Achievements and Tales of Woe

For discussion of the Subeta pet site, including new colours and other features.
Wingsrising
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Wingsrising »

Marah wrote:I rather like the new subeautique system. I'm currently without invitation, but I found quite a few so far. If I have an invitation it is actually possible for me to catch a restock and buy something good. I was never able to buy wishlist items straight from the beautique befor ethe new system, but managed to grab a few now!
HOW is it possible? I've found a grand total of ONE coupon so far, and when I went to use it, there were 3 items in the store, none of them something I wanted. I tried buying a coupon, and again there were 3 items in the store (not the same as the 3 items the first time) and again, none of them something I wanted.

Am I missing something?

I don't understand about Subeautique restocks, because there were different items the second time, implying it restocks continuously. However, then I got a ping about about a Subeautique restock, implying it only restocks sometimes. Making things more confusing, that's the only ping I've ever gotten about a restock, implying that either the store has only restocked once since the new system went online (in which case restocks are extremely rare) or no one uses the ping group (meaning restocks may be common but I have zero chance of catching one).

So maybe I'm really confused. I'd gotten the impression from my attempts to use it that it just gives you 3 random items to choose from every time. I've also assumed that if you don't buy one of the three items presented, you lose your chance and you've wasted your coupon.

Or maybe it works totally differently, in which case I still blame the site for not actually telling users HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS.
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AngharadTy
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by AngharadTy »

When it restocks, there are 9 different items in there. The people who restock there know the time of the minute it restocks (although for all I'm aware this may have changed). There's sometimes a delay before they post to the ping group (make sure you've joined the right one--I think it's #subqrs but someone else can confirm as I just left it while I wait to collect more invites) because they want to buy items for themselves. (Which is fine with me, to be clear!) I have the best luck late at night, but I've gotten quite a few wishlist items by putting the shop link in my bookmarks bar and hurrying over when the forum group is pinged. If you go and you don't want to buy anything, you don't lose your invitation. It's only used up when you buy an item.

The only downside is waking up to 20 pings. (So it definitely restocks fairly often....) Well, and the other downside is the time it bought two of an item when I only wanted one and that made me run out of invites when they had another thing I wanted in stock, too. Grump.
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Wingsrising
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Wingsrising »

Ah, see that would have been nice information to know. Too bad the site didn't see fit to, you know, TELL US THIS.

I'd say it's like you need a PhD to figure this out except that I didn't figure it out so that's clearly not sufficient! ;-)

Maybe I'm not in the right ping group as I've been pinged exactly once...

Maybe it's worth trying again although I still have no idea where y'all are getting these coupons. Like I said, I've gotten exactly one and it's not like I didn't open a few pages here in there in the course of burning 800+ Red Rreign items for the sidebar! Auto-refreshers? Buying them? (It looks like they're about 300k a pop, which seems to put an automatic lower limit on how much any Subeautique item will sell for in user shops.)

EDIT: OK, apparently I wasn't in the ping group correctly.

I still think the site dropped the ball on explaining the new system (and I'm still not convinced it's better than the old one, although we'll see).
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Ierosbats
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Ierosbats »

Sadly, giving subeta compliments has become a bitter pill for me, but I have to admit I do like the new subq system a lot. I never ever ever restocked there before because I'm terrible at normal restocking, even in shops that don't have crazy amounts of competition. The new system actually gives me a chance. I didn't bother joining the ping group, though. I don't like the events cluttering things up, and like Ty said it's only sort of helpful (by the time someone pings, most of the best stuff is gone). It restocks pretty often so I just rely on luck. Thankfully they didn't add something evil like the Blackheart Hollow time limit, so you can just leave it open in a tab and check in while you quest or whatever. I don't have many of the items wishlisted so I just buy things to resell. I was making great profits from that at first, but I think lots of other people are doing the same now so I might have to adjust what I buy. This seems to be one area of the site where they're actually fighting inflation, which I think is great.

I think the trivia situation is a disaster. I should have known better than to read the news comments. I got about four or five staff comments in and had to abandon ship because... dayum. There is some nonsense happening in there. Excuses upon excuses, and contradictory ones at that. Amber seemed to be doing some damage control, which was nice, but it looked like an uphill battle. Even Debilee, the person who used to run the trivia, stepped in to say she was upset. Keith said running something like the trivia isn't possible on a site the size of subeta (...really?) and then went on to say not many active players even participate so... not sure where he was going with that. And the cheating thing came up a lot, as did the fact that people often complain (and rightly so) about poorly worded questions, but just giving up is a pretty pathetic solution to those problems. Another common theme was "it's broken anyway" which I guess isn't surprising. If that's the case, though, why not just take it down for now and say it's being revamped at some point in the future. Maybe that's the case, I don't know. Like I said, I couldn't make it all the way through the comments. I hope the hugely negative response made them question the decision, at least.
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
Wingsrising
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Wingsrising »

OK, apparently public bitching does accomplish something, because after finding one and only one Subeautique invite since they were introduced (including nothing in my 800ish pages of Fireside burning) I've found TWO this evening (and missed 4 Subeautique restocks because I was reading a really interested blog on the history of nuclear warfare, oops). In retrospect I'm surprised there was ANYTHING in the shop when I was there the first two times -- and sorry, actually, since if there hadn't been it would have made it clearer that you didn't have to use them on that visit.

Is it better? I can't say the prices in user shops appear have lowered any (if at all) and I HATE restocking, especially in high-competition situations, so I remain skeptical.
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Wingsrising
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Wingsrising »

So having spent a little time experimenting with Subeautique restocking, I was able to score something like 5 WL items, plus one I bought twice by accident and one WL item that I bought and then decided I didn't actually want after all. (Those two combined sold for something like 7 mil, so I really can't complain on that score, either.)

On the one hand, I do agree the system works, at least if you RS late at night... late at night sometimes you even have time to check prices in user shops if you want.

On the other, as I said it reminds my why I hate restocking. You basically have to check the ping thread to see the last time it restocked, then roughly an hour later you go Subeautique and refresh every minute to see if it's RSing. Not very exciting. And of course there's no guarantee they'll be a WL item if it does. (I had good luck reselling those other two items -- they both sold within a day -- but I don't know how typical that is.)

The system tends to inflate the cost of Subeautique items in user shops, so that it costs more to buy many items in user shops as it did in the past. So it makes RSing a better option to get WL items and earn money, but at the same time it makes buying from user shops a worse option, annoying for those who don't really care to RS.

Because I hadn't bought any coupons prior to this, I also didn't realize that the price of coupons had been deflated 2 weeks ago due (I presume) to a batch having been put in the Token Shop fairly recently. The price of coupons in user shops has now doubled since then, to over 600k each. So I don't really want to buy any more coupons at the moment, and after finding those two in a row I've had no more luck finding them.

Overall the system certainly works much better than I originally thought but I think that finding coupons should be more common and/or that coupons RSing in the token shop should happen more frequently. Having to shell out 600K+ for a coupon in order to RS just one item seems excessive to me, but right now they don't seem to be common enough to get them just with random events.

Aside: I did find a coupon in my inventory I wasn't expecting, so if it was from someone here and I missed the event, thank you. :-)
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Iggy
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Iggy »

Right now, the only reason why people struggle to find SBQ invites is because Snow Faeries are 95% of the random events on site.

As soon as we have no more faeries, I'll go back to find 2 invites a day and I don't even check the site that much. The event is much much more common that the Morty Card one, in normal circumstances.
Wingsrising
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Wingsrising »

Morty card?

Is that how it works? The site rolls once to see whether you get a random event and then again to see what it is? I'd assumed all random events occurred with independent probabilities. If random events are zero-sum game, then that seems kind of lame, but it would explain why the coupon prices are so high now.

I only got the 2-invite-in-a-day aberration once -- I've only found 3 coupons that I know of since the whole system started. So I still don't see it as a very common event and I doubt I'll be able to RS very many items just on the coupons I find. But if the price drops back down into the 200k-300k neighborhood I'll likely start buying them again.
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Iggy
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Iggy »

Morty Card is an item that works in the same kind of event as the SBQ invitation, it increases your vault interest for a while and is pretty much a useless junk item, but I noticed that I only got one of these (And even then, really recently) compared to how many SBQ invitations I've gotten.
The site rolls once to see whether you get a random event and then again to see what it is?
Before the faeries were rereleased, I got three SBQ invitations since the start of December. Since they were released, all I get is faeries and I got a "You get a pie thrown at you" once. And maybe Ice King?

It sucks for people that didn't get the chance to get faeries in past events, but I'd rather have the faeries as floaters than random events. That way, when I get the RE, I don't get annoyapissed thinking it's something good.

I got four invites from Mysterious Melody partners since the start of the event and still have two claimed.But I always want more! ;)
Gumdrops
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Gumdrops »

I didn't realize I was so lucky with the Subeatique invites. Well, before Luminaire I was anyway. I got 2 within the space of an hour on like, Nov. 30th. And I'd been getting at least 1 a day usually.

I too wish the faeries were floaters.
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Jessi »

Oh my goodness. I met this sweetheart user through Mysterious Melody (we were able to figure out who we were through hints in our gifts!) who is an absolute dear. I just went to check my shop til (I'll leave that event up for a few days and forget it, haha) and I had over 200 mil in there! So I went and checked my shop log and she BOUGHT OUT MY ENTIRE SHOP as a Lumi gift. I'm totally in shock and plan to pay it forward by really shoving things under peoples' trees this year, haha! It was just such a lovely surprise!
Marah
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Marah »

Such a generous stranger, enjoy it Jessi!

As for faeries and random events, after the overkill of pumpkins and fireside floaters the faeries always seem to come in slow for me. Has anyone already finished the achievement? I'm not even going to make it to 300 if it keeps on going like this!

And does the morty card work for anyone? I have one but I'm not allowed to activate it and am stuck on a measly 3% interest...

Edit: And just stumbled on another subeautique card. Like so many people, hadn't had one in awhile. So yay :)
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Cranberry »

I gave up on waiting around for RE fairies and bought around 800 of them. Most of them cost around 6-7k when I did that. I find those achievements SUPER tedious, but I love the colors on that layout.
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Marah
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by Marah »

:)

That is one way of dealing with that. There are probably achievements that I spent more on, come to think of it. I might have to consider it!
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Re: Achievements and Tales of Woe

Post by TCStarwind »

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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Shin is supposed to be the 2759, not Shuu. :( I knew this would happen. I knew I'd get the wrong experiment on the wrong pet. Now I have to keep zapping past this glorious creature to get the 0507 for Shuu. I always have terrible luck.
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