Just wondering. I can't decide if I wish there were more people online at any given time or if ~400-600 is a good amount, enough to keep things lively but not inspire insane amount of competition. It seems like pet sites don't really advertise these days. Like, if I search "pet site" I don't get much but if you peruse Reddit forums for just a little bit you'll see people chiming in for all the different pet sites they play. And, do you think the lack of Reddit community for Subeta is due to the freedom we have in the actual forums?

I'm unsure, but I've heard that the bigger a fan community gets the more toxicity shows up.

Certain controversies on here (Masq 2020, pet naming changes, profile Armageddon) might have been even worse with a bigger userbase.....

Pet sites have kind of fallen out of favor with the general public, and newer ones are just that - Newer, built upon newer codebases, newer features, and newer things people want. Staff tries here, but this site is a relic, and I'm not sure if you can revamp the entire foundation of the game here without changing what people like about it!

I do wish we had more users like in the past (mainly because it's mildly annoying when buying and selling transactions take days because people are busy - More people, more chances to buy an item quicker, less chance of me going "Will they respond to my comment before the heat death of the universe happens?"), but I understand that we're somewhat stuck in 2009.

I'm so-so on the number of active, playing users tbh, but I have definitely seen a bit of a drop during site holidays. We'll see if Halloween/Morostide manages to get us past 600 users online, I'm hoping it will.

Personally, I don't play as much. Subeta has definitely lost a lot of its old spark for me. The site just... exists right now? The holidays and news posts go out as scheduled, programming is... sort of happening??, it's mostly staff running to douse bug fires during events. Even with the nostalgia factor, there's little else to keep me interested now that all my friends have moved on.

That same nostalgia factor is something the site should definitely capitalize on if it wants to get more people to play, especially after the Neopets NFT debacle. Update the code on the back end, that's common sense, but don't lose the general nostalgic vibe of the site. Neopets is doing that with its "site revamp" and boy howdy, does the site look bad. But all that aside, I haven't seen any visible incentive on making use of the nostalgia vibe from Subeta? No idea if there's been talk of it behind the scenes, I'm just giving my two cents on what I can currently see.

The serious lack of Subeta advertisement (newsletter??? what is a newsletter, is it edible???) doesn't help at all, imo. I am still super annoyed that we haven't had a newsletter letting people know that petnames are non-unique now. That's kind of a super big deal for all of the people who liked making characters with their pets, and we had zero effort to get old users curious about playing again with that news. Hell, recently we haven't even had a post on the official Twitter regarding the Masquerade starting, or even Vesnali. Staff are struggling to maintain their current social media platforms, I don't think adding a Subeta Reddit would make things any easier. The only active (and actively maintained) offsite platform I know of is the Subeta discord.

Personally, I'm all for a smaller site with dedicated staff to keep things interesting, even if I do only really pop up for Masq anymore.

In the recent months, I've had some very bad experiences with larger userbases and while I miss Subeta's days of +1000 users being online, I'm glad it's done with. Do I have to run in the CW circles to get some friends here? Probably, but what kind of friends can be bought?

I miss the newsletter, I miss the new lines for Vanity every so often, and I miss the wigs but I understand that there's other things needing focus to keep this place running. I'd rather have site running, first off. Secondly, I'd rather have the responsive staff that can handle individual cases. And...

That's about it for me, tbph.

I'm not a Subeta investor, so I have little reason to care if there are a lot of users.

I'm okay with Subeta being small and slow, now. I can find my excitement elsewhere, which isn't really a bad thing. I had my fun with this site, but it shifted away from my interests so I'm just...not that interested anymore.

I'm aging, I'm getting close to 40. I'm not exactly the target audience for things anymore.

I feel the aging part - I'll be 33 in August, I'm not in the target audience either, but I also feel that I've spent an embarrassing amount of money here and should remain... to some degree.

Sunk Cost Fallacy? I feel you, my dude.

I would like it if we did have a big userbase like we used to. But not to the point where we have to put up with toxic players who gang up on others.

Or post anonymous shit in those Tumblr burn books, because they have a personal beef with someone. Or act like only their opinion matters, and no one else is allowed to have a say. I'm glad we lost those toxic users. They also cost us a chunk of our userbase.

And many of those refuse to even step foot back on the site, due to the old saying "Once bitten, twice shy." Hell, we even lost players because of poor decisions made by staff that have yet to be remedied. I stay here because we don't get treated like we're in a daycare, and have them be overly conservative and overbearing like both Neopets and Gaia Online became. How is Gaia Online still even up and running if everyone left?

They ruined that site when the site staff decided to act like a bunch of pearl clutchers. If site staff ever pulled that shit here, I would be gone in a heartbeat.

As a player, I definitely like a smaller userbase.

But realistically, as someone who wants the site to continue indefinitely we NEED more regular players. We need people buying CSC and spending cash onsite. Staff need to be paid, resources need to be bought/maintained, etc. That's not going to happen with a tiny userbase, and definitely won't be happening with a disinterested, wishy-washy userbase.

We need more players, and we also need those passionate players (some of whom will be toxic). My hope, though, would be to gradually add more people and not get a sudden influx.

I plead the Fifth.

Knowing how prone the servers are to collapsing -- yes, I'm fine with this number.

When it comes to keeping the site alive (or at least, alive with far less stress), I would love to see more users. New users are also exciting in general and help things grow.

Which results in an unfortunate catch-22.

i do wish there were more users like it used to be. it sometimes really feels like a ghost town. and i understand that it can't be run the same as all those years ago but it creates a viscous cycle that only ends with less and less users. a few months ago i decided to drop my subscription tier from $15 to $5 because i couldn't justify it anymore. how many others have done similar? and then the next step is stop playing altogether...

when custom wears first came out i thought they would be the downfall of accessibility in making avatars (i think i was right) and it bothered me so much i didn't use subeta for a few years. then when i came back cults were gone? i actually still don't know what happened; i guess forum groups were meant to be a replacement? that was where i got a sense of community, but when i came back cults were gone and virtually all my friends had stopped playing. :/

i see the same most recent posts in most subforums for days sometimes. i tried looking at the discord but it's really just not the same...

but i know how keith views the site (and i don't think he's wrong at all) and i don't know what would really draw in new users (and make them stay) anyway. i started playing subeta when i was like, 15. i don't think a 15 year old today would be interested in a virtual pet site with all the other options now. does that mean subeta should market to 30 year olds? because that sounds silly doesn't it? the day of the virtual pet site is over. apparently the day of the online forum is over. i sure do feel old and sad when i think about how different the internet is today!

but i'm still here. everyday! i just start feeling stupid for it sometimes. don't know how else to put it.

Just came back after being on and off inactive for over a year, I'm actually surprised at the number of users online since I thought it might be lower. Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever. As a pet person, I no longer have the motivation to work on pets here, especially when most of my friends are quite inactive as well. Honestly, years ago, I'd never thought I'd stop working on my pets, but I guess we can never say never...I don't think aging is an issue for me as I just simply switched my creative outlay to elsewhere (though not a pet site so maybe I'm over pet sites as well?). I do miss the subeta at its prime.

I miss Subeta's heyday. A lot of that is missing folks who have since left (and unfortunately have lost contact with) and wondering how they're doing. Some of that is missing the chaos, fun, and community that would form around the big site events that just aren't frequent or feasible anymore with the reduced userbase and cashflow. I miss the big cult communities, some of which are still around, but are much smaller. It is what it is.

Similar to others, as I've gotten older, I've lost interest in the site over time. I still love my pets and characters, but I just haven't really had interest in working on them in a long time. I remember the days where I thought I'd never stop playing Subeta... and then I took a 3 year hiatus and only just recently came back. These days, I mostly just buy mage amulets and mess around with my battle pets.

I think this puts it pretty nicely. The internet is a lot different from what it used to be, and my interests and the sites I've engaged in have shifted over time. It's not a uniquely Subeta thing. I used to be on Tumblr every day, and now I'm not even logged in. Same with Deviantart, Toyhou.se (although that one is a bit newer), old school forums, LiveJournal, etc. All of which has reduced userbases these days.

I've whole heartdly accepted that the biggest demographic for avi/pet sites are already adults. People grew up with these sites and it was a major part of their internet lives. I, myself, am really no better since I've been on avatar sites since I was 13 and am 26 now. I still love avatar sites and still am very active on gaia and subeta but times do change and the people that were the target audience for these places grow up past them. That's nothing to be sad over in my opinion. I'm on subeta till it breathes its last breath. This isn't my first rodeo so im here till the end.

There is something nostalgic about these sites, having come of age in the early 2000's heyday of virtual pet games. I recently came back after being essentially inactive for 6 or 7 years, and the site feels somewhat like a ghost town, and yet there's always 500-ish users online. Are they the same set of 500 people? Or is it more like 2 or 3k who are rotating through?

I can't really explain why I find the repetitive questing/hoarding/training cycle so soothing, but I always have and I keep getting drawn back to spend small amounts of time here. I would definitely be sad if Subeta suddenly went offline if I tried to mentally calculate the amount of hours and money spent here over the years but it wouldn't feel nearly as tragic compared to if it happened a decade ago.

it's a bit sad to see how dead the forums are (aside from the more popular ones, like the battle threads, forum groups, and B&C); the main draw of subeta to me is the HA system, and the best way to show HAs off is the forums... but i'm also the type of person to pine for RP threads because i grew up with neopets and proboards, and this is a nice in-between with lax language rules, so it could just be me being nostalgic for subeta's heyday lmfao

Such a hard question to give a solid answer to - there's absolutely aspects that are easier with a smaller userbase...but it also makes other areas more tedious/difficult, whatever. Having played when the site was particularly active in all the good and bad ways -- I can say I miss the way it was. However, take that with a grain of salt because I'm 34 years old now and it's nostalgic regardless of whether the experience was inherently good or bad...

As others have mentioned, pet sites aren't a thing nowadays and it's just not the same anymore -- someone mentioned marketing to my age group now since we were who was really the core of the userbase back then -- silly and actually not a bad idea at the same time, which is why this is such a hard question to answer.

I guess if enough people wanted to replicate back then you'd have to try to reign in those same users - probably more trouble than it's worth for the overall project of Subeta...but it would be awfully fun in theory.