about 4 years ago (no way), i made this thread (please dont necro!) about the number of players subeta had and solicited feedback from other members and the staff about how to pull in more members. when i reread it the other day, it looks like staff took a lot of feedback from that thread (or just potentially already had all of these things in the works and they were happy accidents - either way, awesome!) some things that i noticed mentioned in the thread which were implemented were non-unique pet names and revamping the gold account to more of a patron style support with more benefits (cw vouchers, exclusive monthly item, buddy gold accounts). rereading these, i was SUPER excited to see those things. the revamp of the cw system also came after this, which i think was enormous progress for subeta as a whole. i believe keith is the only programmer right now (sad) but wanted to still provide some thoughts and feedback and solicit some more from the users to see how folks are feeling!

some initial thoughts i had:

1. increased activity on the forums. most of the people i know talk exclusively on discord, and i've met almost all of my subeta friends through discord (besides my literal roommate who i met on the forums all those years ago). i'm not sure how subeta can incentivize people to be more active on the forums, but i think a stronger community base on the forums would be really encouraging for a lot of new players! could forums be more integrated into other parts of the site? is the current population just too small for forums to realistically be active? the cw forums are active because people sell through them, but other than making currency, there's no real reason to post on the forums. i know that unlockable avatars were a staple of other pet sites, and the human avatar essentially replaces that, but there could be other cosmetics that could go along with your posts which might make it more engaging to post. an unlockable avatar to go along with your human avatar, or post backgrounds/decorations. coordinating all of them could be a lot of fun! or just unlockable post cosmetics, especially if they were sort of similar to "titles" where they are associated with the achievements system
2. the barrier to entry for getting into cws is still really high! i don't mean submitting them or creating them, i mean buying them. i think that the morty cards are great, but cws are becoming available on the site more frequently than non-cw wearables, and they're cheaper to buy than they used to be. making it a bit easier to accrue csc i think would be great for the cw marketplace. the more excited people are for cws, the more they'll be willing to pay actual money to buy more or get art commissioned and submit cws. i remember when cws first started, i wasn't able to buy csc and it was REALLY HARD for me to buy my first cw. even now, the only csc i have comes from releasing. the cw system self-sustains really well, but it's still quite hard to enter the system at all.

i know that once i asked why subeta didn't do more advertising to get more members, and part of the reason i was given was that it's not great to advertise when the site is spread across multiple "platforms" - which i understand. however, it seems like instead of getting closer to resolving that, we've just added a 3rd platform (kumos)? i feel like getting new members should be the main priority, because then there might be enough money coming in that a 2nd developer could be hired. i know this topic specifically would require admin or mod response, but still curious if anyone has any other ideas for increasing player traffic

my post the first time kind of sucked and i left the forum open for others to chime in, so i'm gonna do that again.

This post made me realize that I am very much on the fringes of this site and how that seems to be ever increasing with each passing event.

Thank you for revisiting this thread! Looking back through the old thread, I'm glad that certain suggestions were taken and made a reality--particularly non-unique names. Lately I've been feeling more inspired to work on my pets' profiles, and the non-unique pet names is definitely due to this.

I'll avoid pinging anyone who made the posts back on the old thread, since I'm not sure off the top of my head how active they are, but I still like 's idea of revamping the new user tutorial to make the site more accessible for newbies. Subeta's a big website! It can be pretty intimidating to get started, so a more in-depth tutorial would be great.

I think it'd also be cool to make the tutorial a bit like a one-off, newbies-only "plot" with really excellent reward options (e.g. color-changing potion of your choice, additional pet slot, public CW of your choice, some nice stat/battle boost thing, etc) to help users explore what could be possible if they work towards it. By the end of the tutorial, the new user can decide what valuable reward they want, and that might give them incentive to keep working for more/different valuable things. Speaking as a long-term player (18 years next month, omg), I wouldn't be bitter about a newbie getting (relatively) easier access to these things if it means the site grows and becomes more active!

Another thing I think would be cool is making multiple categories for the pet spotlight, so that there can be a couple of winners per day or something. E.g. for fan/tribute pets, educational profiles, completely original ones, ones with particularly excellent art/writing/code, etc. I'm not sure how big the pet spotlight backlog is, but this is one way it could be addressed, and potentially encourage people to branch out and create pet profiles to fit multiple categories.

I also wish there were more ways to incentivize interaction with other players. I wasn't able to participate in the battle of the bands plot a few years back, but having users join teams to try and out-perform each other is cool. Basically, leaning into the community aspect of the site, and create reasons for people to talk to each other more.

Different sorts of competitions would be nice, too. I remember there was supposed to be a Fireside storytelling contest, and was looking forward to it, but it seems to have dropped off the face of the planet. Maybe there could be competitions periodically that highlight different types of creativity - baking/cooking (e.g. design a dessert from a region of Subeta), writing, crafting, etc. On that note, one of my favorite parts of Neopets back when I played it was the Neopian Times, with all its user-submitted content. I have no idea if Subeta has the userbase necessary for something like that, but it'd be SO cool to have a similar thing that highlights user writing and art. I know I'd submit work to it!

Honestly I would love to see the forums more active. I've been on this site a super long time (with admittedly many long hiatuses) and I found the site to become much more fun after participating in the forums, which I didn't do for a long time. Forums are a little dead though. Even the art community is pretty quiet, which I find kind of surprising given the nature of the site. I feel like advertising Subeta in art circles could be a great move. Especially with making your own CWs being a super exciting feature.

I do have concerns about stuff being spread over three different sites though, as you said, before bringing in new members. Honestly the login is pretty jarring and a little untrustworthy looking. And I fully understand why it was done for security reasons so I respect that and I'm glad the change was made. But just making it more of a seamless transition in terms of design and redirecting would go very far. Having the site split up now is very off-putting I think to anyone who would want to join. It's hard to understand what's happening if you're new. And I do get why it was done because I've migrated a website before with a lot of content and we had to do it in pieces. But I also think there are more user friendly ways to make that happen.

I also agree with Marcus about more interactive community events to get people talking. Art and writing just seem like a natural piece of this site and it could get people more involved in the forums if hosted there.

Personally speaking, from a somewhat long-time user perspective (going to be 8 years, wow), the site has been going downhill in terms of stability and functionality. I want a functional site before going into any more new features. Many things are being "fixed" with band-aid solutions which can't exactly fix the issue forever OR being left unfixed for years.

Examples of band-aid solutions and persistent issues are:

1. CW shops not properly crediting releasers with their csc if items are being bought too fast with the solution of a 1-2 minute timer (and a lack of a purchase history accessible to releasers)
2. Luminaire trees not resetting or showing up when Lumi starts, forcing us to reset cache every time we want to change or decorate our trees.
3. The first column of items in the new wardrobe cannot be selected when my browser window is too small or if I'm on the ipad. I have to change my HA on the pc.
4. Blocking on Subeta is still dysfunctional. Why am I still getting pings from people that I've blocked? I sent a ticket to staff and staff literally told me there is nothing I can do but leave the groups they are in (which consists of many active users). If I block someone, they should not be able to access my CW shop. Yet if they block me, I can access their CW shop without any consequences. This makes no sense to me.
5. We were promised a functional forum search, the Teahouse, among other things. Where are they?

I know these are minor inconveniences, but little things like this frustrate the userbase. We were promised many things over the years and we lack the staff support to make certain features work as intended. I don't really tell my friends I play Subeta because of these reasons. If you want more players, please have a functional site and sufficient staff support first.

I also miss the yearly Quest-A-Thons, the Free Shop, and design your own item contests. I understand staff is really understaffed right now, but even that can encourage more interactions among those who are still here and perhaps bring new players in. I hope staff takes no offense as my comment is a critique formed from my experiences on Subeta. I really want to continue investing into Subeta, it's a place where I made many new wonderful people. But the lack of staff support is making me second-guess if I should keep commissioning CWs, renew my subscription, or buy CSC :/

Wait maybe a silly question but what happened to the quest-a-thons? I participated in the one in 2021 and I remember it had issues with prizes unfortunately and incorrect tracking of winners, was that never resolved? I was on a break from the site for a while, in a large part due to technical issues admittedly so I do agree with the above.

@Last_Chance As far as I know, there weren't any in the recent years after the Quest-A-Thon frame issue. I am not sure why the official Quest-A-Thons stopped.

I think the MOST imperative thing would be to get another coder, so all the plans/dreams/fixes can be worked on steadily. Also I have to say I still vastly prefer the web design/UI of this site over new subeta or kumos, and I'm hoping those aren't final.

Now for a positive: I feel like the cw market is still quite booming, and I do agree that the barrier of entry for newer users is quite high - not only to acquire csc, but to understand how cws work. there's a bit of subculture to it by now that isn't written anywhere, that I have seen make many users confused - what are privates, locked items, the methods of releasing, how the pricing works, unwritten "etiquette" stuff, releaser's cut vs subeta's cut, artist copies, etc. This might be something the community could pool together to write a guide for?

I remember a while back it was mentioned there were plans to make it so you could organize pets better, I hope that's still in the plans. I'm at 78 pets currently and they're quite unwieldy to work on when every menu lists all 78 of them <.< I quite like the pets/ characters aspect of petsites, but other than the one spotlight a day I don't think there's much incentive to work on pets given by the site. I'm not sure what could help in this regard - I remember many years ago there were cults/guilds whatever that were focused on this, and maybe having more lore about the world of subeta itself would inspire people to create characters to live in it more often.

On that note, I also miss the plots a lot. The masquerade murder plot, the first survival plot with all the morse code, those were the highlights of events on site IMO - I love some mystery and puzzle solving. And the plot with Jaxon/asmodeus solidified them as my favorite characters of subeta lore, they definitely help people be more invested in the site. Maybe having a way for people who didn't get to participate in the event to get to see/read the story of them at least? They're some of the best writing subeta has and it's unfortunate that we don't get to revisit it. Having some kind of plot that isn't time based could be cool too - like suggested having a tutorial quest, there could be story-type quests that users could play through no matter when they join (like the Altador Mini-Plot in neopets, basically just a mystery waiting to be uncovered by the user that leads to a bunch of puzzles and prizes at the end.)

Also the fireside writing event that was mentioned above: I forgot all about that, that was such a cool idea. Hope it gets done too, that would be a cool way to add to the lore with help of the community.

i'm not sure what 'not the fringes' are lol i think every community on the site is pretty insular. i'm only a custom wearables releaser, but i know there's an entire pets community and battle community which i have no clue about...

i think it's an AWESOME idea to have a tutorial plot/story type of thing. my only concern with that is... if i were a new member and i had a tutorial story, i might expect the rest of the site to have some more structure. but... i think it's a really good idea and i think it would be super engaging. some games i play will release new rewards for new players or returning players and give them to the players who have been active this whole time, so they could just give us the rewards anyway, but i'd also be fine not getting them! :) more interactive community events would be really i think a good push for subeta. right now, most events i've seen have been events run by cw releasers, but it's not the same and not as immersive. idk!

Oh i don't even mean it needs to be done by staff! some of the stuff is very "culture" based, stuff like the privates and different releaser methods etc. perhaps we can make a faq based on people's current doubts (that could be done maybe in a thread asking specifically "people who are not involved in cws: ask your questions here"? haha)

Nothing to add but I'm glad to see the site's growth being discussed.

i would be happy to help you with something like this if you want, em :3 we could also have an informal cw welcome wagon ping group where we could just have some long-time cw artists or releasers available to help provide insight/context/feedback to newer folks

If the PayPal payment system - and maybe others? Based upon the thread, it may be a little complicated depending on global location - doesn't get fixed, how incentivized will people be to participate in CWs if they get over the confusion hurdle if they can't at least test out with 5$ to get started?

Random Stuff: While the forums having achievements borders for posting is nice.. we still have older users who advise newer users not to go to specific forums, which.. I feel isn’t a great look for a site thats about “community.” I feel that some things need to still change so that the forums aren’t viewed as a scary place. I wish we had maybe create banner with link contests to encourage creativity and bring in more new members to join as well as having events like others have said. Hiring a coder.. gosh. This has been debated a lot over the years. Users asking to donate to it, staff saying buy from the cash shop and than it would die down until next year. There was possible talk of a donation site that starts with the letter P that was mentioned as a possibility. Yet, I never saw of its fruitation 😔 I wish there was something exclusive that people would pay for on the site/a feature thats not p2p that could help keep a coder here/well payed. A coder is not only important for things to work, but also the possibility of help with events or subeta webpages if they have special mechanisms. Paypal… I’m surprised no one has suggested about this topic in the suggestions forum, but there needs to be another payment site that will work with subeta for international players to pay through if paypal isn’t going to do anything! It’s important for both new and old members😌-similar to what said.

Wasn’t this what the council was for lmao? Or was there another reason? I swear they were supposed to help put together something like a faq but I’m probably wrong. But it is a good idea though. Too bad there can’t be more cw sales during the year to help people get their hands on cws at a lower price.

My main issue aligns with . We’ve been given bandaids instead of of permanent fixes. Because guess what I still lost some csc despite the timer. Because it doesn’t stop two different people from redeeming invites at the same time. It has cut down on the loss but I now have to send invites slowly to ensure that people don’t claim them at once. Yes the chances of them redeeming at the same time are slim but it does happen, especially if I shoot the invites after they ask for them. If I hold off and batch them it doesn’t seem to happen.

And the block should be all around. Both sides should have no access to each other. With anything. No buying from shops or trades on either end.

I'm on board with an updated CW community guide (written for the community, by the community) in the Custom Wearables forums. It can define some common terms and have links to already existing helpful threads.

Please fix the issue with Paypal, or have an alternate way to buy csc besides Stripe (maybe allow google pay, apple pay? into the mix). I understand staff is working with Paypal to resolve this issue asap, but not having alternate ways to pay means no incentive to spend on Subeta.

I think Subeta is kind of too messy to suggest it to new players at the moment.

"So there is THIS site that you most of your things on but if you want the wardrobe, buy CSC or a subscription, you have to go to this other site, but if you want to see Keith post more often and get some free thing, then you have to have to go to this third site that will kind of be the first site one day-"

I know there are complications that make it hard to have another programmer on board but it feels all that happens on this site, subeta.net, is that fires get put out. I avoid Kumos as much as possible and only went on it because of the login glitch a month ago and because you could only get the free CSC there. I went there reluctantly because I'm still kind of angry that there is another site to begin with because the other two sites are so hard to work with that there is no other choice. I am so frustrated with Kumos and I'm an older player. There are only so many times you can be told 'this time, this will make it easier for us to do new things' before you start questioning if it really will make it easier to fix the site.

I cannot imagine being a new player and trying to find navigate this.

everything said! The Kumos site feels like a massive step backwards after being on regular Subeta and I really don't like it.

I like the idea of a welcome wagon ping group, whether it be for CW's or just general site usage. There are still bits of the site that have me mega confused and I just don't bother with it XD