you do realize that the item cost you money and that there was a 1/3 chance of the item failing... and that if it failed the theif would be fined double the amount they tried to take... so it's not like it was steal from the rich for no real reason.
It was actually a 0% chance if you tried to steal 0 credits, and a 50% chance at the max you could steal (I don't remember what its currently set at). Yes, the item itself was more detrimental towards yourself, and the item alone is what removed over 1.5 million credits from the system.
It might of removed those 1.5 million credits but if you see what it's done to the economy I think you would agree it was not worth the amount dropped. Not only has a majority of sections been evacuated and therefore empty. The people from Spam Heaven and Last Word have leaked over and even though majin, steez etc are friends they are kinda turning the rest of the forum into a spam zone. The community is falling apart aswell because of the massive decrease in credits. It was a much happier time when credits were over inflated and people would have to pay 1000 for a simple tag or sell their own worse tags for 300. I remember when I first started properly coming to here and I sold a lot of my first tags which were really bad to roobs. Not only did she pay 350 EACH it was that which started me off on the marketplace. I was a big buyer and seller last year or perhaps the year before aswell as a big giver and if I remember correctly gave away about 50+ tags including a vogue tag and tutorial I bought for 1k. I also gave away a few thousand credits and funded a crew to increase the fun here. The first sign I saw was when I left for about 6 months and came back to Gac, Zain etc banned. I guess it's ok if Maj1n is banned and allowed to come back but if it's anyone else no way. Then with Steam Accounts being stopped it was another stab and because of the major amount of steam accounts being sold the marketplace was crippled. Then we implemented the steal item a while later which did the final blow and killed the marketplace. Not only were people annoyed as the day you added these the staff stole a lot of credits including 70k of EBK's you implemented a bank which is a great idea only thing is you have to pay to not have your points stolen. So, this newly implemented system forced members to lose out on credits either way.
tl;dr. I think we should just go back to Llama's way of running things. Some people may not be happy but for crying out loud I bet you it increases the activity and makes alot of people happy.
People like to have a reason for things to happen. Fact is, even before we implemented the steal credit item... the marketplace was inactive, and credits value was rapidly declining. People here like to have something to blame besides themselves (this is perfectly natural, its a human thing to attempt to pass the blame to something else). The credit steal item was implemented based on a suggestion and positive feedback from the staff and a select few members. The only parts that are 'spam zone' is spam heaven and the last word. Why can't it spill elsewhere? Because there isn't really activity elsewhere, and only the active spots get any attention from maj or steez, and most of the time when their post gets deleted, they learn to shut up and not say something stupid again (at least, in the same topic). There is *still* over 2 million credits in circulation (almost 3, actually... and don't follow the marketplace stats, they are wrong, they don't include credits deposited in bank accounts as they are two separate mods). If you actually want someone to blame for the credit influx, you can look at Gac, Witde, Lisa, BFTP and the tens of other people the public had no clue about who decided to exploit the credit system and throw hundreds of thousands of credits into the system and distribute them before we could retrieve them and conceal the situation. If you want to thank someone for exploiting the members of GR and getting steam accounts removed (again) you can thank Gac. If you want someone to blame for the marketplace in the first place, you can ask BFTP (considering he forced the idea into play when he was on staff). If you want someone to blame for credit influxes before credit items were exploited, you can thank durial20 for showing that tutorials can fetch 350-500 credits just to look at. Want to know what they all have in common? Well, outside the fact they are all banned and were still trying to clean up all of their messes, they were all members of the community. You can point the blame however you choose, the end result is that it always boils back down to the community, and what they have to give us to work with. If one person chooses to exploit something, or to abuse a privilege, then everyone has to suffer for their consequences because most of the time, its not an isolated incident. Rules are created for this reason, and current rules are more strictly enforced because of this reason. Oh, and another thing, all massive amounts of credits stolen within the first like 3 days of the credit steal item were refunded (especially EBKs). Not because that wasn't our intention, but because a select group of staff members decided it would be funny to exploit their ability to buy items from the shop for free (thus making it impossible for them to never be able to buy some). Kirbir and Marforce, in particular, in case you were curious. Yes, kirbir, the queen of the site who everyone thinks is pure as gold, was one of the 2 predominant people who abused the item (oh, she also got to keep most of her credits as well, she made quite a bit during the whole stealing thing, where Marforce wasn't exactly so lucky).
tl; dr we bring back morv? meh read through the first page though and I largely gree with dem, credits and the dying community pretty much messed things up hopefully V4 will increase activity
v4 is intended to further remove focus from the marketplace and credits and encourage more of a community site with resources that are given, not paid for. We aren't going for page views and unique hits and the traditional movement. If we cared about those numbers (and rightfully, we probably should) we would be encouraging the marketplace, and allowing a hierarchy of elitist professional sig makers (just the thought of this makes me laugh btw) to run the website. Sure, it would bring more profit, sure it would bring more page hits and increase the value of the site, no one is denying that, but the quality of the members would drop drastically, personally that's not a site I would find worth investing time in, nor would many members, or many staff.
the reason why the value of the credit is going down is because all currencies tend towards the value of the object by which they are backed. in this case, there is nothing backing the credit. that means the intrinsic value of credits is $0 and who do I blame for thee credit fiasco? I blame BFTP, he was the guy who started selling credits for money. before him there were no such interactions, at least none that I knew of. and to those who wonder how much I, as a former staff member abused the cred steal item... I used it once on morv for 3000(I intended to refund him after his WTF thread which I knew he would have made), I failed so I was fined 6000.
I think credits slowly kill a forum mainly when you sell them for real £/$ .... I suppose its good that gamerenders staff have already noticed this and have a better approach towards all this with the new v4 GR....itl soon get sorted. Shame that its not so active right now though.
well the whole credit thing... I really think that credits SHOULD stay, just that the credits be limited to forum related activities, as in nothing outside of artwork(and related services) to be bought or sold, or forum services(think "you're my friend here are some credits") yes my views on forum currency do border on communism and it's far removed from my real life approach, but that's simply because unlike in real life, technological innovation won't really be occurring on here and the whole return to labor vs. return to capital arguement doesn't really apply. of course my suggestion was to increase credits per post(rewards posting and increases the rate of inflation, higher inflation = disincentive to credit hoarding.) and to continually do so until you had around 10 credits per post, then just to globally divide creds by 10 whenever the need arises for the sake of keeping the numbers smaller.
Meh, I've never cared about credits. Occasionally I'd buy the odd tutorial if it looked good and wasn't available free, but I never charged for tutorials, I've always been happy to give people .psd's for anything I make, and really, I just liked being able to discuss graphics with people. When you can buy thousands of credits for like, $20, what value does charging 45-50, even 100 credits, for a tutorial? I always tried to contribute honest, constructive critique to tags posted in the signature section, although I admit I eventually got fed up with a lot of people's responses and stopped caring. However, I never really understood people's obsession with credits, as I only ever wanted to get better at making sigs/LPs/etc. I like the sound of V4, as it'll hopefully mean that the site will push more towards being a good, free source of resources, rather than an online pawnbroker.
