Shorter Cooldown for Holiday Drops

[DeathCry]

I know this is a bit very late and everything, but:

 

I was thinking that especially for times like this, when such a large number of the Dragon Cave user population is unable to be in front of a computer (or plans have been seriously changed), there can be a cool down of about 3 hours (time variable) for Holiday drops to mainly allow for faster gifting.

 

I'm hoping that this would make things easier on catchers/gifters who can grab eggs much faster than they can currently give them away. I'm sure a lot of receivers would be very happy to have this done too.

 

Would this even be possible?

Can this be exploited in any way? - I can only think of those that have multiple scrolls.

Is "3" hours too short of a cool down time?

Would this actually help regular gifters on Dragon Cave?

Is this reasonable?

 

This is specifically for new cave born Holiday eggs that typically drop for 24 hours (Valentine's Day, Halloween, and Christmas)

 

I appreciate all responses.

Edited November 3, 2012 by DeathCry

[Obscure_Trash]

Hmm, I don't know. I just feel like this would create a kind of 'vicious' circle. Gifters can grab more often = people who are good at grabbing being able to take more often = more people feeling like they need to be gifted since they can't catch anything.

 

I'm going to have to go with 'leave it as is' for simplicity's sake.

[Dolphinsong]

Changing the cooldown would require TJ to change the coding that deals with that in order to allow for it, and that it only effects holiday cave drops and not everything (as ppl still breed that time period). He has enough on his plate without having to add in additional coding. Besides, with the current wait time, more people have a chance at getting eggs as the faster catchers are removed from the game for 5 hours when they can teleport the caught eggs to others before going back for more.

[Wookieinmashoo]

I'd rather have the ability to teleport eggs with cooldown attached.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

Can this be exploited in any way? - I can only think of those that have multiple scrolls.

I can think of one very obvious form of abuse right off the bat--people catching those eggs and trading them rather than gifting. ;___;

 

One potential counter would be making it so that after three hours you could only send a one way transfer, with trading teleports not being possible until the standard five hours--but then you could just have people doing two one-way transfers from each scroll to accomplish the trade instead. And because it'd be dealing with one-ways, it greatly increases the chance of someone getting cheated (whoever sends their half first isn't guaranteed to get something back).

 

So yah--your intentions are good, I can see how it'd be useful (I was totally planning on nabbing-and-gifting myself, because I'd been doing that during the breeding week, but of course now I remember these are CB/have cool downs e___e), but I also see the openings for abuse.

[DeathCry]

@SockPuppet I'm not too sure about the last part of that equation. There's a current cool down that everyone knows about, but I'm pretty sure that players don't feel entitled to being gifted. Certain expectations, yes, but not an outright demand. A gift is a gift, no?

 

I would think that people respect gifters enough right now when they do send out eggs, and that would remain and not turn into ingratitude over a "but you can catch more, why don't you give more" thought process...

 

I do appreciate your input, though.

 

Edit: Tag typo

 

@Dolphinsong As an additional load for TJ, I do understand that. Me knowing what goes behind the coding would probably bring this into a better perspective for me =/

If it is a great deal of work now, is it possible that something like that can be worked on over a large period of time so we can see results even in a year for now?

 

@Wookieinmashoo Sorry, but what do you mean by attached? I was thinking a shorter cool down for teleport, but it didn't seem like that's what you meant...

 

@angelicdragonpuppy I see what you mean. I would mainly like this to help gifters, but I'm not trying to put a hold on what someone wants to do with their eggs after they have grabbed it. A true gifter would still want to do as they have always done and simply give while not asking for something in return.

Edited November 3, 2012 by DeathCry

[wobster109]

I think this would be really hard to make unexploitable. However, the thoughts for those on the east coast is well placed. Would it be possible to make the eggs drop through Sunday also? No one can hatch an egg by Sunday 23:59, so no one would be able to get more than their egg slots anyway, and it would give another day for people in Sandy's path to get power back or otherwise find an Internet for awhile.

[Obscure_Trash]

I didn't mean that users would feel entitled to gifts. I meant that there'd more competition around more often, so more users might turn to gifting, unable to catch their own. That's just complete conjecture on my part, though, lol.

[ParticleSoup]

what Wook means is to be able to teleport the egg immediately after grabbing, but the egg cannot be abandoned by anyone until the 5 hours is up

[Fuzzbucket]

I fear there is FAR too much potential for abuse here - and 5 hours isn't THAT long. I caught 7 eggs in under 3 minutes, not right at the start of it all, and my connection is fairly average. Everyone is saying how easy it all is this time (I think TJ may have been kind enough to tweak something because of the storm, actually !).

 

I think if I were going to be a gifter (and this year I can't make it) I would be OK getting up earlyish and waiting out the 5 hours.Gifters I have met are that kind ! Making people trade for silly "prices" is not OK - but if people are prepared to do that - it IS their choice

 

I could live with transporting complete with the cooldown though.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

what Wook means is to be able to teleport the egg immediately after grabbing, but the egg cannot be abandoned by anyone until the 5 hours is up

The issue with this is that preserving the cool down in transported eggs isn't going to deter people from using it for early trades. In all likelihood, the egg is being traded to someone who plans to keep it/doesn't care about CD. Unless keeping the CD is just intended to make the idea more feasible to TJ rather than to prevent trading? X'D

[Chanilove]

In order for me to even consider this, there's something I'd like to know. Is it hard for people with slow Internet connections to catch these Halloween eggs? From what I've seen, even the people with painfully sluggish connections have been able to nab enough to fill their scrolls. I don't recall Valentine's or Christmas being that rough, either, but my memory could be failing me. Then again, I've seen a lot of people trying to trade the new eggs off for CB Golds and whatnot. I thought they were being wishful, but maybe I've been misinformed.

[whitebaron]

In order for me to even consider this, there's something I'd like to know. Is it hard for people with slow Internet connections to catch these Halloween eggs? From what I've seen, even the people with painfully sluggish connections have been able to nab enough to fill their scrolls. I don't recall Valentine's or Christmas being that rough, either, but my memory could be failing me. Then again, I've seen a lot of people trying to trade the new eggs off for CB Golds and whatnot. I thought they were being wishful, but maybe I've been misinformed.

I caught 3 eggs from my phone...

small screen, bad connection, slow rendering, bad click areas...

 

And I did not even once get the message that I was to slow. So, thats as easy as it can get.

[kerrikins]

I could be wrong (and TJ is not online to ask) but I believe that this drop was different because the biomes did not seem to 'empty' as fast as they usually do, even for Halloweens. Whether this was because of traffic or because he'd tweaked it to mean that more eggs dropped, period, I'm not sure. This Halloween is definitely not a good example of what a holiday is like, though - I am one of the ones who finds catching on the holiday easy, but most years there are lots of people flailing about not being able to catch any.

[DarkEternity]

most years there are lots of people flailing about not being able to catch any.

Most years we struggle to catch a full fill of eggs within a three hour period.

2010, I spent more like six hours.

[Fuzzbucket]

I think partly the ease of the drop this year was the fact that it is the first holiday we've had the biomes. Some emptied faster than others - but I was off the hour, logged in just to see - and 3 of the biomes had plenty - I had my 7 in minutes.

[kerrikins]

Haven't biomes been around much longer than that? They were introduced by the time that I started playing again, which was September of 2011.

[Chanilove]

Haven't biomes been around much longer than that? They were introduced by the time that I started playing again, which was September of 2011.

Yeah, the biomes have existed since I started playing. I have CB Christmas Magis and Heartseekers, so this isn't the first holiday the biomes have been around.

 

If TJ plans on making every holiday this easy, I don't see the need for this. Otherwise I'm neutral.

[gistofeverything]

I know SWs were hard to catch in my opinion - the last few holidays, however, have been soliddropping for the entire day, without a single normal egg in sight. (Correct me if I'm wrong - I'm never up for the exact midnight drop...)

[Chanilove]

I know SWs were hard to catch in my opinion - the last few holidays, however, have been soliddropping for the entire day, without a single normal egg in sight. (Correct me if I'm wrong - I'm never up for the exact midnight drop...)

I can't speak for the SW's. My account was active at the time, but I was unfortunately on hiatus. I only just came back in the middle of the Christmas festivities last year. I know that the Christmas Magis and Heartseekers were the only ones I saw in the biomes when I grabbed them, though I wasn't on at midnight for those. For the Halloweens I was, and it was nothing but the new release then as well.

[PointOfOrigin]

I was here for Shadow Walkers. We had biomes and it took me good 3 hours to catch four of mine. SWs had big drops on a hour and five minutes one which usually would usually pass in a blink of an eye. I'm not even kidding for the last one. The eggs would literally get grabbed in the time my computer needed to refresh. And I have a fast connection. Can't imagine how it was for those with slow connections.

Edited November 4, 2012 by PointOfOrigin

[olympe]

I'd say that holiday drops have become easier all the time. My first holiday release was the pumpkins, and I didn't catch any. (Okay, I didn't really understand about holiday drops then, and didn't try too hard.) The next were the snow angels, which took me hours to obtain for me and my daughter. (I later tried to gift one - it got lost in trade - and managed to nab a new SA on the AP.)

 

After that, there were the sweetlings. I actually requested help from another player back then. After that, I managed to grab one for my daughter and a 2nd one for me. Once again, it took hours for me to get there.

 

After that, we got marrows. That was the release that kind of marked a turning point: At first, I spent several hourly drops catching nothing. Then, TJ made a 2nd row of eggs appear, and suddenly, I could catch them, and rather quickly at that. Afterwards, holiday releases seemed to be pretty easy - which, I think, is a good thing. Ribbon dancers were crazy at first, but things settled down rather quickly. Rosebuds were totally easy (for me). And everything else that followed was pretty easy, too.

 

Now, the latest release was probably the easiest. I sent away two eggs - I was being gifted with two pumpkin eggs that were incu-hatchable - and had to unlock. Anyway, once I got my pumpkins hatched, it took me three clicks and two refreshes to get two new eggs - at something like :40 to :50, shortly before the hourly drop. (Desert was still full of eggs at that time.)

[gistofeverything]

Could it be possible, though, that TJ made this release easier because Sandy romped through town?

[Fuzzbucket]

Haven't biomes been around much longer than that? They were introduced by the time that I started playing again, which was September of 2011.

OK - I just looked. Biomes came in in June 2011. I stand corrected.

[cyradis4]

I was hunting at the first drop, at midnight. At 12:03, the biomes ran out of eggs. At 12:07, more had appeared.

 

I'm pretty sure TJ did something between 12:03 and 12:07 to make more eggs appear. Alls I can say is, if he did, I hope he does that from now on for every holiday release! It made life oh so much easier on everyone to not have to fight everyone else at the top of every hour / half hour for the (limited) number of eggs the cave generated.

 

Having said that, I don't think this is a good idea. Yea, it might make gifting easier for the holidays, but.... If the Holiday drops are all going to be as easy as this one, then there's no reason for it.

 

C4.