Let's talk about freeze limits

[Aviatus]

So I know there've been a few topics on this in the past, but considering the most recent one is about 2 years old and none of them have approached this the way I'm going to try to, I thought it was time to bring up the topic again. Now this has been something that's been on my mind as I seem to be consistently hitting the freeze limit, and I recently did an inventory of my collection and I realized that based on the way I was collecting (1 adult of each gender 1 hatchling of each gender and 1 ungendered hatchling) I need to freeze about 6 hatchlings for every adult I'm going to raise from here on out. So I did what I always do when I have too much time on my hands, I did the math. I wanted to know, if I was out to only freeze hatchlings, and raise no adults, how quickly would I hit the cap? How much down time would I have? To figure this out I did the following, I considered 4 separate approaches, someone who only freezes CB gendered hatchlings, someone who only freezes CB Ungendered hatchlings, someone who freezes gendered hatchlings from AP eggs, and someone who freezes ungendered hatchlings from the AP. Furthermore I made the assumption that the average time-to-hatch for AP eggs was 1.5 days, which to be honest is probably too high, but I figured a conservative estimate would be best for my calculations. I also assumed the average time to find out the gender of a dragon was 1.5 days, of course this varies heavily but again I wanted a conservative estimate. With all that in mind, I produced the following chart.

 

 

Note in this context a "brood" refers to a full set of acquired eggs.

 

What you should notice from this table is that the amount of downtime for someone hunting for only hatchlings is a minimum of 3.5 days (Downtime meaning a period where nothing is happening on said users scroll) and can be as long as 9.5 days, which is 68% of the total time for a given freeze period. The other thing that should be noted is that this does not change at any given trophy level, and in fact the amount of "broods" you can freeze gets smaller as you gain trophy levels, meaning the proportion of your dragons that you can freeze in a given period gets smaller as you go up in trophy level.

 

Now, there is a reason that freeze limits exist, and unless I'm mistaken, it's not so much about discouraging players from focusing on collecting hatchlings, but rather to ensure players who play this way don't get an unfair advantage by being able to hunt for eggs more often than those who raise adults. This is particularly important for players who hunt on the AP, as someone who could freeze everything would never hit that "growing dragons" cap and could hunt every 1.5 days. The only other purpose I can see the limit serving is that it prevents players from constantly camping the AP for hatchlings to be caught and frozen.

 

With that in mind I think a better solution would be to have a lower limit on a more narrow time scale. Instead of having (10+2*trophylevel) every 14 days, would it better to have (4+1*trophylevel) every 3 days. Doing it this way allows you to directly control what the limit should be controlling, it ensures that players who freeze can't hunt more often than players that don't, without a huge amount of downtime discouraging players who wish to play this way. This approach would also serve to curb the people that hunt for hatchies on the AP, as they would not be able to pick up as many hatchlings in one sitting as before. Doing this would still result in some downtime, particularly for those who hunt from the AP, but this is necessary to ensure they can't hunt more often than other players.

 

So with all that said what do you guys think? Is there an aspect about freezing I'm not considering? Is there maybe another way of doing this I haven't thought of?

[HeatherMarie]

Yes please. I fully support a higher freeze limit or changing the limit to be a little better suited to the game. You did a *lot* more math/etc then I have regarding this, and what you are saying makes a lot of sense. A lower 'cooldown' with a lower limit seems like it would be much better in the long run, especially for people who's scroll goals include a lot of frozens. Personally I've been freezing a lot of messy black alt-fails lately and I've hit the limit way too often, and have even had to pass on nice eggs or abandon nice (messy) hatchies because I didn't have enough freezes to do it all. The thing about the current limit is that you can hit it *very* fast, and then be out of luck for two whole weeks. I've been close to the limit while having 9-10 days before I'd be getting any freezes back, and that's just so so limiting. I really like the idea of a lower limit combined with a lower cooldown.

[DragonLady86]

I've asked before that freeze limit should better adjust to higher egg limits.  The original idea was so you couldn't get more frozens than you could adults.  So, why, if I collect hatchlings, am I punished for not being able to collect as many as those players that collect fully grown dragons?   But apparently it is greedy to want to be able to freeze as many dragons as I could fully raise (CB) to adult in the same time period. 

[GhostMouse]

Yes, please!

I don't really see a need for a limit at all once you've reached the last trophy level. At that point, your number of dragons has no benefit, and frozen hatchlings on their own offer no other advantage. But I'm open to any suggestion for raising the limits.

[olympe]

While I don't freeze, I don't really know whether this is needed or not. What I can observe, though, is that higher freezing limits mean that people who collect frozen hatchlings can hunt more (often) than someone who doesn't. This is particularly evident around holiday breeding events.

 

So, maybe instead of using freezing limits, allow hatchlings that have reached 4 days left to be frozen, and only those hatchlings. This way, people who want to freeze are neither penalized nor do they get an advantage. Of course, they'd need to be more careful about managing their scrolls, but unlimited freezing should be a good enough pay-off, I think. Alternately, let people freeze their hatchlings as soon as they hatch, but let their timers run on until they're old enough to grow up before the freezing actually takes effect. (Meaning: Until the hatchlings hit 4 days left, they're treated as growing hatchlings and count towards scroll limits.) None of these measures would require any kind of limit beyond scroll limits.

[Aviatus]

14 minutes ago, olympe said:

So, maybe instead of using freezing limits, allow hatchlings that have reached 4 days left to be frozen, and only those hatchlings. This way, people who want to freeze are neither penalized nor do they get an advantage. Of course, they'd need to be more careful about managing their scrolls, but unlimited freezing should be a good enough pay-off, I think.

 

My only issue with this is that you would have to be extremely careful with the amount of views your dragons get, especially if you want an ungendered hatchling, which brings me to

 

Quote

Alternately, let people freeze their hatchlings as soon as they hatch, but let their timers run on until they're old enough to grow up before the freezing actually takes effect. (Meaning: Until the hatchlings hit 4 days left, they're treated as growing hatchlings and count towards scroll limits.) None of these measures would require any kind of limit beyond scroll limits.

 

Now this is a fantastic idea. I'm not sure how difficult it would be to implement (It is a fundamental change in what is meant by a growing dragon) but if done it would negate the need for limits altogether while remaining fair to even the AP players.

[HeatherMarie]

44 minutes ago, olympe said:

While I don't freeze, I don't really know whether this is needed or not. What I can observe, though, is that higher freezing limits mean that people who collect frozen hatchlings can hunt more (often) than someone who doesn't. This is particularly evident around holiday breeding events.

 

So, maybe instead of using freezing limits, allow hatchlings that have reached 4 days left to be frozen, and only those hatchlings. This way, people who want to freeze are neither penalized nor do they get an advantage. Of course, they'd need to be more careful about managing their scrolls, but unlimited freezing should be a good enough pay-off, I think. Alternately, let people freeze their hatchlings as soon as they hatch, but let their timers run on until they're old enough to grow up before the freezing actually takes effect. (Meaning: Until the hatchlings hit 4 days left, they're treated as growing hatchlings and count towards scroll limits.) None of these measures would require any kind of limit beyond scroll limits.

 

@Aviatus mentioned my major issue with the 4 days suggestion, that would make it almost impossible to freeze stage-1 hatchlings. I mean you *might* be able to if you fog them directly after hatching, keep them fogged until the 4-day mark, then unfog and immediately freeze, but depending on how many views they had when they hatched that could result in the dragon growing immediately after unfogging, or growing wings in the time it takes between unfogging and freezing. That would *very* much penalize players who like to freeze. I totally get not wanting to give freezers an *advantage*, but let's not penalize them that much. 

 

The timer still counting, however, I could totally support. I do wonder if that's a little too complicated, it's definitely more complicated then simply lowering the limits the way the OP suggested. But I'd support it.

[olympe]

"You cast the spell to keep the dragon hatchling in its current stage. However, the spell cannot be completed before the hatchling reaches a certain age. Until then, you still need to take care of it as if it were still growing."

Your hatchling will be frozen as soon as it has no more than 4 days left on its timer.

 

Simple, straight-forward, easy to understand. Add another symbol to the growing hatchling that indicates that it will be frozen, maybe with a ° or * or something. 

[HeatherMarie]

So, it's not actually frozen yet? Or is that just what the text says to make it understandable? I certainly don't like the idea of using a freeze and *not* having it actually take affect for days... again, what if the hatchling genders in between those times? 

[Aviatus]

I think that's just flavor text to help the user understand. It would be effectively frozen (on the coding end it might be beneficial to stop it from receiving clicks and views) but still contributes to the "growing dragon" limit until the hatchling is 3 days old. That format honestly is much more agreeable to me than a hard numerical limit. I like the idea of another symbol for visual clarity, and of course you'd need to update the help page etc. I wonder if that would mess with any of the hatcheries?

[olympe]

I'd say it should be effectively frozen, meaning it cannot gender after you use the action. Yet, at the same time, the almost-frozen hatchling should still count towards the scroll limits. The text is merely a flavor text meant to inform the player of what's going on and giving a semi-logical reason. But let me rephrase the message above a little bit.

Your hatchling will be frozen as soon as it has no more than 4 days left on its timer. => The action will be completed once your hatchling has no more than 4 days left on its timer.

 

Better? I don't think that the "no gendering" thing needs to be mentioned again, since the first part states quite clearly that the hatchling is being kept in its current stage.

[HeatherMarie]

If it's 'effectively frozen' as soon as the action is done, that makes a lot more sense. I'd assume that means the views/stats will also stop? So basically like a killed egg, then?

 

(I mentioned gender again because 'keeping in it's current stage' seemed at odds with the concept of it not actually being frozen, and it's an issue that needed to be addressed.)

[olympe]

I honestly don't care whether the hatchling will still accumulate stats or not - but since current mechanics don't and people might freeze something because of "perfect stats" or something, I'd say maybe keep the stats as they are? (Should also effectively prevent gendering, sickness and death from overviewing, so...) Simple is best, right? And we could probably expect more drama from "I froze my hatchling with perfect stats, and then they changed!!!" than from "I froze my hatchling, hoping for perfect stats - and didn't get them!!!". You never know.

 

Edited June 29, 2018 by olympe

[Aviatus]

I honestly have no clue if people try to get specific view numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me. It'd just be simpler to stop receiving views.

 

As an Idea for new Help Page Text

Quote

    The Freeze action begins a process that will prevent a hatchling from becoming an adult. The hatchling will remain at the stage it was in at the beginning of the process, and will no longer accumulate views and clicks, but will still contribute to your scroll's "growing dragon" limit until the hatchling is 3 days old. If your hatchling is over 3 days old when you use this action, the process will be completed immediately and the hatchling will no longer count as a growing dragon. While the affected hatchling is under three days old, this symbol (°) will appear next your dragon. When the hatchling is over the age limit, the symbol (°) will be replaced by the symbol (*) and will no longer count as a growing dragon. This action has no limit, but cannot be canceled one begun, and cannot be undone.

Do you think this is clear enough? Olympe am I missing any part of your suggestion?

[Aalbiel]

This suggestion is remarkably well-phrased and thought out, I'm impressed!

 

A small caveat: I'm not sure that complicated the freezing action (which is extremely simple at this time) is likely to get implemented, it seems a little confusing at first glance. I think your first idea of (4+1*trophylevel) every 3 days is a lot more straightforward and overall preferable. I'm not sure why this idea has been discounted at all? It just seems a lot easier than this 4 day or under business which, in its simplest form as Marie has pointed out would make it hard to freeze S1s, so to make it work it does need all this extra "delayed freezing" business you have suggested, which seems like it would work but.... How is it preferable to the original suggestion?

 

That being said, I am highly in favour of any mechanic that would increase the freezing cap. At the moment (and for the next year probably) I am mainly playing to collect all sprites, which means.... So much freezing. As it is, I barely have more than one freeze per day (Gold Trophy), which is so, so, low, whereas if I were AP hunting as I was before I hit my adult goals, I could raise so many more adults than that.

 

(GhostMouse also has a point.... Why is there even a freezing cap after you obtain Platinum Trophy?)

[olympe]

AP walls? Especially once they reach incu-hatchable stage. Especially evil around the holidays, where a single player with a good way to hatch things quickly could literally hatch&freeze 60+ dragons in a couple of hours. Seems a bit excessive to me.

[Fuzzbucket]

8 minutes ago, olympe said:

AP walls? Especially once they reach incu-hatchable stage. Especially evil around the holidays, where a single player with a good way to hatch things quickly could literally hatch&freeze 60+ dragons in a couple of hours. Seems a bit excessive to me.

 

Exactly. We do need a cap.

[Aalbiel]

I don't see in what way it is excessive, since it brings you no advantage whatsoever, once you've already reached platinum. Anyways, I'm not going to fight for this, I'm mainly looking to raise limits in general, I'd be happy with that already.

[olympe]

Because some people actually consider holiday eggs very special. Among other things. And, considering they are only available for a very short amount of time, well...

[DragonLady86]

A limit is fine but I'd still like to be able to freeze at least as many dragons as I could raise biome-caught adults in the same period.  My scroll goals have always been: an adult pair + 3 frozens (both genders and an ungendered) for each breed.  I've had to come up with other things to look for and/or some months I do nothing at all with my scroll because I'm only missing the hatchlings now.  It doesn't make any sense that I can fully raise MORE dragons to adult-hood, which takes longer/more work than I can collect hatchlings for my goal.  Isn't that a fair compromise between "more freezes" and "must have limits"?

[HeatherMarie]

Personally, I just want something to change that doesn't involve waiting almost two full weeks to freeze again. That's why I liked the OP's suggestion of lower freeze limit with much shorter cooldown... You could still freeze a reasonable amount but *not* have to wait 10+ days before freezing again. That's my main issue, I go on freezing sprees and then have to wait way too long before I can do *any* freezing again. (With BSAs it's fine to wait that 2-week cooldown, especially since if you have a lot you may never run out regardless of what the cooldown is. But it seems like freezing shouldn't have the same type of cooldown, since it's not the same type of thing at all.)

[Niomedes]

Definite support. I've been working on collecting hatchlings recently, and it's frustrating to have to wait (in some cases over a week) in order to freeze a couple more. Especially during holiday periods, where prior freezes in the week or so leading up to each holiday means I can't collect my quota of frozen holiday hatchlings for an entire year (in the case of Christmas, when you're starting from scratch in getting one gendered and one ungendered hatchling (plus an extra for Hollies, Solstices, and Mistletoes), that equals 23 hatchlings you would need to get).

Edited July 8, 2018 by Niomedes

[Sazandora]

I really don't think it's necessary to change the way freezing works now, it's fine as is and there's no need to make it more complicated. But I definitely support shortening the cooldown -- I began collecting frozen hatchlings nearly a year ago. I'd also love it if we could know exactly how long we have to wait until we can freeze things again, like a timer that BSAs have.

[olympe]

4 hours ago, Niomedes said:

Definite support. I've been working on collecting hatchlings recently, and it's frustrating to have to wait (in some cases over a week) in order to freeze a couple more. Especially during holiday periods, where prior freezes in the week or so leading up to each holiday means I can't collect my quota of frozen holiday hatchlings for an entire year (in the case of Christmas, when you're starting from scratch in getting one gendered and one ungendered hatchling (plus an extra for Hollies, Solstices, and Mistletoes), that equals 23 hatchlings you would need to get).

I think that holiday breeding weeks are a well-known occurence, and that it's possible to avoid freezing in the twelve days leading up to it. (Not full 2 weeks, since you still need to hatch your first holiday eggs, which will at least take you 48 hours.)

[HeatherMarie]

3 hours ago, Sazandora said:

I really don't think it's necessary to change the way freezing works now, it's fine as is and there's no need to make it more complicated. But I definitely support shortening the cooldown -- I began collecting frozen hatchlings nearly a year ago. I'd also love it if we could know exactly how long we have to wait until we can freeze things again, like a timer that BSAs have.

 

For knowing how long until you get a freeze-slot back, https://dragcave.net/help/actions#freeze shows a list of what you've frozen in the past 2 weeks, and the dates. Look at the oldest date and calculate two weeks from that date, that's when you'll get a freeze back. It's not as easy as the BSA timers, but it's something.