I don't even understand the forum boxes tbh, but the concept of "farming boards" should have probably been thought of beforehand since sub has always had pretty strict rules against spamming and... yeah. It really didn't appear to make the forums more active as much as "post in the farming boards".

Unless that was the goal.

Hence my quote earlier. With additional care though, these good intentions can be turned to good works. I'm aware that there's much effort put into the forum boxes by the staff, and I greatly appreciate it. I'm just disappointed with the current situation. I don't want forum boxes to go away if there's a way to improve them. I've gotten some great items as well.

Wait, this is a thing? This seems really silly. Why not just have a set pool of items to pull from? It would suck to be in a timezone when it isn't ever restocked.

I very rarely post in the forums. Didn’t use to be that way, but still. I couldn’t find threads that could use my input so I... didn’t post? I feel like the spamming threads definitely should have been thought of before hand, but I can’t fault people who saw an opportunity and took it. Still, there are plenty of game boards of use to accomplish the task. Should users have thought better? Sure, I suppose. But blame rests on both sides. Personally, I’d have liked to see these tied to dancing rather than posting. Just a thought.

Wait, this is a thing? This seems really silly. Why not just have a set pool of items to pull from? It would suck to be in a timezone when it isn't ever restocked. The boxes pull from the free shop, which is manually restocked. said on the previous page of this thread that she stocked the item pool with like 20k items and didn't expect them to go nearly as fast as they did, but the farming threads are throwing out a ton of boxes.

For some reason, I don't remember the spam being this prevalent when we've had forum boxes in the past? It's not like there aren't a fuckload of "pointless/spammy" kind of threads you can post on already (user run games, threads like "what did you get from [game] today?", claiming dances, etc.). I just find it really disappointing that people are making threads and posting literal spam just to get the forum boxes. I know some great stuff has gone out in them (though I have yet to get anything spectacular :P) and the threads probably went unnoticed for too long to punish everyone involved, but it's really disappointing to see :/

<3 That's one of the things I've always loved about Subeta - you can approach it from so many angles. Usually you don't even need to talk to other people, unless you want to. I went several years myself before approaching the forums - I couldn't even get into the Blue Building until 2016, six years after joining.

One can argue that no one really needs giftboxes, but it's hard to voluntarily not participate in something that would be an advantage.

OTOH, the farming threads were not the best way to handle this.

I dont know, I kind of like the forum boxes! I am someone who really prefers to stray away from the forums, and i usually just use the SB. It's mostly just out of habit, but any encouragement to use the forums and I am so down. haha :)

I got a single nice thing from forum giftboxes this year which was a great surprise, thanks for that.

My only desire, wish, "complaint" if that's what it is: can we pretty please add the forum boxes to pet treasures? xD My pet

Wrong board. Sorry. :x

I understand about that, but there are better mindless threads to post on in the other forums, like the forum game threads, rate HA threads, or the stick the user above threads which is actually about some element of community, as opposed to just spamming the Masq forum.

I thank the giftboxes for reminding me about forum points tbh. Got a few of those in my quest for the other.

Maybe a little forum rules reminder in the news post next time there's an event like this would help with the spam? This was my first time witnessing a forum box event and I was totally making copy/paste posts on farming threads earlier, since I just assumed it was fine/expected during these sorts of things (which was admittedly kinda dumb of me in retrospect, sorry :()

I do think a news reminder or alert banner would help though. I see now that Amber made a few posts on farming threads to try to control it, but since the threads go so fast that message is only gonna reach a portion of the people who are actually doing it.

I wish there was more discussion as opposed to mindless spamming. :l It's annoying and worst of all doesn't foster community so I agree with your point there. :C

OOOO i feel bad for using the claim forms as they def were spammy. I prob wouldn't in the future. I wish I saw the staff posts, i really feel bad.

i like the forum boxes - i think maybe in future dont allow farming threads - or - occasionally the staff could make one that people could farm on? idk a good answer to this.

When this was announced I was excited at first mainly because it was hinted we'd get NPC threads later and I've been wanting to see more of those and I was looking forward to who might show themselves in the forums. But then the farming threads happened and I started to feel like we wouldn't get them after all, partly because the staff would see no point with these farming threads, and partly as a punishment for all the spam, even if it did mean punishing everyone else too. Maybe they should have been made from the beginning.

I did get a few good items, but I'm more disappointed we didn't get to see any NPCs and possible contributions to lore. I would say maybe next time, but after all the stuff that happened this weekend, will there even be a next time?

disclaimer: i haven't had time to go through all of the posts and see what everyone's got to say about this.

subeta has a tight-knit community. anyone can easily talk to the devs, anyone can ping the owner directly, when people make threads like this, the staff comments, and the staff takes a lot of these opinions into consideration. they care about our enjoyment of the game and they want to make it as good as possible for the members. that said, i think this environment also fosters this attitude of 'i dont like this thing, therefore it is bad.' the reasons listed on this thread for not liking this forum box thing just seem so petty to me. if you don't like the feature, don't interact with it! if you don't like the prizes or the prize pool is frustrating to you, just delete the items! that's an option! who cares if people are spamming? if they like the feature and want to interact with it, who cares if they spam to get it? honestly -- i see this all the time where people go out of their way to comment negatively on something new staff is rolling out and it bums me out so much! they work hard to make our experience here good and people are nit-picking on the art of the box? come on. the aesthetic of the box has literally 0 impact on your gameplay experience, especially if you don't like the feature to begin with!

really cut the staff some slack. they're a small team working for little or no pay who have built something for other people to have fun with. there's no reason to go out of your way to make a thread like this when they're 150% just trying to improve gameplay experience, increase traffic to the forums, encourage people to interact with each other. if you don't like it, at least suggest other things instead of just saying 'this thing sucks and i have no ways to improve it, but i just want you to know that i hate it.' they're a good team and they're working hard. if i was on that team and i saw as much stuff on these forums about how the work i was putting in sucked, i'd be super unmotivated to keep doing the work. have some compassion.

This is literally the site feedback forum. I started this thread because I wanted to give feedback on a site item. In this case, it was negative feedback, but it was also tongue-in-cheek (the aesthetics of the box? really? I hope no one took me too seriously on that one). I was curious to see if anyone else felt the way I do, and a thread like this is a good way to find out, because people will post their opinions.

No one is saying, "this thing sucks and i have no ways to improve it, but i just want you to know that i hate it." I literally gave reasons in my first thread as to why I was frustrated. There are other avenues, and some of them have been explored in this thread, like the free store. Which you would know, if you'd actually read it.

You also can't just see a negative thread and assume they're all negative. Right before this one I made a thread about wonderful site art that I wanted to praise the staff for. That thread is also getting a lot of posts from hungry, appreciative people.

We take the good with the bad here.

Even if someone isn't concerned about others spamming for forum boxes, there will be side effects at the community's expense, even the staff who had to do extra work to restock the prize pool because the forum boxes were being given out much quicker than anticipated, and the userbase is grumbling and confused about why the prize pool is empty again.

Plus, spamming is not allowed, and it triggers herd mentality which gets out of control.

I agree with everything else. They are well put.