News
Search Options ►Updates and Commission Fees
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
- Mynia
(#5309)
-
Posted on: Sun Feb 5, 2017 1:30pm
I had another random idea. How about something like a custom queue 'speedy ticket' ? Where you are able to purchase the item from the USD shop; and it acts like an addon in terms of when you submit your custom to the queue; it is able to jump to the front of the queue?
There would be some issues; like it might affect the already 'slow' tendency of the queue (and i'm not saying Eve does a bad job; she does a wonderful job!) but there are always times when things pile up and people might be interested in an item that would speed it up. One of the issues might be that it actually pushes back the custom queue; but this /could/ be potentially avoided by assigning a staff member directly to this new 'speed' queue, so that Eve can be left to focus on the regular queue. Plus, since users can't possibly know where their custom is in the queue, there shouldn't be any upset that 'their speed custom wasn't accepted first' etc. If the 'speed queue' ever got too big to handle, it could also be put on a sale cycle or something to help maintain the equilibrium of the queue.
Of course the other issue would be; the fact that accepting customs actually requires them to be checked against the custom maker which they are submitted with. I thought of this too when thinking about this idea. This could be made a rule when the item is used by which the custom you submit with it HAS to have had a crystal check already; and this should be linked in the notes section of the submission (which is something Eve asks for already as it saves time)
Of course there are probably 10000 more flaws in this idea; but it was a random one i had when trying to think of items that could be introduced to the USD shop; that would be desirable, but without having to payout any of the money generated to artists.
- Foxtrot
(#40289)
-
Posted on: Mon Feb 6, 2017 7:22am
I have a lot of specific economic suggestions... but I'll wait to see what the revamp holds.
For now- I think putting silver potions/tiny silver potions in the USD shop for $5 would help... people are sitting on dozens of uses they can't get potions for and scc's no one will buy uses of because potions are so pricey!
I can imagine it would also boost the sales of SBCs since SCCs would be more profitable. Just a thought ^-^
- Foxtrot
(#40289)
-
Posted on: Mon Feb 6, 2017 7:24am
I also agree with Tsuya & Sia... that was an idea of mine and I'm glad it's been brought up. I have a career, a boyfriend and a life... those lists are a full time commitment. :/
- wolfcat
(#177)
-
Posted on: Mon Feb 6, 2017 2:15pm
Personally, I spend nothing on the site now because many of the features I enjoyed have been disposed of in favor of a ton of new things that I do not care about at all. Many great artists left or retired without many new people coming to replace them, the user base expanded too quickly and the amount of skilled people became overwhelmed, breeding coin babies changed number, scav is gone, things that I want to collect became impossible to come by, etc. Everything that had me addicted to spending like an addict is just gone. It really makes me sad. This site was like a second home to me for years.
- Answrs
(#13751)
-
Posted on: Mon Feb 6, 2017 4:36pm
I know many users are reluctant to put up such high amounts of US when the site feels like it's gonna tank any moment. heck, even just opening the page seeing the first prices at like 35 dollars would make me immediately close the page, regardless if the site's future was in question or not.
there's no search by price button either, so there being a $2 or $3 item hidden between all the $20+ prices? most people aren't gonna bother even looking through the page to see them. I get you have to pay artists, pay to keep the site running, but to a casual player? seeing something like $25 for a single pre-made pet (like the faux, which as someone who has submitted litters in the past I know for sure you don't pay artists for with usd)... it just makes them click away without even bothering.
I just checked, and there are 23 items (including the 3 unusable ones) total that are less than 10 dollars. there are, I believe, 288 items in the shop? that's 8% of possible purchases.
I didn't calculate the average price of the others, but it has to be minimum somewhere between 20-30 USD. which for a pet site is pretty much unheard of. especially compared to places like subeta (which is also on bad footing, but petty much all pet sites are nowadays). there for 5$ I can get tons of items, a random 10 retired or exclusive items from a slot machine, weapons, books, food, potions, wearables...
(note: yes, I am aware of the need to pay artists and also make a profit, but despite that it is still
I think if you want to encourage people to put money into the site, looking at (relative) microtransactions is the way to go. like the above suggestions, put in some items OTHER than custom-makers and breeding add-ons. I haven't made a custom in years, and add-ons
I for one spend what probably amounts to 100 USD a month on average on subeta, but because it's broken into 5 or 10 dollar increments it doesn't -feel- like I'm throwing a ton of my already sparse money at a sinking ship, like it would dropping $75 or $50 all at once would be.
you could say that's what buying gp is, but let's face it, that currency is just barely above bp in terms of value in the eyes of most users nowadays you'd be buying from with said currency.
maybe a $5 or something coin/ticket ITEM (I mean, you already sell those for events) that you could sell to someone else OR put in a slot machine type feature (again, you've already done this with the box tickets, if that counts as gambling then, well. if the problem is a direct usd to slot machine, like I said, make a sellable item to buy instead.) where you got the chance to get useful, high-demand items (good weapons, glittering rocks, certain account upgrades, skill learning items, old premium items, idk) with a decent handful of lower value items mixed in there too (not like, leaves or anything, but glittering pebbles/whatever the lower version is called, claw cloners, somewhat less powerful weapons, premium outlet items like the item seer, a multi-pack of amorphous ingredients, things like that). the art is already there (besides the token itself, or if new items were slipped in every now and then) so there's less stress on the artists (and thus payment for said artists for the site).
just some thoughts. it's the difference between 2 people buying a 100$ item and 25 people buying a 5$ one.
that's what makes money for things like apps, much fewer people want to pay 4.99 upfront for a game, but will happily e d up spending much more than that through microtransactions in a free one. (in this case, the money amounts are smaller, but the ratio, while simplified, is still there)
- Answrs
(#13751)
-
Posted on: Mon Feb 6, 2017 4:41pm
(argh, I meant 25 buying a 10$ one, or 2 buying a 50$ thing)
also yay mobile for cutting off sentences
- Answrs
(#13751)
-
Posted on: Mon Feb 6, 2017 4:49pm
(also short term solutions are still solutions, if you need time to implement long term ones. if it keeps the site afloat a few extra months or draws in user interest so you can get the new ideas in) (also the post button gets covered with textbox so one more
- Answrs
(#13751)
-
Posted on: Mon Feb 6, 2017 4:49pm
but to finish, it's not a fix for the whole site, but it's one thing that could help, especially with those of us not interested in breeding.
- Bionda
(#1079)
-
Posted on: Tue Feb 7, 2017 2:09am
I think the main problem here is that you can't have nice stuff without paying (lot of...) real money. When I started playing you only had to pay $ to purchase GP, and with those you could have everything: breedings, nice artists' colorations, customs, premium...
I could do some colorations to earn GPs, and I could save up a couple times a year for the others I needed.
Now GPs are basically useless, if you want good breeding items you need to pay directly in the USD shop. If you want a nice coloration from an user, you need to pay lots of $ directly to them (and these are all money lost by the site, since if I have to pay 20/100 $ to an artist I will have less money to spend on site). In the past I invested some real money here, but since economy is not going well, I can't afford to spend >50 $ for each virtual image of a pet...
Posted on: Sun Feb 5, 2017 11:47am
Oh, and how about a functional forum search? Also, a knowledge base that isn't unavailable like half the time.