W hat's up! I'll try not to be too long winded but y'all know how I be: MY THOUGHTS ON USER STUFF [I]because I like how organized tartelette is but im eating tortilla chips and soup so this is the most organized im gonna get[/I] • LOVE the idea of more CW creator events. I personally try to do around 1-2 events a year that don't have to do with official holidays. They require a fair bit of work and creativity to set up, but once you figure out a good idea they aren't too hard to actually run and I highly encourage people to try their hand at them! • CW releaser coalition? Kinda like the welcome wagon suggestion above. It could be a collection of threads or posts that tie a bunch of resources together. For exampleeee I've already shared my 2 cents plenty on the discord slotting thing but since it doesn't seem to be going away, what about a thread for newbs where we can link to all public servers by releaser? Like a directory? Obviously owners will need to consent to their server being there but it might make it easier. Can also link to tutorials, revamped rules wink wink at staff, and maybe we can do an FAQ or Q+A from a releaser's perspective as opposed to a staff perspective. • I'm down to help make some user tutorials. Like literally I can just turn on a screen recorder and go through the submission process and voice it over while heavy breathing and eating right now (or I can do something a little more professional I guess)

MY THOUGHTS ON STAFF STUFF • Please hire another part timer for the queue or who can help rewrite rules, enact quality-of-life cw updates, etc. I volunteer as tribute (check that hot, fresh reference) as I know many others would! • I agree with almost every point on staff improvements here. My top three priorities of tasks that would make the most immediate impact split into categories would be: ----SIMPLE (1 week per task): updated examples of CW standards, switch to "X copies" instead of "X batches" or make batches in multiples of 5 instead of 10, include a small introduction to what CWs are when you sign up to the site. maybe include a randomly rotating user avatar spotlight on that intro page so people can see CWs in action - perhaps a script that grabs the current HAs of people who have released CWs (ie a script that grabs people who have access to this forum) since they're most likely to be wearing CWs. also once the 'hi welcome to the site here's what cws are' page/tutorial/whatever is done, pop that bad boy in a news post so existing users can get an intro to CWs too. but also don't talk like they're a big deal because it might make people mad who aren't interested in cws, just play it cool and be like 'hey wow we added this new page but here's a copy of it because y'all aren't new members just in case u wanna see! :^)' ----COMPLEX (multiple weeks per task): skin tone-only recolor discounts!!!!!!, rehaul of pricing categories based off of size and complexity, CW shop directory or a browse function (remember when you could pick a layer and see all the items available?! I bought SO MANY cws that way)

OTHER THOUGHTS • Just my hot take™ on it, but I don't seem to think the CW situation as a whole is as dire as some of y'all do... I see new people enter the CW market often and new faces buying weekly. So many wonderful new releasers AND artists are coming up, and many people release multiple items every week! Imo the market also feels a lot healthier now than it did around a year or two ago last time a thread like this cropped up. • So, I think part of the problem is actually that the market is a little TOO saturated with all those new faces. Maybe we as releasers can wait longer between releases, or come up with a release timeline for our frequent buyers and then ping publicly later on. Sometimes when I go to like, a really BIG target, I get overwhelmed by all the cute stuff that I want and its too much to choose from so I don't buy anything at all. Same thing! Maybe we can come up with a "seasoned releaser's survival guide to selling items." Yeah I know this should be in the first section of my post but whateverrrrrrr • After reading a few posts I think I'm also going to start using my CW shop more. It's always been a bit of an afterthought for me but it really is super convenient now that I think about it!

This last part of my reply is a bit off-topic and has no useful suggestions in it and might come off as a little c-wordy but I've had this debate in like 8 diff threads over the years and I wanted to share my personal experience and opinion with reselling and batch limits etc.

I usually put my pullovers at 30-40 copies each and it doesn't stop people from shoving them in their shop for 2k immediately or auctioning them a week after slotting for personal profit. People have arbitrarily decided that they are rare or worth more than slot for some reason. Conversely, sometimes I put another item up for 30 copies, and it won't even sell 10 because people think they can just buy one later. Sometimes perceived "rarity" is purely because of the item its self, so everyone getting together and saying "hey I'm gonna release 30+ copies of everything or have it sitting in my shop indefinitely to be fair" will probably not help, it will only ensure that you're broke because people think they can just buy it later :

And re: the judging of people who frequently slot at low numbers - don't we all get off on being withholding just a teeny tiny bit sometimes?

While I wholeheartdly agree with this, I also want to point out how tedious events are, and how.. mild the answers have been in the past few years. I used to run SubetaBox with Tartelette for almost a year and a half, then I tried to revive the concept with MatchMe. It was a lot of time and efforts, a -lot- of csc poured to make it happen (seriously, a lot), and it had really mitigated success. Many people want events to happen but dont want to help make it happen, dont want to participate or actively share it around. I would absolutely love to make more events if I thought people would be interested in it - but I have to admit to myself that whether I make events or not seems to make no difference at all. I wish people invested more time in participating, because it would make all that effort a lot more worthwhile, if this makes sense. If I could find a pool of people to make joint events and share the workload, I would in a heartbeat. But there has to be users to join in these events, and in the past years I haven't seen many.

I'd like to respectfully disagree about the dire situation of cws not being as bad as we think it is. It's true we have new artists and a few new faces - and im glad we have a few new artists. But by clicking in every single thread, there's also a lot of items that don't fill, a lot of scrapped batches and lost recolors. Some people release items multiple times a week and they still don't fill, or they only fill enough to submit one or two batches. It's really not a lot, and usually at a loss. That's why a lot of releasers quit - because they can't break even and don't have enough csc to submit new items at a loss. This shouldn't happen, being a releaser should be a fun and positive experience. To most people I know, it's only stressful.

On another note, I'd be happy to help with tutorials too! I think the main reason why everyone's up for it but no one's really doing it, is that there arent any real directions. We would need to breakdown the tutorials that need to be done and assign it to different people so it doesn't just look like a colossal work-in-progress.

I think we might be thinking or talking about two different things with respect to events. I'm not suggesting ongoing themed things like MatchMe or SubetaBox (or Stakely's old CW raffle idea, etc), I'm suggesting things that are more like the mini-events users run by themselves in their own threads - you yourself have done moodboard events, recolor raffles... stuff like that! Events don't always have to be complex or have expensive rewards! Sometimes they can be silly or fun (I recently had an emoji event where I had people send me 3 emojis and I drew a CW based on them) and the point of them is just to bring people together! I think if more people had the simpler events like your 'post a gif' ones for example, it'd really bring the CW community together. Sometimes easy and simple can be more fun, more effective, and more profitable! You don't have to reinvent the CW wheel, so to speak - just pop some nicer rims on it from time to time to make it more exciting and bring people together more than 'slot please, lovely item'

We will have to agree to disagree with how we perceive the state of CWs ;) and as for tutorials, maybe making some sort of releaser coalition like I mentioned might help with that. and hell, for now the tutorials don't even need to be uniform or organized - as long as people are making updated visual aids and we can kinda slap them all in one spot for people to find!

I suppose I wasn't super clear, but I do understand what you guys are getting at. In the case of the people I'm specifically talking to with my response before (artists who release their own goods) we definitely have a lot more room to choose.

But that's why I said everyone needs to decide what's best for them. I was under no assumption or illusion that what works for me works for everyone and I cannot possibly assume every single person's situation! If you or Tarte are even remotely in the same position as I am, I know we as artists can try to help with our own releases SHOULD we choose to (not saying we HAVE to).

And like you said, we as artists are often rolling in more csc than we know what to do with. Which is part of the reason I said in my first post that Subeta should stop forcing us to accept it mandatorily. Not because I don't want to accept csc, but because I'm at the point more often than not that csc has no value to me at all. I am definitely, as Tarte said, privilaged. I can afford enough financial stability to accept csc from people. The same cannot be said for all others, and some people may be stable but just don't want to accept it. It should be our right to choose. And no one just joining our community should have to choose 'fake currency' over 'dinner' just to be a part of our community. (Yes I get it's a super unpopular opinion based on the fact not a single person has been up to discuss it but ironically there are so many ways around accepting csc, it's clear no one likes the rule even if they won't say it out loud.)

That's awesome if your items have 30+ copies sell out, it means it's that popular and you probably could have upped the copies you released. 30 was my base point I was making, but that popular items could have more. It's impossible to ask for 2k csc if the releaser still has the item in their shop for 600 csc. That is the point I'm trying to make. But again, please everyone; I'm not saying 'this is what everyone has to do'. I am ONLY saying 'this is the action I am personally taking that I think helps with my items.' If it doesn't work for you guys, that's A okay too :)

I think you may be misunderstanding my intention - I'm not personally upset that old/rare stuff is priced super high because I want them and can't get them, since I am happy with what I'm able to slot or buy normally. I was just trying to express the idea that withholding popular CWs as trading fodder, or only selling for very high prices, creates a negative effect on the CW community as a whole. Like said, me expressing this is probably pointless because there are too many aspects of the reselling market that effect pricing, including personal enjoyment of low-risk, high-reward sales environment. IDK I just thought it was good for other members of the CW community to think about this aspect since Cathii was asking how we might be able to improve the CW market/community.

I was referring to reselling on the R200 forums, not slotting! I meant that because I'm an artist, I have a lot of extra CSC, so I don't feel the pressure to resell a sexy rare wig I have for 2k CSC, whereas an average user may use reselling rare items as a way to get more CSC.

I think the CW market is nice and steady right now, and I'm happy to see many new faces in the last year. But I agree with Cathii, it's nothing like it was during the heyday of market 5 years ago. But I'm not too worried about it totally drying up any time soon. A lot of us oldies (myself included) have drifted away or drastically slowed down, and I think that contributes a lot to the feeling of slowness. One of my goals for this year is to sit down and make an actual releasing schedule, as well as a plan for more events. I have 2 events that I've planned for and collected prizes for, but I let myself get too distracted!

I too think that some releasers are releasing a little too frequently, and that might account for lower batch sizes. Some shops seem to be releasing 2-3 CWs at a time and I worry that the market can't support that many coming all at once. But that's up to individual shops to decide what works best for them! For some it works fine, for others I hate to see items getting scrapped because buyers are stretched too thin.

[edit] Pinging to this thread because I know you like The Discourse

So, a couple of further thoughts after reading all of the thread so far:

1. It honestly doesn't matter if I release less frequently/less items at a time. I'll go awhile without releasing and still have the same issues I have if I release a lot.

Added to that - I DO do in-group preclaims on both my groups. I still often can't even fill a full batch. People who've been pinged in both of those and in my artist group and in customwear (so they've had 4 pings for it) STILL do not claim slots but will maybe buy one later when I finally give in and retire the 20+ copies I've got sitting around cluttering my CW Shop. People prioritize slotting on things with more limited copies and/or from "popular" artists because they're worried that if they don't they'll either never be able to get it because resellers jack it up, or they intend to use it to resell/trade later and it has a higher arbitrary value than my release because it's not from X user. (This isn't a criticism of any artist, it's just super weird to me how the market has decided that only art from a few people has any kind of intrinsic value - it's so strange). Limiting copies doesn't help me, increasing copies doesn't help me. It's a market issue but it's also not really the fault of resellers either - some of whom are asking high prices or doing trade only on some things because they know they won't be able to replace it if it's gone and/or because they paid high amounts to get it in the first place.

2. I forgot to mention that it would be great if we could have more organizing freedom within our CW Shops. I appreciate so much the fact that we can now permanently retire things - it's helped me declutter a lot of things that really didn't sell anymore. I would still love to be able to organize things in ways other than by item ID with the newest first. Even just alphabetically would help me boatloads sometimes.

3. I think it would be amazing if we could have a shareable retired items page. Right now I can see my page, but nobody else can, which means I have to keep track of it all and keep an organized list viewable so folks know what items are gone forever. I would love to see two things happen with this: 1. Items on that page organized alphabetically. At the moment, I have literally no idea how they're organized, so when something sells out in my shop, I don't have an easy way to check and make sure I have it on my lists (I have both a spreadsheet for myself as well as a petpage listing). I appreciate the separation of categories we have (self-retired vs sold out) but I'd love if it was organized in any kind of logical way. 2. A sharable version like the collections have so that people can see it and I don't have to bog down a pet page with that list. (I'd also love to see an overall releases page that is shareable for each releaser).

4. Man, the CW Database. I know it was being worked on and then paused because the wardrobe was undergoing more changes, but I'd love to see some movement on that. I will literally help volunteer tagging items or whatever needs to happen to get it done. I'd love to see it include: artist, releaser (if not the same as the artist), retired/active, max copies from submission. I feel like this will help immensely in getting folks interested in cws, especially if there's an easy, right there on the page way to see that an item is or is not retired/sold out.

5. Events are a great thing, they are - but some of those still get low/no participation. Artists who release and can do their own have a slight advantage in that they're not separately paying someone to make their items, but they're still putting in the work to make something(s) for it and still often struggling to fill batches to justify that time and energy. For those of us who buy our designs/recolors from others, that's an additional monetary add-on.

6. I don't think discord slotting/design sales/etc should be allowed. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I pretty much hate it. People are doing all sorts of shady call outs and making accusations about what's happening on X or Y's discord and it's fostering more distrust and dislike for the community as a whole. I say this as a person who has joined half the discords: it doesn't work. I end up muting every group because there's 948u402 conversations happening and I've got so many incoming messages that my discord literally freezes up and lags my entire laptop just trying to open it. I almost never slot on things released via discord because I cannot keep up with it - especially as someone who is working 9.5 hour days. I can check the site quickly on my break and look at pings and keep pings and claim a slot on a thread all from my phone with a lot more ease than trying to manage scouring through 20+ discords.

7. Stop requiring Site Currency options for artists - across the board. I'm gonna echo the artists. I know people are afraid that if that happens, nobody will take CSC and then everyone who can't pay USD/Real Currency will be iced out but the thing is....most artists effectively don't take it anyhow at this point. The USD/Real Currency to CSC ratios are crazy high and often require impossible to obtain items because CSC is useless aside from on this site. It doesn't help an artist pay their bills or put food on their table - but they're still doing real world work! If they were making jewelry and shipping it or making a hand drawn sketch (or even a digital one) and printing it and shipping it, they get to not have to offer CSC/Site Currency options. That's saying that one is more valuable somehow than the other even though digital art/writing/etc still requires real world time and energy. The site is still going to be pulling in money from submitters and slotters and artists, but forcing their hand is discouraging people from staying.

8. My last, but super important point. Stop making these threads trying to figure out how to drum up interest/reignite the community on the Custom Wearable Creators subforum. You know who we need input from? The folks who don't make/buy CWs. We need to know what would entice them into the market and onto the forums. There's still a thread of "cw people are elitist and cliquey" running through the site and it doesn't help us at all to have these discussions where they cannot put in their opinions. I also advocate that staff doesn't do that either because it feeds back into that feeling from people not currently part of the community - and even with the folks in the community but who haven't ever released a cw and therefore cannot access this thread.

I know that between your primary job and RL Issues, the queue has been hard to manage. I honestly do feel for you - they hired you as a second person because everything fell so hard on Jessi that it was getting too hard for one person to manage alone, and then you ended up in the same situation as she was in. It's definitely something I'd like to see the site staff work out - either getting you some part time assistance for the queue/tickets/CW needs or taking some of the burden off of your overall duties and just reassigning them. I know some of the staff members have been trained to do it because they used to step in for Jessi when she was out for an extended time or when the holidays meant an especially overloaded queue. We all do know how hard you work and appreciate it, we're just disappointed that the site offered us a solution to the previous long wait times and then not too long after you got settled in, pulled the rug out again with a staff member leaving and putting everyone back in that same spot (which isn't a dig at Jessi either - I'm all about people making the best choices for themselves).

I read everything else and want to reply later but.. I mean, you're replying too. I understand that some input would be better coming from users who don't make/buy cws, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't also have our own input, or new suggestions to give? I don't know if im just reading it wrong, but there are a lot of the recent suggestions that can be done by us too, so it's not like it stops us from using this as a starting point either. If you dont want these threads to exist, why contribute to them? :/

I definitely am not saying they shouldn't exist or that we shouldn't have input as well, but if the point of the thread is to try and gain some insight into why the market is floundering and how to encourage more people to partake in it - we need to hear from the people who don't partake now or who rarely do.

I think the threads are valuable, I just don't think that putting them in a locked forum where only people who already submit items are going to see it is the best spot. And I've said it before on previous threads - it does more good to have it where it can be seen by everyone on the site than it does where only a select portion can see it.

My point wasn't to stop making them, it was to stop making them in this particular forum which is only visible to certain people instead of the userbase as a whole. One of the points you yourself brought up is that the CW Discussion subforum seems dead, but that is absolutely the place that a thread like this would be most useful.

i have A LOT of thoughts, i am sorry it's so many and so LONG. ty for pinging me cathii 💖✌🐁

editing in a disclaimer about comments/suggestions/problems i mention with organization/layout stuff: i AM dyslexic as all get out and have some sensory issues, and am also highly visual rather than textual - so some specific problems i cite with layout & page design might be specific to myself & others like me. i didn't think about that at all as i was writing, but it completely makes sense to mention since my experience w/ web layout might be just....vastly not the norm at all.

1. i think the cw market is making a comeback, rather than remaining in decline. it's absolutely not where it was 4 years ago, but it's becoming much healthier. for example, the only items that i personally see not filling tend to be either: niche/unpopular colours or patterns, items with a lot of existing recolours already, items that visibly aren't quite up to subeta standard and the art needs touching up, or items that aren't "trendy" at the moment-- we have a huge demand currently for alt-instagram fashion stuff - big sweaters, harnesses & straps, collars, nu goth - and less of a market for fantasy wears & elaborate hairstyles like we were into a few months back/last year. kind of like how lolita stuff will cycle out - lolita & kimonos were H U G E when i first joined subeta in the CW market, and it's just now that they're kind of making a significant impression again. tl;dr i'm really optimistic about it honestly!

2. while i get where it's coming from, i fully agree with the 'must offer csc/sp' rule is flat out killing the art market, and driving it off-site (which is a huge problem). subeta used to have a really, really active and thriving art market for...everything. art, cws, coding, writing. but the majority of creatives that founded that market are older now; we're not teens anymore, who are excited to get 600 or 1000 csc - we've got bills and shit. that's coupled with the fact that subeta doesn't really have a young population to fill that gap, to take over for us that have outgrown that phase of 'getting experience & practice with commissions' into being professional artists & creators. i DO understand, from a staff perspective, that the rule is there in order to make subeta's creative market relevant to itself-- to keep artists from just "using" it for advertising space and to make some bucks, and to make the site money via CSC sales on the side of that. however, the rule needs to be loosened up at the bare minimum - especially for CW designs, which are inherently already intended to be making the site $$$ thru the slotting process. people are skirting the rule anyway with restrictions on CSC purchases (recolour amounts, colours, uneven value between irl $$$ and CSC, requiring a certain rare item + CSC, only having a few CSC/sP slots a YEAR, the list goes on), and by that being totally fine, staff is already kind of acknowledging that the rule is...not exactly necessary, and in the way. if a rule is still followable and okay via a loophole (or many loopholes), it's just not a good rule.

3a. exclusive off-site selling of designs & slotting is a huge problem, and actively hurting the market (discord). nobody is going to like that i'm saying this wuighiwhg BUT, related to the above point, some artists are ONLY offering design sales & commissions via discord to, again, skirt the CSC rule (and because the site lag and there's no good mobile site layout at all its really bad). this is a GIANT!!! problem for the availability of designs and commissions, as only people within these servers can purchase or even be aware that these designs, commission slots, sales, etc., exist. i believe the largest server has around 150 or so people in it? and currently as of writing this, there are over 500 users online. some forum groups for CWs & CW designs have 300 - 500 users in them - customwear has well over 1000 i believe? these people not on discord, in the right servers, are not eligible customers for these CW designs, commissions, and sales. this immediately cuts them out of that part of the market (in terms of these artists), and the more artists that do this or are forced to do this only further limits new users entering the CW market as a whole. it's fine for those of us who have been around, or know where to look - but currently, it's not encouraging growth within the community to "lock" access to CWs behind having to be in a discord. if there was one collective design discord that all artists (who wanted to be) were in, and WIPs/sneak peaks/teasers were still posted on the forums? BOOM, this opens the door wide open again, considerably, because now anyone can see oh there's a sale, oh there's going to be designs, oh so-and-so is active/taking comms, etc. but as of right now it's fairly disorganized and can be very hard to access if you're not already familiar with who's who and what's where. discord is a good tool to use at the moment, but discord-only content specifically is harmful. 3b. i do want to say that i really like how a lot of people handle the slotting aspect of cws over discord, because it's usually forum-adjacent at the same time, to fill the first batch to make site-slotting easier, or for a lil earlybird slotting. cw slotting that's "just discord only" isn't really happening a lot anymore? and it's helping the health of the market a lot, and you can SEE it helping the market a lot, and i just wanted to thank y'all that slot over discord like this for doing it in a way that also ties back to the forum & the site. it breaks down the "exclusivity" aspect of discord, and makes it a companion for easy mobile slotting/gauging interest. this is great and perfect. i just wanted to add this bc i think discord is a hella useful tool when used properly in conjunction with the site-- not instead of it.

4a. we need all the guidelines and rules for CWs written out and in one place, badly. some of the old rules are nowhere to be found; the very old guides and rule set that used to be on the forums vanished when we migrated over to the new forums - like most of the old threads did. was working on compiling this again, but i know it's a big undertaking especially since the rules were just...lost like that? i do not know the state of the rule set behind the scenes, but for example try to find the rule about drop shadows/shadows being not allowed on CI items. you can't. it's gone. is it still a rule? probably. but it's not in any threads or on the submission page, and this is just ONE of the rules that are weird and unspoken. i'm not staff but if y'all wanted me to do this for free & compile the rules into something legible even just as a starting point for staff to use, i would do this. i would do this for $0. it's been driving me small-time crazy for years. if i was a US citizen i'd have applied/would apply to help the CW queue and i'd frankly do it for a GA and mcnuggets twice a year and no payment beyond that. 4b. clearer denial guidelines (not denials) from staff. i swear this isn't a shot at anyone who works the CW queue or helps with it, BUT denials can be very inconsistent. it's been mentioned already that between recolours some are denied and some aren't, while the originals were fine-- this kind of inconsistency is a problem. however, with one person on staff, and 20 - 50 items a week, sometimes WILDLY more like around sale & holiday season, i can understand how it happens. it is, though, still a problem. we need clear examples of when thin line art is okay, when non-realistic anatomy is okay, when coloured line art is okay. because it appears in some items, while others are rejected for it, and it's very very discouraging and feels unfair. having staff put their foot down about when, where, and why some of these rules can be broken will help creativity & moral-- because a lot of CW guidelines are broken, but on a vague, case-by-case basis, and it leaves artists feeling lost and slighted when their item gets denied but so-and-so's doesn't for the same style of lines/anatomy/whatever. it's a headache and doesn't have to be.

5a. costs are quite high to submit items, especially compared to cash shop items. a hair coupon, that you can redeem to make ANY colour, is 250 CSC - a CW wig, in one set colour, is 700. base slot price (no profit, at a loss) is 500, which is still twice the price. i think CWs are definitely "luxury" items (i mean we're putting our own art on the site at an uncapped amount whenever we want as fast as we can draw in some cases which is SUPER COOL), and should probably cost more than cash shop items, but currently i think the price disparity is too high. if the highest submit category were 3000 instead of 5000, so that items were topping out at around ~500 and still the same profit, this would be ideal. there is a lot more math involved for lower-cost items but i am not the person to help with that side of it. this is just a guideline of what feels more 'fair'. 5b. costs categories need to be redone by size, for the most part, or at the very least much more lenient. tiny masks, teeny tiny horns, small ear caps, shouldn't cost 5000 to submit when they're the same size as items in the small/simple jewelry categories. tiny hair accessories should not have to be priced up from 'small accessories', etc. i honestly think there are too many categories, and the system could function much more easily both for submitters & behind the scenes with something along the lines of small, medium, large items - and then stuff like small body mods, large/medium mods, wigs, partial wigs (i.e, bangs/ponytail addons), background/foreground, partial background/foreground. there's still clear designations for items that aren't as easily quantified by size, but a lot less clutter. staff would, however, need to provide a metric (or an imperial, ha ha sorry) for how to "measure" how big an item is, but that's already done moderately well with the current examples for pricing categories. this is just a rough idea, ofc, but i think doing away with a lot of categories and streamlining it would make life easier for everyone, and CWs more approachable for first-timers.

6. body mods & make up should be able to transform between skin tones. i think it's totally reasonable to submit an item with base colours 1-10, with minimal or even no additional charge. staff have mentioned wanting to do this, and i fully support it and want it as a reality. it's been necessary since allowing for body mods of that nature to be accepted.

7a. the cw info/submission pages desperately need some redesigning. they aren't terrible, but some information is in the forums, some is on the page, pricing isn't visible until you submit, etc. the custom clothing landing page is also really long and not super friendly for first-timers; i've tried to introduce friends to the website several times to help with comm sales and etc, and they've just not stayed or bothered because the submission process comes across as very clunky and A Lot. i think the CW landing page is a really good start - i like the tabs, for example - BUT i think having it formatted more like the subetapedia might make it more cohesive? so if you want to submit you just hit the big square, if you want more info you go there, etc. that way it's not trying to condense a lot of information into one area, very quickly, to the reader. 7b. cw shops are rough to navigate. dolli brought up the old CW design where you could sort by layers and etc, and i think that would help a lot. you can do this on the search page?? well. that's a good feature i am glad it's here!! but i suppose that addresses my point that they're a bit rough to navigate. i'm shown all the recent cws, here they are, there's a sidebar with shops i'm following they're random though unless i click, the search feature i think should be on the landing page, and i think there should be a full directory of shops. i find a lot of folks i'm not following, but thought i was, but i wanted to be, and also i'm not getting their alerts and just now went thru my followed shops and enabled over 10. it's a lil clunky- not bad, but a lil clunky.

i have some misc thoughts about pricing/reselling? but honestly i think the trouble with trade only/reselling being difficult at times are not their own issue to treat, but a symptom of the system itself needing improved: more buyers/participants in CWs means more batches are filled, means more copies are in the system, means less inflation of "rarity", etc.. supply and demand will always be a factor, and there will always be "rare" items, but having a better economy overall will knock a lot of these problems out. what we do in the mean time to counter & balance trade only & hiked up prices is just a band-aid, and will have their own consequences down the line in terms of quantity/availability/price/The Pawn Shop.

THATS ALL THO thats all my thoughts/opinions; ik some are kind of written out Like They're A Fact? but i just sat down to write this with the Analytical Brain On and took it kinda seriously, so it maybe came out more aggressively toned than i mean for it to wugwhg i'm sorry if it did! i care a lot about this site & this community and i want this whole boat to thrive and i spent maybe 2 hours writing this and mulling it over OTL

Just posting to throw a big massive support at s post. You hit the nail absolutely on the head.

I have nothing much to add to the discussion but if anyone with any power is reading this. Is there any possibility at all that subeta can enlist the help of volunteers/recruit for voluntary positions?? Just reading through this thread there are so many people with experience, knowledge and dedication to the cw community to do cw submission guides, denial guides, to help with the cw database etc. Someone will be posting about some cw from 2015 on the cw identification thread and like a good 90% of the time someone will reply back with the releaser, artist, slot price, number of copies etc.

Crowdsourcing or user edited content is so big right now and i think we should use this resource of passionate, knowledgeable users to improve cw information and accessibility. So many people here are happy to do it for free or something simple like an extra gold account so please i hope this doesn’t go to waste cause a userbase like this is rare!

As ordinary users we can only do so much. I would like to see some real, site sanctioned changes coming out of this.

Wanting to note that, like , I too am willing to donate time to help compile the rules and crap and make it easier for staff to work on a comprehensive guide. At one point, Jessi approached me about discussing ways to help improve those things and make them far more functional as well as discuss back end things for submitters to make submissions/CW shops/etc a little easier. Unfortunately it came at a time when she was busy and then she was gone so it never went anywhere but I do think we could benefit from discussing this better with staff.

I also don't think this should all fall on Saint because they're already so busy. I know some of the senior staff could help with making the guides/rules and discuss the programming needs. I'm sure there's things that would be beneficial for the staff side too that could help ease things for Saint (I'd imagine simplifying the categories/type of item would make approvals and denials easier as well alongside some of the other simplifications).

“s ubeta used to have a really, really active and thriving art market for...everything. art, cws, coding, writing. but the majority of creatives that founded that market are older now; we're not teens anymore, who are excited to get 600 or 1000 csc - we've got bills and shit. that's coupled with the fact that subeta doesn't really have a young population to fill that gap, to take over for us that have outgrown that phase of 'getting experience & practice with commissions' into being professional artists & creators.”

You put into words exactly how I didn’t realize I felt but totally do feel?!?!?

Also like..... sometimes if I’m broke on csc which I am a lot because I tend to sell designs rather than release stuff, I’ll do some csc art sales and stuff like that. I don’t think all artists would 100% abandon charging csc 100% of the time tbh!

I too would be interested in seeing a thread reaching out to the wider community as opposed to just the active cw peeps. I think help to see what market we even potentially have to reach out to. (A lot of people just plain arent interested in CWs...and thats fair enough ^^).

I feel like most of the ideas I have are...too late to implement :c. but... I'll just put what I'd liked to have seen.

• I'd love to have seen ideas generation spread beyond the few that can effectively draw in the subeta style/ can afford to commission the few that can. We've lost so much over the years because of that alone. Like... imagine if there was a sub-market of artists who generated the ideas/ concepts for cws, without going through the trouble of having to make them? Be it character design/ fashion design/ pets/treasures whatever. Again, I think its far too late for something like this but it would have been so much fun to see ;n;. Especially because we had quite a few budding concept artists/ animators/ comic artists on here before. And I think it would have helped inspire others too.

-More community based contests/ creative projects. I've read this ones already been suggested and understand the lack of interest vs the sheer amount of work they take is why they dont last. It's sad though :c. Maybe if we ever get a healthier maket again we can have a thread for community ideas or something.

-CWs are too expensive all round...and its probably whats hurting the market the most.

-some kinda thing for entry level releasers where the first item you release cost half the price to submit...or idk...something so the initial sting doesnt hurt so bad if the releases fail to make a profit.

• ...I forgot the rest >>

I understand why Varsna and feral believe that discord is hurting the market, but it would drive off a lot of releasers if it's disallowed before the site is actually fixed so that pings really work.

FWIW -- I don't submit limited or capped batches ever.

The only restrictions I have ever placed on purchasing my items is that some items released in honour of people's birthdays are only available during their birthday month. And I did a Morostide event requiring ToTs (which I will never do again).

And yet I never had any trouble filling a first batch except for that event.

Until the "maintenance" and server move.

Since then, the only way I've been able to fill batches has been through Discord (using the "community slotting" channel on one of the larger ones), and I constantly get members of my ping group telling me they never saw a ping for the item.

For every person who slots/takes commissions on discord to avoid this or that site currency requirement or whatever, I would bet real money that there are 3 more who do so because this site is constantly broken.

And no--not everyone does get off on being a little withholding. I feel absolutely terrible when people want to buy stuff but can't because I said they could only get it if they TOT'd or whatever, which is why I am not going to do it again.

There are a few newer releasers--I'm one, is another--who are strongly committed to keeping items unlimited and easy to buy, regardless of when you joined or whether or not we are friends.

If you really want people to buy your items because they love the item, and not because they can flip it for 3000 csc, and you really don't want to see your items going for 3000 csc in a speculator's user shop, this is how you avoid it. Because markets are predictable and human behaviour is a known element. If you create artificial scarcity, you are inviting speculation.

I really don't think it is fair to talk and act like resellers are terrible for doing what humans have done in every economy that has made it possible. I mean, maybe people are kind of terrible generally, that's an argument that has traction, but people who flip items with only 10 copies from popular releasers and artists are not the same as the guy who raised the prices on his cancer drugs, and people who trade off rare items they won in a raffle to get some other rare item they desperately want are behaving...like humans. I wouldn't do it but I also am an adult with a decent job, no dependents and no financial sense.

Besides, if I ever come up with something that 80 people want, I want to sell all 80 of those people copies (because it would be nice to make a profit ever, even once) and hopefully those CSC purchases will help the site stay afloat. I really don't want the site to go broke because I've dumped an incredibly stupid amount of money here.

I will admit that I haven't made much of my investment back. Frankly, I haven't made any. But I release the items that I want to have and if other people are willing to help me make it happen I view it as frosting on the cake.

ETA: Chiming in on the transformable skin tones thing. Yes, yes, yes.

I don't like the whiteouts because they look bad on backgrounds and on dark CSS, and even on the very pale beige background for your avatar in your CW shop I can actually still see them. (I'm one of those obnoxious people who is hypersensitive to colour gradations, sorry!)

But the thing I don't like about the whiteouts is the resurgence of CWs that only come in bases 1-3, which had all but disappeared thanks to the transparency hack. I know it's financial and that releasers do not hate black people, but the fact that dark skin tone items often don't sell well even to players who are POC themselves actually is a side-effect of institutionalised racism, so it's still frustrating--and it's also a vicious circle, because the reason these items don't sell well is that many of the people who want them just give up on CWs.

edit- I either misread or misattributed a sentiment to feral that she never expressed/intended; my apologies.

Thank you so much for pinging me here. I'm a bit short on time so although I've got a lot to say, I'll just note down some important points: 1- The queue needs more manpower, especially during peak seasons such as Luminaire and Black Friday. We have seen through Jessi's and now Saint's circumstances that it is unrealistic to expect one person to burden the workload if we want CW to remain a major source of income for the site. 2- The whole process of approval needs to be more transparent, i.e. if rules are changed we as releasers and artists need to know what have been changed. It is very discouraging and honestly speaking a waste of time on both sides if artists are left to fumble their way in the dark. I myself have had overlays rejected for reasons that previous CWs were not, and though I understand rules need to be changed, I still feel it would save me and the admin lots of time and effort if such changes were made known. It is very frustrating to put effort and time into a piece of overlay to be rejected, and I guess it's no fun for the admin to have to review the same overlay over and over until it gets accepted either. 3- I second Voltage's and Varsna's suggestion that Subeta opens itself to the idea of accepting volunteers. I'm willing to put in time and work to compile a denial guide with other artists, as well as to help rewrite the CW guide on the CW main page, honestly just for a couple of Cash Shop hair coupons or boutique wear a year. I'm only a ping away, and I don't mind it if it helps keep Subeta going. I love Subeta that much to be willing to do it!

I will write based on what i feel overall, playing for just a short amount of time and spending way to much then i want to on here...

1.As a newbie , i dont know exactly what is rare, whats worth what, and when i should jump on an item. if i like something, i like it. This part is kinda overwhelming so ive had to do some search on items and where they came from and whatever... another part to this is, when i do buy items i just like and not love , i cant use them for a bit and resell because they just dont sell. The most likely reason to that is simply there arent enough players to trade and sell with thus everyone wants the same expensive junk as everyone else.

2. The community is not friendly at all. I find this place is a little too cliquey to me. I roll my eyes so damn hard they pop out of my head.. especially when i read these items were originally just for "friends" . as someone with no friends i could care less about private friend only items, its just snobby. Even after this, i find people have been amazing and kind to me. I am not the only one that feels this way.

3. The amount of csc we get for the money ratio is just not good.. 10$ only buys me one freakin CW and i have to wait till a certain day to buy on subeta for a "bonus " it makes me not want to spend money sometimes.

4. I have no idea as a new releaser what is best and what option i should choose. i chose 20 slots for my first release and im closing the remainder that didnt fill up within the first 3 days until a special event or something comes along , just cuz thats what i like so if people dont have money for it now they have a chance later. I dont know what options i should half the time because honestly this is not newbie friendly,... i had to ask many people for advice and sometimes im still confused lmao

5. There should be no private items. Everyone should get a piece of the cake. The only option there should be is submit a CW to the site, it goes to the persons shop and it sits there for 2 months until it auto retires. something like that...

Hnnng.... I wish I had time to read through all this and really offer a great suggestion. Most people have already touched on a lot of the things that I agree with and I'm not going to just rehash what so many of them have already been able to articulate better than I could. However, I will add this:

Doing away with privates will not help anyone. Regardless of how people submit items, if they want only their friends to get copies, it's going to happen. A part of the draw of CWs is being able to control what happens to copies. If people want to keep something to friends only, it should be entirely within their right to do so. They're the ones who spent the time either drawing the item themselves or spent their own hard-earned money to get said item. Pandering to everyone who simply "wants something" just doesn't seem right. If everyone could get everything they wanted, the site simply wouldn't be any fun. Knowing you have things you want or things to work towards is a part of the thrill. And sure, CWs might not be the easiest things to find later, but the thrill of getting an item you've been after for a while is far better than everyone having everything in my eyes.

just to clarify, i specifically cited discord exclusive/only content, then also stated & praised it as a useful tool to use alongside the site.

as a replacement, it's only hurting the market and a lot of accessibility people have to cw designs, design/recolour sales, some slotting, etc. new people can't know, at a glance, these things are happening on discord. if it's used as a replacement, it needs to be better communicated on site that people need to go there. if someone wants to use only discord and never the forums, that's their business, but it's inherently insular & will exclude the general population of the site unless it's mentioned somewhere on the site itself. otherwise, lots of people definitely take slots on discord BUT! then do the awesome thing of posting on-site, too, or using shop alerts (less good, only visible to followers). this removes the barrier of discord-only content. it restores (theoretical) access to the hundreds of people not in the servers. this is great & not doing any harm at all to the market, and is only a nice convenience.

hopefully that's clearer!

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i LOVE 's idea of an 'idea'/concept market; i have no idea how to potentially go about this BUT! there used to be the thread cherrypick where folks would post references and people would claim them & within a certain time frame commission them. it's been inactive for about a year now (i don't know the specifics of why) but it would be nice to see that revived, plus with the possibility of artists of any ilk selling sketches/unfinished design concepts to be spruced up/subeta-fied by other artists. i'd personally sell sketches a lot because i frequently get to the stage of finishing something and....never do. :') it might not be very cut & dry to work out payment though, but that's a fairly small hurdle imo? IDK i totally forgot about cherrypick & love you for making me think of it again

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it's a sore spot for a lot of people, but to touch on limited/private/etc CWs as folks have brought it up: i don't think they're the problem with the level of clique that sometimes crops up. i think honestly that - on both sides - people care too much. not getting an item vs. having a superspecialnobodyelsehasthis item probably shouldn't be as big a part of CW culture as it is, but it's a huge part, and it's...weird and emotionally unhealthy, i think, the levels that some people go to or have gone to with CWs being either accessible or inaccessible to them. and again, i mean that specifically from both sides - people releasing private items specifically to exclude others, and people upset they are excluded from them. and to repeat myself - not everyone!! but it's a big factor and it's toxic. i had to take a huge step back from CWs a few years ago because of this. the state of CWs being mildly emotionally weaponized used to be way worse and it fucked with my anxiety a lot.

(sorry i keep editing this post i keep finding things i want to reply tO)

I never once said OR implied that discord should be disallowed from the CW community. I'm honestly not sure where you've got me saying that, but I both did not say that, and do not feel that way.