I will definitely sign.
Has anyone seen mah wishlist? As one of the people who's bought gaia cash not too long ago, I know it's pretty much almost tyrannical the advantage those who do buy cash have over those that cannot.
I started my account in middle school a couple years back, and it was sort of an on and off with visiting gaia. I always loved the event items since they were pretty much the only thing I could afford (heh, free). I had a massive wishlist then, I've since cleared out a lot though, part buying the items, part just deleting and wondering why I wanted them in the first place.
Anyway, back then, when I discovered booty grab it was pretty much the greatest, I was just a kid trying to get some of those wishlist items, the good stuff you know. I had noticed beforehand the slight inflation it was causing, the general increase in prices over time, but I didn't pay much mind to it or didn't care because I just wanted my shiz. A mentality any kid would have then.
Then I forgot about gaia... for a pretty long time, more than a year at least... and then I remembered, when I came back to check on my account... I flipped mah sh*t... I couldn't believe how ridiculously priced everything was. Lucky for me, I had some of those premium items, now willing to sell since I no longer wanted them, that gave me a bit of a kickstarter. I could now afford all the shop items I initially wanted, including stuff from dernier cri, which made me very happy. Booty grab was pretty much useless.(Though gaia made an effort to fix, it's still useless for someone that isn't willing to play it religiously for the cap amount, last time I checked I think 5,000,000? Which is becoming less and less if inflation continues.)
In truth, there is still a lot that new gaians can do (and before anyone decides to chew me out, I'm looking at both sides, possibilities, my decision was to sign because I weighed in all the factors looking at what others said as well as thinking about it myself).
Gaia gives quite a bit of gold out with the daily chance, some of the games like switchem can give a moderate/decent gold output (I'd include booty grab, but it's not something I'd expect a new user to pick up on very quickly, let alone the guilds for it), If a new (or old) gaian is willing and able to work hard, there are still some pretty nice items they can earn by being loyal to gaia. Loyal's Bazaar has that chance item Ivan's Garage Sale, which if one is patient enough and willing to gamble a bit, can get items worth about 1/3 of a billion gold's worth from (it's also relatively easy to get back what you put into it). There's also goFusion, which when I returned to gaia, I thought it was an AMAZING addition. It gives some leeway and allows people to get quite a selection of premium stuff for free, it just requires a lot of patience. There's also the instance of earning gaia cash (which I remember back when it was added too), which takes a bit of patience, but does help a bit, I think Mecha Neko is a great addition of a cash shop for that reason. So there are plenty of tricks gaians can use to get lots of things they want.
Now that the positives are mentioned, let's talk about the negatives... number one that I see, a new gaian could easily be very intimidated by seeing those prices on some of the items... and never want to touch the site again. New gaians and I'm sure many older gaians as well have to put in 1000% the effort to earn less then half (proportionally) the amount of gold they did back in the day, which only attributes to the major intimidation for newbies, and I'm sure would disappoint so many others. (Possibly a huge exaggeration or even understatement, I didn't do the math.) Those able to buy gaia cash have almost a tyrannical reign over the gold and best items available that many gaians never even hope to reach without buying gaia cash at some point. And yes, absolutely yes, when I first came back to gaia, the amount of announcements was so ridiculously annoying for me, it left me royally pissed. Gaia itself doesn't seem to treat it's users the same, it does feel, blatantly obvious, that we are just here to make them money, and it's not a good feeling to know others don't see you as a human being, but as... money... It also feels as though gaia is doing their best to further increase the gap between the rich and the poor to force people to either leave... or buy gaia cash...
I can't say I really noticed much of the gold being an issue with Zomg, for me it was just a fun casual game to play, I know I never earned all that much gold from it, but I had been gone for a while so I can't say I know the full story, I just know my sister loved the game, and it still had the "work to earn" set up, so I was sad when they took it away.
Anyways, possible fixes? Gold sinks are an obvious given, as it's what most people are asking for here. Many also want the ads to stop, it's fairly obvious as well with that, that gaia at the very least needs to tone it down. Other things I think might be good though would be somethings like adding more gold based premium items and chance items, etc. in the shops. I love shop updates, for the most part, all the shop items are affordable with the rate gaia gives out gold and people can make it, occasionally they'll make a really good item (like for dernier cri), or we get some cool user made items, but I feel they could do so much more with the gold shops, it's really not fair that EVERY bit of the GOOD stuff goes to ONLY gaia cash buyers... way to step on the little guy...
The recolor thing is also a bit ridiculous, you'd expect gaia to have WAY more gold shop updates with affordable items to begin with right? Aren't premium items supposed to be special? Yet at this point, don't they completely out number the amount of regular items (even if the regular items are infinite and always available, it's pretty much ridiculous) why not limited quantity with gold? Or even benefits for those with a certain amount of gold or less? Like access to a special cheap shop with cool stuff? (I know neopets has benefits for those that aren't so privileged, particularly with feeding pets with the soup kitchen.) I think more events like thing with Louie (and the Torii's Gateway) should happen, I initially thought they'd continue and do it with all the shops, but they've hardly done any more gold sinks, being more worried about new bundles and making money instead...
There are so many possibilities and ways to make this a better sight and stop, or at least help with inflation it's almost... no... it IS annoying how gaia does almost nothing but continue on their path...
On a side note, I feel gaia doesn't give enough worth for earning gaia cash, it takes so much to earn enough for one lower priced item, and some of the ads really aren't appropriate for teens... what kid in middle school wants to buy a car? Seriously? Some of them are ridiculously time consuming for very little payout, or don't have well enough connections or will glitch and completely waste your time for nothing because they don't give you what you earned even though you followed directions but it's being a d*ck! Generally I like ads, and the "earn blah blah blah" stuff because they make things free or serve the user some benefit, but there's a lot gaia can do there to improve as well... (I miss the free item sponsor ads gaia would get too, who remembers those?) Ugh, so irritating... just had mention that.
Hmm... I think that was everything... sorry for typing so much... I guess I had more to say than I thought.
sweatdrop But, I digress, I WILL SIGN!!! *signsallofthethingsmegaragessignsallovereverythingandallthegaiastaffsfaces*
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Keep in mind that some people like certain things like Zomg for the games themselves, not just because it's a gold cash cow attributing to inflation, it's better to ask gaia to better balance those things rather than eliminate them, because it's not fair to people like my loving sis, who genuinely enjoyed Zomg and was really sad when took it away...
*Edit*
Oh Sh*t!!! I forgot to mention, the Welcoming Fairy, It was really weird coming back and getting her because I wasn't a *new* user, but I thought it was a great idea that gaia might take the time to improve and expand upon and make things a bit easier and not so scary for new gaians (maybe have her give out items too, which I may have missed part way ignoring her, I know she gives out gold, but with inflation, to match should probably give more, at least until or unless deflation). I was sooooooooooooo confused when I first started my gaia, she would've helped me then...
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