Market Feedback

[Shokomon]

2 minutes ago, olympe said:

You can look it up in this very thread. On page two, someone stated they'd have to save up 40 weeks for a gold since they already had 100 shards...

Oh I just meant the market prices in general.

 

Because they will all change depending on people's habits. 

[TJ09]

22 hours ago, Aurigena said:

 

Sorry, but that's not true, every game rewards - or should reward - players who spend more time playing and who put more effort in playing the game. Making people want to spend their time, effort or money on the game you created is one the basic goals of every game creator and to achieve that, you simply have to reward the most dedicated players. Spending a lot of time playing? Great, have a bonus. Spend less time playing? Play without a bonus and have fun, it's not like the bonus for dedicated players ruins your gaming experience. Plus, if you don't reward dedicated players, they often get bored and go somewhere else, where being a dedicated player pays off.

 

On DC, every players sticks to their own scroll, so I really don't see how the other player buying more eggs from the Market or earning more shards for spending more time on DC ruins your gaming experience. Does that prevents you from playing the way you want or what? Because for now, it's something along those lines: "I can't stand it when more active player gets more good stuff than me, I don't have so much time for playing, it's not fair!"

 

Edit: And yes, I know that many of those "it's not fair" voices come from the active players who spend a lot of time on DC. That doesn't change the fact that getting rewarded for your time and efforts, or wanting to be rewarded for your time and efforts, shouldn't be perceived as "unfairness". In my opinion, it's similar to reverse discrimination (discrimination against more active players, in favor of less active players).

 

Well, I think i'ts not fair for dedicated players to not be rewarded for their activity. I spend a lot of time playing, but I won't get any real bonus for that because... well, less active players won't like it? So what's the point of being more active than them? Log once a week, get as many shards as pretty much every other player here, spend them or save them, that's not encouraging from the point of dedicated player.

 

OK, enough of my rambling. I just wanted to say that I'm all for giving players a reward for spending significantly more time on DC - the ability to earn more shards. Maybe not from breeding dragons, as that would encourage throwing a lot of bred eggs to the AP, but for other actions - catching eggs, trading, maybe also for naming dragons, using BSAs etc. The ability to buy a temporal egg slot would also be awesome.

 

I'd also like to point out that Market prices are weird, in Trading Hub I saw people who wanted to trade Papers, Dinos or Trios for Silvers or Golds because their Market prices are somewhat similar. Those prices can be pretty deceiving, especially for newbies who hope to trade a Magma for a Gold.

 

1. Sure, rewarding actual effort (rather than just trying) is an important part of game design, but not every single mechanic needs to be structured in a way that the reward scales with effort. We already have the cave which does that quite a bit—spending more time in the cave is already directly proportional to chance of seeing (and therefore chance of catching) desirable eggs. Given that that's part of the core of the site and the market explicitly should not supplant the cave, that may be enough.

 

2. As currently structured. a lack of cap would kind-of reward "dedicated" players (i.e. people who are active for a larger portion of the week than most people), but it'd actually reward certain types of long-time players more (those whose goals include amassing many dragons) due to the inclusion of breeding as a source of shards. Even as-is, newer players are at somewhat of disadvantage due to fewer egg slots, fewer dragons to breed, etc.

 

3. The current number was designed roughly around the average person hitting the cap primarily through raising cave eggs every week, which seems to match the sentiment I saw around that the market should be accessible and feasible for "most people." This means that half of the people will hit their cap, and a good portion of them will be active enough to hit more than their cap, but aren't rewarded as such (I don't currently have data on how far over cap people are going, but it's something I'll be looking at going forward to evaluate how well things are working).

 

4. As far as distributions go, if the top 5% of players are only twice as active as the average person, then an uncapped system or increased cap is maybe not too terrible, since there's no evidence of grinding behavior. If the top 25% of people are twice as active, and the top 5% are 20x as active, then the distribution ramps up quite a bit at the tail end, and statistically the top 5% are outliers that maybe don't need to be explicitly catered to in the market (which is the current public perception of how things play out). None of these numbers are real, but hopefully you get the point.

 

5. Playing off the above point: if a cap of 200 means that only the most dedicated people will hit the cap while most people are still around 100, then maybe getting eggs twice as fast for the increased effort is an okay tradeoff to allow more people to be rewarded for their effort. That's an extreme example, but it shows the factors at play here: how tolerant of discrepancies should the system be (how much extra effort above average is okay before you start considering it unfair?) and how much should that be rewarded (relative to the average person). Personally, I'd be okay with an increased cap as long as it doesn't confer a disproportionately high advantage to a small number of people (which will generally mean that it can't be raised too much).

 

6. To solve the above, perhaps the cap could be structured in a way that each criteria has its own cap, instead of one singular cap, adding up to a little more than the current cap. This is common in games under the guise of "weekly challenges" and the like—breed 10 dragons, raise 8 eggs, etc.. It would mean that "normal" play will still get you to around 100 shards a week, but you might have to change up your routine a bit if you really want those last few shards. Thus, most people still get a reasonable amount of shards, but if you specifically put in some extra time you can bring down your time-to-gold-egg from like ten months to seven. Just a thought.

[StormWizard212]

27 minutes ago, TJ09 said:

To solve the above, perhaps the cap could be structured in a way that each criteria has its own cap, instead of one singular cap, adding up to a little more than the current cap. This is common in games under the guise of "weekly challenges" and the like—breed 10 dragons, raise 8 eggs, etc.. It would mean that "normal" play will still get you to around 100 shards a week, but you might have to change up your routine a bit if you really want those last few shards. Thus, most people still get a reasonable amount of shards, but if you specifically put in some extra time you can bring down your time-to-gold-egg from like ten months to seven. Just a thought.

 

I like that solution. I think that also covers the points people have made about fearing people breeding for the sake of shards rather than because they think others might want what they have to breed (though personally, I don't see an issue with mass-breeding for the AP). As someone who's rather goal oriented, I really like the idea of having specific targets to meet and I would find that more fun than "go and do stuff until you reach the limit", though I know that that's not the case for everyone.

 

I think the key here, though, would having a good variety of things that contribute to shards to cater to a broad audience. I think it would also be good to have some 'bonuses' as well as the standard "raise x dragons" that come from achieving a new trophy, summoning a GoN, etc. They are not things that will happen every week or for every player, but it would be a nice little extra something when exciting milestones are achieved, in my opinion. 

[Auriene]

1 hour ago, TJ09 said:

To solve the above, perhaps the cap could be structured in a way that each criteria has its own cap, instead of one singular cap, adding up to a little more than the current cap. This is common in games under the guise of "weekly challenges" and the like—breed 10 dragons, raise 8 eggs, etc.. It would mean that "normal" play will still get you to around 100 shards a week, but you might have to change up your routine a bit if you really want those last few shards. Thus, most people still get a reasonable amount of shards, but if you specifically put in some extra time you can bring down your time-to-gold-egg from like ten months to seven. Just a thought.

 

I really like that solution Also, I agree with @StormWizard212 - it would be good to be able to obtain shards through more forms of DC activity. One-time bonuses for trophy, summonings, maybe also for participating in events (collecting all eggs / tricks or treats during the event), are also a nice idea.

[Meruru]

I have no problem if the cap got increased, Since I have other goals in mind so it won't be too hard to reach cap, my only worry is that after all the effort I can't buy the egg I want due to increased prices, so I push my self to collect more and hope the prices go down with time.... it doesn't bother me too much since I am having fun in the end, but saving up shards for 1 and a half years is not fun lol. 

[olympe]

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing the cap increased - but I fear this might lead to grinding if not done with utmost care. Personally, I can easily reach 250 without even trying, and about several thousands with trying (eg breeding lots of dragons - I'm closing in on 6000, so...), not to mention sifting through the AP. However, I don't want to have to spend countless hours every day doing just that.

 

Also, I'm not a fan of separate caps for various actions. It seems like this would enforce a certain way to play for most of us, which bothers me more than I can express. I'd much rather see bonus shards given for people who hatch/raise common dragons that are under-populated (=blockers) to help out the ratios, which anyone would benefit from, one way or another.

[HeatherMarie]

50 minutes ago, olympe said:

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing the cap increased - but I fear this might lead to grinding if not done with utmost care. Personally, I can easily reach 250 without even trying, and about several thousands with trying (eg breeding lots of dragons - I'm closing in on 6000, so...), not to mention sifting through the AP. However, I don't want to have to spend countless hours every day doing just that.

 

Also, I'm not a fan of separate caps for various actions. It seems like this would enforce a certain way to play for most of us, which bothers me more than I can express. I'd much rather see bonus shards given for people who hatch/raise common dragons that are under-populated (=blockers) to help out the ratios, which anyone would benefit from, one way or another.

 

I'm tentatively on board with separate caps for different actions but this is something that concerns me and I'd really like to know exactly what actions TJ would be thinking about using here. Raising dragons, that's the core of the game so of course earning shards for that is great, but if for instance there is a separate cap where you have to describe 10 dragons, or name 10 dragons, I don't really like that. Many people don't do either of those things in their specific playstyle and I really hate the thought that people would feel pressured to drastically change the way they play just to 'keep up' with other people's shard-earning (and yeah, someone else's shard earning doesn't directly affect others, but that won't stop people from thinking that way.)

 

Also, right now someone with limited playing time can easily reach the max shard number by doing things that take up very little time, like mass-breeding or even just grabbing and tossing tons of AP eggs. I like that, I like that it's fairly simple to earn the max amount of shards. If there were separate caps for this-and-that-and-this, would that lead to a bunch of people feeling left out or frustrated because they simply don't have the time to reach all those different caps?

 

As I've said before, any sort of increase in the cap would positively affect me, since I can and do play DC waaaaayyyyy too much, but I'm more focused on the playerbase as a whole then just what might benefit me. In general I like that the Market is such an even playing field and I don't want that to change.

[Auriene]

3 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

Many people don't do either of those things in their specific playstyle and I really hate the thought that people would feel pressured to drastically change the way they play just to 'keep up' with other people's shard-earning (and yeah, someone else's shard earning doesn't directly affect others, but that won't stop people from thinking that way.) (...) As I've said before, any sort of increase in the cap would positively affect me, since I can and do play DC waaaaayyyyy too much, but I'm more focused on the playerbase as a whole then just what might benefit me.

 

Personally, I believe that DC players are perfectly able to think, decide and speak for themselves Don't get me wrong, I understand that focusing on playerbase as a whole is a good thing and that your concern comes from a good place, but we need to be reasonable about that. Some people don't breed their dragons or don't breed eggs to AP, even though they know that now it means earning less shards. Some people don't hunt in the AP because they prefer to rely on their own scroll or their own dragons, and again, less shards for them. Some people collect only two or four CB dragons of each breed and that's all they want from this game - again, less shards for them. Should they feel pressured?

 

Rules are the same for everyone - but they can't always work to everyone's, like, absolutely everyone's advantage. You may not hit the cap every week, but you can be certain that you'd be able to buy that CB Gold sooner or later because it won't disapper from the Market. You can play at your own pace and still get everything you want.

 

I'll be blunt. If someone feels pressured because of thinking something along those lines: "I want that CB Gold ASAP! Like, really, really ASAP! But I don't want to change my play style! Woe is me!" - then the problem is that someone's unreasonable attitude. You can compare it to a situation when you decide to build an awesome, intricate lineage, but you like to hunt for interesting or rare CBs too much and you don't want to waste any of your slots for bred eggs. And if someone has the constant need to "keep up with others", even at the cost of their own play style, their own playing pace or game enjoyment in general, the problem also lays in their attitude - as far as I know, no one has to "keep up" with everything and everyone in this game (or in life in general). "Keep up with others, no matter what" attitude shouldn't be normalized or reinforced, especially since many DC players are young people, prone to this kind of (unhealthy) thinking.

[olympe]

4 minutes ago, Aurigena said:

Personally, I believe that DC players are perfectly able to think, decide and speak for themselves

Actually, they aren't. At least not all of them. Some don't speak English and yet play. (Heck, my daughter started playing before she could properly read in our native language, much less English.) Some players - mostly kids - can or may not access the forums. Others are just too shy, because S&R has proven more than once to be a rather hostile environment when tempers run hot.

 

Quote

Some people don't breed their dragons or don't breed eggs to AP, even though they know that now it means earning less shards. Some people don't hunt in the AP because they prefer to rely on their own scroll or their own dragons, and again, less shards for them. Some people collect only two or four CB dragons of each breed and that's all they want from this game - again, less shards for them. Should they feel pressured?

Wait, what? I can easily reach 100 shards without breeding a single dragon, without hunting in the AP or without collecting more than 4 CB dragons of any breed. I don't need to do more than one of these things (breeding, AP-hunting, collecting in general) in order to get to my limit, because I can make up the difference with whatever else I choose to do. What's wrong with that? Why does everything have to be about instant gratification and "I'm better/more dedicated than you, so gimme!"

 

Quote

Rules are the same for everyone - but they can't always work to everyone's, like, absolutely everyone's advantage. You may not hit the cap every week, but you can be certain that you'd be able to buy that CB Gold sooner or later because it won't disapper from the Market. You can play at your own pace and still get everything you want.

And what's wrong with the rules we have? Sure, they can't always work to everyone's advantage, but that is to be expected. But why do the rules have to be changed to be to your advantage? (And don't get me wrong, I would benefit from a raised cap. Totally.) Also, while the mystic CB golds won't vanish from the market, their price might skyrocket once too many players buy them. It's something to be expected. So, being unable to reach the cap now might mean a big delay in the achievement of my goals later on. But, hey, no pressure!

 

Quote

I'll be blunt. If someone feels pressured because of thinking something along those lines: "I want that CB Gold ASAP! Like, really, really ASAP! But I don't want to change my play style! Woe is me!" - then the problem is that someone's unreasonable attitude. You can compare it to a situation when you decide to build an awesome, intricate lineage, but you like to hunt for interesting or rare CBs too much and you don't want to waste any of your slots for bred eggs. And if someone has the constant need to "keep up with others", even at the cost of their own play style, their own playing pace or game enjoyment in general, the problem also lays in their attitude - as far as I know, no one has to "keep up" with everything and everyone in this game (or in life in general). "Keep up with others, no matter what" attitude shouldn't be normalized or reinforced, especially since many DC players are young people, prone to this kind of (unhealthy) thinking.

Absolutely. Which is another reason for very low caps instead of raised caps/no caps at all.

[Fuzzbucket]

Applauds Olympe. Spot on, girl

[HeatherMarie]

Thank you for saying things so eloquently, @olympe. I sometimes have a hard time putting my responses into words in a way that makes sense, but what you said is exactly what I've been thinking.

[DragonLady86]

4 hours ago, Aurigena said:

 

Personally, I believe that DC players are perfectly able to think, decide and speak for themselves Don't get me wrong, I understand that focusing on player base as a whole is a good thing and that your concern comes from a good place, but we need to be reasonable about that. Some people don't breed their dragons or don't breed eggs to AP, even though they know that now it means earning less shards. Some people don't hunt in the AP because they prefer to rely on their own scroll or their own dragons, and again, less shards for them. Some people collect only two or four CB dragons of each breed and that's all they want from this game - again, less shards for them. Should they feel pressured?

 

 

lol.  I only collect 2 CB of each, rarely hunt the AP because I'm usually looking for specific things, and rarely breed, period and never to AP.  And I'm sitting at 69/100 eggs for the cap having been on less than an hour today.  Please tell me how I'm not getting as many shards as I could be?. 

 

Admittedly, my play style very well WILL change because of the market introduction.  I'm on every day, but I spend most time on the forums and don't do much outside of new releases.  Occasionally I remember to try and breed for personal projects, but not often.  Which is how I'm a nearly 10 year player whose never been away longer than a weeks worth of vacation with no computer but only have 1696 dragons.  because working for the shards gives me motivation (an excuse) to work on my other stuff. 

[Auriene]

16 hours ago, olympe said:

(1) Actually, they aren't. At least not all of them. Some don't speak English and yet play. (Heck, my daughter started playing before she could properly read in our native language, much less English.) Some players - mostly kids - can or may not access the forums. Others are just too shy, because S&R has proven more than once to be a rather hostile environment when tempers run hot.

 

(2) Wait, what? I can easily reach 100 shards without breeding a single dragon, without hunting in the AP or without collecting more than 4 CB dragons of any breed. I don't need to do more than one of these things (breeding, AP-hunting, collecting in general) in order to get to my limit, because I can make up the difference with whatever else I choose to do. What's wrong with that? Why does everything have to be about instant gratification and "I'm better/more dedicated than you, so gimme!"

 

(3) And what's wrong with the rules we have? Sure, they can't always work to everyone's advantage, but that is to be expected. But why do the rules have to be changed to be to your advantage? (And don't get me wrong, I would benefit from a raised cap. Totally.) Also, while the mystic CB golds won't vanish from the market, their price might skyrocket once too many players buy them. It's something to be expected. So, being unable to reach the cap now might mean a big delay in the achievement of my goals later on. But, hey, no pressure!

 

(1) Acting or speaking in someone's name requires you to act and speak exactly as they would, and - unless you talked to all those people you mentioned and you know for sure what they are thinking and what are their feelings about this topic - you can't know for sure what they would speak. IMHO, speaking in someone's name should be allowed only with that someone's explicit permission. It's disrespectful to say that you know what other player, or a whole group of players, thinks or may think, especially since you stated that you aren't even a member of that group. I can understand the "my family member / my friend thinks that..." approach, but "so many players who can't speak for themselves will think that..." is unacceptable as an argument in discussion (and banned on some forums I know).

 

(2) OK, my bad. Shards aside, I just wanted to say that various play styles are already more demanding than others, yet there are still people who stick to them and apparently either don't feel the pressure to change them, or they manage to find a compromise. If you decide to drastically change your play style, it's your and only your decision - and you have to analyze consequences, because sometimes it's not possible to eat a cookie and have a cookie.

 

Please remember that my "bonus for activity idea" is strongly connected to the idea of giving players more variety of activities rewarded by shards, so that they would be able to earn a reasonable nuber of shards even without changing their play style. Also, the "bonus" would give more active players the ability to, let's say, buy that Gold a few weeks (or months) earlier, not to buy three Golds and a bunch of Silvers at once.

 

(3) The price skyrocketing is a problem I mentioned before and I'm sure that at one point, it will be addressed and solved by TJ, because without that, the Market will be pretty useless. But... I don't know if I understood you correctly, but according to you, more active players want a bonus only because they are 1. greedy, 2. they need instant gratification and 3. they want to feel superior than other players? Wow, that's... low.

 

I explained already why a small reward for activity on DC might be a good thing in my previous posts. Personally, I treat this idea as a way to give the most active players some appreciation and encouragement to stay active, but I don't want to repeat myself. I can understand that not everyone may like this idea (though I'm happy that TJ addressed and considered it), but there's no need to be disrespectful to active and dedicated players who are in favor of "activity bonus". There were enough of "you're greedy" accusations on this forum.

 

@DragonLady86 - that's precisely why I suggested getting shards from other actions - BSAs, for example - not only from "get an egg, raise a dragon" activity

[DragonLady86]

7 hours ago, Aurigena said:

 

 

 

(3) The price skyrocketing is a problem I mentioned before and I'm sure that at one point, it will be addressed and solved by TJ, because without that, the Market will be pretty useless. But... I don't know if I understood you correctly, but according to you, more active players want a bonus only because they are 1. greedy, 2. they need instant gratification and 3. they want to feel superior than other players? Wow, that's... low.

 

I explained already why a small reward for activity on DC might be a good thing in my previous posts. Personally, I treat this idea as a way to give the most active players some appreciation and encouragement to stay active, but I don't want to repeat myself. I can understand that not everyone may like this idea (though I'm happy that TJ addressed and considered it), but there's no need to be disrespectful to active and dedicated players who are in favor of "activity bonus". There were enough of "you're greedy" accusations on this forum.

 

@DragonLady86 - that's precisely why I suggested getting shards from other actions - BSAs, for example - not only from "get an egg, raise a dragon" activity

Actually, the majority of more active players are the ones saying they shouldn't be rewarded for doing more work, because they don't want to be greedy.  No one has done any name-calling. 

 

and I don't understand the point you are trying to make in your reply to me.  because MY point was I can get shards just fine without going outside my play style which you had previously said should put me at a disadvantage.  But doesn't. If I'm already hitting the cap two days in, there isn't much need for more ways to get shards. 

[Fuzzbucket]

One thing. The AP is now constantly full of  what even I would call rubbish eggs, usually a wall of one breed or another - I suspect from people determinedly collecting shards. (which is so unnecessary, as they are so easy to get; I haven't even been TRYING and I am almost at my weekly limit again.) I suspect the market is going to kill the appeal of the AP But I wouldn't want to see a limit on breeding, as I and many others are co-operating on lineages and we need to be able to carry on.

 

So PLEASE don't raise the cap, or it will get even worse.

[HeatherMarie]

3 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

One thing. The AP is now constantly full of  what even I would call rubbish eggs, usually a wall of one breed or another - I suspect from people determinedly collecting shards. (which is so unnecessary, as they are so easy to get; I haven't even been TRYING and I am almost at my weekly limit again.) I suspect the market is going to kill the appeal of the AP But I wouldn't want to see a limit on breeding, as I and many others are co-operating on lineages and we need to be able to carry on.

 

So PLEASE don't raise the cap, or it will get even worse.

 

I don't think shards have been around long enough to say with any sort of certainty that the AP will drastically change because of it. Right now there does seem to be more 'random' lineages, but I just went through a third of the visible eggs and only two were from the same person (and multiple were nice even-gens) so it doesn't seem all that bad right now? And AP walls happened fairly often before shards were introduced... Maybe there are some people breeding a lot to test out the whole shard feature, but there is no way to say if that will keep up once shards become 'normal' instead of 'omg let's try everything to see what gives us shards!'. 

[TJ09]

6 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

One thing. The AP is now constantly full of  what even I would call rubbish eggs, usually a wall of one breed or another - I suspect from people determinedly collecting shards. (which is so unnecessary, as they are so easy to get; I haven't even been TRYING and I am almost at my weekly limit again.) I suspect the market is going to kill the appeal of the AP But I wouldn't want to see a limit on breeding, as I and many others are co-operating on lineages and we need to be able to carry on.

 

So PLEASE don't raise the cap, or it will get even worse.

 

Well imagine if you could only breed up to 10 eggs towards your weekly shards, and had to do other things (e.g. hatch eggs or whatnot) in order to get the rest. You wouldn't be able to spam any one activity to hit your cap.

[Ruby Eyes]

This may have been mentioned already, but 14 pages are a bit daunting to read up while in office ... I did check TJ's posts in here though.

 

So the current shard rewards are basically declaring CB eggs to me more valuable than bred ones (5 shards from cave, 2 from breeding, 1 from AP).

I feel like that is "punishing" lineage-building.

Could the raising of a lineaged dragon to adulthood be awarded with more points than raising of a CB dragon, perhaps, to balance out the difference mentioned above? 2 to 3 points extra maybe?

 

Can the system distinguish between breedings while locked or those that result in auto-abandoning?

If so, could auto-AP-breeding be rewarded with only 1 shard each for a maximum of 10 shards per week, while regular breeding left as is?

(Granted, people can still breed and manually abandon afterwards, but at least they would still have to go that extra step and might still change their mind.)

[Fuzzbucket]

8 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

I don't think shards have been around long enough to say with any sort of certainty that the AP will drastically change because of it. Right now there does seem to be more 'random' lineages, but I just went through a third of the visible eggs and only two were from the same person (and multiple were nice even-gens) so it doesn't seem all that bad right now? And AP walls happened fairly often before shards were introduced... Maybe there are some people breeding a lot to test out the whole shard feature, but there is no way to say if that will keep up once shards become 'normal' instead of 'omg let's try everything to see what gives us shards!'. 

 

Ok fair enough. I just hit SO MANY, and just two pretties, that I gave up AP hunting !

 

6 hours ago, TJ09 said:

 

Well imagine if you could only breed up to 10 eggs towards your weekly shards, and had to do other things (e.g. hatch eggs or whatnot) in order to get the rest. You wouldn't be able to spam any one activity to hit your cap.

 

Works for me

[olympe]

On 5/29/2018 at 4:19 PM, Aurigena said:

 

(1) Acting or speaking in someone's name requires you to act and speak exactly as they would, and - unless you talked to all those people you mentioned and you know for sure what they are thinking and what are their feelings about this topic - you can't know for sure what they would speak. IMHO, speaking in someone's name should be allowed only with that someone's explicit permission. It's disrespectful to say that you know what other player, or a whole group of players, thinks or may think, especially since you stated that you aren't even a member of that group. I can understand the "my family member / my friend thinks that..." approach, but "so many players who can't speak for themselves will think that..." is unacceptable as an argument in discussion (and banned on some forums I know).

 

(2) OK, my bad. Shards aside, I just wanted to say that various play styles are already more demanding than others, yet there are still people who stick to them and apparently either don't feel the pressure to change them, or they manage to find a compromise. If you decide to drastically change your play style, it's your and only your decision - and you have to analyze consequences, because sometimes it's not possible to eat a cookie and have a cookie.

 

Please remember that my "bonus for activity idea" is strongly connected to the idea of giving players more variety of activities rewarded by shards, so that they would be able to earn a reasonable nuber of shards even without changing their play style. Also, the "bonus" would give more active players the ability to, let's say, buy that Gold a few weeks (or months) earlier, not to buy three Golds and a bunch of Silvers at once.

 

(3) The price skyrocketing is a problem I mentioned before and I'm sure that at one point, it will be addressed and solved by TJ, because without that, the Market will be pretty useless. But... I don't know if I understood you correctly, but according to you, more active players want a bonus only because they are 1. greedy, 2. they need instant gratification and 3. they want to feel superior than other players? Wow, that's... low.

 

I explained already why a small reward for activity on DC might be a good thing in my previous posts. Personally, I treat this idea as a way to give the most active players some appreciation and encouragement to stay active, but I don't want to repeat myself. I can understand that not everyone may like this idea (though I'm happy that TJ addressed and considered it), but there's no need to be disrespectful to active and dedicated players who are in favor of "activity bonus". There were enough of "you're greedy" accusations on this forum.

 

@DragonLady86 - that's precisely why I suggested getting shards from other actions - BSAs, for example - not only from "get an egg, raise a dragon" activity

(1) Well, then it probably actually is a good thing that I and many other old-timers here on these forums know don't play at "gotta catch 'em all" here. I - and many others here - know that there are other play styles, some of them quite limiting. People who only collect 2/5/8/16 CBs of each breed or variety. People who only collect certain breeds. People who focus on chickens, of all things. People who don't breed their dragons, or those who don't freeze / freeze as much as they can / bite as many eggs as possible and so on. And how do we know this? Because people have mentioned that they play this way.

 

I also happen to know that not every DC player is active on the forums, and for various reasons. I've seen people state that they won't let their kids/grandkids on here. I've seen people with a handful of posts state that they don't like posting here because things can get hostile pretty quickly. Or because they're too shy in general, or even diagnosed with a social anxiety disorder. I've seen people who struggle with English, and I know (from my daughter's example) that it is quite possible to play DC without knowing a single word of English. (Or how to read, apparently.) Believe it or not, the majority of people in the world is not fluent in English. (Although quite a lot of people do know some.)

 

Personally, I don't see anything disrespectful about telling you that, no, not every DC player actually can post here, much less wants to. Quite the contrary, I find it somewhat ignorant to state that " DC players are perfectly able to think, decide and speak for themselves ". Because this is not true, and for a variety of reasons. (Not the thinking part, obviously.)

 

(2) and (3): Adding more ways to earn shards, with separate limits for each activity, only makes things more complicated. Right now, there's a set limit, and it's totally up to you how you reach it. Whether you want to sift through the AP or do the catch/hatch/raise routine or breed half your scroll - it's all up to you. However, if we had weekly limits like up to 20 shards each for catching from the biomes, catching from the AP, breeding, hatching, raising, freezing, using BSAs, naming and describing, you'd have a total limit of 180 shards - but you'd have to do stuff you maybe don't like to do.

 

I guess calling someone who wants to be able to earn waaaay more shards due to waaaay more activity greedy is just as low as trying to force everyone who wants to keep up to adapt to that play style, so, I feel that we're even.

 

 

And, actually, both freezing and the use of certain BSAs have been discussed for rewarding shards, and it seemed that most people who participated in that discussion were in favor thereof. However, TJ reserves the right to think and decide for himself how much of that he's okay with, so... 

[HeatherMarie]

6 hours ago, olympe said:

(2) and (3): Adding more ways to earn shards, with separate limits for each activity, only makes things more complicated. Right now, there's a set limit, and it's totally up to you how you reach it. Whether you want to sift through the AP or do the catch/hatch/raise routine or breed half your scroll - it's all up to you. However, if we had weekly limits like up to 20 shards each for catching from the biomes, catching from the AP, breeding, hatching, raising, freezing, using BSAs, naming and describing, you'd have a total limit of 180 shards - but you'd have to do stuff you maybe don't like to do.

 

This is what I'm concerned about. Raising the cap a little, I'm okay with (a little, and *not* removing it!). Putting a separate cap on, say, breeding to the AP, I could understand that because this *could* lead to people just spamming the AP in order to earn shards, and then no one wants the crap in the AP, and then everyone gets annoyed, etc. But when people start talking about separate caps for every action, that worries me. Am I going to be earning 10+ shards less then other people each week simply because I don't describe my dragons, despite doing tons of other stuff? Some people feel that freezing is cruel, will they be forced to accept earning less shards just because they don't want to freeze? I very much like that DC doesn't emphasize or cater to *any* certain playstyle and I'd hate for that to change, I'd hate for shard-earning to change in a way that forces large groups of users to choose between earning less shards or abandoning their playstyle.

[Zeditha]

I have been reading page 2, so sorry if this seems a little out of place; I would like to mention that when I first came on and saw that this feature was in the game, after squealing and running to my laptop, I first clicked on 'trading' thinking that would take me to the market.

 

So my thought is, perhaps we could have a nice lorey sentence at the top of the trading place, saying something to the effect of "you approach the trading area, where many Magi dragons are lazing in the sun, guarding eggs for trade. Further away, you see a Market where shards can be exchanged for eggs."

This would provide an indirect link from the trading tab into the market, with a brief explanation for new users as well as some lore

I don't know if this fits with how the site is coded, but if the page can detect which link was used to access it, perhaps there could be an extra line of text at the top of the market page if the user used the trading tab link, pointing out the top-of-the-page shard link? It could be helpful for older returning users

[Tehya Faye]

1 hour ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

This is what I'm concerned about. Raising the cap a little, I'm okay with (a little, and *not* removing it!). Putting a separate cap on, say, breeding to the AP, I could understand that because this *could* lead to people just spamming the AP in order to earn shards, and then no one wants the crap in the AP, and then everyone gets annoyed, etc. But when people start talking about separate caps for every action, that worries me. Am I going to be earning 10+ shards less then other people each week simply because I don't describe my dragons, despite doing tons of other stuff? Some people feel that freezing is cruel, will they be forced to accept earning less shards just because they don't want to freeze? I very much like that DC doesn't emphasize or cater to *any* certain playstyle and I'd hate for that to change, I'd hate for shard-earning to change in a way that forces large groups of users to choose between earning less shards or abandoning their playstyle.

 

I'm of this opinion - I like my current playstyle, and have no interest in changing it. As it is the marketplace is fair to pretty much everyone, and nobody has to actively keep it in mind since it'll accumulate up to the maximum number of shards without needing to worry about it. It'd be a pain to have to check the page near the end of the week to see which quotas I have to fulfill so I don't feel like I've missed out, and make the game as a whole more stressful for me.

[Wiz]

7 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

 Some people feel that freezing is cruel, will they be forced to accept earning less shards just because they don't want to freeze? I very much like that DC doesn't emphasize or cater to *any* certain playstyle and I'd hate for that to change, I'd hate for shard-earning to change in a way that forces large groups of users to choose between earning less shards or abandoning their playstyle.

 

Maybe the answer is to have different caps on separate things while keeping the overall cap as well. Have the separate individual caps high enough that there is no way you can reach them all before hitting the ceiling of the main overall cap. That way people could pick and choose what activities they wanted to do to reach their limit but there would still be some control over how many eggs it's worth breeding for the AP if the only reason you're doing that is to earn shards. And also if you don't like to freeze you could still earn the shards in other ways.

Edited May 31, 2018 by Wiz

[Shokomon]

12 hours ago, Zeditha said:

I have been reading page 2, so sorry if this seems a little out of place; I would like to mention that when I first came on and saw that this feature was in the game, after squealing and running to my laptop, I first clicked on 'trading' thinking that would take me to the market.

 

So my thought is, perhaps we could have a nice lorey sentence at the top of the trading place, saying something to the effect of "you approach the trading area, where many Magi dragons are lazing in the sun, guarding eggs for trade. Further away, you see a Market where shards can be exchanged for eggs."

This would provide an indirect link from the trading tab into the market, with a brief explanation for new users as well as some lore

I don't know if this fits with how the site is coded, but if the page can detect which link was used to access it, perhaps there could be an extra line of text at the top of the market page if the user used the trading tab link, pointing out the top-of-the-page shard link? It could be helpful for older returning users

I like this. I'm always up for more lore.