Make CB Golds **slighty** less rare

[Dragon_Arbock]

I was afraid that was the case really. I noticed that suddenly there were maintenance periods every night at 3am (something that never used to happen, and that providers dictate).

..Guess it can't be helped then.

[Syphoneira]

I was afraid that was the case really. I noticed that suddenly there were maintenance periods every night at 3am (something that never used to happen, and that providers dictate).

..Guess it can't be helped then.

 

 

 

Actually, we usually do get maintenance round that time, but it can vary in length and sometimes be very short and not very noticeable.

 

Well, apparently there's a big problem in the US with effective monopolies not bothering to update infrastructure or efficiently attend to issues affecting/interrupting service - which explains why Americans tend to get such lousy and expensive service in so many areas.

 

Speaking as One Who Knows Nothing, even if one particular provider is not being used, I gather that the signal we get might be relayed through their relay line of servers, and if they don't feel that they have to care about customer satisfaction due to a lack of available options, everyone's just out of luck.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-commen...ternet-monopoly

 

February 13, 2014

We Need Real Competition, Not a Cable-Internet Monopoly

By John Cassidy

[Dragon_Arbock]

Yeah, I'm painfully aware of the monopoly problem too. There used to be laws in place, but lets just say a certain actor who was a popular president for all the wrong reasons opened the floodgates.

Basically nothing short of a revolt is going to fix things now (so I guess we're stuck with this awful internet infrastructure).

[AGYK]

You know, I wish TJ would implement something to make all (current) rares show a random common egg description for the first half (?) second after the page loads, and all commons show the gold description for that same time before they reveal their actual descriptions. That should wreck with script-users, giving them a scroll full of commons.

Eh, nah. They'd adjust. It's a game of cat and mouse. This could be helpful as a one-time trap, to see who gets the scrollful of nothing and what eggs they usually catch, but it wouldn't do much beyond that.

 

Also, according to this benchmark site, human reflex time averages around 215ms, much less than the half-second (500ms) you're suggesting. The quickest people on their leaderboard average around 100ms. What that means for any quick catcher is that the gold they reflex-click won't actually be a gold. Catcher-rage incoming in 3... 2... 1... (bonus rage incoming if TJ actually uses this as a trap and false-positive catches people. I've heard of such things happening before.)

 

...or resign from displaying egg descriptions in biomes. Catching "mystery eggs" combined with sending biome blockers to the AP and (maybe) with shortening the cooldown on abandoning would stop script users and give everybody a chance to find a rare egg, no matter internet connection, fast clicking etc. Just pure luck.

I don't think this would do much good either. It would certainly stop scripters, but it would stop everyone else too. Nobody would be able to find anything they wanted, not even the commons.

 

I'm okay with the descriptions being taken off, but what about showing what the egg is instead? That way it doesn't hurt those actually looking for commons, plus possibly stop scripts from working??

This won't stop anyone either. Back in the days before teleport, there were people who would sit in the AP with a script targeted toward NDs and sometimes other rares (Hollies at Christmas-time were another popular target). If they could catch rares out of the AP with a script, they can catch them out of the cave.

 

Honestly, what everyone making anti-scripting suggestions is missing is that scripts can do everything humans can do with very few exceptions. And the more this is talked about, the less good it does; either it gives people ideas or the suggestions are just downright not helpful. I would say leave this to TJ and focus more on changing the way the cave is designed - suggestions to send blockers to the AP, suggestions for decreasing hourlag, the double-row suggestion, etc. (I would also suggest waiting for the ratios to shift again, or even stabilize after the current shifts, but that seems to be very poorly received. Meh.)

[Doublelift]

7 golds fall in one hour - along with 493 stones, 300 howlers, 276 sun/moonstones and so on. No - just one person catches the lot

 

It is the case that there were, this morning, 7 CB gold eggs on one scroll - 4 with 4 days 6 hours to go and 3 with 4 days 13 hours. The scroll is now hidden, or I'd show you.

 

But yes - nothing will stop cheats. Fair point.

Thanks for clarifying that about the 7 golds falling in one hour. I seriously have never known that x.x, well happy hunting and hopefully the rarity of metallics will change.

[DragonNighthowler]

Yes, this.

I want to know why ever since the site was 'updated' that there's been all this lag all of a sudden. (Considering there wasn't much to that update to begin with.)

 

I'm fairly certain I could catch /something/ if it didn't take 30 seconds+ to load the page.

So I'm not the only one with that problem. Always assumed it was my connection, but as of late I've been avoiding even hunting on releases because it is so frustrating it's annoying. My laptop is worthless (it's a netbook, so you make the maths), but my computer, the one I use to play games, is a beast I built myself to manage heavy load games, so it makes no sense for the page to go so bad.

[Syphoneira]

Thanks for clarifying that about the 7 golds falling in one hour. I seriously have never known that x.x, well happy hunting and hopefully the rarity of metallics will change.

 

 

 

I suspect that fuzzy may have been using random and contrasting numbers to make a point - we do know that there are many more of various Common breeds Dropped than UnCommon ones, and more UnCommons than metallics, but beyond this, we really have no idea.

 

Also, I believe that the numbers of dragons Dropped in the Cave are related to the numbers of people on at the hourly, when eggs are generated, as well as to the numbers taken and the degree of movement within each biome uncovering whatever lurks behind the Blockers, and the numbers of rares generated are also contingent on the numbers of Commons taken and raised at any point in time, so the numbers would, in any event, be highly variable.

 

 

 

Hi, DragonNighthowler,

 

hunting is terrible, useless trying much of the time, although I find that it may vary quite a bit from one moment to the next.

 

I've found it to be much worse even than usual the past few days - hope it gets sorted before DC's B-Day...

[AnanoKimi]

Unless eggs become visible when descriptions are taken off I canot support that as a viable option to increase rares. I am currently doing specific hunting goals for both trade and personal completion. I would hate locking my self with mystery eggs which ended up being breed that I do not need and cannot trade for anything I need.

[kecemis]

This isn't to comment on any one comment, as I haven't read anything and got a bit bored when the subject turned to scripting so I skipped a few pages.

 

I saw someone mention that with a few clicks, you can easily find resources to play this game in a way it wasn't meant to be played. I agree, for curiosity's sake I did a quick search and it was well within anyone's reach to find.

 

For that reason, I support the swapping egg images for descriptions. I'd wager to bet the vast majority of script users do just that (they google what and how to use) and haven't the foggiest on how to adjust anything to search for certain colors. Sure, some scripters will find ways around it, but I think assuming that even 3/4s of people who are smart enough to do a few downloads are smart enough to rewrite a script is giving them WAY too much credit.

 

You'd thwart a good chunk of users, without affecting the way people hunt (besides those that take a SAFMEDS approach and learn to look for just certain keywords in certain spots of the page, but we'd adjust). So yes, totally for it. You give 'most' a fighting chance without affecting game play to find golds and silvers and thwarting those who would just do quick google searches instead of hunt honestly.

 

That's just my two cents.

 

(I just realized this sounded more of a discussion of scripting, I swear it's not, just an argument in favor of switching to images to promote an equal gold/silver catching playing field for all.)

 

And for anyone not familiar with SAFMEDS, it's a teaching technique I learned in uni (say all fast minute each day shuffled) in which you create flashcards and memorize key words on the cards to recall the information quickly (40-60 terms a minute, once you get used to it). Same idea I think applies to me as a hunter, as there are certain keywords I look for that sort of stick out (like "glow" at the end of a caption for silvers). So that's what I call it P:

[_Sin_]

I agree with almost everything that kecemis said. Yes, Google can easily let you know that more than one hundred people installed a particular script. Probably others got it from a different source (i.e. friends, another website) or a different script. That doesn't mean that the majority would know how to modify it, exactly like they wouldn't know how to modify any other add-on.

For that same reason, I don't see why the biomes should change drastically. Couldn't a tiny tweak of the existing code, something not even perceived by human eyes, be enough to make the script useless? I don't know the code behind the biomes but I see that as a possibility.

 

[49ER]

I'm okay with the descriptions being taken off, but what about showing what the egg is instead? That way it doesn't hurt those actually looking for commons, plus possibly stop scripts from working??

Yes, people have "color scripted" eggs from AP in the past. Mind you, it boggles my mind how someone could do that, whereas I can understand searching for keywords in Cave biomes. But there was a forumer player on DC years ago, who quit DC and said she had color scripted AP along with instructions on how to do it

[Obscure_Trash]

I understand that scripting will naturally be a part of this conversation, but I do not want to see this dicussion focused on scripting. Let TJ worry about what's possible to catch scripting-wise and about if a suggestion will benefit scripters so much it wouldn't be worth it to implement the suggestion. If there's something that needs considered, he'll post about it. ^^

The scripting conversation has definitely moved into an off-topic area. Please get back on topic. Thanks.

[AGYK]

I saw someone mention that with a few clicks, you can easily find resources to play this game in a way it wasn't meant to be played. I agree, for curiosity's sake I did a quick search and it was well within anyone's reach to find.

 

For that reason, I support the swapping egg images for descriptions. I'd wager to bet the vast majority of script users do just that (they google what and how to use) and haven't the foggiest on how to adjust anything to search for certain colors. Sure, some scripters will find ways around it, but I think assuming that even 3/4s of people who are smart enough to do a few downloads are smart enough to rewrite a script is giving them WAY too much credit.

 

You'd thwart a good chunk of users, without affecting the way people hunt (besides those that take a SAFMEDS approach and learn to look for just certain keywords in certain spots of the page, but we'd adjust). So yes, totally for it. You give 'most' a fighting chance without affecting game play to find golds and silvers and thwarting those who would just do quick google searches instead of hunt honestly.

 

That's just my two cents.

The problem here is that, even if 99% of the script-using people don't know how to update the script, 1% still will. Scripts can be found online, so the script-writers are clearly willing to share their work; once they've updated a script to deal with colors, all the script-users will be just a download away from being in business again. This suggestion buys us a few days. Maybe a week or two. That's it.

 

This holds true of almost any change that could be made to the cave - you break the scripts until somebody gets around to updating them. It's a game of cat and mouse.

[DarkEternity]

I'm pretty sure that Google reCaptcha is the only way. They'd be upgrading it a ton of times (this is Google, remember) all the time and no one would bother getting around google for a dragon adoptables site when they could be getting heaps of money selling a defeating reCaptcha mechanisms to hackers and thieves.

 

It disadvantages dyslexic and non english background speaking however you must remember that reCaptcha was invented for the explicit purpose of detecting if a user is not human (and harvesting your personal details through a free service while they're at it)

 

EDIT: You could trigger it every fifteen minutes or something and if someone fails it more than twice or keeps refreshing or something, flag and ban.

 

One captcha per login, one captcha every 15 minutes on the AP and the locations and bob's your uncle. Recaptcha V2 even works when javascript is disabled. For extra efficiency, you could only trigger it just as someone's about to catch a rare instead of every 15 minutes.

Edited May 18, 2015 by DarkEternity

[angelicdragonpuppy]

No please no. We had password / recaptcha / something like that upon catching an egg in the past and it was pure and utter misery. It got removed quick and I never want to see it again.

[DarkEternity]

No please no. We had password / recaptcha / something like that upon catching an egg in the past and it was pure and utter misery. It got removed quick and I never want to see it again.

Well it depends, what do you want to see more, captcha or scripting?

The other discussions on this subject are reeaaalllyyy irrelevant. You could suggest some half hearted measure like 'let's change the descriptions on this egg' but I think like other people have said they'd just find a way around that.

 

Google has lots of experts and deals with that sort of thing. The reason why captcha is so popular is because almost every website faces the same problem. The 'Are you a robot' isn't so much as a joke as a statement of fact that a lot of websites face things which do things but aren't actually humans.

Edited May 18, 2015 by DarkEternity

[Tehya Faye]

How did that even work? Did the egg go to the fastest clicker or the person with the easiest to decipher captcha?

[DarkEternity]

How did that even work? Did the egg go to the fastest clicker or the person with the easiest to decipher captcha?

Well maybe if it was every fifteen minutes or something a bit longer you wouldn't be faced with that sort of problem - you can't proceed until you get past it. I know Aywas has random captchas on the site from time to time. Neopets has captchas too however they were easily broken because they were made by the site and not by something like google.

 

It might be an inconvenience to have captcha on things like logging in, however if someone were to mass guess and harvest people's passwords that inconvenience is not as bad as having your account hacked. If your account is hacked and you reuse passwords and things, well you might lose other accounts too. Example: bank accounts.

Edited May 18, 2015 by DarkEternity

[angelicdragonpuppy]

Well it depends, what do you want to see more, captcha or scripting?

The other discussions on this subject are reeaaalllyyy irrelevant. You could suggest some half hearted measure like 'let's change the descriptions on this egg' but I think like other people have said they'd just find a way around that.

 

Google has lots of experts and deals with that sort of thing. The reason why captcha is so popular is because almost every website faces the same problem. The 'Are you a robot' isn't so much as a joke as a statement of fact that a lot of websites face things which do things but aren't actually humans.

I'd rather see TJ checking in on scrolls that register an ungodly amount of CB Metal captures within a certain time period and / or some way long active users can slowly earn a CB Metal instead. Recaptcha on catching is not at all an acceptable solution to me. Just imagine grabbing a CB Gold, finally, and typing in the stupid captcha too slow or wrong... e___e

[The_Bucket]

What if when somebody caught an egg, it became theirs, and if they didn't enter the captcha within x number of seconds (thirty? A minute? Would not want to make somebody lose their first CB gold due to undecipherable captchas), the egg was dropped back into the cave for somebody else to catch. This would not happen with the AP - just the cave - and considering the five hour cooldown, people really can't pick up more than seven eggs in five hours anyways, and so it would be a fairly minimal inconvenience (still painful, but better than scripting?).

 

Now, I'm not saying I support this or whatever, just throwing in a suggestion. As Sock said, this is really off-topic, and we should stop discussing it.

[DarkEternity]

I'd rather see TJ checking in on scrolls that register an ungodly amount of CB Metal captures within a certain time period and / or some way long active users can slowly earn a CB Metal instead. Recaptcha on catching is not at all an acceptable solution to me. Just imagine grabbing a CB Gold, finally, and typing in the stupid captcha too slow or wrong... e___e

Some people have slower internet connections. I imagine that if people here are saying that the script has human-esque qualities it can also pretend to be human too.

 

You just can't tell. Add in trading to the mix and you've got a bunch of potentially innocent victims OR cheaters in arms and there's a whole lot of factors than loads of CB metals. People passing illegit/cloned/pokegenned things off as real is what happens on a lot of sites.

 

What if someone programmed every library computer in their local library to automatically grab all the stripes one day and made every stripe uncatchable? Wouldn't that make stripes just as rare as golds if no one could get them?

 

The_Bucket, a lot of recaptcha v2 looks like: (my library uses the recaptcha for logins and I haven't seen an illegible one in months)

ONLY IF YOU ARE LOGGED INTO GOOGLE OR HAVE YOUR GOOGLE COOKIE SET (google is stalkers)

or

 

None of them are very illegible now unless you've recently logged off google. However they are a privacy concern.

 

Yeah we should probably stop discussing it, sorry guys.

Edited May 18, 2015 by DarkEternity

[AnanoKimi]

I'd rather see TJ checking in on scrolls that register an ungodly amount of CB Metal captures within a certain time period and / or some way long active users can slowly earn a CB Metal instead. Recaptcha on catching is not at all an acceptable solution to me. Just imagine grabbing a CB Gold, finally, and typing in the stupid captcha too slow or wrong... e___e

But what if (there is definitely a possibility) that someone is getting that large amount of metals in a legitimate way. We would be punishing anyone with an "ungodly amount of CB Metal captures within a certain time period." I think that kind of measure is unfair.

 

Think of it this way. In minecraft there are cheats and such you can do to ensure your success. These cheats are mainly used on servers, and most of all PVP servers. The more popular cheat was X-Ray where the cheat would allow you to see underground and find precious ores (Diamond, emerald, gold, etc) that aided you in game play either for currency or crafting. The supposed signature of an x-rayer was a single line 1 block wide by two blocks high that the cheater would leave that lead straight to ore. Thing is almost everyone mined in a 1 by 2 style, meaning cheater or not, if you mined in a 1 by 2 space, you were automatically labeled as an x-rayer. I had thankfully never been pointed at or accused of such but I had seen many players who would use that as a means of getting certain legitament players out of the game. Accuse a person of cheating, person gets investgated, 1 by 2 line of mining was found, bam! banned for x-raying with out a second look.

 

Taking the same approach for metals is unfair. You have absolutely no way of truly knowing of whether its script obtained or legitimate and saying "well this seems suspicious" is not enough grounds of burning someone's scroll without absolute proof of it. on top of that there is no way to obtain absolute proof unless the person says they are cheating or you have access to their files and their computer and you have physical proof that the person is cheating. So, basing whether someone is cheating or not on assumptions is like basing our current "knowldge" of ratios and what not on our assumptions and personally gained info as well as very tiny hints dropped by TJ.

[Lurhstaap]

Honestly I think gold drops are fine. I see them go by once or twice a month, which means there's got to be more dropping I don't see. Have I ever CAUGHT one? Nope. But I do -see- them. Just not fast enough to snag one. So that says to me the problem isn't the golds being too rare but me being too slow.

[olympe]

But what if (there is definitely a possibility) that someone is getting that large amount of metals in a legitimate way. We would be punishing anyone with an "ungodly amount of CB Metal captures within a certain time period." I think that kind of measure is unfair.

 

Think of it this way. In minecraft there are cheats and such you can do to ensure your success. These cheats are mainly used on servers, and most of all PVP servers. The more popular cheat was X-Ray where the cheat would allow you to see underground and find precious ores (Diamond, emerald, gold, etc) that aided you in game play either for currency or crafting. The supposed signature of an x-rayer was a single line 1 block wide by two blocks high that the cheater would leave that lead straight to ore. Thing is almost everyone mined in a 1 by 2 style, meaning cheater or not, if you mined in a 1 by 2 space, you were automatically labeled as an x-rayer. I had thankfully never been pointed at or accused of such but I had seen many players who would use that as a means of getting certain legitament players out of the game. Accuse a person of cheating, person gets investgated, 1 by 2 line of mining was found, bam! banned for x-raying with out a second look.

 

Taking the same approach for metals is unfair. You have absolutely no way of truly knowing of whether its script obtained or legitimate and saying "well this seems suspicious" is not enough grounds of burning someone's scroll without absolute proof of it. on top of that there is no way to obtain absolute proof unless the person says they are cheating or you have access to their files and their computer and you have physical proof that the person is cheating. So, basing whether someone is cheating or not on assumptions is like basing our current "knowldge" of ratios and what not on our assumptions and personally gained info as well as very tiny hints dropped by TJ.

Well, TJ has means of finding out how these golds were acquired. If they were acquired via trades, there's a difference to catching 7 within less than 2 hours. If this catching 7 (from various biomes) in less than two hours pattern seems to be just that, namely a pattern - chances are, it's not a human. Because it's not humanly possible to snatch all the gold stuff from different biomes without anybody else getting one. (Your chances of being in the right biome at the right time are 1 out of 6, since a human can only monitor one biome at a time. 2 eggs caught at the same time by the second in different biomes would scream "cheater" - loading times around shuffles are just too long for that to happen naturally.)

 

And TJ has the resources (code...) to find out which second an egg was caught, or how many rares dropped in that amount of time. He can also check whether several metals go to various scrolls with the same IP in a very limited amount of time...

 

Honestly I think gold drops are fine. I see them go by once or twice a month, which means there's got to be more dropping I don't see. Have I ever CAUGHT one? Nope. But I do -see- them. Just not fast enough to snag one. So that says to me the problem isn't the golds being too rare but me being too slow.

Wow, one or two a month? That's epic and way more than enough of a chance. I mean, it's one or two chances each month - what's not to like? /shot

 

Seriously, though, that is a little low.

[wtf]

If, say, TJ made golds less rare, then the DC market would fluctuate and that would cause problems (my opinion). Since CB golds and silvers are meant to be rare, and to be used as a means of higher tier trades, I think that the current drop rate is good as it is. I haven't been able to catch CB golds very often, probably 2 in the past year. CB silvers are definitely less rare than golds, as I've been able to catch much more. There probably is no way to have a slight change in rarity for CB golds, you either have them extremely rare or rare like CB silvers.