May have been mentioned before but looking over some stuff, outside of Plushies/Beanbags, I think Trading Cards could use some love too. Not only because half of them have the revamped images but because they very rarely ever get anything.

I would like to see the battle system worked on. It really needs some improvement. The system as it stands now is a bit discouraging even to new battlers. It just seems like it caters to more of the higher battle pets, and both the challengers and the tiers need better evening out.

Even when your battle pet is in a mid-tier, its really discouraging to find out you are stuck battling only low tier challengers. The whole system is so uneven and badly balanced. And could we add animations to show stuff is happening ala Neopets, instead of just boring read on text?

Antique Shop: I can't stress this enough, but the prices in the antique shop need a major overhaul. Either that, or just do away with it altogether and just release them from time to time into the Crystal Shop. Everything else seems to be getting released in there nowadays. That and the items are double or even triple what is charged in the MC. This has never made any sense.

Earning New Layouts: Okay, I would like to see more layouts that can be earned through achievements, events, etc. We only have the two from certain holidays that we can earn through achievements. There hasn't been any others released for the other holidays, and it would be nice to get some fresh ones.

The Ballroom: The ballroom really needs an update. The art looks dated now. And I would like interactions and dancing once again with characters during Masq. We haven't had this in years. Is it possible to add some animations to the ballroom to appear like we're dancing?

I'm curious why you think this. Would you mind explaining your reasoning?

coming back to say i absolutely agree with the battling needing an overhaul. and what said specifically about the tiers. my pet is mid tier i guess, and every battle will feel either way too easy or ridiculously impossible.

i don't do much with battling as i find it overly-complicated and hard to get into. every battle i have no idea what's really happening because the little icons aren't... intuitive to me? i guess is what it is. like seeing something did 3 earth damage or whatever doesn't help me understand how much health my pet lost. and while i know it can be understood if you know what you're doing or do your research, i feel like that stuff should be obvious at a glance.

so, i only really train in the training center and try to use recommended weapons for my tier. and actual, good weapons are stupidly expensive. but maybe in the end it's not all meant to be accessible to someone who only wants to battle casually. i'm not trying to have the best pet ever and be able to beat every single opponent. i only want to have a chance at the limited ones, mostly... but i really don't have the interest to read several multi page topics on battling simply so i can understand what i'm doing... then again maybe i'm simply stupid! :/

on the other hand, since battling obviously isn't meant for me, i will say i would be interested if trading cards got an overhaul. like, this is unrealistic levels of wishing, but it would be really cool if the cards actually had a battling system (beyond mazes and mahars) where we could do PvP with our decks and stuff. even if it were pretty simple it would give the cards such an interesting value beyond "buy it and stick it in your collection never to be thought of again."

I'll try to explain in clearer detail hopefully without delving into all the issues tied to this feature. Okay, back when there was a discussion board about this, most of people who were supportive of the so-called prices don't even play the site any longer. Most of it was what we call Yes people.

Like some other parts of the site, people were not allowed give ideas or speak up and give comments and suggestions that would've made things better because of toxic, abusive players both on and off site. Abusive players who harassed other players,and post hateful comments and name calls off site. If that wasn't bad enough, Keith let it drop that items were priced just to target multi-billionaires.

Multi billionaires who in turn laughed and made jokes towards what the staff did on and off site. Many of them said they weren't going to waste sP on those items. And when you get to figuring how much those expensive items cost when compared to how much CSC cost, you realize that a stalemate has been created here.

The money to buy the CSC to trade for someone to buy those expensive items with their sP (like the Mario knock off plush, or that mermaid harp) would've better spent going to Yosemite National Park, or going and getting a Life Time pass to Splash Town.

And even if CSC did go up approximately around those prices, where are the whales now? A lot of them are gone. They don't play Subeta anymore, they went to FR or Dappervolk. Plus saving a lifetime of sP just to get even one real expensive item just seems to do the opposite of pulling sP out of the system, does it not?

This why I made sure I bought points with CSC from other people to get the items I wanted from both Epicons, before staff tacked on those insane prices and put them in AS. If had known what was going to transpire with the other items like Pirate X Islander and Reading Drive items, I would've splurged the CSC to get the points for the items.

Thank you for taking the time to explain it to me. I've been a member for 12 years, but on-and-off, and I wasn't around when the Antique shop was created. Although I have to admit, when I first came back I was positively ecstatic that it exists because I had missed participating in the pirate/islanders plot/war/whatever and couldn't find copies of ANY of those books for sale except for one and that person wanted 500 million for a copy of So, to me, the 100 mill price tag and instant availability is a relief.

After reading your reasoning, I agree with you up to a point. It sucks that more people weren't able/allowed to participate in the discussion surrounding antique shop pricing. Also some of the prices are a little ridiculous (looking at you, Wrath Of Kahaleitzli. Doesn't seem like a good enough weapon to be worth almost 4 billion sP. But I could be wrong. Not worth it to me, anyway)

Where you lose me is here:

The price of CSC hasn't really dropped that much since 2010 (if I recall correctly, it was 11 mill sP for 100 CSC back then, and now it's about 8.) The reason the price has dropped is because more people are buying CSC to make/buy Custom Wearables. That money goes to support the site, which is a good thing! We also have something now that we definitely didn't have back then, Morty Cards. If you quest every day, you can essentially get CSC basically for free. Enough to buy almost every item for sale with diligent questing. (Source: I've quested every day for the past two weeks and currently have 21 morty cards in my vault) I feel like sP and CSC are almost ridiculously easy to acquire (even if you never spend a single dime on this site)

I don't consider myself a rich user (I've never had more than 500 million sP at one time, and when I had that much I didn't even crack the top 100 richest users at that time) but I do feel like everything in the Antique Shop (with the exception of those 3 billion sP weapons) are very achievable. I feel like lowering the cost of some of those expensive items (like the Siren Harp or the Marco Plushie) devalues the effort of the people that did participate in those activities and received those items as prizes.

It's entirely possible that I'm in the minority on this position. My opinion is mostly colored by having started my pet-site journey on Neo before moving (almost exclusively) over to here for basically this very reason. Neo almost NEVER re-releases old stuff. It's really hard to make NP there because of AB'ers and the fact that the only items that hold value there are retired and impossible to get. (Hello, stamp avatars costing almost 1 billion nP to complete one album page) There wasn't a snowballs chance in hell of me ever making enough to get one of those stamps, and even if, by some miracle, I did, there aren't any available because only 100 were released a million years ago as a trivia prize (clearly, I'm still bitter) That isn't really a huge problem here. 186 million for a Siren Harp is quite a bit of sP to drop on an item (roughly 2k CSC or 20 bucks) but it's at least achievable.

Anyway, after all that, I just want to say I'm sorry if I seem like I'm ranting at you, or drawing you into a debate you had no intention of participating in.

I would loveeee this, it would probably even get me into TC collecting. I used to play Magic the Gathering and love that type of game. This would also increase the community feeling on the site, since we don't have very many things that we can do with others on here.

Just wanted to add a little on the Antique Shop. Sorry this isn't super concise.

I don't mind the idea of high prices for rare items. But some prices are terribly skewed. The worst example, I think, is the Pirates vs Islanders items. During that plot, the point system was massively in favor of people who had powerful battle pets. Since it takes months to train up a pet, you couldn't force your way into getting more points if you didn't already battle. The people who didn't have high tier pets were SOL, which is most of the site. At the end of the event, most people only afford to grab a few things from the first row; for Islanders (the team I was on- and we could only buy items from the prize shop of your own team, another hurdle) this is the grass skirts to the Shikaka maybe, and if we could afford a kilt or necklace that would be most of our points, so forget getting one of every color, even though those items were released as the "cheap" options in the prize shop. But the Antique Shop prices were set using those original point values as a reference, despite the original value coming from a terribly unbalanced point system.

I remember the Blossoming Tribal Buds selling for around 2-3mill at most when the Antique Shop was debuted, because even for being unobtainable to many folks, they were not very desirable to battlers, so they weren't exactly hot sellers. The 75 million price tag for them now was and still is laughable. There is really no reason they would ever be that price, except some effort to maintain that the ultra-battlers who dominated the plot should be the only people to access most of the prize shop. That isn't really an accurate way to gauge an item's value.

So while there's always a question of devaluing items, and I think this applies a lot more to weapons or consumables/collectibles like books, there is still the question of whether or not those prices were a legitimate value to begin with. And I can definitely say that the Pirates vs Islanders items are mostly not at a legitimate price for their value. :P I agree that most items in the AS are attainable with some saving, it's not very hard to make sP and I am grateful Subeta makes it so easy to get both basic and premium site currency. Anyone could theoretically save up for any item in the Antique Shop. But I disagree that most of those expensive items are actually worth their price tag. Especially with some of the outdated item art.

I'll also go out on a limb and say that having 500mill sP at one time is actually pretty rich, at least these days. I have 126mil at the moment and according to the dashboard, I'm the 106th richest user on the site right now. I have no clue about subeta economics and idk if having a bigger userbase might make a difference, but even if the average user had close to that much sP, it still seems like setting those prices for what the top richest users have available isn't a way to accurately gauge how much an item is worth.

I say this without a lot of care about what happens to the Antique Shop, as someone who participated in the Islanders vs Pirates plot I already went thru the five stages of grief for those items years and years ago lmao. And that is definitely the worst part of the Antique Shop. A lot of the other sections seem way better and I've used it plenty of times to buy collection items that I missed out on. So I don't have much to add about it. Just want to paint a picture on why some of those prices are really ridiculous.

I'm glad you brought this issue up because I forgot about that part. Of course a lot of people were not able to give legit feedback on either the old thread or old news because of toxic players. I'm hoping now that a lot of them are gone now staff may change their minds and make things more obtainable. I'm not expecting everything to be on the cheap. Hell, lots of things in the Crystal Shop aren't on the cheap anyways.

They did it for the Hustler which was eyeopening for me (changing how much he charges). Either ways, I hope they will listen to the sound of reason this time, not toxic players who don't have site's best interest at heart. Even posting ideas and feedback about the AS on its own thread might hopefully get staff to turn their ears in our direction.

That is extremely illuminating.

I was under the impression that Pirates vs. Islanders was a restock war. I agree that battling does tend to skew rewards towards the very few high tier battlers. I wonder, going forward, if it wouldn't be more fair to keep battling separate from plots?

I also just assumed that certain wearables from those shops lost their "value" (eg selling for less than the antique shop purchase price) because, unlike books/plushies/beanbags etc they don't vanish into a collection and therefore just have more copies floating around the site. Honestly, I always thought it was kind of ludicrous for a simple hair flower to sell for 75 million to begin with.

I don't think it's necessary to divorce battling and plots and this is coming from someone who is salty about battling and quit altogether (and not because it was too difficult to understand). There just needs to be alternatives for non-battlers too.

I think it was the Faded Memories/Shengui Guo plot that had a decent alternative. You could battle the boss or you could turn in anything that had the word 'fire' in the name to deal damage too. Staff have shown that they are willing to use alternatives now so I don't personally think the Islanders vs Pirates fiasco will happen again.

I agree that there need to be options for non-battlers. The bosses that come from plots are generally incredibly difficult, which is OK--but training a pet to be even slightly competent at doing damage is a massive grind that not every player wants to do. Turning in items (or anything, really), completing puzzles, feeding/reading to pets, whatever--it's all site engagement.

I love collaborative plots involving teams, too. One way I could see a high-powered boss battle being feasible and accessible to all players is to have dedicated "champion" battlers (could be voted in or you could sign up as one early on, maybe pets need to be of a particular tier to be a champion), and anyone who doesn't have a battler can provide magical buffs to said champions by completing other tasks. For example, a magical boss that can only be defeated by a special type of spell/damage/etc. When a support player completes a task, that buff automatically gets doled out to a champion, which enables them to damage the boss. Do I know how feasible such a plot would be to create and code? Nope. But it'd be really cool and I know I'd really enjoy it!

(I may or may not prefer to play support characters in D&D and the like lol)

I am in agreement with that the plots since Islanders vs Pirates have been much better and I don't think battling needs to be excluded from plots entirely. From what I remember the problem was apparent to everyone immediately and the plots since then have only been improved and better balanced! :D I still don't know what to do about those prize shop items though.

To add to the original topic, I wouldn't mind a battle system overhaul. I like the idea of battling and I'm glad I have a pet who can take on some easy and medium opponents but god, the time sink. It's not super fun.

I love this!

Sorry if this is way off topic but I'd like to add that the way they handled the Bad Omen plot's bosses was, in my opinion, fantastic. There were 3 bosses that had an established time frame which wasn't that extense, so the grind wasn't that bad. If a player were to participate in more than one boss, only the highest damage would count for the prize calculation, and the top 10 players of each tier got the top prize. If I recall correctly, there were 2 top prizes, the for pets tiers 1-8 and the for tiers 9-13. So if we get more boss fights, I'd appreciate to see this method return

I do like the idea of an alternative way to earn the prizes and loot for plot bosses for those of us inexperienced battlers (especially since there's no way someone could be able to level up in time in order to be able to get the best prizes). But I guess it depends on what the Battle Admins think. There's loads of wearable items I've had to give up hope of ever getting just because of how unavailable they are.

If someone starts training their pet now, no, they wouldn't be able to get the top plot prizes immediately, but in a year? They could make a significant dent. Battling is a long term investment, and devaluing the prizes so they go out to everyone is insulting to the people who have worked on their pets for years. It's the same for prizes for ANY site wide plot device. If I don't quest, I don't expect prizes for a quest-a-thon. If I don't take the time to earn sP, I don't expect prizes for a restock war. If I don't build my plushie/beanbag/sticker/tile collection, I don't expect achievement prizes. If I don't take the time to train my pet, I don't expect prizes for a battle event.

I am all for doing tiered prizes so lower tiers can have a shot at the same loot. I am also all for re-releasing past loot in future battle events or via the battle shop. But let's not turn everything into a participation prize, shall we.

i don't think it's exactly fair to compare battling to questing, restocking, or collections.

quest-a-thon has almost no prerequisites. yes, you would need a bit of sp before hand (like, play random a few times levels of sp), but quests give such good rewards that i think if you made a fresh account and started with Sarah's quests you could probably do every quest, every day. and that's the extreme case of starting with nothing. restocking doesn't take much to understand, if you think it's even worth bothering to do. you only have to pick a shop (or two, or three, etc.) and shop search things to see if they sell for more than you paid. then it's a matter of common sense to factor in their rarity, i would hope. nevermind that you can use things like subetaHQ to streamline the process, or even the on-site item directory to organize by rarity. but that stuff isn't necessary to "being good" at restocking. only makes it easier. collections take nothing to understand. you buy the things you are missing, if you can. that's it. yeah obviously this would take time, but it doesn't take time to understand.

battling, on the other hand, takes a long time to understand and be capable at. as mentioned, it can take years to have a competent pet. i have been training my pet for years and he still sucks. i haven't been diligently logging on every hour and a half to refresh his training sessions, but i have done it. a lot. then i need to read a bunch of guides to understand the system, to understand what weapons are good, to understand what set is good for what opponent, to understand scrolls, to understand weapon mods, etc. etc. then i need to sink a bunch of sp into buying said weapons, continuing training, buying boosters (or earning them slowly), buying mod crystals (or earning them slowly, or being locked out of them because they were limited battle rewards...), buying ingredients and crafting scrolls, unlocking secret challengers (or being locked out of them potentially indefinitely because my pet wasn't strong enough during their limited appearance), etc. etc.

now of course you can say that all this investment is why those who do it should be rewarded so highly. and i don't think that's wrong, but it's a fact that a lot of users are turned off by battling for one reason or another. so i think it should be looked at. or we can continue to structure it around the select users who have fun with the current system and exclude every one else. i don't really care anymore, because as i said battling is something i lost the ambition to get into and i don't find the current system (i mean the actual battles) entertaining.

sorry this was so long and i hope i didn't come off as aggressive. i thought it might be helpful(?) to share my perspective.

I do think that's fair. Quest-a-thons require nothing but time. Doesn't make them inherently fun, though. The format for those or restock wars might not appeal to everyone, and that is okay. Just like battling doesn't appeal to everyone, and that is okay too.

I do agree that battling needs love. The arena needs an overhaul, and it's been long overdue. Most of the best resources are user-made, which can be frustrating.

However, I feel the same can be said about a lot of areas on the site, and it doesn't change that some things SHOULD be locked behind more effort. I don't understand a lick of Mazes and Mahars. It would take many, many guides to learn, and a horrific amount of time. I hate the game with a passion. But do I think there should be an alternate route to get the achievement prize (a highly sought after book)? Of course not. I haven't put time into alchemy either. That's all fan made guides too. It's not too hard to understand, albeit, but it would take ages and a significant chunk of change to actually reach a good level. I have chosen to not do that, and rely on purchasing crafted items with sP.

No one is stopping non-battling users from purchasing battle loot for sP. It might be a horrific resell price, but it's always an option. (Insert argument to bring back battle loot so new battlers can obtain old items and they don't drop out of the economy completely.)

Collections, I'd argue, are far worse for site engagement. When I put a plushie into my collection, it's gone forever. They don't re-release many of these older items (especially plot related, battle or otherwise), so scarcity is insane. Vs battling. Where there is an active community who is willing to lend advice and weapons to literally anyone who wants to understand. Yeah, it took me a long time to create an armory, but before I got to that stage. I borrowed from so. many. people. I was rubbish at strategy, but I took the time to learn.

I do think the battling area of the site needs improvement. I've supported many, many suggestions in past for improvement. But I don't think that it needs to be automatically inclusive to everyone- there are plenty of areas on site that don't interest me personally. It is an area that needs more investment and work than many others, and I think there should be rewards that reflect that.

I'm with Chocolate. If you get into battling, you have to commit. You want the top prizes, you gotta put in the work. You reap what you sow with your pet. It can go very fast when you use auto-trainer. I will agree there is some difficulty with the middling tiers and battling. I feel there's not enough Very Hard difficulty opponents available, or enough that toe the line for VH and extremely hard.

As for getting into battling and making sense of it all: pokes siggy I mean, we're here now, so what don't you guys understand? Is there something in the guide that isn't clear enough or that I missed?

When I mentioned alternatives to battling for plots, my thought process was that battling shouldn't affect your ability to progress or complete the plot. If you can't battle, you do this other thing instead and having weak pets won't count against you. If there is a battling portion, I'm not against battlers getting extra prizes (like the ones brought up or the 5th win drops or whatever).

Future plots shouldn't have to be afraid to include a battling portion because it went badly once or twice. It just needs a different step for non-battlers so that everybody who is engaging with the site and plot can still get to the end, and that's already happened before.