Sagger-AT3
Your post is long, so forgive me for being brief. I'm addressing several issues, mostly ones that have appeared since the first thread, or ones that have something to do with what I do on Gaia.
Text messages are perfectly safe - neither the sender not the receiver see each other's phone number.
Any reply is a good reply. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us about it.
I'm glad to hear that. Can it be traced or hacked...whatever, in any way?
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This is called "soft launch", and is a form of an open beta test.
Shame on us for testing things before fully releasing and announcing them.
Isn't that what SCAS is for?
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Great! It means that Gaia has not only a past and a present; Gaia has also a future to look for.
People get sick of waiting for things after three years.
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Gaia
is free to play and enjoy. The biggest proof of this is the small percentage of Gaians who pay Gaia. Very small percentage. Dig up old Geeza's posts in the previous thread for more details about this.
I did read his post, and I understand that. But that isn't really...proof. It just shows that people don't pay the website. It doesn't mean they're able to get the items easily or at all. It doesn't mean they can enjoy the features or the site as much as those that pay for things.
Not only that but we've received conflicting information about how many people pay for Gaia. One person said you get FARRR more than 8% of us buying, which sounds like a lot, and others have only said a bit. Who are we supposed to believe?
[ .NK. ]
You keep releasing stupid features that no one wants (Cinemas, used mainly for your sponsorships that are annoying as hell, or VJ or whatever it's called which is overrun with porn and s**t no one wants to see. And let's not forget Gaia IM which is really rather pointless.) while neglecting features that people love.
[ .NK. ]
... You've yet to miss an EI update (maybe postpone it for a day, but you haven't missed one) but yet you've completely forgotten New Movie Mondays and several of the updates mentioned above, it seems. How is that fair to the people - your users - that you depend on?
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I'm not sure I can construct a constructive suggestions from these two...
I don't follow.
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As the guide for reporting these ads says, different people see different ads. Even if we decided that it's the mods' work, they could be refreshing pages all day long and not see these inappropriate ads. Unfortunately it is true that the average user won't be able to report the ad. (even though I do believe, as you said in the original post, that "We're smarter than you think we are" ). But we don't need
everyone to report
each ad. We only need a few, or in some cases - one report.
Like I said to someone else in this thread - It's a difficult process. Most users have no idea at all of how to do it. All the stuff you have to download and such...it's not something the average user can do. A lot of the people Gaia is trying to appeal to are young and can barely type (you can't deny it, lol), let alone know how to use the programs you listed. That's why I think mods and the users that actually can do it are more suited to it.
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eek
I respectfully disagree.
Think about it this way. Let's say a new $10 evolving item comes out. Most users won't buy it with cash, as you yourself said. Demand will be high while supply is low, meaning high prices, yes? Let's say the day that's released, the item costs 300,000 gold in the marketplace, which is typical. No typical user will be able to afford it at first. Let's say it evolves every two weeks.
Around the middle of the second week it will go down around 50, MAYBE 100k. That's 200,000 at best. The typical user won't be able to afford that. Every time it evolves it shoots right back up, the rinse and repeat.
Eventually more people will buy it with cash and the supply will be better and demand will go down, meaning the prices go down. Even then, it'll be around 80-100k. The typical user cannot afford that.
Let's say they've been saving up for it since the day it came out, and it fully evolves within, say, four months. Within four months, you're lucky to earn 70k. LUCKY. But at the same time, the item is nearly finished, so prices will skyrocket. They will never be able to afford.
Depending on the item, they MAY be able to get a different gen, but most likely not because you have to be a power user to get even 70k. And by the time they can afford that item, they'll want another EI because they're released so quickly. Then let's add gold shop items, aquarium fish, other random CS items, etc., and there you have it. The average user can't get many CS items AT ALL.
I, for one, can. I draw and I get paid well for it. But I'm in the minority. Most users on here can't draw, at least not well enough to get paid well for it (I'm honestly not trying to toot my own horn here, I'm just saying.)
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The effects of the mythril coins disappeared almost as fast as it came. The second time they were around, the effect was so small, it was barely noticeable. Gaia's economy was not "destroyed", and the 2% MP fee had nothing to do with it (it was implemented
8 months before the bag of win).
Prices in the MP are determined by market forces. If we gave everyone more gold, prices would just rise to compensate for it. It's as simple as that.
I beg to differ. Gaia's economy is
awful. If the Mythril Coins had little effect it was because of one of two things: One, you made 1 million gold coins so rare that few people got them, or two, (or both?) the economy was already so ruined that they couldn't have ruined it more.
Yes prices will rise to compensate for it, but if you made the items in the cash shop cheaper, more people would buy them and gold prices would go down as well. It's a win win situation.
It had something to do with it, and I had a whole
journal entry about it.
The gist of the story: we had a pricing error, that made potions' gold prices inconsistent with all other cash to gold ratio on Gaia. We fixed this problem a couple of days after releasing potions, by lowering the gold price of potions. Shame on us for fixing our mistakes. Shame on us for lowering the price of two items three days after they were introduced.
There's really no need to be sarcastic about it. The reason a lot of users, including myself, don't know the
truth behind things like this is because we aren't informed unless we stalk your journals.
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Gaia is evolving. New features grant gold. New items serve as "gold sinks". Every single change we make on Gaia affects the economy.
Still, we do not intervene directly in the marketplace: we do not limit or influence the prices. Prices are determined by buyers and sellers.
You're using technicalities to get around the issue here. Gold sinks are a given.
You do interfere with the economy indirectly, and another dev told me this in the last thread. I don't feel like digging up the quote, but I will if I have to.
They said that you controlled how many fish went into the daily chance, thus lowering, or raising, the prices. That is affecting the economy. But like I said, you TECHNICALLY aren't, so you can get away with it.
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Not paying our moderators makes it
harder to find good ones, not easier.
I understand that. My point is that you should more actively get new moderators. A moderator from the last thread told us that there are around 30 mods on at any given time. Right now Gaia is pretty dead, considering, and there are 25,000 users online. That's 30 mods for 25,000 users, and even worse, it can be 30 mods for 70,000 users. You certainly need more and lots of users want to be mods, but the rules are pretty strict on being one. I can understand WHY they're strict, but a change is required either way. This has been a problem since the beginning. I'm disappointed that it hasn't changed yet.
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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?
I've heard a lot of stories to the contrary. And while I don't believe every single one of them are innocent, I think there are some that are. Appeals rarely work. I tried to appeal a warning I got the other day, which was unfair, especially considering what the warn was for, and was told it would not be removed no matter what. And then the next day, GAIA did the same thing I apparently did. It's wrong for me to do it, but for Gaia, it's okay. And I don't want to talk about it in the forums, sorry for not giving more info.
But considering WARNS are that hard to appeal, I can imagine hackings and bannings being much more difficult to appeal. Lots of people get cut and paste replies to their inquiries anyways.
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We spend immense resources on banning bots. If you've seen any bots, in the arenas or elsewhere, report them. We're working on complementary anti-botting measures, and we're improving all the time, but CAPTCHAS are still the best solutions for some problems. We're still tweaking the frequency of CAPTCHAs, and will continue to do so to minimize the effects on real users. But unless some new invention comes along, CAPTCHA will stay with us for a while.
Well that's good to hear as well. What about the bots/scripters in towns? CAPTCHAs don't work on them.
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