Feedback: Pricing Changes (Closed.)

[Lollipop x L u x u r y]

Yes to price change.

Disagree to the suggested prices.

To be honest, I'm surprise y'all nixed breeding prices. If anything, I believe there should still be a price for breeding. I've always felt that breedings were a steal in the B/C, since they seemed to always be cheaper. Yes, it's not a custom. But it shouldn't be a tenth of a custom price. At least half a custom price. If you do two babbins for a breeding, with the three stages, that's 6 lines to work with. As a colorist, I'm well aware of the angst. The creative process of figuring out the markings is only half the process; redoing those markings over and over again, in the same relative spot, is just as harsh. But, if you nix the breedings, I suppose that's a random act of kindness?

As for the prices of normal... Maybe have several people screenshot their gold at the beginning of a trial period and have them do daily chance+booty grab+whatev else money making machine they have? If they get pink links or the else, have them record it? And then, when you get the result, find the average, multiply it by a month. I would say that's good grounds for an adult custom. I'm not even entirely sure if a month is the normal amount of time to save up for something, I know it's how long it took me to save up for something in '09. As for the trial people, I'm sure there are several who would volunteer.

If too much work, I would suggest tacking on a mill or any of the suggested. o vo


Y'all definitely need a price raise, though. And if the middle ground is still a wee high for the lower-income, I'll be happy to do a quest charity. Or participate in one.

-snugs- ;v;  

[Light Atago]

I was kind of wondering if or when this topic would come up. XDDD I completely agree with a price increase.

The suggested prices, (understanding that they're just a rough starting point,) I thiiiink are too high. This should be taken with a grain of salt, I'm going to be honest here and preface my opinion with this: I have enough experience in this "new economy" that I know that gold is much easier to get. I do not have enough experience to know just how easy it is to get a certain amount of gold per unit time, for an active gaian. My suggestions may seem off because of that, and that means that you're probably a bit more right than I am when it comes to specific values. Maybe I'm wrong, just the suggested prices seem steep to me.

Anyway, enough disclaimer.

I remember when I first got into SoA in late '06, getting some sticker shock from SoA. I thought it would be impossible to get a custom, and without getting loads of letters and the like, it was impossible. You would need to save for years to earn enough for a not-natural colored SoA, which was 500k I think? 700k? (And you would still need to save for years for natural colored ones!) I don't really remember exact prices, but it was not feasible unless you bought and sold monthly collectibles (or had some other gold-making secret that I didn't know, and still don't know.)

Familiars, however, were easy to get. At 40k for an adult and 60k for a cub/pup/chick/etc, about a month, maybe two of posting and active poll-taking would get you there, which I don't see as unreasonable. Maybe that's a good measuring stick? Relate to how much gold an active user, doing the daily prize and active posting, gains in a month or two?

As for full SoA… I leave that to you- whether the price gap between familiars and SoA should be that big or not; whether sticker shock for a regular species should exist or not.  

[mindsend]

Hi there, I was asked if I could make a comment here, and I'd first off like to say I'd be more than willing to help with figuring out how the credit system works in soquili (and thus how you can to adjust its use here) but I'd like to keep this post focused on the actual Gold Based Buying.

Now I asked a friend (same who asked my for my advice/permission to state that we at soq shot down upping our custom prices and our reasoning for it) for the current price so I could get some idea of where things sit.

Current Prices for SoA

Familiar Adult: 40k
Familiar Baby: 60k
Regular Adult: 350k
Regular Adol: 400k
Regular Cub: 450k
God Adult: 800k
God Adol: 900k
God Cub: 1mil

Meanwhile this is the prices for an UNEDITED Angeni, Ulun'suti, or skinwalker

Super Rare Soq Prices

Unedited Super Rare Soquili Prices:
4 mill for just adult stage
4.2 mill for all 3 stages (basket, foal, and adult)

Edits Prices

=EDIT PRICING=
The price for edits is the same for ALL breeds of soquili
• +100k for Minor Edits
• +200k for Moderate Edits
• +500k for Heavy Edits
• +1mil for Extreme Edits

Now, with the current inflation, this isn't that much -- A customer who gets lucky with daily chance and Pink Links could EASILY come to afford an Extreme Edits Angeni (maybe even some hybriding) within a week. Our prices USED to be some of the highest in Gaia. Now they're relatively inexpensive.

However that is actually in many ways a good thing: At soquili, we want our community to grow, for it to be relatively easy for people to afford their dream pony or characters. Wost of our customer base sort of... Ignores the Daily chance, instead focusing on the RP and social aspects, going directly to Rp or main thread, checking their PM's, not going place to place gathering money from daily chance.

To counter act the inflation of gold, we've been working instead on adjusting Soquili's Staff Currency (Credits), Increased our Paid RaffleTicket Costs (from 1k to 100k. We just had a paid raffle that went to 17trillion in gold), And, oddly enough in a way that has actually improved gold ratio for colorists: Removed our fixed Breeding Prices and replaced it with "Pay What You Want" instead.

I tested it out recently with my December Breedings to see the reaction: Allowing people to give money for the breedings even if they dont win before the rolling, letting people pay with items, Letting people pay with whatever, just to see what the reaction to pay what you want was fiscally

These were the results

Pay what you want Breeding Results

PRE ROLLING
Person 1: 200k
Person 2: 36k


POST ROLLING

5 Breedings: 13 baskets overall

Person 1: 30 Billion
Person 2: 1 billion
Person 3: Reve Marin Item (sells for 2.5bill)
Person 4: Nom Nom Roar (sells for 7 bill)
Person 5: 300 million
person 6: 100k

Now, admittedly, this was just one test, and it may shift about to find an average so eventually we'll be able to get a more accurate reading of it later on.


But, over all -- It'd take far too long to earn an Adult at the proposed prices for those who aren't either Colorists that do raffles/auctions on occasion, Marketplace wranglers, or people who spend real money in order to convert it to Gold by selling.  

[Tanakako]

I certainly understand that the current prices are not suitable any more. However the prices suggested are far too high, at least for myself. I can't donate to Gaia on a regular basis, my real life money has to go to real life things. And I have no way, other than things like daily chance and booty grab, (neither of which actually work a lot of the time for me, I can do one and the rest wont let me click), of earning cash on Gaia.

I have always wanted to be a colourist in SoA and the gold earned was never the draw, it was the chance to earn pets and perks. Like with my item shop, the money was never worth the hours spent creating items, but earning customs and gifts to use was well worth the effort.

Having said that, I do agree that complex customs are worth a lot more than say, a plain colour soa, eg the naturalistic TLK pets vs a cub from the God of Hate. To this end I want to suggest a ladder system. Basic customs would be less and more detailed pets obviously worth more.

It would be similar to how edit shops often split their orders. Simple customs would be very common and cheep, medium customs worth more and a bit more restricted, and incredibly detailed customs would be the rarest slot of all for the most amount of gold.

Breedings would be a little more difficult to manage, but using the ladder system for the custom fee is a start. Maybe, like the 'no customs offered' breeding slots, have a tier system to indicate how detailed a colourist will go.

I certainly can't afford a couple billion for a single custom, I will be through my entire savings within a few breedings if I got a custom each time. But I would be more than happy to pay 2bill for a nicely detailed designed edited soa.

Below is more about the ladder system than actual prices. Im just swopping K for Mill, which seems a fair increase..
Medium adult as the current custom replacement.
Basic adult is cheaper to offer newbies better odds of affording an soa.
Complex would be for those special customs you are willing to quest for.

Basic adult : 100M - Example
Medium adult : 350Mill - Example
Complex adult : 500Mill - Example / example (ignore items)
Edited adult : 1Bill

These are all 1-stage soa suggestions. Cubs and adols would be higher as normal.

Even these prices would swiftly deplete my savings, but they are at least more manageable.

I do not know what to suggest for gods. As a price of 5Bill would price me, and I assume most average gaians, out of the market. But maybe because they are so hard to get, 5Bill is reasonable as a quest objective.  

[Gene Wilder]

Wow holy s**t, I can actually QUEST for something again! @0@ Hell yeah, crank up the prices. Dunno if I'd pay 3 billion for a regular cub SoA when I could get a god for just 2 billion more, though.  

[Annchen]

The short version:

Yes, raise the prices! Colorists shouldn't be expected to work just "for fun".

The longer rambly version:

First of all: Thank you for the opportunity to throw in my two cents! This is one of the things I love about SoA; you always try to involve the shop customers in big changes. It can't be easy to do that. It's so hard to judge tone in writing, and even when I know the person writing to me is meaning well and is not hostile I still have to fight the impulse to read it as "Waaah! They hate me." This must be way worse, but I digress...

As I wrote up there I support the price change! I knew this couldn't last. It's a bit silly that I can afford any custom I could dream up only from what I have left after riding out the crazy inflation. I'm a bit out of touch with the Gaian economy so I can't make any solid input on new prices, but I'm still going to offer some general ideas/thoughts.

- I think the current pricing is making customs less valuable. I haven't posted in a custom thread in a long time, and I think part of that is because I don't have to work for it anymore. I just need to come up with a concept and wait to be picked or rolled. It might as well be a free custom raffle for the effort I as a customer need to offer in order to win.

- If you find a pricing level where you get no complaints at all from anyone you need to tack on a zero or two at the end! It should sting a little if you want to put the value back in customs. If we have to work for that special SoA it will be worth more in the end.

- I would have a hard time saving up for customs with the proposed prices, but that is NOT a bad thing (I'm a Gaia bum who hardly earns any gold, so if I can comfortably afford everything you're waaay too cheap). I used to save up for at least a couple of months in order to get enough gold for a breeding custom cub if I remember correctly.

- Heavily discounted pride customs would make me happy, but we'll figure things out for the pride regardless. If breedings are affordable we can always breed for giveaways. You know, like everyone used to do when racking up 5-10 RPs was easier than earning gold for a gazillion customs...

- Free/cheap breedings would make sure poorer Gaians can still play. Both staff and regulars are usually very generous with freebies and gift cubs so I don't think it will be impossible to get a SoA even for very new gaians without the means to buy gaia cash. "Who can gift the newbie first" is such a fun game after all biggrin

- I don't think you should look too much to pricing in other shops since few shops work exactly the same. Our breedings are mostly "paid" for with RP for example, and I really like it that way. It makes sense that you need to push up custom prices more to make up for it.

- I think Gods should be super expensive. Not sure what super expensive means in this crazy economy, but making them challenging to quest for would be a very good thing! If I can afford a God without working my butt off for a year or so they're too cheap.

- A sliding pricing scale for customs depending on complexity sounds good in theory. I guess the trouble is that one colorists nightmare-custom is another colorists fun. It might be easier if there was a base price and then the colorist could give optional discounts for certain things in the custom thread if they wanted. Something like "CC = this much cheaper, TLC style = this much cheaper". Or "Insane mecha lion = this much cheaper" if the colorist was in that mood I guess.

- I love you guys! (But you really deserve to be paid more than just love from random strangers on the internet)  

[ChaosTheories]

I can't add anything that useful here but yes to increasing prices perhaps into the low-medium millions. As far as I can tell, that seems achievable for most Gaians. Higher than that, it gets a little dodgy I think.

I would be sad to see custom-ins go since I see them as a reward for both customer and staff (customer can get a plot baby, staff gets gold that's actually worth doing a big litter for, perhaps). So I hope a bump up in price for them would make them more worthwhile. Breedings are one of my favourite things to work towards (who doesn't like cubs?) so I would love a system where everyone is happy!  

[a pet dino]

I'm new here, but I will say that I do agree with the prices going up.
However like most have said before I think they should be in the mid millions and not the billions. That is just a little to much for your average Gaian.  

[Kimaria]

I agree on a price rise for SoA but I also think there needs to be a real balance between what SoA RPers are able to pay and the insanity that is the Gaian economy these days. I do literally nothing on Gaia except RP here in SoA and the amount of gold and items I own is pretty dismal.

What I love - and have always loved - about SoA is how accessible it is to get pets here for anyone; whether old Gaian or new. A newbie doesn't stay a newbie for long and once they are set with their first character they can throw themselves in and expand their collection. This is why I stayed in SoA and eventually lost interest in all other of the breedable shops. This accessibility allows everyone to RP a menagerie of different characters and acquire those extra special ones that aid in plot.

Anyway, what I mostly wanted to say was perhaps to consider a price scale in regards to customs. Below is a kind of rough guide with some examples. I'm not going to suggest prices because I have no clue on what to suggest, but perhaps there is some use to be found here.

Custom scales:

Simple: [xxx] [xxx] [xxx] [xxx]
Definition: Simple/natural markings (example: basic stripes / spots / patches)
Time: 15 minutes or less

Medium: [xxx] [xxx] [xxx] [xxx]
Definition: More complicated natural markings/one or two handdrawn markings (example: leopard spots, small tattoos)
Time: 15 minutes - 40 minutes

Complex: [xxx] [xxx] [xxx] [xxx]
Definition: Large amount of hand-drawn markings / complex tattoos / wings
Time: 40+ mins

Gods should be priced much higher as these can take a lot of time and a lot of back and forth making small changes before it can leave the 'sketch' process and the lineart can begin. As they are also very special and unique it makes more sense, to me, to turn them into something they can be quested for.  

[~Masamune~]

I only came back to Gaia recently after like over a year away. I had no idea about what had happened to the economy until a received a gigantic donation from an old friend. Without that, literally all I would have right now is 1 mil. @_@ So the tentative prices that were put up are pretty mind-boggling to me.

I do think there should be a price increase, as SoA has always been much cheaper than Soquili, which to me is the other big/popular Breedables shop. For me though, billions is just far too excessive. I don't get much time on here, so I wouldn't have any other means of making money other than selling items. Which is fine in the short term, but once all the items are gone that I no longer want, I would have no idea how to make money after that. I imagine many others are in a similar situation, only having time for RP and not much else.

So yeah, I'm all for a price increase, but within reason. Maybe you could get the prices up to over a billion eventually, but for now, I think trialling a much smaller increase would be worth a shot.  

[Meepfur]

Thank you for all of the input! <3 I'm going to close this thread, but a new thread will be appearing soon, likely within the next few days, once this one is all sorted through and discussed. Thank you for your opinions, and for having patience with us during this process.

Change is always intimidating, for staff as well, and we appreciate your help in bringing it about in a way that will be agreeable to everyone. emotion_bigheart