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Site Update
Good evening everyone! It is with a heavy heart that I come to you now. Unfortunately we have to make several financial changes rather quickly. I want to be completely open about everything, so I am going to try to address all of the points that I feel need to be discussed.
I was discussing finances with Slash recently and he discovered a major source of the financial issues that we have been having are due to the site making 30% less income these past few months than in previous years. This is understandable, as many have noticed the active user count has gone down substantially last year, and many countries are in a pretty bad state economically and people are nervous about spending. There is a lot of concern about the stability of the site with how behind several aspects have become.
We have been working on catching up on these things to try to earn your faith back. We are in the process of more changes to help streamline background productivity (such as getting breeding helpers, the commission panel fees, etc). We know that it won't happen over night, and that many of our changes will also upset the user base. We do not want to disregard your feelings, but please understand that everything we do is to benefit the site in the long run. We have a lot of damage to repair, and it is a very long and tedious process. I personally spend almost every waking moment when I am not at my offline job, investigating options and discussing changes with the staff to keep pushing forward.
That being said, some of the changes we are making are:
- Alidae Egg, Transitional Fossil Egg, and Grand Edit Potion are having their Prediction Payout dropped to $10. When an Egg and a Grand Edit Potion are combined they will pay out $15. Any breedings submitted before Tuesday February 14th at 11:59 pm will not be effected by this pay change.
- Offering different payment options for USD breeding teams.
- Shrinking some of the larger USD breeding teams. (However, if we end up with enough artists taking different payments we won't have to do this!)
- The GCC and MDT teams will be shrunk. If you are on one of these teams and are interested in receiving GP or working out another payment system please pm me, Kaiyo (#489). If there are enough people willing to accept different payments I won't have to shrink them.
- The monthly site contests are going to have the USD pay dropped starting next month. It will still be offered but it will not be the same amount.
I appreciate everyone reading this, and I apologize again for these changes. Many of them will be temporary, such as the artists adjustments. Over time we may be making more adjustments, but we hope that these changes will be enough to cover the expenses, and we may be able to bring on another artist or two with the new payment methods for some of the backed up breeding teams.
If anyone has questions please feel free to ask, send me a PM if you would like, I will try to answer whatever I can. I want to be completely open about this situation, and withholding information does nothing for any of us. However, due to certain restrictions, there is some information that I am not permitted to share.
I do not come to you today with only bad news, however! The Commission Fee Panel is now live! You are now able to pay your own fees, select which ones you pay and when. There is a minimum of $5, so if you don't have that much in owed fees you won't be able to pay it yet!
It will work the same way it currently does in regards to dates, and all fees of the prior month must be paid within one week of the new month. So January must be paid within the first week of February, February within the first week of March, etc. Of course, this month is an exception since the feature is new and did start late, however please make sure January fees are paid quickly!
If you have any questions regarding your fees, please send me a pm! Only ping to the news comments if it is a general question about how something works.
Posted by 🐼Kaiyo🐼
(#489) on Fri Feb 3, 2017 2:19pm
- Grace
(#31172)
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Posted on: Sat Feb 4, 2017 3:58pm
Tsuyu & Sia {LL} (#774) I like your idea! Wouldn't it kind of be the same thing as having external artists creating user predicts? Would there be a way to organize a few artists who would be willing to do a few predicts for cheap (GP/BP or for free). We could even do this on our own, through the forums, which would save the staff time/energy having to set something new up. The only question is if enough users would be okay with non-site-team artists :/
PM me if anyone's interested?
- Juke 🇵🇸
(#7625)
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Posted on: Sat Feb 4, 2017 4:07pm
♥BunnieHugs♥ (#19822)
Slash is a dude, my dude ;3c
But I love Tsuyu & Sia {LL} (#774) 's idea. It could actually lead into more for the actual breeding teams if people like doing the babies enough and have the time to join. This still makes the queue run faster, and there's an option for GP pay there as well (I think I don't understand breeding stuff very well haha) if they'd rather stick with that.
But hopefully by then the site's gotten back up off it's knees ;v;
- Riri
(#48591)
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Posted on: Sat Feb 4, 2017 5:51pm
I wish you guys would reconsider the application process bit. We understand there are advantages, we're just saying that we think it does more harm than good, in loss of growth and new players vs. potential evil doers. Maybe put a captcha on registration to prevent bots signing up.
- p.poke ::: woogie
(#5869)
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Posted on: Sat Feb 4, 2017 7:18pm
Aa I cant rlly seem to think of a way to help with this except for perhaps the "mystery packs" that larger artists seem to have been doing 0: Tho that definitely is more based on the idea of having a bigger name, and collecting lower amnts of $, but having lots of ppl subbed to pay,,
nevertheless, thank ya for the effort kaiyos, and i rlly hope things work out better! ;;;; u've been doin A++, and im def sure u've been doin all ya can
- Oiseau
(#1570)
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Posted on: Sat Feb 4, 2017 7:20pm
Shaenora (#70050) The BP to GP exchange rate is 600-700k to 1 GP. :)
- OKami_hu
(#23130)
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Posted on: Sat Feb 4, 2017 7:40pm
I don't know how possible it is, but maybe, you could pull out those old SCCs that were only available for like a day or a week (the Husky, the Genet, the Clydesdale), give them a custom maker and sell that in the USD shop?
Those old features I've never even got to see might attract ppl... Gardening, mining? What's up with magic? What's up with the raffle items you said you're going to use and are still sitting in our inventories? I'm glad to hear there will be new games!
Also, how about putting some really cool and rare items into the SP shop? And maybe rethink how one can obtain SP, because it's near impossible if one doesn't have an artistic ability.
- Kris
(#15280)
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Posted on: Sat Feb 4, 2017 8:35pm
Yea, my aywas anniversary for 6 years is coming up on 17th. I'd like to say yea as new member back then I was confused on the layout of the site which has been here since then. I was not totally into Aywas in 2011 didn't come back until 2012 when something happen and the site took over as my main pet site. The breeding and custom making held me here. Since no other site really gives you those options beside a few that more freebie sites. But Aywas is key pet site me and hoping for many more years to come.
- sam-j-c
(#24177)
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Posted on: Sat Feb 4, 2017 9:19pm
I've seen suggestions of adding non-art (breeding) items to the USD shop, which seems like a good idea. Maybe more Physical Merchandise (which could help with publicity)? Even if they had to open it up to users creating site based items at home, and selling it through the site, allowing the site to collect a fee from it. Things like messenger bags, earrings, bracelets, plushes, or decorations...
- caveSalamander
(#64257)
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Posted on: Sat Feb 4, 2017 10:07pm
*Points excitedly* The bounty idea that was mentioned on the last page would definitely be something I'd be interested in applying for!! I'm not always *on* enough to be willing to take on full lists, but I would love to take the occasional MDT or something. I'd do it for GP too...
It's really hard to advertise for colorings on the forums because they get swallowed up so fast... And there's no way to search for them either. The same goes for PSDs - I've got a few custommakers that I want to use, but I don't want to use them without edits since they have edits available, and I can't even search in the forums for relevant PSDs...
Something like the edit repository or the silver database would be so useful, and it would - even if it doesn't directly make the site money, it would probably help a lot of people find the perfect PSD, and maybe boost interest in custommakers - currency sink that doesn't cost the site money, while also easing the design queues...
ALSO If you are going to redesign the site layout/ front page look, I actually made an excel sheet a long time ago that would, in my mind, be a more sensible layout! I would love to discuss it/ my reasoning for it. (There's actually a lot of small UI changes I've noted down over the couple years I've been playing, that I'd love to see streamlined or fixed.)
Posted on: Sat Feb 4, 2017 3:51pm
Hm.... maybe lower the SCC prices? Or, retain the GP price, but put SCC's in the cash shop at a reduced rate to encourage players to buy them? I know the high cost has been a deterrent to some.
I know I haven't been around much; it just been a lot of waiting. We have a lot of features on the side that seem to be all but abandoned ((Like the Adopt A Custom feature; there are pets that still haven't been assigned to winners ))
I still love the site, and I want to see it flourish again, like it was when I joined.
You've been doing great, Kaiyos. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise!