Announcements & News

i've already seen rumors and speculation that staff is mistreating their artists so slowing the roll on new genes and on updates in general would be a great pr move as well. if the reason for the glut of updates recently is financial (most likely is) then the rise of patreon has made it easier and more common to support creators through monthly donations. this site was literally born from crowd funding, and i hate to use this site as an example since it has so much vile content, but ao3 has a lot of success through donations so im sure the userbase would be more than willing to help out... as long as there isn't premium content 100% locked behind a paywall but even in the most negative of predictions i doubt staff would ever stoop that low.

also @Lilian i thought thylacine was one of the oldest genes on the site (with the quality and how little its used can anyone really blame me), when did it come out?

@DuskzeHedgie
Blaming the community for the site taking a financial hit is problematic. If the community is unhappy with the content, that's on the staff, not us. They made the content, they did its quality control and they decided to release it as it is. If a financial hit comes out of this, then the staff did something wrong in those steps.

Right now the main complaint is the drop in quality of genes in favor of quick releases. There's nothing wrong with criticizing art quality as consumers, and nobody should feel obliged to be nice to the staff and overlook legit issues.

@voidbeast
It was released in January 2016, so 4 years ago already. Back when I joined, the only terts were Gembond and Circuit. It took a long time before new ones showed up!

@Lilian [emoji=coatl confused size=2] There was nothing in my post blaming anyone, I think we're all grateful for the players who support the site by buying gems. I'm just trying to say that I find it silly to claim Glowtail costs $12 when it just... doesn't? It'd be like saying Ringlets costs $2, when there's a variety of other ways to acquire that gene. If you don't want to use real money on Glowtail, you can use gems you earned from other trades and gameplay- they are very readily available! And then if you don't want to use your premium currency, you can buy it with treasure on the AH. Or you can trade genes/apparel/familiars/art/adoptables for it. At the end of the day, I just flat-out disagree with people saying Glowtail being "lackluster" or "low quality" or otherwise undeserving of it's place in the gem marketplace- especially with the updated artwork. I'm fine with chalking that up to personal tastes, though. Like, I'm not about to spend my gems on Filigree any time soon but that doesn't mean it's a bad gene or should cost treasure or be a Swipp trade or whatnot.

[quote name="Lilian" date="2020-05-09 23:11:26" ]Right now the main complaint is the drop in quality of genes in favor of quick releases. There's nothing wrong with criticizing art quality as consumers, and nobody should feel obliged to be nice to the staff and overlook legit issues. [/quote] I think @Lilian makes a good point and it's one I want to add on: The staff aren't your friends. They're nice, yes, and they react to you, yes, but in the end you are the consumer and they are the provider. They aren't doing this for free, they are clearly and openly monetizing on this, have been from the start, and so when they produce a product that is not up to the standard of what has been previously given and has been promised the fault lies on the creators, not the consumers. The idea that a community cannot provide critique, harsh as it may sometime be, without being called 'toxic' is in itself toxic, as it does not allow for the providers to learn from their mistakes and allows for them to continue to put out products that have more and more defects in them.

[quote name="MissAri" date="2020-05-09 23:18:10" ] There was nothing in my post blaming anyone, I think we're all grateful for the players who support the site by buying gems. I'm just trying to say that I find it silly to claim Glowtail costs $12 when it just... doesn't? It'd be like saying Ringlets costs $2, when there's a variety of other ways to acquire that gene. If you don't want to use real money on Glowtail, you can use gems you earned from other trades and gameplay- they are very readily available! And then if you don't want to use your premium currency, you can buy it with treasure on the AH. Or you can trade genes/apparel/familiars/art/adoptables for it. [/quote] Gems are a dollar per 100 and that is a 1.2kg gene. So yeah, it costs $12. And telling people to 'just use the other ways to make money on this site! it isn't hard!' is distasteful because not everyone has the time or energy to dedicated to becoming a money baron. Even if I sell hatchlings at 5g, the easiest way imo, I still have to sell two hundred forty (240) of them to make that many gems. If I somehow got lucky and got five (5) eggs every single time I'd still need forty-eight (48) nests to do that all. It takes six days to hatch a nest without a fertility scroll. To hit the amount of dragons and nests I would need I would need to run all five nests full for five weeks. And before you claim "Oh, just got on and press a button once a day no problem!" I work twelve hour days. I go home tired and needing to get food, shower, and go right back to bed so I can go into work again. Not everyone has time to get on every single day, especially not for five weeks. Treasure isn't always an option because as a gem scroll it will cost more, meaning more time spent on the site. Telling people to 'just earn them other ways' is a blinding mindset that doesn't seem to take into account other people's lives. @MissAri Edit: Got my gem numbers wrong, oops!

Firstly, oh man those familiars are amazing and I absolutely love them! One day I'll get the wavesweeper :')

Secondly, I know I've not been on the site as long as lots of other people, but yeah, FR artists and the rest of the team, let yourselves take a break (especially with the current world situation) there's a lot going on both in and out of the game, and I know I'd be happy waiting longer for new gene releases (has it even been a month since keel?)

I appreciate you listened to the community's feedback about glowtail (even if I didn't say anything lol) before and edited it (imo it looks much nicer now, though isn't one of my faves, but that's just personal opinion) and now listen to us again and trust that we are happy to wait for longer for new genes, especially while you're also working on new breeds (both ancient and modern, and honestly, I'm super hyped for the 3rd ancient)...

...which brings me onto my last point I guess, which is involve the community more (though really this is more a personal request lol), even if it's just something as simple as like what you guys are doing with the ancient breeds; stream the development of new genes and have a forum post where people can discuss the stream and the new designs, I think it'll be good for everyone: we'll all get a say, you guys get more feedback that you can actually implement into the designs and honestly imo it just creates more hype for whatever's being created. And I also think doing something like that would reduce a little of the pressure you guys might be feeling about having to produce so much new content. Because we'll be seeing stuff happening even without new content coming out. Idk this is just my opinion. Though @/Huntess also had some really cool ideas about how to involve the community more.

TL;DR: Artists, please take a break if you can, we'll all understand, thanks for listening to community feedback, involving the community more in the creation of new things would be really cool and the new familiars are absolutely awesome :D

@MissAri - Not to really get involved, but gems do have a set cost due to being the premium currency with a direct conversion rate from real money to gems. This is used to calculate the technically real currency cost of treasure, and calculate how much one should sell art for, as an example!

Like, maybe you want to sell your art for ten dollars. 1 USD = 100 gems, if I recall correctly. And 1 gem = 1000 treasure. So 10 USD = 1000 gems = 1,000,000 treasure.

So while I do fully understand your point, and there's many users who never spend a single penny on Flight Rising, everything does have a relative USD cost, regardless of how you acquire the gene. Something that costs 12 USD will cost 1200 gems, which will cost 1,200,000 treasure. To get it with art or anything else, you still have to approximately meet that cost, generally.

I do feel, personally, that the gems genes are a bit expensive, and cost a fair bit more than treasure genes. And it's not personally worth it to me to buy them most of the time. But to each their own. I think it's roughly as valuable as any other gene, especially with the art update making it look nicer. So if people wanna buy it, good for them! But I'm unlikely to be one of those people. Just how it is.

So while yes, it didn't cost you any real money, and it doesn't for most people, it very much has a real currency cost. That's all.

@Deviri Except the whole post you quoted there is detailing the variety of ways players can acquire an item, depending on their life and playstyle. Like most other games, you get things in FR by spending real money, or by spending [i]time[/i]. Time farming the coliseum, time playing Fairgrounds games, time designing accents, time drawing commissions, time breeding dragons to sell, time bonding with familiars. And then you can always take it one step further, and rather than buying a gene scroll, you buy dragons that someone else spent the money on, and you breed until you get the dragon you want- again, it's an investment of time. If you're unwilling to invest time OR money, I think we're at a bit of an impasse. [emoji=coatl tongue size=1]

[quote name="SpaceCorgi" date="2020-05-09 14:03:53" ]I'm also disappointed in people telling folks who are giving valid and overall nice critiques to just kinda be quiet about it and just go with it because "free website" or whatever. I feel we all have the right to be vocal or express our disappointments and concerns. I see most of these critiques coming out of concern and worry for the site. Of course harp on the overly rude folks but other than that, just please don't try and tell others to just keep their complaints/critiques to themselves and that they have no room or need to voice themselves in the first place. Does more harm than good.[/quote] This was my exact feelings upon reading through this. Seen plenty of 'haters can die in a fire, uwu!' forced positivity type stuff. it's okay to have concerns. I like the gene now that it's been revamped and I agree there was tons of nasty shit thrown at it, but it came from both sides of the argument. I hope people can remember - we're all humans on the other side of the screen, and we're all suffering right now. the world is in a state. Everyone is stressed and angry and scared. please try to be understanding and kind, no matter how you feel about the glowing dragon butts. All that above seems pretty negative now, so [b]TLDR;[/b] People are stressed. Everyone behind a screen here is a person who is struggling and scared in some way, and yes, that includes the devs! React with kindness and compassion as much as you can, and if you feel yourself getting upset, get up and take a breather. It's tough. You're going to be okay and [b]it's okay to feel the way you feel as long as you express it in a healthy way. [/b]