An Open Letter to Gaia.

[One Winged Asuka]

Extra Sharp Cheddar

TheAntiHeroJD

I understand.
I just feel maybe people are going too much on that and ignoring her other great ideas to improve it in a way.

What ideas? confused She gave vague generalities. Which, I mean, no idea without merit, but she really didn't... give any specifics.

Sorry you think all the regs here are hardasses, most of us are actually pretty nice. But sometimes, when people don't follow the sticky

Quote:

Provide constructive feedback.
Simply posting that you dislike/like something doesn't help the staff to plan future projects. Let them know what you didn't like, and try to offer suggestions to help shape projects. Alternatively, let them know what you like so that they can try to reproduce it.
Good example: "Please add option X to feature Z"
Bad example: "Feature Z is hard to work with"

we can get a little cranky. Saying "I don't like thing! You need to do something else! emotion_donotwant " is not constructive.
Furthermore, her whole argument was based around the fact that since numbers are dwindling the site is dying. Others pointed out that it is simply not true, and the fact that a great deal of bots have been taken care of, strengthening the community as a whole. We are allowed to disagree and inform users of things they might not be aware of. You're reading malice into our tone, simply because we are disagreeing, and that just isn't fair.

You're asking us not to be so quick to judge, and yet that's exactly what you've done here. I'm sorry to break it to you but SF is not a place for belly rubs and cupcakes. That doesn't make us bad people. We want Gaia to be better, but because of constructive ideas from the community, not tired flat complaints.

Hope this helps.

Please show me WHERE in my first post I said ANYTHING about liking or disliking something. I didn't ask for ANYTHING to be removed because I didn't like it, and I didn't say that my suggestions should be implemented BECAUSE of a dislike for anything.

I made suggestions based ON THE OBSERVATION THAT GAIA'S ACTIVE USER COUNT HAS DROPPED SIGNIFICANTLY.

In addition, when someone posted the "most users online" data, I mispoke because I misread it: I thought it said 2007, it said 2010. I stated it hadn't been updated, when the truth is that it had actually been reset. The peaks I've been talking about are the 100k user event in 2007 (this has been CONFIRMED, and there is an ITEM to prove it), and the following summers of 2008 - 2010 when active users online reached over 200k, and the Facebook like campaign when Gaia received nearly 500k unique likes.

You can argue this all you want, but even using the current highest users online counter of 77k, 25k is STILL MORE THAN A 50% LOSS OF USERS.

I made three very distinct suggestions:

MORE FORUM ONLY EVENTS.

MORE NPC INTERACTION IN THE FORUMS.

ONGOING STORY THAT DOESN'T DISAPPEAR BETWEEN EVENTS.

I still don't see what part of those suggestions are "vague" or "unclear". Again, if I need to spell out exactly how they can accomplish this in order for my suggestion to be "valid", you are just grasping straws.

This is a FORUM COMMUNITY with a background of ROLE PLAYING- If the people running it don't know how to CREATE A STORY USING FORUM POSTS, without the rampant use of flash games and manga/comics, we are up the creek without a paddle.

I've not asking for flash games and manga to go away, I LIKE THEM BOTH VERY MUCH, I just think they are NOT ENOUGH TO SUSTAIN IMMERSION.

I'm not saying for them to devote 40 man hours a week to posting as NPCs to say "Hey what's up!", how hard would it be to have ONE role-play between a few NPCs per week, just to give us an idea of what is going on in the world of Gaia?

It can be an announcement, regular users can't post, we just get to read it. If it's only one whole forum page long, that would be more than sufficient. We saw this, sort of, with the dragon event. I want to see it with regular NPCs.

Additionally, I've been around this forum for a long time, and people like you are not helpful, you are too combative and assuming whenever you see a post you think you don't agree with, or you think the person is simply complaining. There is NO complaint in my first post, at ALL, rendering YOUR entire post invalid- Not that you said very much of anything to begin with.

You said a whole lot of nothing about nothing, because you were "pointing out" things in my OP that weren't even there, just to say something contrary. I respect you as a user and I respect your right to an opinion, but next time, try to make valid points about something I've ACTUALLY said.

[panoptes]

Extra Sharp Cheddar

TheAntiHeroJD

I understand.
I just feel maybe people are going too much on that and ignoring her other great ideas to improve it in a way.

What ideas? confused She gave vague generalities. Which, I mean, no idea without merit, but she really didn't... give any specifics.

Sorry you think all the regs here are hardasses, most of us are actually pretty nice. But sometimes, when people don't follow the sticky

Quote:

Provide constructive feedback.
Simply posting that you dislike/like something doesn't help the staff to plan future projects. Let them know what you didn't like, and try to offer suggestions to help shape projects. Alternatively, let them know what you like so that they can try to reproduce it.
Good example: "Please add option X to feature Z"
Bad example: "Feature Z is hard to work with"

we can get a little cranky. Saying "I don't like thing! You need to do something else! emotion_donotwant " is not constructive.
Furthermore, her whole argument was based around the fact that since numbers are dwindling the site is dying. Others pointed out that it is simply not true, and the fact that a great deal of bots have been taken care of, strengthening the community as a whole. We are allowed to disagree and inform users of things they might not be aware of. You're reading malice into our tone, simply because we are disagreeing, and that just isn't fair.

You're asking us not to be so quick to judge, and yet that's exactly what you've done here. I'm sorry to break it to you but SF is not a place for belly rubs and cupcakes. That doesn't make us bad people. We want Gaia to be better, but because of constructive ideas from the community, not tired flat complaints.

Hope this helps.

uh, well

even if the perceived drop in user activity isnt as steep as the numbers would have us believe, we are all aware that gaia is struggling to make ends meet, which an increase in user activity would remedy. this thread is requesting more forum focus in events and storyline immersion, which is valid feedback and does not violate the rules of the SF

my feelings about it are that a balance of forum and 'flash' focus would be best (some events, like frontier skies, were not flash based but rather DHTML) because i enjoy both and there is a sizable chunk of our userbase that enjoy the flash spaces more than the forums, and vice versa

and more roleplay elements would be awesome considering the strong interest in roleplay on gaia. this is one of gaia's strengths, community-wise, and it should be promoted more as a method of soliciting new people to use the site

[Nights-Rune]

panoptes

Nights-Rune

I agree with this, however I think you missed a few reasons...

Now this may just be something I have noticed and it goes like this: a conversation between me and a new potential member is happening, I will be explaining stuff about Gaia, then they will ask about something else like garage or alchemy.... I will have to honestly say that my garage is broken with no hope of fixing it and that alchemy looks to be the same... This leads to that inevitable awkward moment of the "you actually give the site money when half its stuff is broken and they refuse to repair it? Do you have brain-damage?"

This happens 9/10 times I try to convince someone to join... In this day and age people don't want to be on a site littered with broken features and abandoned projects, they just don't.

I don't think Gaia will get any new members until they buck up their ideas and fix stuff that is broken, work on features they have neglected and also cover all of your points as well OP.

i have to agree with this. either the features should be fixed or taken down, so they dont tease users with promises of functionality where there is none. maybe those features can be taken out until they are fixed? if theyre going to sit on the shelf for this long

and as much as it pains me to say this
something has to be done about zomg. its really hard to play it and have characters going, "oh so and so is in durem/aekea/inaccessible place" and then learning that you are NEVER going to get to explore that place in the game. i know updates wont happen, and no one wants it to leave because its a fun way to make gold (well, in my opinion), but an unfinished plot is... unprofessional

The thing that pisses me off most is it could be fixed.

[Crack in my Cornflakes]

Zandykins

While I agree with what you said about re-establishing community within Gaia, this has never had 500000 let alone 250000 people online at one time sweatdrop .

Not true, actually.

I've made similar observations as the OP. Even without taking actual hard online users numbers into account, the fact that even minishops is lagging hard is proof to me that people are moving on.

[Extra Sharp Cheddar]

panoptes

Extra Sharp Cheddar

TheAntiHeroJD

I understand.
I just feel maybe people are going too much on that and ignoring her other great ideas to improve it in a way.

What ideas? confused She gave vague generalities. Which, I mean, no idea without merit, but she really didn't... give any specifics.

Sorry you think all the regs here are hardasses, most of us are actually pretty nice. But sometimes, when people don't follow the sticky

Quote:

Provide constructive feedback.
Simply posting that you dislike/like something doesn't help the staff to plan future projects. Let them know what you didn't like, and try to offer suggestions to help shape projects. Alternatively, let them know what you like so that they can try to reproduce it.
Good example: "Please add option X to feature Z"
Bad example: "Feature Z is hard to work with"

we can get a little cranky. Saying "I don't like thing! You need to do something else! emotion_donotwant " is not constructive.
Furthermore, her whole argument was based around the fact that since numbers are dwindling the site is dying. Others pointed out that it is simply not true, and the fact that a great deal of bots have been taken care of, strengthening the community as a whole. We are allowed to disagree and inform users of things they might not be aware of. You're reading malice into our tone, simply because we are disagreeing, and that just isn't fair.

You're asking us not to be so quick to judge, and yet that's exactly what you've done here. I'm sorry to break it to you but SF is not a place for belly rubs and cupcakes. That doesn't make us bad people. We want Gaia to be better, but because of constructive ideas from the community, not tired flat complaints.

Hope this helps.

uh, well

even if the perceived drop in user activity isnt as steep as the numbers would have us believe, we are all aware that gaia is struggling to make ends meet, which an increase in user activity would remedy. this thread is requesting more forum focus in events and storyline immersion, which is valid feedback and does not violate the rules of the SF

my feelings about it are that a balance of forum and 'flash' focus would be best (some events, like frontier skies, were not flash based but rather DHTML) because i enjoy both and there is a sizable chunk of our userbase that enjoy the flash spaces more than the forums, and vice versa

and more roleplay elements would be awesome considering the strong interest in roleplay on gaia. this is one of gaia's strengths, community-wise, and it should be promoted more as a method of soliciting new people to use the site

I didn't say it was a violation. I was suggesting why it might not be a popular <3'd thread, because AntiHero thinks it's because we're all meanies.

[Atom Dataverse]

At first I thought this was going to be another suggestion I'd shake my head at on someone just wanting "the good ol' days" of things that we need to keep moving forward from. But at the end of it, I have to agree on the whole immersion thing making gaia feel like its own world to be a part of, and that now it's become more like a shopping area than anything...

The whole, "making gaia feel like another world" thing is actually what hooked me into the site in 2004, is that it did feel that way to me and got me interested to get on the site. With more interactive NPCs and events, back then, it felt like you had to be there for certain events to get the full story out of it, than just having the manga update alone, because the NPCs were interactive within the forum events too.

But I think they could still have NPC interaction in flash based games too, it doesn't exclusively have to be for forums if gaia wants to keep moving forward to better horizons and keeping more up to date with the younger age that may join. Blaze was there for the WTF event, but, she was more in placement like a shop than interaction. Might've been neater/funner to have certain NPCs at different times going around towns to challenge you to a game of tic tac to or find them playing that DDR game too.. or something... they wouldn't even have to program the NPCs to wander around towns right? They could just have someone at HQ do it and play the characters part. Maybe they could even find the easter bunny lurking around the corner sometimes watching, where you maybe able to talk and hear him mumble his disgust at things or something. Or find that little girl with ultra satan going "I think there's something wrong with my fluff :[ " as she wanders around with ultra satan trying to challenge people to tic tac to, and ultra satan messes things up or whatever and makes you loose without even having a turn.... so much they could've done with interactions to make the event more interesting and immersive with the world and NPCs...

As for general NPC interactions outside of events, it could both be done in towns and forums I think. Give something to both parties that like to hang out in forums and flash spaces.

[Bethany Storm]

One Winged Asuka

Run simple, forum based events, not flash based ones! The last time I can say I felt connected to the community was during the Dragons event.

Make us CARE about what is going on in your world; if we never hear about these people (NPCs), how can we give a damn about their adventures? How can we relate to them?

I would love if the NPCs were used in the forums and not just limited to events. I enjoyed the feeding treat aspect of the What the Fluff event because it was forum based.

Maybe in future events there can be more balance with the flash based games.

[Zandy]

Crack in my Cornflakes

Zandykins

While I agree with what you said about re-establishing community within Gaia, this has never had 500000 let alone 250000 people online at one time sweatdrop .

Not true, actually.

I've made similar observations as the OP. Even without taking actual hard online users numbers into account, the fact that even minishops is lagging hard is proof to me that people are moving on.

Whether you saw 500000 users online at one time or not is irrelevant. The point is there has never actually been 500000 users online at one time. And I've been on Gaia for quite some time prior to this account. Once again like I said in my opinion post, I want to re-establish the community here with Gaia. Has it gone down? Yes. But definitely not as exaggerated as it is being portrayed. Gaia certainly does not have 33 times less online users now than it did at it's peak, let alone 13 times less.

[Calelith]

420blaqswag

gaia is sinking fast and ima bout to jump ship

Ok? Why tell us?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i hate the cash shop sht

Then don't use it?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i hate the events

Then don't participate?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i hate most of the mods (lookin at u reapersun)

Reapersun is an artist, not a mod.

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i hate the community

Then in all honesty, why are you still here?
confused

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i even hate waffles

And?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

[Calelith]

One Winged Asuka

Please show me WHERE in my first post I said ANYTHING about liking or disliking something. I didn't ask for ANYTHING to be removed because I didn't like it, and I didn't say that my suggestions should be implemented BECAUSE of a dislike for anything.

...

Why are you getting pissed off at a post that wasn't aimed at you?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

[Sweetie Panini]

Sakura Parfait

420blaqswag

gaia is sinking fast and ima bout to jump ship
i hate the cash shop sht
i hate the events
i hate most of the mods (lookin at u reapersun)
i hate the community
i even hate waffles

um reapersun is an artist

ya and i hate her
what up

[Sweetie Panini]

Calelith

420blaqswag

gaia is sinking fast and ima bout to jump ship

Ok? Why tell us?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i hate the cash shop sht

Then don't use it?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i hate the events

Then don't participate?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i hate most of the mods (lookin at u reapersun)

Reapersun is an artist, not a mod.

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i hate the community

Then in all honesty, why are you still here?
confused

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i even hate waffles

And?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

because i can
n i wasnt talking directly to you

[Calelith]

420blaqswag

Calelith

420blaqswag

gaia is sinking fast and ima bout to jump ship

Ok? Why tell us?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i hate the cash shop sht

Then don't use it?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i hate the events

Then don't participate?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i hate most of the mods (lookin at u reapersun)

Reapersun is an artist, not a mod.

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i hate the community

Then in all honesty, why are you still here?
confused

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

Quote:

i even hate waffles

And?

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”

because i can
n i wasnt talking directly to you

Public forum.
emotion_awesome

“Does this hurt? Of course it does, that’s why I’m going to keep doing it.”