ANSWERED:Can We Please Have Prizes Available in the Market

[Fuzzbucket]

More to the point - this is only one breed (OK technically two) that is at issue. Everything else CAN be achieved by playing normally. CB Prizes are a different kettle of fish and don't fit with a general "more things in the market" thread.

[osmarks]

@Fuzzbucket

"Everything else can be achieved by playing normally"

• XD/<3
• Leetle Stack of Pancakes or whatever
• Spriter's Alts
• CB Hybrids
• CB Alt Blacks
• ...

Not that I think we necessarily need these, but we need to be clear here.

[BlueLatios]

1 hour ago, Fuzzbucket said:

More to the point - this is only one breed (OK technically two) that is at issue. Everything else CAN be achieved by playing normally. CB Prizes are a different kettle of fish and don't fit with a general "more things in the market" thread.

This summarizes up everything pretty well!

They're the hardest to get in-game, pure luck. Even the easier ones (but hard to obtain because of time, such as Holiday Dragons) are unavailable in the market. That being said, every dragon has its own mechanics and trials to get one, just because CB Gold is available in the market does not automatically mean that they're easy to get. I am in a race whether I could get a CB Gold or any Prize Dragon first :v

 

Also, @osmarks thanks for adding further to my point. Excluding Spriter's Alts, I wouldn't count "Leetle Stack of Pancakes" as a breed; who would want one anyways?

Edited September 30, 2018 by BlueLatios
grammarz

[DragonLady86]

5 minutes ago, osmarks said:

@Fuzzbucket

"Everything else can be achieved by playing normally"

• XD/<3
• Leetle Stack of Pancakes or whatever
• Spriter's Alts
• CB Hybrids
• CB Alt Blacks
• ...

Not that I think we necessarily need these, but we need to be clear here.

Item1:  joke eggs that don't do anything (and the site owner/creator is allowed to make stuff for just himself)

Item2: a joke based on a miss-spelling of the owners name that wouldn't make sense for anyone else to have

Item3: sprite a holiday dragon if you want your own.

Items 4 and 5: a glitch that wasn't fixed and later HMs from the raffles.  You want those make a new thread for them.

 

 

 

[osmarks]

Just now, DragonLady86 said:

...

Did you read this?

Not that I think we necessarily need these, but we need to be clear here. 

 

[DragonLady86]

Yes, I can read.

If you want to make pointless arguments over nothing, people are going to counter.  Can we get back to the actual topic now?  Prize dragons are the ONLY things you can got get through work and persistence so can we please get them added to the market?

[Fuzzbucket]

10 minutes ago, osmarks said:

@Fuzzbucket

"Everything else can be achieved by playing normally"

• XD/<3
• Leetle Stack of Pancakes or whatever
• Spriter's Alts
• CB Hybrids
• CB Alt Blacks
• ...

Not that I think we necessarily need these, but we need to be clear here.

 

Of course she read it. You are nitpicking here.

 

OK- as Dragonlady said  -- most of those are personal jokes, and CB hybrids/alts (you forgot vines) appeared VERY briefly and TJ said it was a mistake and cannot be allowed to happen again. And surely to god no sane player is suggesting we should EVER be offered Spriters' alts. No matter what the price.

 

The only issue here is Prize dragons.

[Ruby Eyes]

Also, Spinels and Undines?

 

Did hybrids really ever appear in the Market? I never saw that

 

As for pricing the Prizes: 2 years of collecting shards should give the current Prize owners enough time to trade for everything they want before the first Market-bought Prizes can show up. Still 1.5 years to go if they were added soonish

[osmarks]

5 minutes ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Also, Spinels and Undines? 

 

Did hybrids really ever appear in the Market? I never saw that

 

As for pricing the Prizes: 2 years of collecting shards should give the current Prize owners enough time to trade for everything they want before the first Market-bought Prizes can show up. Still 1.5 years to go if they were added soonish

They were never in the market, I think CB hybrids were old raffle prizes or something.

 

2 years seems high, I think 1.5 would be more reasonable.

[Fuzzbucket]

21 minutes ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Also, Spinels and Undines?

 

Did hybrids really ever appear in the Market? I never saw that

 

As for pricing the Prizes: 2 years of collecting shards should give the current Prize owners enough time to trade for everything they want before the first Market-bought Prizes can show up. Still 1.5 years to go if they were added soonish

 

Not in the market - but showed up as HMs so a few people have them. Just as ONE person has the pancakes  THis relates - I assume - to my saying we coudl get everything else by playing normally. Which we can, basically.

 

I think 2 years  of shards is fine. Golds are actually currently at 3 1/2 years (41 months assuming absolutely constant play) so probably 4 years would be more accurate. They cannot cost LESS than a gold and should cost  a dealmore.

 

 

Edited September 30, 2018 by Fuzzbucket

[Ruby Eyes]

15 minutes ago, osmarks said:

I think CB hybrids were old raffle prizes or something.

That was not a mistake (if you ask me - I love my HM girl!), those were Honorable Mention prizes available during some christmas raffles, and I wish breed-onlies would *also* be added to the Market. The only glitch I remember were some Alt Black(s? I only know of Commondant Lassard who got fake deceased parents for a while that were later removed again)

 

2 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I think 2 years  of shards is fine. Golds are actually currently at 3 1/2 years (41 months assuming absolutely constant play) so probably 4 years would be more accurate. They cannot cost LESS than a gold.

Um ... 4100 shards are 41 weeks worth of collecting, and the year usually has 52 weeks. Your calculator is broken.

Edited September 30, 2018 by Ruby Eyes

[osmarks]

@Fuzzbucket I think you mixed up months and weeks.

Golds are at 4100 shards right now, which is less than a year at 100 shards/week.

[Fuzzbucket]

They were indeed not a mistake at the time in the sense of getting them; TJ said afterwards that they had been, and he should never have allowed it to happen and it would never happen again.

[Fuzzbucket]

Just now, osmarks said:

@Fuzzbucket I think you mixed up months and weeks.

Golds are at 4100 shards right now, which is less than a year at 100 shards/week.

 

Oops true. (Sorry, I am actually packing with my other hand !) OK back to 2 years.

[KrazyKarp]

On 9/28/2018 at 12:20 PM, HeatherMarie said:

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.

That's true. The people who find difficulty in getting 100 shards a week will have difficulty with any possible method of getting CBs through work though. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing that people don't have time to get 100 shards or put in work into DC; heck, I haven't gotten 100 each week since the market was released, some weeks I missed. So I understand. But I also don't think we need to create such an even playing field. A system of the more work you put in, the faster you get CBs, is really what I'd like (reasonably, of course; a CB every day or every week is rather extreme). Having everyone with the same time frame of two years hinders super active players and at the same time doesn't really change anything with how fast or how much work not-so-active players would be able to put in, regardless of exactly how it would be done.

 

Also, somewhat unrelated to my above response, so putting this here separately. The market is made to be a little something extra to help with obtaining dragons already in the biomes. The way I see it, based off of the design philosophies TJ had listed in the Market Feedback thread, is that it takes so long to earn enough shards to buy eggs because you should be using the cave as your main source of CB eggs. Having the market be the main source of obtaining something completely goes against what it's there for. It's not made to be the main source for anything, which is what this suggestion is pushing.

 

I can see that two years is the popular opinion right now, so I won't attempt to fight a battle I can't win. I suppose it doesn't hurt to implement something, see how it goes, then make changes or even take out things entirely depending on how it goes. With that in mind, I do admit that two years in the market may be a good beginning to making CB Prizes more obtainable. But honestly? That's all I see it as, a good beginning, good foundation for something better. I don't see it as something that would last very long. People are going to get sick and tired of waiting two years. Who knows though; this is only my prediction, so obviously it should be taken with a grain of salt, as I'm only one person.

[HeatherMarie]

2 hours ago, KrazyKarp said:

 

Also, somewhat unrelated to my above response, so putting this here separately. The market is made to be a little something extra to help with obtaining dragons already in the biomes. The way I see it, based off of the design philosophies TJ had listed in the Market Feedback thread, is that it takes so long to earn enough shards to buy eggs because you should be using the cave as your main source of CB eggs. Having the market be the main source of obtaining something completely goes against what it's there for. It's not made to be the main source for anything, which is what this suggestion is pushing.

 

I can see that two years is the popular opinion right now, so I won't attempt to fight a battle I can't win. I suppose it doesn't hurt to implement something, see how it goes, then make changes or even take out things entirely depending on how it goes. With that in mind, I do admit that two years in the market may be a good beginning to making CB Prizes more obtainable. But honestly? That's all I see it as, a good beginning, good foundation for something better. I don't see it as something that would last very long. People are going to get sick and tired of waiting two years. Who knows though; this is only my prediction, so obviously it should be taken with a grain of salt, as I'm only one person.

 

While I completely agree that the Market should not ever be a replacement for cave-hunting, Prizes are different. Because you *can't* hunt for them. There is no 'if I hunt long enough I can grab one without spending my shards' or 'the more work I put in the more likely I am to get one and the Market won't matter' or anything like that. The Market should never be the default for things that *can* be obtained in the cave (or through trading). It's a supplement to the cave, for sure. And yes, having a breed in the Market that can't be obtained in the cave does make that distinction a little murky... But that seems to be the most reasonable way to handle the Prize issue at this point (at least when looking at what most people would and wouldn't want). 

 

*Personally*, I would love it if Prizes *were* available in the cave, even if they would be harder to get then CB Golds (and I'm saying that as someone who *just* got her very first CB Gold after an entire *decade* of playing). I would love to be able to get CB Prizes *normally*, the way all other CBs in this game are obtained. But it doesn't seem that will ever, ever happen, so the next-best-thing would be the Market. I've pondered other possible ways to get CB Prizes, as well, like hitting a really high scroll milestone or somesuch, but again that probably would never fly. I will support ANYTHING that makes CB Prizes reasonably obtainable, and right now it seems that the Market is the most likely option. 

 

(And the issue about fuzz's 'everything else can be obtained by playing normally'? That's *really* splitting hairs. Everything that is *generally* available, ie to any random user and not just to one or two specific people for one-off reasons, is indeed obtainable by playing normally. Things that were given out a couple times years ago and never again don't count. Neither do things that only one specific user has, either as a joke or because they contributed valuable art to the site. None of those things are reasonable arguments against the idea that everything else can be gotten by normal game-play.)

[Fuzzbucket]

Thanks. HeatherMarie.

There's nothing wrong with asking for what  is in some way "normal". Lord knows I screamed and screamed until - against all my hopes !!! - Arias showed up 

CB prizes are in that sense normal; in THEORY any player can have one. In practice almost no players can. And there is NOTHING we can do to improve our chances. No-one ever had a chance of the joke eggs, or the pancakes,  and we have already been told that the HM oddities. Prizes are technically available. Just impossible for almost everyone.

 

All we want is the chance to work hard to get one.

[Zeditha]

May I point out that for some people, there already are things in the market that can't be obtained any other way. I can't even catch new releases, how am I supposed to be able to catch Silvers and Golds and Dinos - especially since I rarely have the time to sit and cave-hunt? For these breeds, trading or the Market are my only options, and I've long since accepted that. I enter the raffle every month, get my hopes up every month, and nothing. Maybe I'll get one in five years' time? Maybe I'll get one next month? Maybe I'll never get one ever? There is literally no way to tell, or control it.

With a CB gold, if you're a good hunter, you might expect to get one in a few months of hunting.

With a CB Prize you have literally no idea.

 

I'd love to know how many users, on average, enter the Raffle each month. I'm guessing it's in the order of the tens of thousands at the very least, since at the time of writing this post there are just over 67 THOUSAND forum users, and I'm guessing there are even more Dragon Cave users, and most of them probably enter the raffle.

Let's take 60,000 as our estimate of how many users enter each raffle.

There are 60 Prizes given out.

That puts your odds of getting a Prize at one in a thousand. So you should expect to have to enter a thousand raffles to win one CB Prize.

 

THAT IS MORE THAN 83 YEARS OF ENTERING EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH.

 

And that's simply not acceptable.

 

I'm okay with Raffles, but I'm not okay with the odds being this *ridiculous*. Either give out more Prizes - ten times as many at least - or make them available in the Market. Compared to 83 years from the Raffle, I'd be fine with the Prizes costing five or ten years' worth of Shards - just let us get them! PLEASE!

[Fuzzbucket]

15 minutes ago, Zeditha said:

That puts your odds of getting a Prize at one in a thousand. So you should expect to have to enter a thousand raffles to win one CB Prize.

 

THAT IS MORE THAN 83 YEARS OF ENTERING EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH.

 

 

Not that simple. Every month it starts over. It's RNG. If you enter every month for 500 years you still might not win.

[Zeditha]

True, but it's the expectation. After 83 years (and 3 months), 60,000 Prizes will have been distributed. If 60,000 people enter for every month of that, then there's an expectation that most people will have received one. If repeat winners weren't allowed, everyone would receive exactly one. (Not that I support disallowing repeat winners.)

 

My point is that the odds are ridiculous and the mismatch between the numbers of Prizes distributed and the numbers of users is huge.

 

I know that Prizes aren't something originally intended for just anyone to be able to get, but anyone being able to get them was the *point* of the monthly raffles, right? So can we please have some actual chance? Please???

Like, if instead of 5, 10 and 15 Prizes, we could have 50, 100 and 150, giving 600 dragons out in total. Or maybe 25, 50 and 75, giving 300. If 300 dragons were given out each month instead of 60, instead of giving out roughly enough Prizes for one each in 83 years, we'd manage it in around ten. (3600 dragons a year, still just 5% of my estimate of the playerbase, but far more reasonable than 0.1%.)

[Fuzzbucket]

That's still RNG and we can still do NOTHING. I want to see them obtainable by Hard Work.

[DragonLady86]

Personally, I'd like to see BOTH.  The number trickling out is ridiculous and something needs to fix it.  Either solution would help, both might actually fix the problem.

[Ruby Eyes]

7 minutes ago, Zeditha said:

True, but it's the expectation. After 83 years (and 3 months), 60,000 Prizes will have been distributed. If 60,000 people enter for every month of that, then there's an expectation that most people will have received one.

With that you are also expecting that no new players ever sign up anymore which is something no online game would ever want.

[DragonLady86]

Just now, Ruby Eyes said:

With that you are also expecting that no new players ever sign up anymore which is something no online game would ever want.

but people leave all the time too, so if the number of active players is static...

[Zeditha]

Personally, I'd also prefer Prizes available in the Market. But because they're 'Prizes' and have to be 'won not bought' and need to be 'exclusive' and 'this is how they were introduced' and 'we need to keep to their original idea', it's unlikely to happen.

 

Instead, I'll root for the more-likely-to-happen partial fix of releasing more Prizes with each monthly Raffle.

 

I'd also quite like the option to collect 'raffle tickets' and have the option to either use them all at once in one raffle, or cash them in for Shards.

(Although I see the idea as somewhat mutually exclusive with earning Shard prizes.)

 

3 minutes ago, Ruby Eyes said:

With that you are also expecting that no new players ever sign up anymore which is something no online game would ever want.

I discussed this with my mother, and she said, "How many of those users are active?"

As more people sign up, old people will leave. The number will likely grow, yes, but perhaps not all that quickly.

Edited October 1, 2018 by Zeditha
missing end parenthesis