The title of the post explains it well enough, but I want to elaborate on my suggestion a bit more than that.
C$ inflation on Chicken Smoothie has reached a critical point. Non-dogs are now regularly getting up to 2,000C$, which is around $100 in USD, when they were only 1,200C$ or $60 in USD a year ago. This is very obviously an issue, as now players do not need to buy/can’t buy C$ from the actual website anymore, as it has grown too expensive. Not only has this ruined the economy for all users, but I am sure that it has affected how much money Chicken Smoothie itself generates, though I won’t make any assumptions as to what degree the website has been hurt.
Either CS staff find a better way to curb this severe inflation, or it just keeps getting worse and worse. The tri/bi-monthly store items were a good start, but being so infrequent, and so cheap, it has not made a significant dent in the issue.
I have a number of suggestions- I would like to clarify that these are not serious suggestions or the topic of this post, so please do not lock this thread if one of them happens to be a rejected suggestion already.
1. Release store items more frequently. I don’t want to push CS artists beyond their limits, but I think many would agree that they would sacrifice the number of free event items they received if it meant more limited store items were released. TLDR: less free items, more store items.
2. Create a subscription system that can be bought with USD or C$. This can come with more customization options for profiles, a special discord, or a stamp or badge that is displayed on your avatar for supporting the website. This could also include an option in which you can choose to turn off ads.
3. Rotating old items out of the shop and new ones in. This is a bit like the first suggestion but some of the C$ store items are so dated that I believe they could instead have their spot taken by more contemporary designs as suggested by the community.
4. Tentative suggestion but I’d love to see some kind of gacha machine implemented that would cost C$ to use, and in return users would get an item or pet from an exclusive set that would be made specifically for the gacha. This doesn’t have to be that complicated- it can just be a randomized trade-in as used in events, though I understand that it’s easier said than done. [EDIT] ive since been informed of the fact that this may have legal complications, i do still like the idea but perhaps the gacha would require a non-USD purchased currency that can be won organically and C$ could also be exchanged for that currency
Again I’m not asking for any of these to be implemented, they are merely suggestions. What I AM asking is for Chicken Smoothie to put some real effort into solving the inflation issue, either with something I mentioned here or using their own thoughts and ideas. I’m not an admin- I can’t do anything about the site other than write this post, but I hope the people who CAN do something about the site will read this and realize that we are at a breaking point. CS is no longer friendly for new users. It is unrealistic to expect a newbie to spend 20 USD for a MA, especially considering that CS is, unfortunately, a semi-dying website that will not retain value as FR has.
Thank you to everyone who read this post.