Ever since staff started "fixing rsing" there have been lots of topics popping up ranging from rs times to feedback in general,I'm finally starting to see people really getting down to the heart of the issue and as such I decided to make this topic.

The issue isn't that rsing is boring or that it serves no purpose,No the real issue here is that keith feels such a way about it and thinks we should too. Clearly as all the topics and feedback have shown there really is a purpose to restocking and there is quite a substantial rsing community compared to what keith has led us to believe with past data and statements.

This leads me to believe one thing is happening here,Yet another site feature is being sabotaged by having changes made to it that really serve no purpose other then to render it useless so that it can be gotten rid of or proven to be boring,As a long time user I expect honesty to be given to myself and others but yet I continue to see us being lied to. If you can't outright show that restocking has a fault to it then why sabotage it to make it be the way you currently say it is? I don't see how this is good for any site,I don't see why people would continue to stick around if all features that people actually use are slowly done away with in this manner.

Unless that is the end goal,To do away with subeta. Is subeta simply getting to be too much? Is it not enough that we have people who donate money on a regular basis?

While I am thinking of it,Has anyone seen the google analytic data yet? I'm very curious as to the picture it paints of restocking vs the picture keith painted of it being so useless it just has to be drastically changed or else.

I can get on board with making subeta a friendlier environment,I can get on board with doing productive things to allow the site to continue to grow but I can't get on board with users being told one thing only to have staff do what they want anyways. Our opinion is supposed to matter,We are supposed to count and I am not saying we don't because we do for a while but then in the end where does it get us really?

I have had a lot of stressful times over the last few months and one of my ways of dealing with that is coming here to visit with friends and restock,I restock a lot normally but over the past couple weeks that's been forced to change and it's a change that myself and numerous other users are unhappy with.

We don't want the subeta we have grown to love and support to be phased out slowly,The features that exist are what work for the user base. Improvements can always stand to be made but not when it means sabotaging things to get your own personal opinion across. Let us have our restocking,These needless changes are hurting more then helping,The wait times are ridiculous and getting anything of value is like finding a needle in a haystack but if we want useless junk we can find it in stock at 20 or more...Something else that was supposed to be fixed was these ridiculous stock numbers and yet it continues.

There has to be a way we can get past this and a way we can have our voices heard,I know I am not the only user that is concerned. I think I am done now for the moment but I urge everyone to please join in and make a stand with me.

I must admit... I never liked restocking in the beginning, due in part to leaving Neopets that site's way of restocking was just a nightmare and so when coming over to Subeta, I just ignored the options of restocking unless I had to. A few years into playing the site I realize that restocking has it's functions. The old restocking wars really gave me a sense of learning values of items quickly and trying to be speedy with the captcha typing and all that. I got a sense for how things go and I grew used to it and try to keep restocking a habit.

I also liked the change of doing away with the captcha codes... honestly that change got me to do MORE restocking, though granted I don't restock in the same sense one would to resell items... I just like restocking to try and grab new items or to snag rare items I may need for my pets/personal use.

I can see why some people may find it boring... it takes time to get used to such a thing, you have to wait a long time (most days mind you) for anything decent so there's A LOT of refreshing and mindless clicking... but in the end it CAN still be worth it. Especially if you like new released items and don't want to pay a fortune from user shops.

So yeah I don't want to see this feature keep getting changed and then scrapped. Perhaps if they find a way to make it exciting it may draw more people in. There must be plenty of ways to get users into restocking without bogging the system or making items worthless.

I am extremely disappointed about this recent restocking change. It was one of my favourite hobbies on Subeta. There isn't too much left for me to do. Maybe I could work on my HA, but the only way to generate a good, steady source of sP is through restocking. Maybe I could battle, but that costs sP which I need to earn. I could go on and on here.

Especially for new users, restocking can be a good way to earn sP and introduce them to various features of the site. Yes, quests are an option, but with how much prices of rare/super rares have been going up? It's going to be less profitable. And if new users find it extremely hard to save up to buy anything? Well, they're probably going to lose interest, leave, and find another site.

Apparently, I heard that restocking was too much like Neopets, and that's why it was being changed. Which I call a load of crock, since we took: pets, battling, gourmand, customization, world maps, etc. all from there as well. I don't see any reason as to why restocking needs to be taken away. It's actually hurting Subeta a lot right now.

On the bright side, it appears that I no longer need to spend money for a GA here, which I've considered in the past. Since auto-pricing is the main feature of GAs, I bet many users will not be renewing their subscriptions. I now know there is no need for me to purchase one, if I won't be utilizing the main feature.

So, I pretty much restock every day. When I'm not buying CSC, it's essentially my favorite and most efficient way to make a profit. And I too use restocking to be my escape when I'm stressed out. So I agree restocking now is pretty bad. However, I don't feel as if it's completely lost. Changes have been made to the site before that were eventually changed back once it was seen how it disrupted users.

That being said, I do wish we'd hear soon about what exactly is going on. What the changes have done, what changes need to be made, etc. I have been doing decent in terms of being able to get items, but no where near as good as I use too.

Restocking is the hugest kick in the teeth this far,If we wanted to discuss subeta as a whole then I might as well go get food and some blankets because this isn't just about restocking. I've focused on restocking at this particular time because it's a big problem and it needs to be noted that restocking is an important site thing and not a useless function as keith keeps repeating to everyone.

I repeatedly see things have changes made to them for no other reason then for the sole purpose of pacifying keith's passing whims and that's not how it should work. This site isn't even stable anymore,There's been bandaid fix after bandaid fix applied time and time again. Then new features are piled on top of those in an effort to keep people interested,What would keep me interested is to see the old things work properly not have a new feature come in and scramble the site code some more.

At this point I don't even know what kind of wizard could sort this site out and the help that's needed supposedly can't be paid for even though there is money coming in daily. Where does it go exactly and why do others also feel like subeta is slowly working towards sinking to it's death at the bottom of an ocean?

I just feel like there is so much going on that we are in the dark about,I want some real answers not just some crap about how it's supposed to be better...When does that better effect take place exactly? I haven't seen it yet...I've been playing almost 8 years and I see a lot of spinning wheels and a ton of patching leaks...Eventually the dam is going to burst and then maybe people will really see things for how they have always been and how they are now.

I haven't been following the latest RS changes, though I know they've been pretty drastic. I'd be curious to see if these changes have had the effect that Keith was aiming for. (Actually, I'm curious to know what he was aiming for in the first place, since RSing didn't seem to be terribly broken before and I'm not sure what the goal was with these changes.)

Mostly I'm just not sure Keith understands what different kinds of players there are and how all the different playstyles work together to create the Subeta economy. The ones who actually play Subeta daily through questing or RSing or whatever (who might not be posting much on the forums), and the ones who only ever post in the forums and participate in events and feel rich if they've got 10mil sP, and the people who drop hundreds of real dollars on CWs and have full wardrobes are all different groups that don't necessarily overlap, but they do interact together within the same economy. Keith polled players and felt it validated his belief that people don't RS, but that's obviously incorrect because a bunch of pissed off RSers came out of the woodwork when he started changing things.

It's sort of like if he went into the battle forum and removed the wardrobe because the battlers don't use it much. Or if he polled the site and removed the BC because only x% of players battle. Not every feature has to appeal to everyone. Removing or drastically altering even minor features can drive away portions of your userbase longterm and really unbalance the ingame economy.

My biggest question in the whole process is essentially what Gunnar referenced - what is the desired end result?

To raise value of items in general? This action hasn't affected prices of most of the items at all, given that the numbers of items restocking was raised in early February and hasn't been adjusted down, and vending has been actively encouraged. In fact, what this has done is bottomed out the prices of most items on site.

Slowing down restocks only ensures that most of the common, unwanted items just linger on site without much change, not to mention the shops aren't clearing any more, which means that those unwanted items linger and linger and prices keep dropping. The bottom has fallen out of the market. Items that used to be worth 20k on the resell are now selling, at best, for 4k, and many items are selling for barely shop value. If that. And the numbers of items that restock hasn't changed. We're still getting ten to fifteen common items on each restock. We don't need that.

And in the meantime, vending keeps pumping these worthless items onto the site.

So what the slowdown has done, as a whole, is utterly stagnate the market even further while providing no tangible evidence that there's any value stabilization going on. So if attempting to raise item value is the effort, this route is not working.

Therefore I can only conclude it's an attempt to discourage people actively from restocking at all, which as others have said in other threads, hurts the site. Ad revenue and site clicks are lost as people stop trying to restock at all. Funds are lost as people no longer restock enough to justify a GA for the autopricer.

Some of the strategies from the update thread seemed like they could be useful - temporarily retiring items that weren't selling, etc. That seems like it would encourage values not to bottom out so heavily, and combat the flood of crap from vends.

But the slowdown is not helping the economy and not helping the site, and so any benefit from the other strategies we're trying are utterly lost in the static of the slowdown. It would have been better to maintain original store restock rates and THEN see whether the new variables had any effect.

I don't understand how this is supposed to benefit the site at all. Clearly it isn't.

I haven't really been paying attention to the restock feedback threads, so I'm sorry if this has been said a hundred times or has already been proven to be a bad idea. Maybe restocking should go the opposite direction and become more fast-paced? Fewer items restocking and much faster restock and clear rate (like fully clearing and stocking every 3-5 minutes). I like restocking, but I have a short attention span so I can't be bothered to sit around and refresh for a new stock that could take like ten minutes to come. Dunno if that would be hard on the servers though.

No, because not all users who like restocking have fast computers and connections. Then there's users with a physical disability which means they couldn't be quick enough to get anything under those circumstances. For example, I'm 66 and have bad arthritis in the neck which affects my co-ordination etc. I could get a lot of items under the original restocking system but it was hopeless trying for anything in Freyalise Trading during Keelhualiday.

The restocking system we had wasn't perfect but it worked well enough to keep restockers happy. There was no need to change it, especially as it seems that this new system is designed to drive restockers away because we aren't wanted here.

Except that I've found that lots of item prices have improved. My main shop if full of items which are still priced at a "reasonable" reselling price from days gone by, even through the lowest user shop price is much lower. I've started seeing a number of those items starting to be bought up again, because prices have risen to that level again. I'd be a lot more annoyed about this if it wasn't resulting in a much needed improvement in item prices.

We need some form of economic control. There was (and still is) a lot of slack in item prices, especially for normals and rares. If restocking has to pick up some of that slack, so be it. What does annoy me though is that restocking currently seems to be taking ALL of it. If there's been an economic dip in the last couple of years, it wasn't restocking's fault, since we know the mechanics weren't altered for years.

Something needs to be done about vending. It's the junk food of item acquisition. Threads discussing the economy and the state of restocking frequently and repeatedly request vending reform. However, I have a nagging feeling that nothing will be done on the basis on it's popularity (since the popularity of a feature seems to be a major influence in how good/useful Keith thinks it is). Plus it's an original feature, which gives it extra value in differentiating the site from Neopets (although, there was probably a good reason for Neopets not having something similar...).

Frankly, a lot of work needs to be done in a lot of areas. Fine tuning the restocking mechanics, re-ordering vending being only some of them. We could do with retiring a lot of items that are currently stocking, as well as working on bringing in fresh new stock. I'd be beyond happy if we just reverted to the old system for now, and then got down to sorting everything out once Vesnali is over and out of the way. Although expecting something like that to happen at all is very optimistic.

tl;dr - we need to be met halfway somewhere.

whoa. i didn't know current RS situation is that bad. how can i know, i stop RS about 2 weeks already since i hardly found anything worth the time and effort to do so. better to play games; good payout, no unnecessary time wasted in checking user prices, no disappointment in finding out majority of things i check is not profitable.

besides, item prices are too fluctuated anyway. today, you can make 10k profit of item X, a week later, it dipped to losses. it is hard to make profit based on "know how" unless you actually RS super rare items.

there are way too many restockable items exist on subeta, it is overwhelming. not that i'm against that. i love lots of books, collectables and food, but i do very much feel overwhelmed by the amount of restockable items.

speaking from non-hardcore restocker standpoint, thing that separate neopets rs and subeta rs is in neopets, i actually can have regular set of items to rs which give me steady profit in volume sales, without the need to catch rare items. while here, by doing the same thing, today i AP, i got profit, tomorrow i AP, bam! i lost money.

Beanbag Shop Restocked 27 minutes ago

Trading Card Center Restocked 1 hour, 14 minutes ago

The Bake Stop Restocked 23 minutes ago

Seedlings Restocked 32 minutes ago

Philosopher's Store Restocked 35 minutes ago

The Sable Smithy Restocked 4 hours, 2 minutes ago

And yet, we still get vending exclusive items?

Have any staff members given any updates on whether this is the way they want things to be, if they're still messing around with it to fix it, etc.?

I feel like everyone's freaking out (and for good reason) and it's been many days now since we last had an update on what the deal is...

What I don't get is why the change had to be that drastic. To proof that no one restocks? True, if certain Shops only restock 4 times per day now then of course people won't restock there but for that we needed no "test run", that's plain old logic.

I tried restocking one day this week at one shop without checking the shop search prices first, because with a regular non-GA account, I definitely don't have time for that when I have to hand-price later. And guess what? Most of them were selling for much lower. I lost sp doing that. I only bought the ones that were 1 or 2 in stock too. This should never happen. I shouldn't spend 2k+ to find out the item is 300 sp on the shop search. THAT'S how messed up the economy is. I don't need it selling for tens of thousands of sp, but I want to at least break even. Give me 2k, 5k profit, and maybe I'll actually want to restock. I used to love restocking. I wasn't restocking royalty (high score board for restocking is called that) or anything, but I liked it. Not anymore.

All this talk (more so on other boards than this one) about vending being needed because we have fragging, recycle beast, item hunt, quests, etc. is bull. If staff really wanted to, they would get rid of vending in its entirety, and adjust shop restocks and item quantities per properly so the economy wouldn't have to suffer/inflate to obscene levels. And we would all manage to survive. The reason it sucks right now is because there's a vendetta out against restocking. I mean look at the silence, folks. It speaks volumes. Subeta caters to the vending crowd instead. It is what it is. Let's not sugarcoat it any longer.

Okay, rant over. Sorry, I got ranty, but I feel like this needed to be said.

You have a point, which is that some values seem to be improving. I suppose my opinion is colored quite a bit by the fact that in the past, I could wander into a store and essentially buy five or six things pretty much at random and I'd often be able to get a bit of profit from any of those items. Not much profit, perhaps, but a bit. Now, I walk into a store and I'm lucky if I see two things in the entire store that I know for sure will turn any profit at all. I often will leave the store without buying anything, which is a definite departure from normal.

And yeah, I too made BANK last week on the items that were sitting in my store and hadn't sold, but that argues to the fact that what we're used to seeing sell in the stores isn't appearing any longer, and so we're having to dip into people's hoards. What happens when those hoards are gone? Which I suppose is the point of what they're trying to do, but is it sustainable, and is it applicable across the board or just to a few rarer items? I feel there's got to be a way to achieve that end without slowing down the restocking rates to the point of boredom and flooding the stores with the same non-sellables, and items that continue to drop in price.

Restocking has become an exercise in frustration and in my case, what I'm restocking is not as mentally satisfying as what it has been. Wouldn't it be better if the value of ALL items went up, rather than just the values of items we aren't seeing in the stores much anymore?

People prefer vending because people are lazy. Pushing a button is mindlessly dumb.

Which is why I don't understand why Subeta has such a boner for it. It does not encourage extended stay onsite (do wiz quests to vend 250/500 times is all it encourages) compared to restocking, which demands a lot more patience and participation that vending does.

Vending is the McDonalds of this economy, while restocking is, idk, Five Guys or Harveys. Both serve burgers, but one is widely used, yet its quality is dubious. The other one is slightly better, but is more niche and demands a bigger investment (time for subeta activities - money for the burger analogy)

I understand. I think you equated vending to cancer on the other board? Well, the only sure fire way to cure cancer is to cut that shit out. What's subeta waiting for? I don't expect anything to be done about vending though. That's wishful thinking.