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Post by Carolyn on Jan 25, 2015 17:57:36 GMT -5
Breakingchains- Some nice gender neutral items would be great. To be more specific, maybe some clothes that would work for specific jobs or some casual clothes (like sparkly t-shirts or shirts based on in-game products)? Maybe even clothes designed for geeky fans of plot characters? Kind of how Hot Topic sells shirts and pants that correspond to practically every fandom known to man. Or, like, sports clothes or hang-out sweatpants/hoodies that aren't zippered and go over t-shirts or... something. :X So much day-to-day life stuff could be used. Even the teacher/student look would be great. Or the NT writer look as well! I'd love some more items about writing or drawing (ideas thought bubble, anyone? Or trash can with tons of crumbled up papers trinket? Or "eureka!" thought bubble with a lightbulb or something of a Neopian equivalent? There is a lot that can be said for the ordinary, I think. Oh yeah. Nightmares and Dreams was awesome as well.  Loved that idea!
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Post by Duke Pikachu on Jan 25, 2015 18:28:27 GMT -5
Breakingchains- Some nice gender neutral items would be great. To be more specific, maybe some clothes that would work for specific jobs or some casual clothes (like sparkly t-shirts or shirts based on in-game products)? Maybe even clothes designed for geeky fans of plot characters? Kind of how Hot Topic sells shirts and pants that correspond to practically every fandom known to man. Or, like, sports clothes or hang-out sweatpants/hoodies that aren't zippered and go over t-shirts or... something. :X So much day-to-day life stuff could be used. Even the teacher/student look would be great. Or the NT writer look as well! I'd love some more items about writing or drawing (ideas thought bubble, anyone? Or trash can with tons of crumbled up papers trinket? Or "eureka!" thought bubble with a lightbulb or something of a Neopian equivalent? There is a lot that can be said for the ordinary, I think. Oh yeah. Nightmares and Dreams was awesome as well. Loved that idea! Yeah, we need more gender neutral stuff. The recent MME that was basically from Disney's Frozen was pretty bad with 6 of the 9 items being for female Neopets... |
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Post by Carolyn on Jan 25, 2015 18:32:35 GMT -5
Yeah... They could have done a Christoph version as well. :/ He's a cool character too!
By the by, Hans, Christoph, Anna, and Sven sound like Hans Christian Anderson, the author who wrote the book that Frozen is based on. Also my great-great-great grandmother's ex-boyfriend. ...No. I'm not kidding. :X
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Post by Breakingchains on Jan 25, 2015 18:44:22 GMT -5
Carolyn Those are some pretty neat ideas! All my pets have fairly "ordinary" characters/backstories (well, ordinary except when they're bonkers) so I do like to have items on hand that work for that. Actually, how many people are doing ordinary characters these days? I remember it used to be that every other neopet was a tragic princess and thus could only wear the sparkliest of sparklies plus inexplicable facepaint. Duke Pikachu: Okay, I'll bite. Do you really think NC items are getting done in place of plots? Because I'm not so sure. I mean, for one thing, I'm pretty sure that plots tend to sell plenty of NC, so it's not like the two can't coexist. Second, while NC items are making up a portion of the art workload, it's not all that big a slice of the pie when you look at it--they're still routinely getting NP items, pet colors, site banners, custom and semi-custom NT pics, etc. done at a good clip, and theoretically almost all of that stuff could be put on hold/dialed back to make room for a plot in the works. Unless I miss my guess, whatever the the holdup on getting new and varied plots out is, it's not an NC issue. (Actually, my guess would be a shortage of experienced programmers. Those guys are expensive, and other site issues have kinda been pointing to the same possibility for some time.) Anyways, speculation about Viacom, how much money they made off Neo, how strongly they directed the site's focus, and the details of the jumpstart acquisition are totally moot at our level.
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Post by Duke Pikachu on Jan 25, 2015 19:07:02 GMT -5
Yeah... They could have done a Christoph version as well. :/ He's a cool character too! By the by, Hans, Christoph, Anna, and Sven sound like Hans Christian Anderson, the author who wrote the book that Frozen is based on. Also my great-great-great grandmother's ex-boyfriend. ...No. I'm not kidding. :X Oh, that's interesting trivia and an even more interesting personal fact. How do you know this? Ooh, did he give your grandmother any of his books! Carolyn Those are some pretty neat ideas! All my pets have fairly "ordinary" characters/backstories (well, ordinary except when they're bonkers) so I do like to have items on hand that work for that. Actually, how many people are doing ordinary characters these days? I remember it used to be that every other neopet was a tragic princess and thus could only wear the sparkliest of sparklies plus inexplicable facepaint. Duke Pikachu: Okay, I'll bite. Do you really think NC items are getting done in place of plots? Because I'm not so sure. I mean, for one thing, I'm pretty sure that plots tend to sell plenty of NC, so it's not like the two can't coexist. Second, while NC items are making up a portion of the art workload, it's not all that big a slice of the pie when you look at it--they're still routinely getting NP items, pet colors, site banners, custom and semi-custom NT pics, etc. done at a good clip, and theoretically almost all of that stuff could be put on hold/dialed back to make room for a plot in the works. Unless I miss my guess, whatever the the holdup on getting new and varied plots out is, it's not an NC issue. (Actually, my guess would be a shortage of experienced programmers. Those guys are expensive, and other site issues have kinda been pointing to the same possibility for some time.) Anyways, speculation about Viacom, how much money they made off Neo, how strongly they directed the site's focus, and the details of the jumpstart acquisition are totally moot at our level. I'm going to stick with the facts here: As soon as the NC Mall was introduced, I noticed a decrease in plots and the NC Mall was constantly releasing new NC Mall items every day. I'm just making connections from what I'm seeing. Are they true? I don't know, but I'm not being convinced otherwise so what else am I suppose to think? As for the programmer thing, that's the problem now but what about when they were owned by Viacom? They still had most of their staff (though now some of them have left), and if anything they had the staff from the Nickelodeon crew who moved into their offices. But that's in the past, right now you're right that they are in no position to do anything as big as a plot. I think we can agree that as of right now we all want the site running normally and later on we'll start seeing things like plots and other interesting site events (and maybe fixing ones like the Altador Cup). One step at a time. |
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Post by Carolyn on Jan 25, 2015 19:08:31 GMT -5
Breakingchains- I've seen more "ordinary" looks than I used to, like I've had my one pet be a violinist, or another be a BVU student studying the in faerieland library (we need to suggest a BVU BG O___O. I'd use the heck out of that). Remind me to suggest BVU spirit gear. :X Or like a BVU sports jersey... or t-shirt... or graduation outfit. Something like that. But there seems to be less of the tragic tower princess motif. It happens, but you see seasonal day-to-day customs more often than not as well.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2015 19:50:02 GMT -5
Herdy Ah, thanks for the correction. I don't know why I had it so firmly in my mind that Mr. Insane did the LC puzzles. I seem to remember reading that he did, a long time ago, but my memory is probably shaky on stuff I read on Neopets a decade ago. xD Carolyn Yeah, it was pretty bad. I'm not one to up and leave websites whenever they do something that doesn't suit my fancy, but the site in question had these problems for over a year, and they just kept getting worse. The staff would acknowledge users' overwhelming displeasure with the issues, but not make any attempt to address them--or address them in an ineffective way. For instance, they pulled gold generators out of the cash shop--but reintroduced them about a month later, virtually unchanged (and still generating insane amounts of gold). And in response to complaints about a severe lack of adequate gold sinks that would drive inflation down, they made events into gold sinks, effectively cutting off newer and poorer users from what could and should have been a universal event unless they were willing to spend real money. And in the period of time between when they started to make these changes and when I left, despite numerous updates, fixes, and new activities being (ostensibly) planned and promised, only one new project came to fruition: one that required buying game pieces in the cash shop. Thankfully, that cheesed off enough people that they updated the activity so game pieces were (sparsely) available through non-cash venues around the site, but it still remained something that they pushed cash shop purchasing for. So I left when I finally realized nothing on that site held my interest any more, and they were systematically, unarguably ruining everything I used to enjoy about it. Anyway, enough of that rant. xD I really enjoyed Pikachu's article, too.  I think that's one of the great things about the Neopian Times, is that we can make up our own backgrounds, personalities, and stories for site characters who intrigue us. I mean, I can certainly plead guilty to doing that. xD That's why I'm so torn on whether or not I want a greater expansion of site lore, because I enjoy interpretations of site characters written by myself and other NT authors, and I don't want canon to render any of it moot. Actually no. xD Might as well put all my cards on the table, I'm referring to Gaia Online. But it doesn't surprise me that Maple Story had/has similar problems. I actually used to play Maple a few years ago (well... more than a few years ago, now, probably closer to ten years, time what are you doing), and I left a little while after they introduced their cash shop. (Actually, it was that game that gave me a crash course on why I don't like buying virtual things with real money. I'm ashamed to say how much of my parents' money I sank into buying pixels that only lasted a few months. xD)
But it doesn't surprise me that Maple went that way, too, as that seemed to be the direction they were going when I left (and I do seem to remember that increased emphasis on real money spending was one of the reasons I became disenchanted with the game).
(Although I did get one of my good friends and frequent graphic design clients out of it, so I wouldn't say it was a total loss.) Duke Pikachu It started when Gaia got a new CEO, so I'm willing to speculate that he's the source of the problem. The previous CEO focused on expanding Gaia into a social gaming venue, but that fell through when the Facebook gaming bubble burst. He left in the wake of that, and their new CEO, from what I remember, wanted to take Gaia in a different direction. Well, he has, and it's not a good one. xD Re: item diversity: I think more "everyday" clothing and accessories would definitely balance out all of the super sparkly fantasy ones. They would probably also make good bases for when you want to emphasize some other aspect of customization, such as a background, and don't want it drowned out by super-complicated and flashy clothing. And, like Carolyn said, there are people who have pets who aren't tragic princesses. xD (As for myself, I don't put actual clothes on my pets very often. I don't really imagine them as wearing them or needing them except for functional purposes. Mostly I dress them up on the site because it's fun to play with outfits, but in my stories I imagine them as pretty non-anthro. Although Hyren does look really cute in his fishing hat.) On my part, I would love to see more wearable armour and weapons. There don't seem to be enough of those, especially more mundane and realistic-looking ones (especially ones that aren't species-specific). For example, I'd love to give Hyren a sword, but the only functional-looking, European-style straight sword out there is the Jeran Collectors Sword, which is... out of my reach. xD
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Post by Jae on Jan 25, 2015 21:53:25 GMT -5
@surfersquid : I thought you were referencing Gaia Online in your first post. Nice to see that confirmed although I haven't played lately. It's been about 5 years. I used to RP there until I got really sick of RPing in general. But from the sidelines, I definitely saw a lot of people selling items they bought with real money for Gaia gold so it was impossible for people who didn't have a lot of money in real life to buy items in the game if they wanted to get into that aspect.
Regarding NC, that's something I've noticed as well. I have a bunch of NC items from packs and MMEs that are low in value because they look so much like multiple other NC items. Those are mainly dresses, wavy wigs, and backgrounds (on the subject of wigs and in the spirit of this thread, can I just say that I seriously commend the person a few weeks ago who asked TNT for more diverse hairstyles in the wigs?). I don't know the cap value of Jeran's Sword but I imagine it's fairly high since it's a unique item.
I love the idea of casual clothes! Considering 90% of girls I see around are wearing leggings instead of pants these days, I imagine there'd be a bigger market than TNT might think for 'comfy' clothes.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2015 22:18:37 GMT -5
Jae I used to RP on Gaia, too! When I left, I still had one going, but my friend and I decided to move it to email, so it was no big loss. (For some reason, Gaia had been glitching out whenever she'd tried to send me replies anyway, so that probably worked out for the best.) But yeah, it bothered me that people who had no way to get cash items (or chose not to spend real money on the site) were pretty much completely out of luck if they wanted anything in the marketplace, considering the rate and pace of inflation was such that it was virtually impossible to save up using on-site methods alone. Anyway. xD I'd love to see more diverse armour selections as well. It saddens me that there's only one sci-fi armour set (Space Trooper) and it looks, IMO, kinda derpy and generic. And half the other armour pieces are jokey/decorative (pumkpins? flowers? seriously?). It would also be awesome if more extant Battledome weapons and armour could be made wearable, because so many of those Brightvale robes are gorgeous. (Although I'm not sure what that would do to the economy, since high-end BD equipment is expensive as it is without having another site function.)
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Post by Jae on Jan 25, 2015 22:44:50 GMT -5
@surfersquid : I have to admit I didn't quit because of the site itself which is a story for another time (although I quit the site because without RPing, it had nothing to tempt me so that's fairly on point xD)
Sci-fi stuff would be neat! We have two space-themed lands, a few space-themed paint brush colors (Starry, Eventide, Alien) yet limited space-themed clothes. I also agree on the armor. I looked through the War of the Obelisk and most of the armor was kinda ridiculous. There was one piece I could see an actual warrior wearing. (I have to admit I'm guilty of having my Kougra wear a flower shield ^__^; )
Maybe the ones that aren't expensive or useful? The vast majority of restockable BD weapons are useless because everyone has access to multiple Battledome databases these days and there aren't newbies buying them thinking cool-looking = good. To your point earlier, there are many straight swords sold in Battle Magic that only deal a few icons but would look nice if a pet were holding them. If they picked the right combination of nice looking + weak + cheap, they might actually help the economy by making more weapons useful in other contexts and the battle shops more profitable to RS in as a result.
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Post by Carolyn on Jan 25, 2015 22:55:27 GMT -5
It would be great to see some of those old BD items (and let's face it, they're pretty much junk right now) have an alternative use. It would also increase the number of nice neopoint items out there since, besides rather expensive species-specific wearables... some of the pickings can be a little slim, in my honest opinion.
Huh. Funny you should mention Gaia. My friends used to play on that one and would often complain about people who would spend a ton of real world money getting items that they worked hard to obtain. :/
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2015 0:09:04 GMT -5
Good points, Carolyn. I think there are probably a large number of less-than-useful, never-actually-used-in-the-BD BD items that would make great wearables. (And, well, in converting them to wearables, at least the artists have a little less work because they don't need to think of a concept for an item, they just need to draw the species art for it.) Increasing the amount of nice Neopoint wearables would be a lovely bonus, as well. It might also encourage more buying from the various site-run weapons and armour stores around Neopia, which would serve to sink a little more NP. Yes, I look to Gaia's economy as an example of what not to do. <_< I'm surprised it's still alive at this point, and it saddens me to think that it's probably still alive because of people who are willing to throw away prodigious amounts of money on chance items. It's really a shame, it was a great site back in the 2000s, but now it's economically running itself into the ground. |
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Post by Duke Pikachu on Jan 26, 2015 0:32:33 GMT -5
In addition to turning BD weapons wearable, would be awesome it they could go through the clothing items they released BEFORE customization and make them wearable. One group that immediately comes to mind is the first and second Altador Cup's souvenir clothing.
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Post by Carolyn on Jan 26, 2015 0:54:25 GMT -5
I recall TNT saying there were simply too many items to make into wearables from prior to customization, but it's worth a shot to recommend those.
Perhaps the lot of us should have a poll and submit those results to TNT as to what wearables we think they should release next (for both np and nc)?
But there are some very nice looking weapons around (although I have some odd tastes, haha):
I would have added pics, but they're not working, it seems. :/
Electro Sword, Rustic Wooden Sword, Ruby Sword, Sturdy Blue Sword, Sword of Knowledge, Sword of Domar, Astral Blade of The Space Station
And maybe even the Manacle Mace (because some alternative weapons are cool as well)
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Post by Coaster on Jan 26, 2015 1:05:33 GMT -5
(Just a thought, wondering if this discussion should be moved to a more general Neopets chat thread, or the downtime thread, or the customization discussion, since the topic has diverged from Editorial to current events in NC)
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Loved that idea! 
