Achievements alone aren't causing the server problems though.

Brain's half-asleep, pardon any typos, but have some questions that I've seen pop up on the topic that have been left unanswered so far:

Why are you pushing the update forward all of a sudden and before a site event? Couldn't it have waited until after Vesnali, once Grelca was back from her vacation and the big Subeta holidays were out of the way? Masquerade went fairly well as far as lag is concerned, so this sudden urgency strikes a lot of people as odd. Especially since it was such a long time since a shop limit/recode was mentioned in passing and absolutely nothing was hinted to the userbase about it, and then BAM! Shops get a recode.

Are the new shops going to have all the features that the current shops have? Ex. sorting by type, stack size, searching your shop by price, etc.? Are there going to be any new features, like sorting stocked items by rarity?

Is the minion zoo dead? It seems like the perfect solution to so many existing minion galleries and it mysteriously fell through the cracks not long after the beta for it started...

Are the old shops with priced items going to stay in the shop search until they're manually deleted/emptied by the users? Pulling the plug on the old shops and letting the new ones take over is a perfect recipe for a market crash. Would it be possible at all to let users transfer the items (or auto-transfer from your side) from the old shop system into the new while keeping the prices of the items?

Retiring the current achievements that require hoarding might help, but people stash aside items from events and things in case they get added to achievements in the future, because it's happened before. Even if staff stops doing that, people are still going to want to save the items just in case.

It might; it might not. If only there had been a way to investigate a question like that before deciding on a solution...

: It's really awesome to hear you guys have worked out some flows and are using those for deliberation. I know that's not necessarily a "need to know" thing for anyone but staff, and definitely something the general users might not particularly care about, but it gives me a lot of peace of mind as to how much you guys have really been working to optimize such a difficult transition.

It also helps some of this fall into place a lot more in my mind. You guys have to start the rollout and choose the top needed tasks somewhere in all of that, and ensuring the code is stable does make sense as a priority. Thanks for taking the time to share that. I know it's probably a minor thing to respond to amongst all that you guys are answering, but I appreciate your transparency regarding it and taking the time to listen and reply to my passion-infused UX ramblings :)

And your solution is to pass that "price" onto us by making us all manually move thousands of items. There's talk of a potential solution to that, but nothing concrete and it doesn't sound like we're going to see it before testing ends. (Which doesn't even make sense, because without that tool you won't be able to fully test the new shop system.)

As of last Thursday, Subeta became a massive chore for anyone with a sizeable gallery or shop. That really, really sucks. I keep saying this, but there has to be a better way to handle this transition. I haven't seen you or anyone else acknowledge these concerns, and that's pretty terrifying considering how little time we have left before this goes live for everyone.

So why aren't you guys just pushing back the update until some sort of mass move code is written? From everyone's feedback, it clearly actually is one of the most pressing things to us. Something that doesn't just need "significant attention" but attention before you force this new update on all of us! And again, I am failing to understand why this update has to be done NOW NOW NOW instead of at least after this has been addressed. (and/or splitting off the galleries as some other users have suggested)

To clarify, I am not saying to create a giant remove all to remove absolutely everything, but even something like move 50 or move 25 or maybe even 10 at a time would help people feel a bit more amenable to the change, I would think (correct me if I'm wrong, people with large shops--I'm not sure what the lowest number you'd tolerate would be)

And your solution is to pass that "price" onto us by making us all manually move thousands of items. There's talk of a potential solution to that, but nothing concrete and it doesn't sound like we're going to see it before testing ends. (Which doesn't even make sense, because without that tool you won't be able to fully test the new shop system.)

Exactly what said. Why are WE being punished for a mistake made by the staff? It's not the users' faults that they want to get achievements. Achievements are rewards that make people happy. OF COURSE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO HOARD FOR THE SATISFACTION OF GETTING AN ACHIEVEMENT. Anyone with even the tiniest bit of knowledge about psychology is going to tell you that. And now, you say "bad users for hoarding" and make us pay the price? You think 10 days is going to change the habits of users? It's not. I'm not a hoarder myself, but I can understand the psychology.

It's extremely clear nearly no one is on board for this, yet nothing has been said to ease our concerns. "We might raise the limits later" isn't cutting it anymore. 5 days later, and the daily goal is still atrocious. Shouldn't this be a clear sign that users are serious about not spending anymore money on Subeta?

Well, I wasn't about to be the guinea pig for a new shop mass removal on my gallery items. So I went to work and removed every single thing out of it. Almost 13k unique items. Think I deserve something for that ;) You got me to clear out my gallery. Now the vault needs a revamp badly.

The hoarder achievement for me was like, eh maybe I'll get it whatever. I didn't save things for achievements, though it was a bit of icing on the cake if I had the items. The main reason is because I like the items. The other is I saved them on the off chance the item[s] are; revamped, made wearable, or usable by other means.

So what are we meant to do anymore on here?!? What if people wanted to collect multiples of every single holiday item? What if people wanted to have large themed galleries? What if people wanted to just have a randomocity gallery full of stuff?!? We're now being told we can't?!? Why are the users being forced to be punished over something they had no control over?!? This really is cruel and unusual punishment. Galleries are literally custom collections that users had a choice as to what went in them! Now what? Now we're going to have to just get along and be happy with what will be pre-determined by staff as to what we can and can't collect? Not cool at all. It was a mistake on Staff's part but is an easily rectifiable mistake! The solution was given to you, literally, on page 26 of this thread, by a friend who knows coding like the back of her hand and I will be re-posting that solution again:

I fully agree. I have suggested this more than once to the team and gotten no feed back. This transition to a new shop system offers the best opportunity for this split. Keeping the galleries and shops in the same table simply overloads the shop tables, increasing their size and thus their processing time, for no benefit to anyone, and to the detriment of everyone.

To most users, a gallery is a collection, just like the beanbag and plushie collections, except that it is for things that are not beanbags or plushies or pumpkins or anything else where there is a dedicated collection mechanism. Because galleries can take things out of the economy and thus raise shop prices, they should be encouraged. So a gallery should be seen more like a collection than as a shop. So logically, this argues once again for separating galleries from shops.

A very easy short-term solution, since the old shop/gallery system is not to be taken down immediately after the new shop/gallery system is installed is simply to make the new system "shop-only" and the old system "gallery-only". That takes the load off the creeky old system while keeping the gallery people happy and keeping the game functional. This does not mean that I advocate keeping the creeky old system forever, but the more modular the system is, the easier it is fix something without breaking something else.

Splitting shops and galleries means some changes to the HTML, PHP, and JavaScript, which are the easy parts of a web-site to change. The drop down menus need to have a Gallery section, and I'd put it under personal instead of commerce because, as you note, galleries are not commerce. In the item page, Move To section, there would need to be added a "Move to a gallery". In the User Profiles, a new box for "Galleries" needs to be added. Account Search needs to take it into account too. Those are the key places I see in the short term. We can pick-up the other places later as we discover them. Since these locations need to be edited when the new shop system goes fully live, that's the time to make these edits. And we're talking a lot of cut and paste. This would not be difficult work.

I could explain how to completely rebuild the galleries once they are split off, but we can save that for later. (What surprises me about Subeta is how much code is not re-used. Too much unnecessary uniqueness in too many areas.)

Suffice to say, what I recommend for people with galleries right now is that they keep them on the old system and not move them to the new system. The admins have said the old system will persist for awhile after the new shop system is in place. If we want bigger and faster shops than they are currently offering, we need to keep the shop tables small which means keeping the galleries out of them. (Besides, if everyone does it, they may just decide that this suggestion is a good one and stop being stubborn about the whole thing.)

At the same time, we soon probably want to encourage people to start moving their shops over to the new system. The sooner it is working properly, the better it then becomes for everyone.

And any admin who says "It's not that simple", please stop insulting your own intelligence. I know how hard and how easy these things are because I now do this kind of work as part of my living. It's simpler than you think. Keith did wonders when he started, but all programmers get wiser as they gain experience with age. Making a break from the old system, something you're already doing, is the time to rebuild it right. This is your opportunity to make it or break it.

This solution is that simple. It's that simple to implicate with the right amount of time. I don't know coding, but she does. She does it for a living. Please, take the time to look at this solution instead of doing it the way that things are going now. I can only see a very negative outcome for Subeta if this change goes live in the next few days' time.

shut the site down already it had a good run let it die

I don't understand any of the comments that express that people would rather deal with errors and lag over having item limits in shops and galleries. Restricting a site feature is bad but an inaccessible site isn't? I get that there's a lot to be desired with the execution of this and people are totally entitled to be upset, but not doing anything about the downtime at all is completely illogical. A pared down site is better than one that can't be used because of constant 502 and 504 errors, blank pages, etc.

Alternative sugestions for Shop and Gallery Revamp I urge anyone who feels strongly about this to brainstorm feasible ideas. Real solutions can actually create change as opposed to pointless petitions and boycotts.

oh that's very cool! I emphasized my CS major in UX for undergrad, and I'm almost done with my masters program in UX as well - defense planning! It's also what I do for my career, plus other coding/design stuff while we build the UX practice more. That's so amazing, I look forward to seeing how Subeta brings more UX concepts to light as you continue to enhance.

If you find any cool articles/concepts you want to share ever, I'd love to hear about them ^-^ I'm constantly consuming UX news. I just bought A List Apart's "Design for Real Life" book and I'm so pumped to read it! Plus the other UX books in my accumulating hoard...hah. :)

Best of luck on the flows and all the other work going into this - I truly hope all goes well and the transition is as smooth as it can be. Didn't mean to eat up your time with pings!

From what is saying, it sounds like he is starting to work on something using the feedback. While I feel like the questions I'll have will forever remain ignored, I'll just take what Keith says and see where it goes.

@ poppet - We know this topic exists. But, almost everyone on here has made some sort of point and has left suggestions. Please read carefully before making assumptions.

So this means that the userbase isn't really cared about. We have to "suffer the consequences" due to an error made by staff. This site is going to get ploughed into the ground due to people losing one of the most important things on site - their galleries. Promises made by staff just seem to get broken constantly. The time I've been here I've seen things been promised by staff - new cults, new wardrobe are the two big ones I really remember - and never carried through. Now this promise made in June of last year that the galleries would always remain unlimited is another one that isn't going to stay. How can we believe staff if no promises ever get fulfilled? Anyone who's angry about this is just being ignored. We don't matter, and it doesn't seem to matter to staff. I'm going to have to find another way to spend my fun money because I don't see myself buying CSC again, now, for a very, very long time XS Good bye CWs is all I'm going to say to this, and good bye everything else. I'm just sick as to how these events are going to be played out XS

Broken promises. Broken site. Broken trust (as of right now).

Well done, Staff. Well done. slow claps 3 times

I'm referring to specific sentiments, not generally unhappy users.

Please read carefully before making assumptions.

- I said "almost everyone on here", not "everyone". Also, copying and pasting my words is not effective in making your point.

This argument is pointless and I'll accept your disagreement.

That was snide of me, but it's true. Who is the "we" who's aware of the conversation happening in Suggestions & Ideas? I'm not trying to attack you or anyone else, but my point is that the new limits (however shitty, and I do think that the execution is terrible) are preferable to an incapacitated site. I agree that this argument is pointless, but I don't think we disagree on this subject as much as you may think we do. Sorry for any bad feelings.