Avatars We Want

by aleu1986

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For many, collecting avatars is a large and important part of their Neopets experience. The Neopets avatars set this site apart from many other online forums due to users not being able to upload their own images for use on the boards. Instead, Neopian avatars must be earned through achieving high scores on games, owning certain items or Neopets and are even awarded through random events. Many avies are clickable – which is to say that no real effort is required to obtain them, you just need to view a certain page, or perhaps a petlookup, and a brand new avatar is added to your collection. For many, the number of avatars you have collected is a status symbol, a way of telling how invested you are in the game and how much you care to improve your account. Often, people who are lending expensive items which give avatars (such as the Bony Grarrl Club, or BGC) will not lend their precious item to players with a low avie count. Avatars are important to Neopets players. People may practice for weeks to obtain certain game avies, or save up for months to afford collateral before finding a lender of avie items.

Lately, new avatar releases have not been very frequent, and many collectors long for new pretty pixels to add to their already lengthy lists. I headed over to the very place you show off your fanciest fonts and most amazing avies: The Avatar Chat. I asked the players there what kinds of avatars they would like to see in the (hopefully not too distant) future. I`ve split the suggestions into different categories corresponding to which area of the site they`re related to.

Neopets, petpets and petpetpets

As previously mentioned, there are several avatars that require you to either own a certain Neopet, or visit a petlookup of one to obtain some avatars. Whether they`re clickable, or you need to own the Neopet in question, these are pretty popular, but players feel more variation is required. The newest Neopets species are not well represented in avatars at all. There is a Faerie Xweetok avatar, but no avies featuring Lutari, Ogrin, Vandagyre or Gnorbu (unless you count the Seekers one with Professor Lambert). The default pet avatars are automatically added to your list and so they do not count. The poor Vandagyre doesn`t even have one!

Among the suggestions were a pretty, girly Ruki avatar and avatars for more Royal pets, specifically Peophins. (The Royal Korbats have one for females and one for males). Personally, I would love avatars for Desert and Faerie Eyries, as well as more avatars featuring Baby and Grey Neopets.

Several petpet and petpetpet avatars were suggested: Doglefox, Hasee, Noil, Springabee, Whoot, and last but certainly not least: A Plumpy avatar – possibly also featuring bacon.

Neopet colour/season-related avies

One user suggested a Christmas Uni avatar. I wouldn`t mind ones featuring other Christmas Neopets too, such as Xweetok and Vandagyre, both of which are great examples of the colour and quite festive. As mentioned above, both species are in dire need of more avatars.

Another suggestion was an avatar featuring a Halloween Pteri. This species has already got several avatars, but more Halloween-related avies are always a welcome addition. Halloween Shoyru, Scorchio and Flotsam are also interesting suggestions. The Kiko and Jubjub fit this holiday perfectly in their pumpkin costumes.

Some players wanted avies featuring zombies or ninjas. In the Zombie category, Aisha, Quiggle and Tonu would be my top candidates. Perhaps we could get an avatar of a Stealthy Neopet? I suggest Bori, Gelert and Shoyru.

Generic, seasonal avatars is something certain players miss. We do have a couple of winter ones, but autumn/fall was brought up as an example of an underrepresented season. Suggestions were made for avatars featuring leaves and trees. The other seasons are fairly well covered.

Items

Some of the more serious avatar collectors want another avatar connected to an expensive item. The most well known ones are the so-colled "big three": MSPP, BGC and SuAP. (Malevolent Sentient Poogle Plushie TCG, Bony Grarrl Club and Super Attack Pea). These are the avatars you`ll often see people making threads about, asking for a lender.

One player suggested making an avatar for feeding a Draik Egg to your Neopet! Somehow I don`t think TNT will approve of this suggestion.

A Premium member mentioned the need for a Neocola machine avatar – so we can spend all those Neocola tokens we get from the Cosmic Dome.

Achieving certain numbers

There are several areas/aspects of the site that could use more intrest and popularity. Some players suggested making avatars for reading (having your Neopets intelligence at a certain level, or reading a number of books to them) and gourmet feeding (not too many foods required for a potential avatar though, to reduce inflation).

The Faerieland Employment Agency was mentioned by many as being an under-appreciated feature that should be used more. Adding an avatar (or a trophy!) for completing a certain number of jobs would certainly help.

Other suggestions included buying a million stocks, donating a certain number of items to the Money Tree, collecting Negg tokens at the Neggery or collecting 1 million in a single round of Food Club. In contrast to this, someone suggested an avatar for having zero Nepoints on hand, or even in the bank. A user mentioned a guild avatar which would be awarded for making a high number of posts in your guild. They thought this would encourage people to be more active and chatty in their guilds.

Avatars for upgrading you shop or gallery to certain sizes was also suggested, this is also a good NP sink as the points spent doing this are removed from the economy. A Neodeck avatar (for owning a certain number of cards, not a complete deck) was also mentioned.

Someone suggested we get avatars for having a certain number of game or site event trophies – that should really motivate players and spike their interest in participating in events. Achieving the rank Grand Master on a certain number of games was another idea, and finally a popular suggestion was made of avatars based on account ages, such as five and ten year old accounts.

Site features, dailies, quests, and contests

Various suggestions were made as to which contests and site features should award avatars: Poetry Contest, Gallery spotlight, PPL, Art Gallery, Storytelling and the Daily Puzzle.

We already have an avatar for the Kelp restaurant in Maraqua, why not add one for The Golden Dubloon on Krawk Island too? Give the people who don`t battle, or who have too high level Neopets something to spend their dubloons on. I also suggest avatars for Tombola and Healing Springs, and to spark people`s creativity, I`m just throwing this out there: Neoadventure avatar.

More stamp avatars was also suggested, as well as avies for completing the sea shell and coin albums. A suggestion I think many players would hesitate to follow was rejecting a Fountain Faerie Quest. If TNT actually made an avatar for that, I think only a few people would own it! (Same goes for the "converting an UC pet" avie that some evil users apparently had suggested).

Personally, I think an avatar for rejecting any kind of Faerie quest would be cute. It could have a grumpy Fire Faerie on it, for example.

Games

This is a list of the games people suggested avatars for.

200m Peanut Dash

Berry Bash

Bouncy Supreme

Nova Defender

Sophie`s Stew

Spinacles

Turmac Roll

Ugga Drop

What we DO NOT want