Raise odds of successful zombification

[Fuzzbucket]

Yeah - me too - and a well over 50% dodge rate. The chances could really use tweaking.

[StormWizard212]

@Fuzzbucket did you have a better result with kills vs. dodges this month, by any chance?

 

Out of the 7 dragons I attempted to kill, only 2 dodged which was a much better result than I've had in the past. Hopefully the dodge rate has been lowered a bit and this will make it less frustrating going forward. I still didn't manage to successfully revive any of the 5 I killed, but being able to kill them more easily with less likelihood of dodging made it a lot quicker and less frustrating. Fingers crossed this trend of fewer dodges continues!

Edited March 31, 2018 by StormWizard212

[Fuzzbucket]

Four killed and disintegrated (I bit a few days ago, so couldn't try a fifth.); six dodges. So - my experience is of no improvement.

[TJ09]

Many of the complaints involve getting enough inventory to even try zombifying, which is an issue that is addressable separately from zombie success rates themselves. I'm likely going to try two tweaks around the kill action, and see what downstream effects they have:

• Having the kill limit scale with trophies. It'll probably move from a flat five to four-per-trophy-level.
• Changing kill "dodging" to reset every hour instead of every day. I think it provides some interesting flavor, but it disproportionately affects zombie "fodder" more than anything else, and there's no particular reason it needs to be a daily thing.

These may not be enough, but I think starting with the top of the funnel is the right place to avoid overshooting and making zombies too common.

[StormWizard212]

Thanks so much for this update, @TJ09!  I really like the idea of kill limits scaling with trophies. The more opportunities for zombie creation, the better our luck is going to be. I think these changes will be really helpful and hopefully people will have a little more luck getting the dragons they're after.  Thanks again! 

[angelicdragonpuppy]

While I’m grateful for any change (especially a change that comes with a promise for more change if needed), I think having a better success rate but the same amount of kills would be a better start. I also think having a higher success rate on kill with a day reset is better than an hourly reset.

 

Reasons:

1. Let’s assume there’s a 10% chance of making a zombie. Obviously this is a throwaway guess, I’m just using it to show something.

 

Now:

20 kills = 2 Zombies

Alternately, if the odds of success are doubled:

5 kills = 1 zombie

 

That’s a lot less wasteful and frustrating AND still keeps them rarer (but much better than current!) at a rate of about 24 a year versus 48 with the higher kill limits. And again, those numbers are probably higher than the real turn rate, I just wanted to show the idea.

 

2. Zombie hatchies. I’m already done with the adults (thank God!), which means via fogging to death I can try a limitless amount of hatchies. A higher kill rate doesn’t help me at all with that... and I’m just trying for S2s. People collecting those and S1s are going to tear their hair out even more.

 

3. Now, with dodge—more than once I’ve stayed up until justtt after midnight to attempt to kill and turn a second batch per month. If they dodge, an hourly reset wouldn’t help unless I want to stay up until 1 AM. Conversely, with a higher success rate, while dodges would last longer there’d be less failure when it matters most.

 

 

 

[Guillotine]

I have to agree with ADP, I don't think increasing the amount of kill attempts will help that much compared to just... raising the turn success rate in the first place.

 

e: For reference, I've long since stopped trying because the turn rate is so low compared to the sheer number of sprites that no amount of easier kills would help. 

 

Edited April 2, 2018 by Guillotine

[HeatherMarie]

I totally 100% support an actual higher success rate... But since TJ seems a bit reluctant to do that, I will be very very very grateful for *any* tweaks that make things a bit easier, or at least less horribly frustrating. More kills slots means more overall chances at once, so if there is some sort of set percentage of success or somesuch, more kill slots will help in the long run. (I'm horrible at percentages, but if, say, every 15th kill turns into a zombie, that's currently a month and a half of trying, 5 every two weeks, but if we had like 8 kill slots it would only take a month. Am I making sense? Not sure.) Dodges are something that reaaalllllly annoy me, especially because I often have less then 20 fodder dragons at any one time, so when 11 in a row dodge that severely limits my options. I would be very willing to stay up an extra hour until a dodge resets.

[Fuzzbucket]

7 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

 Dodges are something that reaaalllllly annoy me, especially because I often have less then 20 fodder dragons at any one time, so when 11 in a row dodge that severely limits my options. I would be very willing to stay up an extra hour until a dodge resets.

 

This, very much. Dodges are the WORST !

[Whirlaway]

Dodges are what are really annoying to me when it comes to zombie tries. I would like to have my zombie attempts stop avoiding as much, along with a little bit more sucess with making zombies (or more kill slots).

[Fuzzbucket]

I agree 1000%. I have just had a LARGE majority of dodges; it is such a waste of time.

[perzephone]

On 9/22/2016 at 6:45 PM, Cinnamin Draconna said:

That said, my option would be that if the chance of success is going to be so very low most of the time, then the kill limit should either be greatly increased or done away with. Since killing too many dragons no longer burns your scroll, the kill limit is pretty much useless anyway. Those who are willing to kill their dragons for zombie fodder are going to do it regardless.. and those who think killing pixels is an abomination, aren't going to use the kill function anyway. So why do we need a kill limit anymore anyway?????

 

All this and more. It is completely optional to kill, or risk killing your dragons, and I imagine there are fewer of us who make Zombie attempts than those who avoid it. I'd love to see the Kill ability limit brought in line w/the Freeze limit - along w/the limit going up depending on your trophy level.

[Genjar]

I've had several great lineages ruined because someone killed a dragon down the line. Defeats the point of trying to collect interesting or messy lineages, when you find out later that they've been pruned to next-to-nothing. So yes, it affects other players.

 

Frankly, I'd rather have the scroll-burning feature back than have the limit increased even more.

Edited May 21, 2018 by Genjar

[HeatherMarie]

2 hours ago, Genjar said:

I've had several great lineages ruined because someone killed a dragon down the line. Defeats the point of trying to collect interesting or messy lineages, when you find out later that they've been pruned to next-to-nothing. So yes, it affects other players.

 

Frankly, I'd rather have the scroll-burning feature back than have the limit increased even more.

 

I recently had an awesome messy lineage become a faux-3rd-gen because of someone killing their dragons.... It sucks, but it's completely their right to do so. If you don't own the dragons it's not your call. The scroll-burning feature would completely kill zombie attempts 100%, so I very much doubt that would ever happen unless zombies were just totally retired. I know it's frustrating for a beautiful lineage to change unexpectedly, but that's the risk you take when you play with lineages that aren't totally confined to your scroll. 

[HeatherMarie]

*bump*

 

I just had six dodges in a row. In a row! This is sooooo frustrating. If there is some reasoning for why zombie success chances shouldn't/won't be raised, okay, but can we at least tone down the dodges a little? PLEEEASSSE? It's one thing to kill 5 dragons and not get any zombies out of it, but when you can't even *attempt* getting a zombie because you can't *kill* the dang things it's so much worse!

[StormWizard212]

3 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

*bump*

 

I just had six dodges in a row. In a row! This is sooooo frustrating. If there is some reasoning for why zombie success chances shouldn't/won't be raised, okay, but can we at least tone down the dodges a little? PLEEEASSSE? It's one thing to kill 5 dragons and not get any zombies out of it, but when you can't even *attempt* getting a zombie because you can't *kill* the dang things it's so much worse!

 

Have you seen any improvement in the past few months? Last time I killed a few dragons as Zombie fodder, I had a much easier time than I have in the past and I seemed to have noticeably fewer dodges. I assumed something had changed behind the scenes. Did I just get a lucky streak?

Edited June 14, 2018 by StormWizard212

[HeatherMarie]

For a bit I thought something had changed as well, until I got those 6 dodges in a row. And we haven't heard anything from TJ about those two tweaks he mentioned several months ago, so I have no idea if anything has actually changed or not.

 

Edit: Someone in the zombie success thread just mentioned that out of 11 fodder 10 dodged. That definitely doesn't seem like anything has changed.

Edited June 14, 2018 by HeatherMarie

[StormWizard212]

12 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

Someone in the zombie success thread just mentioned that out of 11 fodder 10 dodged. That definitely doesn't seem like anything has changed.

 

Yeah, that is a lot. In that case, I would really like to see this changed so that the difficulty lies in reviving the dragons as Zombies, rather than in the killing. I think there are currently too many hurdles to jump through to get Zombies which makes it a bit frustrating. 

[HeatherMarie]

Too many hurdles, exactly. If it was *just* about the success of revivals becoming zombies (or even *just* about the success of killing, with a high success rate if the dragon was actually killed), or *just* about knowing what times have better chances.... There are just too many hurdles. When you can barely even kill any in order to *attempt* the revival, to me that's much more frustrating then simply the revivals not working. It shouldn't be so incredibly difficult at *every* single step.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

Can the success rate be raised? Please? Please? I don't need an 80% turn rate but oh, say, more than one every three months would be nice??? Endlessly collecting things just to stab them for no reason is not fun.

 

Also, this, still:

 

While I’m grateful for any change (especially a change that comes with a promise for more change if needed), I think having a better success rate but the same amount of kills would be a better start. I also think having a higher success rate on kill with a day reset is better than an hourly reset.

 

Reasons:

1. Let’s assume there’s a 10% chance of making a zombie. Obviously this is a throwaway guess, I’m just using it to show something.

 

Now:

20 kills = 2 Zombies

Alternately, if the odds of success are doubled:

5 kills = 1 zombie

 

That’s a lot less wasteful and frustrating AND still keeps them rarer (but much better than current!) at a rate of about 24 a year versus 48 with the higher kill limits. And again, those numbers are probably higher than the real turn rate, I just wanted to show the idea.

 

2. Zombie hatchies. I’m already done with the adults (thank God!), which means via fogging to death I can try a limitless amount of hatchies. A higher kill rate doesn’t help me at all with that... and I’m just trying for S2s. People collecting those and S1s are going to tear their hair out even more.

 

3. Now, with dodge—more than once I’ve stayed up until justtt after midnight to attempt to kill and turn a second batch per month. If they dodge, an hourly reset wouldn’t help unless I want to stay up until 1 AM. Conversely, with a higher success rate, while dodges would last longer there’d be less failure when it matters most.

[Fuzzbucket]

Yes please - SOMETHING at least. Today I have 2 dodged and five disintegrated.

[HeatherMarie]

Echoing the pleases! The 31st is supposed to be the 2nd-best chance of getting zombies, 2nd only to Halloween, and yet many people in the zombie success thread have gotten *nothing* today. I only had 3 kill slots available, but I got 3 dodges before even getting a successful kill, and all 3 kills disintegrated. I'm not going to stop trying because I'm stubborn, but this really really isn't fun at all anymore.

[deleted]

May go off topic: has anyone experienced difficulties in killing Zyumorphs that:

 

a. were not used to summon

b. were used to summon

 

I am asking because I've been trying to kill a Yellow Zyumorph (not CB, for loves :P) to test it. It dodged every single day for 2 weeks.

[Whirlaway]

28 minutes ago, Quetzals said:

May go off topic: has anyone experienced difficulties in killing Zyumorphs that:

 

a. were not used to summon

b. were used to summon

 

I am asking because I've been trying to kill a Yellow Zyumorph (not CB, for loves :P) to test it. It dodged every single day for 2 weeks.

 

I've never tried that, especially considering all Zyus only would become western zombies. It might just be that that specific Zyu does not want to die, lol.

[VixenDra]

I had no zombies since at least 31 tries (it doesnt cover attempts made after the latest zombie on the same day the zombie was made...), seen may 1/30 cases... wasting 30 dragons and not even gettign one zombie just screams for a fix... Sorry, this is no longer a challenge, it is just years of a mass waste of dragons (that need to be raised to a certain stage first).

And this all for what? For a non-vanishing tombstone since the visibility window is not only short but also when most of people should be asleep... not even half as rewardign as it should be considering the efforts and resources wasted...

 

Kills won't help that much, because this doesn't increase the amount of fodders one needs, just helps clearing the fodders batch a bit quicker.. stil most likely resulting in 0 zombies and needing to refill the fodder stock even sooner... 

 

Problem is, subtypes like 2-headed leviathan&lindwurm or wyrm, only have 1 cave-rare fodder breed ALL zombie makers mass hunt for, and are not even available in the store(not to mention one would have to buy LOADS before they get a basic zombie set, that's months if not years of just buying one of these if they were available in the first place, if one ignores the tombstones that is - after all, tombstone is what you see 99% of time...). Even the Red-Tailed Wyrm is scarce, and even worse if the tombstone matters to the maker - like to me (during release I picked Forest because it looked like they drop there best, but aparently I haven't seen one there for weeks:/)...

 

So one of the sollutions would be for the first breeds of a new subtype to always be commons and uber-commons - to avoid a breed's drought the way e.g. Baikalas are..

and the other, much more needed, would be to at least triple the riddiculusly low success odds... I even dare say it won't even make a difference yet and would need to be like 10 times increased before we can consider it reasonably rare, especially since it requires loads of dragons to die, often of rarish breeds.

 

 

 

As for dodge, I keep seeing the same dragons dodge me again and again:/ Worst is there are Baikalas and Mageias among these:/ Yes, hourly cooldown would be better. Right now, if they dodge both times before halloween (on 17th and 31st), that's a year more to wait before TRYING again (due to how scarce these are while not having an alternative)... not to mention they'll still most likely desintegrate instead of turning...

 

Edited August 7, 2018 by VixenDra