Suggestion:24h 50% discount for PERMAPET! What u think? Or drop the price of PERMAPET

[Imon Nightfire]

Kittycats used to do a weekend Perma-pet sale once in a while, but I've been waiting for months for one and haven't seen one. I try to do one Perma-pet120 per month on my favorite cats I want to keep but yes, another weekend sale would be great!

[HikariItsumo Resident]

Actually, if I recall well...

There has been only one perma pet kit sale since the beginning of KittyCatS in 2011.

Hikari

[Imon Nightfire]

I know of at least two I think, because one I stocked up on them and one I read the notice late and kicked myself for missing it. I could be wrong in my recall but I think it was Kittycats. Since then I've been trying to pay more attention to notices on time. Anyway, it would be great. I have a lot of collectibles I would like to perma-pet. I guess I will store more in inventory.

[Shukie Galicia]

lets face it. they wont do it. :/ too much money to be made.

[Kayleigh McMillan]

I think if we only think of the L$ made on Permapet at a lower rate than on the current rate I think a permanent lower price of the potion would be attractive for KC because many refuse to Permapet their kitties at the current rate and this makes me think something else lays behind the current price for Permapet.
I think this is something like a discouragement of having too many pets.
Why that is I can only ponder on but I just think if they ranked the potion under L$1000 they would have more and steady sales from this vita so they must have a very good reason not to.
Especially because I and I think many others have their cats under a blanket in the Online Cattery so it can't be for server capacity reasons I think.
Basically all the prim space we would normally pay to breed in world is reduced by the introduction of the Online Cattery so all the spendings which would normally go to prim space can be spend on KittyCatS! and related products.
Having Permapets wandering around costs us prim space and as such land we pay tier for.
And therefore I think they rather have us to spend our money on their products than on land basically.
Wether it are prims to accomodate our breeders or Permapets it does not matter much, the less prims we pay for at Linden Labs the more money for KC.
It started with the low prim mode for our cats and now we have 2D mode and even the Online Cattery besides it is convenient it is pretty smart from KC as a business I think.
Those Permapets if we were to pay the price would take prims ofcourse why keeping our lovely pets we paid for big time in 2D mode or in the Online Cattery that makes no sense.
Therefore I think prim space in cats, pets or Permapets is discouraged and will always be discouraged.
While almost all vita's have the business strategy price marking L$280 for Love 10 sounds better than L$300 etc. etc. the price of Permapet is one of the only vita's no strategies are used on: L$1800 - L$1500 eat it or in other words discouragement.
A permapet does not consume vita's anymore etc. etc. and I think what any business needs is steady monthly income over a one time deal.
I can't blame KC though I've always admired smart business when I see it and this I mean wholeheartedly and in all earnesty.

[Ivy Norsk]

When I first got my Firestorm kitty and started taking breeding classes, I was struck by how other people immediately described me as a “breeder” of Kittycats even though I had just begun and did not think of me as just someone who had gotten a pet. I think this is an expression of how once you take up this hobby you join a circle of people who are, by and large, producing cats for the use and enjoyment of other breeders.

The market is very saturated; people already have a lot of cats. The next natural expansion of the Kittycats market would be to regular SL residents who aren’t really looking to breed - they just want a pet. And what they would rather have, because it’s hassle free, is an SL pet that doesn’t need to be fed - a permapet.

This is not something that KittyCats! HQ would want to encourage since their cash flow comes from cat food. It is only natural that they would rather that “pet-owners” be assimilated into the pay-for-catfood model even if an individual only owns 2 cats.

I am sure that HQ knows that most people permapet for sentimental reasons and that the great bulk of permapetted cats would never be sold (much as the diamond cartel pushes the use of diamonds in engagement rings so that the gems are never resold which would drive the price down on what is a very common rock). However, I am sure that they also are aware of the possibility of the secondary market seeking to expand to a “pet” audience. And a permapet never dies, so the supply would keep going up, and ever so slowly the proportion of cats who do not rely on pet food, for which they would still have to provide customer service, would grow.

Keeping the price of permapet potion high ensures a minimum price for which a Perma-Kitty could be sold. It would be at least 1500L plus the market value of the cat itself. And so it becomes an item the the casual SL pet-owner might not purchase…. unless they really wanted it. I think KittyCats! HQ has just decided that 1500L is the number where they’re willing to to let a cat pass into no-more-funds-from-that-cat land.

[Tad Carlucci]

It's obvious that the 1500L$ price has nothing to do with equipment costs, programming costs, support costs, or anything else related to our long-term holding of cats at no income to them. They provide all that as a free service. I point out there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million, cats currently being held are using this free service.

I think the 1500L$ price is nothing more than a tail, pinned on a donkey, by a blindfolded Resident.

There is no logic to it, it just is.

To me, the lack of any attempt to determine the correct price-point does not indicate greed or any other motivation. Quite simply, I think they don't bother because they don't care; there is no motivation for them, at all, either way.

For all the complaints, I doubt they sell enough kits for it to matter to them. Certainly not enough for it to cause even a blip in their daily cash flows; and not even a blip in the number of our cats they're already servicing FOR FREE.

[Ivy Norsk]

I had to read your post several times to figure out exactly what you meant by “FOR FREE”.
I agree with you that the 1500L permapet cost is likely not part of the cost accounting for their standard operating costs. I would suspect that all the equipment, customer service, etc. is rolled into the income from food and to a lesser extent milk, since those are the backbone of the income stream. Do the post 120-day cats live in the database and cattery and SL inventories forever without us being charged? Yes. If they were to disappear from the database it would affect breeding records. They can’t have the cats expire in our SL inventories - that would be a deal-breaker. And they don’t Want the Cats to Die. And then they have to make the Cattery on par with SL inventories, or perhaps they didn’t have to, but for whatever reason, they did. They could have made a call to kick cats out after a certain age, but they didn’t.

But, KittyCats! has put a lot of checks and balances into this game. If you do not feed the cat, they disable it. It becomes sick. You have to pay, one way or another in food or potions, to get the kitty operational again.

Now let’s consider something else that you said:

“I point out there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million, cats currently being held are using this free service.”

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million, cats. That’s a lot of cats. I have no reason to doubt your estimation of the numbers. I do think that if that quantity of cats were permapetted out onto the grid (instead of being retired into menagerie) it might have some affect larger than a blip on the markets one way or another depending on how it was handled. Right now, sitting disabled, they are kind of a neutral force, but I kind of doubt that Kittycats! HQ hasn’t thought about them.

[Tad Carlucci]

Cat cost accounting, if you want to call it that, is pretty trivial. The KittyCatS region is the main cost. There's a few dollars a month for the web site, and a few cents (pro-rated) a month for the domain name.

Their primary source of income is food. Milk and other vitamins probably run a distant second, with Starter sales (including collectible/limited edition) following far, far behind. Pet kits probably fall at the bottom of the list, following well behind clothing and accessories.

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Except for food costs, we're *NEVER* charged for boxes or live cats, anywhere.

Boxes never cost anything.

You can store as many boxes or live cats as you want in your avatar's inventory.

You can store as many boxes or live cats as you want in the Cattery.

If you ignore region rental costs paid (eventually) to Linden Labs, even in-world boxes and live cats are free.

If you store them in your inventory and lose a few dozen and come back in a year or two and ask for them to be replaced, they will be, for free.

If you find one which is so old it won't even go to the Menagerie, they'll update it, for free. (And, if it's an ancient Starter, is that ever a hassle for them! They have to create it BY HAND and trust you to delete the old one.)

Cats, live or boxed, NEVER "expire". They're never disabled. Even a cat which has been sick for three years is not disabled.

You can CHOOSE to purchase food. If you don't, yes, the cat gets "sick" but does NOT "expire"

In-world, if you don't like the blanket for a sick cat, just change prim mode.

Yes, a sick cat can't breed, but that's not germane to a discussion of pets.

And, yes, a few of the interactions don't make sense when the cat is sick. But it only costs a week's food to fix a sick cat. And that's at half-rate "pet food" level .. or 1/40th of a 20-Pack. That's 74.5 L$ .. nowhere near the price of a Pet kit .. to get them back.

As to my estimates, I'm using "round figures". If you want better estimates, see my other thread. I used "perhaps over a million" to allow for cats sent to the Menagerie.

I agree that pets would have some effect upon the player-to-player markets, if there were any significant quantity available. At present, I doubt there's enough Perma-pet'd cats out there to have any real effect.

I agree the price for pet kits is far too high. I disagree the price should be simply reduced.

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When you're thinking about how the company views cats consider: all cats, live, box, menagerie, pet, deleted, or lost from your inventory, are identical. They are nothing more than a record (maybe two or three) in an SQL database. For the company, a "cat" is basically "free". Make another one, or another million, and their cost is the same as if there were no cats at all.

[Ivy Norsk]

Just a quick note because it's late in my time zone, but as far as cat cost accounting, I have always assumed that the primary cost was salaries for the KittyCats! team including the customer service. I would, for their sakes, hope that they are all paid in RL money.