News

Posted on: Wed Jul 22, 2020 2:38pm

I feel like I've missed something?
What are 'kickbacks' and why are coin prices increasing?

Posted on: Wed Jul 22, 2020 4:14pm

Monday (#5281) - kickbacks give you BP or GP for submitting your own predicts. And the coin prices are not increasing the amount of money they will be paying site artists is increasing. I hope that helps :)

Posted on: Thu Jul 23, 2020 6:57am

Tech (#5057) Oooh right okay! I was honestly so confused for a moment LOL, thanks for catching me up.

Posted on: Thu Jul 23, 2020 11:55pm

Speaking as someone who used to do art a lot more back in the day... yeah no, there's really no real call for gp anymore. People who say the poll aren't fair are right and/or are screwed are right.

the poll uses first past the post, and anyone who's rubbed two braincells together knows that it's a vastly unfair method compared to ranked choice voting. there's even ranked choice voting generators if nobody wants to do coding. While i was fine with things becoming predict only, even a "choose 2 max" ticky box system would have been a better system. Unfortunately it's kind of a standard tactic that staff on petsites tend to use: put their option they really like as one voting item, then break up the others so that the vote gets split, make the poll first past the post style, and then run it. The staff get the appearance of democracy and listening to the playerbase, while getting what they really wanted. You may not have intended this! but since it gets abused on other petsites (khimeros mainly) sometimes, it comes off a little fishy. Just a thing to keep in mind for next time.

Secondly... yeah, i went from buying 30-40 gp a month to not even caring about gp anymore, or even mayday/black friday. I could do work for gp, but I have bills to pay. Gp has to be worth an artist's time and effort, if it can't be worth money, and especially if it costs money. That means games and features that incentivize buying and using gp, and the same for bp. Right now the uses for gp are... buying things that you'd have to spend usd on to get predicts for anyways, items that may be devalued or drastically changed, or even made obsolete if they become inconvenient for the staff, or buying deco items that are being added to ever less frequently.

oh right, or gp pets from the shops. woo.

I have the time to do predicts or work for gp now, but what use is the stuff? If I spend my leisure time on work, i want the payment i get for that work to be used for something fun, if I can't use it to survive. I liked breeding, but the queues are too backed up. I liked making customs, but the whole percentage thing has never been made really user friendly in all these years, and nobody got time for that.

(people especially don't have time for the crystal feedback)

This isn't just me though, a lot of artists have drifted away for that exact reason, and those that stay really want usd, since the fun parts have been whittled away. Other petsites exist, and more and more games (like say, ark) have robust breeding systems that used to be the main province of petsites. Like if you really wanted to, you could make a mod that would emulate all of Pony Island, for example.

In short, games like Ayways don't just have competition from other petsites, they have competition from other games in general. If you really, really want to bring back artists who are happy to accept gp as currency, you need to spend time and resources to make the site something that can provide a fun experience for people today, not the mid-2010's that this game feels dated towards.

I've made these criticisms before, and people have pm'd me with things like "Where would they get the money?! do you want the game to DIE? Support the site!" and look. if the game can't fix it's problems, it's going to die anyway. If there's no money to provide incentive to artists, then make a fundraiser. a well-managed fundraiser can provide more than enough to get coders and update the site.

Posted on: Fri Jul 24, 2020 4:46am

I've been on this site 9 years. Stayed premium the entire time mainly so i could get radioactive pendants. Saved silver points for fricking years to get a radioactive breeding pendant that i got to use once and is now basically useless to me. I don't want to search out predicts. I don't do art. My joy on this site was radioactive breedings that SURPRISE ME. That's the fun in it for me. I think i might be done with this site. I've never complained about your changes but this is absolute bunk.

Posted on: Fri Jul 24, 2020 4:51am

I don't know why i can't edit my above comment, but i was trying to say i stayed premium in order to buy radioactive coins and spent tons of times on contests and games to earn sp. All that time for nothing

Posted on: Fri Jul 24, 2020 10:30am

I'm going to echo the sentiments everyone else is expressing that votes were split up in an unfavourable way that makes this conclusion extremely unjust.

Looking at the results and simplifying them to whether they're predict only or allow people to use site artists (save for option 5, which relied upon the poll results as a whole), you'll see why:

Option 1: Predict only
Option 2: Can use site artists
Option 3: Can use site artists/OPTION to go predict only
Option 4: Can use site artists

There's three different options to use site artists, but only one that is solely predict only. It's like if you have a leader election in hopes of getting a bad one out, but the options for a replacement are split amongst multiple candidates. If not enough votes went towards only one of those candidates, then the likelihood of that bad leader staying in office skyrockets.

This required a way more in-depth poll than the one presented; this was not carefully thought through.

Posted on: Fri Jul 24, 2020 10:36am

Adding on: if you look at the percentages, only 30% of people who voted wanted predicts only. 61% of people wanted to maintain using site artists. Clearly there's a majority of users wanting to be able to use site artists, but their options of compensation for regeneration times limited were split into three categories.

Please, please redo this poll. Let the users have an actual say instead of diminishing their chances of success. "United we stand, divided we fall."

Posted on: Fri Jul 24, 2020 3:39pm

Just stating, here again, News comments hold the same TOS rules as the site, please keep your comments civil.
Attacks on other users and staff will not be tolerated and will be dealt with.

While I fully understand this is a tense and hot topic, keep talk constructive, and within the TOS. There is no need to let this swing into such a negative and attacking tone.

Thanks!

Posted on: Fri Jul 24, 2020 3:57pm

SatanSama & Schezo (#7634)
As of now, the poll will not be redone, users have made suggestion threads for other options on the poll and no users are stepping up with what they want for a trade-in value.
It's not the site sustainable, and the issue still is that those breedings clog up the system for users that don't have pendents.
Staff put a lot of numbers and options out there for a reason, to show the impact of having MORE pendent breedings then normal. That's not a balance that can be sustained. Extending times would push it out a few years but we'll be in the same place.

Was it included because we knew it would be something users wanted? Yes, to be fair, but the poll still came out the way it did.

The poll was not announced as a "first step" and, redoing the poll because the outcome isn't what everyone wants, isn't something staff has done.

Yes it's expected people won't like this, and please trust me when I say we're watching comments and suggestion forums for ways to ease the pain on people who aren't happy.

However in the past when the staff has put in trade-ins, and other things we *Think* users want, they fizzle. This time we WANT input on what you'd want for a trade-in *if* we roll out a trade-in for those who are unhappy.

The big thing is, this is a needed change, all we can do is soften the blow but he pendants are not going back to what they were before the poll.

Lots of users are looking to buy them, at the value they had before the change, as much as I know people don't want to let go of something they worked hard for, the change has not devalued them.

People still want to buy slots for users that don't want to sell but can't use the slot.

There are options, they might not be the option some users want, but, they are there, and we're asking for input on things we can do to help users with this transition such as the trade-in idea.

So please can we focus on what we can do, rather than being upset over what we won't be?