Cave Feedback

[WinstonGA]

Conversely, what do people think about me making the site store the lost linage information so that the lineage can continue past the tombstones, preventing people from "doctoring" lineages. To me, it seems disingenuous to try to misrepresent dragons, so...

Love it.

 

Why SHOULD ancestors *poof* into the bit bin when Great-Grandma dies. They were ancestors before the killing, why not after? What is it about the death that retroactively changes history for all of the descendents? It made no sense at all to me why dead dragons erased entire swathes of history that had already happened. Whether the dragon was offed deliberately, or a scenario such as happened a whiles back where a scroll-burning resulted in killing all of the dragons rather than releasing them, there's no sense in-game for the pruning.

 

Tombstones destroying even-gens is why I stopped being active in the Seasonal and Even-Gen lineage projects, except to gift to others. I lost a year's worth of work on a Seasonal line because someone zombie'd an ancestor and ruined the entire point of the picture. Since then, I've done those types of lineages only on my own scroll, closed to outside input.

 

I don't want another lineage that represents a lot of time, BSAs, planning, etc, to be destroyed because Great-Grandma's owner wanted a zombie. I also don't think the answer is to prevent the owner (including myself) from killing Great-Grandma. I think the answer is to have Great-Grandma's death not affect the descendents in the non-sensical way it does now.

 

The emphasis on lineage and lineage pictures is, IMO, due in large part to the fact that there's not much else you can *do* with a dragon in this game once it's grown up.

 

I'd have to rename this one, who was a classic "OMG GROSS" rambling lineage and gifted to me with the comment "Well, at least it's not inbred" (small price to pay): http://dragcave.net/lineage/NrQV

 

[Wookieinmashoo]

I really would like the doctored lineages and the ability to make them be left alone, yet I can understand why some people would be upset by them. It would be nice if we could find a way to please both sides. Many people work hard on their long lineages and many people work hard making doctored lineage. I have several of each myself. To me an erased name in a lineage is just as irritating as actually killing the dragon. I can't control who goes inactive even though I really hate it when it happens and ruins my lineages. I just deal with it.

[stogucheme]

I suppose the difference between doctoring lineages and anything else is that doctoring lineages is the only thing that can affect dragons you don't own.

Zombie fails do too. Or even zombifying. Some people *hate* it when their PB Pink suddenly has a zombie in its lineage, and how many of you tried for zombies?

[Fuzzbucket]

Zombie fails do too. Or even zombifying. Some people *hate* it when their PB Pink suddenly has a zombie in its lineage, and how many of you tried for zombies?

Actually, she said angelically, only with cave blockers I caught specially for the occasion.

 

Maybe I'd have had more luck if I'd been Doing A Bad Thing to someone else's lineage !

[stogucheme]

Actually, she said angelically, only with cave blockers I caught specially for the occasion.

 

Maybe I'd have had more luck if I'd been Doing A Bad Thing to someone else's lineage !

My point was, no one objects to zombies and zombie-making. They object to this because it's OMG CHEATING and MESSING WITH MY LINEAGE! When it isn't just theirs and these are just pixels. Seriously, this is why I'm keeping all my Spitfires on my scroll and not cheating by using lineages from someone else.

 

Doctoring lineages is fine. Zombifying is fine. If there's no such thing as hoarding, there's no such thing as cheating through this either. I mean, if you don't like doctored lineages, you can, *gasp!*, not trade for them. This is part of the game- quit whining.

 

Edit: If you do trade, that's the risk you're taking. You can't expect people to play the way you want. I mean, take naming for instance. Are you going to change your dragon's name just because the owner of its offspring tells you to? Seriously.

 

And I'm not replying to anyone who doesn't acknowledge my point about zombies.

Edited November 14, 2011 by stogucheme

[Banuk]

Doctoring lineages is fine. Zombifying is fine. If there's no such thing as hoarding, there's no such thing as cheating through this either. I mean, if you don't like doctored lineages, you can, *gasp!*, not trade for them. This is part of the game- quit whining.

And what if you traded for a lineage you liked or always wanted and then someone else ruins it by killing a dragon from earlier in the lineage?

 

It's not really enough sometimes to say, "Just don't trade for doctored lineages" when lineages are still fully capable of being ruined after you've traded for them.

[Fuzzbucket]

And what if you traded for a lineage you liked or always wanted and then someone else ruins it by killing a dragon from earlier in the lineage?

 

It's not really enough sometimes to say, "Just don't trade for doctored lineages" when lineages are still fully capable of being ruined after you've traded for them.

It is horrible and sad and everything - but - there is no way around this. We all get to play as we like. Seeing a lineage go pearshaped is a truly horrible shock - that is - as I said somewhere today - why I only share lineages with people I know won't do that. Because they are valuing them in the same way that I am. My mate who is breeding up her 9th gens as we speak will breed me some, and I will breed for hers from my 6th gens - all MINE !

 

If we rely on AP and trade threads - it is a risk we take. I think all the ones I have got from the even gen thread will be OK - but if they aren't - it's a risk I am taking by not retaining ABSOLUTE control.

[Ayelldee]

I think we should have the option to keep or not to keep our lineages the way we prefer. As I said in the thread about this - just make it OPTIONAL for EVERYONE to just click on one or the other and that way everyone is kept happy. Just becasue my Three times Great Grandpa died, that branch of my family tree wasn't lopped off - it remains there for the history of it all.

[Princess Artemis]

It's not really enough sometimes to say, "Just don't trade for doctored lineages" when lineages are still fully capable of being ruined after you've traded for them.

Indeed they are. Some people trade for short names in a lineage, some trade for long, some trade for, well, alive dragons. But then something happens and the dragons' names change for some reason, or they are killed for some reason. The dragons in a lineage are owned by the people who have them on their scroll and they can do whatever they want with them. If they decide to give them a name someone doesn't like after they specifically traded for a certain name type in a lineage...well, too bad. If they lose their names because the player wandered off when someone specifically traded for a dragon with named parents...well, too bad. It's unfortunate but out of your control. In that case, if the lineage is so important that it Must Not Change Ever, then build it oneself and own all the dragons. That's the only way to assure nothing will happen to the lineage outside Datamonsters.

 

That said, I'm kinda 'eh' on doctored lines. Some look cool, but it seems dodgy to make them and then pass the dragon off as something it's not. And then again, a dragon that had its parents killed by someone else for reasons unknown after two years is all of a sudden good for an even gen line so long as people don't mind the tombstones...so that's not bad, but then it is nice to know a lost Thuwed is a real Thuwed. There are good things and bad things about doctoring them.

[Banuk]

It's tiring to be constantly told that everyone can play the way they want, that some can ruin how others play but that those others can't suggest something to fix the problem or even call out the people who are ruining things for them. It's all very one-sided in this game. Yeah, you can doctor lineages, but no way should anyone be able to see that lineage for what it really is. Yeah, you can kill inbreds to keep them out of the breeding pool and clean things up, but God forbid anyone suggest something that could potentially make things fair for EVERYONE.

 

Ugh, forget it. I'm going to just shut up now. Apparently I have no clue what I'm saying or anything. Whatever.

 

Edited November 14, 2011 by Derranged

[kerrikins]

Conversely, what do people think about me making the site store the lost linage information so that the lineage can continue past the tombstones, preventing people from "doctoring" lineages. To me, it seems disingenuous to try to misrepresent dragons, so...

If you're going to do this, can it be an optional link, OR something that is only used going forward, with lots of warning? Like, 'as of this day, dragons killed will still retain their lineages'.

 

That way there is lots of warning and everyone can at least keep what dragons they have. I'd prefer that it be optional on each scroll, but I don't know if that that might be complicated to code.

 

Derranged; whenever you suggest changing something about how the site already functions, of course there are going to be objections. The key is finding a balance to make both sides happiest.

Edited November 14, 2011 by kerrikins

[Amur_Rama]

(Warning: Long and cranky. ADS-sufferers please skip to the bottom)

 

Leave lineages alone! I doctor mine, but never ones I receive as gifts or from trades, but only their offspring that are already mine to do with what I will. Because as it's been said before, getting low-gens of certain breeds is absolutely impossible!

 

And I don't want to hear any crap about how people should just "catch their own" or "trade better", tell you (general) what: Stop asking for obscenely high-value things for pixels that cost you absolutely nothing to get in the first place. If you didn't ask for so much, people like me wouldn't go "eh, screw it, tombstones work for me."

 

Or, on the matter of cave-generated rares, if you folks -and you know who you are- didn't breed your metal/uncommon armies in the hopes of getting trade fodder for those people who ask for so much, then there would be dragons in the cave for regular people to catch and thus remove the reason to want to deadline anyway. We could all "catch our own" to "trade better" then.

 

Ooooor, if you don't want that option, how about we get four months of that rare glitch back?… Oh wait, you won't want that either, since that would make the "value" of your free pixels plummet, so you won't be able to get the shiny "expensive" stuff either. Okay, how about the breeding drought gets a bit tighter and no metals breed for half the year, then the cave would generate more to compensate... oh, wait, no, you want to trade too and no fair that newbs get to the same level of shiny junk you have, they wouldn't appreciate it, I've been here longer... so that won't work either.

 

How about you quit beating around the bush and just go offsite and wire each other $20 through Paypal and officially buy your dragons that way? DC doesn't have real money-economy, but it sure does have a dragon economy. Two pounds of fresh-minted gold barely buys a pound of first-mold-pressed tinsel these days, it seems. And you wonder why people want to make knock-offs on their own time. Perhaps they don't feel like DEALING with trying TO BARGAIN WITH YOU!

 

DC is completely free, but my time is not. I go to work, I go to graduate school, I actually have real-life hobbies that involve live, time-consuming plants and animals. I sometimes do well to even catch enough cb hatchlings to trade for decent things, sometimes I even have a day off and blow half of it lurking in the cave and IRC and waiting for fickle chance to be nice to me in dragonlotto (though when it's nice, it rains and half the time I think someone's jerking my chain when it does happen, followed by a good expected drought for a while).

 

If I want to lop off the -to me- ugly, uneven, choppy non-themed lineage of to make a deadlined Red dragon then that's my right to do so. And how dare you try to stop me, because if I want anything to change for my benefit, then that's affecting how you play and "We can't have THAT, can we?"

 

I can't help but that suspect is probably only about tinsels , because we only have 31 CBs of those, and those owners, when they're not in the mood to be extremely generous (and thank you deeply for when you are), they can basically siphon off as much of the cream of the DC cave drops as they want for one legal 2gen. The same applies to rare holiday owners, especially the ones who decided to show their ass before Teleport was started. Since they'd lost control of the whole clutch, to dish out for whatever bribes they'd received earlier in the year, they decided that no one would get any eggs period, I remember that thread!

 

And those are the dragons that people really got in to doctoring because no one wants an uneven 19th generation amoeba-lineage, and a pair of tombstones looks a lot nicer than that, even if they are a pair of tombstones.

 

I'm even more petty, I lop them off because I don't like to scroll down to look through a bunch of skinny table cells waiting to get to one pathetically tiny image. I've dumped trios and stripes and blacks and splits because the lineage went on two cells lines longer than I could stand. I'd prefer it if lineages read like dog pedigrees, and I'd love the option to make it look like that. But you don't see me screaming that we shouldn't have pictures in lineages (written name, breed, gender, that's all I want see on a pedigree).

 

 

tl;dr

 

If someone trades you a dragon as something, then messes up the lineage you bought, then that's YOUR OWN FAULT FOR BUYING STUFF FROM A JERK! DEAL WITH IT! Spread word around, heaven forbid you don't trade with them anymore, Lord knows you could also just ASK if the person you're getting a dragon from plans to deadline or try for zombies. And if you don't like their plans, then I guess the egg wasn't worth that much to you, was it?

 

If you're working a lineage, keep it on your own scroll, or work with someone who also has the same lineage goals. DUH. I can't believe that was even brought up as an argument, anything else (especially building with AP stock) is like building a Pokemon card tower at the beach by asking passerby for spare cards, and then getting pissed when someone hands you a Digimon and a regular ace or someone else jostles your table and collapses it with a thrown volleyball. What did you expect could happen under those circumstances?

 

But don't stop me or anyone else from managing our dragons and scrolls how we want them, because you can play this game however you want. Whether you want cb metal frozen armies a thousand strong, play the roulette wheel with killing for zombies in July, or to deadline-start a blunaXgoldfish inbred checker or two.

[Fuzzbucket]

It's tiring to be constantly told that everyone can play the way they want, that some can ruin how others play but that those others can't suggest something to fix the problem or even call out the people who are ruining things for them. It's all very one-sided in this game. Yeah, you can doctor lineages, but no way should anyone be able to see that lineage for what it really is. Yeah, you can kill inbreds to keep them out of the breeding pool and clean things up, but God forbid anyone suggest something that could potentially make things fair for EVERYONE.

 

Ugh, forget it. I'm going to just shut up now. Apparently I have no clue what I'm saying or anything. Whatever.

Thing is, Derranged - there are a LOAD of players who never ever come here. They probably don't even know there are such things as lineages. there is no possible way to tell them not to kill off that dragon they suddenly decided they didn't want. They had it, bred it, it turned up an egg they didn't like and they APd it - and thought no more of where it went.

 

You on the other hand saw it and it fit your lineage. GREAT. You built on it. 6 months later the owner of that egg, who has never been seen here, decided to kill the egg - zombying, a fit of rage - who knows. That's very sad - but they cannot be BLAMED for it. In fact, nor can people who did know about lineages - but I am taking an extreme case here. I admit that if I ever did kill a dragon I had had for ages, which may or may not have kids - I might not check them ALL to see where they went. Can you hand on heart say that you would ?

 

It's not that it's unfair. It's just that there are so many ways to play. And the ONLY way to be certain sure is to use only your own dragons or those of people you absolutely trust. That is one way to play.

 

I don't see how anyone can say others cannot kill. Just as they cannot say that you must.

 

That said I do think it is dirty pool to pretend something is CB that isn't. And I do want to be ABLE to see the lineage of my tombstones, yes.

[~!~]

Whatever happened to the "give everybody the option of showing or hiding the lineage of dead dragons" idea?

[Scrac]

I would like to ask why eggs found in the AP retain lineage. Caveborn eggs are the abandoned offspring of dragons not owed by humans (no one is recording the lineage) picked up by a random person. AP eggs are eggs that were the offspring of human owned dragons that were abandoned and picked up by a random person. For some reason the AP egg comes with information on their history, even though they were abandoned. We have two stories here, with the difference being where the egg comes from, and one of them not making sense. An abandoned egg is an abandoned egg. Why are they treated differently?

 

I feel that traded dragons should retain lineage.

 

My suggestion of an option to forget a dragon's lineage would be for the already adult dragons, and should only effect the dragon the action is used on and the offspring of the dragon after the action is used. Pre-existing offspring would keep their lineage unless they chose to erase the lineage as well.

Edited November 15, 2011 by Scrac

[aangs-sister]

Whatever happened to the "give everybody the option of showing or hiding the lineage of dead dragons" idea?

I'm with this one. This seems like an idea that would make (almost) everyone happy.

 

I'm only putting the 'almost' because some people will never be happy.

[Syphoneira]

Whatever happened to the "give everybody the option of showing or hiding the lineage of dead dragons" idea?

 

 

Unless it's murder to code or something, that certainly does seem to be the only logical compromise...

[perzephone]

Conversely, what do people think about me making the site store the lost linage information so that the lineage can continue past the tombstones, preventing people from "doctoring" lineages. To me, it seems disingenuous to try to misrepresent dragons, so...

I'm late to the discussion, but I like this idea.

 

Not because I'm afraid of misrepresented dragons, but because I'm pathologically curious.

 

I'd love to know what the lost lineages are, back as far as they'll go. I'm also tired of looking at one of my dragons & thinking I'm crazy because I could have sworn it had a longer lineage than what I'm currently seeing. The addition of tombstones cleared that up a little... but not much.

 

I'd also like to see what breed of dragons Vampires were before they were bitten. You can kind of guess from some parentage - chances are the offspring of a Mint x Gold was probably a Mint, but maybe not. And there's no way to know at all with CB Vamps.

[Fuzzbucket]

Whatever happened to the "give everybody the option of showing or hiding the lineage of dead dragons" idea?

Dunno, but I was always for that one

[Nightwing915]

I am really upset with how the AP prevents you from traveling if it has 25+ eggs. All there ever is is common stuff like greens, grays, stones, spitfires, abd the like. Whenever something good shows up, it's taken. All I do is refresh until the pile has shrunken enough.

[Fuzzbucket]

I am really upset with how the AP prevents you from traveling if it has 25+ eggs. All there ever is is common stuff like greens, grays, stones, spitfires, bad the like. Whenever something good shows up, it's taken. All I do is refresh until the pile has shrunken enough.

You're new, aren't you ?

 

This is the way it is, has been and shall be. This game takes patience.

[Fengari]

I don't want the way tombstones work in lineages to change.

 

I don't see how people can complain about 'misrepresenting' dragons, as it is impossible to hide that the lineage has been doctored. Yes, someone might get more value for their doctored tinsel than they would have gotten for it when it was still messy or inbred, but that means someone out there also found it more valuable that way. The tombstone is there for everyone to see, and it is up to the people they trade with to decide if it bothers them or not. If you don't like doctored lineages because they were probably messy and maybe inbred before, don't trade for them...

 

I like making pretty looking lineages. I don't care what the actual history of a dragon is, as long as it looks good on the lineage page. At the moment I'm planning a tombstone tinsel lineage. Why? Not because of the trading value, although I'll probably put some up for trade, and if I get nice things for them, I won't complain. But because I'm getting a bit tired of seeing all those stairstep lineages, and I want to do something different with mine. I like PB lineages, and without doctoring that is impossible with tinsels, because there are no tinsel x tinsel caveborn pairs.

If deceased dragons didn't 'doctor' a lineage anymore, that would mean there's a whole bunch of possibilities to get creative with the dragons I have that disappear.

 

The suggested option of being able to see beyond the tombstones bothers me because to me, that would ruin the lineage. I know I would still be able to see it in it's doctored form, but the fact that other people may ruin the intended effect by clicking the 'see beyond the tombstones' option, bothers me.

 

I realise it is frustrating if someone kills a dragon in your lineage and it ruins it. But honestly, wouldn't you still feel it's ruined if you had to click the tombstone to see what was there?

For me, this falls into the same category as names disappearing or changing, or offspring being killed, bitten or zombified. You don't own the dragons, so you cannot control what happens to them. As said: if you want to make sure your lineage stays intact, make sure you own all dragons in them. Can't find the needed staring pairs? Well, then you know how I would feel if it wasn't possible to doctor them... At least you also have that option.

 

[Nightwing915]

You're new, aren't you ?

 

This is the way it is, has been and shall be. This game takes patience.

Personally, I think you shouldn't be forced if all there are are dragons you got before. That's my solution.

[HeatherMarie]

Personally, I think you shouldn't be forced if all there are are dragons you got before. That's my solution.

Who's forcing you? If the cave is blocked and the AP is filled with dragons you "got before", then just don't pick up any eggs. No one is forcing you to take those AP eggs.

[~!~]

Personally, I think you shouldn't be forced if all there are are dragons you got before. That's my solution.

If you're playing with the idea that you want the same number of each dragon, that'll mess things up, because the game will try to make it so that there are like 10 times as many of each common dragon as of each rare. So, overall, the entire userbase will have to have that many more of each common than each rare.

 

My beef is more that all the people who are "Whiptail lovers who pick up every Whiptail they see" have full scrolls (full of Whiptails, I imagine, and the other blocker breeds they collect) and think to themselves, "man, I wish I could pick up that Whiptail that's in the AP, causing the cave to be blocked, but I can't" and the rest of us are thinking "man, I wish somebody would pick up that Whiptail egg." In my opinion, the only way to solve the problem is to lower the number of Whiptail eggs produced. That goes for all "blocker" breeds. Whether this means we'll have to lower the populations of other breeds or not remains to be seen.

 

Also, @Marie: No single player is forced to pick up these eggs, but the userbase as a whole is forced to do so if they want cave eggs. I think it's reasonable to assume that responsibility/duty on oneself as a player, and to resent it, rather than just saying "nimby, you pick them up."