Hello, im back again!

I made a thread like this one a few years ago, and it feels like a good time to dust it off and start over!

By this point, I think it's pretty obvious that the CW market is suffering - and has been suffering for many years. It's become harder to submit new items, harder to fill batches, harder to sell second-hand items. A lot of cw releasers are leaving because of it, and there's very little new users to enjoy CWs anymore.

There are a lot of suggestions and ideas that I think could help make a difference, but often times I dont think they're voiced officially or all-in-one place, or they don't seem to be taken seriously. I know there are suggestions that can be implemented, others that can atleast be considered in the future.

So let's brainstorm new ideas that would ideally imply little technical contributions from subeta, so that we can make them happen! Ps. i know we all have great ideas and unrealistic expectations, but we're not the ones coding so let's be nice!

New ideas / suggestions!

(i need to update this section with links to post tonight!)

1. I'd like to see the "Must offer a csc option" for artists / writers / coders removed entirely. (Not just in the CW community, but the whole site.) Not every artist on Subeta should be required to be financially stable enough to donate their working hours to Subeta for nothing in return. The forums are free to everyone else, so artists shouldn't be charged to use them.

2. A full update to all CW guidelines, rules, and guides. All of them are horrifically outdated. I get asked questions all the time that only the people who are actively in the community could possibly know because they were there when it happened.

3. The CW database should finally be finished. Or at least, we should be given some serious updates on where this is. It's been over six months since I've heard word or wind.

4. Queue wait times should be given a look at by staff. The last few months, wait times have gotten really bad. I've had a few users just getting into CWs get incredibly discouraged waiting 7+ days for their item to be approved, and worrying they did something wrong. This drives away customers.

5. Make skin tone locked body mods / makeup / etc more easily accessible. Users of color should be able to feel welcome here. This applies to both staff taking a look at it, and artists and releasers also taking a look at this. As a community, we have the power here to be inclusive.

6. A gateway for people to jump into the community, in the form of a community driven shop. This is a big idea, so I don't think it'll be implemented but a feral can hope. -- First month of a new season, the site accepts submissions much like a CW contest that we've had in the past. -- For one week, users vote for their top 5. -- ANY entry with over --- (determined by staff) amount of votes is then approved and put into a community shop that is made entirely by users. -- Items in this shop cost sP as an sP sink. They are unlimited stock so there is zero fighting. -- Winning artists get a copy of their item and what ever staff deems fair / not economy breaking. (In case it's not clear, this should be run by the site, not by users.)

7. Custom items. I know I'm not the first to think of this, but I love the idea of being able to submit NO-USE item only customs. (No use meaning they could not be books, food, collection items, etc. They would be TC / gallery use only.)

Feel free to ping me for any kind of discussion / questions / etc. I'll reply as long as it remains respectful.

Hallo!

So I've only submitted a few CWs, and because of six one way half a dozen the other.. I fell off the bandwagon. However, I wanna chime in right here:

This. I would, get really into this (especially whenever non-unique names become a thing) in a big big way.

I'm not a wearable person (I get it, but it's not my jam) and I went hard into CWs for a while because of TCs and that reason alone. Sadly, $6+ for a single TC item is steep and I couldn't keep it up. Again, I get the cost but as I'm only interested in the item, I can't justify it.

But seeing as custom ITEMs would be... just an item... I assume it'd be a lot cheaper and if done correctly, could be loads of fun and I'd be making quite a ton of them. By done right, I basically mean we don't need private items... we don't need batches... these should be a plain and simple it costs x to submit, goes into a shop for sale for x cost, unlimited, and you get a percentage of the cut for each item sold. If someone wants something private, the CW system already exists. I'd be BIG MAD if I suddenly needed a idk, 6 pack of water bottles for a TC only to find the custom item is private.

I know this has been shot down before because then staff feel like that six pack of water bottles is locked down but really... I just want this item for a TC. If staff make one too, great now I have TWELVE bottles of water and I can die happy.

The only downside, really, is cost. I'm not paying $6 for some water. I'll just find something else or veto needing it. As the items would literally have no other function (they can't, 100% support the items having no use other than galleries/TCs), I wouldn't pay more than $2.50 for an item.

I really like all of these ideas , particularly the gateway!

I know it seems a bit harder to implement, but I definitely think that people's outside perspective of CWs is... less than fun. And a lot of it has to do with how complicated the submission, slotting and overall getting around process is confusing. Seeing as CWs bring back a lot of business, I fail to see how attracting new CW users would be a waste of time or resources.

I also want to echo the queue time. It's often very long and discourages people from submitting. It should be looked at at a minimum once every 2 days. I understand that it is not a fulltime job, but people pay for CWs, they pay to get their items onsite. It should not be normal that they have to wait up to a full week to get an acceptance or denial on the item they submitted.

It's late in the day and my thoughts are doing the adhd thing where I think part of the sentance, and only say half of it.. sorry! The cost for submission would have to be high enough to justify staff dealing with it for sure; it shouldn't, in theory, be as extensive of a review as there's no layering/only a single image verses item/male/female. I wouldn't expect the submission to cost $2.50, but to purchase from another user in their CI shop.

I also say $2.50 as that's the cost of a collection item, which a lot of users still find too steep. If it were cheaper, it'd probably have more appeal to the masses but then it turns into a case of "would it be worth the trouble of dealing with".

It could potentially be a stepping stone from CIs to... hey maybe I'd like this wearable, maybe I'll turn it into a CW instead! My appeal would be the item, personally though.

I stopped making CWs for reasons, but one of them was the lack of a PC. I use my phone these days for art, and while I could easily make items... positioning stuff on a base via sketchbook just isn't worth the trouble -laughs-

I'm in favor of pretty much all of the suggestions so far.

I'd also agree that the guides/guidelines/rules needs to be much better organized and presented. There needs to be one easy spot (on the CWs main page honestly) that contains that information.

I also think we really need the pricing categories to be broken down better as well as restructured. I know that there are things that people have submitted that shouldn't cost nearly as much as they have but are that way because of the current breakdown. This has definitely been brought up before as well.

Bangs/Single Hair Extensions only should not cost the same as a full wig. Tiny devil horns shouldn't be counted as a body mod when some are smaller than a shirt and less detailed, etc etc.

I am not sure how labor intensive it would be, because I'm not on the back end, but I think that we need a lot more clarity in those categories and a lot less of lumping things together. Like, I had to submit a ticket to figure out how to submit a bathing suit way back when because it's less clothing than a dress but also no category to fit it into. The overall pricing scheme has pushed out a lot of people because why make/submit something that's going to cost so very much? ((I mean, if I submit underwear that is small-ish, it still costs at least 2k per batch...which is a lot for a very small scrap of clothing, but it's a bottom so that's the category it has to go in)).

I also think we really need to do something about unique limbs. Right now, as discussed in this topic[/ul] and also [url=https://subeta.net/forums.php/read/904573]this other topic, if you want to submit unique limbs that aren't covered over by clothing, you either have to go with the most popular user skin tone or run the risk of having to cover submissions entirely yourself. I don't know if there's something that can be done on the back end regarding this, but I really wish we could find some way, especially with the new wardrobe Keith is working on, to make it so that either the site can do a skin tone color fill like is done with on-site transformables or if there can be skin tone change only bundle deals on recolors (like, you submit the 'primary' color but can add additional files where the only change is the skin tone for X amount per recolor) and it can either be transformable (the best option) or after the initial approval, can be batched at normal recolor pricing. This is likely something that definitely has to happen with the help of programmers but I wanted to revisit it, because inclusivity will never be a bad thing.

I know I had more thoughts, but I can't get my brain to remember them right now.

One idea for the submission that I know would significantly help me: if an item is a recolor - choosing the item it is a recolor of automatically sets the wardrobe layer and type of item for you so you don't have to cross your fingers and hope you've put it in the right spot as you did last time. I think this would help reduce the amount of item correction tickets that have to be made later for CWs (I have more I need to actually submit of items I've found where some colors are in one layer and some are in a different layer). I know this would also be a programmer job and would depend on whether the site stores/remembers what type of item you submit each item as, but it would be immensely helpful and cut down time for sure.

Also I think "Batch Limit" needs to be renamed to "Copy Limit" or something similar since it's now technically showing the number of copies (minor change but does make a difference in understanding for folks). It would also be helpful to adjust some of the text in there because while a batch is 5 copies, you cannot submit in multiples of 5, only in multiples of 10, so some of that needs to be redone as well.

Also, there's currently an issue if you accidentally click the unisex file upload or one of the gendered overlay uploads and don't realize. There's no way to remove a file put in the wrong spot - you have to reload the page and start from scratch. I know that for sure is a programmer issue but it would be helpful if there was a way to remove a file that was accidentally uploaded instead of starting over.

I'd also suggest adjusting the uploads page so that your latest upload appears at the top rather than the bottom. Sometimes items are still waiting payments etc and depending on how many files one is uploading at once, there's a lot of unnecessary scrolling to get to the latest item to input slotter names/costs to get it actually submitted and have those payment pings sent out.

Prefacing this post by saying I literally just woke up so if I make spelling or grammar errors, or just don't make sense please let me know haha.

I completely agree that CIs would need to be cheaper, and that a system that prevents all the drama that CWs have would be 100% ideal. At this point we can see all the mistakes that were made when CWs were implemented, so implementing CIs could be done so much better now that information like that has been learned. And also staff will never be able to fill all the niche things people need for TCs, there is literally no way lmao. I can name about 50+ items I need for TCs that staff has no priority to make.

Honestly most of the reason I think people haven't brought up the queue time is because we all do realize you're just one person and that life happens, so we've been trying to be patient. I don't know the site's financials, but I do think there should be a minimum of 2 people working on the queue so that one person doesn't feel 100% of the pressure when their life gets busy, just like yours has. I don't mean to be cruel, but this wasn't just a few weeks of slow times, it's been months now. The holidays were very stressful trying to make sure everything made it / we didn't get any communication from staff or anything about any of this. It's unfortunate that all of this lies on you, when it could potentially be a shared load. I feel like that's exactly what happened to the previous person working the queue, and they got the brunt of people's rage which was unfair and could have been solved with two workers.

Also the community shop-- this is why I specified every SEASON. It would be a 4 times a year thing, or even it could be reduced to 2-3 times a year. I was absolutely not suggesting once a month. That's crazy and yes, would seriously impact the queue times in a bad way. But this is something that would encourage people to put their toe in the water and try out actual CWs, which are much more profitable and quicker than only a few times a year.

As for improvements to the submission process, I personally would like to see an easy way to re-submit in the case of a denial OR in the case of a submission you make an error on and need to immediately delete and resubmit. Right now that's the most inconvenient part to me. If it saved the submission form and you could just click 'edit' for either situation, that would be super ideal. (Editing should/could not take place if people had been submitted in the slot section.)

I completely agree about price restructuring. I've been super on the fence about wanting to do 'body mods' because I'm not paying 2500 csc to submit these tiny horns or little ears I want. Yikes. I actually have a LOT of sketches that fit this category but I haven't bothered because I remember I'll have to pay out the butt for them and they're very small. =/

Hello my dear Cathii! Thanks for the ping, I'm always up for some CW discussion! <3

I feel like the ball is in subeta staffs' court, honestly - the biggest improvements to the CW market are going to be ones that require time and attention from staff. But since it seems like you're asking for ideas that users could work toward, I'll brainstorm a bit!

[box=#ccccff]Ideas that users could implement:[/box]

1. Tutorials - everyone has their own unique way of drawing CWs, it would helpful and interesting if there were a thread with step-by-step instructions for creating a CW by various artists, either with links to off-site content or demonstrated right it the thread.

2. Denials - the CWhelp thread is incredible, and has helped me a number of times! Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there used to be a thread with denied items, explaining why they were denied and how they were corrected? That would also be helpful for new artists.

3. User-generated contests/games/events: - I KNOW these are a lot of work, but I feel like there is always a positive response to events when they're hosted. I'd love to see more activity in this way, aside from the standard dance/kiss/flower me for a slot events.

4. Welcoming committee: - this is a variation on an idea I've had for a long time. A group of users that could be on the lookout for new artists/releasers and be able to point them in the right direction. As said, the official CW guidelines etc are extremely outdated and confusing, but there is a lot of very useful user-made content if people know where to look! There are also lot of helpful ping groups that are impossible to find with the current group system that could be shared with new artists/releasers.

5. Individual commitment to reselling for slot price: - This is something that can't be policed or decided on by anyone but the individual, but I believe the recent uptick in users saving certain CWs for "trades" or listing them for 2, 3, or 4 times above slot is really damaging the CW market. Artificial over-valuation of items means that users are fighting over a few popular items, less willing to slot on CWs that they like (but don't think would be popular to resell/trade), and hampering new users' ability to acquire items secondhand because they're either super expensive, locked behind "trade-only" wall, or being hoarded for their "value" even if the user that owns that item has no real intention of using it regularly.

Disclaimer: I'm not super active in the resale market, but this is my take based on a little observation. I'm beginning to believe that the exclusivity problem of CWs that always gets brought up in public discussions now relates more to resales than it does private items. Users that don't participate heavily in the initial slotting of items are looking for them secondhand, but more and more items are priced for trade these days. The average user has only a few CWs that they cherish or are "low-value" items purchased from the pawn shop, so this trading market is limited only to the "wealthier" users who have a large stock of items at their disposal, or else have the financial ability to cough up thousands of CSC.

[edit] Number 5 is not so much a do this or else suggestion, more of some food for thought. The reselling community is the way that it is for a lot of reasons, and it won't change overnight. Collecting, reselling, profiting off of sales, acquiring rare cws via trades, etc, are all fun for some users and I imagine won't ever go away entirely because, like and have expressed below, there is an element of basic supply and demand at work! And I am not morally judging anyone that sells for higher than slot, or reserves for trade. But I think it's good to think about the other side too.

6. More site-specific activity in general: The CW commissions and discussions forum is so dead (I fully accept my part in this too. :(). I could be wrong, but has a lot of this activity moved to Discord? I'm not actually on Discord (rip...I know, I know!), so I don't know, but I would love to see some revitalization of the site spaces. I know Discord is way more fun and convenient to use, so I'm not sure what's to be done here.

[box=#ccccff]Ideas that would require staff intervention:[/box]

1. UPDATES: - again, as mentioned, almost everything official related to CWs is outdated. Frankly, just about everything regarding CWs needs an update. I would love to see an additional part-time staff added to the CW side of things, so that isn't shouldering both the queue and the responsibility to maintain official CW-related content. Since retired from the position, I don't believe there have been any updates to the old old staff threads on the CW forums, for instance, and I imagine that it's because is hella strapped being the only one to manage the queue outside of their full-time job.

• Explain CWs/CW shops in the newbie tutorial.

• Submission Page - Needs a few tweaks for language (see: cults are no longer a thing), could use updated art, and very much needs links to more helpful threads. Some explanation of how to use/sell CWs (including cw forums and CW shops, slots, batches etc) needs to be here, as these things are referred to on the Create page but a true newbie would have no idea what any of this is.

• Echoing a need for a categorization/submission overhaul. Submission prices are too high/outdated for almost all categories, wording on this page is generally confusing (ie. submit groups of 5, but can only choose multiples of 10 for batches)? That wording has always been confusing to me.), Direct-to-Shop is too expensive for what it is to be useful, etc. More discussion on DTS here.

• This thread and this one need to be completely rewritten and updated as needed to reflect the current state of CWs. Items that would have been denied into oblivion 5 years ago are now perfectly acceptable due to a gradual transition in acceptable styles, for example. Batch numbers, pricing, etc, have changed. These threads are actually actively detrimental to anyone looking for info about CWs, rather than being useful or neutral.

2. Reduced price to submit recolors: either in general, or at least for skintone recolors. Could also be a GA perk. More discussion on this here and here.

3. More staff involvement/promotion of CWs: I love the idea of occasional CW contests as both an entry to CWs and a way to introduce CWs to users as a whole, but I understand those are very time-consuming to deal with. I just want to see staff promoting CWs more in general, though. They've always been, for the most part, tucked away from usual site activity, and you have to actively hunt to find them and learn about them, instead of being a normal part of site activities and commerce. The new CW shops are awesome, but I've encountered several people that don't even know how they function. There's no spotlight on CW artists/shops, no special sales or promotions except at BF, no involvement during events unless users host their own holiday threads, and so on. This has always been confusing to me as I know that CWs are a large part of the site economy, yet the entire community is basically left to users to manage on their own in a disjointed, inconsistent way. Individual users are excpected to manage the actual process of obtaining art, submitting it, selling it AS WELL AS stimulate engagement, help new users, explain various processes, and so on.

Here's another place where a second CW staff would come in handy. Staff involvement should extend beyond just managing the queue, but as it is the queue is all that one overworked staff person can manage. :/

4. CW Database: It's been so long since I read anything about this that I don't remember what it's supposed to entail, but I think submitter, artist, number of copies submitted, number of recolors, and retirement status are all points of info that are available to the site and the submitter. I would assume a database could pull this info automatically, so I personally would be happy with just this.

5. Just Cis - expressed my support for this in this thread, though now I do agree that this custom items should notcount toward collections/achievements.

In regards to point 5 about reselling for profit... Anyone who WANTS to actively help this problem go away can start by simply: Not making super low batch counts.

Now obviously I'm specifying people who actively want this to change, and this isn't for everyone to HAVE to do or anything, but 99% of those items being resold for crazy amounts were popular but limited so almost no one could get copies at all.

I personally have set myself a goal this year to batch everything at 30 copies or higher (higher for items that I think are either going to be more popular or very versatile). And then, in addition to that... Stop retiring those items out of your shop, and let them naturally sell out even if that takes 10 years.

People cannot sell the copy for extra, if there are copies still available.

((We cannot have 'high value items' and 'no mark ups' at the same time. We have to pick which one we want more and strive for it. Either the releaser has control over the value of their item by submitting more copies even if they aren't all released at the same time, or customers have the control because we didn't submit enough for everyone. But we have to pick one, because we cannot control other people.))

Yeah, I do agree with you to an extent! Basic economics is basic economics, but not all of the items I've been seeing for sale in user shops at "trade prices" have been super limited batch numbers. This is a weak argument on my point because I can't remember specific examples in shops, but I do get the impression that some item lines and/or artists are earmarked as popular/valuable and end up getting automatically priced higher, perpetuating a false over-valuation.

But yeah, more copies released is a good idea if individuals are up for it! I've been toying with the idea of a 30 slot minimum for a while now, as well. The batch limits discussion from a while back had so much good discourse in it, yet I've still stalled on making a real decision for myself. Good time to rethink things I suppose!

ah i understand! Admiteddly im not a huge TC person so I don’t know how much is an okay amount to spend on an individual item (not just a few expensive ones, but filling chests with cw-ci items!) But I do think it would have a nice potential for side income if all the items were always available at a smaller price, and it would tie to pet / tc people as well (although like i said, I dont know if this would be considered too expensive)

as said, I think we all understand that you are only one person taking care of the queue, and that’s why a lot of times no one says anything about it. But the truth is that when people pay for a service, they shouldn’t have to wait a whole week. It’s really not your fault, and I know you are busy and have other things to do. But would this mean we should have another part time staff? Volunteers if subeta would ever allow any? A different work repartition? Whichever the scenario is, whatever the solution may be, I think in the end it should benefit the submitters who spend money on this site. I know it’s a touchy subject, and illustrates is better than I do, but I really think there needs to be a solution somewhere because this is driving so many people off!

I also agree about the community shop being a seasonal thing - much like the quest shop or the millionnaire shop. I even think this could more or less take the place of cw contests, which always seem so controversial no matter how it’s handled.

Regarding the submission process, I’d personally really like to get rid of that double way : either we slot through the slotting system, or we slot through the cw shop. I personally think every approved item should make it to the cw shop directly. After that, whether you want to make it public or send invites is up to you, but it’s really difficult to explain to a newer user how they can either submit for 1 copy + shop or 5 copies in inventorie, and how they differ but are both similar. All the users ive ever had to explain or guide through submission told me it was far more complicated than it should be. A few of them gave up trying to demystify this. Could there be a tutorial explaining the submission process? Yes. Could it still be streamlined so that you dont need to read 2 different ways of submitting? Also yes!

Regarding tutorials, I think some of the basic should be the way cws are created. As someone else said, everyone has their own way of shading etc, so it can be tricky. However, there are fondamentals that can be used by everyone, such as layering distribution, source light, lineart consistency etc. Those are things that would definitely help a new user to understand how they can translate their art and their illustrations into CWs. We also really, really need a visual denial guide somewhere. I know a partial one exists, but it doesn't cover the major denial reasons, and doesn't illustrate it well enough for users to understand what can be changed.

hi buddy, we meet again!

I am concerned about because well.. it’s not something that can be policed. And i dont think it’s something that should, either. If we had a healthier market, a lot of this issue would quiet down but I dont think even morally forcing people to abide to a certain price tag would be fair. Also, I can say that a lot of the princier items arent sold for as much anymore - they are traded. Mind you, this is a different problem that can be frustrating, but I don’t see items prise at 3k or 5k being bought in csc, which I think is an improvement over our situation years ago!

People make 10 copies because that’s all that sells nowadays. When they make it 30, no one slots because ‘it’s too easy to find’. We’re creating one problem by enabling another one. Because there’s not enough buyers overall. In the better world, i’m certain almost every releaser would rather sell 30 copies than 10 because that’s more profit, but it just doesn’t happen anymore. It’s not like we want to cut down on our profit just to make sure we get 9 slotters (and even so, that can sometimes be a stretch). I do find it frustrating when an item is only 10 copies too, because if you don't slot on it, chances are you'll never find it or you'll have to pay a whole lot to get it afterwards. If our economy was better, this wouldn't happen as often. As of now, I can't blame people for making it 10 copies when they know it's the only way to fill the whole thing. It sucks, and I wish it was different, but... that's one of the limited solutions it seems.

I know anything to do with reselling is a touchy subject, I just wanted to bring it up as "food for thought" because I do think that the current selling market has far-reaching effects on the cw community as a whole and how the site users view it. I know it can't be policed, nor should it be, but we as individual users can think about what we're doing, how we're pricing items, etc, and decide the costs and benefits of that. I know that most items priced at 3k and above are reserved for trade, but my point still stands. Withholding items to be trade-only means that some items are considered to be more valuable than others, which encourages users to only slot on similar "valuable" items and makes it harder for items to be acquired secondhand. Trade-only status is actually a bit worse than literally asking for 3k CSC, because saving 3k is doable for all users, whereas acquiring SUPER RARE (often what traders are looking for) items for trade is a lot harder.

I agree with you that submission, slotting, + use of cw shops could really be streamlined. The whole process is so needlessly complex.

I've been waiting for this sort of thread to pop up, so thank you. It's been a while since I've entered the CW market and I would like to see actual changes to the system. One can hope, yes? Long post ahead.

First off, I'd like to bring up changing the submission costs of CWs in general.

One of the biggest complaints of the pawn shop drama a few years ago was that CWs are expensive at regular prices. People were upset at it being closed down was because it was cheaper, and for other reasons that I will not go into further here. I continue to see such comments about the pawn shop being affordable in later pawn shop opening announcements. In my opinion it would be nice to adjust the prices to base off the pawn shop's prices. I'll be honest, when the pawn shop opened this year I actually bought csc in a long time. I think more people would enter the market if CWs are cheaper.

I would also like to see some changes to the pricing categories, preferably based on the size of the overlay. An example to go with what I am talking about here. A tiny mask such as should not cost 700 csc. I can get one in real life for that amount of csc. I think it should count as a medium accessory, charing at 600 csc at our prices right now.

Finally, many of us have old items from years ago that we never got to submit because they don't sell well in the forums. Yet, people do like them. I often find that people have my older items in their WLs sometime after the item has made it on site. If the normal submission prices will not change, at least change the DTS price so it is actually useful again. Again, adjusting the submission prices will allow us to charge our items at cheaper prices, making our CWs more accessible to those who aren't able to afford it.

There was a thread about DTS submission costs in the same section a few weeks ago. A few of us had a short discussion on how this might go: https://subeta.net/forums.php/gotopost/64244037

Second, the CW queue. I am disappointed at how it is handled. CWs are already costly enough for us to submit, and we have to wait a week to get any feedback. I understand that there is only one person doing the queue, but it is so frustrating to see some items being in the queue for weeks without a yes or a no from our admin. Or that we have the items up in a week only to have a denial for shading issue in one small spot. I personally have not experienced many denial issues, but I have friends who had their items stuck in the queue for a long time only to receive a denial weeks later. Again, bringing up the issue of categories here as well. Why should I get a denial and resubmit an item under "unique limbs" instead of sweater? What is exactly the point of the second category? It does not show up in the wardrobe. They're both in the same pricing category, and I have to wait for my slotters to pay to help get it on site and another week for it to see it on site.

I'd like to say that some items were initially accepted under a cheaper category, such as the and the had their recolors later forced to be resubmitted under a pricier category. Why not deny it and ask the releasers to put it in the proper category the first time? This caused us so much frustration as releasers and slotters due to category inconsistency.

Third, this has more to do with the releasers/the community itself. As said above, we should pick one way to slot for consistency. I personally favor slotting through our CW shop rather than through the forums. The forums in recent years haven't been working out well due to pings and edits being broken. Many people complained about having to interact with us to just buy an item, and I get that. I would prefer leaving my items in my CW shop unlocked so whoever wants a copy can buy one without any interaction. It would be less stressful for me personally. This also links to my first point about DTS/submission prices. I think more people would join CWs if we make it easier on both the releasers and the buyer.

I've only briefly skimmed through the responses here, but I agree with a majority of the ones I've seen. I hope to see some actual changes that will benefit all of us.

I totally understand it being frustrating, and there’s a bunch of wl items I have that I’ll likely never find. But the reason why it’s so hard to find is that at its core, the market is suffering. People only slot 10 copies, sometimes because it can’t do more, sometimes because it’s all they can fill. And some users believe it wont be popular enough and just submit privately. I'm sure there's a way of changing this way of thinking over time, but it's pretty spread.

Say you had 1 of 7 copies available and 50+ people wanted it. I'm not saying you should auction the thing but would you really sell it for slot price? Should people make you feel bad for wanting a little bit more than what you paid for, considering the market has always been about supply and demand? I feel like morally judging people who overprice or trade-only their items isn’t going to improve the situation any better seeing as there will always be people to do it anyway. Would it be nicer, fairer to sell at slot price only, or to be at the very least reasonable? Sure and we'd probably be in a much better place if that were the case. But there'll always be people to do it their own way and they shouldn't be shunned and publicly pointed at for doing so when they're not technically un-allowed. At this point this should be subeta's policy to control that supply and demand and inflation, not for users to do 'what is right' because that's such a large book definition, we'll find a lot of conflicts within it im sure.

I'm not trying to disagree with you, as I also think it's irritating to find an item at such a huge markup that it's virtually impossible to get. But I also think it's not our place to point fingers at people who do it if it's not an actual rule, because it just creates a lot of division!

(PS i didnt know we could do purple bar backgrounds, this is so useful for seperating!)

Also echoing again about the submission category. I for once have been active and drawing for oever 8 years, and sometimes I still wonder which category I'm supposed to select. What of a mod sweater, or a headband, or a hybrid piece that takes up two body categories? It really shouldn't be that hard to figure out what it is (nor should it be as frustrating to have the item denied one week later for being 'in the wrong category'.)

Adding to about cw shops and consistency. I'd personally also rather have my items stuck in a cw shop for people to buy. It's easier, more convenient, less stressful. I know a bunch of releasers who delay submitting new items because they find the whole process stressful. So there's files out there waiting to be submitted, people who would like to submit their own things, but who just don't. Submission process shouldn't be as complicated or stressful as that!

If we went down the route of cw shop submission only though, I do think there should be a central page revamp. A better search engine, filtering by category, having a shop directory etc.

I 100% agree with you on all points, I really do! I don't want anyone to be shamed or shunned! I added a small edit to my original post to hopefully clear that up. I just wanted to express my feelings about the resale market and how it appears to be damaging the CW community, in my opinion. It's a nuanced issue and if the CW market was healthier as a whole, easier to enter, cheaper to submit/buy, I do think it would make the resales market less of an issue. Back in the day when the CW community was big and bustling, popular items still sold for more, but there was a LOT more variety of items and opportunities to buy things you like, so it didn't sting as much to have some items become harder to obtain. (I do not personally collect or seek trade-only/popular items, just making a general statement).

[edit] The purple bar bg is a box! It's a newish thing that they added to scode a while back

[box=#colorhere] type type [/box]

and I 100% agree with you that it hinders our market too! It's a touchy subject because it's true but it's also extremely hard to change its outcome. In a way, it's almost a passive remark about a situation we have little hope of changing. I agree that back in the day, there was a lot more diversity which made 'missing on an item' not that big of a deal because there was a lot of different items for everyone to enjoy. I find nowadays that there are little new items compared to recolors. So it becomes a bit.. redundant.

Edit :

Incoming COLOR CODED CATEGORIES [box=#ebaf3a] this is gonna be so much cuter [/box]

Yeah, you're completely right about little hope of changing the situation, as it's all up to individual buyers and sellers. I personally decided to sell items at around slot price if I decide to sell, but I can't ask anyone else to do so. I'm a bit of privileged situation anyway, since most of what I'm selling are artist copies of my commissions, and the commissions themselves give me a lot of extra CSC to play with. I don't need to resell things for high prices to drum up money that way. shrug I didn't intend the statement to be passive aggressive, but I can see how it might be read that way.

The boxes are the best. I totally overuse them because I always write SO much, my posts are massively in need of organization. XD

[box=#ffcccc]Community CW Shop[/box]

I really like the ideas above for seasonal/event-related CW contests, and second that a special shop be created for submissions. These would be unlimited items and accessible year-round to everyone on site. It could be the "face" of Custom Wearables that users interact with first to get a feel for them, before diving into user-run shops.

Caveat: unlike the previous CW contests, I believe that all items in the Community Shop should be credited. Just something as simple as "submitted by User" would suffice - so that buyers can understand that CWs are not created by staff members, but by members of a community that they can learn more about and interact with. If I buy a Community CW by , I might want to go look her up to see what other stuff she's made. If I buy a blue wig , I'm just going to drop it into my wardrobe with nary a thought to who made it or why.

The people who only slot on items that are rare / difficult to find are the people who want to resell it later for crazy prices. So if they're the people that we don't want doing what they're doing, then we have to stop catering to them. People who simply like the item for what it is, will slot on the item regardless. So much like I said, you have to decide which is more important? Not having your item resell for crazy prices later, or providing everyone an equal opportunity?

I'm well aware people slotting is definitely at an all time low. I nearly lose money on every single item I submit. The question I have to ask myself, and other releasers should ask themselves too is "Do I have to sell every single copy I put onsite?" and for every person this is going to be different.

For me personally, the answer is No. I don't have to sell every single copy of the item. Instead I would rather just have it available. Maybe I'll sell a copy or two a year. Maybe it'll sell out during black friday?? I don't know, but for me (and this is 100% just me, I am not telling anyone how to think or feel about their own releases) it kills me to see people come to me asking about an item that I capped due to 'low interest' and now it's absolutely impossible to find because the only people who DO have a copy are people who will never let it go.

Ironically, I don't have a problem with people reselling their items for over priced amounts. It's their item to do with what they want. My bad for not taking advantage of the interest the item would had have when it was released / or later. And I take responsibility for putting them in a position to take advantage of my mistake.

There is nothing that can be done about past items. Whether they were low batch counts or just super old and most of them are in permanent homes or on locked accounts, those items aren't even able to really be a part of the discussion here. We can only prevent the issue in the future by taking actions now. If it upsets you to see your own releases used like this, you can do something about it (and make your own choices about what is right for your items). If you're upset due to items completely out of your control, there is nothing you can do really. Maybe message the releaser and ask that they consider more copies of a recolor in the future or something, but otherwise, it's out of your control and I'm sorry if it's stressing you out.

we have this baby collection at work that is, i kid you not, this exact stade of pink! It’s so soft and cute and urgh ;;

Okay back to regular topic : I agree with the community shop being a sort of ‘front door’ to CWs. It’s a chance to ‘meet’ some artists, learn about their style, what they do etc. It could be available all-year round like the mill center, or maybe rotated like the seasonal quest shop? There's definitely something to do with it, and while it may not be a direct source of income for subeta at first, I really think this would open the community as a whole to new potential buyers, which is what the market cruelly needs right now!

I may be wrong here, but here's a quote from 's post just above yours :

It's true that every person will have a different opinion and a different way of doing. But - and again I may be wrong and am only speaking for myself -, I feel what Tartelette is saying. Because when we submit things, as artists, we avoid a part of the cost poured into making the item an onsite cw. We don't need to pay an artist to draw for us. I'd say almost every cw artist has more csc lying around than the average releaser. It likely gives us an edge and a certain flexibility with how much things can sell and whatnot. For all this, I think it's frustrating when something doesn't sell, just because there's just not enough users left to potentially buy said item.

As an example, I submitted a bunch of items for black friday 2019 and atleast half of them haven't even sold enough to break even. Two of the items literally had 0 copies sold, outside my own and the one I gifted away. And that's not necessarily because the item wasn't desirable, but because people chose what they could spend on, and that particular item might've not made the cut. I like to believe that people would slot on an item regardless, but seeing as most things don't fill more than 5-10 copies, I don't think that's exactly to our benefit right now. In my case, the huge loss of csc from BF submissions wasn't too hard to absorb. But most of my non-artist releaser friends would have a lot of trouble recovering from that loss and wouldn't be able to wait until the copies slowly sold, as it would put them on hold for the next release altogether.

It's definitely a delicate balance, one that I think can be actively fought with a healthier cw economy. But we're lacking solutions, both on subeta's and our parts, to make that happen, and it's been tanking for years now.