💸 EC to CC Conversion Terminal

brookie • 17 February 2022 at 12:00 PM

@Ian Thank you for the response! It makes sense to me that there are many obstacles that have to be addressed before the concept of a conversion terminal can be implemented. I believe the measures you mentioned, such as formally linking accounts and implementing a cap feed per second, will help ensure the game is fair. I was not aware of the bot issue, but I do always recognize the lag during events. Personally, I never understood how some users can achieve such high numbers in these events since I could spend an entire day feeding and other users' success gathering chocolates, etc. is exponentially greater than mine.

Although the conversion terminal may take time to work through, I appreciate the thoughtful input and other ideas. I am in total support of other options to obtain CC without a direct buy. Although I enjoy the current events, trivia games, scavenger hunts, etc., I definitely believe there can be a revamp that benefits everyone, especially those who constantly spend time and support the site.

sandara • 17 February 2022 at 12:23 PM

@Ian
I agree 100% with it. I would really like have to have weekly/monthly challenges, as it would incentivize players to be more active. Plus I think it would be less problematic than implanting the conversion (even with the measures implemented as well).

riceboysleeps • 17 February 2022 at 12:45 PM

@ian Thank you so much for responding. I'm very happy to read your post and I'm glad that the team is talking about this idea. I like your suggestion of having other site features reward CC, but I assume that this would take lots of time to program. The EC to CC terminal seems much easier to implement and having a monthly cap is a great idea. But I would welcome any opportunity for users to get CC through site activities. Thank you again 😊

greengrassoftunnel • 17 February 2022 at 1:03 PM

It is great to hear from you @ian, thank you for hearing us 😃

I'm looking forward to hearing what the team decides. Whatever the decision, it could be a trial run and then changes could be made depending on player feedback, spending, unanticipated challenges, etc.

I am very happy right now because of this ❤️

prairie • 17 February 2022 at 2:42 PM

@Ian
Thanks for the response!
I defiantly agree with you that bots are a huge issue on the site in general - and would absolutely pose a huge issue with a EC:CC terminal.
I am entirely all for registering side accounts and your other ideas. 😊 It sounds like it would hopefully solve many issues.

I always loved the idea of sign in rewards and such. where there's a mix of EC and CC rewards available through tiers. I guess its just a question of how much and how often.
Another suggestion (that's kinda off topic from the CC stuff) would be to have achievements/badges you can earn doing various activities throughout the site. Each achievement has a reward of some kind such as the following:
- achievement exclusive multi-use travel (basically a achivement exclusive CC status travel)
- achievement exclusive creature(s)
- achievement exclusive items
- CC & EC

I do think one option for CC other than a daily sign in reward/achievement/challange type prize could certainly be questing. If you took the idea of one 500cc voucher cap per month and had it as a permanent prize in the VEND (which might cost more tokens than others ofc) than I feel that'd not only boost the use of the VEND but also feeding, ec trading and user shops.

jirachiwishmaker • 17 February 2022 at 3:08 PM

I feel like the double feeds should be once every week, so if you missed out on one you can try again the next week. This would be the potential to attract people to obtain their ec goals, so they could be a millionaire at the end of the month. Having lots of ec provides more options to get creatures, expand cove space, pay for tim's food, buy items, etc. We all know this, but it should be something possible for everyone to be able to achieve.

prairie • 17 February 2022 at 3:16 PM

@jirachiwishmaker
I will go out on a limb and say that I actually disagree with that idea.
Collecting EC is meant to be a challenge so that's why there is only one Double Feed day every 2nd Sunday of the month. If it happened every week that would lead to a huge influx of EC across the entire site.
I could possibly get behind 2 double feeds per month, but quite honestly I think it's fine as is.

jirachiwishmaker • 17 February 2022 at 3:56 PM

@prairie

It's ok you don't have to agree, but people don't have time to do feeds often and try to get that double feed day on the dot, I've missed that countless times, but for a newbie it's a huge miss. They want to buy creatures and auctions are a good way, but you should have a good amount of ec saved up to even bid. Then that ec is held till you get outbidded that's the only time it's released, meanwhile you could've tried bidding on other creatures if you had enough ec. And when you're a newbie and you see 1 ec, or 1k ec you want to bid so badly, it's not a guarantee that you will win as outbidding goes. But you should have enough ec on here to do the things on here, expanding the cove is expensive, and tim's is expensive for each creature even for 1 month you need lots of ec to keep them in there. Not to mention any items that you want to use on your pet. I'm thinking from the perspective of a new player, they don't last long on here because of real life situations, so time really is precious on here. And I'm sure that parents give their kid maybe an hour if they're lucky for that time to spend on any games, and socializing. It's most likely more during a weekend, but during the week homework is more important, and other school activities. I'm not sure how many kid players are on here, but they always mention that they don't have enough ec to get the things that they want, because normally, they don't have time to do feeds to have enough ec to put it in Tim's. This is just how things are on here, and I believe that things should be achievable even for newbies.

brookie • 17 February 2022 at 4:13 PM

@jirachiwishmaker I definitely support more opportunities for double feed days. I often miss the double feed day depending on where it lands and the normal feed days I find myself making no more than 100k-200k EC after going through hundreds to thousands of pets. Super time consuming, which I understand is the point, but I think it can be improved. Especially when the cap on a sign in bonus is 3,000 EC and other games like site trivia only allow for a 10,000 EC reward.

jirachiwishmaker • 17 February 2022 at 4:29 PM

@brookie

Yes you get it this game is time consuming and alot of people don't have that kind of time to make enough ec to do whatever that they want to do. And you're right on a normal day I can do 100k and be sastified, but if I was expanding my cove I know that 100k is just not going to cut it. And I've missed the double feed day not thinking about what day it is because of other things I'm doing offline. And price of Tim's 10 creatures for a week 5,250 ec that may not sound like much, but when you got more then 10 you better have enough in that ec bank.

hinokazes • 17 February 2022 at 5:23 PM

@Ian Any of the things you proposed, I'm fine with them as long as they don't end up ridiculously difficult like VEND quests. It can even be a little amount like 50CC, I just want it to be available for everyone, and not be long + costly + RNG like the VEND machine ^^'

viltuvitrast • 17 February 2022 at 9:31 PM

Agreed, I don't want CC to only be a rare prize and for the RNG to be cruel most of the time. That wouldn't solve the problems of CC being unobtainable for most players. I like all the suggestions here, and I hope at least something will be proposed. Maybe when the site is less pay to win I will spend money here 😊

lobstertheremin • 17 February 2022 at 10:35 PM

Thanks for taking the time to let us know about this @ian 😸 All very exciting news. Hopefully we can get this going sooner rather than later. I think that the site would really benefit and we'll get more traffic and players. Cheers 😃

ida92 • 18 February 2022 at 3:58 AM

@Ian Thank you for the reply to this topic! I would love to be able to finally link my storage and trade side accounts to my main and I think it would be great if I could still feed Coves from my sides to obtain EC (which in case of my storage accounts I use to buy cove spaces) but without gaining any event materials such as seeds, chocolate boxes, gobblers and so on. I believe events should be disabled on side accounts and if a daily sigh in rewards gets implemented, which gives something other than EC, this should be disabled too.

The weekly/monthly challenges sound fun, perhaps there could be more than one challenge, rating from easy to difficut. The more difficult the challenge the greater the reward. For example an easy challenge to feed 500 creatures in one moth could reward the user with EC, a medium challenge to feed 2000 creatures in one month could reward an exclusive r100 travel and a difficult challenge to feed, lets say 5000 creatures could give 100CC. This is only an idea. 😊

quinoafuntime • 18 February 2022 at 3:36 PM

@ian

It's very good to hear from you. I hope that your team will implement something soon.

Of course, a complex achievment/mission system that rewards CC for various site activities would be the most robust solution, but I imagine that it would be very complex to implement and take a lot of time.

I would rather go with a simpler solution like @prairie's idea for a conversion terminal with a monthly cap. I also agree with other users that it could start out as a temporary experiment to see how it goes.

But letting us know your well-reasoned thoughts is improving my perception of the site already. Thank you 😊

aquafaba • 22 February 2022 at 4:06 PM

@ian I am very happy and excited to hear from you on this thread! Thank you very much 😊

I hope CC will be more available for all players soon via whatever implementation you decide. The terminal that is being proposed in this thread seems the simplest, plus it will reward feeding each other's coves and spending time earning EC. A more elaborate mission/achivement system that awards a decent amount of CC with site activity is also interesting, but it sounds like much more of an undertaking. I would rather something be put in place sooner that's simpler instead of waiting a year or years for that.

Thank you ❤️

greengrassoftunnel • 26 February 2022 at 9:08 PM

@quinoafuntime I agree with you. I would prefer a simpler option sooner rather than something more complex that would take years and just keeping the same old broken CC-centric economy as is for a long time.

@aquafaba I agree with you as well. Feeding is obviously the main activity here, and it's pretty much the only method for players who don't have real life money to spend to get what they want here. But the inability to acquire CC save for the occasional person who offers vouchers in trades/auctions, which are very quickly taken, makes me feel really powerless to get the cove I want.

I'm quite excited to see what the team decides. I hope they will share plans and updates with us soon 😊

lobstertheremin • 27 February 2022 at 9:32 PM

I want to keep this post alive and let the developers know that we're still thinking about this. I think I can speak for everyone who commented that we appreciate the response that we got from Ian. Hopefully we'll hear more soon 😊

"We're also discussing other ways we could give users to obtain CC without a direct buy, but that's not a direct EC -> CC conversion. Think questing, scavenger hunts, daily sign in rewards, or weekly/monthly challenges you have to clear. What do you guys think about these ideas? Let us know your ideas and reactions to that. It's still about rewarding time spent on the site."

Those ideas sound great. Whatever you decide, I hope it will be soon. There are a bunch of rereleases that I would love to get that I'm unable to purchase with real life money. I would love to be able to get them with time spent on the site 😸

aquafaba • 4 March 2022 at 12:03 PM

I'm still thinking about this. And with respect, I'm still not spending money on this site until something is done to address the pay-to-win-ness. I hope that @ian will continue to keep us updated with what the team is planning.

@greengrassoftunnel Thank you. You said it well 😊

poptarts • 4 March 2022 at 1:02 PM

If EC -> CC Conversion was to be a thing, I agree that questing, scavenger hunts, daily sign-ins, weekly/monthly challenges would be fun! I am sure it will also keep players from growing bored with the lack of things to do.

I for one would enjoy it if the Mining Minigame that was released during the Astroid Plot years back was brought back as a permanent addition to the site.

It is a perfect way to increase the flow and value of EC, and a great way to obtain CC.

Users can spend their EC on tools at a new NPC store, those tools can be used to mine different minerals/metals/gems, fossils, and more!

O Metals can be used to repair/upgrade tools for longer mining.
(Metals can even be required for weekly/monthly events which can give out prizes! The top 10-50 players receive 100-200cc Top five receive 500cc? just an example)(issues to fix the same exact players from topping is to make it where they can only top once a month/every 2 months?)

O Gems: Gems can be traded in for CC from some NPC collector who will reward the CC once a specific amount of gems is reached.
(That is a way to give players CC)
You can even implement scavenger hunts for the same NPC? They just go to the NPC page to turn in the items for CC.


O Minerals/Fossils: Maybe this can be on par with the theif shop? Players find fossils from mining, these fossils can be taken to the SAR center where Cathy can run an experiment to see if she can rebirth the creature from its remains.
(This will encourage players to trade their CC for the new pets if players have them? Maybe Cathy can even pay 50-100cc per 5-10 fossils found instead and there be a chance where she rewards the player a pet instead)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you decided to implement the mining suggestion, why not make it where the player's profile creature can explore an actual map of the cave and use their tools to mine pictures of sitting rocks that could be fun too? 😋 (I mean, the idea of exploring the Egg Cave itself would make so much sense for the site.)

And if down the line you are feeling ambitious, bringing back the creature battling would be fun! It would make NPC stores selling food, toys, books, etc worth purchasing for non-collectors, the objects will no longer only serve to heal happiness, but even health. Battling creatures in the cave can help pets level up faster as well so they can reach immortality.
(There can even be a daily/yearly goal of defeating a specific amount of creatures with the reward being CC?)
——————
I just think it would be super fun if something very interactive and something that made you work for the CC was implemented, which is mostly why I suggested mining, and there can be many events/creature discoveries surrounding it. I mean, it can even be made where the players actually explore the cave where they get their eggs from!

Pros:
It cuts EC inflation down and increases EC spending.
Players still obtain CC from the mining feature.
New plots/events/creature discoveries.
Can even have a battle feature implemented down the line.
New NPC(s) to marvel at.
It is a cool idea to think you are exploring the EggCave itself.

Cons:
- NPC shop selling tools will likely be empty unless it was made where items were unlimited.
-A lot of work to likely code I assume.
-Players not wanting to put in the work to obtain CC, but there are always other options such as dailies/scavenger hunts mentioned in other peoples posts.
- Probably a lot needs to be tweaked, but it is just a skeleton idea.
——-

Maybe make the Wall of Sandrodons and Alkub racing reward CC instead of 10k EC

Do a lottery that rewards CC to the lottery winner/winners.
~



@ian

autumnal • 5 March 2022 at 12:12 AM

One reason why I like @prairie's suggestion for a simple terminal is that it would require minimal effort. There are a bunch of great ideas like the mining one above as well as missions, achievements, etc, but those would take a lot of time to program I think. I'm sure that @ian already has his hands full with running the site, and adding lots of gameplay mechanics might not be realistic. If the site had a bunch of programmers, that would be one thing, but I think that going with a simple ec to cc terminal would be wise at this point.

lobstertheremin • 6 March 2022 at 12:54 PM

I am also hoping to hear another update soon. I also want to respond to some ideas in @ian's post on page 5:

"Other measures such as (1) formally declaring and linking multiple accounts (i.e. in account preferences with email address verification), (2) removing the ability to feed from non-registered users completely (i.e. you must have an account to feed, so you can't spoof from VPNs or change IP addresses), and (3) implementing a cap of X feeds per second might also be needed to deter cheating."

(1) I think this would be a good idea.

(2) Would viewing and clicking still be possible for people without accounts? If viewing/clicking was no longer possible, it would no longer be desirable to get the html code for creatures and embed them on other sites. This would be a bad in my opinion. I found this site because I saw a creature embedded on another forum site. I think EC would lose a lot of potential players.

(3) I don't know about this one. A lot of people feed by opening up a bunch of tabs and then quickly feeding them one after the other (feed, Ctrl-W, feed, Ctrl-W, etc). If there was a time cap for feeds, it would really make feeding take a lot longer for those players and would increase feelings of annoyance.

dougprishpreed • 7 March 2022 at 12:13 PM

Lots of good ideas here.

"We're also discussing other ways we could give users to obtain CC without a direct buy, but that's not a direct EC -> CC conversion. Think questing, scavenger hunts, daily sign in rewards, or weekly/monthly challenges you have to clear. What do you guys think about these ideas? Let us know your ideas and reactions to that. It's still about rewarding time spent on the site."

@ian What is the feasibility of these ideas? Would it take years to code and program that stuff? If it would be a big pain, maybe it would be better to just do the conversion terminal with a monthly cap. If it wouldn't take too long though, weekly and monthly challenges could be cool. Thanks for getting back to us.

viltuvitrast • 8 March 2022 at 4:18 PM

@ian I think @dougprishpreed asked a good question and I would like to see your answer. If it's possible daily missions that award smaller stuff and if you do all of then you get 50cc or something like that could be cool, but if that's too much to handle @prairie's idea is great too.

greengrassoftunnel • 9 March 2022 at 2:37 PM

@ian Any new development of ideas among the team? I am eagerly awaiting another update. And I'm with the bunch of people above: it would be better to address the broken CC economy sooner rather than later. An experiment could be interesting. Let's try it for a few months and see how it goes 😊

viltuvitrast • 12 March 2022 at 9:55 PM

There is another suggestion thread about reducing the cost of cove expansions, but a lot of people think that it will damage the economy even more and make it even more pay to win. The ideas in this thread would really help I think, and the sooner something is added the better. @ian thanks for considering it 😊

dougprishpreed • 13 March 2022 at 12:47 PM

Still curious about my above question:

@ian What is the feasibility of these ideas? Would it take years to code and program daily missions/achievments? If it would be a big pain, maybe it would be better to just do the conversion terminal with a monthly cap. If it wouldn't take too long though, weekly and monthly challenges could be cool.

Something should be done soon though. Just take a look at the trade sections and it's just nonstop "cc only."

Thanks for getting back to us 😸

structuresfromsilence • 15 March 2022 at 8:57 PM

@ian Any update on this? I would love to start earning CC through site activities. I'm sure you're busy, but we'd love an update when possible.

aquafaba • 16 March 2022 at 10:29 PM

I really like this site and would love to be able to access more of the content on here through time spent and hard work. Whatever that looks like, I'll be happy with it. If it's something like daily missions, that sounds fun and interesting. But if it's something simpler like @prairie's suggestion, I'll be happy with that as well. Thank you @ian 😊

kataclysm • 17 March 2022 at 5:10 AM

I love this idea a lot. Given how many creatures are dependent on CC, it seems like an accessible and free-friendly method to encourage users to be more active. Imagine how incentivised people would be to trade for EC, to join auctions, to feed coves? I'd really love to see this go forward!