Hey! Welcome to the site! I joined years ago specifically to make CWs, so I feel I can relate haha. The process isn't very transparent, for sure. I wish staff would come out with a comprehensive, easy-to-understand, and better yet...updated FAQ for submitting CWs, similar to the tutorial you get when joining the site, but as yet, that hasn't happened. Some of the old hats in the CW community have tried to help with this, and there are a few guides/helpful posts in the CW forums that try and explain everything:

CW Discussion and Where to Start

Updated New Buyers Guide to CWs

But I know that even just those two threads can be overwhelming! There's a lot to take in. I think the best way to get your foot in the door with CWs is to do as suggested and try and find a veteran to guide you through the process. Most of the people active with CWs are very kind and helpful, so if you feel comfortable reaching out, I'm sure you'll find someone to answer you questions. I'm always up for that, by the way! ^_^

If you ever decide to try CWs again, please don't hesitate to approach someone with questions! I'd be happy to help you, or you might try this thread to find another CW veteran that you feel more comfortable with. The CW process has been sliiiightly simplified since those early days, but it can still be overwhelming!

Oof, I'm sorry you've been turned off of the process of CWs! It is....kinda a lot, particularly if you just want something for yourself/aren't interested in the social aspects of submitting/selling. In general, it's cheaper to submit 5 slots of something yourself and end up with 5 copies (which you could just shove in your vault, or put in your sp user shop/trades), than to submit direct-to-shop...but submitting direct-to-shop does have the benefit of allowing other people to buy your CW if they like it without you ever having to interact with anyone.

Anyway, as I said above, if you ever have any questions or want help trying again with CWs, there are plenty of people on the site that would be willing to help, myself included. ^_^

Nooo, don't let this turn you off of making CWs! I know some CW releasers that submit as unlimited that still sell well, it really just depends on the people you're selling to and the type of item you're selling. Unfortunately, it's hard to garner more than 10 slots on a lot of different CWs, so I think a lot of releasers feel like it's pointless to submit as unlimited, if that makes sense.

One thing I've really enjoyed doing is taking slots first to get an idea of how popular an item is, filling a batch or two, then putting the rest of the copies up in my CW shop so that anyone else that finds the item later can grab a copy. I usually only submit 20 copies/batches and not as unlimited, but I find that works for me.

The reseller market is brutal for sure with some items selling for double slot price or more, and I wish people would tone it down with that. Not really sure how to address it, honestly! I can understand really old items with only a few copies on site costing a lot, but I think a lot of resellers overprice even recent items to encourage trading rather than looking to actually get 1500 CSC for a single wig or whatever, though.

Anywayyyy, I wanna extend the same offer to you as I did to the others above - if you ever need guidance or just want to ask a question, I'm happy to help. ^_^ Sorry for writing a novel lmao!

asdfghjkl thanks for the offer ' v '

hnn honestly even if ending up with 5 items myself is the cheaper option it's still expensive tho ;; like we're talking anywhere between 1k to 2.5k csc, which is just insane for a single item, and i can def see this turning new players away

Yeah, for sure, it's pricey. I know a lot of people have suggested lowering the price to submit over the years, but so far nothing has stuck. I think reducing the number of slots required down to 5 was staff's compromise on submission cost, but I can see why it's still a big turn off to people.

This is probably going to be a very long post, but as someone close to me rightly pointed out: I use more words to say something the more that something means to me. So take my verbosity as passion.

I haven't been here for very long, in that my account is very young relative to the age of the site; and I lost interest within about a month. But, I've been familiar with Subeta for years, and I still check in now and then. I'm just not active.

I love petsites. I'm on most of them, and I actively play most of them. Not all of them all the time – I get tired, lose interest, or just want to hide from one or more memebrs of a certain site's community (and most petsites have terrible, if any, privacy features, so the only way to hide is to not login). I'm sporadically active everywhere, and my activity doesn't necessarily line up neatly from site to site. I'm on popular sites; I'm on dying sites with six regulars. I moderate a couple of petsites, one of which is so last-legs dying I've wished I could buy it myself.

I've seen petsites run all kinds of ways; I've seen all kinds of takes on the same mechanics; I've seen unique mechanics I've wished for on other sites for years only to cry “yes! Finally! Someone did this” upon finding a site that has it.

I'm going to be 100% honest here, because I just can't stay interested in Subeta so I don't care if I get banned for honesty. I guess I'll lose Leare but whatever, I own the actual character and that's what matters.

There were things that drew me to Subeta, things that drove me away, and things that failed to hold my interest. For the sake of this not being miles long, I'm just going to list the biggest points:

What drew me in

There's so much to do. I can't even list it all because I don't know because there really is that much. I don't know what half the links in my sidebar mean.

Custom pets! You can upload custom art for your pets!

Custom pet profiles! 100% HTML and CSS editing! YES!! (Shame I never made use of it, I just got tired of the site too quickly)

The avatar apparel selection is enormous. You can do such cool stuff with it! I despise human avatars (not an exaggeration – I campaigned and succeeded in allowing users to not have one on another site) and I despise Subeta's...but with work and money it's possible to make it look like something completely not-human. I have some great outfits saved in the wardrobe. Shame I'll never afford them, but they're great.

What drove me away

I can't name my pet something if someone else on the whole site has ever named their pet that. Fucking seriously? You're going to username-problem pets? On a petsite, where the whole draw is the pets which I can't fucking name? I just don't know how else to emphasiese how monumentally stupid this is.

This is the kind of site where users are commonly wanting to create pets based on OCs, based on fictional characters, based on real pets...I could go on. Naming pets is hard enough on other sites, but Subeta you can't even create a pet until you've named it, they can't just sit around nameless. Even if you look at the secondary market (or whatever, I know they're free), pets are given away for their names. Just their names. People change the whole pet and they just want the name. This doesn't strike you as the opposite of a petsite? Subeta is set up as though the pet itself isn't even important. You just collect the name and the pet is attached to the name. This is the exact opposite of the experience I crave. I want to collect pets and have them valued as themselves, not for the name I give them because it's 3AM and I've been staring at them for six hours and if I don't name them now I just won't name them but NOPE that name's fucking TAKEN.

I nearly quit the second I tried to name a pet something and got told I couldn't (and it doesn't help that the message didn't say “You can't use this name”. It said the pet itself was taken, further indicating Subeta conflates name with pet, and I thought there was a glitch in the pet adoption system) . I'm not kidding. And everything else aside, if you ignore absolutely everything else in this post, it is this which is the true reason I'll probably never come back to Subeta For Real. I can't have my pets on this site, so......there's no point playing. I just can't get over this concept.

Along a similar theme....I'm only allowed 10 pets? 11 now because I bought extra space (and boy do I regret that). Ten pets? That's all? That's nothing. You can't have so much variance in pet options and expect users to be happy with 10. Add an extra zero, at least. I want to collect pets. Probably the other big reason I won't be back for real: I only have one blank space already.

There are thousands of apparel items for my avatar but...none for my pets? At all? You can't dress pets, the only way to customise pets is to upload custom art. Which is nice, but it's backwards. I don't care about my avatar. This is a petsite. I want to customise my pets.

Everything is so tedious. Links buried under links buried under links. I'm drowning in bookmarks and I only seriously played for about two weeks. I barely understand where these bookmarks go. I barely understand most things. I think there was a tutorial? But it was woefully insufficient. It told me all the stuff I could have guessed, and skipped literally anything I needed to be told.

It takes hours to get anything done on Subeta. Literal hours. Sometimes days. And I'm not talking about long-term goals like filling collections or earning that one rare item or whatever. I mean anything takes far too much time. It feels like you're trying to make everything as slow as possible and it's agony. I play other games while I wait for Subeta to load, or for some timer to run down, then I just forget about Subeta because the other games are actually fun.

I think it took me three days to figure out how to get to my pets' pages. Not the list of pets, but the actual page for my pet, the one other users see when they click on the pet. It took me so long to find that tiny arrow that I was accessing pet pages via URL manipulation for days after I joined. Why are all the useful links buried under that rather than displayed next to the pet? Why aren't those links also accessible from the pet's page? Why does clicking on the pet, the thing it seems obvious to do to access such a page, just make it active? Whose fucking idea was that? And how do I view someone else's pet page? In my month here, the only pets I could view of others were their actives.

What the actual accursed disaster is the spotlight? Why do other players have to permit my pets for consideration? Why can't I just do it myself? Why is it only once a day, if the queue is just permanently too long? Why is it all random instead of FIFO, as the word “queue” would suggest? Why do I get a news update every time a pet gets the spotlight? Why isn't there a button to see just news when browsing the news? I don't care about the 4654654 pets that got spotlight since I last logged in, I want to know what's changed on the site. Why in all of Oblivion is the spotlight not its own independent feature completely separate from news?

It wasn't even something I thought about when I joined, but upon learning it was a goal, and then learning that random users can gatekeep whether the spotlight judges are even allowed to see my pet, and then knowing that even if it earned spotlight it may not actually get in for months...just turned me off immediately. Why go through the effort of working to make a spotlight-viable pet if I then have all that bullshit to deal with? Not worth the energy.

I don't understand custom wearables. At all. I could list so many ways they're needlessly complicated and user-unfriendly. I won't for the sake of length. So just have this: Everything about custom wearables put me off even trying to make one.

And on the subject of wearables....the wardrobe is a mess. It's a great concept, and there's largely a very good system there, but a couple of facts make it hard to use:

1. The art that shows for the apparel item looks nothing like the actual apparel. Why?? This makes it fucking impossible to know what I want, or even (on the rest of the site) what is wearable and what isn't! I have to hover every single item to see how it looks. Every. Single. Item. And I can't even remember “the mushroom items stick mushrooms on you” because there's probably a mushroom item that's fucking body glitter or something! It makes no sense! There isn't even a system for certain images representing certain types of apparel, it's absolute, unmitigated, user-unfriendly chaos.

2. The wardrobe itself is so poorly-organised. Sure, I can sort by layer, but what layer something is on is determined by 1d12 and nothing else. I can search by name, but that requires already knowing the exact item I want. There are literally thousands of wearable items! And the only way to learn about them is to use the wardrobe....but the only way to see them in the wardrobe is to search for them! Do you see the problem? I can't even search for “goat” and get every goat-themed item. Not only are there some missing; that search term yields many non-goat-related items. Implement a tagging system! Make items look like what they are! Just! Something to make choosing outfits not a day-long hell in its own right. I have to use an external site (which itself is hellish to use yet still preferable to the wardrobe's own search) just to get a slightly-less-impossible-to-make-sense-of list of items.

On the subject of items, identifying items is made deliberately hard as evidenced by everyone saying that me not being able to tell whether I'm looking at an apparel item or a book in a shop is intended by fucking design. How does that make sense? You're deliberately making Subeta as difficult-to-use as possible. Not just in this, it's simply a perfect example of the overall issue.

Oh yeah, INVENTORY LIMIT. Not only can I only have 11 pets, I can only have 100 items too. On a site with literally tens of thousands of items, this is a ridiculous restriction. Makes achieving almost anything somewhere on the impossible side of difficult and every time my inventory fills up I just think “actually fuck Subeta I'm going to do something else”

It's so hard to find or do or make sense of almost anything on Subeta. I kept learning about shit I can (and, arguably, should) do every day or more than once a day that isn't accessible from anywhere but a link someone else gave me. How the fuck am I supposed to find these things?

And, for that matter, there's a lot of stuff I did find that I'm not allowed to use for some vague, not-at-all-explained reason. Great! So I'll just...never do those I guess?

Would you believe I came here to reply to some of the posts in this thread and didn't even get that far because I wanted to get this out of the way first? It was supposed to be a couple of paragraphs of context. Yeah. I'll try to get back on track, because this post isn't remotely what it was supposed to be.

Actually, I would say literally give new players 20 of every currency. Or, better yet, cut down on the artificial exclusivity. Retire old exclusives out of the only-for-this-currency pool and put them in the general cash pool.

Why isn't there just a shop where users submit the wearable and then others can buy it, forever, even if the submitter never logs in again? I'm on sites where this happens and it was a delight to finally see it when every other site where I suggest this is full of users saying “this won't work because of $reasons_that_are_never_an issue_on_sites_where_this_is_a_feature” Don't want your item for sale? Don't put it in the shop! Want it to stop being for sale? Take it out of the shop! It is literally that easy!

(Bonus: When you return after a seven-month break you come back to a huge shop till)

Can confirm: Am a new user, saw how many items are locked behind bullshit non-progression marks and said “fuck that”.

Took the words from me. I've seen it again and again. Staff continually ignore what the vast majority of the ever-dwindling userbase (or even for that matter, a big enough minority that they should really pay attention) until finally the site is either under new management or just abandoned one day without explanation.

I understand that there's a chicken-and-egg situation with needing more staff to effect change, and not having enough staff, and being unable to hire more without a bigger userbase to provide the necessary funds, and users leaving because nothing gets done...but I've worked for (pet)sites for free before, and would do again. There are clearly passionate users here. They want to see Subeta succeed. Ask them for help.

I genuinely can't remember. I think if you're on one petsite you inevitably learn about most of the others, even the niche ones (and Subeta isn't niche, but it is dying). But I finally joined because I received a character design from someone who had made that character into a pet on Subeta, and thought I might want the pet. I thought I'd stick around because 12-year-old petsite+ fully customisable profiles sounded like a great combination. Shame those two factors are overshadowed by the site's major issues, which I won't repeat. Scroll back up.

You just described my brief time here. I never saw that max out, and seeing it low or empty every day made me hesitant to invest much time or energy (or money) into Subeta since a consistent failure to meet funding goals is a huge indicator that the site as a whole is dying. I was especially hesitant to buy premium currency because, why waste my money on a site that's dying anyway?

I bought premium currency and TBH I regret it.

Actually I got tired replying after like page 3 but you get my point. I've posted a lot about suggestions/ideas/confusions in the past if you want to read. I don't have that many forum posts, it's not a whole lot of digging.

TL;DR: Subeta is (in places deliberately and knowingly) as user-unfriendly as possible. The whole design of the site actively drives users, new and old, away, and certain features are custom-build to tell new users to fuck off and not even try.

You hit so many proverbial nails on the head for me.

Don't get me wrong - I've been on here for ten years but I keep coming back and leaving until something catches my interest, the bath house streak thing is a joke, the pets topic is something that's never going to be addressed to the satisfaction of all...

And the CW market is an elitist clique made up of those with more money than sense most days. (That's the tea, I'm sticking with it.) There's nothing to understand there, you either have or you don't. That's it. It used to be far more fun than it is today.

Why would I put money into a site that routinely goes through bouts of the staff talking to the general population of users and not. We're in the point of them not talking again (watch someone post going "WE'RE HERE," yet some problems with the site from last year's last database "upgrade" have yet to be fully, satisfactorily addressed.)

I dumped so much money into this site once upon a time and what do I have to show for it? Pretty pixels that I can't even use as art and older me is staring at younger me like "Bro, wtf you doin'."

I'm still wondering.

oh hey your post was def an interesting read! o: i think most people have been here long enough that we just kinda..... forgot what being new is like asdfghjkl

i just have a couple things i kinda wanted to comment on if that's okay!

(tho i def agree on the unique pet names being a bad game mechanic but hnn it's a bit of a spicy debate and i don't want to derail the thread haha)

honestly i just want to applaud 's post as an older user, it's honestly been a while since i've stopped and considered what it's like to be a new user on this site. but i have noticed that a lot of things just seem catered to the current long-term userbase. i am all for making things easier for new users because that is absolutely what this site needs.

ALSO big agree on unique names being a very poor, very old & outdated mechanic that should be done away with. now that i'm thinking about it, how many new users are aware of the name clearing system? are they expected to know that they have to sit there at 3pm exactly, smashing the refresh button on the create page to have even a fraction of a hope that they might get whatever they're after? hm. i also remember when charahub, a character hosting website, shut down and users there were suggested subeta as a replacement. this.. made no sense to me, personally. it makes sense to direct people to an affiliated/owned website but subeta is so far from a character hosting site that it was just. what. why??? (this would also absolutely get me to spend money on subeta again lol but that's a discussion for a different topic another day bc im Too Tired to have this debate)

That was an absolutely fabulous post that I'd love to heart (it doesn't work on mobile, because why would it) so I'll just say thank you.

A lot of that I knew (don't like it, have complained about a fair amount of it) and some of it just forgot all about. Turns out subeta is even more unfriendly to new users than I thought; my thoughts already being why would anyone join + stay, unless their gig was avatar dress-up of course.

I think the thing that hurts the most, to me, is that subeta definitely started as a petsite but at this point in time I don't see how it could be considered one; your point made regarding how it's really a unique name that comes first before the pet later, really cements that farther.

Subeta is also not a character site. I'm not sure why, beside a (potentially) financial reason, when charahub closed anyone was told to come here. I wish it were a character site, I really do; the completely customizable pet profiles would make it fantastic as one, but it isn't. It will never be, as long as unique names are a thing. The second a user can't have anything they want, what's the draw? However this has been brought up a few times and shot down, so here we are. If a name is due to go inactive, the only chance is to find a group of friends who will be home at the appropriate time and able to slam as many ARs as possible to try and grab it before someone else does.

I thought Subeta was only suggested as a alternative to Charahub was because Keith owned both? That might be just rumours or a false memory though.

I really love my unique pet names and would be very sad to see that aspect of the site change, but I am starting to agree that maybe it should. I recently tried to refer someone here whom I met on another site and they seemed quite interested, got through the sign-up process and everything, but then immediately quit when they couldn't get the pet name they wanted. They messaged me over on the other site to say they could never play a pet game where they couldn't get the names they want.

I've decided I'd rather lose my claim to unique names than watch the entire site sink. If that's really a dealbreaker for so many potential new players, I say change it.

Sounds like it might be worth bringing up the subject of unique near again. I can't remember how long ago the old thread was. At any rate, it seems like unique names is just not what modern pet sites do.

"Why can I only have 10 pets?"

You can buy more pet slots, either by Cash Shop or via the Millionaire Center. Millionaire Center slots prices increase after every purchase while CS slots are a set 1500 CSC each time.

"I nearly quit the second I tried to name a pet something and got told I couldn't (and it doesn't help that the message didn't say “You can't use this name”. It said the pet itself was taken, further indicating Subeta conflates name with pet, and I thought there was a glitch in the pet adoption system)."

I've dealt with that issue on Neopets by either combining two words I like or putting numbers after my desired name. I've done that with many of my Subeta pets too.

Just a few examples here.

Maybe you could suggest what I've done with my petnames to your friend who recently joined?

Oh, believe me, I already tried to talk them into a workaround. I also went through the pound a few times and found good names there and suggested that perhaps they could adopt those, but they were adamant about wanting a particular name and no compromise or alternative would do. It is understandable, seeing as how they were coming from a site that doesn't require unique names so they weren't used to such a restriction. Also, a lot of people really dislike putting numbers in petnames and I'm one of them. I did that with my first neopet and even though it was my favorite number, I always regretted it. x')

Ouch. I guess some people are really picky with names.... Me, not so much. Most people love real name pets, but I actually tend to stray away from real words because my ideas for pets can change.

Honestly, if I had two websites and one shut down I'd suggest for everyone to migrate to the still active site too. No reason to lose such a dedicated base, right?

I just wish CWs didn't have to be in a specific art style to be accepted. That doesn't seem to be the case with custom pet art.

AND... I totally get the frustration behind the database upgrade. The errors that resulted really put a damper on Fireside and Lumi. I heard staff wanted to do the server move on a holiday so they'd had enough time to dedicate to working on the site, but next time they want to do this I think it needs to be earlier in the year and NOT close to a major Subeta holiday.

Seems I've revived a discussion I had doubts had ever truly happened. Seems like if it had happened this wouldn't still be an issue today. Maybe there are those who like the unique pet names who aren't speaking up because they don't want to start an argument (I don't either) but I think it is a discussion that needs to be had, since it's central to the OP of the thread.

I think, like most folk who play petsites, certainly those in more than one, I'm in a couple of decently-sized friend-groups comprised entirely of other petsite players. If someone mentions a petsite they're joining, or returning to, there's typically a flurry of "time to finally sign up for that one I guess". Some stay, some look around and decide it's not for them. Not every petsite appeals to every player, if they did they'd all be the same and there would be no point in having different sites.

But, and here's my point: In one particular group, everyone always follows me to new sites (just as I follow everyone else). It's a Whole Thing. Someone finds a new (or, sometimes, old) site, joins, take a look around, and then says "so I found another one" and we all join it. We play together, we laugh at the weird art errors all the regulars have learned to tune out, we help each other figure out stuff that isn't in the tutorial (I've yet to join a petsite with a complete tutorial)....we eventually settle down and some of us keep playing and some of us lose interest. I've found some truly out-there petsites this way. I'm still on most of them.

Subeta is only the second petsite this didn't happen with (the other one was ClanHeart, which...yeah). Know why? Unique names. One and only reason.

I was doing the usual routine, sharing pet images, screenshots of my initial experience, expressing frustrations and confusions and surprises.

.......oh.

I can't seem to adopt a pet.

Excitement grinds to a halt.

To quote my exact words from the very ">first post I made in the forums: (open the spoiler)

We are all confused about why I couldn't adopt one, so I had to ask, only to get told...the error message really means "You're not allowed to use that name because someone else has already used it". Everything else aside, why in the fuck is the error message literally "Someone already owns that pet"? Genius way to confuse new users into thinking they're getting sniped.

Everyone immediately said, almost verbatim "Oh, well I guess I'm not joining then". And I agreed with them that, yeah, I might not be around much longer either. (And I wasn't)

Once I got my answer I decided that if they were going to username-problem pets I was going to username-problem them right the fuck back. Meet xXxDali420xXx. I did it out of frustration and spite, thinking maybe I could make that my theme here. A lot of my petsite accounts are themed. This one could be "usernames you only see from 10-year-olds who threaten to fuck your mother on Xbox Live".

But I couldn't do it, because I wanted to have serious characters and custom art and nice profiles...and I just can't do any of that when I know I'm not taking the site seriously.

Unique pet names is something I've only ever seen on one other petsite, and I haven't played Neopets in well over ten years for the same reason. Actually there are a lot of reasons, but that's definitely a big one.

In my long experience, the phrases "I've never seen this before on a petsite" and "I've literally only seen this on one other petsite" exist in a powerful dichotomy: It's either one of the most amazing concepts ever added to the petsite genre and isn't seen elsewhere because it's so hard to pull off or just such a genuinely unexpected and unique thing to add....or it's a hilariously stupid idea. Unique pet names falls very firmly on the "hilariously stupid" side of that dichotomy. It drives new players away like nothing else I've ever seen (except ClanHeart, but again, that's CH).

I can deal with all the other issues Subeta has. I'd complain about them, of course. I'd want them fixed. But I would be willing to deal with them if unique names weren't the Goliath-sized-obstacle to learning to love the site despite its flaws, as one learns to love any petsite (because they're all flawed somehow). And I know I'm not the generic petsite audience, because I get very into a petsite in sporadic bursts of intense attention followed by exhaustion and disinterest before returning to that intense attention again.

Most users are much more casually into a given petsite and the stuff I'm willing to tolerate is on most user's "fuck this shit I'm out" list, and rightly so.

If you (and when I say "you", here, I'm speaking directly to the devs and no-one else) really want to keep unique names....you need to fix every other issue Subeta has instead. This site needs to be fucking perfect. The one and only flaw has to be the names. That's the only way it could work. And even then, it'll drive most new users away...but you might be able to hold some of them for the otherwise amazing mechanics and buttery-smooth site functions. I won't be one of them. I'll tolerate a clunky site if it lets me name my pets anything I want and has some means of customising their appearance.

I know I can buy more pet slots, but they're fucking expensive. Charging premium currency for pet space isn't an alien concept to me - a fair few sites do it - but it's normally incredibly cheap, or space is sold in batches. And, pricey though it is, my issue isn't specifically with having to buy more, it's with how few I'm given before I need to buy more, and that the only way to get more space is premium currency.

I don't care if you're happy giving your pets the kind of names I gave to my Pokémon when I was eleven. I want to name my pets what I want to name them, not something else. It's a fucking name, real actual people don't even have unique names.

Naming your pet shouldn't be some weird system of workarounds and guessing and hoping. It should be as simple as choosing a name. xXxDali420xXx shouldn't have had to exist.

I checked the abandoned pets out of equal parts curiosity and hoping I could get something not available in the pet creator. I found Keening. Keening! If I make Wraithguard and Sunder pets I could have a whole thing! Matching profiles! A triptych of fanpets! I was so excited about this project, it was something to focus on while I worked on Leare's hellish profile. (the HTML I inherited is...a mess. And, apparently, tinypic went down so now the images are gone. Good job I have backups. Not sure I care to reupload.) I was glad of a profile to work on from scratch.

Guess who that empty spot in my profile was for.

Sunder.

The name's taken, and I did ask the owner if they'd be willing to let me have it (the name, not the pet). They functionally told me to piss of.

So. Project cancelled.

And with it died the last bit of excitement I had for Subeta.

For me, the problem is that other pet sites don't require users to come up with less optimal workarounds because there is no such thing as unique names. If a user really wants to stick around on Subeta, they will make do, but when there is an alternative out there that allows them to have the exact name they want (which there are), why stick around?

One other site I know of that has non-unique pet names ties pets to an ID number. Low ID numbers are desirable, as are IDs with a certain combination of numbers (eg. ), but the name of the pet itself can be anything the user wants. Heck, it can be changed after the fact! The same site allows users to have hundreds of pets.

For people who want a pet-driven website, it's more ideal than having to compromise what you want by adding numbers or picking a new name altogether.

Perhaps this is an issue that compounds with not being able to customize pets by dressing them up, or having fewer customization options in that you can only pick one colour for your pet. The same pet site that I mentioned earlier, for example, allows pets to be a range of 3 different colours, with purchasable designs for each body part and corresponding colour. Perhaps the issue with Subeta for people who want a pet site is that it isn't really that.

I'm on dozens of sites like this (some of which even allow spaces in names! And really long names!) and it is the standard for petsites. For that matter, on Subeta itself, pets have an ID number. Unique names is not a hardcoded limitation in URL structure or pet identification, it is an artificial limitation created for some reason beyond my understanding.

Exactly my point. The only customisation available is to upload custom art, which again, that's nice, but it shouldn't be the only option. Pets don't need a doll-dressup system, either. Just give us stickers with a few variations and let us slap them anywhere we want on our pet. Players can get incredibly creative with that kind of stuff.

Slightly derailing the pet name discussion here (which, I absolutely agree, it's nothing but an outdated and totally artificial limitation since pets have ID numbers for urls. heck, I once took a fandom name over TWO YEARS after the fandom started, then within a week got someone in my inbox not so politely telling me I was terrible for taking that name because THEY wanted it and were totally gonna make it! like???? on what other site would i have to deal with that issue????)

In terms of staff interaction, I noticed today the forum feedback thread where staff/mods confirmed the necro rule in the forums (which is extremely stifling and not pleasant to see, let alone be faced with as your only interaction with mods starting out) would be updated "very soon" was last posted months ago, and I can't ask for an update on the dang thread because it would be necro-ing it. like.... thanks.

Hmmm...You said you had coding issues?

Well, there are free profile templates offered in the forums. My

"The name's taken, and I did ask the owner if they'd be willing to let me have it (the name, not the pet). They functionally told me to piss off."

I believe that happened due to 's experience. It seems disrespectful to ask someone for a pet name; you'll have to make a variation on the pet name you want. Ultimately, once someone clicks on the profile they'll know what your pet is referencing.