There are already pages and pages of outrage, here, so I won't spend a lot of time voicing my own regarding the changes to be made. I'm all for changes to the outdated code that result in better functionality in the site, and am willing to believe that staff is genuinely working to create a better, faster, stronger site for the benefit of its userbase.

I would encourage staff, however, to reconsider it's PR methods. Nearly every change to the system within memory has resulted in some level of upset and confusion among users, forcing staff to backtrack, post "updates", and eventually try to appease the angry hoards. I know the GA forums exist, could they be used as some kind of "think tank" to brainstorm user reaction and suggestions BEFORE major plans are implemented? So many of the problems addressed in this thread could have been brainstormed and avoided before making a huge public announcement and causing untold chaos. The new shop/gallery system should have been put through a closed beta, perhaps offered to GA members for an incentive, and tested rigorously for some time before an announcement was ever made to the site as a whole. As it is, with changes being implemented in only 9 days, if bugs occur and are reported by testers it will leave coders scrambling to fix things before a negative impact is felt site wide. As we've seen in the past, the small number of people on staff trying to support a site of this size will mean delays and frustration for everyone.

The fact that staff proposed MANDATED this change with an honestly a ridiculously short warning, and more importantly, without being transparent about the possible timeline for increases to the user shop limits is unacceptable. It was only ever going to cause an uproar. But if closed beta testing had been performed, coders would have had access to usable data that would allow them to give 1) reasons why this change will be helpful, with data to back it up, 2) functional fixes for all the problems users have brought up in this thread (ie. transferring items to new shops conveniently, maintaining prices, suggestions for alternatives like vaults and pet TCs), 3) a firm timeline for limit increases. Opening up a think tank thread and a closed beta would have provided soooooo much helpful information not only for coders, but for staff that would eventually be announcing these changes. All the information that users have craved in this thread would be answered, right up front. People wouldn't be panicking wondering how they will deal with the changes, or how the site will function after the changes are made. Users wouldn't have to comb through hundreds of replies on a news post or forum thread to get information. They would be better able to sit back and be patient on full implementation, if they had a firm date for a reasonable shop limit instead of just nebulous promises of "eventually, the limits will be increased." Instead, the majority of the userbase is confused about WHY these changes are being made, HOW the changes will affect them, and WHEN the site will see true functionality (because let's be honest, 250 items per shop is approximately 2 days worth of quest rewards). Ariel and Amber seem to be trying hard to answer questions and do damage control, but they have admitted that they don't fully understand the specifics about the changes, and no one has any firm answers to give. This is par for the course with every major change that I have witnessed on subeta.

Every question in this thread should have been anticipated and answered in the first official newspost.

So now that I've said my piece, I'll try to offer some helpful suggestions. :P

1. Think tank. THINK TANKKKKKKKKK. Perhaps random users could be offered a temporary position on this think tank, giving honest opinions and suggestions for an incentive of some kind (CSC, week of GA)? Or perhaps just having input threads on the GA forums would be enough. Staff needs input from regular users who are in touch with the day to day functionality of the site to know better what users want and don't want, and how BEST to implement these changes. Plus, I'm sure having a larger input base could spur some really good ideas and discussions that staff may not have thought of on their own! Fresh eyes are ALWAYS plus.

2. Keep galleries unlimited, but make them unsearchable to decrease the load on the site. Users can still manipulate and view their own galleries, but would have to give out a unique link to friends/other users if they want to share and show off.

3. Promote/incentivize using Pet TCs in place of item galleries. Perhaps making TC slots easier to obtain, hold contests or events that focus around pet profile building/creativity? Right now pets seem like an underutilized part of the site...

4. Brainstorm new event types that don't focus solely around collecting new items to reduce reliance on collecting/hoarding. Right now, take away avenues for collecting, and the vast majority of the fun of the site goes out the window. Basically the whole point of the site right now is to actively collect, or collect with intent to sell (so that you can buy more stuff to collect!) :P

I know staff is working hard and I truly appreciate all the hazards and hoops you all have to navigate. Thank you, and thank you all for listening to us and trying to make things better!

Honestly the staff is missing out on a great opportunity to make an sP sink. You can make galleries "unlimited" by starting out with the number of slots being suggested, and giving users the option to buy more slots with sP. Users may be more open to this change if something like this was implemented, because those with large galleries they worked hard on can feel like their hard work isn't going to waste (though personally I'd grandfather those in so they don't have to pay). It also doesn't take away the incentive to work on galleries, since technically there is no limit (provided the sP price is reasonable, of course).

So if the items are left in our shops, what happens then? Do our items get deleted? Do our shops get deleted? I'm a little confused here.

130/133 pages left in my gallery. I'm actually finding things I forgot I had and I haven't even left the A's yet. I stuck things in a gallery because I liked the organization better than the vault. Plus if I wanted to keep only one copy I didn't have to worry about a duplicate ending up sorted into my savings category.

Why the heck do I have so many goody bags from 2011-2014? lmao I should open them up, save the books and frag the rest.

Yes, yes, yes. I tried making that point earlier and got a non-answer answer.

As far as I can understand, you'll get to keep your shops but you would be the only person that can see and interact with it. Items should be safe.

Again, I might be wrong.

Yeah, but if they expect people to move their items, they should at least give us a 'move all to gallery' option. Also, will we be able to decide on which of our shops we can use?

It is mentioned in the post on the news page, they're busy discussing a "move all" option.

I think the only shops we will be able to use will be the new ones, after April 17th.

Does anyone know if there has been talk about the autopricer? I know that's a big issue.

I'm sorry. Subeta, I love you. I do. At least I loved the old you. But I no longer have any faith that you can 100% pull something like this off. I just don't. When your user base knows, regardless of what is being "fixed," that it won't be entirely completed and functional, just because it's coming from your website? Your brand is wrong. It's... it's just wrong.

Fix your limits. Give users something to do. Give them a REASON to play your site rather than nostalgia and art. Heavens.

Does anyone know the link to create your own new shops? I cant find it anywhere

Right now it's only in Beta Testing for Gold Account users. If you don't have a GA, you will only be able to make a new shop on April 17th when it goes live for everyone.

I have a gold account but cant find it. help anyone?

There should be a link here :)

Thanks :)

on a side note, I think it would be neat if no two shops could have the same name.

So I'm not as upset as I was initially. However, I am still hoping galleries will somehow eventually be completely separate and not have limits. And if so...I hope we can somehow convert our galleries to the new coding without messing anything up or requiring a complete re-do (re-create categories, organize items into those categories). But even if it won't be separate, I hope the limit for galleries will eventually be VERY very high, like 20k, 30k, or even 40k. Closer to the total number of items in the whole site.

I think having a different limit amount on the gallery would be needed. Or having more then just giving us 5 galleries and 1 sales shop. I can handle having only 1 sales shop...I personally have never had more then 500 items in a shop at a time for selling things. I did have 2 sales shops now (1 for the sp hoarding achievement and 1 for quick sp to get to spend), but if the sp hoarding is going away then I dont need it (Although I had always wished that the sp in a shop had the same system in place as our money vault where we could withdraw what we wanted but leave the majority in there...that would have been cool). Im just really concerned that I have been working on collecting 1 of every item from main shops since I started and with the 17k unique items I have...the way it sits now, 12k of those items have no where to go (I have 30k items in the shop but I can sell off MOST of the duplicate items...But I think I read somewhere that duplicate items would only count as 1 in the new shops so you can have stacks of things and it not matter...its just the unique items that are really being limited).

I think the issue that a lot of people have with the change isn't that it is needed but rather how it was executed. It's not just taking something that the site has encouraged for over a decade, but it's being mandated it within ten days of publicly announcing it. For perspective, that's not even a day for each year the site has existed.

Not just that, but it's also being implemented without actually creating an easier way to move items. There might be an option before it goes live - and that would be great! - but this was planned/announced with such poor foresight.

If the shops really were so bad on the servers, these could have been announced months ago with prior testing over a period of months with 'special' beta shops for GA users (maybe with the ability to autoprice one of those shops and one of their old shops for those participating in said testing), which could have probably provided enough data and also enough time to figure out an effective method to move a large amount of items from one shop to another.

Not just that, but if people were able to actually use beta shops (and price them), and the limit to the beta shops was slowly increased over times, a lot of people could have slowly but relatively painlessly moved their shops over. That way, when the old shops go defunct and are no longer on shop search, the economy wouldn't be impacted quite as hard as what will (probably) happen unless older shops are "grandfathered" in. It doesn't even have to be a true "grandfathering" of shops, as much as not allowing users to add/autoprice those shops - that way, autopricers for new shops can price items to their current value, instead of thinking a red ball is worth 3 mill, and waiting for the fallout that will probably occur from "all shop item prices where basically reset and now I can't quest/frag/whatever."

Honestly there would be so much less panic and concern if there was more communication a long time ago about this, and the lack of prior communication for such a big feature I think is what alarms so much of the userbase.

I am worried about the economy, for reasons that other users and I have put forward already in the news post yesterday. I would suggest that BEFORE forcibly implementing this change can staff please also address how they would save the economy when the prices from current shops disappear and everyone can price items according to their own wishes - I honestly do not want to see 10m for a stick of butter ever again - like when the Bakery is first unfolded. But this is likely to happen when the 'disabled' shops and thus their item prices disappear from view when the new shops go live. What about the prices of csc when GA users seem to have so big an advantage over non-GA users? What about common items that nobody wants in their shop but need for their quests?

Subeta was not pay to play, and if that becomes reality I'm sure the site will lose much of their userbase.

There is a problem of trust here - WE NEED MORE DETAILS AND MORE TRANSPARENCY - for instance as mentioned users would highly appreciate a timeline of WHEN the shop limits will be increased. Without a concrete timeline that will just be an empty promise because promises are not set in stone - there must be some assurance for the users.

As Sonatine previously said, please open your eyes and listen to what your users are telling you - rethink the implementation of this update.

I've seen one question asked several times but can't find an answer to it. Even when the shop limit is finally increased, many of us will still be forced to have more than one shop. If I buy a GA for the autopricer, will I be able to autoprice each shop once a day? I don't think anyone will be happy if we can only autorpice one shop a day so we have to do a different shop every day or pay a further 100CSC per shop to autoprice everything every day.

Autopricing in the new shops isn't working...I just spent best part of 2 hours transferring all my stock over only to find I can't price it all up....dear me, come on...