I have 33 Pending referrals. That is 33 people who signed up, couldn't figure out the site and never came back again.

Just sayin'.

All this focus on the referral prizes that are hard to obtain, while there are other collection items like the Sew Crafty Sticker that is even harder to obtain. 😂😂😂

Thank you ❤️. The last response sounded like it was fine where it was and all I really wanted to hear is, yes, sooner or later it will be moved and that this hasn't been forgotten. Bless you!

I've been following this thread from the beginning. I've only been a user of subeta for almost 10 months. I have four referral points. I found out about this site through tumblr as people were photo-shopping neopets with subeta colours and it sparked my interest. I'm 25 years old, I was on neo for 13+ years. I researched the entire subeta site/past events/items/pets/you name it for a whole week BEFORE even signing up. And I think that's the main reason why I've come so far with my account already. The people I have referred did not research this site for a whole week, and did not understand how to do much of anything and thus leaving the site/leaving their accounts stranded for clutter.

I am a monthly CSC purchaser, yes, with real money. I like the site's atmosphere and have made a few friends with other players on this site. I would like to be on here instead of neopets, most definitely. I love the achievement aspect, neo doesn't have that. But collections in fact are extremely difficult for a regular/non artistic commissioner/non csc purchaser users to obtain. The prices are extremely inflated for sought after items. I'm [B]not[/b] saying make it easier. It's just nearly impossible to complete collections.

And as for referral points, something has got to give. It's like we the users are damned if we do and damned if we don't. If we 'spill the beans' and tell our rl friends/coworkers/acquaintances/random children wuuut/people we know about our place here, I don't know about other users but I definitely get looked at funny and thus I'll never get more referral points than what I have now. I can understand these long-time users are frustrated and fed up with trying. I'm a relatively new user here and going into collections at the beginning I never knew they were this difficult to complete and I probably would've done things a little differently if I had to start my account over again. A newer-ish user like me, or a complete newb really doesn't have a chance. I mean, the countless lists/wishlists you'd have to make for all the achievements/collections etc it'll just slow the site experience down even more/dat lag. It's kind of a ridiculous endless loop, really.

Yes. The people who have been here from day 1 and know the site in and out, and know all the resources like helpful threads and subetalodge, have no idea how difficult it is for a newbie who knows absolutely nothing. I've tried to bring 2 friends here and I was trying to get them hyped up for playing and help them as much as possible by sending them sp vouchers and items, but both of them haven't been back on in 8months-1 year. I can't force them, I can only drop hints but they're just not interested. I've offered so much help but they get frustrated by the site and leave. Plenty of people who already have the hang of this site are motivated to get referrals and try. Who doesn't want free csc and referral points? The hard part is convincing a new player that it'll get better, that they'll understand soon. [edit] http://subeta.net/forums.php/read/803952 Absolutely case and point of how frustrating it can be joining. It's nice that the admins are trying to solve this but really, it's a wonder this person didn't just say "screw it" and leave. Wonder how many other new players this has driven off, though.

Cannot say that these numbers surprise me.

And man, reading all this about referrals, old items, pets and so on (and nodding to a lot of those points because I agree and can relate) frustrates me, especially in my role as a pet person I often feel kinda...unwanted, underappreciated? You won't manage to get rid of me and free my pet names of course (not even sorry) but still it's not my favorite feeling, you know?

P.S.: pets.php lags terribly for me, loading times of 30 seconds and above, uh-huh.

I can remember when I was a newbie and a friend helped me with a lot of stuff. However, it still took me a very long time to learn the ropes. I've tried to refer people too, but am just seen with a "pending". One of their profiles says "Member For: 1 year, 6 months, 1 week, 6 days Last Seen: 1 year, 4 months, 1 week, 4 days, 21 hours, 14 minutes ago". That's not good.

I can't see when the other person was online last, but they haven't once used the forums either.

We need a complete tutorial for pretty much everything that directs you where to go to ask questions as well as a couple of the stickied threads in the help section linked in the tutorial. Basic things like feeding, playing, the inn/resort, battling, fragging items for crystals, the token shop/various other places to spend tokens, how to quest, how to get to the Omen Islands, a link to all the possible pet colours as well as species and how to use the wardrobe properly. Just to name a few things off the top of my head.

I think we also need a place for commonly asked questions and I mean a legit FAQ page, which can be tied into the tutorial, not just a stickied topic in the help thread. For those that don't use the forums that's not going to encourage them to want to use them it's just going to frustrate them and get them to leave faster, or at least it would me.

This:

Plus this:

Is the main reason that referrals don't work in the BEST of times. I HAVE told some friends irl, ones who I could help out and encourage and have a good time with. They couldn't get past the confusion and the issues. If we're going to play the "pet game comparisons", all of the ones subeta wants to be on par with or absorb parts from are actual GAMES. We have some games, sure, though they are almost all versions of games from the other petsites people could go to. But in the other ones, even if shit is complicated to know the site as a whole, they have fun games to play and fun simple things to do in the meantime that will also help to get them on their feet. When I started, wiz quests helped get me to a place that I could play and have fun and buy some stuff, now New people don't really have something like that. The wardrobe, which was the other thing that kept me here (I couldn't care less about the rest of the site at the time), is broken now. People who are new can't enjoy one of the main factors for staying.

I don't understand how the PTB think that adding more people and more info to the server load would HELP the problem. They're not going to spend money when they see that "daily goal" thing in the red every day anyway. Why waste your money on something that LOOKS like it's not going to last?

Exactly what benefit does subeta get from referred players that aren't going to stick around? It's already been proven in this thread alone that if a new user joins that was referred here, all they really do are the required little tasks so that the person who referred them gets off their backs. And like was previously stated, users can't just "go tell people to join." Things are not that easy, not without creating some incredibly awkward atmosphere. Anybody who I know would have a lick of interest in the site already has an account, and I'm not about to pester my sister to join when her top priorities are her family and religion. I'm pretty sure the friends I have here (which I met on other sites for the record) only have a smidge of interest here because I keep whining and poking them to play over instant messengers so that their accounts don't get marked as inactive.

It seems that unless a new user already has a veteran player to hold their hand and tell them how to work around the bugs on the site, they just leave and never return. Speaking of which, why are inactive accounts still on the server? Although I may be wrong, inactive accounts are either never touched again, or if they are logged into again, the owner's reaction is somewhere between "F*ck this site my pet/user names were stolen" and "This site is still boring and broken, let me forget about it for another year". Very rarely do I see inactive users who return be glad their accounts are otherwise in tact. And going off of help topics I've seen, it's not even obvious that these users can get free name changes in the case that pet names are taken. The site is not user friendly, to be frank. The same questions keep popping up.

And on a semi-related note, the training page loads fine for me but not the pets.php page, similar to other users with a ton of pets. The only way I can get to any of my pets really is to go through the finicky dropdown menu under the personal tab. It makes me wonder if adding pagination to the pets.php page would help the lag at all.

RE: Referring people. lmao Everyone [my friends mostly] that I know who is/was interested in playing? lmao They've quit playing already because to them the site is a broken mess. They're not coming back even if you promise them everything on site for free x2. The broken everything is one reason I've never referred anyone.

Sometimes I wonder how the hell I managed to even still be here. When I joined (I can't remember) the "guide" was one page welcoming me before "throwing me to the wolves". I was so pissed that the welcome page told me I could find help on the forums then telling me to piss off my account wasn't old enough to even view the forums (didn't care I couldn't post I wanted to read the stupid FAQ), I didn't even set foot in the forums until months later. Until then I pretty much had to fall back on my neopets days to even get anywhere. I think that right there is the main reason I didn't just up and leave after the not so friendly welcome the site gave me.

Not to mention around a couple of weeks after I joined? Longcat. Still amazed I managed to stay here.

I wouldn't mind all of these revamps if they weren't so BAD.

Look, I'm gonna be honest, all of the new revamps--quests, forums, achievements--have the same bad design in common. Subeta really has a hard-on for putting boxes within boxes within boxes lately and it looks awful. Keeping everything compact and easy to navigate is just good design. Now everything's HUGE and spread-out.

I can't think of a good analogy, but visually it's like...you know how you have normal cellphones, and then you have the kind for kids/old people that are shaped like a brick and only have like 3 huge buttons? The achievements and stuff weren't perfect before but now we have even worse, ugly, blocky versions.

Oh, that barely work. All three of the revamps I mentioned fuck up pretty badly on a regular basis. Hello, missing achievements, quests that take my items and don't give me a reward, and not one but TWO completely broken wardrobes. Great job on those revamps, guys! Maybe instead of breaking perfectly functional site features it's time to fix what's actually broken.

oh my god this made me laugh so hard??/

even when i joined 4 years ago without any available tutorial (or maybe there was? nevertheless it didn't help me learn how to navigate the site), i still managed to stay because THINGS ACTUALLY WORKED. if i was a new user joining the site now i definitely would have left after seeing all those broken images. smh. i'm so glad i never asked my friends to join after the 500 csc promo because IT'S EMBARRASSING.

Omg. That girl, . She's a hero. She has never been here and she really wants to stay. I'm impressed.

Fwiw, I also only joined because a veteran player brought me. Nowadays, this friend doesn't play anymore due to site issues, except for checking her account every now and then / during events sometimes. She insisted and talked about Subeta for over a year before I finally accepted to sign up. When I signed up, I actually disliked the setups (I couldn't find anything but quests, which was kind of boring), but she insisted so much that it would be fun that I decided to put a bit of an effort before leaving it.

Thanks to two amazing people I now have the only two items I wanted from the referral shop. Now I don't even have an interest in getting people I don't know into joining a site they won't stay on =3 but one of my pets is closer to completion, so hey.

I'm still mentally reeling, knowing that there are a lot of people on the site who are here /because/ they're homebound that the referral response 'go out and stalk kids' (seriously, if some older person came up to me when I was a kid and told me to join a site... joining that site is the LAST thing I'd do...) and 'advertise on your art'. Well firstly... no. I'll advertise ME on my art, my work, my income, go piggy back off something else, and secondly, the people who follow my art are there for robots, war, torture and dumb old men, they're not interested, I know they're not interested because I appealed to them for referral help before.

Geez at the 33 pending though... I only have 1 x_X

I google for all the pages I want now, cos I can't always find them, and the others I have bookmarked. Nice to know the pet page lag isn't a priority on a pet site, that's lovely, but as a pet person I can't say I'm surprised.

You too? I flipped when I was a newbie looking for help and the site was like LOL NOPE, I left for ages, can't remember why I came back tbqh, bored probably.

god damn girl you're a tough player, looking at the state of this place through a newbie's eyes makes my eyes water... There is no way I can refer someone in good faith, even if I COULD I wouldn't, it'd just make me look bad =|

I just wish that more time and resources would be devoted to the experience and survival of a new player with an account that's under a year old. It's disheartening that everything being done is to ensure that people who have already been here for years and have spent real money here, stay. To be honest, they seem pretty invested and probably will not leave anytime soon. It's the brand new players that they should be more worried about, the brand new players who have absolutely nothing invested, no money, no time, who could just leave the next day and there's no skin off their nose.

And you know what the cherry on top of it all is? There is no reward for having your account turn 1 year old. There's no loyalty box. I never use this language on the forums, but that's pretty fucked up. The first year is the hardest year, and after a whole year of struggling, there's nothing. They get to wait a whole 'nother year just to get a loyalty box. That is, assuming they stay another year after that.

I know I've gone a little off topic but since we were talking about referrals, I think more attention should be given to improving the signing up process, the tutorial, and newbie rewards.

I suspect the word "struggling" on that context refers to the general conditions of the site (errors, downtime) and/or learning all the ropes. It can be hard if you aren't helped by a veteran player, certainly could take more than a year.

Although I get the point of sticking to one way of releasing items, if staff turns to people who are actively working on collections for years and says that "there are items you are not going to get", then I guess I'm glad I've never put a lot of effort into mines. : /

Sorry, the rest of that post was responding to the posts above yours.

I agree on the signup process and complications that come from being a new user, though. We're working on a lot of really fun stuff to replace the current tutorial with (that'll be new stuff for existing users, too) and today are gutting a lot of the registration process to make it a lot less stressful for new users.