First: A reminder that we have community guidelines, and I will enforce them. My email (.net">keith.net) is always open to have conversations about the site, and if you're a programmer we're always looking for contractors. In addition, if you have any recommendations for hires in the programming department, my email is open.

I'm not going to post about the difficulty of running a 20 year old site, or how much investment it takes to turn things around (go look up how much a PHP programmer starts at ;)). I think, honestly, it's time to lower your expectations about what Subeta is going to provide you. We're keeping the site running, building the wardrobe, hopefully launching new features more often. For most people (over 80% of the user base has never made a single CS purchase) Subeta is entirely free. If the current state of affairs means that means you stop purchasing from the cash shop, or getting subscriptions that is fine, especially if you feel like you aren't getting value from your purchases. If you feel like you're sticking around just to see the tea room, I think we can both admit that you're not sticking around for anything positive, and you don't have to! I'm working with on hitting a big reset on how this back and forth works, my goal being to bring us back to an earlier, scrappier kind of flow (more things happening more quickly) but it is hard to change structures in a 20 year old site.

We've been offered buyouts before, and I've said no because every time it was by a giant corporation that would have immediately put 50 ads on the site, increased CS costs and pushed everyone into subscriptions. The plan given to me is always "How to turn around the profitability of Subeta" that when reduced is just about extracting as much value from you as possible. That isn't acceptable to me, and so I've always turned down those offers. There are hundreds of tutorials for learning programming (I built Subeta based on one 20 years ago) and I'd (honestly) love for one of you to make a new pet site that has all of the features you want. I'd find a way to let you transfer wealth or pets, or something. I mean this completely sincerely and honestly, I would love to see new pet sites popping up, but I have a feeling we all know why they aren't successful.

Until then, we've got Subeta. And again, my email for anyone interested in providing programming support (javascript or PHP) is .net">keith.net. Or product support, or if you think you have a skill that would make the site better, my email is open. Even just a few hours here and there fixing up small site bugs can help!

First: These things aren't going to be ironed out in a "feedback" thread that starts by saying this:

There wasn't an intention of any problem solving here.

Second: I think you're all right that we've done a poor job of communication around timelines, deadlines, and getting things out. I think an easy way to reset the board there is to say -- nothing that we've promised up until this point is certain to happen. The tea hut is done conceptually, but has not had an opportunity to be programmed. Pet profiles are around twenty percent done, and have a lot more to finish. Items have been entirely given a new rarity in the 1-5 rarity squish, and some backend code is even using that, but updating the shops got put on hold for the cache server (running multiple versions out of date so that it can communicate with Subeta, so I spend a lot of time writing custom patches) Prioritizing starting that project meant putting other things on hold, which pushed back the battle revamps, etc, etc, etc.

I think it's really, really hard to quantify the amount of work that goes into launching something new on Subeta, or even updating something. I don't mean from a technical perspective, but I mean from a EVERYTHING perspective. Updating mysterious melody meant getting the code (finally) on the new site that handles inventory items, and passes their data back and forth between components. Easy stuff, can do it in my sleep, the difficulty comes in, oh right, we have 20 years of data and unless we do a full transition for item data, everything has to fit into this legacy format, that a teenager wrote.

Okay, what if we do completely move over inventory data, and finally have the item system of my dreams that handles tracking around the site and can lock inventory items without making them useless. Fantastic, start drawing up a migration plan, and seeing all of the places that interact with the inventory on the current site, using custom code in every instance (so not something easily updated) and quickly going back to just working with the legacy format. Well, then, we still have to figure out how to work around the really hacky way that locking is implemented.......

What I want, and what I think all of you want, is a completely new Subeta. One built from scratch, that doesn't need to adhere to twenty years of decisions (both technical, site, product, etc decisions) and inertia. What I'm trying to say is that you aren't going to get that on Subeta. It's going to be slow, painful, and uphill from this point forward, even if we hired 30 programmers tomorrow. I'm trying to be as honest as possible here.

I'll even go into more technical depth about an actual problem around items, and some of the hacks that we've had to apply over the years to keep the system running in any kind of fashion.

In the start, items could only have a single type. Weapon, food, book, etc. Then we made more and more complex items, and wanted the ability to create items that had multiple uses.

That created the bones of the system that we have today, which is implemented in, imo, a ridiculous way (hindsight is 20/20, of course). We have a property on the items table (a table is like an excel sheet, it's one big group of data, like "items" or "users") called 'item_uses' that looks like this "0--0--0--0--0--0--0--0--0", where the first 0 being a 1 means it can be used as food, second means toy, etc. So 1-0-1-... is an item that can be used as a food and a book. There are many, many places on the site that take item_uses, "explodes" it (PHP for breaking apart between the --) and checks for a specific spot, so $item_uses[1] for it being a toy.

That means that we can never change what those numbers mean, or change which one means what, we can only add to the end and 🤞 hope that doesn't break something else.

To get around that in newer code, we've built a table (item_uses) that sits between item, reads the values from item_uses, and can do something like $item->isToy(); it still updates back to that row, and mostly acts as an easier way to access the information, and to add new options to.

SO: To make any changes to the way that the inventory works, if we're keeping subeta.net alive and running while we build the new system, is to build on top of those 20 years of decisions and ensure that items continue to work on the current site, and the new site, and just try to put whatever bandaids we can on top of it to keep it working into the future.

Or we can spend 3 months planning a migration and building the item system of our dreams, but then literally nothing else gets done while that happens. It's a tradeoff where both decisions suck.

You've asked for communication, the communication that we can provide is someone helping users in real time, and answering questions with things like "it's still being worked on". We aren't going to make news posts that say that, and if someone asks in the forums we respond, typically saying that it's being worked on.

If you have a question about the status of something, make a board, will respond exactly the same way as in discord, it'll be locked, and you have the same information.

Can you give me an example of a topic locked with no explanation? I (and the entire team) welcome the feedback, and are doing our best to address it. What I'm not going to take anymore is threads looking for "grievances here regarding staff-user communication. See how long until this thread gets locked I guess." as a serious matter of feedback.

I hear you all on the communication RE: canceling, moving deadlines, etc. It's frustrating and difficult, and almost always a lose-lose situation.

If we update (Sorry, MM is being pushed back a month, here are the reasons why) we'll get tons of 'feedback' that we said that it'd be at the start of December, and pushing it back is breaking that UNBREAKABLE PROMISE and that we suck.

If we don't update, it's because we are still pushing to get it done by that deadline and once it's passed, we're hoping to have it done the next day or two. Then, whoops, I get covid and can't look at the computer for three days and has to tread water because there is no status update other than "I can't".

What I'm working with on is a tangible roadmap, we use a product to track all of our tasks as tickets, and the programmers respond and add updates to those tickets as we move through them. I'm going to work to figure out a way to make at least some of the data from these (as 'milestones' with % complete) public (I have an email thread with the company that makes it now!). That is a place that I can easily update, can be looked to for information about upcoming projects, etc.

The benefit of something like that is being able to show the kinds of things that I'm talking about. If I'm rewriting a piece of code, or moving it to the new codebase, very frequently something like, idk the entire site going down due to an old version of redis, and that takes two weeks to fully resolve (because I have to crawl through the legacy code, updating any methods used from the previous version, rewrite it as much as I can to make it simpler in the future but not spending any more time than needed) which then pushes me into completely different work (holiday prep, next project, wardrobe fixes) and I never get to even circle back to that original project.

Hopefully on top of that we can add the ability to vote up things you'd like to see happen sooner, things that you don't care about at all, etc.

I know we talked ages ago about using some kind of crowdfunding platform for Subeta, but I think a public roadmap will get us closer to what we're aiming for ("Ambitious project coming up, if we hire 3 contract programmers it can be done in x weeks, buy some csc?") in that regard.

But a reminder: Building something like this takes time, building tools to be more communicative takes time, hiring more folks takes time (hiring is hard!), onboarding volunteer programmers takes time.

Give me a break. I said to remember the community guidelines, and treat each other (including the staff) with respect, because I've seen what happens to threads when someone doesn't remind you. Saying that I'll lock a thread is not saying "your ass is cooked". I'm not willing to put in the time, but I'd imagine and would be willing to bet over the twenty years this site has existed we've banned less than 100 players total for 'giving feedback' or 'stepping out of line' in regards to feedback.

We went from "list of boards locked without explanation" to "list of boards locked with explanation" -- and you're right that the explanation is I didn't want those threads to continue in some cases. I own 100% of Subeta, I am the CEO of Agoge Inc, and I get to make those decisions.

Your choice as a consumer, as a player of the game, is to decide if my choices and decisions are ones that you want to provide payment for (or attention to) in exchange to play the game that I've built and kept online for 20 years. That's the agreement here. If you walked in to a local business and said "Alright, everyone who is in line right now, speak up with your grievances, we're going to show these folks what we think!!!" you would be escorted out. We allow these threads to go on because we really, honestly, need and appreciate the feedback.

We're stretched thin, doing our best, and just want to keep this site running for the folks who love it. I pay out of pocket to keep Subeta running, and I'm finished spending time and energy toward the folks who have nothing but negative vibes. If you think that this kind of response is chewing out, you should read a few of the posts you direct at staff.

There is a link at the bottom of the page titled "Discord", if you click it, it'll open up the discord.

Information in discord (and IRC, from your examples) comes in real time, so if the site is down and we're updating discord, those updates make it to the site, just not in real time. This isn't going to change, however I do recommend joining the discord, everyone is very lovely in there :)

Subeta is 100% owned by me. I make the final decisions, I get to decide what feedback to respond to, and how. I get to determine my tone (and let me be very clear that my tone on these posts is very purposeful) and also determine the tone of the website. You don't get a personal connection with the staff of the site without the personal part. There are other places on the internet (most of them!) where the interactions are between community managers, support teams, and the players. Subeta has never been one of those sites, and likely never will be.

You, as the customer and player, get to decide if that is a site that you're interested in. If you are, great, stick around, I hope that you continue to get joy and entertainment from it, and build strong friendships with others interested in the same things. If you aren't interested in that (or the site that I've built, or my tone) that is also very cool, there are other virtual pet sites (and again, anyone who builds another would have my support, happy to walk through any difficult programming concept, give free advice, etc!) and more coming all the time.

And finally, I am not ever going to hand off rude, mean, asshole users to my team. Taking verbal abuse and hatred should not be part of your job, no matter your position.

I think what you're missing here is that there is no important intel on the discord that doesn't make it to the main site. There are status updates that make it here, there are conversations that ... are conversations and don't happen on the site anyway, but the result of those make it to the site.

I'm really just not sure where this FOMO from the discord is coming from. The forums have been quiet for 5 years.

I don't think there is much more "wealth" to extract from Subeta, outside of being exploitative. I don't want to increase the price of things in the cash shop, subscriptions, or the value of items, because that goes against what I've built Subeta to be. There are plenty of sites (especially now with the web3 craze!) that are built in the way that you're suggesting, Subeta just isn't going to be one of them :)

Yup, I was looking for particular feedback in the moment while there were people online, and taking that to create the longer form threads on the site that I'll be doing, looking for more targeted & long form feedback. No one missed anything by not being in the discord (especially because you helpfully cross posted to the site) and nothing changed on the site based on that feedback.

This is how we're going to continue using the discord, and having conversations in different places with different users. I do not intend to cross post every comment or question I make on discord, and if you are expecting that after this thread you're going to be incredibly disappointed.

I'm working on a more permanent contractor plan for programmers, so have put off announcing that in a larger capacity :)