So BOTH the shoutbox and forums were down, making it difficult for people to kiss each other and gain hearts.

Yeah.....no, this was a REALLY BAD move. Both of these features should not be inaccessible, especially during an event where the majority of currency collection is done through those features.

I've seen news comments about people being annoyed about forums & SB being down, and I don't blame them!

This is a learning experience for Subeta staff. Here's what they should do to placate users and prevent issues like this from occurring again:

Have the sb open if forums are closed for maintenance.

I know the sb causes lag, but if forums are down a source of lag has already been removed. Heck, in the error message put a link to the full page shoutbox so users can easily access it. Or set aside a news post for people to chat and post kissing links, the userbase already did so during the forum downtime.

Extend Survival and give CSC as compensation.

was one of the people who suggested this, and I agree because of how important the forums are to Survival. I suggested CSC because in addition to the SB and forums issues, there was backlash about the items displayed in the parlour this year. I understand the "you don't have to buy the items" idea, but honestly? Subeta is a 13+ site, and there are many parents who don't want their children to be exposed to such topics on the internet. I personally believe that 13-14 years old is way too young to learn about these kinky adult toys (and I'm certain many parents feel the same way). In addition, some users were triggered by these items due to abuse or other bad experiences. If staff wants to keep adding these items, they'll have to post a warning on the news when Survival starts. Also, IMO there should only be 5 or less of these items introduced during this holiday. The majority of parlour items should have a different theme.

If the staff doesn't wish to give out CSC, I'd suggest giving a voucher that allows users to buy 5-10 items from the Cash Shop for free. Most of the CSC purchases are CWs, so I don't think this will ruin the ecomony. I guess CSC cards will have to be excluded from the vouchers as a safeguard, but I still think this could work.

Hire more coders/get more volunteer coders.

Honestly, this idea seems to be becoming more and more of a NECESSITY at this point. I don't know how many coders Subeta has currently. But if the current number of coders is less than 7, that's too few coders for a site with this many users and SO many glitches. The server move brought a LOT of foreseen issues, and whenever a new glitch pop ups (Pet Spotlight for example) it takes time away from repairing the current errors plaguing the site. There needs to be at least 10 coders, and ideally they should all be from different time zones so that there always is a coder on hand to work on new glitches that pop up on the site.

The last new coder that joined staff is {user=Bug] (at least according to my memory), and they joined about 2-3 years ago. MANY< MANY users have given Subeta flack for long delays between implementing certain features, and I think the only way to alleviate such an issue is to get more coders.

I have to disagree here. Bug made the right calls to get the site working as well as possible. They even went so far as to fix bugs days in advance in preparation. Our strains were working and progressing fine, which was an improvement over the past two years. The only thing we really missed out on was biting time because bites can only be accessed via the forums. However, people could get a new infection in the VIP if they didn’t want to wait. Today was inconvenient, yes, but it was necessary to make the rest of the event run smoothly.

The only thing I would like to see is the event extended by a day to make up for the time some people had to wait for bites. That’s all we really need.

The site has been down longer and in worse condition than the past day, we still have 13 days, give or take 12 hours, left in it...and you want at least 5 free CS items for it?

Am I understanding this correctly?

I don't really care about any compensation personally, I'm just sad that the site is so much harder to use with all the problems it's been having lately.

It is very inconvenient, but the forums and SB were disabled because its deemed necessary after considering what was happening. But I admit I am still baffled at the lag and errors overnight with only 300 users online.

Helpful tip: You can add the notepad widget to your sidebar and enter sCode for kissing any user there, even when the forums are down. https://subeta.net/preferences.php?act=sidebar

The timeline was going to be a bit tight anyway, if you were shooting for 4 strains.

But compensation in the form of CS shop items or CSC? No.

Holy crap the entitlement here. Bug did their best to keep the site usable AT ALL by disabling the sb and forums while they could and the rest of us just kissed our friends list and found people through discord. While yes the biting being not accessible was a bit of a damper demanding compensation via money items is a bit far. We've been spoiled to the fact they do that when we are inconvenienced in any way.

Bug worked incredibly hard to get everything working as much as they could and while the forums and SB being down was an inconvenience there was a message posted when you tried to access the forums notifying all users the problem was being worked on, which was amazing to see.

Was it an ideal situation? No. But bug wouldn’t have made that decision if they didn’t have too and the suggestion of major compensation like you’re describing is outrageous and reeks of entitlement.

I’ll be happy if they extend the event to make up for lost time with bites but all in all the viruses are progressing properly and we still have a lot of time to get candy hearts.

CSC compensation for Stuff not working on a weekday? Seems a bit excessive doesn't it.

Also on the item controversies once again. If you want to influence what items do (and do not) get made, please pay the occasional visit to the suggestions and ideas forum. The controversial items in question were actually asked for (not specifically but I digress) back in november (and in last years suggestion thread) and in all that time nobody gave those suggestions any negative commentary. Make of that what you will.

That said, the most appropriate time and place to give commentary on event items is honestly there in the forums where the artists can find it and preferably before the drawing process has started. Now if anyone has great ideas for what they do want to see, feel free to come share them. It really works!

Atebus Revolution Masquerade 2020 suggestions The great vesnali 2020 suggestion thread

Compensation?! 5 free cash shop items? That is such a terribly entitled comment I cannot believe it. Bug worked INCREDIBLY hard to make this work, if anything sure extend it a day so people can work on bites and such more, we aren't going to receive csc or any "compensation" no one lost money by not being able to access the forums for a short while.

As Disasters said was it an ideal situation? No, but Bug made what they know is the proper decision.

Please take back the ENTIRE compensation paragraph because no, that doesnt work at all.

- I am going to address what you said one point at a time.

1. "I understand the "you don't have to buy the items" idea, but honestly? Subeta is a 13+ site, and there are many parents who don't want their children to be exposed to such topics on the internet. I personally believe that 13-14 years old is way too young to learn about these kinky adult toys (and I'm certain many parents feel the same way). In addition, some users were triggered by these items due to abuse or other bad experiences. If staff wants to keep adding these items, they'll have to post a warning on the news when Survival starts. Also, IMO there should only be 5 or less of these items introduced during this holiday. The majority of parlour items should have a different theme."

NO. Just NO. Subeta is not like other sites, like the ones that begin with M, N, and G that all have more suggestive items than Subeta does. People who properly parent won't worry about things like that with their teenage kids, and if they do, then said kids should not be on here in the first place. As for those being triggered, that is understandable, but again, if people don't like them, they don't need to buy them. Period.

2. If the staff doesn't wish to give out CSC, I'd suggest giving a voucher that allows users to buy 5-10 items from the Cash Shop for free. Most of the CSC purchases are CWs, so I don't think this will ruin the ecomony. I guess CSC cards will have to be excluded from the vouchers as a safeguard, but I still think this could work.

UM NO. For one day's time you expect 1000csc or a bunch of free items? How entitled are you?! It's well known that you want/need CSC, of course, we all enjoy that, but it's incredibly ridiculous to want $10 for missing the first 24 hours of an event. We still have plenty of time to enjoy it. As was already stated, a one day extension of the event would be enough.

3. Have the sb open if forums are closed for maintenance.

I know the sb causes lag, but if forums are down a source of lag has already been removed. Heck, in the error message put a link to the full page shoutbox so users can easily access it. Or set aside a news post for people to chat and post kissing links, the userbase already did so during the forum downtime.

It has already been said that the SB is closed due to issues that it causes during the event. There are many Discord chats available if you want to talk when the SB is closed during this event, this is NOT needed just for comfort purposes.

4. Hire more coders/get more volunteer coders.

Honestly, this idea seems to be becoming more and more of a NECESSITY at this point. I don't know how many coders Subeta has currently. But if the current number of coders is less than 7, that's too few coders for a site with this many users and SO many glitches.

This is a novel idea, now where do you propose Subeta get the money to hire more coders, and where do you propose, around their real life full time jobs, that they find time to train volunteer coders just so you and other users are not inconvenienced by glitches and issues onsite? It'd be interesting to see what you come up with for that.

In other words, all of these ideas are not good, not good at all.

worked their ass off to fix the forums and fix the site. We are NOT owed any huge bonuses for our "inconvenience" or to "placate" users that constantly think they are entitled to extras for minor glitches. Bug deserves all the love and gratitude we can give them for working so hard, and posting stuff like this asking for CSC and etc is incredibly ungrateful and rude.

Barring the discussion of the items themselves, because I am not going to go there at all, I would like it if the site didn't have these hiccups. Like everyone else.

But I'm also not going to go "This isn't going exactly the way I want, time to write a lengthy forum post most will simply glean over."

Just sayin'.

Okay so...

did their absolute best to keep us in the loop regarding bugfixes and what's been making the site lag. Staff had to take the forums and shoutbox down to avoid killing the site entirely with lag. The site was still very playable despite that - I even got my quests done. Lots of people were sharing kissing links in the news comments! The infections progressed fine, the only thing that was impacted was biting.

And... you are suggesting that the site compensates people with 5-10 cash shop items? ... For what, exactly? Temporarily blocking forum access to fix bugs so that the rest of the event can run much better? If I got this right, you want the site to give away money via cash shop vouchers, just for like 12-18 hours of not being able to access the forums. And then you expect the site to hire new coders?

If they want to extend the event because of this, that's good. If they don't, that's also good. Absolutely no CSC compensation is needed.

I see, but the problem is that many people don't chat on these forums. There was a thread that discussed how to make the forums more active. And just MAYBE the artists should have been a bit more.... subtle with the kinky stuff.

These are examples of items being subtle with the kinky theme. I thought the first item was just a dog trinket, LOL.

I agree with your entire post! Props to Bug. I believe that the recent maintenance means that we won't have to worry about forums going down for Masquerade.

I get your point. Not everyone has Discord, though. And my compensation is mainly for those who were triggered due to these new items. There was a news comment from a user. They and their siblings suffered abuse that were apparently connected to those items. But we don't know which users were triggered, so the entire userbase gets these free items. Basically, everyone benefits due to the outcry of a few people. I hope you get my drift.

I'm sorry those people were triggered but no piplup we don't deserve compensation for a few hours inconvenience look we all know you just want free csc to fund your angelic potions addiction...

All I'm gonna say is, did we all forget the Giselle Kinkylove set? Cause like...That exists. There's a stripper pole that's apart of this set. There's a dog collar with leash attached. If you're just NOW bothered by items...then that's on you. Don't like em? Don't look at em. Simple enough. Plenty of other sites out there have worse items and are considered 13+. I'm sorry people were triggered, but it's the internet, and much like real life, things don't often come with warning labels.

So you want the site to let us buy 5-10 items from the cash shop, for free, cause someone complained about new items? So if every user buys CWs like you mentioned, that's $30-60 per user in lost revenue. There's currently 650 users online. That's $20k bare minimum. And then you want them to hire coders after giving away tens of thousands of dollars for...no real reason.

I can't even begin to process how absurd this is.

You're... basically saying "hey, we should all profit off of someone else's trauma". I've seen users sharing some of the things they've gone through in the comments but I don't remember any of them demanding monetary compensation.

This feels wrong on so many levels. I doubt that anyone who has gone through that kind of trauma appreciates being used as an excuse for getting free items.

CWs and CSC cards wouldn't be included in the vouchers. My plan was to hopefully get more people with GAs to spend CSC on the autopricer.

The Vouchers are also intended to be a gesture of goodwill to avoid controversy. Because let's face it, I'm worried that Subeta might not recover if it got negative publicity in the news. And the negative publicity would stem from an angry parent who mistakenly thought this was a kids site. Sadly I think pet sites have the "it's for kids" connotation, much like animation.

The staff don't need to do so this time, it's something to consider in the future. At the very least, make a post apologizing for putting up a trigger warning. But they still need to consider getting more coders at some point. I don't want the coders we currently have to get overwhelmed. I still remember hearing about the artist who broke her bone before this event started. YIKES! That could cause considerable delays if it was a coder.