No news post saying maintenance was done. Still getting lag. And I see that the status page shows the same issues.

:/

ty for the update :)

First, sorry this is going to be SO tl'dr... This was a hard read-- I'm on Subeta almost every single day, with some exceptions when I'm just too busy with work. I haven't experienced the same errors that most people have, so I consider myself blessed. My time spent here is usually when server capacity is low, very late at night. I do understand the frustration, especially in light of today's "instant gratification" kind of world.

When I see "pay to play", I instantly consider an exit strategy... Now, not because I can't afford to pay a required $5-10 monthly but because if I'm paying a monthly fee, I know Subeta can't guarantee uptime with its' small staff. I'm already spending hundreds a month on having CW's created and selling those CW's to a market that I can barely fill slots for, because our userbase is slowly dwindling down due to these errors. I've been very vocal over the past couple of months about the slow downfall of users willing to spend real money on custom wearables and I'm finally starting to see why exactly the CW market is declining. People are growing incredibly tired of not being able to access the site. Forcing a pay to play model will only hurt the current economy even more and to be perfectly honest, I don't desire spending money on anything besides custom wearables on Subeta. I understand it's a niche and not everyone has that same logic but it's been hard to deal with and hard to watch. Everyone still loves CW's and I think it was a fantastic addition to the site, as it gave me a real reason to come back after I'd played minimally for quite a few years after I was fired from Subeta's staff.

People like and myself have seen some really, really insane DDoS attacks, hacking, downtime, and some serious struggle on behalf of being a part of Subeta's team. This issue seems so marginal in comparison to some of the previous issues Subeta has actually had. (Just check out Encyclopedia Dramatica's entry on Subeta if you're new to the site.)

However, I do have to agree that I can't see Subeta really surviving unless the team does something to make a huge change. That doesn't just apply to the servers, no. I always appreciate the events and holidays but I simply don't see that being enough to save the site as a whole. People aren't even willing to spend the money to buy GA's when the site is iffy, as made very evident here by a lot of people that have been around for years, as said before.

So maybe some suggestions on user involvement?

• We once were able to select users to be a part of a user-driven panel to help increase productivity. Users were able to apply for an unpaid trial into the staff, where they had a very small workload but the main idea was to try out some more active users opinions on events, rules, etc... I believe there were 8 people brought into the group, which essentially only came with bragging rights and a place to throw out ideas. This was when Subeta's market demographic was much younger and was, actually, how I found myself hired onto Subeta's staff for a /actual/ money. Again, this was when many of Subeta's users were in their mid-to-late teens and early twenties, so it wasn't a total success but the entire process was a lot of fun and everyone really enjoyed being a part of Subeta's decision making and problem solving process. Would that interest anyone? I've seen a few volunteers so far on this thread.
• We're a MOBILE world, y'all. I've been praying for years that Subeta would finally jump on the mobile bandwagon and create a companion app (on separate servers, of course). We've all seen the rise of Pokemon Go, for example... 15 million plus users were gained for them on launch weekend alone. Obviously Subeta doesn't have the kind of dedicated fanbase that Pokemon has, but I can't imagine anyone being negatively affected by the ability to use the site's main functions via mobile phone. Now, I understand that the mobile field is an incredibly new and niche thing as far as development goes, so I'm not entirely sure that Subeta even has the resources to start on something like this currently. I'd opt in solely for forum reads and maybe the option of being able to complete some daily quests on my phone.
• Add the site's status onto the dashboard of everyone's page-- I was completely unaware that Subeta had a separate status page altogether until I read the first page of this thread. Why not make it available at all times so that users know when the servers are compromised. I've always just googled Subeta's social media to find out what's wrong on-site or if there is an update available at all.
• Come up with some NEW IDEAS. As far as holidays and events go, it's always a copy/paste of prior events. Battle this thing and get a couple of free items. Go to Melody every day for a month and get an achievement. For years. I've rallied for RS wars again, which were MASSIVE fun, but when it comes down to it, everything is hampered by server condition. I haven't much in the way of a suggestion for events that would keep server capacity at bay but also be fun and interactive for users. I do know, though, that I'm much more inclined to play and participate in events when it's something brand new to do.

I'm just snowballing.......... The long/short of it is, pls no pay to play. Everyone will quit and cry.

Edit because o yas -- THX FOR THE HARD WORK AND UPDATES ILY. LMK IF I CAN HELP IN ANY WAY.

Goodness gracious people, one person said they would rather see subeta pay to play than close, not that subeta should be pay to play in order to fix problems happening right now, or anything of the sort. It was one person expressing that they are interested enough in subeta that rather than see it disappear completely they'd like it to hang on by whatever it could. Pretty reasonable thing for someone to express about a hobby they have. The site is being worked on... constantly. There will ALWAYS be room for improvement, and there will always be things that go wrong, the fact that the problem is so elusive, is just another problem to be worked out, and that's happening slowly but surely. This is true for anything, and everything. The doom and gloom here is absolutely ridiculous. There's no reason to spread fear based on suspicions, information out of context, and disinformation. If you think the site is dying with no hope, so be it, but that certainly doesn't make it true...

"I'd rather have the site be pay-to-play than die" is a mentality that excludes a lot of people, including the part of the userbase that is in the 13-17 age group, people in countries where the currency exchange rate is unprofitable compared to the USD, people who are in low income households and such. Casual players who don't come online enough to justify a subscription fee would also get shafted

We're starting to make a lot of people feel excluded the moment we talk about P2P. So, we should tell these people goodbye, and keep the site for people with deeper pockets only?

Is this really caring about Subeta? Pushing most of the userbase behind a paywall?

You've always been very vocal about things and I wish you grabbed the mic more often, because man, I love seeing your posts <3

However

The problem with that is ... apps are insanely expensive when outsourced, and if it's done in house, it's going to be very long, and take away from programmer time on the site.

It would be good if the finances of the site were great. But today, it's almost 2PM, daily goal at 14% I really, really hate having such imprecise information. But we're on target for a less than 30% of the daily goal today. We were around halfway mark yesterday. This...this isn't good at all.

Also, for each Clash of Clans, or Pokemon Go, how many applications never make back their initial investment. A lot

My brother in law worked on an app game, and this was in the early 2010's, and the lack of players and support bankrupted the studio. You'll see a lot of apps who share the same fate, end up unsupported and die miserably, its existence written only in red ink.

I think that we're in a point where we need a revolution to happen. Not just evolution. We had a revolution in 2009, where the entire holiday format was changed, where lore and story was more important than everything.

Now? Everything is just routine. And we need to break this routine, not just with the holidays, but with everything.

Thanks for the update Keith, and that sounds like my kind of trouble-shooting - while trying to resolve problem A, you end up resolving problem D instead ;) At least it didn't cause a new problem, and hopefully the call to the database people will be helpful :)

*hands everyone working on this a *

[edit] the status site is linked on the footer of every page (admittedly not the first place I thought of looking for it) ;)

I don't think making it pay-to-play was a serious suggestion, plus making the site die would exclude more people than making it pay-to-play. but seriously, I'm sure pay-to-play isn't even being considered and it isn't an option. I don't think was being serious suggesting it, moreso a "I'd rather have to pay for the site than see it shut down completely"

p2p always ends up being brought up in these conversations and being shut down by Keith via a big "lolnope"

If the site closes down (Spoilers - it will happen someday, don't expect Subeta to be around when you'll be in your 70's, guys) the grief will be hard, but it will never be as hard as "I got kicked out because I couldn't pay for a site that was free for 12 years"

if it gets shut down by Keith every time why are we still talking about it like it's something being seriously considered? :x there will be people reading this thread that see it and go OH NO PAY TO PLAY I DON'T WANT THAT and not really realize the context.

Because I'd rather use my fearmongering powers for good (denying that p2p could happen) than for evil, thx

It better be...and you guys better be here too. ;) SUBETA 5EVER

In all seriousness, I know a lot of people (me included) notify the programmers every time we get a 502/504 error. I know it is behind the scenes so you can't see it (and honestly how do you know I am telling the truth) but we are trying to get this figured out and under control. And I can't even ask anyone to be patient anymore because I know there are only so many times we can ask that before it gets beyond frustrating. I want to quest and play and restock too. I wish there was more I could personally say or do.

(now I am just blabbering and so I will quit) tl;dr There is work being done to resolve this and hopefully it will be soon!

I don't necessarily see it that way, nor have I read into other posts in that light. We're simply trying to pitch ideas to /help/. Any information that's been posted on this thread has been be long-time players or ex-staff that have incredible insight to offer. We're concerned that this site, which has been a large part of our lives for a long time, won't be successful enough to continue on long-term. Not only that but people here have outright stated that they're quitting if this issue doesn't become resolved because they're so exhausted with not being heard. Declining daily goals and user base are /factual/, which is scary for those of us who have invested so much into the site. On the other hand, I haven't seen anyone slam programmers, UA's, or Keith himself here. It's not a personal attack on Subeta itself, only the timeframes and lack of communication on what issues are, why they're happening, and the time frame in which they'll be fixed. Again, until today I had no idea that the status was in the footer, as half of the time I'm not able to even make it to the footer because my coding in forums goes all wonky. A simple addition of that feature in the dashboard of users could help greatly. I've never been the biggest fan of curtailing issues to the forums... I'm meant to scroll through pages upon pages upon pages of updates, bug fixes, user rants, and so on just to find some tiny tidbit of information on why things are happening. I don't have time to sit and refresh error-riddled forum pages just for some hint on what's going on. I think most of us just want some clarity without having to invest hours upon hours researching the new bug fixes for the day. That said, I still think Subeta's staff does a FANTASTIC job elsewhere. I know how hard everyone works and most of the daily duties you invoke in general and it's a lot to take on. My concern isn't that. My concern lies in the fact that you're understaffed, which in turn causes things to take much longer to take care of, which then causes users to quit in frustration. I'm worried that it's going to cause daily goals to plummet and Subeta will eventually come to a screeching halt. I donate often-- check my purchase logs. I'm proactive about it because I want to see Subeta around for another 12 years. It's been here through some of the worst times of my life. It's a comfort to come home to a bit of nostalgia every day. We want it to be successful, too.

Fair enough. Again, I'm not a programmer and don't have much in the way of insight on what it takes to push mobile apps through or the success rate at that. I feel like most of Subeta's programmers are incredibly competent of what they're doing, there just aren't enough to nip issues in the bud right off the bat without potentially corrupting something else in the process-- we've seen this time and time again and even today, we're learning that they've fixed another issue while the main issue at hand still seems unresolved for some. To be clear, I haven't had any errors this afternoon at all. It's smooth-sailing on my end but I can't speak for others. I've still seen reports on those errors.

The logic behind my reasoning for suggesting a mobile app is based solely on this: Should Subeta offer one, it has the potential of being a paid app. Most apps range anywhere from $.99 to like $9.99 (usually for fully functioning games). Instead of making a pay-to-play website as a whole, which would likely decrease membership, Subeta could offer a kind of "bonus app" for a one-time payment of say... $2.99. Those of us who are interested have no reason not to purchase the app, but the net of a mobile app could potentially help in daily goals in the long-term, depending on the type of skill sets our current programs actually have. I, for one, don't desire a fully functioning game as an app, either. All I'd like to see is a simplified version for questing and browser-based games. I barely ever have a chance to complete quests on my PC but introducing a way to streamline them to my phone has a massive appeal. Especially in light of server crashes and certain downtime. Introducing an app where users could still participate via mobile phone, even with downtime on the web server's end could help curtail some user loss. I could be the only person on Subeta that desires that, though. Seemed like an appropriate mention, regardless. It really all boils down to the ol' "You've got to spend money to make money.", which it appears is a bit of a stretch these days.

[edit] I spoke too soon. I just got my first error of the day. I AM A PART OF THE GRUMP-CLUB NOW.

It's sort of funny to say "hey! It's in the footer!" when 99% of page loads look like this:

Even if I had the footer enabled, I'm not sure I could see it.

Anyways, Cara has hit the nail on the head. This board wasn't made for "doom and gloom". It was made for accountability and transparency reasons. If you can't see that, then I don't even know what to say to you.

Appreciate the small update from Keith. It's what I -and most users- are looking for.

if you're using firefox, hitting the ' key that brings up the quick find function fixes that layout issue on the page :)

No, Safari. But thanks though. :)

I don't have safari or else I'd try to see if there's a similar fix for it there :X no problem, sorry I couldn't be of help xD

shame the maintenance didn't work out, still getting all those errors :(

No it's just literally saying that they like the site enough that they'd pay to play rather than not have any more site to play. It's a simple statement about if there were 2 really bad options, they support the site enough to go the pay to play option over no site. It really has nothing to do with anything as its not on the table or a feasible idea for people to be scared of, seriously. There's no point in acknowledging it from a negative standpoint on a thread like this except pure fear-mongering for fear-mongerings sake, it's not helpful. Especially not when saying things like "We're starting to make a lot of people feel excluded the moment we talk about P2P. So, we should tell these people goodbye, and keep the site for people with deeper pockets only?" No one said that, not even close to that. No one thinks that, at all. And yes it is caring about Subeta to think that you would rather it be pay to play exclusive vs dead, if you work out the numbers, a lot more people are excluded without subeta than with p2p subeta.

subeta is understaffed but theyre also pretty darn transparent, far more so than they need to (though apparently less so than some people think they should be). We were told what the issue was believed to be a while ago, and things take time to fix. Users aren't going to quit over this any more than they quit over shops being changed or saggitarius quests being changed for that matter. Some users just feel like threatening to quit helps make change go faster though it doesn't, and maybe even a very select few are upset enough to actually leave and maybe one actually does forever, but its really irrelevant. Staff are doing what they can and they've said as much. If people want to feel negatively about it so be it, but the general sentiment behind a lot of posts in this thread and others like it aren't helping do anything but put people in a sour mood about subeta.

That's what the title implies absolutely, unfortunately the posts have gone quite askew which is why I decided to post. Personally I'm very happy with the amount of transparency from staff especially on site problems, which they acknowledge and explain in some cases far more than I think they should have to bother with time the could have spent working on them else doing something else more productive and appreciated. We don't need constant reminders that hey the sites not running well, because we all know it isn't. And if people think the sites been abandoned and isn't being worked on then well, I don't even know what to say.

But its a bit more reasonable than people acting as if it's going to happen and going on to list all the reasons why its really bad. No one WANTS it to happen, no one thinks its going to happen, but some people would rather it happen than something they perceive as worse. No one responded to the original statement by saying, "no I'd rather see subeta die completely right away".

This thread, and the various threads made over the years all saying the same basic thing (Where is staff? What's going on? Why is the site so slow?) is evidence of that.