We should be able to give other people's creatures items (except for travels)

audrei9 • 24 October 2024 at 4:29 AM

It would provide more incentive for people to buy rarer items from the market due to their higher influence on the happiness of the creatures, and it would make looking after a dying/ struggling cove a lot easier. Some creatures just don't get high happiness no matter how much you feed them!

In universe, we can't use travels on them because that's like kidnapping lol

minnie298a • 24 October 2024 at 7:10 AM

@audrei9
I don't really like this idea. Mainly as I know of some players who don't want items, even travels on their creatures, or only want certain items. So the opportunity for malicious intent is too high for me to feel comfortable.

However, I do see the goal of your idea. So, maybe something more like paying for a day at Tim's. Then the only thing that would be effected is the happiness.

sparklefox • 24 October 2024 at 7:50 AM

Yeah, for the reasons outlined above, I'm not a fan of this. I have seen a few users seek out old creatures that were given travels and such way before the item collection feature existed, so have "0 Items Collected" on their profiles despite the travel. This feature would make it very easy for someone to ruin that just for the hell of it, or maybe because they don't like a user and want to childishly sour their day. Same goes with ruining a creature with a hard-to-find, possibly retired travel by gifting it a common one.

The ability to turn item gifting off would possibly be a way to fix that, but what if someone was on hiatus? Now they come back to their fancy creature being either sabotaged on purpose or innocently given an item for fun by someone unaware. And making it opt-in or acceptable/rejectable would defeat the "saving dying coves" purpose, which I see is mainly why you'd like it. We can already gift items to others, so it would probably be best to simply leave it at that to let the recipient decide what to do with their gift.

However, I do like the sound of gifting someone with a day or so at Tim's. It sounds more useful for keeping inactive mortal coves alive, and I can't really think of any big negatives.

heatherm19 • 24 October 2024 at 10:18 AM

For the reasons above I'm not a fan of the idea, but being able to gift a stay at Tim's sounds like a really great compromise. I've felt that frustration of trying to keep mortal inactive coves out of the red, because feeds don't always give the same amount of happiness I've had times where feeding from all 4 of my accounts barely got a creature to yellow. Using Tims would help so much, while not messing with item counts or anything like that.

dragrawr • 24 October 2024 at 1:50 PM

@heatherm19 I like the Tims gift idea!! I hate seeing coves die.

Basically what everyone else said. It could really offend someone / annoy them if you could give their pristine creatures items. It’s kind of like taking a figurine out of a box if that makes sense.

But I like where this is going ^.^

poptarts • 24 October 2024 at 4:01 PM

Item Purchase Incentive:
While gifting items to a player's creatures is a nice gesture, it also has the downside if players prefer their creatures to have specific items or none, just as other players have stated.

I do love your idea of giving more incentives to purchase items!

My Opinion on Item Purchase Incentives:
I feel like another incentive for item usage and purchase would be implementing something like battling like in the Asteroid Event (there was battling during it), with items increasing specific stats. That way, players would be more incentivized to spend EC or even trade their CC vouchers for EC to purchase more items in the stores.

Or, if players do not like battling, maybe an actual explore option could be implemented to allow players to explore the cave or actual habitats assigned to egg cave creatures, and the store items can be purchased to increase happiness, which degrades every couple of explore attempts/steps.

They can go even further by giving thief shop and cc creatures higher happiness stats to explore longer. Perks for exploring could be finding fragments/gems that will be used to unlock new explore locations or exclusive pets/items. Exploring could also maybe be a replacement for token collecting for the VEND, instead of shop items being given to the NPCs, they will sell you the items as a means to explore and collect these fragments/gems/etc which you can give in exchange for a vend token, this way there is still incentive to purchase and use items, more interaction with the website, and hopefully an increase in the active player-base. (pets booked at tim's would not be able to explore for as long as they are booked into it or 24-hours after cancelling tim's service)

However, I assume this option would take a long time and money to code and obtain art for.
(though I believe the site could make more profit and balance out the time and money put into implementing something like this)
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A Day At Tim’s
As for buying player's creatures a day at Tims. The downside of that would be if a player is intentionally letting their pet starve and die to make space in their cove. If a player sees an active player who has a creature at low health, they may end up buying a day for that creature without realizing the owner intentionally allowed that.

How I see it Working:
I could see a day at Tim's working if putting creatures into the adoption center was free, or if there was an option to release the pet into the wild for free. If the release into the wild is an option, it would allow pets that players assume others want to be put into the adoption center, and pets they believe others do not want to be released (aka; deleted). As of now, it is cheaper to just let the pet die compared to placing it into the adoption center.
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Dying Coves:
Another idea for helping dying coves would be a "hibernation" option where the creatures will stop losing happiness and go into stasis if the player is inactive for at least 1-2+ weeks (or the creatures hibernate at 1% during a long hiatus period). It may even encourage returning players to stick around longer as I am sure it is discouraging to see that a majority of your pets died.