official way to trade pets/wondertrade

[stukn]

Since players are already trading pets, it would be nice to have a way to do it directly between people (there could be, as always, a monies fee to do it). It would circumvent the need for people to have accounts dedicated to emptying the wilds in order for trades to take place.

Also, possibly add the ability to do wondertrades like in Pokemon (send and receive a random pet)

[BenMakesGames]

because of alt abuse moderation concerns, I've specifically omitted features that allow direct player-to-player trading.

can you tell me more about why people want to trade pets? perhaps an alternative solution is available.

[stukn]

certainly! it can be because someone has access to a pet someone else wants (either because they collect that species or because the pet is from rare pet day). it can be because one of the alternate wilds accounts have pets that are of interest to someone (the species, colors, birth date are appealing for example). it can also be to get pets from a secondary account to a primary account.

[stukn]

also if I may, what would constitute abuse of an alt account?

[BenMakesGames]

I try to design PSP such that alt abuse isn't possible in the first place. (you'll find this idea at the center of many design decisions.)

off the top of my head (not an exhaustive list):

1. using alts to gain an advantage over other players, or otherwise ruin their individual fun/efforts
   • PSP is largely non-competitive... with the Museum being a notable exception! I expect a competitive Museum donator would feel bad/cheated if they found that other people were using alts to funnel items to their "main" and always stay ahead (this is part of the reason directly trading items isn't allowed)
   • using alts to go above normal caps & limits in order to dominate the market, buying for more & selling for less than any single-account player could hope to compete with (introducing the market in the first place was something I went back and forth on; it's an easily-abusable system, but I think it currently does more good for the game than bad)
2. circumventing a ban or other limitation imposed on an account (as a result of abuse performed by a player, such as naming pets slurs or other targeted harassing names)

[BenMakesGames]

I feel a little iffy about the way people use The Wilds to trade pets; if people feel incentivized to work with others to coordinate pet trades, they'd surely feel incentivized to "cut out the middleman" and just use alts, instead. any feature in the game which incentivizes alt account use is a feature worth scrutinizing.

I ask "why" people want to trade pets in order to try and think "is there an alternative way to get players what they want, so they don't have to resort to weird and/or cumbersome behavior in the first place?"

for example: different people having different pets in the pet shelter, and being able to only adopt one pet per day, is a limit people use The Wilds to circumvent. in retrospect, it's a system that incentivizes alt account use, both to gain more options, and to circumvent the daily limit. realizing this makes me ask myself questions like "should all players receive the same options?" "should players have daily limits?" potential answers could be "there's a single random pet every day which you can adopt as-is, as many times as you want, and/or pay per tweak you want to make to that pet." but I just made that up in 10 seconds; I'm not going to rush out and do that change; I more hope it's a useful example for how I try to approach these problems.

[stukn]

It certainly is, thank you for sharing your perspective!