I posted about this in the other thread - but it's just so easy for kickstarters to go wrong, and then the negative energy left over from that is really hard to recover from. I've been a part of one project that did pre-filming and a lot of work, posted a really well made kickstarter for a LGBT-focused movie and it ended up being off a few hundred dollars... which was really awful feeling for everyone involved.

I think that the prizes would be easy: Donate some huge amount for a NPC based on you, donate some amount for plushies based on your pets, or whatever.

The hard part is estimating the total cost of a development. I'd want to hire a team of developers (probably ~3) and basically not touch the code myself but manage the development. We'd be looking at probably $40,000 to rewrite all of the functionality of Subeta and bring it up to 2015. That is a lot of money. I think if we got a lot of publicity from former users and we could potentially do it, but it's still a lot.

CWs also completely ate the profits from every other CS item. It wasn't existing money + CWs, it was CWs instead of everything else. It's why we don't release trunks anymore, they don't get bought because people have put aside most of their CSC for CWs, and trunks almost don't hit the profit point (it takes around two months now).

I really dislike the tone of this post that "this will get something done finally". We've done a lot over the past two years. We're working on ways that we can keep that ball rolling, with or without a KS :)

Collections still do well enough because they're a mix of wearables and regular items (which aren't as "expensive" for us to make) and are also typically less items than a collection :)

Yeah, we've had a few recodes throughout time. There was the recode that resulted in the current wardrobe (from and EnderNeko) that was ditched when they were all ditched, and then a few times since then we've beat the drum of "this is something we actually need to do because the site is operating on code from 2005". Unfortunately we'd have to do it parallel to working on the main site which is why I'd want to hire a separate team that only worked on the recode - but that just isn't something we can do right now regardless of how many people we let go of on the main site.

Can you link me to it?

First I'll point out that I haven't signed on to this idea, but the point is that right now we make enough to keep Subeta running as is. We can keep the artists we have employed, employed, and the programmers on the team can keep plugging away at the things that we've been doing for ten years.

What I (and the users in this thread) want is an entirely separate fund used to hire a few programmers and a designer to create a new Subeta, based on new coding, that doesn't have a rotting core that is what has plagued us for ten years. I think it's a really enticing idea (we'd keep working on the main site, adding features that were already being ported to the 'new' version) because it means at the end of the process we'd have a Subeta that would be mobile friendly, would have an API so that a mobile app could be easily made, would be based on coding standards for this year, etc.

Right now we just don't bring in enough to hire people (average PHP contractor makes $100-$200/h, average game UX designer makes about $100-$150 an hour) to do this work and keep the site running (which would be required because we'd have to keep making money to hire those people).

This might not be the best (or nicest) response but we've seen hundreds of these threads since the dawn of time.

Subeta is ten years ago. There have been a slew of programmers. There have been a slew of changes to the code that runs it all, rendering some outdated, some making you think twice of what is even going on, and others working very well. We can't just easily hire a team of programmers to work on an alternate Subeta and build up the hundreds of thousands of lines of code that we've accumulated over the years. We can't take the site down for two weeks and fix ti all (another idea that is constantly raised). There are so many limitations to each of those ideas - tens/hundreds of thousands in overhead, shaky timelines, among several others.

The outpour of support on this thread is great. We know that everyone cares about Subeta. We, as staff, care about Subeta. But if you are so willing to drop $50, $100, or $250 on a Kickstater - what is stopping you from buying that much in CSC?

Every time that we are in the green for a month, that money goes to two places: reinvesting in the business (hiring freelancers for X, Y, Z projects that we otherwise wouldn't have time to do in addition to keeping the site afloat) and saving for a rainy day.

Strengthening the core of Subeta is at the top of our priority list. Where can we cut the fat? Where can we recode features that could use some new components or dynamics? Keith has pushed out several changes within the last week. Grace is working on an incredible project right that will be awesome. Amber and I are war-rooming a great revamp and plan to tighten other areas of the site.

It's all in the works. We'll get there in time. But there is really no quick fix (even with boatloads of money). And if you are wondering about a feature that is broken or not fixed entirely - reach out to me directly - sMail, [email protected], whichever you want and I'll take a look.

: I am a bit confused. You are saying that you are not incentivized to purchase any items from the CS because none of them align to your interests. Now if we extend that logic to say that if there were items (or features or whatever) that you were interested in, then you would purchase them from the CS. Is that correct?

My next question is - what are those features or items that would you want in the CS and would spend money on?

Thank you, I was trying to think of how to phrase this earlier! With the cash shop you're purchasing something and know what you're getting (cash shop credits to spend on an item / pet slot / whatever) but if we put up some kind of fundraiser then we're setting ourselves up to do the sort of reporting that kickstarters are supposed to do (even if we do it on site) which is reporting on the status of the project, what pitfalls have come up, etc.

I'm not saying I have a problem with that additional reporting (I don't at all!) it's just hard to do right without people feeling like they've been cheated / things are moving too slowly. If you back a project via kickstarter or otherwise, you feel a little bit of ownership in the project and that's why people get so upset when projects they've backed don't make it or vanish halfway through because they feel like they pumped the cash in and they should have gotten something for it.

This just comes with SO MANY problems. What does Subeta V2 look like? Is it the same game as Subeta today, just with better backend? Do we take strides to apply actual game theory and have actual mechanics that make people come back for periods of time? Do we apply all of the limits then and just say "sorry" when v2 comes online? How do we make a new game but keep all of the same things (user items, value of weapons, etc) without just... doing the exact same thing.

I'm with everyone on this thread that a new, faster, put together Subeta built for 2015 is a great idea (obviously) and would prefer that to be the place we are in, but there are a lot more questions than answers down that road of thinking.

We know what the answers will be - there are some things people will be flexible on, but imagine if we said that in our reimagined battle system we are getting rid of weapons in their current form and making them do something entirely different, but the real focus will be on other aspects. People who've invested billions of sP would riot even if the choice is better for the game overall.

It's the same thing that comes up any time we talk about limiting shops (but I haven't been able to get the achievement!!!) or anything, even though it'll make the game better.

I think that analogy works because you can't afford to save up for a new car if you have to keep repairing the old one.

We're having a discussion about this almost daily, talking about what we could offer and how to best represent updates and things that are happening, what stages to bring people in on, etc. We're leaning a lot more toward doing it than not :)

I've been watching what is going on with Neopets over the last week and I feel like a lot of the responses are a lot of the same things that we're getting here. Users are upset that a place that they love and have an emotional attachment to is (possibly) going away, but also that it got into such a broken state. It's really hard to see everyone so sad over something they love (the same way I hope we all feel about Subeta :P) and is a real parallel to what I think is going on here in the sense that we all just want Subeta to be the best version of itself that it can be.

Like I said in my last post, this is a conversation with the team that we've been having and how we'd want to organize it and push it, BUT what I can say is that I've done a few projects recently in Laravel and have a really firm grip on it at this point. I don't want to promise anything because it sounds like another HUGE REWRITE IS MAYBE COMING SOMEDAY but it's something we're investigating.

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We have a pretty good idea of this usually, I think

We're still investigating. If we do this we want to be entirely transparent with complete breakdowns of the costs, what features we would specifically focus on first, and all of the logistics. It takes a lot of research (and a lot of digging into our code) to figure those kinds of things out :) We wouldn't want to half-ass this and end up needing a ton more work done in a few months, which is something I've seen happen with a ton of freelance projects.

Do you mean on the current site? Obviously if we went forward with this plan we'd post all of the things we wanted accomplished, and the reason (which would be THIS SUCKED ON V1 OF SUBETA, CAN WE DO BETTER for most of them) - but if you want a break down of the current site that'd take a bit of time (but would be possible)!