Lineage view change

[grammydragon]

Thanks for shedding a bit of light on the situation. Obviously this is a bigger

issue than I was imagining.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

I still don't believe it's a resource issue, and will continue not to until TJ explicitly says it is. Few reasons.

 

1) TJ has said many times that the vast majority of players are in the US (which is why most DC Holidays fit standard US ones). Thus, I really doubt he'd change something that, as the poll shows, is so very important to many of the game's oldest and strongest advocates just to please those with "lesser technology" in other places.

2) The only other time TJ changed something due to resource use (how many dragons showed on each page), he said that was why he did it. So if resources were an issue again, why not say so again?

3) I don't know about other mobile users, but lineages on my iPhone 4S are lousy to look at. Were before and still are now. Unboxed, massive, chaotic messes for almost everything but low gen patterned lineages. So if he's trying to cater to mobile users with this he's not doing a very good job!

4) Last but not least--shrinking the first gen doesn't save all that much space or data, especially not on the bigger even gens, so why bother to begin with?

 

Also, there was a topic made about changes to the lineage view shortly before this happened. It suggested, however, that clicking on lineages would shrink or maximize them. But it seems like TJ took the problem and implemented a fix that no one wanted instead. Kinda like the change to deadlines, which neither protected pretty lineages nor let deadliners hide messy lineages. :l

 

I know it's a free game. I know there have been times in the past I've gotten mad with TJ about things that I later came to appreciate, or realized I was misunderstanding things. But changes like this without a word of discussion or feedback or response need to stop. If TJ can't handle everything on his own, he really needs to take on some more staffing help. I can understand being too busy to give people a response for a few days. But three weeks of not a single word while he's commented in other spots? Ridiculous.

 

I don't donate (I should, and if things improve, maybe I'll start), but perhaps those who do should consider stopping until some more concern is granted to the concerns of the members.

[Iside]

3) I don't know about other mobile users, but lineages on my iPhone 4S are lousy to look at. Were before and still are now. Unboxed, massive, chaotic messes for almost everything but low gen patterned lineages. So if he's trying to cater to mobile users with this he's not doing a very good job!

I tried to look at a some lineages on my e-reader and they are not that bad.

I mean, they look like a 5th even gen lineage may look on a 6-inch black and white monitor created to read a book that secondly can also browse internet pages. So they are always so small and poor definition that you hardly recognize which dragons are in the lineage and you can't really appreciate if the first gen is smaller than other gens or not.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Iside

[skauble]

That would be my educated guess. He could also have some project he thought would be fun and decided to do it here. But no one made a plea for change and TJ just busted out the coding moves. This is something that would have had to start being tweaked with sooner or later. And the sooner he finds the best solution, the better he secures his game player base, ranking and income from such. Even free games cost and make money. And if this game ever costs more to run than it makes, it wouldn't be around in its current format. And if it can make more, then TJ can do a lot more for us in the future with upgrades and whatever else he does to manage this little hobby.

I don't disagree with your assessment of where TJ might be coming from. But the problem is that if finding a solution to lineage viewing and/or resource consumption on various forms of technology comes at the price of the players' sense of stability, then the move might very well not be a net win.

 

In a game where people do things like collect and create things, there has to be a reasonable belief on the part of the player that there will be a consistent and enduring reward for their time and effort. The idea that people can put months or even years into collections and projects and end up with something that they never worked toward isn't just frustrating and disheartening, it's off-putting. And the game can be super sleek and run like a dream, but if people begin to doubt that something is worth doing often or at all, then that is, IMO, a worse place to be than the other way round.

 

Frankly, I think that most of this could have been avoided by either A. putting together some mockups of possible lineage changes and a site poll (which we used to have a number of), or B. temporarily changing it to gather resource data and putting a note on site with a link to a thread where people could leave feedback.

 

A lot of people have brought up the issue of change aversion, but this really isn't about hating change. A knee-jerk resistance to change would be if TJ had proposed lineage changes and everyone said they hated them without seeing them. But this is a visual change, not a complex game mechanic change. People can tell rather easily whether or not they like it in most cases.

 

This issue is about consistency and dependability. It's about creating long-term players by allowing them to have some amount of faith in the idea that they won't log in in five years and feel like what they have is not the product that they toiled to create. Compromising that faith is a terrible business move when it comes to older players, and it's not really a great one for newer players, because things like this tend to get brought up over and over in future discussions.

 

Having said that, I still believe that this will be addressed and, hopefully, made optional at the very least. What can I say? Hope springs eternal...and by eternal I mean a few more months because the new lineage view is seriously making me not want to venture past 4th even gen.

Edited July 25, 2013 by skauble

[annageckos]

I believe this issue is that we are now living in a omnichannel (for those who do not know this phrase, it means that people can use many ways to interact with businesses and people and you have to be able to embrace many forms of interaction: various social media, mobile/smartphone, computers, laptops, tablets, apps, various other programs and technologies as they develop, etc - which I'm sure you all do anyway) world and that TJ has to prepare this game for being accessed thru many different mediums and modes. And each of those modes are going to have different screen sizes, internet speeds, various programming interactions, etc. And in the USA, we take it for granted that most of the world doesn't have our high end desktops. Its illegal for those chipsets to leave the USA without very specific restrictions. So the rest of the world is using tablets, smartphones, or else their much further behind technology computers. Its one of the reasons why the rest of the world is so much more quickly adapting tablets and smartphones/mobile vs the USA. They have more computing power in those formats for afforadable prices compared to what it would take or cost to get a "desktop computer or laptop" that runs for what many Americans take for granted.

 

So he is probably working with how graphics and resources are going to be accessed and distributed and the cost benefit analysis on each with regards to ad revenue / donations garnered from each format in different locations.

 

I don't think anyone asked for this other than the comments mobile users have had about difficulty seeing lineages in the mobile thread. But having worked for a retailer thats been ahead of the the omnichannel embrace curve, its funny watching people fumble to catch up and losing millions and spending millions (billions too) trying to get it right.

 

Even on a "free" game, those things impact too. So I don't think someone complained about it. I just think if you've been watching the tech/business/whatever world develop, this becomes a necessary thing to work on. So I just assume he's trying to get a handle on how lineages are viewed across platforms without having to necessarily scroll as not everything has scrolling options.

 

That would be my educated guess. He could also have some project he thought would be fun and decided to do it here. But no one made a plea for change and TJ just busted out the coding moves. This is something that would have had to start being tweaked with sooner or later. And the sooner he finds the best solution, the better he secures his game player base, ranking and income from such. Even free games cost and make money. And if this game ever costs more to run than it makes, it wouldn't be around in its current format. And if it can make more, then TJ can do a lot more for us in the future with upgrades and whatever else he does to manage this little hobby.

If this is the case, wouldn't it make more sense to make the new lineage view be for the mobile devices only? And leave the 'normal' site to the old lineage view? Not sure if this is possible or makes sense, I only use computers to go online. I don't have or want to use a phone to play online games.

[DarkEternity]

It's not entirely true. I have seen about three suggestions in the forum asking for minimised lineages, scrollable ones, smaller ancestors, etc so they fit on a monitor. If I recall correctly, they've been going back at least a couple of months before TJ changed lineages. Of course, I ignored those suggestions, thinking they weren't going to be implemented.

 

Blah.

Edited July 25, 2013 by DarkEternity

[Syleye]

If this is the case, wouldn't it make more sense to make the new lineage view be for the mobile devices only? And leave the 'normal' site to the old lineage view? Not sure if this is possible or makes sense, I only use computers to go online. I don't have or want to use a phone to play online games.

According to my husband(who is a programmer) there are very simple codes that can be put in that will recognize what type of device is being used to view and make the needed adjustments from there. That being said I often find what he and his friends think to be simple not so much the case

[eritated]

If this is the case, wouldn't it make more sense to make the new lineage view be for the mobile devices only? And leave the 'normal' site to the old lineage view? Not sure if this is possible or makes sense, I only use computers to go online. I don't have or want to use a phone to play online games.

No thank you. I use DC solely on my iPad, so I would be quite annoyed if other users could view their lineages properly and I couldn't. I don't have a problem viewing lineages on here, so I don't see the point of just having it on mobile devices.

[daba555]

I saw something today and realized something else.

 

Aside from not liking the way it displays the first gen dragons, and how much you lose, the overall shape on EG's in no longer a pyramid on its side.

 

Someone posted a lineage they were doing - at it's tip was possibly a pinkish dragon, the two previous gens were dark.

 

It would end up looking like a body part, and I'm not keen on that. Granted, it was the coloring in addition to the shape that put me off, but still, it rubbed my last nerve raw.

 

I don't want to just come out and say what it looked like, because I don't know if it would get me thrown out of the Forum. But a perfectly lovely, beautiful lineage could end up with overtones that might appeal to a teenage boy, but not a mature woman.

 

So, still not happy about this, and not getting used to it.

[Dimar]

daba555, I know what Sunrise/Sunset lineage you're referring to and I have to strongly disagree. The lineage view change doesn't change the shape to such an extreme extent, and even with the dragons' colorations, what you're referring to is really just not noticeable, if not practically nonexistent. I asked several people (who were, may I add, a teenage boy and another young man with an interesting imagination) and they agreed with me. I think this is a tad bit of overreaction stemming from your distaste of the change?

 

It's ok if you see it like that and I know that many people don't like the change and even vehemently despise it, but let's be careful not to be too quick to find ways to denounce it if it means we're going to exaggerating lengths.

[daba555]

daba555, I know what Sunrise/Sunset lineage you're referring to and I have to strongly disagree. The lineage view change doesn't change the shape to such an extreme extent, and even with the dragons' colorations, what you're referring to is really just not noticeable, if not practically nonexistent. I asked several people (who were, may I add, a teenage boy and another young man with an interesting imagination) and they agreed with me. I think this is a tad bit of overreaction stemming from your distaste of the change?

 

It's ok if you see it like that and I know that many people don't like the change and even vehemently despise it, but let's be careful not to be too quick to find ways to denounce it if it means we're going to exaggerating lengths.

I really do see it like that, but only depending on the coloring of that last dragon. And, I've spoken with a couple of others who agree.

 

And now that I have that picture in my mind, it's not going away. I don't normally even see things like that, and even if I liked the change, it wouldn't make me feel any differently.

 

This is basically a political thread, and like any other politics, we can always find those to support what we want to hear.

 

I have admitted on other threads, although I can't tell you which ones, that some lineages do like nice in the new view. It depends, for me, on the coloring. Where you have every other dragon something "special", I think you completely lose the effect intended, and it's all squashed together in a big mess.

 

I'm deleting the rest of what I'd written, and will suffice to say that just because you don't like my opinion, don't put your values on it. If it were you, it might be over-reacting. But don't try to tell me what's in my head, I'm the only one that can do that.

 

[annageckos]

No thank you. I use DC solely on my iPad, so I would be quite annoyed if other users could view their lineages properly and I couldn't. I don't have a problem viewing lineages on here, so I don't see the point of just having it on mobile devices.

It was purely a question, not a suggestion. But if it was changed because of mobile devices then we all are now suffering because of it.

[Natayah]

Guys, it was an educated guess by what I see as an ongoing struggle in business /marketing /tech with really big impacts beyond graphics themselves. TJ could also be writing a thesis on "The Impact of Changes Within Online Gaming and Which Options Provide the Greatest Results. " or he could be abducted by aliens arising from Atlantis and being held captive in the Bermuda Triangle and they are demanding a special new dragon release in August to celebrate the birth of their new Cthulu Hive Queen.

 

Its just that when it comes to the more graphic intensive part of the game (lineages, scrolls, Caves/AP), there is always more going on his end than just the pictures. And it will always incur a strong reaction from the players because it impacts more than just "my pictures ain't purty no moe. "

 

I hope this next Dragon Release in August is awesome and earns you your own release from the Bermuda Triangle. (And to be fair, since releases take lots of work, we may just have gotten shunted down a bit on the list of To Dos til afterwards. )

[Sycamore]

we may just have gotten shunted down a bit on the list of To Dos

This is exactly the reason communication is important. Literally one sentence could set everyone's mind at ease that their discontent is, at the very least, recognized.

 

The only reason I can think of to say nothing for so long is if telling the truth would yield a net negative result for the site (i.e. - after hearing plans for the future of the change, people actually pull the trigger on leaving instead of sticking around waiting to see what's going to happen, which those same people would only continue doing for as long as they don't know TJ's plans).

 

Of course, essentially tricking people into staying instead of respecting their right to leave if they don't like the direction the changes are going is pretty terrible...

 

Then again I could be totally wrong. It could be that despite the amount of time that's passed and the constant pleas for a little insight into what's happening, maybe the truth is simply that a decision hasn't even been made yet. Again, we have no way to know, and that's for exactly one reason, the complete lack of communication between site management and the community.

 

Unfortunately, after doing a bit looking into the history of changes/drama/etc. on Dragon Cave, I'm seeing that this sort of behavior (along with a pretty disturbing level of shaming and censoring people for having negative opinions) is a common, recurring problem.

 

EDIT: spelling and clarity, darn it...

Edited July 26, 2013 by Sycamore

[danegrrrl]

I'll just keep my thoughts short and sweet...

 

I don't like this change. It's completely snubbed over a years worth of collecting/breeding/finger crossing to create a lineage I was SO very proud of..and now it's disproportionate and not nearly as appealing visually...

 

I don't like surprise change with no explanation.

 

As in the past, any change that is disliked by the majority of the userbase is met with either complete silence, or locked threads. Or the rabid fangirls/ TJ supporters who say IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT DON'T PLAY THEN.

 

It's a rather disconcerting pattern, truthfully.

 

While it is a "free" game (I say "free" because I know it's not free on TJ's end and I do appreciate all that he *does* do for us), that doesn't mean we should be a silence mass who sit on our thoughts. It's good for the site, and good for user morale to be able to offer our input and be included in big decisions that affect how the game is played. It is also good for user morale to be ACKNOWLEDGED instead of ignored.

 

Meh.

Edited July 26, 2013 by danegrrrl

[Lady Artemis]

>:c

[TCA]

Eww, the spacing on that... it doesn't match and it looks bad.

[Fuzzbucket]

That's odd - my 5th gens with deads in don't have their deceased names underneath like that....

 

even a 6th gen doesn't.

 

http://dragcave.net/lineage/9goOb

[tjekan]

Lady Artemis' lineage is very odd, yet strangely heartening. It does not look like other 5th-gen lineages do right now. Perhaps that means things are still in flux and may change back (or bifurcate into two competing options) once the kinks are worked out. :-)

[Sycamore]

>:c

Now that is strange. Does anyone else have a lineage where the majority, but not all of the first gen are dead?

[Windy]

Yes, here is mine: http://dragcave.net/lineage/y43Fg

 

 

[Lady Artemis]

Yes, here is mine: http://dragcave.net/lineage/y43Fg

It's just weird. I wonder why it's doing that?

[Fuzzbucket]

Yes - I posted mine already...

[Sycamore]

Yes - I posted mine already...

Yes, but even for the fifth gen in your lineage less than a quarter of the first gens are dead.

 

I wonder if it's the fact that >50% of the first gens have been killed in Artemis' and Windy's lineages that's making the views mix like that? ... or maybe it's that all the live dragons are in one half of the lineage...

 

This makes me wish I had a few deadlines just so I could poke around.

 

--

 

EDIT: It looks like exactly 25% isn't enough - or maybe the fact that they're zombies is interfering...

Edited July 28, 2013 by Sycamore

[dragongrrl]

I looked at this lineage, http://dragcave.net/lineage/OibxP, made an offer and got it.

 

Then, I looked at it again, and realized it isn't PB. It was advertised as even gen, nothing said about PB, and I am still glad I got it, but I was stunned when I took the second, closer look.

 

Please fix the Even Gens!