Cyopets

For posting threads about MMOs, console games, other virtual pet sites, gaming news and suchlike.
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Huggles
Feral Koala
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Cyopets

Post by Huggles »

Cyopets: Don't be fooled by the prettiness!
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I found Cyopets through an artist for Ichumon, Tikopets.
Apparently she makes tons of stock pet and world images to sell to various pet sites. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this site to anyone who doesn't list masochism as one of their hobbies. First, you cannot choose the gender of your pet upon creation. All four of the pets I created are the wrong gender. The only remedy is to purchase an item from their cash shop. You can create pets in about 4 or 5 colors, with a few special ones available from the cash shop or as rare items from shops. The pet art ranges from terrific to trite. It's painfully obvious that most of their art for the entire site was outsourced to various freelance artists without much regard to consistency or quality.

You cannot abandon your pets. They only way to get rid of them is for them to die, leaving an image of a tombstone forever upon your profile. At maximum happiness and hunger, pets have 14 days before they croak if left unattended. There is a resort to place them in that will keep them happy and well fed. However, it's relatively expensive. It's 750 money for one pet for one day. There are a dozen or so games to play, but only one you can play without having money in the first place. I was left with 1750 money, 4 pets, and no way to make more other than wandering around and hoping for money to fall from the sky. If you're hoping to sign up, look around, and visit your pets later, you better bring some flowers and lots of tissue. Profile pages are veritable pet cemeteries.

The site itself looks like it was made with bare bones design skill. I could do just as much on my own, and that's not a compliment. There's a side navigation menu with links placed in no particular order, and then nameless icons listed at the top of the page. You have to click to see what they are, because there's no mouseover alt text or titles. This is a great segue for one of the worst design features ever conceived for a browser based game. You cannot right click. Well, you can, but it brings up their own personalized menu of what they think you want. This means you cannot copy and paste via rightclick or do anything else you'd do everywhere else on the interweb. Things that should be found through the navigation menu or elsewhere on the site, are instead brought up here. FAQ, Rules, Messages, Blogs, Donations, and a Contact link are some of the options you have. I cannot fathom why anyone would laud this as a feature. I had to go digging around in the source to get pictures.

As expected, there isn't much in the way of interaction with your pet. You have a profile page and so does your pet, and that's the only time you see them. The only way to get to them is to click your username in the upper right hand corner and then click on their name below their picture. There's battling, of course, and it's very much like Neopets NeoQuest and regular battling system. You're taken onto a playing grid where you move around and are attacked randomly. Once the battle begins, you're given a battle menu.

Attack: Fierce, Normal, Cautious.
Spells: Aka abilities and I have none.
Items: Aka weapons. They don't exist and/or you can't use them yet.
Other: Run for your life. One of the only sensible choices on the site.

You can gain experience points and money from battles, I got 1 money for winning one battle, but I haven't seen anyplace where I can use my experience.
Veo
Posts: 267
Joined: 26 Feb 2007 01:30 am
Gender: Female
Location: The Void

Re: Cyopets

Post by Veo »

Wow.....fail site is fail. :/
Seerow
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Re: Cyopets

Post by Seerow »

I saw this from your post in that other petsite thread and went to go check it out. I LOVE how the disclaimer for owning a pet is about half a page long, and how in the first line they have a segment on burial fees.
For your reading pleasure:
Pets need to be fed and played with or else they will die. A 5000 CP burial fee will be given, as well as a tombstone on your userlookup. Your Cyopet can go to the hotel for a cost of 750 CP a day for up to 30 days if you are unable to come online for a while. If your Cyopet is close to dying, you will be sent a warning message to let you know that if you do not take actions soon, your pet will die. Take care of your pet, or face the consequences.

A pet goes down a level of hunger and boredom every 8 hours, even if you are offline. Please be aware of this, as a completely full and happy pet will only last up to 14 days. If you have under 10k, you can feed your pet at the soup kitchen for free.

There is a maximum amount of 4 pets per account. Make sure the name is one you are happy with, because while you can change everything else about the pet, the name remains the same.

You cannot abandon a Cyopet. The only way to remove your Cyopet is to let it die. Just as the previous, make sure you are pleased with the pet and its name before creating it. Therefore, there is no exchanging or selling of pets among users, as you cannot abandon them.

The gender will be chosen randomly for you, you cannot choose. If you really want a female Cyopet, but it is male, you can change the gender using a Gender Potion.
Seriously? Come on. WHO thought ANY of the above was good for a virtual pet site.

Some of the pets are pretty, but a lot are lackluster. I created Samuel, the dragon looking pet, and after he ended up being a girl I just exited out of the site.
Wanna donate towards my drink gallery, the Golden Goblet.
mellaka
Posts: 1055
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Location: philly, usa

Re: Cyopets

Post by mellaka »

Seerow wrote:I saw this from your post in that other petsite thread and went to go check it out. I LOVE how the disclaimer for owning a pet is about half a page long, and how in the first line they have a segment on burial fees.
Wow the idea of a burial fee made me laugh, though I don't think that's their intent. I think I'll stay away from this one.
WisteriaLynx
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Re: Cyopets

Post by WisteriaLynx »

I also find the tombstones and burial fee more amusing than they intended, if only because this site is otherwise a combination of pretty much every bad pet site idea I've ever seen. I say "otherwise," because I hadn't seen those yet.

... Some really, really morbid and twisted part of me *wants* to create a profile full of tombstones. O.o;
Kantark
Posts: 1927
Joined: 18 Jan 2006 08:59 pm
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Re: Cyopets

Post by Kantark »

Hmm, is this such a bad thing? I remember thinking that the whole 'pets-cannot-die' ethos of Neopets felt something of a cop-out, a concession to younger users who would be upset if they found their prized possessions dead if they ignored the site for a couple of weeks... When I first encountered Neo, my experience of virtual pets was limited to the Tamagotchi which was perfectly happy to croak if you didn't attend to its every need pretty much immediately, and I was a bit surprised when the pets on virtual pet sites didn't act the same way.

I think we've been spoilt by Neopets - this way is different to other sites (many of which only seem to pay lip-service to the concept of virtual pets, or just ape Neo), but nonetheless no less valid. </provocateur>
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Huggles
Feral Koala
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Gender: Female

Re: Cyopets

Post by Huggles »

In the grand scheme of things, I agree, the idea of pets permanently dying is not a bad thing. However, the caveat being that it in some way contributes to or does not detract from the game being fun. There's next to nothing to do there, so when you add pets dying while you're waiting around for something interesting to do, you have to start all over with a new pet and still nothing to do with it. It'd be like playing a long video game without being able to save. Say, Tomb Raider. I had a copy on my Sega Saturn, but my console lacked a lithium battery required for saving. I ended up playing for 4 or 5 hours, getting tired and quitting, then having to start all over and play the same levels again for hours on end. In the general formula that most pet sites use, including Cyopets, I can't imagine playing a game for weeks or months and then having to start over.

If your pets died and came back as zombies or ghosts, with a choice to resurrect them or keep them undead, I might feel differently.
Veo
Posts: 267
Joined: 26 Feb 2007 01:30 am
Gender: Female
Location: The Void

Re: Cyopets

Post by Veo »

Well, if pets died on Neo - that would be bad, because you could lose everything you put into them - rare food, books, battledome training, beauty contest, etc *fear* ---- by letting your pets die on a website, it means either you slave on the site day in and out, or quit and never come back because they'll be dead and you will have lost everything. XD
daisybell
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Re: Cyopets

Post by daisybell »

The difference between an online pet site and a Tamagotchi is that the Tamagotchi can go everywhere with you and it's easy to attend to it for a few minutes at a time regularly throughout the day. If you have technical issues with your internets, your computer breaks or you go away somewhere with no internet access, you can't look after your online pet. If it was a longer length of time, three months or so, then it would be fairer. I think it would be better if they just ran away rather than dying, though.

I went and had a quick look at Cyopets' front page, and after reading the first paragraph that they put up there with the random bits of bold text, I'm quite sure I don't want to join. By the sound of it, I think the most amusement Cyopets has to offer is in reading the snarky comments that other people make :P
Neopets wishlists: here
Spivsy
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Re: Cyopets

Post by Spivsy »

all I have to add is this.

"Join our friendly community today, and see why cyopets has become one of the fastest growing new virtual pet sites in the world!"

Users Online: 23
Kantark
Posts: 1927
Joined: 18 Jan 2006 08:59 pm
Gender: Male
Location: UK

Re: Cyopets

Post by Kantark »

Agreed, Huggles & Daisy. Maybe as you suggest a month-or-two of inactivity would be more appropriate, or some kind of comatose state that could be revived should unforseen user inability occur. The lack of choice when it comes to gender also seems to indicate that they wanted to make the Cyopet-owning experience more realistic than other pet sites - though the posted pet designs would possibly argue otherwise ;) It seems a little confused. I stand by my original point, though - a different way of doing things isn't necessarily worse than the accepted approach.

Spivsy - Fast Growing doesn't necessarily equal Large. The town I live in was - for a period of time in the early 80's - the fastest growing town in Europe. Today it still has a population of less than 30,000.
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Neopets: sparkygoesforth, decommissioned, nightfall, LiveJournal:kantark, Last.FM:Kantark
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