https://www.tumblr.com/csvent-2/811783168534380544/hello-im-making-my-own-lore-heavy-humanoid-cs
a small list of things that immediately turns me off from a cs, hopefully it's helpful!
-hard to read guides - be it because they're handwritten, or because they use a very fancy font, or because the text and the background is on are too similar in colour, if it's difficult to read people are Very unlikely to read it (avoid red on black, very light colours for the text, or very bright and saturated colours overall)
-too many traits for basic things - things like natural skin colours, eye and hair colours, shapes inside the eye, heterochromia, natural hair textures, scars and skin conditions, should never require traits imo. unnatural skin colours, colourful sclera, big sharp teeth, long or unusual tongues are common enough traits for species that it's fine to trait, but I've seen things like black hair textures, brown skin, albinism and vitiligo traited and that's just really shitty to do
-overly complicated rarity system - most people will be turned away if the trait rarity is hard to follow, most of the species I've been in have boiled it down to 3 categories (regular, seasonal, super special hard to get ones) tho it can def be done in other ways
-unclear rules, especially about nsfw - you don't have to have have nsfw (be that gore or sex) in your species, but you gotta be clear about it. For starters never treat nsfw like it means just sex. It stands for not safe for work and encapsulates gore, bodyhorror and sexual things, so if you're talking about just one of those, name them properly. Secondly, don't use vague language like "illegal" "immoral" "weird", it makes it sound like you're 12 and don't know what you're talking about. Say which specific country's laws you're following, list the things you allow/don't allow, or put a blanket ban on nsfw if you can't/won't deal with it. I've seen a species state in its rules that "nsfw prompts are allowed but discouraged" and good luck guessing what that means lol
-launching with a bunch of sales without the species being ready - listen I know we all gotta get that bag and half the point of a species is adoptables, but if half your guides/rules/faq aren't done, your website is missing most of its pages, you have like 3 prompts and maybe one page of lore but you're putting out sale after sale, the species is just gonna look like a cash grab. You have to have enough info up to draw people in and make it clear you're passionate about your species before you ask them to pay you for it. Since you say your species is lore heavy, this is even more important
-no resell policy or cooldown - if people are allowed to sell their characters regardless of how they got them with no limitations, I usually turn away. One time in a species like that I made a free custom for someone and a week later they turned around and sold it for over 100 usd and I will forever be mad about it. Likewise, if anyone can sell an (official) adopt as soon as they buy it, your species will quickly become breeding ground for flippers and scalpers and those always ruin the fun in getting adopts
as well as some advice - I know your species will be heavy on the lore but please know and accept many people will join without reading the lore at all. I will, bc I love reading lore, but many won't, don't let it upset you! In general you have to be prepared to deal with people that seem completely illiterate and unable to follow basic instructions. If you've ever worked customer service, you already know this haha</3
you can look at vent blogs, but you can't aknowledge them unless someone specifically brings them up to you. all cs players know that mods read the vent blogs, and mods know the players post on them, but nobody ever adresses it and I think that's for the best.
wishing you lots of luck with your species!
These are really good points - I do also want to add on piggybacking off the closer this anon made that very *rarely* can you please everyone. Even if you do all these things and more, there'll very likely still be a couple complaints about your CS. Don't bend backwards to a point you hurt yourself to try to please everyone: I Mean hey, we've seen on this blog alone some people have the complaint of "ugh xyz species has way too many trait options" while other people will complain "ugh abc species has way too few trait options", just for example. Some people LOVE tons of traits, other people HATE that.
If it's something like that, where it largely comes down to opinion, and you see a complaint about something you, as the owner/creator, are passionate about or like a lot? Don't feel obligated to change it.
