Gems - So Not Necessary

whats it calls? ill reads it …!:yellow_heart:

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It’s called Death on the Beach. It’s a murder mystery and also takes not-so-subtle digs at the weirdness that is Episode.

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Thnks…!!:yellow_heart::grin:

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YES this is it! i’ve seen the prices of gem choices just get higher and higher and honestly it had kind of made episode lose that key appeal for me. if you are looking for something that has no gem choices (also no choices) i would recommend We Are Boundless (it’s such a beautiful story it made me cry) hope that helps !

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I’m an author and I refuse to add gem choices in my stories. “Support the author” is the only one I will ever use and because there is no punishment for not doing it. I refuse to play into episode’s “pay to choose your own adventure” direction they’re heading in.

That being said, all the power to those who do, I’m fully aware you’re sort of being forced.

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Same here! I also use “support the author” and that’s it, my bonus scenes, my choices, point gains are all free.

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From what I noticed, some of the community stories have gem choices and that to me is anathema to a community story. There shouldn’t be gem choices, except to support the author, buy points, and skip waits. Unfortunately, we get gem choices to choose dialogue or outfits.

As for the official stories, there’s nothing you can do about that.

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Same here - it’s definitely losing its appeal. I will certainly check out the story.

Thank you :slight_smile:

Eyanna

I agree with you. That’s the only time that I will spend gems.

Eyanna

That’s the only time that I spend gems. I just think it really sucks that they changed the process. Please let me know what your stories are and I will support. :slight_smile:

Eyanna

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The links to my stories are in my profile! Thank you :face_holding_back_tears:

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You’re welcome!

I noticed one week I had a lot of reads but only one gem spend and my rankings plummeted but then the next week I had far fewer reads but quite a few gem spends and the ranking went up to 88 in the mystery category!
It looks like the rankings are heavily skewed towards gem spends, which is unfair for anyone wanting to write a good story without gems getting in the way.

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There’s lots of older community stories that don’t have gems

How do gem choices affect the ranking? I know that if you have gem choices it can get you into the paid author program with less reads but I wasn’t aware that it affected the ranking.

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Simply put, the more gems your story receives from readers, the higher its rank will be. Supposedly, a story without gems can trend well (or so says Episode), but I’ve never seen it.

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Most gem choices I’ve noticed are up to 29 gems, others as low as 19 gems. Is there a maximum price for gem choices? If so, maybe it should be encouraged for authors to lower gem prices for stories.

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Thank you, that’s really horrible. I highly doubt it will happen but hopefully one day it will change.

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That would be nice, but the community already had it’s chance to reject this system. Not enough people did. So now, unfortunately, it’s kind of a must to include gems in stories if you want your story to get noticed at all. I will say this though… As much as I despise the gem system, it has led to a much greater variety of stories trending. It used to be essentially the same exact stories filling out the top 100 in various genres over and over again with little to no change, making it far harder to find anything new because they were mostly old, established stories that had been there for years from the early days when there were less options and it was easier to get reads due to far less competition. That needed to be fixed. It’s just a shame Episode decided to replace that system with one that encourages manipulation and inequality. Though, obviously, not every author who includes gems uses them in that way.

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