Okay. So. It's been a while since this has been discussed, and I think it's worth bringing up again. The pet spotlight is one of my favorite features on this site. It's now been around for over 13 years, and I am VERY happy that people continue to make their pets presentable and keep the spotlight queue filled. I don't ever want to encroach on a new user's chance at winning the spotlight for the first time. That being said...

A lot of us veteran players have been around since the spotlight began, and a lot of us have pets that won a long, long time ago. Now, I know there are some people who haven't changed their pets' profiles since they won the spotlight. I respect that a lot, actually! But if you're someone like me, you are constantly changing your pets and the characters they represent. I know for a fact that I've gone through three different profile layouts and at least two profile rewrites with my babygirl

Aran in the last three years. She won the spotlight almost ten years ago, when her personality and backstory were completely different from what they are today. I would love to clean up her profile (again), as well as all the other pets of mine who have won the spotlight in the past, and have a chance for them all to win the spotlight again with their new, updated looks. I really don't think I'm alone in this when I say that having the opportunity to make a pet spotlight-eligible again would motivate me to play Subeta more, but I'll let you guys comment and you can correct me if I'm wrong.

Blah blah blah, Soren stop rambling. Here are the proposed spotlight changes.

1. Let pets who have won the spotlight before be eligible to win again if at least two years have passed since they last won. This is to prevent the spotlight queue from getting gummed up with the same pets over and over within a short period of time. No, I didn't include a clause where the profile has to be changed significantly within that two year period in order to become re-eligible. Argument Against: But Soren, I don't want someone to resubmit the same pet/profile combo every two years. We'll start to see the same things over and over again. Argument For: You're right. This IS a possibility. It really, entirely depends on how many people are going to work on their pets again after the spotlight rules are overhauled. This is one of those situations where the good outweighs the bad, in my opinion. Yes, we might see the same pets win the spotlight in a two year cycle. But if that's the price we must pay in order to allow people to revamp their pets entirely and resubmit them to the spotlight queue, then I'm all for it. Also... this is just my personal opinion, but how bad would it really be to see someone's pet win the spotlight multiple times, even if they didn't change their profile significantly between wins? That's a minor annoyance at most, right? I'd actually be really thrilled to see someone's hard work be acknowledged multiple times, but that's just me.

2. Give users who have adopted past spotlight winners the chance to immediately be re-eligible for the spotlight queue. i.e., if I adopted Crazy Spinach Joe from someone, and he won the spotlight last year on that other person's account, I should have the chance to make my own character/profile for him and put him in the spotlight queue. Argument Against: What if the new owner doesn't change anything about the profile, and they resubmit the pet into the queue? Wouldn't it be possible for a pet to win the spotlight, then get transferred to someone else, THEN have them be put into the queue, AND THEN potentially win within a short period of time? Argument For: I think this is a non-issue How many people are actually going to care enough to do something like that? As it stands now, there's nothing stopping me from renaming one of my non-spotlight-winning pets to "Aran", plopping her profile on theirs, and then submitting them for the spotlight. I could theoretically resubmit the same pet name+profile combo a hundred times because I can just keep moving the concept of "Aran" from one pet to the next (but I'm not going to do that because I'm not a maniac). Also, keep in mind that the spotlight queue is overseen by staff. I think they would quickly catch on if someone were to start doing this.

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Overall Argument Against: But what about all the people who have never won the spotlight before? If people start to resubmit their pets into the spotlight queue, it'll make it much harder for newbies to have their pet+profile work recognized. Overall Argument For: I'm... gonna be completely honest here. Subeta. I love you with all of my heart. I have been playing you for over half my lifetime now. But I know that we're no longer in the "golden age" of pet sites. How many new users are actually staying and working on their pets? How many of the past month's spotlight winners have been from people who had never won before? I never want to discourage new people from playing Subeta, but in this case, I think it's time for a quality-of-life update that benefits the longtime users who are still here.

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I've run out of steam, but I think I've made my points clear. I don't think what I'm asking for is unreasonable, but again, y'all can be the judge of that! I'm looking forward to seeing the responses here and KINDLY(!) debating with y'all! Thanks so much for reading!

I feel called out. It's been seventeen years for me. I met my girlfriend of 11 years on here. Aaaaaa.

Anyways, I think the "two years+ between wins" is fair and reasonable. Maybe three years? As long as we're able to toggle our pets on/off for eligibility, in the same way they already are, would be great. I wouldn't really want Star Dream to win again because its current iteration already won some 4-7 years ago (what do you mean Kirby: Planet Robobot came out in 2016?!?). I'd love to have Zero Two win again because I completely overhauled its content, though, and then I have pets like Noir who won before they ever came into my ownership and are totally different.

It's a good idea for freshness, though. Subeta's in a weird quiet place for its age and this could perk up Pet Spotlight a bit.

Yeah, I agree with this. Things change. People adopt their pets out to new people to carry on their legacy or start something anew. Heck, I'd love to one day aka when it snows in July where I live to fix up Elfric's profile and go for another win (holy shoot, it's gonna be 10 years since he won the spotlight, stop making me feel old..). I think it would be easy to goldban a pet for a year so that they can't rack up wins too often, even when transferred to a new owner during that goldban.

We'd definitely need some kind of archive though to make sure people aren't entering the same old thing 2-3 years later.

Also I appreciate the Spongebob image in the opening. xD

This is one of the things I wasn't actually going to recommend, if only because I don't think we'll see too many repeats in the future? But I don't know for certain - I can't predict what the pet community is going to do if the spotlight rules were to change. I personally wouldn't mind seeing repeat pets with the same profile/whatever as long as two years have passed, but that's just me! I'd be happy to advocate for some kind of archive to prevent repeat winners with the same profile if that's something that most people would like. :- D

Also, thank you for appreciating my Spongebob image. It seemed appropriate. xD

I'm actually all for this change. My initial thought, before reading the OP, was um...nope. But you changed my mind.

I've always had some sympathy for people who adopt a past spotlight winner and realize they can never be a spotlight contender again, even with drastic changes.

As for re-submitting a 'winning' pet without changing it at all, who really cares? Sure it might lead to reducing opportunities for pets who have never won but as , said, the site is a long way from its heyday and this may not the be huge impact we should fear. Its certainly worth discussing. As for boredom seeing the 'same' pet day after day, I doubt that's a huge issue. The spotlight is for 1 day, and I for one don't look at them every time there's a new one. I do other necessary site stuff first, and only really check out the spotlight winner if I have the free time.

Also, personally, I wouldn't activate the pet spotlight option of a past winner unless I'd made significant changes. I suppose I might consider it if I was one away from the next achievement tier, but I wouldn't feel good about it.

i "really" care because the pet spotlight queue is already soooooo arduously long that you currently have to wait multiple years between nomination and winning, during which time you can't even fix/update your pet's profile without being bumped back down to the bottom of the list and starting the wait over again, so the idea of gumming it up even further with repeats sounds just horrible.

i think the policy simply HAS to be that the profile is significantly if not completely different. otherwise what's the point? winning pets are already archived, so anyone can go back and see the profile your pet won with if you haven't changed it much since then. if you're really so desperate to show the same thing off again, you can post in the pet or profile & graphics subforums.

I knew that was the case a few years back, but wasn't sure it was the same now. My most recent pet spotlight win was with a pet created on April 22nd, 2022 who won on March 15th, 2023. I'm not sure exactly when I activated the spotlight eligibility - but nomination to winning was only a few weeks. Maybe I just got extremely lucky. The previous winner I had did take years!

This is a genuine question - do we know for sure how big the spotlight queue currently is? :o Like, is that information stated anywhere on-site? I have a hard time believing it's full of hundreds of pets, but I don't know that for sure, so (shrugs). The pet spotlight used to happen every night - if there's really that many pets in the queue, why not move back to making it an every night thing?

You do raise a good point in that there's an archive for previous winners! I had completely forgotten about that. I'm leaning towards the caveat being that the pet profile must been changed significantly in order for it to become re-eligible, myself. I just don't know how staff would keep track of something like that, which is why I initially didn't argue for it in my first post.

@ Lypsyl i guess it's still random then. many many years ago i had a handful of spotlight wins, some of them taking only a few months and some of them taking probably close to if not over a year. i definitely feel like things used to move substantially faster, though.

i had a pet nominated last may and have been sitting on my hands trying not to touch up her profile even though it needed some changes, but have finally bitten the bullet and updated it (and will have to update it again since she'll be getting a new overlay), knowing in doing so i've shunted myself out of the winner's queue (assuming i was even there to begin with) and back into the approval queue and will have to start the wait over again -_-

it certainly doesn't SEEM like it should be possible for the queue to be that big considering the current size and activity level of the userbase... but multiple people have confirmed that not only have they had to wait several years for a win, they've even had to wait several years for a DENIAL. the staff in charge of the spotlight queue also mentioned a few years back that it was very full, which was why people were having to wait so long for any result. but when i asked why it was then, if that was really the case, that the spotlight shouldn't go back to being daily if not even twice a day until the queue was sufficiently thinned out, i never got an answer...

Interesting! Thank you for that information, that helps a lot. So, it makes me wonder - is it an issue of staff not having enough time to properly vet pets that are in the queue? Is it just... kind of ignored, at this point? That's what it sounds like, if people are waiting literal years for a freakin' denial. Is there a dedicated staff member for the spotlight, or is it a shared duty amongst multiple staff?

If there's a lot of pets in the queue... something should be done about that. There should be someone who regularly goes through the queue and accepts/denies pets. With the way the current userbase is, I can't imagine there being TOO much for staff to look at. OR maybe there's a huge backlog of pets because it's been ignored for so long. I don't know.

@ staff hey if you're reading this, are you looking for someone to moderate the pet spotlight queue? like this post if yes but you can't say it outright

One of the changes I would love to see included in the next "update" to the Spotlight is that we can see where our pet is in the process once submitted! Not "you're this # in the cue" (especially since the winner is random from the cue) but simply stating "approval" or "winner" for example. I know I have several pets who have been nominated and I'm always wondering where we're at.

As for being able to win again, I think this is a great idea!

I do agree with Frenchi about feeling uncomfortable with resubmissions for a profile that hasn't really been modified, so I'd love to see some kind of guidelines for this. At the same time, I do think you're right (Soren) that most folks aren't going to resubmit the same pet every two years. If they do, it's really only an issue if the cue is backed up.

I was thinking about something like the profile being "wiped" if a pet is transferred or pounded, but the reality of someone adopting a pet from the pound with a spotlight winning profile seems pretty miniscule. And if someone is transferring specifically so someone else can win off the same profile, it's not like they can't send the code another way. Maybe something like, if you adopt a pet / get a pet transferred to you that has already won the spotlight they can't win for 6 months? 3 months?

I'm not sure how we could do a "degree of change" rule without over-taxing the staff. The code could maybe be written so a pet is automatically sorted into "new" versus "former winner" which would help, but the staff would then have to pull up the archived win and compare the profiles.

Alternatively, perhaps the past win could be "cleared" from the pet's profile? So to submit again their past trophy would go away. I think that would deter folks from submitting without changes because it's not like they would keep racking up wins for the same pet. Like you said, you want a win for this pet who is a completely different character. Being able to screenshot our previous wins is a thing, so it's not like we couldn't still have a way to commemorate that if it was important to us.

I wonder if we could have a daily winner to move the cue more quickly. Is that not a thing because staff has to review profiles to ensure they meet the requirements? Maybe folks can volunteer some time to do this so the cue moves more quickly? I know I'd be willing to spend a certain amount of time each week / review a certain number of profiles each week.

In a way I guess I'm just thinking out loud lol. I support being able to win again, as there are too many long timers (17 years for me!) who don't want to give up their pet, but do want to be able to have their new character win just like their old one did. And with the new naming system, it's even easier to change the character over time. I think a time period between wins for the same pet is a great idea, and maybe also one for a pet that was just adopted? (Again, not sure how the code works for all that).

In the end, I think I'd rather a pet be able to be submitted again within x time frame since the last win, even if there is no changed / added rule for anything else at this time. I don't want to tax the site or staff, we really need to focus on finding a way to get the OG site recoded and that's more important to me than a few folks submitting a pet for an additional win. I feel like the spotlight is really something we do for ourselves, it's not like there's a huge group of people flocking to each news post or chatting about the spotlight, and I don't even know that there are any achievements or something related that would encourage anyone.

I don't want to take away from folks who haven't won / pets who haven't won, but I also don't want to punish other users who have been here a long time and have changed their characters. They're put that much effort into the pet, it deserves to be celebrated.

@ soren i guess part of the issue is that we don't even know how many pets are in the approval queue vs how many are in the winners queue, and there's no way to know which queue you're in once your pet has been nominated. is the problem that people are spending forever in the approval queue because it's so clogged up, but can speed through the winners queue once there? or is it the other way around? or both?

last i heard it was just one person in charge of spotlight approvals, but idk if that's still the case. i wouldn't be surprised if it's yet another thing that's unfortunately had to fall by the wayside due to being under the purview of a single person who probably has other things taking priority...

staff has said (many years ago) they can't use volunteers to vet spotlight winners. This makes a huge amount of sense, because the main of job of the spotlight person is making sure that nothing in the profile breaks site rules and also to make sure it adheres to the PG rating (due to legal stuff). It really isn't something that staff can comfortably leave in the hands of non-staff.

Its one thing if a random profile among thousands breaks some rules and staff doesn't notice, its a whole other level of responsibility when the SITE itself "sponsors" a profile - they really need to make sure its appropriate and legal.

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I too would love to know where the queue is right now and if the process has changed at all. With my most recent win, my first time around I was rejected due to having too small a TC. I filled it in with stuff I'd planned to add, but hadn't gotten around to buying yet (because I thought I'd have much more time before staff even looked at it), and resubmitted for nomination. Even with all that it felt really fast!

There are three queues. The nominated one that the Staff look at to ensure all is good. The Approval- waiting to be won. And then the Adjusted (it was called something else) The pets that have been nominated but the profile has been tweaked and saved after nomination. They get sent to the back of the line to be checked out again in order to move to the Approval line.

As for the question. Sorry. I don't agree with pets able to win again. It won't give the site players the need to keep having more pets and people buying more slots. Economically for the site, it is not feasible.

I support this suggestion, mainly for the bind that the restriction puts adopted pets in. It's something I hadn't thought about and, honestly, would make me a little leery of adopting pets just in case they've formerly won the spotlight. Then again, I'm not necessarily that attached to a specific pet--mostly ideas/concepts--so I suppose I'd be evil and just abandon the ineligible former-adoptee with an attractive species/color/name combo and create a new pet with the idea/concept I want for a spotlight contender, but that feels, well, evil! It's very odd to me that adopted pets don't have their wins wiped, too.

That said, honestly I don't know how I feel about pets who have already won getting showcased again without first making major changes to their profiles. Given how old the pet spotlight is, and how I don't think the winning profiles are exactly archived anywhere, I'm not sure how this could work for pets that do have major updates to their profile. I think it'd suck to not be able to show off your hard work again for a pet that won nearly two decades ago, but at the same time, there are tons of deserving profiles still waiting to be showcased.

I'd rather the pet spotlight "archive" be rehauled to make it easier to browse and search. For example, different categories and genres could be implemented so users can search through the things they're most interested in, or users could apply tags to a profile based on its content. I'm not sure how feasible a proper archive is, that would save the appearance of a profile when the pet actually wins and ignore its live appearance, but that'd be pretty cool to have too.

I don't necessarily think there's a strong economic argument for not allowing the same pet to win multiple times, though, as pointed out. I have nearly 50 pets, and I'm pretty sure I didn't spend real money on a pet slot, but instead saved sP for them, won them, or used totems. There also isn't a limit on the pet slots you can get through loyalty totems. Unless someone is an absolute machine at making spotlight-worthy profiles, I don't think most users will be hurting for pet slots, since you can get so many from spending sP on MC slots, or CSC cards to purchase cash shop slots. I would guess subs and CSC purchases for CWs are doing more for the site's budget than pet slots can come close to.

The site budget is a really important thing to consider, though; I don't believe in pay-to-win, but maybe there could be a subscription feature that lets you add some cosmetic flair to your pets' icons if they've won the pet spotlight? That feature alone wouldn't be enough to encourage people to subscribe, but I do think it'd be a nice feature to add to the pile and make the whole package more appealing.

I think that maybe if a pet is adopted by someone else, the spotlight win ahould be automatically cleared? Or maybe there should be an option at the Cleansing Pools to clear the win, but it only works for pets who have been adopted after winning, and maybe also only after a certain amount of time has passed? I don't know how easy or hard that would be in terms of coding, though.

Folks, thank you SO much for all the great discussion on this thread so far! I really appreciate hearing your thoughts and concerns. : D

I think this is a fantastic idea. I don't know how feasible it is, coding-wise, but imagine this: Perhaps it's possible for a "former winner" queue to exist, while simultaneously being lower priority than the "new" queue? Maybe we could have "new" spotlight winners five or six times a week, and then one or two days dedicated to someone from the "former winner" queue? And this could be fluid, too - if there's not many pets in the "new" queue, then we can pull more winners from the "former winner" queue, and vice versa.

So, let me state that I am NOT an expert at running businesses. This is just me talking out loud. xD I wonder how much would it cost to hire someone specifically for managing the pet spotlight queue? I suppose it would entirely depend on how much work per day it would require. Hell, I'd absolutely apply if a job like that were to open up, but I worry that Subeta's under too much financial stress to even consider adding new staff at the moment. Which makes me sad, since Subeta is a pet site first and foremost, and I feel like they should prioritize pet-related functions, especially ones that are community-driven, but alas.

I don't think this is a bad point, at all, but I think this depends entirely on what the userbase will actually do vs. what we think the userbase will do. And, of course, we won't know what happens until we try it out. I'm wondering how many people are out there that are interested in spending real money on pet slots, when there's so many options to gain pet slots through sP, like suggested. Also... personally, I'm a maniac when it comes to buying pet slots. I have 123 at the moment, and if Subeta gave me the option to buy any more through real money, you bet your butt I'd buy them. xD I may be fixated on having some of my older pets win the spotlight again, but I'm still motivated to buy more slots whenever I get the chance! (*Again, though, this is just me personally. I don't know what the rest of the pet-loving userbase will do.)

I'm still abosrbing a lot of this suggestion but I do really like it!

Also, I am seconding the anecdotal, single-user evidence that I doubt this will effect how people buy petslots. I have 69 pets, 72 petslots, and ONE spotlight win. I have also spent IRL money on petslots. The spotlight isn't a major factor for me for creating more slots. Couldn't one also argue that having a pet be able to win multiple times will increase the value of a single pet in a way that makes people want to keep pets long term rather than adopt out once they've won the spotlight? Right now it is much easier to get rid of all your spotlight winners and adopt new pets and never need to buy new pet slots, if that really is someone's major reason for buying slots. Especially with the non-unique names and the ability to change pet names. I think this change would actually incentivize people to keep more pets rather than stop buying slots.

My proposal: Give them a spotlight trophy for every time they win it. We still have unique pet ID numbers. That pet just aquires more and more spotlight wins. If they're already manually approved, just say that the final profile has to be significantly or completely different than the other wins, and it has to be a year between wins or smth.

"But the queue takes forever to get through already!" I know this and I like the conversation happening above about this. This is where the jaded, cynical me thinks, "Well it's not like there are going to be any major changes on this site anyway, at the rate it's currently going, so this is all a pipe dream." So. Shrug. Hopefully that's not true and it will get attention in the future.

i just don't think that's true. pets don't exist solely to be spotlight-winning machines. even if you could, most people wouldn't want to overhaul the same pet over and over again just to churn out wins. if i have a galactic jollin, it's because i like the galactic jollin and want to have one. if i then decide i want a sweetheart legeica, i'm not going to just overwrite the jollin. i'm going to have both. collecting names and color/species combos you like is pretty much the whole point of having lots of pet slots; that wouldn't change just because you could hypothetically get another spotlight win out of revamping an old pet. at that point it's functionally the same as abandoning the old pet and making a new one.

Is it legal to hire someone and pay with site currencies like CSC? Asking for a friend. The friend is me LOL. Probably unfortunately illegal, but totally would be open to doing a limited but hopefully helpful amount weekly for "site payment" if it meant not costing the site anything but covering them legally.

Also to the idea of the separate queues - I like the idea of (if it can be done without overwhelming staff) increasing days of the week there is a spotlight winner (to avoid gumming up the queues as much as possible) even if it's temporary (to get the list down). And, having two queues the initial submission is sorted in to - "new submissions" and "previous winners". I would think there's a way to code it based on running the pet number against the archive of winners, but I don't know how taxing that would be on the system and I know the site already has a hard time with the load. Working through to move pets from the submission to the approved list could be prioritized via day of the week or percentage - like 6:1 or 9:1 depending on what things look like. Once the pet is in the approved list things continue to be random. At that point the pet has already waited two years to win again, been vetted for changes, and has been slower to gain approval than new pets. I mean at that point in a way pushing through without even having a degree of change requirement would likely be fine because is it realistic that someone is going to go through that work to get a second win two years later when there's not really any motivation to have a win except internal joy / pride.

I agree with this! I think most people who are really into pets are pretty attached to their pets even when they change things about them - like name, species / color, character, etc. We tend to keep them and add more slots. In addition, we get attached to characters, species / color, profiles, etc so there is still a LOT of motivation to continue getting slots. I think it could decrease it a tiny bit sure, but not enough to make much of a difference to the site's economy.

Ohhh, good point!