk]

Three days left and we've currently got a tie!

So conveniently my list of petsites I've played in some capacity pretty recently and have well-formed opinions on is ten games long! Some of these would require a bit more effort than others to get into review format, but all of them are pretty good candidates for starting out with. I'll probably tackle 2-3 of these before I start looking at games I'm less familiar with.

So, this poll will determine which couple games I will do reviews for first (video form, length will be however long they need to be). All of these are likely to get covered eventually though!

[sparrowvolk]

So conveniently my list of petsites I've played in some capacity pretty recently and have well-formed opinions on is ten games long! Some of these would require a bit more effort than others to get into review format, but all of them are pretty good candidates for starting out with. I'll probably tackle 2-3 of these before I start looking at games I'm less familiar with.

So, this poll will determine which couple games I will do reviews for first (video form, length will be however long they need to be). All of these are likely to get covered eventually though!

[sparrowvolk]

So I'm thinking of starting a series of in-depth petsite reviews every couple weeks or so! I originally actually made the assets for this blog with the intention to start a Youtube channel and I'm thinking that would probably be the best format for them.

That said, I'd like feedback on what games people would be most interested in having me review and/or other video content that you'd be interested in seeing from that channel! Any of the things I muse on here are fair game. Send in suggestions and I'll put together a poll or two to decide what to tackle first. :>

[sparrowvolk]

Hey, let's talk about the recent Paw Borough color update (Kickstarter post dated 7/19)!

The gist of it for anyone who hasn't read it is that they're changing from a color wheel to a HSV system, where base colors are categorized by hue (10 options), saturation (saturated or desaturated, greyscale is classified as a hue and counts as neither), and value (light, medium, dark). Definitely recommend checking the post out for more explanation and examples of how the system works.

I've already left a short comment on the post itself but I thought I'd detail things a little more here for anyone interested, and think through some specific propositions in case the team would like to use them.

I really like category-based color mixing systems! It is one of my personal favorite ways to handle petsite color systems and so from that standpoint I'm really pleased they're looking at this sort of approach. Let's talk pros and cons with both this type of system in general and with their particular implementation (with acknowledgement that it is still in progress).

Pro: Intuitive, in the sense that you probably know what types of colors are possible just by looking at the parents. You don't need to reference the color wheel to see where a certain shade of brown happens to fall on it or where the monochromes are. Dark cats make dark kittens, not just any color that happens to fall between where those two dark colors happen to be positioned.

Pro: It will be extremely easy for players who favor a particular aesthetic to stick with it! If I want all my cats to be pastel, rather than needing to very carefully coordinate breeding pairs so that ranges stay around the specific pastel colors on the wheel, I should for the most part be able to just breed cats who have all Light colors.

Con: You may not be able to narrow your options quite as far as you can on a color wheel, at least with the current draft. This is an issue with other sites that use a similar system as well (WD immediately comes to mind). There may be a handful of colors in the same HSV category, so colors which would previously have been next door neighbors may now have all of those colors in that category as possible options. I think there is room here for some adjustment to help players who are trying to breed for very specific colors.

Con: Some HSV categories are currently much larger than others, with a range from 1 at the smallest to 10 at the largest. While my brain would like for the categories to be perfectly balanced, small discrepancies aren't necessarily an issue. This wide of a range, though, means there will be a huge skew in rarity, with the colors in large categories being very hard to breed for specifically, while those in small categories will be disproportionately common. This is my number one concern that I am hoping to see rectified.

One approach would be to simply balance the current categories, but I feel a better approach would be to splinter the current three value categories into five or more. This would also help players concerned with the previous point by making categories smaller on average without needing to cut currently planned colors.

My other tweak would be to treat grayscale as a saturation category rather than a hue category (and have those colors be hue-neutral instead of saturation-neutral). So we'd have three saturation categories - bright, dull, and grayscale - roughly the same number of hue categories, and five or so value categories. This would put 2-3 colors in each HSV category, so you could breed with quite a lot of specificity!

[sparrowvolk]

So I forgot to set this to be a full week but I do feel like enough people answered for a rough idea of the distribution, thanks for that!

My typical definition is #5, though as mentioned I don't actually play any games that would fit in that category but not categories 2 or 3! I'd definitely consider anything I found there to be tenuously a petsite, but if it has enough trappings of the genre and is marketed to the same audience/categorized the same way by said audience I would be inclined to count it.

Treatise on petsite categorization and classification to come, please feel free to continue adding to the discussion! :>

Having an interesting discussion in my Discord server today about petsite definition and classification! Hopefully my preferred terminology is unambiguous in that we're talking about browser-based games and game-adjacent entities.

Clarifications:

1. Lioden and Flight Rising are petsites. Having pet care absent or having pet care/collection as secondary to main mechanics puts a site in a different category.

2. Dappervolk and Tattered Weave are petsites. Pet care can be secondary to other mechanics as long as it is present and the pets are a core part of the site concept (if you removed them it would require making major changes to the lore, even if they are not central to gameplay).

3. Chicken Smoothie is a petsite. Pet collection must be the core gameplay, but additional mechanics are not needed. Choosing this option means you don't consider #2 or similar to be petsites.

4. Both 2 and 3 constitute petsites, but not the next option.

5. All of the above, plus more. A site which has pet collection or care as a notable part of gameplay, but these need not be the core mechanics. (I personally don't play any games like this)

6-7. Elaboration encouraged!

For extra credit, provide additional examples and counterexamples, and define the boundaries of the terms "pet sim" and "virtual pet game".

[sparrowvolk]

Having an interesting discussion in my Discord server today about petsite definition and classification! Hopefully my preferred terminology is unambiguous in that we're talking about browser-based games and game-adjacent entities.

Clarifications:

1. Lioden and Flight Rising are petsites. Having pet care absent or having pet care/collection as secondary to main mechanics puts a site in a different category.

2. Dappervolk and Tattered Weave are petsites. Pet care can be secondary to other mechanics as long as it is present and the pets are a core part of the site concept (if you removed them it would require making major changes to the lore, even if they are not central to gameplay).

3. Chicken Smoothie is a petsite. Pet collection must be the core gameplay, but additional mechanics are not needed. Choosing this option means you don't consider #2 or similar to be petsites.

4. Both 2 and 3 constitute petsites, but not the next option.

5. All of the above, plus more. A site which has pet collection or care as a notable part of gameplay, but these need not be the core mechanics. (I personally don't play any games like this)

6-7. Elaboration encouraged!

For extra credit, provide additional examples and counterexamples, and define the boundaries of the terms "pet sim" and "virtual pet game".

[sparrowvolk]

Hey to everyone following cat site development! I'm now drafting and soliciting feedback on the system which will handle all stat-affecting conditions. This includes disabilities and any other conditions a cat may have, inborn or acquired, that may affect gameplay.

System Overview:

The system is split into two parts - the conditions themselves, and their effects. In applicable instances, effects may be referred to as symptoms, but since this is a very broad system I want terms to be neutral by default.

Common effects include stat disadvantages (when performing a stat check, roll twice and take the lower roll) and stat disaptitudes (lowered chance of gaining points in that stat compared to the usual rate - the inverse of stat aptitudes which every cat will have one or two of). However, they can also include things like lowered energy capacity or disadvantages in more specific situations. The only limitation is they must have an actual mechanical effect to be included in the list.

Conditions, then, are some collection of effects with an explanation of their cause. They will appear on the cat's page with the name of the condition, a short description, and a list of the specific effects it causes. Some effects can only have a chance of occurring with a condition, so not every cat with a given condition must have exactly the same effects.

Conditions may or may not come with visual differences and may or may not be heritable. Ones which appear in cats will be preferred, but due to the nature of the in-game cats as sentient beings human-only conditions are not necessarily off the table.

Disability Philosophy:

As a reminder, the general philosophy I have on portrayal of disabilities in this game is that no condition should completely prevent a cat from interacting with the main game mechanics. I also do not currently intend to include inborn conditions that would drastically shorten a cat's lifespan a la LD/WD's lethal mutations.

I obviously can't portray everything with these limitations, not even accounting for the limitations on my own time and effort. But I do hope to include a broad variety of conditions, including some not commonly represented, and I want the system to be flexible enough to accommodate that.

I have drafted a few conditions that I have myself, or feel that I am educated enough on to take an initial stab at, but I want as much feedback as I can get. Even if that feedback is just "I feel like this condition would be best left out of this system since mechanical effects would be too difficult to respectfully balance" or "I'll proof anything you come up with for these conditions".

Please dm me here or on Discord (sparrowsgarden) if you have any feedback! I'll happily send any relevant information privately to anyone who wants to proof parts of the system. You can also send stuff through the askbox, but I will generally assume anything sent there is intended for public discussion.

[sparrowvolk]

Torn between the urge to start tagging all these posts like crazy to get more people to talk about the catsite with and the reasonable part of me saying to stick to the plan and reveal nothing until the demo is ready.

[sparrowvolk]

Looks like we are very slowly converging toward a favorite...excited to develop more of the system!

Hey, it's been a bit! I'm circling around to actively working on the cat site once again so it's time for another opinion gathering post! Now with a poll!

The first option is exemplified well by the mainline Pokemon games. That requires you to anticipate what your opponent may choose to do that turn, and even which actions will go first may not be apparent until they occur.

The second brings to mind, for me, fifth-edition Dungeons and Dragons (that being the only edition I've played extensively). Every character gets one turn per round by default. Turn order is determined at the beginning of battle and then proceeds in the same order.

Flexible turn order refers to systems where some characters may get more frequent turns than others, based on their speed or equivalent stat.

[sparrowvolk]

will there be a limited amount of exploring you can do in a day? will there be a rollover system? how long would you plan for dailies to take on average? do you think there will be a way to auto-care for your cats, if you have the food/toys to do so anyway, or will having to care for them all be a way to naturally limit how large players' colonies get? (the phrasing of that makes it seem like i support such a thing, whoops; i personally prefer the option to auto-care for them, to save my hands the repetitive strain)

There will be an energy system limiting how much exploring you can do at a time. Our goal is to have much fewer, more meaningful encounters than many other petsites do in similar features, where each one plays as a miniature text adventure with multiple branching paths and outcomes. How many you can do at one time and how fast energy regenerates will be tuned after that system is built.

There will be a manual rollover system, since that is completely necessary for any game that can have your pets die due to age. Almost everything tied to player account will operate off this system, and anything that doesn't will have some kind of fallback so that nothing too bad can happen just from being idle.

We want it to be trivially easy to do dailies and basic care unless your colony is quite expansive. I'm always happiest with sites where I can be done with dailies in less than 20 minutes, but have features to keep me occupied for essentially as long as I want to play. And that doesn't and shouldn't include the activity of "waiting for cooldowns"! Cooldowns are fine and will certainly be present but I really want to have plenty of things to actively engage in.

While there may be interactions you can do with each individual cat for a bonus, basic maintenance should not require going through all of them every day. Our currently planned system involves feeding occurring via prey points (much like FR's food points) so that will be one-and-done, and cats will only lose mood via interactions with other systems rather than it decreasing a set amount every day.

For example, hunger, untreated injuries or illness, or being defeated in battle are some things that could decrease a cat's mood. Cats just hanging out in your den will not lose mood. My tentative thoughts are that fixing the root cause will give them some mood back, and if a cat's needs are met then they will gain a bit of mood back every rollover. This means that items which actively increase mood may be on the rarer side.

[sparrowvolk]

Since I'm getting back on the catsite dev train, I thought it might be nice to make a list of all the features I'm willing to reveal things about! Obviously I'm not going to spill everything, but these are all things that I'm happy to answer questions about and get feedback on.

Cat appearance, genes, and stats

Caring for cats in your colony

Time progression + aging

Breeding mechanics

Territory and den expansion

Exploring mechanics (including battles)

Patrolling mechanics

Questing + achievements

I'll answer pretty much any questions I get, but I thought this might be a nice guide to anyone who would like to know more but doesn't know where to start!

[sparrowvolk]

Hey, it's been a bit! I'm circling around to actively working on the cat site once again so it's time for another opinion gathering post! Now with a poll!

The first option is exemplified well by the mainline Pokemon games. That requires you to anticipate what your opponent may choose to do that turn, and even which actions will go first may not be apparent until they occur.

The second brings to mind, for me, fifth-edition Dungeons and Dragons (that being the only edition I've played extensively). Every character gets one turn per round by default. Turn order is determined at the beginning of battle and then proceeds in the same order.

Flexible turn order refers to systems where some characters may get more frequent turns than others, based on their speed or equivalent stat.

[sparrowvolk]

Thoughts on Pixel Cat's End? Hope you're doing well!

It's really cute and I like it a lot! I was playing it every day a while ago, now not so much, but it's definitely gonna sit nicely on my list of games I check in on every now and then.

Specifics:

I generally approve of the genetics system! I think most of it was adapted very successfully from real cat genetics in a way that is very simplified but way more interesting than most petsite systems. The winds system is such a neat way to handle sex-linked red and I think it really enriches the game overall.

I think it's a shame that the cats don't have flattened images, but having them as layered sprite sheets is a very good way to reduce the server load, and also to prevent from having a million dang images, which is a problem I run into very frequently when coding image-heavy stuff. I know there are tricks to save html canvases client-side so I wonder if that could be made an option for saving cat images.

Daily activities are nice! I like that they're quick to run through - for a while there wasn't much to do, but now that a couple more features are in and the site has lost its shiny newness for me, I'm really appreciating how easy it is to do dailies.

Adventuring is...ok. A little slow, and I found the first area impossible at level 1, had to start over from scratch to assign skills once my cats leveled up, but then breezed through at level 2 (which was more tedious than anything). I like it conceptually, and the feature's still very new, so I am hopeful that it'll improve over time.

[sparrowvolk]

Development Update

Play the demo at pawborough.net

Share the cats you make with us by tagging @pawborough and tagging the post with #pawborough!

And a huge thank you to our art team who helped to make this project a reality!