a lot needs to change.

sonny • 15 March 2022 at 4:27 PM

two weeks ago i made a post trying to off-site trade. in the post i detailed why i was trading my stuff for the other website and exactly what was wrong with this one and why i felt the other game was more worth playing. i even mentioned in that post that i spent irl money on the other website after only a week of playing, something i have NEVER done in my almost eight years of playing on eggcave, ive been playing since 2014.

this website is STAGNATED. there is next to nothing to do on here, the games tab is something ive never visited in the entire time ive played because the games are... boring, and also bc they really do not provide any kind of reward that is substantial. a few of the games offer only 10k ec as a reward which we all know is just enough to buy a travel or an item, when all we're trying for are creatures that cost millions of ec and hundreds of cc.

the price of creatures inflates SOOOO much to the point where i will literally never see myself getting my hands on dream creatures because i could never afford them unless i spent money on cc, which i wont do because spending ten dollars on 1k cc for ONE re-release creature is just, absolutely not worth it in my opinion??? and then there are older retired creatures that cost actual thousands of cc, amounts that no one could muster up even in eight years of playing, again unless they paid for it. but some older creatures can cost 5k to even 10k cc which equates to $50-$100 worth of cc. how is that fair?? how can this game be called free to play AT ALL? especially when there is no official way to convert your ec into cc except by trading with other users, and especially since every month at least $30-$40 worth of new cash shop and rerelease creatures and travels come out that if you dont pay real money for, you have to come up with the cc before the month ends just to get a creature you want. and after that month, poof! creature is gone, you can never get it on site again, price gets inflated like crazy and it becomes next to impossible to get it. its simply not fair, not fair to adults who play but cant afford to spend money on a pet site, not fair to kids who play whose parents cant afford it, and honestly not fair to people who actually do spend money here because if someone wants to get every new cash shop creature and re-realease, thats about $30+ out of pocket, and if they want to spend money on cc to buy retired creatures they could easily spend $100 on one creature. that is an absolutely crazy price for some virtual pets. ever since ive started playing i basically trained myself to ignore the new csp's because i know ill never be able to afford them. when re-releases came out i did the same thing. that shouldnt be the case. everyone should be able to get any creature they want without paying exuberant prices for them.

even besides all that, the creatures themselves take absolutely forever to evolve! ive had some creatures of mine take an entire year to get to their final stage. i do not use the click exchange, its extremely tedious, just as feeding my creatures is. its literally not fun to feed all of my 400 creatures and it really sucks that feeding creatures is one of the only ways to get ec on this website, and even then its like, really not that much ec earned from feeding. some creatures have final stages that take 10,000 views to get there, absolutely insane considering theres really not many ways to get THAT many views on your creature, especially if youre just a casual player and dont put much effort in, like myself. the only in-site way to evolve your creatures is the click exchange which i hate messing with- and is also nearly completely dead because i swear no one else uses it. in the past when i used the exchange and would get around 300-400 xc, i could literally wait a whole week before it got back down to 0. it is not an efficient way to evolve your creatures and i genuinely cant think of another, better way to evolve them except by using a different website, which again, i and im sure many others just dont have the energy to do.

the VEND system is another thing i have never participated in. it seems like it takes way too much effort to get anything from the vend, and even then, the creatures you can get from it arent even what a lot of people want, and the one you do want comes from a pool of other creatures you DONT want. the daily sign in rewards are abyssmal and need a revamp sooo badly.

i have never even once thought to collect items except for travels, i have a strongroom full of 500+ travels from what ive collected over the years, but not one other type of item. i never visit any shop except the travel agency/trinket travels because other items have virtually no use to me because i have a leaf of vaka. maybe this is different for other users, but the items on this site just dont interest me at all. i frankly think the art is kind of unappealing.

im sorry if this seems too harsh. but ive played for so long now and it just seems like nothing has changed here except for the prices of creatures i want getting higher and higher and higher, to unreachable levels. the site UI has been exactly the same since the day i started. the click exchange has actually basically just died altogether, a few years ago i was on top of it all the time because it actually helped my creatures evolve but now no one uses it unless its the valentines event. its just honestly really sad to see a website i have loved so much and spent so much time on stagnate like this. another thing is that i cant imagine how hard it is to get into this game as a new player. imagine signing up for a game with cool creatures you think youll be able to get, only to find out that new ones can cost $30 every month, and older retired creatures can cost up to and even above $100 in cc. its extremely hard starting off as a new player and i dont blame any new player who just stops playing cuz they cant afford nearly anything.

pinging some people who i think might agree, or have points to add, forgive me if you dont want the ping, im going from @prairie's old forum post about the EC to CC conversion terminal!
@ian @orderedchaos @iia @hinokazes @brookie @pipkitten @tryvegan4theanimals @jirachiwishmaker @riceboysleeps @lexicon @solaris @doublechin @dougprishpreed @poserpanda @structuresfromsilence @stellalunagirl @portal @autumnal

riceboysleeps • 15 March 2022 at 9:21 PM

@sonny Thanks for your post. I agree that the games should be tweaked to make them worthwhile. I do trivia every day and the lottery when I like the CSPs, but that's about it.

I also agree that dream coves are pretty unobtainable for newer players. I think that having a way for players to earn CC via time spent on the site would help a lot.

I like eggcave a lot, but it's unfortunately pretty impossible for new and free players (unless you're satisfied by the most common creatures only). Hope there will be changes to make it more accessible.

jirachiwishmaker • 15 March 2022 at 9:25 PM

@sonny

I'm all for changes on this site because I do believe that it has been stagnate and still no results. Like the click exchange used to be able to perform very well in leveling up creatures, now you're lucky if you can get a few clicks on yours cause even though you got lots of credits there's just so many creatures on there that your credits don't even get all used up. So, it won't level up your creature quickly, I'm not sure what it takes to upgrade the click exchange, but it needs to be able to perform like it once used too years ago. More games, quests, a scavenger hunt, maybe even pet battles would be nice. For people to not lose interest there has to be more things to do around here when the events are off. It would be nice if there was a Chinese New Year event where there's a shop and you can also get items like you do with valentines. Another event could be a like a save the planet event where you could find items around the site, which would be considered trash and turn it in for ec.
That's just another event idea I had. Maybe have more double feed days in a month even if it was twice a month. Here's another idea, instead of dumping your creatures into the adoption area, maybe you could make a shop where they would buy creatures from you because you're saving them kind of like a creature orphanage. However many species you can save you get so much ec for turning in those creatures and saving Ark City from overpopulation. You could also have a breeding creature idea where it doesn't create a new creature, but just existing ones from the parents whatever species they are. People like breeding their pets and it would be much fun for them in doing so, after all this is an eggcave site, but where do eggs come from? Parents of course! Breedables can be only cave commons not rares, cash shop pets, or cave monthlies. They could put a lock on the unbreedable creatures. The quests are fine, but gathering 50 coins to win a vend creature seems like a lot, I believe it should be much lower so it's more achievable, so it should be at least 20 coins to win a vend creature.

sonny • 15 March 2022 at 10:38 PM

@jirachiwishmaker , all really great ideas. there is really next to nothing to do on this site! breeding creatures would be so cool and making creature shops would be so great for this site. same with making double feed days twice a month or maybe even three times a month. this site is just so boring and theres so few ways to gain ec, and it cant be called free to play when so many creatures costs hundreds of cc. love the ideas!

myriadium • 20 March 2022 at 7:06 PM

I totally agree with all these points. the biggest problem is that all these creatures are being pumped out, retired, and left to rot. we have an archive of 950 species and it feels like such a waste that almost all of them are unobtainable.

I would love more involved monthly events. it feels like it's been such a long time since the last event (asteroid takeover. those were the good times) and i miss logging in everyday to participate in it. i've seen the idea of better login rewards and maybe there can be a battle-pass-esque system of quests (eg feed 100/200/300 creatures, buy 5/10/20 things from x shop, click 100/200/300 creatures in the xc) where you get a small amount of cc or even a monthly csp creature would be cool, i think.

apparently april fools events are coded in for whatever reason, even if its a one off gag and never comes back. why spend all your time working towards a gag when you can bring a fun, long lasting event or something.

some of these pages , like alkub racing or click exchange is barely touched. i still have 300 xc and it's been months since i clicked anything there. long term things like the VEND machine was a step in the right direction but the process to collect these items is tedious and very expensive.

i like these mini yearly events like dragolds den but they're either too short or very boring. this event, for example, is extremely uninvolved. Additionally other months straight up don't have events, making them very drab.

a lot of the inflation happens because there's such a history of these creatures that never return, which I have a huge gripe about. since the playerbase has fallen a lot of these old creatures can't be bought or traded and some have even died, making them even more limited. of course people have spent so much money and there's the chance that they'll be mad if you bring back some of these creatures for free, and it's a tough situation to get out of because, by its core, this system doesn't really work long term.

edited to be a bit more readable.

hinokazes • 21 March 2022 at 5:53 AM

@sonny Sorry, saw your ping the same day you posted, but was too tired to answer something, and then I was constantly forgetting to do it. I'll try to give my thoughts for every point :


1 : Games tab
I do visit it, because site trivia can give me 10K EC most of the time. As someone not clicking that much, those 10K are welcome, even if it's not a lot compared to how expansive everything is here... I also do the wall of sandrodons, but the amount of time I win something during an entire year can be count on the fingers of a single hand, despite me trying with the same number everytime. The alkub race seems to be a complete waste of money, I'm sure I would lose EC more than winning anything, so I don't even look at it. And finally, the lottery... I made the final decision to never try again, even for a pet I really want. Let's be real, this is just a pure waste of precious EC... I lost millions in it for what ? NOTHING ! And sometimes when seeing the winners I feel it's always the same people. So I prefer to keep my EC instead of throwing it out of the window for nothing, especially with how hard it is for me to make a lot of it. I guess it'll be a good thing for other players, because one less user trying to win the lottery, but I don't care. I want my EC to be useful, not thrown in the trash.


2 : Creatures prices
This is, like, one of the worst thing in the entire website. How can people justify that a little picture of a pet that you don't even own cost almost 100$ or 100€ or whatever ??? No ! I'm sorry, I don't want to feel like I'm insulting the artist, I have nothing against them, but such a price for a pet is a scam ! Doesn't matter how good the drawing is, you can't put such a price on it ! I'd rather buy a new switch game with DLCs and all than this ! At least, the game is mine and I can play with it as much as I want. But here, you don't own the actual thing, it's just some pixels on a website, and if it's shut down you lose everything.
Also, because of how ridiculous the price is for many pets, you can't call this game free to play AT ALL. First of, you can't because every month, half of the pets are behind a paywall, and it's worse now with the re-releases. And no, being able to win 500 CC for the anniversary, and 1K CC during the november event (only if you get a good place in the leaderboard) isn't enough to justify this. Because it's just 3 500 CC pets, when there's 24 CC PETS each year !! And it's so difficult to get CC with EC ! Especially with re-releases because users keep their CC to buy those that cost a lot ! And then, second reason this is ridiculous is that a big majority of the pets are impossible to get by yourself. There's over 900 pets but you can get what, 100 of them ? I'm not even sure this that much but it's actually even less... So this means more than half of them cost CC, and some way too much. This game isn't free to play, it's pay to "win".


3 : Evolving creatures
I think we can agree some pets are asking too much to evolve. I remember a thief shop pet someone wanted to evolve, and did a little game that everytime someone fed their pet, they would get a point, and for each evolution stage, there would be a drawing for prizes. Guess what ? It took MORE THAN A YEAR to just evolve it ONCE ! And the pet have 3 evolutions !!! Whoever find this normal, I'm sorry but there's a serious problem. This shouldn't take so much time for just 1 evolution. Even for the full evo line it's too much to take an entire year... Maybe there was a time the activity was so big on this site that it was very quick to evolve a pet, but with how the site is dying, it now takes ages. I have pets that I adopted not long after starting the game that are still in their eggs... ._.
I do use click exchange, but now it's kinda dead. I admit, I barely click, but the reason is because of how badly done the clicking option is. Having to constantly open a new tab to feed a pet, you think my laptop like this ? No, it doesn't, and me neither. Yes, I have ctrl + left click then ctrl + w to quickly open and close the tabs, but opening too many tabs in a short time isn't good for my laptop, and it also lags because it has to charge every page. And for clicking my own pets... This is so boring and bad for my hands ! WHY, W H Y can't we use the keyboard to feed ??? Why can't we use I don't know, the left and right arrows to go to the next/previous pet, and click enter or space or whatever to feed the pet ?? This would be so much better for users hands, because it's less tiring than constantly moving a mouse and click. Even with my graphic tablet it's still bad despite being better than using a mouse u_u'


4 : VEND machine
Oof, that's a thing that I tend to forget it exist because of how much I ignore it (like oasis and thief shop). The idea was good, but the execution... not so much... Not only does it take ages to gather what the NPCs ask to get the tokens, but it cost a ridiculous amount of EC to get those items, you only have a short time to get them, and when you finally have everything needed to try to get the pet you want, you may not get it !! If we have to do so much things to even try, at least give us the possibility to choose the pet we want ! Having to lost so many time and ressources to in the end get something we don't even want, why bother ? And that's exactly my mindset : I don't bother about VEND because it's a waste of time and ressources for just 1 pet that may not even be the one wanted.


5 : Items
I collect the ones I get, but don't use them, don't really see the point tbh. And for travels, gonna be honest right there, some are just... well... let's say not that great... Like, there's some event travels, when I see them, I absolutely don't see how can they cost "so much" (in terms of event tokens) when right next to them there's so much better quality travels with the same price. Some travels are good in EC, but even some monthly CC travels I'm like "what ? No, those should be EC, not CC". It's ok sometimes a travel or item isn't "that good" (this isn't even a question of taste, there's some travels I don't like that I see the quality in them), we all do sometimes not that good stuff, me first, but the price should be fair. I can't expect someone to buy full price something I did if the quality isn't there.


6 : Eggcave stagnating
Yes, it totally does. Despite me not being that really old on it, and even with the addition of things like VEND and re-releases, it's stagnating. Why ? Because clearly eggcave panders to the ones with money. But this is not how things work. You can't just bend the knee to a part of your userbase, and completely ignore the other one. And this is for both side. Bending the knee to the majority that doesn't pay, and completely ignoring the ones that give money to the site isn't good either. A balance needs to be find, and currently there's none. Only people that pay can really enjoy eggcave currently, and this is very bad because the majority that doesn't pay, you're losing them. But having a website with just a few that pay and nobody else means it's dead. All those users that don't pay are needed for the website to stay alive (no activity = dead website), as much as the ones that pay (no money = dead website). What I'm gonna say next isn't toward anyone, not even eggcave specifically, but is something I already saw somewhere : I hate when there's some (not all thanks god) ptw users that feel they are entitled to how the site works, and scream like banshees because "how dare you make things easier when I had to pay/work hard !!" It's called "evolution"... ¬_¬ Imagine if our ancestors were offended at us because how dare we have surgery and survive when they didn't have such a luxury and died ? You can't expect a website to evolve if you prevent it to do it. Of course the QOL or new stuff have to be done properly, but saying no to everything because you had to struggle and the new users will not will just kill eggcave. You can't survive if you stagnate and, even worse, DE-EVOLVE. Changes are needed... and this is coming from someone that have high difficulty with changes !



I think this is all. Sorry if I missed stuff or if I didn't expressed myself properly (I'm not english). And tbh, there's other things I wanted to rant about but let's stop there, it's already a lot xD
I don't want this website to die, but seeing how things are going, it's hard to have any hope left...

aquafaba • 21 March 2022 at 8:26 PM

@hinokazes thank you for your post, I agree with a lot of what you said.

"you can't call this game free to play AT ALL. First of, you can't because every month, half of the pets are behind a paywall, and it's worse now with the re-releases. And no, being able to win 500 CC for the anniversary, and 1K CC during the november event (only if you get a good place in the leaderboard) isn't enough to justify this."

" it's so difficult to get CC with EC ! Especially with re-releases because users keep their CC to buy those that cost a lot ! "

"a big majority of the pets are impossible to get by yourself. There's over 900 pets but you can get what, 100 of them? I'm not even sure this that much but it's actually even less... So this means more than half of them cost CC, and some way too much. This game isn't free to play, it's pay to "win"."

I really enjoy the site and will continue to spend a lot of time here, but I'm unhappy with how pay to win it is currently. I think that Prairie's idea of a EC to CC terminal with a monthly cap is a great idea. Something needs to change though.

Thanks for considering @ian, and know that we're so passionate about this because we love your site and want to see it succeed and be great 😊

sonny • 22 March 2022 at 10:53 AM

@aquafaba and @hinokazes THANK YOU. and @myriadium thank you too. thank you all so much for agreeing and hinokazes and myriadium for coming up with really good detailed points. this site really is dying and it really is pay to win/pay to be able to enjoy anything abt this website and mods and staff just do not seem to care. @iia 's ec to cc conversion terminal idea could really transform this website but i highly, highly doubt it will be implemented because i genuinely dont think staff cares at all. as far as i can tell they really dont care that 900 or so creatures on this site are completely retired and unobtainable unless you spend quite literally up to hundreds of dollars to pay for ONE creature. its absolutely insane how this economy has tumbled into a nightmare economy, and its not fair to people who really love and enjoy this site and genuinely want to keep it going. if big changes were made i could see myself playing more but for now, the site has been exactly the same for years and i cant take it anymore. what @myriadium said about making longer events is SO great, i literally dont enjoy even one of the FEW events that go on on this website, seriously. dragolds den will literally TAKE your ec,, like what??? also, what you said about having 300 xc but not having clicked in months is insane. the click exchange NEEDS a complete redo.

what @hinokazes said about the ability to click and feed creatures with your keyboard is SO important too. the click exchange is bad for my laptop too, i cant open up 50 tabs at once and feed all of them, my laptop would combust into flames lol. not to mention that the repeated clicking it takes to use the exchange and to feed is an accessibility problem. some people have disabilities and literally cant use their hands like that to feed every day, it will cause them pain!!!! it already is tedious and boring for a non-disabled player, now imagine a disabled player adding a ton of pain in their hands just to feed and get really minimal amounts of ec, and also not even have creatures evolve from feeding because it takes so so many feeds. also what you said abt creatures evolving is so, so true. i have creatures as well that have been in eggs since i got them- it is literally so hard to evolve some creatures i genuinely cant stand it. also what you said about the games and lottery system is so true. i have also noticed that lottery winners have been some of the same people sometimes, ive never participated and never will. also completely agree that some cash shop and retired travels are literally just, not very appealing and NOT worth real money at all.

thank you all for your contributions, if anyone else has anything to add im more than willing to listen to more input.

@ian @orderedchaos , maybe listen to your playerbase more. this website is on a downward spiral.

iia • 22 March 2022 at 12:33 PM

(I don't have time atm to read everyones response but I figure I'll still add my 2 cents)

First of all, I do agree that this site has become a bit stagnant but it seems like things are picking up. We've had a few updates to the site (donations center) recently. So I won't harp on that much.

Here are my personal thoughts on a few aspect of eggcave:

XC: Doesn't have much use. I have never seen it active and for my 3 years on eggcave I've never used it much at all. At this point I'd be ok to see it go rather than have the EC team spend a lot of time revamping it at the moment (I think there are more important things to do)

Questing: (This drives me up the wall) Right now if I want to get the Florette from the VEND machine I must do 160 quests (averaging 3kec per quest) That is ~480kec (and all the time you spend collecting) for a CHANCE to get a creature barely worth 100kec. WHY??? I think VEND creatures should cost less because they have a mark setting them apart from the average creature that makes them a lower value.
I am a believer that questing could be a HUGE part of eggcave (promotes feeding, promotes trading, promotes activity, equally accessible to old and new players) but unfortunately it is not worth the work to get a creature.
I liked when the foo came out in the VEND. Eggcave went crazy for a few days but it wasn't for CC(for once). It is so much more fun to quest if everyone is doing it. I wish the rereleases would have come out the VEND. Think about it... there would be so much motivation to quest, be active, and interact on the site whereas now its just desperately trying to find a player that will sell you their extremely inflated cc. The only reason I don't think this has happened is because rare creatures can bring in revenue for eggcave (which is understandable). But how much more money is eggcave really making if all of the players are leaving because Eggcave is a race for cc. Personally, I would be fine with supporting a game that I feel takes into account what their players want, but I don't think Eggcave has done good job with that over the last few years hence why I haven't bought cc.

Donations center: I think it is on the right track with giving away retired items and adding a cool down

Adoption center: I'm not sure why the adoption center has a fee. Personally I don't think it should, just so it can get more activity. I also think it should have a cool down. As a new player I was ecstatic to find creatures in the adoption center and would love to share that generosity now, but why would I pay to do it when I can just transfer it to a player for free? (you got me?)

Wall of sandrodons/alkub racing: Fine but underused. Could use a revamp someday.

Thief shop/SARC: I think we need to retire some and add some new creatures


Here are my thoughts 😊
I REALLY wish questing would become a bigger thing here, but first it needs more incentive.


Btw... I didn't come up with the ec/cc terminal. The idea has been around forever 😊

https://eggcave.com/forums/topic/76031?page=1#1664333

^ there is the link to the one prairie made. It has a lot of good ideas, so check it out and leave a post saying you support or not if you want 😊

myriadium • 22 March 2022 at 1:31 PM

@iia
Ooh, a questing revamp would be sooo nice. I haven't been tending to my shop recently but because of the lack of people questing, there's a lack of active user shops (speaking of usershops you know the ones where they're really expensive and it's just a place to flex your unobtainables? seeing those while questing makes me so sad).

Did you know I was trying to get a Foo and a Tawny for the longest times through the VEND machine and I ended up getting four Blizes in a row! That was really cool, I definitely did not quit questing after that disaster.

The idea of quests is so good on paper; it gives underutilized things like food and toys a chance to be used properly (even if the amount of food and toys is way too much and chances of having certain kinds is quite low because both user and game shops don't restock that often).

hopefully with a more active questing community they can rerelease old creatures more often

hinokazes • 22 March 2022 at 1:58 PM

@iia : Oh, the donations center... Thank you for speaking about it, I completely forgot because of how recent it is. Honest question tho, did it exist before... ? For me, it seems to be something new. Doesn't seems like something I'll use however, but if it can be a good thing for others, I hope it'll be 😊

iia • 22 March 2022 at 2:00 PM

@hinokazes the donation center has been a thing for all of the time I'be been around 😊

Deleted • 19 July 2022 at 10:59 AM

I agree with what everyone has been saying. Devs are very greedy, they don’t want the game to be fun or the community to be friendly, they just want your money. Userbase is also quite stagnant, apart from a few cool people like @boba it’s mostly just people whining about how they want CC. CSPs are such a waste in my opinion, it’s upwards of $10 a month just to keep up with the Joneses. This isn’t a gym membership, it’s a pet game. The devs don’t listen to the fans, I doubt anything short of a protest will get them to make some much needed improvements to this dying website.

wonder404exe • 19 July 2022 at 1:41 PM

I PRESSED THE REFRESH shfwieufbefiefov *sad :c*

1. Only game I did is the site trivia BCS its easy but the other ones- Not worth it

1. I cant spent EC on here. It seems nicer to have a system to turn EC to CC. People spent thousands of USD on this game, for virtual pets.

2. My friend got an Izalav in the thief shop (yes another way to get all ur EC down the drain) and it costs 5k Feeds to evolve. I cant understand why some pets are so hard to evolve. Also my other friend took like 5yrs for a creature to evolve xD

3. I always wanted a creature from the VEND, never did, never will. I could spent idk- 500k EC on the creature or RISK ~1mil EC on ONE SET that could give me a creature that I'm not aiming for.

4. Lots of ppl like to collect items. but for other people, most/all the shops are useless. I wish they have some other use.

heatherm19 • 19 July 2022 at 5:57 PM

I really agree with @wonder404exe 2nd point, especially as a newer player I'm continually shocked at how many stats some creatures need in order to evolve. I mean there are active players with feed-friendly coves with years-old creatures not grown yet because they need ridiculous amounts of stats. I personally have no trouble getting my creatures *views* if that's what they require, but the clicks and feeds come much slower even if you are very active. I don't see how it's helpful for the users or the game for one single creature to take so long to evolve.

Also agree there shouldn't be a fee for the adoption center, I get the idea of 'abandoning your creature is bad' but is it better to just let an unwanted creature languish on an account? Also the donations center is an awesome idea that just seems fairly useless because nothing is ever there? I understand why maybe users aren't going to want to toss items into the donation center for free, but I feel like there must be some way to make it more appealing and more likely to be used.

The CC creatures, especially the re-releases.... It really is just too much. And I'm speaking as someone who has had the privilege to be able to buy large quantities of CC at least a few times. The numbers are just extremely off imo, the largest amount of CC you can buy in one transaction is 5k for *forty-five* actual real dollars, but each re-release is at least 1k *plus* new CC-only creatures every single month. That adds up to 3kCC a month, every single month, if you don't want to miss anything. It's too much, given how much it costs in real money for just 5k. It's not sustainable for most users, I have literally spent hundreds of real-life dollars on this game already and it's just not possible to keep doing that.

Personally the quests and VEND stuff is a bit addictive and I don't really have complaints about that, except for how hard some of the quests actually are (Speed Reading is my sworn enemy omg the library never has what's needed and user shops are always so expensive!). But the Thief Shop... Feels like a huge waste of time. Literally just throwing hundreds of thousands of ec away for nothing. I've tried my luck 3 times and it was infuriating enough that I've already sworn it off, if I want a Thief Shop creature I'll trade or whatever. I honestly just don't even understand the concept behind it, I mean why is it supposed to be a fun thing to do, just throw away *millions* of ec without getting a thing with the tiny hope that maybe you might get something eventually? That's not fun.

All of that said, I haven't been this addicted to a game in a loooong time. I *love* Eggcave and it has already replaced my other petsite-game that I've played for over a decade! I love the variety of creatures, how adorable some of them are but also how creepy and weird some of them are. I'm addicted to Travels, even though I only put travels on grown/frozen creatures I can't stop collecting them. I'm struggling real bad in real life currently, my anxiety is worse than it's been in years and home life is extremely difficult, and Eggcave has given me an amazing reprieve from all of that. As a newer player I see these issues that could be addressed to make the game more inviting and more accessible for more players and I just want to shout YES PLEASE because this is such an amazing game and more people should be able to play and have fun with it.

snowwall • 20 July 2022 at 9:43 PM

@heatherm19
> I get the idea of 'abandoning your creature is bad' but is it better to just let an unwanted creature languish on an account?
Particularly the non-immortals...

> I honestly just don't even understand the concept behind it, I mean why is it supposed to be a fun thing to do, just throw away *millions* of ec without getting a thing with the tiny hope that maybe you might get something eventually? That's not fun.
About as fun as a casino/lottery. I was shocked to see people betting a pile of chips amounting to half-a-thousand coins of the realm, because... that's a fortnight's groceries, or a dozen books (or half a bookshelf, if you go to a second-hand bookshop), or enough chocolate peanuts to last a month!
Here, though, I hardly visit the cave (in case I see a creature I like, because a space is 80kEC at the moment for me), which means not daring to even look at the monthlies (much less the creature release week), so Thief and Leila Oasis, mostly empty, are the perfect way to acquire just a few creatures a year without breaking my heart.

Not bothered by slow growth, though - more annoyed by the fact most of cutest poses are egg/child poses that are fleeting unless you Essence them. But then, I got leaves of Vakka when there were more CC sellers in the game, so immortality is not necessary for me.



@myriadium
>Ooh, a questing revamp would be sooo nice. I haven't been tending to my shop recently but because of the lack of people questing, there's a lack of active user shops

My 2 cents on quests:

My user shop on Subeta is active, because I can autoprice and, on average, get a profit. My questing there is greatly eased by the ability to search user shops straight from questgiver's page, but since inventory search is a different button, I always feel like I should search both or I'm missing out on my on-hand, already bought/"free" items and there are such a lot of quests to do daily I'm just giving up...

My questing on Misticpets is pretty active because all of my cheapy-questy items are available at once in my inventory and I can submit them at once, straight after being asked. Ideal streamlining.

My questing on EC is dead - the usershops are no help and, until now, I never knew if 30k is a fair price for this item; inventory is small; searching the vault, the shops, the usershop for each item of each quest is far too long and annoying. My usershop is likewise, empty, because pricing is (was, now there's at least an oracle database) always a guessing game; buying is not possible to do with a mouse copy-paste of price (darn comma), typing out the exact price (haggling? hah!) is the only way; and, to add insult to injury, shop size is a second ever-growing cove expansion ladder. I don't think I'm too unique in this respect... Any wonder quests are not too popular, esp. with what I hear about a lottery at VENDing?


Also, when a creature can get an "art update" at any time (and it can in any pet game, I'm a user with no rights besides the right to pay, as per the typical EULA, "buying" a creature is a drastic misnomer 😃), spending real-life money becomes a gamble of epic proportions. I still remember that the Batteron and Meriton were different, even if I can't find those pictures, they were more to my liking, and if I had been saving my lunch money for one and then they changed... nah.

(and, of course, I probably would've kept quiet in my new-creature-less burrow if not for the whole "Free" CC. As per a book like like, "a mage gets very annoyed when something is taken they've already considered theirs". Sometimes, this annoyance is what pushes people to take the next step in verification/pay-to-win. In my case, it can't work, technically can't, those steps are untake-able, so I resort to words on forums...)