Lioden, Wolvden, Dragcave come to mind, but they have their own issues.
Lioden and Wolvden are MUCH more RNG based, can be pretty pay to play in terms of getting the lions/wolves you want or those that make you money. Also, your pets can die or run away, and keeping them fed/happy can be a pain with larger prides/packs.
Dragcave is pretty much just collecting and sniping, and if you're a "G1- aka Caveborn" purist and want older breeds, you're gonna have a hard time as a new player. Older/luckier players (who won prize dragons) have more weight in getting trades and kind of "own" the trading market. Aside from collecting, there isn't much to do with them.
Sylestia is active, and is now having an 'event' though if you just join, you probably won't be able to participate much.
Gryffs, last I looked, had a few new account slots open, and while not ACTIVE active, has a core of active players (think single digit numbers, but still they are usually active everyday and helpful)
Chicken smoothie is active, but is more of an adoptible site rather than pet site (as in you just adopt pets and hope for pretty outcomes)
FelisFire is active, but not sure how much. I lost interest quickly because it just wasn't to my tastes.
Khimeros and Leayphs might be active, but Khimeros basically is just being run by one person (the person recently got banned from FR I belive, because they were trying to pay artists to work on their site using gen1s and things like that. Or something like that), and I think I heard from someone that Leayphs is becoming less active.
A pet site that MIGHT become active is Arillio. The people working on it, at least one, plays Gryffs, and they were mentioning a while ago about revamping things and trying to get it going again, but I don't know how soon it will be, or if it will ever go. I hope it does, I liked what was there for the original game.
Felisfire is practically running on borrowed time. I rarely ever see more than 20 people online at any time, and most of the time it's just barely pushing over 10 players. The fact it's still going and being developed, as someone who used to play when it first started and there would be 300+ users on at any time, is a miracle.
There is Tattered World (formerly Tattered World) which gets so much love in its frequent updates and genuine attention to user feedback from part of the staff but just kinda isn't very good at grabbing your attention? Like, I like it, but I stopped playing for a while there and can't make myself go back for some reason.
Beast Keeper is intriguing in that THEY'VE GOT AN ADVENTURE MODE AND IT'S SIMPLE AND CUTE AND IT MAKES ME JEALOUS, but managing the pets made me feel stressed and stupid and all the really pretty ones are premium anyway and I kinda wilted and gave up there.
Sylestia is fun too but I got stuck in the latest dungeon because you apparently need expensive equipment (like armor and stuff) and expensive pets that have been stat-enhanced through repeated breeding and stat boosting items to navigate that, which takes several months and lots of money if you want to do it yourself.
Also the best equipment is apparently found by winning battles in a coliseum arena thing that requires you to have a team that is an exact level (level 25, level 50 etc.) so you need to level them up there and then buy an item that freezes experience gain, and I had to go to the forums to find out what was up with that because the game itself doesn't explain that and I'm kinda frustrated now.
Also they need some better incentive to releasing pets like fr's exalting, because the current incentive (increasing the appearance of rare pets in the Ultra Hard Last Dungeon I mentioned getting stuck on) requires you to hold on to your pets for a long time (like, over a month, I think?) so basically most pets are worthless and don't net you currency by themselves.
GPX Plus is still holding on out of sheer nostalgia. Pokefarm Q is still there but the owner seems to want to make another site? idk what's going on over there.
Neopets technically still exists but I hear it's a shadow of its former self.
Dappervolk is still there if you like grinding and gambling or paying real money and gambling. (It's gacha based so joking aside if you've got gambling or gaming addictions beware.)
Re Beastkeeper: Yeah, I loved how it looks, but it wasn't very active, and just wasn't enough to keep my interest, but I wish it had. One of the few sites with HORSES that didn't focus around competition, where the horses looked 'realistic' (it had others as well)
Re Sylestia: Technically you don't need max stat or super stat. I made it all the way to the lost grove using my starter pet, a pet I bought (just random pet) and a pet I was gifted, which I think is not max stat (pretty sure). I have made it to the caverns and fought some of those creatures, but yeah, it is a LOT of repeated grinding to move anywhere in that partcular area.
It is EASIER, yeah, but honestly, not by a whole lot, which is why I do like sylestia. Krinadon, the owner/coder, does seem to make sure that the bosses are beatable by regular pets, though you DO need specific armor.
However, you don't need to win in the arena to get the best equipment, as that is actually found in the LG, but for level 60+. I have fought in the arena twice, and I think both times my pet got its tail handed to it.
However, some of the bosses require specific strategies and you do need the best equipment you can get, which by the time you are in the LG is from the LG, but you need to be able to upgrade it (which I can't yet) which is expensive, requires lots of grinding, and specific stuff.
But, anyway, if you want help, let Jemadar over there know, or post in region chat, there are some people in there who have battle strategies for various bosses, and are usually willing to help out.
Late reply, but thank you for the encouragement. I've been studying the guides more carefully and paying more attention to what I'm doing and it's working out better!
Sylestia rules actually, it's just that you can't mindlessly grind on some battles, and equipment, pet stats and tactics matter way more than I expected.
Yeah, That is what I have trouble with sometimes. I have just opened up the caverns in the Lost Grove, and that is where you *Really* have to pay attention, and I just am not sure I have it in me.
I am really happy that Krin seems willing to keep things balanced. When I first started I was afraid that this would be a case of where one element was 'better' than all others, so if you spent time leveling a specific team, you were out of luck, and that the max stats/super stats would be 'catered' to in the end levels, making it so you HAD to have a team of them in the later levels.
So far, in my experience, both are not true. While element CAN matter, if you are careful and pay attention, you can use pretty much any element you want, you just need a healer. Max/super stat pets make things much much easier, but you can still use non-max stat pets. I have a team of non-max stats that I used when I first started (my starter pet and a couple others) and it does nearly as well as the max stats. I just get a bit more *ummph* with the max stats.
Buy, if you want 100% mindless battling, then sylestia is NOT the game you want to play, because I would say about 70-80% of battling is mindless when you have the right pet equipment and stats, but that other 20-30% will kill you. Literally (in a sylestian way of course). There have been times I have tuned back in to battling to find out my poor tank is there looking at me pleading for help because the healer and cannon are passed out, and he is holding on by his teeth...
you have made me curious, so now I have to google furvilla.
I quit playing furvilla because it was WAAAAAYYY to RNG dependant and WAY to time gated. Maybe if the art had appealed to me more, I might have stuck around, but probably not.
The other responses to this thread sadden me. To think that there could be some real competition in this genre if other sites were even halfway competent, but other sites' owners either refuse to pay site artists, site operations people, or both, or just behave so unprofessionally that FR staff treating their jobs like an actual job comes as a breath of fresh air. You'd think FR devs making questionable game design decisions as frequently as they do would hurt them more, but it's not like players have better choices when the whole "industry" is a circus.
It's very hard to create a successful petsite, especially in this current climate where non-browser pet sims are far more popular. They are often labours of love as opposed to an actual job, and then it's considered the culture to be unpaid workers for these sites. Flight Rising is probably the only steadily successful site now that actually takes care of their own staff as they should.
it's considered the culture to be unpaid workers for these sites
That's shady as hell and I hope it changes. Why is it this way? Is it because all of the would-be applicants are young or come from fannish environments where they don't expect compensation for (technically copyright infringing) fan art, so they don't know they should demand payment for artwork on an original IP?
Here I thought FR using UMAs as a way of driving gem purchases was shady too, since the community artists who submit UMA designs can't use them for anything else (since they are on proprietary bases) and never see a cent of that revenue, but other sites not paying "official" artists is so much worse.
First you have to have a concept that people will want to play. Sure, you can go CS route and just do adoptibles, but many players won't want to play it unless you have extremely good art, which brings us to the next issue:
You need someone who is willing to create the art that people want to actually stare at for periods of time. While art is subjective, you want to appeal to a broad userbase.
Good art can only go so far, even with doing an adoptibles site. You have to know how to code various aspects of a site and bring it together so it can handle a lot of traffic (hopefully), and how to code mechanics that people will want to engage with. (even CS has other aspects that people can engage with, such as the drawing issue, and dressing up your pets, and creating scenes)
But, even if you have those aspects down, you still need a server, and that takes money, and a domain.
Then, websites tend to have issues balancing the free to play vs pay to play model (which is where I do think FR does well). If you get too much pay to play, then you drive people away who can't, if you get too free to play, then no one has incentive to actually pay.
Add in many players are lower income/minors and they CAN'T often toss a lot of money at a site often and the competition from existing site, it can be extremely difficult (not impossible).
I would love to create my own pet site, because there are so many things I would love to have and know that none of the petsites I play will have them, or they won't do them like I want. Sadly, it isn't in the cards
Subeta had some 100-400 players online when I last checked? Holidays get boosts in user activity. Their forums are slow but a decent amount of people still play. But I last logged in in like, November.
Xanje's pretty active? It's not a well-known site, but pets are still being made (I'm actually a "pattern artist" for the site myself, since there's only one artist who actually draws the pets, there's a team that does patterns/designs on them.) and there are definitely people active on it still. It's not amazingly populated but it's active.
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Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-12 07:58 am (UTC)(link)Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-12 08:10 am (UTC)(link)Lioden and Wolvden are MUCH more RNG based, can be pretty pay to play in terms of getting the lions/wolves you want or those that make you money. Also, your pets can die or run away, and keeping them fed/happy can be a pain with larger prides/packs.
Dragcave is pretty much just collecting and sniping, and if you're a "G1- aka Caveborn" purist and want older breeds, you're gonna have a hard time as a new player. Older/luckier players (who won prize dragons) have more weight in getting trades and kind of "own" the trading market. Aside from collecting, there isn't much to do with them.
Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-12 04:00 pm (UTC)(link)Gryffs, last I looked, had a few new account slots open, and while not ACTIVE active, has a core of active players (think single digit numbers, but still they are usually active everyday and helpful)
Chicken smoothie is active, but is more of an adoptible site rather than pet site (as in you just adopt pets and hope for pretty outcomes)
FelisFire is active, but not sure how much. I lost interest quickly because it just wasn't to my tastes.
Khimeros and Leayphs might be active, but Khimeros basically is just being run by one person (the person recently got banned from FR I belive, because they were trying to pay artists to work on their site using gen1s and things like that. Or something like that), and I think I heard from someone that Leayphs is becoming less active.
A pet site that MIGHT become active is Arillio. The people working on it, at least one, plays Gryffs, and they were mentioning a while ago about revamping things and trying to get it going again, but I don't know how soon it will be, or if it will ever go. I hope it does, I liked what was there for the original game.
Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-12 04:42 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-13 05:28 am (UTC)(link)Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) - 2022-02-13 06:01 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Pet sites
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(Anonymous) 2022-02-13 03:59 pm (UTC)(link)I forgot Aywas, though I quit it a while ago, but it is still technically active and last I saw being developed, but not sure.
Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-13 12:57 am (UTC)(link)Beast Keeper is intriguing in that THEY'VE GOT AN ADVENTURE MODE AND IT'S SIMPLE AND CUTE AND IT MAKES ME JEALOUS, but managing the pets made me feel stressed and stupid and all the really pretty ones are premium anyway and I kinda wilted and gave up there.
Sylestia is fun too but I got stuck in the latest dungeon because you apparently need expensive equipment (like armor and stuff) and expensive pets that have been stat-enhanced through repeated breeding and stat boosting items to navigate that, which takes several months and lots of money if you want to do it yourself.
Also the best equipment is apparently found by winning battles in a coliseum arena thing that requires you to have a team that is an exact level (level 25, level 50 etc.) so you need to level them up there and then buy an item that freezes experience gain, and I had to go to the forums to find out what was up with that because the game itself doesn't explain that and I'm kinda frustrated now.
Also they need some better incentive to releasing pets like fr's exalting, because the current incentive (increasing the appearance of rare pets in the Ultra Hard Last Dungeon I mentioned getting stuck on) requires you to hold on to your pets for a long time (like, over a month, I think?) so basically most pets are worthless and don't net you currency by themselves.
GPX Plus is still holding on out of sheer nostalgia. Pokefarm Q is still there but the owner seems to want to make another site? idk what's going on over there.
Neopets technically still exists but I hear it's a shadow of its former self.
Dappervolk is still there if you like grinding and gambling or paying real money and gambling. (It's gacha based so joking aside if you've got gambling or gaming addictions beware.)
Dang, I could swear there were more?
Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-13 12:58 am (UTC)(link)Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-13 03:55 pm (UTC)(link)Re Sylestia: Technically you don't need max stat or super stat. I made it all the way to the lost grove using my starter pet, a pet I bought (just random pet) and a pet I was gifted, which I think is not max stat (pretty sure). I have made it to the caverns and fought some of those creatures, but yeah, it is a LOT of repeated grinding to move anywhere in that partcular area.
It is EASIER, yeah, but honestly, not by a whole lot, which is why I do like sylestia. Krinadon, the owner/coder, does seem to make sure that the bosses are beatable by regular pets, though you DO need specific armor.
However, you don't need to win in the arena to get the best equipment, as that is actually found in the LG, but for level 60+. I have fought in the arena twice, and I think both times my pet got its tail handed to it.
However, some of the bosses require specific strategies and you do need the best equipment you can get, which by the time you are in the LG is from the LG, but you need to be able to upgrade it (which I can't yet) which is expensive, requires lots of grinding, and specific stuff.
But, anyway, if you want help, let Jemadar over there know, or post in region chat, there are some people in there who have battle strategies for various bosses, and are usually willing to help out.
Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-03-26 03:09 am (UTC)(link)Late reply, but thank you for the encouragement. I've been studying the guides more carefully and paying more attention to what I'm doing and it's working out better!
Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) - 2022-03-26 13:56 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Pet sites
(Anonymous) - 2022-03-27 01:38 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Pet sites
(Anonymous) - 2022-03-27 15:09 (UTC) - ExpandSA
(Anonymous) 2022-03-27 01:42 am (UTC)(link)Sylestia rules actually, it's just that you can't mindlessly grind on some battles, and equipment, pet stats and tactics matter way more than I expected.
Re: SA
(Anonymous) 2022-03-27 03:06 pm (UTC)(link)I am really happy that Krin seems willing to keep things balanced. When I first started I was afraid that this would be a case of where one element was 'better' than all others, so if you spent time leveling a specific team, you were out of luck, and that the max stats/super stats would be 'catered' to in the end levels, making it so you HAD to have a team of them in the later levels.
So far, in my experience, both are not true. While element CAN matter, if you are careful and pay attention, you can use pretty much any element you want, you just need a healer. Max/super stat pets make things much much easier, but you can still use non-max stat pets. I have a team of non-max stats that I used when I first started (my starter pet and a couple others) and it does nearly as well as the max stats. I just get a bit more *ummph* with the max stats.
Buy, if you want 100% mindless battling, then sylestia is NOT the game you want to play, because I would say about 70-80% of battling is mindless when you have the right pet equipment and stats, but that other 20-30% will kill you. Literally (in a sylestian way of course). There have been times I have tuned back in to battling to find out my poor tank is there looking at me pleading for help because the healer and cannon are passed out, and he is holding on by his teeth...
Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-13 01:13 am (UTC)(link)Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-13 01:22 am (UTC)(link)Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-13 03:56 pm (UTC)(link)I quit playing furvilla because it was WAAAAAYYY to RNG dependant and WAY to time gated. Maybe if the art had appealed to me more, I might have stuck around, but probably not.
Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-13 08:33 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-13 09:25 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-14 12:17 am (UTC)(link)That's shady as hell and I hope it changes. Why is it this way? Is it because all of the would-be applicants are young or come from fannish environments where they don't expect compensation for (technically copyright infringing) fan art, so they don't know they should demand payment for artwork on an original IP?
Here I thought FR using UMAs as a way of driving gem purchases was shady too, since the community artists who submit UMA designs can't use them for anything else (since they are on proprietary bases) and never see a cent of that revenue, but other sites not paying "official" artists is so much worse.
Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) - 2022-02-14 05:00 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Pet sites
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(Anonymous) 2022-02-14 01:56 am (UTC)(link)First you have to have a concept that people will want to play. Sure, you can go CS route and just do adoptibles, but many players won't want to play it unless you have extremely good art, which brings us to the next issue:
You need someone who is willing to create the art that people want to actually stare at for periods of time. While art is subjective, you want to appeal to a broad userbase.
Good art can only go so far, even with doing an adoptibles site. You have to know how to code various aspects of a site and bring it together so it can handle a lot of traffic (hopefully), and how to code mechanics that people will want to engage with. (even CS has other aspects that people can engage with, such as the drawing issue, and dressing up your pets, and creating scenes)
But, even if you have those aspects down, you still need a server, and that takes money, and a domain.
Then, websites tend to have issues balancing the free to play vs pay to play model (which is where I do think FR does well). If you get too much pay to play, then you drive people away who can't, if you get too free to play, then no one has incentive to actually pay.
Add in many players are lower income/minors and they CAN'T often toss a lot of money at a site often and the competition from existing site, it can be extremely difficult (not impossible).
I would love to create my own pet site, because there are so many things I would love to have and know that none of the petsites I play will have them, or they won't do them like I want. Sadly, it isn't in the cards
Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-13 09:23 pm (UTC)(link)i can't believe its been around for 5 years. the most recent announcement only has 3 comments and its been up for a week
its super disappointing because the art is gorgeous
Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-14 05:40 am (UTC)(link)Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-14 05:41 am (UTC)(link)*100-400 players online daily. I haven't seen it go below 100, maybe even 200.
Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-14 12:44 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Pet sites
(Anonymous) 2022-02-14 10:20 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Pet sites
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