Serafiella
(?)Community Member
Offline
- Posted: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 17:58:03 +0000
It's been somewhat of a busy and remarkable year for Gaia, and as we rapidly approach 2015, it's always good to take a look back at what was good or bad about the year, what to improve on, what to add, and so forth.
If I've forgotten something in this large list of options, I'm not too surprised, but do poke me with a stick if you feel something should be added. Also pardon if you're bothered by all the random emoticons as bullet points. Using only a few made it look like a massive wall of text-which it is, but this seems to make it less scary to my eyes because of the variety.
Human Base
yum_strawberry We've seen a large rise in arm and leg mods in recent years. This year has featured quite a number of them. But this is in some ways the year of "skin colored mods." Many items with these mods now feature skin color options. Notably, they don't hit up every color in the rainbow. Black, white, and other colors are options, but should even more poses be made in the future to match items such as the body dyes? Or is that too much? Should the options be arm poses, or entirely separate poses within the item?
yum_cupcake Traditonal EIs (Evolving Items) seem to have flown out the window in exchange for REIs (Rapid Evolving Items). Zodiacal Equinox is the only currently running EI. Do EIs seem slow and out of date now? Or do you feel that we should filter out REIs and return to the slower evolutions?
yum_wasabipie It's been a huge year for recolors and color palettes! Some recolors come out within a day of the original. What color schemes are you glad have gotten attention? Not so glad? What palettes would you like to see? What items got too much attention? Not enough?
yum_burger We've had much more experience with (oftentimes mostly human) Limited Quantity Items. What makes a good LQI in your eyes? A bad one? Does an item or bundle being limited affect your stance on buying that item (for gold or cash), even if some items that are not limited technically have less quantity in existence? Should LQIs be required to sell out to their full quantity?
yum_sausage Many a new scissors, razors, background mods, etc. have hit Gaia this year. Have they been good? Bad? Should such an item ever be a limited quantity item? Are you glad the haircut bundle is still in the shop (even if it's hidden off the featured page)?
Animal Bases
While not entirely new (my brain thinks that was last summer for some reason)
Animal bases got a lot of interesting little perks and quirks this year.
gaia_kittenstar We have as of now, 5 bases- Cat, Wolf, Bear, Bunny, and Puppy. What animals would make other good bases? What good happenings, or problems, have you had using one of these bases? Should making a base become its own ticket prize? What colors or patterns should be released for these bases?
dramallama We have many, many more of what could be described as "cash skins"- nonpermanent skins that work by editing one of the five bases. What animals, recolors, etc would you like to see from these skins?
cat_ninja This has been the year of the animal Monthly Collectible- our furry friends getting a cut of that sweet $2.50 montly mystery. Do you feel the items this year have been good? Bad? Average? Should there be separate masculine and feminine items like the human base?
cat_talk2hand Slow and steady, once in a while we get an item remastered from human to animal base. What items would you like to see remastered? Should all recolors of a remaster be released at once, or over time? In what ways did an item or pose not quite work when made for the animal base? In what ways were some poses or items made better?
cat_exclaim The animal base has some room for creativity, as with our current Tamagotchi-inspired REI. What other items can you imagine that could seemingly only work for this base?
classified_diedrich Conversely, this is also the rise of the "chibi human"- with mods like the elf fur and hear no evil allowing what were cats and mice with wigs to become small people. This is somewhat controversial as it in some ways breaks the idea of having a "separate from human" base to begin with. Most people shrug it off- it is, as with anything, optional. But does it open any doors for the animal base in terms of getting more remastered items, or getting more human-based items of their own?
Features & Random Things
gaia_spoons One of the big changes this year was the removal of zOMG. The items are now available in caches and grab bags, and some locations have moved to Towns 2, but is this enough to you? Should it one day be remastered? Should more commemorative items be released to celebrate what it once was, such as backgrounds, additional companions of any monsters that don't have one, etc.?
gaia_gaiagold In place of zOMG, we've seemingly stuck now to the forum battle system. This has shown itself to have several kinks, such as the slaughter that was Angels vs Demons. In what ways can this sort of event be improved on? Or what would you suggest in its place?
gaia_diamond With the clear inflation on site, some event games are now pay (gold) to play. What has your experience been with these games? Should they exist? Should any event game give out more gold? Less?
gaia_nitemareleft This has also been the use of Kickstarters- donating gold to earn individual or site-wide prizes. Has this feature helped, or has it made things worse? In what ways could kickstarts improve? What sort of kickstarters would make sense to you for the site to have?
gaia_angelleft Tickets here, tickets there, tickets stuck everywhere. What do you think of all of our mystical tickets? Perfect parcel? This has also been the year of baby and mini tickets. Should these exist? What new tickets should be made? Which should see more frequent re-release? What makes for a "good" or "bad" use of a ticket? Should there be more "quick" prizes like getting to be featured in chance items?
gaia_crown 100 Packs are interesting things. Are they worth it? Should items be rotated more frequently, or exclusive to one such chance item per year? Or do you like them being super common pulls? Should they be improved (such as being more like Walk in the Woods, and less like Let's Build a Snowman in the number of clicks to a prize)?
gaia_nitemareright On yet another deflation tangent are the gold for gold chance items like Spin to Win. Are these "dangerous gambling devices"? Do they help enough, or do you think people know they're terrible, and thus sink almost no gold?
gaia_angelright GoFusion has gotten some updates, including starting a potential rotation schedule. Does this work, or should it have been cleaned up so that everything was still in stock, but with less scrolling involved? How many diamond charms should something ever use, maximum? What are your thoughts with soulbound items like snowflake charms- is this a good or bad idea? Should many of the holiday items used less snowflake charms, or were they fair?
emotion_bigheart Club Verge has only gotten the rare update. Do you think it will vanish? Or will it stick around? Rococo has also similarly dropped to infrequent updates- what will become of it in the following year? Are you glad Mecha Neko was repurposed, or would you like to see more sponsored items?
emotion_bandaid On the non-cash side, Back Alley Bargains recently got re-purposed following the closing of zOMG. Was this a good move? Should any other shops be tweaked? Do we need any more shops, so as to better categorize merchandise? An animal base only store? Conversely to adding more, should events like caroling be limited to certain shops, as if we have too many? What has been good or bad about the grab bags this year? Was the price hike at H&R Wesley worth it, or should it have stayed the same? Should other shops be fit to match inflation? Do the gold shops get enough updates?
gaia_star Loyal's shop has somewhat slowed down in releases. What sort of items should be released in his shop? Should limited quantity items for gold be released again? I would love to see a vote each week of maybe 5 popular cash items each in a popular color that it hasn't been made in yet, get a community vote, to be permanently placed in Loyal's at the start of the next week's voting, or something along those lines.
yum_tuna Staff involvement has been somewhat on the rise this year, with the return of Ask the Admin as Ask the Staff, Community Spotlight, and so on. Does Ask the Staff seem to be doing a good job? Should it be held different days each week, or is Monday evening a good time? Have staff felt more approachable than they might have previously seemed to you? Is Community Spotlight doing a good job with its nominations? Should just the first place winners of the avatar arena be featured, or things like second and third place?
yum_onigiri We finally got a new inventory arranger! Which has had some glitches, and admittedly, doesn't feature things such as being able to see labels like "hat/wings/item" and has to be hunted through page by page for the right spot to put something. It does feature stacking, which has been a help to some, but what will really seal the deal for you in using this new version?
gaia_gaiagold Some games and features have had their payouts increased. What features should get this treatment? Is this a bad idea? Should other options like Crosstich contests and avatar arena entries see an increase in paying to enter?
gaia_spoons While on hiatus for a while, the manga is now slowly but surely progressing again. Should it update more frequently? Less? Should we see less serious minicomics more often? What sort of story arc would you like to come after the Airship Saga?
New Points (edits)
Will eventually be moved to the proper spot but if you're here just to see what's new that's a lot to hunt through.
idea This year also saw the release of the account lock- allowing many an old account (standard or mule) to step back into the world. While largely a good thing, it does mean some old accounts may one day be brute-force hacked or the like. But it seems a rarity compared to the positives of activating old accounts.
emo Some members of Gaia staff poured a lot of time and energy into setting up Tentacl, supposed to be an adult sister site to Gaia. However...Tentacl didn't go over welll. Somewhat like Twitter, along with many other problems, it just didn't find the love it needed to stay afloat. Chalk another Gaia flop up on the board. Did you use Tentacl? Should it have stuck around, or do you feel it was doomed to die?
stare 133Tgate, oh, what an interesting time that was. A bit before AtS came up, no? It sent parts of the site into a fervor against the staff as, well...even if you try to take the conspiracy theories with a grain of salt, this is still a very bad PR event. Staff felt overworked when it came to tickets, but knowing tickets make good prizes for things like kickstarters, wanted to have some to give away. So they figured they'd buy someone's already won ticket. Problem is, they bought one for 133 TRILLION, still a huge sum even by today's even more inflated standards. Why was it priced that high on the MP? Because it was to show that the user actually owned a ticket. They certainly didn't expect someone to buy the thing at that price. People caught on to the strange event and things went crazy for a few weeks. After all, it means staff "printed money" (in a much larger sum than any gold gen), were not transparent with the users that that's what was happening during the transaction or even a warning beforehand that staff are overworked and ticket requests will be accepted more slowly in coming months or something... I won't really post more on this, there's plenty of threads to explore on the matter. In hindsight, how could this have been handled better? Should staff policies forbid using "fake" gold on MP purchases?
gonk I burned this one from my brain, I did. Back in June, most people ignored the announcments because, well, you could get 10 a day or so, really ridiculous on its own. "A sale is happening! Sale still ongoing! Only an hour for the sale left now!" Then someone got the brilliant idea that the admin account (which you can't put on ignore)...should PM you those announcements. There's nothing really to argue for in this case. Someone thought sending a PM to a limited space inbox (possibly up to that 10+ a day) was a good idea. Now we have the Cash Shop Digest announcements to at least partially stem the flood of spam. So they're learning. Slowly. Would you limit it to one CS update per day? Or are you satisfied with attempts like the Digest?
redface The Gaian economy is so bad people are using it as a real life example. On the one hand, ow. On the other hand, this is a clear "what not to do" to other sites. See Alexius08's post on page 2 for a link. How do you think Gaia can recover? Will it ever recover?
Thank you to Alexius08 for pointing a few of these out!
In Closing
wahmbulance What have I not mentioned here that you liked about this year? Disliked? What would you like to see happen in 2015?
If I've forgotten something in this large list of options, I'm not too surprised, but do poke me with a stick if you feel something should be added. Also pardon if you're bothered by all the random emoticons as bullet points. Using only a few made it look like a massive wall of text-which it is, but this seems to make it less scary to my eyes because of the variety.
Human Base
yum_strawberry We've seen a large rise in arm and leg mods in recent years. This year has featured quite a number of them. But this is in some ways the year of "skin colored mods." Many items with these mods now feature skin color options. Notably, they don't hit up every color in the rainbow. Black, white, and other colors are options, but should even more poses be made in the future to match items such as the body dyes? Or is that too much? Should the options be arm poses, or entirely separate poses within the item?
yum_cupcake Traditonal EIs (Evolving Items) seem to have flown out the window in exchange for REIs (Rapid Evolving Items). Zodiacal Equinox is the only currently running EI. Do EIs seem slow and out of date now? Or do you feel that we should filter out REIs and return to the slower evolutions?
yum_wasabipie It's been a huge year for recolors and color palettes! Some recolors come out within a day of the original. What color schemes are you glad have gotten attention? Not so glad? What palettes would you like to see? What items got too much attention? Not enough?
yum_burger We've had much more experience with (oftentimes mostly human) Limited Quantity Items. What makes a good LQI in your eyes? A bad one? Does an item or bundle being limited affect your stance on buying that item (for gold or cash), even if some items that are not limited technically have less quantity in existence? Should LQIs be required to sell out to their full quantity?
yum_sausage Many a new scissors, razors, background mods, etc. have hit Gaia this year. Have they been good? Bad? Should such an item ever be a limited quantity item? Are you glad the haircut bundle is still in the shop (even if it's hidden off the featured page)?
Animal Bases
While not entirely new (my brain thinks that was last summer for some reason)
Animal bases got a lot of interesting little perks and quirks this year.
gaia_kittenstar We have as of now, 5 bases- Cat, Wolf, Bear, Bunny, and Puppy. What animals would make other good bases? What good happenings, or problems, have you had using one of these bases? Should making a base become its own ticket prize? What colors or patterns should be released for these bases?
dramallama We have many, many more of what could be described as "cash skins"- nonpermanent skins that work by editing one of the five bases. What animals, recolors, etc would you like to see from these skins?
cat_ninja This has been the year of the animal Monthly Collectible- our furry friends getting a cut of that sweet $2.50 montly mystery. Do you feel the items this year have been good? Bad? Average? Should there be separate masculine and feminine items like the human base?
cat_talk2hand Slow and steady, once in a while we get an item remastered from human to animal base. What items would you like to see remastered? Should all recolors of a remaster be released at once, or over time? In what ways did an item or pose not quite work when made for the animal base? In what ways were some poses or items made better?
cat_exclaim The animal base has some room for creativity, as with our current Tamagotchi-inspired REI. What other items can you imagine that could seemingly only work for this base?
classified_diedrich Conversely, this is also the rise of the "chibi human"- with mods like the elf fur and hear no evil allowing what were cats and mice with wigs to become small people. This is somewhat controversial as it in some ways breaks the idea of having a "separate from human" base to begin with. Most people shrug it off- it is, as with anything, optional. But does it open any doors for the animal base in terms of getting more remastered items, or getting more human-based items of their own?
Features & Random Things
gaia_spoons One of the big changes this year was the removal of zOMG. The items are now available in caches and grab bags, and some locations have moved to Towns 2, but is this enough to you? Should it one day be remastered? Should more commemorative items be released to celebrate what it once was, such as backgrounds, additional companions of any monsters that don't have one, etc.?
gaia_gaiagold In place of zOMG, we've seemingly stuck now to the forum battle system. This has shown itself to have several kinks, such as the slaughter that was Angels vs Demons. In what ways can this sort of event be improved on? Or what would you suggest in its place?
gaia_diamond With the clear inflation on site, some event games are now pay (gold) to play. What has your experience been with these games? Should they exist? Should any event game give out more gold? Less?
gaia_nitemareleft This has also been the use of Kickstarters- donating gold to earn individual or site-wide prizes. Has this feature helped, or has it made things worse? In what ways could kickstarts improve? What sort of kickstarters would make sense to you for the site to have?
gaia_angelleft Tickets here, tickets there, tickets stuck everywhere. What do you think of all of our mystical tickets? Perfect parcel? This has also been the year of baby and mini tickets. Should these exist? What new tickets should be made? Which should see more frequent re-release? What makes for a "good" or "bad" use of a ticket? Should there be more "quick" prizes like getting to be featured in chance items?
gaia_crown 100 Packs are interesting things. Are they worth it? Should items be rotated more frequently, or exclusive to one such chance item per year? Or do you like them being super common pulls? Should they be improved (such as being more like Walk in the Woods, and less like Let's Build a Snowman in the number of clicks to a prize)?
gaia_nitemareright On yet another deflation tangent are the gold for gold chance items like Spin to Win. Are these "dangerous gambling devices"? Do they help enough, or do you think people know they're terrible, and thus sink almost no gold?
gaia_angelright GoFusion has gotten some updates, including starting a potential rotation schedule. Does this work, or should it have been cleaned up so that everything was still in stock, but with less scrolling involved? How many diamond charms should something ever use, maximum? What are your thoughts with soulbound items like snowflake charms- is this a good or bad idea? Should many of the holiday items used less snowflake charms, or were they fair?
emotion_bigheart Club Verge has only gotten the rare update. Do you think it will vanish? Or will it stick around? Rococo has also similarly dropped to infrequent updates- what will become of it in the following year? Are you glad Mecha Neko was repurposed, or would you like to see more sponsored items?
emotion_bandaid On the non-cash side, Back Alley Bargains recently got re-purposed following the closing of zOMG. Was this a good move? Should any other shops be tweaked? Do we need any more shops, so as to better categorize merchandise? An animal base only store? Conversely to adding more, should events like caroling be limited to certain shops, as if we have too many? What has been good or bad about the grab bags this year? Was the price hike at H&R Wesley worth it, or should it have stayed the same? Should other shops be fit to match inflation? Do the gold shops get enough updates?
gaia_star Loyal's shop has somewhat slowed down in releases. What sort of items should be released in his shop? Should limited quantity items for gold be released again? I would love to see a vote each week of maybe 5 popular cash items each in a popular color that it hasn't been made in yet, get a community vote, to be permanently placed in Loyal's at the start of the next week's voting, or something along those lines.
yum_tuna Staff involvement has been somewhat on the rise this year, with the return of Ask the Admin as Ask the Staff, Community Spotlight, and so on. Does Ask the Staff seem to be doing a good job? Should it be held different days each week, or is Monday evening a good time? Have staff felt more approachable than they might have previously seemed to you? Is Community Spotlight doing a good job with its nominations? Should just the first place winners of the avatar arena be featured, or things like second and third place?
yum_onigiri We finally got a new inventory arranger! Which has had some glitches, and admittedly, doesn't feature things such as being able to see labels like "hat/wings/item" and has to be hunted through page by page for the right spot to put something. It does feature stacking, which has been a help to some, but what will really seal the deal for you in using this new version?
gaia_gaiagold Some games and features have had their payouts increased. What features should get this treatment? Is this a bad idea? Should other options like Crosstich contests and avatar arena entries see an increase in paying to enter?
gaia_spoons While on hiatus for a while, the manga is now slowly but surely progressing again. Should it update more frequently? Less? Should we see less serious minicomics more often? What sort of story arc would you like to come after the Airship Saga?
New Points (edits)
Will eventually be moved to the proper spot but if you're here just to see what's new that's a lot to hunt through.
idea This year also saw the release of the account lock- allowing many an old account (standard or mule) to step back into the world. While largely a good thing, it does mean some old accounts may one day be brute-force hacked or the like. But it seems a rarity compared to the positives of activating old accounts.
emo Some members of Gaia staff poured a lot of time and energy into setting up Tentacl, supposed to be an adult sister site to Gaia. However...Tentacl didn't go over welll. Somewhat like Twitter, along with many other problems, it just didn't find the love it needed to stay afloat. Chalk another Gaia flop up on the board. Did you use Tentacl? Should it have stuck around, or do you feel it was doomed to die?
stare 133Tgate, oh, what an interesting time that was. A bit before AtS came up, no? It sent parts of the site into a fervor against the staff as, well...even if you try to take the conspiracy theories with a grain of salt, this is still a very bad PR event. Staff felt overworked when it came to tickets, but knowing tickets make good prizes for things like kickstarters, wanted to have some to give away. So they figured they'd buy someone's already won ticket. Problem is, they bought one for 133 TRILLION, still a huge sum even by today's even more inflated standards. Why was it priced that high on the MP? Because it was to show that the user actually owned a ticket. They certainly didn't expect someone to buy the thing at that price. People caught on to the strange event and things went crazy for a few weeks. After all, it means staff "printed money" (in a much larger sum than any gold gen), were not transparent with the users that that's what was happening during the transaction or even a warning beforehand that staff are overworked and ticket requests will be accepted more slowly in coming months or something... I won't really post more on this, there's plenty of threads to explore on the matter. In hindsight, how could this have been handled better? Should staff policies forbid using "fake" gold on MP purchases?
gonk I burned this one from my brain, I did. Back in June, most people ignored the announcments because, well, you could get 10 a day or so, really ridiculous on its own. "A sale is happening! Sale still ongoing! Only an hour for the sale left now!" Then someone got the brilliant idea that the admin account (which you can't put on ignore)...should PM you those announcements. There's nothing really to argue for in this case. Someone thought sending a PM to a limited space inbox (possibly up to that 10+ a day) was a good idea. Now we have the Cash Shop Digest announcements to at least partially stem the flood of spam. So they're learning. Slowly. Would you limit it to one CS update per day? Or are you satisfied with attempts like the Digest?
redface The Gaian economy is so bad people are using it as a real life example. On the one hand, ow. On the other hand, this is a clear "what not to do" to other sites. See Alexius08's post on page 2 for a link. How do you think Gaia can recover? Will it ever recover?
Thank you to Alexius08 for pointing a few of these out!
In Closing
wahmbulance What have I not mentioned here that you liked about this year? Disliked? What would you like to see happen in 2015?
