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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
- Inu
(#3296)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 3:44pm
This is unfortunate but understandable, things are hard for everyone, I can't afford do donate, either, seeing as I am in Mexico and the peso has been dropping like a rock. It's worth half as much as it was 5 years ago. At 22 mex to a dollar, I'm essentially paying twice the value as someone from the United states. 22 pesos goes a lot further than $1, it's not the same value. I can get a sandwich for $20 pesos, but I can barely get a stick of gum for $1.
The only option I can think of, is somehow changing the prices according to IP and somehow doing the same thing that gog, steam, and origin does. They all have lower prices for the video games in Latin America.
Gog also has a fair pricing thing, because 1£ isn't the same as $1
For example, I preordered the witcher 3 for $24 cad when the price was about $50. I got some discount for being in Mexico, and it applied again since my PayPal, bank, etc is Canadian.
If you can, I would see into charging say, 5 usd, 5 cad, 50 pesos, etc, accordingly, I think more people would be able to donate if it's in their own currency, and poorer nations like Mexico get a little bit of a break. (50 pesos instead of 70)
- Leonidas
(#64689)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 3:44pm
Oh dear, I do hope things improve for the staff. Money is stressful and I'm sure a number of these artists rely on their commissions to pay for certain things, but hopefully they'll be able to sort things out. I do not envy you, staff, I do not envy you.
- 🐼Kaiyo🐼
(#489)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 3:47pm
Inu (#3296) Leo (#64689) Unfortunately I don't think that we can do that for a variety of reasons. Paypal is the one who changes the currency through the current rates, it used to not so we didn't have these issues. But if we were to drop a price for one country, it would still change when coming back to us since Aywas is located in the united states. And on that same note, people can actually change their Ip's to be different countries if they wanted to just to try to pay less for items.
- Inu
(#3296)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 3:53pm
My other suggestion is dropping the commission panel fee or eliminating it. 15% is just simply too much, it turns a lot of people away from it, and in the past, try to find loopholes around it. It causes around risks to price their things higher, which makes users less likely to buy, especially right now.
Also, I don't think cutting down on the breeding/crystal teams would help, they are already working minimum wage or less than minimum wage. "Volunteer" positions haven't really worked in the past. There's simply too many for people to keep up with, but at the same time, paying them less than theyd make in a normal job. Well.
It's a tough situation,
- 🐼Kaiyo🐼
(#489)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 3:57pm
Inu (#3296) That we can't do, that is actually a portion of our profits. Originally Aywas did not allow direct commissions like that, then paintbrushes were brought in but they had to be bought from the USD Shop, that way we could still get a portion of the payment. We decided to get rid of staffs involvement and make it easier so the commission panel got put in.
Unfortunately while we don't want to cut down, if we do not get enough people wanting to swap their payments to a different option then we're going to have to. It really isn't something we want to do, however we would never ask for volunteer artists for those positions. I have no intention in dropping their payment, all of the options I am giving are for equal or more payment depending on if they are transferring to GP or doing something else.
- Kazna (Pirate@142)
(#233)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:10pm
Have you considered things to encourage users to stay too? Like for example the loooong wait times on things like the custom queue puts people off (obviously breeding cant be worked on much cause you need artists for that but such a time intensive specific custom percent system imo is unecessary and time wasting when the eyeballing method turned out a lot faster and for the variation caused its no more than the current system)
Also potentially the ability to sell customs already made for usd could be an idea - with the site taking a cut too?
- 🐼Kaiyo🐼
(#489)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:13pm
Pirate & Kazna (#233) We have already improved the custom queue time a lot, and the crystal check time is going to be getting a lot better. I do remember us discussing the ability to sell already made customs, but I believe that was turned down because we would have to monitor those a lot since the original artists may or may not be okay with their designs being sold for USD, as well as a few other reasons I don't quite remember at this time.
- Shaenora
(#70050)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:15pm
5 dollars is what I think, for me, is fair to spend for a browser game, and here with 5 dollars I can have pretty much nothing. Gp ? I buy them with the blue ones or even other games currency, and even if I'd buy them with real money, what can I have for 5 gp ? or even 5 dollars ? I'm not an artists and I don't understand a half of hte things in here about breeding and co. Only 10% of whatever you're selling are within the reach of my budget and yeah queue times are waaaay too long.
The frontpage idea is great to my sense, you're loosing players and you're not trying to find new ones. "closed to the world" and "artist focused" => I'm a lambda player and I definitely feel that way too.
Now many thanks for telling the truth and good luck for everything !
- ♥ Mochi ♥
(#70211)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:16pm
I'll admit I think a big part of so many players leaving or being turned away is that a lot of the site is outdated and a lot of features are around that are broken or no longer used.
I feel like if that type of thing were cleaned up, it would help, but then it'd probably require a lot of work to do things like that. Changing the UI would probably also help, but then that's even more effort, plus time and money to redesign things.
Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 3:41pm
🎁❄Kaiyo❄⛄ (#489)
I look forward to seeing suggestions!