A Very Unfortunate Downtime

December 25, 2015 5:22 pm

Happy Luminaire to all timezones! For those of you that checked Subeta earlier today, you may have noticed an issue in the way that Luminaire presents went out. Unfortunately, an incorrect script was used to process the many gifts given by generous Subetans, and they were given out via the (much oudated) "stocking” method for many users. This caused an influx of sidebar events rather than the (much preferred) method of seeing your gifts gathered on one page. More importantly, and more detrimentally, it caused some gifts to go out more than once - a big problem for things like Custom Wearables or CSC cards!

We've spent the last few hours trying to figure out the best route to take. We considered manually deleting items, but we couldn't be certain which items were legitimately sent in multiples. We were looking at doing a rollback, but it's about the worst day of the year for that, (not that there's EVER a good time for a rollback) and wasn't possible to set up until tomorrow, meaning the site may have been offline for up to 48 hours. We obviously didn't want this to happen - not at a time of year where you want to be well-wishing your friends on the site!

So we've come to this: we trust you guys, and we don't think it's fair for you to lose any effort you've put into the site because of a mistake on our end. So we're asking you this: to please delete the items you may have received via the "stocking events". (HERE is a handy link to your events page in case you want to keep track of what you received)We ask you to take some time to enjoy the holiday while we work on our end to resolve this as quickly as we can. We will be updating you as soon as possible (this could mean it might take a few days) with the link to the Trees so you can open your gifts properly. This is a special time of year for everybody - including the staff - and getting things like this resolved is a lot more difficult for us.

If you did not receive any stocking related events, you’re in the clear and don’t have to worry about deleting any items. You’ll just have to wait for the trees to open, which we will make a separate news post about!

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience or upset caused, and as a goodwill gesture, you can now get a 1 Week Gold Account Medal via the free gift. We are also giving each user 250csc (added to your on-hand credits), putting a few extra gifts under the tree, and until Monday ALL quests are weekend quests.

Happy Luminaire, thank you for continuing to support Subeta, and here's to a slightly less chaotic New Year!

December 26, 2015, 3:34 am by

Whew, got hit with a huge stack of stocking events so I had to do a massive delete but I got everything cleared! Thank you so much to the staff for all your hard work and thank you for the GA medal, CSC and weekend quests! So nice of you!! Happy Luminaire!

December 26, 2015, 3:32 am by

Color me surprised

December 26, 2015, 3:32 am by

No problem! I hope it helps out others too. Happy holidays!

December 26, 2015, 3:30 am by

- Thank you for clarifying that for me. I appreciate your help.

December 26, 2015, 3:22 am by

The people who you gifted fall into two categories.

The ones who received the stocking events. In this case, they should delete everything they got today from those events. Everything. Not just duplicates, everything. Everyone will receive the proper gifts in a few days when trees open up.
The ones who did not receive any stocking events. They can do nothing and wait until their trees open up. They are the lucky ones who don't have to delete anything or worry about this madness :)

December 26, 2015, 3:14 am by

Yikes! Now I'm in a panic. I put several stickers under various trees and in each case I included a 10K sP voucher per sticker. Do I need to contact each person and ask them to count stickers/vouchers before they delete? Then there's someone I claimed who had a candy heart on her wishlist. I sent her 25. Should I comment her and let her know they're all legit?

and The Team: Hugs to all of you. Thank you for giving up your holiday to help us out. Thank you for the CSC and Gold Medal. May your New Year be a lot less eventful and whole lot more fun!

December 26, 2015, 3:09 am by

Ouch that's a major bummer :( The same happened to me one of the past years, I thought I had collected every day and then when I went to figure it out I apparently forgot to collect on the 24th

December 26, 2015, 3:05 am by

Not all of us got a potion from Melody! ;P I missed a single day by an hour :(

December 26, 2015, 2:59 am by

Oh my god, this is still going? Not only have you guys made a much bigger scene than I did, but you've got people thinking it's a huge mass of people when it's really just me that complained openly.

Yup, that's right folks. All of this hyperbole, exaggeration, overreaction and venom, is all because I had a problem with the amount of compensation and inconvenience of this glitch. Such heresy! e_e

Meanwhile, all of those who are overreacting to what I said are calling me all sorts of names, making all sorts of accusations and assassinations of my character, based off one complaint I made in the heat of the moment, while also telling me not to take virtual items seriously. I'm even being harassed via gifts now, and you're all questioning my lack of maturity/Christmas cheer? Like, come the fuck on, now. Practice what you preach, at least. If these items aren't something to treat seriously then why allow my post to be any different?

As for everyone else that got caught in the crossfire, I am sorry to have muddied your news feed. I don't necessarily regret what I said but I could and should have worded it better. That I do regret. As I said, heat of the moment. I do appreciate the efforts made by some to help explain things, but I still believe the compensation was too low and the mess not ours to clean up but, alas, nothing to be done now so I'll stop talking about this....

...In a moment. Couple things I want to address:

Just because I believe some stores should stay open, doesn't mean I see retail people as slaves. Come on now. Don't blame/yell at me because you had to work on the holiday. (I would take your shift if I could, honestly.)
I do not live in the same place as you, (I assume not, anyway,) so of course, my cities standards and traditions are probably going to be different than yours. Don't assume just because your establishments are closed, it's like that everywhere.
I haven't missed "the point" of Christmas but, let's face it people, if the materialism wasn't important, we wouldn't even have the tree feature and there wouldn't be an industry. Plus, for some the physical is more real than the emotion/"gingerbread feeling."

To my family, however, it's more about showing how well you know a person by being able to surprise them on Christmas morn. That's the stuff we live for. Plus, I just love buying for people. Yes, I am materialistic but also very, very generous. Need a coat, hat, mitts or scarf? Come see me. How about a meal? Hope you like Mac'n'cheese. Friend moving to college and needs supplies? I'll see what I can spare. (I don't mean to brag but this is just how I am and I feel the need to contest the labels of Grinch and Scrooge that I've been unfairly slapped with.)

But thank you all for throwing me under the bus because of one, poorly expressed moment of holiday driven madness. I do hope you think of this the next time you decide to have a day and that you are able to hold yourself to your own standards.

Goodnight.

December 26, 2015, 2:47 am by

There is a censor you can turn on if you would like words to be filtered, though I'm not sure if it works on the shoutbox as I don't use it.

December 26, 2015, 2:46 am by

First I was upset, because this isn't the first time something goes wrong with the trees. Plus I don't have a good bond with my real life family so I'm always more excited for Subeta lumi than real life Christmas.

But now I read this post after waking up (the site was down a great part of my evening and until i went to bed) and let it sink in a bit I feel like it would be foolish to get really worked up over it. Because getting worked up would actually ruin subeta lumi. Instead of being a grumpy grinch I'm going to do make a small fortune doing those extra weekend quests while snuggling in the sofa with a fleece watching the doctor who christmas special.

We got a free nostalgic potion from visiting melody, a free week of gold that you can use whenever you want and 250csc. If you still feel like you deserve more and that this isn't enough then you really don't appreciate the spirit of lumi/christmas.

December 26, 2015, 2:33 am by

Happy Luminaire! How unfortunate for YOU guys working on such an awkward issue on holiday!!! I guess all of us are very grateful for this to begin with. You're being overly generous with your reimbursement for a little downtime. Thank you so much! Also great you're having trust in your users! "until Monday ALL quests are weekend quests" - kind of putting some stress on US now, lol.

The only real problem I see is the Melody achievement for those, that could not get online yesterday at all (I fortunately went to the cottage early in the morning and did not get any stocking events, either. At 10.30 p.m. I gave in trying to log back in and do my quests)

December 26, 2015, 2:27 am by

This is so rad, thanks guys :D

December 26, 2015, 2:19 am by

Wow, thank you Subeta team. This is incredibly generous.

December 26, 2015, 1:56 am by

I know some people are complaining about having to delete the items, but really, the Staff gave us the fairest option, and I'll explain why.
So I see three ways out of this; The staffs way, of trusting us as players to remove the duplicated items; The rollback way, of rolling back the clock, so that it never occurred; and the ignorance way, of letting everyone just keep the items and do as they will.

Now, everyone can agree that letting the players take the responsibility of deleting the dupes does mean we have to take the time to do it. It takes effort, especially if you deleted your event list, and you have no idea what's a present. If you got a ton of presents, it means you can't even view them all, and it is going to be difficult discerning presents from items previously in your inventory, especially if you've been vending. Mistakes might be made. You could accidentally delete an item that wasn't a present at all, or maybe you'll miss deleting a present. It can be rough, but time, if you are careful, will be the only thing lost. The items deleted are duplications, they aren't meant to exist, so you didn't lose anything by deleting them. If a user is smart, makes a list of inventory items, maybe even waiting for the trees to be fixed, taking a list of the inventory before the tree, and the inventory after the tree are fixed and presents are given out, they can effectively clear out all duplications, without deleting items that weren't meant to be. It would suck, and its a lot of hard work if you got a ton of gifts this year, but I think its probably the better option. Best part it, Staff didn't say "And this has to all be done before midnight tonight, or we turn you and your pets into pumpkins!" It means you can take your time, and do it right.
Now, if the Staff had decided to do a rollback, not only would you still lose time, for you would lose all the time you spent during the rollback, but you would lose all the work you did. Did you go Vending and get a rare item? Gone. Maybe a special event occurred, or you finally got the experiment you wanted from the Zapper? Gone. Sure, you don't need to worry about deleting something special in your inventory, but then again, there is a chance you wouldn't get the item in the first place. No one would like that, at all. If you think people are complaining now, the backlash for a rollback would be nuts. Yes, some people would be unaffected, like you just got your stockings, and then spent the rest of the day with your family. Of course a rollback for you would be incredibly helpful, but think of all the problems a rollback would cause for quests, for trades that were done, and maybe even for CSC bought. It would be a nightmare if you had had a productive day, to lose all your work.
So what about that third option, the ignore option? Lets say for just a moment, the staff decided, "You know, maybe we'll just let them keep all the dupes. No one loses time, no one loses work they did, everyone gets a bonus for Luminaire." I'm going to do a little math, and its not perfect, so just try to folllow me. There are, according to the statistics page, 127,556 users on Subeta, not including staff or suspended accounts. Lets say of that number, only a third of people sent gifts for Luminaire, so 42,518. Still a lot of people, and that is a generous number. Now, I spent just over 6 million on presents this year, just some things for gift giving, but lets say that on average, people gave a third of that, so 2 million per person who gave gifts. This is probably much lower than it should be mind you, but I'm aiming low. 42,518 people, each giving around 2 million sp in gifts. That comes out to, for total sp in gifts given, 85,036,000,000 sp, suddenly appearing. That is more than the richest user on Subeta has, entering the market. Now it is true, that 85 billion is only 4% of the total amount of sp on Subeta, but that is really a best case scenario.
Lets try something a little worse than that. Lets say two thirds of people participated in gift giving, and each of them gave on average as much as I did, 6 million sp worth of gifts. That is 95,667 people, giving out a total of 574,002,000,000 sp. That is 29% of the Subeta wealth, miraculously added to the game. Now, I am not a macroeconomic, but if you think the prices of all items, not just items that were gifted, are not going to be adversely affected by an instantaneous 29% increase in the total wealth of all Subetans, you should think about it some more. It would be economy crashing, it really would.

The Staff is placing a lot of faith in the users today. Not everyone is going to delete all the items they got, some people are going to keep them, or try to sell them, and that is part of the consequence of the Staff's decision. They understood that there would be people who didn't delete items, and they are willing to take that risk, and trust us to be responsible, and not take advantage. A few people keeping items instead of deleting them is not going to destroy the economy, and it isn't as bad as the backlash from players about a rollback would have been. The staff apologized, they compensated the players in a reasonable way, and they are working their butts off on Christmas to fix the problem as soon as possible. I certainly didn't work today. I lazed about, ate sweets, and enjoyed my time with family. They are considering the best possible option for everyone, not just a few, and I think they achieved that. So kudos to the Staff, for working hard, and trusting the users. I don't think other staff on sites like Subeta would trust their users with pointy sticks. May they have a Happy Luminaire, and any other holiday they may be celebrating, and I hope every other user does as well.

December 26, 2015, 1:56 am by

I don't see ANY gifts under my tree :(

December 26, 2015, 1:53 am by

i actually just noticed this morning aha

December 26, 2015, 1:51 am by

Ah. I hadn't seen it since yesterday, so I didn't know. :P

December 26, 2015, 1:49 am by

it was changed to 1,000 for all ga users, i believe (:

December 26, 2015, 1:49 am by

I wasn't even aware of the problem, to be honest, but this is a lovely way to handle it. Thank you!

December 26, 2015, 1:46 am by

"You have 6 items on hand. We will only display 1000 at a time."

Huh? I wonder if that was a glitch as well, given that usually, it's 250 items at a time with a GA.

December 26, 2015, 1:45 am by

Thank you SO much for the weekend quests!!

December 26, 2015, 1:45 am by

Thanks for the 250 CSC, the GA Medal, and the all quests are Weekend Quests thing! This is something I really appreciate knowing that while you guys are working on any issues on the site that you still want things to be fun for us to do while getting issues fixed, and that's something I really appreciate about this site!

Stay classy, Subeta. :) And keep up the great work, guys!

December 26, 2015, 1:44 am by

I think a more positive viewpoint i share with most users is that even though I don't officially celebrate holidays in RL> I do celebrate lumi. I think that this "perk" if you want to call it that. for the extra csc and goodies made my day. and I think for others who do celebrate made their christmas more special. why? because we get the gift on the holiday from you and get to have an extra day of christmas (for those that celebrate) and an extra day of lumi for the day we do get to open trees. Thank you so very much for being a site that cares about its users. P.S. I am a tad bit bummed the donation center is down. kinda wish there was a surprise in there to grab for each day. but that would probably be asking for too much when you are giving out a lot already. Sorry you had to work your holiday but thank you for making ours awesome. I forgot to ping you so I don't think I got my question answered. Can we still stuff trees with goodies? I am hoping and thinking the answer is yes. also just an added thank you. I use this other site i love (remains nameless) but they gouge people with charging a lot of money for nice items you have to buy with real cash. they advertise their black friday with more stuff to buy and call it a sale. but you guys go and make everything 50 percent off? wow. tbh I removed my spending funds from that site over to this one because i feel you guys deserve to be receiving my moneys when you are so generous. not to mention that free gift of csc we got a few weeks back. You guys really make gaming online enjoyable. One thing I would like to see in the future. I would like a filtering system for the sb. Some comments and cussing is triggering for me. But, I do like to respect peoples ability to express themselves if they wish. I would just like it if there were a toggle switch of some kind I could personally use to censor certain sensitive material. Could you consider this in the future. but not necessarily censor other people but that its an option for us more erm... "sensitive" users? because the people on the sb are awesome people and deserve to express themselves. I would like to be more active on there without having to worry about triggers. please consider this and thank you so very much.

December 26, 2015, 1:42 am by

- Yeah, that's normal.

Quote

We will be updating you as soon as possible (this could mean it might take a few days) with the link to the Trees so you can open your gifts properly. This is a special time of year for everybody - including the staff - and getting things like this resolved is a lot more difficult for us.

December 26, 2015, 1:38 am by

I did not get presents at all. o.0

December 26, 2015, 1:33 am by

Oh wow. I kinda would like a list of all the mods who were amazing and helped fix this on their holiday. Because I would like to gift them lots :D

December 26, 2015, 1:17 am by

I just wish you guys would address the 502 errors. I missed a day of melodys cottage because the ENTIRE day that's all I got. On every computer and device in my house. Reset Internet and still nothing. I missed a day and the achievement. If there is anything that can be done, I would appreciate it. It's not my fault the site was down the entirety of the day for me, yet I've missed out on an achievement because of it.

December 26, 2015, 1:06 am by

: aw thank you, i guess it's way too early for me... i just woke up (:

December 26, 2015, 1:01 am by

it's a free gift, there's a link in the above post.

December 26, 2015, 12:56 am by

wait, should the GA medal be in every user's inventory? because i can't seem to finde mine right now o:

December 26, 2015, 12:52 am by

The GC and CSC is appreciated, though, in my boredom, I found myself playing games at a horrid site that shall not be named.

I'm really only commenting because of someone's comment about people spending "frivolously" and then stating that they are in fact spending frivolously out in the real world... if you wind up using your overdraft each year so that your loved ones have gifts... I think you've missed the point of the season, and what an unbelievably silly thing to do. I know, a lot of people play silly buggers and spend money they don't have this time of year. Bad. I'd wager, if you simply did a kind thing for a loved one, or made something they'd be just as happy. If they're not, probably not overly decent individuals, really. Also, stating you are overly-generous is tooting your own horn and a lot less believable. Real charity/generosity is anonymous, I've always thought.

Some people need a whole lot of perspective and we really gotta work on people's views on entitlement. Embarrassing.

I'm honestly baffled that anyone has their knickers in a twist over this.

December 26, 2015, 12:35 am by

OK thanks, I must have missed that part. Thank you! :)

December 26, 2015, 12:32 am by

I'm just saying, you're literally whining about not being allowed to exploit a glitch. Like, dude, seriously, it's in the site's rules. For the mods to go "Hey because of error, we'll let users who got this glitch break the rules" would be ridiculous. Especially because not everyone got hit with the glitch. Had you NOT gotten the glitch and the mods DID do that, don't you think you'd be feeling pissed over that instead?

And trust me, it could be a lot worse. Another pet site I've been frequenting for two years will leave their site down for DAYS just because they don't feel inclined to deal with a situation right away. Then it goes back up without so much as an apology from the mods for making a mistake in the first place. That could have easily been the case here too, but it's not.

I'm not saying your feelings are invalid, here. I'm just saying the mods are doing their best with keeping things fair. They gave us all gifts. And it's super rude to receive a gift and WHINE about it. It's like your grandmother giving you clothes for Christmas and you complaining loudly that you wanted an IPod.

December 26, 2015, 12:31 am by

Whoops, check my post below!

December 26, 2015, 12:30 am by

@?StarShadow The news post specifically says: “until Monday ALL quests are weekend quests”. :) So yes, the quests are all weekend quests until Monday! I’m going to look into figuring out how to get the gifts that were donated to the Donation Center out without deleting the items that were added out of the kindness of our users heart earlier!

December 26, 2015, 12:27 am by

thank you! so many nice gifts. glad u guys were able to bring the site back up :)

December 26, 2015, 12:22 am by

All of the quests say "weekend quest", is that a glitch or on purpose as a thanks for the down time? Concerned because I don't want to get in trouble for questing. And will the donation center return with the items that were in it before it was closed?

December 26, 2015, 12:20 am by

You guys always work so hard to make sure we the player's are taken care of. Mistakes happen to everyone, and I think you handled the care of this very well. I hope your Luminaire is full of joy, friends, and sweets!

December 26, 2015, 12:10 am by

Thanks for your hard work answering all these questions, and thanks to the staff in general for giving everyone a GA medal and CSC! I read through all the comments here and it seems like people are having similar questions - maybe add a note to the News post that reminds people they can sort their inventory by Timeline in order to figure out which items should be deleted, and that they have to delete /all/ stocking items, not just ones that have multiples, since everything from under the tree will be sent out properly when the trees are fixed. Also, I'm not sure if this is possible, but maybe a special pinned event notification that reminds people to see the News Post if they got stocking items, in case they haven't seen the news? Have an awesome Lumi <3

December 26, 2015, 12:07 am by

You guys are wonderful. I just wanted to let you know. <3

December 25, 2015, 11:54 pm by

🙀 Stuff like this happens sometimes. shrugs I'm perfectly okay with waiting until it gets fixed and works properly to see what I have. Thank you so much for the medal & credits too, that's insanely generous of the staff. I hope that everyone is having a wonderful holiday regardless of the site issues. 😸

December 25, 2015, 11:54 pm by

Thanks for the GA and CSC. Cool. :) But I see the donation center is down and I was wondering what will happen to all the items that were already in there, because I threw in a few hundred scratch cards as a Luminaire present to players and I hope they come back when it's restarted (?). :(

December 25, 2015, 11:54 pm by

Extremely grateful for the GA and 250 CSC! Best wishes to the staff who've worked hard to keep us happy.

December 25, 2015, 11:52 pm by

Thank you for working so hard Subeta staff!

December 25, 2015, 11:43 pm by

I know it's been said, but thank you Subeta staff! This was an unfortunate accident, but you guys working so hard on Christmas to fix it and even giving users some major perks as a goodwill gesture, just wow! Your dedication and generosity are just so amazing. Happy holidays. <3

December 25, 2015, 11:34 pm by

Like a number of other folks, I was offline for the entire duration of Christmas Day with family and friends, and so missed out on all of the fiasco with the Stockings script going haywire. I did a mass delete of the duplicate items, thankful that the problem had been identified so quickly, and immensely grateful for the gifts of the one-week GA medal and CSC to apologise for the whole thing. Your efforts are very much appreciated and many thanks for working on this unfortunate hiccup on one of the busiest days of the year. You've sacrificed personal time with your own families and friends for us, the users, where other sites and their staff would have simply shrugged and said to just deal with it.

You're all absolutely AMAZING!
Merry Christmas from this ol' Aussie <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

December 25, 2015, 11:29 pm by

Ouch, it seriously hurt my soul to delete the beautiful custom clothing I got as gifts! But wow, your generosity and hard work is more than appreciated! I'm looking forward to when this is all sorted out!

December 25, 2015, 11:26 pm by

sorry if this has already been asked but I received a couple melody x2 gifts. Am I suppose to delete these also being they came from the stocking event? thanks

December 25, 2015, 11:19 pm by

Wow there was a huge downtime during Subeta? Luckily I was gone when it seemed to have happened XD! However, I am very grateful for the 1 week GA and the 250 csc, that was a nice little gift to see (:!!

Speaking about being grateful...there are some REALLY ungrateful people posting comments down below O.o I can't believe the grumpiness people are having. Mistakes happen and at least they were kind enough to admit their mistake and fix whatever it is that needs fixing PLUS give us a nice gift as apology, some people (I won't name names but you know who you are) really need to step down from their high horse and know how to say "Thank you" and move on instead of "Oh it was your fault and these gifts won't do." :/ someone need a lesson or two on manners and how to be grateful.

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A Very Unfortunate Downtime

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