So I'm guessing that really does mean he killed restocking on purpose. As if we needed any more verification on that front...

Man, fuck this. Subeta's not getting another penny of my cash until Keith gets his act together. I would honestly advise other people to do the same - after all, what good are the Autopricer and extra quests if restocking is as disgustingly broken as it is?

I agree - there's really no reason for me to spend my real money here when one of my hobbies, way of making money is being killed. When a vital part of the site economy is being killed.

You earn sP through restocking. Wait... You earn sP through quests then. Wait.... Games and other methods are just so slow. I can't imagine myself as a newbie coming into this environment. One of the reasons I was so drawn to Subeta was because it was easier for the underdog, the newbie to accrue a good amount of sP. Enough for me to buy something nice and draw me in. On Neopets, it was so difficult! If Subeta turns down that road, I think we're going to ultimately see less newbie retention.

I won't be spending any real money here until something is changed. There isn't really a need for me to use Autopricer when there's nothing to price. There isn't really a need for me to do extra quests if they aren't even worth the reward.

What frustrates me is that last night we were told they are trying to fix the gap there is between the super rich users and the users that don't have a lot of sP. They're doing this by creating sP sinks and limiting the amount of sP that goes out... but doesn't that just do the opposite of making that gap more even? The rich users aren't going to want to spend their sP. The poor users aren't going to be able to afford anything. It's just making it worse, not better.

What gets me is that that's not their business to fix.

A lot of the richest users are people who've been here for a long time, who've invested a lot of time and frequently real money in building up their sP reserves. "Poorer" users are either newer, or more casual players who don't spend as much time on-site, and so haven't earned as much. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of those positions; they're not things that need to be "fixed" by the staff because the players could easily fix them themselves if they wanted to - I would have been a billionaire by now, if I could've been bothered to restock and quest every day for even the past couple of years. But I did the bare minimum, instead, and that's nobody's issue but my own to fix.

All that has done is made it impossible for anyone to enjoy upward mobility. How is that supposed to encourage users to stick around and spend money on this site? Common sense says it won't.

What gets me is that that's not their business to fix.

A lot of the richest users are people who've been here for a long time, who've invested a lot of time and frequently real money in building up their sP reserves. "Poorer" users are either newer, or more casual players who don't spend as much time on-site, and so haven't earned as much. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of those positions; they're not things that need to be "fixed" by the staff because the players could easily fix them themselves if they wanted to - I would have been a billionaire by now, if I could've been bothered to restock and quest every day for even the past couple of years. But I did the bare minimum, instead, and that's nobody's issue but my own to fix.

All that Keith has done is made it impossible for anyone to enjoy upward mobility. How is that supposed to encourage users to stick around and spend money on this site? Common sense says it won't.[/quote]

At some point Keith needs to realize the users who hoard their sP are not going to just all of a sudden start spending their sP anyway, no matter how badly he tries to force them. They've had YEARS to spend their sP on everything under the sun and have opted not to, so reintroducing the same items these people already passed on and at higher prices (Antique Shop anyone?) isn't going to do the trick. Reintroducing new items probably won't either because, as proven, these users don't buy the items put out by the site. There is no "fixing" that "problem," which frankly what's so wrong with someone choosing to hoard their sP anyway? If he hates it so much then cut the vault interest if it's really that big of a deal. That's why he really hates it anyway since some people can come online and just collect a couple million in interest each day. That doesn't help Subeta's bottom line, which I get (though it really doesn't hurt it that much either since those people who can easily pay sP for CSC just promote other users buying CSC to sell for sP, and it's already been proven that they aren't spending much of their sP to begin with if they've hoarded tens of billions over the years). It's a pointless battle Keith's fighting that's costing every other user the ability to earn and spend sP in the meantime.

And I'll second you on feeling less inclined to spend real money on this site. I haven't changed my spending habits yet since I've been hoping Keith would rethink his strategy after receiving so much user feedback on a vast array of topics users are unhappy about currently, but the more the staff in general talks about this new site philosophy of limiting sP output and making everything difficult to buy the more I think that the site is racing in the wrong direction. If the site is going to stay with this plan then I really do hope they prove me wrong once all is said and done. My entire understanding of small site MMO operations and basic economic principles, which can be applied to any capitalist economy (even pretend ones with a smaller amount of suppliers and consumers in which much more control is possible than a real life economy), tells me differently though. Plus I think it's a path that will lead to more users feeling alienated through the process, which could also hurt Subeta's bottom line if people actually do decide they don't like the direction the site is going and opt not to spend as much real money on it. I know the site has been much less fun on my end for the past couple months, much of which I do attribute to the NPC shops overhaul. I think it's clear I'm not alone there.

Personally, at this point, I think we're fucked.

Staff tried things and they didn't work.

Inflation is STILL A PROBLEM and high inflation affects the poorer users of the site way more than the richer end. And, inflation is not something the userbase can really control.

He already did that, something like five or six years back? Previously, users were getting something like like 10% interest daily? It might've been more, but I can't quite remember now. Keith had fits over users making so much sP that they "hadn't earned" and blamed the state of the site's economy on that, before cutting it down to where it is now despite a widespread protest from site users.

If anything, these changes to RSing are only going to make inflation worse, because so so many items are barely restocking at all, so their prices in user shops are just going to keep climbing. So yeah, very soon the "poor" users are going to find it virtually impossible to earn sP because they're going to either going to be spending more on things like RSing and quests, or they're going to be making less sP in general due to not being able to RS or quest. Meanwhile, the "rich" won't even need to bother, they'll just sit on their bank accounts and not buy anything.

Congrats, Keith =/

I think that happened right before I started on the site, about two and a half years ago. I remember quite the ruckus about it then at least, though I wasn't nearly as involved in the site when I first started either. I do remember users used to get a random interest percentage assigned to their account between 5%-10% for interest though, and then Keith changed it to the 1%-3% model (which really was just a 3% model for the most part since the original idea of tiered interest using Morty Cards and being required to collect it each day didn't ever work properly). I actually don't mind his decision on the vault interest and think the current plan is just fine for the economy (and is much better and more realistic than eliminating vault interest altogether, though I won't be surprised if the day comes when that rolls out as well with the way things have been going). On the other hand, when it comes to the recent RS changes I feel that's an entirely different story.

I really hate that the Wishlist box on the "you bought this" page is still. missing.

It makes the 'add to wardrobe' button really pointless unless you just want to load another page just to remove something from WL.

I really do not understand why it had to go/why it can't come back. I've asked several times at deaf ears. At this point I've just chalked it up as another reason to be less excited about the site.

I could've sworn it was longer, before I moved back to my old hometown. Oh, well.

Fundamentally, yes. But if Keith's "it's MY way or NOTHING AT ALL" history is anything to go by, we're going to be looking at exactly the same results as before - him doing exactly what he wants no matter HOW badly it alienates the user base (and then wondering why his profits take a dive afterward...)

Lets rejoice

one more sp fountain plugged! This coupled with rs changes and its domino effect on quests, just what we always needed :/

one more sp fountain plugged! This coupled with rs changes and its domino effect on quests, just what we always needed :/ Yeah, less and less and less sP. Because that makes sP "more valuable."

In short, it's all nothing but fancy talk for "LOL You guys r makin 2 much money GOTTA MAKE SURE THAT AIN'T HAPPENIN!"

one more sp fountain plugged! This coupled with rs changes and its domino effect on quests, just what we always needed :/

I only wonder what this would mean for newbies. One draw of Subeta, at least for me, was that it was fairly easy for a newbie to gain sP and to buy items. It was much easier for the underdog here, not like Neopets.

What can a newbie earn from now? Restocking? No. Quests? No. Item Hunt? No. The only thing left would be games.

As a newbie, why would I want to stick around? Why would I want to spend my money here and contribute to the site?

Okay, I don't get it.

Do people want to have a viable website, where SP is actually worth something, or do they want to make piles and piles of SP, feeling prestigious because billionaires! but have to use a lot of that pile to buy things?

I'm getting mixed signals from this thread.

- Naturally everyone wants their cake and to eat it too. Such is life.

Granted, it sucks they plugged an sP fountain, but if it means that my sP is worth more in the long run, well, I'll get over it for the sake of my small pile of dough meaning more.

[Edit] Got a forum point for that post. I guess the site likes when I agree with the methods being used lol

That was pretty much my original wording, but I felt "Man, that's harsh" and edited it out before posting

Seriously, the antique shop made me discover things about the economy of the site and I'm not sure I like them. Yeah, we have more SP in our vaults, but it really doesn't mean we're richer. We lost a lot of buying power in the last 6 years.

IGNORANCE IS BLISS.

If the goal of this restocking change was to increase buying power and to help the economy, why didn't staff just come straight out and tell users?

Because I don't understand a lot of these economy terms. I vaguely know what buying power is, and what the worth of sP should be. All I'm seeing right now, is restocking becoming extremely difficult along with lower quest payouts. To me, and to the average user, it looks pretty bad - it looks like staff are ignoring our comments and concerns, and we're becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of response with this seemingly "perfect" system.

To me, it seemed like these restocking changes are made to make the system better, but they're all failing miserably. If these changes were the real intent all along, why not inform users? Why not comment on the issue instead of leaving users frustrated with no response?

Looks like it was in October 2012. Here's the post from Keith announcing the change.

- LMAO, I've been told I need to reign it in sometimes because I'm too frank. I try not to be but you know how that goes.

And I was thinking the same thing about buying power myself after seeing those prices. It was a real sting to the pocketbook before realization set in and it dawned on me that that is how far the currency has fallen. Talk about an eye-opener

If something isn't broken then just don't fix it? Restocking was fine the way it was. Now it's...tortuously slow and useless. I understand the need to update certain features to give the site a better look but restocking? How did it change anything about whether Subeta felt antiquated or not? It was a good, working feature. And feeling that our requests/questions/pleas are ignored isn't a nice feeling. u_u

In 2009, the average user had around 2.5M on hand.

Today, the average user has 13M on hand

That means that pretty much, one SP from 2009 is worth 5.2 SP right now.

Desirable items who sold for 1M in 2009 (like 100 CSC, the going rate was a little under 1M/100CSC) would sell for around 5M today.

CSC really is the easiest one to check, because it is pretty much the only item who stayed desirable in that time period. We just had a sale, so prices went down, but I'm expecting them to go back up fairly soon.