Customization Ratings!

[Nectaris]

I don't particularly like this idea, as I've been seing peopl "exchanging" five star ratings. Essentially one person saying they will give your pet(s) a five star rating if you do the same for them.

Also, for some reason there is either a glitch or a limit to the number of ratings you can do in a given time.

[yvonne_l_d]

I guess they got this idea from all the 'rating' threads. Before customisation, I always wondered what, exactly, people were rating. The art was done by neopets staff, not by the pet owner. Most of them did not have custom lookups, so there's no skill involved to be rated. (Although, if it makes people happy, it's harmless I suppose.)

I disabled rating on mine. I think of my pets sort of like my original characters. The point of having is to entertain myself. I don't need somebody to rate my pets 5/5 to find my pets entertaining. They are for my own amusement, not outside approval.

[Farseek]

I find the rating thing silly like most of the changes Neo has made lately. I don't want to dress my pets and I certainly don't want them rated. I guess I'll actually have to log into my account and disable it

[thelonetiel]

*mutters rude things about TNT's mothers*

I have a code on my pet lookups that removes all images, including the rating ones. So today I figured I'd take some initiative and make it so people can rate my pets if they so desire. I'm curious as to what people think of grandfathered pets these days.

But, of course, TNT has done a strange coding filter which involves not letting you use CSS to edit anything inside the DIVs for the pet rating. You can edit the DIVs on their own, but not specific tags in them.

I can see why they'd want this, to prevent people from installing false ratings. But, with the way they have it set up now, I could still easily do that. This prevents me from displaying my ratings while doing nothing to stop me from hiding them.

Now I have to decide if having ratings is worth ugly images on my lookups, or actually spend some time and effort to figure out a work around.

[adi_gallia]

I think it will be some sought of spotlight image as well, because it's in the star's image link.
http://images.neopets.com/spotlight/custompet/rating_star_01.gif

New Spotlight - Get ready to show off your Neopets with the new Customisation Spotlight! Entries for next week's contest start today and voting will begin next Monday, so you've got a week to fetch your Neopet that fancy hat they've always wanted!

umm..yay? I assume this will be a cross between a Beauty Contest and Caption Contest. I'm not sure I will enter since it's likely that winning will require advertising your entry, like most things.

So yeah..more reason to buy shiny NC Mall clothes!! x:

NC Mall Update - The NC Mall is now open to English users in Singapore, Australia, the UK... well, it would take a while to list them all. To see if the Mall is available in your country, click here.

Yay, where's my wallet? (excuse my sarcasm)

[Goldenchaos]

One thing. They better not accept entries from people that have NC mall junk. Seriously. Not many people can or will buy the stuff (Or, they are too paranoid to buy stuff online, or their parents refuse to throw money away on virtual items ), and, since its the prettiest of items, people will over vote for those. Take that into consideration. Because it WOULD suck if week after week someone with flashing backgrounds and sparkling tiaras wins this.


I can feel the prices on wearables start to raise already.. <_< So much for the volcanic bg.

[Seerow]

This doesn't make much sense to me really. There aren't a whole of of things your neopets can wear, basically a handfull of hats. There's a few species specific clothing options, but those are the same for everyone.
I guess it for people who are filthy rich and repaint their pets to get all the accessories from the colors so can mix and match a few different ones.

Now, if it had the amount (or heck, even like 1/4th the amount) of clothing Subeta does, then by all means open a contest. There's so many different ideas people can make there and you probably wouldn't see the same thing twice. But with so few overall clothing items, its gonna get really repetitive really fast I think.

Not like it really affects me a whole lot as I go one maybe once a week to zap and don't ever plan on looking at or joining in on this contest.

[adi_gallia]

I'm allowed to buy off petsites, I do on Subeta a fair bit. The difference is Neopets scares me. I have to use my stepdads Paypal behind his back, with mum involved, so any purchases have to be done in secret. That's why I'm fine with Subeta..I know that after the receipt is sent they don't e-mail you again. But with Neopets I'm not so confident, something in my head says that once you buy from them they'll start sending you more e-mails asking to buy again or something.

I know it probably wont happen, but I got that idea from the fact that TNT isn't like Subeta in that when you buy Premium they assume that you want it for the next month or something, so if you don't cancel, they will let it run on and charge you whereas Subeta isn't like that with Gold Accounts they wait for you to buy another month instead. Again that's just Premium, I'm sure people who have bought from the NC Mall will tell me I'm being stupid, but I have no faith in Neopets really.

[Jessi]

I know it probably wont happen, but I got that idea from the fact that TNT isn't like Subeta in that when you buy Premium they assume that you want it for the next month or something, so if you don't cancel, they will let it run on and charge you whereas Subeta isn't like that with Gold Accounts they wait for you to buy another month instead.

Actually, most companies work like Neopets for subscriptions - you have to give them your info, even for a free trial. It's just the way it works. Who knows why?

However... keep in mind that Neopets is a major international corporation. They won't get away with scamming you out of your money - I don't think you have anything to worry about.

[daisybell]

I think you're being too harsh, Adi. I have much, much more faith in Neopets than in Subeta, which is why I refuse to buy anything on Subeta at all. I see all the petty, stupid stuff that goes on- and that's the high up members of staff doing it... Neopets is big enough, and professional enough, to not let that sort of thing get out of hand.

Anyway, back on topic, I do hope that this isn't dominated by people with cash shop stuff. I think for the species that have had pet days already, it's easier, but for those who haven't it would be much harder. I would be keener to see someone's really imaginative combination of paint brush clothes, base colour and a few bought items than a lot of expensive items thrown together. But yes, it would be expensive- but so are galleries, the book club, avatar collections, the battledome and the gourmet food thing, if you want to get trophies. It doesn't mean you can't still enjoy that particular part of the site without spending all your np on it.

[Nectaris]

What I'm hoping is that this contest thing will mean that they will start releasing wearable clothes faster than they have been. I'm never going to participate though as I don't care for popularity contests like the beauty contest, and now this.

[Iggy]

What I'm hoping is that this contest thing will mean that they will start releasing wearable clothes faster than they have been. I'm never going to participate though as I don't care for popularity contests like the beauty contest, and now this.

Since two or three weeks, we're getting a lot of wearables.

In the past days, we got:

The Aluminium Foil Hat thingy
The four Techo toys, who seems wearable
Six Techo day clothing items
Four puppets
Four handbags
The censor bar glasses
Eight Draik day items

And made the Woolen Scarf and Woolen Cap wearable by nearly all pets.

The only items who aren't wearable by all species are the two sets of Pet Day Clothing Items.

[Wingsrising]

I think it's clearly going to be dominated by people with cash shop stuff, since there's not a whole hell of a lot else to wear. (Sorry, Iggy, a few toys, a few species-only items, and an aluminium foil hat are not a lot of wearable as far as I'm concerned.)

Honestly, this is exactly what I expected when the cash shop opened and IMHO, it's exactly what happened -- there are tons of pretty cash shop clothes wearable by all species with new ones released at a fast clip, while very few non-cash clothes are released. It annoys me no end when they have a party in the news every time a scarf becomes wearable by three more species, when in the meantime generally 2-3 cash shop items wearable by all speces have been released.

If there were lots of non-cash shop clothes to choose from, or even if non-cash-shop all-species clothes were being released at anything near the rate that cash shop clothes were, I wouldn't be so annoyed. (Although there would still be the thing where they screwed my pets over, of course.)

Personally, I see the spotlight as nothing but another ploy to sell more cash shop items, as most species don't have anywhere near enough non-cash-shop items to compete.

[Iggy]

(Sorry, Iggy, a few toys, a few species-only items, and an aluminium foil hat are not a lot of wearable as far as I'm concerned.)

T'was only what was released since last monday.

Besides the backdrops, of course



While there are only 4 to 6 cash shop items added a week. 8, at best, recently. And, half of them are backdrops.



I'll wait before being worried, honestly. Because money can buy you items, but it cannot buy you creativity. I've seen awesome customised pets without any NC Mall items.

[Wingsrising]

Damnit, the forum ate my post.

Last week was not a typical week for non-cash clothes, though, between the random "customization day" theme and the background release. Scanning the news suggests that for the 6 weeks BEFORE last week, since the cash shop started, a rate of 1-2 non-species items a week is more typical.

So compare 1-2 non-cash shop items a week to about 4-6 cash shop items a week (about 1 a day). I consider that enough to be upset by. To my mind non-cash-shop items should be released at a substantially higher rate than the cash-shop ones. Until that happens customization remains, to my mind, a feature geared primarily towards paying users.