The Ratios

[airaani]

NEW UPDATE 4/30/13

It has been a long time since I made this post and honestly I had forgotten about it until I received a request to add the above poll.

A lot has changed in the cave since I made this post. It seems as if a lot of the commons have straightened themselves out quite a bit--for all I know, TJ has done exactly what I was proposing. I don't know if this is even an issue anymore, what do you guys think?

 

Since so many people still seem to be misunderstanding the point I am trying to make, I've thought of another way to phrase it.

As I understand it, what the ratios do (or did?) was say that, for example, black dragons and albino dragons should both be 9% of all dragons. But before the ratios were strictly enforced, black dragons were collected much more than albinos, resulting in 12% of the population being black dragons and 6% being albino dragons. The ratios say, oh no! there are too many black dragons and thus, black dragons are harder to breed/catch. And the ratios say, oh no! there aren't enough albino dragons, and the cave starts spewing them because they aren't being bred enough to make up the difference.

What I am suggesting is that the ratios say, black dragons and albino dragons should each be 9% OF NEW DRAGONS BRED/PRODUCED BY THE CAVE.

Of course there should be ratios, I never said that I wanted to do away with them! I understand that, given free reign, we would pick what we want, breeding our favorite breeds into overpopulation and ignoring others--and that should not be allowed. But rather than pushing us for the overpopulation that was allowed before, make the ratios have to do with what dragons are being produced, not with what dragons are already in existence.

 

Now, I do not know how the ratios are currently calculated. I can only use the information that I have: previous statements by TJ stating that the ratios take into account the dragons grown in the last year.

 

ADDING AN UPDATE BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE MISUNDERSTANDING ME

I am not advocating for rares being easier to get. I accept and even prefer that a ratio be enforced of a certain number of commons, to a certain number of uncommons, to a certain number of rares.

The ratios I am talking about are the ones between breeds within these categories, the ones that cause "overpopulated" breeds to be hard to find, because the cave produces less of these eggs based on the adults in existence (only over the last year, as I understand it).

I am not suggesting doing away with the ratios entirely.

I am not suggesting the CB and bred ratios be made independent.

Please read my post to see what it is I am suggesting

 

I have a half request, half question.

Would it be possible to alter the way the ratios work? Now hear me out...

Currently, which eggs are produced is based on what dragons are already in existence.

This means that popular breeds get less common as people collect more of them. It also means that when new breeds come out, they flood the cave because there are so few of them in contrast to how many there are of older breeds of similar rarity.

So the question (and resulting suggestion) is, why do the eggs produced depend on what dragons are in existence? Could they not just depend on the rarity of the breed?

If a breed is "common," shouldn't it be easy to find? Just as easy to find as any other common? I have never been able to figure out why the fact that there are a lot of blacks already should make them harder to find now. If Nocturnes and Stripes are both "commons", why aren't the equally easy to catch/breed?

I do *not* suggest making the rares easier to get. They are rare for a reason, and if everything were easy to get there would be no challenge. But let the ratios just work with rarity--make the commons common, the uncommons uncommon, the rares rare, and maybe even some ultra-rares ultra-rare. Make them all different even--maybe greens and reds, while both commons, have slightly different numbers. But the way it's set up right now, with the ratios bound to what's already in existence, is the *opposite* of supply and demand--it's supplying what isn't demanded! And it doesn't make sense.

So, can we unbind the ratios from the dragons in existence, and return the rarities to normal?

 

A little more specific version of what I mean:

There SHOULD be a ratio of commons to uncommons to rares. An example might be 800 commons:180 uncommons:20 rares. The cave would only produce rares when there were enough commons and uncommons in existence.

However, the commons that are produces should be evenly split amongst the available common breeds, rather than the number of each breed being dependent on the number of adults of that breed in the last year.

Edited May 1, 2013 by airaani

[olympe]

Definitely a can of worms. Still, I agree with the suggestion, and I'd like to add a little idea of my own that I discussed with a couple of people. But it will be a long post...

 

First of all, make ratios independent of breeding and the number of dragons on people's scrolls, and make them work like this:

 

Use fixed rarities for rares, uncommons and unbreedables. Since they usually get snatched up pretty quickly, I don't see a problem with that.

 

Now, about commons...

 

I've seen many suggestions to change the ratios according to the time the egg sits in the cave. Personally, I'm afraid that measuring the time of up to 18 eggs permanently might take a little too much in the way of resources. (Of course, I don't know much about programming, and I might be way off base here.) But what if, instead, the ratio of a common dragon always got decreased if there were three eggs of that kind sitting in one biome?

 

Like this: Let's start with an assumed common:common ratio of 100 : 100 (for each and every common breed there is). Now, there are three guardians sitting in the alpine biome. From that point on, the three eggs get taken to the wilderness to be raised there (or to a "cave scroll" to be put in the AP three days later, or they just get deleted or stay where they are until they are picked up - it doesn't really matter what happens to the blocker eggs), and the ratio of guardians towards all other common breeds gets adjusted to 99 guardians to 100 of all others. Now, there are 3 neotropicals sitting in the jungle, an the ratios get adjusted to 99 guardians and neos to 100 of all other commons.

 

Easy, right? But there is one catch. If things work that way, the ratios will get skewed sooner or later because they cannot be raised any more. So, we need to adjust upwards, too. Since there are roughly 56 common breeds (including all breedables but trios and rares, but no color morphs), I'd say that, whenever the ratios have been adjusted 56 times (once for each common breed dropping in the cave), all ratios get 1 added to them.

 

So, if all 56 adjustments happened to the regular cave blockers (neos, canopies, guardians, nocturnes, stones, pebbles, balloons, water walkers), their ratios will have been lowered by 7 points each, if the adjustment happened to all of them in equal measure. As a result, we'd have a ratio of 93 caveblockers to 100 of all other breeds. Now, we get the upwards adjustment, and we'll be at 94 caveblockers to 101 of all other breeds.

 

With only 5 cycles of this, you'll have lowered the ratios of cave blockers to other commons to 70 caveblockers to 105 other commons, and with no more than 10 cycles, it will be 40 to 110. By then, the cave blockers will probably be other breeds... Since ratios get upped every once in a while, no dragon will permanently leave the cave, either.

 

This should be simple enough to code, it's obviously effective, self-adjusting and caters to the players' demands. So what's not to like?

 

(Coding would say something like this (in computerese):

1) If new egg goes to a biome, check if it is of the same breed as the two other eggs there. If not, go ahead as usual.

2) If there are three eggs of the same breed, continue as detailed below:

- take the three eggs of breed X to wilderness

- lower ratio of breed X by one

- set counter +1 (for counting the number of adjustments)

- if the counter has reached 56 (number of common breeds), increase all ratios by one and set the counter to 0.)

 

Of course, this needs another little adjustment for new releases. Maybe have them count as another group (super-commons) for a day up to a week, then put them in with the regular common breeds (with a starting ratio of 100) to have them adjusted according to the players' preference.

 

 

Now, about breeding. Breeding will have to work independently of cave drops, with fixed ratios for success, depending on what kind of pairing you breed. Please bear in mind that I chose the numbers voluntarily, and that they're just there to give you an example, not to represent the actual numbers needed.

 

Suggested ratios for breeding:

 

common x common: 50% success; either breed has a 50% ratio of breeding true.

common x uncommon: 50% success, 80% : 20% ratio

common x rare: 50% success, 95% : 5% ratio

 

uncommon x uncommon: 20% success: 50% : 50% (will give you the same chance of breeding an uncommon as two common x uncommon breedings)

uncommon x rare: 12.5% success; 80% : 20% ratio (same chance of breeding an uncommon or rare as one common x uncommon and one common x rare breeding put together)

rare x rare: 5% success; 50% for each rare breed involved

 

And, since we cannot forget about holidays (out of season) or frills (which are always kind of "out of season"):

holiday x common: 50% success

holiday x uncommon: 10% success

holiday x rare: 2.5% success

(once again, the success ratios reflect the breeding ratios of commons/uncommon/rares when bred with a common.)

 

So, in essence, every time you breed one common dragon to whatever, you have a chance of 50% to get an egg out of the breeding attempt. If you breed a rare, you'll have a 2.5% chance to get a rare egg out of it (5% if you breed rare x rare, since this effectively breeds two rares). If you breed an uncommon in any combination, you have a 10% chance of getting an uncommon egg (20% for uncommon x uncommon, since you effectively breed two uncommons).

 

Overall, this way breeding is pretty easy for players to handle. If you don't want breed X, don't breed it.

 

Any comments, ideas, suggestions?

[~!~]

I've seen many suggestions to change the ratios according to the time the egg sits in the cave.

Yes, and they've all come from me.

 

The one flaw I see with your "all three at once" idea is that what if there are two equally unwanted breeds in a biome? Having the desert blocked by two Spitfires and a Stone is just as bad as three Spitfires, for the people hunting for Blacks and Silvers. This would be particularly bad with dragons that appear in lots of biomes, like Grays. They don't get picked up any faster than one-biome blockers, like Spitfires, but they are much less likely to appear three times at once in a single biome.

[Rally Vincent]

A simple question: Do we know if ratios aren't already adjusted from time to time? I have wondered about that ever since noticing that Balloon Dragons aren't quite as common as they were "back then".

 

I am afraid that adjusting ratios won't work as good as all these suggestions hope they will because I don't think that now more "desirable" will stay "desirable" if their numbers increase. At some point, there are those breed we all have enough dragons on our scroll, and those two breeds we really hoard and/or need for lineages. My guess is that biomes will always be blocked by some breeds, reagrdless of their "inner ratio inbetween the common group".

 

I think it will work better to make certain breeds more desirable, be it via a useful BSA or due to the "Cave Scroll" idea.

[TJ09]

I do *not* suggest making the rares easier to get. They are rare for a reason, and if everything were easy to get there would be no challenge. But let the ratios just work with rarity--make the commons common, the uncommons uncommon, the rares rare, and maybe even some ultra-rares ultra-rare. Make them all different even--maybe greens and reds, while both commons, have slightly different numbers. But the way it's set up right now, with the ratios bound to what's already in existence, is the *opposite* of supply and demand--it's supplying what isn't demanded! And it doesn't make sense.

But it will make rares easier to get. It will mean people with many gold dragons will be able to easily hoard more, AKA once you have a sizeable collection of golds, breeding them will produce a good number more golds each week.

 

How do I know this will actually happen? As I've said elsewhere, the reason golds, silvers, and blacks are overpopulated right now is because the ratios weren't really enforced for breeding.

In other words, when the ratios were effectively disabled, the population of desirable dragons shot up. When the ratios were effectively disabled, rares ceased to be rare and were rather easy to get. Yes, CB golds and such were still difficult to get, but that's only because CB eggs properly obeyed the ratios.

[olympe]

Yes, and they've all come from me.

 

The one flaw I see with your "all three at once" idea is that what if there are two equally unwanted breeds in a biome?  Having the desert blocked by two Spitfires and a Stone is just as bad as three Spitfires, for the people hunting for Blacks and Silvers.  This would be particularly bad with dragons that appear in lots of biomes, like Grays.  They don't get picked up any faster than one-biome blockers, like Spitfires, but they are much less likely to appear three times at once in a single biome.

Well, if the desert is blocked by two spitfires and one stone, a strategical player might grab the stone and hope for another spitfire. Sure, it won't always work, but it's a chance to directly influence the ratios. (Or maybe it would be better if the system looked for two eggs of the same breed or the same description in one biome?)

 

A simple question: Do we know if ratios aren't already adjusted from time to time? I have wondered about that ever since noticing that Balloon Dragons aren't quite as common as they were "back then".

 

I am afraid that adjusting ratios won't work as good as all these suggestions hope they will because I don't think that now more "desirable" will stay "desirable" if their numbers increase. At some point, there are those breed we all have enough dragons on our scroll, and those two breeds we really hoard and/or need for lineages. My guess is that biomes will always be blocked by some breeds, reagrdless of their "inner ratio inbetween the common group".

 

I think it will work better to make certain breeds more desirable, be it via a useful BSA or due to the "Cave Scroll" idea.

 

Well, adjusting the ratios from time to time - meaning every few months to every few years - won't work as well as a system that constantly adjusts the ratios, and for obvious reasons. A system that adjusts the ratios constantly and automatically is also able to react to changes in demand, so if (for example) nebulas were very much desired now, but would turn into blockers later on, the ratios would adjust to produce fewer nebulas. The system I proposed works both ways, be it by decreasing or increasing ratios.

 

Making certain breeds more desirable probably won't work as well as you think, either. There are hardly any interesting BSAs left, and if we allow for duplicates (like variations on incubate), we'll need fewer dragons of each breed with a BSA. In any case, you won't need an endless amount of dragons of any breed to be able to use their BSA on a regular basis. You can't even take in that many ER eggs of blocker breeds because we still have scroll limits, which you can easily fill with the use of incubate. That's why I prefer the ratio adjustment to "making breeds more desirable".

 

But it will make rares easier to get. It will mean people with many gold dragons will be able to easily hoard more, AKA once you have a sizeable collection of golds, breeding them will produce a good number more golds each week.

Even if you just adjust the ratios of the commons towards each other, but leave the number of commons (overall) compared to the number of rares the same as now?

Edited August 13, 2011 by olympe

[libby2999]

I do agree with this. As eggs will be dropped depending on the rarerty not how many is out there. And atleast your not trying to get rares thrun at your face. You just want commons to be more like commons and such.

 

But it will make rares easier to get. It will mean people with many gold dragons will be able to easily hoard more, AKA once you have a sizeable collection of golds, breeding them will produce a good number more golds each week.

 

That quote is from TJ in this thread. There was also another thread that TJ has flat out said there is no such thing as hording! (I'll go see if I can find it) and those people who have raised those golds did in face try hard in order to get those golds.

Edited August 13, 2011 by libby2999

[Rally Vincent]

Making certain breeds more desirable probably won't work as well as you think, either. There are hardly any interesting BSAs left, and if we allow for duplicates (like variations on incubate), we'll need fewer dragons of each breed with a BSA. In any case, you won't need an endless amount of dragons of any breed to be able to use their BSA on a regular basis. You can't even take in that many ER eggs of blocker breeds because we still have scroll limits, which you can easily fill with the use of incubate.

I have 27 adult reds, and I still am waiting for incubates to get ready all the time. And my hatchling slots are never filled to the max because I don't have enough incubates. I probably would need 40-45 reds to make that possible.

 

You don't see reds blocking the cave, right? Every new player needs a similar amount of reds if playing to the max. The need of reds is overproportinal to other common breeds. If everyone of us would need 45 neotropicals, that would be a huge help for the ratios even without tweaking, just with a BSA.

 

And, I still think that ER eggs of any breed will get take from the AP as fast as they appear, and be it just to make best use of the limits.

[HeatherMarie]

But it will make rares easier to get. It will mean people with many gold dragons will be able to easily hoard more, AKA once you have a sizeable collection of golds, breeding them will produce a good number more golds each week.

Does this mean that there now *is* such a thing as hoarding in DC? Many of us have been under the assumption, because of what you've said in the past, that hoarding simply doesn't exist in DC because the whole *point* of the game is grabbing dragons.

 

If this has changed, I'd like to know.

[OMGitsKairi]

Does this mean that there now *is* such a thing as hoarding in DC? Many of us have been under the assumption, because of what you've said in the past, that hoarding simply doesn't exist in DC because the whole *point* of the game is grabbing dragons.

 

If this has changed, I'd like to know.

This is what I've heard a dozen times, so I'd like to know if it's changed as well.

[TJ09]

Officially, there is no such thing, but it'd be naive to claim that users don't believe the concept of hoarding exists.

 

Also, sock is right.

Edited August 14, 2011 by TJ09

[Obscure_Trash]

This is what I've heard a dozen times, so I'd like to know if it's changed as well.

I took it to mean that this suggestion would just be giving the same people better chances at getting rares, rather than spreading the wealth, as seems the purpose of this suggestion (to bring back what people want more). Not that hoarding is bad, only that it won't fix the problems people are having. o3o

 

Of course, I'm not TJ, so take that with a grain of salt. /shrug

 

EDIT: Haha, 'd. Nevermind then. x3

Edited August 14, 2011 by SockPuppet Strangler

[airaani]

But it will make rares easier to get. It will mean people with many gold dragons will be able to easily hoard more, AKA once you have a sizeable collection of golds, breeding them will produce a good number more golds each week.

 

How do I know this will actually happen? As I've said elsewhere, the reason golds, silvers, and blacks are overpopulated right now is because the ratios weren't really enforced for breeding.

In other words, when the ratios were effectively disabled, the population of desirable dragons shot up. When the ratios were effectively disabled, rares ceased to be rare and were rather easy to get. Yes, CB golds and such were still difficult to get, but that's only because CB eggs properly obeyed the ratios.

You are misunderstanding me. Mess with the rare percentage as much as you like. The rares should be rare--this is not the point of this suggestion. The point is that how hard it is to find something should be dependent on its rarity--NOT on how many of them are in existence. Silvers and golds should be hard to get, and if a new rare comes out, it should be the same rarity. Perhaps a few days of slightly more common drops would make sense, but it doesn't make sense for the rarity to be skewed for months because there are fewer of them in existence--if they're rare, they should be hard to find.

But this is also true for commons. If a new common comes out, it should be the *same* rarity as the old commons--common! It should be easy to catch and breed, because it's common! Conversely, old commons should still be common, even if people have a lot of them. They should still drop in the cave, they should still be breedable.

Uncommons--new and old--should be harder to find than commons, but easier than rares.

In what way would this make rares easier to get?

 

Edit: I also want to clarify--this request is not trying to "make more of what people want more." Please read what I said carefully...I want rares to be rare, uncommons to be uncommon, and commons to be common.

Edited August 14, 2011 by airaani

[olympe]

TJ, as airaani pointed out, the idea is not to make rares less rare, but to make blacks and vines and nebulas and the like less rare. Right now, they are pretty hard to get, even to breed - and they are supposed to be commons, and thus easy to get. Other commons are so "easy to get" that they block the various biomes because the cave produces more of them than people actually want to raise.

 

The question is: Does it really matter if one metallics comes on 50 of each common breed (or whatever the actual ratios are), or would they be just as rare if there were 50*60 common dragons (if we assume that there are 60 common breeds) for every rare? The actual ratios of rares towards commons would still be the same, making rares just as rare as before - but the latter would give us players more of a choice as to which commons we actually raise. If people want more blacks than greys, more pinks than flamingos or more stripes than spitfires, why not?

[mou325]

yes, i would love to see a stipe in cb. i've played for about 3month now and i have only ever seen 4 black and 1 stripe. its for unfortunate that stripes happened to be a breed i like. the eggs look epic

[Ayelldee]

I have to go along, the fact that I'm able to breed more Trios than either Blacks OR Stripes is just ludicrous - Blacks and Strips are SUPPOSED to be Commons, the Trios are supposedly UNcommon - but try getting a Black or Stripe.

 

I'll not even go INTO my trying to successfully breed (let alone snag a CB) Metallic. As I've said ( a LOT), I got my first Silver in '08, she bred ONE SIlver egg shortly thereafter, and not ONE Metallic since - it's the same story for my other Metallics too - they've not given me ONE Metallic egg. Not a ONE. Is THAT rare enough forya????

[olympe]

Well, most of your metallics seem rather young, and they don't have much in the way of offspring in the first place, making it look like you don't breed them all that often.

[Dianacat777]

I can only guess; I'm not omniscient. But if you ask me, the reason why CB blacks, vines, stripes, and nebulae are so rare is because people are and were constantly breeding them. The former two for alts, the latter two for lineage projects. Actually, blacks were popular in both. To compensate, the cave doesn't make many CBs of them. The massive breeding of these caused them to be hugely overpopulated, but even when the ratios even out, they're still going to be hard-to-find CBs because people will still be breeding them like rabbits.* Other common breeds were not so popular - atm, seems to be nocturnes, stones, spitfires, mints, guardians, about half the breeds in the Coast biome, and maybe canopies - and weren't bred as extensively, which means the cave is trying to even things out. The fact that people grab commons and earthquake them doesn't help, because those eggs just come back two weeks later to sit in front of the cave.

 

Having said that... I find it irritating that commons have become rares in such sense. (I don't think CB nebulae are terribly hard to find, and I keep impulsing them, but blacks and stripes are definitely few and far between in the cave.) I'm talking about things I don't understand, but would it be possible to set the ratios so a certain percent of the new egg population for each breed had to come from the cave, rather than breeding? It would make cb metallics 'easier' to find without creating more of them as well. Also, it would help the hoarding problem, per se. I have a few golds and silvers that I breed regularly (haven't gotten a metallic egg in ages), but I'm not particularly fond of either breed, so I never tried to create an army of them. But if some eggs were set aside to come from the cave, it could prevent all of the metallic egg 'slots' being filled by an old user with an army's mass breed.

 

I guess I could be called a hoarder myself, but I got my army of vampires back when they were actually obtainable, and I was constantly filling the AP with both repulses and keeps that I abandoned. You could probably blame me now for part of the dry spell, but that's besides the point

 

*When I was a newer player, cb blacks and vines were both common and utterly unwanted. I'd abandoned so many of them ; But if I'm correctly interpreting what TJ said, this was because breeding didn't really have a limit, and at that time, everyone and their mother wanted alts. Caveborns had no chance of being alts, so people just tossed them aside in the frenzied alt lotto that happened right after the alt eggs were removed. It wasn't uncommon to see the AP completely walled by black and vine eggs.

My memory's a bit hazy, but it seems like blacks and vines jumped up the rarity scale when the progeny page was created. Now that you could actually see lineages at a glance, people started caring about how pretty their dragons looked, and decided that they still wanted alts, but they wanted pretty, even-gen, non-inbred, purebred alts, and the like. So everyone wanted to start clean slates and stairways with caveborns.

Edited August 14, 2011 by Dianacat777

[~!~]

My memory's a bit hazy, but it seems like blacks and vines jumped up the rarity scale when the progeny page was created. Now that you could actually see lineages at a glance, people started caring about how pretty their dragons looked, and decided that they still wanted alts, but they wanted pretty, even-gen, non-inbred, purebred alts, and the like. So everyone wanted to start clean slates and stairways with caveborns.

If I were to venture a guess, I'd think CB Blacks and Vines first started being rare because once everybody managed to get an alt. Black, the demand for ugly-lineaged alt. Blacks went way down, and now people only wanted to collect pretty-lineaged alt. Blacks. I think it goes the same way for every rare or uncommon breed once it's added. And, now that CB Blacks are hard to get, they have attained their own value (i.e., a Gold with a Black parent is worth more than one with a Dorsal parent.)

 

Heck, I can't trade an ugly-lineaged Thunder for anything.

[elynne]

I remember the constant AP wall of blacks and vines, too--I have my own army of black dragons, from when I liked them and picked them up off the AP constantly, and an army of frozen vine and black hatchlings off the AP as well.

 

I could be called a "hoarder" in that I have an army of silvers--39 of them, I think--from when they bred consistently; I usually added one to my army every week. Since I came back from DC a few months ago, I've stopped even trying to breed them, except for once a month when I'm hoping to produce a prize for the Common Collectors' Competition. Both months, I bred all of them, even the ones that are inbred, and produced--0 silver eggs. If the object was to make them -really- rare, it's succeeded.

 

But the impossible rarity of certain "common" breeds is just silly. Reds are -supposed- to be common, regardless of how much their breed-specific BSA is wanted. I have an army of reds myself, because I started breeding them before their BSA was activated, and have been breeding them vigorously. Now that I'm getting up to as many of them as I wanted... I'm having difficulty breeding any more, when I wanted them to give/trade away. The demand is still there; but the supply of these "common" dragons has evaporated.

 

The comment about supply and demand being inverted in DC is exactly spot on. For the rares and uncommon--yes, they're supposed to be rare and uncommon; nobody is arguing for more silvers (except possibly me). But when all the biomes are constantly clogged with spitfires, pebbles, waterhorses, guardians, or daydreams, and it's virtually impossible to find or even breed blacks, reds, nebulas, whites, or stripes, which are all supposed to be -common-, it might be a signal that something needs adjusting somewhere.

[Obscure_Trash]

TJ, as airaani pointed out, the idea is not to make rares less rare, but to make blacks and vines and nebulas and the like less rare.

Which is great (I wish we could do something to help user frustration, but I don't know how myself), but here's what I saw in this thread:

"Let's re-start ratios and see if we can bring some breeds back."

"But wouldn't this make rares more common?"

"That's not the point."

"But it would make rares more common."

"Then fix it."

 

Which doesn't exactly help solve the problem. Dx

[~!~]

The comment about supply and demand being inverted in DC is exactly spot on. For the rares and uncommon--yes, they're supposed to be rare and uncommon; nobody is arguing for more silvers (except possibly me). But when all the biomes are constantly clogged with spitfires, pebbles, waterhorses, guardians, or daydreams, and it's virtually impossible to find or even breed blacks, reds, nebulas, whites, or stripes, which are all supposed to be -common-, it might be a signal that something needs adjusting somewhere.

Supply and demand aren't inverted. I mean, they are in terms of rare and uncommon dragons, because the reason demand is high is because supply is low. (Otherwise, do you think metallics would be more popular than trios? I think not.) Supply is exactly equal (or, at least, that's the goal) for every breed on each rarity level. Demand has nothing to do with it.

 

And it seems like it'd be pretty easy to fix it so that it doesn't make rares more common--don't re-start their ratios. Keep them based on whatever they're based on now. Or, perhaps, deal with rares being more common for a bit. They'll never be as common enough for everyone to get as many as they like, and DC has weathered fluctuations in rarity before.

[Dianacat777]

The problem with rares becoming more common for a bit is that they become nigh-freaking-impossible to find for a while later. We've seen this before. They're never common enough for the people that don't have rares, and some of them will always be complaining and demanding more, while everyone will be upset when metallics go temporarily AWOL.

 

Still, I don't understand why some ratios could be altered or changed in nature while others were left unaffected.

Edited August 14, 2011 by Dianacat777

[elynne]

Supply and demand aren't inverted.  I mean, they are in terms of rare and uncommon dragons, because the reason demand is high is because supply is low.  Supply is exactly equal (or, at least, that's the goal) for every breed on each rarity level.  Demand has nothing to do with it.

But the way it's set up right now, with the ratios bound to what's already in existence, is the *opposite* of supply and demand--it's supplying what isn't demanded!

 

From the first post to this thread.

 

Perhaps, instead of talking about overall populations as "common" or "uncommon" or whatever, we should be talking about the real issue: the relative -availability- of various eggs. Because of the ways the ratios are set, there are much fewer black or stripe eggs -available- (either through the cave or breeding) than other breeds that are supposedly "equally common." This is the real problem. If I started my scroll on day one and collected only red dragons, and had over 400 of them and immediately quit, and ten other people had done the same thing, it would be even more impossible for anybody else to get a new one--for the sake of people who aren't currently active at all. The drop/breeding rate of "common" species being linked to what -already exists- on people's scrolls is the problem.

 

This "ratio balance" thing is a good idea in theory, but in practice, it's -guaranteed- to have the opposite effect: by making an artificial imbalance of certain highly desireable commons, it will mean that new eggs of these breeds will -continue- to be scarce, while the cave will continue to be blocked with "undesireable" breeds indefinitely.

 

Perhaps the ratios could be adjusted to only account for "newer" dragons--those that were grown within the last year, for example? Or even within the last couple of months? That would allow the ratios to readjust for -current- demand; it wouldn't affect the rares, since the ratios of rares have been (evidently) correct for the last few months anyway. It would also make the Cave more flexible in supplying CB or bred eggs to match the interests of what players want -now-, rather than averaging out everything that has ever been caught in the last several years.

 

No, the point is not to match supply to demand; but the point of the game is to keep people coming back and playing. I know I stopped playing for several months because I couldn't get some of the breeds I wanted. How much worse is it for new people now, when they catch a dozen Spitfires and Canopies and then realize that they will never be able to get a red unless they come to the forums and participate in one of the gifting programs?

Edited August 14, 2011 by elynne

[Obscure_Trash]

Perhaps the ratios could be adjusted to only account for "newer" dragons--those that were grown within the last year, for example?

 

This is actually how it is set up now. ^^