So at some point I kinda wanted to throw together some ideas for a pet site in the future. Pet sites for example would be neopets, flight rising, and lioden. I wanna hear about experiences, what aspects of these sites you liked, which ones you didn't, what animals or creatures you found cool, and things you were bored of in a day. I dunno, I find this interesting and also am curious cuz I someday want to make a site. So I wanna know what people like! If it is a site not previously listed, please link it! Tell me all about 'em guys! Current list of good mechanics: + customization/genetics + dynamic art + minigames, battle features + forums for rp + death/breeding limits? (leaning towards breeding limits) + bonus for daily interaction + site "story" + lore, lore, lore + events, especially holiday events + good economy + mobile site or app
I've always been way into pet sites, and customization is my favorite part. Paintbrushes on Neopets, genes on flight rising... Also lore. Gotta have cool lore. And RP forums!
Those are def things I love! The gene system on flight rising was cool, I liked it a lot. Rp forums are always a great idea!
I've never actually used a pet site though I've wanted to for a while because virtual pets just really get to me. The thing I find most important with my pet games that I like to play is that my pet can get sick and what not. Also that eventually the creature will die. This sort of emotional investment means a lot to me with virtual pets though I have no idea how that would work with a site? Again I've never used one of these things. The whole lack of death thing is why I can't get into Pokemon much but Monster Rancher and Digimon World 1 are totally my jam. I just want to feel like my pet is actually a living thing. Things like breeding the little bastards appeals to me heavily too. Cool lore and world building is also definitely a must. Like Monster Rancher would be fun even without its lore but things like the mystery discs just make the world stand out to me a lot. It's memorable. Same with Digimon. Things like how Digimon never truly die and are basically reborn via being reformatted is just super freaking cool. Or how there is this entire world within computers where terrifying virus infected Digimons can be slowed down by being bombarded with emails and IMs.
One of the aspects I loved with Neopets back in the day, that I'm sorely disappointed it's been lacking on other Pet Sites I've gone too like the cute goat one and Flight Rising, is an ongoing and interactive storyline. I really like feeling like there's a world to my games, and that I have some sort of part in it, even if it's a minute one. As much as I like my dragons on FR, I just feel really bored doing things on the site nowadays because it's a lot of grinding and gathering money to... Purchase more dragons and finery for them, so I can have them look nice as I go grind and gather money, so I can have more dragons and more finery. Holiday events especially are something I enjoy. I love having a Winter Solstice/Secular Christmas stand-in for my pets and a big to-do about presents and a gift-giving deity that's kind of like Santa.
One of the most important things, methinks, is economy. It has to be well devised, otherwise hyperinflation a la Neopets/Gaia/Subeta will happen. Inflation will anyway happen probably, but hopefully not Weimar Republic level inflation like those three. I'm deeply interested in genetics myself, so pet sites with genetics have always appealed to me. Flight Rising, Khimeros, Order of the Griffin... Order had the best genetics, like really seriously thought-out stuff, the recessive/dominant alleles, both Mendelian and non-Mendelian stuff... but that site seems to be out of order (ha!) now. =/ Khimeros I adored until they made the genetic information on pets invisible. And then mucked up the layout. Never muck up the layout. Also lots of species? This might be just me again, because I know at least a few people who don't like when pet sites are overcrowded with various things. Though even I like it better when it's more like variations of specific thing (the various (sub)species of Dragon Cave / Flight Rising) than ALL THE POSSIBLE ANIMULS (Subeta). Of abovementioned things, I kinda support all. Sicknesses and dying are good so you don't hoard more animals you can feed. Cool lore and worldbuilding. Holidays are fun - makes me think of Subeta, where I nowadays only go during holidays to nag expensive items cheaply and sell them later (so I can buy arts on the forums). And forums. For RP and art at least. This makes me remember when I tried to make my own adoptable site. :D Started with puppies and tigers, ended with twenty plants (flowers were easier to pixel than animals), lasted a whopping two months in total (miracle when I think how short attention span I had back then). I do hope yours will last longer than this.
Pet sites used to be my jam. Neopets was the first website I ever got into period, and from there if you can think of a petsite that existed between 2002-2010 I probably had an account on it to try it out. My personal favorites as far as "games I stayed the longest at and spent way too much time on" were neopets (duh), teripets, and subeta. The only one I still have an account on is neopets since teripets went under years ago and my accounts were frozen of subeta because I was a dumbass and didn't actually read the rules before I signed up (I didn't even cheat I just like having multiple accounts). (a balanced economy has already been mentioned so I will address other points. This is a good video about the topic if you havn't already watched it.) I like playing flash games to kill time, even if they are just snake clones. This is just personal preference. I also feel like a lot of new games sacrifice dynamic pet poses for the sake of customization (neopets being the first example of this) I never cared about customization so a lot of the newer games never appealed to me. A lot of people who work on pet sites say that a game like old school neopets would not survive against modern games because it has none of the bells and whistles like customizing pets, breeding, even human avatars that were really popular for awhile. but really that's all I want to play. Just a simple HTML/web 1.0/whatever you want to call it pet site where I can play flash games, oogle pretty pets that don't look static, and doesn't lag on my old computers. Maybe with some rpg flavored exploration/battle system. A couple of games have this already, but they either feel slow because the graphics they put in to make it look pretty, or the battle system itself isn't really compatible with the way I like to play (my interest in paladore was killed when I had an all-cat team and got basically perma stuck in the game because I was in an area were grinding would take forever because the typing of my team was weak to everything I wasn't over leveled against and evolution flutes were really expensive and almost impossible to come by).
Ooh. Good input! I have a fascination with genetics, I would love to have a good genetics system in place. I also agree with boring static pet poses. Hell naw gimme something fun to look at! I love and adore exploring/battle aspects and minigames. Not borked economy is a must. That's what made me quit several games! I was considering starting with one or two species, and if the site took off, releasing more later a la flight rising
Amusingly since everyone else seems to love it, pets being able to die is going to turn me off a pet site in 0.2 of a second because the stress is literally too much for me, and it feels less like a relaxing, amusing place to mess about in and more like an OBLIGATION, DO IT EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY OR YOU ARE THE WORST PET OWNER GOD. I love breeding, though, breeding and genetics. I will breed EVERYTHING WITH EVERYTHING. And I don't have anything against pets having to be properly fed/watered/entertained to be able to breed. What I thought was pretty good about a cat-breeding site called Mweor I used to go on was that a) the pets had a limited amount of time where they were able to breed and b) you could 'retire' them into a seperate section so you could still have them but didn't have to feed them and couldn't really do anything with them. So you can have a sort of 'gallery' of pretty beasties while keeping the amount you have to actually look after down a bit. Oh! And dominant/recessive traits are fun. I used to keep a Mweor account where I was trying to breed the prettiest sabre-toothed cats, which was tricky as sabre teeth were a recessive mutation that most people seemed to hate. Mutations, also good. And open breeding. Usually done as having a choice between public and private breeding at various prices set by the owner.
That's a biiiiiig turn-off for me, too. I don't care for games that punish me for not taking them as obligations. They're not real animals, they're games, they will sometimes have to take a backseat to real life, and a game that punishes me for that is a game I won't play. I like how FR does it - you get bonuses if you keep your dragons fed, you lose them if you don't keep them fed enough, and if they're too hungry you can't breed them until they're fed, but that's the worst of it. If you're on a trip or get sick or have to care for a family member or your computer dies, you're not going to lose pets you may have worked hard to get and/or have a lot of lore built up around. Mutation mechanics sound like a lot of fun and are something I think is missing in FR. Breeding for colors and genes is okay, but it'd be so much fun to have weird shit pop up in clutches that you could try to breed out or breed in more of. (If the mutations are downright eldritch, all the better.)
Yeah, FR has a good system. If I ever elect to go back to FR I know I won't have lost some dragons I was super fond of back in the day. I might get rid of them anyway, but at least it'd be my choice and not the game taking them away as a punishment.
Easy mobile capability or an app. I pampered the hell out of my tamagatchi and I'd love to be able to poke around while I'm waiting in the dentist's or something.
Yeah pet death kinda.... Hm. I do and don't like it. I would have to ponder this a bit. Maybe certain number of breedings before they become "retired" and you get bonuses for being fed/played with/ect
In regards to death: the "retirement" option sounds actually the best, then. They're still there and pretty but don't stress (which is a reason that I can get entirely behind of). Like maybe they can be retired only after they've reached certain age/number of times bred/amount of children. Illnesses when they catch some disease/are very hungry/are fed wrong food/??? could affect breeding/battling/minigaming with them negatively, like they won't breed at all or will make progeny that is also ill. (I can totally see why not everybody likes virtual pets dying. Sometimes I think I take my games too seriously.) Also, HAs to go with pets are cool, nothing overcustomized like Subeta, but something simple and nice.
Customizable habitats? Even something like "jungle background" "aquatic background" "suburban background" up to fully custom.
Okay so was discussing with boyfriend stuff! An idea I had is these pets are used for exploring new planets. There will be multiple planets in game to explore. You can breed for color, "battle" stats (self explanatory), or "companion" stats (how good they are at minigames) As game progresses, more pets will be released. Retirement will happen after x amount of kids, but a possible illness mechanic might be an idea I will toss around. Also mutations will be a thing at some point I think. (i picked a sci fi edge cuz like... All these games do fantasy! I want some weird science mumbo jumbo) Also customizable habitats for your pets would be cool!
(Also if anyone wants to suggest what kind of pets they like appearance wise, feel free) (I will also be accepting people who want to work on said project with me re: lore, art concepts, and coding)
Would you want something that already has a following, like, "dragons" or make up an entirely new species? For some reason @roach 's designs for Petstuck trolls popped into my head. Something along the lines of "cute critter that has traits from lots of cute things"
... That makes me wanna do sphinx-like creatures tbh. I love those petstuck designs. I am willing to forego creatures with a preexisting following if only cuz there are a ton of sites for those already
