Zandy
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So it has almost been a year since I first posted this thread, so I thought I would update it to reflect more so with the current issues on Gaia at the moment. Parts bolded in green are the most important in my opinion.
June 30th Edit: Introducing a direct purchase-with-GC option to the marketplace is a selfish idea. This option is essentially a GC-sink and we do NOT need a GC-sink in any respect. If more users spend GC on the marketplace that means there will be less GC in circulation for users to spend on cash shop items which means that fewer cash shop items will be purchased which is a decrease in supply. With a decreased supply of cash shop items and a fixed demand, we will see inflation happening to new items.
Of course Gaia wants this because it benefits them because fewer users will be able to obtain these items from gold and hence spend GC to get them. What Gaia is doing is alienating more and more users though. Nobody asked for this feature. It's just another ploy for Gaia to profit off of users while trashing the site at the same time. This is not how you should treat the users who practically write your paycheques.
Old Post:
Seriously, I have never seen such a blatant disregard towards the user base with regards to everything cash-related on any other site.
Is there no common sense anymore? It doesn't even matter if the team working on all these cash shop updates is different to those who aren't. The marketing team is not on the same page as the rest of Gaia and clearly does not think of the social implications these actions have on their users.
My suggestion is that the marketing team get re-evaluated, as they're crushing the experience of Gaia online for many users, including myself.
Centralization of The Cash Shops.
The cash shops have become the main attraction to the site. There's updates every day at 12:00PM CST, with multiple items added. There's coupons every day, GC is alway on sale, and "tiered spending events" are always in action. Anything that's not GC-related almost always gets drowned out. Listen, I get it. The cash shops are vital for Gaia to sustain itself. However, Gaia managed to maintain its internal costs for a decade with a few bumps here and there WITHOUT shoving GC items, sales, and coupons own our throats.
Gaia needs more than just item updates. Gaia needs to provide attention to the other features on Gaia. We need new and innovative content to attract new users and to keep old users from leaving the site. If Gaia does not provide new and innovative content, then Gaia will be outcompeted in online entertainment in the coming years.
Many areas of the site that need updates have been addressed in the Site Feedback. A few include: guild updates, virtual space updates and fixes, new games and updates to old games such as fishing, slots, and blackjack.
Price Increases in The Cash Shops.
There was a time when a bundle of four or five NEW items could be bought for 899-999GC. These days, each individually released new item is a "Limited Quantity Item" and on average tend to sell for 799GC or approximately 8USD.
In early 2014, a bundle of 100 rerelease CIs could be purchased for at lowest, 1299GC. These days, your 50 packs and 100 packs can cost as much as 7499GC.
Many of your recolour chance items have also gone up in price. 299-499GC seem to be the standard these days. Furthermore, direct recolours can sometimes go for twice or even more than the cost of the original items.
Lately, Gaia has also been making certain items "exclusive" in CI bundles and making it so that users who want to buy the item need to spend the extra cash associated with the bundles. I made a thread on the issue and the link can be found here.
Desensitization to Items.
Since it is pretty obvious that avatars have become pretty much the only sight ahead in Gaia's eyes, there's a huge problem that arises as a result. The desensitization of items… and since Gaia is focused on items these days, then people very quickly become desensitized or disinterested in Gaia itself. Just take a look at some of the responses from this thread in the GCD.
Many people have said that they no longer find items special or unique. Many people are getting bored of relentlessly changing their avatars over an over again with nothing else to do. This needs to change. To get users interested in items, you need to space them out and make them higher quality in general. You need to increase the number of sales per item, not the number of items for sale. We need items that matter on Gaia, not items that feel like they're produced from a third world country labour factory. Gaia, you're not Walmart. Don't make your products come an go in the blink of an eye.
Reused and Recycled Events.
Over the last year and a half, we've been getting the same style of events over and over again. If it's not an event involving attacking users or a boss in the forums, then it's an event involving finding pictures hidden in forum posts or spamming needlessly.
One example of a recycled event was the Valentine's Day event this year. I made a thread about it which can be found here, but during this event, you reused a 2011 Diedrich virtual space that had no relevance to the 2015 event at all. C'mon Gaia. Why couldn't you have made a completely new virtual space or at least jazzed this one up a little bit?
But seriously. Your developer team is way too small for Gaia's size. Gaia needs to reinvest into itself in terms of development. If Gaia's skeptical about spending money on Gaia, then shouldn't us users as well? I feel like Gaia's in the position where they have all of their bags packed and can head straight out the door at any time if they please. That's not a comforting environment for this site. More developers need to be employed and trained so that new content can be created and so that Gaia won't become a 1-dimensional avatar dress up site.
Staff Communication.
I will give credit where credit is due. It was a good idea to bring back a form of communication in terms of ATS. I've even noticed some staff members post more frequently in the Site Feedback. However, almost always, the issues concerning users most are still not addressed.
I understand that many staff are probably under non-disclosure agreements and cannot say much regarding some of the issues that have been brought up over the years. But communication with ALL users - whether they have small concerns or large concerns need to be addressed since Gaia is a community site. Gaia thrives off of getting concerns from users and then adjusting the site accordingly…. or at least, Gaia used to thrive that way.
Gold Generators and Marketplace Equilibrium.
Gold generators are still an issue for Gaia. While we may not get a gold generator every day like we have in the past, we now face a new issue of the marketplace establishing an equilibrium that is far out of reach for many users.
Here's an old graph from March 31st, 2014:
Here's a graph from December 22nd, 2014:
And here's a graph from March 6th, 2014, almost one year later:
Notice how the marketplace sales have been hovering around 300T in daily sales for the last three months? Inflation may not be rapidly increasing like it once was, but instead has plateaued to unreasonable levels for most Gaians.
For just 5 bucks on Gaia, you can get about 100,000,000,000 gold. For 50 bucks, you can get about 1,000,000,000,000 gold, if not more. That is an unreasonable, especially when there are a bunch of active Gaians with under 1B who are only able to watch paying users and vendors get new items.
Not to mention, Gaia has also contributed to inflation apart from gold generators. Gaia's price hikes have consequently driven costs of items on the marketplace up, and Gaia making almost all directly-released new items "limited quantity" instills inflation. The item Dainty Dragonslayer is a good example of this. This item (which costed less than 10 dollars at the time) skyrocket to sell for over 400B in the first week after its release.
June 30th Edit: Introducing a direct purchase-with-GC option to the marketplace is a selfish idea. This option is essentially a GC-sink and we do NOT need a GC-sink in any respect. If more users spend GC on the marketplace that means there will be less GC in circulation for users to spend on cash shop items which means that fewer cash shop items will be purchased which is a decrease in supply. With a decreased supply of cash shop items and a fixed demand, we will see inflation happening to new items.
Of course Gaia wants this because it benefits them because fewer users will be able to obtain these items from gold and hence spend GC to get them. What Gaia is doing is alienating more and more users though. Nobody asked for this feature. It's just another ploy for Gaia to profit off of users while trashing the site at the same time. This is not how you should treat the users who practically write your paycheques.
TLDR is bolded in green.
Old Post:
Seriously, I have never seen such a blatant disregard towards the user base with regards to everything cash-related on any other site.
Users wanted you to stop releasing gold generators and address appropriate methods to initiate deflation, and it has come to the point where there is practically 2-3 in La Victoire at all times with a a few new ones getting released every week. That's right, we're no longer talking in terms of billions, but rather TRILLIONS, 425 trillion to be exact. A year ago from today, we were standing at 5 billion gold per day on average from the marketplace graphs. That's 85000x less than we are at today, or a 8500000% (8.5 million percent) increase. And tomorrow will likely be much worse. This is absolutely ridiculous, and completely deters people away from the site when 100k a year ago is equivalent in value to 10b+ today.
In the span of this thread, the marketplace has capped from 0.65t (650b) to 425t (425000b) (0.425Q), or approximately a growth of 653.85X.
March 31st:
December 22nd:
Users wanted gold sinks, and you gave them... but wait, there's strings attached! For every gold sink you've released in the past half year, you've followed with the release of a gold generator or two a few hours later. Bravo Gaia, your marketing team has learned how to indirectly profit off of gold sinks stressed . Every release or rerelease of a gold generator costs you more than you realize Gaia. It's gold generators making your games "less playable" for earning gold. It's gold generators making less users able to make avatars. It's gold generators that have caused what seems like a civil war on Gaia.
Users wanted high quality recolours, but instead Gaia artists were either overworked to the point where recolours are hit or miss, or these items you're selling are not getting filtered through any quality control you claim to have. Also, why the heck should a 5 minute recolour be priced so high? Why the heck should a single pose recolour be priced high just because the original item is popular *cough*HaloRecolours*cough*. In my opinion, the amount of work put into an item should be proportion to its price. And Gaia, you have PROVEN that some of your artists literally just adjust some settings on Photoshop... Also, the impressions the marketing team has left after placing MULTIPLE MC recolours time and time again into the cash shop are outrageous. Wasn't the Loyalty Shop supposed to be where these items were meant to be released?
Your daily GC sales offer facetious discounts to spending users. You have upped the prices on items in the last year. A typical new release bundle these days no longer contain 4 items but rather 3, and any new direct release averages around $10 in price. Things aren't really cheaper than their counterparts would be a year ago. You have these daily "discounts", but let's be real, they're not really discounts. Users still pay pretty much the exact same price or more. Upping prices and then discounting them with your discounts is just a scam. Also, 5-10% is absolutely nothing unless you spends tons of GC for larger discounts. Oh great, I can save a dime spending on this month's MC! rolleyes . I'm not trying to sound ungrateful or anything, but at the same time, please don't try and sound like you're doing us a service with these discounts. It is the users who provide your paycheques.
Your constant "It's leaving soon" and "It's back announcements" are utter BS at this point. It's really a talent to be able to reglorify the exact same thing hundreds of times over.
Discounting an item after their initial release is just plain disrespectful to those who buy it. If you're going to sell the item 20-60% off, at least wait a few months. Don't slash the prices a few hours after your sales go down just because you want more sales. Stop putting your greed first and think of the users.
Don't try to pretend you're doing us a favour by implying price cuts. All these gold generators that apparently were or have a value of "7000GC+" but have never been released for that price is yet another scam. List the item for the lowest you intend to sell it for, and don't try to make an item or bundle seem better than it is. Half the time your implied discounts of various items you sell were NEVER at their "original prices".
Users wanted more appropriate pricing on items. If you recolour a popular item though, you're almost guaranteed to pay 1000-5000GC. Why the heck are recolours of popular items that have no intrinsic value prior to their release STILL priced so high? I am looking right at you Princess of the Orbit. 6 poses recoloured, $50, and not that good of a recolour at it (probably one of those 5 minute recolours). Same with any sort of popular 2003-2005 MC recolour that hits the cash shop. C'mon, those MCs do not have intricate details and have so few poses. Why the heck should they cost over $10 pretty much every single time?
Stop buffing item prices based on some crap that has no real value. Just because an item is "limited release" does not make the item any more or less spectacular, so stop charging upwards of 1299GC+ for these items. And if you notice some sort of item is popular, stop charging more for when you rerelease a recolour of it 2 days later. Charging 2-3$ more for a recolour just because something "sells out" makes you seem greedier (e.g. the March and Mustachio series). You don't care about your users when you're trying to exploit some valueless gimmick to make more money.
Users want less announcements. We started with 1 every 2-3 days a year ago. We rose to 1 announce per day around October. 2-3 announcements per day in December and January. 4-5 in February. And now we're upwards of 12+ announcements per day. It's absolutely ridiculous. You make additional announcements on the exact same thing 2-3 times a day too. As of this year (2014) alone, we have EXCEEDED 3000 GC-related announcements. That's ridiculous. That's more announcements than in all of the history of Gaia's past.
Slow down significantly on how much you release daily. People have their spending limits and with there being upwards of 5+ things added to the CS a day, people just simply can't keep up. You've changed your market to focus on hardcore spenders - those people who can afford to spend $20 every day or so at their leisure as opposed to the wider casual spending audience. You've limited your income to a smaller and generous group of individuals, but that consequentially leaves the site incredibly unstable.
We get Club Verge back in 2013, people are angry of how unnecessary it is, and you're essentially just rebranding La Victoire again with Rococo. Rococo is absolutely useless since you also put those items in LV. Like really..?
Dec 2014 Update: There are now four cash shops - La Victoire, Rococo, Club Verge, and Mecha Neko. If you really need 4 cash shops to sell all of those pixels, then doesn't that tell you you're selling too much?
Is there no common sense anymore? It doesn't even matter if the team working on all these cash shop updates is different to those who aren't. The marketing team is not on the same page as the rest of Gaia and clearly does not think of the social implications these actions have on their users.
My suggestion is that the marketing team get re-evaluated, as they're crushing the experience of Gaia online for many users, including myself.
