I don't know why I was expecting an achievement prize for Melody Regular this year. Oh, maybe just because there's been one every single previous year this achievement existed? This Luminaire has been rough, jeez.

12/25 Edit: I see from comments posted below that there is now a prize that has been added after the fact. I didn't get it since I earned the achievement prior to its addition so I've filed a ticket. I do feel better now that I know the lack of a prize was just an oversight and not another cutback in the holiday. Nice item too, it's much appreciated.

*Hopefully constructive feedback *

I wish that we could select the item we want from each year, when we select the year. As someone who likes to read books to each pet (but I'm too much of a cheapskate to actually buy them), I would love to be able to select books that my pets need to read, rather than be given (Keith's words, not mine) "nearly worthless" items. I also would have liked to have been able to select pet treasure items or foods that some of my pets need to eat as well.

Also, it would have been nice to have been given a little more specificity on the frequency of new Melody items we would get. With the vagueness of the post, I thought that we would get a new item every 2-3 days, as many other users assumed. Perhaps a schedule could have been created so that a new item was released every 5 days? And then that could have been clearly communicated to the user base.

All of the above being said, I think there are larger issues that need to be discussed and/or communicated with the users. We're making this "big move" to Kumos (not sold on that yet, by the way), but what's the point if we have no artists to make art or people to create interesting reasons to stick around (anyone else really miss plots....)?

Questing, battling, buying/selling/creating CWs... it all gets monotonous if there's nothing to spark interest once in a while, like a new area (tea house... community garden...) or new characters.

These are all things that have been on my mind as someone who was on a hiatus and came back specifically for the joy of Lumi. What is the point of coming back?

Um yes please. There are still some Melody items i might need that aren't books for TCs, but I have severe book paralysis when it comes to Melody. Let me waste an entire month picking the same two books every day or something. xD

I agree with about item selection. I posted in the Kumos post where reasoning was provided for this change. Each day I've picked the same two years, and I've gotten "worthless items" and even duplicates! That's not in line with Melody's Cottage, as we received unique items for each day of the event in the past. It would be preferable to select the item we want or I'd even prefer to commit to a certain year, which would guarantee every item that was released in that year. The way it stands, I haven't gotten a single item I want and there aren't many days left.

I’ve gotten Partridge in a Pear Beanbag three times (my third one today and paired with the Chubby Bluebird Ornament again) … yes, no more duplicates please. I love the idea of getting old items, but the randomness has made it unexciting.

Otherwise, I’m fine with fewer new Melody items. I understand the ‘worthless’ comment. If the majority of Melody items are put up for sale in shops for cheap and stay cheap, clearly a large portion of the userbase did not see value in those items; regardless of whether a handful of individuals cherish them.

I’d really like to see more ‘basic’ recolors of existing items, personally. For example, I was looking for a tan version of the High Tops line, but closest I got was brown or yellow. I ended up going with the Pinkee High Tops.

I see an Essence of Melody listed as the Melody Regular prize, but didn’t receive one this year. Is this a bug?

essence of melody is the lumineve regular achievement reward. the melody regular achievement reward is a small bauble pile. now that you point it out, i'm realizing i got the essence of melody, but not the bauble pile, despite having both achievements for this year. did you get neither reward, or only one of them?

I didn't get the Small Bauble Pile either, and I don't remember there being a prize shown for the achievement before. I got the achievement yesterday, so maybe they just added it? (In which case, I hope we get it...)

yeah i don't remember there initially being a prize listed. i think they added it after the fact which may be why those of us who already got the achievement haven't received anything.

There wasn't a prize for Melody Regular 2025 yesterday. It was added after many of us already got the achievement. I guess I'll have to file a ticket. Consider how many people may miss out because of this oversight.

spoiler for melody today:

I thought that perhaps it would pop up the next day after I visited Melody, but nope! Ticket time, I suppose.

I don't have anything constructive to say, but I'm too emotional about this Luminaire not to add one more negative feedback to this pile. This year sucked. Jumping between legacy and Kumos site sucks. The new tree decorating page is one thing, it does not support touch devices (hello iPad user here), but it definitely is an upgrade. But the Melody Cottage system?? Why? She used to bring an unnecessarily big truckload of new items, but Melody used to bring me delight every day of December. This year it changed to having to take ages jumping over to Kumos site just to get a disappointing no-new-item-today message, what, 85% of the time?, and get multiple copies of one item due to the randomization system. Instead, couldn't we have been given a pick of one item from the same calendar day of the selected year? Or not get a choice at all, everyone gets the same three historic items? This scenario could even be workable on the old legacy Melody Cottage page, which would mean no need for new coding. And as to the "there will not be a new item every day" part, while I can understand (and frankly I can see) that the site is struggling staff-wise, honestly, with the total number of new items this year I just wish we could've been given them all on the 25th. I prefer to know where I stand instead of the disappointment element. Even that it's past noon on the 25th Subeta time and there was no automatized news post telling us to check under our trees tells me there's trouble behind the scenes.

First off - Thx for the above posts for pointing out the achievement thing, I too am missing the Baubles and probably would have missed that otherwise. I've filed a ticket, thanks for the heads up! :)

Now onto my post...

I'm honestly shocked there wasn't a new item today. Even when it became clear that new items were going to be thin on the ground, I thought it was a done deal that we'd get one for Christmas Day itself?!?

Agreeing with many of these comments, the duplicate items are lame. I would've preferred everyone gets the same set of re-run items, or we get to pick which old item we'd like (I can see how that would be awesome for people that needed multiples of certain items), or at least make it so we don't end up with duplicates :/ I agree a Random option (select for me) would've been nice too since the huge selection of items... It just gives me choice paralysis lol. I don't have the time or energy to go through all the previous years' lists of items to see if there's any I might want and don't already have, so I ended up just picking 2009/2010 every day, but I still have that lingering feeling of "Maybe I should've picked a different day" and it's just stressful and Not Fun, and having to switch back and forth between the welcoming Legacy site and the hospital-white strange land of Kumos just added to it all. I'm not finding myself wanting to keep coming back like I always have done each year. Melody has been a chore rather than a joy. (and yeah yeah okay, first world, I know, I don't 'have' to keep logging on, but I want to want to log on, if that makes sense. I'm not sure how to phrase it but I'm trying to explain how it's made me feel in the hopes it'll be helpful feedback, it's not meant to be a complaint, per se)

I would've liked more recolours too! I feel like that would've been the obvious solution to the artists' struggles too. Like if day 1 had been a scarf and we got 10 recolours of it? That would've been just fine in my book and I don't think it would've been too hard on the artists.

Honestly I always assumed the seasonal items (esp. Melody) WERE all made several months in advance! I'm surprised to learn that's apparently not the case. I think it'd be fair to focus on the "bigger" holidays too, I know the staff have said before they struggle to get new ideas for Ale/Neugarten for example so it'd make sense to me to scale those back if cuts have to be made. I understood it when Fireside was scaled back, for example, that made perfect sense.

I agree. I've been increasingly worried about the Kumos move thing for a good while now, but the way Lumi's been handled has left a really bad taste in my mouth and honestly has not left me feeling good or hopeful about the way the site's heading.

I've been MIA from Subeta but I always come back for the advent and they dropped the ball this time... I expected a new item every few days at least. Nothing on Christmas itself is bizarre. We also never got the coal giving guy (I can't bother to look up his name right now) and the new tree page was so wonky. I could not use tree skirt items at all, they just didn't work. Plus anything that involves the forced kumos site really takes the joy out.

Omg yeah the Phantom!! I knew something else was missing! I always liked him too.

Whatever randomizer system that is being used for Melody's 'chose your old items' thing is borked. I've gotten multiple doubles of items. Not fun at all.

We should have been told that this year's Melody Cottage would be different well in advance, and it should have been worked out so that there were no kinks. And definitely told more . . . pleasantly. All of the new items dropped on Christmas Day would have been a nice surprise, rather than an item every . . . five days? Six? I would much rather be pleasantly surprised than slightly disappointed each day.

I'm sure there would be volunteers that wouldn't mind keeping track of things for Subeta, like people do for topics on the forums - for instance, assign someone a random holiday. They can make and keep a spreadsheet of that holiday, and what usually happens during it, how long it lasts, what items are given out, what to change, what challengers are released, what to put into the token or crystal shop, what should be retired, anything new that could be added, if NPCs are dressed up, what wouldn't work that year, etc. Then they could give that organized information to a member of staff when the holiday approaches, and they can decide what to use, if any. Heck, I volunteer as tribute! I'm sure many of us would; I love Subeta, despite my griping, and don't want to see it go down.

All of this.

I honestly don't understand the reluctance of accepting volunteers... I've seen soooo many threads and news posts where users have offered to help out with X or Y only to be turned down.

The fantastic fansite Subetalodge already keeps track of every single item on Subeta - if it's retired, where it came from, when it was released, what holiday it belongs to, etc. Sending a volunteer or asking a Subetalodge member to go search through lists of old trivia prizes, or retired or holiday items is half of the work right there. God, I would do this for free. I love organizing.

Check out these wonderful retired non-Melody items! + pompom scarf friends, +4 cocoa friends, +3 bunny friends, +2 piggy friends, +8 lion friends, +7 candy cane lolly friends, +3 eggnog friends, +all of the other reindeer, +all of the other reindeer plushies, +all of the other colors, +6 other Sufganiyot, +6 other Dreidels, +4 other Latkes

I pulled these from my gallery of holiday items in about a hour, and there's probably lots more. They could have been re-released as Melody items if the artists were running low on ideas. Melody also could have given out random snowballs.

pounds on Staff's doors Use me! USE ME!!! Let me help you!