I really appreciate Amy and all the staff who run this game, and I understand why they're feeling the way they are now. If I was running this game and received all the criticism that they get for no return I would've shut down the game a long time ago, I'd slap this game on my resume and then be done with it. But I don't like sugarcoating things. I also understand the frustrations that the players have and I share a lot of the same sentiments that a lot of them have, the quality of the game has definitely gone down, I've only been playing since April 2016 and I've definitely noticed my expectations of the game decline. My questions went from "I wonder what the new items will be?" to "I wonder how late the new items will be?" to "I wonder if new items will come out?" and that's fine, I know real life gets in the way, there are a lot more important things going on in people's lives than this game. But I think the thing most people are frustrated about, are promises and propositions that do not get realized. Nobody likes to get let down, especially by something that they enjoy like this game. There are a lot of reasons why people are unhappy, but this is definitely one of the more prominent ones.
One thing that I believe should happen to remedy this is that Amy needs to lessen her workload, she's coding the game by herself which is enough work as is, but having to design items on top of that in addition to her real life? That's a lot for anybody. I'm sure A LOT of people want to contribute to this game. I think that the playerbase should be allowed to contribute their ideas for items.
An idea would be to let the playerbase know a few weeks to a month in advance the theme of the next month, let the playerbase know what's needed: hats, clothes, pins, furniture etc. and have them submit them and vote on them. Let players know what are the requirements for submissions so that it isn't a hassle to deal with, let them know what filetype it needs to be saved as, what resolution/size it needs to be at, how many different angles of the item need to be made (if it's a rotatable item/clothing) etc. whatever needs to be done to make the workload less for Amy.
I do appreciate everything that the staff and Amy is doing regardless, I've really enjoyed my time in the game thus far.