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 Posted: Mon Nov 11, 2013 12:24 pm
I just wonder why Gaia bothers with gold sinks if they have Flynn's Booty. Kind of defeats the purpose, and makes prices skyrocket ridiculously.
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Posted: Mon Nov 11, 2013 12:33 pm
S2 Erry pretty hate machine S2 Erry i'll be honest , i hate Flynn's Booty!!! stressed , they should just put 1-2 in a times in a year , why? because they keep on raising price in MP and they are TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE to get!!! i mean seriously gaia??? why would you spend your money on a item that got double the prices? at first when Flynn's Booty was realease the first times, i was ' ok ', but second and more, NO i'm not ok.
people who *like* Flynn Booty are the people that can be able to sell items for a higher price. but let me say this, how will you feel if you got hacked while Flynn's Booty was release ? and you have no items to sell at all, and you are in a complete new account.
i am just saying.. i might be wrong or correct... ;o
I understand that they have to maintain servers and pay developers, and ad revenue just isn't enough sometimes, but I honestly felt alienated by that announcement. I'm the mother of a child who works full time. I cannot justify spending the insane amounts of money on pixels when I have groceries to buy and bills to pay. I feel like the only way to ever make any gold these days is essentially to pay for it. The admins stated they would never allow outright trading of money for gold to happen, but essentially that's what's happening.
Take the Halloween event that just happened. I try to play up to the 100k limit of booty grab every day that I can just to even barely keep up with the inflation of the prices. They were, at first, selling the gold shop energy potions for around 1k. It was a bit expensive but eh... not that bad. Once the event was underway, they jacked the price up to 25k. That is effing ridiculous... They still offered the cash shop potions (they could have made them much stronger like instantly refilling health and/or energy) and left the gold shop alone (it only did 10%). Jacking the price up that much was an insult to users like me who can't afford to invest that much money and/or time into the site and can only resort to earning gold the old fashioned ways by posting, voting in polls, and playing the games.
But anyhow, I think I've ranted enough. I think I'm a bit off topic. rofl gaia_star yes, exactly! spending real money *sigh* one of my friend think that the person who control gaia has changed, and when that new guy came, it is all about money. because she know that the old person(who control gaia) wouldn't wanted us to spend money, but after the new guy came, money money MONEY! i think i kinda agree with her. neutral
They haven't really updated aquariums or zOMG in a very long time, but yet continue to spend time and effort on releasing items for the cash shop.
They want to make sure that people use the other features of the site, like play the games, make aquariums, etc which is why they don't offer gold for money because people would probably neglect those features if they didn't have to work, somewhat, for their gold, but they can kill those features just as fast if they don't update them ever. neutral gaia_star
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Posted: Mon Nov 11, 2013 1:44 pm
DinahDevoured And I agree, it was awesome when first released and gave people a chance to get a boost up and get somethings they've been wanting or working for but by doing it so often it's almost like it cancels itself out in a way. It should be more special and limited in how often it's available otherwise it just makes things more expensive. The inflation is affecting everyone except the extremely rich gaians. In my humble opinion, once a season would be great, four times a year at the beginning of each season. Alas I am one small voice ;p The interesting thing about inflation is that it's not necessarily detrimental to those who are established (a.k.a. not new players). Anyone who comes in new has to start from scratch, which means it will be much harder for a new player to get a leg up in this economy than it used to be. For people who know how to make money, who have items to sell, who have a modest amount of gold and know how to create income for themselves, inflation is nearly negligible...it just means they are managing larger amounts of money. The value of items isn't what changed, but the value of gold, so the ratios in buying/selling are usually equivalent ( equivalent, not equal). I actually have no problem with loyalty programs for customers that use real money (Verge). There's so many companies and businesses that use loyalty programs in real life, so it's not surprising to me that people are seeing it more and more in the online world. But Flynn isn't set up as part of a loyalty program, it's available for anyone that wants to convert real money directly into gold. It's a no-brainer why Flynn is so successful because there's always going to be a group of people that loves to convert real money into virtual currency. There's a group like that in almost every online community. If the group is big enough, then the executives at Gaia will be hard pressed to find a reason not to market to them. Ultimately, Gaia is a business even if they offer a lot of free services on their site. The only thing that keeps them up and running and allows them to expand their business is going to be money from their customers. On top of that, it's usually not enough for a company to break even or hold consistent earnings from year to year. Companies always want and try to earn more in the current year than they earned in the previous year. They want positive growth. If Flynn is giving Gaia positive growth, then yes they'll keep releasing it. I'm not incredibly outraged over Flynn, I feel like I'm probably more neutral than anything else, but if Gaia has any interest in maintaining a healthy economy on their site, they need to find a balance. It's like Yin and Yang...you can't flood an economy with money without also introducing a way to remove that money. I think Gaia only has 50% of a set-up here, they're missing the last 50%...we've got all Yin and no Yang.
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Posted: Mon Nov 11, 2013 2:16 pm
Sturnidae DinahDevoured And I agree, it was awesome when first released and gave people a chance to get a boost up and get somethings they've been wanting or working for but by doing it so often it's almost like it cancels itself out in a way. It should be more special and limited in how often it's available otherwise it just makes things more expensive. The inflation is affecting everyone except the extremely rich gaians. In my humble opinion, once a season would be great, four times a year at the beginning of each season. Alas I am one small voice ;p The interesting thing about inflation is that it's not necessarily detrimental to those who are established (a.k.a. not new players). Anyone who comes in new has to start from scratch, which means it will be much harder for a new player to get a leg up in this economy than it used to be. For people who know how to make money, who have items to sell, who have a modest amount of gold and know how to create income for themselves, inflation is nearly negligible...it just means they are managing larger amounts of money. The value of items isn't what changed, but the value of gold, so the ratios in buying/selling are usually equivalent ( equivalent, not equal). I actually have no problem with loyalty programs for customers that use real money (Verge). There's so many companies and businesses that use loyalty programs in real life, so it's not surprising to me that people are seeing it more and more in the online world. But Flynn isn't set up as part of a loyalty program, it's available for anyone that wants to convert real money directly into gold. It's a no-brainer why Flynn is so successful because there's always going to be a group of people that loves to convert real money into virtual currency. There's a group like that in almost every online community. If the group is big enough, then the executives at Gaia will be hard pressed to find a reason not to market to them. Ultimately, Gaia is a business even if they offer a lot of free services on their site. The only thing that keeps them up and running and allows them to expand their business is going to be money from their customers. On top of that, it's usually not enough for a company to break even or hold consistent earnings from year to year. Companies always want and try to earn more in the current year than they earned in the previous year. They want positive growth. If Flynn is giving Gaia positive growth, then yes they'll keep releasing it. I'm not incredibly outraged over Flynn, I feel like I'm probably more neutral than anything else, but if Gaia has any interest in maintaining a healthy economy on their site, they need to find a balance. It's like Yin and Yang...you can't flood an economy with money without also introducing a way to remove that money. I think Gaia only has 50% of a set-up here, they're missing the last 50%...we've got all Yin and no Yang. Well spoken!!!!
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Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2013 9:52 pm
Flynn's booty is a disasster.
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Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 4:40 pm
Annie Felis I'm against it, and have been vocal in GCD and Site Feedback, but my opinion is a drop in the ocean, and that's an ocean Gaia is just going to fly right over and ignore. They are intentionally making gold worthless while making money in the process with both Flynn's Booty/Chest and Smashblox. This site is going to crash and burn within a year from a useless economy where members can't do anything without buying cash.
I'm glad you've been vocal as well! :3
I refuse to give up, only since I've been around since '03 & I just can't see myself leaving a site that I was such a part of from the very beginning that easily. I will fight until this burning ship goes down in flames. Until then...I'll fight ;3
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Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 4:46 pm
Sturnidae The interesting thing about inflation is that it's not necessarily detrimental to those who are established (a.k.a. not new players). Anyone who comes in new has to start from scratch, which means it will be much harder for a new player to get a leg up in this economy than it used to be. For people who know how to make money, who have items to sell, who have a modest amount of gold and know how to create income for themselves, inflation is nearly negligible...it just means they are managing larger amounts of money. The value of items isn't what changed, but the value of gold, so the ratios in buying/selling are usually equivalent ( equivalent, not equal). I actually have no problem with loyalty programs for customers that use real money (Verge). There's so many companies and businesses that use loyalty programs in real life, so it's not surprising to me that people are seeing it more and more in the online world. But Flynn isn't set up as part of a loyalty program, it's available for anyone that wants to convert real money directly into gold. It's a no-brainer why Flynn is so successful because there's always going to be a group of people that loves to convert real money into virtual currency. There's a group like that in almost every online community. If the group is big enough, then the executives at Gaia will be hard pressed to find a reason not to market to them. Ultimately, Gaia is a business even if they offer a lot of free services on their site. The only thing that keeps them up and running and allows them to expand their business is going to be money from their customers. On top of that, it's usually not enough for a company to break even or hold consistent earnings from year to year. Companies always want and try to earn more in the current year than they earned in the previous year. They want positive growth. If Flynn is giving Gaia positive growth, then yes they'll keep releasing it. I'm not incredibly outraged over Flynn, I feel like I'm probably more neutral than anything else, but if Gaia has any interest in maintaining a healthy economy on their site, they need to find a balance. It's like Yin and Yang...you can't flood an economy with money without also introducing a way to remove that money. I think Gaia only has 50% of a set-up here, they're missing the last 50%...we've got all Yin and no Yang.
What is interesting about what you said is that I have been....creating various theories in my mind about FB, if you will.
One of these deals precisely with newbies. Let's say you made an account today, & saw the state of the MP. To them, that is normal. They have no idea what has happened & that it was never this bad nor this expensive before. They search around the forums & new member guides, & see that people are saying that the conventional ways of making gold, through zOMG, aquariums, etc., is simply too hard & too time consuming. What's a new user to do?
Simple.
Buy EIs, RIGs, MCs, & now....Flynn's Booty. Before it was sort of known that buying cash items could turn you a profit on the MP. However, that little amount of work compared to just opening a chest & getting instant gratification...it's no comparison. It goes from easy to even bloody easier.
So in my mind, while I would like to assume those in Gaia HQ are not inherently evil...by making gold relatively worthless, that drives new users & those desperate for gold alike to delve into the easy method of obtaining gold. I.e., Flynn's Booty.
So not only does it fatten their wallets, but it makes this essentially slowly turn into a "pay to have any fun" site. Not pay to play entirely, since some aspects are still...."free" (I will use that term loosely right now, seeing as how s**t the updates are to anything free), but to win in certain games, to have a good avatar, to enjoy the experience...lots of gold is necessary, & thus buying items like FB that just grant stupid amounts of gold is the easiest option.
This is now going to become the norm. New users will not want to work for their gold when they can buy it. That's a sad, sad state, & loses the entire idea of a community...but its the theory I have in my mind & it seems to becoming more & more true every day :
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Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 4:48 pm
pretty hate machine S2 Erry pretty hate machine S2 Erry i'll be honest , i hate Flynn's Booty!!! stressed , they should just put 1-2 in a times in a year , why? because they keep on raising price in MP and they are TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE to get!!! i mean seriously gaia??? why would you spend your money on a item that got double the prices? at first when Flynn's Booty was realease the first times, i was ' ok ', but second and more, NO i'm not ok.
people who *like* Flynn Booty are the people that can be able to sell items for a higher price. but let me say this, how will you feel if you got hacked while Flynn's Booty was release ? and you have no items to sell at all, and you are in a complete new account.
i am just saying.. i might be wrong or correct... ;o
I understand that they have to maintain servers and pay developers, and ad revenue just isn't enough sometimes, but I honestly felt alienated by that announcement. I'm the mother of a child who works full time. I cannot justify spending the insane amounts of money on pixels when I have groceries to buy and bills to pay. I feel like the only way to ever make any gold these days is essentially to pay for it. The admins stated they would never allow outright trading of money for gold to happen, but essentially that's what's happening.
Take the Halloween event that just happened. I try to play up to the 100k limit of booty grab every day that I can just to even barely keep up with the inflation of the prices. They were, at first, selling the gold shop energy potions for around 1k. It was a bit expensive but eh... not that bad. Once the event was underway, they jacked the price up to 25k. That is effing ridiculous... They still offered the cash shop potions (they could have made them much stronger like instantly refilling health and/or energy) and left the gold shop alone (it only did 10%). Jacking the price up that much was an insult to users like me who can't afford to invest that much money and/or time into the site and can only resort to earning gold the old fashioned ways by posting, voting in polls, and playing the games.
But anyhow, I think I've ranted enough. I think I'm a bit off topic. rofl gaia_star yes, exactly! spending real money *sigh* one of my friend think that the person who control gaia has changed, and when that new guy came, it is all about money. because she know that the old person(who control gaia) wouldn't wanted us to spend money, but after the new guy came, money money MONEY! i think i kinda agree with her. neutral
They haven't really updated aquariums or zOMG in a very long time, but yet continue to spend time and effort on releasing items for the cash shop.
They want to make sure that people use the other features of the site, like play the games, make aquariums, etc which is why they don't offer gold for money because people would probably neglect those features if they didn't have to work, somewhat, for their gold, but they can kill those features just as fast if they don't update them ever. neutral gaia_star
I asked in the SF forum for some attention to be paid to aspects of the site like Aquariums. I know they said for now zOMG will forever be in beta mode & update mode....but that is no reason to ignore the large BG community. We are losing players, fish are becoming too expensive to upkeep tanks, so I merely made suggestions to "feature" certain aspects of the site every few weeks.
By drawing user attention to actual features of the site that they bloody created, perhaps we can draw attention away from cash for a bit & away from the obnoxious re-releases to actually create a sense of community again. So we'll see if they take that feedback into account :3
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Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 7:16 pm
b u n n y - l i o r e Annie Felis I'm against it, and have been vocal in GCD and Site Feedback, but my opinion is a drop in the ocean, and that's an ocean Gaia is just going to fly right over and ignore. They are intentionally making gold worthless while making money in the process with both Flynn's Booty/Chest and Smashblox. This site is going to crash and burn within a year from a useless economy where members can't do anything without buying cash.
I'm glad you've been vocal as well! :3
I refuse to give up, only since I've been around since '03 & I just can't see myself leaving a site that I was such a part of from the very beginning that easily. I will fight until this burning ship goes down in flames. Until then...I'll fight ;3Oh, I've given up. It's not that I don't care, it's just I'm realistic and I realize that Gaia will continue to do whatever it takes to make money. They don't want to listen to the userbase that tell them ways to lose a big fat profit, so they are intentionally ignoring the people who hate Flynn's parts.
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Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 6:10 pm
I personally don't like Flynn or her fat booty...
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Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2013 11:22 am
b u n n y - l i o r e
What is interesting about what you said is that I have been....creating various theories in my mind about FB, if you will.
One of these deals precisely with newbies. Let's say you made an account today, & saw the state of the MP. To them, that is normal. They have no idea what has happened & that it was never this bad nor this expensive before. They search around the forums & new member guides, & see that people are saying that the conventional ways of making gold, through zOMG, aquariums, etc., is simply too hard & too time consuming. What's a new user to do?
Simple.
Buy EIs, RIGs, MCs, & now....Flynn's Booty. Before it was sort of known that buying cash items could turn you a profit on the MP. However, that little amount of work compared to just opening a chest & getting instant gratification...it's no comparison. It goes from easy to even bloody easier.
So in my mind, while I would like to assume those in Gaia HQ are not inherently evil...by making gold relatively worthless, that drives new users & those desperate for gold alike to delve into the easy method of obtaining gold. I.e., Flynn's Booty.
So not only does it fatten their wallets, but it makes this essentially slowly turn into a "pay to have any fun" site. Not pay to play entirely, since some aspects are still...."free" (I will use that term loosely right now, seeing as how s**t the updates are to anything free), but to win in certain games, to have a good avatar, to enjoy the experience...lots of gold is necessary, & thus buying items like FB that just grant stupid amounts of gold is the easiest option.
This is now going to become the norm. New users will not want to work for their gold when they can buy it. That's a sad, sad state, & loses the entire idea of a community...but its the theory I have in my mind & it seems to becoming more & more true every day : That's true, but it would be hard to say exactly how many new players come to this site in a month (or in a year's time) and on top of that, it's not likely that 100% of new players are buyers. From community polls and stats that are floating around, it seems that only about 10% of the community* makes Flynn item purchases, which is about the average/normal percentage that an online company would want as buyers. Anything above 10% is an extra bonus. The more I observe what is going on, the more it seems like Gaia admins aren't completely wrong with what they're doing. I still believe their setup is flawed, but it is more than likely that they do profit from this 10% and that 10% is enough to warrant the re-releasing of the Flynn items. It's a small percentage compared to the total number of players in the entire community, but it's not a small number where marketing and revenue is concerned. They're probably right where they want to be in terms of making money. But anyway making money doesn't equal instant success. There's so many other factors involved in running a successful business and company... you could make a lot of money in a short amount of time, but without supporting any other factors, the company can still crash and burn. Gaia still needs the other 90% of their players to keep community and population up. Deserted sites are NOT fun...seriously, they're just not. If the only active people here were the 10% that make purchases, even they would leave because a site with that few people can't succeed. I kind of doubt that the admins don't know these things...I'm sure that they do. Even a business executive that doesn't interact directly with the site or community would know these basics about consumers and consumer behavior. That's why what's happening is kind of weird...like they're ignoring all of the business basics that I know they know. stare * Keeping in mind that this percentage is still a bit inaccurate because it's limited to Gaians who are active on the forums.
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Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2013 5:23 pm
My thoughts on Flynn's Booty:
Yeah that pretty much sums it up.
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