Honestly this entire thread frustrates me to no end. All complaining and no one offering a realistic, comprehensive solution. Gaia will never stop selling cash items cheap or expensive, so instead it's better to think up a compromise that would restore the site to more of your liking while they can still profit. Screaming "gold sink" till the cows come home won't solve anything because most aren't willing to go along with a very dramatic siphoning of gold out of the marketplace. However, this needs to happen because it will essentially punish vendors for being greedy which is just as an important factor for the rising prices as the Flynn chests. Here's some suggestions from me:
1)
Community: The site needs to rekindle the emphasis on creating a virtual world. The home page should mostly advertise the goings on of the characters and events on gaia and not simply advertisements for everything that's on sale this week/month/whatever (leave that to announcements and less intrusive side banners). Interesting plot points should always be occurring and give clear lead up to the various events. Plot events should NOT be centered around cash items. Cash items should only be an offshoot of the events. Events should take much more effort and involve actual games instead of a bunch of forum attacking/spamming. Event's should actually give desirable items for higher achievement.
2)
Gold Sink: The marketplace is the biggest gold sink no doubt, but with all the extra gold it isn't effective in the slightest. Vendors cannot be controlled so you can only drive down the prices by making taxes punishing for hugely inflated prices. A graduated tax could be used ranging from the normal 2% up to 40% for the 2 billlion+ gold items. The taxes would be divided into ten classes with each class showing a rise of 2 to 4% and then an increasing 4% for each class beyond the second. Taxes will only remain this way until prices drop back to pre-Flynn inflation levels. Once that happens all products will be charged a flat tax of 4%.
3)
Tying in the Mess: Tie in the inflation fiasco along with the drastic market change to an ongoing event. Something like a shady entity blackmailed Flynn into releasing a ton of gold into the gaia economy. The economic chaos that ensued left a perfect opportunity to invade. The leaders of gaia create the higher taxes to bring things under control and to raise money for defense. A few main characters form a resistance group to bring down the evil being and its minions threatening gaia towns. All seasonal events and characters tie into this major event during its duration. At the end of the event market taxes reduce back to normal over the next few weeks. All seasonal events during this year offer the best quality prizes in the history of gaia events for those who can complete the difficult challenges. The event duration is based on the time it takes for inflation to reduce to acceptable levels.
4)
The Cash Shop: Super expensive items can still exist but they cannot be old items or recolors. They are their own unique items and all have some form of animation. Certain community members can get into a monthly payment plan and once they reach certain amounts are free to choose from several of the exclusive expensive items for that tier. Tiers go from $50 - $150 - $300 - $500-$1000. Payments should only be like $25 a month. Recolors of items go back into rigs. EIs are no more than twelve dollars and all have at least 25 poses for $5 eis and 60+ for normal price. No more Flynn's anything. Since alchemy is now pay to win that probably remains the same.
5)
Games: Instead of having emphasis on paying to win simpler games should instead be made balanced gold earners only. More advanced games like soul crash or whatever your iphone games are is where paying for features can be included. Of the simpler games decide what you're going to revamp and what you're going to lose. Keeping old, unbalanced games and never upgrading them is a waste of bandwidth. Do polls on the five most popular ones, update those, and replace a couple of the least popular with something similar but more entertaining/unique. Have fewer but better quality games that you are serious of about keeping up with (like 7-
cool
6)
Monthly plans: There should be no outside ads whatsoever for those on a plan. Also give other benefits such as exclusive viewing to some popular new animes you're currently partnered with after they've been paying for some amount of time (like two months). If they've been paying for two years they get a beautiful exclusive item as nice as a high quality EI for that alone.
7)
Gold Shops: are the same I guess. They are updated fairly frequently.
Those are just some of my ideas on this issue. Other suggestions can be made but people need to get serious about this. Pointing fingers and cursing out the CEO will not change jack s**t. Hell my suggestions probably won't either but at least it starts a real discussion. This community really needs to decide what about this site is absolutely vital and what isn't. Now I'm going to bed because my head feels like s**t.
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