I want to donate money to Subeta and I spend an ungodly amount here already. I've already bought everything I'm interested in from the cs. I have over 2bil sp, I don't need to buy extra csc just to sell to make more sp. I have no qualms forking over money to Subeta if there's something I want. If you made an option to buy a custom pet species/experiment/color I would buy it.

A fundraiser event would allow for bigger ticket items and I would just personally feel so much better donating $250+ to a fundraiser that I knew was going directly into fixing the code and foundation of the site. It would mean I was a part of a big milestone for Subeta and that is awesome.

Err I think people tend to forget that staff has a direct interest in keeping the site running. Aside from the fact that subeta is a private business and we have no business knowing their exact financial status, I think we can trust that money from csc sales are being reinvested in to the site in order to fix things and make new things. I'm not really sure why anyone would think different. No one would have anything to gain from running the site into the ground... Subeta obviously has plenty of potential to continue successfully and even grow exponentially really. I would also venture to say that most of y'all aren't going anywhere so we might as well have some patience and trust that things will continue to get better as they have been lately. Clearly there is no easy fix to all the problems, and on top of that new content is mandatory and ASIDE from THAT even a lot of new things don't get worked on by the same people that are fixing old things so there's no conflict there anyhow...

So back to the fund raiser idea... How about everyone whoi wants to support subeta througha fundraiser just buy however much they would donate in csc instead. the money is going to go back in to the site unless there's some secret subeta embezzling scheme going on lmao. Once again subeta is a business and its governed by laws... And to those who say that csc serves them no purpose, csc is used for more than just buying from the cash shop or cws. you can sell it in your shop and then buy whatever you want for it or just direct trade it for whatever. And if there's nothing left on the site you want to buy or whatever well then I don't see how a recode is going to solve that problem, maybe you just need a break to think of something else fun to do on site.

Well perhaps theres a reason people are making these threads.. hmm?

We've stated on here multiple times that we want to see the money go directly into getting the site recoded, if we spend it in the cash shop as is we have no idea what its ACTUALLY spent on and we will likely never see a proper fresh recode.

After reading some comments I'm a little more wary of spending any money here.. sinking ship, rotting core, bugs all over the place, these things don't sound good and don't make me want to spend money unless I know things are going to change.

Sometime you need a fresh canvas!

I have no interest in buying CSC just to resell. Unless new lifelike dolls are released.

Sometimes, I just want to spoil myself, and use my money for things that are fun to me. Buying CSC to resell it is not fun.

pretty much summed it up, when you hit a certain point, you don't need more pure

But if someone is interested in spending money to help fund the site, why not just spend it on csc so you get something for yourself as well...

I'd like to know that my money is going RIGHT TO the recode, not to a just in general Subeta maintenance. I mean, I DO buy CSC every so often, but how much of what I purchase is going to the recode? How much is currently set aside for the recode, and how much more CSC would I have to buy to kick the recode timeline into gear? A mysterious number.

I mean, if I donated to the recode fund, and we hit our goal, then when I buy CSC I won't be thinking "I wonder if I'm helping the recode in any way". I'd know that that was over and done with!

Because my status is "Unless they release more LLD or pet slot", at a standstill, and buying CSC is not going to change the fact I can't get more pets.

But contributing to a fundraiser who has "Hey, if we hit 25 000$, we'll increase the number of pet slots you can buy by 10" is so so so so much more interesting than status quo.

I wouldn't spend 500$ on the cash shop because there isn't anything suiting my fancy there, but if a fundraiser had interesting stretch goals and tiers, yeah. yeah, I'd give 500$

The cash shop is for the present. A fundraiser is for the future.

But it is a business. If there was a fundraiser type thing like that where money donated HAD to be used for the recode asap, then it would pull money away from maintaining the daily goings on and potentially put the site in a state where it can't bring in as much money. You can't go to your local grocer and say, I'm gonna buy these tomatoes, but I want to make sure the money goes towards getting more tomato variety o.O Just because this is a virtual site doesn't mean it's not a regular business.

I can't see them doing anything like that. Though I suspect very much it probably would work lol. But again it'd likely pull money away from supporting the regular maintenance the site needs. I'm sure they allocate as much money as they can towards improving the site. But really I'm not really sure where the idea of recode funding = more pet slots came from anyways o.O it seems like a totally different suggestion to me.

The basis of the suggestion is to make a in-house fundraiser, in the same fashion kickstarter works, with reward tiers and stretch goals.

Are you familiar with how kickstarter works? If you're not, I can go and post the links of the kickstarters we have discussed in the thread

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stormlightworkshop/flight-rising-0

Flight Rising Launch Kickstarter.

Rewards were both physical and on-site, and the kickstarter items are extremely in demand and valuable on site today.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14293468/homestuck-adventure-game

Homestuck kickstarter, the only kickstarter I donated to.

With these two, you can see examples of stretch goals they had to get more money for their goals. FR offered more species at launch, and Homestuck offered more things for the game, like multi-lingual options and linux support.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/324283889/potato-salad

And that kickstarter is just to prove that raising money for silly shenanigans is possible.

I am familiar with kickstarter :P But I guess I was looking at this forum more from a fund raising perspective vs those rewards and whatnot. And from my perspective we already have an adequate way of putting money in to the site and getting something in return. And again I really think that having a fundraising thing like that would be hurtful to the site in general even if eventually it raised enough for a complete recode, it'd really be akin to taking the site down for a few weeks for the recode.

The big thing I'm taking away from this thread is that some of the top spenders don't have anything more to buy. They've essentially beaten the game. I think if that could be addressed somehow and get people interested in the CS again, that's a better choice than a kickstarter. It's a more long-term source of income for the site, which may have a greater impact.

I'll admit that it has taken me some time to go through all of this, and while I do support the idea,

I especially like that a fundraiser like this could be treated as a sort of event. The computer geek could actually DO something! He could be the mascot for this mess. Other NPCs could join in to help him reach his goal. I mean, I can't possibly be the only one who wants to see some of our lifeless shop keepers have a bit more of a purpose other than "He keeps this shop," right?

As for the rewards, I am not a fan of some of the ideas tossed around, such as "Have a NPC based on you/help create an NPC" unless its a fairly limited tier (Like... 4 or 5 people. How do you choose who is designing WHAT on that NPC? Leaves a lot of room for error. Same thing for design a pet, unless they're all experiments? That could still potentially be a LOT of experiments).

Now, design a minion/food/book? Things that people have asked for in the past multiple times? Sure! These are things that you may not even have to have the site artists cook up. We have perfectly capable user artists who could make the items for us and we just can have a voucher to submit it (meaning that the artist may become a recipient of CSC that the user would have to either a: buy first hand or b. buy from another user), then the person with said voucher can submit it and viola! Functional CUSTOM collection item! This would also make it so that people would still need to buy CSC to do that, there by supporting the day to day costs of the site on top of the fundraiser perk.

Maybe Subeta needs to have some cash only options like we did back in the day? Where instead of spending money to get CSC, you just spent the money for something in particular, thus skipping the CSC part? Some of the suggestions users have posted would be neat options to incorporate, but instead of like 500,000 CSC to make an NPC or something, it'd just be straight $500 cash like we used to do for really old custom items(not CWs) or when we used to want to get old CS items and the hot pink DPs. These options where it's "spend even more csc to get this cool item." just makes users spend rl money for awhile before the majority of them are using gift csc or csc they purchased with sP to gain the same thing(Not that it's a bad thing if you can't purchase CSC with sP), but really, maybe some only cash options would help?

I believe it was that brought up a question like, "If you'd be willing to support a fundraiser for this project, what's stopping you from just buying the CSC right now to support us?" or at least to that effect. To which users did and have responded to in abundance. This is natural and I hold no judgement on any of the ideas whatsoever, and I'd be a total liar if I said I haven't thought of one thousand ways to spend my life savings on Subeta "if only" situations. And I can almost hear the staff over there banging their heads on their keyboards with clumps of hair tumbling about them in frustration. Because they are getting an answer to their question but not a real business resolve.

I think, honestly, you can't simply ask the user base what they want all the time. Have you ever watched Shark Tank? One young man was presenting a product with his wife, and he bragged about how he always took suggestions from customers to better his product. He was coming across as amiable and pleasant which are endearing qualities in a person, but not in a business--not to the extent he was. One of the investors looked over their earnings and noticed a huge drop from one year to the next only to find out it was because they pulled a flopped item off the shelves because of consumer input. When they inquired about real issues concerning problematic or questionable areas of his product and sales he was so eager to get them to invest in his product, he sounded, as one investor said, "way too desperate" to please everyone all of the time. He argued, of course, that it wasn't what he was doing, and offered to work with the investors... but by being so agreeable that he only hurt his cause even further and so they rejected him even though they all absolutely loved the product. Their point wasn't to bash his hopes and dreams of being successful, but in their experience, as investors who are all about the calculations, money, and potential future, the real profit didn't come from relying so heavily on what the customer wanted bur rather through inventive marketing and solid formulas for their products. Companies like Coca-Cola, for example, doesn't rely on the input of their consumers to tell them what taste they want, Coca-Cola tells their customers what they want and then convince them why they will and how they'll love it.

I think Subeta is past the "baby stage" where most regular user input is essential, and is much more "young adult" stage in the sense that it does in fact have a good foundation and many happy users. I mean, we (the users) as one other person put out there, have been saying the same thing for a long time. And as I see it, the staff are too, in saying, "We can't put out more stuff like what we already have at the cost of hurting the game play (like economics, pet slots, etc.) and infuriating half our users, but we also can't devalue the income we are making to satisfy the overall game experience of the other half to make up for it either."

I liked the game play experience idea of buffs that was presented quite awhile ago. We saw the little addition in our widget, and I got so super excited because I didn't know exactly what it meant or what was in store for me. My brain was racing with the thrill of surprise and anticipation. But it never really mattered because it didn't really do anything that made me go, "Yeah, I freakin' love buffs! I'm going to zap past these quests in no time because it's worth it!" or "Wow, what the heck is this? I wonder what this buff does!" Instead I got a random event (that I totally never seem to see pop up) that buffs my Wizard Quest by 1. And then it sat there. And sat there. And I think once or twice during an event it did something, but I only knew because I saw someone else mention it. My point isn't to bash the buff idea. I'm actually saying that I really think it has some awesome-sauce potential, but since it stagnated, my experience went from positive to negative on that particular aspect of the game. When people complain about stuff like battling, or hitting a max pet slot (or perhaps an insurmountable effort to the next step) they are really saying that they loved the experience, but now it's hit a stand still.

I'm not proposing it will always be that way, much like many of us understand that there are things yet to come, but can you see what I'm saying? Make it more fun and I'm pretty sure you'll see an increase in interest which would lead to an increase in people wanting things that do bring money to the site. Put less load on your paid staff if you can. Maybe you guys can train more volunteers or seek out users who know the site and are willing to help with the mundane easy stuff. I'm sure there are plenty more things out there that could lesson the load at least a little bit. I'm sure there are a few people out there that could help plan a special event or help on the brainstorming creative front for little or no incentive just because they are gifted at writing or whatnot.

In conclusion, I just don't think doing a money grab single event will solve the issues that are seeded in more than just code. In my opinion, segregating the overhaul into a fundraiser is just subjecting the mechanics and finances of the game to public scrutiny and I can see how some users might feel like it's putting the burden of improvement on them. I think it would be a better idea to just budget it in with the rest of the costs that are needed, somewhere with that "rainy day" fund, even if it means putting it at the end and only adding in overflow. 40 grand is about $110 a day for a year. Maybe break it down that way instead of how many users can pay what amount to get there.

If there was another increase to the number of pet slots (unlikely I know as they take up database space and all that), I'd be buying more CSC just to get those 😇

"Bugs and glitches are awesome, you'll love it or soon you will. You spend cash, we deliver items. But then we will have a couple downtimes in the middle ..

But trust me, you'll love it."

The Cash Shop is perfectly fine for maintaining the site's current state of being.

Having enough funds for Keith to hire a side-team to actually write and code up a brand-new Subeta for us to all eventually move over to is the purpose of holding a fundraiser drive.

That's the difference. That's why we want and would support a fundraiser drive.

I feel like subeta should strike while the iron is hot. (granted if these threads do indeed get brought up all the time, the iron may be always hot, but I assure you patience is very individual and it could very well go south fast)

While people can donate now, if there's transparency with this, people will naturally feel better, which means they are more liable to donate. Especially for a very specific cause such as re-coding. I know 40k$ is a lot, but like someone said, it could very well be a long-term goal. How many people would REALLY mind waiting an extra year if it meant raising enough money if the kickstarter was open for a year with 40k/12 months as the goal for each month? People are ALREADY waiting, so I highly doubt most would mind waiting additional months. 40k is daunting. 40k/12 is so much less daunting and imo feasible.

Also.. I think instead of x amount of $ for things like make your own NPC or subQ line, there should be a prize pool filled with these things. This way you limit the amount of prizes right off the bat instead of waking up to see 5479372 purchases of make your own NPC, which I'm sure would become a verifiable nightmare. Make the prize pool a raffle. For each ?? $ you get an entry. Winners get to choose from the prize pool in order of draw. Make it so one person can only win once. In light of this kickstarter being divided into 12 months (or 10 for easy 4k a month number), there could be bi-monthly or monthly prize pool raffles. And if anyone says wait a second, that's a lot of "prizes", consider that things like subQ and battle challengers are released throughout the year REGARDLESS, so what would happen if subeta substituted winning user input / influence for what it has been regularly doing? I imagine it wouldn't be the end of the world subeta.

As a user who wouldn't donate anyway (since I can't), it wouldn't bum me out in the slightest to see prizes like "design a battle challenger" or "design a subQ line" because if it means making subeta a better website, I couldn't really be less happy. Plus I'd love to see what people come up with. c:

Have the whole thing on-site to eliminate the middle man and to control the situation by saying end date: 12 months from now but will extend if not met so tbd.

People like transparency. People like knowing things.

I really hope subeta decides to do this. On other sites, I've seen users get to be able to influence certain things like "design a celebration / day", so I don't honestly get why subeta is so against this? It's not like the user who helped design things will reap the benefits... everyone else will get to see the awesome concept / art.

Anyway, this got longer than it needed to be. tl;dr I totally support a kickstarter for coding.

edit: and ideas.. help design a line (could be like 3 - 5 or more, depending on what it is like subQ would obviously be more, and you would be able to name and describe the items, of course pending staff approval): minions, food items, vanity, subQ, female hair coupons, male hair coupons, subQ makeup, battle challenger - includes their loot, plushies, beanbags, npc, celebration/day, books, stickers, miscellany no use items, backdrops/foregrounds, collection theme, forum title, forum button, pet, color, wearable weapons (could be like restocking in mc or battle shop or restockable? idk). That's 22 separate prizes. :O

I'd definitely toss some money in the direction of a fundraiser.

(My biggest dream would be "donate [x amount] and receive [x number] of the non-restockable [retired, Cash Shop, BHH, Token Shop, etc.] beanbags/plushies/stickers", especially if there was a way to guarantee that they were ones you needed [though I imagine that would be a nightmare to sort out]. Hell, if that was an item in the Cash Shop, like a "Mysterious Box Of Beanbags" or something that you would open and get ~five of said beanbags I would buy a lot of them. I just want to be able to finish my collections let me live my dreams)

Huh well the entire thread vanished. What a surprise there was a glitch. Sigh