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Jazeki

Transparency in DC

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8 minutes ago, LadyLyzar said:

No, this is something only moderators have access to.  However, I'm happy to recommend a post if you ask me to (within reason, of course).  Also the ability does exist to recommend more than one, but I'd want to avoid that unless necessary because I wouldn't want the thread to look cluttered for those trying to browse.

MK... and that does make sense.

 

 

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7 hours ago, TJ09 said:

Each situation is going to be subtly different, but in general, things that are inflammatory and/or off-topic (usually both, because being inflammatory is rarely on-topic) messes with the flow of people trying to be productive. The posts aren't fully deleted, only hidden (the distinction mostly just means that mods can go and see what happened, as I've already done).

 

e.g. the Sweetling thread, the removed posts were along the same vein as this thread, though often angrier. The subject of this thread is 100% off-topic for a thread discussing what "could/should be done about the Alt Sweetlings," so I fully agree that the discussion there didn't really belong.

 

Lots of discussion here since I went to bed. Again I feel I must respond to this, because it doesn't really answer or help the issue at hand. I think most of us here completely understand that very-off-topic posts, as well as inflammatory posts, are not productive to a thread and mess with what the thread could possibly accomplish. I don't think anyone would argue that point. The issue is that those off-topic or inflammatory posts are *disappearing* (you say they are 'only hidden', but for us non-mods the results are the same as complete deletion, ie they just don't exist anymore) instead of simply being edited to remove the unwanted stuff. To me, and to many others, it's very frustrating and sort of insulting when an entire post we made just up and disappears, especially because often only *part* of the post was off-topic or inflammatory and the other part actually had good on-topic discussion. We know that mods have the ability to simply edit a user's post, we see that often when view links and scroll links are edited out, so it really feels like just blatant censorship for the entire post to be deleted when we know that's *not* actually necessary. It's like, we know there is a small action that can be taken to enforce the rules (editing the post), and yet the 'nuclear option' is usually used instead, which... Doesn't feel right.

 

I'm also a little confused about your response here to the breeding mechanics issue. You say things have been tweaked, but breeding is a 'black box' so you can't take much action... What does that mean? I have no clue about the inner workings of breeding, but 'black box' means absolutely nothing to me, I have no clue what that means. What are these 'practical reasons' that breeding has to stay that way? The breeding dominance issue is a fairly serious, fairly widespread issue that's been happening for a loooong time (I'm not going to dig out specific examples at this time, but they've been posted all over the forum over the last few years)... It really is almost impossible to get certain common dragons from a common/common pairing because the newer type is always produced. Is that really not a big enough issue to tackle? Whatever 'black box' means, I assume what you are saying is that things are too complicated with the breeding mechanic to really change the breeding dominance issue in any real way, but... I don't know, you can prioritize however you want, but imo something that has been a fairly big problem for years, that has frustrated many users and hurt many potential lineages, would be something that really should try to be fixed.

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I believe by black box he simply meant that the exact mechanisms of how breeding works won’t be revealed to us, and since we don’t know the details, it’s hard to come up with specific suggestions of what to change.

 

That being said, I didn’t expect to be given a mathematical formula. Honestly it would remove the mystery if we were! The suggestions at the start were just reasonable guesses as to how things might work and could be fixed. 

 

But that’s not really the point. The point is that newer commons (even “three years old” “newer” breeds) tend to dominate breeding. Don’t need to know how breeding works to ask for something to be done about it. 

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No - he said somewhere that because it was a black box there wasn't much he could so.
 

Quote

 

The breeding mechanics thread I should've shut down a while ago actually (sorry). It's pretty inherently unactionable, and the disclaimer at the top of the thread points to why: breeding is somewhat of a black box which, for practical reasons, will likely continue to be so. There have probably been a number of tweaks since it was posted, and yet it still continues. I could have asserted that "this has been made better" a number of times, and it's hard to prove or disprove.

 

 

 

In this very thread:

 

I can't find the actual breeding mechanics thread now :(

Edited by Fuzzbucket

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Why not simplify the breeding mechanics..

common x common - 50/50

common x uncommon - 75/25

common x rare - 90/10

uncommon x rare - 50/50 to get an egg at all, 90/10 otherwise

rare x rare - only 10% to get an egg at all, then 50/50 on which rare breed is produced

Then it doesn't matter what breeds are involved, it's based on rarity.

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Hmm... While I have no idea how feasible it would be to just totally strip down breeding to such simple terms, I definitely think that would be mega-helpful for common/common pairings at least. If two breeds are both genuinely supposed to be commons, on the same relative level rarity-wise, it seems like it would make perfect sense for there to be an equal chance of getting both. I really don't understand at all *why* newer breeds dominate breeding results so much, especially because it used to be the dragons only 'counted' towards overall breed totals for a year (has that changed?) so a breed being *slightly* newer really shouldn't make such an overwhelming difference. If there could be a group of commons that are designated more-or-less the same in terms of rarity, how many there should be, whatever, then making breeding two of those have a roughly equal chance of producing either breed sounds completely logical.

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What TJ posted suggests that it isn't that simple. For HIM, not for us !

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Perhaps the way breeding is right now it isn't that simple, perhaps it's never been that simple... That doesn't necessarily mean it *shouldn't* be that simple. 

 

Look, I realize that TJ has an actual job and an actual life and such, and that if the whole breeding thing is a complicated 'black box' it may be more trouble then he thinks it's worth to actually totally change it.... That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, or at least talked about. It's very, very obvious that whatever the breeding mechanics are, they simply aren't working in a way that benefits the game as a whole. They *haven't* worked in a way that benefits the game in a long, long time (if ever, honestly). I totally get not wanting to completely overhaul a huge complicated system, or even not having the time to feasibly do it, but.... It definitely seems like just keeping it the way it is is *not* helping the game at all. 

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23 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

What TJ posted suggests that it isn't that simple. For HIM, not for us !

 

WELL... as Heather Marie said... for all we know maybe it ISN'T. 

 

I'll give TJ a point here. We really don't KNOW what goes on 'behind the curtain' so to speak, when we breed our dragons OR, for all of that, when an eggie is spawned in a biome. NOR do we know for a fact what might be involved in completely overhauling it. AS was mentioned by SOMEBODY in a previous thread, SOMETIMES even minor messing with the ratios has had unintended consequences ( NOT that, as someone else pointed out, that that is always a valid argument against change). I have always been under the impression that there is some fairly complicated mathematical stuff involved.... though again, this issue is sort of a blackbox and ONLY TJ knows for sure. That being said it may very WELL be not such a simple thing to change without making problems worse before they got better. HOWEVER! Given that we are constantly adding new breeds of dragon, maybe taking a look at it at least might be wise?

Edited by JavaTigress

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Actually, what I got from that was that TJ isn't exactly sure why its still just as bad as it was, that there are too many variables in play. 

 

A "black box" is something where certain inputs give certain outputs.... and the users doesn't know how any given output is generated. So its possible TJ is using some sort of RNG that he didn't, himself, code, so he doesn't know why its doing what it is. Or he could have a multitude of factors playing into which egg is produced (which we know from the past is the case) and he isn't sure which factor is what's driving the mess. He's said he's "probably" made some changes. Well, I remember that in the past, it wasn't as bad as this. 

 

Now, if he wanted help figuring it out, there are a lot of users on here who'd be happy to do mass-breeds / collect armies to help out. And if he wanted to see how a breed changes over the course of a year, he could check out the Holy Competition and look at the stats for those breeds. There's a lot of ways the users could help him figure this out by generating mass amounts of breeding data. I think I've mentioned that less and less people are breeding blockers, so any change TJ made could well have been swallowed up by lower breeding. 

 

Cheers!
C4. 

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18 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

Perhaps the way breeding is right now it isn't that simple, perhaps it's never been that simple... That doesn't necessarily mean it *shouldn't* be that simple. 

 

Look, I realize that TJ has an actual job and an actual life and such, and that if the whole breeding thing is a complicated 'black box' it may be more trouble then he thinks it's worth to actually totally change it.... That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, or at least talked about. It's very, very obvious that whatever the breeding mechanics are, they simply aren't working in a way that benefits the game as a whole. They *haven't* worked in a way that benefits the game in a long, long time (if ever, honestly). I totally get not wanting to completely overhaul a huge complicated system, or even not having the time to feasibly do it, but.... It definitely seems like just keeping it the way it is is *not* helping the game at all. 

 

Much as I love you - if I understand black boxes correctly, it is as "easy" as analysing the brain.

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1 minute ago, cyradis4 said:

Actually, what I got from that was that TJ isn't exactly sure why its still just as bad as it was, that there are too many variables in play. 

 

A "black box" is something where certain inputs give certain outputs.... and the users doesn't know how any given output is generated. So its possible TJ is using some sort of RNG that he didn't, himself, code, so he doesn't know why its doing what it is. Or he could have a multitude of factors playing into which egg is produced (which we know from the past is the case) and he isn't sure which factor is what's driving the mess. He's said he's "probably" made some changes. Well, I remember that in the past, it wasn't as bad as this. 

 

Now, if he wanted help figuring it out, there are a lot of users on here who'd be happy to do mass-breeds / collect armies to help out. And if he wanted to see how a breed changes over the course of a year, he could check out the Holy Competition and look at the stats for those breeds. There's a lot of ways the users could help him figure this out by generating mass amounts of breeding data. I think I've mentioned that less and less people are breeding blockers, so any change TJ made could well have been swallowed up by lower breeding. 

 

Cheers!
C4. 

Exactly - better put than I just did. Thanks,

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8 minutes ago, cyradis4 said:

Actually, what I got from that was that TJ isn't exactly sure why its still just as bad as it was, that there are too many variables in play. 

 

A "black box" is something where certain inputs give certain outputs.... and the users doesn't know how any given output is generated. So its possible TJ is using some sort of RNG that he didn't, himself, code, so he doesn't know why its doing what it is. Or he could have a multitude of factors playing into which egg is produced (which we know from the past is the case) and he isn't sure which factor is what's driving the mess. He's said he's "probably" made some changes. Well, I remember that in the past, it wasn't as bad as this. 

 

Now, if he wanted help figuring it out, there are a lot of users on here who'd be happy to do mass-breeds / collect armies to help out. And if he wanted to see how a breed changes over the course of a year, he could check out the Holy Competition and look at the stats for those breeds. There's a lot of ways the users could help him figure this out by generating mass amounts of breeding data. I think I've mentioned that less and less people are breeding blockers, so any change TJ made could well have been swallowed up by lower breeding. 

 

Cheers!
C4. 

Interesting point, C4.

 

IF TJ isn't entirely SURE why it is doing what it is, that would, as you say, make it very difficult to fix.

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Then perhaps the whole breeding system needs an overhaul from the roots.

 

I actually like that breeds can vary across the years in terms of rarity—makes the game feel alive—and would like to see SOME of that variability kept, if possible. But if the current mechanics are a snarled mess beyond saving, then I’d rather just see commons be fun to use. 

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5 minutes ago, JavaTigress said:

Interesting point, C4.

 

IF TJ isn't entirely SURE why it is doing what it is, that would, as you say, make it very difficult to fix.

 

Exactly - poor man.

 

3 minutes ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

Then perhaps the whole breeding system needs an overhaul from the roots.

 

I actually like that breeds can vary across the years in terms of rarity—makes the game feel alive—and would like to see SOME of that variability kept, if possible. But if the current mechanics are a snarled mess beyond saving, then I’d rather just see commons be fun to use. 

 

I don't know if that's as possible as we might like to think....

 

Edited by Fuzzbucket

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A quick suggestion for the thread:

 

Can someone please compile a master list of what kind of transparency the user base - moderators and admins included - would like from TJ?

 

That way everyone can be on the same page about what needs to be discussed and what doesn't, and TJ can give better input on why he chooses to give us certain information and withhold others?

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Just now, JavaTigress said:

Interesting point, C4.

 

IF TJ isn't entirely SURE why it is doing what it is, that would, as you say, make it very difficult to fix.

 

When a black box is figured out, its no longer a black box. So if something is being investigated, and is still a black box, its probably safe to assume its not easy to figure out. 

 

And even if you happen to know how everything goes in, and how all the equations work, in a large dynamic system like the DC breeding program has to be (based on what we know), it can be almost impossible to predict the outcome if you have enough variables going in. 

 

Having said that, I would hate to see DC's odds go to a simple percentage. I've always found it amusing to see how dragons change in rarity over time. But the blocker problem, which is specific to only the *most* common dragons (the less common, uncommon, and rare dragon pairings don't suffer from this), that seems to me, that the problem is somewhere in the over-populated / under-populated area of the program. 

 

Cheers!
C4. 

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The problem has been known for AGES... the ratios are BROKEN, and have been for years. 'In The Beginning' the ratios did a lot of different things, including keeping rares rare. But as the user base grew, the ratios couldn't keep up with demand... I 'think' they've been tweaked and tweaked and tweaked, or at least TJ has hinted at it.. but I don't think the tweaks are working anymore. The coding probably started out simple, then grew complicated over time... and now I think it should be retired and a new system put up in it's place.

 

Just as a point, the abandoned page used to be EMPTY FOR HOURS at a time.. we celebrated successful breedings and players scrambled for the extra eggs (this was when multi-clutches were standard). Today we have so many eggs available that they DIE on the AP. There was also a time when we cursed the AP for blocking the main Cave, because there was only 1 Cave.

 

Ten years is a long time and many things have changed... so why not change today's problem? The broken breeding system

Edited by Cinnamin Draconna

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@noxlyx Jazeki has been updating her first post with the requests posted here. I'm sure she'll update it once she's seen how fast the thread has moved.

 

I'm also happy to see TJ posting here. This is the kind of engagement we need, even if all our requests aren't honored satisfactorily; it's the effort I appreciate, definitely a good start.

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Just now, Cinnamin Draconna said:

The problem has been known for AGES... the ratios are BROKEN, and have been for years. 'In The Beginning' the ratios did a lot of different things, including keeping rares rare. But as the user base grew, the ratios couldn't keep up with demand... I 'think' they've been tweaked and tweaked and tweaked, or at least TJ has hinted at it.. but I don't think the tweaks are working anymore. The coding probably started out simple, then grew complicated over time... and now I think it should be retired and a new system put up in it's place.

 

Just as a point, the abandoned page used to be EMPTY FOR HOURS at a time.. we celebrated successful breedings and players scrambled for the extra eggs (this was when multi-clutches were standard). Today we have so many eggs available that they DIE on the AP. There was also a time when we cursed the AP for bloking the main Cave, because there was only 1 Cave.

 

Ten years is a long time and many things have changed... so why not change today's problem? The broken breeding system

 

 

Cin, the only time eggs die in the AP is when they are *blocked* by a Holiday wall, which occurs exactly 3 times a year and there are a half-dozen work-around suggestions. 

 

And your last point is the crux of the issue: IS the breeding system broken? The only place where there is a problem is the blockers. If you get "no egg" on a quasi-regular basis, you will get both breeds. So why over-haul the whole system.... when you have just one *part* that isn't working right? wouldn't it be better to ID why that one section isn't working as desired.... and fix it? 

 

Cheers!
C4. 

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1 minute ago, Cinnamin Draconna said:

The problem has been known for AGES... the ratios are BROKEN, and have been for years. 'In The Beginning' the ratios did a lot of different things, including keeping rares rare. But as the user base grew, the ratios couldn't keep up with demand... I 'think' they've been tweaked and tweaked and tweaked, or at least TJ has hinted at it.. but I don't think the tweaks are working anymore. The coding probably started out simple, then grew complicated over time... and now I think it should be retired and a new system put up in it's place.

 

Just as a point, the abandoned page used to be EMPTY FOR HOURS at a time.. we celebrated successful breedings and players scrambled for the extra eggs (this was when multi-clutches were standard). Today we have so many eggs available that they DIE on the AP. There was also a time when we cursed the AP for blocking the main Cave, because there was only 1 Cave.

 

Ten years is a long time and many things have changed... so why not change today's problem? The broken breeding system

 

I am sure that this isn't just a matter of ratios. They are reset every year and the breeding issue continues.

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At the end of the day, a lot of this seems to come down to expectation management.  And at the risk of being a bit devil's advocate for a moment, I would say that cuts both ways.  TJ could really do with being better at managing player expectations and players could perhaps be better at managing their own expectations.  This is hardly only a problem with DC, mind - you only have to look at the furore around the game No Man's Sky to see what kind of mess can be made when X is delivered to people who thought they were promised Y - and that was with the backing/blessing of Sony behind it.

 

TJ alludes indirectly to expectation management regarding commenting definitively on certain suggestion threads and I actually get that, I really do.  I'm not going to say that it is the best way to manage those expectations, but I understand that it is motivated by that intention.  A lot of the time when I browse a suggestion thread and see comments like, "We should have X be like this." or "Well, what if we do such-and-such?" it always leaves me thinking, "Well, we can't do anything of the sort because it's not our site."  There is an expectation/assumption by the people involved that, because they have talked a topic around in circles for however long and reached some kind of consensus with other forum commenters, then that "agreed-on solution" MUST be the way forward.  Hell, I know I did something similar with a thread I created to propose an alternative to Teleport before it happened.  Obviously, I didn't get what I asked for!  And, devil's advocate again, sometimes I see things suggested that would undermine core gameplay (as I understand it from a player perspective) to such an extent that it would stop this game from being a game - or be fundamentally, radically different to the game as it presently exists.  These days I very rarely bother getting involved with suggestion threads beyond a "yay/nay" because I don't really have the time or energy these days to hash out a "solution" that.... isn't a solution.

 

Note: I am not for one second saying that it is pointless to make suggestions or state how one feels about the gameplay experience - we may not be the authorities on the best way to address our concerns about gameplay issues, but we are all absolutely authorities on how the present gameplay loop makes us feel, and that is very important information.

 

Despite all that, however, I do have to echo the concerns of others here regarding management communication in general.  As someone else accurately noted, the playerbase would not seize quite so hungrily onto every last scrap of management feedback if it wasn't so few and far between - to the point where "TJ sez..." posts are dredged up from literally years ago - and those posts probably aren't even slightly relevant now.  The starving will make do with every last crumb thrown to them because they have no choice.

 

To nod towards the Sweetling fiasco, I have no idea how many alt Sweetling owners there are now relative to the player population as a whole.  Perhaps they have dwindled down to edge-case levels.  I suspect Tiki G's analysis on the Sweetling thread may be pretty much on the nose.  However, it is worth bearing in mind that those edge-cases are 100% of some peoples' experiences, even if they are a very tiny percentage of the global experience.  And those people showed up just like the rest of us at midnight on the 8th to breed their dragons and continue their lineages, only to have that ability removed from them with literally no warning.  I have no way of knowing (and nor does anyone else) whether the change was something long planned or dreamt up on the evening of the 7th of February 2018, but frankly, the way it went down, it doesn't matter either way.  Holiday lineages, especially ones with the two-per-scroll breeds, take literally years to plan and coordinate and bring to fruition, and the kind of person willing to invest that kind of time in a game in this day and age should deserve somewhat better treatment than that.  TJ made a comment along the lines of "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second-best time is now" - but this change was not about planting something new to grow, it was about pruning away an existing feature.  It would have been kinder to announce that this year would be the last year of the "expected" behaviour, with the change actually coming into effect for the 2019 breeding season.  There would still have been drama (because when does anything here not create drama?) but it would have allowed the lineage builders one last hurrah and then given them a whole year to come to terms with the fact of the change.  Moreover, making the decision but not warning the mods who would be on the front line to deal with the resulting flack?  That's.... ouch.  I would say they deserve better treatment in this regard, too.

 

(That ended up being even more of a wall o' text than I thought it would.  Ooops.)

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2 minutes ago, purpledragonclaw said:

I'm also happy to see TJ posting here. This is the kind of engagement we need, even if all our requests aren't honored satisfactorily; it's the effort I appreciate, definitely a good start.

 

I couldn't agree more.

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12 minutes ago, purpledragonclaw said:

@noxlyx Jazeki has been updating her first post with the requests posted here. I'm sure she'll update it once she's seen how fast the thread has moved.

 

I'm also happy to see TJ posting here. This is the kind of engagement we need, even if all our requests aren't honored satisfactorily; it's the effort I appreciate, definitely a good start.

I also agree, PDC. THAT is exactly the sort of thing that folks on this thread are hoping for more of, IMO. AND Thank you @TJ09

Edited by JavaTigress

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