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Egg Circulation

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Here's the problem that I see with this suggestion.

 

At the moment, in fast moving biomes such as the desert, if there are three spitfires or something sitting in a row, people do pick them up in the hope that there will be something rare behind it in the queue. A lot of commons and blockers are picked up for this reason.

 

However, if something like this was implemented, then people wouldn't pick them up. They'd just wait until the time limit was up and the blockers moved to the back of the line. Then once all the rares are gone and it keeps updating with more commons and blockers, people wouldn't pick them up.

 

The desert usually empties entirely five to ten minutes after the hourly drop. Cave blockers included. But with a system like what is being suggested here, most of those blockers wouldn't be picked up and we'd just have the same problem with not enough people grabbing them and the cave then creating more and more to compensate.

 

So unless this issue is addressed, I don't support this. Yes, it's frustrating when you go to a biome you want to hunt in and all three eggs are the same breed, but that's just part of the game. I don't think this would make the game any better. It could make commons rotate better, but I think in the long run, it's most likely to just make the cave spit out even more commons and less rares, since no one would pick up the commons anymore.

 

If you want to get on with your hunting but there are blockers in the way, the best thing to do is just pick one of them up. tongue.gif

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Also, keep in mind: The more rares are picked up, the more commons will appear. That's the reason they are called rares. If you have 1 cb black, there has to be around 10 to 15 commons to make that black rare. So the easy solution is to pick up the commons so there has to be a rare spawned to keep the ratios balanced.

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Also, keep in mind: The more rares are picked up, the more commons will appear. That's the reason they are called rares. If you have 1 cb black, there has to be around 10 to 15 commons to make that black rare. So the easy solution is to pick up the commons so there has to be a rare spawned to keep the ratios balanced.

(Well, technically, blacks aren't really rare - they're just valuable/wanted.)

Edited by SockPuppet Strangler

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I've read the whole topic, and this is my $0.02:

 

first off, in my experiance it's not SO bad. Desert and Alpine zones seem to clear out pretty quick, because people KNOW there's good stuff hiding there and they wanna get to it. I myself have seen (and missed) both a CB silver and a CB gold in the last 2 weeks, along with many magi, some blacks, reds, all these other types that are the valuble things. however, it seems to me that if i want to go hunting at any time other than top of the hour, it's quite different.

I suppose you could say that top of the hour is like a river in flood-stage, while most other times it's like a river if there hasn't been any rain for a few days.

and then you get walls of "This Egg is sitting in front of the others" or "This light egg is floating in the air" or "You can see the baby dragon curled up inside this translucent egg" and when all 3 are the same description, it's like....UGH!

 

now, as for the ideas to deal with this....

 

Rotating Eggs: No. just no. it may give the 'illusion' that things are moving, but once people pick out all the good eggs, no amount of rotating is gonna make what's left look any more appealing than it already is with the current system. at least with the current system, if there's a silver sitting behind a wall of 3 stones, someone has to TAKE one of those stones before the silver will show up. then there's at least a chance the stone will make it to adulthood and contribute to the ratios. but if the eggs ROTATE then people will snatch the silver and leave the stones to rot. And then the cave will have to make more stones because none of them survived to help balance the ratios.

 

Ratio Tweaks: I like this. I read somewhere in here that stripes are supposed to be freaking COMMON DRAGONS. COMMON. Like waterwalkers, pebbles, and stones. I thought they were UNcommon, and MINE tend to breed like rares when they're not willing to cooperate, and breed like uncommons when they DO cooperate. I read that CB ratios are not 100% tied to bred ratios, which is good. I like the idea of "micro-ratios" in the cave, that is, trends between CB ratios that fluctuate ever-so-slightly based on demand and supply of users.

lets say theres 10 eggs in the cave: 2 magi, 2 black, 2 fog, 2 stone, 2 red. the black and red eggs go fastest, the magi egg next fastest, then the fog, and the stone is last to get picked up. The cave sees this, and factors it into the next hour drop, and makes 3 black eggs, 3 red eggs, 2 magi, 1 fog, and 1 stone. if there's no noticable difference, it reverts back to the overall "macro-ratios" to determine what to produce.

 

Retiring Breeds: *insert meme rage face* <-- this is what i think would result from that on the forums. the DC userbase can throw a fit over the slightest thing. it would NOT be pretty if we started retiring breeds on a regular basis. Plus, for all the users on the forums, there's a bunch more who DON'T use the forums. they'd never know, and all of the sudden they wouldn't be able to find any more pebbles/whiptails/balloons/whatever and they wouldn't know what happened.

 

Seasonal/Migrating breeds: personally, i like this. Would it cause uproar? yes. But if you want a solution that WON'T cause any sort of baw-fest to start, I dont think that's possible without violating some universal law of physics. As i noted above, the userbase is ripe with people who like to invoke "They Changed It Now It Sucks" AND "It's The Same Now It Sucks". (why yes I do read tv tropes) but I think it could get the job done, if given time.

Let's take 4 blocker breeds for example. whiptail, waterhorse, stone, and albino. Let's say the whiptails disappear during the spring. waterhorse in summer, stone in fall, and albino in winter. I'd imagine it'd take maybe a year to see the full effect, but eventually people realize those breeds won't always be there. They may not be POPULAR but there are some people who take them, and when the whiptails return, people will stock up again. It may take some tweaking to find the right balance of how often to migrate them out, but I think it COULD work.

 

Cave Scroll: this one seems to be controversial. personally, I like the idea. A bot picks up an egg that's been in the biome for a while, say 90 seconds, and holds it on a "scroll" for a length of time. Then the egg gets kicked to the ER. I've watched, and I know people LOVE to snatch up eggs with less time remaining, regardless of breed. Now i've seen people saying "it's too easy, you're handing people ER eggs!" and the like. Well what if it's random when the egg appears in the ER? then it's a matter of timing, luck, and competing with everyone else in the AP for that egg. PLUS if the "cave scroll" holds an egg for 3 days, it wouldn't be an ER when it hit the AP. It would gain a day from being abandoned. so it'd appear at 5 days, not 4.

ALSO, I ask this to TJ since I think he first said it was like "handing people hatchlings/ER eggs": People take blockers on their own, and dump them after 5 hours, where they sit on the AP and lose time until they become appealing due to having less than 7 days remaining. HOW is that any different than the "cave scroll" idea? in both cases you have blockers being picked up, held until their time drops, and then getting dumped into the AP. The only differences that I can see is the location where the eggs get held, and that one is done by a bot, the other by players.

 

Alt Sprites: I wouldn't mind seeing it, but with how touchy the artists can be, I don't think this is likely.

 

BSAs: Viable, it would generate interest, but the ability would have to be worth it. Earthquake didn't really help make pebbles popular.... Maybe Guardians could get a BSA to shield one egg from the effects of an earthquake, then people would be more interested to get both guardians AND pebbles to make earthquake less risky? but that would only work for those two breeds....

 

Site-Based incentives: Not sure what these would be...but I saw the vague concept tossed out. I guess I'd have to know exactly what these incentives are before I can say if I'd like these or not.

 

So that's pretty much my take on ideas that have been put out in this thread. I have tried doing my part to help. i recently decided to make a specific lineage mate for a dragon I have and use blocker breeds to build it. but generally speaking, if I don't have a plan or reason to take those breeds, I have as many as I want of those, as do many others. I'll take a blocker to help out sometimes even if I don't have ulterior motive, but it's kinda discouraging to watch it be replaced by another of the exact same breed. dry.gif

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I feel that maybe the amount of biomes should be cut down to speed it up a bit. While they help, they slow them down too much; cave-hunting is now too slow. However, I doubt this is likely to happen any time soon ^^.

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This is a nice suggestion, but being honest, I prefer the Mossy Eggs suggestion more. Where if an egg sits there for a while, it becomes 'mossy' and it will have the potential to have a Moss-Specific Action and such. That makes it more interesting, in my opinion. Good idea, but I think that solution would be better.

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I feel that maybe the amount of biomes should be cut down to speed it up a bit. While they help, they slow them down too much; cave-hunting is now too slow. However, I doubt this is likely to happen any time soon ^^.

That is one thing I would REALLY not like to see... And there are good things that drop in ALL of them, in fact, though good is in the eye of the hunter !

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One thing I would like to see is for what appears in the cave to not be based upon what's being bred. Let us look at a popular common dragon, such as the black. Because they are popular, I'm already going to be fighting other people to grab the 1-2% that drop as commons amidst all the other commons. I don't need the fact that other people are breeding their blacks to somehow negatively affect where they're appearing elsewhere.

 

The ratios for both breeding and cave eggs should be locked--always a certain chance of breeding a certain egg, always a certain chance of spawning a certain egg. Rather than the ratios being nailed to how many of a certain dragon currently exist.

 

Current method: "There are 3898 type X eggs right now so the chance of producing one is..."

 

Suggested method: "There is a 1/200% chance of producing this egg in the cave, no matter what."

 

I also think that deleting eggs after a certain time of not being claimed could work well with this. Let's say a balloon egg sits there for five minutes, and is deleted. It's not going to magically generate a gold in its place--it's going to follow the % chance factor again and might very well just pop out another balloon, although chances are better that it'll just push out another common. People are suggesting that people will just wait for waves of rares, but I honestly don't think that'll happen. At FIVE MINUTES PER POP, chances are only a small handful of dropped eggs in the cave will ever actually be deleted--enough to move things along faster, but far from enough to produce a drastic upshoot of new eggs. And, again, the chances of a new egg being a rare are still incredibly low.

 

Other things I think that would help are evening out the ratio of commons to rares. Right now, not counting breed-only hybrids, alts, or holidays, we have ~60 common eggs, 8 uncommon (Dinos/Papers/Cheese/Chicken) and 5 rare (gold, silver, trio). And none of the uncommon ones are even breedable, and over half of them aren't even dragons.

 

So just based on the five rares I mentioned above, the current ratio is about 12 common breed : 1 rare breed.

 

I'm not saying we have to make a 3:2:1 ratio of commons-to-rares, but something even half of this-- 6:3:1 for common/uncommon/rare--would produce a lot more hard to find dragons in the cave and make hunting more exciting. The chances of you getting that elusive silver would still be the same, but overall you'd have a slightly greater chance of still coming away with something rare. That's a heck of a lot nicer than seeing eternally nothing but commons because on top of the rare breeds being, well, rare, there are so few breeds of them on top of it.

 

Even just a few more breeding uncommons would be awesome. And yes, I'm aware that some people say "uncommons" don't exist, but I've seen cheeses and papers and dinos in the cave in the last few months and even caught some. Can't say the same for even a glimpse of a metallic. And again, regardless of the current set up, if the whole % breeding ratio was implemented then there truly would be an uncommon/rare distinction.

 

And last but not least: I wish TJ'd be a bit more open about how the ratios work. Right now everything I'm saying is based off of what I've heard other people say, not any official word. I don't think knowing that in the current system there's a .0001% of getting a metallic and that the cave responds to the AP is going to destroy anyone's enjoyment of the game, or allow any sort of magical upsurge in rares. It's hard to fix the problem when you only have a dim understanding of the problem.

Edited by angelicdragonpuppy

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IF a balloon egg sits and then vanishes it will generate another balloon. That's ratios for you.

 

I don't think there is an official ratio of anything. I also don't see that it matters that much. If we "knew", we'd just get a new class of fuss, begging for the ratio of x dragon to y dragon to be changed "because I can't get one so the ratios must be wrong..."

 

And - as I think I've said already - I have seen several silvers and 2 golds in the biomes in the last week alone. I'm not at all sure what the perceived problem is supposed to be, which means that if it is "fixed" by your standards, then I guess I will find that I have the problem instead of you !

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IF a balloon egg sits and then vanishes it will generate another balloon. That's ratios for you.

That's why I'm suggesting the ratios be changed to be independent for each and every egg. Not "oh, there was a balloon here so the cave now needs another balloon," but rather "let's roll the dice again and see what happens." wink.gif

 

Personally, I don't have a lot of time to sit around the cave hunting. Accordingly, when I do have ten minutes or so, I'd like to at least see some movement. I'm not expecting to see a rare throw itself at me in that time--far from it--but I'd love it if I could at least have my pick from 10-15 commons whisking past as opposed to "hey I'm just going to sit here and stare at these three stone eggs for ten minutes."

 

Which, alright, is something of an exaggeration, but I really am spending minutes at a time staring at the cave only to see a single egg change.

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A lot of the problems with various cave/AP blocker solutions is that they often tend to assume that things were a lot better before when often a. that's not really the case, and b. if it is the case there's often reasons why that can't be realistically recreated.

 

For instance, there were cave blockers way before we ever had biomes. In fact, I remember that someone once suggested that we change the Purple's description from “Wow, purple isn't a color of egg you expected to see.” to something else because purple was the color we all expected to see all of the time. lol Sure, there was a time when the cave almost always cleared out with lightning speed, but I think that had more to do with a huge influx of new players and not enough older players to breed eggs to help cover demand. That's why we had to have multi-clutches. And, most importantly, IMO, a lot of the reason that the eggs cleared out faster was because all of those new players were catching commons to fill up their empty scrolls.

 

In many of the suggestions I've seen for speeding up the cave, people assure that it won't become a situation where people just take the rares and leave everything else. But that doesn't really make any sense to me since the reason the cave is slow now is precisely because people are waiting for rares and not taking anything else. Why would shifting eggs around change that?

 

IMO, there are two factors that contribute to cave blocking that aren't really going to change.

 

1. A lot of players have massive scrolls at this point. I have 1,300+ dragons right now (and lots of people have way more than that). So, although I often mean to collect commons, the fact is that I have a lot of them, so it's not a pressing issue for me and it's easy to put off so that I can chase rares instead.

 

2. Trading has taken a huge upswing since Teleport was implemented, Tinsels were introduced, and more people learned how to make Neglecteds. A lot of times rare eggs are required to buy into the system. An older player with a lot of Golds and Silvers has a much better chance of securing trades because they can produce their own rares. What beats them out are CB rares, so new players rush to get them.

 

So we end up with older players hunting rares because they have plenty of commons and new players hunting rares so that they can be a substantial player in the trade market (which also means that older players need CB rares to compete with newer players' trade offers).

 

The way I see it, the problem with changing ratios, shifting eggs around, or possibly deleting them, is that it has to end up with a situation in which we get more rares, because that's the focus of an overwhelming number of players these days. So if things change based on egg popularity, and only the rares are popular, the cave either has to produce more rares than anything else or we're still going to be stuck with the problem that we have where no one picks up the commons.

 

And part of the problem with anything that results in making more rares is, as people usually point out, they become less valuable. That means that players will need more of them to make good trades. That means that people will need to pass up commons even more often. And if we increase the demand at the same rate that we're increasing production (whether intentionally or not), then how are we going to end up any better off?

 

And in regard to just changing the common ratio, while it's true that it might make things like Blacks and Stripes more available, once they're no longer considered rares, people won't be picking them up either because they'll just be searching for “true” rares or because they'll quickly build up their desired stock. Because, let's face it, before Blacks gained their pseudo-rare status, they blocked the cave, too.

 

So you can try to balance things out by just changing the ratio of commons compared to other commons, so that all intended common breeds are actually common, but if no one wants commons at all then you just end up with 20 breeds no one will take instead of 15.

 

I agree with those who say that the simplest way to change things is to make common eggs more valuable, not by increasing their rarity (which ratio change suggestions generally do), but by giving them an inherent value. Whether that's with a BSA, the chance that they could develop some kind of ability (I'm not in favor of alts as I think that's just a temp solution), or by in-game rewards such as badges, by making common eggs useful or rewarding you create an incentive to pick them up that may not quite equal the incentive for rares, but definitely ups the demand.

 

A lot of players aren't filling up all of their egg slots on the off chance that they'll get rares (and to allow for misclicks). Giving them a reason to fill them all seems like it would be the easiest way to speed up the cave.

 

As for the cave scroll, I think that it's an intriguing idea, and I definitely see the appeal, but I have to agree with others that it drains away too much of the most basic challenge of the game – raising a dragon – while requiring nothing from the player in turn – like trading something for a hatchling or dedicating time and effort to hunting the AP. And since I think that we can address the issues in other ways, I'd hate to see things changed to that degree.

 

And regarding the last point in the series: NDs take a lot of time, effort and luck to make - would having more 4-day eggs necessarily cause NDs to become more widely available?

 

Would this be such a bad thing, if it did?

 

I have to agree with DarkEternity that they would become much more available. Lots of times I won't bother making NDs unless I find a low time egg in the AP, because most of that time that it takes is simply the time it takes to hold the egg. And not only are we decreasing the amount of time, we're vastly increasing the amount of low time practice eggs that are readily available.

 

As for it being a bad thing, I don't think it's awful for everyone to have them, but we would be stripping away one more equalizing factor for people with slower connections. If the one rare that they can create loses value, then they have to get CB rares to get "good" trades.

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1. A lot of players have massive scrolls at this point. I have 1,300+ dragons right now (and lots of people have way more than that). So, although I often mean to collect commons, the fact is that I have a lot of them, so it's not a pressing issue for me and it's easy to put off so that I can chase rares instead.

 

To be blunt, there are commons I create armies of (if I can) because I love them. And there are other commons of which I don't have any (or no more than 4) on my scroll because I'm not fond of them. However, what I like isn't necessarily what other people like. If eggs shuffled, I'd probably grab more ridgewings and sunsongs and moonstones and nebulas (and... and... and...) than I can at the moment. (Heck, I only recently managed to grab CB ridgewings in larger numbers, thanks to the latest release! I would have done so before, but I always failed.)

 

However, there are some common sprites out there that are so amazing that they are pretty hard to get as CB. (That's not only the vines and blacks and stripes, but also the nebulas - and, to some extent, I think, also seasonals and ridgewings, nilia and seawyrm pygmies....) If their CB ratios were raised, I wouldn't complain a bit. Not just for trading value, but also for my fondness of the sprites or the possibility to breed alts or grab color variants.

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I'm afraid that I don't like Armies all that much... At least not while I haven't completed my primary goal.

 

I think what would ease up the egg circulation would be the freezing of eggs. Then we'd have a reason to pick up more commons again.

 

Plus with the Freeze limit it wouldn't be something that would be finished overnight.

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I seem to be really confused. I know I haven't been here a full year yet, but it seems to me that for some time, eggs have been err... seasonal?? Like for Awhile Reds and Embers were harder to find. Embers were worth a good amount. And then they were common. So Common no one touches them.

 

And then harvests were hard to find and worth a good amount. And now they aren't.

 

And blacks, especially CB ones, were impossible to find. And now more people are getting blacks, more black alts, and more CB Blacks.

 

Winters weren't common at the beginning of winter, they were up more during the middle part, and now they are less common.

 

During this past 2 weeks, its been MUCH easier to breed Trios. I imagine that too will pass. Sometimes Golds and Silvers are Easier to Breed. Sometimes they are easier to catch.

 

I mean, maybe I'm drinking some fancy kool-aid, but it seems to me that there is a seasonal progression. Its just based off a year or so. And that might seem like a LOT of time for an online game .... but - we put up with 4 seasons every year of our lives. We might just have to learn that this game has seasons too.

 

I know time in online games moves MUCH faster than real life. But with the number of dragons that we have in this game (with more constantly scheduled to come out) and we are rotating batches of them in and out of seasonal flux... you've got to be a little more realistic and not expect seasons to change every few weeks just because you want it now.

Edited by natayah

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I don't think anything needs to be done. Sooner or later the current blocker breeds will become rare and hardly able to be caught as cb in the cave or in the ap for that matter. Prime example cb blacks, once upon a time they were cave blockers and ap cloggers. And now blacks are rare in the cave. The same goes for pinks. They went though a period of being wanted for breeding purposes, then as all dragons gained dual genders, pinks started losing popularity and started becoming another cave blocker and ap clogger. And now pinks have become rare and sought after again due to their bsa.

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Maybe, once an egg has sat for a certain amount of time, it could be auto abandoned. After sitting there for a slightly longer time, it could just be poofed.

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i like the mossy eggs and kick to the ap idea

Since this topic was made, this is no longer a problem. eggs do not "sit" forever in the biomes. If not picked up, they are "refreshed" for a new set at every 5 min mark and everything is deleted at the top of the hour and a whole new set created.

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As this thread was created several years ago and there's been no real activity here since 2012, plus we have the five minute shuffle, I am going to go ahead and close this thread.

 

If any user still sees this as an issue and has an idea they wish to propose with it, they may post a new topic.

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