#and that i dont have to swear off albino fish for the rest of ever

[toytulini]

rock sausage

[resconarchive]

prinxess's rescreatu rant

Hey all (+Riyo), it's prinxess. I found this blog today, which naturally means I spent the next 5 hours flipping through the archive lol. This was supposed to be a short post but plans never go as expected (Warning: this is LONG). If you know me, you’ve probably seen me try to talk about this stuff in the SB—which rarely goes well, haha. I’m going to word vomit on three main things: Res’s “first come, first serve” issue, Staff/ShoutBox Culture, and my own mistakes.

This isn’t Voice of God. I’m just a flawed 20-year-old who feels compelled articulate her thoughts at least once somewhere.

I accept responsibility for what’s written below.

1. Early Birds Get the Worm

Nice names are Res’s lifeblood. The aim of the game is to accumulate as many as you can. It didn't start out that way but that’s what it's become; it's human nature to want what your peers want. We enjoy having valuable things—the proof is in the pixels. But LOL good names are now worth 1B tu? This is why people are so upset with the site. If you made an account in 2006, quickly hatched three creatu named Diamond, Emerald, and Sapphire, and didn't log in again until now, your account would be worth more than someone who joined a year ago but has put in hundreds of hours into the site.

1B is pretty abstract, so I'll offer a cold splash of in-game reality. 700M = $100

Many of Rescreatu’s issues writhe around one malignant crux: its “first come, first serve” groundwork. Meaning, if your account isn’t old enough to be sent off to grade school, then you are out of luck. With everything. If you weren’t there when you could fish tier-1 names from the Atquateen Forest, if you weren’t there during the mass graveyard purges, if you weren’t smart enough to buy valuable names en masse for cheap from naive tweens 8 years ago, you’re out of luck. Unless Mr. Moneybags disembowels him/herself into your hands, you will never measure up to the sheer wealth of a select few old users (Gunmetal, Fleur, etc).

The visible wealth disparity is unreal. It’s kind of cute—there’s this ritual where when a newbie appears in the SB, older users flood them with tu and lovely creatu because they know baby bambi can’t make it on their own in modern Res. But what about the invisible users? The 99% who never set foot in the SB? Imagine you’re twelve, creating an account for the first time. You’re given XYZtu (aka not enough) to start off with. Hatching pets is fun. You like finding clothes for your avatar in the trash. A while later, you become interested in buying more creatu, so you fiddle around with the Creatu Search. And... you realize that the only good rwns are in the 20M+ range.

Actually no—a few weeks ago, a user called prinxess went through the entire directory, cleaned out most lower-priced RWNs, and stuck them in her shop at mark-up. But hey, she left “Blisters” and “Introspective” for you.

There’s nothing to do on Rescreatu except lord your cool names over other users. Nothing else... except... wait. Isn’t the Kir Quest about colors, not names? Which brings me to my next point. Years ago, blondes were worth 700k, and albinos 3M. Players back then threw these cheap creatu at Kir and rode the Uldavian Express to higher Rounds at mach speed (there are 5 Rounds now. each need an additional 120 creatu/points to access). Nowadays, albinos are no longer stocked in ranchers—period. I’m talking chimbies and meragons, not even seasonals. To use myself as an example, I restarted Kir a month ago (I was only at 25 points, Round 1). I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t being 100% efficient with my tu, but within a few days, I managed to add an additional 23 creatu to that number. At the cost of nearly one billion tu. 95% of which went towards beans.

If you’re a newbie with a dream of earning a Cyancu Nest, you need to give Kir 180 creatu total. That isn’t just hard—it’s straight-up impossible. From a cost/benefit standpoint, if you do not already have a substantial amount of Kir points, do not touch the Quest. Instead, buy the prize shop items from other users.

Because, let’s do some math. 180 (creatu) x 7,800,000 (price per bean) = 1,404,000,000tu.

I swear on every god out there that, overall, you will not just be spending 7.8M per creatu.

Cyancu eggs are selling for 500M each/1.5B for a nest, pretty close to that mythical 1,404,000,000 number. Just buy the egg.

A staff member once told me, “The Kir Quest is supposed to be hard.” Fair enough. The original purpose of the Quest was to fix Res’s overpopulation problem. Make higher colors valuable again. But now we’ve swung hard towards creatu extinction. The fix is relatively simple. Have Kir ask for blondes/albinos less often. Or increase the likelihood of hatching colors. Should be a simple coding tweak.

Side-note: With beans having become an integral part of Rescreatu’s ONLY real continuous Quest, why are they still cash shop items? People love to tout “but the site needs money to run”. How about put out a better product instead of squeezing users with Stockholm Syndrome/a gambling addiction out of more pennies? Actually, not pennies, it’s serious cash. The next promo is $100 for 3 retired CS eggs—a promo which was supposed to be in December, but moved because the higher ups thought users would be too strapped for cash during Christmas.

2. Staff/Culture

Hopelessness makes the newer users leave. Staff corruption poisons the rest. I’m not involved in current Rescreatu politics, but in the past it absolutely was a thing. Even with generally loved and respected staff members.

 I don’t want to disclose too much information, but since I’m old and weary, I’ll say that (without asking for it) a substantial boon was thrown my way because I was friendly with a member of staff. They are still highly regarded within the community.

14BM was unabashedly shady. One day, I announced I was selling a name on the SB and got in touch with a buyer. During our back-and-forth rmailing, 14BM rmailed me to say one of us had “accidentally hit the report button” which pointed her to our conversation. She warned me the other user was ripping me off, and that she could give me a better offer. Not very professional behavior, in my honest opinion.

Way back when, BillyBob was abusing glitches.

A name appeared in anon-staff’s Showroom one hot second after the person it belonged to was banned for “using a bot to find eggs.” Anon-staff had previously asked if they’d ever sell the name and they had said no. Shady.

Real talk. A staff member told me they don’t even care if you use bots, just as long as you don’t find enough seasonal eggs to ruin the market. I think anything above 40 is considered suspicious. Nevermind if you actually have no life and want to search for eggs for 48 hours straight.

There were way more corruption incidents, but those were so long ago I barely remember them. As for current staff, I can’t speak for them. Honestly, I can’t tell who most people are anymore because of all the username switching lol. There’s this ridiculous implicit rule of “don’t ask what someone’s username used to be” around Res. Like hello? That makes no sense. Not only do they retain their unique pets, but really, if someone hated you, a simple change of username isn’t going to make them suddenly forget who you are. Similarly, the whole idea of a new username being “a new start” for the user is frankly hilarious. Especially when you act no different.

That’s unfortunately just the start of my issue with Res’s “nice” culture. I’ll call it by another name: suck-up culture. It’s this omnipresent force of saccharine sweetness that’s nearly alive from how many people are hooked up into it. Plenty of users are genuinely nice, I won’t knock that. But damn, when a staff member/older user/wealthbag comes on the SB? It’s a vicious competition to prove how close they are are with that member. Immediately, there are “glomps” and “huggles” and “we’re married!/best friends” as if they actually give a shit about the other person. You do not. I know you do not. Everyone knows you do not. You’re just trying to get free things—and hey, it’s not a bad move, since those users are generally the gifting type. Oh. The cringiest thing is when a fan gives a popular user a cheap present, so the popular user will feel obliged to give them something in return—hopefully a better something. Machiavelli must be rolling in his grave.

This sugary behavior has somehow infected staff as well. I find it doubly disgusting because I can’t even call them out on it.

“<3 oh sweetheart, just so you know, what you’re doing is called spam. [link to rules] please take a look!! :333 ^_^”

“ *pops in* haiiiii guys, sorry to bump in but could you please take this convo to rmail? :3 *hugs* squeeeee <333 *hopes you dont hate me* ”

Like, fucking Christ. I can feel their phantom arms around me in my sleep. Can anyone speak normally anymore? Does everything need to be qualified with butterflies, sunshine, and overtures of love?

Back to the subject of staff... that issue is multifaceted. First, it’s a weirdly cyclical thing. Notice how newly chosen staff are almost always friends with current staff? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen some anon that’s never visited the SB become staff purely on merit (save for artists/programmers). But I could be wrong. Anyway, users inducted into staff are usually already one of Res’s wealthy elite. I can only speak for the trend I’ve noticed over the years, but A LOT of people become staff as a status symbol. Some also do it because they’re invested in the site and want to make it better. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. You can want to help while liking the boost in popularity at the same time. The real issue with staff is how they are compensated. Getting paid in credits (cash points?) actively increases the wealth disparity in the site. There’s a difference between giving someone 100 dollars versus a handful of credits. If someone handed you a hundred dollars, would you use it for rent or on some virtual name tags? Without this choice, staff are essentially forced into one course of action: buy credit shop items, put these items in their merchant shop, sell them to users, rake in tu. Or just sell cp for tu.

Rescreatu doesn’t use their staff properly. I’m referring to writers and artists. There are hundreds of wearable items available, but dressing up an avatar to look forum-fancy isn’t the purpose of a pet site. It’s a nice feature. But I didn’t join Rescreatu so I could play dress-up, I joined for the pets, for the battle arena, for the story of it all. Writers, I feel, are the most wasted of all. Does anyone actually read the stories in the books? Does anyone buy books, even? Res should take their talent and invest in proper story lines. They have six writers right now. Come on. Put up a good kidnapping site-wide story involving Xoria and Loyna. Get a competition between Scria users and Reiflem users going. Maybe the story could be Quest-style, with the users voting on how the story moves with their tu. Do something!

...Because this site also needs a tu sink. Desperately. Contrary to popular belief, the Kir Quest isn’t a tu sink, it vacuums money up to the top dogs of Rescreatu. You buy 10 beans—where are you getting these beans? More than likely, it’s from a staff member selling 70 of them in their shop. IRL right now there are 4 users selling beans: Feather x34, Isolation x30, Umbreon420 x1, Phos x36. Nothing against these users—in fact, I like them, but do you notice a trend? What do staff do with all this tu? They buy names at premium prices because they can afford to.

Q: Wait, prinx. If you just paid real money, you could have lots of tu too! A: My honor code forbids me from validating freemium games

Q: But, prinx. Why don’t you just become staff?  A: I tried when I was 13 but they didn’t accept me ): Probably for good reason.

It’s shocking that the stock market hasn’t been removed/tweaked yet. It shouldn’t be possible to buy 50,000 stocks of FAS for 400k on Sunday, and sell that for 20M one week later. This is another reason why names are considered the real currency on Rescreatu. Their value increases along with the inflation. It’s the only safe investment you can make.

3. Me

So, my long-winded rant is out of the way. Above, I mentioned I’d like to apologize for myself, so here I go. For context, these past few months I’ve been trying to get rid of my RWNs through forum auctions. In the latest thread, I stuck in an umbrella clause basically saying that I reserved the right to pull whatever bullshit I wanted, which I used, without warning, to tack 1.2B Autobuy options to the names. Half my reason was I was being egged on by a friend to do it. Half was because I just didn’t care. Never in my wildest dreams did I even imagine one person would actually go for it, let alone 3. When I opened the thread the morning after, I felt dread. My actions understandably upset quite a few people. I acknowledge that what I did was unprofessional. I regret it, and I’ve learned a valuable lesson.

In general, I’ve spent my recent years on Rescreatu being rude and abrasive. Trying to tie 14 year old staff in logic knots, picking at overly sensitive members, engaging trolls, the works. I’ve been throwing angsty melodrama around like glow-sticks at an EDM concert, and it isn’t fair to the newer members who have no memory of Res’s past.

This post clocks in at 2.5k words. The only reason I’ve written so much is because Rescreatu means/meant so much to me. For all its faults, Res somehow just works. Maybe because it encourages addictive behavior. Maybe because of the community. Whatever it is, it’s helped the site escape multiple waves of peril that would’ve killed any other. For that it deserves some applause. 

If you want to contact me, rmail me or email me at blu.moon.dragon@gmail.com. I don't bite

Peace.