ANSWERED:Suggestions to improve the raffle

[DarkEternity]

A new breed will just cause the same problems really, with the added issue of it being as ridiculously scarce as the Tinsels were the first time around. Don't have a half dozen golds? Hope you like waiting two years to attempt to catch a 12th gen on the AP if you want that dragon at all.

Only multiclutching would present a fix for people reliant on the AP for prizes, because prizes are trasmitted from user to user and breeding to the AP only occurs from time to time. There is also a huge division in what traders on the forums perceive as rare and what non-forumers would perceive as rare. ^^;;

 

Though people would likely gift lots of long gen prizes on the IRC and forums if a user requested them. ^^;;

[Obscure_Trash]

Only multiclutching would present a fix for people reliant on the AP for prizes, because prizes are trasmitted from user to user and breeding to the AP only occurs from time to time. There is also a huge division in what traders on the forums perceive as rare and what non-forumers would perceive as rare. ^^;;

 

Though people would likely gift lots of long gen prizes on the IRC and forums if a user requested them. ^^;;

I don't really like the idea of multiclutches, but you are talking me into it. :3

[Marrionetta]

Well, that's fine. The shimmers alone would be more than enough. 

 

~Removed~

 

And just because you will not do it does not mean the suggested solution isn't doable, as well.

As far as the suggested solution being doable, actually it does. I mean, if by suggested solution you merely mean Shimmers getting a consolation prize update, that's totes fine and dandy. Just not the tins. I do have say over that.

 

Multi-clutches distribute special eggs to the hands of players not previously in trade arrangements. It's a good equalizer for the everyman when the world of second gen trading is somewhat exclusive and difficult to enter.

Edited January 24, 2014 by Marrionetta

[prpldrgnfr]

I would love to see the ratios tweaked so *all* prize dragons breed better, I did not, do not, and will not support multi-clutching.

[Fuzzbucket]

Multi-clutches distribute special eggs to the hands of players not previously in trade arrangements.  It's a good equalizer for the everyman when the world of second gen trading is somewhat exclusive and difficult to enter.

This. As for recolours - leaving aside that Marrionetta has the say there for tins - and quite right too - I suspect that what would happen would just be that people will then be upset that they can't build a recoloured/original checker.

 

AS long as there are prize dragons, this will continue to be an issue. I think multiclutching is probably the only way to "solve" that side of it, as it will mean that breeders who ARE greedy (a small minority of them, I have to say) cannot control all their eggs, while still being able to arrange trades and gifts to people they want to gift to/trade with.

Edited January 24, 2014 by fuzzbucket

[DarkEternity]

I'll take this from both sides. Theoretically, of course.

 

From a prizewinner's perspective:

- You won a raffle, you were one of a very, very small batch of people who won prizes

- You expect, of course, that the 2g direct offspring of your dragons will fetch a very, very high price if you choose to trade them. If you choose not to trade them, the 2g direct offspring will fetch a very high price/would be incredibly valued by the recipients of your gift. Usually, you'd want to gift in private and select carefully the recipients of the offspring so that you know that it would be appreciated by the person in question, cared for and bred.

- You don't want multiclutching, because if you are interested in trading, it significantly devalues your 2g dragons. Your 2g dragons abandoned - the ones you could have traded - will fetch the equivalent or even higher price on a trading thread. If you were trying to trade at the same time, the number of dragons in circulation would be divided amongst you and the other trader(s) causing you to lose out.

 

Even if you aren't trading your dragons, what about the people you are gifting too? The specialness/value of the gifts are lost. The dragons that you have produced are wasted. Those dragons could have been gifted to people. You could have made your list longer. Those dragons abandoned are hogging the ratio, what happens if your subsequent gifts are more difficult to breed? What if your list is never finished?

 

What IF the autoabandoned dragons are never cared for and die like so many other dragons? What if they're never bred/used in a lineage that someone cares about? What if it goes to an inactive/multiscroll and is left to rot?

 

- You don't want dragons multiclutching because you don't want other people trading the offspring of your dragons for ridiculously high prices (it does happen). Sometimes, people charge WAY more for the dragon than you do. This is unfair, because you would have charged less. Especially people charging so much for 2g prize fails, when you would have bred for less than that. Maybe you would have even bred for free. You resent the offspring of your dragon being used as a currency and want to enforce some kind of pricing controls. (Part of the thing I think is being represented by this idea is the adage of not trading gifts. The mindset is that you bred for free and you expect other people to treat the offspring with the same mindset.)

 

Multiclutching does take away from the agency of a prizewinner. Whether you're freaking out because your dragon's probably going to die in the AP (Which I thought of. About 1000 times every time I bred a 2g Holly - what's the death rate going to be this time? I ask myself.)

 

To gifting things. I think it's a really curious puzzle. (I won't deny it, breeding something as a gift for someone and having one of the siblings being put up for trade by someone who nabbed one of the dragons from the clutches is prrrobbabbly a bit irritating because in a way it defeats the purpose of gifting [and said breeder never did end up keeping one]. And THAT AWKWARD MOMENT ... when 3gs are being traded for more than the equivalent 2gs! - 99% sure that some 2g owners charge more than CB owners. Very awkward. I'm sorry. There's sometimes that weird bottleneck effect?)

 

- Plus even if 2gs are devalued, what if other things will rise, like 2gs from spriter's alts, 2gs from frills.

 

From a non-winner's side, esp. high tier users

- You worked hard for a low gen prize and now you're screwed because a sudden appearance of low gens means that you probably never needed to pay that much for a 2g. You think - what if more 2gs means that you won't be able to trade/repay your debts? Keep in mind that you don't have the agency that a winner possesses. If you're lucky, you can rely on more than one 2g prize, but more than likely you've got one 2g or none. The same reasoning as above winner, but to a lesser extent. After all, you can expect less from trades so you've got to make do with what you can.

 

You might also be interested in gifting. You know that long gen prizes aren't especially ... liked. The same might happen to low gen prizes.

 

Plus that chequer/lineage you were working on. What if those eggs get auto'd?

 

From a non-winner's side, not great catchers

- And besides, you might not be that great at catching things anyway. At least the raffle didn't rely on catching speed. You think that they're just putting power back in the hands of the catcher - something the raffle wanted to avoid!

 

- You might not have much to trade with anyway. Multiclutching might not be for you.

- Besides, might it just flood the AP with loads of crappy lineages? Who wants to sort through that mess for 2gs?

 

 

From a non-winner's side, the hopefully optimistic

- You might be able to catch a 2g.

- You go from having no chance to having a small chance at one.

- You might be too scared of PMing people.

- People without access to the forums, whatnot, would be able to catch prizes potentially.

- Your POV: Winners would have their PM inbox reduced/bugged less (I'm p. sure that winners are humans which means that they'd probably prefer having agency over their eggs wherever possible even if it means they get bugged. If you cloned a landowners house, it would not directly benefit them and they might worry about losing money over rent or having the cloned house damaged even if it sounds silly.)

- Well, there's not much chance you're going to win a CB prize anyway, so there's a very slim chance you'd go through the mindset of above, unless you have dragons you don't want to be multiclutching.

 

In my opinion:

- Multiclutching should have been implemented from the start

- It is probably/might be too late now. Individuals have become accustomed and would expect to control where their eggs go. (I think this is the same sort of expectation that people would have that if you won it would 'feel' like a prize i.e. you'd be one of a very small pool of people and be able to trade for a lot if you chose to - not everyone would probably choose to and it might just be a mental backup e.g. you fail at catching and are worried you can't catch anything: the option just BEING there might be enough to offer reassuarance)

- I think that everyone has the potential mindset to oppose multiclutches. Just some examples (generic) of some opinions I'd see around DC:

o People not giving my holidays homes during the 2 per person limit. I just don't want to breed my dragons anymore because they are dying.

o I don't breed to the AP, because my dragons might die. I prefer to gift my dragons.

- However, if I had won a CB prize shimmer or CB prize tinsel, I would probably feel obligated to support multiclutches, because I felt like I needed to, but not because I'd liked it. But because it is not the case, I feel that there is some potential for multiclutching in it as a method by which things are spread reliably.

 

I also think that the thread is always going to be a very difficult compromise between two almost incompatible outlooks.

 

In my opinion, no matter what the options are, multiclutches would theoretically go some distance towards appeasing the population of individuals who don't have the means of trading for things, PMing or using the forum. In my opinion, winners would ultimately need to choose between multiclutches, releasing prizes in cave or more winners, though the thread and user opinion is likely to be directly turned against winner interests no matter which way it is phrased.

 

If you were a winner, you would want agency, even if you don't use the agency it would be a comforting thought.

If you were not a winner, you would want short gen prizes.

Most people here, I think, would fall onto either camp or this thread would not exist. I think that even if this thread was closed, people would continue to want to change. Even if something changed like it has now (more winners) people would want to see it changed.

 

That is human nature.

 

I would have thought that the consolation prize thing is the least likely point of contention between winners and non-winners, but it would not address the underlying rarity of 2g prizes.

 

In my opinion, no matter what happens, individuals will not be wholly appeased, because the underlying structure of the raffle is such that the majority of people lose and the minority win. And even if that is changed, we are all wholly screwed because in either case the winners would be left out or the individuals who did not win would lose out.

 

And if we said that people should only win once then you'd be limiting people to one CB where there are likely to be lots of different species of prize dragons released, but if you don't exclude people from winning once one or maybe a few people might miss out because of random chance.

 

If we increased the number of winners, not winning would feel more like losing as you saw a lot of people around you winning but you didn't. People would probably just keep trading 2gs amongst themselves and swapping them without trading for regular rares. You could have just been the extremely unlucky one who would just never win. If we decreased the number of winners, then it would be even harder to win and contribute to the extreme 'value' of 2g prizes.

 

If we neutered the prizes, then we'd make a new generation of extinct dragons that could never be bred. If we fertilised the prizes, then arguably you could say that the winners get more utility out of their dragons and I'm 99% certain someone would grumble that instead of winners getting trades once a year of 10 CB metals, they would get them once a week. Perhaps the slight inability to produce prizes is purposeful to prevent the dragons being too overpowered?

 

I think that no matter WHICH way you work it human nature will not co-operate.

[Marrionetta]

-buries darketernity in a pile of candy-

 

Maybe what we really need to think about are other types of contests to get other special breeds into circulation so there's not so much pressure on the holiday raffle breeds? To paraphrase, the more winners there are, the more those who are not selected feel like 'losers' instead of 'not-winners.' Maybe minigames that you can exchange some amount of effort for special eggs with an element of random chance in terms of specific type, or more events through the year culminating in an egg distribution? Maybe not everyone gets a shiny CB tin/shimmer, but everyone will eventually end up with at least a shiny CB randomincentivedragon A, B, or C.

 

Maybe the big issue isn't inherent to the raffle, it's part of a larger void imbalance in DC economics.

[cyradis4]

-buries darketernity in a pile of candy-

 

Maybe what we really need to think about are other types of contests to get other special breeds into circulation so there's not so much pressure on the holiday raffle breeds? To paraphrase, the more winners there are, the more those who are not selected feel like 'losers' instead of 'not-winners.' Maybe minigames that you can exchange some amount of effort for special eggs with an element of random chance in terms of specific type, or more events through the year culminating in an egg distribution? Maybe not everyone gets a shiny CB tin/shimmer, but everyone will eventually end up with at least a shiny CB randomincentivedragon A, B, or C.

 

Maybe the big issue isn't inherent to the raffle, it's part of a larger void imbalance in DC economics.

The problem is there are two exclusive breeds that breed abysmally when compared to their numbers.

 

Adding more exclusives that have piss-poor breeding will only exacerbate the problem. Fixing the piss-poor breeding of the existing prizes would go a LONG way towards fixing the problem: lack of availability of 2nd gens. There just aren't that many of them, period. So how can they spread far, if there aren't that many of them? There are only 93 living 2nd gens from the first 5 Gold Tinsels. Even after 3 years, and one of them was when the breed was new.

 

However, having said that, I do agree that adding another tier of "rares", that can be earned through activities on the site, would be A Good Idea. There is a hole in the economy, and I like the idea of in-cave games. Maybe having x of a blocker grow on your scroll, or collecting x of each breed in a period of time. Or something.

 

But a word of Caution:

It will ONLY work if the new dragons breed decently!

And I mean, like Commons (not blockers but commons! Better than Trios, whos breeding sucks).

 

That way, the "new" exclusives can actually spread. They will still draw good trades, because they are hard to obtain, but their breeding WELL is paramount to making sure they don't end up just like Tinsels and Shimmers: Unobtainable in 2nd gen form, with a LOT of hard feelings, people feeling left out, lots of anger, lots of hurt.

 

 

 

tl;dr

Make the CB Prizes breed like commons, and you fix the root problem: Unobtainable 2nd gens.

 

Cheers!

C4.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

^

 

Well said.

 

I've been on lists that don't move for months at a time.

 

Conversely, my own list--around ten people long, which I considered a reasonable amount at the time--is lucky to shift once every two months. And I'm breeding to Luminas, which while hardly rare aren't exactly cave blockers, either...

 

More prizes, multiclutching... the only way these things are going to be effective is, I increasingly feel, dependent on the breeding rates also being upped.

[Sheriziya]

Maybe the big issue isn't inherent to the raffle, it's part of a larger void imbalance in DC economics. 

Which is exactly one of the reasons this thread was started:

What's the base of this thread?

leaves most of the users only dreaming of getting a prize dragon, their only hope a long gen months, or even a year or more in the future. This seems to be especially true to new/casual players since they have very limited scroll space in comparison to veteran players who are already at their max spaces.

The ratio of breeding results from prize dragons seems not good (not enough prize dragons are being produced)

Creating lineages with prize dragons is hard because the lineage creator can't get the dragons s/he wants

Fear of (shiny) hatchies from multi clutches growing up through the AP and going to the wild instead of ending up on someone's scroll

Balance between low-gen and high-gen prize dragons for breeders both in obtaining and creating lineages

Not enough CB Prize dragons to make good lineages

With general Multiclutching offspring from carefully bred prize dragon lineages might go to the AP while to owner doesn't want this happening.

CB prize owners want to keep the feeling that they've got something exclusive.

Which is all culminating in a trademarket which has gone insane (or a trademarket where we have no seemingly fair balance anymore), if I may deduce that from the comments. I don't have any experience in the trademarket, so I can't really say anything about it. This leads to the a general feeling amongst a (big?) part of our community:

Although DC was original a fun collectables games, it's become a trading game where it's become hard to actually collect every dragon you want.

The trademarket was apparently seemingly balanced, although the metals were quite expensive. However, with the prize dragons the market seems to have gotten... inflation?

 

Perhaps it would help if we also had a release around when prizes were given out, so those who don't win have something else to distract themself with cave-wise.

Several people (including me) have done exactly this suggestion, but it was shot down a couple of times due to the extra work this would mean for TJ with the release of the Christmas dragon, the work for the results of the raffle (checking all picked winners, mailing the winners, waiting for their choices, redraw of winners where necessary and mailing the new winners, implementing the prizes as asked) and the preperations for the new release with Valentine.

I wholeheartedly support a release between Christmas and Valentine, btw.

 

A poll could be a good idea as well

[olympe]

I'll take this from both sides. Theoretically, of course.

 

From a prizewinner's perspective:

[...]

 

From a non-winner's side, esp. high tier users

[...]

From a non-winner's side, not great catchers

[...]

 

 

From a non-winner's side, the hopefully optimistic

[...]

I must admit that I see much in your post that doesn't make sense to me.

 

 

Even if you aren't trading your dragons, what about the people you are gifting too? The specialness/value of the gifts are lost. The dragons that you have produced are wasted. Those dragons could have been gifted to people. You could have made your list longer. Those dragons abandoned are hogging the ratio, what happens if your subsequent gifts are more difficult to breed? What if your list is never finished?

Well, the dragons that go to people are just as cherished - if not more so - as those you gifted. So they're not wasted. And if they do happen to die, they won't be hogging the ratios either. Also, the specialness of your 2nd gen prize egg won't be diminished because someone else might have caught its twin. Why would it be?

 

What IF the autoabandoned dragons are never cared for and die like so many other dragons? What if they're never bred/used in a lineage that someone cares about? What if it goes to an inactive/multiscroll and is left to rot?

What if that very same thing happens to an egg you gifted/traded away?

 

You resent the offspring of your dragon being used as a currency and want to enforce some kind of pricing controls.

But it's okay if you do so yourself, isn't it? And what about the people you may have gifted 2nd gens to? Aren't they allowed to trade away the 3rd gens they breed? Not even for lineage swaps? If you give an egg away, it's not yours any more. Period. Whether you do so on purpose or accidentally doesn't matter, really.

 

From a non-winner's side, esp. high tier users

- You worked hard for a low gen prize and now you're screwed because a sudden appearance of low gens means that you probably never needed to pay that much for a 2g. You think - what if more 2gs means that you won't be able to trade/repay your debts?

Going into debt isn't meant to happen on DC. (IOU aren't allowed, right?) And if you do so despite that, it's at your own risk - and the risk of the person you're indebted to.

 

You might also be interested in gifting. You know that long gen prizes aren't especially ... liked. The same might happen to low gen prizes.

Oh, really? How so? I doubt that low-gens will ever cease to be in demand, but even if that should ever happen - so what? Just stop breeding them. You'll always be able to gift other things, too.

 

From a non-winner's side, not great catchers

- And besides, you might not be that great at catching things anyway. At least the raffle didn't rely on catching speed. You think that they're just putting power back in the hands of the catcher - something the raffle wanted to avoid!

Not more than CB golds do, seriously. Besides, the more 2nd gens there are, the better chances you have of being gifted a 4th/5th/6th gen prize egg eventually. Most likely sooner than before. Because even good catchers tend to be generous with their precious catches and the offspring thereof.

 

In my opinion:

- Multiclutching should have been implemented from the start

- It is probably/might be too late now. Individuals have become accustomed and would expect to control where their eggs go. (I think this is the same sort of expectation that people would have that if you won it would 'feel' like a prize i.e. you'd be one of a very small pool of people and be able to trade for a lot if you chose to - not everyone would probably choose to and it might just be a mental backup e.g. you fail at catching and are worried you can't catch anything: the option just BEING there might be enough to offer reassuarance)

- I think that everyone has the potential mindset to oppose multiclutches. Just some examples (generic) of some opinions I'd see around DC:

o People not giving my holidays homes during the 2 per person limit. I just don't want to breed my dragons anymore because they are dying.

o I don't breed to the AP, because my dragons might die. I prefer to gift my dragons.

- However, if I had won a CB prize shimmer or CB prize tinsel, I would probably feel obligated to support multiclutches, because I felt like I needed to, but not because I'd liked it. But because it is not the case, I feel that there is some potential for multiclutching in it as a method by which things are spread reliably.

 

I also think that the thread is always going to be a very difficult compromise between two almost incompatible outlooks.

 

In my opinion, no matter what the options are, multiclutches would theoretically go some distance towards appeasing the population of individuals who don't have the means of trading for things, PMing or using the forum. In my opinion, winners would ultimately need to choose between multiclutches, releasing prizes in cave or more winners, though the thread and user opinion is likely to be directly turned against winner interests no matter which way it is phrased.

 

If you were a winner, you would want agency, even if you don't use the agency it would be a comforting thought.

If you were not a winner, you would want short gen prizes.

Most people here, I think, would fall onto either camp or this thread would not exist. I think that even if this thread was closed, people would continue to want to change. Even if something changed like it has now (more winners) people would want to see it changed.

 

That is human nature.

 

I would have thought that the consolation prize thing is the least likely point of contention between winners and non-winners, but it would not address the underlying rarity of 2g prizes. 

 

In my opinion, no matter what happens, individuals will not be wholly appeased, because the underlying structure of the raffle is such that the majority of people lose and the minority win. And even if that is changed, we are all wholly screwed because in either case the winners would be left out or the individuals who did not win would lose out.

 

And if we said that people should only win once then you'd be limiting people to one CB where there are likely to be lots of different species of prize dragons released, but if you don't exclude people from winning once one or maybe a few people might miss out because of random chance.

 

If we increased the number of winners, not winning would feel more like losing as you saw a lot of people around you winning but you didn't. People would probably just keep trading 2gs amongst themselves and swapping them without trading for regular rares. You could have just been the extremely unlucky one who would just never win. If we decreased the number of winners, then it would be even harder to win and contribute to the extreme 'value' of 2g prizes.

 

If we neutered the prizes, then we'd make a new generation of extinct dragons that could never be bred. If we fertilised the prizes, then arguably you could say that the winners get more utility out of their dragons and I'm 99% certain someone would grumble that instead of winners getting trades once a year of 10 CB metals, they would get them once a week. Perhaps the slight inability to produce prizes is purposeful to prevent the dragons being too overpowered?

 

I think that no matter WHICH way you work it human nature will not co-operate.

This I can wholly agree with, though. (Unfortuante, but true.)

[TheGrox]

I'd say the problem, not solely to do with prizes but exaggerated a lot due to them, is with the DC economy and trading. DC was once a game where you could go it alone, catch 'em all with a little bit of effort, but without the need to trade. You could collect [virtually] every dragon in the game in this way. In my opinion, it was more fun back then.

 

But, with the introduction of CB Prizes, only available to a small minority of players, and the fact you are forced to trade to get one fairly soon after their release, and forced to trade to just get one at all, unless you want to wait for that ugly 10th gen to appear on the AP months down the line. Obviously this only applies if you want prizes at all, and decently lineaged ones at that, but I think it's safe to say most people do.

 

It seems now there's more emphasis on value than there ever has been - no longer is it okay to just collect the nice lineages you find on the AP, or CB's that you like, because they aren't valuable. I know when I was properly active, when I traded for something I usually only considered how much I could get for it's offspring. Because when the next set of prizes, or the next new rare dragon appeared, I needed valuables I could use to trade for one. I sometimes wonder why I even collected low gen Tinsels - they're not my favourite sprite (although they are nice) - but I needed them to keep up with the competition in terms of trading.

 

In summary, the economy is screwed, and I have no idea what's the best way to sort it out. No single idea is going to please everyone. But I hope at least something is changed, because I don't think things are sustainable the way they are.

[ZzelaBusya]

Sorry, don't have the time to read through all the 50+ pages of the thread, but I thought I'd contribute my two cents to it

 

I'm one of the people who dislike the raffle in general - HM Prizes are okay to me, but Tinsel/Shimmer Prizes aren't. In all honesty, I wish they had never happened. The idea of a contest, like the one we had with the first Tinsels, seems more appealing to me because at least it requires effort and creativity and because the winners are basically selected by the userbase; however, I assume that the contest was shut down and replaced with the raffle for certain reasons (I am not aware of *hides*), and also I can't say a contest is something I really like either, so it's probably pointless to bring it up right now.

 

 

Why am I so negative about raffles/shiny Prizes in the first place?

 

To begin with, I'm not fond of the idea of randomly giving a small group of people an exclusive dragon that will end up being the center of the trading system (and it does exactly that, which is logical). Before Prizes, trading had to do with items that were a matter of catching, breeding and such, the most valuable items (aka Metals for instance) being dragon types that are in the cave for everyone. Now, if we look at the trading threads, we'll see that a lot of, I daresay most, serious trades circulate around Prizes.

 

Basically, the person who gets chosen as one of the winners receives a dragon with which they can get absolutely anything. And before someone smacks me, I'm not just sitting here and whining about the fact I'm not one of those people - even if someone hands me a CB Prize right now I won't change my mind - I simply think that the whole concept of it is wrong, in a game that is about catching, breeding, collecting dragons, working hard on achieving one's goals.

 

Let's assume that the person's scroll goal is one CB/lowest gen adult pair of each dragon type. With a CB Prize, they can achieve that goal with a couple of 2nd gen trades (with the exception of Prize swaps of course, for which they will need some time). Which actually means that they can complete their main game goal in a very short time with, let's admit it, not too much in-game effort. That doesn't feel right to me.

 

Apart from that, Prizes bring in several problems in the community which would have been less of an issue without them.

 

Prize winners get swamped with PMs, requests and questions. I won't say they are necessarily "harassed", as I believe not every message they get is a case of harassment, but it is quite the problem anyway. Owning a Prize results in a lot of pressure, as I understand it, no matter if you openly take requests or not, whether you have a huge line in your sig that the list is closed or not. At the same time people do, and will, PM the owners for obvious reasons - I do hope that I won't be looked down upon for that, but yes, if I stumble upon a profile of a winner and their list is open or there is no clear info about trading listed on their page, I may very well PM them and ask - I think people on this side of the issue can be understood as well.

 

The problem creates a potential conflict between winners and non-winners. As a non-winner, like many people, I have a line in my signature stating that I'm looking to trade for 2nd gen Prizes, which is true because it's one of my goals, and I won't deny it; at the same time I'd hate to learn that any possible Prize winner I get to talk to on here sees my sig and thinks to themselves I will want to strangle them for their 2nd gen - I hope it's not true, but I guess that Prize owners may indeed have negative experience and enough reasons to assume that pretty much anyone who communicates with them does that because of a "possibility" of obtaining a 2nd gen at one point in the future, which is sad.

 

Another sort of conflict that takes place is "greed" [NOTE: if I start using quotation marks everywhere in this paragraph, I'll have to do it in half of the statements and it will be a little excessive, so let's just assume that I reflect what is said elsewhere, but personally I don't share the view that DC really has greed as is], that has been mentioned a lot of times. Prize owners are seen as greedy by a lot of users, while it's not true. If one thinks about it, a Prize owner will never have the opportunity to satisfy everyone, NO matter which approach to their CB they prefer. If they trade offsprings for huge offers, they are considered greedy because they only want stellar trades; if they privately gift to friends, they are because they don't trade to people around; if they trade randomly and have no lists, they are because there's no way to get on the list; if they breed their Prize for themselves, they are because they don't spread the love around; if they don't breed their Prize at all, they are because of the same reason.

What is ironic is that, moreover, the other side is often also considered greedy. People who gather big Metallic/ND/whatnot trades are because they only trade them for 2nd gen Prizes as a way of trying to achieve their goals, people who do not have big Metallic/ND/etc. offers and try to get on a Prize list with something less impressive are because they hope to get a superepic 2nd gen for cheap, and so on, and so forth.

 

Again, please imagine quotation marks all around the statements above. I do hope I haven't said anything inappropriate; I'm not here to discuss greed as a term or anything, I'm not complaining about anyone, I just think that what I mentioned above is a problem that's one of the reasons raffles don't seem like a nice thing to me. Basically, the whole story splits the userbase into several groups that appear to often hold a grudge against each other for various reasons. Honestly, I think the atmosphere would be a lot less tense if there had been no Prizes.

 

 

So, ideally, I wish there were a situation where raffles did not exist at all or at least didn't have such a huge impact on the site. The suggestion having to do with releasing Prizes in-cave seems rather interesting to me, actually. I'm not ready to claim I find it perfect, but it is an idea that may work.

 

I suppose it would mean that every time a new Prize would be released, but after a while it would be available to everyone in the cave. A certain delay in the release, for example, 1-2 years, something like that, would mean that the winners would get their Prizes as a special pre-release and could use the time to find cool trades, to gift around and such, and the rest of the community would get a chance to obtain CBs of the same breed much later.

 

Perhaps it would also make sense to make it more challenging than a usual CB dragon. Maybe creating a sort of a quest/adventure/etc. which would require certain actions, dragons and so on, would be a curious new way of obtaining a CB Prize. That way people would need to work a lot on getting theirs in any case. It's also good for "OCD" collectors who prefer to have lowest-gen dragons on their scroll: the feature would let one eventually collect their CB Prize pairs with enough effort.

 

If an adventure-like feature is impossible, then I guess Prizes would probably need to be rare in the cave, but I don't think that it's necessary to make them rarer than Metallics. No idea *how* rare they should be, though.

 

Again, not sure about the whole re-release thing. There is something about it that I find positive, but I'm not ready to fully support anything in that regard, I just don't know, and cannot imagine for now, how things would work, so I may have said something stupid because I don't feel like I'm able to estimate how the feature would influence everything and how it needs to work.

 

 

If, however, that suggestion is a "no" and raffles should be the only way of obtaining CB Prizes, then here's what I think about some of the related ideas.

 

Firstly, I am wholeheartedly against releasing any new Prizes in that case. Tinsels and Shimmers are already an issue enough and we need to solve that, introducing a new Prize breed will only worsen the problem. If raffles keep being held every year, and every time Tinsels and Shimmers are given out, that will be better, I think. That way there would be more CBs in the system.

 

Secondly, increasing the breeding success rate for Prizes would be the right thing to do. In addition to that - and yeah, I guess there must be a lot of users who disapprove of the concept - I actually like the idea of multiclutches. While some CB owners may see it as a problem from the point of view that not every offspring will be under their control, and while some users who pay/have paid huge prices to be on a certain list may also dislike that, I believe it would be a nice solution actually. That way 2nd gens would spread on the site a lot more and would be available to non-forum members, trading would end up not being the main way of getting them, and also I think that eventually the trade value of 2nd gens could finally decrease, which I consider a positive thing.

 

When it comes to the number of winners in a given raffle, I don't have a firm opinion on that, to be honest, but it would possibly be nice to increase the amount of Prizes given out every time - why not, the chance is insanely low after all, so it's not like upping the amount a bit will really raise the chance, but at the same time it would add to the site's 2nd gen breeding "base".

 

I don't think consolation Prizes are necessary, they kinda ruin the whole purpose of Prizes in the first place, don't have a lot to add to that, sorry.

 

 

Errr, walls of text are my thing. *scratches head* I'm terribly sorry if I have said something that is unacceptable here, I didn't mean to offend or disappoint anyone, and hopefully all the points I've made are alright.

[whitebaron]

Actually, dc economy works pretty well - within expected bounds of an uncontrolled market without currency. While prizes might have fastened inflation, the real problem is human nature (aka greed) and the prosecution of,trade value over personal likes.

 

Grox, you worked like a hedge-fond. Get stuff cheap, sell it expensive, ruin the economy on,the way, and then complain that there's not enough exploitation left.

[Natayah]

I love the idea of HM prizes whether they are done once a year vs other times. And I'd be ok with TJ letting people pick codes if its no extra work for him. I believe making the idea as little work as possible would be more apt to get approved, but I really wouldn't care what form or name or style they came in.

 

I just strongly believe that having more variety of rare or unusual CB dragons amongst the population more variety of unique things to seek out without devaluing or taking away from the Prize Dragons. The only reason I suggested tiering is if you decide to have say .... 300 HMs .... and all of them want CB Hollies, yes this makes for more Hollies but I don't think that overall benefits the player base as a larger variety of breeds would do.

 

We have gold, silver, and bronze level prizes, I just thought doing that with HMs would flow naturally. I would be just as fine with like .... during DCs birthday having HM type prizes that excluded any prior holidays. Same thing accomplished.

[TheGrox]

Grox, you worked like a hedge-fond. Get stuff cheap, sell it expensive, ruin the economy on,the way, and then complain that there's not enough exploitation left.

Maybe I did? Maybe I was sick of the being the one who couldn't even catch uncommons on my pitifully slow connection, so I did something about it? Maybe I am one of the 'greedy' ones for putting effort in and getting 'rich'? Yes, trading made me rich, but I didn't go about it with the intention of ruining the economy, as you seem to suggest. Either way, I can't see anywhere in my post me complaining about there not being "enough exploitation left". Surely it's my choice how I play, and attacking me for it isn't likely to solve anything.

[whitebaron]

Yes, trading made me rich, but I didn't go about it with the intention of ruining the economy, as you seem to suggest.

noone ever has the intent to destroy the economy that sustains them.

 

Now take a good look at how many clise-to or total breakdowns there were even in this century... Let alone the last.

 

 

If you have economy, it will work like dc does currently. That was not meant as a,personal attack, btw.

[DarkEternity]

Olympe, if people are opposed to multiclutching despite the fact that they gift a lot, I think that there must be some kind of reason behind it.

 

My argument is, if two things are created, then of course the specialness of a thing must be diminished in order to compensate, because the increase in supply means that the demand must be reduced. If the demand may be reduced by a small margin, then maybe the specialness would be reduced by a negligible margin. However, at some point when the supply is very high - as the appearance of long gens illustrates - the 'specialness' plummets.

 

Even if those ones I've brainstormed raised are not the reasons, there must be reasons that people do not like/support/have reservations on multiclutching. Else they would be embracing the chance of multiclutching to spread their offspring wholeheartedly. But, as we can see, winners are not supporting the multiclutching of CB prizes. And we can't say that all of them are interested in getting the most out of trades. So there must be some other factor. I suggest the concept of 'specialness', fear of things dying/fear of things going somewhere where you don't want them to go amongst other things as possible theories of why people don't like multiclutching.

Edited January 24, 2014 by DarkEternity

[cyradis4]

Olympe, if people are opposed to multiclutching despite the fact that they gift a lot, I think that there must be some kind of reason behind it.

 

My argument is, if two things are created, then of course the specialness of a thing must be diminished in order to compensate, because the increase in supply means that the demand must be reduced. If the demand may be reduced by a small margin, then maybe the specialness would be reduced by a negligible margin. However, at some point when the supply is very high - as the appearance of long gens illustrates - the 'specialness' plummets.

 

Even if those ones I've brainstormed raised are not the reasons, there must be reasons that people do not like/support/have reservations on multiclutching. Else they would be embracing the chance of multiclutching to spread their offspring wholeheartedly. But, as we can see, winners are not supporting the multiclutching of CB prizes. And we can't say that all of them are interested in getting the most out of trades. So there must be some other factor.

The other factor is almost certainly the ratios.

 

If two Tinsels are created today in one multi-clutch, then by the very nature of ratios, there will be 1 less tinsel created later.

 

Which given how abysmally CB Tinsels breed (compared to the very small number of CBs) means that it will take twice as long for the CB Prize owner to fulfill any IOUs, special breeding requests, or any gifts they might want.

 

In truth: If I were a CB Prize owner, I'd be dead set against multi-clutching for just that reason. For that matter, I'm *not* a CB Prize owner, and I'm against it for the above reason.

If, and I say if, CB Prizes bred well (as in, 40 or 30 shinies a year), then that'd be one thing. But I don't think there's a single CB Prize alive who has 30 Prize offspring, and some have been around for 3 years.

 

Cheers!

C4.

[DarkEternity]

Ratios... did I miss them.

Well I had something about lists getting filled.

 

That might be a more likely contender.

 

AND I THOUGHT

THAT I HAD EVERY SINGLE ONE

BUT I MISSED A FOREST FOR ITS TREES

- A poem by me

Edited January 24, 2014 by DarkEternity

[angelicdragonpuppy]

I think if ratios were improved (which, again, I believe is a necessity), then multiclutching wouldn't be a big deal on that end. The bigger reason I imagine people are against it is because people have gotten used to one egg per breeding, and thus a certain "exclusivity." In that argument, I'm on both sides of the fence.

 

Multiclutching would go a long way towards giving people who previously had no hopes of getting a 2g hopes that maybe they can get a 2g, and since it already happens with Holidays (and used to happen with all dragons), it wouldn't be a completely unheard of thing.

 

On the other hand, I can also sympathize with wanting to maintain a level of exclusivity; some of the lines I'm working on I'd rather know where the offspring went, because I worked hard to make them and want them off to places where they'll be used and appreciated. I can also see the potential annoyance in getting a 2g Prize from a pairing that's really special to you--and then seeing another sibling went off into the AP, and whoever grabs it is gifting the babies left and right and taking away a lot of the potential value of your own.

 

So while I'm willing to consider the idea--I'd rather see the other ideas implemented first (like better ratios, more prizes).

Edited January 24, 2014 by angelicdragonpuppy

[HeatherMarie]

I think if ratios were improved (which, again, I believe is a necessity), then multiclutching wouldn't be a big deal on that end.

*nods*

 

I don't think *anyone* would support multi-clutching with the current ratios (as long as they know what would end up happening). I think a change of the ratios (someone suggested they breed like commons, I'd say even breeding like uncommons would be a heck of a lot better then now!) would go a loooong way to fixing what's wrong with the whole prize-dragon-economy.

 

And then adding multi-clutching would be a good thing, not a bad thing. Of course there will be people who's instinct reaction will be "My dragon! My eggs! I get to choose where they go!", which is understandable. But DC already has a past with multi-clutching, so it's not like it's a foreign idea. And we *still* have multi-clutching during holidays, so even for newer users it's not foreign. If holidays have multi-clutches, and if you personally have ever benefited from that, chances are you aren't going to put up a fight about prize dragons. And really, I've seen *very* few users go around during holidays saying they aren't going to breed their dragons because they don't want random people to get the eggs. I've seen people not breed their dragons because past holiday eggs *died*, but never just because a stranger might get their egg.

 

Imo, the worry about multi-clutching is putting the cart before the horse; If it helps the prize-dragon economy, I'd think that CB-prize-owners would be glad for that. Less pressure. I'd be interesting to hear what CB-prize-owners *actually* think about it, and if anyone is put off by it, is there some way to deal with that?

 

But then again, if the ratios are improved (like, for real) there may be no need for multi-clutching. That may solve most of the frustration. ..... But I've been here a loong time and I can't remember TJ ever "fixing ratios" because users requested it.

[Fuzzbucket]

But I've been here a loong time and I can't remember TJ ever "fixing ratios" because users requested it.

How would we be able to tell ?

[InugamiZERO]

this is what I think about multi-clutching

if it is forced on CB owners they should get to keep all the eggs because it is their dragons

but if it is a rework of the purple dragon BSA than they keep one egg and the rest go to the AP like normal

[Fuzzbucket]

this is what I think about multi-clutching

if it is forced on CB owners they should get to keep all the eggs because it is their dragons

but if it is a rework of the purple dragon BSA than they keep one egg and the rest go to the AP like normal

The POINT of multiclutching would be to spread the wealth, as you might say and reduce the perceived stranglehold on the "trade market" (ugh spit !)

 

If this were to happen - well, I would be totally against it. It would make the trading issues identified even worse. It should be like holiday dragons, if it does happen.