Jump to content
JavaTigress

BSA Timetable

Recommended Posts

I have an idea I want to throw out there for consideration.

 

I have found the sort feature for our active BSA dragons to be extremely useful for seeing what I have available to me to use currently. This is especially nice for things like Influence and Incubate. The thought occurred to me how nice it would be to have something similar for our Inactive BSA dragons, so we could see at a glance how many more days it is until I can influence or incubate again. As it is I have to check all the inactive ones individually to see how many days they have left before they can use their BSA again. I had a couple of possibilities in mind for how this might even look:

 

1. Include the inactive BSA dragons in the BSA sort with their cooldown timers displayed... and the dragons grayed out similar to how they are for refused breeding partners on the breeding page to indicate that they cannot be used currently.

 

2. A separate sort feature entirely for inactive BSAs.

 

My reasoning being, if we are dragon keepers it would make sense to keep records on things like that all in one place... like for breeding. I even guess it wouldn't require too much change of the existing programming (though I may be way off base on that) This would help me keep track of things so much rather than having to check each pink or red to see how many more days cooldown they have. I am NOT sure how helpful this would be to folks with way more BSA dragons than I have. ( MIGHT be even more helpful... given they have so many... or it might be useless... given that they always have uses of BSAs available to them)

 

So thoughts, suggestions, critiques... rotten vegetables for a foolish idea?

Edited by Silverswift

Share this post


Link to post

I use the action trackers on AoND for incubates and influences and find it very handy. It does exactly what you are describing. It might be nice to have it onsite, though.

Share this post


Link to post

I have so many Pinks, Reds, Purples, and Magis that really.... this would only help me with Summon.

 

Though expanding this out into a more general "action timer", where you can tell DC what timers you want to track would be nice. That way, you can track BSA timers, breeding cooldown timers, freezing timers, and the like.

 

Cheers!

C4.

Share this post


Link to post

Sounds nice, but there is an alternative we obsessive Excel users do. I have a chart of my dragons anyway and one sheet is for BSAs; when I use one I type in the date, and the formula in the next cell changes to give the next date the dragon is available.

 

It means it is available to me just by looking; I don't have to click anything.

 

But you're right too - I have so many BSA dragons I don't remember when I last ran out of anything !

Share this post


Link to post

Though expanding this out into a more general "action timer", where you can tell DC what timers you want to track would be nice. That way, you can track BSA timers, breeding cooldown timers, freezing timers, and the like.

ACTUALLY

 

This is an excellent alternative to my idea, C4. That way, the user could see what timers were most useful to them, personally. One person might want to see BSA timers, while another might want breeding timers. More personalization would be a good thing. So... that alternative would get a big yes from me. smile.gif

Edited by Silverswift

Share this post


Link to post

It would probably be useful for those players with only a handful of dragons, but not for someone like me. I have so many magis, reds and pinks that I never run out of Teleports, Influences or Incubates. But I do remember the frustration of waiting on the cooldown timers of my reds to recycle. So I can see how this would benefit those with fewer dragons.

Share this post


Link to post

I'm another with enough BSAs to never run out, but it would have been very useful when my scroll was smaller. Both of your ideas look good, so good luck with this suggestion. smile.gif

Share this post


Link to post
It would probably be useful for those players with only a handful of dragons, but not for someone like me. I have so many magis, reds and pinks that I never run out of Teleports, Influences or Incubates. But I do remember the frustration of waiting on the cooldown timers of my reds to recycle. So I can see how this would benefit those with fewer dragons.

And that is the kind of thing I WASN'T certain of making this suggestion as... I assume you probably have many, many more dragons than I do.

Share this post


Link to post

Well, the site's always getting new users who will by virtue of being new have very few BSA dragons. I think this is a good idea, and I also have enough BSA dragons that it's basically a non-issue to me.

Share this post


Link to post

This would be a great idea for new players or players who don't have many bsa dragons. I clearly remember checking individual dragons to see how much longer I had to wait when I was new. I would've loved something like this back then.

Share this post


Link to post
It would probably be useful for those players with only a handful of dragons, but not for someone like me. I have so many magis, reds and pinks that I never run out of Teleports, Influences or Incubates. But I do remember the frustration of waiting on the cooldown timers of my reds to recycle. So I can see how this would benefit those with fewer dragons.

I *so* thought I had more then enough Reds, until I went on a freezing-spree that included Incubating *everything*, and.... Yeah. I've been picking up reds in the AP lately because apparently I don't have enough!

 

I'd loooove an easy way to track all sorts of timers... Freeze, BSAs, breeding, there are SO many things on DragonCave that have some sort of timer, it'd be very convenient to have all of them in one place.

Share this post


Link to post

I'd loooove an easy way to track all sorts of timers... Freeze, BSAs, breeding, there are SO many things on DragonCave that have some sort of timer, it'd be very convenient to have all of them in one place.

I agree. smile.gif

 

That is why I actually rather like C4's idea for having them as an 'action timer' where the user could input what timers they wanted to see. My ONLY concern is that that might be too complicated.

 

Rurplehaze suggested the one on AoND I took a look at it. That one seemed a bit complicated for my liking. I was a bit confused as to HOW exactly it worked. Not sure if you were supposed to input when the last egg was incubated/influenced or... ANYWAY, I am not QUITE certain how to use it because the times it gave me when I put in my dragons weren't right. IF something like this got approved I think it should be straight forward enough that the average DCer should be able to figure out how to use it without it needing to be explained... or at least not overly much.

 

ETA... Especially since, as some people pointed out, it is the relative newbies this would help most.

Edited by Silverswift

Share this post


Link to post

Yes please! While I almost have enough BSA dragons to not need this, it would be super helpful to newer members. And I would really love if it were applied to freezing and breeding timers as well (especially more accurate breeding timers, so I know if "wait one day" means "wait 24 hours" or "wait 1 hour.")

Share this post


Link to post

Why not just have a '<Red Dragon Name> has # days left until it can use its BSA.' Instesd of going to the Dragons that can use their BSA page and seeing 1000 ones that are on cooldown?

 

Or have a 'Ready for BSA' and a 'on BSA cooldown' option.

Share this post


Link to post
Why not just have a '<Red Dragon Name> has # days left until it can use its BSA.' Instesd of going to the Dragons that can use their BSA page and seeing 1000 ones that are on cooldown?

 

Or have a 'Ready for BSA' and a 'on BSA cooldown' option.

So... you lean more towards the second option, DW? Having it as a separate sort?

Share this post


Link to post

When I read the title of this thread, I had this sort of mental image. But you're not suggesting that. Bummer. laugh.gif

 

But, no, seriously, I like this idea. At the moment I keep a bookmark on the actions page of one of my thunders on my desktop, telling me in the name of the link when to next go there to summon so I don't have to manually check. Having somewhere to easily check when a BSA is next off cooldown would be cool.

 

If I had to pick, I'd say I like the first variant better. At the moment things disappear off the BSA filter if you use them, which makes dragons creep up on the pages rather than having a fixed position you can easily page to. (...I guess this really is only relevant to people that obsessively use BSAs. But I did say "if I had to pick". xd.png I'd be happy with either.)

Share this post


Link to post

Purplehaze suggested the one on AoND I took a look at it.  That one seemed a bit complicated for my liking. I was a bit confused as to HOW exactly it worked. Not sure if you were supposed to input when the last egg was incubated/influenced or... ANYWAY, I am not QUITE certain how to use it because the times it gave me when I put in my dragons weren't right.  IF something like this got approved I think it should be straight forward enough that the average DCer should be able to figure out how to use it without it needing to be explained... or at least not overly much.

 

ETA... Especially since, as some people pointed out, it is the relative newbies this would help most.

I was confused when I first started using it, too. It is not intuitive. Once you get all your BSA dragons entered and synched right with when their ability was last used, it works fine. I still use it, even though I now have so many BSA dragons that I never run out, because I can see at a glance how many I have left and how long it will be until I have more.

 

As I said, I do think it would be nice to have something onsite to track them. I think I would like option 1 better, if it also showed when the ability would be restored. I can tell that to the minute on AoND, which is a feature I really like, since our dragons' action pages only show it in days, which is not ideal. I would also hope that all those that are not available at the moment would move to the bottom, so you didn't have to scroll through all of them to get to the usable ones.

Edited by purplehaze

Share this post


Link to post

Dunno what your pic means, pinkgothic, but it's pretty. =o

 

I'm another who has more than enough BSAs to not run out, but I would use this for some of my vamps and agree this could come in handy for lots of others. Something like a "disAction Log". =p I prefer them being separate, too, simply because I have a lot of dragons still when I sort by BSA (and about 80 of them are just feesh!) and don't need the inactive ones making me stumble around more.

Share this post


Link to post

Oh wow, I had the same idea a while ago and I am surprised it hadn't been suggested before?

I would like that as I am not one of the people who never runs out of BSA (yet).

 

Have a "Not available for BSA" filter where you can see the time left at a glance and we save time and clicks biggrin.gif

Edited by Mondat

Share this post


Link to post

Dunno what your pic means, pinkgothic, but it's pretty. =o

Haha, it's a terrible sketch of the basic idea of having a page that shows you, in a calendar-like way, how long you have to wait for your BSA dragons to come off cooldown.

 

The 'calendar' shows a full month since that's the time one has to wait for Bite to come off cooldown - but not all BSAs take a month to get off cooldown, so they have fields that are greyed out where the calendar is no longer relevant to them.

 

Then the colours are showing you how many days you need to wait.

 

You have stairsteps in the colours because you might have more than one dragon of the species. (The resulting rows could potentially be clickable and take you to the action page; and let you hover over them to see the name/code of the dragon. IDK.)

 

I didn't put a huge amount of thought into it, it was just the first thing that came to mind. It might be better to 'invert' the colouring - have it where you can use the BSA again, not where you need to wait for it to get off cooldown - and some rule like "if you have more than N (e.g. 6) of <breed>, only the N (e.g. 6) that are going to be available for BSA soonest are displayed in the calendar".

 

</explanation>

 

(Edit: Also, the mock-up is missing Fertility and Expunge, but that part's obvious, I reckon.)

Edited by pinkgothic

Share this post


Link to post

Actuall, the Calendar Idea is pretty in a way I wasn't thinking of... might cause to much lag on the site for most folks' tastes, though.

Share this post


Link to post
Haha, it's a terrible sketch of the basic idea of having a page that shows you, in a calendar-like way, how long you have to wait for your BSA dragons to come off cooldown.

 

The 'calendar' shows a full month since that's the time one has to wait for Bite to come off cooldown - but not all BSAs take a month to get off cooldown, so they have fields that are greyed out where the calendar is no longer relevant to them.

 

Then the colours are showing you how many days you need to wait.

 

You have stairsteps in the colours because you might have more than one dragon of the species. (The resulting rows could potentially be clickable and take you to the action page; and let you hover over them to see the name/code of the dragon. IDK.)

 

I didn't put a huge amount of thought into it, it was just the first thing that came to mind. It might be better to 'invert' the colouring - have it where you can use the BSA again, not where you need to wait for it to get off cooldown - and some rule like "if you have more than N (e.g. 6) of <breed>, only the N (e.g. 6) that are going to be available for BSA soonest are displayed in the calendar".

 

</explanation>

 

(Edit: Also, the mock-up is missing Fertility and Expunge, but that part's obvious, I reckon.)

Oooh, I see. That's kind of a neat idea if it's easy for everyone to read to get the information they want. o3o

Share this post


Link to post
Oooh, I see. That's kind of a neat idea if it's easy for everyone to read to get the information they want. o3o

Yes, i agree, though like I said, it MIGHT be harder to code than the way I suggested.

 

Mind you, that is entirely a guess on my part. I don't honestly know how much work either would be. THAT would be a question for TJ, methinks. ULTIMATELY, it is up to him, after all, to do as he deams best. Really I would be good with this whichever way TJ would like to handle it, if this got implemented.

Share this post


Link to post

This is a great idea. Whatever way it appears on the site, I'd find it extremely useful, and would also like it to be implemented for actions in general with a subcategory to just see BSAs.

Share this post


Link to post
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.


  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.