Ask the Staff - 13 Oct 2014 - Updated w/collected answers

[admin]

Let's answer a few of the most common questions up front! These are some that we know you are interested in. Please don't duplicate the questions listed below as the answers we have given are as complete as we can make them at this time.

Can we opt out of announcements?
The long and short answer to this one is: No. Announcements and staff notices are the best way we currently have to get info about events and sales out to you. While we may look at alternative communication methods in the future, right now we have no plans to change this system. The sales of announcements are how we keep this site up and running- so a big thank you to the Gaian's who read those and take advantage of the sales they offer!

Can you update shop navigation? (ex. Better tabs, tags, and shopping cart?)
This has been on our radar for awhile now! Definitely a strong possibility for the future!


Where did zOMG items go in the shop?
As we are currently fixing some critical issues with zOMG!, the items have been removed from shops while we work on it! This is so that no one makes a purchase they can't use.

Why are there so many GCash items and are the prices going up?
GCash is how we support this site. When a Gaian is generous enough to make a purchase from us- it helps everyone. Without these purchases we couldn't afford to keep this place free and fun for everyone. So, of course, we put a lot of priority on making sure we have quality items in our GCash stores for these Gaians to buy. It's not just an effort to make money, it's an effort to keep our community going. Just like any other store, we constantly strive to strike a balance with our pricing that is enticing to our customers but profitable to our company. Items in our store range from 99 cents to $80, so there should be something for everyone at every price point!

Can you fix Loyal's counter so that it works?
Yes, we actually want to change completely how that part functions so more people can get access.

Can we have more outfit slots?
Yes!

Inventory arranger update?
Was on hold for a very long time but currently being worked on. No set launch date.

What are you doing to help new and existing Gaian's keep up with inflation?
New Gaians:
We are in the process of improving the Gaian experience for new and old players alike. Currently, we are working on balancing existing systems to make Gaia even more newbie friendly than it is now.

Existing Gaians:
We are aware of the inflation issue on Gaia, and are doing everything we can to address and resolve this important issue. Although we are unable to remove Gold Chance Items completely from La Victoire, we've taken steps to lessen the amount of Gold Chance CIs in the shop at once, as well as re-balancing the items.

Our long term goal is simple: we plan on revamping existing systems such as GoFusion and some of the mini games (e.g. Smashblox) to enable Gaians to use their gold to obtain exclusive items available only in these features. These features, once completely revamped, will allow Gaians to either use Gold or Gaia Cash to participate. Our main priority is to focus on our economy and address it accordingly, so that will work in tandem with gold generators.


Are you going to update the mobile app?
We absolutely must. It's where the world is going.

Click here to go to a compiled list of the Answers submitted in our first Ask the Staff!!

[Narumi Misuhara]

General Guidelines
Please keep your posts constructive. Posts that are overly abusive towards management, staff or other members of the community will be deleted without warning. Gaian's who are overly negative in Ask the Staff may be permanently removed from participation in this and future events.

Not all questions will be answered. This may occur because at present- they do not have an answer, it was already answered, or because we missed it. Should the thread posts grow faster than we can handle, we may temporarily lock the thread while we catch up. We will post if the lock is because of us catching up, or due to the event being over.

[jonjon21428]

ninja

How was lunch?

[x3rubiachica3x]

Glad to see some questions I had wanted to ask are already answered. While gold generators seem to be here to stay, I still have to say I firmly oppose this, and no matter how less we see of them, I will still not spend a dime on Gaia until I see them gone...

Now, any news you can share with us about the Halloween Event? Maybe when we can expect it to launch? I assume forum battles as always?

Edit: Also, anymore info on zOMG! would be wonderful. Like what you're fixing? Hardware, code? Who's working on it? Any of that??

[Krissim Klaw]

It’s been a full year since the entire staff team ran in terror from the Super Duper Important Question I asked as the first user made post of the very last ATA.

My mantises Zombie and Taboo, simply wanted to know what staffers were going to do to make Gaia a more mantis friendly place for their offspring. Since then, not only have both of them passed of old age, but their children have passed, all never knowing the joys of romping around this site in pixel mantis ecstasy.

Still the new Gaian mantises of today such as Grimoire, Invoke, Enchant, and Trance, all sit praying with the same hopes and dreams.

Will they ever get a Praying Mantis Companion, I AM pose, Adorable Astra Item, or even a Mantis Strut/Mantis March? What about the Mantis Themed Event Lanzer himself promised? When is Gaia going to do something for its simply massive praying mantis userbase?

Don't make me poke you!

[Ren Orenji Doragon]

Hello AtS! I have a couple of questions from a friend of mine regarding Paws stuff. smile

Quote:

Question 1: Can you give a rough estimate on when the winners of the Best in Show contest will be announced?

Question 2: The prices for Paw CS items have come down considerably but there are several furs in Skin Tyte with steep pricetags. Can you consider lowering their price as well and reimburse the difference to people who already bought them for the current price?

As for my own little questions and/or feedback:

3. Orange/Yellow/Purple/Pink Lizardman? lol Orange especially. wink

4. Is Going Postal still open? o3o I know sisky posted a blog entry about it a couple of years ago, but I haven't seen much since then. :C

5. Speaking of sisky, she also ran a couple of Tumblr blogs centered around avis and artwork... any chance those will ever be active again? emotion_kirakira

Blogs in question: http://gaiaonlineavatars.tumblr.com/ http://creativegaians.tumblr.com/

Oh, and I wanted to thank you guys for bringing us some form of feedback session after AtA was axed. heart heart heart

[Angeni1]

I am a vice president of the Booty Prowling Panther and our guild members want answers..
We are members of your aquarium community where things are so bad we can only believe that you want to let it die? The choice of fish in Phin Phang is such a joke and the market even worse. You are aware you have young people in this game who have no access to money to buy gold? Then that leaves us to turn to the market place to buy fish with the gold we earned.Which again is running rampant with an airshark today running at 50 mil? We ourselves are buying your cash card but i guess thats coming to an end since we cant support the whole community. God knows we have tried.Your announcements to buy buy buy ~ is annoying to all. But at least if your going to throw out every color, every old item, etc why don't you at least make a few fish bundles for us to purchase. With some of the old time fish like landsharks, mermaids, etc. Maybe packs of wolves, airsharks, giant stones? Give us a choice and price range so people may stock a tank again so others can play! You do realize that most members in aquariums are older and can afford your cash cards? So give them a choice of fish if you must have real cash...you didnt even include aquarium on your first post and we deserve answers


NASHOBA1 and ANGENI1

[Lei_Trigar]

Welcome Staff! I hope you brought your flame shield +9001 because you're gonna need it!

Alright, just got a few things I'm going to post about before I go to bed. (its 1am here atm).

Topic #1: zOMG! Kill Badges as Achievements

For a looong time now, probably shortly after Achievements were introduced, I've always wanted that to happen but never really got a answer or anything concrete about it, maybe because I didn't post it enough? I dunno, but here I am now!

I made a thread here recently since the game has been taken off for this 'maintenance' so I figured now would be a good time to throw this idea around since the game is actually being worked on. I'll post the original post in spoilers so I don't clog up my post to much with a tl;dr version at the bottom of it.

So yeah, I've been throwing this idea around for god knows how long and today I've decided to make a thread about it.

The concept is actually quite simple, in the game you get Badges, in particular there are these kill badges, every Animated has 3 you can earn;

1st one for killing 50 of said Animated: Air Fluff Deflater.
2nd one for killing 500 of said Animated: Air Fluff Decimator.
3rd one for killing 5000 of said Animated: Air Fluff God.


I think it would be a great idea to convert those Kill Badges into Achievements. For one, I think it would increase usage, and would be a great thing to get extra points and more titles for under you avi.

Now, I am FULLY aware that the game has been put into a permanent state of 'maintenance mode' but hear me out;

1: The kill count is already integrated into the main site; Check here
2: Each Badge has there own unique icon they can use for the Achievement. (See above)
3: Each Badge has there own unique title(s) they can use for under your avi; (Royal God anyone?)

So from that alone most of the work is done, only thing left to do is convert it all into Achievements, personally, I don't know how hard that would be, but since they are able to make 2 new Achievements per kickstarter is shouldn't be that hard. wink

How would the points work? Well, here's how I figured it could work;

50 Kill Achievement grants 50 Points.
500 Kill Achievement grants 150 Points.
5000 Kill Achievement grants 300 Points.
Giving you a total of 500 Points per Animated slain 5000 times!

Now, there are a few issues I'd like to take note;

At the moment in the game it works like this, if you hit the Animated at least once you'll get the kill even if you don't deal the final blow. Which is fine, because there would be a lot of people raging over who owns the animated everywhere. The issue I have is that, for example, you're CL10 and you kill a Gnome (CL1) it counts as a kill. That to me isn't fair.

Each Animated has 5 different colors which represent how strong or weak they are and it goes like this;

Red: They are over 1.0 CL then you, good chance you'll die, also, no loot.
Yellow: They are between 0.6 and 0.9 higher CL then you, tough fighting, you will get drops
Green: Ideal CL they are within 0.5 higher and lower then your CL, always get drops.
Blue: They are 0.6 to 0.9 under your CL, easy fight, you will get drops.
Purple: Under 1.0 then your CL, no challenge, and no drops.

Personally I think Animated whose colors are Yellow, Green, and Blue should only count as kills, but currently if it dies, and you hit it, it will count. Chances are nothing will/can be done about it because that'll involve a lot more resources that I know they won't put into the game.
But there is a certain group of animated that you can't even attack unless you're CL5. The damn Giftboxes.. gonk

ADDED: Something I forgot to post.. (it was 2am so yeah, surprised I even managed to post all of this lol)
One of the things I was worried about was if they would be retro-active, most of us already have a few badges, does that mean we need to get them all over again? Personally I don't see why we would, the Badge List here clearly shows you what you've earned and what you still need to earn. But if they do that we can't log in one day and get pounded with 10+ Achievements because of it, so I was thinking you can log in and slay 1 Animated, and once the site updates (if I recall, it takes a couple minutes) they'll grant you the amount of Badges/Achievements you have already earned with that animated, for example;

Say you have 3182 Anchor Bugs killed already, once they activate the Achievements, you log into zOMG!, kill 1 of them, once the site updates you instantly get the 50 and 500 Achievements! Then you can keep killing them till you get the 5000 kill Achievement! Does that sound like a good idea? Please let me know. smile

ALSO ADDED: Since Gaia has been obsessed with Kickstarters lately, and I have this faint feeling that zOMG! will probably get one, maybe they can added this little idea as a Global Tier! I'd happily donate for this happen! (Since it seems to be the only way to actually get Gaia to do something lol)


Well, that's that. You like this idea? If yes, please tell me! If no, please tell me! Notice an error? Please tell me! xp

Any other comments or feedback is more then welcome, thank you for your time. (I hope some devs see this and can comment on it)

tl;dr version;

Want all Kill badges as Achievements, most of the work is done and only need to convert them into Achievements themselves, points can add up to a total of 500 per set (3 per animated).

And while I'm on the topic of Achievements, why not add them for the games you currently have here? Like Fishing, Pinball, etc. I'm sure others will play them a lot more if there's more incentive to play them.


Topic #2: When's the next batch of Emerald Tickets going to be released?

Topic pretty much nails it right there, the Emerald Ticket has been released twice, to my knowledge, but I have yet to get one, only reason I am after it is because for some reason this particular Ticket has an Achievement attached to it, and like many might already know, I've worked very hard on trying to get them all. Though lately I feel like the meaning of them has been tarnished because now you have to pay gold for them. But that's another story..
So yeah, when is the next set of those Emerald Tickets coming out? biggrin

Topic #3: Loyalty Program?

I remember much talk about this, only thing that came from it was Loyal's Bazaar and personally I don't see that as part of it, just more expensive Dernier Cri. I remember the staff liking the idea of using the Achievement Points in that program, not to spend them, but to unlock perks when you reach certain tiers. (5k, 10k, 20, 30k, etc) Things like, getting more gold when posting, getting better items in Daily Chance, maybe even a discount in the shops? 2% - 5%. You know, little things, I feel those who worked hard to collect the Achievements, and nowadays, pay for them, show loyalty to the site. Is this something that can be worked on in the future? And by future I mean within a year.

That's all for now, hope you guys have a great time in this pit of fire you've set upon you! twisted

Also, got a birthday in 3 days, want to help me fund this current kickstarter? mrgreen

[Parexus]

I missed having these AtA, glad you guys have brought them back.

Only question I have is regarding future events. Any plans on having more NPC interaction during the events, such as talking in the forums or discussing the plot that is currently happening with said event?

Also any chance we can get more music items made? Such as guitars, basses, electronic keyboards, drums, etc?

[Darc Nightgale]

I really happy that you guys are doin' this again. So thank you very much. biggrin


1st. Achievements, as of lately there only seems to be achievements for kickstarters. I wanted to know if there are goin' to be other achievements, or is it just goin' to be given up on. I know that there are some achievement hunters that have some really good ideas for new achievements. I really hope that Gaia does continue with achievements, and please ones where we don't have to spend real life money to get.

2nd. Alchemy. It's gettin' harder and harder to work on makin' the back wings due to lack of formulas, bugs, rare fish, and inks. I wonder if there is a chance that maybe they could sell the formulas agaian. And maybe put some of those inks, rare bugs and fish into the daily rewards. Or even have some put into rigs. You could also make it where we could make it so we have an option to make some of them through GoFusion.

Again thank you for takin' the time to read my post. 3nodding

[xx I met my fate xx]

The Avatar Arenas have been ignored for a very long time now. Many users still enjoy using them. Why not use this to your advantage Gaia? An alternative and more inclusive means to promoting your new items and possibly generating the sales that you desire, particularly your LQI's. Raise the prize amounts for winners and host a contest each week that must feature a certain LQI, or whatever random item you wish to promote. Bring life back to the Arena's, generate more interest and, dare I say, "need" for your items and utilize what you have available to you, rather than introducing something new?

[gataka]

Oh yeah, welcome back!

What are the issues you're trying to fix in zOMG! ?

[Kid Jak]

Hello!

If Item layering and glitches are usually handled by the artist who make an item.
What do you do for items Who's artist has left Gaia?

specificaly for things like Ninja Headbands and fish helms.

When might we get to trade in our fish for Paws items?

Besides Rufus, Jet, and Carl, will we get a Paws shopkeeper?

Was there a set number of Citrine Tickets in Project Old School?

Are there any tickets left in Loyal's Bazaar that can be Won?

Edit: answered thank you

bluealaris

Hi Jak! Let me answer your questions as best I can.

Item Glitches: Older items many times have been layered or made incorrectly. We can look into fixing them- it usually ends up either being an easy fix or a monolithic spiderweb of fixes that goes thousands of items deep.

Fish for Paws: Maybe!

Citrine Tickets: Yes, there are still Citrine Tickets in Project Old School!

[Arli]

First of all, Thank you staff for listening to the user's concerns with the lack of Ask the Admin. I am very happy to see it return as Ask the Staff. We are slowly rebuilding the communication gap between users and staff. ATA was what helped make our community felt unique in my humble opinion. I'm glad to see this feature back. I hope it continues! <3

First question - Narumi posted on Twitter months ago that the possible return to the Gaia Blog. Is there any update on this feature returning?

Second question - I would like to know what the general plans are for the plot. I know it will be continuing, but I would like to know if there is some sort of timeframe you are looking at?

Third question - Do you watch the Blacklist? If SO: Do you think Red is Lizzie's dad? razz

[Hassli]

Hello! Hi! Howdy! Hey! How are you? How is your cat? Oh, that is good. Ok.

My name is Hassli, and I am Diedrich's No. 1 Fan! I also run the D-Party, Gaia's one and only political party! This is my first Ask the Staff thing. YAAAAAAAY.

((If reapersun shows up tell her I am sorry I haven't had time this semester to interview her! STUFFS IS CRAZY FOR ME! I had that health thing and then have been just really busy with teaching and taking graduate level classes. I dropped the ball, but I promise to make it up to her one day! ))

I wanted to ask if Diedrich has any plans for the mid term elections? The D-Party has recently started taking nominations for a Vice President of Gaia. Did you know the President of these United Gaia doesn't even have a Vice President? IT'S TRUE! I have seen it! And it is disgraceful! Our Commander in Chief has served half his term without even having a vice president! Who has been performing the VP's two duties? Who casts a vote in the event of a Senate deadlock and presides over and certifies the official vote count of the Gaia Electoral College? Certainly not Diedrich! He can't even count that high! WE WILL FIX THIS.

D-CISION 2014! BE THERE



Will you tell Diedrich I love him?

By the way, whatever happened to Diedrich's Twitter? I MADE A TWITTER ACCOUNT FOR YOU, GAIA.

OK! Thank you! BYE BYE! See you later! I LOVE YOU! OK BYE BYE.

#okbyebye

P.S. If you ever want someone to be Diedrich. I might know a guy.

P.P.S. I wanted to make sure you weren't confused. That guy was me.

P.P.P.S. One more thing, Save Our Plot.