The Ratios

[Pokemonfan13]

Why not just have fixed ratios? It can't be that hard to code. It would also be easier if we knew a dragon's exact rarity and worth in trades. At least it would be a help for me.

It wouldn't be that simple for trades. Popularity and demand also play a big part. It's the same reason why blacks are supposedly common but they trade as uncommons/rares. So if a dragon is in high demand there will be fewer available so they will be worth more, even if there are the same number created as another less popular breed.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

No to dragons going to infertile. No to higher gens being less fertile.

 

I do think it'd be nice if the breeding and cave drop ratios were separate, though.

[kerrikins]

The problem that I see with fixed chances it the potential for a glut of 'rares' due to the fact that *so* many people would be breeding to try and get them. It'll just make trading even wonkier if everyone and their brother has a second gen gold and the value plunges.

[olympe]

So? People already either demand 2nd gen PB metallics or CB metallics anyway.

[Pokemonfan13]

I do agree that CB ratios and breeding ratios should be different. They're completely different populations, so it doesn't make much sense that they should influence each other. And it would solve the problem of people breeding a dragon like crazy [coughblackscough] making them too rare in CB form.

[olympe]

This also goes for stripes, which can be obtained only in white as CB, but bred to have 4 other colorations. Of course people are breeding stripes like crazy to get them all, and of course people are breeding their vines and blacks, playing the alt lotto. But that these breeds are pretty rare as CBs because of this seems to make things worse than they need to be.

[Fiona]

As I said in the other thread, ratios for bred and cb dragons used to not be tied together, but that caused a big problem because the site still saw them as the same breed. The result was that you essentially never saw certain breeds in the cave. Blacks, stripes, golds and silvers were particularly affected. TJ essentially was left with no choice but to tie breeding into it so they would drop.

 

The only way I can see divorcing breeding from cave ratios would be if they were coded to be essentially two different breeds. I don't know how practical that is though.

[TJ09]

As I said in the other thread, ratios for bred and cb dragons used to not be tied together, but that caused a big problem because the site still saw them as the same breed. The result was that you essentially never saw certain breeds in the cave. Blacks, stripes, golds and silvers were particularly affected. TJ essentially was left with no choice but to tie breeding into it so they would drop.

 

The only way I can see divorcing breeding from cave ratios would be if they were coded to be essentially two different breeds. I don't know how practical that is though.

That was the case of breeding success not being tied to the population manager, but breeding output was. In that, the site didn't stop you from breeding an overpopulated breed, but those eggs were counted towards the overall population, which continued to stay overpopulated (even though the site was making fewer CB's to try to keep things in balance).

 

So it wasn't that they were separate, it's that breeding success was unaffected by population.

[Reidragon]

That was the case of breeding success not being tied to the population manager, but breeding output was. In that, the site didn't stop you from breeding an overpopulated breed, but those eggs were counted towards the overall population, which continued to stay overpopulated (even though the site was making fewer CB's to try to keep things in balance).

 

So it wasn't that they were separate, it's that breeding success was unaffected by population.

Thanks for clearing things up TJ !

 

Really I think a way to help out ratios and alleviate blockers would be the migration suggestion someone brought up awhile ago. In that breeds would migrate seasonally and then rotate out again. I think if releases are increasing this should be something we should look into in more depth.

 

As it stands the increase in breeds is going to clog up the cave so I don't see the issue in letting breeds rotate in and out. It might bring back desirability to some of those who don't get picked up because if you need them you would only have a certain window to pick them up kinda like the CB seasonal are now. I think it might help the whole cave run more smoothly :3

 

I don't necessarily think ratios need to be fixed just availability? Though in a sense if breeds rotate in and out not sure if they would have to recode ratios to allow that to work?

Edited March 5, 2013 by Reidragon

[angelicdragonpuppy]

If I'm totally misunderstanding/not realizing things then I apologize.

 

What I would like to see, ratio-wise, is:

1) Locked ratios for each breed

2) More stratified rarity levels

 

Locked ratios for each breed: A Black is a Black is a Black. Ratios should not be dependent on how many Blacks are raised or bred or produced by the cave. They should depend on how rare Blacks are meant to be. If Blacks are meant to be (just in example) 5% of all drops--then let them BE 5% of all drops, regardless of how popular or unpopular they are. Ratios would have to be manually adjusted, but that should be fairly easy, as I'll explain in point 2...

 

More stratified rarity levels: Right now, from what I've seen, we have three 'levels' of rarity: rares (Golds/Silvers), perceived rares (Trios/Blacks/Blusangs/Stripes/Unbreedables), and commons (everything else). I think it'd be nice if we had a more rigid hierarchy of rarity, something like:

Very Common ---> Common ---> Uncommon ---> Very Uncommon ---> Rare

Every breed would be set to one of these levels, and then the ratios would be divided within that level. For example...

 

Cave has a 35% chance to make a very common, 30% to make a common, 20% to make an uncommon, 10% to make a very uncommon, 5% to make a rare, or something along these lines.

 

After the cave picks which level of rarity to produce, it'll roll again to determine which breed within that level is produced. Let's say there are ten very uncommon breeds. The chance of any one of those breeds being produced would be 10% within that 7% chance of a very uncommon egg to begin with. Ratios would be easy to adjust because you could just divide again after a new breed was added. For example, if another very uncommon was released, you'd divide 100 by 11 to see what the chance of any one of that breed being produced is.

 

 

[alci]

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.

A lot of discussion going on here. I'm just going to ask a question to the quoted point. Perhaps I'm just being stupid, but:

 

I can't understand how what TJ talks about in the quote has anything to do with dynamic ratios (current system) or fixed ratios. Say user A has 100 Gold dragons and user B has 1. If we have ratios, at a certain time, user A will statistically get 100 x more Gold eggs from breeding his Gold dragons than user B will get from his - the system does not lower the chance for user A to get Gold offspring, just because he has many Gold dragons already. The same will be true if we have fixed ratios.

 

The difference as I understand it is that the dynamic ratios will change with time, so that at a cetain point, if Golds are overpopulated, breeding will go into effective zero (draught), whereas at other times, ratios will swing the other way, and breeding Golds will be very likely (we have been on such a high for metallics and tinsels for the last weeks).

 

But on the bottom line, player A gets 100 x as many eggs from his dragons, no matter what system. The only difference is that with dynamic ratios, the eggs will sometimes come many at a time, and other times he will go for months with no eggs, whereas with fixed ratios, the eggs will be evenly distributed over time. Right?

Edited March 5, 2013 by alci

[Fiona]

Thanks for the clarification, TJ. Whatever you changed when you changed it, it helped.

 

I wouldn't be opposed to some sort of migration for dragon breeds. Most of the rest of the proposals here would be a huge change to the way the site works. I don't think we'd like it as much as you think we would, just from what itty tiny bit I know about how things work.

[Reidragon]

Thanks for the clarification, TJ. Whatever you changed when you changed it, it helped.

 

I wouldn't be opposed to some sort of migration for dragon breeds. Most of the rest of the proposals here would be a huge change to the way the site works. I don't think we'd like it as much as you think we would, just from what itty tiny bit I know about how things work.

100% agreed with you. To be honest NOBODY but TJ really know how the ratios work anyway so all of these proposals are really mostly speculation on our part. Personally I think as more breeds get introduced this will just become more and more of an issue and people will complain more and more about 'blocker breeds' That's why I think that Migration could be a neat system in general if it's worked out right.

Edited March 5, 2013 by Reidragon

[HeatherMarie]

I want to add something to this discussion, but I don't really know what to say that hasn't been said already.

 

We really, honestly, don't *know* HOW the ratios work. There's SO much talk in the forums about ratios, how fair/unfair they are, how we'd like them to be different... But how can we fairly make any sort of informed suggestions about ratios when we really know *nothing* about how they actually work *now*? We're all just assuming things.

 

Fixed percentages/whatever as opposed to vague rare/uncommon designations, that confuses me because TJ has said there are no such things as those designations in the cave.

 

IF I can just say what I prefer, I would much prefer a "Locked" ratio/percentage on each breed, rather then assigning vague designations like "rare" "uncommon" "common" etc.

 

But to be honest? I've been here for years and I don't really see a huge problem with ratios. There *are* ratio problems, constantly, but eventually they work themselves out. *shrugs*

[Nectaris]

 

But to be honest? I've been here for years and I don't really see a huge problem with ratios. There *are* ratio problems, constantly, but eventually they work themselves out. *shrugs*

 

Personally I disagree on this. I tend to think that the ratio problems have existed for years, it is just that many have become numb to it and have accepted it as "the way things are".

 

Yeah, all we can do is speculate on how things work and as such any suggestions are mere speculation. But to me, by posting at all, you are letting TJ know that the status quo isn't leaving people happy, that it needs to be adjusted. Blacks have been rare in the cave ever since the change in alt eggs(though they appear to be in a resurgence, probably temporary though). Rares have gone through this as well.

 

What I personally want is something to keep us from having the "feast then famine" that we have had for many years. I don't like it that sometimes there are floods of rares, that usually mean there will be few later on. I don't like it because I know that if I do have bad luck while breeding/catching during the "feast" period, I sure won't when we go through the "famine".

[cyradis4]

What I personally want is something to keep us from having the "feast then famine" that we have had for many years. I don't like it that sometimes there are floods of rares, that usually mean there will be few later on. I don't like it because I know that if I do have bad luck while breeding/catching during the "feast" period, I sure won't when we go through the "famine".

I agree 100%, what I'd love is something that smooths out most of the Feast then Famine. Having things shift over time, being cyclical but not on a set cycle, I love that.

 

Having months where every single bred Black is a sitting Alt (and every breeding is succeeding), and then have 10 months where there are no alts (and few eggs)? That's what I'd like smoothed out.

 

I think alls that really needs to be done is to have this cycle smoothed out.

 

Without knowing how the ratios work, or how they update, you can't really be sure that there isn't a better solution to the problem then fixed ratios. Most places do fixed ratios, and I like differences.

 

So the way I see it, my DragonCave wish list is:

 

1. Smooth out the Feast / Famine, so the feasts aren't nearly as big and the famines aren't nearly so bad.

 

2. Find some way (lots of good suggestions in another thread) to provide a continuous incentive for people to pick up whatever happens to be blocking the AP at any given time

 

3. Something to help the biomes cycle faster (combine with two would be nice)

 

Cheers!

C4.

[DarkEternity]

I'm just really worried that lots of CB metals now will mean no CB metals EVER for the next two years...

[olympe]

Personally I disagree on this. I tend to think that the ratio problems have existed for years, it is just that many have become numb to it and have accepted it as "the way things are".

 

[...]

 

What I personally want is something to keep us from having the "feast then famine" that we have had for many years. I don't like it that sometimes there are floods of rares, that usually mean there will be few later on. I don't like it because I know that if I do have bad luck while breeding/catching during the "feast" period, I sure won't when we go through the "famine".

Exactly. Sure, it's nice to know when you can breed rares and expect a success, even if it's only once a year - but it's just as depressing to breed the rest of the year.

 

And I still think that, if bred dragons don't count towards the ratios, this will help immensely. Because the people who cannot catch them as CB can still trade for 2nd gens with greater ease than now.

 

True, it's natural that animals occur in certain ratios towards each other, like 50 mice on an owl or something - and the ratios are auto-adpting to an ideal, sometimes being more like 10 mice on an owl, leading to more owls to die from famine until there are so few owls that the mice can breed like crazy without being eaten by them.

 

Still, bred and kept animals don't work that way. Even though most mice in nature are something like agouti-colored - the color being a mix of brown and grey, I think - those mice being kept and bred by humans can have all kinds of colors - white, brown, black, grey, even patterns (which don't occur in nature).

 

Even if the cave only produces 5 golds in 1000 dragons (example, not an exact number), there's no reason for breeding ratios to follow that number, too. What does nature care if some dragon keepers keep thousands of gold dragons, or colored stripes which don't occur in nature (eg the cave)?

[Pixxelation]

I think instead of having a ratio system for breeding, breeding should be percents. The cave as ratios makes sense, but breeding should have a fixed chance that will never change when new dragons are released.

[alci]

But to be honest? I've been here for years and I don't really see a huge problem with ratios. There *are* ratio problems, constantly, but eventually they work themselves out. *shrugs*

No, the ratio problems don't work themselves out - quite on the contrary, the ratio problems get worse and worse as the number of players grows bigger.

 

One source of the problem is that the ratios only update with a certain time interval. We don't know how often they update, but based on indications it might be anything from at each new release to once or twice a month. Now why is this a problem?

 

The problem arises because the ratios, when updating, check on the actual population of each breed against the target population. Let's say the ratios are updated, and we find out Golds are overpopulated. This means from this point, Golds will drop more rarely in cave and be harder to breed, so that next time ratios are updated, hopefully they will correspond closer to the target population. That's all good on paper, but there is a big IF here: Ideally the time it takes for Golds to get back to target level should be about the same as the time between updates - if that is so, next time we run a ratio check, Golds will be on par, and all is find.

 

However, in reality there seems to have become too far between updates - or perhaps there simply passes too many eggs through the cave and are bred too many eggs between the updates, courtesy of increased activity - but the bottom line is the same. Now when we ran our ratio check and found out that Golds were overpopulated, Golds became more rare compared to other dragons. Now, next time we run a ratio check, Golds are not just back on normal, suddenly because so many other eggs have come through the cave, Golds have become massively underpopulated - which in turn will result in Golds becoming relatively very common and breeding en mass. This should bring Golds up to their target level, but again, only if next upgrade comes at the right time.

 

So, now comes third ratio upgrade, and because of the large number of Golds in existance, and hence large number of eggs bred since second ratio check, Golds are now massively overpopulated. This causes a complete stop to Golds, and we enter a draught. No Golds in cave, and no Golds what-so-ever are bred. Now this continues until at some ratio check, things have swung the other way, and we get a new Gold flood, etc.

 

To cut a long story short, as we get more and more players and hence dragons in circulation, ratios need to adjust themselves more and more frequently in order to stay stable - if too long time goes between ratio checks, what we will see is massive fluctuations between on one hand extreme overpopulation (draught) and on the other side severe underpopulation (flood). Compare to how things have been with metallics and tinsels over the last years and compare for yourself. We are in a flood at the moment, btw.

 

The figures below is an attempt to illustrate this. The red line shows the number of the breed compared to the target number. Notice that in first case (frequent ratio checks) things stabilize after the initial overpopulation (but then gradually destabilize), whereas in lower second case (long time between ratio checks) we get wild fluctuations instead. Notice also how red lines become steaper and steaper with time, because more dragons and players in circulation means bigger rate in change of numbers (more people collect more egg in a given time interval). This is an important point, because this means that ratio update intervals might have been enough to keep things stable back in the days, but may not be it any longer - if ratios don't get checked more and more frequently, things will grow unstable with time.

 

Edited March 6, 2013 by alci

[Fuzzbucket]

Do you know for an absolute fact that this is how it is happening, or is this speculation based on your own observations ?

 

Just asking... as TJ has said many times that the ratios do not work the way any of us had suggested that they do...

Edited March 6, 2013 by fuzzbucket

[TheGrox]

From what we know currently, what alci said is probably the best explanation of how the ratios work. And we haven't got anything else to go off.

 

 

[cyradis4]

Yea, how Alci described it is how I've always thought the ratios worked, and that the issue with them was their frequency or dampening (technical terms for not updating quickly enough / dropping too many new eggs).

 

I would like to hear from TJ if this is how the ratios work. And smoothing things out would be really good....

 

Cheers!

C4.

[Fuzzbucket]

From what we know currently, what alci said is probably the best explanation of how the ratios work. And we haven't got anything else to go off.

No.... I just - wonder about the inner workings of the Meister's brain...

 

Whether it is all set up to confuzzle us as much as possible and keep us guessing...

[alci]

Do you know for an absolute fact that this is how it is happening, or is this speculation based on your own observations ?

 

Just asking... as TJ has said many times that the ratios do not work the way any of us had suggested that they do...

I know for fact that the ratios are only checked with a certain time interval between them - TJ has said that directly, because I once asked him whether the ratios were checked each time an dragon was bred, and he said something along the lines of "obviously not, as that would tax the system way too much". But we don't know the actual time interval between these changes.

 

As for things getting into/out of balance, I don't know for fact that what is happening, but for any system that callibrates against a certain ratio, that is how it will go, if the frequency for checking is not adjusted properly towards the growth rate of the system.

 

That this is the explanation of the actual behaviour of the system is speculation from my part. It does fit the observations, however - for instance, it is pretty well documented how breeding behavior of a certain species can change literally from one day to the next (remember the first black/metallic draught last year, when we still had breed numbers back on Silve's). Back then TJ also said directly, that he had changed nothing in the system, and that the system was working perfectly fine, what we saw was just the ratios correcting them self. It seems logical to match these events to updating of the ratios, but obviously we can't know that without confirmation.

Edited March 6, 2013 by alci