Hi! I can answer some of the qualms/questions you have about this as I am a staff member for figment!
1) the Explore feature will be getting a huuuuuge revamp when we have the capacity to do so! We want to move away from the point and click, boringness of the current system. This system is leftovers from our old ideas for the site which we recognize we're not going to work for our game. We are in Alpha, which means we are testing and changing things, maybe not at the fastest pace, but we've certainly hit our own huge number of roadblocks.
2) The point of the game was not pet collection en masse, but to love and cherish the pets you have. But to address this we have stated that we plan to have the premium currency be earnable without paying out to us, and for users to be able to trade the currency just like other pet sites, and we also plan on having an adoption center with pets available for the non-premium currency as well! The cost for the breeding/customs is because each breeding and custom is hand drawn by our artists to give each pet a unique flair.
3) The page placeholders are due to this site being in Alpha Testing phase, which means the site isn't finished quite yet! There isn't any shame in redeeming the rewards and waiting for us to work to finish the site in it's entirety for beta!
There are many things that don't work quite like they should, but rest assured we are trying our best to keep the site afloat without burning out the people working on it <3
The site is pieced together and we honestly just wanted to do our best to support this cause with what we are able to offer, which is the art we have.
If there are any questions please feel free to contact us at support@figment.pet and we'll reply as fast and as accurately as our staff are able