Honestly , i never saw the point of having a GC only theme , when at the same time you give users a way around it. All you have to do is wait till your freebie comes up .
The whole point of GC is so that Gaia can pay it's bills , it's employees , so that it can maintain itself .
But if you give out more than you are receiving , then yeah that is " unsustainable " . I assume that what they meant by that , is that the majority of entries in the GC theme come from freebies .
And people might assume that to Gaia " GC " is just digital and that they can just manufacture as much as Gaia wants.
And though that is technically true.
The reality is that they ( Gaia ) can not spend real dollars on a feature that is eating their resources .
Resources like :
Electricity
server space / hard drive space
memory
Computing power
Time and Personnel
Taking time from the Devs to deal with a feature whose main problem might not be a coding problem but a human one .
Taking the time away from mods to deal with constant and repeated runway issues , when they can deal with other more important ones.
Don't get me wrong , Runway , as a feature to show of what Gaia really is ( a character creator ) is great. Not only does it do that , but it shows off the creativity of the users and at the same time it challenges the users to BE creative .
But that creativity can be stifled by unwritten rules , people's ego , cheating , and manipulation of some users idea of what a " good avatar " is.
That last one is a problem because it limits individuality and uniqueness .
I have noticed this in fads/ avatar fashion trends within the Runway . I remember entering some theme , where my avatar was ON theme , but ended up on the backpages , because it did not look like the avatars on the first page.
And what did all the avatars on the first page have in common ? Some lighting effect , that the theme did not call for . In fact creating an avatar with that lighting effect was completely unnecessary for that theme.
Now i can understand there being artistic choices , and different interpretations , and there being a lack of item diversity for a specific theme.
But seeing nearly a full page , of avatars that look like clones of each other ?
You mean to tell me that over 50 people all of a sudden had the exact same thought , at the exact same time ? * doubt face *
My point is that it seems ( to me ) that Runway's main flaw is that it is more of a popularity contest , than a contest of skill . Casual players can not break into that . Because , it takes a necessary knowledge of the existence of items and how they work, on top of that most users that can create winning entries consistently have the advantage of large inventories , and that usually comes from having the advantage of being on Gaia for a long time.
On top of that there is the enforcing of rules and definitions within themes . Are there enough mods for that ? Does Runway only rely on users flagging problematic entries / off theme entries ?
I think in the end the main problem that Runway has is the Human element . I don't know how to fix that . Maybe charge less GC like someone suggested ?
Maybe have Diedrich communicate to the wider userbase how Runway is supposed to work ? Explain rules and definitions .
Find a way to do away with " unwritten rules " of avatar creation ? I DK.
