Reduce "Sale" Frequency: 600+ Items in 6 Months(List Inside)

Do you agree with what was said in the post?

Yes	95.6%	[ 370 ]
No	4.4%	[ 17 ]
Total Votes:			[ 387 ]

[Zandy]

[ List of Sales since The Opening of Club Verge ]
List was moved to the link above due to it exceeding the 50,000 character capacity per post

Please slow down on the sales Gaia. I know threads like these have popped up frequently in the forums in the last couple of months, but realistically, you are becoming your own competition when you have so many sales at once without fair spacing in between them. The excessive amount of rereleases, flash sales, bundles, chance items, etc... is in no doubt cutting in to profits you could've made in other areas (ie, REIs, EIs, MCs, etc...). Wh

Additionally, with all of these sales you have undoubtedly caused a lot of individuals to no longer trust Gaia as a site based of community but rather see you as a site that is desperate to make money at almost every opportunity you can get no matter what the long term consequences are.

The way the marketing of this site is being held is not sustainable for a community site long term. It's a slippery slope downward. The more and more sales you have in such a short amount of time, the less people participate in sales indefinitely. The less people participating means that you receive less revenue than expected and hence Gaia will be required to have more sales to meet what seem to be extremely high monthly quotas.

Now I don't know the future of Gaia, however, the way the site is maintained: extremely slow and lack of updates; less staff communication; insane quantities of sales in short periods of time; etc..., it almost seems as if Gaia does not care about its longterm reputation, implying a near shift in focus elsewhere (possibly the new 18+ site) whilst abandoning Gaia. If this isn't the case, then please SLOW DOWN on the sales. Upwards of 4 large sales a day is too much for the average person, and becomes disinteresting very quickly.

Old Stuff:

September 30th - October 3rd Update:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

September 30th Edit:

I am disgusted on Gaia's tactics for rereleases. It's true what they've been trying to do. Inflate the values of items severely and then release them at outrageous GC prices deeming them as good deals. Specifically with the items Bound Warlock and Melodious Witchcraft

Bound Warlock is at 5000GC at the moment, and just two months ago it had a value of about 3m. Nobody would have EVER thought that was even close to a decent value back then.

Melodious Witchcraft is worse. An item worth 350k at one point, and steadily worth 500k until inflation spiked is now at 2500GC. This is absolutely ridiculous.

October 1st Edit:

Gemini Twins is definitely a rip off at 3999GC. It was once an item worth 1.6m, but because of all of Gaia's inflation techniques, you can pretend it's worth that value I guess. In terms of poses, you're paying practically $6.66 for each pose. Definitely worth it... :/.

But what I find even worse is that you are trying to portray the prices as better than they are. Why not list the items at 4000GC? Because 3999GC introduces the first digit as less than 4, and because it looks at first glance possibly more enticing? Sneaky rolleyes

October 2nd Edit:

Really? Dark Heart 2nd Gen for 1000GC? There was a point where Gaia offered REI Bundles and gave like, 3 old REIs + an REI recolour for like 1299GC. What an even worse ripoff.

October 3rd Edit:

Runcible Spoon for 999GC? Really? More ripoffs? 4 consecutive days.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

October 8th/14th Update:

Narumi Misuhara

I can definitely understand your concerns, however it's important to understand that those images are out of context. They had nothing to do with Gaia.

Regarding managements vision of Gaia, yes, we all want to see Gaia do well and thrive. Gaia has an amazing community and none of us want to see that go away. Not sure why the idea is going around that we don't care about the community. We continue to have mini-events, we've recently had amazing gold only item recolors and we have tons of free contests going on all the time.

I wouldn't expect things like the rates of sales to decrease, but we can definitely find more useful and less intrusive ways to message these things and that is currently something we are working on.

So it's official. Seems like the rate of the sales will just stay stagnant for awhile.

Gaia, how on earth do you NOT realize that you are COMPETING WITH YOURSELF for sales these days? I'm going to assume the sales of CIs, EIs, and REIs on the marketplace are proportional to the number being bought directly from from the cash shop. Logically, that makes sense. Last month, the number of sales you made on the fourth day of the release of the Return to Valefor CI were only 1/4 as large as August's CI. Not to mention, other sales with REIs must be down too. If people who actually still want to spend money on Gaia have $25 dollars to spend, they're going to likely spend it on an item you dangle in front of their faces and claim as a "flash sale" with your cheap marketing tactics of profiting off impulse buyers than other items. Also, Midnight Citadel on its fourth day had only 400 sales on the marketplace. Seems like decreasing sales for sure. Apart from you redirecting buyers, you're also decreasing the want to even play the CIs. For $50, you can buy 50 CIs and still have a tiny chance of winning a great item... OR you could wait a month an have Gaia release the rare items in that CI for $50, since clearly, Gaia seems to be on a roll of selling every item worth over 1m in CV or LV. By this rate, it'd be inevitable for Gaia to release these rare items from CIs too, especially since their rarity is forcefully being increased by the fact that CIs aren't selling in the quantities they used to, and hence, the rares in the CIs are even rarer since less people are getting them!

Secondly, Gaia, you are inadvertently causing inflation. I'm not just talking about about the constant releases of Flynn's Booty. I am talking about the fact that you are limiting the available supplies of cash shop items on the marketplace by constantly luring people away into buying those impulse deals. Alongside inflation, it seems that 90% of items you release as a flash sale also inflate on the marketplace just because PEOPLE KNOW THAT IN GENERAL, THE COMMUNITY IS TIRED DOWN BY YOUR CASH OFFERS, AND RUSH TO BUY THE ITEMS OFF THE MARKETPLACE WHICH CAUSES MORE INFLATION. This also emphasizes how till sales you're getting on these daily flash sales for what you could get if the wallets of your user base were recharged.

Thirdly of course, you're alienating your user base from wanting to spend more cash. Less people want to spend their $50 allowance on this site on an item that comes up today, when there could be a better item offered tomorrow. You're causing a lot of purchaser scepticism. Not to mention, nobody likes a site that throws out paid offers at such a higher rate than free non-GC offers. That's where a ton of sites get a lot of criticism and negative reviews. Take a look at MG and HoC, games developed by Gaia Interactive as examples. Both have tanked, and to no surprise, it was from the fact that virtually every aspect of the game limited you when you didn't have the money to advance. HoC was a little better since you offered gold rewards, but still, the lack of updates on both games made purchasing from both games seem useless. I bring this example up because Gaia, you barely get have updates done these days, so why should people support a site by buying these sales that take Gaia no effort to produce through your exploitation of a likely fired-Gaia artists' hard work alongside the fact that the platforms to show off these items (forums, guilds, flash spaces, etc...) are old and dusty?

[Myrielle]

My Paypal is exhausted and dehydrated and needs to go to the bank hospital for a few weeks.

[Seasoning Salt]

Notice most of these items are 10$++++

I cry inside. OTL emo

And another sale....
Somehow now i feel as these re-releases arent special anymore.

[Naxto]

They're getting way too pushy which makes me want to spend even less here.

[Balenciaga]

gaia

no smile

[shulie]

People complain about sales. Gaia advertises more through dev alerts. Good trolls lol

[Sifen Yamishi]

Revolution Trilogy single went for 399/Revolution Trilogy bundle was 999.

But on topic, these sales are really getting to be too much. Once in a while are good, but at the rate this is happening? No thanks.

[Sunset Glimmer]

Sifen Yamishi

There is a problem when a site administrator even thinks its an issue. ._.

[Zandy]

Sunset Glimmer

Sifen Yamishi

There is a problem when a site administrator even thinks its an issue. ._.

Sorry, but which administrator thinks this?

Just for clarification, if you meant Sifen Yamishi, I want to just point out she is actually a forum assistant which is quite different than that of an administrator ^^.

[Pegasaurus Rex]

That's a lot to take in, looking at all the sales in one place.
...
Do they even realize how many people they're upsetting?

[Fate Stays the Night]

I understand that Gaia is a business and needs to make money, but jfc that's a shitload of items. And I see only two "unexpected" items worth less than 149 GC. What happened to the micro in microtransactions?

I was actually thinking that I'd compare last month in terms of Cash items Vs. Free/Gold items in both pose and item number to two or three years ago. Like see if we're still getting the same percentage of free items to premium items.

[Zandy]

Fate Stays the Night

I understand that Gaia is a business and needs to make money, but jfc that's a shitload of items. And I see only two "unexpected" items worth less than 149 GC. What happened to the micro in microtransactions?

I was actually thinking that I'd compare last month in terms of Cash items Vs. Free/Gold items in both pose and item number to two or three years ago. Like see if we're still getting the same percentage of free items to premium items.

I know, it's really a shame. Apart from the regular MCs, EIs, and CIs, everything else for the most part is catered the the massive spenders. And even thoes people who can drop 5000GC here and there would be overwhelmed if they wanted to get a lot of the items on the last within a two month span.

[Pilotslover]

All they're doing is exhausting our desire to give them money.

I personally will be turning off my cash subscription as of next month, something I've had on since they introduced the system.

[Sunset Glimmer]

Zandykins

I did mean to say Forum Assistant. XD
It was like crazy late at my corner of the world and I was passing out at the computer when I wrote that! XD
By baaaad! XD
Remember kids, no forums after a full 8 hours of sleep. sweatdrop

[Fate Stays the Night]

Zandykins

Fate Stays the Night

I understand that Gaia is a business and needs to make money, but jfc that's a shitload of items. And I see only two "unexpected" items worth less than 149 GC. What happened to the micro in microtransactions?

I was actually thinking that I'd compare last month in terms of Cash items Vs. Free/Gold items in both pose and item number to two or three years ago. Like see if we're still getting the same percentage of free items to premium items.

I know, it's really a shame. Apart from the regular MCs, EIs, and CIs, everything else for the most part is catered the the massive spenders. And even thoes people who can drop 5000GC here and there would be overwhelmed if they wanted to get a lot of the items on the last within a two month span.

I did some quick math, and to buy every one of the items on "sale", you'd have to spend 114894 GC. That's more than plenty to get into Club Verge, so let's add the cost of all the Halo/Wings/Horn/Tail to that, or the 193800 GC you'd need to drop to get just those. The other listed Club Verge items add another 79000 GC onto that. 387694 GC so far, just to buy one of every item. I have not included Flynn's Booty, the Starlight Redemption Bonus Bundle, the Aria Dannata sale, or the CYOA bundles.

Let me bold that. $3876.94 if you had bought everything on sale. Even if you only bought 5% of the items, you'd still need to spend around $200.

As for the "regular" releases, that comes out to a measely 6532 GC, or 6232 GC if you bought the Aria Dannata on sale, if you bought one bundle per CI and every EI/REI. That's $65.32, if you need a quick conversion. About 5% of that would be only enough to buy you one CI and one MC ( 5% would be 3.26, so I rounded up to $3.50 )

Could someone please explain how someone who makes less than $50k a year is supposed to keep up?