Remove Individual Dragons from Breeding 'Pool'

[GhostMouse]

I searched and didn't see this suggested, sorry if it's out there somewhere!

 

I would love to be able to remove certain dragons of mine from the breeding 'pool' of my scroll. I'm sure many of us have messy dragons that we're attached to for some reason or another (many of my original dragons are incredibly messy but quite a few of them also have very useful BSAs!) You don't want to release them but you never plan to breed them either.

 

I would like to have a toggle/checkbox/something on each dragon's Actions page that lets you choose Available for Breeding: Yes/No. If No is selected, that dragon will not show up when you filter by 'Available for Breeding' (just like unbreedables and hatchlings) or in other dragon's lists when selecting a mate. If Yes is selected then nothing changes at all. You should be able to switch back and forth as often as you like, with no restrictions (it's not giving you an enormous advantage, just simplifying your scroll). Yes would be selected by default, so new players would not be hindered by it before they knew about it, and so anyone who doesn't want to use it never has to think about it. Putting the choice on the Actions page means that if someone changes their mind and forgets a dragon is not available for breeding, they will already be on the page to fix it when they try to breed that dragon.

 

If a dragon breeds with another, is toggled to "No" within the 7 day cooldown, and then toggled back to "Yes" within that same cooldown, they should still have to wait however many days are left on cooldown, just like normal.

 

If you need lore reasons, maybe some of your dragons have started a religious cult and taken vows of celibacy? I don't really think this needs lore reasons. I also don't think breeding status should be visible to other players (just as it is not visible now), unless cross-scroll breeding becomes a thing.

[Dragon_Arbock]

I would actually like a more simplified system- like an option where when I go to 'Breed', only dragons that I've bred a dragon to before would show up (mostly cause my laptop hates loading the whole list of dragons by default), and if you want to breed to a new mate, you could enter their code or something.. I don't think it's necessary to disable breeding individually on dragons, as you can already choose not to breed them.

Edited December 13, 2017 by Dragon_Arbock

[The Dragoness]

I'm in favor of this. I've made the mistake of breeding messy dragons instead of CBs numerous times. I do think the idea can be simplified even more though. Entering codes for a new mate would be okay, but kind of a hassle if you're breeding multiple new pairs at once. 

[Dragon_Arbock]

22 minutes ago, The Dragoness said:

I'm in favor of this. I've made the mistake of breeding messy dragons instead of CBs numerous times. I do think the idea can be simplified even more though. Entering codes for a new mate would be okay, but kind of a hassle if you're breeding multiple new pairs at once. 

Well that's another whole deal- I wish CBs had some visible marker outside of their lack of a lineage page. I've manually sorted all my CBs into a group now, but it would be nice if it would do it for me or something.

Actually that could be an idea- when breeding, be able to pick from groups. There's a lot of ways this could go.

[Guillotine]

I would really like a way to remove dragons from the breding pool, personally, and I would not like having to add a code to introduce a new mate considering how few of my dragons have set mates.

 

I feel like adding a CB distinction/making it so that you can use filters in the breeding page would be nice too, but it's also outside the scope of the thread.
 

[Dragon_Arbock]

11 minutes ago, Guillotine said:

I would really like a way to remove dragons from the breding pool, personally, and I would not like having to add a code to introduce a new mate considering how few of my dragons have set mates.
 

For the code thing- CBs wouldn't have set mates, but most of my gen 2s and onwards are checkers and usually will never have another mate, so having only mates that it has already been bred to show up would work for them. Just like if it was an option or something, not a replacement for the current system in its entirety.
It's taxing to load 500+ dragons when I only care about the top result.

 

I guess like, I could see Actions -> Breed -> popup window that asks 'Select from previous mates' or 'Show whole list'

Edited December 13, 2017 by Dragon_Arbock

[Jazeki]

36 minutes ago, Guillotine said:

I would really like a way to remove dragons from the breding pool, personally, and I would not like having to add a code to introduce a new mate considering how few of my dragons have set mates.

 

I feel like adding a CB distinction/making it so that you can use filters in the breeding page would be nice too, but it's also outside the scope of the thread.
 

This. Also, I name most of my dragons, so trying to remember a code to be able to add him or her as a new mate seems like more work than it needs to be--especially for people with hundreds (or like me) thousands of dragons to choose from.

[Dragon_Arbock]

I don't know whether to be sad that I get ignored or not.

@Jazeki

 

37 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

For the code thing- CBs wouldn't have set mates, but most of my gen 2s and onwards are checkers and usually will never have another mate, so having only mates that it has already been bred to show up would work for them. Just like if it was an option or something, not a replacement for the current system in its entirety.
It's taxing to load 500+ dragons when I only care about the top result.

 

I guess like, I could see Actions -> Breed -> popup window that asks 'Select from previous mates' or 'Show whole list'

If we did the 'code' thing, I'd assume it would work like the fertility select now. I only said 'code' cause it's shorter and a lot of my dragons are unnamed until I breed them.\

 

But really what I would want is Actions -> Breed -> popup window that asks 'Select from previous mates' or 'Show whole list'

Mainly to avoid having to load 500 - 1000 dragons each time I click 'Breed'.

[HeatherMarie]

I actually really like the OP's suggestion. Sure you'd have to do it one dragon at a time, but I'd think many people wouldn't have *that* many dragons they'd want to take out of the breeding pool this way, and anyways if you really want to stop yourself from accidentally breeding the dragon then you'll probably happily do what's needed for it.

 

I definitely do *not* like a code-based thing, since I often breed dragons that have never bred before so don't have any already established mates, and I name all my dragons so I really have no clue what most of their codes are and that would be a *huge* pain to have to look up their code in order to breed them. If it was completely optional, like the default is show all possible mates and then you could "filter" by code or something, I wouldn't mind that.

 

I think the easiest way to solve these sorts of breeding issues would be simply to be able to filter by group when breeding. So if you are breeding a CB, you can filter to only see dragons in your Cavebred group on the breeding page, and since you can make unlimited number of groups you could even make a group for every single breed if you want, so you could filter to see only a specific breed.

 

Also, no thanks to a pop-up window, those are very very annoying and intrusive and *many* people hate them. Many people hate the pop-ups we have now for Action confirmations. And having a pop-up like that would be adding a mandatory extra step to breeding, so all the people who *don't* want to breed from previous mates (or any other sort of filter) will have a very annoying extra step. When you are breeding dozens of dragons at a time that could get very, very tedious.

[LibbyLishly]

Love this idea. The cult of celibacy lore suggestion made me laugh, but that's beside the point. I would absolutely make use of an ability to toggle off the breeding abilities of various dragons - there are several that I consider either retired from breeding or never intended to breed to begin with, and sometimes the sheer number of available mates in the breeding list crashes my phone browser. 

 

ETA: I would also very much like the ability to filter by group from the breeding list, and given the choice, I'd rather see that implemented over this, but I don't see why we can't have both.

Edited December 13, 2017 by LibbyLishly

[Dragon_Arbock]

6 minutes ago, Marie19R said:

I think the easiest way to solve these sorts of breeding issues would be simply to be able to filter by group when breeding. So if you are breeding a CB, you can filter to only see dragons in your Cavebred group on the breeding page, and since you can make unlimited number of groups you could even make a group for every single breed if you want, so you could filter to see only a specific breed.

 

Also, no thanks to a pop-up window, those are very very annoying and intrusive and *many* people hate them. Many people hate the pop-ups we have now for Action confirmations. And having a pop-up like that would be adding a mandatory extra step to breeding, so all the people who *don't* want to breed from previous mates (or any other sort of filter) will have a very annoying extra step. When you are breeding dozens of dragons at a time that could get very, very tedious.

How would you filter by groups without having that be an extra step? Cause that would be just as much an extra step as choosing if you want to only see former mates. Maybe it could be implemented in a better way than a pop up (but I also have no issue with the 'confirm name' pop-ups and whatnot)

 

But my core issue is, if we're talking about excluding dragons from breeding, it would be very useful if I could minimize the amount of dragons that get loaded on the breeding page. Just having the ability to exclude individual dragons from breeding doesn't help much, because my exclusions would vary based on what dragon I want to breed (which sounds impossible).

Edited December 13, 2017 by Dragon_Arbock

[HeatherMarie]

Well, I'm sure there are ways to implement breeding from groups that wouldn't involve a mandatory extra step. Off the top of my head, if you are on a certain Group's page and filter by "available for breeding", the "breed" link shows up next to each dragon, so perhaps if you click the "breed" link from that Group's page then the breeding page will only show dragons from that group. Or, when you go to a specific dragon's Actions page, there could be a drop-down under the Breed action which allows you to choose which group to show dragons from (with the default being show all).

Edited December 13, 2017 by Marie19R

[Dragon_Arbock]

@Marie19R

Drop down could maybe work.

I guess my main concern is, if groups are the only option, and I really want to minimize loading (my laptop is old and likes to be trash at times), I would have to make a bunch of groups with only one or two dragons in it.

If displaying only past mates is an option (possibly in addition to groups), it saves me the trouble of that.

 

Edit; basically what I'm talking/complaining about;

 

Edited December 13, 2017 by Dragon_Arbock

[Jazeki]

3 hours ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

I don't know whether to be sad that I get ignored or not.

@Jazeki

 

*Snip*

I got the gist. I tolerate how fertility is now in terms of filtering. I don't care how the "add new mate" feature would be added. I have thousands of dragons and barely remember codes or names. I don't want to take an extra step every time I want to try a new pairing. The end.

 

Again, I support the OP's suggestion.

[Ruby Eyes]

6 hours ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

But really what I would want is Actions -> Breed -> popup window that asks 'Select from previous mates' or 'Show whole list'

Mainly to avoid having to load 500 - 1000 dragons each time I click 'Breed'.

I think there was already a suggestion like this some time ago. But both ideas don't need to exclude each other. "Show whole list" still doesn't need to display dragons I'd never want to breed anyway.

edit: found it here, as #4: https://forums.dragcave.net/topic/174162-faster-breeding/ I don't know why it was closed, but maybe it can be re-opened.

 

@GhostMouse I love that idea of yours Yes, please!

Edited December 13, 2017 by Ruby Eyes

[Confused Cat]

Here's a fake screenshot that shows how we could filter the breeding list without adding an additional step for those who don't want to filter it. If you don't need a filter, you just click "Breed" like before.

 

(The dropdown would be a list of the user's groups. Changing the selection in the dropdown and checking/unchecking the checkbox would have to activate a script that modifies the target of the "Breed" link.)

 

[Fuzzbucket]

One could also have a group of Do.Not.Breed dragons and a filter to exclude them?

[StarSea]

Reading through this thread, I honestly would like all three things; option to turn off breeding for a dragon (don't have to worry about messy/complete lineages), option to show only confirmed mates, and option to filter by groups. There's even a suggestion somewhere for being able to remove previous mates from the list, which I would love too. There's a lot of changes that breeding could benefit from, or at least stand to see.

 

I admittedly do have a group for every single breed and then some (read: individual groups for each stripe and nebula color and etc.), as well as groups for cb/mateless/do not breed/breeding pairs, and for lineage shapes/patterns, and for specific lineages themselves, and many more. I'd love use for groups to be integrated with more aspects of the site.

[GhostMouse]

I'm glad to see all the support this has gotten!

 

@Dragon_Arbock, I think you're addressing a different issue. The reason behind my suggestion is that there are dragons that I never intend to breed for one reason or another, so I don't need them to show up at all on any breeding list. For example, I wanted to breed more Purples because I keep running out of Fertility. I have all my Purples in a group so it's easy to check who's available for BSA, and I can filter this group by "Available to breed," but then I still have to sort through those dragons to find the nice lineages. I just want an option to say "Never show me this dragon for breeding." It would be beyond tedious to have to remove that particular dragon from every other dragon's breeding list, and I would still have the issue of having it show up on the scroll/in groups as Available for Breeding.

 

I agree that these aren't incompatible ideas, and it would be nice to be able to customize an individual dragon's breeding list. I just think the mechanic needs some fine-tuning, and it's a separate issue from this suggestion.

 

I would also like to see the Groups become more useful/accessible when breeding (filtering for only dragons from a certain group, or filtering out dragons from a certain group; it would make my "Messy, Don't Breed" Group have an actual purpose). Honestly, I'd like to be able to see what groups a dragon is in on the dragon's page (without having to open a drop down list) and when breeding, like tags, but that's a whole other suggestion.

[Dragon_Arbock]

@GhostMouse I just don't see the use for removing only a  few dragons from a  global pool. I've only ever accidentally bred to the wrong dragon once or twice, and both times it wasn't a dragon I would have wanted removed from breeding altogether- it was simply the wrong generation of the same checker pair. [See: this accident]

Also might just be my opinion, but if I need more BSAs I usually don't care about their lineages.

 

My point i just, if we're going to consider removing dragons from breeding lists, it would be nice if there was an option to have it be done individually for dragons or have an option to say 'Breed to most recent mate' or something.

[Ruby Eyes]

I have plenty of messy dragons - non-BSA - that I keep for sentimental value but which I'd never want to breed, not even accidentally. So I'd love to mark them "unbreedable" before such a thing could even happen.

[LadyLyzar]

I think this thread has turned into multiple suggestions but the basic idea is still the same - if you have a lot of dragons, it shows way too many mates, especially if you're looking for a new one.

 

I love the psuedo screenshot that Confused Cat posted above and I think it's a great start.  However, I'd like to expand on the idea.  In addition to filtering by group, you could also filter by breed.  That would help you find the one you want as well, especially if you've never done that pairing before.

 

I'll be the first to admit that I know very little about game coding and design (I was awful at programming in college), but it seems that filtering by breed already exists in some manner due to group sorting and breed order sort.  As such, how hard would it be to tell the breeding page, "Only show dragons of (breed)", with the breeds listed being ones that are compatible for that dragon and also ones that the user owns?

 

That being said, I think removing individuals from the pool is a great idea as well.  This would help filter out ones you don't want to breed for whatever reason, even if you were going to breed other dragons of that breed.  However, I think filtering by breed and past mates would be a more efficient way to find the dragons you do want.

[Yubelchen]

I LOVE that idea, not only to make it better for mobile/laptop/slow pc user which have to still load all dragons but dont need to! Would safe me a lot of MB of my internet service!

 

EDIT: Lorewise there could be dragons who only mate with certain dragons und reject others, like the autorejects that can happen when breeding a pair the first time

Edited December 16, 2017 by Yubelchen

[VixenDra]

On 13.12.2017 at 6:00 AM, Dragon_Arbock said:

@Marie19R

Drop down could maybe work.

I guess my main concern is, if groups are the only option, and I really want to minimize loading (my laptop is old and likes to be trash at times), I would have to make a bunch of groups with only one or two dragons in it.

If displaying only past mates is an option (possibly in addition to groups), it saves me the trouble of that.

 

Edit; basically what I'm talking/complaining about;

 

 

This is basically the only thing I need either.

Removing some messy dragon from my scroll-wide breeding poll won't do anything for me if I can still accidently misbreed and break 2 pairings at once(yes, 2, all my main dragons are in the front of my scroll and they all have a respective set mate) and would still need to have all the dragons take their time to load there at all. I have so few dragons I won't ever breed(basic actions BSAs)... not to mention I keep them at the end of my scroll (cuz' they are a mess in my collection) so they don't show up anywhere near the fixed mate on the breeding list anyway, so removing just them from the breeding poll woudn't make even a microscopic difference to me... 

I just need to lock 1 mate per dragon. With dragons having inequal 'hitbox' on the list when I'm massbreeding, when I close the tab (ctrl+w) I too often find my coursor hover above the 2nd dragon in line... and when you breed so many dragons in a short time, you can have your hand auto-slip. And again, the loading time each dragon takes to load all those dragons I will never voluntary breed them to...

 

My bf sorts by lineage, his CBs are in the front of his scroll (with selected exceptions) and lineaged are further back. This basically does the same to CBs as this OP suggestion, just forces a certain criterium in sorting (the only flaw). And the OP suggestion won't help in non CB breeding at all.

 

More likely we need a bunch of tools and filters in the breeding, not just a kind of render a few dragons infertile, and still have all the rest mixed up and/or load unneccessarily long every single time...
so basically more like what the discussion headed at...

Edited December 17, 2017 by VixenDra

[Guillotine]

That would be better served by having its own thread, though; this is aimed at a completely different issue than "I don't want to load these every time I breed [dragon]".