I totally support you in the feeling uncomfortable and stepping back thing. I mean I have a certain type of contest I won't participate in even if it means missing out on something I really want or could benefit from because it makes me uncomfortable ethically, so I know how that feels...

I can see the reasoning behind lowering prices. Maybe they should give a one time amnesty sort of thing for lowering prices on items if the amount subeta keeps goes lower. Like, so it stays the same profit margin for the releaser rather than the same price to users.

It would really benefit a lot of people if the shops had a button you could tick for "trade only" so items would show up in the shop search without you having to set a price on them. Then people wouldn't think that folks really expected to be paid 10000 CSC or whatever.

(It might not benefit me though lol. My tastes are weird, so I never have the items most "trade only" people have on their wishlists. So I'll sometimes pay 1000-3000 csc for really rare items. It might be my fault that sometimes people price stuff for 5000 and up when they want trades, lol, cause I will NOT pay more than 3000.)

It's too bad the actual trades system is so inconvenient to browse. Shop search is linked from so many places, and has that awesome autofill search bar.. I think making it easier for CWs to circulate throughout the greater community without needing to be "in the know" would be super beneficial!

LOL people keep talking about how it's crazy to see items priced at like 10k or a similar amount...am I the only one who commonly remembers people buying items at that price? I get that practically all the auction hags left (that was their given title) but it hasn't been that many years...has it? I remember participating in Coy/Saint's wing auction and losing with a 20k bid. Or the styx/fuu CW design auctions...I seem to remember those going for hundreds of dollars upwards of $500? I shudder to think what a phasma bg would have cost as a design auction back in those days lol

This doesn't seem to be a new or uncommon issue.

I appreciate the kind words. :) I really love this:

I think that's the best motivation anyone can have as a member of any creative field. I hope the same is true for everyone in the CW community! <3

And happy birthday, by the way!! 🎉

You should suggest some kind of "trade only" indicator. I think that would cut out on a LOT of confusion!!!!

Those sure were the wild west CW days, eh?! XD

I think so too! thank you as well ^^

It was sure memorable LOL It's just a shame so many of those people left...so many nice people + the artists.

I don't foresee them making vouchers buyable - if only because it's a subscription perk (one of the few). I imagine they'll encourage more people to subscribe to get those and also to purchase during the Black Friday sales that happen annually since the prices are much lower generally that way (provided folks don't adjust the price of their items upwards).

It's fair that never say never is generally the policy here, I just don't think they'll do it as they previously didn't and don't seem inclined to now. It's kind of a lose-lose for them either way - if they adjust the pricing whenever they release it, folks who just paid for something in the old scheme are gonna be pissed they spent more on something. Alternately, if they don't adjust the pricing, sales will drop on older items. I think the best bet is to differentiate between them like Ambition suggested and leave it be honestly. It'll suck but if someone wants a thing and knows it's locked in, eventually they'll grab it (or they'll grab it out of pawn or something one day) shrug

ALSO - you're totally not alone. I remember the 10k+ auction days. I do not even remotely miss them (lemme tell you, I never once made back what I spent on anything I picked up that way).

eh, I guess it's true that some people might be pissed...but they shouldn't be. If anything we've been warned of price changes and know that they might potentially alter the prices of old items. So if they were so worried over losing a couple hundred/thousand CSC they should have waited if the item was unlimited. How I look at it when games alter pricing - you paid for the honor of owning it early. I don't see people bat an eye when real life items drop in price or go on sale/clearance months/years after they were released.

Altering the prices of old items, at least from my point of view, would help the site far more than not doing it. People will stop buying 90% of the items because we have similar clothing/shoes/wigs/etc that can be released in the future to create a "cheaper version" or recolors. Subeta users never shy away from making a million recolors - some of which can easily be almost the exact same color scheme but under the new pricing. It's going to create a lot of dead items - so while I understand why subeta isn't looking into it now I firmly believe they should look into it after they alter the rules/update pricing.

I don't think I made back what I spent on them either, but honestly I never tried. If I bought something at that price it's because I wanted to keep it. I miss the people not the pricing.

We both know people are not that logical hahaha. I personally am like "well shit" and that's about it if something goes cheaper soon after I buy it, but also that was a me decision to grab it when I did (RL or here).

And while I agree that it would benefit them more to do it, sometimes they do not follow along to the logical conclusion of what would actually be more profitable for them.

Yeah - I miss some things and people from that time period. I usually planned to keep things but I also sometimes got caught up and then I was sitting on so much stuff I just...never use. I still am. I have an honestly stupid amount of CWs and I have a lot of trouble being like...okay just...just let them go.

The world would be a better place if everyone was more logical LOL "Oh logic, why don't they teach logic at these schools?" (and yes it's the BBC Narnia - I refuse to remember the Disney version)

Ah, see I only have 400-500, so a lot...but a doable amount. But yeah, a friend of mine told me recently she has like 1800 CWs lol.

I have 1750.

I think the site would benefit from a large dose of "caveat emptor". If you buy something and the price changes IRL, you don't get refunded or reimbursed unless you bought it from a big box corporation with a low price guarantee, like Target or Walmart.

Every year I see people putting up disclaimers like "Don't buy before Black Friday if you want the BF price" and it makes me feel grouchy because... doing smart shopping is up to the buyer.

I bought a Transformer off eBay and saw it at Amazon $10 cheaper and I'm... not crying about it, just reminding myself from now on to check prices before I hit the buy button and also that I have it right now and I'm really happy I have it. The pictures were better on eBay and so, while I'd seen the figure before, I didn't realise how much I wanted it till then. But that's on me. I'm not expecting other players to take more responsibility for their own decisions than I'm willing to take for my own.

Dropping prices unilaterally and not excluding older items would be good for the site, for new players, and releasers who would like to continue to make sales. I'm really sad if it turns out that the reason that they won't do it is because previous buyers feel entitled to fixed prices forever.

As for the 10K auction days, I suspect the economy was generally better back then.

Bahahaha exactly. Also...disney made a version of that? I didn't even know shrugs

((I have...in the neighborhood of 3500 because I used to buy damn near everything and I tend to buy all the colors of a thing I like and then never wear 80% of them or more. It's a problem that thankfully poorness is curing))

I don't really have a problem with people reminding folks that the sale is upcoming and they should hold off if they want the sale price. I think that's actually a pretty nice thing to do (and I do it every year). There was, at one point (I can't remember if it was the same last year or not), a thing that went into place that basically stopped you from adjusting prices/copies/items in your shop once the sale began. So like...we'd add our CWs and be like "hey this is unlimited for the BF sale but don't buy it until it goes on sale in 2 days because I am not refunding price differences but it needs to be in the shop and ready to go before we have to worry about the site glitching". I don't really see any kind of issue with that.

It's not really the same as a store where you can return it if it's not opened and get your full money back and then buy again at the discount. We don't get the full purchase price off folks so we can't really control refunding the price difference.

The site itself has a habit of doing refunds within a time frame if a sale is unannounced ahead of time because people who would've waited didn't know to wait. I also don't really have an issue with this. They make a big bold statement ahead of BF that any purchases made before it begins and items go on sale will not be honored for any kind of refund of price difference because the sale is always announced ahead, and I think that's fine too.

I don't really know why they didn't make price adjustments after the first drop, I don't know if it had anything at all to do with not wanting to make customers mad or whether it had to do with something else.

For Example (and what I think the real issue is, and has been all along and was already brought up by a lot of us: trying to reprogram all of those items that had a set price, it's not exactly a walk in the park with literally over 40k items and not all of them having a universal pricing scheme. Initially, all cws were 5000 to submit and came with 10 copies. When they switched to the current pricing scheme, there were suddenly 4 different pricing tiers. You can't automate the price fixing on the items because you have to go in and manually see which tier it should be in, in order to reduce the new programmed base price. From the time of the new tiers, there was always only 1 staff member in charge of the queue and all CW related questions. Jessi trained Saint to replace her, not to work side by side together. Even then, that's exactly 2 people in the CW realm. That means instead of handling tickets and approvals/denials/etc....they'd have to devote every bit of time here to categorizing every single old item into a new pricing tier - and then all of the programmers (I think we've got 2 only at this point: Bug and Keith) would have to stop literally everything else they're doing to devote all of their time here to rolling out programming changes for each of those items by hand. And they'd have to pause new submissions, batch submissions on old stuff, and any kind of shop sales on anything old while they did it and hope nothing glitched out.

So, while it would've been great to see things get shoved over to the new scheme, that's probably why old ones didn't. As for the items that have been submitted under new pricing schemes - maybe it would be easier because they're categorized already and if it's a blanket drop across categories then it might work. But it seems like what's actually happening is that all of the tiers are going to be reworked and simplified and that the entire way submission happens is going to change - so they'd still have to manually reprogram over 40k CWs to work in the new system (because even retired things would have to get updated or probably break the new format). OR, as is most likely, they're going to leave them the way they are and not reprogram any of that and just make CWs work differently in the future and find a way to more easily differentiate between old and new (like changing the star color once the new system goes into place because that's something that can be altered on their end much more easily as it would just be the new automatic add when an item is approved).

And yeah, the economy as a whole was better IRL and here, and also everything was new - we didn't have 2394028340284 versions of the same generally styled hair or wings or whatever. Now if I want shorts and someone submits some I like but they're private, I don't really need to buy an auctioned public copy when I can just look for one of the thousands of other similar styles of shorts etc. There's still some super cool stuff that I miss, but I don't have the funds or the drive to overpay for stuff anymore. Collectively, the community moved away from auctions and things like that.

I completely agree - price drops are a very normal thing in real life and most games. Buying an item at a higher price gives you the "honor" of owning it earlier. A friend of mine just built a computer - I told her to wait for the new nvidia 3000 series to hit the market and watch the prices of the other chips drop (or honestly just buy that drool worthy chip), but she needed the part immediately and happily paid more because it was a necessity even knowing she could wait a month/s and get the same thing cheaper. I don't see why Subeta can't/won't do the same thing just because it'd upset some people who spent more for the item. Honestly, if that's what they're worried about they can just make a poll, and ask what people want (a poll is completely unnecessary in my opinion, but I've found people very rarely ever listen to me). Hell, I spent as much as 10-20k for some of my items...I've seen them sold cheaper, but did I grumble? no.

I'm not sure it was necessarily the economy as much as it was advertising. People advertised shiny rare/private items that you couldn't own unless you spent that much. If you owned this item you become part of a shiny exclusive group of pretty people that wore pretty things. It's kinda like owning brand name clothes - you don't necessarily pay for the quality of the clothes you're paying for the brand name and the feeling you get when you wear them. In one of my classes we discussed how buying a brand name item is good for the soul - it releases a series of chemicals in the brain that make you feel happy/proud/makes you feel prettier/handsomer/etc. So I think as we lost artists the competition fell, which sorta popped that particular bubble.

there was a very terrible remake that nearly brought me to tears as a child 15 years ago. I still have nightmares about that monstrosity.

Smh that's why you gotta be more like me want the things people will never sell you and just buy black...the color of my soul LOL. And pretty white/reds because one can never have enough white/red colorings.

I don't have a problem with people giving the warnings. It's nice, like you said. But I do feel it shouldn't seem necessary.

My feeling is that if they're going to do a really radical price drop, though, they oughta just take a certain amount off the base price for older cws regardless of tier. That would obviate the problem of having to recalibrate the price individually on each and every one of 40000 CWs. Because the base price is a number and it's stored somewhere, it should be possible to just, say, cut it across the board by 200.

It's not the perfect recalibration some people might like, but the perfect is often the enemy of the good, so they say.

It's an interesting point you raised about shorts, particularly. A lot of the people who say that they can't fill batches if they don't limit their releases are putting out shorts, big sweaters, miniskirts, rompers, and other items that lots of other people are also releasing. I wonder if people need to invoke artificial scarcity to get those items on site in part because there really are a lot of these items on site already.

I own a lot of lolita brand clothing, so I definitely understand what you are getting at, but that's also where the brakes come down for me. If I could buy the actual item in a store and wear it for that price, I won't pay that to buy it for my pixel avatar. And yeah exactly, buying something the second it comes out works out to a kind of "impulsiveness/first on the block" tax. I mean I had a friend who bought the very first iPhone the day it came out, and she certainly didn't expect the newer models to cost that much. (We are amused with each other a lot because I am a Galaxy girl.)

I think the only CW I've paid more than 3500 for was a set of ears. But there are only two copies of the ears and I have no intention of ever selling them. They were made for the releaser's OC but they are also perfect for an OC of mine who is very, very different from the releaser's OC. :) I was determined to get them some day and I lucked out. This is why I tell people not to give up on things that they really want. You never know what might happen.

Also I know the film you are talking about and it is officially an atrocity.

I'm going to continue not knowing anything about it and remaining happy haha.

And I definitely do that now lol. I have a small list of high priority but pretty much impossible wishes and then a bunch of stuff I liked but not enough to buy and still haven't bought because like..what if I don't use it???

I mean - I don't really get that distinction. Nobody is forcing anyone else to give a heads up warning. Some people don't bother and nobody complains about that. I personally have no issue doing it and I appreciate if someone gives a reminder, but I don't think anyone is forcing it on anyone so shrug

As far as staff giving a warning ahead of BF - I think they do it to curb the number of "oh no I bought this before it started can I get a refund?" tickets that they used to get.

Also I don't think anyone is intentionally invoking artificial scarcity on anything. Why make something unlimited when you've only got 5 people interested? We're not nintendo making a gaming system we know people are going to foam at the mouth over. We're releasing a custom item that was designed/colored with our own tastes in mind that we know may not be desired by many. People are usually batch limiting based on what they think might actually sell vs having an endless number of items sitting unbought in their shop and cluttering it up, lagging their backend, and making it harder to manage things. I've advocated before for changes to user CW shops that would make management easier for users so there's less drive to remove tons of items because we can't sort out what we want to sort out easily but so far there've been no moves for that beyond getting to retire items (one of the things I pushed hard for).

I see people making much more unique items that still aren't filling slots - so I really don't think it has to do with there being too many of the near same thing. I see lots of sweaters/big hairs/shorts/crops that are similar to other things that sell lots of copies and unique stuff that sells barely any copies. I was just noting that I don't think private items/item auctions are a thing anymore because most often there are other options and we, as a community, kinda got tired of spending so much money on something that we can't really use IRL. A lot of us who've been around since the start are getting older and have more responsibilities and less disposable income, especially right now.

Why not make something unlimited when, out of the minority of people on the site who not only participate in forum slotting but also are aware that you and your shop even exist, you have 5 people who are interested now?

Forum slotting is something that a lot of people on the site never participate in. If you don't take the option away from them before they ever have a chance to see your item, some of them may buy your item from your shop.

Also, you might be ahead of the curve, and something that is not very popular now might become popular later. And people who join the site six months from now might want to buy this item, and if only 5 people bought it and aren't selling it, they can't.

Of all the reasons people give for making items limited, this one is the one that makes the absolute least sense to me.

Meanwhile, people actually do tell me that they have to make things artificially scarce to generate interest in getting the batch put through.

I literally listed reasons why making things unlimited is a hassle for people in my reply. I also know this is like the most pointless discussion to have with you because you don't really ever acknowledge any of the reasons people give for why they limit things because you've decided in your head we're trying to create artificial scarcity and a "rush" to buy our items no matter how many times we explain that isn't why. You can't actually make any item only 5 copies, you have to do a minimum of 10. I've got tons of items sitting in my shop that were max 10 copies and have sold maybe 1 copy beyond the initially batched 5. Doesn't require anyone to forum slot to buy it from my shop and yet....there they sit.

Also I'd love to see where anyone has said they're intentionally making something artificially scarce (artificially means fake scarce - you can't say an item will be 10 copies and then secretly make it unlimited or you can and should be reported for scamming - if they're setting limits low because nobody is slotting, that isn't artificial, that's actually making less because interest is low).

I've literally been here since before CWs were a thing. I've watched the market get created and grow and change. I used to make things with waaaaaaaay more batches and guess what: I sat on tons of copies nobody wanted. Sorry to folks who come 6+ months later and suddenly want something older (a rarity for most things honestly, it's always the same small set of 'populars' that people usually seek out) but when items were unlimited or had 30++ copies sitting unsold after years and years in my shop, cluttering my backend, making it nearly impossible to load or to find anything in my categories...well, it got retired once that became a feature. There are user shops I won't go into because they have hundreds of items and it lags the browser so bad that it's not worth buying whatever item I might want from their CW Shop. Am I telling them they should just retire their shit because I personally don't like it? Nope. Just like I'm not telling folks to make their shit unlimited because one day, someone, somewhere, might want to buy a copy that didn't get a chance after it was out for 5+ years.

What you call artificial scarcity is just natural market planning. An item has low interest therefore copies are set to a lower number. It's not fake. We can't suddenly add more later because haha it got popular. We looked at market demand and adjusted supply to provide slightly more than it had and hope for the best and that nobody who actually wants it doesn't get it. Seems like most of us are seeing that work out for the best.

I can't keep having a circular discussion about this though. You don't want to understand what anyone who has a differing experience from you has said and it's pretty pointless to keep trying to explain it to you because you've decided your experience is the primary. It's not worth my energy to keep going on it.

Just to give my two cents - when I was still releasing items at a regular pace - I used to keep items open for X number of days and cap it at whatever the batch number became. This was pre cw shop and back when a batch was 10 items. My items ranged from 1 batch to 10/12 batches if memory serves. I did this not to force people to buy in the moment, but because I didn't want to be bothered by constantly collecting slots on an item and it cluttering my forum page. And let me point out organizing a forum page is way easier than organizing a cw shop. A cw shop is a nightmare for anyone with a lot of items - I loath going into mine and have since they opened...and I only have 20? or so items in it. Personally, if the staff want to make cws easier I think they should make a cw shop that doesn't make me want to bash my head against a wall when I go to add an item into it. They have, however, made large strides in that direction since the initial cw shop release lmao.

While, I do believe some people created items in the hopes of it being rare/scarce I don't believe that's a thing anymore or at least not common. For one thing - as reaper mentioned we have a lot of similar items now. But, in my opinion the main issue is we have very very very few artists now. There's little artist competition or change in artistic styles between items. This lowers the value of items instantly.