Inventory Improvements

The inventory, and its limitations, are a major problem right now. Something needs to get bigger.

Regardless of how else inventory is changed, items that are identical should stack. Two swords at max durability? Stack. Medicines at the same potency? Stack. Two Female Pink Pearls? Should stack. The fact that identical items currently do not stack is eating up an insane amount of inventory space, which brings me to my next issue:

The inventory is too small. The upgrades should cost FC, not FD, or else they should give out 100 slots each. Inventory upgrade prices should absolutely not escalate the way villager slot prices do, or else escalate much slower. After the first purchase, a mere 20 slots cost as much as a paintie. After that, 25 slots cost more than a paintie. That is absolutely too much. Something needs to change there.

Alternatively...

Storage should be infinite. Keep inventory the way it is, but turn storage into an archive with no limit on contents.

On a related note: Stables, houses, and plant pots should not take durability hits if they are unoccupied.

General UI improvements:

The Quickstock page should have a link to storage in addition to inventory.

The Quickstock page should display current inventory, stall, and storage usage/capacity above the relevant columns.

Paintie Rule and Queue Improvements

First, to echo the resounding request throughout the site: Revert paintie rules to their original sate: “Don't change the species”.

Retrain the paintie mods. The rejection messages they leave are generic and unhelpful. They should be as specific as possible when rejecting a paintie.

REGARDING COSTUMES AND SPECIAL SPECIES:

Allow us to mix costumes. This would be done very simply by a tailor or crafter, similar to the current process of mixing medicines. When mixing, the first costume selected would become the “dominant costume”. This is how the costume will display on default art, and determines the buff the costume gives. However, mixing two costumes allows the use of both costume themes in the same paintie – for example, a pirate shark-wolf would need a pirate-aquatic costume.

Similarly, allow us to mix special species in the form of shifties. An alchemist would do this with two shifting potions. Using the potion on a shifty does not change its form, but instead changes its colour to, for example, Dutch Angel Dragon/Wickerbeast. Again, this allows the use of parts from both restricted breeds at once – a Wickerbeast with DAD wings, for example.

Now, suggestions specifically for the queue:

When a paintie is uploaded, users should have an optional box to tick: “I am willing to edit this paintie”. If the paintie is rejected, it is not kicked out of the queue, and the FD is not refunded. Instead it is tagged as “rejected” and retains its original position. When the artist has made the necessary changes, they can go to the rejected paintie and upload the corrected version, whereupon the paintie jumps to it's previous queue position (IE, near the top). This reduces one of the biggest frustrations with having a paintie rejected: getting kicked out of the queue and having to wait another three days for judgement. Obviously, mods should still have the power to kick it straight out of the queue if it obviously requires very heavy editing (effectively, a complete redo) to become acceptable. This is primarily for “please reduce the size of the ears”-style rejections.

When a paintie is rejected, there is a “reply” button which allows users to communicate directly with the mod who did the rejecting.
A pending paintie should display its current queue position, so everyone has a good idea of where their paintie is in the queue and how long they should expect to wait for a mod to see it. This will assist everyone: It reduces the number of unnecessary additional submissions (Did mods see it? Is the queue moving? I'll just cancel it and submit again) and the number of emails to staff along the lines of “Hey, have you guys seen my paintie yet?”. It also greatly increases transparency and reduces user anxiety along those issues.