I'mma quote things others have already said and add my own 2 cents to the jar. Bear in mind, I'm going to sound nasty and blunt, but a) that's just who I am b) believe it or not, it's because I care about this site. Passion and frustration go hand-in-hand. I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly of this site, and I want the good to return.

And they wonder why we users don't trust them. I'm not giving money to a bunch of shady folks who don't tell us squat or even talk to us. It's not entitlement for someone who gives money to expect content they want to see or if they feel they're getting less content for as much money as they're throwing at something.

And obligatory mention of the teahouse, which at this rate is practically a meme, why bother making it a reality? Still haven't gotten that west Centropolis map even though it was said to have been moved up in priority while the teahouse remains under wraps. I don't even remember what that third thing was, the gardens? Another never ever. All promise, no actual follow through.

...

Let me get this straight. First, we have claims that the website isn't bringing in any money and complaints that the desperate cashgrabs are obvious and obnoxious. Next, we have claims that all the money that the site is bringing in is being used for illicit vacations.

Honestly it's no wonder staff is tired of chiming in. I haven't been actively following the thread, but wild speculations don't seem healthy to the topic of getting more players.

I'm in the camp that the site has less players mainly due to the golden age of petsites being in the past. There are things that can be done to improve, and there are things to critique.

[Edit]Keith beat me to it.

While I may not agree with a lot of those topics, there's really no need to be callous about them, or immediately shut them down. That just makes Subeta look dodgy. People are not all cut from the same cloth. We (users & staff) want to keep users on the site, not act like royal dicks when someone's presenting something that, to them, feels like a genuine issue until someone else provides a different viewpoint.

re: ~ mysterious vacations ~ People can work two jobs and take vacation time from both of those jobs. A lot of staff have Subeta as a second job. I'll admit being curious about where the money goes, but I also believe that if it's really in their goal to keep the site going for as long as they can because they love both it & the community, they'll re-arrange, fund and prioritize things accordingly. Call me a hopeful, idealistic idiot if you want, but that part just seems like common sense to me. The same goes if Subeta's really that big of a cash cow as you're implying. (highkey doubt that but ok)

re: new artist I'm also curious about this. I understand if the new hire wanted to remain anonymous for whatever reason! That's perfectly fine! But not even having a forum post that formally announces something like "we've wrapped it up and looked through all the apps, and we have a new artist! However, the person we've hired has decided to remain anonymous and we've decided to respect that" just makes it seem like the whole hiring went sour and that nobody was actually hired. Even in that scenario, a follow-up post would have been nice!

re: teahouse Subeta's no stranger to ditching big projects that prove to be too heavy, but considering how many users are hyped for this one, I think it's a good move to continue working on it. If it's 70% done (guesstimating, I have no accurate info on this whatsoever), might as well give it that final push. Updates about it would be nice, but I also understand them wanting to keep it vague to avoid spoiling it. Frankly, I'm not really hyped for it and my mood toward it is lukewarm at best, but it really left a bad taste in my mouth when you basically said "OHMYGOD who gives a fuck about the teahouse any more, it's all a lie so just drop the project already". If they drop the teahouse, they can go ahead and close up shop because so much of the userbase would be deeply disappointed that Subeta's gone and dropped yet another thing that people were super excited for and looking forward to. There's only so many times you can disappoint people, and I don't really see the reason to push users away even more. The radio silence is already making a dayjob of smothering the hype.

tbh, the best thing I think we as uses can do is to just... keep swimming. Keep making good feedback topics like this, keep making good suggestions, keep being optimistic and if you have some money you feel comfortable with spending - buy something from the cash shop. It's slow, it's hard, it's frustrating to watch (& probably to work on), there are so many projects in the works right now, but I'm hoping we'll at least have one of them see the light of day by the end of the year. [edit]Sorry for the group ping! :( I forgot to edit the hashtag bit when I quoted.

Thank you for the update on that situation!

I know it's not the best kind of news, but I think this is the kind of update people should & would still like to know about. From my viewpoint as a user, it doesn't really feel all that great when stuff like this is left in limbo until a topic like this pops up and it gets dredged up after months of awkward silence. :/

A quick little "we're really sorry to tell you, but due to unforeseen expenses, we've decided to delay hiring for the time being" post is better (imo at least!) than leaving people floundering in the murk of misinformation and gossip.

Hey! I'm coming here from the twitter post. I've been a member of Subeta for 12 Years and 9 months. I originally found out about subeta from word of mouth from my Neopets friends who migrated. I'm the only one from my group of friends who migrated who makes any attempt to hold onto their account. Subeta has a very special place in my heart, much more than neopets ever did. I don't remember when I stopped playing, but I do remember it wasn't anything subeta was doing wrong. I'm 27 Years old now and I just don't have the time to spend on a pet site, and the little time I do have I spend on things that hold my interest better (Video games). I still come on every month or so, train my pet, buy an item, etc. but the teenage years of me spending hours and hours on a pet site are over, not because subeta is a bad pet site but just because it is still at the end of the day, a pet site, and there are more interesting things to me now. I hope this helps. Despite not being on here often, I still want subeta to succeed.

I definitely agree with the majority of the posts here who are saying that forum rules make the site super unapproachable. I've been here over 11 years and I am constantly still second guessing what is and isn't allowed. "Is this forum a no necro forum, or a one board per 3 pages, or both???" and then struggling to find an actual answer / maybe just hoping for the best. Maybe for me it's only a little stressful to receive a verbal warning like "Hey this is against the rules" but if I was new.... RIP. I'd be so anxious I might leave, thinking I was in big trouble. :S

The other big thing I see that causes people to leave is the "If you're selling a digital service (Art,writing,coding) you have to have a csc option." I see TONS of new artists come into the art market, post, get told they have to have a csc option, and then leave. I get that, especially based off Keith's earlier post that the site needs all the help it can get but forcing people to take a fake currency for not-fake amounts of work is... hypocritical. You ask your users to pay real money for cash shop items, but then demean them by basically making every creator have to pay rent to sell here? I don't blame the people who leave. It should be up to the individual to decide if they need csc / want to offer it. There are tons of artists who have left who would have / could have fueled csc purchases without even offering csc slots (overlays, CWs, and profile coding and writing also encourages people to make impressive TCs that can also boost csc sales).

The last thing I want to state is that I am just sad as hell to see so many people hate CWs so much. I don't disagree that the community has a handful of bad eggs but... the other like 95% of he community is actually hella amazing. =/ It would be nice to see some work put into CWs to make them more approachable, just like suggested. And if the site is hurting for art content and the staff team needs to focus on not constantly mass producing... You have a team of CW artists out here who could help fuel new content / a new shop type that offers unlimited items to the entire site. (And not just wearables, but collectables, minions, and other items could also be offered too.)

((I don't think a new site artist was actually hired and that's why we've not seen a post about it. I could be wrong of course!!-- but I think steps in when an extra hand is needed but that's it. I have seen nothing in the last year that looked like it belonged to an artist that wasn't already on staff, minus the extra work has done.))

There have been occasions when this kind of topic has led to a change. Major Drills calling users a pansy was one of them. The other one I can think of immediately was changing the Stained Wifebeater to Stained T-shirt.

Something to possibly consider: we don't know anything until it's explicitly told to us. So even little bits and snippets like "we're still working on X!" or "Z is being stubborn and we're having to wrangle the code, but it's coming along nicely!" let us know that things haven't slipped through the cracks. Tell us that you haven't forgotten, tell us if you've hit an unfortunate snag in the road - it helps a lot with putting minds at ease and crushing rumors and gossip!

Staff don't have to write a novel every time you update us, or have an in-depth analysis of every bump in the road. A casual little "hey, we're still ironing out the kinks and squishing some bugs in -insert announced new feature here- so that new bugs can move in!" every month could go a long way. Especially because the team is so small and everyone does the best they can with juggling so many different things.

Honestly really appreciate Keith chiming in here and giving some great insight to why some things are the way they are...

But I am disgusted by some of the posts and “rumours” flying around... seriously when it gets to the point people honestly expect staff to work 24/7 with no vacation it’s just appalling.

We don’t have to agree with everything staff does but NONE of us have ANY right to make any assumptions about their personal lives and/or why/where they go on vacations. This is just horrible and staff shouldn’t have to deal with this.

That being said I’m also sad the CW community gets such a bad rep when MANY of us try and making things accessible to everyone and many even run giveaways to give cws to people who can’t always afford them.

I also 100% would support a monthly charge system that is optional for users and would 100% be willing to keep buying csc AND support a patreon if it would keep Subeta afloat.

Thank you Keith for taking the time to give us some updates and insight despite the disgusting comments you’ve dealt with. While we have a right to be frustrated with some things on site none of you deserve the personal insults that have been thrown your way.

I think a very small change that might help keep new users around would be to change the "Daily Support Goal" to a monthly goal. When I first came back to the site after a long absence, I remember being very intimidated by the Support Goal counter being at 0% (which it usually is, outside of bonus weekend). At first, I thought maybe I shouldn't waste my time on Subeta because it seemed like it was going downhill very quickly. In retrospect, I know now that a lot of Subeta's income often comes from bonus weekends, but that's only about 5 days out of the month! If a new user logs on during any of those other ~25 days and only looks at the front page, it's likely that the site looks kind of dead...

Obviously I don't think that this would make a tremendous amount of difference in retaining new users. They may be equally as intimidated as I once was if they log on a few days before bonus weekend and find that the Monthly Support Goal is still pretty low... But I also don't think such a change would likely hurt new user retention either, and it seems like it would probably be pretty easy to change.

I definitely think Staff is a bit too ambitious sometimes. I understand wanting to take an idea and make it better, but then it takes longer and we're kind of left in the dark about it because Staff can't spoil it. It took two years for us to get any real news about that wasn't the occasional "it turned out to be bigger than we first imagined". I get it, you guys are really excited about it, but we just see three projects that have no on-site progress for two years. I imagine it might be three years before we see any of Emma and Esther's projects realized.

I would also love to see Keith around more. I get he's really busy. Last I heard, he has another job that isn't Subeta, but I feel like we only see him when we get W4 updates, or when threads like these pop up. The news and updates here are things I think we should see more often, that way we aren't left to wonder and speculate.

Regarding a monthly system - is this something on top of the already hard to find GA subscriptions? I would personal love to see some updates to that system (like, we can have loyalty points when we get billed?), and another monthly system where we you donate whatever you want. Maybe people are more comfortable with donating $1 - 3 a month, and that's a potential audience that you might not already have since GA subscriptions are $5 a go, or maybe they aren't interested in CSC.

I'm honestly not sure what can be done. Everyone points out these changes that are fundamental to usability, but are there really any genuinely active and flourishing pet sites anymore? As someone pointed out, that golden age is over. There are so many things to do now, that pet sites took a hit in terms of entertainment. So many kids don't even know what Neopets is despite the fact it was MASSIVE

100000% confused by the idea that 100% of the funds donated to the site or used to purchase CSC should be going into maintaining or improving the site itself. Employees deserve to be paid and they can do whatever the heck they want with their pay. If the site is lean on funds then employees still deserve to be paid.

There's been a super weird dichotomy of people complaining about "cash grabs" and people saying that the site should try harder to pull in funds to support XYZ - not saying it's the same people saying both things, but it's a little weird. If staff are creating new items, new opponents, new pets, etc to try and entice users to spend money, what's the problem? It's not like they're begging for funds and offering nothing in return, AND it's not like there haven't been frequent non-cash shop releases as well for those that truly can't support the site monetarily. It seems that the site is mega understaffed and yet, honestly I feel like we are getting far more value in terms of new "stuff" than we got back 6-7 years ago when I joined.

Also, why not try to push subscriptions more, since it's already a function of the Cash Shop? If people would be willing to support a Patreon or off-site fundraiser and have a large % of their donation be taken as a processing fee, why wouldn't they be willing to donate directly to the site? I feel bonus weekend has created this strange economy of users only wanting to donate when they can get "their money's worth," rather than donating because they want to support the site or because there are CSC items they want to purchase at that time. It's squished the CW market into a tenuous corner, as well, with users not wanting to release items except around bonus weekend, because otherwise buyers might be broke and hesitant to slot on things.

Hey-oooooo I love this idea! It jives with a recent suggestion topic that I liked involving submitting custom foods, etc the same as CWs. People seemed to like the masquerade CW contest, for the most part, so I'd love to see some ability for users to submit more items on a more regular basis. I like the idea of some kind of special shop for unlimited items. Obviously staff couldn't crowdsource the majority of new items, but I think a big chunk of the userbase really wants to feel like they're being heard, seen, and allowed to contribute. This along with some of the suggestions in the writing contests thread prove that.

While I may not agree with a lot of those topics, there's really no need to be callous about them, or immediately shut them down. That just makes Subeta look dodgy. People are not all cut from the same cloth. We (users & staff) want to keep users on the site, not act like royal dicks when someone's presenting something that, to them, feels like a genuine issue until someone else provides a different viewpoint. There have been occasions when this kind of topic has led to a change. Major Drills calling users a pansy was one of them. The other one I can think of immediately was changing the Stained Wifebeater to Stained T-shirt.

I completely agree with you, . Although I don’t necessarily agree with those threads, I have never felt like the people who were writing them were disingenuous. Everyone thinks differently and can have a different reaction to different things. I absolutely do not think threads like those should be shut down immediately just for people stating their opinion, having discourse about these things is merely a sign of the times we are living in and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with thinking critically about what is or isn’t appropriate.

For better or worse, I’ve never gotten in trouble for posting on those threads despite replying strongly to them. It’s not that hard to stick to critiquing the topic at hand.

From my perspective this had been one of the biggest problems that they've had for years. Planning new and exciting content and getting the users hyped up is great but you actually gotta... finish something. There are a lot of in-progress projects that either silently disappear or it takes so long for an update to come out that no one cares anymore. 😔 Teahouse and other esther/emma projects, the millionth wardrobe version, pet profile recode, the site layout recode, minion zoo, minion battles, forum search, smail revamp, the item use page revamp??, and whatever else project was mentioned once and never again. The weekly sprint was changed to a monthly sprint to focus on longterm projects but as someone who has also struggled with "too many projects" and "spreading myself thin" it really helps to just stop and do one at a time. I get that the recode is being done in chunks but there's nothing to show for it on the user's end yet (I'd rather they finish one thing from it and push it out if possible, right now it seems that some things are set aside for others or the projects are cycled through being worked on)

I don't have any advice for attracting new players, but as a current player, this is what bothers me the most, personally. Nothing ever seems to happen. Just feeling strung along with "we're still working on this and 50 other things!" Which is probably why people start seeming resentful when the teahouse is mentioned anymore... :( (which I know Keith has addressed the why for it above but the teahouse isn't the first project to have this problem, nor is it the last)

I'm not sure who decided that CWs were "meant to be" rare or exclusive.

I came here from Gaia where releasing custom items costs hundreds of bucks and I can't afford to do it any more, but on Gaia, if you want your custom item to be private (less than 20 copies and you have control over where they all go) it costs a LOT more money than making regular custom items because the highly limited custom items are not making the site any money.

Now, obviously I don't think it should cost a thousand dollars to make a totally limited item.

But the way slotting and batches are set up, particularly with the thing where you can't add more batches if it turns out that people really, really, really want your items, is REALLY BAD both for users and for the site.

It's bad for the site because people who want to buy items that are very useful and very popular can't give the site their money and get the items. The AB auctions for items that are not actually deeply personally meaningful get ridiculous.

I'm not going to AB 5000 CSC to get a Lolita Bow (even though I collect them) because I live in San Francisco, and can go to Angelic Pretty's US shop on Kearny Street and get a real Japanese lolita brand bow for 50 bucks. (The dress might be $300 but the bow sure isn't.)

If the site is encouraging people to make useful items that everyone likes so rare that people are willing to pay the same kind of money for those pixel items that they would spend for the top of the line branded item IRL, that's a little strange.

(Of course it's also a little strange that you can buy a durian in the food market for pocket lint but a carton of soymilk costs an arm and a leg, but I digress.)

Anyhow, the site needs money (and more importantly, happy active players who aren't going to quit) more than anyone needs the rarity of the items they paid for protected, so if someone's 4 batches sell out, why the hell NOT let them make another 4 batches and meet the demand? I'm not saying we should make privates go away forever, but the reason the rum cakes are so freaking rare is that the releaser didn't realise she could make recolours any batch size she wanted because everyone's so petrified about batch size limits.

Releasers shouldn't have to pay more to have their items NOT be small batch and exclusive, not when it costs the site the same amount of money to code the item whether it's releasing as unlimited or as 10 copies, and the more items the site sells, the more money the site gets.

If we just got rid of some of these rules which are basically the site kicking itself in the face, the privates and pinged only items would not be so very much of a problem for new users.

(Also, items that mandate the use of a particular base, usually a white person skin colour, are off-putting to new players.)