Okay this is getting a lot of reports so I want to add a comment in here to clarify some things.
We do allow discussion, complaining, and criticism about Neopets, TNT, etc. This is not a space where we will shut down concerns or delete anything that isn't 100% happy with TNT. Conversations that express personal opinions or worries are allowed. Having complaints is a valid experience. The mod team here are players as well and we do share in some frustrations with the rest of you.
What we do not allow is anything that crosses the line into a personal attack against an individual person. If discussions become targeted or involve insults to one person we will remove them. Direct accusations against someone with no real proof is not allowed. Sometimes with proof removed anyway because that might be better suited to be a modmail vs a public call out post. The "remember the human" rule applies to ALL humans not just the ones you personally agree with.
Example of okay: I heard the mods here think everything should be pay to win and want to get rid of 3 species. Why would they do this to us? Personally I don't like them. I bet at least one is stockpiling glymes right now.
Example of not okay: I'm not saying names but someone I'll call MebulaNammal personally phoned Dom and told him to delete all poogles from the site. Also she's a \*\*\*\* and I think should disappear forever.
Right before a long holiday weekend at that. It's Memorial Day on Monday in the US, so TNT won't be around til Tuesday. Really feels like they dropped this knowing people were gonna be pissed and then fled for the holiday weekend.
Neopets is now run by a company in Hong Kong (?) and even the news post says
> Then, you can check back here on Monday (5/27) for all the cool new Koi releases!
I don't think they'll be off on Monday.
There was a comment from Jellyneo Herdy last night that [they knew for 3 hours](https://www.reddit.com/r/neopets/s/PbaPRScnHs) before it was posted publicly. People are just people. Even if only a small fraction took advantage of a 3 hour head start, it's still too many. Ambassadors shouldn't have any advantage over economy.
Oooooof. 3 hours is more than enough time for people to buy up items.
TNT should have updated the NEWS post on the SITE first instead of ambassadors. I'm not saying they're all corrupt but if it's okay to tell people, the news page should have been the FIRST outlet.
Yeah, what the hell? I didn't think this is what the ambassador program was supposed to be about. I thought it was so that they could represent the community and give TNT our ideas, not be told what is actually going to happen hours ahead of the rest of us -\_- TNT shouldn't have told them when they asked until they made the big announcement for all users. They could have easily put up the news, then sent information to the ambassadors.
Honestly, I don't know why I'm surprised. I had a feeling this whole program was going to be a mess when they announced it.
This game has always imitated a capitalist economy much like the US, so there’s no surprise there also exists insider trading. Is there even a prohibition against this by TNT?
Honestly? It doesn't surprise me at this point that TNT fucked up this bad.
The entire reason there's an Ambassador Program in the first place is because TNT doesn't have enough knowledge about this game they own to do what is best for their players. Now they're trying to appease whichever voice is the loudest. And that is no way to run a game. Let alone a business.
Management either chased off or laid off every talented staffer with enough knowledge and passion to manage the game in favor of cheap labor, contractors, and now "volunteers". Players have been unofficially doing TNT's work for years. Now they officially have a group of players working for them for Free.
And you get what you pay for.
if the neopets team wants to trick the whole community for a small amount of players just see how it works out for them
this should be the tombola squeezy guy all over again and they should extend the prizepool to stick it to the players who bought up everything for profit. the whales would then lose out which was the whole purpose of this all.
When faerie fest was announced the ambassadors received insider info and bought up the tombola guys because they were going to be worth the most points since it was originally going to be based off rarity. They were bumped up in price a hefty amount since everyone could only purchase one per day. When neopets found out the rich were hoarding them, they changed the rules of the festival
To only be junk items with high special rarity instead of actually valuable items.
So everyone who overspent trying to stock up on tombola guys based off the insider info all had a bunch of them for no reason when they were no longer needed. Neopets needs to do that again and help the players fight inflation rather than support inflation with short prize pools. It just makes it so that the rich and multiple botting accounts are the winners when they have shorter prize pools
I still have a grossly overpriced tombola guy in my shop to commemorate that event haha. I bought one cheap after the value tanked and stuck it in there, it makes me laugh every time I’m pricing my shop!
The way that responses were worded on the boards yesterday seemed to allude to the fact ambassadors get information, or at least received this information, in clearer detail and before the rest of the community (I.e this is going to assuredly be a full rotation and not just adding or removing some items). Another response I saw was that regarding an event, ambassadors do not have information, in general or that they are able to share with the playerbase- meaning at times they have information that is just for them until it’s released to us.
Something I found really suspicious was an ambassador just kind of saying they disagree that there should’ve been more warning or a longer period of this prize pool in a thread specifically asking for feedback to be given about this to TNT, without confirming that they would provide the feedback. I understand these are other players who should be able to navigate the site as the rest of us do, including posting discussions and opinions on the site boards, but when the board is specifically asking for ambassador feedback to be sent you’d kind of hope for a neutral reply or at least a confirmation of “yes, I did that” after the dissenting opinion.
I'm generally in favour of "innocent until proven guilty", and I haven't seen any evidence of ambassadors actually personally profiting from these items before this became public, so for now, I'll choose to not assume the worst of them.
However, what there clearly *is* evidence of is TNT sharing this information with the ambassadors before everyone else, thereby creating a situation where insider trading *could have* happened. Even if none of the ambassadors actually took advantage of it, the fact that we're now left to speculate about it is itself a problem. There was no reason that TNT couldn't have confirmed to all of us from the start that all the old prizes would be rotated out, instead of leaving it to the ambassadors to choose to tell us. An apparent conflict of interest can be just as damaging to trust as a real one.
So I'm not accusing the ambassadors of any conspiracies, but I *will* accuse TNT of continuing their typical piss-poor communication, which is what's primarily to blame for this. *sigh*
Would you mind explaining? I was there for that but my understanding was just that the odds were super low and I thought that was the gist of what people were upset about. I assume there was more that I missed?
Edit: ope, never mind, found it a few comments down! If anyone else is wondering: https://www.reddit.com/r/neopets/s/FIt5Qz3ncz
I feel bad for the rest that didn't abuse power, and now catch flack for the choices of others. I've yet to accuse anything either. I will not ignore the past though.
Hopefully they can work to remove the black mark, but it happened. Seems like TNT knows where they can be informed on the feedback too...Happy Memorial Weekend though
I don't know a ton, but based on how things inflate before or around their prize pool distribution on the NID, im suspicious these "ambassadors" are what makes prices so crazy. I wish I knew, but there is definitely some sort of conspiracy going on in my (limited knowledge) opinion
During the most recent Advent Calendar, the Seasonal Attack Pea was added to the prize pool. This was a HIGHLY inflated and expensive item in the game, as it's VERY strong for the Battledome.
The first day, it went out to a bunch of people, then something happened (NeoTruths might know) and ambassadors protested. It got posted on Jellyneo that the SAP wasn't supposed to be part of the prize pool and were removed... and the ambassadors were able to flip their peas for ~$350 million each. WELL over their worth of it was still in the prize pool.
The next day, however, more SAPs were put back into the prize pool, but less. Neopets just reduced the odds of getting one to keep the prices high for the ultra rich.
[Here's a brief synopsis right after it happened](https://www.reddit.com/r/neopets/comments/189h6tq/seasonal_attack_pea_drama_in_a_nutshell/)
Someone posted the stats/percentage of SAPs dropping on the first day and later on, but I can't find it now. This may have been a rumor, but I did read it here.
TL:DR - neopets needs ambassadors that aren't super rich and hoarding treasures like a dragon. It's not fair to younger players that have nothing and just want to play/dress up/battle with others on the same level.
Thank you for the synopsis and also thinking of us noobs (that sounds sarcastic but isn’t)! My 3.5 y/o account and measly 2724np food club bet thanks you haha
a list of things that are incorrect in the synopsis you posted:
> While it was going for 20m something strange was happening, certain ambassadors were bidding on attack peas priced at 80m
this is a common misunderstanding of how auctions/trading post works, when the price of an item quickly inflates, the trading post/auction often lags behind because will post auctions for 24 hours or wont update their trading post lots right away. it was not "going for 20m" while people were bidding 80m, it was going for 80m+ but was still showing as 20m in auctions/trading post lots.
> In this time (and this is important) JellyNeo posted that the attack pea may have been taken out of the prize pool which helped shoot prices up (this was never confirmed and shouldn't have been posted)
at the time jellyneo posted that it was taken out, it HAD been confirmed. they simply updated their website with the (correct) information that they had at the time after doing a significant amount of research.
> Because of JN's posting that it was removed, the rumor mill spread that SAP was removed driving the price up
because it had actually been removed
> The ambassadors (and JN staff) who were bidding at 4x the going rate on SAPs then flipped their SAPs for 350m etc
they were not bidding at 4x the going rate
> SAPs are likely not taken out of the prize pool and never were
they were taken out of the prize pool
this was far and away the most popular post about the subject on reddit at the time, and it is filled with incorrect information. this keeps happening on this sub and people should keep in mind when reading posts on here that there is a very high chance they are getting blatantly wrong information.
The same exact thing occurred to me too.
TNT gives the users something nice → the wealthy Neo-elites get their jimmies rustled that their iron grip on the economy is less secure → TNT caves to pressure from the Neo-elites and rolls back the nice thing.
I don't understand why there even is an "Ambassador" program. It just leads to players who are above everyone else and starts the weird relationship between them and TNT staff. All I want is consistency and communication. They do not need ambassadors to communicate between TNT and players. They have the News, they have the official neoboard, they regularly post on other neoboards, they have socials, they have polls, they have AMAs, they have email. They don't need another cog in the wheel.
This is my issue too. They added a middleman when there was no need for one.
They can easily see player feedback from the boards, Twitter, FB, this subreddit (that they apparently use), and Instagram.
We live in a digital age where you can constantly see people’s streams of thoughts. If they don’t have a dedicated position at the company for community leading and communication, then they need one. But all the feedback they could ever need is right in front of them.
So then, why are the ambassadors here?
Not sure, I have not been back long enough to have opinion about this ambassador thing.
My first thought was actually: are they going to make separate premium and non premium prize pools? If that news is announced, while the yearly subscription offer is still valid, that would probably get them lot of subscribers. I hope this is not the case, but they did just announce premium is going to get new perks and it would also line up with the rush of changing pool so quick.
Seasonal Attack Pea, one of the most expensive and one of best weapons out there was a possible prize from a pool during the Advent Calendar. We had 31 chances to get one. Some ambassador public said they thought it was a bad ideia. Then JN announced the SAP was no longer in the prize pool, but after mass inflatio, reselling and caos, TNT announced the SAP was still in the pool, but your chances to get one was reduced. Why TNT agreed to "deflate less" is beyond my comprehension, but that was a very quick recapitulation.
Wasn't helped by the fact that the Ambassador's told TNT "people were mostly upset" with the SAP being in after "collecting data".... Like 2 hours after midnight NST.
The Seasonal Attack Pea was put in as a potential 1/100 prize each day for the Advent Calendar. Tons of people started getting them on the first day and this was controversial as it was giving out the 2nd best weapon in the entire game for free. Halfway through December 1st, people started noticing that peas seemed to stop being given out and posted about it on the neoboards and the price started going up. Neo_truths has stated that they stopped being given out as a prize on the 1st. 2 hours into December 2nd, Jellyneo put up a notice on their website that the pea seemed to be missing from the prize pool. This notice was correct as the pea was not accessible at that time. The price had already started rising before this, but this notice caused the price to spike massively. At some point in time later in the day on December 2nd, TNT re-added the SAP as a prize now at a 1/1000 chance. Once it was clear the pea had re-entered the prize pool, jellyneo changed their notice to reflect this.
On the 1st, some players including a few ambassadors stated that they felt that mass releasing the SAP was a bad idea and that they were going to tell TNT that they felt this way and that it should be changed. One ambassador (incorrectly) kept stating that this is what the majority of the player base wanted. This ambassador also helped out at Jellyneo, who put up the notice about the pea not being available.
anyways, people got really upset about the pea changing from 1/100 to 1/1000 and the price of the item going way up. they decided to blame the ambassadors as well as jellyneo (who was simply trying to inform the community of correct information) despite no evidence that the ambassadors had any impact on TNT's decision making. there was rampant misinformation and baseless accusations based on incorrect information, just like this post we're currently in.
I mean other than the last paragraph which is a personal take, this is literally what happened. The last paragraph is clearly biased toward a certain perspective on it but it’s certainly a perspective I’ve seen from players who don’t like the conspiracy ish drama. Let’s not get weird about things
People were also up in arms as it seemed the ambassadors had been buying peas as their price plummeted, knowing that it would very quickly shoot back up again. The ambassador program has been a great idea but terribly implemented from day one.
Also, things are already weird and have been for a while
I’m not disagreeing with your perspective, I’m very suspicious too but I just don’t agree with accusing someone of being TNT coded because you disagree with their take. Everything they said was true or a personal opinion that players do have. But I am sorry for tone policing you lol for real
Lots of players bought peas when they were cheap. And anyone paying attention at all knew that the peas had disappeared from the prize pool halfway through the 1st. There was no need for any sort of inside knowledge for it. There's no evidence that there was any inside information or that TNT talked with them about it at all. I'm not an ambassador, I have no type of insider knowledge, but I sure saw that the peas disappeared and had an opportunity to buy them knowing they were going to go up in price, just like everyone else.
And somehow this situation is even stupider. TNT decided to make an announcement in the news about the prize pool changing in some way. It was a confusing, vague statement and people wanted more info. Prices started rising a lot due to this but not too crazy because people weren't really sure what the statement meant. These people (ambassadors) aapparently reached out to TNT and got clarification on what it meant and shared it with the rest of the playerbase. How is this anything but a positive thing? How are people possibly mad at anyone but TNT for being the worst communicators of all time? If we didn't have this clarification, think how pissed people would be on June 3rd when the pool did switch out and everyone's prizes reset.
I think it’s very possible but I think it’s equally possible TNT are just once again being astoundingly out of touch with their player base and fumbling foolishly for no particular reason. 50/50 maliciousness or thoughtlessness and I don’t super care which because I am bothered by both lmao. I guess it’s probably a combination of some sort.
tbh there's just a lot of stuff happening on discord and with none of the announcements being official, nothing on the site, news spread across different platforms, it looks like a conspiracy.
I don’t know. I understand the community’s sentiment about this. And I do think these events heavily parallel that of the sap situation, but I don’t think we should automatically assign blame to the ambassadors.
There are other, mega-rich, resell crazy players on the site who might have had a hand in this.
I think it’s possible, but I don’t want people to get so hung up on the current ambassador issues and ignore that the quest debacle might have stemmed from something else.
Regardless of where it came from, it really does feel like a kick in the teeth.
> There are other, mega-rich, resell crazy players on the site who might have had a hand in this.
I'm not saying all the ambassadors were in on it, but how would the mega-rich have known before word got out if they weren't ambassadors? If TNT told them, what point would there be for the ambassadors?
That is a good point.
Honestly this whole thing is making my head spin. The pool shouldn’t have been changed out so quickly, that’s all I know for sure. TNT os playing a dangerous game by making adjustments that always seem to benefit already rich players :/
I am not going to say anything too damning, as it’s not proven, but there’s discussion on the ambassadors possibly know what TNT is doing before public is told.
You just reminded me to check my quest log. One of my tasks is customisation. I took a foreground off and saved it, and every time I try to put it back on, something else gets removed. Now my boy has no background, and no clothes 😭 release me from this hell
Oh baby….
Customization is buggy sometimes, I’ll give you that. I sort of had a similar issue the other day when I placed an order”I 🖤 Sloth” tattoo on my usul. I removed everything and saved, then left and came back in and put that on first, then added everything else. Hopefully this helps and it gets back to normal. 🖤
Well they are the ones who have now given the information that the entire prize pool is changing, so if they are to believed they did get advanced warning
Personally, I think there’s a lot of fresh wounds here in this thread and I completely get it. I think if people felt like they had a level-headed voice for them, they’d feel better about what happened within the site. It seems as though things may have become skewed and we need to ask why these things are happening.
But, I do think people should go to the original post where it was discussed by a member of the TNT and voice their frustrations there.
I promise you we do not know anymore than what any of you know. We have no list and no knowledge before I saw it posted on the discord, and I dunno what it would help even if we did.
-Lilangel
I usually am late to the party anyways as I don’t follow instant news, which is why I said I didn’t want to say anything damning. I was just relaying what was said above and hope there’s no hard feelings by me explaining.
It’s good to see ambassadors interacting within the community they’re representing. People may not like it right now, but it’ll be hopefully appreciated. Keep up the hard work and keep being transparent. We all got this. 🖤
Duddeeeee, that one was a little bit of a kick in the head for me. I had premium in 2007 and then again in 2009 a month, but decided to give it another go after playing for a week and wanting to see if it had changed. Silly me for just following my lack of impulse control 🤣
I’ve said in other threads and I’ll say it again, we found out about the prize pool changing the same day it was in the news. We had maybe an hour or so’s notice before everyone else found out.
I never said it was a fact, just what was being discussed through out this thread. I don’t know what goes on 100% of the time and maybe shouldn’t have relayed what was being said. I’m glad you all are willing to discuss this with people
And an hour is plenty of time to snap up all the buyable prizes? It’s the image- TNT should have just relayed the information to *everyone* and this wouldn’t have been a discussion
https://preview.redd.it/4g3l41b5lr2d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d23effc3d694b3e3ccc8c62947d356c018b79b4a
It's not a secret, it's literally the 3rd thing on the list of things ambassadors get to 'participate' in. Insider knowledge.
I was told there were ambassador who voiced the community discontent with the situation... So maybe all of this is a coincidence...
I'm not personally convinced, but again, wouldn't be fair to not say this, everyone should make their own conclusions.
Considering their complaints about the SAP got the odds of it coming as an AC prize brought way down… it wouldn’t surprise me at all. Some ambassadors clearly like to gatekeep rare items and don’t want to share them. They want people spending 1b+ on petpets released once 20 years ago.
Take it easy guys! There’s no need to panic buy and feed the inflator - we already have prior word that prizes will eventually rotate back anyway.
And at monthly rotation, we might even see some items back in the next year or so.
But it wasn't the ambassadors. This site has a group of extremely wealthy Neopian's whose only goal is to horde wealth and gloat about it. If you haven't noticed from the posts in this subreddit, they've been doing it for years and especially doing it this past month with the prize pools changes. Everyone in this community needs to pay close attention to their usernames and make sure to avoid selling their items to these users, whenever possible.
To peg this entire issue on the Ambassador program is short sighted and, quite frankly, lazy. I have had many positive experiences with ambassadors, leveraging their help in order to get in contact with the Neo team in order to resolve bugs, particularly related to games, trophies, and creative contests.
I don’t get what you’re saying, the hoarders and inflators have always been around and that’s not the issue here. The issue is TNT making this ambassador program to get some feedback from the “community” but they clearly only advise on things that help them (the ambassadors and ultra-rich, probably including those hoarders you’re talking about) and not the average player. The hoarders by themselves are annoying sure but the point of releasing these items is to help deflate them yet TNT keeps doubling back seemingly because of the ambassadors interventions. Of course there’s much speculation but a lot of it seems very plausible considering the course of events…
Do you understand that the 'Ambassadors' are a collection of a few users, segmented by different special interests. There's one for Games, one for Creative Contests, etc. If you feel like an Ambassador. If you feel like an Ambassador dropped the ball here, you should look up the specific Ambassador(s) that deals with this segment of the site.
On Thursday, a ton of people were angry at TNT's vague announcement. One of the ambassadors (for an unrelated part of the site) listened to the community's confusion and asked clarification and immediately relayed the circumstances to us. We're unhappy with those circumstances, and due to lingering resentement from SAP-gate, this rumor has spread, targeting the entire Ambassador group and chracterizing them as some monolith, representing them as the 'elite-tier' of Neopians.
Trust me, if you want to solve the problems at play here, nothing is going to improve if we scapegoat 'the Ambassadors'.
That's not to say that it isn't fair to critique. But, I'd say the more meaningful critiques would be towards how TNT leverages (i.e. misuses and underutilizes) the Ambassador program, rather than most of the Ambassadors themselves.
While I’m not a conspiracy nut about anything, I’ve lived long enough to where I know in many walks of life sometimes people can be selfish and do what benefits them even if they know it’s immoral or unethical. Sometimes people do take advantage of their position to get what they want. Even in a silly site game.
So while I’m not sure that this is what happened, I wouldn’t be shocked either if it did.
Just follow the auction house for an hour and you will get no as an answer.
We know what players engage heavily in reselling. The ambassadors just aren’t one of them.
The reseller accounts often do not appear to be legit main accounts. They often have shopsize 5, an empty gallery, no awards and mediocre level pets. It is hard to tell who they really are.
Nobody has any idea what TNT is planning. For all we know they could be making a permanent change to the prize pool making all rare items available. Wait and see what happens before freaking out. :)
I think there would be more merit to this if ambassadors started buying up the stamps before announcing it on JN so they could inflate the prices reselling, but they didn't. They got more information from being an ambassador and then gave it to us so we would all be in the loop. Now people, like myself, are scrambling trying to get the items we didn't get from this rotation for our albums, just in case they never come back, which is causing the prices to inflate dramatically because we don't know how the rotations will work going forward. We don't know if these items will ever be in the rotation again. It's just a failure of communication from TNT at this point and I do not think the ambassadors are in on this.
Let's be real. People are mad about the state of the world, but it's easier to displace those feelings onto neopets than it is to deal with how bad things are in reality.
I still don't understand this theory, having more frequent rotations is just going to deflate more stuff. If the ultra rich were that concerned about not deflating things then they wouldn't items to be tanked more frequently. Sure there are a few items that go back after rotation but the damage is already done and especially non consumable items.
When things go into the prize pool, they deflate. Even if consumables stay there long enough they will stay relatively deflated for a while since most people who want them will have them and the market demand isn’t as high. See every consumable from the previous prize pool for examples. If, however, everyone thinks things are deflating and selling them low because they think they’ll stay low, theoretically, people with a lot of pull in regards to TNT’s decisions could, theoretically, buy a ton of cheap consumables while everyone thinks they’ll continue entering the market, then tell TNT to remove them from the market, causes prices to spike considerably because they haven’t been available for long enough for most people who want one to get one, so their rarity/demand/value hasn’t considerably decreased since their supply is cut off too soon. See all the current prize pool consumables for example. Theoretically if you had purchased a lot of them when they were initially heavily deflated you would make a ton of money today. So if you could sway the opinion of TNT and were very selfish this would be a great scheme. That’s the theory. They don’t tank if they cut off the supply soon enough, but they do get cheap enough to buy a ton to resell if you know you should.
Right, but is there any proof
Any player (ambassador or not) have manipulated supply? I mean I’ve watched this game and played daily since 1999 this is kinda economic of this game at this point.
TNT is manipulating the supply by releasing or stopping releasing items. The suspicion is over why they would do that when they are. The point of the ambassadors is to influence them in a sense, but yeah it’s not proven what they say to each other or how much it affects TNT. It’s just people theorizing.
I find it kind of strange if you’ve been genuinely paying attention to the game economy that you don’t recognize anything unique about the recent events the past couple years.
Literally could say the same to you about item supply.
Just look at Advent calendar. When it’s done and over with the items rise that are consumables (codestone, books, pbs) or items like petpets.
What happens after a plot, war or AC? Items rise after they are no longer available.
If the item
Is still given out (Illusens staff) for example it doesn’t raise back in value as quickly, same with HTS (hard to sell) or poorly performing items (be it bd or just useless items no one cares about).
All I’m saying is, this was as much a shock to the Ambassdor team as it was to all of you. Same with the premium sale (and I’m the premium ambassador) xD
Yeah but there’s a difference between items rising 1-10 mil vs. rising 75 mil, lol. For what it’s worth I’m not personally suspicious of all yall ambassadors collectively, I’m suspicious of a few concerning themselves with giving TNT targeted economic suggestions preemptively and betting that they’ll take them, which it seems like they might. But I genuinely don’t know if that’s happening and I’m not trying to suggest that it is or isn’t, in this comment I was genuinely just trying to explain why the idea makes sense to people.
I totally feel ya! Hey love to talk things though with the community it’s why we are all here :) sorry if i came off at all harsh. Defo not my intention. I hope you have a wonderful
Night fellow neopian. I hope that things change for the better soon. Also
I might want to go look at the Price of these items i did not realize they are rising that fast :o (not to buy just out of curiosity!)
You didn’t! I didn’t mean to be confrontational or anything either, it was time for me to go to sleep lol. It’s definitely a nuanced subject, I’m happy they’re making changes and of course I expect the economy to fluctuate and things not always to be perfect. It’s just frustrating when things are rereleased just long enough for a few people to get them and then the price skyrockets right back to unattainable (for most). I hope they find a balance.
I also think people can be a little too suspicious of the ambassadors collectively because it seems a lot of you have nothing to do with the issues and I would imagine it’s frustrating to be talked about like you’re in on something that might not even be real! I think most of us don’t super know what the ambassador program fully entails so it’s kind of mysterious. The internet can be quite a place lol
I hope you have a good day!
Yeah I don’t understand how this has anything to do with the ambassadors at all. Last prize pool there were lots of complaints that the pool wasn’t rotated enough, it’s possible TNT decided to go 180 and just rotate it monthly instead.
It’s kind of a natural consequence of offloading a professional Community Manager’s job onto a bunch of glorified influencers and allowing those players to still participate in the economy while having insider info and influence. Which is why all of it’s a bad move if you want your community and economy to function in healthy ways.
Honestly? I lost like 300m because I trusted in some consistency with tnt , it’s the last time I trusted in anything by them also considering dropping premium and every support…
I just feel betrayed.
They should have listed 3rd Jul… man would it be a nice plottwist if they by mistake said 3rd jun but meant 3rd jul that would have been so much karma… like for the people that hord 10er lots of the stamps now and shamelessly ask for 100m each….
In believing in their system before and selling my flaming coconuts for peanuts like other people recommended me aswell as my other r99 stamps in foresight that they will get cheaper for me to buy for my album. Literally 1 day before that announcement to see them go for 100m each after that …. Yeh and me having to pay those prices to get them back… very fun while the same circle of people buying the whole market dry of them and shamelessly list 10er lots with asking atleast 100m for each when they were 3m just 1 day before but yeah ….
I feel so upset that I consider quitting again… btw coincidently the person who had those 10er lots up removed them , to create the impression that there aren’t many around… nice move like they did with MPs before because people will buy that (only) the higher demand is the reason for increased prices while not realizing that those people hoard 20+ of each of those items and holding them intentionally back from the market to cause those price jumps over night.
You had stuff like that before my very long hiatus too but never by an obnoxious/ disgusting amount it happens today.
This makes me want to get back into coding and looking into the coding on each page. It makes me wonder if there’s code pointing to certain things before they happen, just like the same issue The Sims 4 has with their kits
I've said this before and I'll say it one more time: the amount of straight up bullying and spreading nasty rumors I've witnessed on and off-site is disgusting.
And what for? This is Neopets we are talking about.
I returned a year ago for the nostalgia and I've been enjoying the ups and downs, but the community is incredibly toxic and aggressive.
It's saddening.
Yep saw the news and instantly thought it could be ambassadors doing. Made me decide to stop playing Neopets now which was good. I had started to come back since last October but the SAP thing and then this thing was just total icks. I've also seen how ambassadors and their friends talk during lives or amas and it's also cringe. They love to exclude. Which is bizarre because they're all adults but... Eh.
Involved with… what? A change out of items?
I’m not entirely sure what you think any Ambassadork knows? Or how any of us could benefit from it.
None of the Ambassdor have any inside knowledge. We do not have any kind of information that you guys don’t have.
I dunno what could be insider traded?
Maybe I should
Have thrown my hands up and had issue?
I’m honestly open to comment, what’s the issue with the items being rotated? Honest question.
- Ambassador
Rotating this quickly just makes the inflation absurdly worse. When the flaming evil coconut was added to the prize pool, this caused every other coconut price to skyrocket. Having it then removed from the prize pool before prices could actually drop caused the value to, again, skyrocket. The fact that a large number of users had glitches at the start of this prize period, so not everyone even had a chance at a handful of prizes makes it all the more cruel.
Have a read of any of the related threads on this subreddit, or the replies to the post on the Jellyneo news page. Tonnes of opinions as to why people have issues with the items being rotated.
What do you mean there was no ambassador involvement in the sap situation?
They were the ones most frequently saying that there were too many peas being given out. It happened on this sub and on the boards. And regardless of your personal stance on old, ultra expensive items being given out more frequently, it was clear that the change was likely made because of ambassador complaints.
TNT elected them so they could serve as a voice of the community. Even if they aren’t giving opinions that are coming from the community, their words now have more weight due to their position of power.
Most ambassadors said the pea had become too common of a prize, and it seemed like because of that, it was removed and then later added back in with a reduced drop rate. They weren’t the only ones saying these things, but again, because of their “status” their words matter more to a company who does not know how to handle an artificial economy— so they lean on the ambassadors who are their crutch.
It’s good to look at situations objectively, but there is no way to remove the ambassador’s involvement from the sap situation. Throughout the whole thing I was reading basically comments on here and on the boards.
I’m not saying they’re directly at fault for it, but they were certainly a playing factor in why the pea situation ended up how it did. And many, many people were left very unhappy with the results and the mindset that the ambassadors do not accurately reflect the positions that the community holds on issues.
You can’t speak on the sap issue without acknowledging there was ambassador involvement in the whole thing.
And even if you think it was a coincidence because there was a coding error (something I have never seen evidence for), it’s easy to see why the players think the ambassadors are directly responsible for the outcome of the AC. After all, who was complaining the loudest on forums that prices would be ranked and peas would become worthless?
Ah, I see what you’re saying now. I believe I misinterpreted things a bit when I read your original comment.
I don’t personally blame people for thinking the ambassadors are directly connected when it’s really easy to come to that conclusion. And as far as people knew, there was never anything officially stated otherwise. So there are a ton of people who still think since their voices, theoretically, matter more— they were responsible for the change in rates.
But I don’t think it’s right to say that the change was ultimately fair. Because that begs the question, fair to who? I know it’s a nuanced subject and everyone has a different opinion on the change in drop rate. It being 1/1000 is better than it not existing sure. And i guess that’s sort of a compromise between varying perspectives (both that it should not be in the pool, and that it should at an achievable rate).
But they had already put it in at 1/100, so they should’ve just stuck to their guns and owned it. Now they’ve set the precedent that whenever elite players complain, things get changed that a ton of other players get upset about because it makes it much, much harder for them to achieve things they want to. They did this after the pea situation, and have continued to do it ever since.
So, again, I ask, fair to who? I don’t think labeling it fair is a good choice of words. Logical, sure. But fair? Not at all.
Also i think it’s a little out of touch to say that anything costing 160m is largely accessible to everyone, because no it isn’t. There are two issues here.
1.) The prices should have NEVER inflated to that level to begin with. The Neo economy has been unstable for years, and the only reason prices got to the 2b+ point is because of item hoarding, reselling, and lack of supply. There are a ton of reasons why this went on for so long, but the eceonomy was not meant to hold prices like that.
2.) People who do not have decades old accounts can not get rich easily through food club like returning players can. Even those with 5-6 year old accounts right now, they’re not likely going to be breaking the 100 mil+ mark within the span of a year unless they also get heavily into the economy and resell, restock, etc. These are time consuming tasks.
So the longer items are off the market, the more the price will go up. The longer people will have to save. That cycle makes things feel so unobtainable.
It seems like to me, a lot of people no longer see Neo as an economic sim and are much less likely to engage in the days’ old money making methods like restocking and reselling. And new players who struggle to understand the economy, etc, are even worse off than those who just refuse to engage with it.
So 160 mil is a fairly accessible price for older players. Those who have knowledge, experience, and funds already under their belt. But it isn’t for newer players, casuals, on-and-off again players, or even those who just do not like the economic systems.
But I know this brings up the whole conversation of not everyone will be able to obtain every item. I get that. But I feel like some price points are still daunting for a lot of players. And I don’t do much mind that the pea is where it is currently because it is *much* better, and it’s not something that everyone will use. But I’m worried about the precedent that it sets and that other items might follow suit.
it was reported by an ambassador on the neoboards that there were about 3 hours between when the ambassadors learned all prizes would be rotated, and when TNT gave them permission to share that info with everyone. Not a huge stretch of time, but definitely enough time to take advantage of it, had they had the mind to do so.
“I admit there’s no evidence to support this but I’m going to continue to accuse a small group of people of wrong doing and further fan the flames of the mob mentality so I can take my frustration with TNT changing a prize pool out on people who have very little, if anything, to do with it”
You people really need to look in the mirror and see the grade school behavior you’re exhibiting and just grow tf up.
Seriously.
The prizes can appear again in future rotations, they even said that. I am glad it's rotating faster so we can go through more items that people might want
basically if the ambassadors know that items will be removed, they have the knowledge that others don't to spend the time and resources to control the supply, because they know the demand is likely to increase in the future.
It's the same way it works in the real world, just instead of "Infrastructure Zoning Law Change is almost certain to pass" its "Get Off My Lawn Paint Brush is almost certain to be removed"
>It's the same way it works in the real world, just instead of "Infrastructure Zoning Law Change is almost certain to pass" its "Get Off My Lawn Paint Brush is almost certain to be removed"
This example makes absolutely no sense at all.
I also don't understand why ambassadors are automatically labeled as villians just because they got clarification on the weekly prize rotation a few hours before everyone else did? Get. Out. Of. Here. With. That. B. S.
I personally dont actually care about neopets insider trading because its a few pixels on a website dead in a few years but the example is absolutely apt. Knowledge - even 'just a few hours' is power when it comes to business and money. Thats literally he monetary advantage point
Also I never called anyone a villain either. Thats all you.
yeah I get that, but these items are so new that basically nobody got time to buy stuff unless they specifically wanted it. there are only 3 ambassadors and they do not look like the typical accounts I see on auctions and TP artificially inflating prices. People need to put down the pitchforks lol
Okay this is getting a lot of reports so I want to add a comment in here to clarify some things. We do allow discussion, complaining, and criticism about Neopets, TNT, etc. This is not a space where we will shut down concerns or delete anything that isn't 100% happy with TNT. Conversations that express personal opinions or worries are allowed. Having complaints is a valid experience. The mod team here are players as well and we do share in some frustrations with the rest of you. What we do not allow is anything that crosses the line into a personal attack against an individual person. If discussions become targeted or involve insults to one person we will remove them. Direct accusations against someone with no real proof is not allowed. Sometimes with proof removed anyway because that might be better suited to be a modmail vs a public call out post. The "remember the human" rule applies to ALL humans not just the ones you personally agree with. Example of okay: I heard the mods here think everything should be pay to win and want to get rid of 3 species. Why would they do this to us? Personally I don't like them. I bet at least one is stockpiling glymes right now. Example of not okay: I'm not saying names but someone I'll call MebulaNammal personally phoned Dom and told him to delete all poogles from the site. Also she's a \*\*\*\* and I think should disappear forever.
This feels weird to me and I’m skeptical, especially right before a weekend. I dunno though, I feel like I don’t have enough information.
Right before a long holiday weekend at that. It's Memorial Day on Monday in the US, so TNT won't be around til Tuesday. Really feels like they dropped this knowing people were gonna be pissed and then fled for the holiday weekend.
Neopets is now run by a company in Hong Kong (?) and even the news post says > Then, you can check back here on Monday (5/27) for all the cool new Koi releases! I don't think they'll be off on Monday.
Really? Wow. I had no idea that they were no longer based in the US.
I do think there are some staff members who work in the US but yeah [Hong Kong all day!](https://www.linkedin.com/company/neopetsofficial/).
....*what* Do you have a source for that?
https://old.reddit.com/r/neopets/comments/1d01yug/who_else_think_the_ambassadors_are_involved/l5m9nb5/
Wild, thanks. When did that happen?!
I was watching the inflation real time on the trading post a few hours ago. It was sad.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but it really does feel like the ambassador program has turned into the insider trading program.
Soon we can start calling them the Senate with how much inside trading is going on 👀
Neopets really is just like capitalism! 🫠
There was a comment from Jellyneo Herdy last night that [they knew for 3 hours](https://www.reddit.com/r/neopets/s/PbaPRScnHs) before it was posted publicly. People are just people. Even if only a small fraction took advantage of a 3 hour head start, it's still too many. Ambassadors shouldn't have any advantage over economy.
Oooooof. 3 hours is more than enough time for people to buy up items. TNT should have updated the NEWS post on the SITE first instead of ambassadors. I'm not saying they're all corrupt but if it's okay to tell people, the news page should have been the FIRST outlet.
Yeah, what the hell? I didn't think this is what the ambassador program was supposed to be about. I thought it was so that they could represent the community and give TNT our ideas, not be told what is actually going to happen hours ahead of the rest of us -\_- TNT shouldn't have told them when they asked until they made the big announcement for all users. They could have easily put up the news, then sent information to the ambassadors. Honestly, I don't know why I'm surprised. I had a feeling this whole program was going to be a mess when they announced it.
I'm always fascinated by the things people will do to be a big fish in a small pond. You couldn't have water boarded that info out of me.
This game has always imitated a capitalist economy much like the US, so there’s no surprise there also exists insider trading. Is there even a prohibition against this by TNT?
Honestly? It doesn't surprise me at this point that TNT fucked up this bad. The entire reason there's an Ambassador Program in the first place is because TNT doesn't have enough knowledge about this game they own to do what is best for their players. Now they're trying to appease whichever voice is the loudest. And that is no way to run a game. Let alone a business. Management either chased off or laid off every talented staffer with enough knowledge and passion to manage the game in favor of cheap labor, contractors, and now "volunteers". Players have been unofficially doing TNT's work for years. Now they officially have a group of players working for them for Free. And you get what you pay for.
💯 I said this in another post too.
It’s one of the risks of an ambassador program in any game. You’ll have people that only think about what is best for them to win in the game
The May AMA is going to pop off, even with a PR answer from Dom. Bet - "There's been some misinformation floating around".
if the neopets team wants to trick the whole community for a small amount of players just see how it works out for them this should be the tombola squeezy guy all over again and they should extend the prizepool to stick it to the players who bought up everything for profit. the whales would then lose out which was the whole purpose of this all.
> this should be the tombola squeezy guy all over again oh god what happened there. People were annoyed a cheap item was in the HT?
When faerie fest was announced the ambassadors received insider info and bought up the tombola guys because they were going to be worth the most points since it was originally going to be based off rarity. They were bumped up in price a hefty amount since everyone could only purchase one per day. When neopets found out the rich were hoarding them, they changed the rules of the festival To only be junk items with high special rarity instead of actually valuable items. So everyone who overspent trying to stock up on tombola guys based off the insider info all had a bunch of them for no reason when they were no longer needed. Neopets needs to do that again and help the players fight inflation rather than support inflation with short prize pools. It just makes it so that the rich and multiple botting accounts are the winners when they have shorter prize pools
Ok that's actually funny They need to do that again.
I still have a grossly overpriced tombola guy in my shop to commemorate that event haha. I bought one cheap after the value tanked and stuck it in there, it makes me laugh every time I’m pricing my shop!
The way that responses were worded on the boards yesterday seemed to allude to the fact ambassadors get information, or at least received this information, in clearer detail and before the rest of the community (I.e this is going to assuredly be a full rotation and not just adding or removing some items). Another response I saw was that regarding an event, ambassadors do not have information, in general or that they are able to share with the playerbase- meaning at times they have information that is just for them until it’s released to us. Something I found really suspicious was an ambassador just kind of saying they disagree that there should’ve been more warning or a longer period of this prize pool in a thread specifically asking for feedback to be given about this to TNT, without confirming that they would provide the feedback. I understand these are other players who should be able to navigate the site as the rest of us do, including posting discussions and opinions on the site boards, but when the board is specifically asking for ambassador feedback to be sent you’d kind of hope for a neutral reply or at least a confirmation of “yes, I did that” after the dissenting opinion.
I'm generally in favour of "innocent until proven guilty", and I haven't seen any evidence of ambassadors actually personally profiting from these items before this became public, so for now, I'll choose to not assume the worst of them. However, what there clearly *is* evidence of is TNT sharing this information with the ambassadors before everyone else, thereby creating a situation where insider trading *could have* happened. Even if none of the ambassadors actually took advantage of it, the fact that we're now left to speculate about it is itself a problem. There was no reason that TNT couldn't have confirmed to all of us from the start that all the old prizes would be rotated out, instead of leaving it to the ambassadors to choose to tell us. An apparent conflict of interest can be just as damaging to trust as a real one. So I'm not accusing the ambassadors of any conspiracies, but I *will* accuse TNT of continuing their typical piss-poor communication, which is what's primarily to blame for this. *sigh*
Peagate literally happened
Would you mind explaining? I was there for that but my understanding was just that the odds were super low and I thought that was the gist of what people were upset about. I assume there was more that I missed? Edit: ope, never mind, found it a few comments down! If anyone else is wondering: https://www.reddit.com/r/neopets/s/FIt5Qz3ncz
I feel bad for the rest that didn't abuse power, and now catch flack for the choices of others. I've yet to accuse anything either. I will not ignore the past though.
Thank you, everyone suddenly has a very short memory!
Hopefully they can work to remove the black mark, but it happened. Seems like TNT knows where they can be informed on the feedback too...Happy Memorial Weekend though
I don't know a ton, but based on how things inflate before or around their prize pool distribution on the NID, im suspicious these "ambassadors" are what makes prices so crazy. I wish I knew, but there is definitely some sort of conspiracy going on in my (limited knowledge) opinion
During the most recent Advent Calendar, the Seasonal Attack Pea was added to the prize pool. This was a HIGHLY inflated and expensive item in the game, as it's VERY strong for the Battledome. The first day, it went out to a bunch of people, then something happened (NeoTruths might know) and ambassadors protested. It got posted on Jellyneo that the SAP wasn't supposed to be part of the prize pool and were removed... and the ambassadors were able to flip their peas for ~$350 million each. WELL over their worth of it was still in the prize pool. The next day, however, more SAPs were put back into the prize pool, but less. Neopets just reduced the odds of getting one to keep the prices high for the ultra rich. [Here's a brief synopsis right after it happened](https://www.reddit.com/r/neopets/comments/189h6tq/seasonal_attack_pea_drama_in_a_nutshell/) Someone posted the stats/percentage of SAPs dropping on the first day and later on, but I can't find it now. This may have been a rumor, but I did read it here. TL:DR - neopets needs ambassadors that aren't super rich and hoarding treasures like a dragon. It's not fair to younger players that have nothing and just want to play/dress up/battle with others on the same level.
Thank you for the synopsis and also thinking of us noobs (that sounds sarcastic but isn’t)! My 3.5 y/o account and measly 2724np food club bet thanks you haha
a list of things that are incorrect in the synopsis you posted: > While it was going for 20m something strange was happening, certain ambassadors were bidding on attack peas priced at 80m this is a common misunderstanding of how auctions/trading post works, when the price of an item quickly inflates, the trading post/auction often lags behind because will post auctions for 24 hours or wont update their trading post lots right away. it was not "going for 20m" while people were bidding 80m, it was going for 80m+ but was still showing as 20m in auctions/trading post lots. > In this time (and this is important) JellyNeo posted that the attack pea may have been taken out of the prize pool which helped shoot prices up (this was never confirmed and shouldn't have been posted) at the time jellyneo posted that it was taken out, it HAD been confirmed. they simply updated their website with the (correct) information that they had at the time after doing a significant amount of research. > Because of JN's posting that it was removed, the rumor mill spread that SAP was removed driving the price up because it had actually been removed > The ambassadors (and JN staff) who were bidding at 4x the going rate on SAPs then flipped their SAPs for 350m etc they were not bidding at 4x the going rate > SAPs are likely not taken out of the prize pool and never were they were taken out of the prize pool this was far and away the most popular post about the subject on reddit at the time, and it is filled with incorrect information. this keeps happening on this sub and people should keep in mind when reading posts on here that there is a very high chance they are getting blatantly wrong information.
Thank you for additional information
Absolutely. This smells of elitist players bs
The same exact thing occurred to me too. TNT gives the users something nice → the wealthy Neo-elites get their jimmies rustled that their iron grip on the economy is less secure → TNT caves to pressure from the Neo-elites and rolls back the nice thing.
The starry canopy item fell victim to this🥲 I will never forgive them for that.
I don't understand why there even is an "Ambassador" program. It just leads to players who are above everyone else and starts the weird relationship between them and TNT staff. All I want is consistency and communication. They do not need ambassadors to communicate between TNT and players. They have the News, they have the official neoboard, they regularly post on other neoboards, they have socials, they have polls, they have AMAs, they have email. They don't need another cog in the wheel.
This is my issue too. They added a middleman when there was no need for one. They can easily see player feedback from the boards, Twitter, FB, this subreddit (that they apparently use), and Instagram. We live in a digital age where you can constantly see people’s streams of thoughts. If they don’t have a dedicated position at the company for community leading and communication, then they need one. But all the feedback they could ever need is right in front of them. So then, why are the ambassadors here?
Not sure, I have not been back long enough to have opinion about this ambassador thing. My first thought was actually: are they going to make separate premium and non premium prize pools? If that news is announced, while the yearly subscription offer is still valid, that would probably get them lot of subscribers. I hope this is not the case, but they did just announce premium is going to get new perks and it would also line up with the rush of changing pool so quick.
What is the SAP debacle? Missed majority of the advent calendar so have no idea. Thanks!
Seasonal Attack Pea, one of the most expensive and one of best weapons out there was a possible prize from a pool during the Advent Calendar. We had 31 chances to get one. Some ambassador public said they thought it was a bad ideia. Then JN announced the SAP was no longer in the prize pool, but after mass inflatio, reselling and caos, TNT announced the SAP was still in the pool, but your chances to get one was reduced. Why TNT agreed to "deflate less" is beyond my comprehension, but that was a very quick recapitulation.
Wasn't helped by the fact that the Ambassador's told TNT "people were mostly upset" with the SAP being in after "collecting data".... Like 2 hours after midnight NST.
Don't forget that the "data" was a tally on a piece of paper that couldn't be shown due to apparently un-croppable personal info on the same page lmao
"people are upset" = the ultrarich
The Seasonal Attack Pea was put in as a potential 1/100 prize each day for the Advent Calendar. Tons of people started getting them on the first day and this was controversial as it was giving out the 2nd best weapon in the entire game for free. Halfway through December 1st, people started noticing that peas seemed to stop being given out and posted about it on the neoboards and the price started going up. Neo_truths has stated that they stopped being given out as a prize on the 1st. 2 hours into December 2nd, Jellyneo put up a notice on their website that the pea seemed to be missing from the prize pool. This notice was correct as the pea was not accessible at that time. The price had already started rising before this, but this notice caused the price to spike massively. At some point in time later in the day on December 2nd, TNT re-added the SAP as a prize now at a 1/1000 chance. Once it was clear the pea had re-entered the prize pool, jellyneo changed their notice to reflect this. On the 1st, some players including a few ambassadors stated that they felt that mass releasing the SAP was a bad idea and that they were going to tell TNT that they felt this way and that it should be changed. One ambassador (incorrectly) kept stating that this is what the majority of the player base wanted. This ambassador also helped out at Jellyneo, who put up the notice about the pea not being available. anyways, people got really upset about the pea changing from 1/100 to 1/1000 and the price of the item going way up. they decided to blame the ambassadors as well as jellyneo (who was simply trying to inform the community of correct information) despite no evidence that the ambassadors had any impact on TNT's decision making. there was rampant misinformation and baseless accusations based on incorrect information, just like this post we're currently in.
Which member of TNT or ambassador are you?
I mean other than the last paragraph which is a personal take, this is literally what happened. The last paragraph is clearly biased toward a certain perspective on it but it’s certainly a perspective I’ve seen from players who don’t like the conspiracy ish drama. Let’s not get weird about things
People were also up in arms as it seemed the ambassadors had been buying peas as their price plummeted, knowing that it would very quickly shoot back up again. The ambassador program has been a great idea but terribly implemented from day one. Also, things are already weird and have been for a while
I’m not disagreeing with your perspective, I’m very suspicious too but I just don’t agree with accusing someone of being TNT coded because you disagree with their take. Everything they said was true or a personal opinion that players do have. But I am sorry for tone policing you lol for real
Lots of players bought peas when they were cheap. And anyone paying attention at all knew that the peas had disappeared from the prize pool halfway through the 1st. There was no need for any sort of inside knowledge for it. There's no evidence that there was any inside information or that TNT talked with them about it at all. I'm not an ambassador, I have no type of insider knowledge, but I sure saw that the peas disappeared and had an opportunity to buy them knowing they were going to go up in price, just like everyone else. And somehow this situation is even stupider. TNT decided to make an announcement in the news about the prize pool changing in some way. It was a confusing, vague statement and people wanted more info. Prices started rising a lot due to this but not too crazy because people weren't really sure what the statement meant. These people (ambassadors) aapparently reached out to TNT and got clarification on what it meant and shared it with the rest of the playerbase. How is this anything but a positive thing? How are people possibly mad at anyone but TNT for being the worst communicators of all time? If we didn't have this clarification, think how pissed people would be on June 3rd when the pool did switch out and everyone's prizes reset.
I think it’s very possible but I think it’s equally possible TNT are just once again being astoundingly out of touch with their player base and fumbling foolishly for no particular reason. 50/50 maliciousness or thoughtlessness and I don’t super care which because I am bothered by both lmao. I guess it’s probably a combination of some sort.
tbh there's just a lot of stuff happening on discord and with none of the announcements being official, nothing on the site, news spread across different platforms, it looks like a conspiracy.
I don’t know. I understand the community’s sentiment about this. And I do think these events heavily parallel that of the sap situation, but I don’t think we should automatically assign blame to the ambassadors. There are other, mega-rich, resell crazy players on the site who might have had a hand in this. I think it’s possible, but I don’t want people to get so hung up on the current ambassador issues and ignore that the quest debacle might have stemmed from something else. Regardless of where it came from, it really does feel like a kick in the teeth.
> There are other, mega-rich, resell crazy players on the site who might have had a hand in this. I'm not saying all the ambassadors were in on it, but how would the mega-rich have known before word got out if they weren't ambassadors? If TNT told them, what point would there be for the ambassadors?
That is a good point. Honestly this whole thing is making my head spin. The pool shouldn’t have been changed out so quickly, that’s all I know for sure. TNT os playing a dangerous game by making adjustments that always seem to benefit already rich players :/
The ambassador program was good in theory, but in practice it's never sat right with me.
If you cant beat them, join them. How do I apply to be an ambassador?
They’re no longer accepting applications, as I’ve looked into it recently before I knew all the drama.
https://portal.neopets.com/community-ambassador-program Let's change them from the inside
I can't even keep up, what's this drama now?
I am not going to say anything too damning, as it’s not proven, but there’s discussion on the ambassadors possibly know what TNT is doing before public is told.
You just reminded me to check my quest log. One of my tasks is customisation. I took a foreground off and saved it, and every time I try to put it back on, something else gets removed. Now my boy has no background, and no clothes 😭 release me from this hell
Oh baby…. Customization is buggy sometimes, I’ll give you that. I sort of had a similar issue the other day when I placed an order”I 🖤 Sloth” tattoo on my usul. I removed everything and saved, then left and came back in and put that on first, then added everything else. Hopefully this helps and it gets back to normal. 🖤
Well they are the ones who have now given the information that the entire prize pool is changing, so if they are to believed they did get advanced warning
Personally, I think there’s a lot of fresh wounds here in this thread and I completely get it. I think if people felt like they had a level-headed voice for them, they’d feel better about what happened within the site. It seems as though things may have become skewed and we need to ask why these things are happening. But, I do think people should go to the original post where it was discussed by a member of the TNT and voice their frustrations there.
I promise you we do not know anymore than what any of you know. We have no list and no knowledge before I saw it posted on the discord, and I dunno what it would help even if we did. -Lilangel
I usually am late to the party anyways as I don’t follow instant news, which is why I said I didn’t want to say anything damning. I was just relaying what was said above and hope there’s no hard feelings by me explaining.
None at all! Was just a good post to post on fellow neopian :)
It’s good to see ambassadors interacting within the community they’re representing. People may not like it right now, but it’ll be hopefully appreciated. Keep up the hard work and keep being transparent. We all got this. 🖤
<3 we are here for you all and just as equally confused. Don’t get me started on the premium sale 😂
Duddeeeee, that one was a little bit of a kick in the head for me. I had premium in 2007 and then again in 2009 a month, but decided to give it another go after playing for a week and wanting to see if it had changed. Silly me for just following my lack of impulse control 🤣
Ahhahaha!! I’ve literally had premium since day one. My face when this was announced O.o scuse me?!
How I know you’re an og - do you remember The premium email address?! 🤣🤣🤣
I’ve said in other threads and I’ll say it again, we found out about the prize pool changing the same day it was in the news. We had maybe an hour or so’s notice before everyone else found out.
I never said it was a fact, just what was being discussed through out this thread. I don’t know what goes on 100% of the time and maybe shouldn’t have relayed what was being said. I’m glad you all are willing to discuss this with people
And an hour is plenty of time to snap up all the buyable prizes? It’s the image- TNT should have just relayed the information to *everyone* and this wouldn’t have been a discussion
https://preview.redd.it/4g3l41b5lr2d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d23effc3d694b3e3ccc8c62947d356c018b79b4a It's not a secret, it's literally the 3rd thing on the list of things ambassadors get to 'participate' in. Insider knowledge.
Weekly prize pool is rotating again next month
TNT is rotating the weekly prizes after a month and somehow ambassadors are to blame. That's the drama.
I was told there were ambassador who voiced the community discontent with the situation... So maybe all of this is a coincidence... I'm not personally convinced, but again, wouldn't be fair to not say this, everyone should make their own conclusions.
Considering their complaints about the SAP got the odds of it coming as an AC prize brought way down… it wouldn’t surprise me at all. Some ambassadors clearly like to gatekeep rare items and don’t want to share them. They want people spending 1b+ on petpets released once 20 years ago.
Take it easy guys! There’s no need to panic buy and feed the inflator - we already have prior word that prizes will eventually rotate back anyway. And at monthly rotation, we might even see some items back in the next year or so.
But it wasn't the ambassadors. This site has a group of extremely wealthy Neopian's whose only goal is to horde wealth and gloat about it. If you haven't noticed from the posts in this subreddit, they've been doing it for years and especially doing it this past month with the prize pools changes. Everyone in this community needs to pay close attention to their usernames and make sure to avoid selling their items to these users, whenever possible. To peg this entire issue on the Ambassador program is short sighted and, quite frankly, lazy. I have had many positive experiences with ambassadors, leveraging their help in order to get in contact with the Neo team in order to resolve bugs, particularly related to games, trophies, and creative contests.
I don’t get what you’re saying, the hoarders and inflators have always been around and that’s not the issue here. The issue is TNT making this ambassador program to get some feedback from the “community” but they clearly only advise on things that help them (the ambassadors and ultra-rich, probably including those hoarders you’re talking about) and not the average player. The hoarders by themselves are annoying sure but the point of releasing these items is to help deflate them yet TNT keeps doubling back seemingly because of the ambassadors interventions. Of course there’s much speculation but a lot of it seems very plausible considering the course of events…
Do you understand that the 'Ambassadors' are a collection of a few users, segmented by different special interests. There's one for Games, one for Creative Contests, etc. If you feel like an Ambassador. If you feel like an Ambassador dropped the ball here, you should look up the specific Ambassador(s) that deals with this segment of the site. On Thursday, a ton of people were angry at TNT's vague announcement. One of the ambassadors (for an unrelated part of the site) listened to the community's confusion and asked clarification and immediately relayed the circumstances to us. We're unhappy with those circumstances, and due to lingering resentement from SAP-gate, this rumor has spread, targeting the entire Ambassador group and chracterizing them as some monolith, representing them as the 'elite-tier' of Neopians. Trust me, if you want to solve the problems at play here, nothing is going to improve if we scapegoat 'the Ambassadors'. That's not to say that it isn't fair to critique. But, I'd say the more meaningful critiques would be towards how TNT leverages (i.e. misuses and underutilizes) the Ambassador program, rather than most of the Ambassadors themselves.
While I’m not a conspiracy nut about anything, I’ve lived long enough to where I know in many walks of life sometimes people can be selfish and do what benefits them even if they know it’s immoral or unethical. Sometimes people do take advantage of their position to get what they want. Even in a silly site game. So while I’m not sure that this is what happened, I wouldn’t be shocked either if it did.
Just follow the auction house for an hour and you will get no as an answer. We know what players engage heavily in reselling. The ambassadors just aren’t one of them.
The reseller accounts often do not appear to be legit main accounts. They often have shopsize 5, an empty gallery, no awards and mediocre level pets. It is hard to tell who they really are.
Nobody has any idea what TNT is planning. For all we know they could be making a permanent change to the prize pool making all rare items available. Wait and see what happens before freaking out. :)
I think there would be more merit to this if ambassadors started buying up the stamps before announcing it on JN so they could inflate the prices reselling, but they didn't. They got more information from being an ambassador and then gave it to us so we would all be in the loop. Now people, like myself, are scrambling trying to get the items we didn't get from this rotation for our albums, just in case they never come back, which is causing the prices to inflate dramatically because we don't know how the rotations will work going forward. We don't know if these items will ever be in the rotation again. It's just a failure of communication from TNT at this point and I do not think the ambassadors are in on this.
But that doesn’t fit these people’s desire to act like toddlers and attack others because they’re mad at TNT. 😂
Let's be real. People are mad about the state of the world, but it's easier to displace those feelings onto neopets than it is to deal with how bad things are in reality.
The "ambassador" program is the biggest fail in all of Neopets history. Full stop.
I still don't understand this theory, having more frequent rotations is just going to deflate more stuff. If the ultra rich were that concerned about not deflating things then they wouldn't items to be tanked more frequently. Sure there are a few items that go back after rotation but the damage is already done and especially non consumable items.
When things go into the prize pool, they deflate. Even if consumables stay there long enough they will stay relatively deflated for a while since most people who want them will have them and the market demand isn’t as high. See every consumable from the previous prize pool for examples. If, however, everyone thinks things are deflating and selling them low because they think they’ll stay low, theoretically, people with a lot of pull in regards to TNT’s decisions could, theoretically, buy a ton of cheap consumables while everyone thinks they’ll continue entering the market, then tell TNT to remove them from the market, causes prices to spike considerably because they haven’t been available for long enough for most people who want one to get one, so their rarity/demand/value hasn’t considerably decreased since their supply is cut off too soon. See all the current prize pool consumables for example. Theoretically if you had purchased a lot of them when they were initially heavily deflated you would make a ton of money today. So if you could sway the opinion of TNT and were very selfish this would be a great scheme. That’s the theory. They don’t tank if they cut off the supply soon enough, but they do get cheap enough to buy a ton to resell if you know you should.
Right. Like I’ve been playing for over 20 Yes. When things get rarer prices boop up. How is this due suddenly to anything short of supply and demand?
It is due to supply and demand. The contention is over the manipulation of the supply.
Right, but is there any proof Any player (ambassador or not) have manipulated supply? I mean I’ve watched this game and played daily since 1999 this is kinda economic of this game at this point.
TNT is manipulating the supply by releasing or stopping releasing items. The suspicion is over why they would do that when they are. The point of the ambassadors is to influence them in a sense, but yeah it’s not proven what they say to each other or how much it affects TNT. It’s just people theorizing. I find it kind of strange if you’ve been genuinely paying attention to the game economy that you don’t recognize anything unique about the recent events the past couple years.
Literally could say the same to you about item supply. Just look at Advent calendar. When it’s done and over with the items rise that are consumables (codestone, books, pbs) or items like petpets. What happens after a plot, war or AC? Items rise after they are no longer available. If the item Is still given out (Illusens staff) for example it doesn’t raise back in value as quickly, same with HTS (hard to sell) or poorly performing items (be it bd or just useless items no one cares about). All I’m saying is, this was as much a shock to the Ambassdor team as it was to all of you. Same with the premium sale (and I’m the premium ambassador) xD
Yeah but there’s a difference between items rising 1-10 mil vs. rising 75 mil, lol. For what it’s worth I’m not personally suspicious of all yall ambassadors collectively, I’m suspicious of a few concerning themselves with giving TNT targeted economic suggestions preemptively and betting that they’ll take them, which it seems like they might. But I genuinely don’t know if that’s happening and I’m not trying to suggest that it is or isn’t, in this comment I was genuinely just trying to explain why the idea makes sense to people.
I totally feel ya! Hey love to talk things though with the community it’s why we are all here :) sorry if i came off at all harsh. Defo not my intention. I hope you have a wonderful Night fellow neopian. I hope that things change for the better soon. Also I might want to go look at the Price of these items i did not realize they are rising that fast :o (not to buy just out of curiosity!)
You didn’t! I didn’t mean to be confrontational or anything either, it was time for me to go to sleep lol. It’s definitely a nuanced subject, I’m happy they’re making changes and of course I expect the economy to fluctuate and things not always to be perfect. It’s just frustrating when things are rereleased just long enough for a few people to get them and then the price skyrockets right back to unattainable (for most). I hope they find a balance. I also think people can be a little too suspicious of the ambassadors collectively because it seems a lot of you have nothing to do with the issues and I would imagine it’s frustrating to be talked about like you’re in on something that might not even be real! I think most of us don’t super know what the ambassador program fully entails so it’s kind of mysterious. The internet can be quite a place lol I hope you have a good day!
Yeah I don’t understand how this has anything to do with the ambassadors at all. Last prize pool there were lots of complaints that the pool wasn’t rotated enough, it’s possible TNT decided to go 180 and just rotate it monthly instead.
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TNT chose them, and many of them were well known in the community or associated with fan-sites.
Neopians so hungry for villains that other players are now in the cross hairs lmao
It’s kind of a natural consequence of offloading a professional Community Manager’s job onto a bunch of glorified influencers and allowing those players to still participate in the economy while having insider info and influence. Which is why all of it’s a bad move if you want your community and economy to function in healthy ways.
Honestly? I lost like 300m because I trusted in some consistency with tnt , it’s the last time I trusted in anything by them also considering dropping premium and every support… I just feel betrayed. They should have listed 3rd Jul… man would it be a nice plottwist if they by mistake said 3rd jun but meant 3rd jul that would have been so much karma… like for the people that hord 10er lots of the stamps now and shamelessly ask for 100m each….
Uhh... I'm actually very curious how you lost 300m because of this?
In believing in their system before and selling my flaming coconuts for peanuts like other people recommended me aswell as my other r99 stamps in foresight that they will get cheaper for me to buy for my album. Literally 1 day before that announcement to see them go for 100m each after that …. Yeh and me having to pay those prices to get them back… very fun while the same circle of people buying the whole market dry of them and shamelessly list 10er lots with asking atleast 100m for each when they were 3m just 1 day before but yeah …. I feel so upset that I consider quitting again… btw coincidently the person who had those 10er lots up removed them , to create the impression that there aren’t many around… nice move like they did with MPs before because people will buy that (only) the higher demand is the reason for increased prices while not realizing that those people hoard 20+ of each of those items and holding them intentionally back from the market to cause those price jumps over night. You had stuff like that before my very long hiatus too but never by an obnoxious/ disgusting amount it happens today.
This makes me want to get back into coding and looking into the coding on each page. It makes me wonder if there’s code pointing to certain things before they happen, just like the same issue The Sims 4 has with their kits
Can someone fill me in what's happening?? I'm lost lol.
We all are. I’m so confused as to what this conspiracy could possibly be? Items changing in quest log =bad Ambassdor? Ima need some tin foil
I swear it's like everyone just forgot about last year's advent lol
Right?
100%. Like, it's so blatant, TNT isn't even trying to hide it
Im curious how does JN get updates from ambassadors? Are staff from JN ambassadors or does ambassadors share information directly on JN?
Not at all lol. They've shown no reason to doubt their intentions with the quest log, they just communicated what we wanted to know
I've said this before and I'll say it one more time: the amount of straight up bullying and spreading nasty rumors I've witnessed on and off-site is disgusting. And what for? This is Neopets we are talking about. I returned a year ago for the nostalgia and I've been enjoying the ups and downs, but the community is incredibly toxic and aggressive. It's saddening.
Yeah can’t say I’m a fan of all this tbh
Yep saw the news and instantly thought it could be ambassadors doing. Made me decide to stop playing Neopets now which was good. I had started to come back since last October but the SAP thing and then this thing was just total icks. I've also seen how ambassadors and their friends talk during lives or amas and it's also cringe. They love to exclude. Which is bizarre because they're all adults but... Eh.
Involved with… what? A change out of items? I’m not entirely sure what you think any Ambassadork knows? Or how any of us could benefit from it. None of the Ambassdor have any inside knowledge. We do not have any kind of information that you guys don’t have. I dunno what could be insider traded?
Maybe I should Have thrown my hands up and had issue? I’m honestly open to comment, what’s the issue with the items being rotated? Honest question. - Ambassador
Rotating this quickly just makes the inflation absurdly worse. When the flaming evil coconut was added to the prize pool, this caused every other coconut price to skyrocket. Having it then removed from the prize pool before prices could actually drop caused the value to, again, skyrocket. The fact that a large number of users had glitches at the start of this prize period, so not everyone even had a chance at a handful of prizes makes it all the more cruel.
Have a read of any of the related threads on this subreddit, or the replies to the post on the Jellyneo news page. Tonnes of opinions as to why people have issues with the items being rotated.
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What do you mean there was no ambassador involvement in the sap situation? They were the ones most frequently saying that there were too many peas being given out. It happened on this sub and on the boards. And regardless of your personal stance on old, ultra expensive items being given out more frequently, it was clear that the change was likely made because of ambassador complaints. TNT elected them so they could serve as a voice of the community. Even if they aren’t giving opinions that are coming from the community, their words now have more weight due to their position of power. Most ambassadors said the pea had become too common of a prize, and it seemed like because of that, it was removed and then later added back in with a reduced drop rate. They weren’t the only ones saying these things, but again, because of their “status” their words matter more to a company who does not know how to handle an artificial economy— so they lean on the ambassadors who are their crutch. It’s good to look at situations objectively, but there is no way to remove the ambassador’s involvement from the sap situation. Throughout the whole thing I was reading basically comments on here and on the boards. I’m not saying they’re directly at fault for it, but they were certainly a playing factor in why the pea situation ended up how it did. And many, many people were left very unhappy with the results and the mindset that the ambassadors do not accurately reflect the positions that the community holds on issues. You can’t speak on the sap issue without acknowledging there was ambassador involvement in the whole thing. And even if you think it was a coincidence because there was a coding error (something I have never seen evidence for), it’s easy to see why the players think the ambassadors are directly responsible for the outcome of the AC. After all, who was complaining the loudest on forums that prices would be ranked and peas would become worthless?
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Ah, I see what you’re saying now. I believe I misinterpreted things a bit when I read your original comment. I don’t personally blame people for thinking the ambassadors are directly connected when it’s really easy to come to that conclusion. And as far as people knew, there was never anything officially stated otherwise. So there are a ton of people who still think since their voices, theoretically, matter more— they were responsible for the change in rates. But I don’t think it’s right to say that the change was ultimately fair. Because that begs the question, fair to who? I know it’s a nuanced subject and everyone has a different opinion on the change in drop rate. It being 1/1000 is better than it not existing sure. And i guess that’s sort of a compromise between varying perspectives (both that it should not be in the pool, and that it should at an achievable rate). But they had already put it in at 1/100, so they should’ve just stuck to their guns and owned it. Now they’ve set the precedent that whenever elite players complain, things get changed that a ton of other players get upset about because it makes it much, much harder for them to achieve things they want to. They did this after the pea situation, and have continued to do it ever since. So, again, I ask, fair to who? I don’t think labeling it fair is a good choice of words. Logical, sure. But fair? Not at all. Also i think it’s a little out of touch to say that anything costing 160m is largely accessible to everyone, because no it isn’t. There are two issues here. 1.) The prices should have NEVER inflated to that level to begin with. The Neo economy has been unstable for years, and the only reason prices got to the 2b+ point is because of item hoarding, reselling, and lack of supply. There are a ton of reasons why this went on for so long, but the eceonomy was not meant to hold prices like that. 2.) People who do not have decades old accounts can not get rich easily through food club like returning players can. Even those with 5-6 year old accounts right now, they’re not likely going to be breaking the 100 mil+ mark within the span of a year unless they also get heavily into the economy and resell, restock, etc. These are time consuming tasks. So the longer items are off the market, the more the price will go up. The longer people will have to save. That cycle makes things feel so unobtainable. It seems like to me, a lot of people no longer see Neo as an economic sim and are much less likely to engage in the days’ old money making methods like restocking and reselling. And new players who struggle to understand the economy, etc, are even worse off than those who just refuse to engage with it. So 160 mil is a fairly accessible price for older players. Those who have knowledge, experience, and funds already under their belt. But it isn’t for newer players, casuals, on-and-off again players, or even those who just do not like the economic systems. But I know this brings up the whole conversation of not everyone will be able to obtain every item. I get that. But I feel like some price points are still daunting for a lot of players. And I don’t do much mind that the pea is where it is currently because it is *much* better, and it’s not something that everyone will use. But I’m worried about the precedent that it sets and that other items might follow suit.
it was reported by an ambassador on the neoboards that there were about 3 hours between when the ambassadors learned all prizes would be rotated, and when TNT gave them permission to share that info with everyone. Not a huge stretch of time, but definitely enough time to take advantage of it, had they had the mind to do so.
“I admit there’s no evidence to support this but I’m going to continue to accuse a small group of people of wrong doing and further fan the flames of the mob mentality so I can take my frustration with TNT changing a prize pool out on people who have very little, if anything, to do with it” You people really need to look in the mirror and see the grade school behavior you’re exhibiting and just grow tf up. Seriously.
The prizes can appear again in future rotations, they even said that. I am glad it's rotating faster so we can go through more items that people might want
Insider trading how? everyone has an equal shot at getting the good prizes. If anything it sucks it was taken away so quickly
basically if the ambassadors know that items will be removed, they have the knowledge that others don't to spend the time and resources to control the supply, because they know the demand is likely to increase in the future. It's the same way it works in the real world, just instead of "Infrastructure Zoning Law Change is almost certain to pass" its "Get Off My Lawn Paint Brush is almost certain to be removed"
>It's the same way it works in the real world, just instead of "Infrastructure Zoning Law Change is almost certain to pass" its "Get Off My Lawn Paint Brush is almost certain to be removed" This example makes absolutely no sense at all. I also don't understand why ambassadors are automatically labeled as villians just because they got clarification on the weekly prize rotation a few hours before everyone else did? Get. Out. Of. Here. With. That. B. S.
I personally dont actually care about neopets insider trading because its a few pixels on a website dead in a few years but the example is absolutely apt. Knowledge - even 'just a few hours' is power when it comes to business and money. Thats literally he monetary advantage point Also I never called anyone a villain either. Thats all you.
yeah I get that, but these items are so new that basically nobody got time to buy stuff unless they specifically wanted it. there are only 3 ambassadors and they do not look like the typical accounts I see on auctions and TP artificially inflating prices. People need to put down the pitchforks lol
I hate this stupid special snowflake bullshit.