McSteak'n'Cheese! ~ SFHangout Thread ~ Objection!

[chainsmoker chan]

Karakal5

Sagger-AT3

[ .NK. ]

- Bannings
- Though this somewhat goes hand in hand with moderation, we have a big concern about the mass bannings. We should not be afraid of participating in the website, fearing that we'll be banned when we've done nothing wrong. Mass bannings should not happen unless you have substantial evidence that it wasn't just your screw up. On top of that, you should be able to immediately unban those there were unfairly banned. To ban someone that was truthfully innocent, and then never unban them is wrong, especially when it's usually a committed, paying customer. This leads us to further think you don't care about your loyal, dedicated users. If you think someone has a hacked or botted item, don't immediately ban them, but try to figure out where the item came from first. A lot of people - even those that pay the insane cash shop prices for you - are banned unfairly over this every day. We should not be afraid to accept generosity. Now I'm hearing stories about users that were banned unfairly, and are being told that they'll never be unbanned, even if found to be innocent. What is that? That's not fair at all.

We don't ban people for hacking, scamming and the likes without sufficient evidence. In the rare occasions when innocent users are banned, there is a mechanism for appeal. We take no joy in banning innocent users - why would we?

Sorry but this appeal system just doesn't work.
Djibrilshadow, a good friend of mine was banned for supposedly benefiting from botted gold.
A friend sent her a trade of botted gold. She found out about the gold's origins and canceled the trade. She did not accept it.
She got banned.
She appealed her perma-ban with the screen-shot of her canceled trade.
She was told she had a perma-ban from profiting from the gold.
How can one profit from botted gold if you never recieve it, tell me?

Also, you can tell them all you want that you didn't do anything to recieve a ban. You can provide screen caps, old posts, evidence, and they will send you an automated response. Assuming that you don't answer back, you won't receive another e-mail.

My main from 2007 got banned for profiting for hacks/botting. I didn't learn what that was until early this year.

[you young rascal]

chainsmoking helvetia

ryuichiX3

Towns looks like this at the moment.
1 2 3
It's not as bad as the racist one.
It's just ... Annoying.

Who the ******** does Flight think he is?

U:<
I DUNNO.
LETS SHANK HIM.

[Slick Devil]

After reading Sagger's resonse, I've come to the conclusion that poignant criticism solves nothing on this site. There is always a sugar coated, bullshit sprinkled answer to all our issues.

I'm just going to play/browse until it gets unbearable. If things should happen to improve, all the better.

[chainsmoker chan]

ryuichiX3

chainsmoking helvetia

ryuichiX3

Towns looks like this at the moment.
1 2 3
It's not as bad as the racist one.
It's just ... Annoying.

Who the ******** does Flight think he is?

U:<
I DUNNO.
LETS SHANK HIM.

Seriously, does he think he's some kind of super hacktime Gaia prommie?

[Karakal5]

chainsmoking helvetia

Karakal5

Sagger-AT3

[ .NK. ]

- Bannings
- Though this somewhat goes hand in hand with moderation, we have a big concern about the mass bannings. We should not be afraid of participating in the website, fearing that we'll be banned when we've done nothing wrong. Mass bannings should not happen unless you have substantial evidence that it wasn't just your screw up. On top of that, you should be able to immediately unban those there were unfairly banned. To ban someone that was truthfully innocent, and then never unban them is wrong, especially when it's usually a committed, paying customer. This leads us to further think you don't care about your loyal, dedicated users. If you think someone has a hacked or botted item, don't immediately ban them, but try to figure out where the item came from first. A lot of people - even those that pay the insane cash shop prices for you - are banned unfairly over this every day. We should not be afraid to accept generosity. Now I'm hearing stories about users that were banned unfairly, and are being told that they'll never be unbanned, even if found to be innocent. What is that? That's not fair at all.

We don't ban people for hacking, scamming and the likes without sufficient evidence. In the rare occasions when innocent users are banned, there is a mechanism for appeal. We take no joy in banning innocent users - why would we?

Sorry but this appeal system just doesn't work.
Djibrilshadow, a good friend of mine was banned for supposedly benefiting from botted gold.
A friend sent her a trade of botted gold. She found out about the gold's origins and canceled the trade. She did not accept it.
She got banned.
She appealed her perma-ban with the screen-shot of her canceled trade.
She was told she had a perma-ban from profiting from the gold.
How can one profit from botted gold if you never recieve it, tell me?

Also, you can tell them all you want that you didn't do anything to recieve a ban. You can provide screen caps, old posts, evidence, and they will send you an automated response. Assuming that you don't answer back, you won't receive another e-mail.

My main from 2007 got banned for profiting for hacks/botting. I didn't learn what that was until early this year.

Yes I was about to go bad to add to my post that every time she appealed all she got was an automated response.

[Mistress Procellifer]

Well I have to say I moderately agree with most of the OP points. I've been on Gaia since...'04? Something like that. I liked it the way it was. I had fun RPing, saving up to get items, chatting to people- it was great! Then I went on hiatus for two years and lost my net.

By the time I came back, my stuff had all gone. The account was there, just as I left it, with an empty inventory. Weird. I mentioned this, of course, but to no avail. So I've been scrounging since and have managed to make it to about a tenth of the wealth I previously had (seriously, I had a nitemare bustier, angelic stuff, the works).

I come on here to feed my fish, generally. My free ones, they're quite cute and fun to watch for about three minutes. Unfortunately, I find I tend to spend a lot of time sifting through announcements before I can get to my fish.

I don't want to know where the next convention Gaia's attending is- I'm British, and it bears little relevance to me unless you're coming to Liverpool, England. Which you're not. I don't want to know about EIs I'm never going to afford (the Dr Singh sans Timmy storyline's pretty cute, and is the only reason I skim through those announcements). I don't want to know about guilds or threads that already have a million posts so mine can get lost within it. And I really don't want to know about High School Musical 3, The House Bunny or any other silly teenybopper film coming out.

Meh, that's my two pence. I'd rather it be a bit more like it was. Sort of... friendlier.

[MiaIkumis#1Fan]

This thread actually makes a few good points. I do not like the MTV sponsors at all as well as a few of the other ones that are not anime, and I can tell gaia is trying to appeal to a wider demographic, but I agree they need to stick with the views of their original audience if they want to keep them. It's like making friends. You should not change the yourself to make people want to join you, people should join you because they like you for who you are. Besides, trying to make something into something it's not just about always results in everyone being unhappy.

I also agree on the thing about aquariums. There is no way I'm spending money I had to get by doing extra chores for items that will not exist in a few weeks. (yes, I have an aquarium. however, everything inside I got for free. Either daily chance or donations from people) Normal fish live longer than the ones in the aquarium!

I also don't like the prices of some of the CS items, mainly the evolving items. 5 dollars for an awesome item isn't that bad considering it's like getting that instead of two monthly collectibles... but 10 dollars is just pushing it. We're buying pixels. -_-; EDIT: yes, I am wearing an EI worth 10 dollars. In my defense, it's generation 10 or something. I've been saving up for 2 months or so to get it.


As for what you said about the battle system, I have mixed feelings. I've been on the site for only about 2 years, and I heard about it from a friend who had been on longer and really couldn't wait to try it out. I'm a beta tester now and all I can give away without getting into trouble is... wow. It's huge, it's amazing. There's so much to do with it. However, I do think gaia shouldn't have underestimated the time it would take to make something this great. False alarms are not fun and quote disappointing. I also don't like how certain items for the game can be bought with only gaia cash. At least give us the option to go gold. :

As for the rest, there's quite a lot to cover, and I can't really give my opinion on certain areas that I don't know enough about.

But that's my two cents, at least for now.

[Insanity_Is_Freedom]

I can't believe you were bahminated.
>.<
This thread is insanely logical, as well...

[Einjelato]

Indulge - Hmmm again. I didn't say I myself was daunted by looking at it. Or "scared" as you put it. I've seen users say how when they discovered that Aquarium's shop - Phing Phang - consisted of Gaia Cash items, it put them off or found it intimidating since they gotta fork out cash IT WOULD SEEM in order to actually enjoy a feature.

Yes it is a matter of opinion, and again I don't see the majority of people going on and on and on in the past several weeks or these past couple months raving about features that can be deemed unnecessary when other things needs to be fixed. (And that was just an example, whether you use it or not is again different for each person.)

Yea, quite an easy solution eh? Just ignore it. That's a good one if you feel like that's all you can do. It's one option. But how many options are you given if you are allowed a choice or a decision on something? Many, and it can be endless. While you're suggesting one rather cliche choice, there happens to be more but apparently people just haven't thought of it since people can be so used to thinking that there's only one thing I can do and that's it. Nothing else. That's not the case for everything.

No one is spoiling anyone's free item fountain. You're very well free to enjoy it as others are very well free not to enjoy it as well. Different people, different tastes, etc.

[chainsmoker chan]

Karakal5

chainsmoking helvetia

Karakal5

Sagger-AT3

[ .NK. ]

- Bannings
- Though this somewhat goes hand in hand with moderation, we have a big concern about the mass bannings. We should not be afraid of participating in the website, fearing that we'll be banned when we've done nothing wrong. Mass bannings should not happen unless you have substantial evidence that it wasn't just your screw up. On top of that, you should be able to immediately unban those there were unfairly banned. To ban someone that was truthfully innocent, and then never unban them is wrong, especially when it's usually a committed, paying customer. This leads us to further think you don't care about your loyal, dedicated users. If you think someone has a hacked or botted item, don't immediately ban them, but try to figure out where the item came from first. A lot of people - even those that pay the insane cash shop prices for you - are banned unfairly over this every day. We should not be afraid to accept generosity. Now I'm hearing stories about users that were banned unfairly, and are being told that they'll never be unbanned, even if found to be innocent. What is that? That's not fair at all.

We don't ban people for hacking, scamming and the likes without sufficient evidence. In the rare occasions when innocent users are banned, there is a mechanism for appeal. We take no joy in banning innocent users - why would we?

Sorry but this appeal system just doesn't work.
Djibrilshadow, a good friend of mine was banned for supposedly benefiting from botted gold.
A friend sent her a trade of botted gold. She found out about the gold's origins and canceled the trade. She did not accept it.
She got banned.
She appealed her perma-ban with the screen-shot of her canceled trade.
She was told she had a perma-ban from profiting from the gold.
How can one profit from botted gold if you never recieve it, tell me?

Also, you can tell them all you want that you didn't do anything to recieve a ban. You can provide screen caps, old posts, evidence, and they will send you an automated response. Assuming that you don't answer back, you won't receive another e-mail.
My main from 2007 got banned for profiting for hacks/botting. I didn't learn what that was until early this year.

Yes I was about to go bad to add to my post that every time she appealed all she got was an automated response.

Everyone I have ever spoken with about unfair "PFB" related bannings says the same thing.

[NRGized]

I dunno lyk i thnk tht gold should b eazier to get. u know. itz hard scream

Quote:

Gaia is free to play and enjoy. The biggest proof of this is the small percentage of Gaians who pay Gaia.

I just would like to quote this, because I think this quote is lovely. Gaia is free to play and enjoy; meaning you are free to play the "core" and also free to pay for the "cash" items. It's almost like a trapping statement in which you are free to make decisions on things that cost actual money to play, and theoretically it is "free to play and enjoy" varying on the person and their perception of fun. For instance, will my opinion of fun be the same as a person who joined here a month ago? Well, probably not; the fact that I know more information about a certain add-on (whether it be a new feature or game) will possibly alter my opinion more than new people who don't know. For example, I will say that the zOMG won't be good because for the last 4 years I've been on Gaia I've been sold by hype, with the promises that Gaia (as with all its features) will stay "free" so everyone can "enjoy". A new user may not care about the same things I do because he simply doesn't know.

So I won't over write this post because its 4:00AM; Gaia is indeed free to play and "enjoy", but the things that could possibly enhance our experience are costing money now. I like the Hermes Moon when it arrived, but I very well didn't have the monetary funds to pay for gaia cash to buy this item nor was I intending to spend $10 at the time either (shame on me for being used to donating 2.50 thinking that was good enough). Not only that, I don't have the 100k or 70k now to purchase Hermes Moon of any generation, so I'm guessed I'm out of the deal. Am I frustrated? Well, yes. Will new users? Probably not, because they won't know or probably care because they don't know as much.

What I'm trying to say is that it's easy from a staff standpoint to say "It's free to play and enjoy" but for the user, it isn't. Unfortunately, the good things will or are going to cost Gaia Cash, while the B-list items end up as Donation Items and C-list items end up tossed in shops; again, that's all matter of opinion, but items like "Fairy Wings" are good A- items compared to other expensive-but-rather-sucky clothes (Gothic Set) that could very well be cheaper. In the end, the users who can't pay suffer a little with having to pass up great opportunities to have more
fun because they can't access more items by the usual means. You then rely on the *Market to give you good price conversions from Gaia Cash, which doesn't work. To have fun on Gaia now, you need to either be exclusive (GC) or rich (Gold); every thing else in between are just methods to just "get by" (Games, Posting, Minishops, etc.) so one can be rich to have fun. That's not a unrealistic statement; that's a reality we face both in RW and Gaia.

So it's no suprise that as Gaia grows older, it might cost more (not in more prices, but high quantities of Cash items and low quality of other "cheaper" or free items). To sum it up; Gaia is still free to play and enjoy, but to enjoy the great quality of what Gaia has to offer (which is the essentials of Gaia, like our avatars) one would have to toss out more money. To those who can't do that, Gaia is slowly losing its "fun" in the fact that they just might have to "pay" just to "play". It's what I call the "Habbo Hotel theory"; it's fun and free to play, but to REALLY start enjoying what we have to offer, you gotta pay. confused


*I have a question regarding the market. Why does the Staff repeatedly state "if you can't get the item by cash, you can get it in the market" yet you very well know just as much as I do how the market system plays out? It's like you know the system is flawed, controlled and over-priced -and fully acknowledge countless times that its the "users" fault- yet you are hellbent on making sure that users who can't pay for these extra "fun" items have to go through that very flawed system to get those items they very well want. You can't fix the market, but stop making us rely on it.

[Matsunaga Kaede]

I've always found Gaia to be a really adorable token economy, but the Evolving Items and Cash Shop really have ruined it a little. I'm glad Gaia is making more money (even before I officially joined, I wanted to be a Gaia item designer) but flooding the economy with items that cost real money has really damaged it-- for someone who doesn't have real money to blow ten bucks on a virtual toy and doesn't have the time or inclination to carefully tycoon their way through the marketplace (which is now taxed) it will only get worse.

More than that, though, there's gradually coming to be a huge class divide between users who can't pay and users who can, on some level, and in the middle, people (like me) who make up the literal working class to upgrade our avatars. Naturally the people who pay real money to the site to buy things (and not donate money) will want something to show for it and will deserve it, but they're only getting one pose for any given Evolving Item for up to ten dollars-- and the poor folk and newbies will never have a shot. At least, not until months after the fact, after waiting for the last generation of the item to come out, evolve to completion, and then get it at a(n un)reasonable gold price-- and it still only gives one pose! So the rich folks get ripped off from the start and pass the ripping down on to the less fortunate by charging exorbitant amounts of gold in the market. (Seriously, who has 50,000 gold to spend on an Aquarium Pavillion?)

What if the MMO is free to play, but high class items for it are Cash Shop only? What if they're only available for limited times? Will the poor depend entirely on the rich for it? A lot of MMOs have similar complaints, where free users have a much less worthwhile experience than the pay users, I'd be sad to see that happen with Gaia.

The Aquariums represent an unsettling trend toward this, and I don't like it at all.

[Indulge [In Words]]

chainsmoking helvetia

Also, you can tell them all you want that you didn't do anything to recieve a ban. You can provide screen caps, old posts, evidence, and they will send you an automated response. Assuming that you don't answer back, you won't receive another e-mail.

My main from 2007 got banned for profiting for hacks/botting. I didn't learn what that was until early this year.

I can give you two cases where what you just said
is proven to be total bull. :3

(1) My dear friend, Simplistic-Tyranny. She was banned a while back for suspected botting. Apparently, the rate at which she was refreshing the page was seen as botter-esk behavior. (there's a bot commonly used that refreshes the page a hundred times per minute and collects all that gold for the user) After a week of talking with the mods, providing screen shots of her computer data showing that the real issue was that her computer and internet was too slow to run Gaia without freaking out, she had her account returned to her.

(2) Ah! My Goddess. Perma-banned for apparent handling of items purchased with botted gold while vending for the Mil-a-Day giveaway. A few weeks later, she receives her account and all its items back.

Also, from my own dealings with staff, I have never once gotten a automated response. Mistakes happen, and Gaia really does do their best to be fixed. The problem is screen caps can be altered, posts can be edited, and evidence isn't quite as trustworthy online as it is in real life.

The staff is also receiving mixed signals. Some are screaming at them to toughen up security right away, while others yell at them to basically soften it. I don't know anyone who wouldn't slip up once or twice under that sort of pressure.

[chainsmoker chan]

Slick Devil

After reading Sagger's resonse, I've come to the conclusion that poignant criticism solves nothing on this site. There is always a sugar coated, bullshit sprinkled answer to all our issues.
I'm just going to play/browse until it gets unbearable. If things should happen to improve, all the better.

They really just want us to be quiet, and pretend everything here on Gaia is alright. If we keep quiet, and don't complain, the problems will solve themselves.

Anyone ever feel like duct tape is covering your mouth?

inb4 a mod deletes this