Flight Rising Discussion

I agree, all these reasons are very good reasons that I have decided to keep playing Flight Rising.

Partly; I have also found that the community here is much more forgiving and welcoming to new players. Not that other pet sites are toxic, but I have had a more easygoing experience when learning the rules of the game and forums on FR than I have on any other pet site. Places like Dappervolk or Chicken Smoothie often find newcomers drowning in active forums, not really knowing which places to find free items for starters or even just simple advice. This made me feel like I had to figure out those games on my own. Dappervolk at least has a tutorial for most of its gameplay, but even then it is much more complicated than most other pet games with its RPG elements, so someone who doesn't know much about either genre may get overwhelmed.

I will also say that the customization of pets in particular is what really excites me about FR. We can easily change breeds, skins, and other features unlike Neopets which relies on rare Paintbrushes. And even then, not all paintbrush pets can wear all kinds of apparel. There's certain apparel that ONLY applies to certain paintbrush types. Every pet has the basic Red/Blue/Green/Yellow styles, but certain ones like Cookie or Maraquan might not be suitable for the breed you want to change. All of these details are not easily found on the Neopets website, and I have had to go to multiple wikis and fansites to find this information.

Flight Rising simplifies it: if they're ancient, no apparel; easy peasy. Modern breeds are happily able to be dressed however you like. And even if you want to customize your Ancients, their special genes and skins will do the job just fine.

Oh, and when you apply a Paintbrush of any kind to any Neopet, it's gone forever. You can easily take skins on and off here. As for genes, the same applies. It may take you a little while to earn the money to buy that Glimmer gene, but if it makes you happy; you can take your time and earn it.

Speaking of gem genes and thereby gems, the Gem economy here is quite easy to get into. You don't need to worry too much about Treasure either, but since you can earn that for free I won't talk too much about that. As for Gems, you can buy them with money, but if you don't want to do that you can sell your items for a price in Gems or even earn them by selling lore/art/you name it! The open creativity in the Flight Rising community inspires me to make my own lair better, and I'm always inspired seeing the ways other users make their own niche in the game.

I only play Lioden and compared to FR... yeahhh it is kinda hard and overwhelming for me, it doesn't suit my playstyle. it is tense, having to rething using decor/apparel as it is has limited uses while on FR I can constantly switch stuff around. and if you aren't constantly active during events... owh. with FR I need to get more active only a week in one month, on LD is all the time. it sure works if you are bored and don't have many duties, but for me it is lot to manage for my playstyle. I am there because I do like art and my lions, but comapred to FR...? yeah FR is more forgiving if you wanna take it easier and be less active

and I am not too into breed only stuff, it is... hard and not fun for me. sure lions can die and be gone, but I got enough to expand dynasty to store my lions and still look at em haha but FR it is... more closer and better for me

I do have my own criticizm on FR ways of doing, but really it is fine, there are enough pros that I can close my eye to cons. I always liked customizing and dress up games, and yeah FR does it pretty well. it is def good and consistent art where old art holds up well too - I mean, part of why I got into LD is also art, I like how FR is more of good ol' cell shading and LD is more of semi realism, both are styles I like and look up too

also... community. on LD... it seems like there isn't much to talk about what goes in game itself, while FR will have big threads on most random stuff. while I do like you can be bit more mature there, there is nothing to entertain me in sense of opening threads and reading random stuff - I am not seeking communication, just fun thread to read thru. there is barely anything


also yeah I like, both here and on lioden you can earn premium curency thru gameplay. I would say lioden is def good, but it is def depending more on playstyle and how far you wanna take it

People are mentioning how accommodating FR is to different play styles so I want to take that thought to its logical conclusion: FR’s appeal is broader than “virtual pet site.” I am not interested in virtual pets in and of themselves, and have no interest in any of the games FR is being compared to in this thread. But I love games that give me little tasks to complete, inventory to manage, ‘paper dolls’ to dress, and collections to collect. Games that have scratched similar itches for me are as diverse as Sorority Life, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, Kim Kardashian Hollywood, Animal Crossing, Pokemon Go, and Stardew Valley. But unlike those games, FR is free to play. It doesn’t require me to befriend a bunch of strangers on Facebook or give my email address to advertisers. It’s way less investment than a full-on life sim, and it doesn’t force immersion into a single narrative or lore, which is great because my idea of lore is a weezer song or a screenshot from a movie. I can do stuff entirely on my own or I can interact with others remotely (via the auction house, let’s say, or dom) or I can get personally involved in the forums. TRADING! SPREADSHEETS! And for me it all comes down to obtaining familiars and matching them to dragons and opening the chests they give me… then starting the cycle over again with whatever is in the chest! And that has nothing to do with “pets” and everything to do with dopamine, really.

As an old who has Seen Too Much, I also think the mods do a very good job of keeping young users safe and keeping the community as a whole healthy, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

I think that exalting/dominance is a great alternative to death mechanics, being an incentivized but completely voluntary 'dragon sink' and also an easy way to make money.

Also I appreciate the fact that there has never been a way to buy unhatched eggs even though they're a highly desired consumable. Most other sites I've been on would have charged real money/premium currency for something like that, but instead FR has been improving NoTN and making it easier to get eggs completely free.

[center]I loved petsites ever since I've learned of their existence, but FR is the only one I've stuck with through all these years. (Which is on and off since 2016, wow, that's been quite some time). Though I guess it's not exactly fair to say that, because if Celestial Vale didn't decide to close down, I'd probably still be playing it. Like, does anyone but me remember Celestial Vale? It was my absolute favorite thing back in the day, I'd kill to get to play it again TwT I first noticed FR because some of the familiar assets reminded me of it. Like, one look at ethereal trickster and I felt such a punch of nostalgia that I knew I had to come here. [img]https://www1.flightrising.com/static/cms/familiar/art/416.png[/img][img]https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/celestialvale/images/7/7c/Tenacity_Kitsune.png[/img] This game even has perytons too! Doesn't feel as unique and exciting after all these years, and I'm going on a tangent I didn't plan for, but yeah, sorry, [i]everything reminds me of her... I still go into Internet Wayback Machine sometimes just to hear her voice again....[/i] ----- But yeah, I tried a few different sites afterwards, yet nothing stuck except FR. Neopets were too ugly for me to get into any deeper issues with them, but I spent a fair amount of time on FurVilla. Couldn't figure out what exactly was the endgame past making some villagers and then having opportunity to click a few buttons and /checks notes/ pay for cooler villagers? I never was much into roleplay, so that was that for me. ----- I actually had a lot of hope for Dappervolk at first, and at a time even thought I could leave FR for it (traded one of my sprites for their items, rip). But it turned out to have the same problems as Furvilla (but, like, worse). Everything looked very pretty, but there wasn't much to actually do except painstakingly click through the same text boxes over and over and over again to gain enough money to play at the apparel casino. Which was fun for the first few months, ngl, but then I managed to pull everything I could possibly get for free. For anything but the basics you'd have to pay real life money. And so I did a few times. (Does anyone need some old DV items? I can trade for FR!) But the new ways to pay them money kept coming each month, and I'm an adult with obligations, I can't just throw away money on lottery all the time... But there was nothing else to do. And I've got one avatar character there. Even if I had all the money in the world, how much apparel could I possibly need if I can only showcase one suit at a time anyway? So I couldn't get in with the cool kids without draining my bank account, and there was nothing to do there otherwise, so eventually I gave up and left. I still come there sometimes, because it's basically the old flash player doll dress up game, and I love those. But even now, nothing really changes. There's still a new limited way to spend money each month, but the same 5 little cities for FTP users with a handful of the same old quests. I need enrichment! Otherwise I might start plucking my feathers out. ----- I also tried LorWolf, but that one is just a mess on so many levels we'd have to move this thread to general discussion if I started talking about it. So, yeah. My experiences are not universal, but I have quite a bit of them, enough to form a personal opinion. ----- So, what does FR have that all those other PetSites do not? Well, a bit of everything, really. First and foremost — [b]clear communication with the userbase[/b]. You can't possibly do everything perfectly and/or according to plan, but you need to both listen and talk to people who play your game. You can't just go back on your promises or miss all deadlines and disappear off the face of the earth and hope for them to still believe in you. [b]Updates[/b], both gameplay ones and quality of life ones. Of course, it may be hard for a newer game with a tiny dev team to rush out monthly updates to keep user engagement high, but in a game where nothing new ever happens the userbase will just rush through all the available content, lose interest and stop checking in with you. [b]Healthy economy and premium currency trading[/b]. There are lots of things to do for treasure on FR, as well as lots of ways to get gems. Because of that the market stays relatively stable, the exchange rate — reasonable, and even the expensive ventures are still relatively achievable for the average user. [b]Overall accessibility [/b]for the average user. If you want to, you can play FR the whole day. But even if you login in short bursts, do a few things here and there and only engage with parts of the site you're interested in — you will still be able to progress in this game, albeit at a slower pace; and even if you go on a hiatus — you will still have a place to come back to and continue playing as usual. I know I did that quite a few times! You don't have to grind(tm) unless you're into that. The large variety of [b]available customization[/b] and [b]ability to show it off[/b]. I'm talking both about the dragons (yeah, they're called dragons, but look at them, they're all so different from each other!) themselves and the available apparel/umas for them. There are lots of different things for people with different tastes available on FR! And once you find what suits you specifically — you can lay it all out in a way you like most and show it off all at once. [b]Artstyle.[/b] I like pretty things. They may not look perfect, but they have to be both interesting and easy on the eye. You gotta feel the effort behind it! Spiral anatomy may hurt my soul whenever I look at it too closely, but I can see that it was made with love, and I learn to love it in response. I think this last one is actually the most important factor for me personally when it comes to new games I try. If there are deeper issues, I will find them eventually. But the amount of grace I give to a game is proportionate to the amount of effort I feel from its artists. Dappervolk was really cute, so I stuck around for a while in hopes it would grow and even gave it some money. Because yeah, there were issues, but it was fun to dress up my character and have them interact with adorable NPCs in their pretty little cities. FR is also great at this. Sure, not everything I see suits my fancy, but I have found plenty of things I deem pretty and I can surround myself with them and stare at them the whole day. Dragons? Pretty! Genes? Neat! Familiars? Gosh, there are so many cool looking ones! There are even scenes now! And the art gets occasionally reworked and updated where possible, which I also appreciate. This site is very comfy and its world is very fun to traverse, visuals-wise. Lorwolf has MS Paint wolves in colors that are nigh impossible to work with and just end up looking godawful 90% of the time and MS Paint crudely drawn over a stock photo graphics. I could talk all day about the problems that site has, but the biggest one is that to get to any of them I need to stare at lazy photo paintovers with crude black linework and black shadows all day, which just doesn't spark joy :( ----- So, to sum things up for a tl;dr — FR looked pretty and then gave me enough fun stuff to do for free for the last 8 years. Gee, now I wanna give it money. [/center]

@Lyvenex That's good to hear! It's not enough to make me come back but positive changes are a good thing no matter what :)

It's dragons, obv.

Now, a bit more serious answer:

• Lore customization and leniency in its usage: This varies petsite from petsite, but for example, in DragonCave the lore you write for your dragons has to be reviewed to see if it follows the specific lore of that species, first by other members of the site and then, after a long wait by moderators of the site. Think of a more nightmarish skin queque. But for written lore. And if those mods think you're pulling their hair, they can delete the dragon. I didn't fully grasp how awful this was, since my english wasn't that great so I never cared as much for this part of the game. Also fun thing: the descriptions could only be in english.
  Here, you can name an Obelisk Thomas, say they're a forgotten god of the Second Age people who can shapeshift and only eats radioactive minerals, and nobody bats an eye. As long as you don't write truly offensive stuff, you're free to write your lore to your heart's content and in your language.
  
• Free trading of Premuim currency: This was something that was new to me when I joined, to be able to trade freely currency, to be able to sell dragons and materials for gems without having to buy a premium pack first! Like it was the case with Ovipets, that petsite was... something I tell you. Yeah, now that I think about it, you couldn't buy pets from other players if you hadn't bought premium currency with real money either. Yeah. Fun stuff.
  
• following stuff FR does right, the Colorwheel is an amazing thing, let me tell you. Another Ovipets example, you could create pets to make breeding projects, splicing new genes each generation, pretty cool stuff actually. The problem lies in the colors themselves, because they're not even something you can control or lock. Wanted a Blue pet? too bad, the red values are also high and it looks kinda purplish. So pets with Pure Colors (for example an #80808080 is a Pure Gray pet, denoted by a small grey dot), pure color pets are the big stuff, the rest is all muddy or toned down colors. Also, pure color purists are what some people think G1 lairs are but unironically. I didn't like them, because they were too bright in color & painful to look at for extended periods of time.

If i would type my reasons for FR thriving for 10 years (and onwards!), it would take way too long and be too tiring for me, so i'm going to state this:

EVERYONE's points on this topic are amazing and i agree with all of them! The staff and mods are professional, amazing, and address problems well, the lack of paywalling, the currency system, the customization, the freedom to customize your dragons however you want as long as it's appropriate, easy-to-look-at-artstyle, the simple gene system and color wheel, the events, the exaltation system, etc, etc, etc.

All in all, there are LOTS of reasons this site works so well, and it's all so meticulously crafted and it all flows smoothly.

So, To The Devs:

THANK YOU, FOR DOING SUCH AWESOME WORK, KEEP AT IT AND HAVE FUN TOO!

I used to play Ovipets a lot. Like a lot lot. But over time I got burnt out.

• Obtaining currency was a chore
  To do so you had to turn incubating eggs for a chance at currency. You couldn't do your own eggs, you had to turn your friends. That meant that you had to have a robust friend list with active people currently breeding eggs. If you were active, you'd be bombarded with friend requests on a daily basis.
  
  Certain people had certain rules about who could or could not turn eggs. Many only wanted friends turning their eggs; their friend list friends were directed to their sell pages instead. People could get quite irate if you did turn their eggs when they didn't want you to. But no turning eggs = no free way to get currency. And playing Ovipets demanded a lot of currency if you wanted to make anything.
  
• Keeping your pets alive was a chore
  Every species of pet had a feeding timer that, if it went down to zero, your pet would die. If you had, say, thirty pets, it wasn't that hard. But that's not how Ovipets played. You had to have dozens of pets if you were making breeding projects, even more if you were trying for a perfect hex color. If you wanted to use the base pets for additional breeding projects, you had to feed them too. It was very easy to have hundreds of pets that you had to feed from every several days to every week. If they died, you had to pay to bring them back.
  
  If you needed a break, you could freeze your account, however, if you were gone too long, the game would unfreeze and all your pets would die without you realizing. I lost all my pets this way (twice) when I had to step away from the game because of my daughter's worsting health.
  
• Continual rule additions that diminished the fun
  The whole point of Ovipets is to splice in genes in base pets to create a whole new looking pet. This had to be done one gene at a time, using enough pets that it wouldn't create inbreeding down the line. The more genes you wanted to add, the more pets you needed to start with (and the more expensive it would take to make them since each pet in a generation needed the gene you were adding in). This would make each breeding line a significant investment. In the end, you ended up with a cool looking breeding pair that you'd breed so you could see the babies to make a profit.
  
  This was all well and good, but some project makers started getting angry that some users were breeding their projects with other pets. So they went to the creators and complained. New features were put into place that let project makers make their pets' offspring unbreedable. That effectively made these pets useless as you couldn't do anything else other than feed them.
  
  Now I understand their upset to a point. I made and sold over a hundred custom projects myself (with many of the base pets generated being generated by myself, which cost in game currency). But breeding and creating is the whole point of the game. When you make that impossible, what's the point of playing?

Making premium currency in Flight Rising can be time consuming, but it's not obnoxious and dull like in Ovipets. There is another currency that is easy to get. It's a much more fun system. I don't mind buying currency as money allows from time to time because the devs really seem to care about the game and the player base.

My dragons don't die. That's a big one. I play this game as a comfort game. I don't want something I care about dying because I have to take a step back.

I can have friends because I like them and not because I need something on their account that enables me to play the game.

There's a whole lot more, but I think the people who posted before me more than covered it.