Change on how cooldowns work

[olympe]

Sometimes, waiting for a cooldown to end can be pretty annoying, because you have to wait for the exact second it expires. Like when you want to breed your favorite pairing: You'll have to wait exactly one week to the second until you can breed that pairing again. And, since most people won't be able to be there at exactly the right second, the time of breeding will slowly move to a later time. Like this:

 

You breed on a sunday at 6 PM. Next week, you have an appointment and breed at 8 PM. The week after that, you would have time to breed at 6 PM again, but you can't because you will have to wait two more hours. Waiting for the cooldown to end, you get distracted and breed at 9 PM. In week 4, you have a date and can't breed until 11 PM...

I know that this might be exaggerated, but the trend is there, even if it isn't quite as pronounced.

 

What I want to suggest is ending each cooldown at midnight. Say, you breed on a Sunday at 6 PM. Next Sunday, you can breed again, be it at 1 AM or 11 PM.

 

Pros:

• More freedom in choosing the exact time of your breeding/using an BSA
• No more staying up later all the time in order to still get that breeding (or whatever) done before turning in. Instead, you have a breeding window of 24 hours without it affecting the time you can breed next.
• No more having to change your weekly breeding day eventually.

Cons:

• You might be able to take almost 24 hours off your timer, but only once. (If you breed on Sunday at 11:59 PM in week one and at 00:01 AM in week two, you won't be able to breed on a Saturday the next week.)
• Downtime won't affect timers any more unless it happens around midnight.

Which timers should be affected:

• breeding
• freezing/freeze slots
• kill slots
• BSAs (all)

What should not be affected:

• killed eggs counting towards your limit: Changing the modus on the time killed eggs count towards your limit might lead to a loophole: You accidentally grab a CB egg at 11 PM, kill it and can grab a new one a mere hour later. This would go against the idea of punishing the player for killing an egg.
• hatching of eggs and growing up of hatchlings - once again, this might shorten the time needed to hatch/grow up too much.

Unsure about:

• tombstones and broken egg shells - should they vanish at midnight or on the second?

Edited October 4, 2012 by olympe

[Mysfytt]

I am finding my breed day gets messed up every so often - i usually breed Sunday for eggs I owe, but sometimes I miss a week because the cooldown is too late at night by the time it has jumped those few hours each week, so say once a month or two, no bred week to reset the day.

 

this would be handy - or even just a final day hourly countdown - 'dragon cannot breed for 5 days' then dragon cannot breed for 6 hrs' on the final day.

[KageSora]

I agree, this would be useful. And I don't see it being a game-breaker if implemented.

 

Agreed that killed eggs should not reset, as that would be a bit of a problem.

 

But aside from that, I don't see any real issues with this.

 

The "might be able to remove almost 24h from the time once" thing isn't even that big of a con, because you'd either have to wait a long time for that to happen again, or you'd have to wait more than 7 days to be able to do that again, so you'd end up having a penalty later on to even it out if you were trying to do that.

[Emeraldmay]

Yes. Yes yes yes yes omg yes!

 

I would love it so...so much if this was implanted. I usually end up skipping breeding just so I can get it to a time when I'm actually half awake. It's so well thought out and amazing - I play on one game like this and it works fine I would say dead eggshells vanish on the second personally

 

Yes to the hourly countdown as well. I'm bouncing around waiting for my dragons which have '1 day left' to kick into action and let me breed them

[Pokemonfan13]

YES!!!!

 

I remember this being suggested ages ago and TJ shot it down, but he could be more amenable now.

 

It makes so much sense. My breeding slowly shifts throughout the week, and it's so annoying. I'd much rather it be on x day and it STAY on x day. Like you said, it can't really be abused, you can't migrate earlier in the week, for example.

[Dolphinsong]

I wouldn't mind it if was at least down to the hour instead of to the second. Having it just down to the day tho... not that fond of really. By having it down to the hour you can still breed at the same time within that peticular hour without it delaying it any further.

Edited October 4, 2012 by Dolphinsong

[olympe]

(Not trying to pick a fight, but to further my understanding on your POV:) Could you tell me why you'd prefer it to be down to the hour only?

[Dolphinsong]

For me it makes more sense, cause its more or less subtracting nearly an entire day if you breed at 11:50pm and next week you can breed again at 12:01am, thats like an ENTIRE day less in the cooldown. Its already been shot down for anything that will shorten the cooldown of breeding. Having it where it resets on the day instead of the hour basically does this.

[olympe]

At a maximum, and only once in your life-time. Unless you oscillate between a late and an early breeding. However, the maximum gain total is less than 24 hours.

 

Let's take the BSA Splash, for example. Cooldown is 24 hours. If my suggestion gets implemented, you could Splash on Monday at 11:59 PM and again two minutes later. However, you can only Splash once on Monday, once on Tuesday, once on Wednesday and so forth. Is it really such a problem if you can to it twice within 2 minutes and then wait 47 hours and 58 minutes to repeat the same thing? On average, it's still only one Splash per day (and shallow water dragon), so the average uses you have per cooldown period don't increase at all.

 

And, yes, the system works just the same for any other cooldown, be it breeding, summoning or biting, to name a few.

[Dolphinsong]

Using your splash example I'll explain why I think just having it down to the hour will work. Monday you splash at 11:50pm, Tuesday you can splash at 11:20pm, Wesenday 11:58pm. Roughly same time period each day without having to wait till the next day to splash again like it is currently.

Edited October 4, 2012 by Dolphinsong

[blah]

This is a splendid idea. If we could get TJ to do that and then make him put the same text for all the timers as well...

 

The 'pushing back' thing happens to me all the time. I just can't be online always at the same time.

 

And when I am online, the timer just says "one more day". Great. I'll be refreshing every 30 minutes because I really do not remember what time exactly I bred the week before. And I won't keep a list to put it down for every dragon.

[olympe]

Using your splash example I'll explain why I think just having it down to the hour will work. Monday you splash at 11:50pm, Tuesday you can splash at 11:20pm, Wesenday 11:58pm. Roughly same time period each day without having to wait till the next day to splash again like it is currently.

As blah said, people don't always have the opportunity to be online at the same time of day. All I intended to accomplish with my suggestion is to increase the window of opportunity for the use of [insert action here] to 24 hours without any drawbacks (like the pushing back thing mentioned). Right now, our window of opportunity is less than a second, or the timer will be moved further back, albeit slowly. Increasing the duration of the window to one hour is an improvement, but still seems to make not much of a difference overall.

[Ashes The Second]

Yes, please. I can't stand not being able to breed the same time each week; it always ticks me off.

[Pokemonfan13]

I still support. No matter hoe unfair people might convince themselves it is, it is completely fair and you will never gain any time, since if you want to only have to wait 6 days you have to wait 8 days to set it up. =3

 

And for the one day cooldown, yes, you could do it a few minutes apart, but you have to wait essentially 48 hours to set it up.

Edited October 5, 2012 by Pokemonfan13

[annageckos]

I'm actually fine with how it is now. I would rather have the timers be changed to show exactly how much time is left. Like instead of it saying 'one more day' it would say ' 15hours and 26 minutes'. But if it was changed I would agree with Dolphinsong.

[chemdragoner]

I'm actually fine with how it is now. I would rather have the timers be changed to show exactly how much time is left. Like instead of it saying 'one more day' it would say ' 15hours and 26 minutes'. But if it was changed I would agree with Dolphinsong.

Agreed, either that (with a inside-page clock) or to the day.

Not an IT person, so have no idea how hard it could be to do that tho.

[Ashes The Second]

Agreed, either that (with a inside-page clock) or to the day.

Not an IT person, so have no idea how hard it could be to do that tho.

Why would you need to be an IT person to make a clock for a game? o.0; IT people help with computer problems. |D.

 

It'd be hard to make a clock, since the area would have to refresh every second, and would lag to death, probably.

 

 

[Pokemonfan13]

I still love this. I hate waiting to exactly whatever random time I bred last, it would be so much better to just be able to breed on "saturday" or whenever my breeding day is. The way it is now there is a guaranteed drift that can be very very very very obnoxious, especially if you don't mark to the minute every dragon breeding, since you're waiting all day for a breeding at 10pm when all you remember is your last breeding was "thursday".

[SnowWhite]

I'm not really invested heavily in this idea, but I was reading the thread and had a suggestion. What if it was reset in a 12 hour window, instead of the full 24 hours that Olympe suggested? Say you breed your dragons at 10 PM on Monday night. You would be able to breed them again noon of the following Monday.

[olympe]

That would work for me, too. But then, the next person will ask if we can't have a 4-hour-window (12, 4 and 8 o'clock) - and then, another one will ask if we can't just take X hours off the timer... Making one clean cut at midnight seemed like a good idea to me, to be honest. And it's easy to remember that the reset is whenever the date changes (in EST time).

[dustpuppy]

Yes, switching at midnight instead of on the second would be VERY helpful, yes please!

[olympe]

I decided to put up a poll, since I'd really like to see more opinions. I hope it covers all.

[StormWizard212]

I support this idea. I'd like to be able to breed on the same day and even if it's only a slow process, your time can get out really badly with the current system.

[Atalante]

I'd LOVE it if this could be implemented.

I voted "Make the cooldown end at midnight." This would be so insanely useful.

[Fuzzbucket]

Is that even if you did whatever at five to midnight ?