DC Gold

[Amur_Rama]

Well my goodness. The OP read my mind.

 

I just got started in Magistream, and I gotta say, the forum there seems nicer than the DC one. Not to mention I do also like how the Keep and forum accounts are hooked up. Also, scroll TABS that I can label! And moving creatures is SO WONDERFULLY EASY!

 

Anyway, the one thing I am not particularly fond of is the economy there, as has been mentioned already. But where you get people you get greedy s, and there's no getting around that. You'd have to have a control from the top to stop people being ridiculously greedy. And there's no other word for what happens to those kind of in-game economies than pure greed.

 

And I'm sure this'll get me shot, but I happen to love those monthly donator creatures. Fortunately I have a job that'll let me toss about $10 into it a month, So while I can't get a scroll full of donation creatures, I have one of each and I'm satisfied with it. I don't really mind the price, since obviously the money goes to keeping the site up, and probably contracting the sprite artists to keep new creatures coming on a regular release basis. Win win as far as I can see.

 

<Minor gripe>(For anyone who's going to gripe and whine about people who "can't donate because of too young/student/jobless/cancer", for DC it'd be the equivalent of not being able to sit in the cave for hours (because you have a job so you can afford a few donation dollars a month), you just take your 2gens and be satisfied already or save some pennies and do things that way, because everyone can do that much at least. I notice that sympathy doesn't extend to people who grump about not being able to catch metals in cave, they're always told to go get on a waiting list, because there's no hoarding in DC and they should be satisfied with crumbs.falselol) To me there's no difference between simply accepting adds and paying for the pleasure to not see them, TJ's already accepting money for "perks" that only the haves can afford anyway. If it's going to the site's benefit, I don't mind paying it, but I'd prefer to actually get some scroll decor with it.</end gripe>

 

So to keep that in line, I'm not in favor of trading being done on the user end, even with limited gold, because someone's going to be a giant jerk with it, abuse the system and ruin it for everyone. However. I would be heavily in favor of "trading" by using the site as a broker.

 

>Player A offers a bred/caught egg/hatchling to be traded/sold on a common meeting "trade board" in the site.

>> Player A labels the egg by some already established choices: (e.g. Caveborn/Lineaged, Breed, Generation [perhaps a list of numbers to the extent that the site shows lineages])

>>> Player A then puts in a minimum amount of gold required to buy the egg/hatchling from them, controlled by a site maximum.* And/or a time limit in which to take the egg from them, in case a minimum isn't met, as a sorting measure.

 

>>>> The site then places the eggs up according to their lineage/generation/breed(maybe)/time limit(double-maybe), thus making things easy for people looking for specific eggs to have their lists narrowed down, instead of being swamped.

 

>>Player B select the criteria they want for an egg/hatchling, if there isn't anything there, they change their criteria until they find something they like.

>>> If Player B doesn't find something they want, they go hunt on the cave, go to the chat to ask if someone will breed them an egg of a particularly strange pairing (since some people are nice like that in the chat), or just go to the forums to see if there's a trading group for what they want. The way they play doesn't really change at all unless they let it.

 

>> Player C sees something they like under the criteria they've picked. As gold is easy to obtain to reach the minimum bid asked, they head over to their favorite hatchery and snaplink/multilink eggs until they reach the gold amount they want/need.

>>>At the same Player C is giving UV and clicks to easily a thousand eggs for other viewers completely independent of the trade situation going on. Their eggs grow faster and they can go raise more off the AP/cave blockers/raise gorgeous lineages since their scroll space isn't nearly as tight a commodity as before. No more going nuts trying to find new UV, and because of the 15:1 ratio, a trader can click the same egg at least 15 times before their views stop counting. But they'll have the motivation to keep clicking on new eggs, because only the first click gives gold (the site obviously must track that, since the only way to give the same egg more than one click is with a dynamic IP connection, thus spreading clicks out across many eggs, not just one page of them.)

 

 

*Possibly could be determined by clicks. Though our eggs don't need them to hatch, any click given also gives a V and UV (only once though). The average number of UV needed to hatch an egg seems to fall around 400-600, so twice that should be the max one could charge in gold for an egg.** The site could have a max bid setting, but that'd leave it to the players to decide how "valuable" they consider their eggs to be. (As a twist, the actual max bid could be a hidden element, determined by TJ, so players could set their price at 60,000, where they think the max is, but if the max is actually tied in to double/triple? the UV needed to hatch/grow (which varies to every individual already), people putting bids on the egg can get lucky and hit the right number early, and prevent people who do nothing but grind to get gold to simply buy everything, as well as undercut anyone who does try to corner the market by asking for millions for whatever the hot egg of the month is. Which might be nice for people who think it isn't challenging to buy eggs straight off.

 

After all, if you're throwing eggs out to the highest bidder, you aren't making lineages so should not care where the egg ends up. You're tossing eggs to another AP and hoping someone will give you gold for them. If you want to move lineages to like-minded individuals, that's what gifting and teleport trading is for. And if you just want to dump eggs off your scroll, that's what the AP is for.

 

** Now, some BS math. Unlike Magistream, DC needs the page to load fully to register, so there could be no such thing as an Image-free DC hatchery. So only clicking and letting the page load fully will do. Eggs Around The World seems to have an average of 15-20k eggs/hatchlings on it at any moment, that's easily 15k in gold a day for a serious grinder. But at least a manageable 2-5k for any average person to do if they can put together a few minutes a day to Snaplink a bunch of eggs.

 

 

 

..... Can we have a "collapse" forum command? Because this got way longer than I'd originally intended. I apologize for the wall up there, but not my argument.

[whitebaron]

actually, unless people can spend their money on something more useful to them than dragons, any suggestion of implementing money would change the situation for poor people not at all.

 

I'll compare this to a well known video game - Diablo II.

Since you could get money a lot easier than Items, and could not buy top-notch items from the store, money was worthless.

Same applies here: Since you cannot buy a dragon from the store, and never will be able to do just that, money would be worthless. why should i trade you my cb gold for 10000 gold when I am an active player with 60+ hours per week of play? Money would come to me automatically, just by playing more.

 

So, the only way to get money to work would be to limit it in some ways, both the acquisition as well as the expenditure, limit trades, and build in other ways to spend money as well. Which would mean that DC is not DC at all anymore.

[Dolphinsong]

Currency to use on items that have time limits on them.... Very very bad idea. Yes these are eggs/hatchlings you're buying but they have time limits on them. Whats to prevent a person from selling a 1h egg for the max coin cost to another player that didn't pay attetion to the time left?

[Obscure_Trash]

I like DC for its simplicity. So no.

 

Not to mention I can't imagine what this would do to ratios for those of us just doing in cave and not buying. Everyone else expanded on this a lot better than me, though. x3

[schmupti]

We already have in-game currency. It's called 'eggs'.

 

The current system is not entirely dependent on speed and luck. Lots of people trade 'red paperclip' style, trading a handful of less valuable eggs/hatchlings for a few more valuable ones, working their way up to what they want. The difference between this and a gold system, in which players earn and save their gold to trade, is that gold is easier to accumulate and so ultimately less valuable (inflation!), while at the same time it devalues eggs/hatchlings as currency.

 

It would also add all the hassles that face financial regulation agencies in the real world.

Does TJ regulate inflation or take a hands-off approach? How do they handle the sites that would inevitably spring up to game the system and rack up big bucks in a short time? Where's the fun when the only folks hunting new releases are the ones looking to resell them as everyone sits back and waits for the 'market' to open?

 

There's a learning curve to catching and trading, and it can be a frustrating process, but replacing it with click-and-buy changes it from a game to a collection.

[wobster109]

I'm shocked that it's typical to respond to unpopular suggestions with "no, just no", followed by accusations of self-interestedness.

 

That's very abrupt and condescending. People put a lot of time and effort into their ideas. This is not an immediately bad idea. I think it's bad for the cave, because I've been around a long time, but that doesn't the OP deserves to be swiftly put down like a misbehaving child. I think (s)he deserves a respectful and reasonable explanation of why it doesn't work.

 

---

 

PF13 made a very strong argument, and I'd like to add to it. The OP suggested putting a profile limit on the number of coins, and I think that's no good either. If there is a limit, it's because people are reaching it. And if people are reaching it, then coins are not scarce. If I know I can get 200 coins in a week, or even in 3 months, I will not want to trade eggs for coins because I can get coins any time, but I can't get a particular dragon any time.

 

Like PF13 said, economies are complicated balancing games. Money (mediating apples and bread) works partly because people (myself, at least) teeter on the border of enough/not enough to buy what they want. If I could reach my account maximum, then coins would be "easy" and "certain", and I wouldn't want to exchange dragons for it. For coins to be worth anything at all, they have to be scarce.

 

---

 

In closing, I hope everyone will imagine saying their post out loud to a friend before posting it! I'd also suggest replacing "no, just no" with "I think this wouldn't work because". We were all new once.

[Daypaw]

I believe that for coins to have value, there would need to be some sort of in-game motivation to collect them (an egg shop / trading post where users could 'buy an egg' from an NPC) -- if it is limited strictly to user-to-user interaction and they can not be applied to anything OTHER than user-to-user trades, what motivation would we have to use these coins for bartering? Coins would essentially be useless other than as something difficult to obtain and pass from one account to another.

 

I for one would not want to take coins because I would have nowhere to spend them in-game that would be worthwhile. If we had no means of spending coins in-game, even with an account cap, there would be no way of removing coins from the economy and they would devalue fairly quickly.

 

Somewhere to use these would be vital to this idea, and I do not like the idea of shops on DC. Without the shops, all this gold circulating from one account to another just makes no sense, because again, what's the point in having coins that you really can't do anything with?

[RheaZen]

I believe that for coins to have value, there would need to be some sort of in-game motivation to collect them (an egg shop / trading post where users could 'buy an egg' from an NPC) -- if it is limited strictly to user-to-user interaction and they can not be applied to anything OTHER than user-to-user trades, what motivation would we have to use these coins for bartering? Coins would essentially be useless other than as something difficult to obtain and pass from one account to another.

 

I for one would not want to take coins because I would have nowhere to spend them in-game that would be worthwhile. If we had no means of spending coins in-game, even with an account cap, there would be no way of removing coins from the economy and they would devalue fairly quickly.

 

Somewhere to use these would be vital to this idea, and I do not like the idea of shops on DC. Without the shops, all this gold circulating from one account to another just makes no sense, because again, what's the point in having coins that you really can't do anything with?

Maybe a large enough amount of points could provide an account benefit, in a similar vein to how the number of dragons you own does.

[Daypaw]

Maybe a large enough amount of points could provide an account benefit, in a similar vein to how the number of dragons you own does.

I could not see TJ giving us anything other than a badge to signify that we collected xAmount of coins- he has stated multiple times that he will not do anything to unbalance the game or point favor one way or another to any users in terms of functionality.

[KageSora]

I'm shocked that it's typical to respond to unpopular suggestions with "no, just no", followed by accusations of self-interestedness.

 

[snip]

 

In closing, I hope everyone will imagine saying their post out loud to a friend before posting it! I'd also suggest replacing "no, just no" with "I think this wouldn't work because". We were all new once.

Well, when people out-right say "I'd like this because I'd benefit from it", it's kind a hard NOT to call "self-interest", honestly. And that does happen with various unpopular suggestions. It's on the very first page--the OP themselves states that a currency would help them.

 

Also, meh, I'd say what I post aloud to a friend of mine--only it'd be with a lot of wording that would get me warned here!

 

Additionally, the OP is not new. They have been a member of the forums for just a few months shy of 2 years now now, and this is not the first suggestion they've made that has been shot down, and IIRC it's not the first one they've made that would completely change the nature of the game--which is a massive no-no to a lot of the people here. (And if it IS their first, sorry, must be getting the OP confused with somebody else)

 

Making DC into something that it's not, well, then what reason do we have to stay here? Why bother to play a game if it's become something you don't like?

 

That's one reason why people jump on massively game-altering suggestions with "no, just no" and such. Especially if other people have summed up their objections, but they want to add in their objection without making a wall of text repeating what others have said.

 

This suggestion would, if implemented, make me seriously question remaining at DC. And, honestly, I'd probably abandon DC after a while just like I do most other petsites. DC is not a petsite, it's a collectible site. There is a difference, and I enjoy collectible sites far more than I like petsites.

[stogucheme]

Addressing the concerns about money becoming worthless, why not either a] make dragons worth thousands of coins (so coins are a bit annoying to obtain and are therefore valued more) or b] make the coins harder to obtain, such as going with my original idea of giving 1 coin per raised dragon? We could also have three different images for gold piles- as this site is all about images- like a small pile, a large pile, and a pile with rare treasures mixed in.

 

@KageSora and everyone else saying "self-interest is bad!": Would you suggest something that would not benefit you? The reason people have suggestions is to make their gaming experience more enjoyable.

 

In addition, it is highly questionable that people attack my personal motivations (rather than my actual points) and think that this makes my points invalid. This is the same as saying, "you gave me a dollar, but you did it for personal reasons that benefited you, so I never actually got that dollar." Highly illogical and offensive and I wish it would stop.

 

So to keep that in line, I'm not in favor of trading being done on the user end, even with limited gold, because someone's going to be a giant jerk with it, abuse the system and ruin it for everyone.  However. I would be heavily in favor of "trading" by using the site as a broker.

 

>Player A offers a bred/caught egg/hatchling to be traded/sold on a common meeting "trade board" in the site. 

>> Player A labels the egg by some already established choices:  (e.g. Caveborn/Lineaged, Breed, Generation [perhaps a list of numbers to the extent that the site shows lineages])

>>> Player A then puts in a minimum amount of gold required to buy the egg/hatchling from them, controlled by a site maximum.* And/or a time limit in which to take the egg from them, in case a minimum isn't met, as a sorting measure.

 

>>>> The site then places the eggs up according to their lineage/generation/breed(maybe)/time limit(double-maybe), thus making things easy for people looking for specific eggs to have their lists narrowed down, instead of being swamped.

 

>>Player B select the criteria they want for an egg/hatchling, if there isn't anything there, they change their criteria until they find something they like.

>>> If Player B doesn't find something they want, they go hunt on the cave, go to the chat to ask if someone will breed them an egg of a particularly strange pairing (since some people are nice like that in the chat), or just go to the forums to see if there's a trading group for what they want.  The way they play doesn't really change at all unless they let it.

 

>> Player C sees something they like under the criteria they've picked.  As gold is easy to obtain to reach the minimum bid asked, they head over to their favorite hatchery and snaplink/multilink eggs until they reach the gold amount they want/need.

>>>At the same Player C is giving UV and clicks to easily a thousand eggs for other viewers completely independent of the trade situation going on. Their eggs grow faster and they can go raise more off the AP/cave blockers/raise gorgeous lineages since their scroll space isn't nearly as tight a commodity as before.  No more going nuts trying to find new UV, and because of the 15:1 ratio, a trader can click the same egg at least 15 times before their views stop counting.  But they'll have the motivation to keep clicking on new eggs, because only the first click gives gold (the site obviously must track that, since the only way to give the same egg more than one click is with a dynamic IP connection, thus spreading clicks out across many eggs, not just one page of them.)

 

 

*Possibly could be determined by clicks.  Though our eggs don't need them to hatch, any click given also gives a V and UV (only once though).  The average number of UV needed to hatch an egg seems to fall around 400-600, so twice that should be the max one could charge in gold for an egg.**  The site could have a max bid setting, but that'd leave it to the players to decide how "valuable" they consider their eggs to be. (As a twist, the actual max bid could be a hidden element, determined by TJ, so players could set their price at 60,000, where they think the max is, but if the max is actually tied in to double/triple? the UV needed to hatch/grow (which varies to every individual already), people putting bids on the egg can get lucky and hit the right number early, and prevent people who do nothing but grind to get gold to simply buy everything, as well as undercut anyone who does try to corner the market by asking for millions for whatever the hot egg of the month is. Which might be nice for people who think it isn't challenging to buy eggs straight off. 

 

After all, if you're throwing eggs out to the highest bidder, you aren't making lineages so should not care where the egg ends up.  You're tossing eggs to another AP and hoping someone will give you gold for them.  If you want to move lineages to like-minded individuals, that's what gifting and teleport trading is for.  And if you just want to dump eggs off your scroll, that's what the AP is for.

 

** Now, some BS math. Unlike Magistream, DC needs the page to load fully to register, so there could be no such thing as an Image-free DC hatchery. So only clicking and letting the page load fully will do.  Eggs Around The World seems to have an average of 15-20k eggs/hatchlings on it at any moment, that's easily 15k in gold a day for a serious grinder.  But at least a manageable 2-5k for any average person to do if they can put together a few minutes a day to Snaplink a bunch of eggs.

I really, really like your idea. I've quoted (in my opinion) the most important parts. (Can I add them to the OP?)

 

Addressing your greed concerns, well, I believe we have that now, and there's nothing we can really do about it except meet everyone's wants and make the greed null and void.

[Daypaw]

Making the dragons worth more or making the gold harder to obtain still does not alleviate the problem of the gold never leaving the economy. If I get 2k for my dragon and spend 2k for another dragon, that 2k does not cease to exist- it just changes hands while everyone continues to earn gold until everyone ends up with an absurd amount. This would eventually cause extreme inflation (because what else are we going to do with this 50k sitting on our scroll...) making it impossible for new players to keep up with the people around when the system was implemented.

 

Adding any means of removing gold (other than outright deleting it) would change DC from a collection site to a petsite, as KageSora mentioned in their post.

 

Edited to add.

Edited November 3, 2012 by Daypaw

[KageSora]

The thing with self-interest is that you need to be careful how you use it.

 

Of course we all suggest things we think would improve the game. But there's a difference between "I'm making this suggestion because I think it would improve the game, and thus my enjoyment of it, and the enjoyment of others" and "I think X is too hard/I can't be bothered to do X/I don't like X for purely selfish reasons, and therefore I want it to be changed to Y."

 

Depending on how you approach the topic, it can either come off as something that would enhance your enjoyment and be beneficial overall, or as something that you just want because you want to make DC conform to your standards rather than finding a game that suits your tastes.

 

 

 

Besides, coming off as somebody who has something to gain is something that inherently makes an audience wary. It's the idea of disinterest--the less you appear to stand to gain from something, the more people will be willing to listen because it makes it seem that the suggestion is there to benefit them. The more you stand to gain, the more wary people are that it won't actually benefit them but will benefit you at their expense.

 

So by going "I want it to be X, because it would help me" you are instantly making your attempt to persuade the audience that much harder. If you don't bring your personal interest into it, and present it as "I think X would be beneficial to the community because Y", then you make yourself much more likely to at least be heard rather than just shot down instantly.

 

DC is a very hostile audience to suggestions that would change the nature of the game. To present an argument in favor of such a suggestion requires a very delicate touch, careful wording, and maintaining plausible disinterest in the topic.

 

 

You may think it's illogical to call you into question because of your motives, but it's what people do. If you think people will magically stop calling the validity of your suggestion into question because of your motives, then you're sadly in for a disappointment. It's why disinterest is an important thing to keep in mind in a situation where you're attempting to put forth an argument.

[stogucheme]

Making the dragons worth more or making the gold harder to obtain still does not alleviate the problem of the gold never leaving the economy. If I get 2k for my dragon and spend 2k for another dragon, that 2k does not cease to exist- it just changes hands while everyone continues to earn gold until everyone ends up with an absurd amount.

 

Adding any means of removing gold (other than outright deleting it) would change DC from a collection site to a petsite, as KageSora mentioned in their post.

What if it did get deleted or there was a cap? But enough of a cap that you couldn't just live off your current Gold forever? Hmm...

 

1g per dragon raised. I believe someone once calculated it out to 50 dragons raised per 2 weeks? So 50g per 2 weeks.

If the minimum bid for a dragon is 25g, and we set the maximum at 75g, and the cap was 175g, which is 7 dragons able to be bought at a time (possibly 200g for flexibility)...

 

But how to incentivise selling? Perhaps you can only obtain 175g on your own, and up to 250g (75g more) if you sell a dragon? Kind of like you could have 4 eggs and breed 1 extra in the old days.

 

I think this could really work. It'd take 3 weeks to have enough for the most expensive dragon- a good amount of work, especially considering you'd have to work 'round the clock. The only problem with this is that sellers would have more buying power, but isn't this at least slightly negated by the maximum bid? And they couldn't buy and resell to turn profits; aside from raising eggs to hatchies, they'd be spending as much as they'd be getting.

 

But how to decide the hatchie vs. egg prices...perhaps you can add 5g per day taken off, but rares are rares so they get capped?

 

@KageSora: Alright. I'll stop being honest and straightforward from here on out. I'll only present the pros and cons (which I had done in the OP and there was no mention of personal gain- yet I still got attacked! Hmm...). I'll start lying from here on out because people hate honest people.

Edited November 3, 2012 by stogucheme

[schmupti]

Addressing the concerns about money becoming worthless, why not either a] make dragons worth thousands of coins (so coins are a bit annoying to obtain and are therefore valued more) or b] make the coins harder to obtain, such as going with my original idea of giving 1 coin per raised dragon? We could also have three different images for gold piles- as this site is all about images- like a small pile, a large pile, and a pile with rare treasures mixed in. wink.gif

 

As pointed out by the ever-so-quotable KageSora, you're talking about changing the nature of the game. That's the primary problem I see with your suggestion.

 

For example...

 

What if it did get deleted or there was a cap? But enough of a cap that you couldn't just live off your current Gold forever? Hmm...

 

1g per dragon raised. I believe someone once calculated it out to 50 dragons raised per 2 weeks? So 50g per 2 weeks.

If the minimum bid for a dragon is 25g, and we set the maximum at 75g, and the cap was 175g, which is 7 dragons able to be bought at a time (possibly 200g for flexibility)...

 

But how to incentivise selling? Perhaps you can only obtain 175g on your own, and up to 250g (75g more) if you sell a dragon? Kind of like you could have 4 eggs and breed 1 extra in the old days.

 

I think this could really work. It'd take 3 weeks to have enough for the most expensive dragon- a good amount of work, especially considering you'd have to work 'round the clock. The only problem with this is that sellers would have more buying power, but isn't this at least slightly negated by the maximum bid? And they couldn't buy and resell to turn profits; aside from raising eggs to hatchies, they'd be spending as much as they'd be getting.

 

But how to decide the hatchie vs. egg prices...perhaps you can add 5g per day taken off, but rares are rares so they get capped?

 

(Accent mine.)

 

This isn't a small change to level the playing field for newbies--this is a fundamentally different game. Users would be forced to play this 'make money' game rather than the 'steal eggs' game we signed up for.

 

Essentially, what works for Magistream is great for Magistream, but DC isn't Magistream.

[ParticleSoup]

a very large 'No thanks' from me.

 

for all the reasons everyone has pretty much stated. schmupti put it nicely, too.

 

our currency in this game is eggs and hatchlings and you would be surprised what some people would trade for what. i enjoy the simplicity of this game as it is, and if you want a game with currency, go play one that has currency.

 

[stogucheme]

@schmupti: Well, some users do this already. Besides, no one would be forced to use the on-site trading boards (and T.J. might make a gold-or-offers option).

 

No one has really explained how this will change the game- at least, not in a way that's been clear to me. (Edit- change the game fundamentally, I meant. It's getting late.)

Edited November 3, 2012 by stogucheme

[Daypaw]

What if it did get deleted or there was a cap? But enough of a cap that you couldn't just live off your current Gold forever? Hmm...

 

1g per dragon raised. I believe someone once calculated it out to 50 dragons raised per 2 weeks? So 50g per 2 weeks.

If the minimum bid for a dragon is 25g, and we set the maximum at 75g, and the cap was 175g, which is 7 dragons able to be bought at a time (possibly 200g for flexibility)...

 

But how to incentivise selling? Perhaps you can only obtain 175g on your own, and up to 250g (75g more) if you sell a dragon? Kind of like you could have 4 eggs and breed 1 extra in the old days.

 

I think this could really work. It'd take 3 weeks to have enough for the most expensive dragon- a good amount of work, especially considering you'd have to work 'round the clock. The only problem with this is that sellers would have more buying power, but isn't this at least slightly negated by the maximum bid? And they couldn't buy and resell to turn profits; aside from raising eggs to hatchies, they'd be spending as much as they'd be getting.

 

But how to decide the hatchie vs. egg prices...perhaps you can add 5g per day taken off, but rares are rares so they get capped?

 

@KageSora: Alright. I'll stop being honest and straightforward from here on out. I'll only present the pros and cons (which I had done in the OP and there was no mention of personal gain- yet I still got attacked! Hmm...). I'll start lying from here on out because people hate honest people.

If it just gets deleted, then what's the point? People who are trying to save would be extremely upset by this, especially those who can not be around to raise 50 dragons in any given month (especially new users who are limited to 4 eggs at a time and thus would be slower to earn gold anyway)

 

"3 weeks to buy an expensive dragon" but for what purpose? So that the seller can send the gold to someone else?

 

I still do not see how this is in anyway more plausible or applicable to DC than the barter system that we use now. I happen to find CB whites more appealing than CB trios and would pay better in eggs to get one; trading in eggs is easy- either you have what the person is looking for and you make an offer, or you don't and you move on.

 

If someone who favors, say, Mints wanted to create a listing asking for gold, what stops them from listing their Mint at 75g? There would be just as much difference from one user to another as there is in current trading.

 

And again: Exactly what motivation do we have to use this system? If we are going to sell an egg and get another one with the gold, why include another step in the middle at all when we already have Magis to teleport? Even if we are 'saving for an expensive dragon' there is no guarantee that someone who HAS said dragon will have any interest in taking gold (since it can only be used in trades and is otherwise useless on-site) and that they won't demand that we complete 20 other gold trades for them first to accumulate a small collection of other dragons to send them via the current trading method instead. This is not practical, and not appealing. I simply do not see any way to make this 'work' without destroying the current play style of DC and driving half of the userbase away.

[DarkEternity]

Ok:

1. I have never seen anyone make a suggestion topic without some degree of self interest.

 

2. You wouldn't be replying to this thread if you didn't have your own self interest.

 

3. Humans are only interested in what benefit them. Or they just say that it's for the good of the hypothetical 'them' or 'newer players', people 'who can't trade' or people 'who don't have fast reflexes' or people 'who have a slow internet'. Whether you agree with me or not, that is the truth. And if anyone denies that and attacks other people of having self interest, well then you are a hypocrite because you have a vested interest. Why else would you want to undermine someone else's respectability/statement/idea if it would potentially impact on your gameplay?

 

This goes for everyone, but excuse me, if anyone has a broad generalisation about the anonymous 'them' let the anonymous 'them' state their own opinion instead of trying to capitalise on the silence of others to further YOUR OWN interests.

 

Furthermore, if people are unable to give constructive feedback, this thread should probably be closed. If stogucheme does not adhere to your concept of Political Correctness, because he/she is not cloaking his/her suggestion for the good of the 'hypothetical community' then take your personal attacks and leave.

[KageSora]

I'm not saying to lie, I'm saying you need to be sure to stress how much more the community stands to gain that you, otherwise it WILL come off as "I want X, so change the game for me".

 

When dealing with a hostile audience, you NEED to expect that you'll get hostile responses. It's completely ridiculous to think that they'll welcome you with open arms.

 

And if you get offended by that... Perhaps you should think more carefully about how strongly people will believe it to be an absolute game-changer, and simply not suggest things that WILL get a hostile response from the audience.

 

 

Besides, prior to you SAYING that you wanted to change it for your benefit, nobody attacked you personally.

 

Ashes said no because no auto-buying dragons and using real currency being against the ToS so virtual shouldn't be different and called Magistream a failure. You're not Magistream, so I don't see how an attack on Magistream is an attack on you.

 

DarkEternity said that Magistream had an awful economy--again, not a personal attack on you. They also said that an economy would need very strict control, and expressed a more neutral stance while saying that they'd prefer to keep costs down because it looks nicer to see single digits than quadruple digits, and then asked some very valid questions about how the suggestion would be handled if it were implemented.

 

Infinis simply said that they couldn't see a purpose for the currency in the context of DC, as all we have are dragons and nothing to actually spend that currency on. They also stood up for Magistream. As well as that they'd rather not see "prices" increase.

 

Angel of the Inferno said no, bringing up their belief that TJ has nixed the idea himself a few times and that they personally don't feel it would be beneficial to the game. They expressed a concern that people would demand ridiculous prices and that they felt it was fine the way it was.

 

Windnose defended Magistream believing "failure" was rude to use on Ashes' part. And then brought up that as it stands now, it's currently against the ToS to use virtual currency to purchase dragons. And then politely expressed that they were not fond of the suggestion because to them it would lessen the value of things to use gold rather than catching or trading for them themselves.

 

After that, you explicitly state that changing the game so drastically "would really help" you, to quote you.

 

 

Please, in the posts five posts prior to you explicitly stating that you had quite a bit to gain from this suggestion, where you personally were attacked.

 

(I'm serious, I want to know. I'm terrible at reading tone, especially in text, so I want to know where I'm missing this personal attack that people launched before you admitted to standing to benefit quite a bit from the suggestion.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

I personally have issue with the idea of putting a set amount per dragon. That completely fails to take into account that DC has so may people who put so much different value on dragons. That's what I love about DC. A dragon that I personally have no value for I could potentially trade to somebody who does want/need it for something they view as worthless but that's important to me.

[Daypaw]

No one has really explained how this will change the game- at least, not in a way that's been clear to me. (Edit- change the game fundamentally, I meant. It's getting late.)

Dragon Cave: Click to steal an egg, raise it, done. Trade if you feel like it. (collect)

 

Everywhere else: Shops, quests, dress-up, etc etc.... (pet site)

 

We like DC because it is so, eh, simple compared to the pet sites and doesn't have all the other nonsense piled on top of the basic element of raising your creature. We have our holiday events, but we're not constantly bombarded by "DO ALL OF THIS OTHER STUFF, LOOK AT THIS STUFF OVER HERE THAT ISN'T DIRECTLY RELATED TO YOUR DRAGON" and so on and so forth.

 

Simple, clean, no mess.

 

Adding elements such as gold would pitch DC into the "look at this stuff over here that isn't directly related to your dragon" category, one of those distractions that starts to steer it in the direction of pet site territory.

[Fuzzbucket]

No - please no. Someone said further up that we developed money to avoid having to say I want to trade my apple for your potato.

 

BUT - look at what has happened with money in the REAL WORLD. Capitalism is collapsing because - in effect - the WORLD implemented exactly what is being suggested - greedy people collecting what they can get and using it to buy stuff. And as things progress, they use their riches to browbeat others and we get the haves and the have nots.

 

I love this game partly for the generosity it engenders. GIFTING is not a bad thing. CHARITY is not a bad thing - charity - in its real sense - is "benevolence or generosity toward others or toward humanity." It comes from a word for affection. It's about kindness. I hate the way it has become a dirty word. That is all part of the same mindset that makes me dislike this suggestion so much.

 

If I am not clear here - do not support. (And I have no self-interest here. People gift to me and that's nice. I gift to others. I like doing that. That is how I would continue to play if this were implemented, so in fact it would not affect me either way. But it would make the game feel tainted, to me. Sad.)

[KageSora]

Ok:

1. I have never seen anyone make a suggestion topic without some degree of self interest.

 

2. You wouldn't be replying to this thread if you didn't have your own self interest.

 

3. Humans are only interested in what benefit them. Or they just say that it's for the good of the hypothetical 'them' or 'newer players', people 'who can't trade' or people 'who don't have fast reflexes' or people 'who have a slow internet'. Whether you agree with me or not, that is the truth. And if anyone denies that and attacks other people of having self interest, well then you are a hypocrite because you have a vested interest. Why else would you want to undermine someone else's respectability/statement/idea if it would potentially impact on your gameplay?

 

This goes for everyone, but excuse me, if anyone has a broad generalisation about the anonymous 'them' let the anonymous 'them' state their own opinion instead of trying to capitalise on the silence of others to further YOUR OWN interests.

 

Furthermore, if people are unable to give constructive feedback, this thread should probably be closed. If stogucheme does not adhere to your concept of Political Correctness, because he/she is not cloaking his/her suggestion for the good of the 'hypothetical community' then take your personal attacks and leave.

It's true that everybody has self-interest, I never denied that.

 

THAT is why it's important to maintain a plausible level of disinterest. We all know you will get something out of the suggestion. It's just a matter of "are you only suggesting this for you, or are you suggesting this for us too?"

 

Suppose that you had two people who were trying to sell you a car.

 

Person A stands to get a nice chunk of the profit if they sell you a car, while Person B simply gets to have better sales numbers thus making them more likely to keep their job.

 

Would you trust person A or B more about the car they're trying to sell you?

 

People, generally, are more likely to think that person A is going to lie or twist the truth to push that sale while person B is more likely to be honest.

 

It doesn't matter if it's the truth or not, it's how people work

 

It's why some people completely change their tune when they learn a sales person ISN'T working on commission. I've seen people refuse to make a purchase with the reasoning "You just want to sell it to me because you get paid on commission therefore I can't trust you that it's actually worth something to me" and then when the learn that no, the employee ISN'T paid on commission they buy it.

 

 

 

Additionally, it's not a personal attack nor does it have anything to do with being politically correct. It has everything to do with rhetoric, and how a person goes about actually presenting their argument in a way that will get it listened to and not brushed off instantly/reacted to with a knee-jerk reaction of "NO JUST NO NEVER DON'T LET IT HAPPEN I HATE IT".

 

It's an important concept of arguing effectively. It's something easily observable as well, as I pointed out in my personal example about sales people and commission--I HAVE seen that at my work.

[stogucheme]

@Daypaw (first post): Yeah, nevermind. Deleting is a bad idea. I like what I laid out.

 

The seller could use the Gold to get what they wanted.

 

Anyway, I'm going back and forth on this. I think the best solution is to have a "highly recommended prices" list. You don't have to follow it (and someone can bid more for an auto-buy), but it's a good rubric based solely on the ratios. And people can't bid higher than 75g, so there'd be no "rich players always outbid me!" stuff with the rares. (Any bid with 75g should be an auto-buy, unless the seller selects "don't auto-sell," since you can't outbid it.)

 

@KageSora: I shouldn't have to word my stuff for a hostile audience, because DC shouldn't BE a hostile audience. Call me unreasonable, but I think hostile people are just rude. (Unless, of course, they're a marginalized group going up against bigotry, but that's unrelated.) This is the last time I will respond to you because this is really off-topic.

 

@Daypaw (second post): This would just be adding currency. Same as trading, honestly. You get it the same way you get dragons, and you might not even notice getting it. It's just a more stable version.

 

@Fuzzbucket: Capitalism doesn't have a max wage, and people can circumvent the minimum wage. This is why it fails. We don't need to worry about the second, and we'll have the first.

Edited November 3, 2012 by stogucheme

[DarkEternity]

PC and PC again. If a person is interested in maintaining a reputation, they ought to adhere to PC, since if they don't the knee-jerk reaction is to immediately adopt the moral high ground.

 

However, this is a suggestion, not a sale. An essential difference because TJ's ultimate decision should be made based on logic, rationality and people's experience/gameplay styles rather than being swayed based on emotion.

 

Therefore, it would be more constructive if we argued on the basis of cause and effect not LOL THIS PERSON WANTS TO BENEFIT THEMSELVES, LET'S JUMP ON THE MORAL HIGH GROUND BANDWAGON. I dislike the double standard.

 

EDIT: Yep, personal attacks probably isn't the right word. It's more along the lines of distracting people with flashy minute details to undermine a person's reputation and substantiate an argument that would otherwise consist of: "NO JUST NO NEVER DON'T LET IT HAPPEN I HATE IT".

Edited November 3, 2012 by DarkEternity