I don't even know this is the right forum to talk about this in (if it ain't, you mods can change it) Ok, there is some drama about the pet poll results and i can explain that not everyone is happy about it, but it's times like this we can weigh both the pros and cons of this event/poll.

Firstly, before I start, Thank you to the subeta team for letting us have this opportunity. for some people, pets are a huge area of the site, and after the news of qrykee (which warmed my aussie heart), to have something like this is great. don't let the complaining bring you down.

However, I like to raise this issue: was a sp sink like this necessary? I know sp sinks are essential in order to keep the economy stable (COUGH COUGH GAIA ONLINE), but not everyone on subeta has great funds. For people who only have around 1 mil compared to others with 500 mil (wherever it would be due to time spent on site or other reasons), those with smaller funds were noticeably absent from having their voice heard. Yet, i would also like to bring up the idea that this poll was intended to be done from Euclid, and he seems like the guy to scam people out of millions with experiment pets. This is a weaker point, but it's something to think about when it comes to character interaction with the players.

But let's be honest: no matter how the poll was done; people will still complain about the results. You can't please everyone, but you can please the majority. Subeta team, don't let this bring you down. don't let this stop you from doing polls, or any type of sp sinks. you're amazing staff, and are probs better than other pet sites (no mentions needed). And I can't wait to see what ideas you have for this peacock horse and blob. And if people are still angry, Oatmeal is always there. users, feel free to jot down on other points i've might of missed. just don't bash each other ok? I don't want any hate. Sincerely, A fellow user.

While I understand that people are upset about the results of the poll, I'm not sure it's somehow more biased towards wealthy users than the majority of plots and activities on the site.

Pretty much everything favors the people with more resources (time, energy, sP, real cash, a hoard of items, trained battle pets, etc.). That's simply the nature of games. There are probably hundreds of users with 100mil+ sP. That's really not some unachievable number, making 50mil or more in a month is really easy if you do some daily quests and autoprice your shop each day. I certainly don't think it's unfair that users who actively play the game get to have more of a say in what pets are released than users who don't play.

No matter what, people who feel passionately about one and don't win will be upset. At least in this format, if you feel very passionately, you can put in more sP and effort into the competition than in a traditional popularity contest.

I think calling this a vote is misleading. It isn't a simple vote. Votes imply fairness and that everyone gets an equal voice. This isn't true and it was never stated to be so.

Honestly I have more sP than the total amount donated. If I cared about the contest, I could have influenced this completely by myself.

I liked the concept of this. Maybe it isn't fun, but it made it so people who felt strongly about a pet were able to have more say than someone who didn't really care. How else should we measure this? sP just makes sense. It's the main site currency and it isn't hard to make.

I'm curious how the votes were distributed. A lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that a minority of rich players completely threw the vote and that the results must be skewed, but I've seen a lot of support for the blob so I'm not entirely convinced.

That said, I can understand how some players with less sP might feel left out. As a compromise, maybe if this is done again it could be set up so votes scale in cost? Your first vote is free, you second vote costs 100k, and it increases exponentially from there? That way a rich player could throw 10x as much money at this as you do, but they only get twice the votes or something. That makes it so that your votes are weighed a little more evenly.

How was it not stated? The format was clear from the start (buy as many votes as you want for whatever combination of pets you want to spend them on). We also just had the fundraiser for the NPC wedding, which followed a similar format so it's not like this is entirely new.

I'm saying that calling it a "vote" implies that. It was always stated 100% the whole time this wasn't going to be a fair every vote counts the same contest, so I want to move it away from calling it something that inplies it was supposed to be fair in the first place.

I shouldn't post from my phone after two long days of pokemon go I guess. I'm tired and not as clear as I'd like to be haha

Edit: I'll change it to say and instead of but, I think that's what I meant :x

- That makes more sense. :P

Good, because if it didn't I was going to give up.

i really love hearing your circticisms. it's nice to hear more postive stuff around it, as i was scaffoled into thinking this was a bad thing. but i do think in some ways poorer players were left out. , I agree with you that this wasn't supposed to be fair in the first place. it was made very clear that this was going to be a more dedication based vote than a equal vote (also it makes more sense to call it something else than a vote, because calling it that is giving off the message of the latter) ( I know i'm just stating your comments, but they're something i do agree with) also, i love the compromise came up with. still makes it a sp sink, but gives some fairness. i'm not sure about the whole everything favors people with more resources thing. subeta have made sure that people on the cheaper side have not been left out (just look at dupe items for has based on cash shop/subq items), it's just that this was going to be a more richer thing than others

I don't mind the site using polls as an sP sink, but I do kind of wish things that affect the site on a fairly large scale (pet species/colours, locations or items being added, ongoing storytelling/characterization decisions for NPCs, etc.) would stick to "one user, one vote". Leave the "buy your way to victory" approach for more informal stuff like "what Morostide costume should Oatmeal wear this year" or "what colour scheme should Ian and Jaxon's wedding use".

It wasn't a vote, it was a kickstarter. You throw in "money" or in this case site scrip, and you get out Art.

I'm not really sure what "victory" is being bought here. Everyone can make a regularized Experiment pet now, not just the donors. The Experiment pets that are still Experiment are still pets even if they are not regularlized and for most of the decade I've been playing here there was no particular expectation by anyone that they would be.

I love 's idea about exponentially increasing the amount of sP per "vote". I'm sure there are plenty of users who still would have given as much as, if not more than, they did and overall it would've made more sP.

Knowing that a smaller group of people heavily influenced something that permanently affects the entire site feels pretty unfair, regardless of how strongly you feel about the experiments themselves. I personally don't care too much and I have a good feeling about more experiments becoming species in the future, maybe even giving the runners up a second chance.

Also I know I would dump sP down the drain to have Oatmeal be a rain cloud for Morostide.

I thought about the scaling vote thing for this, but then users with lots of money could just trade/give that money to other users. We kind of did that sort of trading thing during the Let's All Go To The Island plot when we were in two groups with gold accounts and questing and whatever. It would not be hard to make a forum group for pet votes.

Example, I'm spending all my money to make sure the 84 becomes a real pet. (that's never NOT going to be my example. heh.) Other users want that too. Chit chat in the forums about it. I've already purchased a lot of votes. Now it's 100 million for me to cast just one vote, but other users who say they want the same thing? My friends that I convince to get on to throw my money at that thing I want? I trade them some of my money, they buy more, smaller-cost votes. And, maybe they do, maybe they do not. Can't trust everyone. But, it would still be potentially more votes purchased with my 100 mil than the one vote that I could do with it. More votes for the 84 god, same money spent. It doesn't really stop me (generic me) from voting a lot of times with all of the money that I have for no other reason in particular. vote vote vote ugh. It sounds better, but that's not going to stop what happened with this one, unless you're (generic you) not considering how the system can be gamed.

Not that I don't like the idea. I also liked what we just did too. I kind of made the suggestion of it before. ha. I also would be fine with a one user, one vote thing too. Seriously. New pet colors for everyone forever. Easier to get experiment pets. It's great! Do whatever as long as the users get something out of it! Hell, even if the 84 was up for becoming a real pet and it lost? Eh. So what? It doesn't get rid of the ones that I already own and I can always just replace images myself, if I want to make them some other color. Never thought that experiment pets might get a chance for official changed colors and any one that does? That's good. Can't win everything and someone else is happy. Also good.

[sub]I don't think any of this is typed well, but it's staying this. Hope it makes enough sense and you can read it~[/sub]

I don't really have any complaints about the format but I'm not entirely invested in pets. I wanted my little squiddy to win but I still have one as an experiment and that isn't going to change.

I do think it's weird that I could have solely bankrolled a single pet to victory; the fact all totals fell below 1b is honestly quite surprising to me. That shows to me that people are overestimating the impact of richer users, in my opinion, because the amount spent was actually quite low.

Maybe a hard cap on spending would work but, really, I don't think it's a huge problem.

It'd be cool to see another cephalopod, if nothing else. Something with a little more edge to provide contrast, a more roguish, tough octopus would be fun. The squid is fabulous enough and nothing will top the bright pink fantasy for me so it'd be sweet to see it taken in another direction.

(I realise you aren't looking for suggestions but the idea of another marine creature tickles me so)

I think 's idea for a compromise should at least be taken into consideration the next time we have a donation-base poll like this, as it's a good way of trying to balance things out between those who have tons of sP and those who don't.

But anyway, I'm more disappointed in seeing users take out their frustrations on each other just because a certain pet won. Some of y'all need to chill, it's just a game.

I want a Stegosaurus like pet. I don't ask for much here.

I think the problem with these sorts of, whatever the hell this was, is an automatic assumption that it is not a democracy, but an oligarchy led by the rich users. Which causes a lot of bad blood to get spewed out in comments, every time. Never read the comments is something one should adhere to, but sometimes you just have to look at a train wreck. While, I realize life isn't fair, faux life should probably be a bit fairer as there is definitely the ability to control how things go. So, yes, I like the idea that first vote is free and everything then goes up exponentially from there.

Personally, I am probably considered one of those rich users, I gave money once to each pet I wanted to see, I only recall the pangolin as getting money, but pretty sure I gave to another, neither won. Anyway, I have been here a long time, and yes, I am on a fair amount, however, I don't play the sP sink game, so I do not contribute nine times out of ten. Rarely does it seem worth it. I won't do a lot of things if it involves stupid amounts of sP, cause I sure as hell haven't spent hours accruing my money to blow it on silliness (which is probably very silly because this is an online game and the worth of my account does not offer me any incentives in the real world), but I get peoples frustrations when they see someone state that they put 200mil into the pet "vote." Realistically, that person shouldn't have said anything, that was a very bad move and probably spurred a lot of the anger.

Finally, I think the blob is bloody stupid and do not look forward to it appearing in the news, not sure I've ever disliked a pet idea, but people do silly things, so, whatever.

Sooooo I somehow feel obligated to post since I may have single-handedly skewed things? K here we go.

This type of event is not fun.

For starters, most of the sP I contributed I had sitting idle in my shop till for months. It takes time to accumulate that much sP and yyyyeah not a lot of people have that much they're just willing to toss away. I could've done 2832479 other things with that sP. A lot of people don't have that much time to sit at their computer and accumulate that sort of money either. I know I certainly don't, between work and rl responsibilities at home I had to focus on only the most profitable quests to earn what I could to donate.

The big reason why (I think) people are so upset is that unless staff change their mind again, there's just no way for other experiments to become potential pets. The difference between this and donating for Ester and Emma's charity event is that all three of those will eventually have their time in the spotlight. They're just gonna be ordered depending on the amount of donations. This time around though? We were initially told that only one pet was gonna make it. Heck, if the first and second place pets weren't as close as they were, we would've only gotten a blob (under the assumption that I don't donate as much as I did).

Plus the process of donating was just bad. I don't enjoy spamming the enter key to donate as much as possible before the page refreshes. I can't even imagine trying to do this on mobile before getting frustrated after two minutes. If something like this was ever done again (please shinwa no), at least let there be the option to input a custom amount in increments of whatever. It'd be nicer on the servers too?

I realize this post was entirely critical, but yeah I did not enjoy this. I'm glad that my peacock child will become a real boy pet but 0/10 would not participate in something like this again.

I know that the site is in a need for an effective sP sink but using it for this kind of poll is not the way to go as it could easily be unjust and leave a bad taste. The results definitely suggests this comparing 3rd place's 302,100,000 sP grand total and 2nd's 857,100,000 sP which is a huge gap and obviously some people are going to be disappointed about that as it's their money that went to something that ended with nothing gained. It worked for the charities as the features were all going to eventually happen but this is just one pet (well now two) meaning more disappointment for some people.

The results of the two pets should've been most donated and popular to seem more fairer but it's a bit late to change that. Maybe better that the choice of experiments were 3 instead of 5 to avoid big disappointment. If an experiment poll was to happen again, either purely make it a one vote that doesn't cost or as suggested the 1st vote free but extra votes doubling up the cost.

While I do really appreciate this experiment poll as there are a few experiments that are definitely worth being full-fledged pets (as pets are the big reason why I'm here) I just don't feel that this was handled well at all.

I'm glad the blob won, I really am.

BUT MY SQUID THO.

We need an actual squidkid, . I need it yesterday. Until we get this, all of my posts will be Splatoon memes.

Honestly, I really wished that the experiments picked for the vote filled a niche, which was the case with the blob, squid and sloth/pangolin, especially. These three felt more unique and added things we don't really have on the site, and I hope it means we can get someting, at least with the squid.

CONGRATS CALLIE BLOB, YOU DESERVED IT