Okay, so let's just call her the Real Slim Shamber.

There was a staff headed thread discussing a way to bring in players and encourage them to stick around. It was shot down for what I think are fairly good reasons. And while I absolutely understand why that idea was floated as a way to grow the player base, I think the biggest hurdle Subeta faces to attracting and retaining players is being able to meet the baseline expectation of a stable, working site.

There’s a year-round calendar of events bringing with it activities and items. More pets being added than the artists can seemingly keep up with on colors. We could use more plots, one off events, and contests, and the things we have could always stand some improvement. But even with attractive and fun features it’s just dead in the water when we can’t do anything because the site is paralyzed by relentless and ongoing lag.

Sure, it used to be worse or it could be worse. But games have turn over, and why in the world is a new player going to stick around when they can go to a site that works?

I've found myself doing less and less on Subeta due to the lag. I was excited to play Masquerade, which I honestly make an effort to participate in, and then the site because crapped itself and hasn't been right since the event started.

Then I got a reminder that my GA is going to expire in three days - three days ago - and I'm like, "HA! Not when I can't even get a page to load."

Some people act like Staff is just sitting there scratching their butts like "lmao look at those suckers, maybe I'll fix the lag later if I feel like it farts" Do you have any notion of what is running a high-traffic site? do you have common sense? apparently not

I'm not saying that this lag is acceptable, it's a HUGE problem that should have been fixed years ago and its ridiculous and unacceptable at this point, but that's actually why Amber herself or any other single Staff member can't fix it by typing 2 lines of code while eating a donut

For the past 5 or so years, we've heard that the entire site infrastructure needed to be rewritten to be more efficient.

I have maybe a negative 3 knowledge about back and front-end web infrastructure (I'm more hardware) but....the struggle is showing.

Honestly, this lag and the frequent issues during events are why I never and probably won't ever give this site real money. Every time we get our hopes up (especially this time with the scheduled downtime last week) but then... nope, lag every time! I get managing the servers is not an easy task, staff does its best and everything can't be perfect but it really seems it's getting worse with time...

This site is probably poorly optimized to today's standards. Seriously, it shouldn't be lagging like this with less than 700 users on. Maybe it's time to go and stop having event over event if we can't enjoy them.

I don't understand why is this happening? Is this the coding (again), the servers (again) or something external?

Wow, the lag does suck, but no need to be insulting to staff. Especially to a staff member who is never anything but friendly and nice. Name calling is in no way an appropriate response.

700 users? It was lagging super bad with less than 400 users.

For this message go through it took over 9 minutes.

It's not a new problem, it's there for years and years and so on, and it's always the same thing. People are getting tired, I am getting tired, and I really do not want to see this website go downhill because of the lag.

You know what though? Maybe it's time we, the users, stop being nice about this. At the bare minimum for those of us with GA's or who pay for CSC or put money into the site another way Keith at least has the responsibility to make sure we have a functioning product for what we're paying for.

I understand it isn't easy to run a site. I understand that yes, chances are this site is poorly optimized for today's standards and that's probably what's causing all the lag and a complete recode will likely be needed, it isn't as easy as changing a few lines and having it fixed.

But to that end, I think we also have the right to demand that's what gets done no matter the cost. If during the summer when the site doesn't have any of the massive events the site has to go down for a few days or weeks as long as it's announced in advance and GA users are given compensation for that downtime then it should be done. A recode should be done if that's what's needed. Server moves should be done if that's what's needed.

Yeah... Subeta's kind of been like a baby on a plane lately. A 14-year-old, hormonal "baby" throwing tantrums while the staff try their best to calm it down. :P

The only thing that's been seriously hurt by the lag time and time again and will continue to be hurt by it is Subeta itself. Considering everyone loves the site and there's really no other website exactly like this on the net, I doubt staff are just sitting around with their thumbs up their noses collectively singing "Another one bits the dust!" every time a user quits, people complain, or the site lags really badly.

Like, even from someone who knows shit-all about programming, I'd still prefer to be working on new, fun things than to be forced to pour over old code ad nauseam, looking for the bottlenecks and sources of the problems, all because the site decided to flip its shit.

Also pls don't call Amber names, she's really nice, and she (& everyone else on staff lbr) is likely just as pissed at the lag as all of us are.

I stopped giving this site money a while ago - because it was getting dull. Right now, I think the best option would be to just go and bail - it sucks for the staff, it sucks for the artists, but I don't really have hours to invest on a site that doesn't work as it should.

I don’t feel like users being meaner is going to be in any way productive!

If anyone feels otherwise it’s the sad truth people will have to leave the site if it’s not playable. It’s the natural course of things. But being mean isn’t and I promise you there really isn’t a way for users to literally bully staff members into making this problem disappear... being a kumquat at the staff is not going to solve anything. That’s just not how it works.

Be angry and frustrated, that’s fine, I am definitely frustrated at how little progress I’ve made on dailies this weekend. Just don’t pretend like intentionally being a huge turkey butt is going to improve the situation.

I haven't given them money, my GA is funded through Morty Cards because I like the perks and don't have much else to spend that CSC on.

The opposite of 'nice' isn't always 'mean'.

I'm talking we stop telling users who say things like I do that we should ease up because the staff are doing their best, stop making apologies when things should be done better.. I'm talking about more talk about how this is unacceptable and the staff should be more open with us about the causes and more regular updates on what they are doing to identify and fix the site's problems. I'm talking about actually holding the staff responsible for providing a product that works when it's mostly funded by users.

Subeta uses Facebook Pixel. You can find it in the page by viewing source.

To be honest, the lag is worse now than it ever has been - it seems independent of how many people are on (so awful, crippling lag at 400 people, and how sad is it that there's only 400 people on at any time during Masq?), versus the lag we'd get when over 1k people would slam the site at once during previous years.

I don't know what's going on, and I don't intend to drag staff, because I know they're doing their best, but I barely played during Survival, and I'm only on now to spam the dance button for one person. Even that is frustratingly slow.

It hurts my heart to be this disappointed in Subeta. I love this site. I want to see it thrive. I want to see the user base grow instead of shrink. But how can we expect it to when we have literally months of almost constant lag?

The lag got worse after the downtime, it picked up for a bit then just kinda gave up. Is it server issues, coding issues.... weather.. any updates would be nice specially on site if possible.

If the staff where actually just being lazy it /might/ be effective to be constantly riding them, but if it’s just a case of a small crew with a big project they simply can’t keep running well at all times? You have to be realistic, cracking a whip over people already working hard because a site you’re using for free has wish washy stability won’t make it start running as smooth as Facebook.

People don’t say “they’re doing their best” just as an excuse. People say those things because instead of actually making helpful comments like your suggestion to make more updates so we know what’s going on, someone inevitably says things like “it’s time to stop being nice”. That’s simply not helpful to anyone and you will probably run out of steam with that faster than the site can realistically improve with the resources they have currently available.

You know, a few years ago, I would have agreed with you. The lack of transparency has been a persistent issue, though - even if they don't understand what's going on, it's still better to hear "we don't know the source of the issue, but we're working on it/here's what we've tried" than to hear nothing while dealing with crippling lag all day for weeks at a time.

Sigilmancy's right. The opposite of nice isn't always mean. I'm done defending staff, especially since a certain staff member was mocking a user who posted off-site about how many features have been "coming soon" for years. That's a bad look for a site with constant lag and frequently poor to nonexistant updates on site issues.

I mean, fuck, I guarantee there are users who would be more than happy to pitch in with bug fixes for free if they wanted to open up volunteer code jockey positions - before that can happen, though, they need to talk to us. We need staff to get better about communicating, because resentment is brewing even among the most dedicated of us.

I'm not giving up on Subeta - I gave them money just this morning because I wanted those CSC items - but I'm not going to bother defending them. There's no excuse for the lack of updates at this point.