Further Restrict Breeding

[Dragon_Arbock]

I kind of feel like this post was just bait to begin with, but; Obviously no- 99% of people here would never agree to this. There needn't be any kind of additional breeding restrictions.

[AGYK]

I guess nobody pays attention to 'don't hate me for this' anymore.

Nobody's hating. There is a ton of valid critique on your suggestion, but that's on your suggestion. "Attack the idea not the person" is still a very valid thing, and it's being applied here.

 

Another breeding restriction should be on inbreeding-- make it so you can't do it. I know this would also damage lineages, but...

No. As someone who's picky about lineages, no.

 

Some people collect dragons for the sprites, not for the lineages. They don't care about inbreeding. Some people specifically inbreed their dragons to create a massively inbred but very pretty lineage. If you ban inbreeding, you'll harm or destroy these users' playstyle. DC is all about letting people do what they want - so let people do what they want.

 

You can avoid inbred dragons yourself. It's not that hard to check whether a dragon is inbred. There's even a user-provided tool to do it for you automatically. If you find an inbred one, toss it to the AP. Somebody will want it. Or raise it and release it to the wilderness if it's that big a problem to you. Wild dragons can never be bred again, so you won't have to worry about that one producing babies.

 

And besides. Lineages grow too quickly

They do not. Even-gen lineages double in time required for each new generation (because the number of dragons required doubles). Stairsteps grow more quickly, but I don't think too quickly.

 

And when you consider any lineage containing a Seasonal or a Holiday or most rares... you'll be lucky to get more than a "correct" breeding (a breeding needed to continue the lineage) or two every year.

 

and the code combinations are going to run out quickly.

Again, they will not. We used to have 4-character codes, and eventually we filled up all the available combinations. TJ just moved to 5-character codes. Eventually we'll run out of those too, no matter how long the cooldown on breeding is, and at that point I expect TJ will just bring in 6-character codes with no harm done.

 

This also could potentially save room on the site.

If you're referring to storage space on the site's server, I don't think this is a problem. If it is, TJ sure hasn't said anything about it.

 

There's not much of a reason for it to be a problem anyway. Looking at this from a programming viewpoint, it's almost certain the dragons are stored in a database. Within that database, each dragon would need the following stored:

* Breed (probably a numeric flag) (probably stored as a smallint - 2 bytes)

* Code (up to 5 characters) (probably stored as a fixed-size character field - 5 bytes)

* Name (up to 32 characters) (probably stored as a variable-size character field capped at 32 - 32 bytes)

* Gender (binary flag) (probably stored as a bit - 1 byte)

* Time of birth (egg laid/bred) (probably stored as a datetime field - 8 bytes)

* Time of hatching (probably stored as a datetime field - 8 bytes)

* Time of fully maturing (probably stored as a datetime field - 8 bytes)

* Views (probably stored as an int - 4 bytes)

* Unique views (probably stored as an int - 4 bytes)

* Clicks (probably stored as an int - 4 bytes)

* Description (up to 1000 characters) (probably stored as a variable-length character field capped at 1000 - 1000 bytes)

* Location (probably a numeric flag) (probably stored as a tinyint - 1 byte)

 

Now let's add that all up: your entire dragon can be stored in a maximum of 1077 bytes. That's just over 1 KB (1024 bytes). That assumes you use all 32 characters for your dragon's name and all 1000 characters for the dragon's description; some dragons won't get all of that, so it won't need the full 1077 bytes. We can say an average dragon can be stored in 1 KB of space.

 

Let's say TJ got the server a 1 TB drive specifically for the dragon database (not unreasonable, my home computer has a drive that big). Such a drive could hold approximately 1,073,741,824 dragons. (1024 KB to a MB, 1024 MB to a GB, 1024 GB to a TB - 1024 * 1024 * 1024 = 1,073,741,824)

 

Now let's do some more math. We've burned through all the four-digit codes, so we know there are at least 14,776,336 dragons (26 lowercase letters + 26 uppercase letters + 10 numbers = 62 possible values for each character in a code. 62^4 = 14,776,336) on the site already.

 

Dragon Cave was started in 2006, but let's say it got popular in 2008. TJ switched to 5-digit codes in June 2011. This means it took three years to get those 14,776,336 dragons, or roughly 4,925,445 per year.

 

DC has gotten more popular since then, so let's take a wild guess and say there are now 10 million dragons being raised per year. A 5-character code has 916,132,832 valid possibilities (62^5). At this rate, it will take us about 91 years until the 5-character codes run out. (This is probably a much higher number than reality, but I can't be fricked to run all the math for an exponentially growing userbase, and I flat-up don't even know if the userbase is growing exponentially. I'm not TJ, I don't get access to this stuff.)

 

When we burn through the last of the 5-character codes, there will be 930,909,168 dragons on the site (14,776,336 with 4-character codes and 916,132,832 with 5-character codes). Remember the part where we calculated about how many dragons a 1 TB drive could hold (1,073,741,824)? We're still well shy of that. 142 million short of that.

 

It's also worth noting that drive sizes have gotten significantly larger over the years. Drives which used to be a few hundred GB are now being replaced with drives upward of 1 TB. A web server can have multiple TB of storage available. And by the time we go through 183 years of codes, I rather think there'll be something a bit bigger available to switch to.

 

tl;dr it should take a long frickin' time to run out of 5-character codes and the server's drive still shouldn't be full. Space is not a problem. Breed at will.

[olympe]

And, of those (approximately) 1077 bytes, 1000 are for the description alone. I daresay that most dragons don't get a description, so for most of them, it's only up to 77 bytes. That's more than one order of magnitude less than 1077.

 

And, yes, lineages can take a lot of time and effort. I just managed to breed my 7th gen "PB" EG AoCh - after almost a whole year. (Okay, only 51 weeks - but who's counting?)

Edited May 26, 2015 by olympe

[CNR4806]

Another breeding restriction should be on inbreeding-- make it so you can't do it. I know this would also damage lineages, but...

LOLWUT? You talking to me?

 

Your moral values should not have any influence over how I play the game.

 

And besides. Lineages grow too quickly, and the code combinations are going to run out quickly. Therefore, the breeding times should be longer. This also could potentially save room on the site.

Lineage growth speed is hurting anyone now? I'm not exactly following your logic, so please elaborate.

 

Dragon code is a non-issue. It had been bumped from 4 character to 5 some years ago, and TJ can bump it again as required.

Edited May 27, 2015 by CNR4806

[Mondat]

@Szayelapporo

(First of all, Bleach is <3)

I would support a new abandoned page which enables you to switch pages to get away from massbreeding and collect non-massbred AP eggs. I don't know, implement a detector for a certain amount of breeds in the AP or something. Otherwise I see no other way to get away from this..."fun" and still being able to hunt in the AP normally, unfortunately.

 

And while I have absolutely nothing against inbreeding, I think it would be nice to have an option for your own scroll which prevents you from accidental inbreeding.

 

[Tehya Faye]

Like an optional box you can check under your Account Settings for an inbreeding warning? That would be nice.

[Dragon_Arbock]

Like an optional box you can check under your Account Settings for an inbreeding warning? That would be nice.

That I would at least accept- I've done so several times on complete accident because I'm bad at keeping track of things ;p

[Mondat]

Like an optional box you can check under your Account Settings for an inbreeding warning? That would be nice.

Yes, a warning that tells you that the offspring will be inbred if you breed two dragons together or a somewhat harsher "dragons which could create inbred offspring are automatically blocked from breeding with each other, like forever, and will never pop up in the mates breeding list" option.

 

I think there was some other thread for this....

Edited May 27, 2015 by Mondat

[purplehaze]

Yes, a warning that tells you that the offspring will be inbred if you breed two dragons together or a somewhat harsher "dragons which could create inbred offspring are automatically blocked from breeding with each other, like forever, and will never pop up in the mates breeding list" option.

 

I think there was some other thread for this....

That would only be acceptable if it is totally optional!

[Syphoneira]

Like an optional box you can check under your Account Settings for an inbreeding warning? That would be nice.

 

 

 

That would be brilliant!

 

Would that be hard to code or cause lag running checks?

[Mondat]

That would only be acceptable if it is totally optional!

Options have to be totally optional.

Make it toggle on/off and everybody can do their thing.

 

There was this thread but TJ shot it down

https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showt...inbreeding&st=0

Edited May 27, 2015 by Mondat

[Tehya Faye]

I could imagine it causing a bit of lag, honestly. It's a great idea otherwise, though.

[Syphoneira]

I could imagine it causing a bit of lag, honestly. It's a great idea otherwise, though.

 

 

Yeah, it IS a great idea, although very few things would worth adding to lag... drat!

[AGYK]

Would that be hard to code or cause lag running checks?

Wouldn't be hard to code, but it could definitely cause some lag since every breeding would require iterating through every dragon in the to-be-bred dragons' lineages.

 

Basically the check would have to make a list of every dragon in dragon A's lineage and every dragon in dragon B's lineage, and compare the two lists, stopping after the first match (match = shared ancestor = inbreeding if bred together). Best case scenario is for both to be CB, in which case the check should take virtually no time. Worst case scenario is for a pair of long-gen non-inbred dragons, which would take just a couple of seconds for a single breeding (maybe less, depending on how TJ sets up the lists) but could cause some heavy lag when you multiply it out by the sheer number of breedings being done at any given moment.

 

I can't say I'm a huge fan of this idea, and not even for lag-related reasons - this will only stop misbreedings that would cause inbreeding. It absolutely won't stop people from misclicking on the breed page, which is the larger issue in play. (If anything, I could get behind the option to permamate a given pair of dragons, or the option to show a bred egg's lineage before the egg is actually bred. But those suggestions may not be overly popular.)

[Syphoneira]

Wouldn't be hard to code, but it could definitely cause some lag since every breeding would require iterating through every dragon in the to-be-bred dragons' lineages.

 

Basically the check would have to make a list of every dragon in dragon A's lineage and every dragon in dragon B's lineage, and compare the two lists, stopping after the first match (match = shared ancestor = inbreeding if bred together). Best case scenario is for both to be CB, in which case the check should take virtually no time. Worst case scenario is for a pair of long-gen non-inbred dragons, which would take just a couple of seconds for a single breeding (maybe less, depending on how TJ sets up the lists) but could cause some heavy lag when you multiply it out by the sheer number of breedings being done at any given moment.

 

I can't say I'm a huge fan of this idea, and not even for lag-related reasons - this will only stop misbreedings that would cause inbreeding. It absolutely won't stop people from misclicking on the breed page, which is the larger issue in play. (If anything, I could get behind the option to permamate a given pair of dragons, or the option to show a bred egg's lineage before the egg is actually bred. But those suggestions may not be overly popular.)

 

 

 

Thanks!

 

Would NOT want to add to lag, though!

 

 

What we really need is to have lineage links in the breeding pages, just like everywhere else we have dragon images appear...

[Dragon_Arbock]

Hm, would there be a way to do it where it only checks once you click the breed button next to the other dragon you're trying to breed with? (I'm fairly certain that's how Order of the griffin used to do it).

[Tehya Faye]

Yes, it's rather upsetting that the pictures aren't linked everywhere.

[AGYK]

Hm, would there be a way to do it where it only checks once you click the breed button next to the other dragon you're trying to breed with? (I'm fairly certain that's how Order of the griffin used to do it).

This is how I assumed it would be done in my comment. Lag wouldn't be bad for a single breeding, but when multiplied by every breeding being done at a given moment across every scroll, it might be pretty bad. (Only TJ can say for sure, of course.)

 

The only other way I could imagine it even being possible would be checking inbreeding against literally every mate a dragon could have - some players have thousands and thousands of dragons, and the lag from checking a dragon against every possible mate would be awful. -10/10 would never ever support.

 

What we really need is to have lineage links in the breeding pages, just like everywhere else we have dragon images appear...

I could get behind this. As it is, I already manually open lineage pages for dragons before I breed them, just to be safe.

[AnanoKimi]

 

 

Thanks!

 

Would NOT want to add to lag, though!

 

 

What we really need is to have lineage links in the breeding pages, just like everywhere else we have dragon images appear...

This. Dragon images in the mates available page leading to their respective lineages or breed pages would be perfection.

 

Honestly in terms of inbreeding I think its the responsibility fo every player to check through their dragons before breeding. Those who breed blindly and later regret it, release. Those who dump, worry not, that lil inbred will find a good home with someone who will hopefully love it. If it dies oh well.

 

Also like the thread that someone linked said, inbreeding isnt bad. It doesnt kill the dragon, doesnt ruin the sprites of any future babies, and is sometimes done on purpose for gorgeous lineages. SO showing a message that says "This will be inbred" is like saying "Don't do it cuz its a bad thing" and thats not true.

[The_Bucket]

 

 

That would be brilliant!

 

Would that be hard to code or cause lag running checks?

It shouldn't be. It would just run a simple script like AoND's inbred checker, and if it returned positive generate the warning.

[Syphoneira]

This. Dragon images in the mates available page leading to their respective lineages or breed pages would be perfection.

 

Honestly in terms of inbreeding I think its the responsibility fo every player to check through their dragons before breeding. Those who breed blindly and later regret it, release. Those who dump, worry not, that lil inbred will find a good home with someone who will hopefully love it. If it dies oh well.

 

Also like the thread that someone linked said, inbreeding isnt bad. It doesnt kill the dragon, doesnt ruin the sprites of any future babies, and is sometimes done on purpose for gorgeous lineages. SO showing a message that says "This will be inbred" is like saying "Don't do it cuz its a bad thing" and thats not true.

 

 

I'm not sure why we DON'T have links on the breeding page, may be some coding reason I'd never be able to guess at.

 

But it's a pain having to look up every dragon on a separate page when checking for new mates and I HATE having to 'name' dragons things like '3rd gen, BrightPink base' or whatever to make them easier to find, although with so many mateless I guess I'd have to do that anyway...

 

But sometimes you THINK one's a CB/specific lineage which turns out to be a muttered apology to the AP instead.

 

But while I don't breed many long-lineaged ones, when I do, I bless AOND and bbik with great fervour.

[AGYK]

I'm not sure why we DON'T have links on the breeding page, may be some coding reason I'd never be able to guess at.

There isn't a coding reason. 99.9% sure. It should be pretty trivial to add a lineage link to each dragon, probably turning the name/code field into a link. TJ's already pulling the potential mate's code; all he has to do is add a single element containing http://dragcave.net/lineage/CODE to the page for each mate.

 

Going off on a tangent for a bit, I could probably come up with something to do it on our end, but I dunno if such a site mod would be against the ToS or not. The last time I asked about creating and releasing a site mod, I got mixed results. The mod I asked linked this post from TJ:

You can achieve custom coloring and styling on a per-person basis with an addon like GreaseMonkey.

 

and added the comment

The illegality would come in if you modified actual site functions, not just style Ex. making AP/cave links automatically open in new tabs, making the actual eggs visible instead of mystery eggs, etc. would be illega.

 

I asked TJ for clarification, but he chose to comment on the inviability of the mod itself, rather than whether it was allowed under the ToS, and didn't answer a followup PM.

 

I don't actually know whether such a mod would be considered "styling" or modifying site functionality, and I'd rather not find out the hard way.

[Syphoneira]

There isn't a coding reason. 99.9% sure. It should be pretty trivial to add a lineage link to each dragon, probably turning the name/code field into a link. TJ's already pulling the potential mate's code; all he has to do is add a single element containing http://dragcave.net/lineage/CODE to the page for each mate.

 

Going off on a tangent for a bit, I could probably come up with something to do it on our end, but I dunno if such a site mod would be against the ToS or not. The last time I asked about creating and releasing a site mod, I got mixed results. The mod I asked linked this post from TJ:

 

 

and added the comment

 

 

I asked TJ for clarification, but he chose to comment on the inviability of the mod itself, rather than whether it was allowed under the ToS, and didn't answer a followup PM.

 

I don't actually know whether such a mod would be considered "styling" or modifying site functionality, and I'd rather not find out the hard way.

 

 

I certainly wouldn't take any chance on it without an OK from TJ - and maybe it's something he's been planning to do but hasn't had time to mange yet?

 

He does work full-time as well as run the site and must be trading off any social life he manages for sleep...

[shanique]

I guess nobody pays attention to 'don't hate me for this' anymore. Another breeding restriction should be on inbreeding-- make it so you can't do it. I know this would also damage lineages, but...

 

 

And besides. Lineages grow too quickly, and the code combinations are going to run out quickly. Therefore, the breeding times should be longer. This also could potentially save room on the site.

"Lineages grow quickly" - some people take YEARS to finish/have significant progress on their lineages

 

"Code combinations going to run out quickly" - that's when we'll start having 6-character codes

 

Personally, I think it'll be really, REALLY annoying to have further restrictions on breeding. The first time I've tried making lineage projects, the wait already killed me, not to mention MONTHS of not getting the dragon I want from the pairing(s). If I had to wait super long before I can breed them again, I better be able to choose what egg I want and that it has no refusals >.>

 

Honestly it would aggravate the frustration of lineage builders because they'll have to collect more and more dragons for their lineage "just in case" they refuse. Honestly, I don't see a problem with limits, especially because we already have too many limits on breeding.

 

Also, I wouldn't hate massbreeding. If any, it helps lineage builders and newbies alike. Want more Tan Ridgewings? Encourage the community to breed Purple Ridgewings! Want more Pinks? Massbreed Flamingos! Want more Red Dorsals? Massbreed Purple Dorsals! It's not just for the alts of same-description eggs. In a way, it helps tremendously with fixing ratios, mostly, so we can find less of the blockers in the gave and give way to other eggs. If any, I'm actually extremely thrilled when I see an AP flood of BSAs, or my favorite dragons.

 

-------

 

 

The question, however, is this. If you're suggesting more restrictions from breeding, what's the payoff for us who take happiness and leisure into making lineage projects, other than inspiring us to make more lineage projects while waiting for other projects to progress, should these limits be in place?

 

No refusals? Out-of-holiday multi clutches? 100% interest? Ability to choose what egg I want?

 

For putting limits that frustrate the players even more, shouldn't there be some sort of 'advantage' to this sort of situation? It could go both ways. I mean, I'd rather wait a month and get the egg I want, than try every week just to get the wrong egg. I'm gonna say it'll be detrimental to the ratios if we do this, but somewhere out there, maybe there can be amenable terms to this.

 

Otherwise, if it's not going to be helpful to the community, I don't see why this is a good suggestion. I mean I'm not hating you, OP. We're just voicing out our opinions on here. I think we here all strive to make the DC experience more enjoyable, not frustrating, to players.

Edited May 27, 2015 by Pandalf

[Fuzzbucket]

Yes, a warning that tells you that the offspring will be inbred if you breed two dragons together or a somewhat harsher "dragons which could create inbred offspring are automatically blocked from breeding with each other, like forever, and will never pop up in the mates breeding list" option.

 

I think there was some other thread for this....

No no no no not a WARNING as there is nothing wrong with inbreeding; TJ has said. There is a WHOLE THREAD ABOUT THIS.

 

If you are to "warn" about inbreeding you have to also warn about "warning this egg will not have any shared ancestors" and "Warning; this egg will not be Even Gen" and so on.

 

And ABSOLUTELY NO WAY block inbreeding. Look at the lovely inbred ljnes within this thread ! The only thing I would accept would be a BSA (suggested somewhere) where you could sterilise a dragon - make it unable to breed for ever.