Sounds good! I do like the item promotions and usually buy extra if we're getting a % bonus; but neither feel like long term solutions. I've always ended up buying missing bobbles as have never had much luck with the system despite consistent purchases, so am happy to see the site step away from that kind of thing.

(add Spears tickets to the rewards system. and flights to Vegas too.)

so do you mean to say you're getting rid of/downplaying the "random" aspect that the bobbles have? because i feel like a move toward "more purchases = better rewards" would be a huge improvement over "buy a ton and hope you get the one you want."

while it's nice to think that i could theoretically get a super rare bobble when i go in to purchase a month's research notes, it just feels like that bobble (or replacement reward of choice) should more appropriately go to the user who's dumping 50 bucks' worth of CSC on collection items/name changes.

Yeah, the randomness is something we want to not be an issue at all anymore. We want you to be able to look at a page and see what rewards you are moving toward, and when you're going to get them.

I both love and hate the bobbleheads, I like them because gambling but hate them because what is luck even I don't know... definitely can't wait to see what happens with that! I imagine it'd be a lot easier to control prizes in a tiered system too (trident vs. knocker, basically xD) which could end up making it a lot more rewarding in the end.

GOOD BECAUSE I LIKE TO HOARD IN PLACES AND VAULTS ARE BOTH IMPORTANT AND THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE )):! I have a dump shop for hoarding mine but I like to keep the things I might need/have uses for/could potentially need easier to access than my gallery of lagging... but I also don't need the stuff enough to have in my inventory (I have like a toned down and kinda categorized 6 pages in there) because I'll get lost or kill the site accidentally |DD Glad to here more discussions will try to be had for 2014, about that and other things c:!

then you have my full support on that. i mean i can forsee that there might be issues with keeping whatever the reward is rare (the current active set of bobbles and their respective prize set is proof enough that time will devalue active rewards, thus necessitating the need for regular prize rotation), but even with that in mind, i think this proposed system will be better than what is currently in place.

Just a Feedback FYI: I was MUCH more active in the entire website, purchasing csc, talking in the forums (see my forum count because it hasn't gone up any THIS year) when cults worked better. I was active in my cult AND in the forums, as were a lot of my cult members. Now we all have no reason to really be on subeta just because we all HAVE to chat somewhere else for it even to work better.

So, while it may not be true for everyone, if you improve cults, you will definitely get some of your more loyal players to continue playing again and to be more active in the site overall. As it stands, I have little to know reason to be active other than "what the fuck else am I going to do" which is not where you want your customers to be. But when I had a better working cult, I had a better reason to BE here, and more reason to BE involved in the site.

I am so happy over the randomness of bobbles going away. I've wanted a logical buy-more-earn-better system from the get go. So many angry tears would have been saved and less hatred for certain NPCs all around had this been made from the start lol

Also Keith, I don't know if you were just avoiding my livechat/forum suggestion because it was dumb/unhelpful, or if you didn't see it, or if I am now a black sheep - but that might be something to consider in the transparency progression moving forward too. I've heard more than once that some users are frightened to say what they feel because they think they're ignored by staff afterward (only pointing this out considering several other users have been pinged back/discussed with since)

I just hope I've provided something useful at some point here and that I haven't caused any offense - I'm sure I've had a few derps in there as well, but hopefully there was some good in it. :)

i feel you WRT hoarding. right now i'm doing it by way of gallery because 1. i initially started it for the super shop achievement, and 2. i'm going to wait until the very last second to move tens of thousands of items if at all possible, and also 3. because the catagorization is much better in galleries than in vaults. this is a pain for me because wow do shops ever lag when you cram enough crap in them. i'm sure it'd be easier for me and the servers if we could have some kind of upgraded vault system with all the catagorization that galleries have (which is to say, automatic catagories that sort out things like books and food, then custom catagories so i can store TC fodder some place i can find it later).

or, if not vaults, then the "extended" inventories where one part is "active" (subject to zapper misfortune, readily accessible, on display, etc), and one is designated for storage, preferrably accessible via tab or link so that i'm not staring down 37 thousand* items every time i want to read my pet a book. (*actual number of items in my gallery right now)

didnt mean to go all on a vault spiel, but as long as it's being brought up, i figure i'd say my piece.

Oh for sure, and I also want to set up a twitter account ( or something) for me to have like times where I respond to a lot of questions (and I think having to respond back in so few characters is a good test!) and things like that. I was planning to have a livechat about the new stuff when a few more things were more clear :).

Yeah, we wouldn't change the vaults unless we had a better system in mind. I think being faster than galleries with the same/better sorting is absolutely a possibility though. I think that having an 'active' part for your inventory is also completely doable (And also part of our focus in making Subeta more of a game in 2014 is actually implementing stuff like inventory limits and sticking to it. Maybe you have to buy a new bag with sP to extend your limit or something) but at the same time making it much easier to shift between your inventory/vault so that none of your things get destroyed. Being able to read books/play with pets directly from the vault would also be very nice.

[edit]

Went ahead and made the account. No promises on when I'll start using it!

: Nice - I was actually thinking a social media solution as well; I hope it works out and is well received if you guys go that route! Thanks for the response!

i could get behind the idea of being able to interact with items in vaults. though i'm a bit curious on why we currently have inventory limits enabled in the first place: is it more stress on servers to have items in an inventory or shop than in a vault? i dont have much insight to things like this, so legit question here. but assuming that IS the case, then i'd certainly be incentivized to use the vaults if i could read/feed/play directly from the vault.

also it's dawned on me that the vaults have a quick move feature (check all, move to inventory/shop), and the inventory has quickstock, but there's nothing in reverse for galleries. i'm at the point where i'd absolutely love to move items from my gallery to my vault, but my only means of doing so is basically by hand, which is so far from practical that just thinking about it stresses me out. if it's possible, i'd love to see a feature like this coded into galleries in the future. i think i recall something about shop size caps being tossed around, and i feel like it would be that much easier to enforce something like that if we were given a tool like this.

I'm so glad to read all of the updates about the recode. I know cults are a big thing for some users, but I'm glad that other more pressing site issues are taking precedence. :)

Thanks for taking the time to actually address our concerns, Keith. It's nice to finally know what on earth is going on with the mythical recode. It'd be great if we didn't have to throw a fuss every couple of months to get some sort of update on the progress of things like that.

And I'm beyond relieved to hear that that new layout was scrapped. While I'm still looking forward to the site actually functioning properly, I was absolutely dreading that bubbly layout that was way too cluttered in some places and way too big, white and empty in others.

you and me both, the first thing I thought when I read Keith's post was nooooooooo not the vaults!!! XD

It was interesting to read staff's explanations, would be good to get this more often. I also hope that the things that were promised or hinted here will indeed show up at some point in the near(er) future.

P.S.: Non-random Bobbleheads would make me happy, I have such a terrible luck with them!

1. staff communication, why does this feel like it's christmas and we got a big present. Please make this a regular thing, and not something that only happens after we got our pitchforks ready. Because it makes it for us, a world of difference. From being left completely in the dark to having some sort of idea what's going on.

2. thank god that the layout that was previewed isn't coming. Subeta isn't a social media website, we don't need feeds here. If if this means back to square 1, it gives hope, that we aren't stuck for the next few years with something only super social people enjoy.

3. yes please for not random 'rewards' for buying from the cash shop. The bobbleheads drove me nuts. I've been buying cash shop items quite regulary, and the only time i got a rare bobblehead since the release of the first bobbles was when the previous collection was retiring and the numbers were changed. A cute stamp card would be nice :D Something like: 5 stamps, take a plushie (bam all stamps gone), 10 stamps, redeem for this wig, 15 stamps redeem for a one time 10% discount. Something like that.

Keith did mention they were going to try to be more transparent in the future - 2014 which is less than 24 hours away, whoot! Although I don't think it will all be perfect communication in the beginning (practice makes perfect) I am looking forward to seeing what he posts his plans are and then going forward hoping he is willing to admit when things don't go as planned (hey, it happens) as well as when they do.