This is a perfect way to describe this. And Subeta V2? No, that's not what this was about. Using the above analogy:

We don't expect this money to buy us a Mercedes Benz. We just want our Corolla to be upgraded from 1985 to 2015. Once we have a running vehicle, it can take us places. We can then pimp it out to have those big ass rims and hydraulics. But for now, we just want to not drive around with a duct taped garbage bag over the back window and a transmission that is nearly shot.

This money would be to fix what is broken at the core... not to revamp the whole site.

Also wanted to add:

I understand that any sort of recode is going to likely come with more than a few cosmetic changes and that's fine. The revamp-in-progress Wardrobe and Achievements are proof of that. However the entire function of those didn't change. Minor changes that make sense are a plus. Completely changing a feature can wait.

Retire the big shop achievements if big shops are causing problems. Retire the filled wardrobe ones as well if they're causing problems, too. These wouldn't be the first achievements to be retired.

I think everyone wants V2 to be essentially the same game as V1 but with improvements. The Beta wardrobe is great but it would be even greater if we could create drawers and put things in them or move stuff to our inventories from the avatar creation section like we can in the original wardrobe.

I don't think anyone wants a whole new subeta. Just THIS subeta that actually works without going to a shop and have the site break. Without trying to load a wishlist and the site breaks. Without trying to load the forums and the site breaks... Sometimes as the owner, no matter how much people whine about things, you just have to say...sorry, this is how it is and it will make the site better overall! Sure people will be pissed with change, they always are...but guess what? They get over it eventually and even forget how things were before. Stop enabling entitlement.

Do you people not understand that subeta as it is has tons of inherent problems. It's not like recoding things to be the same as they were but just with a shiny new coat of paint is going to fix everything... Things will literally need to be RE-coded, as in coded differently, completely differently. Which means some things have to change drastically, or replaced or done away with completely in order to improve the site overall. This all aside from the fact that the game needs more things to keep people playing for more time out of the day, that's as good as fact.

You can't have a recode, make everything the same, and say, "Well, add new stuff in the future." Because it makes literally 0 sense to spend time and money recoding something that needs to be replaced anyhow, just to satisfy a user-base that can't deal with too much change at once. Obviously the inability to understand this is directly hindering the progress of the site. When staff is having meetings and saying we can't fix these things and make the site better because the whiny user-base will flip out and riot, that's a problem! Changes can, will and NEED to happen, get over it. You can't pick and choose which things get fixed and which don't because you like some things the broken way they are...

I don't think a lot of people are saying they are opposed to change just drastic game altering change, does that make sense? I want to feel like I'm still on Subeta when I visit, not some other new petsite I have to completely relearn.

Lets use Neopets as an example. They drastically changed just about everything on the site in one fell swoop and have never really recovered. I mean they still have tons of fans and are obviously still around but their time to shine is long past. They changed fundamentally everything about how pets looked and worked while at the same time changing nearly everything about their navigation. Although to be fair I'm highly impressed at the balls the corporate people had when they said this is what we are doing and sorry to those users who don't like it. They stuck to their guns which is what Keith needs to do with any changes that happen.

However people like the current Subeta and want it to be preserved where possible. The basic fundamentals of the site don't really need to change that much I feel like.

The community is going to complain. So what. The community is already bitching and moaning because the site doesn't work.

What's the point of adding more things to do (lol minion battling) if the site is like, at 30% of its potential and becoming less and less relevant? Making less money because the competition is stronger.

Do you want to do not a whole lot into changing things and have like 15-20 users on at a given time, like Misticpets?

Or do you want the site to gain more visitors, more power. We have an AMAZING window of opportunity right now, with Neopets losing steam really, really quickly, and the fact FR is nowhere near open registration. We have a chance to get back to the top, and no matter what it costs, I'm willing to take it.

But I'm not going to give money if we don't have a solid plan, or if it ends up being done in 2018. The future is now.

Things which need to be kept in a V2 Subeta-

1. The Wardrobe. This earns a lot of revenue for the site what with CWs and ordinary Cash Shop items. It's a major game activity for a lot of people. Apart from having one wardrobe which does everything instead of two wardrobes, there's not much that can be changed here.

2. Battling. This is another major activity for a lot of people. Going by what dedicated battlers are saying there's a lot of room for improvement here. A recode could open up a whole new world of battling possibilities.

3. Quests. The game's economy is built on them and it's how a lot of people make their sP along with restocking and reselling.

4. Special holiday events. They're the fun occasions which attract more players to the site.

I think those are likely all things that would be changed in one way or another, some likely very drastically, i.e. staff alluded to wanting to drastically change battling... But I don't see any of them being done away with, those are all basic foundations of the site...

I have confidence that even though I'm POSITIVE there will probably be many changes I don't like, if the site was recoded exactly how staff wants to, that overall I would be much happier with a new and improved and FUNCTIONING site. I think that any REASONABLE person would be :)

There's a difference between culling existing core site features that users joined the site for/put their effort into, and changing the same core features for the betterment of both the site and the experience as long as the TIME, MONEY, and EFFORT users have put into those core features is both taken into account as well as discussed with the users it most effects before game altering changes are made.

Like, here are a few things that will drive users away and make both a recode and the site's existence, pointless:

1. Resetting all pets to base stats.
2. Deciding 10 pet slots is enough and giving users 30 days to decide which 10 pets they want and the rest will be deleted from the system.
3. Pet names should be a free for all, why not have 49053 pet's named "Max" onsite?
4. Deleting all of the weapons onsite, and promising it'll be for the best because we have cool things in mind.
5. Deleting the wardrobe system.
6. Deleting all CWs onsite.
7. Deleting mega shops/galleries and all of the items inside of them, they're too big/kill the site.
8. Resetting the achievements for every user back to 0.
9. You know, collections are really big now and it's really hard for new users to get a foothold on them, I think we'll just delete them and do something new that's funner and easier to get in on.

These are utterly unacceptable at face value and would kill the site in an entirely different way (no users, no site). Numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9 are irrational and there's really no wiggle room for these as people have spent a lot of time/money/effort doing these very specific things and there's really nothing that can be given to me that would replace the money I've spent on pet slots/renaming pets/time taken off work or time to get my pet names that could replace those things. Same for collections (potentially minus the time off part, unless it was plot related which is another story), and obviously CWs are untouchable unless extreme circumstances permit.

However, capping the amount of items a user can have in a shop/gallery sucks but as long as those items aren't being deleted and the user still has them they can move them elsewhere/sell them/etc so there's really no harm-- especially if the hoarding achievements are retired or changed (like 40k items in your account vs. a gallery, or make a hoarding collection or whatever).

Weapons changing ahh... as long as 1) the community in which it actually effects is given a discussion board that's both listened to and participated in, and 2) the weapons aren't actually DELETED but converted into whatever this new system is then... no one is actually LOOSING anything so, that's potentially fair enough. The battle system is already debatable and I"d definitely open ears to some new thing that changes everything (redeem weapons directly to a pet/account and turn them into 'abilities' or something? Idk what exactly is being proposed but I'd be open to listening).

While yeah users are spoiled and yeah no human being (or feline) is keen on change if it's for the betterment of the site/experience then... throw this out to the userbase -BEFORE- the recode fundraiser becomes a thing.. so users will know what to expect, what direction aspects of the site are going to move to, that now's the time to work with staff on hwo to make it better for the site without totally tossing hardwork out the window (and if users just keep saying BAW NO LEAVE IT ALONE, freakin' ban them from the board for a week because that's not helpful and this needs to happen). There's obviously things that can bend or can be changed into something else.

I would like to see Agoge's quarterly reports before I pledge a lump sum of money to the site.

i for one dont mind drastic, sweeping change as long as said change works, is an improvement over the prior form of that feature (as opposed to change for change's sake), and works fairly without removing or neutering a function that many users valued it for.

battle quests changed dramatically, and my biggest (and pretty much only) problem was with the rewards at fifth quest model, because that neutered a lot of peoples' ability to split quests between pets, as well as cheated many transitional battlers out of potential experience. it didn't affect me, but i rallied against it, because it was a bad model. they changed it, and now i'm completely fuckin fine with new battle quests, even though it's different from what i'm used to and has taken some getting used to. because it functions, functions well, and functions fairly.

people are always going to complain against change, because people are opposed to change on principle (i count myself within this crowd, for the record. i'm only human). but as long as said changes accomplish the three things i mentioned, the complaints will stop once people get used to the change. if it's a bad change, then the complaints are valid, and it's an important skill for any person in charge to be able to distinguish "complaining because change is scary" from "complaining due to legitimate problems."

This thread totally cursed us tonight. Let's not talk bad about the code, she is a sensitive being.

I'm too lazy to quote all the people who've said it... but yes. I'd support a kickstarter that would give me more pet slots. I'm capped and I want more.

I think there are two really important things about a "V2" that come to my mind.

1. If you're worried about what to change? What a better way to figure that out than a survey. We haven't voted on anything in a LONG time and as a business gauging a "huge overhaul" toss out your ideas and let us give you feedback. You could have 1-5 or -10 rating scales of interest in new and current features, of satisfaction with current ones. You could have boxes (with character limits) for us to textually articulate. There are 112 things a properly worded/created survey can do. Especially if you put some items and an achievement for completing it. If you wanna be really mean? Book + food + wearable + plushie + beanbag. Make it a theme set and cover every collection once and only once. I know it sounds like a hefty prize for "just a survey," but this will likely have to be detailed and you want to appeal to as many people as possible. Data is your friend.

2. You can add changes later. If you get the site to 2015 and you can actually work on a site that isn't going to make you want to shove yourself in a toaster? You can add, change, and maintenance everything you couldn't before. So if, six months after a recode, you want to talk us into limiting shops? Fine. Subeta has lasted 10 years without implementing features omgrightnow. Why change that? Don't make a new site. Stabilize our old one, get us interested again, and then we can take steps forward.

[edit]

On a side note? I do think we're spoiled as shit and am totally okay with screwing that up. However, I think we're spoiled in the wrong places and neglected in the right ones. I would rather be spoiled in communication than in revisions to site-helping changes. Ya'feel?

Also. If I can pay 20$, 30$, 40$, whatever to make those STUPID SLASHES go away when I edit, then count me fucking in.

Just wanted to say that while surveys are a good way to get feedback, I'm afraid that a lot of players won't give it the importance that it requires and will just answer roughly for the achievement/prize. Therefore I don't believe there should be a reward for doing it, so you can be almost sure you'll get relevant opinions from people who do have them.

Just wanted to say that while surveys are a good way to get feedback, I'm afraid that a lot of players won't give it the importance that it requires and will just answer roughly for the achievement/prize.

This. Including a prize will ensure that any survey results are completely useless.

There is complaining. And there is LEAVING.

Would you rather have people log on and voice their issues with changes, which is bound to happen if the site is recoded?

Or is it better if those people just STFU and left the site for greener pastures, which is what happens regularly on Subeta due to what has become years of staff using the shitty coding as their fall back excuse for everything and anything that goes wrong?

My point was less "complaining is dumb, people shouldn't complain at all" and more "just because people are going to complain doesn't mean we need to keep the status quo"

The fact people are going to complain about change should not be a good reason to not change anything. People are already complaining about issues, it's not like the userbase is happy with the site right now. Seeing Keith using the spoiled userbase excuse annoys me.

So were spoiled for paying to keep the site running as well as the servers?