Bring Back CB Vampires

[KageSora]

1 hour ago, inghelene said:

Whilst some seasonals have a funny gimmick, they can only be acquired during their respective holiday. Saying that any gimmick is just as much a reason to have them no longer drop in cave for their holiday, as it is for a breed that reproduces outside of the holiday is a stretch. This would need an additional gimmick to make them produce offspring, or you’d make them unobtainable. No such thing was needed for a breed whos gimmick was that it defied the one rule of every other holiday dragon: only breed/drop during a holiday.

 

I don't see a difference, personally.  A gimmick is a gimmick.  I disagree that their acquisition gimmick disqualifies them from being a holiday release despite being released as the Halloween dragon in their year--especially as you cannot obtain them CB other times of the year.  They would still have their special little gimmick--they'd still be the only holiday you can obtain a "bred" version of outside of their season, it's just that you'd then be able to obtain a CB version during their season.  I don't see how that cheapens or defeats their gimmick or anything.  All holiday dragons originally could only be obtained CB during their original run--that was their thing, the gimmick that all holiday dragons shared.  The fact that it was decided that their limited-run nature was played out and time to change means I don't see why vampires should be magically super special where if you didn't get a CB the best you can hope for is a bitten one.

 

24 minutes ago, Laugh said:

Every dragon on DC is unique. No one is arguing otherwise. It's not because "x" dragon is unique that it shouldn't be released, but rather the functions of its uniqueness and why it shouldn't be rereleased. None of the rebuttal answers this. The bigger question: "Why weren't Vamps rereleased with the other holidays"?

 

They have unique images/falvor text but no, not every dragon on DC is "unique".  Most of them don't have any special gimmick.

 

Re-releasing them, as I said in reply to the other person I quoted in this, would not change that you cannot get CBs during the majority of the year.  They'd still keep their special fancy little gimmick of "able to produce bitten 'offspring' out of season", they just would be put back on par with the rest of the holidays in that their CB wouldn't be unique anymore.

 

Why is their limited CB status sacrosanct and cannot be expanded the way the other holiday dragons were?  People opposed those, too, on the grounds that they'd be less special.  I don't see why vamps are so magically ultra super special to the degree that we can't let other people have a proper CB of them.  Unless the act of making them available again as a proper CB does cheapen them, in which case I think it would make more sense to argue for the complete reversal of CB holidays being available in subsequent years.

 

I think it makes more sense to consider that leaving them out was an outdated decision that needs to be updated and changed, much like it was decided that having the other holidays as CB only during their original release was an outdated idea that needed to be updated and changed.

 

21 minutes ago, Laugh said:

You're really stretching it with the "lineage" point. Pretty sure everyone on thread is specifically talking about the "breeding" aspect of lineages, which Vampires cannot do. 

 

It's a line of inheritance you can trace from your vampire back through each vampire until you get to the original one or a dead end--it's a lineage of a sort.  Which is what I said, you can sort of lineage them by mapping it out.  Besides, over the years I've seen people ask for the bitten by to be displayed the way breeding lineages are, so clearly some users have historically considered them similar.

[seventeendeer]

No support from me. As has been brought up previously in this thread, the fact that CB vampires can't breed means there'll be less of an incentive to pick them up, as they're disqualified from lineage projects, which will likely lead to clogged biomes.

 

Genuine CB dragons are generally considered worth more because they can be used for nearly any lineage project. Vampires with no "bitten by" label serve no practical function, since vampires can't make actual lineages (the fact that they don't have a dedicated bite-lineage page makes it clear they're supposed to be separate features that just so happen to accomplish similar things). Ones with a short "bite lineage" are only worth a little extra when trading because they're hard to come by, so they're a novelty - value that would be completely wrecked anyway if cave-bitten(?) vamps were released again.

 

I think it's a mistake to compare vampires produced pre-bitten by the cave with other CB holidays. The difference between vampires and other holidays is huge and obvious, and the way the current system handles these differences is perfectly balanced. Taking away part of what makes them unique and putting more pressure on our already-overworked holiday biome just to get rid of a single line of text intended to be fun and add flavor to the breed seems counterintuitive.

[MoonShark]

As someone who was present in 2008 when Vampires were released and could not grab any because my living-in-the-country dial-up was so bad, I would LOVE for Vampires to drop in the cave during Halloween. It was heartbreaking to see those eggs whipping by all day without me ever being fast enough to grab even one. Even fifteen years later, I can still remember how upsetting it was to click and click and click without success. There were several holidays that were like that for me in the early years of playing DC, and thanks to TJ re-releasing old holiday breeds, I finally do have CBs of those...but still none of Vampires, because they were the only exclusion.

 

Do they serve no practical function for some folks? Sure. But saying that's the case, full stop, is a blanket statement and doesn't reflect the views of every player. It's clear that there are folks like me who would love to be able to obtain some Vampires without the "bitten by" tag. Even if they were just added to the Market, I'd appreciate it and would happily spend some shards to obtain a few.

[Shadowdrake]

Old holidays already clog the biomes, whether they're Halloween or not. Adding vampires would at least help move it a little more than the lurker/marrow/swalker eggs do, if only for a year or two.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Shadowdrake

[KageSora]

On 9/28/2023 at 7:05 AM, seventeendeer said:

Vampires with no "bitten by" label serve no practical function, since vampires can't make actual lineages

 

By this logic we should also remove the unbreedables since those also serve no practical function as they cannot have any sort of lineage at all--Vampires, at least, get more than Dinos or Papers or CB Neglecteds do in that they can have a theoretically traceable "bitten by" line.

 

I'd also argue that the fact that we can see those things at all indicates that they do, in fact, have a "practical" function.  IIRC, originally vamps didn't display sires or progeny--those were both added after the fact in separate updates, years apart.  Since neither of them were added with a "proper" lineage view, there was no "practical" reason to add those features at all from a lineage-building perspective.  But the site is more than just a lineage-builder.  That's merely one playstyle, out of many--the idea that something shouldn't be added or re-introduced because it doesn't serve the practical needs of lineage builders is a very poor argument since it has to argue, inherently, that one specific playstyle (building lineages) is more "intended" as the playstyle than other playstyles, such as simply collecting CBs or collecting without regard to lineage.  I don't believe there's an "official" playstyle, however?

 

On 9/28/2023 at 7:05 AM, seventeendeer said:

which will likely lead to clogged biomes.

 

What's clogging a biome often depends on when you look at it.  Personally when I'm hunting for Desipis CBs I see so many things like the Marrows I wish I could just grab and smash them to clear them out without taking up a slot for 24 hours.  Assuming they'll clog the biomes doesn't mean they will forever, nor should that be a reason any given dragon is no longer offered as a CB.  "They might theoretically clog the biomes" is a very weak reason to not bring them back as a CB.

[seventeendeer]

3 minutes ago, KageSora said:

 

By this logic we should also remove the unbreedables since those also serve no practical function as they cannot have any sort of lineage at all--Vampires, at least, get more than Dinos or Papers or CB Neglecteds do in that they can have a theoretically traceable "bitten by" line.

 

Unbreedables serve the purpose of being unique, somewhat-more-difficult-to-obtain sprites. DC is primarily about collecting different dragon sprites, so their purpose is to be collected. The original vampires and sired vampires look the same and function the same mechanically, with the only difference being the label on their view page clearly added for fun and flavor. An aesthetic touch and an actual game mechanic are not the same thing.

 

9 minutes ago, KageSora said:

That's merely one playstyle, out of many--the idea that something shouldn't be added or re-introduced because it doesn't serve the practical needs of lineage builders is a very poor argument since it has to argue, inherently, that one specific playstyle (building lineages) is more "intended" as the playstyle than other playstyles, such as simply collecting CBs or collecting without regard to lineage.  I don't believe there's an "official" playstyle, however?

 

The official blurb on-site reads as follows: Welcome to Dragon Cave! Dragon Cave is an online adoptables game. Collect eggs, raise them to adulthood, and then breed them to cre­ate interesting lineages. New dragons are added regularly!

 

So yes, there is in fact an "official" playstyle that is encouraged by the site. Creating "interesting lineages" is quite literally stated to be the end-goal right there on the front page. Vampires are clearly deliberate outliers here.

 

18 minutes ago, KageSora said:

What's clogging a biome often depends on when you look at it.  Personally when I'm hunting for Desipis CBs I see so many things like the Marrows I wish I could just grab and smash them to clear them out without taking up a slot for 24 hours.  Assuming they'll clog the biomes doesn't mean they will forever, nor should that be a reason any given dragon is no longer offered as a CB.  "They might theoretically clog the biomes" is a very weak reason to not bring them back as a CB.

 

People pick up multiple CB's of the same breeds to use in lineage projects, which is one of the most popular game mechanics and the stated end-goal of the game. Vampires cannot be used in lineages, so there's a much smaller incentive to pick them up compared to other breeds. Surely you can see how there's a balancing issue here?

[Tiira]

19 minutes ago, seventeendeer said:

The official blurb on-site reads as follows: Welcome to Dragon Cave! Dragon Cave is an online adoptables game. Collect eggs, raise them to adulthood, and then breed them to cre­ate interesting lineages. New dragons are added regularly!

 

So yes, there is in fact an "official" playstyle that is encouraged by the site. Creating "interesting lineages" is quite literally stated to be the end-goal right there on the front page. Vampires are clearly deliberate outliers here.

 

Sorry for my random off-topic comment, but this is nothing more than your interpretation of a few lines of text. I don't think you're right. I would be surprised if that brief description was actually meant to be read as an official statement of the game's intented playstyle and main objective.

 

In fact, the Site Introduction on the Help page seems to be telling us rather clearly that the game doesn't have an official goal:

"Dragon Cave is an online adoptables site. The goal is to grab dragon eggs and raise them to adulthood by having others click on them. There are over 300 different kinds of dragon to collect; how you play is completely up to you."

Lineages are not mentioned at all in site Help, which would be rather strange if creating them was the point of the whole game.

 

(I realise I might have sounded a bit blunt and harsh, sorry for that, I'm rather tired so I had Google Translate to help me with English. 😹)

[seventeendeer]

@Tiira I'm sorry, but you're right, this is indeed off-topic. The part of my post you're quoting is taken out of context; KageSora was arguing that no playstyle is "more intended" than others, so I felt it was relevant to mention that there is actually one playstyle that is encouraged right there on the main page. The help page does add the nuance that you can actually play however you want (with the subtext that there's no real end-goal to the game, there's no "winning" the game), but the fact of the matter is that lineage-building was still singled out as the recommended playstyle in the literal third line of text when you open the site as a guest (read: potential new player). You don't have to be a game designer to see why this is a significant detail to keep in mind when discussing suggestions for the site and whether or not they make sense for the game.

 

Please try to read for intent and keep the context of the topic in mind. I shouldn't have to defend the argument that lineage-building is one of the features most prioritized by both staff and players on the "collect eggs, raise them to adulthood, and then breed them to cre­ate interesting lineages" website (no sass intended at you personally). 😂

Edited September 29, 2023 by seventeendeer

[Hawaiianbabidoll]

4 hours ago, seventeendeer said:

Unbreedables serve the purpose of being unique, somewhat-more-difficult-to-obtain sprites. DC is primarily about collecting different dragon sprites, so their purpose is to be collected. The original vampires and sired vampires look the same and function the same mechanically, with the only difference being the label on their view page clearly added for fun and flavor. An aesthetic touch and an actual game mechanic are not the same thing.

One could argue the breed lineage link is merely a label on a view page for fun and flavor as well. Caveborn dragons and bred dragons also function the same mechanically, and the majority of breeds also look the same as their sires. Being able to see a lineage is the same mechanic as being able to see bite progeny. All it does is show you dragons linked to the one you're viewing. Making a lineage that is aesthetically pleasing might be gameplay to you, but making a bite lineage that is 100 vampires long might be gameplay to someone else. At the end of the day, they're still both just lineages that we can look at for fun.

On that note, I think it would be neat if Vampires had their 'bitten by' expanded to link to a proper vampire lineage page. It could be like their 'bitten' page but in reverse, or heck, just a regular lineage page but a straight line, that'd be funny X3

 

4 hours ago, seventeendeer said:

The official blurb on-site reads as follows: Welcome to Dragon Cave! Dragon Cave is an online adoptables game. Collect eggs, raise them to adulthood, and then breed them to cre­ate interesting lineages. New dragons are added regularly!

 

So yes, there is in fact an "official" playstyle that is encouraged by the site. Creating "interesting lineages" is quite literally stated to be the end-goal right there on the front page. Vampires are clearly deliberate outliers here.

 

 

People pick up multiple CB's of the same breeds to use in lineage projects, which is one of the most popular game mechanics and the stated end-goal of the game. Vampires cannot be used in lineages, so there's a much smaller incentive to pick them up compared to other breeds. Surely you can see how there's a balancing issue here?

 

The blurb on site is more of a 'hey these are things you can do' not 'these are things you should do'. There is no 'official' or 'recommended' play style, and just because it's a common play style, doesn't mean ideas and concepts that don't adhere to that play style should be dismissed. If one gameplay style is more popular than another, that shouldn't be a reason to deny the minority their fun. Breeding is a major mechanic of dragon cave, that is true, but the far larger mechanic is, as you said earlier, to 'collect' and if your goal in the game is 'collect dragons with no ties to other dragons', which a lot of people have that goal even if they don't breed their dragons (Hi I'm one of those people), then having a chance to get a caveborn vampire, the singular only breed that was originally released in cave and is no longer available to obtain without a lineage, would be welcomed.

I really don't think it would be a cave blocking issue either. There might be a smaller incentive if you're only collecting for breeding, but many people just like to hoard dragons. You never see cheese, papers, and dinos sit for very long, and vampires arguably have more utility than they do since gamblers like to use their bite bsa when they misclick in the cave to try to repulse the egg. Put vamps at a low drop rate and only have them available during spooky season? I doubt you'll see them sit. And even if by some reason they did, TJ would know how many eggs are generated vs picked up. He could adjust their drop rates.

 

 

 

Because Vamps are available to be 'bred' in their own way year round, I don't think they should be added to the Halloween biome in the same numbers as the rest of the halloweenies, but I would fully support if they were sprinkled in as a rarer drop. I am always for making every breed as accessible to new players as possible. We were able to get caveborn vamps before, new players should have that chance as well.

[Tiira]

@seventeendeer I'm very sorry if I offended you or if I misunderstood something. I was indeed only commenting at the part of your post that I quoted. What I was trying to say was that I'd agree with KageSora that there is no official playstyle, and therefore, protecting the interests of any one group that prefers this or that playstyle might not be the best way to defend one's opinions.

 

I still think that the short advertising text in the front page doesn't make building lineages THE playstyle. I interpret it differently and in my opinion you're giving it too much weight (instead, I wouldn't say that the Help page Intro is just a nuance). I do enjoy creating lineages myself, but I wouldn't consider it more valuable or prioritised than any other playstyle.

 

Anyway, it really is useless to continue this discussion any further and I'll back off as I don't have anything to say on the actual topic. I do feel that I shouldn't have opened my mouth in the first place. I was just browsing this thread out of curiousity and found the debate on the "official playstyle" more interesting than the question of re-releasing vampires, haha. I hope I was clearer now, didn't want to leave you wondering if I was just trying to attack you or anything.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Tiira

[KageSora]

13 hours ago, seventeendeer said:

The original vampires and sired vampires look the same and function the same mechanically, with the only difference being the label on their view page clearly added for fun and flavor. An aesthetic touch and an actual game mechanic are not the same thing.

 

What's an aesthetic touch to you is a feature people build playstyles around.  Did you know there are people who explicitly collect dragons with release-date "catch/laid on" dates and those are a top priority for their collection?  It's not a "practical" purpose but it's a thing that people build entire playstyles around to the point of offering rare dragons in trade for those that have specific dates on them.

 

Same thing with specific codes--those don't serve any sort of special purpose outside of being an ID so you can go to the correct dragon.  Yet others build entire playstyles around collecting specific types of codes, even though any given type of code is purely an aesthetic appeal.

 

Functionally, building a lineage of specific types of codes or collecting vamps to trace their sire line are both mere aesthetic choices that don't mean anything practically.

 

There's no significant difference between "somebody who wants to collect only specific types of codes", "somebody who wants to collect dragons that were caught/laid only on specific dates", "somebody who wants a vamp with no sire listed", "somebody who collects specific dragons to build a particular style of lineage" and "somebody who collects unbreedables".  Each of those serves no "practical" function and are pure aesthetic choices on the part of players who opt to collect and build playstyles around them.

 

14 hours ago, seventeendeer said:

The official blurb on-site reads as follows: Welcome to Dragon Cave! Dragon Cave is an online adoptables game. Collect eggs, raise them to adulthood, and then breed them to cre­ate interesting lineages. New dragons are added regularly!

 

So yes, there is in fact an "official" playstyle that is encouraged by the site. Creating "interesting lineages" is quite literally stated to be the end-goal right there on the front page. Vampires are clearly deliberate outliers here.

 

So then why do unbreedables exist if they fly in the face of the "official" playstyle?  Because far as I can tell there isn't an official playstyle, that's merely a blurb that explains what you can do if you choose to.  You'll also note the game allows you to not breed your dragons.  If there were only one proper playstyle the game would all but force you to breed your dragons to create the next generation to continue to progress.  I've played games like that, if a game is meant to use breeding as a primary mechanic then it does very heavily incentivize it and at times have some penalties to not using the breeding mechanic.  DC doesn't really do that outside of a comparatively small handful of hybrid or breed-only alts/specific breeding mechanics.  Those kinds of games can be a lot of fun, but they have a very different feel to them than DC does.

 

The fact that DC allows you to continually obtain new CBs and never makes you breed up a next generation to raise to continue playing (outside of if you specifically want certain hybrids or bred-only alts/varieties) means that breeding your dragons is not a required element of the gameplay, and therefore cannot be said to be a true "official" gameplay style.

 

Quite frankly the only way you'll ever be able to convince me that there's a 100% absolute intended playstyle that anything else is a deviation from is if TJ himself came in and said "yeah there's only one way to play the game correctly, everybody else is just ignoring that to do their own thing".  If he does feel that way, then fine--that would probably settle a lot of debates if he came right out and said what playstyle is the correct intended way to play the game and people might stop suggesting things that don't defer to that style entirely.  But as far as I can tell he isn't on-record saying there's a singular "correct" way to play the game that is meant to be exclusively catered to in features and updates.

 

In the absence of that, I think it's safer to assume that there isn't actually one "correct" gameplay method that people are supposed to follow and the little blurb on the front is just advertising main elements of the game that you can do, not that you should do to play it "correctly".

 

14 hours ago, seventeendeer said:

People pick up multiple CB's of the same breeds to use in lineage projects, which is one of the most popular game mechanics and the stated end-goal of the game. Vampires cannot be used in lineages, so there's a much smaller incentive to pick them up compared to other breeds. Surely you can see how there's a balancing issue here?

 

And since people are already annoyed year-round because the blockers are not the CB dragons they're trying to pick up for lineages, surely you can see how there's a balancing issue there already?  Vamps would not magically create some sort of balancing issue if they were released CB.  If they blocked the cave it would merely be yet another symptom of the on-going issues that plague the rest of the game in regards to the ratios and such.  I'm also quite sure that TJ could mess around with their CB drop rates if he needed to.

 

But, again, what is the material difference between "the same 3 vamp eggs sitting there for 5 minutes because nobody wants them" and "the same three Marrow eggs sitting there for 5 minutes because nobody wants them"?  In both cases a single breed has the same eggs sitting there for the entire drop because nobody who was browsing at the time wanted them, and therefore any other eggs those browsers may have been interested in weren't visible.  Exact same end result.  But I'm supposed to believe that the vamps would somehow be worse in those otherwise identical situations??  Doesn't make a lick of sense to me.

 

(And you can tell, at least on desktop, if it's the same three eggs or if one of them got picked up and replaced by another of the same breed--hovering over the egg will let you see the URL which includes the code, and I have at times seen the exact same eggs sit there for the entire 5 minute drop)

 

8 hours ago, Hawaiianbabidoll said:

On that note, I think it would be neat if Vampires had their 'bitten by' expanded to link to a proper vampire lineage page. It could be like their 'bitten' page but in reverse, or heck, just a regular lineage page but a straight line, that'd be funny X3

 

You're definitely not the first to suggest this, I know I've seen it before a few times over the years--so clearly there is interest, among some players, as treating the bite lineage the same as a bred lineage!  I think it'd be neat, too, personally.

[StarlightLion]

I'd love to have true CB Vamps! I am (as you might be able to tell from my signature lmao) a true lineage builder, to the point that I don't collect any dragon with a lineage I don't like, with my freezies being a current exception but that will likely meet the purge in the near future. My scroll has undergone several purges in the past and it's possible that it will again in the future, though on a much smaller scale since I am, deliberately, very selective about what grows up on my scroll.

 

All that to say that the unique flavour of Vampires is that their lineage takes the form of the 'bitten by' trail. They're not fundamentally different from any other dragon, their lineages just look different to the rest of the dragons. That's their flavour, their special Thing. If I had access to true CB Vamps, I would build a lineage from them, because I don't consider the bitten by line to be anything but a lineage. I'm honestly a little confused as to how it could be considered anything else - a 'lineage' is just a series of traceable ancestors, and a Vampire creating another Vampire definitely meets the criteria to be considered an ancestor - but that's possibly a failing on my part since I can't account for the experience of every user. I think it's a little disingenuous to say they're so unique that their very availability should be so tightly restricted. The way Vampire lineages work isn't more unique than GoNs (who can't breed true) or Sinos (ditto), it just looks slightly different. I already have a naming schema for my Vampires that hinges on the bitten by lineage - I would absolutely adore the chance to pick up a handful of true CBs and create a line that's entirely my own.

 

As it stands, even in a best case scenario (where I get Vamps bitten by an 'original'), it's 100% impossible for me to do that. An option that places a hard block on a playstyle versus an option that not everyone will use because it's not for their playstyle but places no additional obstacles to those players seems like kind of an obvious decision to me.

Edited October 7, 2023 by StarlightLion
Typos lol