On March 31st I got a notice that my gold account has expired. I don't get online very often, and I didn't even know I had gotten a gold account and for how long it lasted. Turns out that an event I participated in had such a lag, everyone who logged on in that event got a 3 day gold account. I missed it. I wrote a ticket about it and was told I could make a suggestion. So here goes:

Instead of giving a gold account that I can't use because I am not online, how about sending a gold account token or three 1 day gold account medals? Then they can be used when it is convenient for the player, not just subeta?

I think the reason the site auto-activates any sort of GA perk like that is because they don't want the perks to be traded or sold. I recall the site stopped giving out 1 week GAs for this reason, so I unfortunately don't see a 3 day gold account token being made.

However, I do like the idea of such a perk being activated when the user is ready. Perhaps it can be something that's manually activated on the dashboard.

In the past, they have given out medals. The problem with this one is that there is no "one day" GA item. They would have to make a new one. In terms of the event, that was supposed to compensate those who were active and affected, even those with that did not have a GA at the time. I personally think it was fine the way it was. Giving out medals every time just means that the user can sell it. They wanted to kinda give back the lost time and not just something to sell.

But I agree with Yoshi. If there is a way to allow the user to activate it when they want, then I might not be opposed to that. I just don't know if that will cause problems down the line and what if there isn't a way to make them stackable? Or what if it IS stackable and a user just signs on every event hoping for a lag reward and amasses a ton of free days? If we go that route, they would have to look into the repercussions.

Should the site bend over backward (creating potential loopholes) to make sure that casual players can make use of a free gift?

Sure, it might be nice, but I don't think they should be spending more than absolute minimal resources on it. A simple coding change, sure. Creating a new item, one with special properties (can't be sold)? No, I don't think so.

This site is incredibly generous with its CSC - you can get it for no money, not even site currency (by visiting the bathhouse, through quests). We've always been able to buy it with site currency. Getting gold account privileges is super easy here - many sites won't even allow a person who doesn't spend cash to get their cash account privileges in another way.

I think being able to get CSC (and therefore GAs) in a variety ways is a huge strength of the site. Unfortunately I think it also seems to have given a sense of entitlement to the user base (and I include myself in that assessment).

A free gift, some extra GA time to compensate for poor site performance is wonderful, but absolutely not necessary. If a user doesn't happen to be able to be online to use it, then its unfortunate, but I don't think that's a problem that needs fixing.

What if there is a way to have the rewards saved to your account to activate when you want, but they expire after like 6 months or something?

I feel like if someone isn't signing in often enough to use it by then, they're probably not super active anyway.

[edit]But yeah, I can also see where is coming from too. If something like this is possible to do, I wouldn't be opposed to it. I agree with not spending a huge amount of effort on it though, when there are other bigger things that still need addressing.

I don’t see how a “loophole” is a real issue, is there any real repercussions if someone only logs in to get free GA? It happens like, once or twice a year max, so it’s not like someone is going to have months and months saved up, and that is someone who wasn’t logging on to the site and now is, so that’s a plus for the site. It’s incentive for people to keep playing.

Having an option to activate the gold account at our convenience seems like a pretty user friendly idea.

It could be an 'account bound' GA medal that cannot be traded/given or sold? I wouldn't mind seeing these as it loses its value by simply getting it activated while we are experiencing lags.

I think an expiration would be a good balance! It gives some extra time but not so much that it becomes another thing to hoard.

I'm with on this one.

The expiration is the 'problem' and creating another expiration delays this matter until someone else finds out their account-bound one has expired and makes their own Suggestion.

Subeta has rules about contests, they last a fixed time, have rules, and the rewards have to be given out within thirty days of contest end. Being able to hang out for the whole event is part of the rules for holidays then, and in particular any casual user may not have experienced any delay. So far that's been the implied rule for everything Subeta does: they want us all to come on in and hang out for awhile, and reward those who stick with it The OP by their own admission, didn't (for whatever reason} stick.

If you hang out there for awhile, when Subeta grants you a GA you get to see the free sample for what it is, and you get to experience it it while you are on the emotional high of completing the holiday and have experience of what it means to use the site without it. Several months later both of those are gone. This is good marketing, and meets the implied hang out with us for awhile purpose. Granting the account perk at any other time counts as customer service, and the OP has already encountered that feature of the site (which is excellent, btw).

I don't see the harm in adding the ability to "activate" the free GA, but I generally think that free GA time is a compensation for active users who lost out on playtime due to downtime. If you're not active, then I don't see why Subeta should try to compensate you for anything.

I kind of get it though because when you get a GA for lag it doesn't actually fix much, because a lot of time the lag will continue during the time you have the GA which limits the functionality of having a gold account at all. I don't see why it couldn't be an account bound item like the loyalty chest GAs.

I wouldn't mind an event with a link to activate the free GA time or something, but I agree with it having a reasonable expiration date also if that were implemented. I tend to let my GA expire before activating the next one so it'd be more useful to me if I could wait, but I don't mind if they leave it as-is either

They can't please everyone in this situation when the site lags. Some people are ok with extra GA time, while others don't care about free GAs and prefer an extended event, and some people will never be satisfied because they only had time during the event and didn't get as much done as expected. The GA extension is a compromise for people who were active during the event and lost a few days of playing time because of the lag.