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One of the things that pisses me off most about the RIGs, is that gaia seems to want to pimp out gold shop items like crazy but they do not want to make a lot of money. Yes, chance items encourage a surge of impulse buying more and gold inflation from people trying to sell rare items well above their value, but if they just came out with these things in the gold shops for a reasonable price (about 50¢ to $2.50), they should make more. If you know what you're going to get, you're more willing to spend your money.

Think about how many RIG items are on everyone's wishlists. Now let's take the average number of RIGs seemingly sold and compare. So we can see that they stand to sell about say... 70,000 of the things looking at the numbers seen in use and on the marketplace both items and the RIG kajiggers themselves and if they are heavy on bundles instead of singly, that works out to be about $1.20 each. So Let's say they make about $84,000.

Now let's consider how many RIG items are on people's wishlists, going just by people I know and profiles I see, the average is about 20. If that is to be taken as an average overall of the users. Then it is probably reasonable to say there are about 980,000 RIG items on active user wishlists. Let's say an fourth of those people are willing to spend 50¢ for each item, that's $122,500.

These RIGs are a great way for Gaia to make money fast, but not a good way to make the most money they can in a reasonable period. Why would they do that?

I have a few theories:
1. They are retarded – looking at some of the things they do, this is actually a likely case.
2. They are impatient - why get $120k+ over the course of a few months, when you can get $80k in impulse buys now and maybe another 10k over time? The income per day seems better until you realize that they keep these things in the market as long as if they were just to sell them singly and give you a good shot at them.
3. It destabilizes the gold economy - the sooner they make it more reasonable to just spend real money for almost everything, the sooner they can make more money.
4. The users that have loads of cash to burn love it - got to play to the people with the money, though if you go as far as gaia and many other companies do, you end up playing to a limited crowd and completely cut off the inflow of new users/customers, thus as the payers leave, you have not as many people coming in to replace them.
5. A combination of all of the above - gaia knows that their incompetence and the financial situation (especially in the bay area of CA) has them about ready to collapse. So instead of hunkering down, they want to pull cash in so they can get as much right now as they can before the feces hits the oscillating air mover.

It is simply not a financially logical course of action if otherwise.

I seen a few things I enjoyed.. but let me tell yah.. way way way over priced atm.

lol yeah a lot of my own wish list has turned into a list of items I'm just trying to keep track of for myself in case the prices goes down. wink

I finally got through the Frontier Skies with Louie (so I could get the cape lol). The only other item I really want is Carl's but yikes that one is tough.

Congrats, Camwen. Too bad it wasn't me... This is will be my 4th attempt with Louie and so far, he is not cooperating (buys cape for 50 Loot?!? Is he insane? ) but he is helping (in a way) on our voyage. Anyway, this game reminded me of Oregon Trail (which I failed miserably in that game too.) Well, here goes nothing...

*Off to another exciting (yet disappointing) journey across the Frontier*

Here's what I did:

First I spent all the loot to get as much ammo as possible. You start out with no loot but pick more up on the journey. Then let two (or three) of your crew die right away. Hunt a lot! Cut through the dessert but go around the volcano. I actually ended up with a lot more food than I needed at the end. (I did the medium ship, average pace and food portions the whole way) It's a rumor that equipping the utility belt helps but I don't know if that's true.

If anyone has advice for Carl I'd love to hear it. Or I'll just wait until the item does the Paris Hilton panty thing (lol@Lamb)

I got the Louie cape little bit like Camwen did. So with maximum amount of ammos and lots of hunting. Only difference was that I selected the fastest ship and went through the whole time with fastest pace but with average portions. Killed of three crew members, cut through both shortcuts and for the last stretch dropped the portions into lowest possible. I almost got killed, but managed to get two guys live enough into the finish line. sweatdrop

I'm trying Carl at the moment and only thing I can say at this point is that don't hunt those grey elks. I killed three and Carl instantly killed the entire crew and the game ended.

Edit: Tested it again. If you kill an elk, Carl will kill your entire crew. sweatdrop I managed to get pretty far with Carl with the hunt as much as you can -strategy, but then I was out of ammos and died in the last ocean stretch. Tomorrow I might try the same but with the faster ship.