Gaia really is Pay To Play now

[DJ Twissta]

There hasn't been much play.

[Monday Delirium]

Slick Southpaw

ugh for sure

I mean I went on hiatus for a few months due to work

guess what I can still access the site

Unless this is an hallucination and you are actually just talking to your cat.

I'm pretty sure I'm halucinating most of the stuff that happens here for the last four years or so.

Remember when they banned cigs?
NOPE, cause it wasn't real.
zOmg!? Not real. It was actually all of us drooling on our keyboards.


This aside, I really don't care anymore about the way gaia manages it's bussiness.

I kind of just feel a bit tired I guess... The events should not be used to get people to spend real money.

Even it meant we had less of them through out the year it would boss all our spirits if they made their events cash free and the event items were available to all participants.

I NOW that paying cash to reset your this and that is optional.
using cash to buy items made to comemorate these events is optional.
Buying cash to buy the charms to craft the events items is optional.

We could however have at least thsi one time even if just one every year during which we could get all the event related items with just investing a bit of time.

This year some people spent real money to get fake virtual swaters to craft the one cool event item.

That's not cool by my book.

In short guy that posted first phrased it in the worst way possible.

[Gutsy Taiyaki]

Jumping Jehosaphat

All the events have become awful fighting events too where you have to pay GC for boosts or quick reload time. And then everyone complains when there is any level of difficulty. It's disgusting.

And to be fair, the donation items you get usually aren't that great. In fact, you could probably set up a donation board in the proper forum to get them for free. A lot of people just want the achievements and not the prizes.

I dislike battle events. I really do. They feel really elitist. Whatever happened to fun ones such as collecting something or like the Orphan event of 2007? I stopped doing events in 2011 on Halloween.

ZOMG I could careless about I never played it much,

[QUARAN7INE]

Dumpter Dive the hell out of it... more than 200b in items on January only

[ClefairyKid]

I'm not trying to brag here but, I'm doing pretty well for myself and don't buy it? It's all about the effort you put in, much like real life too.

[1000 bees]

EDIT: Wow. Thank you so much to the anon who sent me animal furs! That was so sweet of you! I hope you have a great day and eat some great snacks/watch something really good on Netflix/pet some nice animals or something.

This whole thread is people being like:

Quote:

But they don't make you pay!

No, they don't. Yes, you can buy some things, but the things most people really want are prohibitively expensive for casual users. This is an avatar forum. You dress up your avatar and you talk to people. The former doesn't seem all that fun anymore considering how prohibitively expensive things are. Yes, you make gold from the daily chance, but it frankly doesn't compare. At best, I get about 100,000 from daily chance. The "cheap item" threads list nice items that are in the low billions.

I considered changing my avatar recently, even though I've been a tiny horse for years. The new animal bases are cute. Just to get dog fur that isn't green or tan, I would need to pay hundreds of millions in gold. Tbh, I don't care enough to work at earning gold for that long when the site otherwise seems unsatisfying. The events involve donating a lot of gold or buying Gaia Cash. The marketplace requires a kind of capital I don't have. There's nothing to do here for me besides talking to people, and frankly, I can find other places more tailored to my interests that don't annoy me as much with their aggressive advertisements.

It's so short-sighted. They're chasing people away. I have friends who used to use Gaia, and more than one has reported logging on again to see what's up on the website -- then noticing the inflation and leaving. The game isn't friendly for people who aren't already very committed. It's a recipe for stagnation.

So, no, it's not pay-to-play. It's more like the iOS games that require ridiculous waiting times or don't let you play the game fully unless you make in-app purchases. Technically free, but not very enjoyable if you aren't spending money. It's even worse on Gaia, because this isn't really a video game. It's an avatar forum site. There's better social media communities out there if you're looking to chat with people (like Reddit) and dressing your avatar isn't very fun when you feel completely defeated by the cost of most items. Why would potential new users want to stick around? Why would more casual users want to bother instead of spending time on websites where they can feel successful without having to invest a lot of real money?

All I can think is that they're wringing money from the loyal users as long as they can keep them around. They don't care about the future of the site.

[AKO_Slash]

Guess I have to pray they survive so I can at least make use of the items I payd for...

[Sablinovia]

Oh, definitely. I think a lot of the original users left once Gaia started changing away from an anime/manga/rpg forum that had avatars once the former admins started leaving & the advertising and all the items that could only be purchased by spending actual money (discluding donation items) appeared. Remember Gaia movies? Most of that was 'watch this commercial and we'll give you free gold/items.'

[YourAzureGoddess]

Here's the thing...

I just returned from about a 6 month LoA ... and while yes, there's so much to spend money on... it all looks the same.

To me that's not enticing anymore. The forums are still free. Just hang out and chat like always.

[Wystern]

Eh. You can pay to make your virtual self look reallyyyy nice.
But that's about it. It's still about the forums and the community itself.

[Vex Darling]

o_o