Make CB Golds **slighty** less rare

[danicast]

This is probably a bad idea, but I might as well throw it out there. What if the biomes displayed a random three eggs that were in them every time an individual user refreshed, so it showed different eggs to everyone. This would balance out the whole "user A is faster than user B so user B never gets rares" aspect, since it would be largely luck-based. With persistence and dedication, you could be the only user who a CB gold shows up for, and grab it before anyone else refreshes. Scripters can't beat people to an egg if they can't even see it (unless they just got six or seven computers all refreshing at the same time...). New eggs would still drop every five minutes, maybe more frequently, because the rare eggs would be picked over much faster. Egg drops also might have to significantly increase in size, from (guessing) around 15 eggs per biome to more like 50, or 100, so that it would take a while for everything to be sorted through by hunters. The largest problem I see with this is that it would further disadvantage people like me, with terrible internet and long page refresh times, as compared to people with fast internet who can rapidly cycle between eggs.

This is absolutely BRILLIANT. +1 from me.

[Syphoneira]

This was called the "egg shuffle" and we tried it before. Basically, all highly desirable eggs get sniped super quick and then there's nothing but blockers left, so we abandoned the idea. ^^

 

 

 

 

 

Bringing this forward, as some essential points seem to be getting missed and adding my (thoroughly ninja'd) points up as well:

 

 

 

While some very good points are made in this suggestion, not so sure myself about the idea of different Caves for different people...

 

 

With a change every Refresh, anything desirable in the back-log would be rapidly picked out, leaving nothing but Blockers and reducing the future production of anything BUT the hourly regenerated Blockers.

 

 

Currently, I believe the eggs Dropping into the biomes to be in a line-up generated every hour, based on several factors such as the number of people on and the numbers of each egg type required for the ratios.

 

So as rares were picked out early in every hour, more untaken types would be produced until nothing else remained, every hour, until the rares became essentially extinct.

 

 

(Edit: totally ninja'd here by Socky, lol, takes me forever to post... .png )

 

What I'd personally like to see would be something like the AP dump of untaken biome eggs every shuffle to gradually help balance the ratios as low-time Commons are raised rather than regenerated in an endless cycle and increase biome movement as more variety began to appear.

 

(This needs to be paired with regular New Releases for evident reasons.) ...

[Tehya Faye]

Alternatively unclaimed eggs could be dumped to the AP at the end of the hour rather than the shuffles. I would really prefer that to having eggs get sent off every 5 minutes since it would introduce short-lived waves of CB eggs (rares and commons) instead of permanently altering the AP to be heavily in favor of CB eggs 24/7.

Edited May 25, 2015 by Tehya Faye

[Syphoneira]

Alternatively unclaimed eggs could be dumped to the AP at the end of the hour rather than the shuffles. I would really prefer that to having eggs get sent off every 5 minutes since it would introduce short-lived waves of CB eggs (rares and commons) instead of permanently altering the AP to be heavily in favor of CB eggs 24/7.

 

 

 

Actually, I strongly suspect that doing this at the end of the hour, with a larger mass of CB eggs hitting the AP all at once, would more likely produce the effect you'd would prefer to avoid, as every 5 minutes, a smaller number of CBs would be folded in with the constant supply of breds and normally player-dropped CBs, (even if over time many of the latter would likely be replaced by those auto-dropped at the shuffles,) so that the AP would change far less when doing this at each shuffle than if the rejects from all 6 biomes were to collect over the hour and be deposited all at once.

 

The variety of the AP holds much of its charm, and those of us who hunt for both CB and breds in there have a strong interest in maintaining that variety.

[Ribombee]

As far as the dump to the AP goes, perhaps rather than dumping everything at the end of the hour, a certain percentage is dumped in the AP? Then it is not a huge flood, but there is still a chance that some of the unseen rarer eggs will end up in the AP to be nabbed?

 

Of course, this is going to affect the ratios, as there is no distinction made between CB and lineaged. It will mean that getting lineaged rares will be even harder than it was before. This could mean that CB rares are going to be needed even more (since you will then need extra CB golds, say, to have the same chance at getting a 2nd gen gold for your lineage), and the supply-to-demand ratio will be right back where we started.

 

And nobody ever considers that maybe a lot of Prize owners have enough CB Golds already.

 

If they aren't actually looking for a particular dragon, offering more of the same gets you nowhere.

This, thank you! I keep trying to say this over and over, and I feel as though everyone just skips right by it.

 

I currently have 20 PAIRS of CB silvers plus an extra female. I have 5 pairs of CB golds plus two extra females. I MIGHT (maybe, possibly, unlikely) do one more trade sometime in the future for another lot of golds, but since I like silvers more (and already have enough of them), I am not out looking for CB metal offers. Mind you, some of these I got on my own before winning the raffle, but in the end, the point is that I have enough metals to last me quite some time. I could get to a 6th gen silver checker before I even had to start looking for more silvers, and by that time, I will probably have managed to find people to do lineage swaps with for the checker lineage, gotten more silvers from 3rd gen prize trades, etc.

 

Right now, likely the only way to get a 2nd gen baby from me is to be a prize owner yourself (so we can swap), a CB holly owner, be a holiday spriter (I am a sucker for a pair of breedable eggs from spriter alts), or win my raffle (which I only run when I don't have a list going).

 

It is not that I am mean, or greedy, or horrible (I give away 2nd and 3rd gens in raffles, for heaven sake!). It is that I have something that will get me what I want, and I am going to use it to get what I want. At this point, I don't really need more CB metals.

 

I think this is a fairly normal cycle. Soon after a raffle, you can likely get 2nd gens for a decent offer of CB metals. Then, as the new prize owners get all they need, they turn their attention to 2nd gen swaps, spriter alt babies, hollies, and the like. So people throw more and more CB metals at prize owners, hoping to persuade them. Every once in a while, they find someone who will bend for a really big offer, and the cycle continues.

 

[Mondat]

Bad idea. That's how Tale of Dragons worked. It allowed you to pretty much just grind for rares and made the game WAY too easy.

So?

I played ToD as well but left because the admin(s) were ..... - I better say nothing. And while the boy here also displays certain behaviour I like the game and my past efforts and work more.

 

It says on the main page:

"Dragon Cave is an online adoptables game. Collect eggs, raise them to adulthood, and then breed them to cre­ate interesting lineages. You’re free to play however you want!"

 

HOWEVER: I cannot get several dragons from the cave (also, NDs!), there are very low chances I'll ever win in the raffle, HM got discarded by somebody after many people supported more shinies, I stopped breeding because since somebody discarded the old default layout it's not the same anymore, description system does not work because for every dragon with description you need approval from certain people who are busy enough with life and the work they do on the forum, there are no Encyclopedia entries for so many breeds, I am still waiting for my 3rd GoN, etc....

 

I am here to collect dragons. I am not looking for challenge and action. If I want to have challenges and fights I buy a horror game with a story, beginning and end and play it through. DC is a hobby which could be compared to collecting post stamps. I take a few minutes out of my life to look for dragons, get them and leave. And it's nice to know that even if I leave the game for months and come back I can collect everything I missed.

 

DC needs serious fixing.

[AnanoKimi]

As far as the dump to the AP goes, perhaps rather than dumping everything at the end of the hour, a certain percentage is dumped in the AP? Then it is not a huge flood, but there is still a chance that some of the unseen rarer eggs will end up in the AP to be nabbed?

 

Of course, this is going to affect the ratios, as there is no distinction made between CB and lineaged. It will mean that getting lineaged rares will be even harder than it was before. This could mean that CB rares are going to be needed even more (since you will then need extra CB golds, say, to have the same chance at getting a 2nd gen gold for your lineage), and the supply-to-demand ratio will be right back where we started.

 

Honestly I want to say toss em all to the AP but then the issue of all the CBs in the AP is also an issue. There has to be some happy compromise to all of this. I like the individual cave idea though the issue of all unwanted backlog eggs causes problems. 5 minute ap dump or most ap dump ideas cause the problem of regardless flooding the AP with CB eggs that ,though desirable once low time, may interfere with some people stalking for pretty lineages. As it is right now is horrible and doing nothing is just lame.

 

Honestly A fix in ratios is also another suggestion but even then the suggestion is blind since only TJ knows how that works. The issue is there are too many dragons no one wants, to little of the ones we do want, and the cheaters are taking most of them leaving us with little to nothing to strive for. I have to go with olympe that an annual drop in the rarity of rares wont kill anyone. Other than that I'm at a loss.

 

[EDIT] The entirety of mondat's post is absolutely perfect!!

 

In terms of prize dragon trades, it really comes down to the individual user. Some will continue to get metals no matter how many they have, some won't get more than a handful before moving on to other rare things, other will focus on certain lineage goals and as such ask for multiple common dragons or certain lineages, maybe even holiday IOU's, etc. There is no one offer that will nab all the prize owners, and no one seems to understand that. They wave these big metal flags thinking someone will want it, a few do, and suddenly the few that did take the bait are the bar setters for any future trades? No thanks.

Edited May 25, 2015 by AnanoKimi

[The_Bucket]

Honestly I want to say toss em all to the AP but then the issue of all the CBs in the AP is also an issue. There has to be some happy compromise to all of this.

What if these eggs from the cave did not appear in the AP until they were ER? Then people without enough Reds could enjoy them too. There would be generous users (like there are already) who just sit in the AP, hatch batch after batch of CB commons, and give them out in Departures. I am sure contest threads would spring up for this, with neat prizes to whoever hatches and gifts the most.

[Kith]

Actually, I strongly suspect that doing this at the end of the hour, with a larger mass of CB eggs hitting the AP all at once, would more likely produce the effect you'd would prefer to avoid, as every 5 minutes, a smaller number of CBs would be folded in with the constant supply of breds and normally player-dropped CBs, (even if over time many of the latter would likely be replaced by those auto-dropped at the shuffles,) so that the AP would change far less when doing this at each shuffle than if the rejects from all 6 biomes were to collect over the hour and be deposited all at once.

 

The variety of the AP holds much of its charm, and those of us who hunt for both CB and breds in there have a strong interest in maintaining that variety.

It's hard to say, since it would heavily depend on how quickly those CBs would get snagged. With the 5-minute dumps, there'd be 18 eggs (3 AP lines) dumped at a time, which would leave 2 more AP lines full of bred and previously-dumped eggs. Conversely, an undetermined yet much larger number of them would roll in with an hourly dump, which would mean an hourly "flood" of the AP with CBs which would need clearing before any other eggs showed up.

 

So it would really depend on the activity both in the biomes and in the AP at any given time whether the 5s or the 00 method would be better.

[Ribombee]

What if these eggs from the cave did not appear in the AP until they were ER? Then people without enough Reds could enjoy them too. There would be generous users (like there are already) who just sit in the AP, hatch batch after batch of CB commons, and give them out in Departures. I am sure contest threads would spring up for this, with neat prizes to whoever hatches and gifts the most.

I already tend to grab CB instahatch eggs from the AP, even if I think I have plenty of that breed. Unless I am scroll locked or close to being scroll locked, I can't pass up an instahatch egg! For that matter, I even grab some of the lineaged ones and freeze them. I like lots of babies on my scroll. I think a lot more people would do this, as well. I am not sure the AP could handle a dump of all the eggs every hour, but a percentage dump or a dump a couple times a day, something like that, might be manageable, especially if the dumps dropped eggs to 5 or less days.

 

I'm not sure about the dumps being every hour and only showing up when they are ER, though. It might make it so you see nothing but ER CB dumped eggs (It really depends on how many are generated each hour, which we don't know?).

[AnanoKimi]

What if these eggs from the cave did not appear in the AP until they were ER? Then people without enough Reds could enjoy them too. There would be generous users (like there are already) who just sit in the AP, hatch batch after batch of CB commons, and give them out in Departures. I am sure contest threads would spring up for this, with neat prizes to whoever hatches and gifts the most.

Considerably this already happens buuuuuuuut[/b] Ensuring that lets say most eggs become incuhatchable or ER status once in the AP would be nice. WHat I mean is making it so any egg above 4 days is immediately dropped to lets say 4 days the moment they become abandoned. Any egg below 4 days would retain that time, so if an egg is dumped at 3 days 15 hours, it would show up at the top at that time. This means eggs are hatchable from the moment they hit the AP, people wont require a red every single time allowing them to save those reds for CB eggs they really want/need and such or traded eggs, and ratios get fixed since everyone is hoarding insta hatch babies.

 

I don't see a down side to this because if you don't pick it up someone else will. There will be no shortage of users wanting some. If 4 days is too little then maybe 4 days 12 hours to give them an extra time incase someone really wants to use their reds on an AP baby. Otherwise a days is the moment an egg hatches once it has enough views. Picking up an egg at exactly 4 days means you pop em in a hatchery and boom, hatchy.

 

This would allow AP dump ideas to function whether its the 5 minute egg kick to the AP or an hourly dump of any untaken egg in the backlog already.

[The_Bucket]

Considerably this already happens buuuuuuuut[/b] Ensuring that lets say most eggs become incuhatchable or ER status once in the AP would be nice. WHat I mean is making it so any egg above 4 days is immediately dropped to lets say 4 days the moment they become abandoned. Any egg below 4 days would retain that time, so if an egg is dumped at 3 days 15 hours, it would show up at the top at that time. This means eggs are hatchable from the moment they hit the AP, people wont require a red every single time allowing them to save those reds for CB eggs they really want/need and such or traded eggs, and ratios get fixed since everyone is hoarding insta hatch babies.

 

I don't see a down side to this because if you don't pick it up someone else will. There will be no shortage of users wanting some. If 4 days is too little then maybe 4 days 12 hours to give them an extra time incase someone really wants to use their reds on an AP baby. Otherwise a days is the moment an egg hatches once it has enough views. Picking up an egg at exactly 4 days means you pop em in a hatchery and boom, hatchy.

 

This would allow AP dump ideas to function whether its the 5 minute egg kick to the AP or an hourly dump of any untaken egg in the backlog already.

The problem with waiting for it to happen naturally is that they may block the AP of lineaged eggs while they are still high-time and undesirable. If they started out ER, they would be grabbed far more quickly, so lineaged eggs would still have time to be seen (purely hypothetically - I don't know).

[codyne]

This was called the "egg shuffle" and we tried it before. Basically, all highly desirable eggs get sniped super quick and then there's nothing but blockers left, so we abandoned the idea. ^^

Out of curiosity, exactly when was this tried? I've been playing almost daily since the beginning of 2009, and I don't remember an "egg shuffle" ever being tried in the Cave. I do remember a "test version" of an AP where the eggs appeared in real time in random places on the page, which everybody hated because the eggs would sometimes fall on top of each other and you couldn't see what they were. Was it a site-wide test, or a limited test with a small number of users? How long ago was it? Was it before Biomes were introduced?

 

I just wonder how applicable that test would be to current conditions in the Cave.

 

I played Tale of Dragons, too, and really liked the way any player with enough persistence could eventually get pretty much any Lair dragon. Of course, it had a much smaller user base (rarely more than 20 people on the site at any given time, versus Dragon Cave's hundreds), so hourly drops would get picked over much faster here.

[Infinis]

HOWEVER: I cannot get several dragons from the cave (also, NDs!), there are very low chances I'll ever win in the raffle, HM got discarded by somebody after many people supported more shinies, I stopped breeding because since somebody discarded the old default layout it's not the same anymore, description system does not work because for every dragon with description you need approval from certain people who are busy enough with life and the work they do on the forum, there are no Encyclopedia entries for so many breeds, I am still waiting for my 3rd GoN, etc....

 

I am here to collect dragons. I am not looking for challenge and action. If I want to have challenges and fights I buy a horror game with a story, beginning and end and play it through. DC is a hobby which could be compared to collecting post stamps. I take a few minutes out of my life to look for dragons, get them and leave. And it's nice to know that even if I leave the game for months and come back I can collect everything I missed.

 

DC needs serious fixing.

Every collecting game has a difficult side. That's what makes it worthwhile to come back to; at some point everything gets boring when it's too easy.

 

Even your example of collecting postage stamps has difficulties: not all of the stamps are easy to obtain and some of them can fetch high prices - which is exactly how DC works. There's some difficulty but it's not so difficult you can't get everything without some effort and time put in (excluding CB prizes as those are special releases).

 

"Play how you want" - I never took to mean that everything would be easy. That just meant I could collect everything, not collect some things, let stuff die - things like that. Play how you want never means that there is no difficulty, just that you have a choice in what you do in the game.

 

Anyway, I don't support this. I haven't seen that CB golds are so rare, just that they're hard to trade for. I've never caught a CB gold on my own, but I don't put in any time and effort to watch the cave to catch one, either.

[DarkEternity]

But of course, ALL CB Prize owners are ALL simply members among us who happened to win a Prize dragon; all individuals who are here to do to whatever it is that matters to them with their scrolls and dragons, just like the rest of us.

Of course, however it is still strange that there's that big gap that's been there for 5 years. And the gap is still there, though it's been somewhat lessened.

Edited May 26, 2015 by DarkEternity

[Dragon_Arbock]

Exactly what DarkEternity said.

 

Now, I do like some of the solutions on here (Shuffle, AP banishment after 5 minutes, etc).. but each seem to come back to to problem of ratios- Rares would become easier to get with these measures, but only temporarily.

 

That's why I feel ratios are really not a good system. I think it would be much better overall if at least the rares had a 'set' rarity. I can understand new releases being more populous for weeks after, because the ratios working in that way give people plenty of chances to to get a lot of the new breed; but for dragons that already have existed for a while, and when lineaged dragons also count towards this total, it really destroys most people's chances of ever getting a CB rare.

[Syphoneira]

As far as the dump to the AP goes, perhaps rather than dumping everything at the end of the hour, a certain percentage is dumped in the AP? Then it is not a huge flood, but there is still a chance that some of the unseen rarer eggs will end up in the AP to be nabbed?

 

Of course, this is going to affect the ratios, as there is no distinction made between CB and lineaged. It will mean that getting lineaged rares will be even harder than it was before. This could mean that CB rares are going to be needed even more (since you will then need extra CB golds, say, to have the same chance at getting a 2nd gen gold for your lineage), and the supply-to-demand ratio will be right back where we started.

 

 

This, thank you! I keep trying to say this over and over, and I feel as though everyone just skips right by it.

 

I currently have 20 PAIRS of CB silvers plus an extra female. I have 5 pairs of CB golds plus two extra females. I MIGHT (maybe, possibly, unlikely) do one more trade sometime in the future for another lot of golds, but since I like silvers more (and already have enough of them), I am not out looking for CB metal offers. Mind you, some of these I got on my own before winning the raffle, but in the end, the point is that I have enough metals to last me quite some time. I could get to a 6th gen silver checker before I even had to start looking for more silvers, and by that time, I will probably have managed to find people to do lineage swaps with for the checker lineage, gotten more silvers from 3rd gen prize trades, etc.

 

Right now, likely the only way to get a 2nd gen baby from me is to be a prize owner yourself (so we can swap), a CB holly owner, be a holiday spriter (I am a sucker for a pair of breedable eggs from spriter alts), or win my raffle (which I only run when I don't have a list going).

 

It is not that I am mean, or greedy, or horrible (I give away 2nd and 3rd gens in raffles, for heaven sake!). It is that I have something that will get me what I want, and I am going to use it to get what I want. At this point, I don't really need more CB metals.

 

I think this is a fairly normal cycle. Soon after a raffle, you can likely get 2nd gens for a decent offer of CB metals. Then, as the new prize owners get all they need, they turn their attention to 2nd gen swaps, spriter alt babies, hollies, and the like. So people throw more and more CB metals at prize owners, hoping to persuade them. Every once in a while, they find someone who will bend for a really big offer, and the cycle continues.

 

 

 

Actually, I was thinking that it might be best for disposing ONLY of the eggs shown and untaken at each 5-minute shuffle, since under normal conditions, these will be the ones where the programmed Cave perception and that of the players differs as to how many of each type *need to be produced in relation to everything else*.

 

 

Some of the major benefits of - rather than endlessly regenerating - dumping specifically and only untaken biome eggs into the AP to hopefully surface as Incuhatchables would be:

 

that these will then be raised/Frozen and count into the ratios

 

so that the Cave will FINALLY stop pumping out so many of them relative to others

 

*in a player-responsive manner*

 

and more variety will appear in better-moving biomes

 

so that we can actually hunt through a variety of eggs somebody may actually want one of,

 

rather than refresh over the same currently unwanted eggs everybody present has enough of and nobody has room to waste on in taking them to see if anything more interesting than the same or a similar egg shows up.

 

 

But if ALL remaining eggs were to be dumped into the AP at the hourly, rather than those which the players have seen but haven't taken, we'd lose, to that extent, the gradual benefit of the selection process which would finally allow for more variety and movement in the Cave, *determined by player selection or the lack thereof*.

 

 

Also, the AP, despite people dropping nice eggs into it, is an Abandoned Page.

 

CB Eggs are produced by the Cave and the basic AP idea is that even if somebody doesn't want an egg themselves, likely someone else will want it, and people variously add to that, so that many CB and nicely lineaged eggs do wind up in the AP which many of us happily hunt, but the AP and Cave have different functions.

 

Shuffling specifically unwanted eggs from biomes to the AP would be a logical extension of these functions - mass-dumping all remaining eggs (or a random portion of all, including those as yet unviewed by biome hunters which could potentially have been taken) would not, and would also (even if this failed to overwhelm the ability of players to keep up with the supply and simply transfer the hourly regeneration to replacing dead AP eggs rather than deleted Cave ones) alter the character of the AP from a mix of bred and CB to predominately CB.

 

 

We also do not actually need incentives to raise more unCommons and rares by making them appear at lower times - but the only way that ultra-Commons can be made desirable to those already having enough of them is to make it so that preciousssss egg spaces don't have to be wasted on them.

 

 

We also don't want to go back to running out of Cave eggs, (which consists of major and general suckage,) especially as many people have limited hunting 'windows' and as we don't want people encountering the site for the first time to see empty biomes and not maybe stay to play when they otherwise might have.

 

 

I'm not sure if this is still in effect or not, but didn't TJ disassociate the Cave and breeding ratios quite some time back?

 

I've spent a lot of time off-line here and there over the past few years and could easily have missed all sorts of changes, lol.

 

 

 

 

Lol, nice to have someone who's living the Prize owner thing speak up and verify all this.

 

And of course you're not '... mean, or greedy, or horrible...' for playing the way you choose!

 

 

But of course, ALL CB Prize owners are ALL simply members among us who happened to win a Prize dragon; all individuals who are here to do to whatever it is that matters to them with their scrolls and dragons, just like the rest of us.

 

And the arguments that multiple dragons HAVE to be ultra-rare and inaccessible to all but the fastest or they'll have to offer even more of them to Prize owners also fail on these grounds, as has just been further verified by yet another Prize owner.

 

They trade for what they want or need, just like the rest of us.

 

But with increasing numbers of CB Prize owners, there are also increasing odds that more people will be able to provide something they might happen to want when trading 2nd gens, something which may not have anything to do with scrolls-full of the next-most-hard-to-come-by Cave dragons at all.

 

 

[Syphoneira]

Of course, however it is still strange that there's that big gap that's been there for 5 years. And the gap is still there, though it's been somewhat lessened.

 

 

 

 

Well, there I was just making the point that they were looking for what they wanted/needed the same as the rest of us.

 

 

The problem there was with scarcity - that unbalances everything.

 

Had the initial and following Prize distributions been of 600 Prizes as were the last, the situation never would have become anywhere near so pronounced.

 

http://dragcave.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Prize_Dragons

 

Distribution of the Tinsel prizes of 2010: (Tree Decorating Event 2010)

 

5x - 1st place

10x - 2nd place

15x - 3rd place

20x - Honourable mentions

 

Distribution of the Tinsel prizes of 2011: (Holiday Raffle 2011)

 

5x - 1st place

10x - 2nd place

15x - 3rd place

20x - Honourable mentions

 

Distribution of the Shimmer-scale prizes of 2012: (Holiday Cooking Raffle 2012)

 

10x - 1st place

20x - 2nd place

30x - 3rd place

40x - Honourable mentions

 

Distribution of the Shimmer-scale and Tinsel prizes of 2013: (Holiday Snow Fort Raffle 2013 )

 

10x - 1st place Shimmer

20x - 2nd place Shimmer

30x - 3rd place Shimmer

10x - 1st place Tinsel

20x - 2nd place Tinsel

30x - 3rd place Tinsel

30x - Honourable mentions

 

 

 

Lol, the mere fact there weren't riots speaks well of the membership!

 

 

 

Edit: whoops - there used to be a post in between mine, lol, and it vanished!

Edited May 26, 2015 by Syphoneira

[Mondat]

Every collecting game has a difficult side. That's what makes it worthwhile to come back to; at some point everything gets boring when it's too easy.

 

Even your example of collecting postage stamps has difficulties: not all of the stamps are easy to obtain and some of them can fetch high prices - which is exactly how DC works. There's some difficulty but it's not so difficult you can't get everything without some effort and time put in (excluding CB prizes as those are special releases).

 

"Play how you want" - I never took to mean that everything would be easy. That just meant I could collect everything, not collect some things, let stuff die - things like that. Play how you want never means that there is no difficulty, just that you have a choice in what you do in the game.

 

Anyway, I don't support this. I haven't seen that CB golds are so rare, just that they're hard to trade for. I've never caught a CB gold on my own, but I don't put in any time and effort to watch the cave to catch one, either.

Well, I would say it's up to every person to decide what makes it worthwile to come back to a game. I would be perfectly fine with just collecting new releases and breeding for other people(helping) if I had everything I needed.

 

I didn't mean to say that everything should be easy. But: in the current state of DC, I cannot even collect everything in the cave without trading. I cannot play how I want without depending on other people => so writing and advertising the game with "you're free to play however you want" is rather misleading in my opinion. I even cannot describe the dragons I collect how I want, even if I don't use bad words?

 

In DC you are put into different player categories from the beginning based on your internet connection, luck (raffles or meeting a generous person) or your ability to sprite and/or making friends. People who don't have luck, good reflexes & internet and no interest in socializing can just watch the others having everything they want on their scroll.

[Dragon_Arbock]

That is kind of true.. though with things like Alt Sweetlings and the Snow Angels, I feel like it's become impossible to collect 'everything'. Though, You can still get a variation of the species at the least. With this current Rare problem, you just can't collect any CB version.

 

I'm still curious about the ratios vs set rarity thing- surely that's been brought up before, no?

 

Edit; *insert curse words here*

(Just saw the first CB Gold I've seen since the caves were split into biomes and I missed it)

(Though if the above statement about how long it's been since I last saw one doesn't indicate a problem, I don't know what does).

Edited May 26, 2015 by Dragon_Arbock

[Ribombee]

As a prize owner, I'd actually be very happy if other people got a lot of CB metals. That would be more who could swap lineages with me. I'm lazy. If someone can offer me a couple second gens of what I have been struggling to get, especially if they are willing to influence and hatch for me, I am likely to overpay on my side. Now, I probably wouldn't trade a 2nd gen for that alone, but if you got a 2nd gen from a silver x black tea? Oh yeah, I'd trade a 3rd gen prize in a heartbeat, even though technically that is overpay for me, since I can (and just did) get a CB silver for a 3rd gen prize.

 

Basically, the more people who have CB metals--i.e. the more evenly the wealth is spread--the more people there are who might be willing to try breeding them to get the outcome I want and don't wish to tie my own dragons up forever trying to get. That silver x black tea? I tried it for months, didn't get a one. I decided to put it as one of my auto-accepts for a 3rd gen prize egg, and someone got lucky and bred it. Bam. Done. They got a low gen prize, I got what I wanted. Everyone was happy.

 

I would also really love to see NON-RARE lineages being traded. We have some beautiful sprites in the commons, but the only things I ever see traded are the rare lineages, even in the even gen trade forums. I'm not sure how to fix this, but if these lineages got the love they deserve, I think that perhaps more people would be interested in them, and the ratios might swing back in the favour of the rares. One way or another, we need the very commons to be picked up and raised. I try to mass breed most of my common lineages every week to keep them going in the AP. They always get picked up, and it helps (even if only a little) to the issue with there being too many people only breeding and raising the rares. I'm not saying others have to play my way, of course, but if more people did just do pretty common lineages to release to the AP (and others could pick these up then continue them!), perhaps there would be less of the super commons being generated in the caves?

 

I, for one, love the incuhatchable eggs in the AP. I will snatch them up if they are a sprite I like, even if they are very commons. Incuhatchable CB cassare or falconiform in the AP? I'm very likely to nab it unless I'm almost scroll-locked. Everyone has sprites they like. I know one person collects neotropicals, which I am not much of a fan of (except in checker with spring!). If the eggs that aren't getting picked up are put in the AP, or at least a portion of them, someone will take them if they are low enough time. The trick is to balance it so we are averaging around 3-5 days in the AP with all the eggs. That's when they will get grabbed without it being so far they can't be influenced. The only one who will know whether that will be all the eggs that have been seen and not grabbed or only a portion of them is TJ. We really have no idea how many eggs are generated, though I suspect it is not THAT many, since I see the same codes pop up again and again (I code hunt, so I pay attention to codes pretty well).

 

If that happens, and the influx eggs either force times lower so people grab them or are not added until they are low time, then people WILL take them. Every egg (except ones stuck behind the holiday wall) in the AP gets grabbed eventually, even if it is a super messy extremely common one. If it gets low enough in time, collectors or people who need them for freezing will grab them. CB ones? I bet if they are low in time, more people will grab them, just to have them in case they ever want to do checkers with them. I find I am often missing enough of whatever new checker I decide I have to do because I found a gorgeous combo in the AP or departures thread. First place I look is the AP.

[Dragon_Arbock]

Basically, the more people who have CB metals--i.e. the more evenly the wealth is spread--the more people there are who might be willing to try breeding them to get the outcome I want and don't wish to tie my own dragons up forever trying to get. That silver x black tea? I tried it for months, didn't get a one. I decided to put it as one of my auto-accepts for a 3rd gen prize egg, and someone got lucky and bred it. Bam. Done. They got a low gen prize, I got what I wanted. Everyone was happy.

 

I would also really love to see NON-RARE lineages being traded. We have some beautiful sprites in the commons, but the only things I ever see traded are the rare lineages, even in the even gen trade forums. I'm not sure how to fix this, but if these lineages got the love they deserve, I think that perhaps more people would be interested in them, and the ratios might swing back in the favour of the rares. One way or another, we need the very commons to be picked up and raised. I try to mass breed most of my common lineages every week to keep them going in the AP. They always get picked up, and it helps (even if only a little) to the issue with there being too many people only breeding and raising the rares. I'm not saying others have to play my way, of course, but if more people did just do pretty common lineages to release to the AP (and others could pick these up then continue them!), perhaps there would be less of the super commons being generated in the caves?

I have definitely seen the overflow of rares being used in lineages in the last few months, and it kind of is a problem. I wouldn't want rares near as much if I didn't /need/ them to continue these lines. It's also gotten to where I will /try/ to find non-rare checkers, but I never really do. It's frustrating.

 

And while I many not perhaps be very efficient, I have been trying to breed together at least a few nice common checkers and always breed nice things to the AP. (However doesn't help one of them is a song line so I still need certain breeds from certain parents before I can continue :/ ).

 

Beside the point though, I'm okay with rares being 'harder' to get than all the other Cave dragons, but there needs to be a limit, because right now it's too hard, and it's really roadblocking how I like to play the game.

[AnanoKimi]

The gap in terms of prize value is there because of poor breeding ratios for prizes and the hype of demand needed for them. Thats it. Would demand go down and prizes bred better, there would be no gap to begin with. Set rarity would work perfectly because it would a set percentage of something to happen regardless of whether there are too many or too little of that dragon in existence.

 

Its like Vampire bites. I'm sure vampire biting would suck hell if the percentage of whether a bite worked whether it stayed or not was reliant on how many vampires there were in existence in the entirety of the site.

 

You have a set percentage of it working, and a set percentage of it not working, and then the working percentage is split in to a set pair of percentages that determines whether it stays or gets auto dumped. Its simple, straight to the point, and it works. Why cant the cave function this way?

 

All in all DC is becoming frustrating to do anything. People can;t hunt for what they want because ratios, people can't breed nice things because of ratios, people cant breed nice things because refusals are on the rise, people can't trade because not just prize owners but a small set group of people with the hard to get rares get all the trades, you cant do a damn thing here that doesn't require you jumping through bloody hoops of friggin fire and hoping you not only not get burned but that you land on the pad and not in the pit of spikes.

 

 

[Rubin]

I have definitely seen the overflow of rares being used in lineages in the last few months, and it kind of is a problem. I wouldn't want rares near as much if I didn't /need/ them to continue these lines. It's also gotten to where I will /try/ to find non-rare checkers, but I never really do. It's frustrating.

This isn't quite correct.

 

The problem is not that no pretty lineages are being bred with commons. The problem is that the market doesn't want them.

 

I usually end up breeding my checkers to the AP. I've tried doing bloodswaps but unless it actually is a metal checker, I usually end up tossing the (by then) hatchie to the AP or into the Departure Thread, because I get zero interest.

 

Doing an even gen lineage, be it checker or any other of the numerous gorgeous designs that exist is mostly rewarding only for yourself and the people who enjoy picking them up as gifts or AP finds. In terms of trade they are virtually worthless, as the time and effort put into them doesn't count on the market, only the perceived rarity of the breed itself. And even with a rare breed people are likely to disregard anything above 3rd maybe 4th gen because they cannot easily obtain a mate.

[Dragon_Arbock]

Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't (I still never see common x common in the AP, though I'm sure someone does.)

But really, I don't let the market dictate how I play, and in fact, I mostly ignore the trades anymore because all there is are things I cannot hope to swap for. I don't know if you could say the market ruined the game- certainly not trading itself, because even before the BSA there's always been trading- but, the prize trading racket certainly did.

 

All I'm saying is, though, I don't really care about pleasing the market, and just like to do my own projects- but the market makes it hard for someone who doesn't want to jump through hoops and network with people hard, because they're the ones with the rares.

Edited May 26, 2015 by Dragon_Arbock