Make CB Golds **slighty** less rare

[DragonNighthowler]

then the DC market would fluctuate and that would cause problems

 

Could you elaborate on this issue? I'd like to know what, in your opinion, would be the problems caused by a more common drop rate of rares.

 

Since CB golds and silvers are meant to be rare, and to be used as a means of higher tier trades

 

No, they are not meant to be used in higher tier trades, just as elephant tusks and rhino horns are not meant to be used in the black market or as medicines. It is the people using them for that.

 

Trading was something introduced officially way after the existence of golds and silvers. Their main function is to be collected, not to be used as money.

[Lurhstaap]

Well, TJ has means of finding out how these golds were acquired. If they

 

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.

Well the thing is I don't spend much time cave hunting. So there have to be more than that dropping that I just don't see. I can't possibly be lucky enough to be around for the one or two drops that happen per month, after all, even if it were that rare. Actually oddly enough for the longest time I never saw them at all. But in the last year of playing I've slowly begun seeing more of them. It's probably just because I've been playing more consistently this past year than I have in a while - but still, I just don't feel like they're excessively rare drop-wise. It's just that they go so crazy fast it's likely that the ones that drop are often gone before people on slower connections ever even got a chance to see the egg was there, which makes the drop rate seem lower than it really is.

[wtf]

Could you elaborate on this issue? I'd like to know what, in your opinion, would be the problems caused by a more common drop rate of rares.

 

 

 

No, they are not meant to be used in higher tier trades, just as elephant tusks and rhino horns are not meant to be used in the black market or as medicines. It is the people using them for that.

 

Trading was something introduced officially way after the existence of golds and silvers. Their main function is to be collected, not to be used as money.

I'm not sure if anyone else would see it as a problem, but since I work really hard to catch these metals for trades I would probably need to catch double or triple the amount since people would see it as less rare than it actually is. It's like inflation. Even if it does drop more, I think it'll be hard for me to meet the demands of the trades. But that's my own opinion on this matter

 

And I guess so, trading isn't really the main function for DC so I don't see why we would need to make CB golds less rare.

[Auriene]

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...

I doubt that TJ has the time to monitor every single scroll and to regularly check the way the players obtain rare eggs. I suppose that he generally intervenes only when someone reports player suspected of cheating or something like that. Which means that cheaters with hidden scrolls can feel relatively safe, because how to report someone's scroll while it's invisible to other players?

 

Honestly... I gave up on hunting ultra-rares (golds, silvers, spesssartines or almandines) a few months ago, when I read on another forum about DC scripts and script users. What is the point of spending hours on hunting in biomes while someone else can have tons of rare eggs without any effort? I joined DC about a year ago, sometimes I hunted in biomes every day, for hours. I caught one CB gold and one CB silver (I traded for the second one), I missed two or three others, but mostly I didn't even see them, especially with the lag at the top of the hour. And when I read about script users... gah.

[Ruby Eyes]

I doubt that TJ has the time to monitor every single scroll and to regularly check the way the players obtain rare eggs.

You make this sound like he would need to sit and actually watch scrolls

He has programmed a whole site; I don't think it would be such an issue for him to have his own scripts look through the data that the site collects anyway, such as IP, breed, biome etc. All he'd need is a quiet moment to actually run the thing without causing too much lag, I would guess. And once enough evidence has been collected, another scroll or two are history.

[DragonNighthowler]

but since I work really hard to catch these metals for trades I would probably need to catch double or triple the amount since people would see it as less rare than it actually is. It's like inflation. Even if it does drop more, I think it'll be hard for me to meet the demands of the trades.

 

Or in retrospective, it would make it more affordable for everyone therefore the market would grow outside the exclusivity that's imperative right now (where only the selected few who can hunt for rares are able to engage in trading). It's as if Apple suddenly priced its iPhone 600,000 dollars the unit. Would it sell phones? Yes, but deffinitely not at the rate it is selling now, and in the end, the benefits would be lower as only a few would be able to afford it.

 

And I guess so, trading isn't really the main function for DC so I don't see why we would need to make CB golds less rare.

 

Because it is a collecting game, and by ensuring people are able to collect (even with effort), you're guaranteeing the main principles of the game. You hunt to trade, I don't have a sinlge CB gold and the only golds I've got were gifts from very generous people. If I ever get my pair of CB golds (which I need to breed and gift back to those generous people), you will not see me hunting for rares, ever (I don't enjoy spending hours in a game to end up with "nada"). The problem is I can't achieve my collecting goals because of the insane rarity of the gold in question.

 

My silvers where also gifted or traded by being in the right place at the right time.

 

I don't consider I have invaluable stuff. I could breed a bunch of second gens. I could hunt for CB BSA eggs, or whatever people wanted. But the trade market is so broken at the moment the only trades going on are the high tier. That is, unless I have a super rare I can't expect to trade for the super rare I need, in which case, if I was able to hunt one for myself, the whole issue would be redundant (I'm not interested in second gen prizes).

 

The way you see it, lowering the rarity of rares would break the market. The way I see it, the market is so broken already the mayority of players are left out of it.

[FiveSix]

I'm not sure if anyone else would see it as a problem, but since I work really hard to catch these metals for trades I would probably need to catch double or triple the amount since people would see it as less rare than it actually is.

People will request more eggs in rough proportion to the newly reduced effort required to catch them - you wont have to put in more effort at all.

[olympe]

People will request more eggs in rough proportion to the newly reduced effort required to catch them - you wont have to put in more effort at all.

And they'll probably stop asking for metals sooner or later since they have all the metals the could wish for...

[Auriene]

You make this sound like he would need to sit and actually watch scrolls

I didn't think about it until you mentioned it

 

I mean... Yeah, maybe writing a few new scripts wouldn't be a problem for TJ, but on the other hand, there are many other suggestions for site improvement that need only a few new scripts and a quiet moment to actually run the thing - for example, sorting tabs / tags for scrolls (many players literally beg for them for years already). And... well.

[wtf]

Or in retrospective, it would make it more affordable for everyone therefore the market would grow outside the exclusivity that's imperative right now (where only the selected few who can hunt for rares are able to engage in trading). It's as if Apple suddenly priced its iPhone 600,000 dollars the unit. Would it sell phones? Yes, but deffinitely not at the rate it is selling now, and in the end, the benefits would be lower as only a few would be able to afford it.

 

 

 

Because it is a collecting game, and by ensuring people are able to collect (even with effort), you're guaranteeing the main principles of the game. You hunt to trade, I don't have a sinlge CB gold and the only golds I've got were gifts from very generous people. If I ever get my pair of CB golds (which I need to breed and gift back to those generous people), you will not see me hunting for rares, ever (I don't enjoy spending hours in a game to end up with "nada"). The problem is I can't achieve my collecting goals because of the insane rarity of the gold in question.

 

My silvers where also gifted or traded by being in the right place at the right time.

 

I don't consider I have invaluable stuff. I could breed a bunch of second gens. I could hunt for CB BSA eggs, or whatever people wanted. But the trade market is so broken at the moment the only trades going on are the high tier. That is, unless I have a super rare I can't expect to trade for the super rare I need, in which case, if I was able to hunt one for myself, the whole issue would be redundant (I'm not interested in second gen prizes).

 

The way you see it, lowering the rarity of rares would break the market. The way I see it, the market is so broken already the mayority of players are left out of it.

People will request more eggs in rough proportion to the newly reduced effort required to catch them - you wont have to put in more effort at all.

 

The way you see it, lowering the rarity of rares would break the market. The way I see it, the market is so broken already the majority of players are left out of it.

 

I think that no matter how much we try to fix the broken market by supplying the cave with more rares, there will always be a way for the high tier trades to come on top, and the absurdness of the trades will go up with it. This way even less people will be able to afford the trades. I'm thinking it's just better to leave things as they are, since rares are meant to be rare, or else there's no purpose in calling them that. The same goes for neglecteds and CB tinsels, they're basically prizes for those that have the patience to go through failure after failure, or those that are lucky enough to get it. If the game calls for equality, wouldn't it be less fun than it is? If we all got the rares with no effort, then what would be the point of playing?

 

I am active in gifting and I've given CB metals to people without expecting compensation from them. It really depends on the person; I don't always hunt to trade, just like many other nice people on DC

[FiveSix]

The more I read the more I fall on the side of making both Golds and Silvers somewhat more available alongside 'correcting' coppers and pyralspites. We can have genuinely rare rares without having them so rare that it's common for people to play for years without being able to catch one.

 

I'm not wanting to fix a broken market, I'm wanting to fix a general availability problem on what is supposedly a 'catch 'em all' site.

[wtf]

The more I read the more I fall on the side of making both Golds and Silvers somewhat more available alongside 'correcting' coppers and pyralspites. We can have genuinely rare rares without having them so rare that it's common for people to play for years without being able to catch one.

 

I'm not wanting to fix a broken market, I'm wanting to fix a general availability problem on what is supposedly a 'catch 'em all' site.

I don't think the coppers and almandines are something we can fix, its like before with blusangs, they're just generally more popular and more people catch them so they're rarer. Maybe it'll be like blusangs and become less rare as the time passes.

 

 

"Catch them all"

Well, I see where you're getting at, and I respect your opinion. I guess either way, if it turns out they're less rare or the same, I'll be ok with it.

[DragonNighthowler]

I think that no matter how much we try to fix the broken market by supplying the cave with more rares

 

We're not trying to fix the market. We're trying to fix a situation that's ridiculous in a family friendly game, which is the rarity of the rares for collection purposes.

 

there will always be a way for the high tier trades to come on top

 

The problem isn't that high tier trades come on top. The market problem (which is a totally different issue) is that, right now, there are ONLY high tier trades. Imagine in real life that you wanted to buy potatoes and had 10 dollars, yet you can't buy potatoes because their prize is a kilo of sugar, which you don't have, and you can't buy sugar either because they are worth a bunch of potatoes. You're essentially left outside the trade market even when you have worthy things that you could use to trade.

 

That is the market problem today. I don't want a second gen prize. I want 2 CB golds, nothing else. But I can't get them even when I'm more than willing to invest time raising hatchies because I don't have a second gen prize (which I never wanted to begin with).

 

The market is leaving out everyone without rares and prizes. I've even tried trading FOR terraes, offering uncommons and even second gen rares for a few terraes. Do you know how many offers I got? Nothing, not because people can't catch terraes, but because people have stopped bothering with trading. What for? Most trades are a bunch or rares in exchange for another bunch of rares.

 

This way even less people will be able to afford the trades.

 

On the contrary. If I can invest my ten dollars on the potatoes, I won't have to look for sugar to get the potatoes. A bigger market will mean more demand, more offer, more product and in the end more fun for everyone. If more people hunt rares, the bigger offer of such rares would mean more people willing to trade for other than second gen prizes. When tinsels bred like rabbits you could aquire tinsels for several CB BSA (which are not insanely hard to catch) hatchlings. That meant more people trading, more offers, a more dynamic market. As it is now, it's completely stale.

 

since rares are meant to be rare

 

A daedric armor is supposed to be rare, but if you work hard on it, you can achieve it. Rares in DC are not rare. They are unique like unicorns. The divergence between rares and common is so high we don't have a middle term. Commons are way too common and rares are way too rare. Commons are so common nobody wants them, and rares are massively wanted, yet at the hands of only a few. It wouldn't hurt to give them a lower level of rarity. It would keep the challenge of hunting them, but be rewarding in the end.

 

If the game calls for equality, wouldn't it be less fun than it is?

 

No. It wouldn't. I'm NOT competing against you. I'm NOT playing against you. Even when online, DC is a very individualistic game where each person has their own scroll goals, not a competition to see who gets the most points at the end.

 

Discrimination, anyways, has never been fun, not in a game, and deffinitely not in real life. Positively balanced games are fun. Games where you have a privilege through sheer luck (or through paying out, as in several pay to win games) are not.

 

If we all got the rares with no effort, then what would be the point of playing?

 

This is not about making them insanely common, but about balancing their rarity to make them achievable through effort (something that is evidently not there now, or I would have caught one in the five years I've been playing).

 

Anyways, there are other activities aside from hunting for rares.

 

The more I read the more I fall on the side of making both Golds and Silvers somewhat more available alongside 'correcting' coppers and pyralspites. We can have genuinely rare rares without having them so rare that it's common for people to play for years without being able to catch one.

 

Thank you. That is precisely my situation. When I first started playing, I thought; "hey, rares, well, I'll get better and with time I'll be able to catch them." That was 5 years ago. With time I ended up completely giving up. Why bother?

This is Skinner and Thorndike at its best. A behavior that's not reinforced and doesn't imply any inner reinforcement will extinguish.

Edited May 18, 2015 by DragonNighthowler

[cyradis4]

The problem with Golds and Silvers being super rare right now isn't with the GOLD AND SILVER's ratios. Its with the COMMON's ratios.

 

 

ra·tio/ˈrāSHēˌō/

noun

the quantitative relation between two amounts showing the number of times one value contains or is contained within the other.

 

 

 

If you get more commons onto scrolls, it'll allow more Golds and Silvers to be produced.

 

Having said that, what we need is a dynamic to the game way to regulate the ratios. Making Golds and Silvers (our only true rares) more common isn't the way to do it, either.

 

What I would also love to see is more uncommon / quasi rares out there. Right now, the only breeds that retain the rare / uncommon trading value when bred in 2nd or 3rd gen are Golds, Silvers, Trios, and Prizes. Bred Coppers and bred Almondines are basically worthless unless there's something with their mate. So, I'd like to see more breeds (metalic by preference) released into the uncommon / rare niche, ones that breed like rares to keep their numbers down and their value up.

 

 

ETA:

The reason people can play for years without catching one is largely because the Biomes don't move. When the biomes don't move during the 5 minute interval, it pushes all the fast hunters to the 5 min, and puts everyone head-to-head, with predictable results. Both of the CB metals I've caught have been in the downtime between refreshes, when I happened to be there when a common did move.

 

 

Cheers!

C4.

Edited May 18, 2015 by cyradis4

[olympe]

Isn't it enough we have golds, silvers, green and red coppers, spessartines and almandines as (quasi?) rares, not to mention trios as uncommons? You may probably even add gemstones and blusangs to that list, although the latter aren't nearly as rare as they used to be.

 

The very last thing DC needs is more rares unobtainables.

 

 

That being said, ratios work both ways. Let's assume the following: 1 rare : 3 uncomon : 10 common (of each breed, respectively).

 

Back when I started, we had about 40 breeds: golds, silvers (rares), 8 kinds of unbreedables (uncommon) as well as a number of "common" breeds, roughly 30. (Trios and coppers came later...)

 

That's 2 rare eggs for every 24 uncommons for every 300 commons. That's one gold out of 326 eggs.

 

 

Now, we have around 110 breeds in the cave - and I counted coppers and pyralspites and seasonals, glory drakes and sunsrises/sunsets as one breed each, and didn't count things that don't drop in the cave (hybrids...).

2 actual rares (gold and silver), 8 unbreedables (uncommon) + trios + coppers (which are meant to be uncommon, not rare!) + pyralspites + blusangs + (maybe) GW = 15 uncommons. The other 93 breeds would be common then.

 

That would add up to 2 rares + 45 uncommons + 930 commons. One gold out of 977 eggs. If ratios actually work like this, with fixed amounts of dragons of each breed per drop, the ratio of golds dropping has dropped to roughly one third of what it used to be. And when I started, golds and silvers were so hard to get it wasn't even remotely funny. It also means that someone has to adopt many more commons than used to be the case in order for the cave to produce a gold

 

 

[Fuzzbucket]

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

THIS.

 

I am on a dodgy connection here - to look at a linked LINEAGE in a help thread just took me almost 20 minutes fo rth page to load. NO WAY could I have a captcha for every catch

[DragonNighthowler]

The problem with Golds and Silvers being super rare right now isn't with the GOLD AND SILVER's ratios. Its with the COMMON's ratios.

 

The very last thing DC needs is more rares unobtainables.

 

Agreed with both of you.

 

However, maybe it would be a good thing to have more true rares. Right now it's practically golds and silvers. I'm not counting coppers or blusangs because I've managed to hunt for my own, and the spessartine I'm missing, to be honest, I'm not even trying.

 

If we have right now 200 breeds, and 50 of those were true rares dropping at the same rate of golds and silvers, the pressure would be distributed not between 2 dragon breeds, but between 50, which would make it a bit easier for the rest of the community to snatch them.

 

Maybe that's part of the problem. We have waaaay too many common breeds, and the full pressure of rarity has been relying on the very same two dragons for the past 8 years. Maybe it's time we got a few rare releases to make things more equivalent. That a dragon specie is rare shouldn't neccesarily mean rare dragon breeds have to be a minority of the total.

[cyradis4]

 

 

Agreed with both of you.

 

However, maybe it would be a good thing to have more true rares. Right now it's practically golds and silvers. I'm not counting coppers or blusangs because I've managed to hunt for my own, and the spessartine I'm missing, to be honest, I'm not even trying.

 

If we have right now 200 breeds, and 50 of those were true rares dropping at the same rate of golds and silvers, the pressure would be distributed not between 2 dragon breeds, but between 50, which would make it a bit easier for the rest of the community to snatch them.

 

Maybe that's part of the problem. We have waaaay too many common breeds, and the full pressure of rarity has been relying on the very same two dragons for the past 8 years. Maybe it's time we got a few rare releases to make things more equivalent. That a dragon specie is rare shouldn't neccesarily mean rare dragon breeds have to be a minority of the total.

Basically, this. Right now, the only thing you can really trade for CB metals is.... CB metals, or other supper rares / unobtainables, or huge amounts of hatchies (which have to be an IOU because of the difficulty of having tons of what is wanted right then, and that's risky). Or be good at making NDs.

 

But if there were more breeds between "super rare" Gold and Silvers and commons.... Then people on slower connections could trade 2 or 3 "less rare" rares for the more rare Golds and Silvers. Right now, its other metals or Prizes, or tons and tons of common hatchies.

 

If you add another couple of rare BREEDS, it'll:

1. Give more rares for people to find, while keeping each rare BREED rare. This takes the pressure off Golds and Silvers

2. Gives more potential trade fodder than metals, ND, or Prizes, making it easier for people to "trade up"

 

But this working absolutely requires the Biomes to actually you know.... Move? And not the shuffle which brings up the exact same breed of eggs each time.

 

I also suspect that some of the breeds we consider "common" are not, in fact, meant to be that common. But they aren't getting bred and aren't getting caught, because the Biomes are just shuffle between most of the same old breeds.

 

Cheers!

C4.

 

 

[Auriene]

Maybe that's part of the problem. We have waaaay too many common breeds, and the full pressure of rarity has been relying on the very same two dragons for the past 8 years. Maybe it's time we got a few rare releases to make things more equivalent. That a dragon specie is rare shouldn't neccesarily mean rare dragon breeds have to be a minority of the total.

Another problem is that many players don't have any reason to raise hundreds of commons and uncommons. NDs and low gen prizes can be used to obtain anything you want, rares can be used to obtain more rares, Trios can be used to raise chance of summoning GoN, dragons with useful BSAs can be used to incubate, influence or teleport eggs, some breeds can be used to obtain hybrids or alts... and the majority of commons? OK, making lineages or armies is fun, participating in breeding and collecting projects is fun, but with hundreds of commons in biomes and constantly increasing number of common breeds it's often like "...meh".

 

Sending biome blockers to the AP, introducing new BSAs or seasonal migrations of some breeds - something that would make commons more attractive - should help.

[Fuzzbucket]

Another problem is that many players don't have any reason to raise hundreds of commons and uncommons. NDs and low gen prizes can be used to obtain anything you want, rares can be used to obtain more rares, Trios can be used to raise chance of summoning GoN, dragons with useful BSAs can be used to incubate, influence or teleport eggs, some breeds can be used to obtain hybrids or alts... and the majority of commons? OK, making lineages or armies is fun, participating in breeding and collecting projects is fun, but with hundreds of commons in biomes and constantly increasing number of common breeds it's often like "...meh".

 

Sending biome blockers to the AP, introducing new BSAs or seasonal migrations of some breeds - something that would make commons more attractive - should help.

Many players love creating common lineages... (I would personally LOVE it if there were a better chance of BREEDING the one one wants - there are some breeds that resolutely refuse to turn out the other breed - falcos, I'm looking at you...! and black teas, and... I'd pick up more of the offending breeds in the biomes if there were any hope that they wouldn't just reproduce themselves and nothing else !)

 

I'd hate lineage building to get harder with migration and so on...

Edited May 18, 2015 by fuzzbucket

[purplehaze]

Many players love creating common lineages... (I would personally LOVE it if there were a better chance of BREEDING the one one wants - there are some breeds that resolutely refuse to turn out the other breed - falcos, I'm looking at you...! and black teas, and... I'd pick up more of the offending breeds in the biomes if there were any hope that they wouldn't just reproduce themselves and nothing else !)

 

I'd hate lineage building to get harder with migration and so on...

Amen to that!

 

I would be much more likely to pick up some of the blocker breeds if one could actually use them in checker lineages. About all you can hope to do with them are purebreds or stairs and those get boring very quickly. But when you get 30 or more blocker breed offspring in the attempt to get one of the opposite breed (common breed, too, I must add), then something is broken!

[Fiona]

After something like two years watching and considering I don't think migration is the answer. Yes, this is a change of mind for me. But I do think making sure all the eggs generated during each hour in the cave get into players' hands would help greatly. The idea of sending them to the AP is currently my favorite idea to insure that. There are two methods for that being debated. I'd be ok with either of them, whichever Mr. Bossman thought the best approach.

 

I think if that were to happen we'd see a gradual return to more sanity in the biomes. While I don't think that would immediately affect breeding outcomes it should make hunting for particular breeds easier. I believe it would also have the effect of allowing more golds and silvers to be produced, or at least more of them being revealed.

[Auriene]

Many players love creating common lineages... (I would personally LOVE it if there were a better chance of BREEDING the one one wants - there are some breeds that resolutely refuse to turn out the other breed - falcos, I'm looking at you...! and black teas, and... I'd pick up more of the offending breeds in the biomes if there were any hope that they wouldn't just reproduce themselves and nothing else !)

 

I'd hate lineage building to get harder with migration and so on...

Creating common x common lineages is another issue, but everything boils down to the fact that some common breeds are in much less demand than others. At the moment, we have about 100 common and uncommon breeds in biomes and about 80 of them are "ordinary" - while in BSA and Dragon Requests sections there are so many interesting ideas and concepts that could make at least some blockers more valuable...

 

It seems that in the current situation the only way to make unobtainable rares less unobtainable is to raise hundreds of commons. I suppose that we need something - anything, really - that would make commons more desired.

 

 

[olympe]

Personally, I have all the commons I want. Well, almost all of them - there's always a new release I need to stock up on.

 

The problem is that, no matter how many commons everyone raises, the rares will still go to the same people. :/

[Fuzzbucket]

I am part of a project which has been stuck for a YEAR or more. All it needs is for a specific waverunner x green pair to produce a green. Only that. They did ot ONCE way back in the mists of time. Since then they have produced a waverunner - 17 or more so far - EVERY TIME. WHY ?

 

As I said - and purplehaze seconded - this would make a lot of difference to what people were happy to pick up.