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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
- Jade
(#54709)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:18pm
I'm not sure whether this has been considered, but its just something that occurred to me thinking about this, but I'm not sure the best solution for the site would be to provide more ways for artists to make USD. Even if the site gets a cut, I'm not sure if it would make an appreciable difference compared to trying to implement items which don't require a USD artist payout on the other end.
- Kazna (Pirate@142)
(#233)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:23pm
Ah fair enough (though on the user end custom queue times are long for gold type customs - month+ which is one of the longest times ive remembered compared to pre eves system disregarding times the custom admins left suddenly)
Also i just had another idea - how about outright lifting the fee cap for predicts? My reasoning being you want to cut down on breeding staff which will probably result in longer queues. No fee cap would mean you don't have to pay those artists at all for their work on the teams so for any usd purchases in particular you'd get way more revenue? Also it would encourage highly popular but pricey artists to do predicts (can get paid fairly) which would encourage more people to get those items so they can get a piece off those artists. I know the reason before was to ensure artists stayed with the teams but those that do get job security through guarenteed amount of babies to do and if youre cutting back anyways then it might work out for the better?
- Mynia
(#5309)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:27pm
This is just a random thought i had; but i don't see any harm in sharing it as an idea.
Why not use the currently pretty much unused Admin Auctions Feature to auction off some of the rarer items for USD? (obviously still keeping the items rare) Or maybe users could 'donate' already on site customs or something that could be auctioned off for USD?
If it means potentially saving the site then i'm sure a lot of users would want to help out by either donating stuff; or bidding on auctions.
- ChaosAzeroth
(#43055)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:30pm
Sell Mystery Eggs from time to time? I know if feels like a band aide but there's more than just the money made off of it why I say this. Some things pretty much ONLY can be gotten from breeding. ((The Xaoc from a BC breed made me think of this.)) There's no way to get that one, for example, without breeding basically. I don't think they should be made easy to get for various reasons but...
The fact that there are many things basically only available by breeding is going to keep people heavily relying on breeding. Breeding costs the site money. Since adventure is... Well anything short of that re-vamp is not going to have people looking at it as the main draw of the site anymore lets be real, it's a means to an end anymore for a lot of people and those of us that enjoy it even get tired of some of the issues with it.
Also on top of the cost, breeding is a cycle of slow, and it's not helping confidence in spending. Bottom line though the site needs to feel like less of a waiting game and more engaged. There have been some measures to deal with this, however since adventure fixes keep being labeled as not possible/not viable/low priority/etc I feel like that's going to cause problems.
Even when I joined as late as late '12 adventure felt like it had promise and was going to move forward and was a vital and important part of the site, and it feels left behind. Seeing the site CAN'T do much with it makes it feel less engaging and important than breeding and customs, which at some pint had to take priority just to stay afloat. Sorry for the long post, just some things I've noticed in my short time here.
- Detective Butt
(#1403)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:31pm
I like the idea of lifting predict caps, if I bought a pmbc + paid someone $10 through the panel to color it the site could make $9.50 (8 + 1.50 fee). Otherwise isnt the site only making like $4 per painted breeding completed? (8 from the coin -4 from paying the artist to make the offspring) I could be off on my calculations here of course, but it does seem like the site could make more allowing predicts to be sold for any amount.
- Frostfall
(#38271)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:42pm
Thank you for being open about this and I really hope you find a way to keep the site going. If I come up with any ideas I'll post them.
- 🐼Kaiyo🐼
(#489)
-
Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:43pm
Shaenora (#70050) I do like the idea of adding more smaller priced items!
♥ Mochi ♥ LL ♥ (#70211) We are planning on fixing a lot of what we can inthe next two months. If you have any broken things feel free to PM me so we can add em to my list!
singingbadger (#30385) Due to legalities and gambling laws we can't do any sort of "raffle" for USD, It would causeus a whole world of issues, I actually wanted to do this a few months ago and was abruptly smacked down XD
Jade [LL] (#54709) Unfortunately that would not help us with our current USD issues :(
Pirate & Kazna (#233) That will definitely never happen. That would be unfair to our artists, as now prediction artists could get paid more than they get, which would in turn cause us to lose our artists as they could just do predictions and get paid much more. My goal is, as I had mentioned, to avoid cutting the artists. This is only a temporary thing, as I desperately do not want to fire anyone. All of our artists are extremely talented, and very well deserving of their position, so the very last thing I will do is fire them. I am hoping the other changes we are doing helps us balance the cost as well, to help prevent that outcome.
Mynia (#5309) I already have a plan in motions for that if it comes to it, but that is another "bandaid" fix, and won't help in the long run.
ChaosAzeroth[LUFF] (#43055) it is a band aid, but you're right. We should sell them a bit more as users did love them but I would like to change them a bit since right now they are incredibly confusing when users have multiple eggs. So they have a pile they gotta go through to get the one they want. I hope that the feature we are going to be doing shortly will help the interactive problems because I agree entirely. A lot of it just.. isn't there to do. The site can be very boring at times when you're just waiting and waiting. We do want to adjust adventure quite a bit, but that is in the long run for reasons I don't feel comfortable saying since it involves another of our admins.
Detective Butt (#1403) You are close on your calculations, however for the reasons stated above at this time we are not looking to lift the cap. If it comes down to having to let many artists go then I will rethink this, but at this point it is not an option.
- 🍀Allysun🌈
(#317)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:50pm
Honestly, I'd love to see the application process to join Aywas just removed completely - I feel it's not really needed anymore, and having new users able to openly join doesn't seem like a bad thing. (Though, if the site is having a massive re-haul as I saw suggested(excite!), if it's anywhere in the 'near-ish' future, I'd probably save off opening that up until after that's implemented?)
I'd also just love more incentive/reasons for adventuring/pet collecting. There's so many pets on site, give collecting them a value, ya know? Something like 'get 1k melos, get x item' may be cool, and would entice users to actually want to collect and fill their Aywapedia~? Boost the pet market and possibly give ADs a little value. I really just miss when I first joined and thought adventure had a chance to be so cool. It still could, but I think.. not in it's current state..
Also, some kind of permanent pet sink feature may be cool? Pets being worth 1-10 points depending on rarity, with high-price but sought after items? Just some basic ideas that may be cool and could possibly generate some profit from purchases of site-generated rather than artist-generated content.
Also, purchasable pet backgrounds? We were never allowed to draw backgrounds on our pets and I always thought it'd be because we'd eventually be able to buy little backgrounds for'em, haha.
I love the customs/breeding of Aywas, but it was always supposed to be a secondary part of the site, not the primary.
- ChaosAzeroth
(#43055)
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Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:51pm
Thanks for the reply. You've been making strides in making the site more interactive, don't get me wrong. Just figured any input might help in some way, however small. :3
Posted on: Fri Feb 3, 2017 4:17pm
Having been involved in NP fundraising for lo these many years, I can think of a few things that might at least provide short-term relief...raffles for "finished" (no artist) high-ticket items ($5 a ticket for items worth $50+ etc), auctions (one site I know has them weekly, lol, but for site tender, you'd want to do cash), site-based CDs that run on cash rather than site tender, and cash sales of rare AD pets for our devoted collectors...I can probably come up with more but that's it off the top of my head.
oh, and if secretarial aid would be of any use, throw some at me, glad to help out.