Once gem choices have been chosen once, they become free during replays, so I’m gonna guess that even if you’re forced to replay a chapter after an update, you’ll be able to choose the gem choice again for free.
2 Likes
Will earning a gem after each episode be available for creators stories, just like the featured stories?
1 Like
honestly same (i love maid for you btw)
1 Like
Disappointed lol. I dislike this new feature. A lot of authors are adding gem choices to their story and I’m definitely not gonna read them 
Of course I’m glad that authors get ‘‘more’’ money with this feature, but what do readers get? Absolutely nothing. While authors get paid for gem choices, readers have to pay to buy gems (if you have no gems, you obviously can’t choose gem choices) Y’all probably think I’m exaggerating, which is quite true lol but I’m just trying to explain why I (and many other readers) don’t like this feature.
10 Likes
Yeah. I can’t say I’m a fan of Gems as a whole. I feel it’s annoying and very flawed. In the Episode -created stories, the Gem choices are often not worth it.
4 Likes
This is very interesting! Thank you for listening when it came to the part people were having doubts about. I personally think that the limitations are good. This way, authors cannot abuse it. It’s nice to see that authors that are in payments will receive some extra for it.
I’m excited to see how this will roll out to be!
3 Likes
I probably won’t use gems myself, but I also think the Episode team have done a great job working out how to fix the problems and concerns the community has brought up.
I know a lot of people don’t like gem choices, but honestly, Episode needs to get their money from somewhere. And they need to get the money that community authors gets from writer payments. Advertisements alone aren’t enough to make a sound profit.
I personally don’t have any doubts that the talented authors in the community will make their gem choices satisfactory and worth the money.
4 Likes
I’m not sure if this will help you, but for my story I used gems for a reader to gain something that they were unable to gain previously. For example, they needed to earn someone’s trust. If they fail to do that based on their past choices, there’s a gem choice where they can still gain it (which ends up saving that character).
I think the way choices are used will completely depend on a writer’s style. In some stories, especially most featured ones, I wouldn’t expect the gem choices to do much except give me a bonus scene and some extra dialogue. I know that no matter what, the outcome of the story would be the same.
Since you’re an author who writes stories with a lot of branches/important choices, your readers would probably expect to get a bit more value out of your choices even without you describing what’s going to happen. You could maybe even include choices where they can gain bonus items which could help them in the future (without being essential to a good ending)?
8 Likes
Will there be any way to regulate your gem choice prices? Say your story accumulates over a 100k reads, will you still be able to make a choice 2 or 5 gems? I understand right now you can’t, but will this be an option in the future? Tbh I’m all for this. But ten gems feels a bit steep for some readers and I’d like to be able to regulate it in the future.
5 Likes
I think Episode needs to work closely with people to ensure that these gem choices are there for a reason. We shouldn’t be spending money on choices just to find out that they didn’t have any impact on the wider story at all. That would be really unfair.
It already happens with featured stories. Sometimes I specifically don’t want something to happen, so I use gems. Then I find out it makes no difference whatsoever. Episode needs to regulate these things to keep it fair.
13 Likes
Also, I think it would be a great incentive if writers who haven’t qualified for the writers programme get gems for the number of people who read their story chapters - say 10 gems for 1000 reads or something.
8 Likes
I like that idea! I honestly can’t see gem choices benefiting many people except those already in payments or those close to getting in anyway.
6 Likes
One of the first things I thought when the community gem test was happening was ‘finally community authors will show Episode how gems should be used.’ I expect most authors will use them smartly and make them worth it. Others may emulate Episode’s model and that won’t be fun tbh 
7 Likes
I’ll be flagging any story that doesn’t have a specific gain for the gem choice! It would be ridiculous and unfair, in my opinion. There are definitely loads of community writers who will show the featured stories up, but I know of a few people who don’t really care for the guidelines: they’d probably go wild. It’s a big responsibility!
3 Likes
@ShanniiWrites I am indifferent towards the whole gem choice announcement, but I will admit things where the logic lies. This is absolutely true.
How can a gem choice be better than a regular choice if you end up with the same result regardless of the choice you make?This is an example of bad gem choices in my opinion. Logically, the choices will have no effect on the story itself, just performed in a different fashion. The Demi Lovato Trilogy had tons of these lol. Now there are some exceptions, for example, let’s say a gem choice helps you in a story (or affects the story itself) - now that is a good gem choice.
Of course, gem choices are meant to be the ‘better choices’. But Episode uses it to make you think that they are. If you end up with the same results anyways, is it necessarily the ‘better’ choice? There must be a way to make gem choices better than how Episode uses them in its current state because if you pay for something (with gems, not real life cash in this case since you can now get them for free in different ways), you’d better get something out of it. The idea is to pay for quality, not mediocrity. This is why I suggested having strict requirements on who can use gem choices in their stories on the other thread, but your ideas would work well as well.
Edit: I think that authors will be using gem choices more efficiently than Episode does. I don’t think they will use them the same way. I mean, it only makes sense.
5 Likes
Definitely! And the problem with the criteria offered by Episode for Gem Choices is that the first ten chapters have to include gem choices! That either means a bunch of gems being wasted on choices that make no difference to the story or people cracking under crippling branching issues later on!
As a follow-up, I hope that Episode releases a series of updates to help people make stories with complex branching (like being able to see what gains you’ve used throughout your story, and not just in the current chapter, in the portal) so that these goals aren’t unattainable.
3 Likes
I’m not sure if that would be considered a “bad” gem choice by Episode’s standards though, when you consider that the gem choices in most featured stories don’t normally result in specific gains. As long as there’s an actual bonus scene and not just like one line of dialogue, I feel like it will be deemed an acceptable gem choice
2 Likes
For me, that’s a massive waste of money! This is where it would become people money-grabbing and adding in “extra info” about characters with clickbait choice names that trick you into believing that it will be important later on!
4 Likes
I don’t disagree with you, but honestly I rarely pay for gem choices because I know they won’t affect the story. They don’t bother me because I know they don’t matter 
I don’t think people will be “money grabbing” as it seems like they’ll get their bonus payments/gem choice read as long as people read the episode. I don’t think readers will actually need to buy the choice for it to count.
3 Likes
That’s true. I guess that does make it a bit more fair, but at the same time, I wonder if people will do that just to qualify for the whole “ten chapters” criteria?
Also, is anyone else sick of seeing this format:
Terrible choice
Okay gem choice
Amazing gem choice
I mean, it’s basically telling people that they can’t afford good outcomes 
1 Like