Send Biome Blockers to the AP

[Starbit]

I happen to love a lot of the commons. I pick up a lot of Water Walkers from the AP long before they were ever ER. They're not completely unwanted, just far too common.

[dragongrrl]

I simply don't see how the AP backlog is doing any harm, seeing as it no longer blocks the biomes.

 

The "instant-ER!" is pretty much the only gimmick of these completely unwanted blockers to ordinary players who do not really like them anyway.

I love Mints, and the gorgeous and often outrageous Nocturnes which were uncommon, and very hard to catch when I was finally getting the hang of how to raise my dragons. It took me a month and a half of focused effort to catch my first Nocturne.

 

I don't know of any breed that doesn't have a supporter/collector/hoarder somewhere in the Cave, so there are NO completely unwanted blockers in the Cave.

 

I don't see anything blocking the Biomes, except the impatient attitude of those who only want rares, and want them RIGHT NOW. The first lesson of hunting ANYTHING is patience.

 

The Cave and the AP are pretty well balanced at this point, and they do move reasonably well. Leave it as it is.

[Cinnamin Draconna]

I disagree about the biomes being OK. The biomes are stagnant and it's almost impossible to hunt. Patience and persistence is one thing, but nothing moving for several minutes at a time is just plain BORING.

 

Not everyone is hunting rares either, most folk lately are simply hunting the newly released dragons. Personally, I'm hunting for coppers and stripes.. one relativly new dragon and one that's been out for at least 2 years and STILL hard to find.

 

Blockers will always be a part of the game, but there comes a point when it gets ridiculous... and we've reached that point. No one really wants to retire breeds or make them seasonal or any of the other suggestions that have been suggested. Folk just want the biomes to MOVE. And TJ needs to get off his hands and FIX IT... and if he doesn't have time, then he needs to admit that he needs help and hire someone who CAN fix the problem.

[Syphoneira]

If we had more Commons Released and cut back on the overload of Blockers to mix up the pool of Commons with a variety of eggs, the likelihood of someone coming on who might actually want one of the commons showing would increase, enabling some movement in the various biomes.

 

As has been pointed out, not everyone is rare-hunting, but people often do have specific, if varied, needs and almost everyone who's been here a while has already got as many as they want/have room to raise of certain breeds.

 

Also, a number of people only want a limited number of each dragon sprite, anywhere from one of each type to a set number of pairs,( which may only be one pair,) with or without often one to 3 Frozens, to have one example of each sprite stage.

 

Running a collecting game based on the theory that people must take many unwanted sprites in order to get any of various others simply isn't feasible.

 

Nor is it recreational...

 

 

As has also been pointed out, most of the unwanted eggs picked up simply tie up the scrolls of those who do so in order to drop them into the AP 5 hours later to get back hunting/breeding room, limiting, delaying or possibly ruining their recreational time for that day, and the Cave auto-dropping some of the excess of Blocker breeds directly into the AP after their sitting for 5 minutes is unlikely to cause any drastic increase in the number going to the AP.

 

In fact, it's arguable as to whether this would cause ANY increase in the number going to the AP, as it would simply mean that those picking up Blockers to drop them into the AP later MIGHT have more effect than to simply turn up another Blocker in their long-standing gross excess.

 

 

As the Blockers come up as ERs in the AP, they are taken by those who otherwise might not, because they no longer take up limited egg room for any longer than it takes to hatch them.

 

The addition of even a few more hatchy spaces, (perhaps even one more per Trophy level?) and allowing the time before death to determine what comes up first in the AP, (as only seems logical) would also rehome more AP babies which might otherwise not be, as hatchies are currently predominately going directly to the Wild (where, I gather, they no longer count in the ratios) and as space considerations would be slightly less compelling an argument against people adopting more sprites of their less-desired/the over-abundant species, and more of the over-produced breeds might survive on scrolls to help alleviate the boredom and stress thereby increased by the Sacred Ratios replacing them in the Cave.

 

 

As has been pointed out, refreshing on/picking up Blockers is boring - while people are here specifically to have fun and collect the dragons they want and/or need.

 

There is no 'challenge' in any positive sense to this, and it cannot properly be termed 'playing'.

 

More and more people have been hunting the Cave less and less, and the more people effectively give up on the Cave, outside of Releases, or who go on extended hiatus or simply don't bother coming back, the more things deteriorate.

 

Certainly, we do not want the Cave running dry - many people have only limited windows in which to hunt, and it would be nice if hunting was typically fun and more people enjoyed it.

 

We do not need variety cut back by retirement or Migration, to increase other Blockers and disappoint people who want/need dragons which are only a problem because of being grossly over-produced for the player population/their environment to support.

 

We need more variety in commons, far fewer Blockers rained down upon our unwilling heads, and sufficient useful/desirable dragons to keep hunters amused in finding and collecting what they want of them among sufficient variety and movement within the Drops in each biome while they're here to get away from RL, relax, and have some fun.

 

Then more players on hiatus between Releases would find something worth coming back for, more new people see reasons to stay, and more discover reasons to join, to stay, and to become involved in the community, and DC could grow and continue to bring us all pleasure for many more years, without the avoidable frustration and boredom of continually refreshing/picking up Blockers taking so much of the shiny off of the game.

[LibbyLishly]

As usual, Syphoneira hits the nail on the head.

 

We don't need systems to clear the blockers out of the biomes faster through retirement, sending eggs to the AP after a certain amount of time, Migration, or really anything else, so long as the ratios are adjusted and there are more Commons in the cave, and so long as breeds that have clearly become blockers have their ratios reduced just enough to make them no longer blockers.

 

There's a dozen suggestions floating around the forum for ways to make the biomes move, and some are better than others. Sending the blockers to the AP has been my favorite so far. But if all we really need is variety (which the monthly releases have been ENORMOUSLY helpful toward), and a ratio adjustment, why not just do that?

 

I'm not saying we should make all breeds common - good heavens, no. I LIKE the fact that Silvers and Golds (and, okay, to a much lesser extent 'liking', Coppers) are rare. I'm not saying that the ratio system is in a good enough place that this one little fix will make everything better. But I AM saying that this will help enormously in moving the blockers along. That's why the Alpine and Desert in particular seem to move along so nicely - there are a lot of breeds that show up there, and with frequency. We are well on our way to having that kind of variety in all the biomes, and a ratio adjustment could get us there much faster.

Edited September 23, 2013 by LibbyLishly

[cyradis4]

There's a dozen suggestions floating around the forum for ways to make the biomes move, and some are better than others. Sending the blockers to the AP has been my favorite so far. But if all we really need is variety (which the monthly releases have been ENORMOUSLY helpful toward), and a ratio adjustment, why not just do that?

- snipped quote to avoid text wall -

 

I've been in the cave since 2009, and the only thing that's changed is what breeds are acting as blockers. A ratio adjustment won't do the trick, nor will more variety. I can say this definitively, because in the..... *counts* 5 years I've been here, more variety hasn't done the trick and the blockers all cycle. I do remember when Blacks were horrible blockers, to the point where the AP was solid Blacks all the time. And I remember when Noctures were first released, how there was nothing but them and their release mates in the cave. And I remember how they then vanished for a lone while from the cave, only to come back as horrid blockers.

 

What we need is something that makes *whichever current breed* is blocking more desirable. That's what this suggestion is all about: turn those unwanted blockers into ERs that are desirable. Given enough time, the new AP arrangement will help, but alone I don't think it'll turn the trick.

 

There has to be some non-player driven mechanism to move eggs that are not being picked up to the AP, so that they can lose time and become desirable. Either that, or the existing player mechanism has to be adjusted so it no longer kills the play-time of those actually doing it.

 

Cheers!

C4.

[Ayelldee]

There is something terribly wrong when the most populated biome has only 16 people in at eight minutes after the hour and all the Biomes have three of the SAME breed blockers just sitting there. SIXTEEN? Seriously?

[Guillotine]

What C4 said. Booting blocking eggs AND adjusting the ratios to be more in line with player demand would help keep the current ratio system from causing the cave to stagnate like it currently is (my ideal is something that I suspect TJ simply won't put into practice and that I'm having difficulty explaining coherently). And given that the biomes generate ~4 more new eggs every five minutes if there's space (from my observations), there's no real need to fret about the biomes being empty once they start moving; if they're empty, they'll fill up again, but that doesn't happen when they're full of blockers.

 

I mean, I'm not generally hunting for eggs that are rare by design, and I definitely would like most blocker breeds more if I didn't have to stare at them for way too long while hunting for something else. Besides, breeds in high demand are still going to get snapped up quickly; it's not like they'll magically get super-ultra-common just because the biomes move.

[Flamingo]

I know 'IC' isn't really talked about much but I like to think that the cave is IC, considering we have RP-like events and everything is described in an IC-like manner. So what would be the IC reason for these CB eggs being punted to the AP? Would the dragon mothers abandon them, or what? Or am I just reading too much into it?

[Guillotine]

Well, animals abandon their eggs and offspring for various reasons quite frequently in real life; it could be handwaved as egg hunters touching the eggs while getting to a different egg in the area, since we already know that dragons ICly reject their eggs if they smell like people.

[Cinnamin Draconna]

Keep the RP out of it, that is NOT a part of the official game.. nor do some of us want it to be. RP has it's own section on the forums and that's where it needs to stay.

[rumor33]

I don't think this is a bad idea, but personally I prefer the Mossy egg idea. Though this seems like it would be quite easier to implement.

[Syphoneira]

There is something terribly wrong when the most populated biome has only 16 people in at eight minutes after the hour and all the Biomes have three of the SAME breed blockers just sitting there.  SIXTEEN? Seriously?

 

 

I've gone in late in the evening and at night, often to find anywhere from 0 to 4 people in the various biomes just after the hourly - a time when when not only people from different timezones, (including what certainly used to be a fairly sizable Australian contingent,) but slower catchers who are night owls used to hunt a lot.

 

Not much point in people staying on with the biomes plugged up and not moving, so that while sometimes a bunch of fast clickers will suddenly show up out of the blue, more typically, unless you have enough extra spaces to take a Blocker or two, (and uncover another Blocker or miss whatever might potentially come up that isn't, lol,) you can continue to refresh on Blockers, check out the AP, try breeding, or go away and do something more productive.

 

And considering the number of people I'm not seeing on here any more, (and miss) I'd say that it seems as if rather a lot have taken the latter choice...

 

 

Edit: if we need a rationale for eggs rolling off the pile into the AP, why can't they simply roll off the pile into the AP as a new egg or eggs get(s) shoved in from the other side?

 

Not that it would need to be announced or anything, they'd just - blessedly - go.

 

 

 

Re-edit: applauds CNR4806's post.

 

I'm locked right now, so will stay out of the Cave since that would undoubtedly trigger a blizzard of various dragons I want to appear, just when I can't even try for them, but I did go in last night and make a note of the number of people in the various biomes at about 20 after 12 midnight, my time.

 

It was MUCH better than usual.

 

Alpine: 3 people; Coast: 9 people; Desert: 4 people; Forest: 5 people; Jungle: 10 people; Volcano: 7 people.

 

But even with that many people on, there was very little movement, and I almost fell asleep... Cave hunting has all-too-frequently become an ordeal, in a game that's supposed to be fun.

 

There were 47 people in the AP, checked after the biomes, btw, (a relatively low number, compared to the usual between 50-70 people, quite often around 60 even at night when I pop in) and I did pop in there periodically to wake myself up a bit, gaining several ER CB Neos, although there were a lot of messy lineages in there...

Edited September 26, 2013 by Syphoneira

[CNR4806]

I love Mints, and the gorgeous and often outrageous Nocturnes which were uncommon, and very hard to catch when I was finally getting the hang of how to raise my dragons.  It took me a month and a half of focused effort to catch my first Nocturne. 

 

I don't know of any breed that doesn't have a supporter/collector/hoarder somewhere in the Cave, so there are NO completely unwanted blockers in the Cave.

 

I don't see anything blocking the Biomes, except the impatient attitude of those who only want rares, and want them RIGHT NOW.  The first lesson of hunting ANYTHING is patience.

 

The Cave and the AP are pretty well balanced at this point, and they do move reasonably well.  Leave it as it is.

 

 

I never said there is any completely unwanted blocker. I only mentioned "Completely unwanted blockers" is an exaggeration. What I really mean is generally unwanted blockers, which is pretty much the definition of blockers. They block because they are over-abundant for the limited fanbase they have.

 

The AP in its current form is an almost-perfect blocker sink, being able to shape unwanted stuff into less-unwanted stuff ie. ERs. Its downside is that it takes frustrated hunters to waste 5 hours worth of egg slot to move these garbage down the chute for recyling.

 

In DC's current shape there are pretty much only two ways to hunt:

1. Stare at the biome(s) all day long smashing F5 and pray for someone to take that damn blocker.

2. Take the blockers in hope of revealing something you want. These people are also usually the people you're praying for help if you're doing option 1.

 

Needless to say, option 1 is extremely time-consuming, F5-damaging*, practically impossible for people who have school and/or work, and very boring to most people. I mean, really, Facebook grinding games are more fun than this.

 

Option 2 is not how the game is supposed to work, and yet is the only sensible option right now. I said it is not how the game is supposed to work because the 5-hour cooldown was implemented exactly to limit this type of hunting. It is less bothersome but still very time-consuming, and why the hell on Earth am I required to play the game in a way that it is not meant to be just in order to not waste my whole life in it?

 

Simply put, biome-hunting is a chore in its current state no matter which approach you take. I play a game to relax and enjoy, not to work extra hours in front of my computer.

 

Of course, the culprit behind this madness is the ratio system (which makes no sense at all regarding the supposedly-common breeds), but until that is fixed, which I'm not really looking forward to in a foreseeable future, this suggestion to automatically move unwanted junk to the AP ie. saving hunters from having to do that themselves, is the best band-aid fix suggestion I have seen so far.

 

 

*Fig. 1: Just for fun because hunting isn't -- Refreshing a page all-day long is not good for your F5 button. Please, think of your keyboard!

 

 

 

EDIT 24 Oct: Whoops, looks like I did use that term afterall.

Edited October 24, 2013 by CNR4806

[Fiona]

I've heard of hot hands, CNR, but... you melted it!

 

 

I would never have expected to see that. Printing worn off, yes. Melted? No.

[Shanthaia]

I have to agree with Cyradis. I find myself hunting the AP exculsively - not even looking at the biomes anymore because they never move when I sit and refresh them - so I go back to the way mroe exciting AP to raise dragons from there.

This idea would help make the cave more exciting again and I think it would also help the ratios as more common eggs get created and picked up than when there is the same 3 eggs sitting for a whole hour.

[love_HP]

I completely agree with CNR4806.

In DC's current shape there are pretty much only two ways to hunt:

1. Stare at the biome(s) all day long smashing F5 and pray for someone to take that damn blocker.

2. Take the blockers in hope of revealing something you want. These people are also usually the people you're praying for help if you're doing option 1.

Option 1 is simply not a "game" as Dragon Cave should be one. It is called ridiculousness.

Option 2 - I am tired of those people who tell others "just pick up the blockers". I am in no ways against this activity; it just doesn't solve the problem at all. You might do it, I might do it, someone might even start a thread promoting people to pick up as many blockers as they can and dump them in 5 hours, but the number of people doing this can't make an obvious influence on the general problem. And as CNR4806 has said, the 5-hour cooldown was implemented to discourage people from doing that.

[djengis]

Give the blockers a usefull BSA so they get more desirable (Like taking a day of hatchlings, i read somewhere)

[CNR4806]

Give the blockers a usefull BSA so they get more desirable (Like taking a day of hatchlings, i read somewhere)

It has been explained countless times that this would not work.

 

You can make something more desirable by giving it a useful BSA, sure. But that will just make another breed fill the gap of being a blocker due to how ratios work.

[Syphoneira]

It has been explained countless times that this would not work.

 

You can make something more desirable by giving it a useful BSA, sure. But that will just make another breed fill the gap of being a blocker due to how ratios work.

 

 

 

Lol, agree, but would add also that '... that will just make another breed fill the gap of being a blocker due to how ratios (DON'T) work.'

 

The ratios have long been spoiling the game, and are gradually killing it - a waste of an otherwise brilliant game...

[GUYUGKUYG]

I quit this game a long time ago, and I have just returned.

 

I quit shortly after the biomes were first implemented.

 

The cave moved A LOT faster before that, and even after, the biomes moved really fast too. Blockers last for a few minutes at most usually . . .

 

I come back and stare at all of the biomes for a few minutes, and not a single one moved . . . wtf.

 

The current biome system (along with the fact that there is little reason to grab caveborn eggs when you can grab the same ones off of AP at lower times now) is killing the cave.

 

I pledge my full support for this.

[Psychotic Khaotic]

I agree to both suggestions whole heartedly.

 

There's been several times last month that I went CB hunting, only to find the same eggs sitting there without leaving.

Staring.

 

Mocking me.

 

Daring me to pick them up, then laughing in my face as they egg lock me JUST as a see an egg I NEED.

 

Anyways, it can get quite annoying.

However, for the first times that I've seen in YEARS outside releases ((And shortly after them)) the cave was moving right along. I even saw a few biomes get empty!

Although some, like the jungle and forest were lazily plodding along.

 

 

So, at times when the biomes are backed up worse than New York's 5 O'clock traffic, this is a wonderful way to get them moving again. And even when the biomes are moving - like today - there are still some eggs that linger to the left.

 

I often AP hunt too, just because of the low-time eggs, so I can see where low time cave blockers can be desireable. Often times you can hatch an egg from the AP within a few minutes, and if not, you can incubate them, and usually they'll hatch soon enough.

 

The only, and I do mean the only possible problem I could see with this is the AP getting overloaded during the holidays - just before, and after the new releases.

And really, I'm not sure that could even be considered a problem.

 

 

I also agree with shortening the 5 hour wait limit, especially if kicking cave blockers to the AP can't be implemented. Something more agreeable, like a 2 or 3 hours would be better.

[diaveborn]

Keep the RP out of it, that is NOT a part of the official game.. nor do some of us want it to be. RP has it's own section on the forums and that's where it needs to stay.

Maybe not "roleplaying" per se, but definitely there is a lore to the official game and a sense that you and your dragons are characters. Dragon requests have to make a certain amount of sense in the world that DC is, and even something as simple as logging in and out of the game isn't considered being on a computer and clicking links, but doing things with a scroll.

[cyradis4]

Seeing as how the new release has people questioning the ratios again.... Let me nudge this up again, as it would help the stagnant biomes and increase the allure of blockers, all in one.

 

And with 75% approval and 216 votes.... I think a lot of people are in favor.

 

Cheers!

C4.

[Alice Rose]

I totally support this! Already voted.

The only time that I actually saw the eggs moving with the biomes were these last days, with the new release egg. It would be great to see this happening more times, without a release and people just stalking one single biome.