One of the most irritating things about playing Pet Society is that whenever you perform actions with your pet, you can send out spam notifications that are beyond your control. For instance, if your pet visits your friend’s pet to give them a hug, then Pet Society sends a notification without your permission through facebook notifications to your friend about your action. Likewise, you send out Pet Society notification messages for running races in the stadium. Since visiting friends and running races are two of the most basic ways of earning coins, this ensures that you spam your friends on a daily basis with irritating, mind-numbing notifications.
Back in October I asked whether these notifications could be stopped, but was told that the only way to stop the notifications was for my friends to block them from their end through facebook. This is a really awful solution, which was making me feel like quitting the game rather than be a spammer. We should be in control of what notifications we send out, if any! I would prefer none at all.
Here’s my solution to the Pet Society spam notification problem. If you always choose “fight” when you visit your friends, then they won’t get any spam from your actions. A friend and I figured this out and tested it. It’s a great solution, and even though you may feel mean for “fighting” with your friend’s pets, at least you aren’t spamming them. Not spamming is the mark of a true friend. I also only run races with two friends that have all notification from Pet Society blocked under their facebook notifications settings. That way I don’t send out any Pet Society spam notifications at all (or at least none that I’m aware of!).
Hope this helps if you’re facing the same problem!
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Also, a note about the Pet Society Photo Album. I haven’t used it because I don’t feel comfortable making an album for my fake pet photos for all my real life friends and family to see. I’ve heard that using the camera and album features also result in spam notifications from Pet Society to all your facebook friends every time you add a photo. Your album can also end up in the facebook “highlights” section, which could be supremely embarrassing. I’m not sure if there’s a solution to prevent these notification from being sent, and I can’t think of any ideas to stop them.
For now, I’ll continue to use print screen to take screencaps of my pet. I think it would be really great if Playfish added an option to take snaps and download them directly to my harddrive. That way players wouldn’t have to worry about the facebook pet society album middle man and the related notification spam issue.
