Ask The Admin (01/09/2012)

[The Undead Suitor]

bedsick

Can I just ask what sort of process went into making alchemy recipes specifically? For example Wed to Darkness is 300k in the mp and in addition to several items requires a Judas SD Plus doll--fairly rare and about 800K. This is part of the core problem with it--the recipes cost more to make than they're worth. How did you guys even determine what to make from what? Did anyone even look at the pricing?

short answer: No


long answer: NOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo



I've come to a conclusion that absolutely no thought was put into alchemy at all. They just told artists to make formulas out of whatever they felt their own personal items were "worth", and well, you know how great artists are with monetary value.....

[Lanzer]

The Undead Suitor

Is there any chance for someone with a knowledge of percentages and drop rates working on alchemy, or are you going to let the short sighted artists continue to have free reign to run the system into the ground?

We know of the drop rates but how many attempts are being made is the action that we need to monitor. We would be thrilled if we came up with a perfect system that everyone is happy with yet doesn't exhaust itself in a short time. Unfortunately that didn't happen, but we continue to monitor usage as we listen to everyone at site feedback and plan on next steps.

[Rya Dracosin]

Still hoping to hear about an android app update before this closes....

[Yeata Zi]

The Undead Suitor

bedsick

Can I just ask what sort of process went into making alchemy recipes specifically? For example Wed to Darkness is 300k in the mp and in addition to several items requires a Judas SD Plus doll--fairly rare and about 800K. This is part of the core problem with it--the recipes cost more to make than they're worth. How did you guys even determine what to make from what? Did anyone even look at the pricing?

short answer: No


long answer: NOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo



I've come to a conclusion that absolutely no thought was put into alchemy at all. They just told artists to make formulas out of whatever they felt their own personal items were "worth", and well, you know how great artists are with monetary value.....

Have I ever told you that you are my favorite?

[briarborn]

Rya Dracosin

Prism Moon

See, they may say they read the SF and are listening, but i think what we'd really like to see is at least, at the very least, say "we're looking into it" and have someone come in to that thread once a week if it's kept up in SF or wherever to say "hey, we're still looking into it" and MAYBE explain what is going on with what they are doing, at least GIVE US INSIGHT into everything, PLEASE?

I agree, I think they could really benefit from designating a customer service rep to the SF, at least from time to time.

[biglanky14]

Rya Dracosin

Prism Moon

MistressMinako

The Undead Suitor

Auxiliary question; Can we please reign in Reapersun, or at least keep her from creating sequels to items she wasn't involved in?

I would very much appreciate this. Right now, certain aspects of her work are bordering on unprofessional. She's not the only one.

I would appreciate, Lanzer, if someone on-staff was promoted to actually dealing with users concerns. Right now, I don't feel as if anyone is listening. Looking at the problems with Alchemy, zOMG, other feature and item management. I feel like the site is slowly falling into disrepair with a heavy emphasis of quantity over quality and a quick cash grab before everything goes to pot.

There needs to be a stop put on staff members dashing off ill-worded posts and vanishing. It doesn't look good when a single sentence by a staff member results in a 20-page thread full of insulted customers.

I have to say that I agree with all of this, especially the italicized.

I hate to play the oldbie card, but I've been on Gaia since late '03. I love this site and I wish it all the success in the world, but I honestly feel like Gaia's quickly dying. This may not be the case but it's definitely how I feel for all the reasons Minako stated, most notably the alchemy issue.

I was really excited about alchemy at first, especially because I've wanted a pair of plain white wings since foreverrr. I was determined to work my way up, but I quickly found that it was a nearly impossible task for me. I have a good amount of Gaia Gold but I can't even get past level three without going bankrupt. Getting to level 10 is a feat that can only be accomplished with such a massive amount of gold that I can't even fathom how anyone could ever earn enough without obsessively vending or dropping tons and tons of cash into the site like it's going out of style. Alchemy is all about luck and wealth. Everything on Gaia seems like it's been about chance and Gaia Cash.

To add insult to injury, it seems like none of the Gaia staff members are really listening to anyone's legitimate concerns about this; it feels like it's been in one ear and out the other. Only a few small changes have been made to the alchemy system, and with the way it is now, simple angel/demon wings will be virtually unattainable, and I feel really let down. I've waited eight years for them.

See, they may say they read the SF and are listening, but i think what we'd really like to see is at least, at the very least, say "we're looking into it" and have someone come in to that thread once a week if it's kept up in SF or wherever to say "hey, we're still looking into it" and MAYBE explain what is going on with what they are doing, at least GIVE US INSIGHT into everything, PLEASE?

Hi Rya,

Good to see you again smile

Totally fair point. Like I said elsewhere here, we can do a better job of this. I certainly can't promise that we'll be everywhere that folks want us to be, but we'll try as best we can.

As Lanzer mentioned too, there are some things we're doing to improve our Comms. We're trying to do more Dev notices when we fix things (we've done 5 recently), we're doing the Gaia State of Union videos each month, and we're looking to run more contests, like the Fortune Cookie one. Ok, I know that's not strictly communications, but these are hopefully all signs that we know we can do more on the communications side and are working to get better.

[Rya Dracosin]

Prism Moon

Rya Dracosin

Prism Moon

See, they may say they read the SF and are listening, but i think what we'd really like to see is at least, at the very least, say "we're looking into it" and have someone come in to that thread once a week if it's kept up in SF or wherever to say "hey, we're still looking into it" and MAYBE explain what is going on with what they are doing, at least GIVE US INSIGHT into everything, PLEASE?

I agree, I think they could really benefit from designating a customer service rep to the SF, at least from time to time.

Yeah, if they did that, more users would be hearing about the topics that obviously are important to them, and maybe there'd be a little less frustration floating around...just a little...

[The Undead Suitor]

Lanzer

The Undead Suitor

Is there any chance for someone with a knowledge of percentages and drop rates working on alchemy, or are you going to let the short sighted artists continue to have free reign to run the system into the ground?

We know of the drop rates but how many attempts are being made is the action that we need to monitor. We would be thrilled if we came up with a perfect system that everyone is happy with yet doesn't exhaust itself in a short time. Unfortunately that didn't happen, but we continue to monitor usage as we listen to everyone at site feedback and plan on next steps.

"Monitor usage"?

There's a point where you don't want stuff to get too common, and then there's alchemy.


Where formulas only appear in bidblast 6 months later, where apparently they've been available the entire 6 months.

Is that event a percentage? .00000000000000000001%?

[Corinth Maxwell]

Lanzer

That's a great suggestion. We'll put it into consideration, for the next time we update the marketplace.

It's definitely possible, right now we're focusing our flash developers on Towns right now but we'll be able to get to it on a later date.

Having a digest is possible though it won't be a small change on a programming sense. I'll let Darknrgy know. Thank you.

cat_talk2hand No, no...as always, I thank you and all the rest of the staff for your replies! cat_3nodding cat_xd cat_ninja

[Rya Dracosin]

biglanky14

Hi Rya,

Good to see you again smile

Totally fair point. Like I said elsewhere here, we can do a better job of this. I certainly can't promise that we'll be everywhere that folks want us to be, but we'll try as best we can.

As Lanzer mentioned too, there are some things we're doing to improve our Comms. We're trying to do more Dev notices when we fix things (we've done 5 recently), we're doing the Gaia State of Union videos each month, and we're looking to run more contests, like the Fortune Cookie one. Ok, I know that's not strictly communications, but these are hopefully all signs that we know we can do more on the communications side and are working to get better.

^_^ hope you've been well!

I am pleased that there is a lot more communication than there used to be. But us in SF, at least, would love to hear more on the topics that get to them. I know you guys post in select few threads, and I know you have very little time to post, as you're busy doing stuff to keep Gaia running. Which is why it would be nice if you could maybe designate someone to spend some time responding to threads in SF, after information has been gathered about the topics.

You know what would be kind of interesting? A weekly newsletter of sorts. Covering the more popular topics of SF, and what is being done towards those things. Just an idea. 3nodding

[biglanky14]

Prism Moon

Rya Dracosin

Prism Moon

See, they may say they read the SF and are listening, but i think what we'd really like to see is at least, at the very least, say "we're looking into it" and have someone come in to that thread once a week if it's kept up in SF or wherever to say "hey, we're still looking into it" and MAYBE explain what is going on with what they are doing, at least GIVE US INSIGHT into everything, PLEASE?

I agree, I think they could really benefit from designating a customer service rep to the SF, at least from time to time.

Hi Prism,

Actually, multiple folks do this - both staff and mods have it as part of their routines to check SF and other forums regularly and report back their findings. But we haven't done a great job of letting you guys know that. We also of course can't possibly do everything that's requested of us in there, but the vast majority of it does actually get read.

One thing that's been a tough balance is that because there's so much more in there than what we can do, if we're posting in every thread it'll be a lot of "Thank you for your post"-type comments without much follow-up action, which may not look great to users either. But maybe that's something we've misjudged.

[Jayce Reinhardt]

Rya Dracosin

Prism Moon

Rya Dracosin

Prism Moon

See, they may say they read the SF and are listening, but i think what we'd really like to see is at least, at the very least, say "we're looking into it" and have someone come in to that thread once a week if it's kept up in SF or wherever to say "hey, we're still looking into it" and MAYBE explain what is going on with what they are doing, at least GIVE US INSIGHT into everything, PLEASE?

I agree, I think they could really benefit from designating a customer service rep to the SF, at least from time to time.

Yeah, if they did that, more users would be hearing about the topics that obviously are important to them, and maybe there'd be a little less frustration floating around...just a little...

So does this mean Pan is coming back?

[Lanzer]

Ridley Starsmore

1. Why can't anyone else host the ATA? near a month seems like a long time.

2. I hear over and over again Alchemy isn't broke. Your userbase disagrees. This isn't a question, just an informational statement. You may want to ask the ones responsible why it's failing so hard.

3. Why are the angelic and demonic wings in a broken thing like Alchemy? That is NOT available to everyone. It is a crying shame that it has to be released through bid blast so the highest farming exchanger can get the ONLY one that has appeared in 6 months.

It's the first time in 8 years that I've taken a 3 week vacation so we didn't really had made plans for anyone other than myself to host the ATA. But I'll keep that in mind in case there will be any other long breaks in the future.

As devs and admins we don't consider that anything is working great if Gaian's are unhappy about it. Things might not be broken as in it's working with the formula and rates that were designed, but that doesn't mean we're happy with it, and we always strive to make improvements. Alchemy is no exception and we're in constant discussion to what we can do as next steps. I hope that we'll reach the state where the feature is challenging yet achievable by many.

Thanks for joining us on this week's ATA. We'll see you all next week!

[biglanky14]

Rya Dracosin

biglanky14

Hi Rya,

Good to see you again smile

Totally fair point. Like I said elsewhere here, we can do a better job of this. I certainly can't promise that we'll be everywhere that folks want us to be, but we'll try as best we can.

As Lanzer mentioned too, there are some things we're doing to improve our Comms. We're trying to do more Dev notices when we fix things (we've done 5 recently), we're doing the Gaia State of Union videos each month, and we're looking to run more contests, like the Fortune Cookie one. Ok, I know that's not strictly communications, but these are hopefully all signs that we know we can do more on the communications side and are working to get better.

^_^ hope you've been well!

I am pleased that there is a lot more communication than there used to be. But us in SF, at least, would love to hear more on the topics that get to them. I know you guys post in select few threads, and I know you have very little time to post, as you're busy doing stuff to keep Gaia running. Which is why it would be nice if you could maybe designate someone to spend some time responding to threads in SF, after information has been gathered about the topics.

You know what would be kind of interesting? A weekly newsletter of sorts. Covering the more popular topics of SF, and what is being done towards those things. Just an idea. 3nodding

My response to Rya kinda addresses your comments, but the newsletter thing is interesting. I certainly don't want to promise anything (the last thing I want to do is set an expectation that we can't follow through on), but I appreciate any and all ideas of how we can get better. Eventually there will be that one great one that works for everyone smile

[biglanky14]

One last thing since this is locked. If you have any ideas about communication improvements, please PM me. I can't promise I'll reply (unfortunately I get tons), but I'll take any and all ideas.

Thanks for joining us tonight!