Breeding mostly unsuccessful

[Vhale]

It seems reasonable that Silvi's is a decent sample. Though what it doesn't show is the ratio of adult dragons that now need to be worked out. Given that metals were more common than commons a couple weeks ago, and they are supposed to be... rare... it should be common sense that they can't stay that way forever.

 

I think this thread shows how skewed getting rares is, in favor of breeding vrs catching. When the cave is blocked, you don't get 17 page threads complaining that people can't get rares anymore or threatening to punch the site admin.

[Pink]

It seems reasonable that Silvi's is a decent sample. Though what it doesn't show is the ratio of adult dragons that now need to be worked out. Given that metals were more common than commons a couple weeks ago, and they are supposed to be... rare... it should be common sense that they can't stay that way forever.

 

I think this thread shows how skewed getting rares is, in favor of breeding vrs catching. When the cave is blocked, you don't get 17 page threads complaining that people can't get rares anymore or threatening to punch the site admin.

Excuse me for the off topic comment, but who threatened to punch the admin?

That sounds like something worth seeing.

 

[siliconrose]

A representative sample IS a small group being used to predict the state of the whole. That's the way it works. On an assembly line, they pull random components off the line and test them to determine whether they're meeting a measure of success, like "only 1% of the components fail." If they find that 20% of their tested components fail, that's usually an indication that there is something seriously wrong. But they only test a small number of those components; they don't test all of them, because that's prohibitively expensive. It's theoretically possible that you happen to choose only components that fail when the overall failure rate is still within the guidelines, or only components that succeed when the failure rate is way out of whack, but that's an acceptable risk. Probability will out; that probably won't happen.

 

Yes, the only person who can actually tell us what the state of things is TJ. However, amazingly enough, even TJ can be wrong. Even about his own code. He's saying "there's nothing wrong." We're saying "are you really sure about that? Could you check again? Are you sure you didn't overlook something?"

[earthgirl]

I've bred nearly all my dragons recently and today I finally got an egg. A magma egg.

And I think I also got an Electric a couple of days ago.

[Silverdrak]

Yeah, my stats can only give an rough idea on how the trends may be. Dragonnery used to have twice that much entries than my lair has.

 

Though I don't think that people with black eggs/hatchis are suddenly avoiding my hatchery. ^^' Would be kinda mean if so... *looks to her sprites*

 

Today there are 42 blacks in the lair.

I also think the system is just evening out their amount because of black striped breeding. The blacks amount has been very high for quite some time.

I'd just keep calm and watch how it turns out in the next few days.

 

 

I saw several legendaries in the cave today. Actually I hoped for a CB black but I haven't seen one yet.

[Nectaris]

Yes, the only person who can actually tell us what the state of things is TJ. However, amazingly enough, even TJ can be wrong. Even about his own code. He's saying "there's nothing wrong." We're saying "are you really sure about that? Could you check again? Are you sure you didn't overlook something?"

This.

 

Especially when everyone is seeing something so completely different than what the cave is reporting. I see nothing wrong with asking TJ to please check to make sure the counter is counting correctly. After all, if it is wrong, and he does not know it is wrong, and thus does not fix the issue then the problem only will continue for longer.

[Misha]

I'd love to know the "successful" breeding rates of both blacks and stripes at this moment because, for me, they've failed to produce eggs period. Generally not the case with at least one or two of them. I'm assuming due to the vast over breeding of blacks to stripes in the hopes of producing a black stripe. I wish I knew when the playing field would level off again so that some of my breedings would show a slightly higher rate than zero. How long does it take the Cave to even out the numbers? I've no idea at this point. I'm sure some breedings take but it must have been quite a drop from the normal numbers.

[zephyr_123]

I'm impressed by how much people here keep track of breedings. Maybe I should do that.

 

I've only been able to breed commons recently, no trios or metallics. All of them "fail to produce an egg."

[earthgirl]

Hmm... it appears to be the Cave's way of evening the CB/bred eggs ratios. After the AP has been clogged for weeks, I think it's time for breeding potential AP cloggers to stop.

 

Funnily enough, after I bred that one egg I mentioned before, I got several other eggs in a row. And I am not the only one, as the AP seems to be 5 lines big again.

[Vhale]

I'd love to know the "successful" breeding rates of both blacks and stripes at this moment because, for me, they've failed to produce eggs period. Generally not the case with at least one or two of them. I'm assuming due to the vast over breeding of blacks to stripes in the hopes of producing a black stripe. I wish I knew when the playing field would level off again so that some of my breedings would show a slightly higher rate than zero. How long does it take the Cave to even out the numbers? I've no idea at this point. I'm sure some breedings take but it must have been quite a drop from the normal numbers.

Well, if we go by Silvi's again. There were 1000 blacks for a bit. (rounding numbers to keep it simple) and pebbles are supposed to be as common as blacks. So, if ratios works like I think, black breeding is squelched until we get (for example) 1000 pebbles. If about 150 pebbles are raised a week, that would take about 6 weeks. In between all that, people are still trying to mass-breed blacks so a few get through, so a bit longer.

 

Disclaimer: No clue what the proper ratio for blacks to pebbles is, etc. But I would expect it to take awhile given how badly they were off.

[Tayiadragonbite]

i breed my Trios and i got several Red eggs, a Pink, a Fog, Electric, and one Ice i sent all to the ap. but still nothing with my Metals, Stripes, or Blacks.

[elynne]

Just to mention, there has, as far as I know, virtually always been a division of dragon types into common, uncommon and rare as to frequency of appearance.

But as far as catch-able Cave and/or bred Frills go, they're actually gone, having been retired (sniffle) some time ago.

I haven't seen any mentions in this thread about the uncommons. I don't read the boards regularly; I haven't seen any references to them in general, though I'll grant you there could have been a dozen threads on it during the various times I've stopped paying attention to the site completely. I would love to see a distribution chart of the percentages of various types, how many of them there are.

 

And I know about Frills; I have several on my scroll. I meant Ridgewings, but I gave the wrong name. I liked the Frills and was surprised and sad to see that they were gone when I came back from the most recent hiatus, but they were *the* crazy caveblockers for a while, so it's not really surprising. I do wonder if some of the other common varieties will eventually go that way. I think it wouldn't be a bad thing, especially for commons that don't have any alt varieties or BSAs (Whiptails and Storm dragons come to mind); it would make having a few on your scroll a badge of honor kind of thing.

 

ETA: see, got the wrong name again--I meant Gray dragons, not Storms.

Edited April 21, 2011 by elynne

[moxiegraphix]

And I know about Frills; I have several on my scroll. I meant Ridgewings, but I gave the wrong name. I liked the Frills and was surprised and sad to see that they were gone when I came back from the most recent hiatus, but they were *the* crazy caveblockers for a while, so it's not really surprising. I do wonder if some of the other common varieties will eventually go that way. I think it wouldn't be a bad thing, especially for commons that don't have any alt varieties or BSAs (Whiptails and Storm dragons come to mind); it would make having a few on your scroll a badge of honor kind of thing.

The reason they were retired wasn't because they were crazy caveblockers, though. It was a decision by the artist apparently because of the complaints about the looks of the sprite (which I don't understand, I liked them).

[alci]

My point is, depending on how many active scrolls there actually are on DC, it can only be considered a small portion and can not be indicative of the overall success across all the scrolls. Again, on Silvi's, we're looking at a little over 3.000 scrolls.

 

The only person who can really tell us us TJ and, I'm sure he's getting tired of being called either a liar (even if not directly), accused of having changed things when he says he hasn't, having his own numbers questioned (when you know he has access to information nobody on this site has access to), or any of the other things being said in this thread by now. I know I would be.

There are different ways to address the issue. First, Silve's gives us some raw numbers for that site, which is clearly straight-foward to interpretate - i.e. Tridymite's graphs. But are these numbers representative?

 

Second, one can check against reports in this thread, and people are pretty much unanimous - metals and blacks virtually don't breed these days. Now problem with this is most of us (including certain members, as listed above) breed relatively small samples (N << 100 dragons) and thus hardly make a statistic significant sample. Notice, however, that certain members have breed 100+ or even 200+ dragons and made observations.

 

Third, one can go to different ER sites and look how things are. I actually did that - I went to a couple of ER sites (AOND, Yamelias or whatever it's called), and randomly refreshed a number of times and counted number of blacks an metallics vs. pillows. Result was pretty clear, Blacks were easily outnumber by pillows by a factor of 1:7 or more. Metallics were much lower. You can do it yourself if you want to double-check. Again, this goes against the observation that Blacks and Pillows are on the same numbers.

 

So we have three different sources that all say the same, and all point against what TJ said. Thus, as Siliconrose pointed out, all we're saying is that it seems something's off with TJ's numbers. This doesn't have to mean site is functioning poorly, nor does it have to be a bad thing - and it might well correct itself with time, we have no way of knowing. Only TJ knows how things are programmed, and thus only he can say if there's reason for alarm. But that things are far from status-quo compared to two weeks ago seems pretty well established to me.

[tridymite]

Good morning...

 

Silvi: could you do a black count and PM me or mention it here for the stats? Thanks!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Aurora-Silver]

Arrg, in case of metallics, it doesn't matter which dragon I took, there was always no egg! I tried blacks, albinos, guardians... Each attempt was not successful and I tried 30 golds.

 

It's su frustrating! Nowadays I don't even see a CB Metallics, while others can catch them and I can't even breed D:

[GiratinaOF]

Just bred 15 metallics (with common mates, of course). Not one single common egg.

No white, no seasonal, no fellfire, no black, no daydream, ..... nothing! My purebreed 4th gen winters also produced no egg. Not even my CB pink pair. My CB alt nebula pair: no egg.

 

I think the only way to successfully get an egg is to catch it from the cave. Forget breeding.

[Fuzzbucket]

Frankly, I wouldn't be suprised if nebs joined the big dry very soon. Their numbers are taking a huge dive too.

Just bred a nebula - no problem at all.

[libby2999]

Ive been trying for a pink for sooo long now!! and you know that time when all there was was pinks? well now this is the time of no pinks. lol,

[dragonpuck]

Well, I DID breed a black egg Tuesday night ( auto abandoned * headdesk*) but no stripes or metallics and only that black, other black pairings were "no egg"

[Troya-Shel]

Ive been trying for a pink for sooo long now!! and you know that time when all there was was pinks? well now this is the time of no pinks. lol,

Just bred a pink with a Valentine09 - no problem. Will abandoned in about 5 Minutes.

 

I did though have problems a few weeks ago. None of my pinks/valentines breeded - no interest. That happened 2 weeks in a row. This is the second week were it works again.

 

 

[tehjohnli]

I have noticed an increase in CB trios. I've seen maybe 5 CB thunders recently. And I've caught one. But still, huge increase.

[quadibloc]

The only person who can really tell us us TJ and, I'm sure he's getting tired of being called either a liar (even if not directly), accused of having changed things when he says he hasn't,

I have no reason to doubt TJ's word in any way. That, however, doesn't contradict the fact that a lot of people are finding the breeding doesn't work nearly as well as it did before.

 

Presumably, then, what's happened is a natural result of how ratios work. Whether it's the EQ penalty, the fact that black stripes and nebulas were major new items in this release obtained from breeding, or just the increased popularity of Dragon Cave, this release hasn't worked out quite the way other new releases have.

 

This may mean it's time for TJ to change, in the future, something about how the ratios work, to make the impact of a new release gentler.

[Sansa]

Just bred all my metallics - total 51 dragons. Got only two eggs - a Harvest and a Horse

[brie108]

i don't breed much, but some dragons don't produce any eggs sometimes and others won't breed at all