Weather influence?

[absofacto]

So I was thinking, we have moon phases, seasons, and time of day. Why not add weather?

- Weather could influence what eggs may appear in the different regions. (snow for more ice themed dragons, rain for water dragons, sunny for fire, etc.)
- Could give newbies a chance at finding harder to find dragons, but it would still be hard (think of it like how zombie chances increase on halloween)
- Weather likelihood would be influenced by the seasons of course (more likely to snow in the winter, more likely to be sunny in the summer)
- Weather dragons that change appearance with the weather (either similar to how nocturnes change at night, or more like seasonal dragons that stay as the season they were born in)


Types of Weather:
- Clear: regular percentages, most common type of weather
- Ashfall (blots the sun out): maybe nocturnes, slight increase on magma and spritwards, maybe hellfire wyverns)
- Rain/monsoon OR Hurricane/Tropical Storm: slight increase in chance of finding blusang lindwyrms, thalassa xenowyrms, and tsunami wyverns, baikala
- Snow/blizzard: increases on the chances of finding: ice, silver, pillows, moonstone, frostbite
- Sweltering/Sunny: increase on many fire dragons, sunstones, freckled, hellfire wyverns, ochredrakes, pyro
- Humid: bright breasted wyvern, neotropical, gaia
- Windy: balloon, skywing, daydream, howler drake, khusa, nilia pygmys, ridgewing
- Thunder Storm: Thunder, Electric, Storm, nhiostrife, astrapi
- Foggy: two-headed lindwyrm, tatterdrake, stone, olive, magelight, howlerdrake, darkmist

[HeatherMarie]

Hmm. Not really sure I like this, and a little unclear what exactly you are picturing. Are you talking a specific weather change in each biome, or a general weather change in all biomes? I'm assuming the first, because not all weather you listed is likely to appear in all environments (you listed moonstone under snow/blizzard, but moonstones are only found in the Desert; you listed spirit wards and nocturnes under ashfall, which I'm assuming would be a volcano-weather, but neither of those are found in the volcano...). 

 

I'd love to know more details about what exactly you are picturing here. If you are talking specific weather changes in each biome, your list doesn't make much sense right now, with different biome dragons listed within the same weather type and such. 

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

Not gonna lie I actually really like this, it’d definitely be interesting and fun!

 

However, I feel like that might be a lot of programming for TJ. Atm, as far as I’m aware, the rarities are somewhat linear - I imagine there are a certain amount of rarities and each dragon falls under a specific one, instead of every single dragon’s drop being individually designed. That’s what it seems like to me, especially since we have stated rarities like cave-blockers being extremely common, and Golds being extremely rare and everything. As such, I imagine individually coding everything to have very specific and different numbers under a huge variety of weather conditions would be a lot of work! And probably something TJ wouldn’t be too willing to do, quite understandably tbh.

 

So while it is an awesome idea which I think is cool, I don’t particulalr think it’d go down well unfortunately. It fits in well on other websites, but perhaps not DC 

[angelicdragonpuppy]

@RealWilliamShakespeare I don’t think this would need to follow strict numbers. I imagine it would be like breeding Luminas, where the moons have a noticeable influence on whether you find light or dark, but it’s just applied as a modifying effect rather than a firm demand on anything (in other words, it still works with the ratios).

 

I have mixed feelings on the topic myself. I think it might be fun as long as weather changes from normal were fairly non typical (such as perhaps one weather event every ten days, statistically). I think mixing up how often we find certain breeds would be refreshing and help make it easier to sort through the masses of commons we have (I’ve long been an advocate of more night/day and seasonal rarity fluctuations for this reason!), but as someone who also knows how frustrating it is to work with Luminas and Lunar Heralds, I also know it’s important to have 1) regular,  2) short lived cycles 3) with only moderate effects. An interesting 24 hour weather effect every other week or so that influences just a couple breeds would be neat, but having to check the weather every single day to figure out whether a breed will even be PRESENT, or having 10+ windy days in a row and being drowned in balloons in skywings, is not.

 

In other words...

 

Fun: “Oh, cool, it’s stormy today, might see some Storms and Thunders!”

 

Not Fun: “Ohhh golly it’s Sunny that means NO STORMS AND THUNDERS WHATSOEVER.”

 

Also Not Fun: “Oh man, LOVING this ten day storm! Nothing but Storms and Thunders for TEN DAYS because who needs variety, right?!? RIGHT?!?”

 

Edit: I would also suggest limiting the number of different events—makes it easier to apply for TJ and remember for users. Maybe just Clear and Storming, to be honest.

 

Edited August 16, 2018 by angelicdragonpuppy

[DarkEternity]

I think it would be cool if an action was added to mildly weather related dragons and you could use 1 action to influence the weather and at the end of every few hours or whatever the site RNG'd all the votes and selected a weather. 

[Ruby Eyes]

Nope. Enough weather unpredictability in real life already, so NO THANKS.

[Fuzzbucket]

23 minutes ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Nope. Enough weather unpredictability in real life already, so NO THANKS.

 

I'm with Ruby. Unless someone GIVES us the lumina breeding info, and so on....

[Fiona]

I'm not sure I would like this kind of complication added.

 

And I don't see how ashfall would have any affect whatsoever on the frequency of Spirit Wards showing up. Unless you're claiming that the ashfall is somehow caused by evil spirits it would have no effect on Spirit Wards, no matter what time of day it happens.

[Moonlight_Eevee]

46 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

I'm with Ruby. Unless someone GIVES us the lumina breeding info, and so on....

But didn't Corteo answer us about that? This post here 😕

 

[Ruby Eyes]

1 minute ago, Dalek Raptor said:

But didn't Corteo answer us about that? This post here 😕

 

Sure he did. But I myself don't have the memory space to remember *which* moon they depend on and which phase is the one for what I need right now. Thus, I'm still relying on Alectrona's regular updates on the Lumina thread.

For Lunars, it's easier: I can just look at what the Market is currentlly selling.

[Fuzzbucket]

Yeah - but

Quote

I can confirm that luminae are influenced by the moon and it transitions in waves. Unfortunately, the ratios have been influencing the outcome to make it way less predictable than I had hoped. Maybe something to look into.  But for now you have “official” confirmation. 

 

[Kaini]

I... wouldn't mind this if it was done right, like ADP said. Sounds fun.

 

Not sure how doable it actually is, sounds like a pain to code, but I have no idea. If we can do moon phases...

[Ruby Eyes]

Moon phases are predictable. Weather is not.

[blockEdragon]

I wouldn't mind this suggestion so long as the weather doesn't affect things too horribly but doesn't also do almost nothing, it has to be just right with the chance increase or else it will get annoying, increasing the chances of finding certain breeds based on weather sounds like fun but having them be the only breed available during certain weather conditions sounds awful.

 

 

6 hours ago, Fiona said:

I'm not sure I would like this kind of complication added.

 

And I don't see how ashfall would have any affect whatsoever on the frequency of Spirit Wards showing up. Unless you're claiming that the ashfall is somehow caused by evil spirits it would have no effect on Spirit Wards, no matter what time of day it happens.

The evil spirits are implied to come out in the dark, which is why they glow brighter and stronger the later it gets. A ashfall would be like a free licence to run about during the day when people are more active and less weary, if your job is to drive away evil spirits an ashfall would be a call to action.

Edited August 16, 2018 by blockEdragon

[angelicdragonpuppy]

1 hour ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Moon phases are predictable. Weather is not.

 

While this is true, I still think it could be fun if done in a controlled, balanced way, such as a hard limit on how many times events could happen within 10 days, only lasting 24 hours, and having a fairly mild effect (ie rather than ALL STORMS AND ELECTRICS AND THUNDERS, maybe 1.5x the normal chance). 

 

I can see how it could go horribly wrong, if implemented badly, but done right I think it would be a fun and painless compliment that might shake up the normal monotony of cave hunting.

[olympe]

This sounds really close to the idea of migration, which had at least one big downside: Less variety at any given point in time. It wouldn't be any different for the weather. Having a (mostly) reliable weather forecast in the cave (or as a BSA) might help with that and give us an idea of when to hunt for what.

 

Still, this needs some more working out. Icy weather in a hot, arid desert isn't exactly something to be expected, and cold-themed dragons are all in Alpine anyway, so we'd need some other things to go by.

Weather could also be different in the respective biomes, too.

[HeatherMarie]

6 hours ago, olympe said:

This sounds really close to the idea of migration, which had at least one big downside: Less variety at any given point in time. It wouldn't be any different for the weather.

 

9 hours ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Moon phases are predictable. Weather is not.

 

These are two huge concerns with this suggestion, and the main reason I don't really like the idea.

 

A *LOT* of us already don't like the abundance of time-based/strange-mechanic breeds that have been introduced in the past few years... Lunars are frustrating as heck. But at least they are predictable and you can plan things in advance. Fire Gems are annoying, but their color changes every hour and it's still something you can plan around for the most part. Many people have pretty much given up trying to do anything with Nebulas and Gemshards because of how frustrating it is to not know if it's the right color until it hatches. I'm really not sure adding *more* random/limiting mechanics is a great idea.

 

Many people already have very limited time to hunt, because of school or work or other real life things, I can't even imagine how frustrating it would be to get online for that one small window where you can hunt and then oops it's sunny so all I'm seeing are the sun/heat breeds! If random weather actually affected things to a noticeable degree, it means in general there will be much less variety during these different bouts of weather, much more blocker-commons sitting there not being taken, and much less chance to get those breeds you actually *do* want. 

 

I honestly see a *lot* of downsides and no real upsides to this. Even if the different weather might make harder to get dragons a bit more abundant during that time, there are huge downsides to that as well: If you aren't lucky enough to be able to hunt during that time you completely miss out, and because of ratios those breeds will most likely be even harder to get then normal during the non-weather-increased times. 

[Fuzzbucket]

4 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

 

These are two huge concerns with this suggestion, and the main reason I don't really like the idea.

 

A *LOT* of us already don't like the abundance of time-based/strange-mechanic breeds that have been introduced in the past few years... Lunars are frustrating as heck. But at least they are predictable and you can plan things in advance. Fire Gems are annoying, but their color changes every hour and it's still something you can plan around for the most part. Many people have pretty much given up trying to do anything with Nebulas and Gemshards because of how frustrating it is to not know if it's the right color until it hatches. I'm really not sure adding *more* random/limiting mechanics is a great idea.

 

Many people already have very limited time to hunt, because of school or work or other real life things, I can't even imagine how frustrating it would be to get online for that one small window where you can hunt and then oops it's sunny so all I'm seeing are the sun/heat breeds! If random weather actually affected things to a noticeable degree, it means in general there will be much less variety during these different bouts of weather, much more blocker-commons sitting there not being taken, and much less chance to get those breeds you actually *do* want. 

 

I honestly see a *lot* of downsides and no real upsides to this. Even if the different weather might make harder to get dragons a bit more abundant during that time, there are huge downsides to that as well: If you aren't lucky enough to be able to hunt during that time you completely miss out, and because of ratios those breeds will most likely be even harder to get then normal during the non-weather-increased times. 

 

I very much agree. I can't see any benefits to this, only a huge amount of frustration. Seasonals are already mildly annoying, and as for nebulas (glares hopefully at the one that HAS to be purple (and so it won't be...) And are you seeing it also as applying to breeding - so I try to get a spitter from an UV and suddenly it's raining and - nope.

 

Me no support.

[Ruby Eyes]

42 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

And are you seeing it also as applying to breeding

 

Actually, breeding is the only thing I could see this work with: Say, it's raining when an egg is laid, and the hatchling inside has a slightly higher chance to turn alt (would apply to Black, Dark Green, Nebula and Undine). Also, colour of Gemshards: coldness makes more blue, heatwave makes more red, rain makes more green? After all, *bred* eggs aren't in their respective biomes anymore - they are exposed to any kind of weather their owner lives with.

As such, weather for your own scroll's dragons could indeed be induced by some of your other dragons: Storm for rain, Frostbite for a layer of snow, Ember for some additional heat.

No additional randomness involved, just the usual egg breeding success rate. The chance modifier for the colour/alt could be as low as +10%, but it would give some feeling of being in control of things.

Now watch this being shot down.

[Fuzzbucket]

NO shooting here. I could live with that ! Anything  that might get me a better chance of moonstones from Blue-banded in my line !

Edited August 17, 2018 by Fuzzbucket
Speelcjecker went nuts.

[Sazandora]

Yeah, no support from me either. I could be fine with it working with breeding, though.

[HeatherMarie]

I could totally get behind Ruby Eyes' idea, taking the concept of weather affecting things but leaving the control that most users prefer. 

[absofacto]

@HeatherMarie @Ruby Eyes

ngl i like the breeding version a lot better than my own idea

but yeah what I was originally going for was a way to make caveblockers be less frustrating to deal with

the weather was more of a way to increase the chance of less likely to be seen dragons and I forgot the biomes would make the weather programming rather hard

unless the staff completely rewrote the entire biome system

[Ruby Eyes]

The staff is only one guy, with a fulltime job that is NOT dragcave

[absofacto]

oh damn thats rough