I agree with so much that has already been said here and I'm honestly just too frustrated with all of it to go through and pick out the pieces. So I'll just say

SEE ABOVE

for my feelings.

I will add that I have been so hopeful, for so long, that things would get better someday. But seeing all of our most loyal users voice my deepest and darkest fears and feelings about where this site is headed, and knowing that all of us feel the same way and have the same fears... it just makes me so sad. Because I really care about Subeta, and what I've built here, and the relationships I've made, and the characters I've created, and the work I've put into it, and the community as a whole. And to finally realize, and accept, that the people who created Subeta don't/can't/won't feel as passionately about it as we do is just... awful.

Scariest question ever concerning this site.

I'm trying to think this through logically, and I've come to the conclusion that staff would be more transparent/vocal in telling its userbase about what's going on and these so-called "reasons" that many are not buying if it wasn't for the ugly truth. Which is the code is so mangled, it's in a worse state than the oldest zombie strain on subeta.

What sucks is there are people here that still care enough to donate and fund a temp programmer, but the site's shooting itself in the foot by not listening. Yes, maybe the userbase wouldn't be able to fund the venture. Or worse, maybe the money would be raised, but no one good and willing enough could be found. But I still think trying is better than not trying. I don't think people would be as bitter as they are now if the site at least tried. But as it stands, staff isn't communicating.

How hard is it to relay info to one spokesperson? I can't imagine what goes on behind the scenes and it's probably a lot but if staff can't be bothered to communicate information - even if it is watered down - then I don't know what to say... because this lack of news is freaking appalling. Users should NOT have to throw temper tantrums and congregate on these boards over and over again in the hopes that someone from staff will be bothered to post. I find it very, VERY difficult to believe that staff cannot sacrifice an additional 10 minutes of their time and post updates in the news. Surely, staff must communicate with EACH OTHER and therefore a relay of information must be passed down so it honestly beats me why it cannot be relayed to US, the userbase. Instead, every time the news updates it's either new items or cash shop promos or cron if it happens to not be broken.

Man, this got more long-winded than I wanted it to. =__=

Also. after I read 's post, I immediately thought what others did.

I have suspected that for quite some time, and and have both been very open and honest in the past about the fact that the current coding is very, very broken. That combined with the fact that we have, for example, the achievement system, which is literally tied into every single aspect of the site (seriously, can you think of one site element that doesn't have an achievement tied to it?), and I would imagine that the coding is indeed a huge, ugly mess. Because pretty much what has been done over and over again over the years is to slap a temporary fix or bandage or overwrite when the site skips a beat. Which as we all know, happens a lot. So yeah, I think it's probably pretty accurate to say that Subeta's code is a big fat mess that would be extremely costly to rewrite, with regards to bringing someone else in. However, at this point, I'm not sure the site has many other options, as I'm not sure the bulk of the user base is willing to stick around to wait for it to be piecemealed together with semi-functioning updates that don't work either. Eventually one or the other has to give.

I joined about six weeks ago, and I'm apparently one of the few new users who's stuck around. I've noticed some of the problems, but I didn't realize how bad they are or how long they've been going on. Most of all, I've noticed lack of communication from staff. It's what bothers me more than all the broken stuff, but I've just assumed that's how Subeta is.

I'm going to be optimistic and focus on how much better my site experience will be when things get fixed. At the same time, I too don't understand why they can't work on one thing at a time. I was surprised when the new achievement system came on the scene so soon after the beta wardrobe. (I think that's the right order.) One huge revamp that doesn't work and is unfinished... then boom! have another! I still use the old wardrobe because the new one is SO unfinished.

And for Shinwa's sake, why has the daily cron stuff suddenly fallen apart? Isn't that easy to fix, or at least easy to go in once a day and manually post the Pet Spotlight and reset the Recycle Beast?

And about not hiring any temp/other coders... I get the feeling staff's position is mine on creating a CW or a profile: stubborn pride. I'm too proud to commission someone else to do these things; I'm just going to keep trying until I get them right. (I succeeded on the profiles at least, lol.) Likewise, the staff is too proud to hire outside help. "We'll do it ourselves or not at all!"

Sorry for being negative and complaining -X-; I'm generally a happy floaty balloony person (who is scared of complaining because I'm afraid I'll get a warning or something). I do love Subeta, and I don't intend to leave. But I also don't intend to put any more real money into the site, or play as much as I have been this summer.

It's sad, because this morning I was reflecting on this with my coffee and my conclusion was:

I still waste (I've never really used/meant the term WASTE when I've given money to subeta... investing in short-term happiness sure, but never waste... I officially view it as wasting money at this point) money here because if the site magically listens and turns around and unicorns shit gold and vomit rainbows I will regret not keeping up with books and items.

How pathetic is that?

I give to the site because of the sunk cost that shit will turn around and I one day won't regret it. So sad. Sadder yet with the new reflection-unobtainable-books + the ongoing referral books I'm about 1 stupid unobtainable book from being done.

If staff don't man up soon, not "soon" ... soon, I've got a plethora of weapons and scrolls I can sell to last and last.

I'm sure that's a big part of this, I really do. But pride is a sin for a reason, and nothing good ever comes from it xD! If staff are so immature that they'd rather watch their site crash and burn than ask for help to hire an outside source to help them help their site.. then they deserve the destruction that's shortcoming.

This is the entire reason I still have an account here that I check on (nearly) daily. :( I've put literally years into this site, and money, and I've built so much and I want to love it like I used to. Hopefully some day I will. That 1% hope feels stupid but I can't kick it. And I can't just sell off my wardrobe (even though I can't fucking use it) because what if it works some day :o

I wouldn't be surprised, either. In fact, I'm half expecting it to close down in the not too distant future. :(

It's sad. I feel pathetic when I do it, waste money on subeta. Like, I can't believe I'm stupid enough to do this day in and day out, like "today is going to be the day I'm going to log in and there will be a news post saying sorry everyone for all the half assed crap we've pushed through-- we've fixed the pings and achievements and they should be working perfectly now :'D NOW TO THE WARDROBE! AND THE PET PAGE LAG! I promise we're making progress guys, thank you for sticking with us"!

But that day has never came. It probably, never will come. Because people like me are stupid enough to think.. I will regret this if I don't do it. My only, not really justification but.. solace is that at least my money might be going to the artists and might help them get a paycheck for a few more months.

And also it is cheaper than booze or smoking, or going out to eat a couple times a month. And all of those things are either gone the next morning or will make you suffer in the long run. So if the site gets taken down tomorrow, then hey... at least it lasted longer than a meal at a restaurant rotf.

But that doesn't justify leaving it in this shape, and that should not be an a-okay battle plan for subeta's future.

I've been keeping up with the content on this thread, and many of the posts here are from users who have been here a long time, who have donated to this site and been very active not only as players but as content creators and as beta testers, and whose opinions I respect a great deal. And the sheer amount of wistful fatigue here is staggering to me.

The fact that there has been a single (highly unsatisfying) staff post here in 24 hours is really not encouraging.

The biggest thing I"m frustrated with right now is the total lack of feedback. A couple days ago, I and a couple other people posted in the bugs about the achievements not updating wardrobe counts. Keith said wardrobe was fixed, wait for the cache to show up.

It didn't work.

Since then I have posted several times on the bugs forum and literally every time I do, I am blatantly ignored. Wardrobe collectors can't even have the joy of getting an achievement when they hit that next tier now. This is just one thing on top of everything else. I play the site for the wardrobe, and I"m very disappointed that Keith won't even take the time to tell us /why/ it's not tracking.

That's almost a scary idea. Because if it's shutdown for the programmers to repair...who is to say no one will up and leave the project, thus permanently leaving the site shutdown?

I've invested a shit ton of money, time and effort into my battle pet over the last year, so to let it all go to waste because of Keith or staff keeping us in the dark would be a kick to the teeth.

I'm surprised no one's showed up yet to tell us we're just being dramatic and the site is fine and just because pings, the wardrobe, pet profiles pet page (my bad), and achievements don't work correctly doesn't mean someone isn't working on it and it should be fixed "soon"!

And that it's literally impossible for the site to make a fundraiser because reasons and complicated stuffs that no one would understand anyways but but don't worry gais because the site is fine financially and the recoding is going fabulous and something about the wardrobe and/or cults.

Y'know. The same spill we get every 3-6 months when everyone's pent up frustrations boil over and a board like this is made.

you know, my first post (on page one) initially included a paragraph about how i was worried that this site was circling the drain. i originally omitted it because people would think i was being too melodramatic. but it looks like a good couple of you guys have the same itchy feeling about subeta's future as i do.

considering staff's dubious record with communication and transparency (and the lingering "everything's fine, no seriously" pride-based facade), i honestly am not sure we'd even know the site was heading past the event horizon. maybe it already has. maybe i'll just try to log on one day and that'll be it, there'll be no more site waiting for us.

i mean, ask yourself: where will subeta be in five years? in the same state of disrepair? in a further state of disrepair? offline? i hate that i can't answer that in the same way i can answer for my other internet haunts.

subeta's biggest staying power is clearly its dedicated memberbase, because i'm not sure i can name one person i've referred (officially or unofficially) who still plays the site. and i mean why should they? they don't have the same investments that are keeping me here. i mentioned the sunk-cost fallacy last time we had one of these threads (funny how cyclical this tends to be, isn't it), so i certainly wouldn't omit it this time, nor the next time we have to make one of these "everything's broken and no one's listening" threads. but the fact of the matter is that i have my limits. i clearly haven't reached them yet, as i play this site actively on a daily basis. i'm not sure what those limits are, but i can promise that i and everyone else here is bound to reach a point where we throw our hands up and say "no, this is enough" and walk away for the last time. and you can hold me to this next statement: once those dedicated players start to walk away en masse, they will not be replacable. that would require the ability to retain members that, frankly, subeta no longer has. others have mentioned it and i'll say it as well: i have actively discouraged new people from signing up for this site, because i respect them enough not to waste their time.

again, i dont want to be that guy who always has a problem with everything. i'm critical of subeta because i desperately, desperately want to see improvements. the day that i give up and say "let it burn" is the day i'm not coming back.

I almost feel ashamed to admit, but I might as well...not only have I also continued to put cash into the site, because I also retain a stupid 1% hope that things will improve, but if Subeta were to go down, permanently....I'd have nowhere to go.

Subeta is pretty much my home on the Internet, has been since Neopets' customization fiasco back in 2007. Even though I play Neo again...it's not the same and never will be Subeta.

Is it sad? I dunno, but Subeta is literally the only pet site that genuinely feels like home...and to lose it all...I don't think I could ever replace that feeling.

I'm going to be completely honest and say that the only reason I bother coming here anymore is because I worked really hard to get my pet names and and don't want to lose them... In the hope that either real life will give me some time to work on them or the site actually gets fixed. Otherwise, if I didn't have so much time and money invested I would leave. I will not refer anyone here because I can't even imagine trying to make it as a newb with the broken economy, not to mention the programming issues.

OH, lol and you see how broken my post was? That's the new forums being next to completely incompatable with my phone. ...Which I can hardly even use to come on here and have very limited internet access right now. :c

When I got my smartphone I was thinking about logging into Subeta to test it but tbh I didn't dare in the end. XD

Sorry about your internet issues though, hope it can be fixed soon (not "Subeta soon"!).

The more posts I see the more I begin to question myself... why am I even bothering? Literally every other site I've played on I've quit at the drop of a hat for things that aren't nearly as broken as subeta are. Subeta is my home on the internet, but now it's pretty much infested with termites at the rate things are going. I guess I still hang around for my pet names and want my money's worth, considering I spent an embarrassing amount on this site. Maybe I have rose colored glasses glued to my face, who knows. To be honest, a free hosting website where I don't have to fight over pet names would be a more efficient way to hold my characters at this rate.

How many more threads like this are going to have to be made until things get fixed? That is, if it's even possible to make threads anymore, at the rate we're going. How many more times are we going to here "It's fixed!" only for it to not be fixed at all, or have such a patchwork job done that things unravel again within a few hours? How many more users are going to have to state their frustrations and leave the site before staff realize that they can't fix this site by themselves? And that yes, they DO need outside help from professional coders. If the site doesn't want help, why is there an open position for a PHP programmer?

So many people have already expressed interest in supporting a fundraiser to get a professional coder in here to fix things. Only to be responded with "Our code is to complicated!" Yeah, this is why users are pissed off. That sounds like an artist refusing to accept critique from someone more experienced because of their "unique style~!", and anybody providing critique doesn't "get their unique special style". Just because something may have a style to it doesn't mean it's exempt from anatomy rules. Just like how subeta's coding cannot run without basic functioning code. It's frustrating, yes I get it. Coding is difficult, nobody is denying it is. But flat out refusing help is even more frustrating. Users are still willing to put money into the site to see things fixed, and they're pretty much being told no.

Subeta, please accept the userbase's help NOW before it's too late. Run a kickstarter or whatever is needed in order to get some real help onto the site. Do something before the users get so frustrated that no, nobody will want to help anymore. The users who still care for the site are only going to take so many excuses.

I actually referred my Mom () unintentionally (I left the pound up one day while I went to do something and I came back and she was like "how cute are these is this that site you play??").. I actually kinda laughed it off and changed the subject and hoped she'd forget and never ask me to help her sign up again but, she didn't forget.

Like 90% of the userbase, she actually plays because she thinks the pets are cute and she likes to train them and feed them, and she likes to restock. But subeta is so unfriendly that, even with the tutorial, she had to ask me an astronomical amount of questions just to get around the site. She still needs help with the forums, and googles 90% of the links she's looking for because the site is confusing, or she calls me and I have to walk her through stuff. Which I don't mind because it's my fault she came here in the first place LOLOL

I couldn't count the times she's said something to the effect of "do they not know it's broken?" or "it's not supposed to do that is it?" or "yeah I tried that but it didn't work... oh I have to just keep trying until it works? well that's stupid".

Amen. For the record when that day happens , you, me.. and maybe we can even get down from Austin-- can meet up and morn our wasted time, money, hopes and dreams (for the sites success, as in lack there of).

I haven't breached my breaking point yet, but I fear it's on the horizon.

Don't feel bad. I still give money to the site, because like I said in one of the posts.. I fear that if I don't keep up with something and one day the site is just magically fixed, I will regret it.

I love to train so many pets, and I still hold out false hope that the cap will be raised/killed and I'll be able to move forward with my main battle pet again. It was really awesome, to know all my hardwork paid off and you can tell how much work I put into him! But now he's just like the other 30+ capped pets and 30+ nearing the cap pets that are just like him, so it's really killed my desire to train, battle, buy new weapons, or frankly.. care.

Because, why? Why the hell am I even training 10 other pets? So I can have 11 capped pets?? Everything's achievement based anyways, or retired, so it's not like I'ma gain anything but having 10 more pets like the 100's before them. Yet here I am, stupidly, every single morning training 10 of them like an idiot because I don't have anything better to waste my time or money doing, apparently.

Because it's easier to just dig myself a deeper hole here, where nothing ever improves, than it is to start new somewhere else r___r;

Yup, there's that, too. I mean not that I can very easily obtain new names because the few times I've tried refreshing more than once = 502502502 SPINNING PAGE LOLOL SUCKS TO BE YOU SUCKA XDD! But, at least I have the names I already have, and for that, even when I hit my breaking point, I'd still log in at least once a month. Because they're mine.

Also if you use an android phone, you should try the Dolphin browser (that's what I use). It supports java/subeta pretty well. I actually updated my achievements in about 5 minutes via my phone while I saw it took triple+ that for people on their PCs.