ANSWERED:Can We Please Have Prizes Available in the Market

[Kyleedj]

People can complain all they want that the millennial generation needs consolation prizes but I wholeheartedly agree that promising everyone some kind of prize would make me more excited to participate each month. The chances of getting a prize are so slim that it doesn't seem possible to get one when there are so many people to compete with. Everyone should get something even if it's a measly 5 shards.

I also agree that the shard system is pretty pointless to me. I have no idea what to buy from the market as everything is obtainable through the cave (even if through patience and quick clicking skills). So yeah if we were to add CB Prizes to the market I'd definitely make 'em pricey. But like others have said the point is to make things virtually obtainable.

When CB holiday dragons came back to the cave I WAS SO THRILLED! Because all I could pick up were messy lineaged creatures if I'd missed the event in the past. All I could obtain that was CB was that current holiday. I'm one of those people who is content having a CB pair of everything. CB's make me feel accomplished because I caught it myself (or in the market's case it would be saving up for it myself). Getting a lineaged prize just doesn't bring me as much excitement.

[osmarks]

Since the market is mostly passive, and also much better than the raffle system, I guess for me ~2 years of shards would be OK. Ideally, though, it would be less ridiculously high - maybe a bit over 1 year. I think that as they stand prizes are overvalued anyway.

[Evangeline]

I'm one of those users that has been around for a long time. I grew up with dragcave. I enjoy the ideal of completing collections. There are dragons I don't have. Once upon a time, I wasn't able to get them. But that was what made those dragons special. It made collecting the offspring all the more special and exciting. The feeling you would get after obtaining a 2nd gen for a dragon you needed was a wonderfully elating feeling. 

But now, everyone can get certain dragons. Kinda takes some of the fun out of it for me personally. I don't feel like I have to put effort into collecting those dragons anymore. It's just a normal chore now.

The fun of the tinsels and the shimmers is that they're extremely hard to obtain. Well... they were. Granted, they're not easy, but it's less of an impossibility. God knows I love getting 2nd gen tins and shimmers. A caveborn would be even more lovely, but I don't think this is necessary. The fun of the shimmers and tinsels is that they are based on luck. 

I'm fine with golds and silvers being in the market. They are already in the caves. Tinsels and shimmers are not in the cave.

If you guys want an impossible egg only obtained through the market to an extreme, that's a fun idea. 

 

Edited September 27, 2018 by Evangeline

[HeatherMarie]

33 minutes ago, Evangeline said:

I'm one of those users that has been around for a long time. I grew up with dragcave. I enjoy the ideal of completing collections. There are dragons I don't have. Once upon a time, I wasn't able to get them. But that was what made those dragons special. It made collecting the offspring all the more special and exciting. The feeling you would get after obtaining a 2nd gen for a dragon you needed was a wonderfully elating feeling. 

But now, everyone can get certain dragons. Kinda takes some of the fun out of it for me personally. I don't feel like I have to put effort into collecting those dragons anymore. It's just a normal chore now.

The fun of the tinsels and the shimmers is that they're extremely hard to obtain. Well... they were. Granted, they're not easy, but it's less of an impossibility. God knows I love getting 2nd gen tins and shimmers. A caveborn would be even more lovely, but I don't think this is necessary. The fun of the shimmers and tinsels is that they are based on luck. 

I'm fine with golds and silvers being in the market. They are already in the caves. Tinsels and shimmers are not in the cave.

If you guys want an impossible egg only obtained through the market to an extreme, that's a fun idea. 

 

 

See, to many people, a completely-unobtainable dragon is not 'fun'. It's not 'fun' to enter a raffle month after month and *know* that the numbers are so slim that you most likely won't win for *years*. It's not 'fun' to know that a very tiny minority of users have such a huge advantage over everyone else, not because they put more effort or spent more time on something but just through random luck. There is no excitement in clicking a button and hoping that a random number generator will somehow land on you. You can't *do* anything to affect your chances, you can't put in a ton of effort and look forward to a CB Prize as a reward for working hard, you just press a button and wait. That's not 'fun' for a lot of people.

 

For me, at least, the fun of this game is in the effort. I camp out in the AP and biomes and refresh like crazy, and I may have to do that for a long time, day after day after day, but the feeling of *finally* seeing that egg I want and being fast enough to grab it first, that's an awesome feeling. It feels great to look at my scroll and see all the hard work that has gone into it, look back at how much I've really invested in this game and feel proud of my accomplishments. ..... CB Prizes are not that. There is no sense of accomplishment whatsoever in clicking a button and waiting for a random generator to pick you. To me, it would be much more *fun* to deliberately collect shards week after week, month after month, and see myself inching closer and closer to being able to get that Prize.

[Evangeline]

58 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

See, to many people, a completely-unobtainable dragon is not 'fun'. It's not 'fun' to enter a raffle month after month and *know* that the numbers are so slim that you most likely won't win for *years*. It's not 'fun' to know that a very tiny minority of users have such a huge advantage over everyone else, not because they put more effort or spent more time on something but just through random luck. There is no excitement in clicking a button and hoping that a random number generator will somehow land on you. You can't *do* anything to affect your chances, you can't put in a ton of effort and look forward to a CB Prize as a reward for working hard, you just press a button and wait. That's not 'fun' for a lot of people.

 

For me, at least, the fun of this game is in the effort. I camp out in the AP and biomes and refresh like crazy, and I may have to do that for a long time, day after day after day, but the feeling of *finally* seeing that egg I want and being fast enough to grab it first, that's an awesome feeling. It feels great to look at my scroll and see all the hard work that has gone into it, look back at how much I've really invested in this game and feel proud of my accomplishments. ..... CB Prizes are not that. There is no sense of accomplishment whatsoever in clicking a button and waiting for a random generator to pick you. To me, it would be much more *fun* to deliberately collect shards week after week, month after month, and see myself inching closer and closer to being able to get that Prize.

There is excitement. There's excitement when you obtain the prize. It's such a large payout because you can't get them anywhere else. That's why they're so special. Once you put them in the market, they're not as special. Why are GoNs not in the market? Because TJ's leaving it up to chance. I understand they are easier to get. I'm just making an example.

Am I mad that I can now catch Holiday dragons that I didn't have before? No. Have I taken advantage of it? Mhm. But I would have been okay not being able to get them. I worked hard. There was no use being discontent over something I couldn't control. I used creativity and collected the next best thing. Heck, if you think about it, a well planned out 5th gen has more hard work put into it than a caveborn. That 5th gen means more to me because the caveborns are so hard to get.

If you want excitement getting dragons, there are a few hundred other dragons you can focus on getting while you enter the lottery.
You can also trade for tinsels and shimmers. And before you tell me that it's impossible to get nice lineages, the two second gens on my scroll were gifts. Someone else is giving me another 2nd gen. That someone won the lottery. Those 2nd gens mean more because the caveborns are sparse.

I do the same. I stalk the cave on hunt for my obsession, the ice dragon. If you didn't enjoy catching the dragons, you wouldn't be here. There are over 100 dragons for you to go after.

I can appreciate hard work and I understand the argument. I will forever have a different view, as will you. My view hasn't changed in 10 years and I still don't have every single caveborn dragon. I am perfectly fine being patient and waiting. I look forward to the day that I might win a raffle. That will be my payout. Not everything needs to be fair. 

Edited September 27, 2018 by Evangeline

[Ruby Eyes]

1 hour ago, Evangeline said:

There's excitement when you obtain the prize.

Wrong word there, I feel. If should be "If (ever at all)", not "when", and that's the big problem here. It may be fun for a handful of players, and all the rest are getting is disappointment each month.

I don't see the fun in disappointment.

 

1 hour ago, Evangeline said:

Why are GoNs not in the market? Because TJ's leaving it up to chance.

Big difference here: You are not competing with everyone else for a tiny pool of individuals, and you can increase your chances by raising more trios.

Edited September 27, 2018 by Ruby Eyes

[Fuzzbucket]

1 hour ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Wrong word there, I feel. If should be "If (ever at all)", not "when", and that's the big problem here. It may be fun for a handful of players, and all the rest are getting is disappointment each month.

I don't see the fun in disappointment.

 

Big difference here: You are not competing with everyone else for a tiny pool of individuals, and you can increase your chances by raising more trios.

 

This, 100%.

[Evangeline]

I don’t agree with how you feel. You won’t agree about how I feel. I could continue to argue/debate the point, but I fear we’d both be wasting our time. 

[Fuzzbucket]

That's part of the point.

[Kyleedj]

45 minutes ago, Evangeline said:

I don’t agree with how you feel. You won’t agree about how I feel. I could continue to argue/debate the point, but I fear we’d both be wasting our time. 

Not everyone is going to have the same take on this topic, that's the point of civil discussion. There are are old players here and new players here, each with different and unique experiences in their gameplay. It's just typical human behavior to have varying opinions on pretty much any topic. All we can do is try to make each other understand (if not sway their opinion).

[DragonLady86]

The lottery is not fun at all.  I want to able to work for things.  before they were introduced, everything in this game was obtainable if you just worked at it.  But no matter how much work you put into the cave, nothing effects your chances of getting a prize.  Even GoN's could be worked for.  (and I did it the hard way with only one set) took well over a year to the first one, but that was exciting to finally get something I'd worked for.  I actually did win a raffle a couple months back.  and I have to say, my reaction was a lot more "meh".  (doesn't help that I won my least favorite of the six but whatever.)

 

Honestly, prizes and their exclusivity needs to just go away.  They've messed the cave up for too many years now.  Can we please go back to a CB gold being the rare, special dragon?  a pipedream, I know.  But at least add them to the market.  I'll even put myself on that short list of being okay with 2 years worth of collecting.  because at least I could work for what I want then.

[HeatherMarie]

3 hours ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Wrong word there, I feel. If should be "If (ever at all)", not "when", and that's the big problem here. It may be fun for a handful of players, and all the rest are getting is disappointment each month.

I don't see the fun in disappointment.

 

Big difference here: You are not competing with everyone else for a tiny pool of individuals, and you can increase your chances by raising more trios.

 

This this and this. Yup. 

 

While I very much prefer to *work* towards something rather then win it in a random raffle, I wouldn't be nearly as annoyed with the whole thing if I *would* win a raffle at some point down the line. But odds are I won't. With the current number of prizes given out each month compared to the last known accurate count of active users, the *vast* majority of players will *not* win a raffle in the next *decade*. How is that exciting? How is that fun? Yeah, it's exciting if you get one! Yay! But for ALL those players who *won't* get one anytime in the next handful of *years*, that's not fun or exciting. It's not exciting to constantly lose, month after month after month, and have absolutely no way to increase your chances or *work* towards getting it. 

 

GoNs are not an accurate comparison at all, as there is no competition there. You get one by, again, *working* towards it. Hunting and collecting Trios and then Summoning. You are not competing against a large number of users for a very tiny amount of available GoNs. There is no cap on GoNs site-wide, to my knowledge. Someone Summoning a GoN is not going to affect my chances of getting one. Not the same thing as Prizes at all. 

 

Also, I just want to point out that not everyone is pushing for CB Prizes to be available some other way because of wanting 2nd-gens. Or wanting to make pretty lineages. Or wanting to have that trading power. Some of us simply think a CB Prize should be available to everyone who puts in time and effort, not a very tiny minority who do nothing at all but randomly get lucky. 

[KrazyKarp]

I'm 100% for making Prizes more obtainable. Things on DC are becoming more accessible, such as CB holidays, and it's about time CB Prizes get fixed, too.

 

But here's the thing. If Prizes were to be obtainable in some other way, I'd want it to be more work and less waiting. Putting them in the market is fine and all, but reaching the shard cap is easy enough that it'd be pretty much 1% effort and 99% waiting for months. And while, yes, that does sound more fun than facing the current odds of most likely never getting a CB Prize, having them in the market still doesn't make getting them fun and exciting.

 

I don't actually know how I'd want to have CB Prizes be obtainable. I do know that I don't think the market is the way to go. If this were to happen, I can see the suggestion threads popping up now: "Third Way to Get CB Prizes!" "Market and Raffle Take Too Long: Another Way to get CB Prizes" etc. etc. I'd like to fix the problem, not temporarily patch it up.

[Saami]

2 hours ago, KrazyKarp said:

But here's the thing. If Prizes were to be obtainable in some other way, I'd want it to be more work and less waiting. Putting them in the market is fine and all, but reaching the shard cap is easy enough that it'd be pretty much 1% effort and 99% waiting for months. And while, yes, that does sound more fun than facing the current odds of most likely never getting a CB Prize, having them in the market still doesn't make getting them fun and exciting.

 

I don't actually know how I'd want to have CB Prizes be obtainable. I do know that I don't think the market is the way to go. If this were to happen, I can see the suggestion threads popping up now: "Third Way to Get CB Prizes!" "Market and Raffle Take Too Long: Another Way to get CB Prizes" etc. etc. I'd like to fix the problem, not temporarily patch it up.

1

 

This better articulates what I was trying to say. I still think the market is a good solution. But variety in how it works would lessen the tedium.

Edited September 28, 2018 by Saami

[DragonLady86]

6 hours ago, KrazyKarp said:

I'm 100% for making Prizes more obtainable. Things on DC are becoming more accessible, such as CB holidays, and it's about time CB Prizes get fixed, too.

 

But here's the thing. If Prizes were to be obtainable in some other way, I'd want it to be more work and less waiting. Putting them in the market is fine and all, but reaching the shard cap is easy enough that it'd be pretty much 1% effort and 99% waiting for months. And while, yes, that does sound more fun than facing the current odds of most likely never getting a CB Prize, having them in the market still doesn't make getting them fun and exciting.

 

I don't actually know how I'd want to have CB Prizes be obtainable. I do know that I don't think the market is the way to go. If this were to happen, I can see the suggestion threads popping up now: "Third Way to Get CB Prizes!" "Market and Raffle Take Too Long: Another Way to get CB Prizes" etc. etc. I'd like to fix the problem, not temporarily patch it up.

how is having to be active every week for at least a year only 1% effort?  That is a lot of work AND you can't do anything else with your shards in the interim.

 

And there are always going to be people that think they need to be handed everything with no effort.  so yes, more threads might pop up, and just like all the suggestions for making rares "easier" to obtain will be shot down by the community.    but I also don't think that problems that "might" happen are a good reason to not make improvements to the site.

 

[osmarks]

Even ignoring whether you find it "fun" to click a button and wait and hope or not, prizes also create a trading imbalance, with a tiny minority of CB prize owners able to dominate the market for anything rarer than CB silvers. Are some given for less? Yes. Are they usually? No.

[DragonLady86]

7 minutes ago, osmarks said:

Even ignoring whether you find it "fun" to click a button and wait and hope or not, prizes also create a trading imbalance, with a tiny minority of CB prize owners able to dominate the market for anything rarer than CB silvers. Are some given for less? Yes. Are they usually? No.

yes, this is one of the reasons we want them in the market, so more people have access to them and the trade imbalance finally goes away.

[KrazyKarp]

9 hours ago, DragonLady86 said:

how is having to be active every week for at least a year only 1% effort?  That is a lot of work AND you can't do anything else with your shards in the interim.

 

And there are always going to be people that think they need to be handed everything with no effort.  so yes, more threads might pop up, and just like all the suggestions for making rares "easier" to obtain will be shot down by the community.    but I also don't think that problems that "might" happen are a good reason to not make improvements to the site.

You don't have to be active 7 days a week to reach 100 shards. It's incredibly easy to reach 100 in one day, heck, even just a few hours. So it really isn't that much work. Also, not doing anything else with shards is part of the 99% just waiting for months and months. It's not actually work, it's just waiting. Not fun.

 

Again, I am not suggesting a way to get CB Prizes with no effort. Not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying people want a way to get CB Prizes by working for them, and I don't think a suggestion that is mostly waiting for months instead of actually doing work is what people will want.

[HeatherMarie]

4 minutes ago, KrazyKarp said:

You don't have to be active 7 days a week to reach 100 shards. It's incredibly easy to reach 100 in one day, heck, even just a few hours. So it really isn't that much work. Also, not doing anything else with shards is part of the 99% just waiting for months and months. It's not actually work, it's just waiting. Not fun.

 

Again, I am not suggesting a way to get CB Prizes with no effort. Not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying people want a way to get CB Prizes by working for them, and I don't think a suggestion that is mostly waiting for months instead of actually doing work is what people will want.

 

I have that view too, getting the max shards is very very simple and I usually do so in less then 24 hours.... But that's not everyone's experience. There have already been multiple people posting around these forums about not being able to hit the max in a certain week, or not being able to do so consistently every single week. I have no life, lol. I'm literally on DC for 5+ hours every single day. But for plenty of people, making sure they are active enough to hit 100 shards every single week (and making sure to do so before the shards get reset for the week) *is* actually a challenge. (Also, for some of us it *is* kind of fun/challenging/etc to not do anything with our shards, it's a struggle of willpower to see all this awesome stuff I can already afford and then go 'okay wait, what do I *really* want to use these shards on?' etc.) 

 

I would personally be totally fine if getting a CB Prize required more active work then 'just' collecting shards, but I don't see any way that could really be accomplished that wouldn't create yet another imbalance and more us vs them issues.

[MIGOR]

I believe, I have one of the biggest collection of prize dragons on DC. Maybe even the biggest. So, I am a really prize fan you could say. I also know, raffle is a raffle. But it is really not fair, that some players (I envy you) have more then one CB prize. I am 100%, I will never get one. So only solution for me is: I can buy it on a market. No matter the price would be. I can wait even two years, I am plying for nine year. Or: you can only get one prize dragon via raffle.... BTW: so many CB prizes are "gifted" every month. Were are 2nd gens, 3rd gens....

 

Be well and happy hunting to all

Igor

[Fuzzbucket]

I agree with you - BUT - TJ has said that making it only one can be won by a single player would make no difference in the long run.

[olympe]

Well, the double/triple/... winners, of course, don't change the odds much - but each CB prize that goes to a scroll that already has one (or more) could have made a different person very happy. Over time, that's a lot of people who could have enjoyed their first CB prize...

[Fuzzbucket]

True, but it isn't the fix-all people think it would be.

[DragonLady86]

7 hours ago, KrazyKarp said:

You don't have to be active 7 days a week to reach 100 shards. It's incredibly easy to reach 100 in one day, heck, even just a few hours. So it really isn't that much work. Also, not doing anything else with shards is part of the 99% just waiting for months and months. It's not actually work, it's just waiting. Not fun.

 

Again, I am not suggesting a way to get CB Prizes with no effort. Not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying people want a way to get CB Prizes by working for them, and I don't think a suggestion that is mostly waiting for months instead of actually doing work is what people will want.

I didn't say 7 days a week I said 52+ weeks in a row.  (also despite being on everyday it usually take me all week to get my 100 so yes 7 days is accurate for me.)  So it IS still a lot of work AND time.

[osmarks]

The multiple-prizewinners really only become relevant extrapolating into the far future of the raffle system. Getting rid of them will not fix the fundamentally broken prize distribution.