I hadn't played Sylestia in over a year, so I googled this and holy shit those were some big name players that got banned!
The original admin forum post explaining the situation doesn't quite clarify things for me, because the screencaptures were removed and there is a lot of back and forth in the thread over how much was joking and venting in a private discord server and how much were genuine plans to tank the game's economy by selling things too cheaply or something like that?
But more seriously, apparently some of the users were apparently harassing and threatening the site owner in their real life social media and circulating identifying information of them, their spouse, workplace, etc.
On a more selfish note, as someone pointed out in the thread, the bannings will have repercussions in the gameplay: One of the banned users leveled up "ranks" for other users (leveling up an individual pet's attacks to make them stronger in battle, it's super time consuming, it takes weeks) as a service and also sold leveled up and ranked pets, another had extensive breeding projects using event only pets that might be out of circulation now, another sold pets with very high battle stats (which requires a lot of patience and money, like, over a year of hard work is not an exaggeration, with spreadsheets to keep things straight).
So if you want pets that look good (randomly pairing up pets result in washed out greyish palettes if you don't choose the parents' colors carefully) and have strong stats (because battling in the more difficult areas of the game is the most profitable in-game grinding there is) and rare markings and so on, you are basically investing a fortune, but you also might have a somewhat steady source of income after several generations of pets, selling the offspring to other users.
(Oh and the pets will need leveled-up battle equipment too, which is its own insane grinding...)
Notably, there is an item that makes a pet infertile forever, to make sure that buyers don't start their own pet breeding and selling business using someone else's hard work as a springboard.
Because there weren't very many users selling these high value pets, now there might be some event only pets (collectionist bragging rights) and other pretty, battle-strong pets with rare genes and whatnot that cannot be bred because the only fertile specimens are in the banned players' stables.
Also for bonus points, if you want the highest possible battle stats, which make the Ultra Hard Area more grindable, you need to capture wild pets with bonus high stats in the highest difficulty exploration area, to breed them with pets that are the result of several generations of gradual stat-increases until you hit the cap.
Or buy them from someone who already did all the hard work. A number of which were banned. D:
Re: Other petsites?
The original admin forum post explaining the situation doesn't quite clarify things for me, because the screencaptures were removed and there is a lot of back and forth in the thread over how much was joking and venting in a private discord server and how much were genuine plans to tank the game's economy by selling things too cheaply or something like that?
But more seriously, apparently some of the users were apparently harassing and threatening the site owner in their real life social media and circulating identifying information of them, their spouse, workplace, etc.
On a more selfish note, as someone pointed out in the thread, the bannings will have repercussions in the gameplay: One of the banned users leveled up "ranks" for other users (leveling up an individual pet's attacks to make them stronger in battle, it's super time consuming, it takes weeks) as a service and also sold leveled up and ranked pets, another had extensive breeding projects using event only pets that might be out of circulation now, another sold pets with very high battle stats (which requires a lot of patience and money, like, over a year of hard work is not an exaggeration, with spreadsheets to keep things straight).
So if you want pets that look good (randomly pairing up pets result in washed out greyish palettes if you don't choose the parents' colors carefully) and have strong stats (because battling in the more difficult areas of the game is the most profitable in-game grinding there is) and rare markings and so on, you are basically investing a fortune, but you also might have a somewhat steady source of income after several generations of pets, selling the offspring to other users.
(Oh and the pets will need leveled-up battle equipment too, which is its own insane grinding...)
Notably, there is an item that makes a pet infertile forever, to make sure that buyers don't start their own pet breeding and selling business using someone else's hard work as a springboard.
Because there weren't very many users selling these high value pets, now there might be some event only pets (collectionist bragging rights) and other pretty, battle-strong pets with rare genes and whatnot that cannot be bred because the only fertile specimens are in the banned players' stables.
Also for bonus points, if you want the highest possible battle stats, which make the Ultra Hard Area more grindable, you need to capture wild pets with bonus high stats in the highest difficulty exploration area, to breed them with pets that are the result of several generations of gradual stat-increases until you hit the cap.
Or buy them from someone who already did all the hard work. A number of which were banned. D: