But the map is actually super cheap right now, compared to how much many "new" players have already paid for it. I think I put about 30mil into completing mine, gave up with a few pieces to go because it was so expensive, and then they drastically lowered the rarity on it sometime in the past year and I picked up my remaining pieces. 6-10 mil isn't that hard to save up, that's a weeks worth of questing like a lot of other people have pointed out.

There's a lot of things that new users can't achieve. Completing the map isn't one of those things.

Random events aren't the same thing as special events where we have to participate in something or restock/vend certain items in a given year. The only reason why the map pieces are so expensive now is because the frequency of the random events has been changed. Keith could decide to make them more frequent tomorrow so the map pieces become a lot cheaper.

I've been here a long time, and FWIW when the map was gettable via Random Events, even before it was dropped on just about anyone as part of the Islander/Pirate plot, users complained it was too easy to get.

Question, why should everything cater to newbies, or people who cannot save money?

Inflation happens. People who say "I paid 2.5M for it six years ago", well, that 2.5M is the equivalent of what, 7M now. Not just for the Omen Islands Map, but for potions in general.The worth of money went down by a lot since most people bought their map.

Big goals, big objectives, needing to save a lot of money, this is something we all have to do. We cannot just re-release things because people who joined last week want these things. What we can do is tell these people how to save money, and several people on the thread have done so. But we should not change site mechanics because they cannot afford it.

When I joined, the price of the map was ABOVE what the average user had. Having it was a sign of prestige, and you didn't get 2-3 pieces a day. Same with the treasure map. I had to save to get my uncharted map. A lot of people in this thread had to go and save for their maps, and I am sure most of them paid a LOT more than what I did (I think I paid 2.2M for mine in 2007?)

Yeah, when the random event was totally gone, and the map was 40M+, it was insane. I would never want to go back to that era. But now? At 7.5M SP? It's affordable. It's a luxury, and it's priced as such.

How much is the map nowadays? Around 10mil? From my experience one is easily able to earn that on Subeta within a week or two without an active Gold Account and I fail to see how such a ridiculously small time frame is going to ruin a newbies' life on here.

I bought the map about a week ago. It cost me less than 7mil (I think 6.4 to be exact? I don't remember.) and that's because I bought the pieces individually from user shops. Someone had been selling all the pieces together in a trade for 8mil, so I could have done that if I'd wanted to save myself some time and effort. imo that's cheap enough. You can easily make that in a week's time from quests alone. With my GA perk of extra quests I make 1.5mil a day on days I bother to do quests, and I never bother with Saggi quests-- this number is also before I had access to Carl, so even a user without a GA or not enough sp to do Saggi quests could make ~7mil in a week. Sooner if you do literally anything else to make sp.

And, as others have said, there are tons of nice people here who would be willing to help you with getting a Hydrus pet if neither of you really want to save up for the map. (There's someone in the adoption forums offering to make Hydrus pets for people now, in fact. You wouldn't even need to make a thread asking for help.)

But if you want the freedom to make your own pets whenever you want without relying on others then the map is the price you'll have to pay. Part of the fun of sites like this is earning things, you can't just have everything practically handed to you. (Which is what it would feel like if staff went out of their way to lower the price on an already very affordable set of items, imo.)

I bought them when they're inflated, you don't wanna know how much it cost (poor me ;w;)

Now the price is quite cheap, 7-10m? You can make it few days by just doing quests xD If i get one from random event i'll give it to you ^^

You can make Hydrus pets, vend at Ocean Depths or doing Carl quest there. If you only want Hydrus pets, i think its better to ask someone with access to help :/

-in-Sand Man, I think mine cost almost 100 mil to complete when I did mine. I think I finished it either last winter or spring. I've made it all back via the vending machine already.

Honestly, you can pretty easily make 1 mill per day via questing and selling the prizes. Even if it were still 100 mil, you could do it in less than a year if you realllly scrimped and saved.

I hate that people make topics like these. Save and very soon you will be able to afford it. It's not that hard.

Hm. It seems that many people posting here suffer from the dilusion that everyone's free time and connection speeds match their own. Talk during the snowball fight earlier was similar. I threw just over 400, and it took me two days. Yet... there were those who simply couldn't grasp it. If their system can handle 100 snowballs every 5 minutes, why can't everyone else's? More often than not, I use a cellphone to log on, because it's my only option most of the time. The website is much more complex to navigate and use, and unless I'm borrowing my friend's phone, I can't do quests and I can't play most games. My phone just can't handle it. When I do get the chance to use a computer, then my location is still an issue. I live about 30 miles from the nearest town, amd the dial-up is painfully sluggish. Doing all the quests (battle/drills not included) takes hours. For me, saving up is a huge matter of time investment. More than many, or possibly all, of you can grasp, and involves a painful amount of frustration, during which my enjoyment of the site is at a heartbreaking minimum. Every achievement and every accomplishment is a really big deal to me because it takes such an above average amount of effort.

Now that that's been said, I hope a few of you can step down from your high horses. My suggestion was to increase the frequency of the random events that yield Uncharted Land Map pieces. Not hand them out, but actually make it plausible for someone to gain access to the islands through patience. Nowadays, no one gets a piece and thinks to themselves 'Yeah! Just * more and I'll have the whole map.' It's not a matter of how long you wait because it would take a ludicrous amount of time to happen. Buying is the only realistic option. For some things, super rare events are appropriate, but for others they are not. Opening a fairly substantial part of the map to users should not be this rare. For those who spent tens or even hundreds of millions to get there, I feel sorry for you, because it was rediculous. Like the 'uphill, ten-mile hikes through the snow to get to school every morning' was for our grandparents. However, 'I had it harder than you' is not a valid argument not to improve things.

Not being physically capable of working the site on the devices you own does not mean the site has to cater to you. I'm sorry, but if you don't have a device that can run any of the moneymaking aspects of the site, that is not the site's problem.

Even with a slow connection, or limited free time, the following applies though:

You can easily earn 200k+ per day by playing one game 10 times (or doing a handful of quests, whichever goes faster/works better on your connection for you). If the full map costs 10m (which it doesn't) that would take you less than 2 months to save up for, at the bare minimum of 200k per day. That is not an unreasonable amount of time to save up for something imo (and if you have more than a few minutes of access to the site on any given day, you can earn way more than 200k)

In a few cases I'm afaid the high horses that users have ridden in on are permanently attached.

I still don't see how something that offers quite a few benefits like the map does should be made cheaper than it already is.

[Edit] [Quote] However, 'I had it harder than you' is not a valid argument not to improve things.[/quote]

Nor does it mean everything must be made easier because you can not reach the same levels as others can

-in-Sand I feel the prices are low enough that we do not require a greater frequency in the amount of random events. 8 million is an extremely fair price. I recall paying 20 million or perhaps more a few years ago. I actually think 8 million is a complete bargain. When I made my hydrus pet a few weeks ago I think the quest cost me less than 100k. I don't think it's fair to tell people to "get off their high horse" in this instance.

I also don't understand why a hydrus pet should be easy to get - by having the chance of map pieces low, and price reasonable (I personally think it should be a HIGHER price), it retains prestige. It's a beautiful colour, and other potions cost roughly the same to buy, however with the map you can get multiple uses out of the quest - it's a huge bargain if you look at it in terms of cost per pet.

It's meant to be rare and prestigious - when you pound hydrus pets they lose their colour to maintain this prestige.

I am one of the laziest players I know when it comes to earning money - I've been here almost ten years and I suppose it's lost it's novelty for me. But one thing I have discovered is we have events pretty much every 2 months or so at least and you can very easily gain a lot of money through taking advantage of this, whether it be through selling prizes or selling whatever is necessary for the event. Prizes tend to sell for a few millions. If someone participated in at least one event to a reasonable standard I'm sure they could at least earn say 4 million, which is half of what you need for the map now (a total bargain if you ask me..).

Also you said that you couldn't afford a map and have poor access and time - 400 snowballs sounds a lot to me who threw 3 - if you spent this time questing or selling things you would probably have enough for a full map. I imagine you must have some kind of reward from your team as well - sell this and ta-da you can buy a map...

I don't want to talk for everyone but I think what everyone is trying to explain is that we had to work all these years to get our accounts to where they are now, work to gain access, work to get our sP, work to have all the advantages we have. We didn't just show up one day and have all of this handed to us. We were newbies once as well and had to do everything you're doing right now, it shouldn't be unreasonable that others would want newer user to work for the same things we worked for. No matter your personal situation with the site, that's on you, there's no special setting for those who spend less time on the site regardless of the reasoning behind it.

There were even comments offering to get the pets for you and transferring them to you and/or your friend. That right there solves the pet issue 100%. But it seems like you missed those comments? I think it's very generous that others have offered to get the pets for you then leaving it up to you to complete the map at a later date when you have saved up if you want access to the rest of the things on the island. People were/are offering to save you millions if it's just the pets you're interested in.

On a personal note, I took a long hiatus and whilst I'm sure I have complained, and have probably come off sounding unreasonable about missing out on things, but I do not expect to get anything for "free". I am playing catch up on the last 4 years and it's going to cost me and that's my choice/problem.

If we are purely talking about random events and valuable items, selling Subq invites is an interesting option. For people running on dial-up, restocking surely isn't so easy (even if restocking Subq could be easier when sets are older), and invites can be a very nice source of income. It's kind of trading one valuable asset (invites) for another (map pieces).

When I was a newbie on Subeta, I used to play on dial-up too, and I already had a full-time job. I played for many months on a dial-up, possibly even over a year. I used to play Neopets everyday on dial-up. I often wouldn't get the Wizard bonus because I couldn't complete quests in under 30 seconds... and what I can say is, you will need more patience, but you can still do it. At its current price, it's really not a bad deal considering Carl, the Inn and the OD machine.

Also about free things, we still have the Free Shop open right now. Those are great opportunities to try and grab valuable items (like potions) for free, which you can, in turn, sell for the amount of sp you need. (:

Suggestions like this are singularly the most frustrating thing to see, because I feel like it seriously undercuts similar complaints when items legitimately ARE too difficult to come by for collections.

Hey, you know what I had to log on and do quests for 6 of the 7 days of the week through most of the summer and fall? A Nokia Lumia, which for those playing the home game, is a Windows phone, which made Internet Explorer (aka the browser that Subeta literally takes a shit on) the only option. I cannot use my phone to buy from main shops by clicking the image; I cannot use my phone for item hovers; I cannot use my phone to autoprice my shop and pricing by hand even with the lowest price visible from GA often took 10-15 minutes per page. Basically, wah wah wah I can't do anything with my phone and, unless my boyfriend and I had some weekend downtime AND it was at his apartment AND he didn't have things he wanted to do on his computer (all very conditional IFs that left me usually about 1-2 hours a month on a computer), it was what I had to access Subeta. And yes, it was frustrating. And yes, I wished to christ I could do games (because I couldn't), and I wished to christ that quests didn't often take me two or three minutes per quest, but it was what it was, and it was better than no access. In the 3 months that I had such limited access, I still managed to go from 400th richest user to 300th richest user. It's not the multi-millions that I can now get weekly with a just-okay work/school/free time schedule, a just-okay laptop, a mostly-there internet connection, or the ability to now play games, but it also isn't as if, with limitations on YOUR end that are NOT the fault of the website or the staff, it isn't possible to do your best.

This doesn't feel any longer a complaint that the map is too hard to get - we've seen plenty of anecdotal support that it isn't, it just isn't. This is about capitulating. You say you want them to "not hand them out, but actually make it plausible for someone to gain access to the islands through patience", but that's exactly what the random events are already doing - handing them out, thereby making it plausible for somebody to get enough money, with patience. The site is not responsible to make this a perfectly fair playing field. The staff is not responsible for making sure that every user gets what they want for a significantly low cost. The game is not to blame if a user has not found a means by which to attain their actually reasonable goals.

I'm not blaming the game for anything. There is no wrongdoing. There is a scenario which I feel could and should be improved, thus I suggested it.

Stating that there are two extremes and everything in between when it comes to users' ability to do things on the site was to point out that they exist. Too many people on here either put down those who don't have superior means to use the site, or pretend that there are no such people. "It's easy to become a multimillionaire practically overnight" is extremely subjective.

Also, gathering collection items (generally a status-symbol situation) and gaining access to a very general continent on the world map are entirely different scenarios and should be treated as such. If there were a separate mission to access the vending machine (the only thing on the island that everyone seems to agree is more than typical) that would be one thing. Access to the blue building and Zombie Den are similarly special.

I did not miss those comments, and actually messaged users thanking them very much for the offer, and accepting as well. The pet issue for me and my friend is solved and I am grateful to the generous users who offered up their time to help.

-in-Sand Access to the blue building and Zombie Den are not entirely the same, I feel. Formerly the Zombie Den access was based only on whom had been infected and chosen not to cure themselves, and there was a system in place by which only the first year of their infections onward had stock available. It's not so much work, as it is a simple choice, one that actually didn't cost anybody anything, and was hugely available and well-known from years back. Now, even greater, the Zombie Den can be accessed by anybody who can shell out a couple thousand for a potion vial and suffer an ugly avatar for a short bit.

On the far opposite extreme, the Blue Building requires very little "work" on the part of a user - 250 achievements might take awhile if they don't realize how to find the easy ones, but I've seen users knock out Blue Building requirements over a single weekend.

In contrast, as you've been told tens of times now, there used to be an actual, legitimate, significant lack of maps available on the site. I've seen so many people explain here that they've spent something like 100 million on their map pieces - honestly, I can't remember what I spent on mine. I do remember that there were weeks at a time that I'd search shops and trades every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, because certain pieces were only available in galleries, and those users unwilling to sell. What you are experiencing now, while frustrating and probably seeming like a long time to you to invest, is not at all what it was in the time that the random events were nowhere near what they are now. That's what most of us here remember - that's what most of us have adjusted to life in a "You want it, you sometimes have to work hard for it" attitude, and the type of sP that can plausibly be made in a week or two doesn't strike most of us as a great need for improvement, is all.

I'm not saying you don't have a right to feel frustrated. However, you've seemingly ignored both kind offers from others, as well as meaningful insight as to why this doesn't come off as at all a serious matter.