ANSWERED:Distributing New Prizes/Special/Limited Dragons

[Laugh]

"I've nothing against having Tinsels and Shimmers distributed via this mechanism. Actually I would like that. But the idea of getting trapped on yet another Prizes discussion, AGAIN, is making me gag. And no, I'm not talking about your posts."

 

So CB Tinsel/Shimmer/Hybrids/Holidays/Metal/Copper/(Anything that can fit into a rare category) can be earned through a mini-game? I only see this being more problematic than being a solution.

 

Difficulty is easy and simple, but you have to keep continually work an "insane" amount: This would only upset anyone that does not spend a "ridiculous" amount of time on DC, yet want to have a way of earning those dragons. It can also seem very tedious to those that do have the time to continually play.

 

Difficulty is hard and complex, but you only need to play a few times (a lot less than above for example): I see this one being complained less. This would lead to different strategies being developed, but even then, those who cannot win even reading through step-by-step guides will still be upset.

 

Lots of different combinations you can mix and mash, but no matter what you do you will still upset a big portion of players and of course you will have players that are better at certain mini-games than others.

 

Another problem I have with this is that it emphasizes on any breed "rare" and "exclusive".

 

Rare is user base determined. For example aren't CB codes that contain all numbers/perfect word codes considered "rare"? Well let's calculate the odds for an all-numbers code. 26 letters, and 10 numbers leads to 36 different combinations. 36 to the fifth power (since that is how many characters are in codes at the moment) and you have 60,466,176 different combinations (and this isn't factoring caps/lower cases). Since there are 10 numbers you'd take it to the 5th power which would be 100,000. Divide that by 60,466,176 and you get 0.00165381716. Multiply that by 100 (for percentage) and you get 0.16% That is obviously less than 1% and rounded up to the nearest tenth is 0.2% Theoretically with the rounded up percentage, out of 1,000 eggs you find, only 2 will contain an all-numbers code. That is pretty rare if you ask me. And specific word codes are 1 out of that 60,466,176 and can even be an absolute 0% if you want that "perfect" code.

 

Exclusivity can be debated a bit more. While you can only currently win CB Prizes/Hybrids/Past holidays (not all) through a raffle you can call that exclusive. However, since ANYONE can be in the raffle you can say it's not exclusive in that sense as well. Though the winners ARE exclusive. You can also say that this game is exclusive too since not everyone is going to be able to reach the criteria for the game to win (and for everyone to win it'd literally would mean TJ would just do a couple things and have everyone just reach that criteria even if they put no effort in), even though its intent is for everyone.

 

 

[silverstreak12]

if it's gonna be mana alchemy again, there was a loophole that i discovered on one of the last days of the event. was too lazy to point it out, because it was after all one of the last days of the event, and i didn't know who to contact about it.

 

if you refreshed the page after you won the alchemy game, where it said "you collected 81 crystals" or whatever the number was, and showed you the collection bars, it gave you those crystals again but you didn't have to play the game. if it were to turn into "get 8000 mana crystals and you can get a prize", theoretically you could play one game, get the 80 crystals, and just refresh a page 99 times over the course of a day and get the prize.

 

if this is implemented, that should be patched out.

[Obscure_Trash]

Thanks for explaining a bit more, everyone.

 

~

 

I definitely don't support this as a way to get exclusive prize dragons or a new exclusive or cb hybrids or anything not available in cave. I am hesitantly going to put out general support for gaining a limited number of dragons as a prize through some kind of game/point system because I know a lot of people don't have good enough internet/enough time on the computer/have been trying for years and not caught any cb golds or silvers. However, there definitely needs to be a limit on how many you can get so as to not mess up cave ratios.

 

I also am not sure I support this being mana alchemy, even if we introduce a ridiculously high mana number to have to reach to get a prize. It was a very simple game and I think there are other ideas out there that were working on similar efforts. Hoarding, for example, may be a tad more involved (and would likely be easier on my computer at least) and introduce a new fun component that could be easily be built into DC lore. Tbh, I really don't find mana alchemy all that game related. It's like buying a pack of cards with dragons on them and playing "DC solitaire". Cutesy and certainly tied in, but not really something that actually flows with DC.

I also don't want RPG, though. That's a lot of work.

 

So I am hesitantly supporting the general idea of a different way to obtain dragons, but not sure about the mechanics behind this particular suggestion.

Edited January 10, 2015 by SockPuppet Strangler

[Jazeki]

I support this. Another adoptable game that I play has two mini games that I know of where if you play long enough (meaning after so many turns or wins, not length of time), you have the chance of winning a pet that is usually a rare/special/limited release.

 

I really like mana alchemy and would love to play it forever until my eyes fall out of my head, but I do not mind if it was tweaked to make the game less likely to just "pop out" rares .

[Rosedamai]

No. This is a dragon CAVE, not a dragon minigame.

Although I would like to see alternate ways of getting a dragon, I would want it to be unbreedable or untradeable and very limited (ex: a dragon egg w a candle or a ribbon on it to commemorate the day you joined-one time only, called a birthday egg). I fail to see how the "new prize" dragon would continue being rare if everyone ends up playing the game and so everyone in the end has a "new prize". Either that or it's the dreaded game of chance again and there's drama everywhere just like with the GoNs.

[lorimmel]

I like this suggestion very much.

 

As for the RPG / mini-game issue, I can't see why we cannot have both, the minigame introduced earlier (because it's easier to put in place) and the RPG at some later stage, after it's thoroughly programmed. But in this case, I would like the prizes to be the same in both games, so that people who hate RPG are not forced to play it, and vice versa.

 

As for the prizes:

I would gladly support tinsels and shimmers distributed in this way, but it's probably not going to happen. And in this case, please keep raffling tinsels and shimmers (ideally with increased number of winners) AND release the new shiny prize-like breeds via this game. Do not add new exclusive breeds to the raffle. This would be a great way to avert some of the raffle drama. We would have a population of tinsels and shimmer that is constantly growing over the years, and we would have new exciting breeds (that can be earned by everybody) to diversify the trade market. Isn't it a brilliant idea?

 

A question to everybody who wants the new dragons to be available via biomes only:

If you don't like playing mini-games, how about catching cb rares and trading them for the dragons available via the mini-game in question? If everything is well-balanced, people with slow internet could trade for the CB golds and silvers, while good catchers could trade for the mini-game rares (while still having the possibility and freedom to play the mini-game, if they change their minds). How awesome is that?

[Rosedamai]

If you don't like playing mini-games, how about catching cb rares and trading them for the dragons available via the mini-game in question? If everything is well-balanced, people with slow internet could trade for the CB golds and silvers, while good catchers could trade for the mini-game rares (while still having the possibility and freedom to play the mini-game, if they change their minds). How awesome is that?

 

Yes trade rares which I have to reflex and click obsessively for something I can get myself with no other competition

 

no thank you

[CNR4806]

I appreciate Dragon Cave for its simplicity. This suggestion massively complicates the game with things like minigames and auxillary tasks.

 

Needless to say I'm not a fan of it.

 

 

And just by the way...

Difficulty is easy and simple, but you have to keep continually work an "insane" amount: This would only upset anyone that does not spend a "ridiculous" amount of time on DC, yet want to have a way of earning those dragons. It can also seem very tedious to those that do have the time to continually play.

This is called grinding. While many RPGs allow you to voluntarily grind levels and/or currency, forcing people to grind is a tactic usually reserved for microtransaction-enabled games as an incentive to buy shortcuts, because it is frustrating.

Edited January 10, 2015 by CNR4806

[DarkEternity]

This is called grinding. While many RPGs allow you to voluntarily grind levels and/or currency, forcing people to grind is a tactic usually reserved for microtransaction-enabled games as an incentive to buy shortcuts, because it is frustrating.

 

I understand that grinding can constitute "frustrating" but what RPG has a waiting period of four years (1460 days) yielding zero results for a large majority of participants?

 

Is that also not "frustration" assuming that most people have already potentially waited 35,040 hours in total and essentially wait 8,760 hours every interval?

 

Yes, we could perhaps attempt time and time again for the rest of our lives and yet RNG may yield absolutely zilch for the next 100 years given the low number of winners. It is not a distant prospect, that death would occur before an individual wins a lottery -- that is the nature of one - minute chance with no reward most of the time.

 

I do not think that it is likely that this suggestion will ever take off (nor do I discount the fact that it may lead to carpal tunnel) however 'frustration' I feel is a huge understatement for the number of years which have already passed and given the choice of waiting more years or grinding for several years flat I'd take the latter.

Edited January 10, 2015 by DarkEternity

[lorimmel]

Actually, no one likes grinding. But I do think it is better than no shot at exclusives for 99.9 percent of the userbase.

[DarkEternity]

It would also favour players with no life, too/those with time/those without health problems.

[purplehaze]

Hmm. First of all, I agree with the people who say that Mana Alchemy is way too simple. Heck, even my 11-year-old daughter told me just how simple the game is! Which, in turn, makes it mind-boggingly boring.

 

Second, as much as I'd like to see something shiny that I'd have a good chance at getting, I somehow don't feel comfortable with making some dragons available through a mini-game only.

 

I also don't see them as very valuable on the trading market if everyone can get them. It's like with 2nd gen Avatars: Within a very short time, they'll be so common nobody will want to trade them for something rarer - like low-gen prizes or CB golds. So they sure wouldn't fill the niche between high-tier and low-tier trading. (If they're nice and shiny, I'd probably put a lot of personal value on them, but that doesn't mean they'd have said value to someone else.)

 

That being said, I'm not strongly opposed to this. I just don't feel it's an amazingly good idea, much less needed.

I agree with most of this.

 

I am not a gamer and find even simple games difficult for me. Mana Alchemy was easy enough that even I could play it -- but I found it extremely boring. I couldn't stand to play it more than once a day after the first day or two. So, if it is easy enough for me to play, it bores me to tears.

 

But I think the more important part is the part about trade value. I agree that it is unlikely that such a dragon would maintain trade value over time. It might start out that way, but if everyone can get it with enough effort and time invested I don't think the high value would last long.

 

So, even though this idea sounded good at first, I don't see it really solving anything and I am a bit fearful that it would change the game in ways that would not be good.

[Syphoneira]

Is high trade value to be forever now automatically assumed as the main point of pretty new dragons, due to the Prize dragon scarcity effect?

 

I find that rather sad...

 

 

Edit: so sad that I thought I'd misplace a word... ooooops!

Edited January 11, 2015 by Syphoneira

[zaverxi]

The only way I see this turning ugly fast is if people who have too much time on their hands glut the market with these new shinies, so if there *IS* some sort of cap involved, that'd be great. Theoretically, you can have as many CB shimmers and tinsels etc as you want if the odds are in your favor like they seem to be for some people, but.... I think if someone does nothing but play whatever game it is all day long, they'd have a better chance at this new prize than, say, someone who works a 12 hour shift 2-5 days a week from 7am to 7pm who usually only has 4 hours a day max to spend on things like this and who doesn't want the stress of having to compete with those with lots of time on their hands.

 

 

Wow that was very specific, go me...

 

I like that 'only win 2 per year' thing. You can still trade for babies, but no one gets to hoard CBs and potentially wreck the ratios and make it so others can't get bred ones.

[Fuzzbucket]

Is high trade value to be forever now automatically assumed as the main point of pretty new dragons, due to the Prize dragon scarcity effect?

 

I find that rather sad...

 

 

Edit: so sad that I thought I'd misplace a word... ooooops!

My sentiments exactly. I have been objecting to the draggie stockmarket since before prizes were invented. Now it is getting to be like hedge funds

 

Which actually have the power to bring down the financial system. (Anyone else read The Fear Index ?)

 

Ugh.

 

Returns to trading ordinary lineages with people who like to bank with mutuals Blusang x pink, anyone ???

[olympe]

Personally, I'm not against this because of some stock market effect. But I think that an imagined beneficial effect on the already existing stock market isn't a valid argument for the suggestion, either. Because, well, it most likely won't work out that way, at least not for long.

 

I'm most definitely not against adding new shinies.

 

And I'm not a fan of having to perform a chore (like playing the same mini game over and over again) in order to get some reward. I'd much rather see regular releases.

[RecycledHeart]

Returns to trading ordinary lineages with people who like to bank with mutuals Blusang x pink, anyone ???

I would love to have that fuzz.

 

Also I don't think this a very good idea. We already have plenty of dragons waiting to be released. Why push them back for another prize sprite that most likely won't help the trading threads? No one is going to really care about trading that much if EVERYONE can get cbs. Male and female so that they can do all the lineages that they want.

[Phenri]

I don't really know about all this.

 

Personally I'd like a sort of minigame as a way to obtain CB rare/uncommon/common dragons since I don't have the internet nor reflexes for catching the rare Cbs when they finally drop (nor do I have the concentration to be checking in every 5 min which I know is completly my own fault).

I don't think the prizes for the game should be the 'real' prize dragons (Shimmers and Tinsel). They should be exclusive to the raffle otherwise they would loose a lot of their rarity and be less unique. It would be borring if they were just farmable in a minigame.

 

I think the prizes should be determined by how hard the game is. I don't support the idea of the game being a larger scaled RPG of sorts, but I do think it should be a little harder than Manaalchemy or more depth could be added to Manaalchemy (which have already been suggested) to give it more difficulty.

If we had a game with 3 difficulties maybe each difficulty could have a chance of awarding a specific type of dragonegg depending on the difficulty.

 

I know the rarity of dragons are dependent on the community which makes it hard to completly justify winning dragons from a game. and if people just farmed the game to win rares it could inflate dragons rarity and mess up trading for everyone.

maybe set a max amount of eggs won per day/week/Month?

Say if you beat a certain amount of points in this game you would have a chance to win an unspecific egg according to the difficulty of the game; if you play on hard you might win a CB Bluesang.

You shoudn't get to choose what egg to win and I think there should be a restriction.

I don't support having a specific 'prize' dragon only obtainable through this game; as far as I understood people wanted this as a replacement methond for obtaining the rares they are not able to catch in the cave due to bad internet or slow reflexes.

 

This idea needs a lot of work but I do support being able to win dragons in a minigame, but there should be some restrictions to how many you can win and it shoudn't be easy; catching rares in the cave isn't easy either.

Edited January 11, 2015 by Phenri

[Sir Barton]

No. This is a dragon CAVE, not a dragon minigame.

Although I would like to see alternate ways of getting a dragon, I would want it to be unbreedable or untradeable and very limited (ex: a dragon egg w a candle or a ribbon on it to commemorate the day you joined-one time only, called a birthday egg). I fail to see how the "new prize" dragon would continue being rare if everyone ends up playing the game and so everyone in the end has a "new prize". Either that or it's the dreaded game of chance again and there's drama everywhere just like with the GoNs.

Agreed. This reminds me way too much of GoNs and the endless, fruitless summonings. Thanks, but no thanks.

[Ayelldee]

If I wanted an all-immersive experience, I'd go do one of the Myst games - AGAIN. I don't want that in DC, and I don't think adding yet another exclusive dragon is the Great Answer either. So, no thanks from me, too.

[kiramaru7]

After reading through the thread, I don't like this at all. I don't have insane amount of time to devote to this game, not do I have a super fast internet connection or have nice people willing to trade with me or gift things to me. I haven't even won any raffles, but I have prize dragons on my scroll, cuz I have friends who traded for one & then bred me some nice eggies. Or I found things with nice lineages that were dumped into the AP. My CB rares that I have, I worked at getting ,by every so often browsing the Cave & clicking on stuff that's rare. If I got one, awesome, if not, I was disappointed for a bit, but I got over it. Plus these things are RARE for a reason. If we make it so all you need to do is play a silly mini game to get one, then they won't be RARE anymore.

 

I've been playing a while, & I remember when Hollies first showed up in the AP, I clicked like mad, never snagged any, but the fun was in the trying! Next year, I was gifted one & I managed to catch a couple. The following year, I caught to many, I was GIFTING them to all my friends. This year, I managed to catch a lot too. And I work too. Don't get me wrong, I think they're awesoem, but they're not as rare as they used to be. And really, the only difference between my CB gold & my other ones, is one is the founded of the line & the others are so many generations removed. The sprites are identical.

 

So please, no silly games to get something that should be earned, otherwise, let's just get rid of the idea of things dropping in the Cave & just have TJ put the thing right on everyone's scroll. That way "everyone wins."

 

The appeal of this game is its simplicity. I go in, tend to my eggies & hatchies, & when I have open slots, I go hunting in AP or the Cave. I don't have to play any games to do that; I can trade with my friends pr give them things I find & know they'd like. As it is, trading for certain things is ridiculous with the amount someone wants in exchange for it. *is looking at you ND dragon*

 

So please NO SILLY GAMES to win "Prizes." Thank you!! (caps for emphasis) That's not saying I hated the Mana game, I just don't think we should have play games in order to get something that drops in the Cave anyway. Instant gratification gets real old real fast & creates a sense of entitlement. So no thanks!

Edited January 11, 2015 by kiramaru7

[cyradis4]

Returns to trading ordinary lineages with people who like to bank with mutuals Blusang x pink, anyone ???

http://dragcave.net/lineage/CNgJB

 

 

You did ask.

 

As for "having a life", if a person is capped to only so many a year, then.... You can do a little each day.

 

Or there could be a per-day cap, so you'd have to do a little something for say....150 days total (not consecutivly) in order to get it.

 

This doesn't have to be intense or anything like that, just something that takes many days to complete.

 

Cheers!

C4.

[_Sin_]

So please, no silly games to get something that should be earned,

You realize that's exactly how things will work this year, no? People "earned" raffle entries by playing the "silly" game (that I enjoyed, nonetheless, and made me go back to play the original Alchemy) and the prizes will be drawn based on those entries...

[Fuzzbucket]

Please bring chat to PM. Edited January 12, 2015 by SockPuppet Strangler

[Melatte]

While I do not support the current suggestion as it stands, or many of the ideas people are posting, I might offer something slightly more fun that I could support.

 

I can't agree with changes to currently existing breeds (especially rares prizes), but if there was a category of dragon that was released only through a mini-game, then that is something that I could see supporting entirely. But to be clear, I am saying that these game dragons would only be released through the game, and nothing else. It would just be another category of dragon like uncommons, rares, prizes, etc. This is the only way I could support a dragon-awarding game on DC.

 

If a dragon that people sit in the cave all day long trying to snatch up was suddenly released through a game, regardless of the difficulty, there is going to be an effect on the rarity as well as people who do a lot of catching. It's not worth making people upset or playing with the rarity of a breed.

 

Another factor in this would be the game. If we're going with mana alchemy, whatever is released through the game is going to be quite plentiful. My friends 5 year old sat on my lap and had no problems with this game. I barely even had to explain it to her, she just clicked around matching "pretty" tiles and "ugly" tiles until she won.