Decline in playerbase

[animaddness]

Recently, I think everyone has been feeling a steady decline in the playerbase. To be more specific, I've felt it this year. Maybe now that it is summer, it's even worse than general but still I believe there should be some rebalancing needing.

 

So my suggestion is just to alter the views ratios needed just a little bit for the eggs. I generally use 3 hatcheries open to hatch ER eggs with no previous views, but lately it has proven impossible to hatch them for under 4-5 hours, while normally on slower seasons it has taken me about 1h. This is 4x times the regular.

 

Also yeah, I know I should just put them in beforehand but I do forget because I'm used to let them sit for a day so they don't get sick (though right now I don't know how sickness would be if I just put them right in).

 

Tell me what do you think guys? Does anyone else has had these troubles?

 

 

"Do we need a revival?" thread - big discussion on the playerbase change and suggestions to get more people in dc.

Edited August 24, 2016 by animaddness

[SkyWolf25]

Mmm, maybe it's because I've only been an active user for about 8 months, but I haven't felt user numbers declining this year. There always seems to be new forum members, and my eggs hatch right away when they hit 4 days left if I put them in 1 popular hatchery.

[animaddness]

Mmm, maybe it's because I've only been an active user for about 8 months, but I haven't felt user numbers declining this year. There always seems to be new forum members, and my eggs hatch right away when they hit 4 days left if I put them in 1 popular hatchery.

Well, yeah. If hey had the time to gain the numbers "organically", aka for a day or so, just 1 view would be needed to crack them at 4d.

 

The suggestion/question is mainly aimed at ER eggs with 0 views.

 

I'm also wondering if the neglecteds are affected by this (even though lower-timed eggs show up first).

[Paradisiske]

i've noticed that its harder to hatch er eggs because they just don't get enough views in a short amount of time

[AGYK]

I'm also wondering if the neglecteds are affected by this (even though lower-timed eggs show up first).

Slightly. Two specific breeds have issues getting the required viewcount. Doesn't seem to be as much of a problem during midday, though, and it only seems to be the two. All in all I'd say it's not a big deal for exps. (Can't say much more than that because of the ban on Neglected discussion.)

 

This discussion thread may be relevant. Giant discussion about whether things are actually slowing down. It doesn't perfectly cover this topic, since your suggestion is about actual mechanics changes, but it might be interesting.

[animaddness]

This discussion thread may be relevant. Giant discussion about whether things are actually slowing down. It doesn't perfectly cover this topic, since your suggestion is about actual mechanics changes, but it might be interesting.

Thank you for pointing this thread out! I'll put it in first post as a pointer to a more in-depth discussion of the playerbase changes and suggestion to bring more people in.

[Pokemonfan13]

Even if we ARE getting a smaller base, another way to solve your specific problem is to convince people to leave various fansites open in tabs, allowing them to autorefresh at a slow rate. If people don't do that, the main views source is random people viewing the site to use it and so looking at some to all ERs and some regular eggs and hatchlings.

[purplehaze]

Lower views in the fansites does not necessarily mean a lower player base, although it may. It just means less people are running the viewers that give the views that grow the dragons that live on our scrolls.

 

I always mention every chance I get that the fansites depend on us giving back views in order to work, but new players don't always realize that and think it is some kind of magic.

 

I see a lot of people talking about raising their dragons by not putting them in the sites until they are ER and then expecting them to hatch quickly. But I wonder if they are bothering to give views at any other time than when they have their own eggs in the ER.

[Amaterasu-sama]

Well there has been a decline but I think the worst phase has passed. If anything I am seeing little bit improvement recently. Some great things have been done to pull back players and several did come. Anyhow that is a separate discussion for another thread. (Or none since the last one is closed)

 

I pop my ERs into every hatchery that exists and still sometimes they can take hours to hatch. There is nothing you can do except sit and wait because there are only so many hatcheries to use. I think this topic needs some attention from TJ because I am not really sure how views work now or if they have been tweaked in background already. But yes, it would be nice to get some adjustments to stats requirements based on current traffic.

 

But mostly it's about users giving back to hatcheries and hatcheries also adapting to new environment.

[Fuzzbucket]

We've discussed this before - I honestly do not believe that there has been a decline in the player base. Nor have I had any issues hatching and growing.

[Jazeki]

This just might be the case for many other long term players. Because farming for Neglected does get boring after a while. Zombies are only possible during the week of Halloween.

Zombies are now possible year around.

 

Regarding this suggestion, I wouldn't mind the tinkering of views to help dragons grow faster, but I don't know how that will change anything with the ebb and flow of players.

[olympe]

Lower views in the fansites does not necessarily mean a lower player base, although it may. It just means less people are running the viewers that give the views that grow the dragons that live on our scrolls.

 

I always mention every chance I get that the fansites depend on us giving back views in order to work, but new players don't always realize that and think it is some kind of magic.

 

I see a lot of people talking about raising their dragons by not putting them in the sites until they are ER and then expecting them to hatch quickly. But I wonder if they are bothering to give views at any other time than when they have their own eggs in the ER.

This is very true indeed, regardless of whether there is an actual decline or not.

[Imzadi]

I see a lot of people talking about raising their dragons by not putting them in the sites until they are ER and then expecting them to hatch quickly. But I wonder if they are bothering to give views at any other time than when they have their own eggs in the ER.

I would like to think most do, but am not really that optimistic. Last night there were nearly 300 ER eggs in aond and 25 people online, including me with no ERs. If every person using the ER had a full complement of 7 ER eggs, it should have been more like 45. And most people tend to use more than one ER. Maybe some of them were running valley sherwood, etc, instead, but I suspect a lot of dump and run is more likely

 

I never have sick eggs/hatchies (except certain tinselly/shimmery things) and I have not needed to ER anything except for those, AP catches and experiments. I really do not think a change in mechanics is needed. We could use more people stepping and doing their share

[VixenDra]

it's after 2pm and there are just 620 people online in the game itself... in Europe it's around 8pm(the most occupied time) and it's a release time going on! And people needing to catch new batch of eggs(1st hatched already).

I remember seing around 1200-1400 players online in the far past...

 

And yeah, I've also noticed it's much more difficult to hatch ERs recently... It hasn't been so in the past (and I'm not an old player, I'm here for about 3,5 years)

 

I'm all for reducing the number of required UVs, and maybe even the Views a little...

 

When I have an ER I add it to all hatcheries in the Wiki.. yet still they take much longer to hatch than in the past with less hatcheries used:(

 

 

Also, reading about one of the potential reasons being lack of release of some particular dragon/s, I did notice that majority of released dragons recently are made by already in-cave artists in the hidden section, also very few came from the non-hidden completed list recently... If that tendency could be reduced than maybe...

but really, idk...

for now I think the required number of UVs should be lowered...

 

I'm also wondering... what if CB Golds and Silvers were not so ultra rare but just the regular rare?

While I'm not interested in replacing my couples of those 2 breeds again (from 2gens into CBs), I'm wondering if that's not one of those discouraging factors that cause some of the 'deserting' players leave?

For instance, they even breed very poorly, I've been using fertility for many of their weekly breedings and the porgenies are pathetically short, especially for the Gold: https://dragcave.net/progeny/OPSSc I'm wondering how hard it must be for non PB pairs to produce Golds for lineage projects...

 

also I've read how nearly impossible it is to breed older COMMONS from newer commons... If that breeding mechanics could be fixed, it may also reduce the number of possible reasons to stop playing.

 

I don't know...

I'm pretty happy with most of the changes being made to DC but seems there's still sth lacking that people are leaving so much while not enough of new players come to keep the numbers balanced or better, growing...

Edited August 24, 2016 by VixenDra

[Obscure_Trash]

Lower views in the fansites does not necessarily mean a lower player base, although it may. It just means less people are running the viewers that give the views that grow the dragons that live on our scrolls.

 

I always mention every chance I get that the fansites depend on us giving back views in order to work, but new players don't always realize that and think it is some kind of magic.

 

I see a lot of people talking about raising their dragons by not putting them in the sites until they are ER and then expecting them to hatch quickly. But I wonder if they are bothering to give views at any other time than when they have their own eggs in the ER.

I agree with this. People started saying they were observing less views from fansites for... at least a year now?

 

I think part of the problem with fansite activity and fansites is the stress that we put on ERs. 1) We have a constant stream of near-incuhatchable eggs from the AP which are typically not going to have views before they're picked up, as most as auto'd. 2) Not everyone is using fansites to consistently raise their dragons - I've seen multiple people say they just wait for their eggs to be ERs to stick them anywhere (and I've seen this confirmed when leaving AoND open the other night when my first batch of new eggs were hatched - at least half of the 200 - 300 ERs that I clicked on were NOT close to hatching because they had not been put in any fansite ahead of time). When most of us are eager to have eggs hatch ASAP, we're putting a lot of stress on fansites, particularly on the ERs. Eggs in the ER are usually naturally going to take longer to hatch because they don't have enough views - with a combo of auto'd AP grabs and people plain not using fansites for anything but the ER - and it requires quite a bit of refreshing to get them to hatch. When I consistently use fansites (don't wait to just ER my dragons), I don't typically have problems hatching them, stubborn breeds aside. It's ER'ing dragons that can take some time.

 

And I don't believe the fix required/necessary/preferred is to lower the amount of views needed to raise eggs.

 

Fact is, we are impatient. And I don't mean that as a bad thing. There are very few limits in this game, but we have a pretty limited amount of dragons we can raise at a time. We're eager to open up eggslots. I incubate all of my eggs (which also makes them more stubborn to hatch because incubating changes time left but not the egg's age!), and I daresay I'm not alone. We want things to hatch ASAP. As SOON as they hit 4 days left, we expect them to hatch.

 

But I do not believe that the views required for hatching is necessarily a problem. Because we ARE still raising eggs/hatchlings just fine. So it takes a little more time to hatch ERs? Annoying when you want things to hatch ASAP, sure, but not really an actual issue. Because we are still getting eggs to hatch. I think we just need to be willing to give views back to fansites and accept that hatching isn't instantaneous, especially with all those desirably low-time-but-no-views eggs in the AP.

 

I mean, I certainly wouldn't argue if TJ did want to lower the views and make it even easier to raise views, but I just don't see how long it takes to raise ERs as a big issue.

 

/this post is really ramble-y, sorry - having trouble articulately explaining what I want to say

[skwerl56767]

I agree that I think this is more of a community problem and not a playerbase problem, though I can see how the playerbase size contributes. I'm active on the forums, after all, but I only grab eggs anymore when there are new releases, and because of this I don't spend nearly as much time on fansites or DC itself as I used to, nor pay as much attention to my eggs (partially because I found a nifty method to hatch eggs without risking sickness like with the ER). I can imagine there are plenty of other players who do the same thing, because they're pretty much satisfied with their scrolls and see no need to be as active as they once were, which results with a lot less people spending time on DC and doing more things on the forums or on other sites. What VixenDra said about rares could also be contributing; I know I would be frustrated if I started a lineage project that was going nowhere, because the breeding ratios are out of wack. Though, I have a feeling that we can't do much about this...

 

I think if we encourage people to spend more time on fansites eggs will receive the attention they need too. Just yesterday I spent an hour or two on Silvi's Lair cleaning out their hatching sands (less than four-day-old eggs) section, because there were over 200 eggs! Part of this is because of the new release, and because we have more dragons to collect people are flooding the fansites with the new breeds, but part of it is also that we throw our eggs into fansites and expect them to hatch without difficulties, instead of helping the fansite by viewing others' dragons so our dragons have a better chance of showing up on other people's screens and receiving views. I admit I'm guilty of this inactivity... but if more people leave some tabs open and have auto-refresh enabled for fansites, I'm pretty sure eggs and hatchlings will start growing the way they used to.

[Paradisiske]

how do you enable auto refresh?

[purplehaze]

Most of the sites have their own viewer that auto refreshes. On some of them you can pick how many eggs you want up at a time and how often you want it to refresh. Then you just leave that tab open while you go and do other things in another tab or another window. I'm not sure if it is possible on mobile because I don't use that.

[Obscure_Trash]

Most of the sites have their own viewer that auto refreshes. On some of them you can pick how many eggs you want up at a time and how often you want it to refresh. Then you just leave that tab open while you go and do other things in another tab or another window. I'm not sure if it is possible on mobile because I don't use that.

This is probably another thing to consider. A lot more people are using mobile nowadays, and I know none of my mobile devices can really handle refreshing these fansites in the background, and it's not something I'm likely to sit there and leave on my phone while I'm doing other things.

[Pokemonfan13]

That is an interesting point. But how many of those mobile users don't have a computer at all? If the person prefers mobile for DC stuff, that doesn't prevent them from leaving a hatchery or two (or all of them) autorefreshing on their PC.

 

I personally have AOND, Silvi's, EATW, and Sherwood going on slow autorefresh (10 to 15 minutes). (EATW on a different page that only has a few dragons on it because their main viewing page doesn't have any refresh controls)

[Endyr_Serifi]

Ah I'm a mobile user, however I do have a computer. Two actually. The only bad thing about them is... Ones a useless MacBook Air considering I was an idiot and deleted the wrong file making it unusable, and the other is a 2007 toshiba that can't handle being on for 20 minutes without overheating or being so slow that it freezes. Then there's my internet issue but I won't get into that. But I can say this, I've noticed many active people stop posting, and that concerns me a bit. Not only for the eggs, but the entire site...

[TJ09]

I can say a few things about this. I don't know if I understand what the suggestion is here, but assuming it's "hatching/maturation numbers should be lessened:"

• The daily peak number of users online is pretty much the same as it's been for the two-ish years for which I have history readily available. The "spike" caused by the recent release is above the maximum number of users online for most of last summer.
• The numbers relating to views/unique views/clicks have been pretty much the same for all ten years of the site. This means that they worked even when the site was much smaller than it is now.
• Over half of active users have logged in from both desktop and mobile at least once (though over half of visits to the site are from desktop). Very few people seem to be mobile-only. I don't know how this is related, but I see people discussing it, so.

[Duskspoken]

Recently, I think everyone has been feeling a steady decline in the playerbase. To be more specific, I've felt it this year. Maybe now that it is summer, it's even worse than general but still I believe there should be some rebalancing needing.

 

So my suggestion is just to alter the views ratios needed just a little bit for the eggs. I generally use 3 hatcheries open to hatch ER eggs with no previous views, but lately it has proven impossible to hatch them for under 4-5 hours, while normally on slower seasons it has taken me about 1h. This is 4x times the regular.

 

Also yeah, I know I should just put them in beforehand but I do forget because I'm used to let them sit for a day so they don't get sick (though right now I don't know how sickness would be if I just put them right in).

 

Tell me what do you think guys? Does anyone else has had these troubles?

 

 

"Do we need a revival?" thread - big discussion on the playerbase change and suggestions to get more people in dc.

I've been playing since 08 and my dragons are still getting roughly the same amount of views/unique views now as they did then and in between. People leave but people join. One thing that would solve your problem would to put things into hatcheries sooner. Another use click sites not just view sites. Clicks are more important than people think they are.

[SlyFox]

Well, I'm a new member, so maybe telling how my eggs are doing might help put into perspective how the view/click sites are doing with all of this these days... I hope.

 

I'll just use one egg as an example. I caught a newer orange magical aura egg on the 23rd, used incubate, then tossed it into no less than 6 click sites that are listed for DC. Right now, it's 2:13 am on the 25 and my egg has 4 days and 0 hours left to hatch and has less than 1000 views. It also isn't going through its cracking sequence as fast as I've seen some do. Maybe one could say it's the type of egg, but I mean... really? In 6 sites for 2 full days and less than 1000 regular views? That seems a little low to me.

 

My other eggs aren't fairing much better. I usually have to slam them all into ERs immediately at 4 days 0 hours to get the views up slightly to 1000 or slightly over, UVs would probably be around 500 by that time.

 

I would have to suggest that the UVs needed to hatch an egg, specifically, should be lowered.

 

Just my two cents worth here. If it's a lower player base, or people just not giving back to the view/click sites, then we need to crusade to get people to understand how they're needed, I guess.

[Obscure_Trash]

I can say a few things about this. I don't know if I understand what the suggestion is here, but assuming it's "hatching/maturation numbers should be lessened:"

The daily peak number of users online is pretty much the same as it's been for the two-ish years for which I have history readily available. The "spike" caused by the recent release is above the maximum number of users online for most of last summer.

The numbers relating to views/unique views/clicks have been pretty much the same for all ten years of the site. This means that they worked even when the site was much smaller than it is now.

Over half of active users have logged in from both desktop and mobile at least once (though over half of visits to the site are from desktop). Very few people seem to be mobile-only. I don't know how this is related, but I see people discussing it, so.

Interesting. Thanks, TJ!

 

This cements my opinion on leaving things as is. A little patience goes a long way.

 

I'll just use one egg as an example. I caught a newer orange magical aura egg on the 23rd, used incubate, then tossed it into no less than 6 click sites that are listed for DC. Right now, it's 2:13 am on the 25 and my egg has 4 days and 0 hours left to hatch and has less than 1000 views. It also isn't going through its cracking sequence as fast as I've seen some do. Maybe one could say it's the type of egg, but I mean... really? In 6 sites for 2 full days and less than 1000 regular views? That seems a little low to me.

 

My other eggs aren't fairing much better. I usually have to slam them all into ERs immediately at 4 days 0 hours to get the views up slightly to 1000 or slightly over, UVs would probably be around 500 by that time.

 

Six! I use four, and I think that's a lot. xP

 

I add my eggs to a lower time site as soon as I get them. Then when they're half a day to a day old (I wait until they're a day old during new releases when there is more traffic), I add them to the other three fansites. OR I add them to two at around half a day or more old, then add them to the highest traffic fansite after they're a day old.

 

So far, the only dragons that haven't hatched as soon as they hit 4 days old with incubate are the stubborn breeds, such as prizes (and luminas).

I will add that I did add my luminati to more fansites earlier than my other eggs. Yet somehow one of my kingcrownes ended up with more views and unique views than it, so there is a certain luck (or lack of luck!) if one egg goes through the fansite rotator less than the others - or perhaps in your case, your scroll ended up getting rotated less than others'.

 

But I would still disagree with lowering unique views because your eggs are still hatching pretty soon after they're incubated to 4 days, right?

 

I think especially if we use incubate, we have to be prepared for eggs to be slightly more stubborn. Remember incubate changes the days left, but not the age, and the older an egg is, the more stats it's going to need to hatch. =)

Edited August 25, 2016 by SockPuppet Strangler