Remove (okay) Egg Limits

[~!~]

So, I haven't been on the forums in a while so I'm sure this has been suggested and shot down already (because there the egg limits are, causing nothing but problems for all users), but I'm gonna suggest it anyway because I tried searching (lol) and nothing turned up.

 

Everyone remember the Egg Shuffle? That feature that everyone thought would be great but it caused nothing but problems, so TJ removed it? How about if we try something like that, but with (temporarily!) removing limits on how many eggs/growing things you can have on your scroll.

 

I understand that most users on here are (bafflingly) completely okay with the extreme glut of eggs in incredibly low demand, but I'm not. I still yearn for the Good Old Days when every egg in the cave got snatched up by somebody or other. Yes, you had to log on at exactly x:00 (or at a 5-minute drop) or you couldn't get any eggs, but isn't that still the case? Except it's even worse because in 0.2 seconds, all the biomes will be blocked by three eggs no one wants?

 

But there's the rub. It's not that no one wants them. Suggest retiring a breed and people will come out of the woodwork saying "Oh, but I love Mints!" "I love Neotropicals!" "I love Fever Wyverns!" Well, random user, why aren't you picking up the one that's sitting gathering dust in the Jungle right now? Oh, right, because you're egg locked, or, more realistically, you're saving your precious, precious egg slots for something you want really badly.

 

When Dragon Cave first came into existence there was very high demand for eggs, and it was important to prevent a few very active players from vacuuming up every egg in sight. But nowadays, players are a lot more particular about what eggs they want. I wouldn't pick up most eggs even with unlimited egg slots, but I would probably pick up a fair number of Pinks, Grays, Neotropicals, Guardians... you know, my favorite breeds. And every breed has someone who will always be happy to have another one of those.

 

"But Nin!" I hear you cry, "Doesn't this mean that a few active players will vacuum up all the really good eggs?" Maybe. Maybe removing the egg limits will make the game completely unplayable. Maybe it'll crash the site, or crash the fan-sites that people use to incubate their eggs with a sudden influx of zillions of eggs. I realize that this could cause Major Problems which is why I'm not saying it should absolutely be implemented. I just want to try it.

 

I maintain we have no way of knowing what badness will happen unless we try it. Then, IF all hell breaks loose, roll back the changes, and maybe let everyone keep the eggs they have but not take any more until they're back down below their normal egg limit. Or maybe force everyone to abandon the excess eggs. That seems rude, but if we're talking site-breaking levels of hell, that may be what has to happen. (And it seems less rude to allow the users to choose what eggs they abandon rather than a complete roll-back which may deny someone a nice rare or something.)

[AGYK]

Couple of random thoughts here:

1. How do you propose handling holidays? Finding good breedings is already a challenge; how do you propose keeping bred holidays accessible to the whole playerbase if good catchers are allowed to catch without limit?

2. I suspect the trading market would get turned on its head, as "will trade 50 CB hatchies for 2g prize/CB ND/CB metal/other rare thing" becomes a worthless offer. How do you propose players without rares get access to rares in a market where CB commons are literally worthless?

3. What's to stop me from sitting in a biome mashing Ctrl-R + left-click, scooping up all the eggs in a biome, then filtering out the rares on my scroll and AP'ing the commons?

[626lavaheart]

mmm I feel like this would be a waste of all the effort put into balancing the system we have now, and that changing to a system where everyone could keep taking eggs would as much as they want might have bad effects? (I wasn't here for this Egg Shuffle but from what you're saying people could pretty much take all they want?)

 

another problem with this is DC is a lot bigger now, and probably has caught the eye of at least a couple of people every once in awhile of people who are downright trolls. who I personally can picture making programs to take as many eggs as they can just to be jerks. Or just the shear number of people that take eggs now taking all the eggs too fast.

 

Overall I think it's better to stick with the system we've had for years that TJ's been working so hard to tweak and keep balanced instead of throwing the entire system into anarchy suddenly. caveblockers aren't /that/ big of a problem the cave moves fairly quickly imo

Edited March 28, 2016 by 626lavaheart

[Obscure_Trash]

I feel like this would create exactly the opposite problem that you described. People are just going to sit there and grab everything until they have to leave. Stuff they don't want will either be raised to boost their adult count, killed/bitten, or shoved off to the AP. Biomes will go far too quickly. Fansites could get overwhelmed, making it harder to raise any eggs. Competition for eggs basically becomes "will the cave even create it" rather than mostly against other users. These consequences are far more negative than what they are right now: eggs stagnantly sitting in biomes.

 

If your issue is that there are too many eggs sitting around, may I suggest supporting any of these:

Send biome blockers to AP: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=151625

Egg circulation: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=117712

Mossy eggs: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=122339

Changing rarities: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=150850

Seasonal rarities: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=156897

Migration: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=122023

Remote biomes: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=148058

Day/night cycle: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=150893

 

General thread with many solutions: https://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=147713

 

I am not against an upped limit, but I am against all out completely removing the limit.

[Lurhstaap]

I have a compromise suggestion. I have played on sites where EGGS are limited, but HATCHLINGS are not. This prevents a lot of the problems with having no limit whatsoever while still significantly alleviating the problems caused by having a limit. You could have only, say, 10 EGGS at any given time, which stopped people from emptying biomes. And there was a time limit on Abandon which combined with the limit on eggs made the sort of rare-fishing described earlier in this thread totally impractical and not worth it. But if you put in the effort to hatch your eggs quicker, you could get more quicker, without eventually being limited by your numbers of hatchlings. In the meantime the people struggling to get clicks so they can get more eggs are out of the way of others who want to be egg hunting.

Edited March 28, 2016 by Lurhstaap

[MessengerDragon]

I have a compromise suggestion. I have played on sites where EGGS are limited, but HATCHLINGS are not. This prevents a lot of the problems with having no limit whatsoever while still significantly alleviating the problems caused by having a limit. You could have only, say, 10 EGGS at any given time, which stopped people from emptying biomes. And there was a time limit on Abandon which combined with the limit on eggs made the sort of rare-fishing described earlier in this thread totally impractical and not worth it. But if you put in the effort to hatch your eggs quicker, you could get more quicker, without eventually being limited by your numbers of hatchlings. In the meantime the people struggling to get clicks so they can get more eggs are out of the way of others who want to be egg hunting.

I beg to disagree with this being called a compromise.

The only times I'm hatchilocked are when the AP is incu/hatchable. However, I am nearly constantly egglocked when I'm active.

Therefore, I don't think this would help much with what the OP was trying to fix via this suggestion.

[VixenDra]

Wouldn't this ruin the game?

 

How about new releases? Just imagine... all those fast connection players getting nearly all the new eggs and trading them for NDs, 2g Prizes, Cb Golds&Silvers for even months? And while the regular players having to way to pay for them for way too long?

Now think about the disappointments and rage when people can't get the new release within the first 3 days, they panic, they ask for longer floods etc. and complaining about the high prices in the trademarkets...

 

And we'd have the problem we have during releases: empty biomes!

 

Regular players often can get eggs only because most of the faster players are already eggLOCKED!

You think why March release was uncatchable at some point but then, during the flood day, most of hunters got locked and then the average layers could get them.

And yet, still many players couldn't get their March eggs...

 

 

8egg slots should be enough, if TJ introduces this 1 additional slot.

I'd also prefer at least a higher hatchling limit. And freeze limit most of all^^; 15 isn't enough for my needs and I can't use Reds or I'll run put of Freezes too soon 20-25 should work.

 

Well, I'd simply prefer the cave blockers to get APed or biomes to shuffle every minute or 2.

[Fuzzbucket]

I feel like this would create exactly the opposite problem that you described. People are just going to sit there and grab everything until they have to leave. Stuff they don't want will either be raised to boost their adult count, killed/bitten, or shoved off to the AP. Biomes will go far too quickly. Fansites could get overwhelmed, making it harder to raise any eggs. Competition for eggs basically becomes "will the cave even create it" rather than mostly against other users. These consequences are far more negative than what they are right now: eggs stagnantly sitting in biomes.

This. Less than no support here. Not to mention the fast clickers not just getting most of the rares but ALL of them

[aussieJJDude]

haha aha haa.... Wait, your being serious here? Not some early april floods.... *awkward*

 

My joke aside, even though it sounds amazing I imagine that it would have the reverse effect on the system. Pretty much everyone can have access to a gold or other rare dragon types.

EG one gold per 50 commons

 

Somebody in one day collects 5000000 common eggs they have to potential to collect 100000 golds! Imagine how easy it would be to get any dragon "species". Heck the hardest things would be to collect Neglected (which it's easy to experiment with an unlimited scroll space! 1000 eggs per day, bound to get at least one, right) or lower gen prizes/holiday alt. How would we even trade for these things? Pretty much everything is worthless!

 

I'd have to say no, sounds great and all but I can not see it work out. If TJ wants to do a day where this happens... I'd suggest my birthday for no apparent reason... Or halloween... or even the start of the new year... DC birthday anyone?

 

...then I wouldn't mind. But 24/7. NOPE.

 

[Fuzzbucket]

Imagine what could be done with snaplinks... (Yes I know we mustn't - but this would REALLY get people doing so anyway...)

[Mistress of Whispers]

Less than no support here. Not to mention the fast clickers not just getting most of the rares but ALL of them

Listen to the great and wise great Fuzz, for she has spoken the truth.

 

But yeah: nope to this. All it'd do it up the scrolls with 50 Golds to scrolls with 100 Golds, while the rest of us see our chances plummet even more.

Edited March 28, 2016 by Mistress of Whispers

[olympe]

Nin, you're back! *jumps with glee*

 

Ahem.

 

That aside, I'm not in favor of your suggestion. I used to play Valley of Unicorns for a while, where you can get up to 100 slots (egg/hatchie - or the equivalent thereof). And I quickly realized that things would get boring pretty quickly. 100, compared to the measly limits we have here, sounds like paradise and unlimited catching. Well, it was almost unlimited catching, that's true. But it also meant almost unlimited catching of the same 100+ commons. It became old very quickly and only really made sense during holiday events.

 

And, of course, there's the issue of being able to get anything at all. If everybody catches and breeds like crazy, we'll (most likely) see more ratio-based problems with breeding. (Of course, cave ratios might go back to something considered normal more easily, especially with new releases.) But there's still the horror scenario:

 

Normal players with connections that currently aren't state of the art competing against the quickest clickers/scripters/whatever with unlimited scroll space. *shudders* Would we even see any dragons in the biomes any more? I'm not just talking about rares and uncommons, but about any kind of dragon.

[MoonTiger]

Personally I don't think it's a smart idea. I would rather have a mechanic like the ability to get a platinum trophy or add an extra slot rather than doing away with them completely. They help to maintain balance and fairness in the system.

 

Edited March 28, 2016 by LoveOfTheMoonChild

[SheridanCharon]

Normally, any idea regarding loosening egg limits would get at least some support from me, but this one creates far too many problems for it to be truly viable...

 

· AP overload: as already mentioned, there would be nothing to stop people farming the biomes for rares/uncommon, then dumping the rest to the AP. Not only would this put way too much stress on the AP, but it'd make bred AP eggs next to impossible to find. And when part of the fun of DC is finding pretty lineages in the AP, that's a pretty big downer.

 

· Trading problems: Now, don't get me wrong. I've complained about some the trade prices I see, but the simple truth is, this would destroy trading. As it is now, people still have hope of getting those extremely rare dragons in return for working hard on multiple CB commons. I know I have, and in the end, it was worth it.

But if you can catch as many CB commons as you want, why would you be willing to trade your super-rare dragon for them? Simple. You wouldn't. You'd hold out for very special dragons, like prizes or alt descendants, and thus make rare dragons even more inaccessible to ESTABLISHED players, let alone new ones!

As well, from my understanding, if you could just farm rares, wouldn't that lower their value? Which brings me to my next point...

 

· Ratios and drops: I'm not gonna lie, I don't understand coding too well. But what I get from things I've read around the site is this: ratios affect breed production. Which is why we have different rarities. The more of a Dragon is bred, the less likely they are to drop in the biomes or breed their own species.

Surely this idea would throw ratios completely out of whack?

 

· Finally, Holidays and new releases: As it stands, New releases and holidays can be hard enough to grab as it is. But this is where limits are useful; once the quicker users are locked, they leave and thus make way for others with slower connections/reflexes. But if they could grab unlimited eggs, what's to stop them just farming new releases, or from emptying the AP, keeping the nice lineages and dumping the rest?

Slower users would never get anything nice, new release or old holidays.

 

I know a lot of what I've said here is just repeating what has already been said, but it is true;

While loosening of limits would be welcomed by many - I know MoonChild's "Platinum trophy" idea is something I would happily support - but completely removing them would just make the game unplayable and unenjoyable, and THAT could potentially do a LOT of damage DC.

[olympe]

Don't get me wrong, though: It's quite viable to add more egg slots to scrolls with the number of breeds we have in the cave. But doing away with scroll limits altogether spells disaster with a capital D IMHO.

[Eos]

Don't get me wrong, though: It's quite viable to add more egg slots to scrolls with the number of breeds we have in the cave. But doing away with scroll limits altogether spells disaster with a capital D IMHO.

^Agreed. Sorry, I'm not for removing egg limits even as annoying as they can be. Totally for increasing them though through additional trophies, scroll age, or whatever.

[Cinnamin Draconna]

I too used to play Valley of Unicorns and yes, I did buy up to 100 egg slots.. but once I had them, I rarely ever filled them up. I usually kept only around 25 slots full with types I was actively working with for breeding and/or armying. Then I had plenty of extra slots in case I did see a rare.

 

The big difference tho is that VoU generated eggs based on rarity and not based on a ratio system like DC. I don't remember the exact number but VoU generated a set number of eggs every hour.. so many rares, so many uncommons and so many commons. Theorectically, they could have all been taken in an hour, but I never saw it happen. Plus, their AP had a filtering system so that you could look for exactly what you wanted.. rare, bred, age, species name, etc.. so you didn't have to wade through what didn't interest you.

 

However, I don't think unlimited (or even 100) eggslots would work for DC. Not because of rare shopping, but because DC eggs can die.. eggs never die on most other games. With that many eggs circulating around, it would be harder to get views and eggs would probably start dying.. even for the veteran players, because we'd never have enough time to hatch/mature everything. The AP would be full of dead eggs too, because the DC AP is time based and only the lowest timed eggs show up.. and the unwanted eggs would just sit there getting older until they eventually die and the only thing showing up would be dead eggshells.

 

BUT, I think that Lurhstaap's suggestion COULD work. I'd like to see an increase of at least 1 eggslot to go with it tho.. or up to a 10 egg limit max. Knowing that I had unlimited hatchling slots would give me the incentive to catch and hatch more common eggs, because I'd know that being egglocked would only be for a limited time and then I could grab more eggs without worrying about hatchlings filling up any slots.

 

I'd still have to be careful about not overloading myself until I learned how many views I could get without things starting to die on me, but things like that just take time and experience.

 

So in summary, while I disagree with the OP as written, I do think that a compromise would work.

[kitsune93]

I think the limit should be up by one maybe two but no limit is kind of over kill.

 

[Pixxelation]

I am vehemently against this suggestion, as its implementation would be detrimental to the game, as has been discussed above.

[NotBambi]

I have a compromise suggestion. I have played on sites where EGGS are limited, but HATCHLINGS are not. This prevents a lot of the problems with having no limit whatsoever while still significantly alleviating the problems caused by having a limit. You could have only, say, 10 EGGS at any given time, which stopped people from emptying biomes. And there was a time limit on Abandon which combined with the limit on eggs made the sort of rare-fishing described earlier in this thread totally impractical and not worth it. But if you put in the effort to hatch your eggs quicker, you could get more quicker, without eventually being limited by your numbers of hatchlings. In the meantime the people struggling to get clicks so they can get more eggs are out of the way of others who want to be egg hunting.

Increase on eggs limit and no limits on hatchies, I like compromises

I would also like to suggest an increase on the eggs limit for newbies, 4 slots are not enough if there is a new release like the latest one. I would like something like this:

No trophy: max 6 eggs

Bronze trophy: max 8 eggs

Silver trophy: max 10 eggs

Gold trophy: max 12 eggs.

[Minimalism]

I'm not sure if this is exactly related or even a compromise but what if we maintained the egg/hatchling limits but, supposing you are a Bronze Level (5 egg limit) and you are already egg-locked, if you went into a biome and saw an egg you wanted, you could click it. Then, instead off getting that message about being overburdened, you were allowed to swap it with another egg? So you could keep the egg you just clicked and choose to abandon one you currently have? If you decide to keep all your current eggs, then the sixth egg is put back to wherever it came from.

 

I'm still new to the site so I don't know if it's been tried before or if this would wreak havoc on the systems though. Thoughts?

[Fuzzbucket]

I'm not sure if this is exactly related or even a compromise but what if we maintained the egg/hatchling limits but, supposing you are a Bronze Level (5 egg limit) and you are already egg-locked, if you went into a biome and saw an egg you wanted, you could click it. Then, instead off getting that message about being overburdened, you were allowed to swap it with another egg? So you could keep the egg you just clicked and choose to abandon one you currently have? If you decide to keep all your current eggs, then the sixth egg is put back to wherever it came from.

 

I'm still new to the site so I don't know if it's been tried before or if this would wreak havoc on the systems though. Thoughts?

That's been suggested in another context and shot down for being a way to get around the limits and cherry pick. No support.

[Minimalism]

That's been suggested in another context and shot down for being a way to get around the limits and cherry pick. No support.

Oh true--I could understand how this feature might be abused. Sorry !

[NotBambi]

I'm not sure if this is exactly related or even a compromise but what if we maintained the egg/hatchling limits but, supposing you are a Bronze Level (5 egg limit) and you are already egg-locked, if you went into a biome and saw an egg you wanted, you could click it. Then, instead off getting that message about being overburdened, you were allowed to swap it with another egg? So you could keep the egg you just clicked and choose to abandon one you currently have? If you decide to keep all your current eggs, then the sixth egg is put back to wherever it came from.

 

I'm still new to the site so I don't know if it's been tried before or if this would wreak havoc on the systems though. Thoughts?

I think that option was discussed on a previous thread about increasing the limits (can't find it, as usual, I'm a disaster) and didn't get a lot of support, to say the least. Personally, I do not like that option. What happens if someone gets the message about being overburdened and thinks 10 minutes about what to swap and, at the end, does not swap? What happens to that egg? The option seems also very open-ended, one could swap forever.

 

'ed

Edited March 28, 2016 by NotBambi

[Thuban]

I think seeing the hatchy lock potential go away, while keeping the exact same egg limits is feasible. Plenty of people have worked out how to maximize their dragon number growth rates, and for them, its the hatchy lock that becomes a problem. I have run into hatchy locks enough times to be annoyed that they are tied to eggs (but not often enough for it to be a huge issue for me).

 

The egg locks help keep things in check. The hatchys.. arent really so much of a problem in my mind. I dont want to see potential for egg farming at an unlimited rate, but most hatchys I see, tend to have enough views to grow without even needing to post them.

 

 

In summary: I think taking the hatchy limit and the egg limit, and keeping them separate (so that 21 hatchy lock isnt preventing picking up eggs) could be useful. But I am NOT in favor of unlimited eggs. Hatchys.. its right there in their descriptions that they can run off and find food on their own at s2, so logically, they could stop counting against hatchy limit once they have their wings.