ANSWERED:Can We Please Have Prizes Available in the Market

[olympe]

6 hours ago, Ruby Eyes said:

It should scale with the number of people entering, at least ... like 1 out of X players wins.

Doesn't really help if the number is still ridiculously low...

[Zeditha]

I think the idea of the same number of Prizes being given each month is one that's fairly set in stone.

That said, if a number more proportional to the average number of participants was chosen, that would be better.

 

Question:

If Prizes *have to* remain Raffle-only, and the chances have to stay 'low', but they were going to be set to scale with monthly participation, what ratio of Prizes:Users would you consider most acceptable?

 

I estimated it at around 1:1000 on the last page, but I have no actual real numbers on this. (Would like some! TJ, if you're reading - could we please have some idea of how many users enter the raffle each month?)

 

Personally I'd like to see something between 1:500 (min) and 1:100 (max).

[sorenna]

On 8/19/2018 at 12:14 AM, DragonLady86 said:

60 total a month 10 gold 20 silver 30 bronze (half of each type).   

 

I would prefer to see them in the market.  even for a ridiculously high price.  I'm even cool with the random idea (though if it's going to take a year or more to save up, I'd prefer to pick, but I'd accept that limit)

 

 

I agree with this.  I'd be willing to save shards for 2 years in order to buy the Prize egg of my choice, for example!  That way if I got one via lottery in the meantime, I could always use the shards for something else, but at least I'd have a viable plan if I didn't win.

 

As for Prize eggs in the Market, I don't really want it to be truly random, but perhaps availability could be rotated - Easterns available one month, and Westerns the next, say.  Or each Prize breed available in Bronze from Jan-April, Silver Prizes available May-Aug, and Gold Prizes available Sept-Dec? 

 

If TJ wants to preserve the element of chance, there could be a single Prize page with a "random selector" that doesn't require you to commit to buy, such as clicking on a rapidly-rotating egg to get an option that resets every 24 hours.  So say you clicked the image and got the message "GOLD EASTERN PRIZE!  Do you want to buy this egg?" If you say no, you'd have a day to change your mind.  After 24 hours the selection would go away and you could click for another random result.  Effectively, each day would in effect be a "lottery" as to whether you can buy the Prize you want, no matter how many shards you have.

Edited October 13, 2018 by sorenna

[relaks]

At first I was kind of "meh" about having prizes in the Market (thinking that the raffle was what made them special), but the more I read this topic and think about it, the more I agree with the sentiment that, yes, they should be available to buy with shards.

So I fully support the idea.

 

Honestly, all the arguments in favor have already been given, so I won't repeat them. Just wanted to voice my support.

[Dohaerys]

17 hours ago, sorenna said:

 

 

I agree with this.  I'd be willing to save shards for 2 years in order to buy the Prize egg of my choice, for example!  That way if I got one via lottery in the meantime, I could always use the shards for something else, but at least I'd have a viable plan if I didn't win.

 

As for Prize eggs in the Market, I don't really want it to be truly random, but perhaps availability could be rotated - Easterns available one month, and Westerns the next, say.  Or each Prize breed available in Bronze from Jan-April, Silver Prizes available May-Aug, and Gold Prizes available Sept-Dec? 

 

If TJ wants to preserve the element of chance, there could be a single Prize page with a "random selector" that doesn't require you to commit to buy, such as clicking on a rapidly-rotating egg to get an option that resets every 24 hours.  So say you clicked the image and got the message "GOLD EASTERN PRIZE!  Do you want to buy this egg?" If you say no, you'd have a day to change your mind.  After 24 hours the selection would go away and you could click for another random result.  Effectively, each day would in effect be a "lottery" as to whether you can buy the Prize you want, no matter how many shards you have.

I agree with everything said here, especially the viable plan in case you don't win (which is usually the case) and the random egg idea, which still preserves the rarity of each prize colour (since getting a bronze buy page would be more common than getting a gold prize buy page)

If prizes are implemented into the market, I do hope it's in this way,

[sorenna]

12 hours ago, Dohaerys said:

I agree with everything said here, especially the viable plan in case you don't win (which is usually the case) and the random egg idea, which still preserves the rarity of each prize colour (since getting a bronze buy page would be more common than getting a gold prize buy page) 

If prizes are implemented into the market, I do hope it's in this way, 

 

Thanks!  I feel like it preserves the "prize" aspect of Prize dragons, while still opening up their availability a little. 

 

I figured the ratios would probably be the same as the raffle - the ratio of 15 Bronze Eastern:15 Bronze Western:10:Silver Eastern:10 Silver Western:5 Gold Eastern:5 Gold Western (so your odds of a Bronze Eastern are 15/60=1/4, Bronze Western 1/4, Silver Eastern 1/6, Silver Western 1/6, Gold Eastern 1/12, and Gold Western 1/12) - but naturally TJ could set it to anything he likes and feels would maintain the balance of the odds!    There might even be some kind of "wild card" included in the shuffle that means you can't get a prize that day? "You close your eyes and point to an egg quickly.  ...Wait, that's not an egg, it's just a rock!  You leave the market for the day, embarrassed." 

 

I do feel that Prize dragons should be prizes!  I also feel that a prize with incredibly low odds of winning is less of a prize and more of a disappointment.  Asking someone to fail at something for 1-2 years before they can try another route is enough; their only option shouldn't be continuing to throw away effort on the tiny odds.

[Guillotine]

Unless the wild card/dud result doesn't take shards, it's a horrible idea that feeds back into the initial problem of the raffle.
 

[SkyMet]

I would like to be able to buy a prize, mainly because the ONLY CB prize I would actually enjoy would be the silver shimmer.  That's the only sprite out of the six that I like (I don't care about prizes for the rarity; I just see them as another sprite.  One that I'd like to build lineages with like I do with any other breedable CB dragon).  It's currently extremely improbable that I would ever get ANY prize, but I only have 1/6th chance of that to get the prize I actually want.  And since I can't swap it for someone else's prize egg, I'll be stuck with whatever I'm bestowed.  I know that probably sounds...entitled, but I think it would be sad for me to get a prize I can't appreciate, while someone else who could have won it and been able to enjoy it, ends up with nothing. 

 

Being able to get the actual sprite I want, even if I have to save up two years' worth of shards to do it, would be worth it.

[Fuzzbucket]

1 hour ago, Cielmuir said:

I don't care about prizes for the rarity; I just see them as another sprite.  One that I'd like to build lineages with like I do with any other breedable CB dragon.

 

Being able to get the actual sprite I want, even if I have to save up two years' worth of shards to do it, would be worth it.

This, so much. I am sick of the VALUE thing. I just want to be able to breed them for myself.

[osmarks]

Yes. Exactly. Anything making prizes more common will necessarily reduce their value. This is probably not that bad.

[HeatherMarie]

I agree, I mean if you want to get technical then the re-introduction of the raffles has already vastly de-valued Prizes. 60 winners every single month is a pretty huge 'devaluing' when compared to the relatively small pool of players who had them before. Every single month going forward Prizes will be less and less 'valuable' in terms of overall numbers and scarcity. So I don't really get why anyone would oppose something like this *just* because of 'value' or wanting to keep Prizes exclusive/rare/etc, since that's already a done deal with monthly raffles.

[Fuzzbucket]

1 hour ago, osmarks said:

Yes. Exactly. Anything making prizes more common will necessarily reduce their value. This is probably not that bad.

Not bad? The value thing is vile. I breed anything on my scroll for free and so do many others. This "well we have to keep the value up" and "I will never get a gold" (I don't mean CB) are driving things the wrong way,to me. This has always been a generous place, but prizes really messed with that.

[olympe]

1 minute ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Not bad? The value thing is vile. I breed anything on my scroll for free and so do many others. This "well we have to keep the value up" and "I will never get a gold" (I don't mean CB) are driving things the wrong way,to me. This has always been a generous place, but prizes really messed with that.

That's exactly what I feel, too. If someone here says they can't get breed X (and don't insist on CB), I tend to try and breed it for them. I know there are lots of people here who do the same, if the "check PM" posts following such an announcement are any indication. I also have a number of low-gen prizes that I breed semi-regularly and usually send to the trading hub, asking for a dummy. (Well, somewhere about 80% or more - occasionally, I do trade them.)

[Zeditha]

I really like the idea of a daily prize spinner, actually. It keeps the randomness (and the g:s:b ratio) but still lets us pick a prize and *buy* it!

 

Thoughts on a daily spinner idea:

 

 - Non-Prize results. There are pros and cons. One pro is that it gives an opportunity to give out other prizes. (A discounted Gold/Silver? A few shards?) A big pro and con is that it keeps the randomness; some people hate it and some people like it. (I see the randomness as a probably necessary evil.)

 - Perhaps you could use shards to spin the spinner more than once within 24 hours. (10sh a spin, you currently have a free spin available / your next free spin will be available in Xh)

 - Prizes bought should list their location as 'market'

 

[olympe]

What use is that spinner if you just keep spinning until you get the prize you want?

• It doesn't keep the ratios intact because you'll just try again the next day.
• It doesn't keep things random because you retry until it spins in your favor.
• Its only purpose is aggravating the players and making them wait days, weeks or even months for the prize they want.

So please, no.

[HeatherMarie]

I'm not really understanding how a spinner would work with the different color-ratios. Unless the spinner wasn't actually random at all, and the coding somehow took in the different ratios. Which would probably make many people a lot more frustrated then the current situation, a sort of 'false-hope' as it were, being able to 'spin' to buy the Prize you want but the odds are still against you if you want the rarer Prize. 

 

I also don't like/understand the idea of being able to spin as often as you want if you have the shards for it. If the spinner is totally random, that just means throwing tons of shards into the void for no guarantee. If it's not random, then there would probably be some sort of percentage to each type, so if you can spin over and over and over then eventually you *will* get what you are after... Which again would skew the color-ratios. 

 

Honestly a spinner just sounds like a huge frustration that doesn't actually solve anything, it just kind of shifts the frustrations around. Instead of sitting around every month hoping some random generator picks you in the raffle, you'll instead be throwing shards at a random generator (or not-so-random) in an attempt to be able to buy the type you actually want the most. Why all the unnecessary hoops? If Prizes are ever going to be available in the Market, just have them available in the Market. No reason to make it so frustrating. Just put a high enough price on them, that's good enough imo.

[animatedrose]

I agree with the above users. I don't really see the point in raffle tickets or a spinner. You're basically suggesting that a majority of people waste shards for a tiny chance at an already tiny chance of winning a prize. Why do that? It's not like we have infinite shards. We can only currently get 100 a week. Once those are gone, you're not really getting them back. You're just adding more of a random chance system to an already frustrating random chance thing.

 

If you want them in the Market, don't add anymore gimmicks. And don't screw with the raffle unless the winner pool is increased because until then, no amount of "chance boosting" will ever help. I really don't see why people want to add gimmicks when most people are already frustrated with the system as is. :/ A spinner or tickets that ultimately probably won't even help is...just a way to frustrate people more. You're asking a majority of the userbase to lose shards AS WELL as the raffle. Talk about kicking you while you're down.

 

I doubt TJ will ever add them to the Market anyway due to prizes not being in-cave. But if he ever did, I pray he wouldn't add gimmicks to it. Just put them there, at a price, just like every other derg, and leave it be. No spinners, no randomized choice of color, nothing. List them out just like the Coppers. Simple and easy.

 

[lilbird]

On 10/16/2018 at 9:38 AM, animatedrose said:

I doubt TJ will ever add them to the Market anyway due to prizes not being in-cave. But if he ever did, I pray he wouldn't add gimmicks to it. Just put them there, at a price, just like every other derg, and leave it be. No spinners, no randomized choice of color, nothing. List them out just like the Coppers. Simple and easy.

 

Amen.

[Zeditha]

The reason that many of us want to add gimmicks is that we feel like just reiterating "Please add Prizes to the market!" endlessly a) won't be listened to and b) doesn't make for a very productive conversation.

We feel like gimmicks are our only hope of getting these Prizes *at all*.

 

I guess it comes down to 'would unnecessary hoops to buy Prizes be better than the current system', and the answer for many of us is a resounding YES. So much so that we're willing to provide ideas for unnecessary hoops, in the faint hope that they might be implemented and improve the system.

[sorenna]

What Zeditha said.

 

If the reason Prizes aren't in the Market already is because they are "prizes" and/or can't be caught in the Cave as CBs, then just asking for them to be in the Market isn't going to get around those rules, any more than asking for CB Soulpeaces in the Market will.

 

I was trying to come up with ways that would allow users to purchase the eggs while preserving some of the 'prize'/'non-Cave' element that is keeping them out of the Market currently. 

 

Not making all variants available at once, offering only one variant per day (the 'spinner' idea), or whatever, is meant to do that.  And only that - my idea isn't designed to extremely limit your ability to get a Prize, or to maintain some kind of strict ratio of which Prizes are on scrolls.  I suggested two different methods (month by month, or a random selector) just as notions to add an element of luck that might help Prizes feel 'prizey' enough to get into the Market, where they are currently disallowed because they're meant to be prizes. 

 

By the way, I'm not sure why everybody in the last few posts keeps talking about "throwing away shards"??  I reiterate from my post:

 

Quote

If TJ wants to preserve the element of chance, there could be a single Prize page with a "random selector" that doesn't require you to commit to buy, such as clicking on a rapidly-rotating egg to get an option that resets every 24 hours.

 

"Doesn't commit you to buy" is the key phrase here.  Spin/check the store in a certain month, see what's available, buy it with your shards or don't.  Whether you're waiting for the right month to roll around on the month-by-month system, or waiting for a spinner result, eventually you'll be able to buy an egg you'll be happy with, which is the whole point of adding Prizes to the Market.  If you'd be happy with any, you could get one immediately; and the worst odds you're going to face with a random selector for any one Prize is 1 in 12, if the spinner's odds match the raffle's. (If they're offered month-by-month, the odds are a little different, and are more based on "what month did you reach the right number of shards at" - you could collect the price the week before the Prize you want goes on sale... or a week after it vanished, making you wait eight more months if it's on a Jan/May/Sept schedule.)

 

EDIT: I see now that somebody above mentioned buying instant re-spins as an option. Sorry; I must have missed that post when reading through initially.  I could see, that, I guess, but to me it seems extreme for a 24-hour wait; if you've saved for 1-2 years for a Prize, is a day really that unbearable?  Maybe if the re-spin wait time was a week, or something, you could buy your way down to 24 hours? 

 

Anyway, as I also mentioned in the first post - things can change while you wait!  You could win a raffle, or trade for a great 2G Prizekin, or something could get resprited so it would look great with a certain Prize, and realize that now you actually want a different Prize than the one you were hoping would come up when you spun the wheel or checked the month yesterday.  So either way there's not just the randomizing of what's offered; there's the randomizing effect of continued gameplay.    If you're playing and earning shards, you're making things happen!

 

I'm not ultra-set on my particular solutions, here; anyone's welcome to throw one in!  But Zeditha and I (and many more) are both working from the principle that solutions are going to have to address the reason Prizes aren't in the Market already; it's been asked for and rejected on certain grounds, so it makes more sense to work with those grounds than to just keep on asking for something TJ already refused.  If your choice was between no-gimmick Prizes and gimmick'd Prizes, then sure, we all want the former!  But your choice is looking like it's between a gimmick'd Prize in the Market and no Prize in the Market.  

 

For me personally, like Cielmuir, there are only a couple of Prizes that I really want, so I do tend to favor solutions that also allows users a choice of what Prize they purchase.  Whether that's waiting for the right month to go around, or patiently re-rolling the dice till the right random result comes up, or some other solution (make Prizes tradeable?? add some kind of mini-game to the site that awards Prize dragons as prizes??), I'm willing to work with it. 

 

. . . . . . . . .

 

Sorry this got so long!  Ultimately, I just want Prizes to be a gameplay element for more people outside of trading; or, to quote my earlier post:

 

Quote

Asking someone to fail at something [raffles] for 1-2 years before they can try another route is enough; their only option shouldn't be continuing to throw away effort on the tiny odds.  

 

I think there must be a way to make Prizes fun instead of frustrating for the players who like them, and add them to the Market, without losing the attributes TJ intended for them which currently exclude them from the Market.  Anyone with an idea how to do that, please chime in!  I think we've already seen that "ask for the attributes to be removed" doesn't work, though, so let's try to move on to new ideas before asking TJ again.

[Firstborn Dragon]

I would love to see prizes in the market, the problem is as the market is CURRENTLY set up, only players who've raised a certain number of eggs of a given speices can buy them.  IE I have 7 paper dragons and STILL can't buy a paper egg, so I'm not sure that as the market is currently working it will help players who have no luck with raffles.

 

I agree some other way of obtaining prize dragons would be amazing.  I've been playing 10 years and I only have 8th gens and higher.

[Dragon_Arbock]

9 minutes ago, Firstborn Dragon said:

I would love to see prizes in the market, the problem is as the market is CURRENTLY set up, only players who've raised a certain number of eggs of a given speices can buy them.  IE I have 7 paper dragons and STILL can't buy a paper egg, so I'm not sure that as the market is currently working it will help players who have no luck with raffles.

 

I agree some other way of obtaining prize dragons would be amazing.  I've been playing 10 years and I only have 8th gens and higher.

 

High gen prizes really aren't hard to get. If anyone would need I'd breed for them. The ones I have are of no use to me. You don't need to raise CBs or anything, unbreedables are just the unfortunate outliers here. I don't agree with the market's raise requirement, but it's not a reason to not include prizes.

 

As far as if they should or shouldn't be in the market because they're 'prizes'.. they really should be. I don't see a point of randomness. The first prizes were given away not by random chance, but to winners of a tree decorating contest. Maybe people who participate in holiday events could be given 'event vouchers' and once you collect enough you could buy a prize? I could see you getting one voucher for each main holiday, valentines, halloween, and christmas, and having an egg cost 3- or having bronze be worth 1, silver be worth 2, and gold 3.

[HeatherMarie]

2 hours ago, Firstborn Dragon said:

I would love to see prizes in the market, the problem is as the market is CURRENTLY set up, only players who've raised a certain number of eggs of a given speices can buy them.  IE I have 7 paper dragons and STILL can't buy a paper egg, so I'm not sure that as the market is currently working it will help players who have no luck with raffles.

 

I agree some other way of obtaining prize dragons would be amazing.  I've been playing 10 years and I only have 8th gens and higher.

 

That's not actually true at all. You don't need to have *any* of the species in order to buy them, you just need to have enough shards and have the breed (or just the egg I think) unlocked in the Encyclopedia. Which you can do without owning a single one, by clicking on other people's dragons. The reason you can't buy a Paper right now is simply because they cost more shards then *anyone* has at this point. The max shard amount at this point is 2,800 (except for the glitches that gave a few people a couple more shards) and Papers cost 4,400. 

[FRiv]

It's simple enough to get the sprites, which are what is collected, we just... decided to play different; collect lineages, codes, gens...

CB Prizes are prizes.

Maybe it could go for 50,000. Here's a prize for reaching veteran status.

[HeatherMarie]

53 minutes ago, FRiv said:

It's simple enough to get the sprites, which are what is collected, we just... decided to play different; collect lineages, codes, gens...

CB Prizes are prizes.

Maybe it could go for 50,000. Here's a prize for reaching veteran status.

 

You mean 50,000 shards? If my math is correct that would be over 10 years. I very very much doubt anyone would be satisfied with that. DC has only been *around* for a tad over 12 years! Even CB Golds, the rarest thing in the cave, are less then a full year of shards. Maybe Prizes should be more then that because of their supposed 'prize' status (though I very much argue they should be looked at as 'prizes' anyways), but at MOST I'd say 2 years. Certainly not 10!

 

And yes, the sprites themselves are relatively easy to get, but it's not just users anymore who put value on CBs. It's the game itself, by having the Market in the first place. Only CBs are buy-able, you can only spend your earned shards on CBs, so the logical conclusion is there is something special about CBs. We also have the holiday biome now, which once again seems to imply there is something different about CBs, since holiday CBs were suddenly brought back after years and years of *not* being able to get them after their release (and yet you *could* get those breeds as bred...). 

 

To me it's not even about CB vs bred or whatever, it's about the fact that there is this THING in the game that NO ONE can work towards, no one can EARN, no one can put in genuine hard work and set a goal to get it. It's completely about random luck. And the raffle numbers are soooooo tiny compared to the actual active userbase numbers (at least the latest numbers we have, I believe from 2014). I simply don't believe there *should* be a Thing on DC, regardless of what it is, that can ONLY be obtained through sheer dumb luck, and ONLY to a very very tiny portion of users. I don't care if that thing is CB or what, that's not my issue.