I apologise if you found this insulting. I'll try to explain my reasoning here.

There are people who can't afford to buy CSC but we can get CSC from the Bathhouse and now get Morty Cards from questing or buy them from other players. We can also buy gift cards from other players if we have enough sP so there are many choices.

It's true that battle loot, quest shop items and the referral points/referral shop items Keliora mentioned are all available other ways so it means that players have choices.

People scared of posting in the main forums had three choices for gaining forum points - join a forum group where they can feel safe, buy raffle/forum tickets from other players or post what they get from various games in the games threads. Now a very important choice has been taken away from one group of Subeta users.

If Keith adopts the API approach and forum points are no longer awarded for game thread posts we'll all lose this choice but it will mean that one group of Subeta users will then have lost two choices while the rest of us will only have lost one.

I have no problem with forum groups receiving the same perks as other threads. People can enjoy talking no matter.

To add to my previous post. A long time ago I went through years of misery with various symptoms of social anxiety and general anxiety along with depression. I was still affected to some extent in the early days of the internet. I'd post something to a news group and then worry about it in case I'd said something wrong - this would last until I saw replies which reassured me that everything was OK. If there were no reassuring replies by bedtime I could lie awake for hours worrying,

I'm not in a forum group so this change doesn't affect me. If I was in a group I'd find the change very annoying and an inconvenience. If I was in a group and I still had all my anxiety and depression symptoms, though, I'd feel as if a rug had been pulled out from under me because I'd been deprived of an important choice without any warning it was going to happen or even an announcement when it did happen.

So what about the possibility of taking forum points away from game threads? The Games forum in the Subeta Features section is an official, staff provided forum. Perhaps we could still get forum points from there even if User Run Games in Chit-Chat were excluded because Social Scene forums aren't exclusively Subeta related.

I'm sorry, what "important choice"? You can still post in your private forums. No one is silencing anyone or taking choices away. It's just...no more bonus perk. That's it.

For the record, I don't agree with nixing the whole thing just cause a few jerks were abusing it. But the overreaction on this thread is leaving me a little dumbfounded.

Also I'm pretty sure forum points are available at the bathhouse too.

I can only explain how I'd have felt about it in the past because we're all different. I wouldn't have lost an important choice where making posts are concerned because, as you point out, the forum groups haven't been removed. The important choice for me would be the ability to decide where I could feel safe posting to get forum points - the forum group or the game threads. Posting in game threads can be tedious in the extreme but if Keith does decide to exclude all game threads from giving points I wouldn't have anywhere I could feel safe earning points if I still had my anxiety symptoms.

Allowing forum points to be earned in the Subeta Features Games forum would be a compromise because many of the game topics there can only be posted in once a day such as what did you get from the Rift or Ruffie Raffle.

Looking into something isn't the same as doing it, though, so we don't know if this change will happen.

I'd just like to add to 's fab point - the choice that's being taken away from us is how to go about getting those points. By removing them from private forums and possibly from places like the games and such that don't contribute what the staff think are 'meaningful' or 'quality' posts users now have to make a choice; set off any potential anxiety by posting in the main forums or just....not earn forum points and have to buy them from the people who can post to get them or buy the items they want for (understandably) high prices.

We are no longer being given a choice and that is the primary issue here. We're being forced to do a thing in one specific spot that has been expressed to set off symptoms of a recognized mental disorder. As I said before, Subeta has by and large been about monitoring your own content, if you don't like something or it sets off anxiety or something else there's options to get around it while still using the functioning site as a whole. But now people who monitored their content by making private forum groups where they felt safer and much more at ease posting, chatting, and having 'quality' discussions are being punished for the actions of a comparatively small number who abused the loop hole. Fixing that probably won't be easy, like the main forums themselves, but admitting they're willing to try to fix it would be so much better than pushing a blanket fix that clearly many users disagree with.

As someone with severe social anxiety and depression, I really don't see why forum groups even matter. I've been excluded and backstabbed in small groups of people I thought were friends. If I cared about forum points more, I'd post in more threads. I can see why they were removed if people were spamming in private groups. No one is taking away the forum groups if you prefer to chat in smaller groups, but that doesn't mean they're safe spaces. A person is just as likely to upset another person in forum groups as they are the rest of the userbase. If you want them, post in the forums. If someone is nasty, ignore them. You don't get rewards for using discord but people do it anyway so I guess I just don't understand.

Forum points are 100% available via Bathhouse, hence my comparison with referral points!

I think they might just be called Raffle Tickets when you get them from Bathhouse.

So you can definitely still get them, even without posting at all (main forums or forum groups).

I think there's another thing to consider where the main forums are concerned - Subeta only has a few hundred regular users. Others just turn up for special events.

The different forums appear to offer a wide range of topics but, in reality, most of them will attract just a handful of players. Creative Corner is no use to people who don't draw, write, create websites or have hobbies involving arts and crafts.

In Social Scene there are forums dedicated to Anime & Manga and Games & MMOs but not all regular Subeta users will be interested in these or even know anything about them.

There are thousands of different music genres and umpteen thousands of bands and musicians. The chances of one player finding another with the same taste in music isn't all that great. (I've seen references to K-pop so looked it up. I'll give it a try out of curiosity)

The same thing applies to books, TV shows and movies etc.

Maybe I could start a topic about Archaeology in case anyone here is interested but where would it go? Entertainment/Internet? Would anyone find it if I did start one?

PS: Star Wars is likely to interest a lot of players. I want to see the next movie but I can no longer cope with going to the cinema so have to wait for the DVD. By the time I get to see it the cinema goers will have said everything they want to say and the topic could be out of date.

I just now saw this thread and heard about this. I'm annoyed by this change. I'm more annoyed that there was no announcement about it (I know that staff obviously didn't want to deal with the inevitable backlash, but it's the sort of change we should be informed about since earning a forum point is a random and rare occurrence and as a relatively infrequent poster it's hard to detect such a change...meanwhile, we keep on posting in our friendly little groups and wondering why our luck is so bad). I'm even more annoyed that nothing has been done yet to make the forums more welcoming and useful ahem, kill the stupid necro rule already! and instead...this...was done. This is not an improvement.

addressing various points on this board not in any order,

I'm not very fond of forum heart idea. As a few others have said that is easily exploitable, and I don't post enough on enough relevant things to get likes on my posts. Nothing I say is particularly insightful, so people don't have a reason to give me likes. (Though it would be cool to see this function used for something, it won't be easy to make it something that can't be exploited.)

I also don't like the idea of the API. The idea of putting "values" on posts is dumb in my opinion. Who is to say what posts are more valuable than others, especially based on length? The "value" of posts may differ depending on what board you're posting on but if you happen to post a short reply on an important topic, you shouldn't be punished for that.

Concerning the Forum Box farming problem we had, I know in my situation I assumed it was the same concept as event boards for dancing and flowering, thus assumed it was allowed. That was a wrong assumption on my part obviously, but it's not very obvious, especially since it was released during an event (Masq, I think?) with claiming boards abound, that that was considered spamming since very similar boards were not.

Addressing the Necro Rule now--not much to say on this except it should definitely be changed and it shouldn't take as long as it has, especially when this could help to revive some of the sub-forums. Somewhat relevant to this point is that, as many others have said, Subeta's rules for what is and isn't allowed on forums regarding the PG-13 rule. I have a really vague idea of what's PG-13 but I'm not comfortable enough with the explanation even after reading the rules several times to truly post anything that might be risky.

As for what this whole topic started to be about: I disagree with this rule change. Like many others I'm more so disappointed that this was an under the table deal. I feel like the user base should have been asked first about their opinions. I'm not in any forum groups but if I were an honest person in one, I'd feel like I'd been cheated. I agree that one of the compromises mentioned should be implemented. A forum point cap for forum groups would ensure that it doesn't get exploited. Along with this, the forum group minimum to be eligible for forum points is also a good idea. 5 tickets a day for all forum groups for the maximum you could receive, with groups that have at least 10 members.

I'd like for the Forum Shop to stay. Evidently I realize as the forums die, this is a dying art, but I really like the idea. I think having so many different currencies is cute and we have a ton of sP shops already.

In regards to the current on-going projects: finish them since they're already started, but the fact of the matter is, Subeta staff needs to get their priorities in order and work on things that are most important first. This is in no way a bash on staff, and I do appreciate the things they do, but I can imagine for a social business that making your rules more clear and precise, perhaps even revisiting some and changing others, therefore making your site more user friendly, would be at the top of priorities. There's a ton of good features on the site already, I think it's time the foundation of Subeta was looked at and edited to adapt to the needs of today instead of adding something shiny and new.

I see the point some users are making where they say that users don't need forum points to make the most of the site, and that forum points are a reward for posting on the forums. I don't have bad social anxiety myself so I can see where they're coming from. However, I disagree with this change in rules. Forum groups should still be able to have a chance of dropping forum points here and there, and until something drastically is done to improve the forums--whether that be a re-evaluation of the rules or livening up the forums (ideally both, to be honest) I don't think any sort of perk will make the forums liven up again. And definitely not punishing the masses for a few bad apples, and especially not telling us such a change was made.

After reviewing the posts earlier and some thoughts of my own (which I'll explain shortly), I've come to the conclusion that if we continue with the current and proposed changes (that forum groups and games will no longer give forum points), both sides will still remain unsatisfied with the results given their expectations.

On the users side, they already explained it so I won't repeat them.

On Keith's side, I reviewed some things he mentioned:

What is considered participation?

1. Very rigorous interpretation: Being involved with conversations in a group?
2. Very loose interpretation: Literally any activity?

These connect with thoughts on the previous quote, but the definitions of "activity" and "involve" are not clear. But Keith's next paragraph will provide hints on his interpretation.

I won't get in a philosophical debate about quality. Also, if anyone's unclear (and I was initially), quality is not the opposite of quantity. They can't be compared. So this intention, although good, is getting confusing right off the bat. I'm going to interpret this as an increase or improvement in "quality", with a decrease in quantity. My remark about this is: Don't expect a large increase of "quality" in Subeta's forums. Otherwise, you'll be greatly disappointed if you intend users who did not make "quality" posts to make them more frequently, if at all. I'm not only referring to users who rarely done this for years, I'm also referring to potentially new ones. This is an entertainment site, not a committee of academics doing scholarly discourse. Sure, the quantity of "low quality" posts could decrease. If that's the only intention, great. But if not, it's time to review why it didn't go as expected.

Let me try to wrap this complicated thing up:

1. Because Keith has a different definition for forums when it comes to awarding FPs, let's define an "eligible forum" as sections in the forums which awards FPs.

2. With the current and proposed change, will these users who aren't participating in the eligible forums produce more "quality" posts there? Arguably no, because of reasons given by the users (anxiety, disinterest, etc).

3. This is why "quality" will not be improved in the eligible forums by giving FPs there.

By Shinwa, this is longer and more complicated than I envisioned. And I haven't even gotten to the effects of FPs being more rare and expensive due to this change, as well as the irony of easily getting high value Forum Shop items from the Free Shop, which significantly deflates them (somebody was asking why some cost much less than their FP value). But one thing is for sure, the way things are and will be is not convincing me that FPs are being given out in a reasonable way.

Edit: Changed some formatting and minor things. Didn't get a FP lol xD

I put in a lot of forum related work yesterday.

1. I scoured the forums looking for non-game topics I could post in with little success.

2. I made a new suggestion in the Suggestions forum. We all know that 95% of player suggestions aren't adopted - this can't be helped because there's a limit to what a small number of staff can provide. Suggestions topics do provide scope for players to give their opinions and add idea of their own, though, so it can lead to Subeta related discussions.

3. I listened to some K-Pop but it didn't appeal to me. If someone makes a K-Pop topic in the Music forum I won't be able to contribute. I tried to think of a topic I could start in the Music forum and came up with "Can anyone recommended good Funeral Doom?". I decided not to because it's unlikely to get any replies.

4. Fans of TV shows and ongoing book series and movie series can discuss characters and their motivations and speculate about future plot develpments. The Subetapedia has a lot of information about ancient plots and characters who haven't been mentioned for years. I don't think staff would appreciate me spamming the General Discussion forum with pointless topics such as "Does Darkheart Phantom still work for Maleria?", "Will Calvin Blackmoon try to invade Subeta?", "King Keith abdicated so why does he still wear royal regalia in the Free Shop?"

After all that I posted in some game threads and got a forum point before going to Facebook.

yep, exactly the problem.

I've had some great chats with people here. Most in group forums. A few in regular forums, but directed to specific forum group people.

I hang out in help & questions - usually produces one or two posts, nothing earth shattering. I also regularly check achievements and games forums for questions, which again will produce one or two posts. Nothing like what I'd call conversations.

About the only place conversations happen is in the Suggestion forum. Sometimes in feedback, but even feedback is often just "thanks for implementing this."

Help questions have two drawbacks when in comes to looking for posts to make -

1. You have to know the answer to the question

2. Others might have answered the question by the time you see it because of who is on at what time.

About rewarding forum points for posting, I still see no better alternatives than it being automated. Letting users completely influence how forum points give out has major pitfalls, and these doesn't accomplish anything better than an automated system.

You can't count on everyone to be unbiased and give rewards solely based on the post's contents. Also, the less visited parts of the forum would be at a disadvantage. The private forum groups would be dependent on themselves and their activeness. In addition, the limits on rewarding others don't scale well when the forums are more active, and it's easy to manipulate a thread's post count to make it appear more active.

However, I'm not praising the automated system. Sometimes I wonder if the RNG stuck to nope, or if someone forget to refill FPs into the machine lol. I've hardly gotten any FPs since my last post, and that was a while and many posts ago. I could probably post willy nilly on the games threads, but how many posts on average does it take to get one FP? Maybe twice or three times as many? But it's way faster to post brain-dead content lmao, so guess what someone will do if they need FPs now.

The ironic thing about the rare and expensive forum shop items is that the Free Shop gives them out and deflates them, and you could get several of them in a much shorter timespan instead of writing posts. It seems like the Free Shop is trying to fix the rarity of FPs, but I really think it's an absurd remedy to depend and leave it to that instead of doing things as well as possible the first time.

So with everything in mind, I'd say that FPs is originally a solution looking for a problem, especially with how FPs are rewarded right now. It's impossible to come up with a reward system that's satisfactory when you don't know your objectives of a 'quality' post. None of the original intentions were met, but instead it created many unintended consequences unreasonable to both users and staff. Hence I'd explore other ways of getting FPs that doesn't involve the forums.

Just noticed today that this is what the currency page says about forum tickets:

Perhaps this could be reworded to clarify that not all posts are eligible for tickets.

Except can we do this? Like actually?? It sounds to me like a half-decent way to try to get some more discussion happening, plus I'm now curious about what's happening with Calvin. Nothing good, I suspect. Or idk. Maybe I'm weird.

Perhaps this could be reworded to clarify that not all posts are eligible for tickets. Also, the tickets themselves were discontinued under that name and renamed forum points.

Yes, the confusion between Raffle Tickets, Forum Tickets, and Forum Points really needs to be sorted out. It's been brought up a few times before, I don't know why the wording hasn't been changed yet to be consistent. Just pick one of those options and stick with it for everything.

Maybe change the Raffle Ticket item to "Forum Point Ticket" and then change all of the Forum Ticket wording to Forum Points, since that's what actually gets awarded for posting. The Forum Point Ticket can just be used for that item to sell Forum Points to other users. Get rid of the Raffle Ticket phrase entirely.

Maybe there should be a suggestion thread for this. I thought there was one before, but I can't find anything.