Guys, please remember that this is not a general suggestion thread. You should confine the subjects of your posts to referral contests, the referral system, and perhaps ideas about how to up our recruitment numbers without holding a referral contest.<br /> <br /> If you wish to make general gameplay suggestions, please post a thread in the suggestion forum.

I think Alacrity should get rid of the entire referring contests, and just leave the simple referring! I voted for #4.

Well, I admit I agree that spaying pound dogs should be taken out. ^_^

Hi everyone....<br /> <br /> Okay I am a newbie.. but i thought I could ask NOT to spay the animals in the selter? I am probably stupid asking this, but you would get a lot more service (mostly from me...) thanks for your time....

I voted for #1, accidentally. It was supposed to be #4, although I still like the rewards for a certain amount of days they are on, but, I don't think we should have contests.

Unfortunately, referral contests aren't even mostly about getting the new players to play.. that's the bummer about it :( Users want to gain as many new players as possible in hopes of winning the contest. If they stick around, that's a plus because they get bonuses.

A referral contest is basically a contest to see what player can get the most people to join the site in a certain amount of time. <br /> <br /> To refer someone to Alacrity, you can go to the referral under 'help alacrity' then click 'referrals'. Here is a url to the page: http://www.alacritysim.com/referrals.php<br /> <br /> Once you're there it explains referring works and gives you the special link that you give people to join the site so the site can keep track of who you invited. <br /> <br /> I'm sure if you still had questions on how referring works on here, the newbie helpers would be happy to help you at the issue hub under 'help alacrity'. http://www.alacritysim.com/issuehub.php<br /> <br /> So basically the poll is asking about having the contests that involve inviting the most people possible on to the site and getting them to play ^^

I don't even know what refferel contest are. >_>

This post is really just to help our users understand why the referral contest has come up as an idea again, as not everyone is privy to this sort of information.<br /> <br /> Alacrity has (as I type this) 29,983 registered accounts. 2,974 are frozen. Considering the number of multiple accounts violations with which the staff deals and that each user is entitled to 2, It's safe to say that between 10,000 and 20,000 people have unfrozen accounts on Alacrity. That's a big number, but that's not how many users we have. <br /> <br /> For administrative purposes, the 'active player' count currently stands at 4,502. Only 3,939 users have logged in this year. The number we should be most concerned about, however, is this one: 563. That is the number of users who last logged in after December 1st, 2012 but before New Years Day. That's the number of users we <b>lost</b> in December. 842 users who were active last month aren't active this month. 30 days of inactivity doesn't mean leaving, but it's still a troubling trend.<br /> <br /> Now, you're always gonna lose some people. Some join and decide they don't like it. Some grow out of the site or of this kind of game in general. Some users left over changes made to keep the site above water or to correct imbalances in our system. Still others have left due to rumors about site staff perpetuated by users we've had to freeze/ban, or former staff members who felt that rule breaking or under-performing were not legitimate grounds for being let go. While we hold no ill will towards these folks, Alacrity is still a small site which cannot survive without the new users we're losing to gossip. <br /> <br /> It would be so very great if we could continue to run this great little community without income, but I'm thinking the people we pay to keep the lights on around here would probably object if we paid our bills in alacash and custom dogs.<br /> <br /> This is the reason we thought of running a referral contest - because our community can't survive without new players to replace the ones who move on. However, this in no way means we want to run one against the wishes (or best interests) of the community we're trying to save. That's why we need suggestions and ideas which allow us to attract and retain more players without reverting to a system which was not working. We need to hear all the voices in our varied community if we hope to turn Alacrity into what we all know it can be.

What I think is that instead of referral contests, which trigger cheating, Alacrity should give out rewards for how many members you have gotten to join. :D <br /> <br /> I'm positive people'll still cheat this way, but this would make things a lot easier.