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Development Update 3/31 Ugh, so much stuff to catch up on. Must type! Must type! Must type! April Fools The April Fool's Day trick seemed pretty successful, with most people getting into the humor of it (and a decent percentage getting tricked by it at first). If Lanzer doesn't get an Emmy for Best Rendition of a Founder Held Against His Will, then there is no justice in the world. In truth, an actual takeover would be far more subtle, I think; it is hard to say, but if that day ever happens, only the most clever will detect it at first -- only those people that drink Coca-Cola(tm) products, for example, although the Starbucks Mocha Fattocino(tm) has also been known to lead to higher grades and a marked increase in attractiveness. The database problems, to be honest, were not part of the April Fool's festivities. One of our servers started to go belly up for no apparent reason, and we ended up turning on and off different portions of the site to try and figure out the problematic queries. It ended up that Aquarium was causing a huge load on a number of the clusters, so we had to turn it off, let all the stacked queries catch up, and then deal with the issue. We've updated our MySQL to a patch set from Percona, which fixes the problem and is giving us substantially better throughput -- looking at the server graphs yesterday reveals database servers that are just cruising along, hardly breaking a sweat. Guilds The new guilds landing page went to SCAS testing yesterday, and if everything looks good we'll be pushing it out next week. (I say that with trepidation because everytime I say something like this, the universe will invoke the Perversity Principle and change things: much like when you say, "This relationship is going really well" and her long-lost boyfriend shows up the next day. Oh, if only English were one of those languages without a future tense!) New Home Page New Home Page goes out on Monday, if all goes well (ummm, see above). Inventory Arranger We pushed out yesterday some changes to try and get the inventory arranger to work better with large inventories -- so if you've been having problems, please try it again. (Basically, people with large inventories were running into a memory limit on the server, so the arranger would flat out not work; 8elly8ean and DAKRNRGY changed it so that the the inventory is requested in batches, and then everything merged on the client side). That said, Inventory Arranger is still slow, and this is a limitation of the Flash technology being used (AS2). We're looking at rewriting it in AS3 -- this should give us a substantial speed increase -- and if this turns out to be feasible then we'll do it in the next month or two. Inventory and Shops We're doing some really cool changes to shops to make it more approachable and easier to navigate; please take a look at the Shops Update thread if you haven't already! Arenas Entry Fee There was some discussion in a number of threads about the possibility of raising the arena entry fee to 5K or thereabouts -- how do people feel about this? Would this help raise the quality of entries or just drive down the number of entries and make it a ghost town? Developer/User Communication We're opening up a new forum (Dev Notices) that will allow for a much higher degree of communication between development and the users. Rather than having to chase down every single journal entry, you'll be able to go to one forum and catch up on the latest on your favorite features. We should be announcing this soon (maybe even today). Bugs Fixed - Large inventories cause problems with inventory arranger - zOMG! tab needed in inventory arranger - Customize Avatar: Avatar Buttons redirect to root page if JS is not loaded - Removing error log for duplicate entries - Should default to 'buy' in marketplace - CSR tools enhancements - When user accepts more than one friend request, error message shows up - Unable to reorder items in Suitcase in Arranger - "Save the changes" button do not appers on the Alerts page. - Adding links to Avatar/Inventory page, and disabling Save/Cancel buttons

Posted by: Panagrammic Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 07:27pm

Read my journal!

User Comments: [57] Viewing page 0 of 2 · Goto Page: 1 2 » [add]

MokieMorty
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Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 07:39pm


	x3 You guys are great. A few hours after I logged off, I still found myself chuckling about it every now and then. The new shop interface looks very nice! 5k might be just a tad to much, but I agree that the price should be raised. (3k sounds a bit more reasonable.) Squee! That new forum sounds like fun. x3

Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 07:55pm


	I think if the Avatar Arena fee is raised, maybe also up the prize? And maybe give an item as a prize as well.....since those kids of things are soulbound now, it wouldn't create a huge issue, I think.

Holly
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Masco
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Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 08:03pm


	I agree with Holly, you should definitely up the prize if you're going to increase the price of even entering. For the Dev Notices forum, what does that mean for Journals? Does that mean you're going to ignore updating them simply because there's a better forum for it? Does that mean that Journals will get a user interface update later than was planned?

Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 08:41pm


	Your recent update to the inventory arranger explains why mine is now all funky. The scroll bar seems to be having an issue. It got way smaller in size and when I reach the bottom of my inventory the scroll bar isn't even halfway down. Once I move it I also can't move it again, I have to use the arrow buttons instead. ((My inventory has a little over 900 items, I don't know if that gives you a hint as to what happened, maybe my inventory is on the smaller side yet the new update accommodates larger inventories.)) I hope that makes sense to you. It use to work fine, I didn't have any major problems with it before, the slow speed wasn't too much of an inconvenience nor did things randomly rearrange themselves((like my mule account does--it is really annoying)) I agree that if the arena fee is raised the prize should also be raised accordingly. Also, I don't consider 5k to be to much, but perhaps 4k would be better for the overall userbase. I'm really excited for the dev/user forum, can't wait until it's released. heart Love, love love the marketplace being set as 'buy only' thank you! Hope you have a great weekend!

PinkFae15
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Elinoire
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Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 08:42pm


	I like the idea of the 5k (or around there) Entry Fee. Honestly, I think it would help weed out all the crappy loser avatars that don't belong there and sadly some of them have been winning.

Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 08:42pm


	The star maker says it ain't so bad, the dream maker's gonna make you mad. . . I loved the April Fools prank, it was quite unexpected. You guys had me there for a second. It was funny to see all the threads asking if it was real or not. As for the raising of the Arena fees, I could see it help with the quality of the arena entries, but I could also see it cause less people to consider entering it. I think you guys should try it for a bit and if the response is too bad then consider changing it back. I hate browsing through and seeing noobish, unimaginative avatars. Btw, I love your journal entries. They keep me updated with all the improvements around Gaia and such. Like, I was wondering why the aquariums were down yesterday. I thought they were being tweaked for the prank, but now I know the real reason. =) lol_ click?

deadlyretro
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Lazarus Larkin
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Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 08:56pm


	5k isn't what it used to be -- I don't think it would discourage people who're proud of their avatars at all, and I think it'd make the arena a bit more of a gold sink, which the site needs pretty badly.

Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 09:06pm


	Raising the fees in the arenas would be a good idea in my opinion. 5k seems fair but of course if it doesn't work out, you can always go back to the 1k entry fee. Woot! Love your j. entries because it gives us such a great idea of what's being update/has been updated. Thanx again for you and your teams for all your hard work. biggrin

Cautionary Tale
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Kunai Jones
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Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 09:13pm


	I love the idea of raising the entry fee for the Avatar Arena. Any Gaian can go to the Aquarium sub-forum and make 5k in twenty minutes, but at least that makes you really think about your entry and commit to making it as good as possible. It would raise the quality of entries in the Arena, and it quintuple the viability of the Arena as a goldsink. There's a thread in the AvA subforum with a lot of suggested changes like this, particularly in my mind is limiting votes to 4-per-IP. It used to be that way, but now the amount of upvoting/downvoting a person can inflict upon an entry is only limited by the number of mules they have. And there are people with hundreds of mules. I also agree that item prizes in addition to gold would be good. Soulbind them, they'll make people ignore the heightened entry fee and get after the only source of an item. A ribbon, sash, something like that. Maybe for just the Top 3 in each arena, and then a less dynamic reward for getting ranked 4-10, in accordance with the gold rewards. But don't get rid of the gold rewards, those will keep people entering as well. The thread with these suggestions and others is here: http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/avatar-arena/arena-rules-need-updating-help-out/t.48537561/ Thanks as always for the updates and the glitch fixes. The arranger works a treat for me now, much more smoothly. I only have to tell Flash not to stop the script once or twice now instead of six times. And being unable to organize within Storage was such a pain. Can't thank you enough. Oh, and the scroll bar in my Arranger also isn't scaling correctly.

Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 09:25pm


	Ohmigawd, developer forum FTW! -hugs Pan- I don't know how well raising the Arenas price to 5k would go over. I feel like it won't eliminate the "lower quality" entries by much, though.

StrawberryDaifuku
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Gabriel Faust
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Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 09:51pm


	Curiousity sits upon my shoulders as I read your journal entry, particularly involving the patch provided via PERCONA's team. How was your experience? Was the patch well documented? Was it a personal visit (I know they do onsite visits) or was it a generic patch? I'm only curious because the company I work for has recently been looking into their service,after myself and a few other backend serverlunkies have reached a dead end in optimization of a few machines (which, sadly, are coming on in age in this world of Moore's Law). I'd be more than happy to hear a response back.

Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 10:10pm


	I think, in regards to raising the entry fee for arenas, you should consider weighing the votes instead... that is, if you're seeking a solution to repeat entries winning. Of course every new member who is a Naruto fan will vote for each incarnation of Naruto at 5 at first... but once they've seen 1,000 different Naruto cosplays, they might scrutinize a little differently. Clearly you're battling an issue of quantity vs. quality, but I'm not sure raising the fee is a solution...Unless you want to rob the youth of their creativity by inadvertantly funneling them into sitefeedback where they can waste said youth crying about the 4,000 gold injustice. But for me to assume you can make ANY change without upsetting someone...that's just upsetting! If you ARE going to up the fee, maybe you should UP the prize money, too? Or prevent people from manipulating their way into the top 10. Or make the arena free, but everyone can make 1 entry per month... Just brainstorming. There's the whole Quantity vs. Quality again.

Spirrow
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Shima Shinji
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Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 10:15pm


	I think at the very least a 5k entry fee should weed out a lot of the "jus doin dis cause im bored its just me lol" entries. I've always thought that the Avatar Arena should be more cream of the crop competing against each other instead of everyone on Gaia throwing their avatars in there and hoping to get noticed. 5k really isn't that much anymore. New users get over 1k with the new user quest, so 5k shouldn't be hard for anyone to make, ESPECIALLY with Booty Grab.

Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 10:19pm


	I thought the April Fool's Day OmniDrink prank was awesome. (My only qualm being the unforseen errors caused me to not recieve the spray bottle item.) Besides that, really fun. I thought it was hilarious how many people fell for it, especially when the only threads you could find in SF were people complaining about the change. XD In regards to the 5k entry fee: It's too much. Honestly I don't think that will improve the quality of entries. Well, actually it probably would. But at the same time, the number of Gaians who enter without expectations of winning but do have good/great entries would decrease. Which isn't really fair to those who want feedback or comments. It would definitely get rid of some of the spam, though. As with everything it's a trade off.

Hyzenthlay
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Smaddy
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Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 10:22pm


	The April Fool's Jokes were awesome. I really enjoyed it, and the event came as a bit of a surprise, so thanks. heart That Shops update thread looks really awesome. I'm excited to see what comes of it. Arenas entry fee? Personally I feel 5000 is too expensive. 2500g to enter might do a little better. I love that "Buy" is the default for selling in MP. Thanks for that. 3nodding

Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 10:25pm


	The 5k entry fee is fine, considering the value of gold recently. I think the people who submit good avatars with the intent of competing will still enter, while it should drive away these "lol im jus bein random" people who submit noobcake avatars in flame clothes. I do agree with some other posts that the reward should be raised too. 50k is hardly a substantial amount of gold anymore, unfortunately.

Hybrid
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Eris_Incognito
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Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 11:35pm


	1. The April Fool's joke was perfect and yes, Lanzer deserves an award. 2. I like the idea of a 5K entry fee. It takes no time to raise that amount now but it's enough to stop the every-little-avatar-I-can-think-of entries and maybe some of the never ending repeats. 3. Thank you, a little communication goes a very long way. Your efforts are appreciated.

Commented on: Fri Apr 03, 2009 @ 11:50pm


	If you were to increase the arena entry fee, I think increasing the reward would be good as well, especially if you are going to raise the fee that much. As someone who changes my avatar at least once a week and often more than that, I often come up with avatars I'd love to enter, but don't because watching crappy avatars win fairly often in the arena makes entering good avatars discouraging. And because many arena junkies down vote avatars for containing specific objects even if the avatar looks good. And also for some reason apparently the arena entry is now also the story entry so if you don't include a fancy little story you'll get a few 1s no matter how good the avatar looks and you could make the crappiest avatar ever and win simply because you wrote a cute story. So, upping the entry fee would make it even more discouraging to enter, because there are still those out there that would enter crappy avatars, get some of their buddies and each of their buddies 5 mules to vote 5's for them and then they'd win and I'd just be out 5k when I could have potentially won 10k or more, which in and of itself doesn't seem like much of a reward considering how much you put into it. If you upped to 5k, I think just doubling the current rewards would be good enough. Or if you maybe only upped to 2.5k you could probably leave the rewards the same without causing too much complaint. That all aside... I still miss the 10 point system. emo Also, the entry rules need to be updated because the week now runs from Sunday-Saturday (Midnight) rather than Monday-7pm on Sunday. wink

Bria_Teragram
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Moonlight Silver
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 12:12am


	I love the Dev Notices forum. That is all.

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 12:16am


	I wouldn't be opposed to raising the arena costs. Great gold sink. 5k might be a bit much though. How about something between 1k and 5k? Maybe 3k?

devilish tenshi
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Deazy
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 12:50am


	I'd love to see the entry fee for the Arena upped to 5K but I rather see the 4 posts per IP reinstated more. With the complete randomization of the spotlight, it's much easier for someone to go under the radar and win due to up voting via mules and friends mules. The old avatar arena spotlighted avatars were show within a certain rhythm... avatars that were highly rated, avatars that had not been recently viewed, avatars that hadn't been recently voted on and avatars recently voted/commented on. It meant that highly placed avatars were seen more and were either voted out because they weren't deemed to be worth the top ten or voted highly on because they were what the majority wanted.... and those that broke the ToS that people though were funny to vote on, were more visible to be removed and/or reported. The 5K fee should be implemented after the 4 votes per IP and the spotlight is fixed, as it is now... it's far too random. As a P.S. - can we get the submission rules updated to reinforce what is acceptable for advertising, what should go in the cosplay/original arenas and to redirect people to who to contact should they need help entering.

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 12:59am


	I'm extremely torn on the issue of raising the Arena fee- on one hand, less of the casual avatars we've been seeing and have to wade through (which I am in favor of) but the other side of this is one I haven't seen discussed yet- the fact that I'd be paying 5k a week, and still do not expect to win. Now don't get me wrong, I do take my avatars seriously and like to hear comments/ratings and have the hope of perhaps snagging a spot someday when my creativity astounds even me. However, I consider my participation to be entirely for personal benefit and enjoyment. At the end of the month when I think about sinking 20k for what is essentially the ability to showcase my avatars in a gallery, it worries me. Unlike some other Gaians, I consider time and gold hard to come by. As discussed, 3k might be a more negligible fee, but probably wouldn't get the same sifting effect as 5. In either case I would be just as inclined to participate, but I do need to speak for the other folk who still consider 1,000 gold to be a serious matter. With the increase, I agree that there should be a prize increase along with a soulbound item- if you got 1st place, you have the right to show it off! Provided, of course, that the voting "issues" as of late get fixed up and the winners are truly people who (I hestitate to say) deserve their rank? In the end, 5k is likely as good a fee as any, but I suppose some of us will be puzzle-piecing and booty grabbing to cover the costs of our own creativity. Thank you for your time.

irkd
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Syd Barrett
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 01:09am


	The Inventory "Arranger" is still broken, and now my inventory is messier than ever! gonk Please, fix it for real. crying Captcha: "for Repairs"... oh, the irony... emo

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 01:26am


	Hurrah!!!! After months and months of not being able to get into my Arranger, I finally was able to. I had to tell it "no" twice to turning off the script causing a loading problem. But it did let me in and didn't freeze my browser up. Thank you! However, now I find I still cannot arrange anything in any of the tabs except the "All" tab where Home, Games, Auto, and zOMG items clog it up and get in the way. I want to be able to just look at my Equip items and arrange them regardless of whether or not they are locked or not. It would be even better if there were sub-tabs in Equip where we can arrange Head, Top, Bottom, Shoes, Accessories and Items. Or at least an Auto-arrange button that will put every thing into their sub-categories in the same order as in Customize Avatar and then you can individually arrange the items within that grouping. That way there's no hassle with all the stuff from those Non-equipable items.

Dlen Isolde
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kuma
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 01:38am


	Please, for the love of all that is good, raise the arena fee. 5k is completely fair. Gold is granted a lot easier now than it was when the site first came out, so the 1k is WAY too little. You make 1k by posting a few times, doing a poll or two, and pulling DC. XDD By raising it, I sincerely hope we'll be able to keep the people who are like "im just her 4 da goldz vot 5" away from us. XD Looking forward to any help with the arranger. :3 I've noticed that it's been less of a problem for me as of late. :3

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 02:01am


	I would love to see the entry fee for the avi arena raised to 5k. It would weed out some of the bad avi's and have people think a bit more. As for the prizes keep the money prizes the same but maybe couple it with a soulbound item prize like medals or sashes. The 4 votes per IP address rule needs to to be implemented and the spotlight still need to be fixed we are still getting avi's that are flying under the radar. The old arena spotlight needs to be implemented agian as Deazy addressed. I think that is it.

Wizzleteats
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France Hopper
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 02:29am


	I thought the April Fools joke was excelent. Too bad the dbase picked that day to act up on (but it was kinda obvious it wasn't a joke when my account briefly went missing...) New home page eh? Is that the logged in homepage or the login homepage? Shop changes look good and the dev forum sounds even better. Any chance there will be a watch this board button (or is there already one that I never noticed before XD)? I sure hope it gets out today biggrin

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 02:47am


	Thanks kindly for an easy-to-read series of journal entries. The updates are very much welcome.

FieldDoc
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Platonix
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 03:29am


	Aww, the "Buy Only" as default is a bug fix? Darn, that's gonna be annoying for me...I like "Bid and Buy"... ...my CAPTCHA included an emoticon. O.O

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 04:00am


	That's a lot of bugs fixed. But dont forget to vote for Gaia Online in the CNET's Webware 100! http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/t.48649659/

muhaymin
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Nobara
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 04:35am


	Thanks for the heads up, I went and tested guilds so hopefully they will be launched successfully! April fools on the forums was OK, but it was AWESOME in zOMG. As for the inventory arranger, I own 2615 items, about 2k which are equippable, and I tested the arranger but didn't notice any signifigant improvements. Then again, my arranger has never refused to completely work, but has never completely worked either. I swear, if you rewrite is in AS3 I will spend that last 4 cash on my account on something for you personally Pan and even consider going out to buy another cash card. Entry fee...I dunno, 5k strikes me as pretty steep. I feel like 1k is pretty low though. Wasn't that how much it originally cost when Gaia was new? Because back then 1k was a good bit of money. I think 5k might really make people pause before entering. But I know some people enter the Arena almost every week and that'd be hard for them if it suddenly increased. I guess I might suggest 2k. Maybe make a thread in the Avatar Arena forum and take a poll?

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 05:24am


	Yes! Please I beg of you raise the fee! It would make for a wonderful gold sink! Can't say I agree with the shop change. I'll have to see how the developer forum goes. And yes, Lanzer deserves that Emmy!

moresugarthanspice
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AtypicalGiraffe
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 05:28am


	raising the Arenas Entry Fee would probably cause panic. why 5k? thats kinda steep for there only being 5 winners.

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 05:44am


	Hurray for the new developer forum! I'm looking forward to seeing more communication between developers and users 3nodding

asylum lane
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Mezo
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 07:17am


	About the avatar entry fee going up: I think 5k is a tad much. 3k, or even 4k, would be much more reasonable.

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 07:54am


	Next year, can you come up with a little better name than "OMNIDrink"? razz That was totally obvious. Now if you had done a real company like MTV (sponsorship?), everyone would freak out. Loved what you guys did to zOMG, give Q my props. 3D-avi's-in-zOMG, HO! The jewtube video was funny too. (Wonder where you guys got that giant gun?) I'm alright with a fee raise. I dont use the arenas that much anyways. Nooo on the new homepage. gonk Speaking of homepage, I almost missed the April Fools event because I never go to the homepage (tab's set to go to My Gaia on login). Thumbs up

dreamsk
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Breakability
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 08:40am


	I don't think the arena fee should be 5k. Maybe 2.5k? Either way, awesome stuff you guys have coming heart Loved the OmniDrink takeover <3

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 08:48am


	birddog3, there are twenty winners a week. Ten original, ten cosplay. It's not unreasonable to increase the entry fee when the number of winners has doubled since the creation of these new arenas. Seriously, you can make 5k in the Aquarium forum playing Booty Grab for less than half an hour. It's not that much gold, and it would make people take their entries much more seriously.

Kunai Jones
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Chocobo Princess
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 09:01am


	I can hardly wait for the Developer Forum~! whee As always, what a load of work your team has gotten through~! Good job! Cupcakes all 'round! I also agree with increasing the entry level for the Arena to at least 5k. Back in the day, only the well-off could afford to enter the arena, and the entries were, on the whole, of a higher quality. As mentioned by nearly every user above, 5k is chump change these days, and anyone who tries to vote around the circle on every single entry during a given week will notice a ton of chumps in there. sweatdrop Didn't the arena used to be moderated so the starter-clothes kids/not-really-trying avatars got weeded out? I think the 4-votes-per-IP sounds like a neat deal, too, since the arena is supposed to be a one Gaian, one vote experience, not a contest to see which avatar types are attractive to the Gaians who have the most mules (Note to team: avatars that suck, usually stare ). I look forward to seeing what brainstorms you guys come up with for this area. Thanks again for all the hard work and for updating the journal so we could learn about it.

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 12:28pm


	A 5k entry fee seems perfectly reasonable to me. It would be a terrific gold sink, and might make people actually think before they submit an entry. Besides... 5k isn't that much these days. You can earn that playing Booty Grab for maybe half an hour. (If it turns out to be too much, you can always drop it down to 3k.) Thank you so much for setting the marketplace default to 'buy only'. Any hope of doing away with the javascript on the 'sell item' page...? You used to be able to sell things without needing to have it enabled. D: I loved the April Fool's event, and I'm really looking forward to the launch of the new forum!

Wangst
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TehDarkling
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 05:55pm


	While, yes, 1,000 gold might be a little low and easy to toss to enter anything into the arena (regulars of the arena know what kinds of avatars I'm talking about), I think 5k wouldn't help the entry situation much. Granted, looking at the arena as it is now and some of the winners that have made it through, I'm not sure the increase would make a ton of people overly happy and possibly, yes, it might turn ghost town after a few weeks. I now some people enter on a weekly basis and, as awesome a goldsink that might happily seem, it would irritate them and not want to spend the gold so often. There was a thread back in the Avi Arena forum I dug up where they spoke of raising the fee up to about 50k. Link here. Yeah, that's not the gravity orf an increase we're talking about here, but the points in it are valid for about any price increase. Having the fee brought up to 5k wouldn't change the quality of the entries. It might slow the time in between the bad entries being able to be put in, but overtime I think we'd be back to where we are right now. Some people are actually wondering what's up the the Spotlight. It doesn't seem to be showing enough avatars, or even the ones in the higher rankings. I remember the week I entered, I never saw myself (or any of the other people who placed the 9 other placings around me) in the Spotlight once. If the Spotlight were fixed to cycle more avatars, maybe have a code added that cycled in the higher ranking ones so they can get the "air time" like the others (since I know some of the winners are voted on 6 times by friends who 5 the avatars and then, from there, they're never seen and their total exceeds those who have better avatars and advertise) it might help to solve some of that issue. Sorry for the long-winded rant. sweatdrop

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 06:21pm


	Arenas Entry Fee There was some discussion in a number of threads about the possibility of raising the arena entry fee to 5K or thereabouts -- how do people feel about this? Would this help raise the quality of entries or just drive down the number of entries and make it a ghost town? Well to start off, I think that the fee is a bit over the top because if these gaians hope to enter the arena with a complete avatar and the fee is 5k, chances are that they will be flat broke and/or they will have to sell some items that they worked so hard for. We might possibly consider trade depending on what gaians trade with who. But then again, if it doesn't work out, you could always change it back to 1k.

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Necromacide
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 06:46pm


	5k entry fee? That would make a PERFECT gold sink and meanwhile put a stop to all those loser avatars (which are riuning it for me so I kinda stopped visiting the arenas). So I'm all for it! Yay! biggrin

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 06:47pm


	"- Should default to 'buy' in marketplace" That is absolutely awesome, great change there. I quite literally never use bid+buy in the MP, and always have to switch it; this is much better now. 3nodding Looking forward to the Dev Notices forum. ^.^

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Hyzenthlay
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 06:55pm


	I agree with irkd completely. Like with what I said, some people take arenas serious without expecting to win every week. 3nodding

Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 10:50pm


	Quote: Developer/User Communication We're opening up a new forum (Dev Notices) that will allow for a much higher degree of communication between development and the users. Rather than having to chase down every single journal entry, you'll be able to go to one forum and catch up on the latest on your favorite features. We should be announcing this soon (maybe even today). -Squeeeeeeeeeeeeees loudly at this part- Thank you, thank you so muches! 4laugh heart I feel like I've done my part now with suggestions and fighting for Gaia to stay afloat. -sniffles of happinesses- crying heart

Cosmic Remnant
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Kamikazi-Cloud
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Commented on: Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 11:25pm


	I would HATE to see the fee for arena entries go up. I think it's good at 1k. I'm thinking about entering the arena myself when I get the time (cough remember *cough) but I know I won't event think about it if i had to pay 5k. It's just not worth it. I think you would get a lot less people participating if they had to pay that much.

Commented on: Sun Apr 05, 2009 @ 11:03am


	April Fools It was very amusing. though my only disappointment, was that it was one day. Guilds Could you look into creating a Guild Treasury? Inventory Arranger hmm ;_; I haven't arranged anything for months. I will try it out now, though I am wary of the results and how it treats the browser. Inventory and Shops For the Shops, is there still going to be some form of HTML with the shops? I hope they load as fast as the new Drop down menu tabs. Nothing bloating. As for the example of the Shop. I would have liked to have seen Ian's as the main example, since we can not see if the previous things are going to be kept. And I agree what previous posters said in the thread, that the white space is a bit too much. And it doesn't give the shop a personality. Also can you please considering putting the zOMG related clothing, back in zOMG shop? I just feel it was better there, everything was within that spot. Arenas Entry Fee I think 5K is too much, and don't know how that was even thought about. I say start at a small increase, then if that doesn't satisfy people, increase it by 200g. But out right saying 5K, is just discouraging. The Avatar Arena is already being taken far too seriously these days, what is the fun if people can't enter what they want? Especially if they are following the Rules/TOS. Basically if someone were to enter every week or every few weeks out of the month, that is 25K to 50K ... which is practically the gold prize given to winners. That isn't very balanced. People might as well just stick to User based Avatar Contest that have entries of 500gold, and at times are selective with entries. I certainly don't make 5K in a week/day. I don't know why people post that they make that much in such a short amount of time and think that it Must be possible for everyone. We do different things to earn gold on Gaia, all of the methods provided, are not used by every individual person. To me, 5K is still quite a lot of gold. Previous comments put 2.5K or 3K. I am more swayed by the 2.5K . Or even 2K as a test Fee. And I agree about the increase of the Prize if the Fee has to be increased. Developer/User Communication Looking forward to this.

Bunai
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DMMegsie
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Commented on: Sun Apr 05, 2009 @ 07:22pm


	I really do like the idea of raising the prices for arena entries to 5k. I mean if you really think how much gold the average gaian could get in a day by just posting, commenting, and so on, then I think it'll help get more gold out of the system. That and I do think it would put more "thoughtful" entries into the arena instead of just slapping together avatars.

Commented on: Sun Apr 05, 2009 @ 08:02pm


	I think the arena entry fee should be 20k. 20k is not something a newer user is going to have. The prizes should be 150k for 1st, 100k for 2nd, 75k for 3rd then 50k for the rest. Also, the arena's ranking logic needs fixed. The old arenas logic was much, much better. You had to have at least 800+ votes to even have a CHANCE of winning. Now, you can get 50 votes and win. Also, I still think the display size of the avatars is way too big.

Eudaemon
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