i’m angry because a site feature/community i care deeply about is going to be extremely impacted by this change. i’ll come out and say that i’m concerned for skins and accents, and skins are the main reason i’ve kept interest in this game. the idea that gasp could become obsolete is harmful to so many people, artists and collectors. and i believe this will have a wider impact than they’ve anticipated.
a ten skin bundle is the lowest cost per skin, but it is a 5000g investment. many players can’t make that investment up-front. those users rely on gasp for both exposure and the ability to make the skin. the engagement that gasp gives is impossible to replicate on the forums naturally, and it can be difficult even for artists that have ‘big’ pinglists to fill entire runs because skin and accent collecting is expensive.
even though this part of the site is robust, it’s still a small percentage of users overall, so it genuinely wouldn’t make sense for staff to use resources recreating this simple and effective system of advertising. as another anon pointed out, it would likely come with its own set of challenges to moderate if they *did* implement it on site. and this is only one community that relies on pinglists for advertising sales and finding items/dragons/whatever they specifically desire. these are systems that have had *years* for trial and error, and anything that replaces them is going to have kinks that will harm the economy while they’re worked out.
i don’t think we have a dappervolk or lorwolf on our hands, but it cannot be overstated that economic impacts will be very much felt as a result of this decision.
Re: mass pings are going to be killed and it’s going to kill the economy
a ten skin bundle is the lowest cost per skin, but it is a 5000g investment. many players can’t make that investment up-front. those users rely on gasp for both exposure and the ability to make the skin. the engagement that gasp gives is impossible to replicate on the forums naturally, and it can be difficult even for artists that have ‘big’ pinglists to fill entire runs because skin and accent collecting is expensive.
even though this part of the site is robust, it’s still a small percentage of users overall, so it genuinely wouldn’t make sense for staff to use resources recreating this simple and effective system of advertising. as another anon pointed out, it would likely come with its own set of challenges to moderate if they *did* implement it on site. and this is only one community that relies on pinglists for advertising sales and finding items/dragons/whatever they specifically desire. these are systems that have had *years* for trial and error, and anything that replaces them is going to have kinks that will harm the economy while they’re worked out.
i don’t think we have a dappervolk or lorwolf on our hands, but it cannot be overstated that economic impacts will be very much felt as a result of this decision.