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prairie • 5 February 2025 at 11:29 PM
Howdy EggCavers!I've been on this site since 2013, and during my time here, I've seen plenty of areas of improvement on the site. Some got solved, but some continue to constantly be talked about in the site feedbacks forums for YEARS, and they're pretty basic QOL or UI (Quality of Life or User Interface) stuff. So I wanted to make a big 'ol mass post so some stuff I see the need for is all in one easy-to-see spot for @Ian, not spread across 5 separate topics. I've even made a Google Doc so things can be checked off if Ian wants it. So let's get right into it then!
myriadium • 5 February 2025 at 11:57 PM
Thank you for putting all of our suggestions into this post, prairie!! A lot of web games are very customizable and it's a shame EC is quite limited, so I agree with your suggestions on being able to change or adjust the theme/color scheme/pfp for every user! I remember back when I played other web based collecting games, they would give you the option to personally code the design for your profile using css. That's not something egg cave has to opt for, of course, but some personalization would be great to have.also, HEAVYYYY on the filters; there are just so many items here on EC and the search functions in the database already requires someone to put in quotation marks to search for the name of the item since the search function also looks at the description. there are already certain tags that can be used for filter fields: Use:, Restock Price (maybe a field where someone inputs a range of prices?), rarity (maybe a field where someone inputs a range of rarities or if they want to find all the r100 items?), retired/not retired, etc.I'd like to also expand that to filters in the strongroom! Specifically, I want to be able to filter the types of shops that an item can be bought from: maybe checkboxes that have all the shops (including the current csp only items). I want to be able to select "Travel Agency" and/or "Trinket Travels" when I want to customize my creature without having to scroll through 172 pages of ice cream and toys. creature try on is also a perfect idea. now that eggcavity doesn't work, finding the perfect travel for my creatures has gotten super tedious...Also, I actually really agree with the cave monthlies only suggestion. I think in that case, not only can all users obtain something that was suggested by one of them (makes hoarding a lot more practical too), but I feel like there might be some comparing going around if two users suggest creatures but only one suggestion ends up in the csp. obviously the csp would be more valuable and there's the feeling that the cave creature wasn't good enough for that position. Not talking about a scenario in general.
prairie • 6 February 2025 at 12:11 AM
@myriadium Yeah it'd at least be nice for users to toggle different modes (such as hopefully one day dark mode) or the likes in their preferences to at least customize their site view for themselves.Shoot- I totally did mean to put in strongroom filters, cause that's one I myself have had problems with too. Might go in and add that! (I build onto this and the doc as I run into of more!)Happy you like alot of the takes!
heatherm19 • 6 February 2025 at 12:52 AM
Such a well thought-out and well worded post @prairie! Just my 2cents on a couple things mentioned:- Opt-out options for notifications, yes please!! Sometimes notifications really get overrun with low-priority things and it makes it difficult to easily see more pressing things (for example, a notification about someone outbidding you on an auction is imo more time-sensitive than knowing that users fed a handful of your creatures). I have a screenshot of 84 unread notifications during a double-feed day. It would be really nice to be able to toggle different types of notifications, even so I could just temporarily stop the flood of notifications in situations like double-feed days. - Item archives are indeed a hot mess, lol. I don't know much about coding or anything, but I'd think just adding some of the existing functionality from the creature archives wouldn't be too difficult? Filtering by store in itself would be a *huge* improvement. - Cove List Sorting: Drag & Drop for cove list sorting, YES! I joined after that was changed so I never got to experience when it used to work like that, but I do know that sorting large cove lists can be an absolute nightmare with this numbering system. (Especially when things don't really end up where you expected, due to accidentally having the same number on multiple creatures or somesuch)- Quick-add for cove lists: I'd *really* like an 'add all (species) not already in list'. That would be SO helpful. Right now there is no easy way to do that, if you have a list with certain species and then you get a bunch more.- Multi-selecting for wall comment deletion, I didn't know that was a thing in the past but I surely don't see why it was removed. I completely gave up keeping my wall 'trimmed' in any way a long time ago, it's such a pain deleting one at a time when there are so many, I literally have over 100 *pages* of wall comments...- Rereleasing retired CC travels, yes, yes please. Just yes. I've spent *way* too much trading for old CC travels, I feel like that's a whole untapped market that could be beneficial for everyone.I'm also going to add a small suggestion for cove searching: Allow a way to search for *name* only in your cove (ie, have only results with that string of characters in a creature's name, not including the creature's species names). Example, I can't figure out a way to search my thousand-plus Wynerl hoard for *only* creatures that have "Wynerl" in their *name*. Just searching Wynerl will of course bring up all the Wynerls, and searching "Wynerl" with quotes brings up nothing at all. (If there is a way, please let me know!
prairie • 7 February 2025 at 11:48 AM
@/heatherm19 Happy you like this stuff!! ❤️On the Quick-add for cove lists, I totally see the value in that, if you have a species-specific tab organized a specific way, and not by name, then yeah its a pain to always be on top of adding new ones. But I guess to me at a point you just "Add all wynerls to list" type thing, due to hassle. Basically delete the list and then do the quick add of the species. but I do see the frustration, Search by name in that instance is super important! That is incredibly frustrating. Might be a nice way for ""s to be used for a specific word and not include species per say. but that might be tricky, I don't know the coding sides of things.
isis • 7 February 2025 at 12:17 PM
Thank you very much for putting this all together. Not much to add here, just posting to boost and show my support! I hope EC staff takes notice!
prairie • 10 February 2025 at 3:47 PM
@isis Happy you like it! And thanks for the support! ❤️More pings for traction and also feedback@silvia@dragrawr@disney@kataclysm
raccoon • 10 February 2025 at 9:24 PM
Support on *most* of these! I dislike the Cash Shop VEND suggestion, but I do think a way to release more old CC travels into circulation is sorely needed. I just don't think a pick and choose VEND is the best option here. I could be misunderstanding what you mean with that suggestion though. It's a bit confusing to me.That's just my opinion however!Also YES YES YES drag and drop cove lists please. Ian I'm begging, give us a toggle to swap between drag and drop and numbered...
prairie • 11 February 2025 at 12:02 AM
@raccoon I might've worded that wrong, but the pick whatever you want VEND would only be available for ONE day. (EC's B-day). The Vend would still be subject to stock supply & the cooldowns.But perhaps it'd make more sense for it to not be a free for all, but perhaps 3-4 select years, and then it rotates. ^ This is just to help some of the less wanted creatures rotate (and avoid something like Onny and then 2 years later: onny again for EX)Dunno if that makes more sense.
silvia • 11 February 2025 at 8:04 AM
@prairie Agreed on everything! Nothing much to add actually. xDJust maybe, when selecting user suggestions for cave monthlies, to also give a chance to users that rarely get chosen or never were, If they got a nice design / idea. I see a lot of same users getting chosen for creature suggestions and while it's totally cool, I'd wish there was more user variety in this all! ^^
raccoon • 11 February 2025 at 3:55 PM
@prairie Ohhhhhh! That makes more sense. 😊 Thank you for the clarification.
prairie • 11 February 2025 at 5:00 PM
Glad y'all like some of the suggested UI & QOL ideas!This topic is focusing on some of the more "main" UI/QOL stuff I've seen, the only thing that might be more "niche" or "culture" would be the Creature Suggestions part, since that at its base is formed with user input & 'donation' to the site.I don't pretend to be a coder or know what all it'd take to do this stuff, but I do know I've seen some of this stuff suggested for YEARS, and it's just never happened. I wanted to put a bunch in one easy to look at spot/doc.This type of stuff might take a good number of years, especially if there's a limited/sole coder for EggCave. But, I would love to see the ball move on some nice UI & QOL features on existing stuff @ian! I LOVE the idea of Galleries, but it is a new feature, not improving or helping us with troubles we already have RN with other aspects of the site.
disney • 12 February 2025 at 11:51 AM
@prairie - I agree with a lot of this stuff ^^ Would be nice to see these things on egg cave ❤️
shine • 14 February 2025 at 10:41 PM
Great list! I have nothing to critique or add, just wanted to voice my support and thanks for compiling it. Here's hoping staff takes notice
dragrawr • 14 February 2025 at 11:49 PM
@prairie yeah, can't add much!! I agree with all this stuff, quality of life improves games so much. Heavy emphasis on dark mode cus my poor eyes are BOILING! I really like the CC Vend idea! ^v^
s6and • 16 February 2025 at 2:50 PM
Hey an idea to add if you think its good enough; since we set our side accounts and its stored in a database, could we take that and just disable side accounts from accessing the urls which main accounts should only see since to log in and stay logged in you'd be interfacing with this db for verification at each step just 403 forbidden on side accounts as a check before serving the rest of the page? Sorry if this is an over simplification.
dragiigy • 14 May 2025 at 5:32 AM
@prairie 1. Another idea for Strongroom:Show ONLY retired items 2. Getting some interest for having CC, in EC of course. Not jsut getting annoying messeges: You have CC to spend.Other ideas. 100% AGREE !!!!Another idea: when qusting, add direct link form each of the stores (Baked Bun Quests, Going Global ...) directly to Strongoom?Tjank you for support 😊
prairie • 14 September 2025 at 1:49 PM
Would have to go through and add more things one day, but I still feel pretty strongly on most of this stuff even though I only am partially on EC now. It's just MUCH more user friendly and makes things easier for players
hinokazes • 20 September 2025 at 6:04 PM
Haven't check the forum in forever so I'm seeing this only now, which would be very welcome. However, a QOL I didn't see mentionned that I personally have been complaining about years ago is that feeding creatures is not keyboard friendly. I have developped issues to my hands overtime, and having to always move the mouse and click with it hurts overtime. Yes, I do use the keyboard shortcuts to open a pet's feeding page in another tab and ctrl+w to close it, but my left hand position is really meh while doing so...All I ever just asked was something like, when you want to mass-feed your own account for example, and go on a pet, that you can use the left or right arrow to change the creature, and press space or enter to feed it. I'd be able to click way more if something like that was implemented.... I know another clicking website that did some very welcome QOL (because they finally listened to their community and realised people can be disabled or have struggles) that offer the possibility to do some form of 'auto-feeding' when I click on a button (it's not broken like it may sound, I just don't know if I can mention said website for those that know it ^^'), it's slower than actual clicking in fact, and it's not painful for the hands, so I can actually enjoy clicking again when I couldn't before. But for eggcave, I can only do some occasional clicking, and it's when my hands are fine enough. I can stay weeks if not months without doing it, and it's terrible because I have so many pets that need to evolve but I just... can't :|
sonny • 22 January 2026 at 10:37 AM
this is an old thread but i highly agree with everything here. its kind of tragically poetic that this post is nearly a year old and still absolutely none of these suggestions have been implemented. it blows my mind to this day that they removed drag and drop sorting, why would they make our qol *worse?* i used to spend hours organizing my whole cove in rainbow order, now with 500+ creatures and a horrible numbering system, i simply cannot do that anymore. youre literally asking me to sort five hundred creatures one by one by number. i will simply not do that. drag and drop is fairly simple HTML, it cannot be that hard to re-implement. the truth is, this game has stagnated for a long, long time now. ive played since 2014 and everything feels more or less the same. there have been some gameplay changes like dailies, vend, csp rereleases, maybe a few other things... but very very few qol/ui updates. some of the updates we've gotten have been for the worse too, like removing drag and drop, removing mass comment deletion, and changing the creature leveling system (i prefer the old one, i miss having crazy high level pets...)no new events, no new gameplay during existing events (like new halloween fair games), no new regular games, a dead click exchange, and we're absolutely flooded with new items but have 0 ui/qol updates to make it easier to sort things. but sure, lets introduce a brand new feature (galleries) while shoving the many problems that this site has under the rug and never acknowledge the players' frequent suggestions/concerns.also, what @/hinokazes said is very important. keyboard navigation is an extremely basic website accessibility feature that *needs* to be implemented. i feel that accessibility should be prioritized above all else.sorry if this comes off as mean spirited or cranky or whatever... ive just grown disillusioned with this game over the years and its really just sad that devs dont seem committed to making good changes like this at all. when i compare eggcave to other games that i play/have played, eggcave feels very bare-bones and i fail to understand what would attract new players or keep them playing if they do join. "come join eggcave, where ~1,100 creatures are retired and very hard and expensive to get your paws on! oh and also the ui hasnt changed in a decade AND our qol *sucks!*"anyway... good post op, i really wish that devs would just listen to us at some point.
kataclysm • 23 January 2026 at 4:32 AM
@sonny I enjoyed your post. It made me chuckle, but raised some very real points. I saw this thread when it was posted and knew that, if it gained traction, it would still be unlikely to receive attention from staff. That's been an issue for Eggcave for a very long time. I posted my own suggestion threads in 2022, just asking for a dark mode (https://eggcave.com/forums/topic/76994), and never received any acknowledgement from any of the staff. For a feature that comes as standard almost everywhere online, I think it's extremely telling of where EggCave is and what the staff do and don't care about. If you use ChickenSmoothie, you might be aware of recent announcements there following a letter from the community and some staff - the tldr is that many people felt the site had been abandoned to stagnation, releasing monthly pets but without ever introducing new features or changing up how things operated. The honchos up the ladder appeared very receptive to the wake up call and positive changes are happening now. I often think EggCave could do with the same treatment, but a part of the issue there is that it doesnt feel like the mods are on our side - with some cases that are the exception to the rule, such as the occasional supportive comment in these threads from mastergemma.I think another point I'd like to make would be to bring attention to the galleries feature. It was the new thing in development last year(?), or year before(?), accepting beta testers, and it has since sunk from the public eye and fallen from the table. Where are galleries? What became of testing? Why did we never hear anything afterwards?Another thing I feel is very telling is that the 'history' page on EggCave (see it at the bottom with the boring guidelines links and whatnot) stops at 2020. The only worthwhile thing that got mentioned for that year was the CRW, indicating that the staff don't keep up - either because they don't care or are unable to prioritise duties here. I think we could do with some new staff, too.Edit to add:Oh, before I forget... When I used to use discord, Mastergemma reached out to me to talk about accessibility features for EggCave. It was somewhat in my field at the time so I took a few hours out of my day to provide a substantial list, including archive searching accessibility notions and keyboard navigation. I can't recall exactly what MG's response was, something along the lines of 'thanks, I'll have a look at this', I think, but I have no idea whether it ever went up the chain to Ian. Mentioning this partly to continue to shine a light on Gemma, who cares/cared about that much at the time, but also to shine a light on the fact that even providing thorough, informed suggestions outside of an inactive and unattended suggestions forum didn't seem to incite movement.(As an aside, with hindsight, no, I don't think the conversation should have happened via discord in closed dms - I wish I had had the forethought to bring my ideas to a thread, but I'm sure anyone will understand it felt moot at the time.)
heatherm19 • 23 January 2026 at 4:52 AM
@kataclysm Your post brings up something I've wondered about before.... The behind the scenes of this site. Specifically, is Ian the only one actually implementing the updates, fixing the bugs, etc? Because based on many past issues where a mod has said something to the effect of 'Ian has been notified, I can't do anything else', that seems to maybe be the case. And if it is true, well no wonder the site has stagnated so much. One person can only do so much, and burnout is real. For a site like this I'd expect at least 4 or 5 people with some level of access to the code and such, to be able to roll back a change that breaks something or reset something that didn't reset on it's own (like when the dailies haven't reset at midnight). (Also, semi-related, the text at the bottom of every page says "© 2009-2026 Egg Cave — a Bumpwire LLC web site." and yet the Bumpwire link just led to an error page for the longest time, and now gives a blank page with just a logo on it. I may be way off, but if the 'parent company' of Eggcave is defunct or no longer active with Eggcave, that may be a big part of the issue here....)
kataclysm • 23 January 2026 at 5:11 AM
@heatherm19 I can only speculate on information I can't rely on to be accurate as it may be outdated. But, to my knowledge, Bumpwire appears to be Ian's own company. (Source: https://tdnforums.com/topic/15803-introducing-eggcavecom-new-from-bumpwire/), so... if it is abandoned, it's very bad news for us, but we have enough reason to believe it isnt, with Ian occasionally commenting on posts here.This quote is from the on site player guide, which also needs updating, imo:"Egg Cave was created by Ian McQueen and is operated by Bumpwire LLC. Ian is a web developer and game designer. He works regularly with Egg Cave's artists who draw the artwork that you see around the site. Development for Egg Cave began in December of 2008; it officially launched on July 20, 2009."So, I can assume that Ian is, or was, largely or solely responsible for developments. The homepage now just being a logo isn't enough to speculate further, but I agree that it doesn't inspire hope.Additionally, Meteoroid is listed as being the staff member responsible for content, specifying a focus on lore, new activities and 'just sprucing up older content'.My question is, when was the last time anyone heard from Meteoroid, saw them engaging, or got to experience anything getting spruced? I know a lot of Eggcaves BTS is anonymous, for one reason or another, so we may not know how active that staff member is, but it certainly feels as though they're absent.I don't want to get too far from the subject of the topic, but I do feel that staff attitudes and participation also constitute QOL significance. However, I'm also happy to yap about this sort of thing via PMs.
prairie • 23 January 2026 at 12:05 PM
@sonny, @kataclysm, @heatherm19Thanks for y'all's posts!Happy to come back to a lot of notifs on this.Yeah, when this new version of the site dropped and they had quietly gotten rid of the drag and drop, I was genuinely tweaking out when I was organizing my cove. It infuriates me. This game HAS 100% been stagnant for so long. It highkey painful. I feel like it's fallen off so hard over the years; things stay the same frequently, and some basic things with this site feel forgotten, when usually on this site or others there's consistency to them. If your community is asking "Is ___ going to happen this year?" then its a problem."it's really just sad that devs don't seem committed to making good changes like this at all." "is Ian the only one actually implementing the updates, fixing the bugs, etc?" "I can assume that Ian is, or was, largely or solely responsible for developments" I'm going to be honest, I could bet money Ian is the dev. As in uno, solo, single individual. I guess that just given how I've seen stuff over the years, how art commissions are done, and the meet the team page.Moderators seem to help come up with ideas, present stuff and you know, moderate the forums/enforce the rules- but I don't think they have the ability to do anything code wise if I had to guess. Usually- that'd be labeled as a dev role on sites. But IDK how staff is labeled here vs other sites that make it evident they have a full team. Either which way, Eggcave's team is SMALL.
sonny • 23 January 2026 at 1:46 PM
wow, if ian is seriously the one and only dev, and everyone else is just a moderator or doesnt have access to the code, thats kind of insane 😅 i honestly wouldnt blame him for the stagnation if he is 100% alone in making code changes and implementing new features. it would be really great to get some clarification on who has access to the code, no need to namedrop anyone either, i'd just like to know if anyone else except ian can code things around here.i wonder if ian would be open to hiring new developers or offering volunteer opportunities? i dunno, i just wish we could have something new and fun to do ;w; the last time i was TRULY hyped for an event was when the tine was rereleased... in 2020 😭 maybe we could have something like that again this upcoming chocotravaganza... ian if youre reading this.. PLSS put an old rare creature in the exchange again 🙏🙏🙏
dragrawr • 23 January 2026 at 1:52 PM
@sonny I feel for Ian if he’s the only coder, must be insanely stressful as well and maybe he will onboard some people to help update the site a bit eventually! Still very adamant on a dark mode that’s compatible with eggcave as my eyes are burning into crisps HAHA;; and yes, more events and such! We need one for summer as the site gets a bit slow during then and I think it would spike the amount of users playing!
heatherm19 • 23 January 2026 at 4:53 PM
@sonny I feel like there are enough of us around that are still very devoted to the site, that if there was the opportunity would love to volunteer to help keep the site going and help it flourish! I know I'd jump at the chance, if I had any coding experience. 😊I still curse my bad luck that I wasn't around for the Big Events like the Pareteorsite Queen thing, there hasn't been anything like that since I joined in 2022. Which is an awfully long time to not have any new Events. I've looked back at the old blog posts for some of the events and it sounds like they were fun! I'd really love to see something like that.
dragrawr • 4 February 2026 at 5:30 AM
Randomly jumping in again, and this is just my sad little cries for help as a collector... another side account. 1. more room, 2. 1 main and 4 sides is just a good number, lol. Expansion costs are getting rough, especially with 1200 plus creatures on the site, and a minimum of 55+ being added yearly isvery excruciating for people that really like to collect. At a point, cave expansions get too costly and may cause people to lose interest in engaging. I see costs for coves over 2.3k ... scary.
heatherm19 • 4 February 2026 at 6:06 AM
@dragrawr Yup yup yup. My two Floofs sides are both now *over* 400k ec for *one* new slot. I've long supported some sort of rework of the expansion costs (bulk discounts, slower increase in cost, only increasing cost every 5, 10, etc spaces, etc etc). Supposedly the huge expansion costs are good for keeping ec relevant/useful, but I certainly think that can be accomplished in a more reasonable way. Allowing another side account would certainly help if they really won't budge on the expansion costs.My Floofs sides also really feel the frustration with cove sorting and would be *extremely* improved with the OP's suggestions of drag and drop, and more quick-add options. I still don't understand why drag and drop was removed since it sounds like so many users preferred it. And personally, I'd LOVE the quick-add options to include 'add all growing creatures'... We have 'all mortals' and 'all immortals', but immortal doesn't necessarily mean done growing!
kataclysm • 6 February 2026 at 9:14 AM
In addition to the topic of side accounts, I'd love a 'switch account' button so I no longer need to log out and in. Oh, and a way to share and send money between side accounts.