Grab multiple clutch eggs

[The Dragoness]

Personally, I can see this from both sides. I understand wanting to keep more than one egg from a multiclutch, especially with holidays. But I also see why it's beneficial to have those eggs auto abandoned to the AP. Maybe a BSA/some other feature could be added to make it possible for a player to take an additional egg from a multiclutch? That way, some are still sent to the AP and the player can do what they wish with their own eggs.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

@RealWilliamShakespeare Multiclutching is still useful to the breeders because you get multiple chances of getting what you want in one breeding. Breeding gold x celestial, for example, has four chances in theory to throw a gold versus the one chance normal breeding has. It can also give you the chance at getting to choose between several codes for your favorite or, with holiday x holiday, potentially different holiday results. Honestly I wish multiclutch was still a (rare) chance for all breedings; I remember those days and always liked picking my favorite code from the clutch, while seeing extras go to the AP to spread the love.

 

Back to the main question—again, I see how this could benefit. It’s pretty obvious. I had a friend request a Rosebud x White line I’d already promised someone this Valentines and had to turn them down accordingly. A person with a 2g Prize is sacrificing their ability to make a 4g Prize checker this year to give me the 3g holiday kin I need instead. Those are obvious payoffs.

 

But the negatives are just as obvious and, in my opinion, outweigh the good. I’ve caught a 2g Holly and 2g Spriter’s Alt offspring from the AP before by virtue of multiclutching. These sorts of gems would be very scarce among average players, and especially non forum goers, if the breeders could keep all the eggs themselves. Even regular pretty lines, like the Rosebud x White I mentioned, would be sequestered away among friends rather than spread around. Multiclutching abandonment has always existed since the game’s inception (it even used to be a REGULAR breeding function!) in order to spread the love. I really, really do not want to see that changed. 

 

 

[Dragon_Arbock]

I would only be okay with keeping more than one egg from a holiday clutch if the limits for CBs were lifted. Trying to find good second gens is already hard enough without people hoarding them. There are some really nice players here, don't get me wrong, but then there are some 'profit players'. Do not forget, even with multiclutching, there are those who track eggs through to the AP and try to grab them as profit. I'd almost wish something could be done to stop people from grabbing siblings- I would think that in and of itself is against the 'spirit' of the holidays.

 

Besides that, multi clutches only exist anymore for the breeds that can't breed once a week, as a means to boost their numbers. There really isn't a need to keep more than one anyway.

[Fuzzbucket]

You cabn't grab eggs YOU bred unless someone else has grabbed them and then dropped them. So if they are nice lines, chances are that once picked up they won't be dropped again.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

@Dragon_Arbock there already is a mechanism in place; once an egg leaves your scroll, by choice and otherwise, it MUST be caught by someone else and reabandoned before you can pick it up. Attempting to do so otherwise will give you the egg not found message.

[Dragon_Arbock]

Just now, Fuzzbucket said:

You cabn't grab eggs YOU bred unless someone else has grabbed them and then dropped them. So if they are nice lines, chances are that once picked up they won't be dropped again.

I know I can't grab my own eggs- I know people, not naming names, who track other people's eggs- such as thuweds or spriter's alt offspring.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

13 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

I know I can't grab my own eggs- I know people, not naming names, who track other people's eggs- such as thuweds or spriter's alt offspring.

 

Ahhh. I’ll confess I’ve done that too. At least the odds are even for everyone.  

[Amazon_warrior]

8 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

I know I can't grab my own eggs- I know people, not naming names, who track other people's eggs- such as thuweds or spriter's alt offspring.

 

I am one of those people, and I can assure you that there is no guarantee that someone who stalks a clutch of eggs is going to get one - or even necessarily see them, if they refresh at the wrong moment.  Sure, having an idea of when eggs are likely to show helps a little, but less than you might think.  Sheer dumb luck also plays a part - like my bizarre experience of completely accidentally catching three sibling 2G Hollies from the AP last month.  I didn't even know they were there until the first landed on my scroll.  Was pretty gobsmacked when the next Holly I clicked was a sib, and basically fell off my chair when I found myself with the third.  I also caught a 2G spriter alt 'kin I didn't know was going to be there, while hunting hopefully for an entirely different clutch (all of which I missed entirely).

 

I support keeping multiclutches as they are, and I say this as someone who has to choose whether to trade or keep 2G Holiday prizekins.  I like knowing that some random person may pick up my "spares" and get a nice treat that they may not have been able to obtain by trading.

[Dragon_Arbock]

I know it's not a guarantee, it just seems odd to me that while the original owner can only keep one, anyone else can go in and grab sibling sets. I like the idea of them being spread around more than that.

 

That being said, I like how they are now, even if it means I have to choose between trading and gifting, and tell some people no cause someone else beat them to a request.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

@Amazon_warrior I really do think you are the “luckiest catch”er. I’d say your eastern is giving you good luck vibes... but then how you’d catch that one ???

 

But yah, I like the system, one of my favorite parts about holidays is the chance everyone has at catching pretties they’d normally have no shot at.  

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

Reading through the responses to this post, it has become clear to me that even if there was an option to grab more than one egg, a lot of you wouldn’t, and would AP them anyway. It seems plenty of people are generous enough to not grab more than one, so surely there would still be plenty of stuff to go around. Again, I just wish there was the option so that others may choose as they wish.

 

@The Dragoness I really strongly approve of an option for BSA - you can have a dragon use a BSA to keep more stuff from clutches and then have to wait for cooldown. Since the general consensus seems to be against my suggestion, a BSA would be a really nice compromise. 

Edited January 16, 2018 by RealWilliamShakespeare

[Amazon_warrior]

16 minutes ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

@Amazon_warrior I really do think you are the “luckiest catch”er. I’d say your eastern is giving you good luck vibes... but then how you’d catch that one ???

 

Pffft, almost five years on and it still blows my mind a bit! 

 

I should try LC with a Celestial some time, see if she'll chuck some shinies to the AP....

[angelicdragonpuppy]

3 hours ago, RealWilliamShakespeare said:

Reading through the responses to this post, it has become clear to me that even if there was an option to grab more than one egg, a lot of you wouldn’t, and would AP them anyway. It seems plenty of people are generous enough to not grab more than one, so surely there would still be plenty of stuff to go around. Again, I just wish there was the option so that others may choose as they wish.

 

@The Dragoness I really strongly approve of an option for BSA - you can have a dragon use a BSA to keep more stuff from clutches and then have to wait for cooldown. Since the general consensus seems to be against my suggestion, a BSA would be a really nice compromise. 

 

But most of us are just peons. I imagine the amount of Spriter's Alt and Prize and other top-tier dragons in the AP would plummet. Yes, there would always be generous people--always have and always will be--but I still think the temptation to keep or only gift among friends would be too much. A lot of good things would be kept among select groups. As I pointed out, even "simpler" fare like pretty checkers could quickly become sequestered away among circles of friends. If it was an option, I'd keep that extra Rosebud from White, and that'd be good for my friend, but bad for the general user base. I still believe much more harm would come from this than good.

 

I still don't think a compelling case has been made as to why it should be done. I've already pointed out how Celestial and even Holiday multiclutching has its own benefit to the breeders aside from just the additional positive outcome in the AP, and your desire to get extra Blacks for alt attempts, as has been pointed out, has many other possible solutions than changing the way multiclutches have worked for almost a decade. If the game had always let us keep everything I could understand people resenting the loss of control, but multiclutch auto abandoning has been a thing truly since almost inception--and, in my opinion, a very positive one. I and many others hunt the AP just for the beautiful dragons we find there, but boy if the thought of finding something extra shiny doesn't make it all that much more exciting!

 

All the above being said, if a compromise HAD to be made (and I really still don't think it must be), then perhaps a BSA to allow keeping ONE extra egg from a multi-egg clutch, but not all of them. And even that I think would have a serious negative outcome on the spreading of awesome.

 

 

 

(And hmm, I'll add this. Some people might think I'm greedy for wanting multiclutching abandoning to continue largely so the AP can be populated with nice eggs. Maybe that's true. But as I've stressed, multiclutching has been a part of the game for so many years precisely TO spread things around. Admittedly mostly retired holidays, which the rules have now changed for, but still. The spread-the-awesome effect of it is still around, and I think would be sorely reduced if things were changed. Prize dragons, while mostly unrelated to this, showed how much sadness can be caused when nice things are largely restricted to small groups and people who have the means or friendships to interact with said groups. In contrast, it's really nice during the holidays for everyone, forum user or not, talkative or shy, slow or fast connection, to have a chance to pull something truly amazing from the AP. And that would be hurt a lot by these changes.)

 

 

[TJ09]

Despite behaving in similar ways, I think Celestial and event multi-clutching are separate things and should be discussed/addressed as separate things (that is, not a package deal that needs to behave the same).

 

Multi-clutching for event dragons was kept around even when normal multi-clutching was removed because past event dragons are/were rare, especially for people who missed the initial drop. This has been mitigated by re-releasing CBs, for sure, but others have pointed out there is an emergent value in accelerating lineage building given that you get basically one shot per-year. While that is useful, I don't think refocusing event multi-clutches around this second purpose is a good idea. So if the event biomes mean multi-clutching no longer needs to serve the original purpose of making it easier to gather and catch up on event dragons, I'd rather just reduce (i.e. less chance of more eggs) or remove them entirely. I've already considered this separately, given how many event eggs tend to flood the AP—probably leaning more towards reducing.

 

Celestials are a different case. The idea was to compensate the ability to breed only once every four weeks with the chance to get four weeks worth of eggs in that one breeding. Due to how multi-clutching works, you don't actually get all of those eggs—though you also aren't really giving up four weeks worth of eggs if the other dragon isn't a Celestial, so it's not exactly equal in both directions. Of the two, though, I'm more open to changing this, though probably not without some sort of tradeoff to componsate for the ability to keep breeding the non-Celestial mate weekly during the Celestial's cooldown.

[PrincessLucy]

2 hours ago, TJ09 said:

Despite behaving in similar ways, I think Celestial and event multi-clutching are separate things and should be discussed/addressed as separate things (that is, not a package deal that needs to behave the same).

 

Multi-clutching for event dragons was kept around even when normal multi-clutching was removed because past event dragons are/were rare, especially for people who missed the initial drop. This has been mitigated by re-releasing CBs, for sure, but others have pointed out there is an emergent value in accelerating lineage building given that you get basically one shot per-year. While that is useful, I don't think refocusing event multi-clutches around this second purpose is a good idea. So if the event biomes mean multi-clutching no longer needs to serve the original purpose of making it easier to gather and catch up on event dragons, I'd rather just reduce (i.e. less chance of more eggs) or remove them entirely. I've already considered this separately, given how many event eggs tend to flood the AP—probably leaning more towards reducing.

 

Celestials are a different case. The idea was to compensate the ability to breed only once every four weeks with the chance to get four weeks worth of eggs in that one breeding. Due to how multi-clutching works, you don't actually get all of those eggs—though you also aren't really giving up four weeks worth of eggs if the other dragon isn't a Celestial, so it's not exactly equal in both directions. Of the two, though, I'm more open to changing this, though probably not without some sort of tradeoff to componsate for the ability to keep breeding the non-Celestial mate weekly during the Celestial's cooldown.

I am hoping that you don't change either. Perhaps some people will breed their messy holiday lines less during the holiday, given that they have CBs to breed nice ones. 

 

Multiclutches from Celestials is part of the reason that I love to breed mine. I don't often keep any of them anyway, but I wouldn't want to see people be able to automatically keep more than 1 in any case.

[Fuzzbucket]

5 minutes ago, PrincessLucy said:

I am hoping that you don't change either. Perhaps some people will breed their messy holiday lines less during the holiday, given that they have CBs to breed nice ones. 

 

Multiclutches from Celestials is part of the reason that I love to breed mine. I don't often keep any of them anyway, but I wouldn't want to see people be able to automatically keep more than 1 in any case.

 

I'm with the Princess 100%.

[Amazon_warrior]

^^ I got the feeling at Christmas that people bred a lot less than the previous year - the AP wall broke a good couple of days earlier, from what I can recall.  It's also probably worth noting that, if the 2 CBs ONLY thing is going to stay, then once people have all the CBs they CAN have (I am one such), then they go back to looking for bred dragons for lineage building.  The Holiday Biome then is really only of any use for new players and anyone who wasn't quite fast enough to grab a treasured Holly or Yule this time.

[Fuzzbucket]

But there are a LOT of new players every year...

[VixenDra]

3 hours ago, TJ09 said:

Multi-clutching for event dragons was kept around even when normal multi-clutching was removed because past event dragons are/were rare, especially for people who missed the initial drop. This has been mitigated by re-releasing CBs, for sure, but others have pointed out there is an emergent value in accelerating lineage building given that you get basically one shot per-year. While that is useful, I don't think refocusing event multi-clutches around this second purpose is a good idea. So if the event biomes mean multi-clutching no longer needs to serve the original purpose of making it easier to gather and catch up on event dragons, I'd rather just reduce (i.e. less chance of more eggs) or remove them entirely. I've already considered this separately, given how many event eggs tend to flood the AP—probably leaning more towards reducing.

 

If they are to still breed just once a year, the multiclutch of the minimal maximum being 4 is an ABSOLUTE MUST.

C'mon...

My PB Gold pair has WAY more offspring than my holidays of the same age(which is most of my holidays atm; well, they can't have more than 8 and I can't see any with 8... really wanna turn it to max 2?!)... even than the pair that is 2 years older than those Golds (Graves, mu oldest and most productive holiday pair, probably ever) has less offspring than those Golds (really wanna make it max 4?!) (and those Golds feel like hardly ever producing when I breed them). Holidays behaving like ever rarer than "the rarest dragon in cave"? It's beyond wrong already... I won't even mention the comparison with Silvers, the supposedly 2nd rarest... Plz NO!

 

Alternatively, let them breed the whole December/February/October respectively to compensate (or 2 weeks before and 2 weeks after the very holiday), with a regular 1 week cooldown, so with good timing one can breed 4 or even 5 eggs a year for themselves, multiclutch or not (though they still should produce multis to balance them out in breeding with other ultra-rares). They could stop taking the AP priority too, except for the week before the holiday or at all.

 

 

 

I'm personally indifferent on Celestials but the OP makes me realise there ARE situations when you may never end up with THE right offsrpring if you're forced to abandon all but one per breeding (such as non-egg revealed variants, especially as rare as the Bred-Alt Three, getting those is so rare it's not fun even with PBs, forget this whenever you get more than 1 egg of the breed itself and must abandon some, which are likely to be the only ones who finally alt). I'd let them stay with the breeder as much as the holidays. Even if it takes a BSA or sth.

Edited January 17, 2018 by VixenDra

[Fuzzbucket]

17 minutes ago, VixenDra said:

I'm personally indifferent on Celestials but the OP makes me realise there ARE situations when you may never end up with THE right offspring if you're forced to abandon all but one per breeding (such as non-egg revealed variants, especially as rare as the Bred-Alt Three, getting those is so rare it's not fun even with PBs, forget this whenever you get more than 1 egg of the breed itself and must abandon some, which are likely to be the only ones who finally alt). I'd let them stay with the breeder as much as the holidays. Even if it takes a BSA or sth.

 

This doesn't make sense. You want one particular egg - that's the one you pick. Why on earth would you assume that the one you drop will likely be the one that alts ? It is equally likely that the one you drop will be the one that doesn't

Edited January 17, 2018 by Fuzzbucket

[VixenDra]

21 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

This doesn't make sense. You want one particular egg - that's the one you pick. Why on earth would you assume that the one you drop will likely be the one that alts ? It is equally likely that the one you drop will be the one that doesn't

 

Situation: the pair produces 2-4 Black eggs. You can only keep one and are system-forced to abandon 1-3 Black eggs. If the clutch happened to contain 4 Black eggs, it's 1 against 3 chance the very one you picked will alt instead of one of those 3 you had to abandon. Not only is the alt ultra rare, your chance at getting it is additionally 4 times lesser everytime the clutch produces 4 Blacks - and you can't do anything about it...

 

I don't do interspecies breeding (except the 2 holidays because forced to both by the gender and CB limits) so Idk if it ever happens that this pairing ever produces more than 1-2 Blacks (older breed, heard those don't really produce their breed if bred to newer breeds if the rarity level is the same, but I don't know Celestial rarity to tell here) but hypothetically... but then all it takes is a future release of a new alting breed of that sort and a bit of time slip (when the alt settles down and goes ultra rare like the other Three) and majority of potentiall alting eggs will be forced to get abandoned, reducing your chance at getting THE alt; OR a fix to the old-new interspecies breeding mechanics. But seing the OP, this pairing looks like it DOES produce multiple Blacks per clutch, at least from time to time..? just not sure what's the realistic breed ratio per clutch. Anyways, for the sake of the discussion let's just assume the clutch produces 2-4 Blacks often enough. Because even if I fit doesn't, some other breed of the sort will work like this if it's not the case yet.

Edited January 17, 2018 by VixenDra

[angelicdragonpuppy]

 

22 minutes ago, VixenDra said:

Not only is the alt ultra rare, your chance at getting it is additionally 4 times lesser everytime the clutch produces 4 Blacks - and you can't do anything about it...

 

You can do something about it. It’s called get and breed more Blacks.

 

Why should Celestials give you an ability to suddenly keep 4 weeks worth of breeding all at once when every other dragon needs to be bred for 4 weeks to have that result? 

 

If you want 4 Blacks, breed 4 Blacks. Multiclutching doesn’t need to be retooled for that. As I’ve said, I think doing so would have very negative implications.

Edited January 17, 2018 by angelicdragonpuppy

[VixenDra]

23 minutes ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

 

 

You can do something about it. It’s called get and breed more Blacks.

 

If you want 4 Blacks, breed 4 Blacks. Multiclutching doesn’t need to be retooled for that. As I’ve said, I think doing so would have very negative implications.

 

That's NOT the point I bet. The OP wants alt Black(/s) from Celestial specifically (also probably self-bred for one or another reason, think about kills destroying lineages), not ANY alt Black. You know, lineage building thing (a BIG part of this game), not getting a mere sprite itself. And having a hoard of alts doesn't inrease your chance at breedign an alt, so...

 

And to achieve it your way, Celestials would have to NOT breed clutches and once a month... Well, speaking of that, I'd definitely rather have 4 holiday (true)breedings a year with no forced auto AP mechanic than 1 clutched one I can't keep...

Edited January 17, 2018 by VixenDra

[angelicdragonpuppy]

I believe they said they only bred to Celestials in the hopes of getting and keeping multiple eggs. Regardless, the solution even with Celestials would be the same: get and breed more Celestial x Black pairings, same as any other pairing.

 

The way you play is drastically different from the way most do. While I’m all in favor of allowing as many play styles as possible (that’s part of DC’s appeal, after all) I still cannot support keeping multiple eggs per clutch due to the negative outcomes I believe it would lead to in terms of desirable egg dispersal.

[Fuzzbucket]

11 minutes ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

I believe they said they only bred to Celestials in the hopes of getting and keeping multiple eggs. Regardless, the solution even with Celestials would be the same: get and breed more Celestial x Black pairings, same as any other pairing.

 

The way you play is drastically different from the way most do. While I’m all in favor of allowing as many play styles as possible (that’s part of DC’s appeal, after all) I still cannot support keeping multiple eggs per clutch due to the negative outcomes I believe it would lead to in terms of desirable egg dispersal.

 

Exactly. I agree 100%.

 

And I am not aware that black x celestial throws up more alts than other pairings. Most of mine have been black x black or black x holiday.

 

ETA just looked. I have a lot. This applies to all but two - which are black x metal.