Freeze Switch Option

[Nyxity]

I wrote this in the Unreasonable Demands thread, but was suggested to post it here... so... I'm following suggestion.
 

Quote

 

I'm not sure if this is completely unreasonable, but remembering back when I paid attention to the forum, there was the section to suggest BSA. There was a lot of controversy in regards to the concept of unfreezing hatchlings since users could abuse such power. Nevertheless, there are likely plenty if not a great majority of users who have regrets that may have haunted them for years due to being a newbie who only saw the site as a dragon collecting site and only learning later of the true complexities going on behind the scenes regarding breeding and lineages - though this has created some beautifully messy lineages that more often than not are inbred as heck...

 

I "demand" something similar but different. Rather than a complete unfreeze, there would be a BSA (or some sort of option) that would allow a user to switch the spell between dragons. You accidentally froze the wrong hatchie? Swap the spell with an adult dragon on your scroll that is the same breed. The adult would become a hatchie that has been given eternal youth and the previously frozen hatchie will be an adult. That way users cannot abuse the unfreezing aspect.At the same time, there would be one rule in place: If the adult has already produced offspring it is not eligible to trade its adulthood for eternal youth.

 

Dang, I think that would be nice. I did so many stupid freezes before I learned just how complex the whole thing could be...

 

 

[LibbyLishly]

Support!

 

I've long supported some sort of "unfreeze" action. This is a good one because it requires some kind of cost and with limitations.

 

To prevent people from using this as a quick way to free up scroll space by freezing and insta-growing hatchies,  I'd suggest that the action not be available on a frozen hatchling within the first week or two of its freezing - or even up to a year, in light of how holiday breeds work.

Edited November 6, 2017 by LibbyLishly

[HeatherMarie]

This is a very interesting twist on the unfreezing suggestions. I could totally support this, especially if there was some sort of "cooldown" after freezing, before you could use this action, like LibbyLishly said.

[Guillotine]

I really like this idea, particularly if it's combined with the cooldown aspect Libby mentioned. Making it a balancing act also reduces the ability to abuse the freezeswap, yeah, but it feels safer to do it with the cooldown aspect.
 

[weebleroxanne]

I personally hate the freeze action, and would dearly love to see some way of undoing it. Maybe like Magma, Thunder and Ice summon...say a caretaker pink, a spitfire and a cassare team up to unfreeze hatchlings, the hatchies take three days to mature and you can only do it once a month. In lore, the caretaker leads the hatchling to a cassare that moved into an old spitfire lair. After spending three days in the cassare's magic deadening care with the sun coming through spellflame made glass of the spitfire's old cave the freeze curse is reversed.

 

[Fuzzbucket]

Anyone who hates freeze doesn't have to use it. Just saying.

 

I'm OK with an unfreeze - but with VERY strict limitations.

 

ETA one in particular that just occurred to me: A holiday dragon should ONLY be able to be unfrozen at the same time as it is breedable. So that you can't load up on Hallowe'ens, freeze as many as you can, and then unfreeze when they are no longer available to pick up.

Edited November 8, 2017 by fuzzbucket

[Nyxity]

20 hours ago, fuzzbucket said:

ETA one in particular that just occurred to me: A holiday dragon should ONLY be able to be unfrozen at the same time as it is breedable. So that you can't load up on Hallowe'ens, freeze as many as you can, and then unfreeze when they are no longer available to pick up.

 

That is the beauty of it though. If you want to unfreeze those hatchlings, you have to "sacrifice" an adult dragon of the same breed that has not parented any offspring to take its place. Therefore, if you want to unfreeze say, a Witchlight Hatchie, you have to use one of your Adult Witchlights (who hasn't given birth, because the parents suddenly become a youth again would be weird...) to trade places. So, the ratio will remain the same. It would be a case where one of your Adult Dragons trading places with one of your frozen Hatchlings. The user cannot abuse the "unfreeze" because it switched places with an Adult on your scroll.

As said, this was considered for those who ignorantly or accidentally froze a Hatchling and has deep regrets about it. Like, you ended up freezing a Hatchling that you later found has a beautiful lineage you'd like to continue. Then you have an Adult Dragon of the same breed that has a lineage you can't continue, it's lineage is horribly messy or it is inbred and thus foils your plans for it... With a freeze switch, the frozen could automatically become an Adult and turn the less desirable Adult automatically into a frozen hatchie. In other words, no one can suddenly trade or over stock because the switch will always result in one Adult and one Frozen Hatchling. You cannot trade, you cannot gain more.

 

In simple terms: The Freezing Spell is swapped. It isn't taken away.

Edited November 9, 2017 by Nyxity

[Zeditha]

I didn't fully read this at first and there's one very important bit I missed: *of the same breed*.

Without that, more severe limits would have to be in place, and there would still be ways to abuse it. With that one extra limitation, it becomes a lot simpler to manage. Full support!

 

I do think, though, that the limits should work something like this:

 - You can Unfreeze any time, as long as you have one free BSA dragon. (Or it could simply be an Action we can perform ourselves on any frozen hatchie.) As was discussed in the earlier 'should Freezing be permanent?' thread, unfreeze would inherently be limited by Freeze itself.

 - You cannot Unfreeze until several full weeks after the dragon would have been able to first breed if it had grown up on its freeze date. This is simply a restriction for Holidays; it means that you cannot Unfreeze until after the holiday on the first year you would have been able to breed it. Other, non-holiday dragons will simply have a few-week cooldown. (I think optimal would be at least 6 weeks, costing three breeding periods if you were to try to abuse the feature.)

 

I'm not sure, though, whether I think this would be better off as a BSA or an Action.

Perhaps it would be a several-stage process, involving, say, a few days in the care of a Cassare to weaken the spell, and then the help of a Kingcrowne or a Script (the only other non-holiday, non-rare Magi element dragons are the Magi (which already has a BSA) and Moonstone (which would not seem to be a powerful spellcaster)) to transfer the spell across to another dragon.

It could still take several days, or even a week, to complete as an Action, during which time both the hatchling and the adult selected are unable to breed.

[LibbyLishly]

Personally I find it needlessly complicated to try to shoehorn this onto a breed as a BSA. We are apparently magical enough ourselves that we can freeze; there's no reason why we also shouldn't be able to perform the unfreeze spell.

 

I also think cooldown times should be consistent across the board; I don't like making special restrictions for Holiday breeds. Either make it a full year for everyone or two to six weeks for everyone. 

[angelicdragonpuppy]

I haven't read the old suggestion thread in a while, but if I remember right, the old unfreeze was already pretty carefully limited with time and number restrictions. So adding something like this seems like unnecessary complication on top of complication. I wouldn't mind it if it was implemented in place of some of the other restrictions, though--but piling everything together seems too much.

[Zeditha]

4 hours ago, LibbyLishly said:

I also think cooldown times should be consistent across the board; I don't like making special restrictions for Holiday breeds. Either make it a full year for everyone or two to six weeks for everyone. 

 

It would have to be a year, then; it's not completely horrendous for someone looking to undo a past mistake but it seems like it could be far too easy to find some loophole that could be an advantage in Holidays. (e.g. picking up hatchlings from the end of Holiday walls after Freezing a maximum of new hatchies, or using previous years' messies.)

 

With that time limitation and the swapping mechanic, that should be sufficient restriction. Now it just comes back down to the 'Should Freezing be Permanent?' argument that did have its own thread... Although, in this case, freezing is permanent, in a way. Not for the individual dragon, but the total number of frozen dragons cannot decrease.

 

I do think that the same freezing spell should not be able to be swapped more than once; when you swap the spell, it should take a few days, and you should be able to stop the process any time before its completion. That, as well as a password-input protection, should be suitable chance to save an accidental swap that no future chances would be needed. (Although then, it would be introducing a new irreversible freezing process, which might well cause similar threads to these...)

[EscapistLore]

So erm...

 

What would stop me from massing a large amount of messy golds, and systematically freezing CB gold hatchlings so I could freeze swap and then have 24 cb gold hatchlings all at once? That seems a bit.. overkill.

 

Unless you mean the hatchling would immediately grow up on your scroll, and not merely become unfrozen? 

[Nyxity]

^

Hence the name "Freeze Switch". What your proposing would mean all the CB golds you have would automatically become adults if they switch places with your large mass of messy lineages that are fully grown - in turn you'd have a hoard of frozen messy gold Hatchlings. As it goes, the theory behind this is to help those who wound up freezing a great lineage unknowingly or accidentally, but has another dragon of the same breed that is an adult, but has an unfavorable, messy or inbred lineage that they can do nothing with - other than go along with casting out randoms with it or chucking the dragon into the wilderness page.

 

PS - Does this imply you are one of those people who are able to catch CB golds as though they were commons? If so, envy!!!!

 

----

 

Anyway, the talk above regarding restrictions... I haven't any huge ideas about those and some of the suggestions got a bit complicated for my semi-broken brain to comprehend... mainly the use of many commons to complete various steps to transfer the spell... 

All I remember when thinking of this whole thing on whim, was that the switch would also work like revive... you can only use it once between specific dragons. Basically:

 

"Oh, this dragon already traded a freezing spell with this hatchling! Sorry, he likes being an adult now and doesn't want to return to being a hatchling." - "Oh, this hatchling already traded a freezing spell with this dragon! Sorry, he likes being a hatchling again and doesn't want to return to being an adult." 

Edited November 11, 2017 by Nyxity

[Zeditha]

Or the action could simply be greyed out, or if it's a BSA then the dragons in question wouldn't show up.

And I meant that those particular two dragons would never be able to freeze switch again, even with other dragons.

 

On the CB Golds thing - yes, you would be able to do that. But after catching and freezing those Golds, you'd have to wait a year since the last one was frozen, and then freeze switch them all at once - then you'd have 24 CB Golds on your scroll that all have the same 'grew up on' date. Well done.

(They would very definitely not be tradeable.)

[Nyxity]

^

Ah, yeah. I was trying to keep in mind all the posts regarding how the whole thing would be implemented... I'm not good at that Though, yeah... what you wrote pretty much is what I was thinking. The whole wait a year kind of adds up to my original thought as well... I hadn't pinned it down to a year, but I had thought that the hatchlings you'd be able to swap "ages" with would be your oldest ones first... The have to have them on your scroll for at least a year does pretty much cut that clean and simple... 

[LibbyLishly]

Since people are taking about wanting to unfreeze old holidays, it's probably a good time to bring back across-the-board unfreeze suggestions that don't give super-special treatment to any one group of players.

[HeatherMarie]

I still really like this idea. It's a very different take on reversing a freeze you regret, and a long cooldown would mean no one could take advantage of it to get around scroll limits. It also requires a bit of sacrifice since you'd have to give up an adult you have to "switch" the freeze, which I think is a good way to stop people from using it all willy-nilly.

[Ruby Eyes]

I would totally like to swap the freeze from my old little Snow Angel to my new lineaged was-supposed-to-replace-my-released-Wrapping-Wing-freezie that I forgot to freeze and never intend to breed anyway.

 

Means, I'd support this if it was without the same-breed limit

[Nyxity]

You'd be able to do that even with the same breed limit. You'd just need to find another Wrapping Wing that has a lineage you would like to continue (if you have one that you already froze by accident, great. If not, then grab a new one and have freeze it) and have it trade places with the freezie. CBs and bred dragons wouldn't matter.

[Ruby Eyes]

The issue is I *released* the frozen CB WW in order to get an adult one, which worked. I just forgot to freeze the lineaged replacement, and I don't *want* to release my CB Snow Angel freezie.

Since no breed limits would be exceeded, the breed shouldn't matter either.

Edited December 27, 2017 by Ruby Eyes

[Nyxity]

Perhaps... It is an adult and a hatchie switching... *Muses* Are there any contests out there where no hatchies can be counted, only adults? That is the only way I can see such a thing being abused...

Edited December 27, 2017 by Nyxity

[maratrekkan]

Interesting idea... and a good option.