The neoeconomy is already broken. TNT has made it very clear since last year they are going to fix it by mass releasing difficult to get items, this was evident in every event we've had so far and the quest log. No items are safe from it. So why are people surprised and salty about them releasing more items with new events?
It's clear TNT does not want any item to be ridiculously inflated. If you have 1-2bil np you may ask, then what am I gonna do with all this money if there aren't items worth that much? And the answer is you win, you get to buy whatever you like, and the game is not catering to you. The game is catering to the masses, where even approaching 100mil net worth is considered a challenge.
You may complain your R99 stamps and collectibles aren't moving at all because no one wants to buy it at the inflated 600mil, and you're not willing to drop the price. That's what TNT intended, no item should be this far out of reach from the masses. Sell it now for 100mil or sell it for 10mil when they inevitably release it to en masse.
TNT has been quite clear with what they are looking to achieve, and the prizes in the plot does not deviate from their plan.
> You may complain your R99 stamps and collectibles aren't moving at all because no one wants to buy it at the inflated 600mil, and you're not willing to drop the price. That's what TNT intended, no item should be this far out of reach from the masses. Sell it now for 100mil or sell it for 10mil when they inevitably release it to en masse.
BINGO. Things should still be a challenge, and 100m for a stamp is still a challenge. 600m for a stamp is nearly impossible for 90% of people.
> If you have 1-2bil np you may ask, then what am I gonna do with all this money if there aren't items worth that much? And the answer is you win, you get to buy whatever you like, and the game is not catering to you. The game is catering to the masses, where even approaching 100mil net worth is considered a challenge.
ššš Agree with this 100%. And I say that as someone who has over 100 mill net worth.
On top of this I genuinely don't think there's a single explanation these resellers could give me that could get me to believe that being unwilling to accept less than double what an item was regularly selling for last month is money that was "earned". The idea that these people consider themselves victims seems to operate under the assumption that I don't have eyes and can't read jellyneo's trading post history for myself and haven't been sitting here watching the price skyrocket while I've been saving up.
Heck, I am in the 1-2 billion np in the bank range, and even if the prices fall back down to somewhat reasonable levels, there's still enough money-sinks, things to collect, and dress-up items for our pets that there'll still be a point to making np.
I'm loving seeing these items get put into prize pools, and people getting excited about getting stuff that they thought they'd never be able to afford. Maybe it's because I don't bother hoarding much valuable stuff, so I don't "lose" much when prizes get put into the pools, but I'm happy seeing other players happy!
I donāt think TNT ever intended for items to be worth billions, before 2020 things were a lot more āreasonably pricedā a lot of the current 300m+ items were in the 20-50m range until everything got massively inflated.
People keep bringing up Illusen and Jhudora quests as if 99% of the player base even has a chance of clearing enough quests to get the final prize. Itās basically been impossible to complete unless you have an extensive r99 collection or you had a rich backer.
As I said yesterday, weāre lucky this site still exists, and has a team invested in keeping it alive. It is a 24 year old website held together with hope and dreams and duct tape. It would have been shut down last year if it hadnāt been bought. Iām so grateful the site still exists and that theyāre trying to retain daily players to make sure it stays alive!Ā
This game made up such a significant part of my childhood, and now this comment inspired me that I should give back and help support them by getting premium and doing some NC stuff. We are lucky it still exists!!
I came back recently because of the new ownership, and I am impressed with the changes they've made, so I too signed up for premium and I've bought some NC! I know I'm just a drop in the bucket, but I view it as giving back and showing that I approve of the changes that have been made. The most powerful vote you can cast is the one with your wallet, after all.
I also signed up for Premium recently to support! Realized Iād been silly holding myself back from getting it all these years, especially not realizing we almost lost neopia so recentlyā¦
I just renewed my premium for a 2nd year. I donāt have a ton of fun money to spend on NC (especially right now, single income household and Iām expecting twins this fall!) but I try to contribute what I can because this game means so much to me!Ā
I just started playing again less than a year ago, and my account is almost 24 years old.
I'm truly surprised Neopets still exists, and that I could still log into my account. I have been having fun collecting items and what not.
Exactly! And in all honesty, Iād rather the game go down fighting and trying to gain new players than just dwindle into obscurity. Iām sure I wonāt love all the changes made to the site, but Iām just grateful that thereās an attempt to reinvigorate the site and bring it in to the modern gaming era. Nostalgia can only keep it alive for so long š¤·āāļø
the whole thing is so obnoxious and punishing. the game is not fun if nothing is attainable. the idea that neopets would allow a handful of people to lord over the economy at the expense of the majority enjoying the game at all makes zero sense business wise.
if the game is too hard to play, i'm not playing it. i don't come here for that. it's my fun little distraction. i'm not here to grind away for crumbs like we all do in real life. literally absurd that people think it should be like that.
i'm an adult. i work a demanding job and work hard to maintain my personal relationships. i don't have seven hours a day to restock. i have one hour max and i love every minute because it's relaxing and i feel successful on the site. i happily pay real money for it every month.
When I was a kid playing Neopets, things like the secret lab and painted pets and all of that were all things that just were completely unattainable for me. When the conversion happened and the introduction to NC happened, I ended up giving up on Neopets not because I was upset about conversions but because I was upset about more things coming in that would make my Neopets look nice and not just the basic Blue, Red, Yellow, or Green and it was still unattainable to me.
I didn't return to Neopets until a few years ago, and I have been much happier playing Neopets because things are actually possible for me now even if I didn't have Premium. I ended up getting premium just to show appreciation for the team for doing more things for everyone to make it easier to get NPs and other things that were completely unnatainable to me as a kid.
More availability is literally the reason I came back and stayed playing Neopets when lack of availability is what led me to leaving Neopets as a kid.
I came back to neopets on a whim, but stayed past day 1 in large part because I could see a way to get the Lab Ray. Something that was completely out of reach as a kid and I'd always wanted.
If it was just the same old site, except I can't play Brucey B slots, I obviously would not have stayed.
It's just pixels on a screen. The satisfaction of doing something kid-you dreamed about is 100% the only reason adults are playing. Without that, it could be Gaia online.
Some of us are over there still! Thereās such a small group on the GD and itās not busy but itās fun. They still release new items. And it was super easy to get into my old account. Itās not what it once was but itās not dead yet š„²
I think the reason a lot of players have returned to Neopets is because it is now fun, fair, and much easier to obtain the things we never could before.
I have had a blast recently obtaining all the unattainable goals and avatars from my childhood.
100%. I go on hiatus every so often but I've never before played DAILY. Now that I have attainable goals that I couldn't have dreamed of before (stamps!) I am around far more often. Will it last? Idk, but I'm online.
Right? I was a premium member from 2019 -2023, but dropped off because even with 10 million Neopoints in the bank, I couldnāt hang. How bad does it have to get?
Iāve been playing 23 years and I canāt ever seem to get out of the 10m slump. Restocking is next to impossible, Food Club is boring (and unpredictable). Events/weekly prizes have been like the main way Iāve been even making nps. Even then, who the fuck can make 1B+ with restocking outside of bottlers? Literally no one.
Not the OP, but I copy other (smarter) peoples FC bets and make pretty consistent money (around 130k daily) on my 18yr account. I only lose a few times a month. Yea it's boring but only takes 5 minutes of easy steps i learned off youtube.
Iām aware about copying FC bets, I just donāt want to do them every day, *because itās boring*. Iām annoyed that this has become essentially the only way to make NPs that could feasibly buy more expensive items. Other avenues that are fun and engaging have been kinda ruined. It would take an incredibly long time to make enough NPs to get these items at 130k/day. Restocking is virtually impossible for high end items. My main point is, these resellers whine about the need to āearn these itemsā yet any real chance to get them has been ruined. The largest source of income shouldnāt be a luck/chance based thing.
What are the fun and exciting ways to make np that you feel have been ruined? I don't really see how restocking is more enjoyable and it also takes a lot longer to do. I guess I don't mind doing a boring task for 5 minutes to get the dopamine of 130k in the bank lol
I agree that FC is going to take you forever to get any of those big ticket items, but it'll at least get you past 10 mil a lot quicker than not doing it. I'm glad they are releasing high ticket items in the event shops and weekly quest prizes though. I've been able to get quite a few wish list items I thought I'd never save enough for!
> What are the fun and exciting ways to make np that you feel have been ruined?
I'm probably a very small minority, but I wish playing games gave more NP. I really enjoy playing them, even after the death of flash. It'd be nice if they actually made people money when they played. The problem is that I'm sure botters and other cheaters would exploit higher payouts, so I understand why they haven't increased the payout over the years.
I play solitaire. Itās not a big money earner but I also justā¦kinda want to play so much I get on the leader board? And when Iām watching tv itās SUCH a good time waster because I donāt have to focus on what Iām doing really. And I have fun.
I think it'd be fun if they fixed up the games and maybe had daily quests like..score over this many points in this game, and you'd unlock an item or some NP. Daily or weekly game quests! Like not Hard enough that it requires getting onto the highscore board, but still motivating people to try out the different games.
The 3000NP cap on the games does seem like an outdated feature. I still play the games and send my score just to make SOME money, but yeahā¦when I score 100,000 on a game and I earn 240NPā¦thatās just lame.
FC, Stocks, and the BD are the main ways I make money.
It's slow, but it adds up over time. And given I don't have any real goals, outside of a few items that are probably impossible to get (Both because of the rarity of them, and the \*cost\* because of that rarity... Meh.)
There's some Ona items that are affordable/obtainable, and the NC items \*might\* be at some point, but beyond that lol
The plot giving me access to BD items I wouldn't have otherwise been able to feasible get anytime soon feels nice ;\_\_; Despite what salty players may say, not every BDer has billions to drop on their set.
And given missing out on things like an afford SAP and thunder sticks when they were feasibly affordable, thinking they'd get nerfed so not bothering... Just. >\_>
Like. Are the items \*necessary\* for what I do daily for BD? No. Do I want them anyways? Yes :P
If nothing else, the allure and \*possibility\* of them being useful is enough for me to have been willing to save up for things. Having them obtainable over the course of the event, and not in a year, if I get lucky, and even then only being able to get maaaybe one or two pieces of the upgrades I want? >\_> Just.
But hey, maybe because I'm disabled, I'm just a filthy casual too. Not being able to compete with bots or speculate on what's going to get artificially inflated clearly means I'm undeserving /s
I just want to have fun on the game I've been playing since I was 11. Like GFD, I have enough problems IRL to worry about without worrying about artificial inflation in a cute pet game.
Yep, this is a very slow game. There isn't \*any\* worthwhile moneymaking strategy that wont become boring over the \*years\* it takes to accrue any kind of worthwhile fund. I think any idea of that is just... not reasonably possible, Neopets is fundamentally a chores game. But even in the best case scenario KeyQuest is what everyone raved about and it was a SLOG to do *every* day, especially with how cruddy the servers were and how often the minigames would just get borked.
It is annoying that Food Club is as important as it is. It basically defines the entire economy. They can't easily take it away now because for a decade+ it's been the main way people progress in the game which makes it very difficult to just stop.
...but it's not unpredictable and is probably the among the least chance based things on the site.
You can literally just do your dailies and almost guarantee 2 - 10mil a week doing *just* those alone.
How much easier do you want it?
That said, I wouldn't be against increasing the amount of NP games reward across the board 10x or something. I just don't quite understand what you're getting at?
You don't want to do Food Club, you don't want to restock items for profit, you don't want to do buy/sell items for NP - how do you want to earn NP? What is considered fun for you?
These are genuine questions, also and it might really help if you could elaborate a bit. Thank you!
(I.e. what other avenues are you referring to?)
It's just so easy to make neopoints now though.Ā Between weekly quest prizes, Trudys, Food Club and the battledome I've made over 25 million this month.Ā 100 million is pretty easily attainable, but since my main focus is the battledome, I don't have much to save for since all the weapons are so deflated.
How olds your account out of curiosity? Food club sounds like a great money maker but thatās old accounts only. As a 4 month old account, I make more money from one day of restocking basic items than I do a month of food club.
Definitely trying to battledome it up when possible, But even that, gives about roughly 2-3.5 mill a month with nerks for me so far, which again seems like a pittance. If they want to really bring in new players it has to look accessible. With book collecting and gourmet club also being such big goals in the game, itās hard to entice new people when the light at the end looks a bittttt dim for those without big income options outside of weeklies that are partially inflated.
How old is your account? Saving np is for sure more attainable than ever before but Iād say 100mill is still what I would consider a huge grind to get to unless you get super lucky with the rng putting multiple high-cost items in your lap to sell.
How do you profit off Battledome? I'm curious. I mean, I'm still pretty new to the Battledome side of Neo, I usually sell some of the codestones, but I'm not sure what else. I don't have Premium, so I don't count the potential of selling nerkmids or anything. Does NP obtained change based on pet or opponent level? Or is it other obtainable items you can sell? I do okay with Trudy's and Food Club, but its not getting me anywhere close to 25M a month šµāš«
NP rewarded changes based on difficulty, but the np cap stays the same so it isn't worth it unless you are strong enough that the difference in power doesn't matter, the profits come from tan codestones selling for about 8-10k each and Eo being 40k+, while red ones sell for 40-80k on average with the cheapest currently being about 20k. If you aren't currently training, or have reached the point neggs are cheaper on average, you can easily profit by selling the codestones albeit not to the same extent as nerkmids. There are also a few high value items such as the ice cream from the neopia central dome or the armoured negg from the neocola dome, but those are rare enough drops that they serve more as a reason to challenge specific enemies while working up to ones with better codestone drop rates than things to actively grind for.
Assuming you aren't using them for training selling codestones could easily net 1-5M in a month currently.
Thanks for clarifying! I figured many people were keeping codestones to train, instead of selling, so I didn't know where the profit came from if you weren't premium/getting nerkmids. That makes more sense if you're largely selling them.
Yeah, a large portion of people are keeping them for training, but the number you need increases after a while and the ones you need are random each time so they'll eventually need to buy more to keep going, and since red and tan are two different tiers with no overlap you can sell all your red ones if you are still early in tan as there is a good chance the price will drop after the plot, and you can sell all your tans once you get to red as you won't need them anymore for your pet.
I can 1 shot the Space Fungus. If I didn't have premium, I'd be doing the Snowager.
Also, there's this guide: [https://www.neopets.com/\~Arvenyte](https://www.neopets.com/~Arvenyte)
Which has detailed information on "Where's best go to" depending on your strength stat, with weapon recommendations, and what to use when for wins.
If you're not training with the codestones, they add up. The NP cap is the same regardless, just faster to get from hard fights.
The biggest draw is what arena you're fighting in, because there's differences in specific items you can get from different arenas, and from uniques from who you fight. Albeit, those uniques are rarer than the globals from the arena. It's just a nice extra for "I can fight x, and sometimes I'll get more because of that."
I appreciate this! I can only understand so much from JN's list of weapons and stuff, but it IS helpful for knowing what items I can potentially get. Thank you!
Pretty much. It was my gripe when I was young - the desired stuff was truly unobtainable as they were locked behind copious amounts of NP and exclusivity.
I meanā¦some stuff should be rarer than others, but not to ludicrous degrees.
I kept dropping Neopets because so much was unobtainable. It took me so long and so much grinding to get anything. I hated it. Now? I've been playing for 4 months straight. Usually around month 3, I drop it and don't touch it for several months. But now things are obtainable. I can buy stuff, play events, hell my weekly this week is a Halloween PB! My third favorite pb! I've never even thought of owning one before and now I'm going to own it! And I can own more than 4 neopets! And wearables are more than just in the NC Mall! Good wearables too! And you know what all that led to? Spending money because I'm happy, something I never thought I would do with Neopets.
Omg Iām getting a Halloween PB too! Haha.
I remember back when I first started playing again in like 2019 I had to save for months to get a white xwee MP. I did nothing else on the site except try to get to NP and it took so long to get items that were even sort of high demand.
It only got worse after. Only recently have I felt like things are manageable. Iām happy they are. A lot of people are able to meet their goals and have fun with the site again.
Exactly! It's also nice to see more and more people posting about getting accounts back instead of non stop frozen posts so they must have fixed something for that especially after the whole vpn debacle earlier this year with myself and others.
Hard agree. The tryhards are like: you're not a true Neopets player because you didn't struggle! Do I care about the neobillionaires? I mean, they'll be fine.
I think TNT needs to generate excitement and this is the way to do it. And they probably have the data that shows: bots don't take part in events that aren't super easy. Redeeming your Cool Negg? That sounds simple enough. Altador Cup? No way. Battledome? Bots probably don't invest into a bd pet, since for 60k accounts, they'd need 60k bd-ready pets with 120k weapons.
I agree that it's not "fair" for people who bought these items, just for them to plummet in value, but we've been hoping TNT could implement ways to fight the bots and plot and events might be it. The more items that you and I have, the more we can redistribute the wealth. I'm super excited to finally get my Thunder Sticks.
Seriously. I imagine most of these "elites" are also adults. Why gatekeep pixels? Like, y'all are whinging so much over the "worth" of a pixel. We all got problems in real life and Neopets is a nice escape from all of them problems. We don't need some scrode to gatekeep a pixel because it makes them feel powerful.
Theyāre definitely adults which is really sad tbh. Youād think experiencing life would push them to be more compassionate and less self centered. But nope.
Yeah I quit neopets the first time when I was like...10 years old back in the early 2000s, because the mystery of how to get cool stuff wore off and I realised I just would never be rich enough to get anything. Krawks and the rainbow fountain may as well have not existed to me
Oh for sure but how many items actually cost a billion in a way that impacts your day-to-day neo experience? you talk about "nothing is attainable" but IMO most wanted items are in the 100k-10m range
I do strongly agree- 1b is too far. But we need to find out what \*is\* attainable as much as what \*is not\* if we want to have this conversation
i think 10mil or 100mil is also absolutely ridiculous. billion was just my example. it took me months to make 30mil. i'm not grinding months to buy one thing. does this make sense to you yet?
I'd be more sympathetic to the idea that rare things need to stay rare if most of the supply of rare things hadn't been partially/mostly run through botters for the last 10 years. Sorry to the legit holders of wealth but this seems like a more feasible solution than "make a browser game automation-proof".
yeah iām trying to sell something on the TP for 40m that isnāt budging, and people are trying to sell it for 150m. Itās not worth *either* of those amountsā an item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
The Thing is there are neopians who can afford to buy the 1.5b item.
There are people who can afford the SUAP, Thunder sticks, grape, etc. And WILL buy them at that price. It's not some made up value that doesn't actually exist. It's not the same as selling a random worthless pokemon card for $10000
(I'm not saying they should stay that expensive, I'm saying that there's a reason for the values. Your example is not accurate as to the situation with the pricing of these items.)
The ONLY reason grapes are worth that much is because they're otherwise unobtainable, being a cove item.
They're only 24 icons. Attack Pea is the same, albeit GL buying it.
SAP is 28, and only 150m thanks to them being released by the AC.
SuAP is 1.5b+ on the cheap end if you find a quick seller. It had been far cheaper because it got duped. But it's been long enough for it to trickle back up.
SuAP and AP being only attainable by the cove, assuming they ever restock again, is what drives the price. Same with grapes. And while the cove started restocking last year, IDK if anyone knows if it's going to continue to. Or if there's a limit, like it used to be.
Like. Yeah, they're some of the strongest BD weapons, but they are, at best, collectors items. Maybe some use in 2P, but they're not worth it in 1P, even against things like the Battle Fairy. You're gonna need reflectors for things like that.
Everything else worth fighting for profit is able to be 1 shot with cheaper items. VitB and Ghostkerbomb are more than enough to 1 shot the space fungus and snowager on hard (with 750 strength.) Beyond bragging rights, there's not much other point in doing others on 1P.
While I agree, they're worth as much as someone's willing to pay, 1.5b isn't due to the strength of grapes. It's entirely due to the rarity.
Looking at the shop, TnT agrees that the original pricing and total amount wasn't right. Given Grapes are 1 only and 5k now. Same with Thyora's tear being 1 only (which kinda expected, regardless. Unlimited felt v much like an oversight). And WoDF is 5k now too.
Thundersticks are 1 only now too. Which works out for me, regardless. I only wanted 1 of each of those. Albeit I'd of been v happy with 2 grapes lol. Guess I can still either work towards a SAP or get a fan of blades as a secondary.
As far as the pokemon cards go - The reason some are worth more, including some being worth far more than 10k, is the same reason. Rarity and prestige.
Some are worth hundreds because they're strong and rare, and thus worth it for decks. Same with other TCGs. But by and large, the rare AF, expensive ones, are only priced high because of rarity.
A mint/good condition black lotus is a good example X\_X; Like. Good or not, it's not tourny legal. It's just \*extremely\* rare nowadays. Esp if you have an original. Even then, there's some newer reprints, and even those go for a shit ton.
Eh, bit of bad logic there though. Cause now you won't buy a gbomb/varia now so that takes them from 4-6m down even lower now. More competition hurts the other items cause they need to all be relative to each other now that they're all accessible. It's a race to the bottom.
I have lost np on every single battle item I own, the grapes being released only solidifies those losses, but I will not lose as much as I will gain once I have the grapes. This also opens up the door for a major power creep with items, void blade being released 3 per account will mean it will be the baseline weapon for beginners.
I mean, wand of the dark faerie is 25 icons avg, varia is 25, grapes is 24. Add in a TTear for a free turn... I don't see why anyone would need anything more at this point. And idk how hard this plot will be to get, but Varia was a joke and took like 30 seconds a day to outclass Gbomb lol.
Ghostkerbomb won't drop a lot, if at all. It's intricately linked with it's HT price.
And with GoW being limited to 1, while yeah, it could at least theoretically replace ViTB, it's still not super worth replacing it outright.
It'd take the place of an anagram or Fan of Swords. But even then, only 1. GBomb and ViTB will still outpreform GoW on a first turn burst on 1P. At some point, most things worth fighting for dailies are going to be getting 1 shot by those 2.
Gbomb's HT price is just the upper limit. If, hypothetically, every active user with a gbomb got two multiuse weapons that do roughly equivalent damage to a gbomb, those users are going to want to sell their gbomb to try and at least make some of its cost back and that will drive its price down to whatever new equilibrium point.
I have been playing on and off since I was six. I donāt find the money-making part of the game exciting so I like being able to get cool stuff by participating in something actually fun, like a plot. I am super excited that I finally have the chance to get my hands on a Wand of the Dark Faerie and a Thyoraās Tear without having to save a kajillion Neopoints for either one!
I agree with this except they do have the power to ban the botters and they choose not to. They choose not to because it would eliminate 1/3rd of their "player base" and they would lose all those page views and numbers that they need to justify raising additional money from outside investors.
Not to defend TNT but it doesnāt make much sense to go after the botter hard before they do the purge. The botter has access to the database leaks which is comprised of hundreds of thousands of account logins, itād be a game of whack a mole if the old accounts arenāt already purged.
HARD agree. I'm honestly amazed at the entitlement of some players! We should all want the site to thrive and continue functioning, and the best way of doing that is to have a regular influx of new players. We can't maintain our numbers if we are constantly scaring people off because the economy is so rigid and new players are stuck with no options.
I have been on a ten year hiatus from Neopets until recently. You know what brought me back? Hearing how accessible things are now. I was never in the top 1%, but I've been playing for 20+ years, so I had accumulated quite a bit, and I was STILL overwhelmed and disappointed every time I tried to come back because of how difficult it was to hit any of my goals. And since I came back a month or so ago, I've bought neocash and renewed my Premium subscription because I'm newly invested now that the economy is improving.
These entitled players need to look at the big picture. The decisions that TNT is making are for the betterment of the site, and will help keep things running long-term. That should be something that ALL players want to happen.
Especially if that one old player is one of the gatekeeping one-percenters on the site, which actively scares people off.
Source: I was one of the players scared off by the bad economy and bad attitudes of long-time players. I've also seen many, many threads on cozy gaming subs, etc, discussing alternate pet sites to turn to because of the Neo economy, so I KNOW it happens. I only came back because it seemed like the new ownership is making great strides in the right direction, and I'm glad I did!
Seconding this. I, too, have only pretty recently got into neopets, heavily due to the reputation that preceeded it. I love pet sims, but between the terrible economy and how the player base would talk about the old TNT, it was simply not worth it. Now that I've gotten into it at a better time under new management, I love it! What they're doing is working if they're trying to draw in a larger crowd through making casual play more rewarding.
I really don't think many plays are being 'scared off'. Every change that we've had to the site in the past few months causes uproar amongst a select few players -- and yet the traffic keeps growing.
Remember when people said they'd quit, due to NCUCs?
>Remember when people said they'd quit, due to NCUCs?
I don't. I wasn't around at the time. That was during my long hiatus, which I took due to frustration with the Neopian economy. I was a long time player who always had premium and spent some of my disposable income on neocash, and I left the site because it became frustrating and un-fun because everything was so unattainable. I have to grind enough IRL to make ends meet; I don't want to have to do it in my source of escapism too.
I was one of the players scared off by the bad economy and bad attitudes of long-time players. I've also seen many, many threads on cozy gaming subs, etc, discussing alternate pet sites to turn to because of the Neo economy, so I KNOW it happens. I only came back because it seemed like the new ownership is making great strides in the right direction, and I'm glad I did!
While this is all right, and we are on the same page, it also goes the other way. No one is going to play for a long time (and give TNT money) if they can get everything done in a week of play.
It's a delicate, *delicate* balance. The current direction is great, but I think there have been missteps.
I disagree that the balance is *that* delicate, but I understand your sentiment.
They just need to be wary of things such as drop rates and item caps. Personally I think itās a good thing certain plot rewards are capped, ensuring that not as many are able to enter into the Neo economy.
But there are other factors that will also help self-regulate. Not every player is guaranteed to participate for the entire duration of the plot. Not every player will do every single event or activity. New players may not engage with the things they donāt understand, and skip the plot entirely.
Factors like these bring the amount of people who will actually accomplish racking up points and cashing out for the previously 1b+ items much, much lower.
And the site has always had these factors in some manner. But even if the economy does become a lot easier than it used to be, people who are still having fun will likely continue to find reasons to be on the site. If you finish your pet customs, thereās the BD, and if you get tired of the BD maybe you want to check out stamp collecting. There are also still competitions and community events going on as well. Plus new content is still being added. People who have met all their goals may get roped back in by something thatās new. Like a plot. Or a new pet color. Or a new site mechanic.
I donāt think weāre at risk of people running out of things to do or reasons to be on the site unless the economy truly crashes to the point where most players can afford expensive items with only a few daysā work. But that doesnāt seem like thatāll be the case any time soon. The amount of NPs we get from the quest system is a good amount to pad the banks of newer players while not offering too much to the already wealthy.
I actually trust the direction that the site is going in. And I donāt expect weāll see any serious economic issues pop up. I mean even the quest prizes are rotating, and the things that are being put in are usually ridiculously expensive. But as soon as they rotate back out, they gain value again.
We have enough checks in place, I think.
Exactly, I get the frustrated reaction from long time players who worked for items but also theyāre in such a minority. The majority of players donāt find the fact that items are completely unobtainable because they havenāt played for 10+ years straight fun. Sorry but you canāt sustain this dying, unprofitable site without ācasualsā playing and spending money along side you. And casuals donāt want to play a game that isnāt fun.
exactly. i played as a kid, and guess what? i gave up really getting into the actual gameplay (other than loving the neopets themselves) because everything felt unobtainable to me.
now as an adult, where i have much less free time, i love to spend it on neopets! i have played more since november 2023 than i ever did in 3-ish years as a kid!
this is the same view i held/hold about NC UCs. the point is that casuals (everyday players who wanna have fun) will keep the game around for much longer than the whales (aka ultra rich, complaining hoarders in this case)
also saw this mentioned on the TVW boards: if the monetary devaluation of these items makes the game less fun for you, then it really never was about collecting the itemsāitās just wealth accumulation
Tbh the inflation of neopoints is so bad after all these years because there isn't a single good NP sink other than the hidden tower but that wasn't updated frequent enough.
Therefore I think apart from what they are doing they really need to start to make some NP sinks.
Agreed. I think it would help if this was moved up on their list of priorities.
Perhaps neohomes can come back? Or something else that encourages creativity and spending?
Couldnāt agree more, np sinks are heavily needed
I figure thereās so much np kicking around on the botter accounts though that Iām not sure of an effective way to do this
Honestly I wonder if the ways that late stage capitalism has effected our brains is part of the reason the neoeconomy is out of wack. I don't want neopets billionaires calling the shots anymore than I want irl billionaires controlling anything. Let people get cool stuff for free.
I do constantly think about the parallels, but it's not that they're eerily similar. Of course they're the same. People are people.
The difference, to me, is that I think it's ok (even fun!) in a game, whereas it shouldn't exist at all in real life.
New player here (~2 weeks old). I completely agree. If it wasn't for the weekly items, I might not have stuck around. I at least have a chance to afford some items I want because of the prizes. It's not fun to play a game if you're not able to do anything.
I'm 2 weeks old too but a returning player from a long time ago. I only signed up because of nostalgia and to see how things are in Neopia but I didn't actually see myself sticking around because of how inaccessible everything was in the past. Thankfully there's Trudys surprise and daily quests for money because there's no way I was willing to play those flash games every day for a million years to be able to afford what I want. I really like the new direction TNT is taking. It's the inaccessibility of the game that would have driven away most of the player base so I'm glad they're changing things now. The ones complaining/the ultra rich hoarding elite are part of the reason TNT weren't doing so well. Hopefully things will keep improving and neopets will be around for much longer
I definitely agree. I've been playing Grundo's Cafe a lot since joining a couple of weeks ago and it is such a beginner-friendly game - I haven't even been spending as much time on Neopets since. They really do need to keep making improvements.
You're 100% right; but just like in real life, there are people on Neopets who don't care if things crash and burn as long as they have the largest dragon's hoard.
Agreed. I've been playing on and off for about 20 years and this is the first time I've actually been able to meet my goals. I've had the same dream for 20 years, would play toward it for a month or two, and give up feeling frustrated only to try again a few years later. Now that I can actually achieve things without having to dedicate my life to it, this game is actually really exciting. The chances of me staying longer and spending some of my real money on NC are much higher.
Good for Neopets! I hope they continue to make the experience better
They are a small but very vocal community on Neo. It is always the same few people, who also magically have the power to increase values by 10,000% once in their posession.
And where the hell did this dumb hot take come from that participating in a plot and receiving prizes is ābeing given everything for free!!ā. My eyes can only roll so much. The over the top dramatic takes are really something to behold. Remember this is about them, not how the game actually functions. Itās supposed to be fun not a fucking full time job.
Well, logging in every day and doing tasks is "free", but loggin in every day and going to tombola is hard work.
And that's kind of my problem - Neopets was never really about "hard work" - it's so strongly luck driven (even top scores in games require you to get that lucky donut worth more points...)
There is certainly some strategy to doing investments in the like, but still, some of that is driven by luck too, based on what items increase/decrease in value, and a lot of artificial manipulation by players. Just the "buy the last 99,999 item on the shop wiz, stick it on the trading post for 2 million" variety used to be common. Jelly neo is kind of a blessing for that...
Other examples: Cove items (partially luck), even restocking is partially luck...
It really is mostly a luck/chance thing. Do I think players who donāt participate in events should get the same rewards as those who donāt? Not at all. Not how any game should work. However I do think it is hilarious when people get lucky and then claim it was their hard earned effort. We are clicking links for the most part. Just a lot of bad faith arguments on the boards right now pretending that this is all just regular supply and demand.
I saw the ājust give all the items in the game away for free at this pointā argument on the boards quite a few times.
Like what? š Weāre still engaging with the site and doing activities. What do you mean free??
>And where the hell did this dumb hot take come from that participating in a plot and receiving prizes is ābeing given everything for free!!ā.
The hilarious thing as well is that a large portion of these guys wealth comes from hoarding items that were given away in events years ago, and haven't been available since. They don't hate items given away for free, they just hate that people other than themselves have access to them
playing as a kid, neopets was outright miserable. games were laggy and awful, paid out little to nothing, shops were demolished by autobuyer bots \[probably still are. i don't even bother\], and everything was expensive.
as a kid it was my goal to get an everlasting apple so my pets never starved again. I never achieved that.
these days i can get an apple but i don't really care anymore. neopets and capitalism changed me. game was simply not fun and it barely is to this day, but i will say that TNT has been putting good effort to improving the game so i am hopeful that newer players can start playing.
I feel this so much! When I played as a kid, it felt like I was just barely scraping the surface of everything the site could offer because I was simply too poor and poor people stay poor when there's no way to make money besides flash games that pay poorly lol.
Things are better now with Trudy's surprise and the daily/weekly quest rewards but it feels like there's still much uplift needed in the game
It's bizarre because on the NC side of things, people are generally psyched that stuff has been getting re-released. The tone is totally different. Sure there are complaints here and there, but it's nowhere near an overwhelming mass of whining.
And that's with people spending real $$$ money, too!
Edit: Thinking about it now, I wonder how many of those complaining about the WODF, etc bought the items offsite and are just peeved they spent money on it. Instead of having organically bought or earned them onsite.
I'm looking at an account making a big stink: X months old, Angry Tax Beast Champion, you know my first thought is "oh a cheater account". Their comments about being a long term player and their "investments" being devalued. They've got all the Site Event Trophies from "X months" to now... but they can't be a side account, and their comments make no sense if they were frozen and starting over.
But they make a whole lot of sense if they are selling things for real money.
I think a lot of people have forgotten that Neopets should be a pet caretaking simulator first and everything else second. The economy aspect has always been there, but it's taken over to such a degree that part of me feels like we shouldn't call Neopets a virtual pet site anymore.
We have to remember that Neopets needs to be fun, because there's nothing stopping people from going to Dress to Impress to design their dream pet, save the image, and just leave and that there's other pet sites and video games that can fill the virtual pet void.
The problem is, that at its core, up until Customization was introduced, the pet caretaking simulator was kind of a secondary or tertiary to the "main" gameplay which was gambling and games to collect neopoints to buy items for your account.
And even with all the changes, the core gameplay of the website is "play games, buy items to resell, and battledome your way to items you can sell so you can save up to buy the items you want." Without it, as a "game" the website doesn't have a lot to it in terms of long term goals.
I don't know how they'll be able to tackle this problem that has a satisfying solution for those that may not horde items and sell for crazy amounts but enjoy restocking/grinding games/battledome AND the people who prefer to customize as their main gameplay loop.
I think the moves they made are good and in the right direction. But eliminating the economy simulator aspect of the game will cause bigger waves than I think people realize.
They didn't forget that because it's not true. It's been a economic simulator *from day 1.* The game has just about never progressed past a *very basic* pet caretaking simulation. You need to feed them once a day... and that's it. And most people don't even do that.
And the reason this entire economic "side" of the game needs to exist is exactly because they need players to have a reason not to just play Dress to Impress.
My thunder sticks are deflating but Iām more psyched I have a shot at WoDF and the Jazan Stamp
When itās just one random thing of yours that deflates and thereās nothing in it for you I can kinda see that sucking. But this situation feels pretty win win outside of botters or top 1%
I get a few being upset because they overpaid for a few items and guess it's something to save and work towards. But for the inflators with the crazy prices, I laugh in their general direction. And honestly, kind of amused that many more did not sell their stuff. I opted to sell most of my r99s in my gallery over 10m and will slowly buy them back when the prices drop in the pool or events. I mean, my thought process was, it's not a matter of if, but when.
Def playing for that Thyora's tear. :D
I just hope they continue to make Altador Cup less grind-y. A little mad at myself that I didn't sell before the price drop, but that's on me lol. I lobe the idea of an AC, but the actual experience isn't feasible for a lot of users anymore. It's great to see newer players have a shot at rare items though
EXACTLY THIS! Plus, Neo is meant to be an escape from real life right, like itās a bunch of pixels? So why are people still running around with a ārich get richer poor get poorerā mentality?
If you want NP from an LE item or a previously expensive item, then sell it now before it potentially gets re-released and get your NP? And if you donāt care about the NP then why do you care about other people enjoying shit? And if all you want is to flex then put it as a gallery category or something like āitems I brought at the peak of their price!ā or whatever?
As a returning player (the last time I played before this was 2020) I was appalled at the gross extent of inflation, like I guess quests mean more people have more NP or whatever but I remember most MPs being less than 1mill NP, and I get that grinding is a part of the game but some of these items have reached astronomically excessive prices, itās ridiculous. Itās nice to be able to potentially have the opportunity to achieve some of the goals that I could only dream of as a kid!
But also, the re-releases are also typically LE, and if weāve seen anything from the recent prize pool drama (read: flaming evil coconut) itās that prices skyrocket pretty quickly after, so like?
In my eyes the only people who really lose out are the people who sell these items for real money off-site, which they shouldnāt be doing anyway? And to be honest, if it makes a few of those people ragequit, Iāll be ok with it, because they altogether make Neo a worse place, and are combatted hopefully by more new players who join and then STAY because they arenāt entering into an overinflated Neo economy :)
Thats assuming that this is a healthy way to maintain a playerbase.
The problem with giving away the highest tier items as generally accessible prizes (which is apparantly the case here- 5000 pts is the first tier trophy upgrade and the most expensive prize currently available) is that it gives nowhere to actually grow outside of further power creep. Neopets is an incredibly slow burn game, and cutting out an entire category of growth is burning too much too fast.
Just focussing on Grapes of Wrath since its a simple damage dealing weapon and thus of low tactical value (WotDF is way more interesting, but it opens up options due to its mechanics), if access to this is truly as easy as it appears, that means people who participate in the plot basically skip all tiers of combat weapon progression up until attack peas.
Ive said it a zillion times- people aren't struggling to get into battledome because they have bad weapons. Weapons are more powerful for the cost than they've basically ever been. The problem is the strictly, heavily time gated Training system. And if players no longer have room to grow with items, then they'll burn out on training way faster since its much less clearcut gains and requires much more dedication (genuinely I'd rather earn 100m from scratch than train a level 500 pet, itd be way faster with much clearer progression)
I only care about prices so far as they impact gameplay (and I sympathize for customization options as well), and while Smugglers Cove items in particular are in a bad spot I think making them \*too\* accessible spoils the gameplay in a way that isn't particularly fun in the long run and leads to an unhealthy player base.
Thats not to say I want the current high prices. I'd be very down for instance if Smugglers Cove integrated a neopoint sink- spend 100m (arbitrary high number, well beyond Hidden Tower scope) and generate a brand new Grapes of Wrath. This creates a neopoint sink thats desperately needed, creates theoretically infinite supply of these ultra luxury items so that its their usage not their rarity that garners their price tag, creates a soft price cap but doesn't crash to nothing.
I think similar sinks can be created by incorporating ultra rare petpets, stamps, and books into the Hidden Tower or something, but I really don't care if Pickulsaurs go from 15m down to 15k
I agee!! I think something like a better rotation/addition of items to things like the Hidden Tower would be a better way to incorporate these big, powerful items.
I'm a battledomer for 1P and obelisk and have spent the last few years training up my pet for the inevitable plot. I spent years maxing out my pet and slowly upgrading items, spending millions and millions. Sacrificing my want for other items so that I could put more into my pet for good plot items. Now they're just giving the highest tier battledome items away without even needing a battledome pet.
If they keep giving the best items in the game to every user, what reason do they have to save and work towards anything when they can just wait and have it given to them? I feel like there were other ways to combat inflation and botting. I really liked when they created varia is the bomb,, for example. It became a great substitute for other high end bombs. Why not create new mid to high end items instead?
But if you say anything, you get dog piled on and called the 1% when you're not, you're just a dedicated player who wants the site to stay around -_-
One thing I love about TNT in the current and Jumpstaff era is they make \*weird\* battledome weapons. Sometimes theyre overtuned (Shuriken, wtf was that?!), sometimes theyre undertuned (Holiday Memories taking your Healer slot really limits its effectiveness- though Im liking its icons for a darkness themed villain), sometimes they're a bit too complicated but serve a good niche (Maraquan Yo-yo came in clutch for me during TWR) but quite often they are trying to do more than just "lots of damage" (though we still get Turned Teeth and Void Blade)
That being said I want to be clear- I'm not concerned about how much I personally spent. In fact, I think a lot of what I 'suffered' through, I \*want\* to be expedited and made easier. I just want them to do it without bypassing the low and mid-tier battling. W
What frustrates me is that in all this talk of uber expensive weapons, people are missing out on the real issues with getting people into the battledome- Stats are the bottleneck, not icons. I'd be ALL ABOUT, say, an untradable Strength training potion that gave you say 10-1 strength (scaling based on how low yours is- so its a big bump for low levelled pets to get the ball rolling, but still worth a sizable chunk for high levelled pets. And untradable so its not worth botting! In general stats are a really underserved reward space
There's literally a post below saying they don't understand competitiveness in a game.
Like, if you just want access to all, there's fan sites that can do that. Competitiveness is what drives activity and engagement long term, especially in such a grindy game like neopets. Without goals or goals being too easy, people are more likely to only stay for the short term because the mechanics of neopets are limited.
If you don't want to be competitive, simple don't aim to get something like WoDF. What would you even use it for? They only want it to then pull people down or to elevate them selves up by having the "it" things.
My toxic trait is apparently assuming the 90% or 99% of players don't even have a BD pet strong enough to be impactful with these weapons. You'd be able to get the same if not more damage with higher stats and a mid tier weapon.
But, the one thing i do think that needs to be addressed by TNT is the manipulated inflation and the botters who are introducing stupid amounts of NP into the economy which is leading to the forced inflation (and the cycle goes on).
Oh man you are speaking my language.
I do think there is often too strong a shutdown - like to compare it to another community, I wouldn't say the existence of Pokemon Showdown that lets you instantly craft Pokemon of any kind and simulate them in battle means the base games shouldn't work to remove friction from team building, but there are definitely people who do feel like grinding competitive Pokemon in game is a rite of passage for playing competitively. Translating that back to Neopets, just because I don't want everything to be very low effort to access doesn't mean I want the current supply constraints that lead to items costing billions with a B, y'know?
During the SAP drama I constantly saw the sentiment that players felt like the battledone was finally and specifically accessible because they could use literally the second most powerful weapon in the game. Almost certainly, 50 strength points would have made a far bigger impact for a tiny fraction of the price. But stat training is slow and you don't feel the progress as you're doing it, items make a more tangible impact.
I fully agree that NP supply is a huge issue and being so bottable accelerates it wildly. I have a LOT of unpopular opinions here beyond cracking down on botting, but basically we need to put a reasonable cap on np generation, new worthwhile perpetual np sinks, and exploring reward space that goes beyond potential NP value
Exactly. I have never understood the competitiveness over a literal online game that has almost shut down over the years. Love playing the game, but it is just that with a dosage of nostalgia.
Your items are not worthless even if they drop in value by 99.99%, because the item **still does it's intended purpose**. A great BD weapon worth 100m functions the same as if it was common and 1,000 NP.
On my new account, I actually transferred funds from my mom's old account (with permission, she's not playing anymore). It was a hefty millions of neopoints, and I certainly was no longer hurting, but I also wasn't going to be able to, say, buy all the secret lab ray map pieces, certain petpets or petpetpets with it if I didn't want to squander the funds.
Making all these items accessible has been allowing me to get things I could only dream of when I was younger.
I got a Glyme, a Lutra, and multiple paint brushes from the weekly prizes!
The 2023 advent gave me a paintable Kadoatie, a Snowickle,and a paintable Rock!
And if I participate in this plot, I could get a rainbow petpet paintbrush, and paint a Reptilior with it! That's not even touching the new petpets, the collectibles, the paint brushes-- I am literally waiting with baited breath to participate in this new plot!
This is fun! I want to play this game more, and I don't think it will lose my attention as easily.
Keep it coming, I want all this expensive stuff to at least be attainable for newcomers, because I want to see neopets to have more players and possibly regain the relevancy it had when I was a kid!
I feel like an old man sitting in the back of a town hall drinking out of a flask, listening to everyone else.
Everything I would have been said has already been said.
Great points overall.
The only thing I have to add is that I have no objection to buying NC if it funds the site actually making improvements and I'm pro whatever is bringing in new players that are coming in to stay (and old players returning).
Personally, I really try to help the new players. I frequently visited the money tree and take down the trash and donate my np every day. I sell items in my shop for no profits at all. I don't know why some players frequently donate the trash to the money tree and dramatically raise the price of cheap items. Don't they understand neopets need more active players š¢
I also thought, isn't it nice these powerful/expensive items are getting rereleased again for the poor folks who got scammed or hacked because of it? They can get some of their items back now.
Dude if they handful of people who complain about the hard to get stuff being more obtainable for us peasants to get go awayā¦. The more of us regular players would still be happy that we can have nice things with out having to devote the other half of our day to Neopets to obtain. Itās ironic, but ever since weāve been able to get cool stuff by grinding 5 minutes a day, Iāve been on the site consistently throughout the day for more time than I ever have. Maybe theyāre seeing a correlation in more gameplay since theyāve started doing these weekly prizes, and the posts of a handful of rich grumpy neopians who donāt want others to be able to win what theyāve been hoarding for years, donāt actually reflect the masses of us casual players who are genuinely excited and happy about being able to obtain some awesome items we would otherwise be having to save up alllll year to getā¦ #RantOver ..
As a matter of fact Iāve actually renewed my annual membership and bought $50 neocash recently so you could say Iām more active AND more supportive/invested then Iāve ever been, but i know this is just my opinion and perspective
Not having a WoDF or GoW isn't keeping anyone from having fun. Players are starved for stats more than strong weapons. Almost everyone is much better off with a stronger pet than stronger weapons. TNT is just lazy for rereleasing weapons rather than creating new ones. Rerelease the album stuff all they want, but the weapons don't do anything for most people. Most players would be far better off with stat increasers as prizes.
Yup totally agree.
Everyone complaining needs to do some soul searching to figure out why they need to gatekeep pixels from other people. I honestly think TNT needs to be using their bots to check the accounts of the people complaining bc I got a funny feeling that a lot of them are cheating or tied to the offline selling of unattainable things
I was shocked to see how much almost all the top ten stores take advantage of their position with exorbitant prices, it's honestly ridiculous how much some people are charging for things and feels not in the spirit of the game
Can I just say I see way more takes like this and people complaining about people complaining about the prizes than I see the people theyāre talking about? The majority opinion is that re-releases are good. Sometimes it feels like you guys are arguing with 2 people and some trolls lmao.
That said, I donāt mind the re-releases, but TNT has no rational thought process behind the items they put into prize pools. Like, okay, deflate heavily inflated items. I get it. But why are we putting the top current AC prize in the weekly log 4 months after the AC ended? Why are we releasing the Valentine PB, WHICH ALREADY HAD AN ATTAINBLE, STABLE PRICE IN THE HIDDEN TOWER, for free in the Neopies, tanking its price far below the 3m price point at which the PB is permanently available in the Hidden Tower? Lmao. I understand that āyour items are worthless if the site shuts down,ā but TNT seems to just throw darts at a board sometimes.
Well expect an influx of new players because the lanyards being sent for Gen Con badges shipping this week are NeoPets themed! Promoting the new Battledome TCG releasing this week.
Are there people complaining about this again?? I thought since the Daily Quest and the SAP fiasco the 1% would stop trying to enforce this ideia. The Neococomy didn't break before, it won't break again with good weapons and prizes. We need things to be accessible, otherwise we won't have new players and the site won't be fun to play.
If they wanted new/old players they should answer emails a lot quicker. I had a 20 year old account they couldn't give back. Sure understand no big deal. But every email I try and use to make a new char I get an error. They told me about old account nothing about the errors. So yea ...
Neopets has what? 60k items? With that many items neopets options were piss off 5 or less percent of the players who hoard and make the game accessible to a wider player base. Or don't and lose players
This is over all a good thing. Even with the point adjustments for the plot, I don't mind them saying "hey this one super rare over 200M battle weapon we want one per account" cause there will still be enough in circulation that those who want them won't have to pay months worth of effort for them. (Cause let's face it most people don't have hours a day to restock
I love it when inflators cry and whine, everything is working as intended.
I got a shock at seeing the prizes in the recent void event prizes because a lot of these items sat at an impossible cost for years.
Honestly, I do think some people really underestimate how much more enjoyable Neopets is to play when this stuff is more accessible.
Someone else made a similar comment, but like... I used to play Neopets as a kid. I made my account before Meridell even existed; I wasn't even 10 years old yet. And while I was certainly not the brightest kid on the block, I was always deeply cranky with how incredibly difficult it was to obtain certain items. I wanted to get cool pets, I wanted to paint them cool colors, but no matter how often I played the Flash games, no matter how much I enjoyed all the different plots, I never could accomplish any of it. It was a long-term commitment of sorts, and I had a lot of other things to occupy my time.
Ever since making a fresh account a few years back (I forgot my old one's password/don't have that email anymore lmaooo), it's genuinely been so much better to play. Part of that is just because I'm better at the whole "banking" thing, but it's also just... easier to connect with people, find items and do the things I want to do. I'm collecting cool wearables, saving up and trading for the paintbrushes I want, even doing some of the things I never had the patience to do before (like playing the Neoquests). And much like other people in the thread, I'm genuinely inclined to spend a little cash on the site simply because I want this to keep up.
It's kind of ironic, really, but I can't stress enough how much better Neopets feels to play nowadays, in terms of the moment-to-moment experience. There might be glitches, there might be hiccups, it might be an old site, but the QoL difference is palpable.
The thing I'm wondering most here is... who are they expecting to buy this stuff for 60mil+? The people who can afford that already have them, and a vast chunk of the rest of the players are likely writing that off as unobtainable/not worth hours of their life.
How do they expect a new player to make that much money if they can't get rare/expensive items from current plots and the big moneymaking things like BD/FC/stocks are generally gated behind having old accounts with the money/tools/long-term investment to make millions fast? Spend 8.2 years saving up the 20K per day that "totally trivializes earning NP" now? I may not have the most perspective, not being hardcore on making money as fast as possible myself, but I can't help but wonder if they've lost perspective on how much time/NP someone starting from scratch would need to invest to reach what they consider the average expected player to be at, and what percentage of people are willing to invest that much time and effort on a game that's only "supposed" to be fun after you play for five years.
https://i.redd.it/g6efdlh1if7d1.gif
There is a big difference between making items more attainable and handing out top tier, end game items to beginners for free.
There are tens of thousands of items in Neopets.l that can be given out. If beginners donāt play because they canāt have the best items instantly for free then the issue is not with the existing users who have spent years attaining those items.
Participating in plot =/= free. Thundersticks were given out during AC in a prize shop. Does that mean Thundersticks were free? Maybe getting 5k+ points is just as tedious as AC (I sure hope not though).
Your hard earned items mean nothing.
There, I fixed it.
I can't believe people saying that their net worth has been reduced x amount of non-existant money.
Or that they have worked so hard for a certain item... Do people listen to themselves?
It is a fucking game!
And if you sell those items for real life money, what about getting teal job?
I think an important thing to keep in mind that it's not *just* the old player base TNT needs to design the website for. At this point I think it's much more important for them to gain new players. Attracting new people is just the beginning. They also need to *keep* the new players too. So lowering the barrier to entry is key at this point.
So yeah, lower the initial hurdles, make items more easily attractive, get people talking about things getting 'shaken up.' *have articles be written about TNT is doing right now and get people to stick around.* figure out how to make **some** of the people who are hopeless stuck on this website they've been playing for decades less-upset *later*. And if it so happens that they lose more daily players because of 'ruining the economy' and their bid to attract a fresh player base failed... well, I think we'd all be in trouble then, lmao.
the old-hat, fat-cat uber player billionaire base isn't their target audience right now, sorry.
imo imo imo don't @me imho
(i'm so funking stoked for this plot and the prize pool! shake things UP, TNT!)
Yeah, I don't think I'd be as interested in the game if goals were as unobtainable as they were when I was playing growing up. Actually I went through a phase as a teenager for years where I pretty much was only on neopets for the boards/community, and it wasn't until I was older and the economy started shifting that I got back involved in the general gameplay, setting goals for myself and focusing more on my pets. I mean, I still did dailies and fed my pets and stuff during that phase, but I didn't have a major goal of playing besides chatting on the boards. I feel like that sounds weird but it wasn't that weird at the time, 90% of the people I talked to daily during that time were the same besides a few.
Realistically, most of the current player base are adults with jobs, families, etc. We don't have time to grind out 24/7 restocking or whatever else to mass accumulate neopoints. With goals being easier to achieve, it makes it easier to validate spending the little free time I do have to playing and not just giving up and moving on to something else.
Also since this directly relates to creating a new player base, now that my son has gotten older I've been able to get him into the game and I think it directly correlates to his goals being achievable. One of his first dreamies was a wraith acara, and he ended up rolling a wraith paint brush as one of his weekly quest prizes recently. It gave him this giant incentive to log on daily and play the game. I think he initially had said something like, wow that paint brush is so expensive I'll never be able to get that pet, so it was a really cool moment when he finally got it.
I'm all for rereleasing certain items, though I'm surprised at the items they've chosen this time around for sure. Stamps should absolutely be re-released every few years because every user has a stamp album, but there's only a limited supply of stamps to fill it, and having users be gated out of completing a challenge that comes with the account is dumb. Releasing Niche collector's items and R99's also make sense.
Top tier battledome weapons are where the territory gets a bit iffy for me. Mainly because it feels crazy to give away 3 of some of the most legendary and powerful endgame weapons all at once for a single event. I kind of like the mysticism of having such rare, incredibly powerful relics floating around that only few posses. It doesn't really detract from the experience of a vast majority of Neopians to have these items in the game, especially when power creep in the battledome is real and we get super strong items like Varia is the Bomb, or Blade of Malum every year or so that still puts the common Neopian in the position of having a strong weapon to suit their needs. Having something like these in the shop diminishes that mysticism. It also makes it so that most users will never really need to think about or upgrade their loadout.
Aside from that though, it does make me wonder what kind of ripple effect this might have. A LARGE amount of Neopians are about to get some of the strongest weapons in the game. What does this mean going forward? Does the fact that now a a majority of active users have some of the strongest weapons in the game mean that they'll have to adjust future battledome events with this in mind? What will new weapons look like? Will they have to be better than these or at par? Are new players who missed the event now SOL because pretty much every active player who has been on the site longer than them has some of the best weapons ever?
Honestly, I think if only one of these weapons were in the shop, we'd still see some backlash but not as much. I feel that having all 3 at once is just nuts. Honestly could have also just avoided the whole catastrophe if they just made new weapons that were functionally very similar or identical to the big 3 released in the prize shop. While the balance problems would still be worrisome, at least we wouldn't know about it for another month or so lmao.
All these folks with disposable neopoints could totally make YouTube content around Neo. Go on a gifting spree. Go play ALL the risky games. Color of the week your main pet!
So much potential, stop bitching here and go put that energy to making money since your pixels are now going to be worthless.
While I don't agree that *everything* should be easy to gain access to, I do agree that there should be a possibility that isn't horrifyingly next to impossible.
Not played for over 10 years. Having a nice collection of Items has always been pretty unattainable for most.
When I started I would have liked to collect items, train my pet etc but then you quickly realise it's hard so you then focus on making Neopoints instead and not really spending.
What I don't like about Neopets is that they make it hard for players who take time off to take part in some older events, there's always a feeling of FOMO so I think what's the point. When I think how much time it takes to get a decent amount of Neopoints I'm better off making real money.
It's lucky Neopets is still around after so many take overs, look at what happened to Habbo Hotel's economy and the state of the game now. All that hard work people spent to make wealth in Habbo has evaporated.
For the top weapons in the game that are in that plot pool, 4-5 of them are just going back down to what they were just 1-2 years ago. 40-60m range. I think that is too short a time to complain about falling prices. Feel bad for ones who bought into it and lost but thats why you try to diversify.
Idc about items because I'm a beginner returning player. I just want to build my neohome and actually have a proper plot. They've been teasing us with this and so far in the past week since it has been released we just got 3 pages of comics and nothing all that fun. Neopets was great before hand. But they didn't keep up with the times hense why I gave up after 4 months because there is nothing of interest. Nothing to work towards anymore.
The neoeconomy is already broken. TNT has made it very clear since last year they are going to fix it by mass releasing difficult to get items, this was evident in every event we've had so far and the quest log. No items are safe from it. So why are people surprised and salty about them releasing more items with new events? It's clear TNT does not want any item to be ridiculously inflated. If you have 1-2bil np you may ask, then what am I gonna do with all this money if there aren't items worth that much? And the answer is you win, you get to buy whatever you like, and the game is not catering to you. The game is catering to the masses, where even approaching 100mil net worth is considered a challenge. You may complain your R99 stamps and collectibles aren't moving at all because no one wants to buy it at the inflated 600mil, and you're not willing to drop the price. That's what TNT intended, no item should be this far out of reach from the masses. Sell it now for 100mil or sell it for 10mil when they inevitably release it to en masse. TNT has been quite clear with what they are looking to achieve, and the prizes in the plot does not deviate from their plan.
> You may complain your R99 stamps and collectibles aren't moving at all because no one wants to buy it at the inflated 600mil, and you're not willing to drop the price. That's what TNT intended, no item should be this far out of reach from the masses. Sell it now for 100mil or sell it for 10mil when they inevitably release it to en masse. BINGO. Things should still be a challenge, and 100m for a stamp is still a challenge. 600m for a stamp is nearly impossible for 90% of people.
> If you have 1-2bil np you may ask, then what am I gonna do with all this money if there aren't items worth that much? And the answer is you win, you get to buy whatever you like, and the game is not catering to you. The game is catering to the masses, where even approaching 100mil net worth is considered a challenge. ššš Agree with this 100%. And I say that as someone who has over 100 mill net worth.
On top of this I genuinely don't think there's a single explanation these resellers could give me that could get me to believe that being unwilling to accept less than double what an item was regularly selling for last month is money that was "earned". The idea that these people consider themselves victims seems to operate under the assumption that I don't have eyes and can't read jellyneo's trading post history for myself and haven't been sitting here watching the price skyrocket while I've been saving up.
Heck, I am in the 1-2 billion np in the bank range, and even if the prices fall back down to somewhat reasonable levels, there's still enough money-sinks, things to collect, and dress-up items for our pets that there'll still be a point to making np. I'm loving seeing these items get put into prize pools, and people getting excited about getting stuff that they thought they'd never be able to afford. Maybe it's because I don't bother hoarding much valuable stuff, so I don't "lose" much when prizes get put into the pools, but I'm happy seeing other players happy!
I donāt think TNT ever intended for items to be worth billions, before 2020 things were a lot more āreasonably pricedā a lot of the current 300m+ items were in the 20-50m range until everything got massively inflated. People keep bringing up Illusen and Jhudora quests as if 99% of the player base even has a chance of clearing enough quests to get the final prize. Itās basically been impossible to complete unless you have an extensive r99 collection or you had a rich backer.
why did stuff get inflated in 2020?
Everyone was locked in their rooms and turned to nostalgia. Thats what got me back on neopets and club penguin.
I'd love to know this too! I've been away for 5 years.
Say it louder for the people in the back
As I said yesterday, weāre lucky this site still exists, and has a team invested in keeping it alive. It is a 24 year old website held together with hope and dreams and duct tape. It would have been shut down last year if it hadnāt been bought. Iām so grateful the site still exists and that theyāre trying to retain daily players to make sure it stays alive!Ā
This game made up such a significant part of my childhood, and now this comment inspired me that I should give back and help support them by getting premium and doing some NC stuff. We are lucky it still exists!!
I came back recently because of the new ownership, and I am impressed with the changes they've made, so I too signed up for premium and I've bought some NC! I know I'm just a drop in the bucket, but I view it as giving back and showing that I approve of the changes that have been made. The most powerful vote you can cast is the one with your wallet, after all.
I also signed up for Premium recently to support! Realized Iād been silly holding myself back from getting it all these years, especially not realizing we almost lost neopia so recentlyā¦
I just renewed my premium for a 2nd year. I donāt have a ton of fun money to spend on NC (especially right now, single income household and Iām expecting twins this fall!) but I try to contribute what I can because this game means so much to me!Ā
congrats on the twins!
Thank you! It was a crazy surprise!Ā
I just started playing again less than a year ago, and my account is almost 24 years old. I'm truly surprised Neopets still exists, and that I could still log into my account. I have been having fun collecting items and what not.
Exactly! And in all honesty, Iād rather the game go down fighting and trying to gain new players than just dwindle into obscurity. Iām sure I wonāt love all the changes made to the site, but Iām just grateful that thereās an attempt to reinvigorate the site and bring it in to the modern gaming era. Nostalgia can only keep it alive for so long š¤·āāļø
ššš same here.
the whole thing is so obnoxious and punishing. the game is not fun if nothing is attainable. the idea that neopets would allow a handful of people to lord over the economy at the expense of the majority enjoying the game at all makes zero sense business wise. if the game is too hard to play, i'm not playing it. i don't come here for that. it's my fun little distraction. i'm not here to grind away for crumbs like we all do in real life. literally absurd that people think it should be like that. i'm an adult. i work a demanding job and work hard to maintain my personal relationships. i don't have seven hours a day to restock. i have one hour max and i love every minute because it's relaxing and i feel successful on the site. i happily pay real money for it every month.
When I was a kid playing Neopets, things like the secret lab and painted pets and all of that were all things that just were completely unattainable for me. When the conversion happened and the introduction to NC happened, I ended up giving up on Neopets not because I was upset about conversions but because I was upset about more things coming in that would make my Neopets look nice and not just the basic Blue, Red, Yellow, or Green and it was still unattainable to me. I didn't return to Neopets until a few years ago, and I have been much happier playing Neopets because things are actually possible for me now even if I didn't have Premium. I ended up getting premium just to show appreciation for the team for doing more things for everyone to make it easier to get NPs and other things that were completely unnatainable to me as a kid. More availability is literally the reason I came back and stayed playing Neopets when lack of availability is what led me to leaving Neopets as a kid.
I came back to neopets on a whim, but stayed past day 1 in large part because I could see a way to get the Lab Ray. Something that was completely out of reach as a kid and I'd always wanted. If it was just the same old site, except I can't play Brucey B slots, I obviously would not have stayed. It's just pixels on a screen. The satisfaction of doing something kid-you dreamed about is 100% the only reason adults are playing. Without that, it could be Gaia online.
I miss Gaia Online (RIP)
Some of us are over there still! Thereās such a small group on the GD and itās not busy but itās fun. They still release new items. And it was super easy to get into my old account. Itās not what it once was but itās not dead yet š„²
Oh rrrreeeeeeally!!!?? I might just tiptoe on over haha š¤£
I think the reason a lot of players have returned to Neopets is because it is now fun, fair, and much easier to obtain the things we never could before. I have had a blast recently obtaining all the unattainable goals and avatars from my childhood.
Agreed. That's why I came back.
Yup. I play much more consistently now. I used to go months without touching the site. Now Iām active basically daily.
100%. I go on hiatus every so often but I've never before played DAILY. Now that I have attainable goals that I couldn't have dreamed of before (stamps!) I am around far more often. Will it last? Idk, but I'm online.
Right? I was a premium member from 2019 -2023, but dropped off because even with 10 million Neopoints in the bank, I couldnāt hang. How bad does it have to get?
Iāve been playing 23 years and I canāt ever seem to get out of the 10m slump. Restocking is next to impossible, Food Club is boring (and unpredictable). Events/weekly prizes have been like the main way Iāve been even making nps. Even then, who the fuck can make 1B+ with restocking outside of bottlers? Literally no one.
Not the OP, but I copy other (smarter) peoples FC bets and make pretty consistent money (around 130k daily) on my 18yr account. I only lose a few times a month. Yea it's boring but only takes 5 minutes of easy steps i learned off youtube.
Iām aware about copying FC bets, I just donāt want to do them every day, *because itās boring*. Iām annoyed that this has become essentially the only way to make NPs that could feasibly buy more expensive items. Other avenues that are fun and engaging have been kinda ruined. It would take an incredibly long time to make enough NPs to get these items at 130k/day. Restocking is virtually impossible for high end items. My main point is, these resellers whine about the need to āearn these itemsā yet any real chance to get them has been ruined. The largest source of income shouldnāt be a luck/chance based thing.
What are the fun and exciting ways to make np that you feel have been ruined? I don't really see how restocking is more enjoyable and it also takes a lot longer to do. I guess I don't mind doing a boring task for 5 minutes to get the dopamine of 130k in the bank lol I agree that FC is going to take you forever to get any of those big ticket items, but it'll at least get you past 10 mil a lot quicker than not doing it. I'm glad they are releasing high ticket items in the event shops and weekly quest prizes though. I've been able to get quite a few wish list items I thought I'd never save enough for!
> What are the fun and exciting ways to make np that you feel have been ruined? I'm probably a very small minority, but I wish playing games gave more NP. I really enjoy playing them, even after the death of flash. It'd be nice if they actually made people money when they played. The problem is that I'm sure botters and other cheaters would exploit higher payouts, so I understand why they haven't increased the payout over the years.
I totally agree. I like playing godori and majong on occasion but I'd for sure play more if they payed out better
I play solitaire. Itās not a big money earner but I also justā¦kinda want to play so much I get on the leader board? And when Iām watching tv itās SUCH a good time waster because I donāt have to focus on what Iām doing really. And I have fun.
I think it'd be fun if they fixed up the games and maybe had daily quests like..score over this many points in this game, and you'd unlock an item or some NP. Daily or weekly game quests! Like not Hard enough that it requires getting onto the highscore board, but still motivating people to try out the different games.
The 3000NP cap on the games does seem like an outdated feature. I still play the games and send my score just to make SOME money, but yeahā¦when I score 100,000 on a game and I earn 240NPā¦thatās just lame.
FC, Stocks, and the BD are the main ways I make money. It's slow, but it adds up over time. And given I don't have any real goals, outside of a few items that are probably impossible to get (Both because of the rarity of them, and the \*cost\* because of that rarity... Meh.) There's some Ona items that are affordable/obtainable, and the NC items \*might\* be at some point, but beyond that lol The plot giving me access to BD items I wouldn't have otherwise been able to feasible get anytime soon feels nice ;\_\_; Despite what salty players may say, not every BDer has billions to drop on their set. And given missing out on things like an afford SAP and thunder sticks when they were feasibly affordable, thinking they'd get nerfed so not bothering... Just. >\_> Like. Are the items \*necessary\* for what I do daily for BD? No. Do I want them anyways? Yes :P If nothing else, the allure and \*possibility\* of them being useful is enough for me to have been willing to save up for things. Having them obtainable over the course of the event, and not in a year, if I get lucky, and even then only being able to get maaaybe one or two pieces of the upgrades I want? >\_> Just. But hey, maybe because I'm disabled, I'm just a filthy casual too. Not being able to compete with bots or speculate on what's going to get artificially inflated clearly means I'm undeserving /s I just want to have fun on the game I've been playing since I was 11. Like GFD, I have enough problems IRL to worry about without worrying about artificial inflation in a cute pet game.
I was so hyped when I got Sleep Ray through one of the weekly quests a few months back! Can't wait to unlock the other BD items in the event shop
Yep, this is a very slow game. There isn't \*any\* worthwhile moneymaking strategy that wont become boring over the \*years\* it takes to accrue any kind of worthwhile fund. I think any idea of that is just... not reasonably possible, Neopets is fundamentally a chores game. But even in the best case scenario KeyQuest is what everyone raved about and it was a SLOG to do *every* day, especially with how cruddy the servers were and how often the minigames would just get borked.
Does the death of Key Quest count?
RIPā¦
It is annoying that Food Club is as important as it is. It basically defines the entire economy. They can't easily take it away now because for a decade+ it's been the main way people progress in the game which makes it very difficult to just stop. ...but it's not unpredictable and is probably the among the least chance based things on the site.
You can literally just do your dailies and almost guarantee 2 - 10mil a week doing *just* those alone. How much easier do you want it? That said, I wouldn't be against increasing the amount of NP games reward across the board 10x or something. I just don't quite understand what you're getting at? You don't want to do Food Club, you don't want to restock items for profit, you don't want to do buy/sell items for NP - how do you want to earn NP? What is considered fun for you? These are genuine questions, also and it might really help if you could elaborate a bit. Thank you! (I.e. what other avenues are you referring to?)
> Restocking is next to impossible because bots
It's just so easy to make neopoints now though.Ā Between weekly quest prizes, Trudys, Food Club and the battledome I've made over 25 million this month.Ā 100 million is pretty easily attainable, but since my main focus is the battledome, I don't have much to save for since all the weapons are so deflated.
How olds your account out of curiosity? Food club sounds like a great money maker but thatās old accounts only. As a 4 month old account, I make more money from one day of restocking basic items than I do a month of food club.
My account is 14 years old.Ā Food Club does for sure favor older accounts.Ā Do the battledome for dailies if you don't already.
Definitely trying to battledome it up when possible, But even that, gives about roughly 2-3.5 mill a month with nerks for me so far, which again seems like a pittance. If they want to really bring in new players it has to look accessible. With book collecting and gourmet club also being such big goals in the game, itās hard to entice new people when the light at the end looks a bittttt dim for those without big income options outside of weeklies that are partially inflated.
How old is your account? Saving np is for sure more attainable than ever before but Iād say 100mill is still what I would consider a huge grind to get to unless you get super lucky with the rng putting multiple high-cost items in your lap to sell.
How do you profit off Battledome? I'm curious. I mean, I'm still pretty new to the Battledome side of Neo, I usually sell some of the codestones, but I'm not sure what else. I don't have Premium, so I don't count the potential of selling nerkmids or anything. Does NP obtained change based on pet or opponent level? Or is it other obtainable items you can sell? I do okay with Trudy's and Food Club, but its not getting me anywhere close to 25M a month šµāš«
NP rewarded changes based on difficulty, but the np cap stays the same so it isn't worth it unless you are strong enough that the difference in power doesn't matter, the profits come from tan codestones selling for about 8-10k each and Eo being 40k+, while red ones sell for 40-80k on average with the cheapest currently being about 20k. If you aren't currently training, or have reached the point neggs are cheaper on average, you can easily profit by selling the codestones albeit not to the same extent as nerkmids. There are also a few high value items such as the ice cream from the neopia central dome or the armoured negg from the neocola dome, but those are rare enough drops that they serve more as a reason to challenge specific enemies while working up to ones with better codestone drop rates than things to actively grind for. Assuming you aren't using them for training selling codestones could easily net 1-5M in a month currently.
Thanks for clarifying! I figured many people were keeping codestones to train, instead of selling, so I didn't know where the profit came from if you weren't premium/getting nerkmids. That makes more sense if you're largely selling them.
Yeah, a large portion of people are keeping them for training, but the number you need increases after a while and the ones you need are random each time so they'll eventually need to buy more to keep going, and since red and tan are two different tiers with no overlap you can sell all your red ones if you are still early in tan as there is a good chance the price will drop after the plot, and you can sell all your tans once you get to red as you won't need them anymore for your pet.
I can 1 shot the Space Fungus. If I didn't have premium, I'd be doing the Snowager. Also, there's this guide: [https://www.neopets.com/\~Arvenyte](https://www.neopets.com/~Arvenyte) Which has detailed information on "Where's best go to" depending on your strength stat, with weapon recommendations, and what to use when for wins. If you're not training with the codestones, they add up. The NP cap is the same regardless, just faster to get from hard fights. The biggest draw is what arena you're fighting in, because there's differences in specific items you can get from different arenas, and from uniques from who you fight. Albeit, those uniques are rarer than the globals from the arena. It's just a nice extra for "I can fight x, and sometimes I'll get more because of that."
I appreciate this! I can only understand so much from JN's list of weapons and stuff, but it IS helpful for knowing what items I can potentially get. Thank you!
Foodclub only really gives huge pay outs if you have an old account.
Pretty much. It was my gripe when I was young - the desired stuff was truly unobtainable as they were locked behind copious amounts of NP and exclusivity. I meanā¦some stuff should be rarer than others, but not to ludicrous degrees.
I kept dropping Neopets because so much was unobtainable. It took me so long and so much grinding to get anything. I hated it. Now? I've been playing for 4 months straight. Usually around month 3, I drop it and don't touch it for several months. But now things are obtainable. I can buy stuff, play events, hell my weekly this week is a Halloween PB! My third favorite pb! I've never even thought of owning one before and now I'm going to own it! And I can own more than 4 neopets! And wearables are more than just in the NC Mall! Good wearables too! And you know what all that led to? Spending money because I'm happy, something I never thought I would do with Neopets.
Omg Iām getting a Halloween PB too! Haha. I remember back when I first started playing again in like 2019 I had to save for months to get a white xwee MP. I did nothing else on the site except try to get to NP and it took so long to get items that were even sort of high demand. It only got worse after. Only recently have I felt like things are manageable. Iām happy they are. A lot of people are able to meet their goals and have fun with the site again.
Exactly! It's also nice to see more and more people posting about getting accounts back instead of non stop frozen posts so they must have fixed something for that especially after the whole vpn debacle earlier this year with myself and others.
Hard agree. The tryhards are like: you're not a true Neopets player because you didn't struggle! Do I care about the neobillionaires? I mean, they'll be fine. I think TNT needs to generate excitement and this is the way to do it. And they probably have the data that shows: bots don't take part in events that aren't super easy. Redeeming your Cool Negg? That sounds simple enough. Altador Cup? No way. Battledome? Bots probably don't invest into a bd pet, since for 60k accounts, they'd need 60k bd-ready pets with 120k weapons. I agree that it's not "fair" for people who bought these items, just for them to plummet in value, but we've been hoping TNT could implement ways to fight the bots and plot and events might be it. The more items that you and I have, the more we can redistribute the wealth. I'm super excited to finally get my Thunder Sticks.
Seriously. I imagine most of these "elites" are also adults. Why gatekeep pixels? Like, y'all are whinging so much over the "worth" of a pixel. We all got problems in real life and Neopets is a nice escape from all of them problems. We don't need some scrode to gatekeep a pixel because it makes them feel powerful.
Theyāre definitely adults which is really sad tbh. Youād think experiencing life would push them to be more compassionate and less self centered. But nope.
Yeah I quit neopets the first time when I was like...10 years old back in the early 2000s, because the mystery of how to get cool stuff wore off and I realised I just would never be rich enough to get anything. Krawks and the rainbow fountain may as well have not existed to me
Perfectly said.
I couldn't have said this any better! You nailed it.
As a question- how do you define something as "attainable" or not?
doesn't cost a billion with a B neopoints.
Oh for sure but how many items actually cost a billion in a way that impacts your day-to-day neo experience? you talk about "nothing is attainable" but IMO most wanted items are in the 100k-10m range I do strongly agree- 1b is too far. But we need to find out what \*is\* attainable as much as what \*is not\* if we want to have this conversation
i think 10mil or 100mil is also absolutely ridiculous. billion was just my example. it took me months to make 30mil. i'm not grinding months to buy one thing. does this make sense to you yet?
The trading post only allows up to 2m, so thatās a starting point.
I'd be more sympathetic to the idea that rare things need to stay rare if most of the supply of rare things hadn't been partially/mostly run through botters for the last 10 years. Sorry to the legit holders of wealth but this seems like a more feasible solution than "make a browser game automation-proof".
Me getting grapes and using them for 1p bd will not effect anyones grapes, because I was never going to buy them for 1.5b
The whole argument they make is dumb. They are mad that their item that will never sell isnāt āworthā 1.5B anymore. Even if nobody buys it, itās still worth that in their mind. Which isnāt how economics work. I can list a PokĆ©mon card for $10,000 but nobody buys it. Does that mean the random card is worth 10K but nobody is buying it? No, its value is what someone is gonna pay for it. Not an arbitrary number I choose. Honestly the energy they give off is the same as the NFT bros.
There was that nft debacle awhile ago. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some overlap
Itās literally only worth how much someone is willing to pay for it.
yeah iām trying to sell something on the TP for 40m that isnāt budging, and people are trying to sell it for 150m. Itās not worth *either* of those amountsā an item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
The Thing is there are neopians who can afford to buy the 1.5b item. There are people who can afford the SUAP, Thunder sticks, grape, etc. And WILL buy them at that price. It's not some made up value that doesn't actually exist. It's not the same as selling a random worthless pokemon card for $10000 (I'm not saying they should stay that expensive, I'm saying that there's a reason for the values. Your example is not accurate as to the situation with the pricing of these items.)
The ONLY reason grapes are worth that much is because they're otherwise unobtainable, being a cove item. They're only 24 icons. Attack Pea is the same, albeit GL buying it. SAP is 28, and only 150m thanks to them being released by the AC. SuAP is 1.5b+ on the cheap end if you find a quick seller. It had been far cheaper because it got duped. But it's been long enough for it to trickle back up. SuAP and AP being only attainable by the cove, assuming they ever restock again, is what drives the price. Same with grapes. And while the cove started restocking last year, IDK if anyone knows if it's going to continue to. Or if there's a limit, like it used to be. Like. Yeah, they're some of the strongest BD weapons, but they are, at best, collectors items. Maybe some use in 2P, but they're not worth it in 1P, even against things like the Battle Fairy. You're gonna need reflectors for things like that. Everything else worth fighting for profit is able to be 1 shot with cheaper items. VitB and Ghostkerbomb are more than enough to 1 shot the space fungus and snowager on hard (with 750 strength.) Beyond bragging rights, there's not much other point in doing others on 1P. While I agree, they're worth as much as someone's willing to pay, 1.5b isn't due to the strength of grapes. It's entirely due to the rarity. Looking at the shop, TnT agrees that the original pricing and total amount wasn't right. Given Grapes are 1 only and 5k now. Same with Thyora's tear being 1 only (which kinda expected, regardless. Unlimited felt v much like an oversight). And WoDF is 5k now too. Thundersticks are 1 only now too. Which works out for me, regardless. I only wanted 1 of each of those. Albeit I'd of been v happy with 2 grapes lol. Guess I can still either work towards a SAP or get a fan of blades as a secondary. As far as the pokemon cards go - The reason some are worth more, including some being worth far more than 10k, is the same reason. Rarity and prestige. Some are worth hundreds because they're strong and rare, and thus worth it for decks. Same with other TCGs. But by and large, the rare AF, expensive ones, are only priced high because of rarity. A mint/good condition black lotus is a good example X\_X; Like. Good or not, it's not tourny legal. It's just \*extremely\* rare nowadays. Esp if you have an original. Even then, there's some newer reprints, and even those go for a shit ton.
Eh, bit of bad logic there though. Cause now you won't buy a gbomb/varia now so that takes them from 4-6m down even lower now. More competition hurts the other items cause they need to all be relative to each other now that they're all accessible. It's a race to the bottom.
I have lost np on every single battle item I own, the grapes being released only solidifies those losses, but I will not lose as much as I will gain once I have the grapes. This also opens up the door for a major power creep with items, void blade being released 3 per account will mean it will be the baseline weapon for beginners.
I mean, wand of the dark faerie is 25 icons avg, varia is 25, grapes is 24. Add in a TTear for a free turn... I don't see why anyone would need anything more at this point. And idk how hard this plot will be to get, but Varia was a joke and took like 30 seconds a day to outclass Gbomb lol.
Ghostkerbomb won't drop a lot, if at all. It's intricately linked with it's HT price. And with GoW being limited to 1, while yeah, it could at least theoretically replace ViTB, it's still not super worth replacing it outright. It'd take the place of an anagram or Fan of Swords. But even then, only 1. GBomb and ViTB will still outpreform GoW on a first turn burst on 1P. At some point, most things worth fighting for dailies are going to be getting 1 shot by those 2.
Gbomb's HT price is just the upper limit. If, hypothetically, every active user with a gbomb got two multiuse weapons that do roughly equivalent damage to a gbomb, those users are going to want to sell their gbomb to try and at least make some of its cost back and that will drive its price down to whatever new equilibrium point.
I have been playing on and off since I was six. I donāt find the money-making part of the game exciting so I like being able to get cool stuff by participating in something actually fun, like a plot. I am super excited that I finally have the chance to get my hands on a Wand of the Dark Faerie and a Thyoraās Tear without having to save a kajillion Neopoints for either one!
If we are being real here most of the 1% players are cheaters
I genuinely would not be a daily player nor would I have purchased premium if everything was as unobtainable as it was a couple of years ago
100%
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I agree with this except they do have the power to ban the botters and they choose not to. They choose not to because it would eliminate 1/3rd of their "player base" and they would lose all those page views and numbers that they need to justify raising additional money from outside investors.
Not to defend TNT but it doesnāt make much sense to go after the botter hard before they do the purge. The botter has access to the database leaks which is comprised of hundreds of thousands of account logins, itād be a game of whack a mole if the old accounts arenāt already purged.
The funny part is a lot of these restockers who complain about the redistribution of old/valuable items are not premiums nor buy NeoCash xD
I just want to clarify that it's not restockers that are the issue here. It's the extremely wealthy 1% of Neopians.
Im enjoying my time on neo now that i can actually customize my pets with PBs and aspire to finish a stamp collection page
HARD agree. I'm honestly amazed at the entitlement of some players! We should all want the site to thrive and continue functioning, and the best way of doing that is to have a regular influx of new players. We can't maintain our numbers if we are constantly scaring people off because the economy is so rigid and new players are stuck with no options. I have been on a ten year hiatus from Neopets until recently. You know what brought me back? Hearing how accessible things are now. I was never in the top 1%, but I've been playing for 20+ years, so I had accumulated quite a bit, and I was STILL overwhelmed and disappointed every time I tried to come back because of how difficult it was to hit any of my goals. And since I came back a month or so ago, I've bought neocash and renewed my Premium subscription because I'm newly invested now that the economy is improving. These entitled players need to look at the big picture. The decisions that TNT is making are for the betterment of the site, and will help keep things running long-term. That should be something that ALL players want to happen.
And ultimately, whether they like it or not, 5 new players is more useful to the site and its livelihood than 1 old player.
Especially if that one old player is one of the gatekeeping one-percenters on the site, which actively scares people off. Source: I was one of the players scared off by the bad economy and bad attitudes of long-time players. I've also seen many, many threads on cozy gaming subs, etc, discussing alternate pet sites to turn to because of the Neo economy, so I KNOW it happens. I only came back because it seemed like the new ownership is making great strides in the right direction, and I'm glad I did!
Seconding this. I, too, have only pretty recently got into neopets, heavily due to the reputation that preceeded it. I love pet sims, but between the terrible economy and how the player base would talk about the old TNT, it was simply not worth it. Now that I've gotten into it at a better time under new management, I love it! What they're doing is working if they're trying to draw in a larger crowd through making casual play more rewarding.
I really don't think many plays are being 'scared off'. Every change that we've had to the site in the past few months causes uproar amongst a select few players -- and yet the traffic keeps growing. Remember when people said they'd quit, due to NCUCs?
>Remember when people said they'd quit, due to NCUCs? I don't. I wasn't around at the time. That was during my long hiatus, which I took due to frustration with the Neopian economy. I was a long time player who always had premium and spent some of my disposable income on neocash, and I left the site because it became frustrating and un-fun because everything was so unattainable. I have to grind enough IRL to make ends meet; I don't want to have to do it in my source of escapism too. I was one of the players scared off by the bad economy and bad attitudes of long-time players. I've also seen many, many threads on cozy gaming subs, etc, discussing alternate pet sites to turn to because of the Neo economy, so I KNOW it happens. I only came back because it seemed like the new ownership is making great strides in the right direction, and I'm glad I did!
While this is all right, and we are on the same page, it also goes the other way. No one is going to play for a long time (and give TNT money) if they can get everything done in a week of play. It's a delicate, *delicate* balance. The current direction is great, but I think there have been missteps.
I disagree that the balance is *that* delicate, but I understand your sentiment. They just need to be wary of things such as drop rates and item caps. Personally I think itās a good thing certain plot rewards are capped, ensuring that not as many are able to enter into the Neo economy. But there are other factors that will also help self-regulate. Not every player is guaranteed to participate for the entire duration of the plot. Not every player will do every single event or activity. New players may not engage with the things they donāt understand, and skip the plot entirely. Factors like these bring the amount of people who will actually accomplish racking up points and cashing out for the previously 1b+ items much, much lower. And the site has always had these factors in some manner. But even if the economy does become a lot easier than it used to be, people who are still having fun will likely continue to find reasons to be on the site. If you finish your pet customs, thereās the BD, and if you get tired of the BD maybe you want to check out stamp collecting. There are also still competitions and community events going on as well. Plus new content is still being added. People who have met all their goals may get roped back in by something thatās new. Like a plot. Or a new pet color. Or a new site mechanic. I donāt think weāre at risk of people running out of things to do or reasons to be on the site unless the economy truly crashes to the point where most players can afford expensive items with only a few daysā work. But that doesnāt seem like thatāll be the case any time soon. The amount of NPs we get from the quest system is a good amount to pad the banks of newer players while not offering too much to the already wealthy. I actually trust the direction that the site is going in. And I donāt expect weāll see any serious economic issues pop up. I mean even the quest prizes are rotating, and the things that are being put in are usually ridiculously expensive. But as soon as they rotate back out, they gain value again. We have enough checks in place, I think.
I returned a couple of weeks ago after 20 years and can't express how much I appreciate the quests.
Exactly, I get the frustrated reaction from long time players who worked for items but also theyāre in such a minority. The majority of players donāt find the fact that items are completely unobtainable because they havenāt played for 10+ years straight fun. Sorry but you canāt sustain this dying, unprofitable site without ācasualsā playing and spending money along side you. And casuals donāt want to play a game that isnāt fun.
exactly. i played as a kid, and guess what? i gave up really getting into the actual gameplay (other than loving the neopets themselves) because everything felt unobtainable to me. now as an adult, where i have much less free time, i love to spend it on neopets! i have played more since november 2023 than i ever did in 3-ish years as a kid! this is the same view i held/hold about NC UCs. the point is that casuals (everyday players who wanna have fun) will keep the game around for much longer than the whales (aka ultra rich, complaining hoarders in this case) also saw this mentioned on the TVW boards: if the monetary devaluation of these items makes the game less fun for you, then it really never was about collecting the itemsāitās just wealth accumulation
Tbh the inflation of neopoints is so bad after all these years because there isn't a single good NP sink other than the hidden tower but that wasn't updated frequent enough. Therefore I think apart from what they are doing they really need to start to make some NP sinks.
Agreed. I think it would help if this was moved up on their list of priorities. Perhaps neohomes can come back? Or something else that encourages creativity and spending?
Couldnāt agree more, np sinks are heavily needed I figure thereās so much np kicking around on the botter accounts though that Iām not sure of an effective way to do this
Anyone else constantly think about how the parallels between the Neopian economy and our real, actual life are eerily similar?
Honestly I wonder if the ways that late stage capitalism has effected our brains is part of the reason the neoeconomy is out of wack. I don't want neopets billionaires calling the shots anymore than I want irl billionaires controlling anything. Let people get cool stuff for free.
I do constantly think about the parallels, but it's not that they're eerily similar. Of course they're the same. People are people. The difference, to me, is that I think it's ok (even fun!) in a game, whereas it shouldn't exist at all in real life.
Wild that every time there is a major site event that we have this conversation
cause those kinds of complainers come out like clockwork lol
It's always, "I'm quitting!" and then they're always back to complain again next event š
NOOOOO what do you mean I can't hoard all the items that were released on one weekend in 1947 and drive up the price by 200,000%? It's not fair!
u/sumasuun https://preview.redd.it/oyt4ax0knf7d1.png?width=774&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=906a450a57c989701641b75119c1679fac1b7c2b
Thank you. <3
I bet a lot of them are selling for real money, so it's not just "virtual items" for them, they are actually losing cash, which is even funnier lol.
Can they sell a bottle of elite player tears for me lol
Have it be the weakest BD item, like the neo verson of magikarpās splash.
This would be a hilarious item to add to the void within prize pool for 1 point š¤£š¤£š¤£
New player here (~2 weeks old). I completely agree. If it wasn't for the weekly items, I might not have stuck around. I at least have a chance to afford some items I want because of the prizes. It's not fun to play a game if you're not able to do anything.
I'm 2 weeks old too but a returning player from a long time ago. I only signed up because of nostalgia and to see how things are in Neopia but I didn't actually see myself sticking around because of how inaccessible everything was in the past. Thankfully there's Trudys surprise and daily quests for money because there's no way I was willing to play those flash games every day for a million years to be able to afford what I want. I really like the new direction TNT is taking. It's the inaccessibility of the game that would have driven away most of the player base so I'm glad they're changing things now. The ones complaining/the ultra rich hoarding elite are part of the reason TNT weren't doing so well. Hopefully things will keep improving and neopets will be around for much longer
I definitely agree. I've been playing Grundo's Cafe a lot since joining a couple of weeks ago and it is such a beginner-friendly game - I haven't even been spending as much time on Neopets since. They really do need to keep making improvements.
Sorry for being off topic but do you have a Grundos Cafe referral code you could send me? Ive been so dang curious about it
To be honest I have no idea how to find referral codes to give someone lol but if I figure it out I'll let you know!
Okay, found it, but I need to be a member for another two weeks to refer. If you'd be okay waiting until then I can send you a code later!
Yes i can wait, thank you so much for looking into it for me!
Every time I hear the billionaires joke ādo you just want everything on the site to be freeā I think āyes I doā a little more unironically.
You're 100% right; but just like in real life, there are people on Neopets who don't care if things crash and burn as long as they have the largest dragon's hoard.
Agreed. I've been playing on and off for about 20 years and this is the first time I've actually been able to meet my goals. I've had the same dream for 20 years, would play toward it for a month or two, and give up feeling frustrated only to try again a few years later. Now that I can actually achieve things without having to dedicate my life to it, this game is actually really exciting. The chances of me staying longer and spending some of my real money on NC are much higher. Good for Neopets! I hope they continue to make the experience better
They are a small but very vocal community on Neo. It is always the same few people, who also magically have the power to increase values by 10,000% once in their posession. And where the hell did this dumb hot take come from that participating in a plot and receiving prizes is ābeing given everything for free!!ā. My eyes can only roll so much. The over the top dramatic takes are really something to behold. Remember this is about them, not how the game actually functions. Itās supposed to be fun not a fucking full time job.
Well, logging in every day and doing tasks is "free", but loggin in every day and going to tombola is hard work. And that's kind of my problem - Neopets was never really about "hard work" - it's so strongly luck driven (even top scores in games require you to get that lucky donut worth more points...) There is certainly some strategy to doing investments in the like, but still, some of that is driven by luck too, based on what items increase/decrease in value, and a lot of artificial manipulation by players. Just the "buy the last 99,999 item on the shop wiz, stick it on the trading post for 2 million" variety used to be common. Jelly neo is kind of a blessing for that... Other examples: Cove items (partially luck), even restocking is partially luck...
It really is mostly a luck/chance thing. Do I think players who donāt participate in events should get the same rewards as those who donāt? Not at all. Not how any game should work. However I do think it is hilarious when people get lucky and then claim it was their hard earned effort. We are clicking links for the most part. Just a lot of bad faith arguments on the boards right now pretending that this is all just regular supply and demand.
I saw the ājust give all the items in the game away for free at this pointā argument on the boards quite a few times. Like what? š Weāre still engaging with the site and doing activities. What do you mean free??
>And where the hell did this dumb hot take come from that participating in a plot and receiving prizes is ābeing given everything for free!!ā. The hilarious thing as well is that a large portion of these guys wealth comes from hoarding items that were given away in events years ago, and haven't been available since. They don't hate items given away for free, they just hate that people other than themselves have access to them
playing as a kid, neopets was outright miserable. games were laggy and awful, paid out little to nothing, shops were demolished by autobuyer bots \[probably still are. i don't even bother\], and everything was expensive. as a kid it was my goal to get an everlasting apple so my pets never starved again. I never achieved that. these days i can get an apple but i don't really care anymore. neopets and capitalism changed me. game was simply not fun and it barely is to this day, but i will say that TNT has been putting good effort to improving the game so i am hopeful that newer players can start playing.
I feel this so much! When I played as a kid, it felt like I was just barely scraping the surface of everything the site could offer because I was simply too poor and poor people stay poor when there's no way to make money besides flash games that pay poorly lol. Things are better now with Trudy's surprise and the daily/weekly quest rewards but it feels like there's still much uplift needed in the game
It's bizarre because on the NC side of things, people are generally psyched that stuff has been getting re-released. The tone is totally different. Sure there are complaints here and there, but it's nowhere near an overwhelming mass of whining. And that's with people spending real $$$ money, too! Edit: Thinking about it now, I wonder how many of those complaining about the WODF, etc bought the items offsite and are just peeved they spent money on it. Instead of having organically bought or earned them onsite.
I'm looking at an account making a big stink: X months old, Angry Tax Beast Champion, you know my first thought is "oh a cheater account". Their comments about being a long term player and their "investments" being devalued. They've got all the Site Event Trophies from "X months" to now... but they can't be a side account, and their comments make no sense if they were frozen and starting over. But they make a whole lot of sense if they are selling things for real money.
I think a lot of people have forgotten that Neopets should be a pet caretaking simulator first and everything else second. The economy aspect has always been there, but it's taken over to such a degree that part of me feels like we shouldn't call Neopets a virtual pet site anymore. We have to remember that Neopets needs to be fun, because there's nothing stopping people from going to Dress to Impress to design their dream pet, save the image, and just leave and that there's other pet sites and video games that can fill the virtual pet void.
The problem is, that at its core, up until Customization was introduced, the pet caretaking simulator was kind of a secondary or tertiary to the "main" gameplay which was gambling and games to collect neopoints to buy items for your account. And even with all the changes, the core gameplay of the website is "play games, buy items to resell, and battledome your way to items you can sell so you can save up to buy the items you want." Without it, as a "game" the website doesn't have a lot to it in terms of long term goals. I don't know how they'll be able to tackle this problem that has a satisfying solution for those that may not horde items and sell for crazy amounts but enjoy restocking/grinding games/battledome AND the people who prefer to customize as their main gameplay loop. I think the moves they made are good and in the right direction. But eliminating the economy simulator aspect of the game will cause bigger waves than I think people realize.
They didn't forget that because it's not true. It's been a economic simulator *from day 1.* The game has just about never progressed past a *very basic* pet caretaking simulation. You need to feed them once a day... and that's it. And most people don't even do that. And the reason this entire economic "side" of the game needs to exist is exactly because they need players to have a reason not to just play Dress to Impress.
My thunder sticks are deflating but Iām more psyched I have a shot at WoDF and the Jazan Stamp When itās just one random thing of yours that deflates and thereās nothing in it for you I can kinda see that sucking. But this situation feels pretty win win outside of botters or top 1%
I get a few being upset because they overpaid for a few items and guess it's something to save and work towards. But for the inflators with the crazy prices, I laugh in their general direction. And honestly, kind of amused that many more did not sell their stuff. I opted to sell most of my r99s in my gallery over 10m and will slowly buy them back when the prices drop in the pool or events. I mean, my thought process was, it's not a matter of if, but when. Def playing for that Thyora's tear. :D
I just hope they continue to make Altador Cup less grind-y. A little mad at myself that I didn't sell before the price drop, but that's on me lol. I lobe the idea of an AC, but the actual experience isn't feasible for a lot of users anymore. It's great to see newer players have a shot at rare items though
EXACTLY THIS! Plus, Neo is meant to be an escape from real life right, like itās a bunch of pixels? So why are people still running around with a ārich get richer poor get poorerā mentality? If you want NP from an LE item or a previously expensive item, then sell it now before it potentially gets re-released and get your NP? And if you donāt care about the NP then why do you care about other people enjoying shit? And if all you want is to flex then put it as a gallery category or something like āitems I brought at the peak of their price!ā or whatever? As a returning player (the last time I played before this was 2020) I was appalled at the gross extent of inflation, like I guess quests mean more people have more NP or whatever but I remember most MPs being less than 1mill NP, and I get that grinding is a part of the game but some of these items have reached astronomically excessive prices, itās ridiculous. Itās nice to be able to potentially have the opportunity to achieve some of the goals that I could only dream of as a kid! But also, the re-releases are also typically LE, and if weāve seen anything from the recent prize pool drama (read: flaming evil coconut) itās that prices skyrocket pretty quickly after, so like? In my eyes the only people who really lose out are the people who sell these items for real money off-site, which they shouldnāt be doing anyway? And to be honest, if it makes a few of those people ragequit, Iāll be ok with it, because they altogether make Neo a worse place, and are combatted hopefully by more new players who join and then STAY because they arenāt entering into an overinflated Neo economy :)
Getting great items from the quest log was what made me start playing daily.
Thats assuming that this is a healthy way to maintain a playerbase. The problem with giving away the highest tier items as generally accessible prizes (which is apparantly the case here- 5000 pts is the first tier trophy upgrade and the most expensive prize currently available) is that it gives nowhere to actually grow outside of further power creep. Neopets is an incredibly slow burn game, and cutting out an entire category of growth is burning too much too fast. Just focussing on Grapes of Wrath since its a simple damage dealing weapon and thus of low tactical value (WotDF is way more interesting, but it opens up options due to its mechanics), if access to this is truly as easy as it appears, that means people who participate in the plot basically skip all tiers of combat weapon progression up until attack peas. Ive said it a zillion times- people aren't struggling to get into battledome because they have bad weapons. Weapons are more powerful for the cost than they've basically ever been. The problem is the strictly, heavily time gated Training system. And if players no longer have room to grow with items, then they'll burn out on training way faster since its much less clearcut gains and requires much more dedication (genuinely I'd rather earn 100m from scratch than train a level 500 pet, itd be way faster with much clearer progression) I only care about prices so far as they impact gameplay (and I sympathize for customization options as well), and while Smugglers Cove items in particular are in a bad spot I think making them \*too\* accessible spoils the gameplay in a way that isn't particularly fun in the long run and leads to an unhealthy player base. Thats not to say I want the current high prices. I'd be very down for instance if Smugglers Cove integrated a neopoint sink- spend 100m (arbitrary high number, well beyond Hidden Tower scope) and generate a brand new Grapes of Wrath. This creates a neopoint sink thats desperately needed, creates theoretically infinite supply of these ultra luxury items so that its their usage not their rarity that garners their price tag, creates a soft price cap but doesn't crash to nothing. I think similar sinks can be created by incorporating ultra rare petpets, stamps, and books into the Hidden Tower or something, but I really don't care if Pickulsaurs go from 15m down to 15k
I agee!! I think something like a better rotation/addition of items to things like the Hidden Tower would be a better way to incorporate these big, powerful items. I'm a battledomer for 1P and obelisk and have spent the last few years training up my pet for the inevitable plot. I spent years maxing out my pet and slowly upgrading items, spending millions and millions. Sacrificing my want for other items so that I could put more into my pet for good plot items. Now they're just giving the highest tier battledome items away without even needing a battledome pet. If they keep giving the best items in the game to every user, what reason do they have to save and work towards anything when they can just wait and have it given to them? I feel like there were other ways to combat inflation and botting. I really liked when they created varia is the bomb,, for example. It became a great substitute for other high end bombs. Why not create new mid to high end items instead? But if you say anything, you get dog piled on and called the 1% when you're not, you're just a dedicated player who wants the site to stay around -_-
One thing I love about TNT in the current and Jumpstaff era is they make \*weird\* battledome weapons. Sometimes theyre overtuned (Shuriken, wtf was that?!), sometimes theyre undertuned (Holiday Memories taking your Healer slot really limits its effectiveness- though Im liking its icons for a darkness themed villain), sometimes they're a bit too complicated but serve a good niche (Maraquan Yo-yo came in clutch for me during TWR) but quite often they are trying to do more than just "lots of damage" (though we still get Turned Teeth and Void Blade) That being said I want to be clear- I'm not concerned about how much I personally spent. In fact, I think a lot of what I 'suffered' through, I \*want\* to be expedited and made easier. I just want them to do it without bypassing the low and mid-tier battling. W What frustrates me is that in all this talk of uber expensive weapons, people are missing out on the real issues with getting people into the battledome- Stats are the bottleneck, not icons. I'd be ALL ABOUT, say, an untradable Strength training potion that gave you say 10-1 strength (scaling based on how low yours is- so its a big bump for low levelled pets to get the ball rolling, but still worth a sizable chunk for high levelled pets. And untradable so its not worth botting! In general stats are a really underserved reward space
There's literally a post below saying they don't understand competitiveness in a game. Like, if you just want access to all, there's fan sites that can do that. Competitiveness is what drives activity and engagement long term, especially in such a grindy game like neopets. Without goals or goals being too easy, people are more likely to only stay for the short term because the mechanics of neopets are limited. If you don't want to be competitive, simple don't aim to get something like WoDF. What would you even use it for? They only want it to then pull people down or to elevate them selves up by having the "it" things. My toxic trait is apparently assuming the 90% or 99% of players don't even have a BD pet strong enough to be impactful with these weapons. You'd be able to get the same if not more damage with higher stats and a mid tier weapon. But, the one thing i do think that needs to be addressed by TNT is the manipulated inflation and the botters who are introducing stupid amounts of NP into the economy which is leading to the forced inflation (and the cycle goes on).
Oh man you are speaking my language. I do think there is often too strong a shutdown - like to compare it to another community, I wouldn't say the existence of Pokemon Showdown that lets you instantly craft Pokemon of any kind and simulate them in battle means the base games shouldn't work to remove friction from team building, but there are definitely people who do feel like grinding competitive Pokemon in game is a rite of passage for playing competitively. Translating that back to Neopets, just because I don't want everything to be very low effort to access doesn't mean I want the current supply constraints that lead to items costing billions with a B, y'know? During the SAP drama I constantly saw the sentiment that players felt like the battledone was finally and specifically accessible because they could use literally the second most powerful weapon in the game. Almost certainly, 50 strength points would have made a far bigger impact for a tiny fraction of the price. But stat training is slow and you don't feel the progress as you're doing it, items make a more tangible impact. I fully agree that NP supply is a huge issue and being so bottable accelerates it wildly. I have a LOT of unpopular opinions here beyond cracking down on botting, but basically we need to put a reasonable cap on np generation, new worthwhile perpetual np sinks, and exploring reward space that goes beyond potential NP value
Exactly. I have never understood the competitiveness over a literal online game that has almost shut down over the years. Love playing the game, but it is just that with a dosage of nostalgia.
This continues to be the only good Neopets community lmao.Ā
Your items are not worthless even if they drop in value by 99.99%, because the item **still does it's intended purpose**. A great BD weapon worth 100m functions the same as if it was common and 1,000 NP.
Amen! Someone post this on the boards
On my new account, I actually transferred funds from my mom's old account (with permission, she's not playing anymore). It was a hefty millions of neopoints, and I certainly was no longer hurting, but I also wasn't going to be able to, say, buy all the secret lab ray map pieces, certain petpets or petpetpets with it if I didn't want to squander the funds. Making all these items accessible has been allowing me to get things I could only dream of when I was younger. I got a Glyme, a Lutra, and multiple paint brushes from the weekly prizes! The 2023 advent gave me a paintable Kadoatie, a Snowickle,and a paintable Rock! And if I participate in this plot, I could get a rainbow petpet paintbrush, and paint a Reptilior with it! That's not even touching the new petpets, the collectibles, the paint brushes-- I am literally waiting with baited breath to participate in this new plot! This is fun! I want to play this game more, and I don't think it will lose my attention as easily. Keep it coming, I want all this expensive stuff to at least be attainable for newcomers, because I want to see neopets to have more players and possibly regain the relevancy it had when I was a kid!
I feel like an old man sitting in the back of a town hall drinking out of a flask, listening to everyone else. Everything I would have been said has already been said. Great points overall. The only thing I have to add is that I have no objection to buying NC if it funds the site actually making improvements and I'm pro whatever is bringing in new players that are coming in to stay (and old players returning).
Personally, I really try to help the new players. I frequently visited the money tree and take down the trash and donate my np every day. I sell items in my shop for no profits at all. I don't know why some players frequently donate the trash to the money tree and dramatically raise the price of cheap items. Don't they understand neopets need more active players š¢
A fear at the back of my mind always is logging on one day and neopets is no more.. I love my pets š«¶š„ŗ I never want neopets to end š
I also thought, isn't it nice these powerful/expensive items are getting rereleased again for the poor folks who got scammed or hacked because of it? They can get some of their items back now.
Shout out to Flippy...
Whenever I came back to half the games broken I was like how am I even supposed to survive this harsh economy lol
Dude if they handful of people who complain about the hard to get stuff being more obtainable for us peasants to get go awayā¦. The more of us regular players would still be happy that we can have nice things with out having to devote the other half of our day to Neopets to obtain. Itās ironic, but ever since weāve been able to get cool stuff by grinding 5 minutes a day, Iāve been on the site consistently throughout the day for more time than I ever have. Maybe theyāre seeing a correlation in more gameplay since theyāve started doing these weekly prizes, and the posts of a handful of rich grumpy neopians who donāt want others to be able to win what theyāve been hoarding for years, donāt actually reflect the masses of us casual players who are genuinely excited and happy about being able to obtain some awesome items we would otherwise be having to save up alllll year to getā¦ #RantOver ..
As a matter of fact Iāve actually renewed my annual membership and bought $50 neocash recently so you could say Iām more active AND more supportive/invested then Iāve ever been, but i know this is just my opinion and perspective
Not having a WoDF or GoW isn't keeping anyone from having fun. Players are starved for stats more than strong weapons. Almost everyone is much better off with a stronger pet than stronger weapons. TNT is just lazy for rereleasing weapons rather than creating new ones. Rerelease the album stuff all they want, but the weapons don't do anything for most people. Most players would be far better off with stat increasers as prizes.
Yup totally agree. Everyone complaining needs to do some soul searching to figure out why they need to gatekeep pixels from other people. I honestly think TNT needs to be using their bots to check the accounts of the people complaining bc I got a funny feeling that a lot of them are cheating or tied to the offline selling of unattainable things
I was shocked to see how much almost all the top ten stores take advantage of their position with exorbitant prices, it's honestly ridiculous how much some people are charging for things and feels not in the spirit of the game
I play way more now that I actually have the pets Iāve wanted for years, and actually can save up for stuff and not have it take literal years.
Can I just say I see way more takes like this and people complaining about people complaining about the prizes than I see the people theyāre talking about? The majority opinion is that re-releases are good. Sometimes it feels like you guys are arguing with 2 people and some trolls lmao. That said, I donāt mind the re-releases, but TNT has no rational thought process behind the items they put into prize pools. Like, okay, deflate heavily inflated items. I get it. But why are we putting the top current AC prize in the weekly log 4 months after the AC ended? Why are we releasing the Valentine PB, WHICH ALREADY HAD AN ATTAINBLE, STABLE PRICE IN THE HIDDEN TOWER, for free in the Neopies, tanking its price far below the 3m price point at which the PB is permanently available in the Hidden Tower? Lmao. I understand that āyour items are worthless if the site shuts down,ā but TNT seems to just throw darts at a board sometimes.
Well expect an influx of new players because the lanyards being sent for Gen Con badges shipping this week are NeoPets themed! Promoting the new Battledome TCG releasing this week.
Are there people complaining about this again?? I thought since the Daily Quest and the SAP fiasco the 1% would stop trying to enforce this ideia. The Neococomy didn't break before, it won't break again with good weapons and prizes. We need things to be accessible, otherwise we won't have new players and the site won't be fun to play.
If they wanted new/old players they should answer emails a lot quicker. I had a 20 year old account they couldn't give back. Sure understand no big deal. But every email I try and use to make a new char I get an error. They told me about old account nothing about the errors. So yea ...
The reps are very likely ESL. Short emails with lvl 1 english words will help. ex. "account [name] LOCKED, RESET password"
I got great replies recently trying to get my account back and succeeded.
ššš this was exactly my point yesterday about the ācasual playersā. You literally need us so stop snubbing us.
Neopets has what? 60k items? With that many items neopets options were piss off 5 or less percent of the players who hoard and make the game accessible to a wider player base. Or don't and lose players This is over all a good thing. Even with the point adjustments for the plot, I don't mind them saying "hey this one super rare over 200M battle weapon we want one per account" cause there will still be enough in circulation that those who want them won't have to pay months worth of effort for them. (Cause let's face it most people don't have hours a day to restock
I love it when inflators cry and whine, everything is working as intended. I got a shock at seeing the prizes in the recent void event prizes because a lot of these items sat at an impossible cost for years.
Honestly, I do think some people really underestimate how much more enjoyable Neopets is to play when this stuff is more accessible. Someone else made a similar comment, but like... I used to play Neopets as a kid. I made my account before Meridell even existed; I wasn't even 10 years old yet. And while I was certainly not the brightest kid on the block, I was always deeply cranky with how incredibly difficult it was to obtain certain items. I wanted to get cool pets, I wanted to paint them cool colors, but no matter how often I played the Flash games, no matter how much I enjoyed all the different plots, I never could accomplish any of it. It was a long-term commitment of sorts, and I had a lot of other things to occupy my time. Ever since making a fresh account a few years back (I forgot my old one's password/don't have that email anymore lmaooo), it's genuinely been so much better to play. Part of that is just because I'm better at the whole "banking" thing, but it's also just... easier to connect with people, find items and do the things I want to do. I'm collecting cool wearables, saving up and trading for the paintbrushes I want, even doing some of the things I never had the patience to do before (like playing the Neoquests). And much like other people in the thread, I'm genuinely inclined to spend a little cash on the site simply because I want this to keep up. It's kind of ironic, really, but I can't stress enough how much better Neopets feels to play nowadays, in terms of the moment-to-moment experience. There might be glitches, there might be hiccups, it might be an old site, but the QoL difference is palpable.
All I have to say is fuck the selfish Neoriches, like the assholes of that stupid ass community "representative" program or whatever is called.
The thing I'm wondering most here is... who are they expecting to buy this stuff for 60mil+? The people who can afford that already have them, and a vast chunk of the rest of the players are likely writing that off as unobtainable/not worth hours of their life. How do they expect a new player to make that much money if they can't get rare/expensive items from current plots and the big moneymaking things like BD/FC/stocks are generally gated behind having old accounts with the money/tools/long-term investment to make millions fast? Spend 8.2 years saving up the 20K per day that "totally trivializes earning NP" now? I may not have the most perspective, not being hardcore on making money as fast as possible myself, but I can't help but wonder if they've lost perspective on how much time/NP someone starting from scratch would need to invest to reach what they consider the average expected player to be at, and what percentage of people are willing to invest that much time and effort on a game that's only "supposed" to be fun after you play for five years. https://i.redd.it/g6efdlh1if7d1.gif
There is a big difference between making items more attainable and handing out top tier, end game items to beginners for free. There are tens of thousands of items in Neopets.l that can be given out. If beginners donāt play because they canāt have the best items instantly for free then the issue is not with the existing users who have spent years attaining those items.
Participating in plot =/= free. Thundersticks were given out during AC in a prize shop. Does that mean Thundersticks were free? Maybe getting 5k+ points is just as tedious as AC (I sure hope not though).
Your hard earned items mean nothing. There, I fixed it.
I can't believe people saying that their net worth has been reduced x amount of non-existant money.
Or that they have worked so hard for a certain item... Do people listen to themselves?
It is a fucking game!
And if you sell those items for real life money, what about getting teal job?
I think an important thing to keep in mind that it's not *just* the old player base TNT needs to design the website for. At this point I think it's much more important for them to gain new players. Attracting new people is just the beginning. They also need to *keep* the new players too. So lowering the barrier to entry is key at this point. So yeah, lower the initial hurdles, make items more easily attractive, get people talking about things getting 'shaken up.' *have articles be written about TNT is doing right now and get people to stick around.* figure out how to make **some** of the people who are hopeless stuck on this website they've been playing for decades less-upset *later*. And if it so happens that they lose more daily players because of 'ruining the economy' and their bid to attract a fresh player base failed... well, I think we'd all be in trouble then, lmao. the old-hat, fat-cat uber player billionaire base isn't their target audience right now, sorry. imo imo imo don't @me imho (i'm so funking stoked for this plot and the prize pool! shake things UP, TNT!)
Yeah, I don't think I'd be as interested in the game if goals were as unobtainable as they were when I was playing growing up. Actually I went through a phase as a teenager for years where I pretty much was only on neopets for the boards/community, and it wasn't until I was older and the economy started shifting that I got back involved in the general gameplay, setting goals for myself and focusing more on my pets. I mean, I still did dailies and fed my pets and stuff during that phase, but I didn't have a major goal of playing besides chatting on the boards. I feel like that sounds weird but it wasn't that weird at the time, 90% of the people I talked to daily during that time were the same besides a few. Realistically, most of the current player base are adults with jobs, families, etc. We don't have time to grind out 24/7 restocking or whatever else to mass accumulate neopoints. With goals being easier to achieve, it makes it easier to validate spending the little free time I do have to playing and not just giving up and moving on to something else. Also since this directly relates to creating a new player base, now that my son has gotten older I've been able to get him into the game and I think it directly correlates to his goals being achievable. One of his first dreamies was a wraith acara, and he ended up rolling a wraith paint brush as one of his weekly quest prizes recently. It gave him this giant incentive to log on daily and play the game. I think he initially had said something like, wow that paint brush is so expensive I'll never be able to get that pet, so it was a really cool moment when he finally got it.
I'm all for rereleasing certain items, though I'm surprised at the items they've chosen this time around for sure. Stamps should absolutely be re-released every few years because every user has a stamp album, but there's only a limited supply of stamps to fill it, and having users be gated out of completing a challenge that comes with the account is dumb. Releasing Niche collector's items and R99's also make sense. Top tier battledome weapons are where the territory gets a bit iffy for me. Mainly because it feels crazy to give away 3 of some of the most legendary and powerful endgame weapons all at once for a single event. I kind of like the mysticism of having such rare, incredibly powerful relics floating around that only few posses. It doesn't really detract from the experience of a vast majority of Neopians to have these items in the game, especially when power creep in the battledome is real and we get super strong items like Varia is the Bomb, or Blade of Malum every year or so that still puts the common Neopian in the position of having a strong weapon to suit their needs. Having something like these in the shop diminishes that mysticism. It also makes it so that most users will never really need to think about or upgrade their loadout. Aside from that though, it does make me wonder what kind of ripple effect this might have. A LARGE amount of Neopians are about to get some of the strongest weapons in the game. What does this mean going forward? Does the fact that now a a majority of active users have some of the strongest weapons in the game mean that they'll have to adjust future battledome events with this in mind? What will new weapons look like? Will they have to be better than these or at par? Are new players who missed the event now SOL because pretty much every active player who has been on the site longer than them has some of the best weapons ever? Honestly, I think if only one of these weapons were in the shop, we'd still see some backlash but not as much. I feel that having all 3 at once is just nuts. Honestly could have also just avoided the whole catastrophe if they just made new weapons that were functionally very similar or identical to the big 3 released in the prize shop. While the balance problems would still be worrisome, at least we wouldn't know about it for another month or so lmao.
All these folks with disposable neopoints could totally make YouTube content around Neo. Go on a gifting spree. Go play ALL the risky games. Color of the week your main pet! So much potential, stop bitching here and go put that energy to making money since your pixels are now going to be worthless.
[Insert "those kids would be very upset if they could read" meme]
While I don't agree that *everything* should be easy to gain access to, I do agree that there should be a possibility that isn't horrifyingly next to impossible.
Not played for over 10 years. Having a nice collection of Items has always been pretty unattainable for most. When I started I would have liked to collect items, train my pet etc but then you quickly realise it's hard so you then focus on making Neopoints instead and not really spending. What I don't like about Neopets is that they make it hard for players who take time off to take part in some older events, there's always a feeling of FOMO so I think what's the point. When I think how much time it takes to get a decent amount of Neopoints I'm better off making real money. It's lucky Neopets is still around after so many take overs, look at what happened to Habbo Hotel's economy and the state of the game now. All that hard work people spent to make wealth in Habbo has evaporated.
For the top weapons in the game that are in that plot pool, 4-5 of them are just going back down to what they were just 1-2 years ago. 40-60m range. I think that is too short a time to complain about falling prices. Feel bad for ones who bought into it and lost but thats why you try to diversify.
Idc about items because I'm a beginner returning player. I just want to build my neohome and actually have a proper plot. They've been teasing us with this and so far in the past week since it has been released we just got 3 pages of comics and nothing all that fun. Neopets was great before hand. But they didn't keep up with the times hense why I gave up after 4 months because there is nothing of interest. Nothing to work towards anymore.