(sorry for the delays in posting... Andrew and I will try to post more regularly...)
Last week, I was chatting with an FFS friend of mine. We were talking about high-value pets and about how the gameplay changes. It is an entirely different world from the play styles that I had seen. The new style boils down pretty simply:
I want to be the highest-valued pet in this network.
Whether that network is your local region, your school or work, or the entire world. These players take all of their profits and dump it back into their own value.
"But wait!" you yell. "You can't buy yourself, so how does their cash get combined into their own value?"
That's the trick, now isn't it? If "John" wants to increase his value, then he will require cooperation from several other players. Pets are traded back and forth in a somewhat complicated set of maneuvers intended to shift the cash away from John to whomever will be the John's new owner. The new owner then buys John using that extra cash, and John's value has now gone up.
I don't have all the mechanics down, nor fully understood. But if you want to get into the high-value game, then expect to spend a lot of time instant-messaging with, making friends with, and establishing trust with your fellow players. All of these deals are worked out there, and then quickly executed within the game.
Update: sorry, this "newly discovered" style is in reference to my original post about playing styles.
Newly Discovered Playing Style
Take a break, get paid.
I recently visited my mother for her 50th birthday and Mother's Day. They do not have Internet, so I was away from the computer.
Throughout my visit, I thought about Friends For Sale. I missed using the application, but I knew I would be in for a surprise when I logged in tonight.
Yep, four days away from Facebook apparently yields big. My two most expensive pets were snatched up. I suggest that if you want some extra cash, just don't make any purchases for a few days, and see how your bankroll stacks up.
With all this money, I have so many questions:
Should I buy back my most valuable pet?
Try and scoop up some $100k gems?
Finding Quick-Sell Pets
I've covered how you make 4% each time a pet sells. To make money, you need to have pets selling. As many and as often as you can. The pets do not have to be highly-valued... selling 10 $10k pets will net you $4,000. Selling one $100k pet will net you $4000.
To keep the pets moving, one technique I covered is to have a long list of pets. Just based on probability, you'll increase the rate of sales.
But another technique, which can be even more important, is to find pets that will be purchased quickly. The pet may be under-valued, and somebody else will come along and buy them. But the typical case is a pet who will be repurchased by their owner.
These pets are not too hard to spot. Look at their purchase history on their profile. You may need to flip a page or two, but what you're looking for is a pattern where the current owner keeps buying the pet. Somebody will buy the pet, and the original owner will buy them back right away. Somebody else buys... bought back. Every now and then, maybe two owners will be in between, but the original owner continues to rebuy the pet.
Also important is to look at the times of the purchases. Let's say John's pet Jane is bought away 10 days ago. John rebuys her at 9 days. Somebody else buys her at 3 days, and he buys her back at 3 days. This is a good sign -- John really wants to keep Jane and buys her as soon as he logs back in.
On the other hand, if Jane was bought at 10 days, and John waits until 5 days to rebuy her? You could end up holding Jane for a while. Go find another pet that is repurchased much more quickly.
I may refer to this later as "flipping a pet" (the term comes from real estate and "flipping a home"). It is a great way to make a quick buck. And if all of your pets are purchased to flip? Then you will make money very quickly!
I Was Mean
I've talked about buying wars, and how you can use that to make yourself money -- as long as the other person is left holding the pet.
An easy way to ensure that you won't be left with the pet is to find an owner who has a pattern of buying their pets back. Look at the history on the pet to see if the current owner always buys the pet back. Even better is when you find somebody who keeps buying their girlfriend or boyfriend back. They simply won't quit!
A few months ago, I found a couple who owned each other. Gold! I bought the girl, and he bought her back as expected. So I bought her and bought the guy. They each bought the other back. I kept doing this until I could not afford both of them, but I had more than enough to buy just the girl. Then she got too expensive, but now I had enough for the guy! This went on for a few days... then the girl didn't buy him back. Oops! Now I was stuck with some dude on my pet list! Oh no!
Eventually, she did buy him, and I stopped messing with them. I had made some good money.
And hoo boy was it fun!
Feature Request: Improved Wishlist
(this is the first "feature request" post ... I'll be posting these periodically with my/your thoughts on suggested changes to FFS)
I've mentioned before how long my wishlist is... hundreds of potential pets (652 currently). This makes my Dashboard quite slow to load, and it even crashes the browser on my iPhone. I'd really like to see an improved wishlist...
I believe a solution is to move the Wishlist to a tab under the "Pets" menu. This tab would be a companion to the existing Friends, Everyone, On Sale, and network tabs. Within that tab, you could then filter your Wishlist by male/female, and sort according to price and activity. That would go a huge way to solving my Wishlist issues.
Also note that the lists under Pets tab are paginated, and they also display the purchase price (a problem that I discussed yesterday). This would greatly improve the usability.
The above change is mostly "cosmetic" and doesn't change the base functionality of the Wishlist. One functional change that I'd like to see is to have two Wishlists. I would like to use the second Wishlist for tracking people with interesting pets, but whom I do not want to actually buy. I just want to revisit them periodically and raid their pets.
