I've been asking for years and again I come back begging the staff to please, please--make an opt out feature from snowballs. I don't even care if that means I can't throw them either... One year all those who didn't join in the snowball fight were immune from being hit from snowballs. So there has to be a way to make this a feature.

See, I have ptsd. It's a very serious situation and the snowballs become three months of hell.... One of the things that makes this much harder for me is the random attacks and messages I get saying I was attacked --the snowballs taking time to come off, even with the dryer, which becomes a visual attack to me--all of it sets my anxiety through the roof. For my sanity please... there HAS to be something. I'm shaking here trying to hold back the tears with the flood of memories I get from the attack feeling--after yet another snowball today.

It's different if I was playing a war with a friend and knew when it was going to happen and chose to do it...or even the Halloween hexes because I choose it. Or I pick random trick or treating and I avoid the hexes all together. But with these random attacks, I feel powerless and it makes me feel like I did when attacked. I put the shield on but sadly I still got 3 snowballs today alone. And of course, I do forget to use it at times too-- I feel like I shouldn't have to depend on something like the shield (especially a not always effective method) to make this site a safe and enjoyable place for me.) Subeta should be fun and unfortunately these snowballs just take a lot of fun out of it for me. I want to be here because of my friends and the community as a whole but I also do not wish to continually endure this torture.

Agreed. It's a boring and grindy achievement at best, and I can definitely see how it would be upsetting.

I support having a way to opt out of the snowball fights. I didn't consider that it might trigger PTSD, but that's a very valid reason for an opt out option, since the shield isn't 100% effective. For me, it's just annoying when I put a lot of time into creating HAs, and they get continuously obstructed by snowballs. But for anyone with PTSD, I can see how it might be a constant source of anxiety for months. The site is supposed to be fun, not stressful. </3

I support this too, Subeta should be fun for all. A safe place and not have to worry about anything.

huuuuge support from me.

this post by says my thoughts perfectly.

The only solution would be to make the shield 100% effective. That would take what, 30 seconds of coding?

Full support. It would make the event a lot better for everybody who wants to opt out to opt out.

Even for those who don't have PTSD, there's still the worry about annoying people with want nothing to do with it. It would be amazing to be able to hit random and it would only hit those who don't mind. It takes a lot of unnecessary worries off.

yeah that would be a major improvement. I still would like to not have to rely on the shield because my memory is not the best, but it would surely give me more piece of mind and if I did get a snowball, I can put it back on and hope nothing is triggered.

There's sold in the Millionaire Center for 2,500,000sP that you can hide on your HA to help with deflecting all the snowballs thrown at you. ;)

The fact that the only option for opt-out costs sP but isn't even fool-proof kinda stinks, to be honest!

Sorry! I thought it did work all the time, as long as it was worn.

Support of this.

2.5M SP isn't a "bit of SP", it's loose change at this point. But there is 0 reason that it's not 100%.

"We want people to participate!"

Listen, the snowtapult mechanic is boring, I'm not going to participate anyway because there is little engagement. I throw snowball, I throw another snowball. It's not a fun minigame. I have the choice to not throw snowballs, but I don't have the choice to deny them? That's silly.

exactly. And that we can opt out on so much more but not this? It has never made much sense to me. I really feel if we can choose to be a zombie or dance we should be able to say, no I don't want to participate in this for whatever reason but we're forced to have the snowballs and subject to them, which to me doesn't seem right.

its okay. Not everyone knows it's not 100% effective. I think it's like 80% but with these snowball tiers people like throwing them and that perpetuates the problem :/

I support, hate seeing banana or other weird snowball shapes in my avatar's face. :') Hope there's a free pass to this.

I don't think anyone needs to "justify" not getting hit by a snowball. If you don't like it, for any reason, you shouldn't have to endure it, period.

Personally, I like that the shield is not 100%. I would prefer an option you could click in the forum preferences. But even though I like that the shield doesn't fully protect me, I would prefer it to be set to 100% than not to have any option at all to completely opt out.

big support for this. this is my first lumi season and i didn't realize how the snowballs worked at first; once i did it stirred up some anxiety for me too. thankfully i saw someone mention the shield so i bought it and put it on, but i don't like that it's a bit of a costly purchase to not even fully ensure that you don't get hit. (it isn't that expensive to be fair, it's just that on its face paying upwards of 1mil sp just for a chance to 'turn off' a site feature you don't want is kinda silly.) there seem to be plenty of users who just plain dislike it, don't want to see the HAs they worked hard on covered up without opting in, and/or have a more complex reason to be upset by a sort of attack outside their control, all of which are perfectly good grounds for there being something that's guaranteed to prevent it. i don't really mind how this option is introduced, whether that be making the shield 100% effective or just implementing a checkbox in preferences somewhere, but i hope it is. love to everyone who's toughing it out in the meantime. 💕

I'll admit that many years ago, when the snowball throwing was a relatively new thing, I said something like this was a silly request because they're just snowballs. I was kind of an ass about it, honestly.

I've since felt bad about saying that back then, because I don't feel the same way now. Since then I've learned how even simple things can trigger a lot of unwanted pain and anxiety. Or maybe things have just gotten worse irl since then, and people should be able to find peace and fun where they can. Maybe a bit of both.

Anyway, main thing is, I agree with giving people the option to opt out of snowballs, for any reason. Make the shield 100 percent effective, have a toggle like we do for gifts, whatever. Just make it happen.

Not everyone wants to see their HA ruined by silly snowballs. I certainly don't. I would be fine with getting hit by snowballs if not for that.

I want to help people with achievements, though, which is why I suggested an option to still be hit by snowballs but not have them show up on the HA in the news comments, which could also solve the problem of it interfering with virus progressions during Survival, but I don't know how easy or hard that would be to code. I think I saw someone say that snowballs thrown at people with shields still count towards the achievement, so I support making the shield fully effective, and maybe lowering the price to 500k or 250k or something so it's still an SP sink but not as expensive. I'm not sure what happens if someone with a shield throws a snowball at someone else with a shield, though.

Also, I find the snowball goes away if I go to the wardrobe and save my avatar even without making changes. But I don't want to have to do that every time.