Ascension

[Aurora-Silver]

I'm against ascended dragon's becoming unbreedable, not everything needs a drawback.

Thinking the same.

 

I'm already unhappy about those dragons who can't breed, and it would be unfair to have an unbreedable dragon more, just in exchange for a new sprite...

[olympe]

I'm absolutely against rendering them unbreedable. Dragons have an unlimited lifespan and don't suffer menopause. (It's a thing only mammals have to go through, anyway. And even mammal males can sire children until they fall over from old age.) So, rendering ascended dragons sterile makes no (biological) sense.

 

(Although I would like to consider a trade-off, like extending the breeding cooldown to two weeks, but therefore allowing for two-egg-clutches or increasing the chances of successful breedings.)

[DragonNighthowler]

I'd rather have them breedable as well. It's sad to see some lovely dragons not being able to enter lineages because they are unbreedable.

[Angziety]

Meh I don't really care if they breed or can't.

[AlternateMew]

I've only seen one ascended sprite, and it's pretty! <*_*>

Time sounds like the best way to enable it. Make it much easier than GoNs, and all's well and good. I'd be okay with small change in the breeding, but I don't want them unbreedable. I'd live with it, but don't want it. Simple=good. Nothing from here should ascend, IMO. Anything else, sure. Halloweens included, if the spriters wish.

 

Just imagine a lineage of pure ascendeds...

[Thuban]

What is instead of rendering them infertile, you made the cooldown a bit longer.. like two weeks for breeding instead of one.

 

Poor word choice alert: Hopefully i can get the point across...

Lets say we base whether they ascend or not purely on age.

 

Your new mature dragon would want better genes for its lineage so they would make their matings count, and only pick "suitable" mates rather than any opposite gendered dragon it can get its claws on. This would be the reasoning behind making them wait longer to breed. suitable in this case just means the dragon you decide to breed to. If its a regular dragon, the breeding time wouldnt change (you could switch it off to another dragon in the mean time) just your ascended one would have a longer wait.

 

At least this way, they still breed, but theres a slight drawback to it.

[Tiki G]

I wouldn't mind a longer cool down for breeding. Just as long as they can still breed.

 

It's already bad enough that I can't breed the gorgeous GoN, if I had a bunch of beautiful sprites I couldn't breed, I would be a very sad panda.

[Fuzzbucket]

Maybe they should only be able to breed with other ascended dragons ? Same cooldown, but... It would mean (in theory; I know genetics don't work..) an especially excellent gene pool - but they would deliver regular eggs, not ascended eggs.

[Sadako]

All I have to say is if there's an item for it, please don't drop it with the eggs. There are already so many things dropping in 3 slots which are always clogged with the same commons that even releasing any more breeds of dragons at this point would make things unthinkably frustrating.

 

/mostly offtopic

[AlternateMew]

Oh, yeah. They should definitely breed normal eggs, not ascendeds. That would be a disaster, IMO.

 

(Tiny grammar edit)

Edited March 10, 2011 by AlternateMew

[KageSora]

Mmmm, I like the idea, personally.

 

I agree with the "no limited ascension" thing, very much so.

 

 

I'd prefer if they could breed, but a longer cooldown isn't so bad. And I can't see how they could possibly produce ascended eggs if they bred. I mean, it's not like they change species, and they're not alts. I mean, if the Dragon has to be old to ascend, they'd have to go through all the life-stages. You don't get an adult Dragon born live instead of having to raise it from an egg, after all--it has to go through all the life-stages. Ascension would just be one more life-stage for them to go through.

 

 

I'm also in the "no item" camp--at least no required item. Something to boost the chances of success if there is a failure rate, sure. But I'd rather it be something like the egg hunt or the ToT event rather than it showing up with the eggs. Maybe if you find it, you get a little badge and if you click it, you're given the chance to use said potion on any eligible Dragons?

 

 

 

I like the idea of it being based on age over anything else--and I'd prefer if it had to be at least 3 months, though I'd rather it be longer (I liked the 1 year idea, or at least like 6 months.)

[Lythiaren]

I've been fond of the item use one mostly because I was the person who suggested it originally. :V

 

And no, it wouldn't drop alongside the eggs. It would be through the search action, spammable by all adults once a week to look for treasure/magical artifacts/shiny trinkets/bugs/whatever. The item would be something among all that stuff.

 

And it would make ascension feel more like an accomplishment than the "I mindlessly spammed this action every cooldown for three months and all I got was this stupid T-shirt" that the Magikarp badge became. It becomes less of a "I spammed for this" and more of a "I found this special thing among all the junk out there and used it to advance my skills". The typical user will have found tons and tons of rusted coins and broken pottery bits before finding an ancient text or something.

 

The items you get from WoW archaeology is a nice example of this. Why do I get trilobyte fossils all the time when I'm looking for a skeletal raptor mount, or a bunch of skull pots when I'm looking for an ancient sword? Because when I finally do get it on my artifact thing, it feels like an actual find. If I could shoot directly for it, it quickly becomes boring. In an adventure, you typically don't skip the journey and go straight for the big thing. You spend time piecing together the side things like the night elf equiavlent of Romeo and Juliet. While getting tons of skimpy silk dresses and useless hairpins in the process.

 

Also, immersion. Think magical artifacts and rituals. Your dragon is reaching a new tier of power. It should feel that way, and the process of doing so should reflect that instead of simply saying "grat @ ur bigdagron".

Edited March 10, 2011 by Lythiaren

[~!~]

And it would make ascension feel more like an accomplishment than the "I mindlessly spammed this action every cooldown for three months and all I got was this stupid T-shirt" that the Magikarp badge became. It becomes less of a "I spammed for this" and more of a "I found this special thing among all the junk out there and used it to advance my skills". The typical user will have found tons and tons of rusted coins and broken pottery bits before finding an ancient text or something.

This reminds me a lot of UniCreatures. They put a lot of time and effort into making everything really interactive and RP-heavy, but it still just boiled down to "I clicked a thing a bunch of times." Really, unless TJ implements minigames *shudder* I don't think it'll be any more than spamming, no matter how detailed it is.

[Kirbyburn]

So after all this arguing, can we have that ascending isnt based soley off age?

[RheaZen]

Lyth, are you for item use only, or item use and [x]? 'cause to me at least, item use is less spectacular than aging/time-based ascension. It... it feels like this ._.

[~!~]

Lyth, are you for item use only, or item use and [x]? 'cause to me at least, item use is less spectacular than aging/time-based ascension. It... it feels like this ._.

If you just feed your Pokemon rare candies and don't train it against wild Pokemon, it will have lower stats because it won't have gotten any EVs. But that's beside the point.

 

If it were up to me, you'd have to raise your adult to that level just like you have to raise eggs and hatchlings. Under such a system, I would pick one adult and concentrate on showing him around, until he got enough v/uv/c to ascend. However, I realize that other people would just post all their adults everywhere, causing tons of strain on the server and general mayhem. There are workarounds, but I'd still support a plain old Action once a dragon hits a certain age.

[SlowHornpipe172]

I like optional action once a dragon is one year old (mebbe eighteen months?) and it just happens and the dragon is still breedable. Keep it simple. Finding potions is way too much like a petsite for my personal taste. And not being able to breed after ascension makes no sense to me. I think of ascension as a new "fourth stage", ie ascended is to adult as second stage hatchie is to first stage hatchie. No real difference in functionality, just a bigger, cooler sprite.

[Wookieinmashoo]

Lyth, are you for item use only, or item use and [x]? 'cause to me at least, item use is less spectacular than aging/time-based ascension. It... it feels like this ._.

I like both the explore option for items able to ascend a dragon and a dragon being able to do that on its own after being so old.

If by going by age, how old would a dragon have to be to ascend?

[HeatherMarie]

I have sooooo many thoughts/responses to this thread... but will try to keep it brief.

 

Frankly, I don't like the "potion" or "clicking tons of things in order to find a magical Ascend item". It's just way too much like most petsites, and DC is always been said to not be a petsite. Potions, magic coins, any "items" that we have to go hunting for in order to use this action... I don't like. (stuff like the Easter egg-hunt was different, we didn't *have* to participate in order to level up a dragon.)

 

I think the simplest way is best, in this case, once an adult dragon has been adult for a certain amount of time (3 months? whatever), an Ascend action becomes available for that dragon. Of course not all dragons would have an Ascend option.

[RheaZen]

A year seems a bit much, since DC is only a few years old and all. 3 months, maybe? No more than 6 months.

[DragonNighthowler]

I don't really see the difference between clicking mindlessly Splash, to clicking mindlessly "Search", except that it reminds me WAAAAY too much of the Summon function and... well, I'm one of the very annoyed users that seems perpetually stuck with commons. No silver or gold because I'm too slow, no GoN because I just don't have luck... no Ascended either?

Ugh... no thanks. I don't mind a little difficulty, but a bit too much is too much.

 

Click, click, click, drats! Another boot! 0

[Angziety]

Meh still not for the clicking.

I mean it may seem like the splah, but when you get down to it it seems more like an adoptable thing.

Splash is just a random thing, clicking while looking for something is well, forageing.

To complicated imo.

 

As for age I think 2-3 months is perfect =3

[Obscure_Trash]

It just seemed weird to have ascendeds breed - my line of thinking was that the stage before adults can't breed, so it made sense to not have them breed the stage after, too. However, as I rarely breed these days it doesn't really matter to me, and the ascendeds would have to become ascendeds in lineages, anyway, so I suppose it does make sense to keep them breeding.

Extended cooldown is interesting, but I suppose I don't really care either way. x3

Definitely don't breed ascended eggs, though. That wouldn't make sense. o_O

 

However, I don't like the idea of this also being item based. I think this over-complicates things and would also take some of the fun out of it for me. ^^;;

 

Anywhere from 3-6 months seems like a good time frame to me. :3

[Completely Different]

Definitely don't like Ascended Eggs...that just doesn't make sense to me. It would hatch immediately into the strongest adult form? Weird.

 

I like the idea of longer cooldown for breeding. It seems like a good compromise between 'no breeding' and 'breeding'.

[olympe]

Well, I don't particularly like the idea that ascension is solely item-based - be it through items dropped in the cave, popping up in random places like the Easter eggs or ToT items, or through "Search".

 

The first would - once again - mean that the people with lotsa time and great connections win all the ascended sprites. Plus, getting them is about as easy as getting a CB metallic.

 

The second - well, it might work, depending on how often these items pop up. But, to be frank, I'd hate to be forced to constantly be on the lookout for something that turns up in random places. It was great fun for the Easter and Halloween collecting events because you knew you only had to look once every five minutes or so, but that's as far as the fun goes for me.

 

The third - lots of spamming, lots of waiting, hardly any success - reminds me of a combination of both Splash and Summon. Only that it combines the two aspects of both actions I like the least - the spamming and the waiting/low success things aren't quite what I'd consider fun. (To compare this to pokemon: Yes, you can take your starter pokemon to the first route you can and train it until it reaches level 99, and it's definitely an accomplishment. But it's also incredibly boring and horrendously time-consuming because you only gain minimal XP - you could also call it a total waste of time because there are better ways of reaching level 99.)

 

I really think it'd be best if we had the main way of ascending a dragon over a simple action (with high success rate) once it reaches a certain age. (I still think 1 year is a good time, and 6 months should be the minimum, but I won't turn into a drama llama if people prefer 3 months.) As a bonus, once the Search action is through, I would like what Lyth suggested as another option - but for younger dragons (maybe half the usual age?) to be turned into an ascended dragon.