True. I'll probably still buy a few things here and there. Are you thrilled a cap is on them now? I know you released wears.

1. may only be from US - in case one of them does a really good job, and will eventually be offered a 'staff' position - subeta has a history of not even accepting mods from outside of us (and it's not because of the native language the person may speak. (i never saw this as fair, but at least Keith wants to pay his staff)
2. if non-US people are accepted in the council, it will be close to free labor/internship (time=money) and i personally don't really know what to think about internships (i heard some companies pay their interns), but as a creator myself (off-subeta) i don't agree with free labor (which i see as slavery; though there are many forums who are run by 'volunteers' because that's their passion/hobby/relax time.
3. will start acting like L33T because they're "involved" ... -it's not as if some CW releasers don't already act like that -_-; being part of this "council" will just reinforce their behaviour...

I also want to assure you that the part with free-labor (which you were wondering if you misunderstood), well, it's close to what i also understood. but i think Keith was a bit too excited about announcing these changes and couldn't convey all his thoughts properly. or he forgot to clarify some aspects. i'm sure he will though ^-^

Overall I'm excited to see changes being made to this system, especially if it means lower prices and it being made easier to get designs and recolors approved through streamlined (and easier to understand) rules.

I do have concerns about the same thing as though, because that statement ("and it's not on pumping out new wearables") has me worried that it's basically just gonna be CWs going forward. I love CWs but if that was the only wearables to choose from I probably wouldn't be making many HAs. Combining CWs with official items is fun and dynamic for me. And I have doubts about the CW market being able to cover all the basis when it comes to the different kinds of items being made. Not to mention the fact that with official items we get several different colors all at once. With CWs you need to wait for the original design to be approved before getting any recolors onsite... And it will alienate all the users that use sP to buy their wearables and not csc. How are they expected to get wearables going forward? Would they have to first buy csc for their sP to then be able to get any wearable at all? And if staff is going to take a step back from making wearables then are you gonna allow users to make facial features such as eyes, noses and mouths?

Like I'm also concerned about how this will affect releasers that have batch extras that they are trying to get sold when the changes get implemented. As an example, I currently have a batch extra in my second hand cw shop that I'm trying to sell. I always bring the price down on my batch extras by 100 to try and get them sold first/quickly (doesn't always make a difference but whatever). But that is how low I'm willing to go on those items since I want to try and make back as much as I can from having had to push an item through (covering X amount of slots myself). If prices to submit say a body modification drops to maybe half the current price then how am I gonna get my batch extra, from before the change, to sell for 600 if the new prices for body modifications are 350? I can see it happening for popular items (but there wouldn't realistically be batch extras from those) but as someone that has a different taste in CWs compared to most on this site (at least that's how it feels) I doubt that mine would sell at all, and I'd probably end up pawning the item and thus losing csc in the process.

I'm not sure how to feel about this. I was never really into CWs, I do have some but because I know I hardly stand a chance of getting many of the ones that already exist, I prefer to use staff-made items. I hope we can at least still have some wearables for events and stuff, even if it's not as many. I mean, I can accept less staff-made wearables if it means they have more time and effort to work on other things like new pet colours, more plots and lore (like maybe finally giving some kind of resolution to the Gunter plot), and other site features that are still stuck in development (like the Tea House), but I just don't want them to be gone forever.

Sincere thanks for making this such a fun and interesting time here on subeta since life on earth is such a mess rn. I'm excited to see how it all turns out! Sounds like it would be fun to be a part of.

This 1000%

This is so exciting! I have a huge CW wishlist and the only issue is...I can't afford them all! There's so many fantastic, wonderful items from the imaginative minds here and I want all the things!!

Carrie

I am also voicing the concern/question which this statement implies the staff won't be focusing a lot on releasing new items. I own less than 5 CWs, I LOVE the ones the team produces, especially during events. Are we to presume this will be cut down dramatically?

It especially feels like a kick to the gut since last I heard we could still be missing a bunch of our wearables if we were unable to provide the full list ourselves?

I'll say this much: I can't dump hundreds of real money into this site for virtual wears and those I have, I've thought long and hard about purchasing.

If I'm understanding this correctly, I kinda hate the idea but you do what you must to keep the site afloat. I just hope there's something still left for those who can't afford five, let alone hundreds, of CWs.

I was honestly so stressed last night after reading the post that I completely missed the

"We're starting to find where our creative focus is best spent (plots! events! features!) and it's not on pumping out new wearables (y'all have that COVERED)"

I am agreeing with the people above me that this site's avatar system should not turn into a 'pay to use' type system (where all new items coming in require money). I'm aware you guys will probably still put out wearables here and there and that this statement doesn't mean you'll NEVER do wearables anymore, but removing the majority of them and forcing people to go to a pay to use aspect of the site is kind of a shitty idea IMHO. CWs aren't cheap, and even if the prices lower, they're still not going to be cheap enough for some people to participate. Official items are important to the site and encourage people TO check out custom wearables, and custom wearables should not replace official items. This is also an insane amount of pressure to put on artists who aren't your staff, and may not be being paid fairly for their work or treated properly.

--

I also want to add that using Custom Wearables to fuel the entire 'wardrobe' community of the site isn't... well thought out. You're asking the wardrobe community to fund itself so that you can save money working on what you've repeatedly called the most profitable part of the site? what

Wow, so much has gone down in the last few days! I haven't weighed in on anything yet, gonna have to spend a good bit of today ruminating. Let me just start off by saying how pleased I am that changes/updates that have been in progress behind the scenes are beginning to be seen publicly - reading these update posts have been invigorating!

Now as to this post in particular -

I am super happy to see that changes to the way CWs are handled are indeed being considered by staff. The CW community has given a lot of feedback over the years, and while I knew it was being seen/listened to, I feel we're getting confirmation that some of it is/will be implemented now, and that's exciting. The CW voucher in the new subscription model is a cool addition, in particular! Reading this post, I get the idea that is trying to integrate CWs more into the site as whole, beyond the currently niche community....that's awesome T__T

I'm already rambling, so I'll try to address the first post point-by-point:

I know a lot of users will be happy to see more focus put into these aspects of the site, but I definitely don't think CWs will replace site wearables. Not that I think staff is aiming to replace them entirely, but perhaps expanding CW contests or implementing some kind of community shop could bolster certain events/holidays.

Definitely excited for updated rules/guidelines, and a more streamlined submission process!

While supporting community feedback like in the ">CW Denial Help Thread is great, I am leery of putting the approval/denial process any more into users' hands for several reasons.

1. Most users, even those in the CW community, are not artists and may not have a trained eye for spotting quality issues like thin lineart, flat shading, etc. While relaxing the rules may be helpful somewhat for gray-area issues like the recent object head debate, I would hate to see the site flooded with lower-quality wearables, too.

2. Feedback quality/visibility might be lopsided depending on the popularity of the releaser. Hypothetically, if a wearable needed a certain number of "yes, this is good enough to be on site" votes from users before being submitted for staff review, popular users/those already well-known in the community would find it much easier to gain these votes than a new user, and the art submitted by a popular user would be less apt to receive real critical review. The CW community has already been accused for years of being some elite clique, and I worry about this coming to fruition if new/less experienced users find it difficult to even make it the part of the submission process where their CW is seen by staff.

3. Increased submission review time. If a CW item needs a certain amount of attention from users during the submission process before moving on to staff review, how would this lengthen the CW queue time? Instead of being seen by a staff member within a couple of days and either accepted or rejected with quality feedback, would CW releasers need to first gain the attention of some number of users? If there isn't enough user "interest" in an item, it could sit for ages before being passed on to staff, even if the art itself is technically acceptable.

4. More confusion about quality. As I said above, most people involved in CWs are not artists, and even those that are may have conflicting opinions about what is or isn't acceptable. There should be a foundation of clear quality rules to go by when creating and reviewing CWs, otherwise it's very overwhelming to know what's acceptable and what's not. While I appreciate that stylistic requirements have evolved/relaxed over the years, leading to some truly beautiful CW artwork, I very much support some sort of foundational rules that users can refer to. An updated version of this, with more visual aids, would be ideal!

Yay!

Cautiously optimistic, but not really sure how it would work since most users need help funding their submission. Also slightly concerned that this would make CWs even more impersonal/take away from the community aspect of using forums/forum groups. Removing barriers to submission like high submission cost and having to pay for both your own, plus an artist copy, sound like great ideas though.

Oh boy, here is something I wasn't expecting to be against. O_O While I do very VERY much appreciate being allowed to give feedback, I'm not sure it's a great idea to put the onus of decision-making on a small group of users, even those that are very passionate about the subject. Users at large will probably be bitter if they feel like a small "elite" group is making decisions for how the site will be used, or that this group is being catered to specially. I'm not really sure why feedback can't be solicited from the already active CW Creators subforum if "cw expert" knowledge or feedback is needed.

CW creators have already offered huge amounts of useful feedback to staff, I really feel like all that needs to be done is the actual decision-making part? IE. we asked for lower prices, now staff just needs to say what those lower prices are. How can users be more specific than that when we can't possibly know the behind-the-scenes workings and needs of the site?

When I (and others) asked to be a part of the decision-making process for the new CW rules, for instance, I envisioned being shown a draft of the staff-generated rules, and allowed to offer feedback. What I'm fearing here with this council is that staff wants a group of users to do the (unpaid) work of ironing out all the details to then be reviewed by staff.

Another concern I have here is that if profit margins for releasers decrease, it may be difficult to fund futureCW submissions and commissions. As a CW artist, I am not able to lower my commission prices just because the cost to submit is lowered without undervaluing my time, so if the profit my commissioners receive is decreased, they will ultimately have lost money on the transaction even if the cost to submit was decreased. IDK, lots of factors here.

While I don't think staff is going to replace sp wearables in favor of CWs at all, I do want to say that if they did, HA-making would be so much harder. Because they have to be paid for to get on site, CWs are niche items. We need sp wearables for basics, for interesting items that would be a "hard sell" as CWs, for small items that are a waste of money as CWs, etc. Plus, yeah, it would be really alienating to users if wearables were suddenly mostly CSC-based.

I can't say for certain, but I think this just means that new wearables will be reduced in favor of giving artists time to work on other site improvements, instead of making new wearables the FOCUS of new events, like they have been for a few years now.

(pssst here is a list of confirmed missing wardrobe items and how to report them/get them back if you're missing them.

As I mentioned above, I hope this means that staff will be expanding on fun ways to submit CWs to the site for the userbase to enjoy freely/at low cost, like the CW contests that have been held in the past. I'm assuming this will be a limited-use thing just to give staff a break from making hundreds of new wearables for every holiday.

Thank you for that link <3

Hey, pinging just a few of you guys in hopes of calming your worries. I don’t think Keith was referring to ALL sP wearables. Since it is the “Cash Shop Wearable Council”, I think he’s referring to the wearables in the cash shop that can only be purchased with CSC. Ex. The wigs, clothing items, vanity items, etc. from here https://subeta.net/ss.php/cashshop#/shop/Clothing

That makes more sense, thanks for suggesting that as a possibility!

I like those changes and this council, and I think Subeta is moving into the right direction.

Subeta needs to find ways to differentiate itself in the world of online pets/avatar/creative sites. Cw have proved to be successful. They bring a good amount of needed money to the site while allowing users to be truly creative. With clearer rules, a simplified process, lower prices and looser criterias, more people will create cw, more people will buy cw. There will be a wider variety of items since people won't feel like they have to make things that are 'popular'. It's a win-win situation for the site and users.

The council is litterally what people have been wanting for years. A ton of users (I'm thinking of users like Tartelette and Cathii) have already created resources for the community. It will be nice to have those users, who are already involved and willing, on the council and bring new ideas to the table to truly change the game.

Having users submit wearables to let staff focus on other areas of the site is a great use of resources. There are already tens of thousands official items that cover all the basics and many niche. With the lower prices, I'm sure there will be ways to make new CW more accessible to the average user. And staff will certainly still make official wearables for events, plots and the CS. It seems like a reasonable solution to me, and will help other areas of the site (pets! Plots! Fun stuff for everyone!)

I will admit that for the first time in years, I feel like Subeta is taking truly good decisions to revitalize itself. I think all those changes are necessary if we want to still have a Subeta in a few years, and I'm glad that steps are finally taken to insure this.

Until we receive actual clarification from from Keith of what he meant, I'm honestly going to continue to be concerned, because we only have assumptions to work off of, not actual information.

Both of you have different assumptions in this, so who's to say which one of you is right?

Very true!!

I really like the idea of CWs being cheaper in general, and I really really want it to be less likely for CW releasers to be consistently making a loss on putting their stuff on site.

Also one idea I've seen floating around that I really want implemented: free recolors of items with ha base skintones to include all basic skintones, possibly making the items transformable between different skin tones like current site items have been. Allowing for different skintones shouldn't bankrupt sellers.

Making it cheaper to get items into the CW shops, especially as unlimited (so we dont have this whole reseller market where things get massively inflated) would be really good imo.

I hope so. Otherwise, Subeta just priced me completely out of the market regardless of however this works. (Excuse my muddledness, I'm so absurdly sleepy from insomnia, I feel I could keel over.)

Wait, as far as I know there isn't going to be a cap on CW's. I'd love to know where this idea came from, if I missed something, clear up any confusion.