Beware: this is long and salty. I could be used to lightly season potato chips! A tl;dr will be at the bottom.

I think this Lumi was extremely mishandled in certain regards, especially the ongoing issue for some of not being able to open gifts. Something that a lot of us put tons of thought and effort to on here yearly. It's disheartening to see that, for all the efforts once made by staff to communicate, we hit the point again wherein no one has heard a peep barely from anyone about the aforementioned issue.

And that's just the first one that springs immediately to mind.

The second is Kumos as a whole. I don't like the layout, I don't like the response times, it lags me down more than I zip along and I'm going to be one of those forced off Legacy Subeta when this gets shut down and forced onto something that essentially barely works for me. Not the other way around, I'm not holding onto a relic because it gives me nostalgia. I understand that the code is ancient and held together by well wishes and bubblegum but to go from one site that relatively worksish to one that maybe sorta kinda works on a day where the stars are aligned? Nope, no thank you.

Subeta is one of the last of a dying breed and I hate to see it that way but we're definitely coming to a point of adapt or die. Kumos is an almost absolute no from me, as I said, so much of it simply does not work for me and that's even on Linux. Without the updates from the admins, it somehow feels worse. We'll be heading into Survival, another server heavy event and user heavy event and what happens with that? Will we still have players waiting to open Lumi presents?

That's it, feel free to add on. Tl;dr below.

Tl;dr - I feel like the admins have abandoned the site in favor of whatever they're doing over answering some pressing user questions and forcing the Kumos change while they do it. Almost like giving the silent treatment on Legacy but answering on Kumos or Discord. Kumos doesn't work right for me on Linux Mint and I'd really rather not have questions buried in a Discord server.

I'm saddened by the turn of things here. I can remember doing the Super User achievements and how easy it was to get that many players on and the site was just chugging away happily. Some would argue that's because it was well over a decade ago at this point and the coding worked better... but that's also missing the point. We had players, the site has had growing pains, it seems that the lack of communication is something that pokes its head up every so often and we have to remind admin that there's also humans playing, not just building the site.

That's it, that's the rant. Disjointed but there ya go.

[edit]FINALLY remembered to delete the one thing that got away from me, as I told Keith. It hasn't been my month to use the braincell or day or hour or minute or second, for that matter.

I'm not repeating all what I said in the other Lumi thread, but - yeah, all of this.

The complete lack of communication lately is very concerning. Even very simple requests like "please make a newspost about the Lumi trees/presents" have been totally ignored. It really makes me worried about the future of the site...

I feel like the userbase has been a broken record for well over a decade now with how often the lack of communication comes up.

Didn't we have a community manager at some point to try and fix this issue? Or am I misremembering something?

is going to have to swallow some of his ego and pride and adapt what many users have said would help get kumos to run better for them or he might only have Kumos for 2 yrs, because only 1/4 of userbase could play on Kumos after the transfer from Legacy from what it sounds like.

My computer is also not powerful enough to run kumos. (an insane statement to have to make about a browser-based pet site, btw) pokes topic link in sig

It's so depressing to me to think that it's very likely this year's Survival, the event that I absolutely LIVE for, will be taken away and put on a site that I literally can't use. Let alone subeta's entire future. If nothing changes, there's 100% going to be a day where I am completely forced out and have to leave this place and it will NOT be my choice.

I'm not a huge fan of kumos, but it's there, it's coming, and I would use it if I could. But I can't.

EDIT: Keith fixed the problem I was having!!! See my second post below.

I think it's wrong and horrible to try to force users to upgrade hardware(some might not have the means to) or not play anymore. This is NOT the Subeta I know and Remember!!

i am losing my mind 😭

what do yall expect from keith- please please look around on the internet. I cannot think of another website that is a not-for-profit, not pay-to-play, still-updated petsite. let alone the fact this site isnt a data-stealing, ad-filled, ai-filled website. seriously go find another website like this with those qualities. it is a miracle this website is around at all, let alone being updated, let alone being entirely rewritten to keep it coming for years to come. for free.

i really think the way people need to look at this site is: it is run out of love. it is not run with any sort of budget. if you contribute real money to it, you are doing that because you support keith, amber, and all of the other staff who are trying to keep the lights on. NOT because you feel entitled to something out of the site, or expect something new. you pay (if at all) because you care about paying the staff for their time. you dont even have to do this. the site has never been pay to play, the prices of csc items have not risen in decades despite real life inflation, and there are plenty of ways to get csc without paying money for it.

1. as keith has said time and time again, the code running this website is literally decades old. i know for non-SWEs that sounds like a non-issue but it is genuinely BAFFLING that there is a functioning website out there running on PHP which has not been maintained for years. It is so expensive and buggy to maintain something like this.
2. no one is making a profit on this website. it is barely keeping the lights on. that is demotivating and difficult to work up against.
3. keith has worked on this website for like 20+ years, since he was literally a teenager. imagine you wrote a comic at 14 and it made a lot of money and people loved it and now youre 35 and people are mad at you for not consistently making updates to that comic that you now havent been paid to write in 10+ years and dont find very interesting anymore creatively but you still log off of your actual job and spend time working on that comic bc you love the community its built and the people who still love it. that is what people are demanding rn. please be fr.
4. it is not the website's responsibility to run on all hardware. modern phone apps dont work on an iphone 4 or a flip phone. you cant buy a new switch game for your 3ds. it sucks but its just literally true for a multitude of reasons. lack of maintenance and security updates on old hardware, for example. forced hardware updates are just part of the game and it comes with running a site on currently-maintained code framework. it sucks that this is the case, but the alternative is, again, paying money out of pocket to maintain a horribly out of date codebase. this is not on staff to fix.

i know this sucks. i know we all love subeta. but i really really think things improve when you put into perspective what this site is fighting against. i think we'd all be a bit happier if we appreciated the site for what it is and while we have it.

The TERF thing, I admit, was just part of a rant that got away from me. In my experience, I get a ton of TERF-y backlash for having the audacity to use this name as my name as a trans player. Anywhere. So I hold onto it. I wasn't meaning to leave an implication, I've been under the weather and as I said, it was part of a rant that got away from me that I meant to delete and forgot about.

I know Subeta is part of a dying breed, I get it. I understand that it's an expensive hobby coming out of your own pocket, I get it. Things are garbage right now and that's not being rushed to be fixed and that's not just here.

I don't want to argue semantics, politics or what you should be doing with your website. I just was hoping for a little communication and maybe another Masq. Throw in the towel? I don't know. It's your site.

I'm just wondering where the average (or less than average like myself) player fits into Subeta's future.

Maybe I don't.

A virtual pet site from our era that's thriving with a growing userbase? How about Flightrising?

Rather than Kumos, I would like to focus on the lack of communication about important things. Small issues tend to be ignored, which then spirals up into larger issues which then becomes "omg Subeta doesn't care, site is dying."

1. Discord drips. A mention of something on Discord by staff members shouldn't have to be ferried over by users to Subeta to other users - if it's important, then please make a news post.

2. Promises unfulfilled. If you can't you do it, stop saying that such and such will arrive at this time. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised at a cool new feature than constantly disappointed when nothing shows up after excitement is built. This is my personal biggest one.

3. Use the users! The artists/whoever's in charge of releasing items needs to get themselves over to the Suggestions and Ideas threads. The users have a great deal of ideas up for various holiday items if needed! There have been offers to keep track of holidays for staff, and free coding! We want to help!

4. Remember that we can read what you say. Your users read EVERYTHING that staff says. Some of it causes anxiety if said flippantly. Sometimes the users need to be reassured, or even told "Yeah, our bad, we'll do it better next time." Something other than silence for weeks.

5. This thread is a good one to read to see the spiral caused solely by dead silence on the part of the staff regarding confusion, errors, and general unease with the new way Melody was handled this year.

https://subeta.net/forums.php/read/942282/Melodys-Cottage-Messaging-/1

omg thank you 😭

First, I so sooo agree with this, the integrity makes subeta amazing ^

The thing is, I used to be able to use kumos just fine for the first half of last year, and then the way the navigation was coded changed and my computer has been freaking out ever since. Keith actually just made some changes concerning this earlier today and my computer, which I got new only 4 years ago, can now run kumos with ease once again.

I do appreciate that keith is going above and beyond to keep subeta alive and I have no doubt that he spends more money on it out of pocket than I can even fathom. I definitely could not afford to do what he does. Having a computer that is as young as 4 years is still a really big deal to me and I definitely cannot afford to buy new upgrades/parts for it at the drop of a hat or a new computer outright. Yeah, my graphics card is kinda crappy, but it's not like I'm trying to run Cyberpunk 2077 here. I know my computer's limits and I just assumed subeta and its future iterations would be well within that limit.

I only play a few other adjacent pet/creature sites that are shifting to a modern era or are already being actively maintained/updated and I definitely do not have the performance issues I've had with kumos on those sites. Because on kumos it was code that could have been optimized better (and has now been! it's really great!) instead of solely my computer the whole time.

So yeah, I'm really happy to be able to return to using kumos as I had been doing previously. I hate change but I was trying to be open minded for once and then I started getting bogged down. I wanted to be able to use it because Kumos isn't going anywhere and neither am I if I can help it. So I really need to squeak to get that grease. And I hope that keith can resolve whatever usability issues that the OP is facing as well. I am really thankful that he took the time to iron out my issues 🙏🙏🙏 I spend a lot of time on here and was starting to get really nervous and upset about the future. I want to be with subeta until the end.

I feel that the nature of the situation is that both we the users and keith need to bear with each other, and both make some sacrifices in order for there to be a subeta at all, and for there to be a subeta with people who want to play it. For me as a user that means having to accept change and that kumos can't and won't be a 1:1 copy of legacy. But I acknowledge that keith does take a lot of feedback and make changes he hasn't wanted to for the sake of the users. I remember the time a new subeta layout was being floated like 12 years ago and he was really hellbent on getting rid of the sidebar. So many of us begged for it to stay. And look, there it is on kumos in the present day! ❤️

And what better time than the present day, to get in keith's ear about what we want to see or what doesn't work than when he is building the site as we speak? Sure, I don't know anything about coding a website, but I'd rather be the squeaky wheel while he's still building it and listening to us, instead of waiting until he's potentially in too deep to change certain things. Or at least I'd like to imagine that would be helpful. Though maybe I'm just inappropriately optimistic when the site's longevity is in such dire straits... 😶

If it will help, then sure, I'll be a carrier pigeon. If it doesn't feel too much like tattling to you, I'd be happy too.

Any way I can help, Keith! It makes me feel better to help rather than just worry about you and the site. So bring the info from Discord to legacy, post it on forums (relevelant forums?) and direct people to the forums on Kumos, correct?

Ty for this topic and the different perspectives. I feel bad that people are frustrated and really hope that it gets better soon. I hope the kumos issues get resolved and believe they will before the transition. I am sorry that kumos has been frustrating and I’ve also run into things that don’t work. Sometimes I wish I knew what feedback would be helpful or in what way I should give feedback.

I have noticed that sometimes things are announced which don’t come through (composting recently), and that’s a bit frustrating. But i get that this is a smaller project now compared to how it was (I really wish I found subeta earlier!)

That being said, I still think subeta and its community are AMAZING. People are well intentioned and still really care about the site. There are so many helpful and kind players and staff. I love exploring the site, seeing updates and participating (sometimes quietly). The new changes to News which lets you see recent site changes are great. The discord is active and so are the forums. 2025 Lumi was my first and i was blown away by how kind and active people were. I am hopeful about the sites future! And wish there was a way to bring more people to it (have told offline friends about it)

we definitely did and I have no clue what happened with that? it was(/is?) but it looks like the last true “update” by them was from Dec 2024. I feel like they helped with the communication issue (at least some of it anyway) but then it stopped.. also with no communication

someone made a thread explicitly for this several months ago, I'm glad Keith has finally come around to the idea of its utility to have these messages logged for us to actually see:

https://subeta.net/forums.php/read/941627/Subetas-Discord-Updates

https://subeta.net/forums.php/read/941621/discord-posts-discussion/