Raise odds of successful zombification

[Cinnamin Draconna]

I don't really see any compelling arguments here as to why the chance should be increased.

 

There's already four tiers of success chance (day time, night time, 31st of month, Halloween), which match the four states of zombie visibility. Those seem sufficient while presenting enough challenge that you need to dedicate some effort to getting a ton of zombies.

Good to know.. it's nice to see you confirm something.

 

Now, what about the Kill limit? Do we really still need a Kill limit?

 

I've had one night time success, so I know it's possible. So I'm not worried about raising the success rate (tho I wouldn't complain if it was raised), but the Kill Limit could be a real issue if I decide to put more effort into making more Zombies.

[olympe]

So on every 31st of the month the success rates are higher? Had no idea about that~

*sigh* 2 months left for that 31st date in this year

If I was going to try for a zombie, I'd do it on the 31st of a month during the night time. Considering that the next 31st happens to be Halloween, I'm sure many of you will succeed.

[HeatherMarie]

Okay, I'm glad that TJ confirmed the "tiers" of success rates. That makes me feel a little better, and I can't wait for Halloween!

 

But I do agree that the Kill Limit should be raised.

[silver_tiger]

I am also glad to see him confirm that chances are going to be better on the 31st and Halloween.

 

In that light, I don't really see the need to up the kill slots either. I mean 5 at a time could be frustrating, but like people have pointed out they're meant to be rare. I personally don't support any more kill slots, since I now plan to take my time about getting these things; even if I wait two months in between attempts it'll be better than having to wait a whole year.

[Sidonie]

I think is fine 5 slots, there are other dragons more difficult to catch.

 

But, can you kill any dragon to create a zombie or it's necesary to be recent?

 

 

 

 

*sorry for my english*

[Obscure_Trash]

But, can you kill any dragon to create a zombie or it's necesary to be recent?

Any dragon of any age, but please ask questions in the help section, not the suggestions section. ^^

[Tears in Rain]

Support, so much! Even today I had 1 out of 10 adults turn, and I was hoping to collect all the Zombie sprites, at this rate is will just never happen... I'm already getting tired of getting a ton of tombstones on my scroll, I wish it were a little more rewarding.

 

I'd love to see the chances raised. And yeah, I wouldn't mind more kill slots either, why not.

Edited October 31, 2016 by Tears in Rain

[Shajana]

I really can't see where we have the higher chance to get a Zombie. I got 1 this year.

[Obscure_Trash]

I really can't see where we have the higher chance to get a Zombie. I got 1 this year.

How many did you try? I went back through my past year's stats and on Halloween have ended up with a 10 - 20% success rate. I think people are confusing "higher rate of success on Halloween" with "a generally high rate/rate higher than 50%". So if you take into account that we can try any time of year now - not just Halloween - the odds do technically come out higher, even if the Halloween rate was left the same and the other tiers were scaled after it.

 

That being said, I think Odeen counted 'em out in another thread, and if you collect hatchies and adults, that's 45 sprites to collect. Just to get one of each. And that works out to 15 adults? And I do believe adults are harder to get, not to mention a slightly longer wait to trying since you can't time adults out.

 

5 kills every two weeks, 26 biweekly periods in a year. So let's say you try every two weeks for a total of 130 adults. Let's just take the low end of my Halloween success and apply it evenly across all the other dates (bad practice, but we don't know what the success scaling actually is). If you get lucky and really do hit that 10% success rate (chances for that seem low, since it's probably a flat chance, similar to summoning) you can get up to 13 adults a year. Which isn't terrible but that isn't even all the adult sprites.

/bad math since we don't know any numbers, but blugh, it's all I got

 

So yeah. Now that I've gone through another Halloween and tried on a few other dates (although missed trying on any other 31st dates), I would also like to see upped rates or at least upped kill slots.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

While I'm ok with upped kill slots I'd rather see upped chances or a zombie curse BSA that makes new zombies. I don't mind killing dragons to make zombies... but having to slaughter a whole bunch just to get very small amounts of zombies out of it does make me feel bad. The point of DC is to raise dragons, not kill them, after all--and when the chances of success are so low that everyone who wants zombies feels the need to kill ten things a month for months on end, it doesn't seem like the best thing to encourage D':

[silver_tiger]

...yeah, after going through Halloween and seeing my chances there, I kind of have to agree. I don't *mind* killing my dragons, but it's annoying when I have several ones that I really want to turn because they have a cool code or sprite and only one of them turns. That's an awesome code that's now assigned to a dead dragon, lovely.

 

I don't know about upping the kill slots, but maybe the chances could be a little better?

[purplenewt]

While I'm ok with upped kill slots I'd rather see upped chances or a zombie curse BSA that makes new zombies. I don't mind killing dragons to make zombies... but having to slaughter a whole bunch just to get very small amounts of zombies out of it does make me feel bad. The point of DC is to raise dragons, not kill them, after all--and when the chances of success are so low that everyone who wants zombies feels the need to kill ten things a month for months on end, it doesn't seem like the best thing to encourage D':

I do have to agree with you there. I was originally going to say there's no need to up the success rate because if it were that easy then people would just get bored again once we have all of our much coveted zombie sprites on our scrolls...but the WAY we have to obtain zombies can only be done through killing...and this is a "raising dragons" game site...not "so much slaughter and so little gain" game. :\

 

I have always been a supporter of adding more kill slots, but maybe, at LEAST for future Halloweens, the success rate could be much higher? I wouldn't suggest anything over 50%, but for the amount of effort everyone's putting in to try to get these zombies...I mean, why not if it's just for one day? And anyhow, why tease us so much by adding so many amazing zombie sprites and make it possible any time of year now if you're not going to at least up the percentage by just a little bit on Halloween? The one day a year where everything spooky happens?

[Dianacat777]

Today's odds were raised (that's pretty hard to deny, looking at the zombie thread on the forum; some people were unlucky, but I've had zombieless Halloweens in the past, too. And this was the first Halloween I got more than one success), but on the off-season at night I was getting about one in thirty. Forty? I wasn't counting, but it was a lot. Weeks' crops of dragons and nothing to show for them. It was terribly disheartening, but it did make success all the more elating when that one hatchling finally zombified.

 

While normally I would say keep zombies hellishly rare, they're not exactly supposed to be encouraged... we were just given all these new sprites, and Dragon Cave is a collector's game at heart. I don't think the current rate of zombification is really... sustainable for the 'gotta catch 'em all' nature of the game. It'll take years, and thousands of dead dragons, to get ~20 sprites. It's not even something that can be worked out with science and invested curiosity - it's just RNG, and slim RNG at that.

 

I think raising the number of dragon kills we're allowed at a time would help. Ten instead of five, or something. Otherwise, zombie hatchlings are relatively spammable, but zombie adults are all but impossible.

 

I really like the idea of a zombie spreading BSA - even if it did have a high death rate, or something. (Maybe something that ups the zombification chance of revival?) The current creation process involves mass slaughter for barely any return, and that's nooot really what I'd think would have been intended. I know that if past rules were still in place, my scroll would have been cinders by now. From this month alone.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Dianacat777

[Rally Vincent]

I would support a different approach on odds. If the odds went down with ever successful turns, they could start reasonable high and decrease so people won't be able to make a hoard of zombies easily. This would allow sprite collectors to get sprites in a reasonable amount of time without allowing for too many zombies.

 

Even more perfect if the chances for each subtype were independent from each other. E.g. someone with 5 Western zombies,but no two-headed, would have low chances of getting another western, but still reasonable chances of getting a two-headed.

 

[Pokemonfan13]

I would support a different approach on odds. If the odds went down with ever successful turns, they could start reasonable high and decrease so people won't be able to make a hoard of zombies easily. This would allow sprite collectors to get sprites in a reasonable amount of time without allowing for too many zombies.

 

Even more perfect if the chances for each subtype were independent from each other. E.g. someone with 5 Western zombies,but no two-headed, would have low chances of getting another western, but still reasonable chances of getting a two-headed.

The problem is, sprite collectors need a hoard. That's the whole problem. With my scroll goals of two of each gender of adults and one of each gender/stage for hatchlings (7 per variety), I calculated last night that I need 105 zombies. Even a minimal collector of one of each gender/stage (5 per variety), that's 75 zombies. So I don't think a high chance at the beginning just to get even more frustratingly low before even the most conservative completionist collectors get to a minimum is workable.

 

Especially since a lot of the people who really care about getting their zombies already have a decent number obtained under the current system. So they wouldn't be able to take advantage of the high odds in the beginning. I, for example, between old zombies and working hard since the expansion of the breed, have 26. More if you count some duplicates from years back that I currently have shoved at the back of my scroll. So that would only be fair if it only counted zombies created after the new system was put into place, and then the people who already have a minor hoard would be able to get a big leg up on the others, making it unfair again.

 

It would be a great idea if we still only had the single variety of zombie. But unless the cutoff of "hoard" is set absurdly high (like 100, to give people some wiggle room), it just doesn't work.

 

Edit: I misunderstood your last bit. Yes, it is improved if you separate the odds of each type. But I still don't particularly like it. Like I said, 5 for each is a reasonable minimum, so unless you don't start significantly lowering the odds until after 5, you're just making the last necessary zombies annoyingly hard to get. (and obviously I'd prefer a higher number, like 7. If what you're really trying to do is to prevent people from collecting zombies like they might collect Balloons: pages upon pages of them, I'd set the cutoff when the odds stop really dropping at 10 per breed. It's a nice round number, and it lets collectors have a little flexibility before things get annoying)

Edited November 1, 2016 by Pokemonfan13

[Rally Vincent]

The problem is, sprite collectors need a hoard.

From TJ's post I get he doesn't want to increase chances per se. With my suggestion, we could at least get a minimum of the sprite we need, and after that, we'd have to deal with TJ's intended chances. It is a compromise of sorts.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

From TJ's post I get he doesn't want to increase chances per se. With my suggestion, we could at least get a minimum of the sprite we need, and after that, we'd have to deal with TJ's intended chances. It is a compromise of sorts.

I would rather have to collect a great deal slowly than know that every new success is shooting myself in the foot.

 

 

[Guillotine]

I would rather have to collect a great deal slowly than know that every new success is shooting myself in the foot.

Same.

 

As a better compromise, could Halloween's chances be boosted at least? I wouldn't mind the abysmal chances the rest of the year if Halloween was less of a crapshoot and more of a coin flip...

[Imzadi]

I'd like to see something improve the odds. 4 adults in 8 years of trying. I do a little better with hatchies, but it's still abysmal.

[VixenDra]

I had a lot this Halloween (15/38) and I hate to see how uneven this is for people, some end up with 0 or just 1-4 and some got not that bad results - as I did (though sadly I didn't get the rare ones:( just the commons, excluding 1 s1 wyrm; I use only CBs -and CB Xenos are user-driven rares; 2-h Lindwurm is also pretty elusive in the biomes to me)

[Cinnamin Draconna]

Raising the chance of success would only help me a little. I don't collect hatchlings, only adults, so I'm limited to 5 tries every two weeks. Personally, I could live with the current numbers, but I need more Kill slots so it's not all hurry up and wait.

[Tears in Rain]

I'm not sure if it's ok to bump this with the last post in Nov '16, but this suggestion has my full support! I think that the odds need to be raised significantly.

 

Most of my adult dragon sets are now complete. With the exception of freezing hatchling sets (which is super annoying with the existing limit by the way, but ok, I'll wait for ~41 more weeks to reach my goal), I have to say that my game has basically turned into 'raise dragons to kill them and then shake your head at how they all disintegrate' for me. It feels awful. This game should be about collecting dragons, not about slaughtering them! And trust me I'm trying to do the former, I want my sets of cool Zombies, but at this point this goal just seems impossible.

 

Looking at other users' reports on their Zombification results, where successful turns seem really rare for any given account, I don't understand why some ppl think that the current ratios are totally fine. Sure it may seem like a couple Zombies every now and then being posted about demonstrate how Zombifying 'works', but if you apply this to a single user things will look much more frustrating except some lucky few maybe. I agree that Zombies should be 'rare'/hard to make, but come on! Not like this.

 

I don't support the suggestion to raise the kill limit (alone at least) because of the reason I already mentioned above - I think DC is a dragon collecting game, and this would just shift it toward more killing against raising.

 

So yeah, I wanna say, yes, please raise the success rate for Zombies!

 

The Zombie BSA similar to Vampires' Bite sounds interesting too.

 

 

 

Putting my rant from the Zombie discussion here, because this is exactly how the current situation makes me feel:

14 zombification attempts today (10 adults, 4 hatchlings) - all disintegrated. 

As a set collector, I started to hate this Zombie thing. Even with the 'good' (not!) Halloween success rate it would literally take years and years to get a full set of each.

 

Since the update with all-year-round Zombie creation in August I've been attempting it twice a month with adults, and so far I have 2 out of 31 I need. Looks a bit more promising with hatchlings but still not good. This just feels like endless dragon slaughtering with no reward, such a waste. 

Edited January 31, 2017 by Tears in Rain

[FoxintheBox4]

I feel like the odds now that we can make Zombies throughout the whole year are so much worse than when we made them only on Halloween

I haven't managed to get a single Zombie apart on Halloween and I've been killing them on every 17th and 31st to try for them on 31st of the months

 

 

But I'm using adult Zombie fodders from the time I started playing DC it might be that old dragons are affected by old time of zombifications and that's why none of my ever turn if I try out of Halloween It's unlikely, but it sure feels like it

Edited January 31, 2017 by WoLfgIrLyS

[maylin]

I LOVE the idea of a bite BSA for Zombies!

It would fit so good to the idea of zombies!

Maybe 50% success, 20% death and 30% Dodge chance?

Edited January 31, 2017 by maylin

[Painter]

Gonna re-post this here:

 

Taking a wild guess that it's somewhere around 1/15 during zombie hours, and that anyone willing to put this much effort in is ONLY doing it during zombie hours.

 

If you want to collect exactly one sprite of each, that is a total of 45 zombie dragons:

 

If I dedicated all 14 non-egg slots to fog-killing hatchlings, and succeeded roughly once per 14 dragons, that would take about 7 months to get all the hatchling sprites (30). That's a rate of 1 hatchling per week, which equals roughly 30 weeks, which is ~7 months...

 

Which is, and I know this goes without saying, not worth it, and extremely unrealistic. The math is off anyway, since acquiring 14 hatchlings will also take 2-4 days of raising and hatching eggs. I have other dragons to raise, I can't spend 7 months only coming by once or twice a week to raise hatchlings exclusively to kill...

 

So if you didn't want to fog-kill your hatchlings...

 

Then kill is the only option. If you were successful every ~1/15 times, that would take 60 months, or, you know... 5 years, to get every single sprite.

 

15 tries = 6 weeks of work = successful once per 1.5 months -> 45 dragons x 6 weeks = 270 weeks. 270 weeks is roughly 62 months which is roughly 5! freaking! years!

 

---

 

Unless the rate is much, much higher than I'm guessing, I really want the rate to be raised -- maybe specifically for the 31st? There are ways they can be still kept rare while giving dedicated players a little help. There aren't that many 31st in a year, for example.

 

Or the kill limit to have a drastically reduced cooldown. Either would be equally fine tbh. Make it rare, okay -- but you're also limiting the zombie fodder you can get by letting you kill only X amount of dragons. That's two large constraints against getting zombies, and it's just too much.

Edited January 31, 2017 by Painter