View 'official' dragon rarity in encyclopedia

[blackgem14]

I was looking over all the information found in the encyclopedia, and several things happened in a row, my mind kind of did its bouncing-around thing where it island-hops from object to object until it arrives at something. Well, this is what it arrived at.

What if, along with 'found in' and 'elemental affinity', the dragon's approximate rarity was also shown? Maybe not the exact rarity, and certainly not ratios, but a general range that gives the player an idea of how easy it would be to get this dragon. I haven't thought this out much, so it's still a very new idea, and I figured I'd get it out there for the rest of the DC community to mull over.

I'm thinking, myself, it would display in between the other two aforementioned informational tidbits (found in; elemental affinity) and on the same line, and to make it fair and kind of a challenge to get you'd have to catch quite a few eggs before it showed up, like 3 or 5 or so. Your opinions?

 

And if this is in the wrong location, or duplicated (I searched, but someone said the search function isn't very good), please tell me and I'll shout below the topic's name that it needs moved.

[Fuzzbucket]

There is no official rarity index; a HUGE amount depends on player demand anyway (see under blacks ("common" allegedly) almost disappeared for a while in cave, during the MUST HAVE ALT rush !) and only TJ has ANY idea about the exact ratios. I would bet this won't fly if only because TJ plays his dragons close to his chest !.

[CNR4806]

While ratios definitely have a hand at rarity, listing out the "official" rarity is not just unhelpful but downright confusing, because player activities have more to do with the rarity that we often talk about than ratios, especially when it comes to breeds that are regarded by the site as commons.

 

For example, Stripes are common and as far as I know has always been a "common" in the context of "official" rarity, yet CB stripes had been elusive since their release until recent years, most likely due to intenstive breeding which stemmed from their unique breeding mechanism.

 

 

tl;dr: What you and/or the community consider common or rare aren't necessarily so within cave mechanics, and any effort to list dragon rarities is bound to fail.

[Sundew]

CNR summarized well most of my problems with this suggestion.

 

Rarities change easily and quickly. Displaying ratios is hardly an option.

 

The wiki is a decent source for rarity reference and is by no means difficult to find by anyone capable of using a search engine. Then there's the forums; the questions about trading thread is good for finding out what a certain dragon can get you in terms of trdaing--rarity playing a huge part in this--and I've gotten answers about rarity from the Tiny Little Questions thread as well.

But none of these ansewrs are offiicial, and none is ever going to be official. Rarities are determined largely by us, by user demand. There isn't really a way to predict, or to record, user demand--not easily. There isn't a way to record rarity easily.

 

I also don't see what purpose knowing the "official" rarities would serve. It really doesn't take that much thought to determine what the approximate rarities are. If you see an egg frequently, it's common. Infrequently or never, it's uncommon or rare.

Are we unaware of the rarities already? No. We have an idea, a good idea, of what is easy and what is hard to find. Making it official wouldn't change this idea.

[Obscure_Trash]

I completely understand why some want this, but due to reasons explained above, I think it's best if we leave determining relative rarities to user reports. ^^

[pinkgothic]

I actually really like this idea.

 

I could imagine something like "Technical rarity: Rare" for Golds and Silvers, and "Technical rarity: Common, but abandoned often" or "Technical rarity: Common, but often not picked up" working as automatic indicators. To determine 'often', the relative numbers should probably be at least in the upper tercile or so. A "Common, but bred often" would also be awesome, but would be more difficult to determine - if you're breeding a blusang and a deepsea and get no egg, what were you trying to get, after all? (You can't just focus on the successful counts, after all.) I mean, we as human beings understand it was probably the blusang, but I can't off-hand think of an algorithm for that. Which is not necessarily to say there is none, just that I'm not imaginative enough.

 

I think it's unlikely we'll get this information, because the ratios are a closely guarded secret and anything other than "Rare" vs. "Common" is probably more information than TJ wants to share, and I can grok why -- but I'd still be super glad to be wrong about that.

[Esdren]

I wouldn't mind this as long as the rarity on the encyclopedia doesn't change regularly like how the value of different dragons change regularly with our market.

A general or technical rarity of the dragon like pinkgothic suggested is a good idea, not too vague but not specific enough for it to reflect our market thats constantly fluctuating.

Edited November 28, 2014 by suskekun222

[HeatherMarie]

I agree that this would probably be more confusing then helpful. Rarity changes, sometimes drastically.

[bluesonic1]

I agree that this would be an extremely useful feature to add to the encyclopedia. I agree though with the issues that many users have proposed above. What I suggest is a compromise.

 

Instead of an "official rarity" status, TJ could release cave ratio information for the breed. Player demands and breedings would be excluded because of their subjective nature, but at least having the CB ratios available will give some kind of an index into "rarity", and is certainly better than nothing.

[ParticleSoup]

I remember somewhere, a long long time ago, TJ mentioning the possibility of something like this happening regarding ratios, so instead of listed rarity it would say the breed's current populus state: underpopulated, overpopulated, or optimal population.

Edited October 23, 2015 by ParticleSoup

[Indigo_Dragon]

I remember somewhere, a long long time ago, TJ mentioning the possibility of something like this happening regarding ratios, so instead of listed rarity it would say the breed's current populus state: underpopulated, overpopulated, or optimal population.

That actually sounds infinitely fascinating. I'd LOVE to know that! It would also help explain to people why they're not getting eggs of this "common" species if its overpopulated atm and needs to "cool down" until the game will produce more eggs based on the ratios! If that could change due to the current populous status, that would be insanely helpful for me! From a breeding, collecting, and even trading standpoint. :3

[Suzumiya]

I would love it if it listed how currently "popular" a dragon was. It would basically let us know if we would ever be able to catch it during normal drops. I hate how the only time I ever have a chance at say, a CB Xeno, is if a new dragon is released. I got more Xenos during the Lunar Herald release than during the Xeno flood the first day!

 

It'd also be nice to know if those bajillion CB Autumns are still staying rare or are now considered common, since I've honestly seen more of them than Mints lately.

[Lurhstaap]

I remember somewhere, a long long time ago, TJ mentioning the possibility of something like this happening regarding ratios, so instead of listed rarity it would say the breed's current populus state: underpopulated, overpopulated, or optimal population.

This is the only version of this idea so far which seems practical to me. I would support this. We had a similar feature on the site I once worked for, but for items in the site's economy rather than pet species, and I've seen similar things on other sites as well. It works a lot better than trying to calculate "rarity" and it still gives a person some idea of how much to value a given pet or item - if you know something is vastly overpopulated you know it probably isn't worth too much, whereas something underpopulated may be more valuable than it seems at first glance.

 

The thing with Autumns is a great example of why "rarity" can't be an official thing in the way a lot of people want. Such things just change too often. You'd have to either have someone whose whole job was tracking the shifting of ratios and player demand and then editing the Encyclopedia to account for it for each species in the game, or else you'd have to have TJ take time away from other things we'd probably rather he be doing in order to do it himself, which means that much less progress on the rest of the game. In the name of information we could research ourselves, and probably more accurately to boot. Just because something is "official" doesn't make it true, after all. I'm sure TJ or whatever staffer was assigned to the job would do their best, but having to cover all the species and constantly update them to account for changes in ratios and player demand would naturally reduce their efficiency with each individual species. Whereas a player researching the specific species they're concerned with at that moment will be able to invest more time in each species and do a more thorough job.

 

Maybe what's actually needed here is a player-driven database collecting information about perceived rarity of given species. Any one person's opinion is just that, but aggregate that of hundreds of players and you should arrive at some reasonably useful conclusions.

 

(I'm guessing Seasonals are spawning like crazy because of being underpopulated, BTW. For the longest time they were pretty rare - I remember hunting very aggressively for them back in '09-'10. But eventually all the people who wanted them enough to work that hard for them had as many as they wanted and I think at that point they just started dropping more and more a bit at a time because more and more people joined but didn't go for Seasonals so much, until you reach now where they're just flooding because the number of people in the game compared to the number of CB Seasonals on scrolls has gotten high enough to trigger the flood.)

Edited October 23, 2015 by Lurhstaap

[Cinnamin Draconna]

Confusing or not, I'd LOVE to have something 'official' stated somewhere. And yes, I know all about how the rarity of something changes with player demand and time since release.. but that isn't what I'm interested in.

 

What I would like to know is what the INTENDED rarity of something is/was. Supply and demand will always be a factor as well as popularity, but it would be nice to know what a particular eggs 'intended' rarity is/was.

 

Blacks 'were' common... then they became rare... then uncommon.. and now they're back to common again.

Stripes (I think) were 'intended' to be uncommon, but became rare quickly... but now they're back to being uncommon again... or maybe even common.

 

But the 'intention' would be helpful.. to me at least, and to newbies as well.. just so one could have an idea of how hard something will be to find. Listing the 'intended' rarity would only be a guideline.. NOT a hard and fast rule.. just something to go by, keeping in mind the popularity of said egg while you were hunting.

 

Rares will always be rare.. that's a given.. and I see no reason why that couldn't be posted. Commons and uncommons vary with age and popularity, so their 'intended' rarity would always be a useful tool for hunting/collecting.

[dragongrrl]

I remember somewhere, a long long time ago, TJ mentioning the possibility of something like this happening regarding ratios, so instead of listed rarity it would say the breed's current populus state: underpopulated, overpopulated, or optimal population.

It is perhaps best as the final information to be unlocked for each breed.

[Obscure_Trash]

I remember somewhere, a long long time ago, TJ mentioning the possibility of something like this happening regarding ratios, so instead of listed rarity it would say the breed's current populus state: underpopulated, overpopulated, or optimal population.

 

This is the only version of this idea so far which seems practical to me. I would support this.

Agreed. :3

[HeatherMarie]

I remember somewhere, a long long time ago, TJ mentioning the possibility of something like this happening regarding ratios, so instead of listed rarity it would say the breed's current populus state: underpopulated, overpopulated, or optimal population.

This would be awesome. I agree that it's probably the best way to go with this particular suggestion.

[NotBambi]

I remember somewhere, a long long time ago, TJ mentioning the possibility of something like this happening regarding ratios, so instead of listed rarity it would say the breed's current populus state: underpopulated, overpopulated, or optimal population.

Personally, I would love that.

In the meantime, I'm "forced" to infer rarity from the Trading section

[Riverwillows]

Dragon rarity and popularity is so transient, fluctuates day by day. Nearly impossible to pin down. Would need to be updated daily, and that's a lot of energy. A LOT of energy.

[Sinion Kabe]

I would really like being able to see some sort of 'Live' rarity feed. I have thought about this myself. However, I can also appreciate how tricky it might be for DC to implement.

[pinkgothic]

Dragon rarity and popularity is so transient, fluctuates day by day. Nearly impossible to pin down. Would need to be updated daily, and that's a lot of energy. A LOT of energy.

Hmm, why do you think it would need to be updated manually? The ratio system and egg generating is automatic - something that checks these things should at least in theory also be automated. (Or are you referring to monitoring the trade section in some way? That doesn't seem like it would coincide with official dragon rarity, so I didn't assume you meant that, but I guess you could still mean that. In which case, sorry for misunderstanding.)

[olympe]

Since the actual rarity is more dependent on what the player base as a whole does than on the actual ratios, I don't think this would help. I'd love to see such a feature, but it wouldn't be nearly as helpful as we might expect.

 

For example, there was a year where CB seasonals were sometimes traded for CB metals or 2nd/3rd gen prizes - when prizes were much more valuable than they are now. There were also times during the metal draught/alt rush were a couple of CB blacks could get you a very low-gen and nice-lineaged metal. (Before rare x rare breeding became possible, of course.) There also was a time when GW were hard to catch, and blusangs were about as rare as silvers in the cave. I remember when nebulas and hellfires were nearly impossible to get. Or when, for weeks on end, we could hardly find anything but canopies, nocturnes and electrics in the cave. (Don't ask...) I don't think TJ has changed the actual ratios since then, but he most assuredly changed something about what part of the dragon population to consider for the ratios. Many of these phenomena, but not all, were driven by player demand or the consequence of releases happening in one biome only. (Yep. The seasonal rarity happened after an uncommon wintertime release in the Alpine biome. I think it was the release involving GWs...)

[AGYK]

Since the actual rarity is more dependent on what the player base as a whole does than on the actual ratios, I don't think this would help. I'd love to see such a feature, but it wouldn't be nearly as helpful as we might expect.

Agreed. I could get behind an underpopulated/optimal population/overpopulated tag, but not anything trying to give actual rarity numbers.

 

Heck, even more recently, Xenos are supposed to be uncommon, but player demand is so high nobody can catch many. >_>;