ASadDog

It'd cool if they'd introduce a new neopet species, but that seems absurdly unlikely at this point. They introduced the vandagyre, what, like two years ago at this point? And it still only has 4 nonbasic colors and nowhere near the wearables catalog of every other species in the game? One of the primary gimmicks of any adoptable animal/monster game is introducing new ones and they've turned that into an impractical chore with customization.

I used to play for the plots. Back when the trading card sets were coming out and they'd have a tie-in plot almost every year it was pretty sweet. There would always be some issue that, apparently, was completely unforeseen by TNT. Like during the Hannah and the Ice Caves war when some of the chump-level fights would infect your BD pet with some disease and the price for the cure shot into the stratosphere, so the Neoboards and all the fan sites were filled with people complaining/refreshing at the Healing Springs every 15 minutes. Or the way the Underwater Basket Weaving section of the library in the Lost Desert plot reached Water Temple-levels of infamy.

The plots were great for injecting some energy into what was otherwise be a pretty stagnant routine of logging in, doing dailies, doing whatever you do to earn NPs and logging off. The speculation, planning, and energy were all great. Then in the end you got a cool unique trophy for your lookup, and if you did well enough you got some nice rewards like a paint brush or maybe a useful BD weapon. I don't think anything else has ever been as successful at pulling new players into the site, either.

I'm honestly just hoping that people start coming back.. I

They probably won't. The market that Jumpstart needs to appeal to is all on tablets and smartphones now and not browsing websites on a computer. Maaaybe the game would have a chance if they could get that app they promised out soon (lol) but I don't really know what kind of features they'd be able to port to it that would attract kids again. Tablet versions of the popular games? Some portable version of the battledome or the neoboards? Whatever it is would probably require a lot more resources than TNT seems to have now.

More money and item sinks would help a lot to clear out the excess. Putting more into Krawk Island that would motivate people to spend dubloons there would be a big help with those prices. Some nice items in their shops or some random chance games that only accept dubloons, maybe? You could even expand out and make an entire new area of the world that exists on a barter economy and only accepts random junk for more valuable items. The risk with with that, of course, is trying to keep the incentive for high-value items there, since suddenly being able to get those items in higher quanity could rapidly deflate those items as well. Maybe something that cycles through different lists of retired items periodically? It would cause fluxuations but the speculation behind it might be interesting, too.

Another thing that could help would be something like the Kadotery where you have to throw random items into a pit for a nice trophy/avatar. This carries a similar risk long-term because as the people who want those prizes will get them, fewer and fewer people will play them. Unless Neopets suddenly experiences a giant surge of new players and starts conintually cycling new blood in.

The challenge with all of this is, with the way the game works and a stagnating/ shrinking userbase any kind of cycling out of items and money would only be temporary. Once the shiny new gimmick wore off of any random item/money pit, or after a point where all the people determind to win something out of it have done so, then it won't be nearly as effective. Even if TNT decided to manually delete mass amounts of items and money from everyone's inventory, most of it will regenerate eventually. (Barring retired items.)