Yes to all that's been said so far; Subeta simply refuses to change and keep up with the times. It's not that they can't, because they certainly can, they just don't seem to want to.

On top of that, as I've said countless times before, communication is a major issue between users and staff. We get told something's coming and then hear nothing about it for a year or more. We get told something will happen, but then just hear a "We're working on it, but we can't tell you any more!" and then nothing.

And yes, it is concerning for new people to hear stuff like this. To come in and read threads of the oldies saying stuff like this and then they just go 'nope!' and that's that. I'm not saying we shouldn't complain, of course, but it's bs that we keep complaining about (or requesting, or whatever) the same things over and over and over and we just get.....ignored. Seeing that the staff ignores its userbase for the most part is probably the most off putting bit, honestly. That and seeing that the site is understaffed and barely surviving as it is really doesn't help any.

yeah...I see people saying that this post is repetitive or dejavu but...can you really say that when the issues keep cropping up, or not being addressed in a wish wash way? The fact that this issue is being brought up so often is alarming enough as it is, and to have people continually request the same ideas but have seemingly no application.. it doesnt bode well. The crumbling wall analogy a user used is sadly more accurate than we are all comfortable admitting.

I think another issue is that right now is the summer slump. Naturally, many people in the northern hemisphere are outside enjoying the warm weather this time of year. Usually there was a plot or restock war to fill in the gap between the spring and fall events. We did have a Gelly War, which was wonderful, but that only filled in a week. I think things will pick up once the Subetaversary and Keel Hauliday roll around, but in the meantime I'm not surprised things are quiet.

i agree with some of the things said in here. i'd love to see older players come back and more newer players come and stay! and frankly i can't wait until holiday season rolls by one thing that might play into this is i think everybody is almost too comfortable with there being less people, myself included. so many people seem to focus on liking how small and humble the community is that they don't bother to drive more people in outside of subeta. i dunno though, just a take on it i vaguely remember there'd be at least 700-900+ people on at any given time. now i never see it go above 600. today it seems to have been fluctuating strictly in the 400's so that may be a good sign?

How do people even discover Subeta? Word of mouth? At the very least to get more players we need more advertising..

most probably word of mouth. hell i don't even remember how i found out about it; but needless to say we need different ways of doing it.

One of the big problems is Subeta doesn’t seem to be making much money, which might mean less improvements. Somewhere I think Keith said the coding is very old as well, which probably makes things harder. I’m confused as to why much of the site is kept the same way? Not much changes. Also, having any money fundraiser is automatically shut down? “We’re fine” uhh yeah nah dude, I don’t think so.

Exactly that. If Subeta put up a fundraiser we'd donate, but instead they're like "Well what do you think the cash shop is?" and it's like....yeah, that's not it. We'd all donate so they could hire up more coders and fix the site up faster, but we get shut down about that and all the recent releases of cash shop based things make me think they're desperate and I know I'm not the only one thinking that.

@ Sigilmancy it would be interesting. Maybe have tiers and different selection of items exclusively for each tier so everyone can get something they like as well as helping support the site/not just specific one item that you may not want, idk:p

Edit: sees the cash shop with new items that helps support Sigilmancy’s last postx)

Yup. And as I see it when we spend money in the cash shop we don't know exactly what it's going towards. Server costs? Paying the artists/coders/ect for their time? Other costs?

I feel like a Kickstarter would be great, or even just some place where we could generally donate with stretch goals like a Patreon; once they're making x per month via Patreon they can hire another coder, for example. Make the goals things like revamps or color releases that are being begged for by the user base or something.

And yes. In the past 3 days we've had 3 new angelic pets (a cash shop potion), the bonus weekend (though we knew that was coming, but it still counts), the much begged for re-release of the Feral Accessory Trunk (at over double what it used to cost), and now more cash shop hair coupons. Each and every one of these things can primarily be obtained with CSC, and that's on top of how things have seemed to shift this past month towards a lot more cash shop releases than normal.

@ Sigilmancy I hate that the most. They stay INCREDIBLY vague about where the funds go. I don’t want to seem paranoid, but why cant we know about it? Ex:Why can’t we know how the plants are made? Are there pesticides? Are bugs eating to much of it? Is there not enough water? Is the soil quality bad?

I can only dream for a fundraiser:c

(WOOF this turned into a fucken essay sorry y'all) i can't say i know a lot about pet sites these days, as subeta is the only one i still really use. (i go on neopets from time to time but i'm not especially devoted to it.)

i remember back when i joined subeta; i believe i found it by googling "virtual pet sites" as i was looking for something to supplement my flagging neopets addiction. i tried out a bunch of different options, but most sites i checked out were pretty crummy with ugly layouts and unimpressive art. rescreatu held my interest the longest, but it really felt like all the coolest pet colors were practically unobtainable to a regular user, and i got tired of it.

so when i found subeta and saw the cool pets and art that, by 2009 standards, was incredible, plus the wardrobe to scratch my dollmaker / character creator itch, of course i had to try it out. and when i realized i could actually afford some decent wearables right off the bat, and when i figured out it wouldn't take too long to save up enough sP for potions to get the pets i wanted, i was hooked. people have mentioned things feeling inaccessible or unobtainable to new users, but i really had the opposite experience. on neopets, i saved for years and years to afford a single paintbrush, scrounging up every last neopoint, following every dailies guide; it was PAINFUL. on subeta, i could take a leisurely approach and earn enough in a month or so - if i'd been maxing out quests, and mind you this is back when they were more of a hassle to do and far less rewarding, i probably could have met my goals in a little less time; a user joining today could have over 10 million sP in a week through quests alone. plus the huge availability of good pet names? the ability to CHANGE pet names and my username? MORE pet slots? fungibility between regular and premium currencies? talk about a dream come true! compared to every alternative, subeta was absolutely the best by a huge margin.

like i said, i don't know much about the alternatives these days, but i haven't seen many that seem as good as subeta imo. and i wouldn't really look at flight rising as an alternative, as it seems to be a different sort of game focusing on different aspects of the whole "virtual pet" thing that doesn't necessarily appeal to all of the same people.

a lot of people are blaming lack of interest from new users on technical issues, slow progress on site features, lack of communication - but in my years of experience, subeta has the best relationship between staff and users, because staff are like, actual real human beings we can talk to! they generally keep us pretty well in the loop. they don't hand out random warnings and freezes because they feel like being petty. they work really hard to keep the site functioning at this level, but because we've grown used to it, a lot of us take it for granted and forget just how BUSTED other sites are in comparison. even neopets, an $18 million dollar company, runs like shit and hasn't had a layout update in over TWELVE YEARS.

what i'm trying to say is, i can't help but wonder if there ARE that many people still looking for virtual pet sites. those who were looking have probably found them already. what new users are we looking for? younger users? teens? are they even interested in this sort of thing? i discovered neopets when i was 7, and that's what kickstarted my years-long interest in these sorts of sites. my nieces, aged 7 and 10 (ages at which i was VERY much into virtual pet sites) are more interested in tiktok and instagram.

i honestly think there might be something to be said for the idea that... there just aren't going to be THAT many more people left to join subeta. a handful here and there, for sure, just look at the welcomes & introductions board; and i think it would absolutely be worth checking in with those people after their first few weeks on subeta to see if there's anything about the site that makes them feel like they don't want to keep playing, as that's the only way we'll know for sure what issues are affecting user retention.

but beyond that, it's like... we're all here. we've been here. those of us who can have told our friends about the site, but many of us have friends we know just aren't into this sort of thing, so it's not like there are many people left for us to refer, if any. user numbers have gone down over time as older users outgrew the site, and the virtual pet craze passed its peak. so while there are always improvements to be made, projects to be finished, policy changes to be considered... i don't think it's right to say those are the main reasons for the shrinking userbase.

I will admit that the Subeta staff are more 'human' in a way than staff of other websites, but only about mundane things. They pop into threads and interact as non-staff, but when we need them to be staff and answer serious questions we get no answers or only very vague answers.

There are people looking for pet websites - Flight Rising is flourishing, and a few years back I remember Tattered Weave and FurVilla as well, though I don't know what became of them recently they did exist and had nice big userbases. If more people knew about the website and saw that new features were being churned out regularly, the staff actually listened to their userbase on suggestions, and the same topics didn't crop up time and time again because we're all frustrated with the lack of anything being done about stuff we keep complaining about they might actually be inclined to stay as opposed to us oldies that feel we have some loyalty to this place.

You say that we don't get random freezes or bans just because but....well, we kinda do. The vague policies that the staff seem so hesitant to update mean people don't know what is and is not acceptable so they step over a line without realizing it and bam, warning or freeze.

Neopets runs like crap because they don't care now that they're owned by a company. But the other sites I mentioned actually ran quite nicely; no need to fear random lag spikes. No need to worry that every event is going to make the site unusable for 2-3 days while the staff scramble to figure out a memory leak or get extra bits up and running to handle the traffic.

TikTok and Instagram aside, as was mentioned earlier a lot of the younger generation these days use their phones instead of a computer and the fact that Subeta refuses a mobile app and the site looks like crap on a phone is unhelpful. Other sites do better because they're designed for it; I can check in, make posts, and even do daily quests or such on other sites without any difficulty from my phone but I can forget doing any of that for Subeta because of the absolutely atrocious mobile layout.

There's a lot of problems that, if corrected, if the staff listened to us and actually implemented them, could really fix Subeta. Attract new users and keep them, and create a growing user base instead of a shrinking one. But for some reason, time and time again, we are ignored and it feels like we're screaming into the void and after a while it does just get tedious.

ive been skimming the posts here and have seen a few things repeated. i agree that this has been a problem for a while and that it hasnt seem to be fixed. i don't think that's because staff doesn't care, i think it's more likely that they just aren't sure what to do. personally, i think that subeta's staff is extremely receptive to feedback and hearing what the users have to say, which is part of the reason i felt inclined to make this thread. they listen and they implement the feedback that their users provide. they are approachable and friendly, they respond to us on forums. and maybe we should work on finding ways that we, as users, can encourage people to return to subeta. what can we do, both to increase traffic and to help staff?

That is one of the problems. The traffic being higher would put stress on the servers, because Keith mentioned their not made to go higher. It comes back to funding again. Well.. also would Keith be inclined to change it to allow more users if enough funds were made?

i'm 150% sure that they funded more servers when the site was getting more traffic, that's something that can be changed really easily if they had enough traffic to justify paying more for servers.

I wish I had that optimism. To bad its been beaten out of me some yrs ago.

Fun thing about the comparison of the Neopets generation vs new online users: it's free time. Again. Free time is the biggest factor. If you have a family, two kids, a job and aging family members, you're gonna want to spend that free time with your kids & family instead of faffing around online for hours on end. On the other hand, Subeta does provide some delightful fun stress relief and opportunities to decompress from day-to-day grinds.

Subeta has the wonderful combo of being the lovechild of Gaia and Neopets nostalgia, with a ton of good QoL stuff and goals you can actually achieve. It has the nostalgia factor, but the downfall is that the users who would register for that nostalgia factor are grownups now. 20+ years old, with different responsibilities & timetables than they had 10 years ago.

re: mobile app Mobile apps are stupidly expensive to make. If the site is doing the best it can to wrap up the two biggest non-CW moneymakers for it (new wardrobe & new pet profiles), I gotta ask what makes some people think that they have mad cash to shell out for a mobile app + the maintenance and other upkeep it requires? Plus, what would you even put in a Subeta app? Subeta is huge in terms of content and activities, and everyone plays a little differently. I'd rather we find ways to make the game more playable on a phone instead of making an app that won't make back the money it took to make & maintain it. Questing, for example, is a nightmare if you only have your phone to access the site.

re: mobile browsing Subeta is a desktop-oriented retro virtual pet and dollmaker website, for all intents and purposes. We've had an old mobile layout that worked horribly and I hated it when I played on phone so I always switched to the desktop layout. The new layout is supposedly going to be much more mobile-friendly and Subeta as a whole is supposedly going to be moving a little more toward being a single-page app. But the new layout is also a WIP and the pet profiles are going to get pushed before the new layout.

Users Online: 190

This makes me so sad that I almost wish the user counter would just be removed. I know it's the summer slump, but I'm pretty sure the site traffic has been lower this year than ever, even during the events. Can you believe there's an achievement for being online when there are 2,000 users on? I got it many years ago...I wonder when the last time was that it was actually possible.

I wish I had some ideas to bring more new users on board. I can't understand how younger people would rather play crappy, slapped-together, money-hungry mobile games but perhaps that is the case (probably because getting sucked into them is sort of built into mobile devices; many of them come with some of those apps pre-loaded and it's easy to find them in the app store, whereas you're never going to find Subeta without specifically searching for something like it). But I'm on other pet sites that have a lot more activity so I don't think pet sites are necessarily dying in general, although forums might be...especially ones with stupid rules about necroing. Ditch that rule already! How many times does it need to be repeated? You're literally killing your own forums, Subeta. I won't get into the question of censorship/forbidden topics now, although I think that's also suffocating the forums, but that subject is at least debatable. There is literally no downside to changing the necro rule...it doesn't harm anyone to see a new on-topic comment added to a six-month-old post, especially on forums that are already so slow to begin with.

As far as accessing the site from mobile though, I don't find it that bad? I actually play on my phone more than on my computer and while the old mobile version was a failure, I have always accessed it in desktop mode and it works fine. Questing might even be faster on my phone. Maybe not all phones and browsers are as accommodating but if you're used to doing anything very involved at all on a phone, using Subeta shouldn't really be any harder.

While I really can't say for sure, I kind of have a feeling that one of Subeta's biggest issues is that it is simply not being found by new users. A mobile app might help to draw people in if it can easily be found in the app store, even though I don't think a mobile app is at all necessary to play Subeta on a mobile device. Perhaps it could be sort of a limited spinoff of the site to get people interested in the full version, idk. But even then, with the amount of apps there are out there, it might still just drown among them. Even the name could be a problem. What is a "Subeta"? That gives no indication at all of what the game is about. Too late to change it now, I know, but I'm just saying it might be another small obstacle it has to overcome.

Some older users will always be lost through attrition for various reasons and aside from decisions made about Neugarten, which I find to be a disaster all around, I don't really think Subeta has done anything super wrong that would drive away users in large numbers. Yeah, the event lag is frustrating but it's always temporary and it's usually made up to us if it was really terrible. Yeah, waiting for promised features is frustrating, but does anyone actually log in specifically looking for the Teahouse and then decide, "That's it, it's not here yet so this is the day I'm quitting"? If other elements of the site aren't enough to keep someone around, I don't think that one thing they're waiting for would do it either. I think that we're actually super lucky that we get pretty-much-daily news and new content on this site...to the point where a day without any sort of release feels abnormal. And it's really great content! Even if it's "just" a revamp, it's quality work and it's exciting. So I don't think content is the issue. We just need to find a more effective way to bring in new people to replace the ones who "grow out of the site" and quit. (Btw, I hate that phrase...as if there's an expectation that we must "grow out" of things that are fun. There actually kind of is, and it's wrong. Nevertheless, that does seem to happen for a lot of people.)

And by the way, I don't mean "incentivize referrals even more", please, just no. The referral shop is already distressingly full of items I'll never get because I don't have any friends; stop reminding me, it feels bad. I don't really have any great solutions though...I'm just rambling at this point, sorry. Nuke the necro rule though. At least do that. And maybe buy some ad space or something. I've seen ads on other sites for other pet sites but I've never, ever seen a Subeta ad. I hate ads but they must work or they wouldn't exist. insert shrug emoji

Been skimming through this thread, lots of good points made! I too would love to see more players on subeta and the see the site flourish again. I personally feel that staff (at least some of them), are very active on the site, and responsive to user requests and problems. I honestly don't know how the site could be better in this regard, unless they literally have a checklist of "tasks" available somewhere for users to see for each discussed addition to the site (teahouse, CW database, new wardrobe, etc) - but I think that might go a little far. I for one am astonished at how much a very very small team of artists and coders manage to accomplish every year. I know it's frustrating to have to wait for the big promises, but hot dang the site is already huge, there are tons of things to do daily, and TONS of high-quality new items flooding the site for every event.

I'm not an active member of any other pet sites right now, but I know they exist and some seem to be very successful. Maybe someone on staff could do an "investigative report" into why people enjoy other sites, and try to integrate that into subeta. XD Or, perhaps a poll of users who also play X game could bring in some insight.

I agree with that CWs seem to be a large part of subeta's income, and, not to beat a dead horse since I always seem to be soapboxing about CWs, but I really wish the site would do more to truly integrate them into the site, encourage users to participate in the CW market, and help newbies understand the CW system. There have been vaaast improvements to the way CWs are organized thanks to 's efforts on the custom clothing page, but I know there are still people on site that don't interact with CWs, the CW marketplace, or that page in any meaningful way and have no idea what CWs are, who makes them, how to make your own, etc.

To people that aren't an active part of the CW community, CWs are confusing, overwhelming, (and as evidenced by comments I see all the time here on site), somewhat irritating. To those that are angered by CWs, they're usually upset that X CW exists, but they can't immediately purchase it for a small amount of CSC or sP like everything else on the site. Not much can be done about those users, as CWs were created to be rare/exclusive and will likely always be very expensive both to create and to buy - but to everyone else, CWs could be a new source or excitement, community, and a way to stimulate the site. I've said this before, but subeta needs to stop hiding CWs behind a single link on the cash shop menu and start integrating them into the lore and site-wide events more. Someone on staff needs to take the time to write some detailed info on them for the FAQ, and put together a new guide or a consolidation of the information you have to hunt for on the CW forums, much of which is extremely out of date. Years ago, I suggested a new map area that would help integrate CWs more into the site (please don't necro this thread), and had lots of good brainstorming there. If the CW database ever gets off the ground, that would also be a way to help users who aren't super familiar with CWs to find out more info, and perhaps soothe some of the ire of users who really want a certain CW, but have no idea how to obtain it.

I have spent 7+ years on site and CWs are the biggest part of what I do here. I only JUST started getting into pets, haha. I joined specifically because I had heard about the ability to draw and submit your own items to subeta, which is AMAZING. There have to be more people like me, who either would be interested in joining, or else would be really engaged by the CW community and want to stay - and I think the site should do more to get and retain those types of users. Perhaps the CW system needs a complete overhaul, I don't know - but it could certainly be integrated better than it is now.

Aside from that, I'd like to see more ways to engage the site that aren't super time intensive for users OR staff - small events, lore drops, perhaps team games, user-generated content, etc. It seems that staff is overworked as it is for the huge holiday events, but letting the site languish between holidays is a mistake. We need some way to get people interested in coming to the site daily, or at least a few days a week, to see what's up. The Gelly War was a great little event, and I'd like to see more "pop up" events that only last a few days or a week. They don't have to be SUPER intense, because I know users get frustrated when RL keeps them from logging in, just something fun get people to log in. Perhaps a new Events forum that's open year round could have stickied topics about the most recent events, with a run down of what happened for those that weren't able to participate.

I'd also love it if the forums could be revitalized in some way. Getting rid of the necro rule, as mentioned many times on this thread, might help. I'm not sure how else we could do it - maybe have more staff-initiated forums/forum games instead of site-wide games? I feel that offline chatting is probably a big problem for the forums in general, as I'm sure most people find it more convenient to use discord or whatever, but honestly I don't know if there's anything the site can do about that.

I think it's amazing that we can have this discussion at all, and I feel confident that staff is lurking around at the very least, taking our ideas into consideration. I'm grateful for that. The community here is great, and I hope the site will continue improving and growing. :)