Angeni1
David2074
Joe - Quoting you here since you have PMs disabled.
I saw your announcement today and I can understand your frustration trying to get people to bump. But I can also understand there being fewer folks playing booty grab (and bumping).
I've only ever talked to three kinds of folks who play booty grab.
1. They just want the gold.
2. They just enjoy actually playing the booty grab / find it relaxing.
3. A combination of 1&2.
I assume the rampant inflation has made it so many feel the amount of gold they earn from playing tanks is insignificant compared to before. Which pretty much just leaves number 2. Likewise I suspect it is near impossible to make a tank pay for itself any more. Back in the day I put many many hours into working my dolphin tanks to earn upwards of 150 mil pure while also buying my replacement dolphins with gold off MP. A week or so ago I had a relative stranger gift me a billion gold because some stuff I said amused her. Probably to a lot of folks maintaining high end booty grab tanks (or putting many hours into playing them) is just not worth it anymore. For example I used to buy dolphins on MP for 200-450k. Lately they have been selling for 200-400 MI - even though a dolphin will not even poop out 1 mil in gold (to its owner) in its entire lifetime. Back in the good ol days I used to figure each dolphin would gross me about 750k gold over its 4 month life span. That was before additional nerfs / caps on the BG game. So in terms of earnings - if someone has a dolphin they are way better off selling it on MP than putting it in their tank.
I'm not trying to be a downer. I guess I'm trying to say that I think you have worked hard to promote the aquarium / booty grab community and if at some point you decide that Gaia's chosen path has made that no longer worth it to purse I can respect that. Either way, thanks for the effort you have put into the tank community. I used to think I might bring back my tanks one of these days but for me personally I'm thinking probably not unless there are some drastic changes on Gaia.
And this is where it pays to be a panther...have you looked at our fish market? we sell cheap or you may even find free fish...so its what ever the member wants to make of there tank...until things get better
It's nice that you try to provide affordable fish to members and I'm not knocking anyone's efforts - But I could not restock my dolphin tanks from your sale thread and if I was still maintaining my tanks I would frankly feel guilty if I did. I ran my tanks as a business (albeit a pretend one) and I had pure dolphin tanks for profit, not because that makes the prettiest tank.
The stuff I said above has only become more true since I posted it. Dolphin prices have gone up even more. Currently -
Lowest Buy Now Price: 800,000,000 gold
Average Buy Price: 695,553,000 gold
As I said before, even before BG was nerfed a dolphin would gross well under a million gold during its four month life span. So, hypothetically, suppose I found someone in your fish market willing to sell dolphins to me low enough for me to make a profit in my tank. That would mean I am asking that person to take a 600-700 million gold hit on the price of each dolphin compared to what they could sell it for on MP. We would both be gold ahead if they sold the dolphin on MP, gave me 10 mil (or even 1 mil) and pocketed the other 600-700 million gold for themselves. Either way it boils down to me taking charity from them.
It is nice to help people "until things get better" but IMO things are not going to get better. At least not for booty grab. Sure they increased the daily cap to 500k but I was never getting 500k before their was a cap. The only way to do that is play booty grab for hours each day. Which is only okay if you really, REALLY like playing hours and hours of booty grab. Otherwise work one extra hour at your job or mow the neighbor's lawn for $5 or however you can get do to get $$ for your time. Then buy a dolphin, sell it on MP for 700 million. Even after market tax you still earned most of 14 days worth of 500k daily cap. You can then use those hours and hours and hours of booty grab time saved to do something else that is fun or productive.
The problem of course is Gaia has not increased fish / BG payout to in any way keep pace with inflation. And this is why I don't see it getting better. Gaia has shown great willingness to release bigger and bigger gold generators but only ones they can sell for cash. And while yes, dolphins sell for cash, I don't believe there is the kind of return Gaia is looking for.
I think this guild has worked hard to promote BG and to help tank owners.
I am in no way being down on the guild or the folks running it.
But I do feel Gaia has dealt a rather bad hand to tank owners with many of the choices Gaia has made. It is sort of like they are changing tanks to ornamental only. Not directly of course but effectively by making what you earn from a tank insignificant compared to other gold generators on Gaia. And the problem compounds because the payout for players has also become less significant which causes fewer people to play BG.
