Allow re-influencing

[pinkgothic]

By far the most common request in "Random Scroll Help and Missed Connections" --

 

 

-- comes from people needing help to erase an influence. While I think it's great that we can fix that by bouncing an egg off another person's scroll, I'd like to propose an easier fix: Allow the egg to be influenced again before it hits the 3d mark.

 

Lore-wise, influencing is supposed to be something related to keep an egg at a certain subtle temperature to get it to hatch male or female. From the encyclopaedia:

 

Quote

Sensitive pads on their paws allow them to easily read the temperature of egg nests, letting them know when to raise or lower the temperature of the nest if a male or female egg clutch is desired.

 

If this can be done any time before the egg hits the 3d mark, I reckon the temperature can probably be changed again, so that it's right at time of hatching.

 

How could this look like, so we don't lose the information whether something was already influenced on the action's page itself?

 

• One option is to just change "(Already influenced)" to a link.
• Another is to change it to a link and the text to something like "Change existing influence", to make it more obvious what the link is supposed to do. The text still makes it clear that an influence already happened in the egg's past.
• Another option would be to combine this suggestion with the ones hoping for an indicator what an egg was influenced as - leaving it as "(Already influenced)" (no link) if the egg we're looking at was already influenced this particular gender, turning it to a link "Change existing influence" if it was influenced the opposite gender.

 

I've attached a mock-up of the last option to this thread (in which case you can tell PBMKR was influenced female, and IJ8EM was influenced male).

Edited September 15, 2018 by pinkgothic
typowhoops

[The Dragoness]

Support! Sometimes requests in the Random Scroll Help and Missed Connections thread can go hours or days without a response--enough time for the egg in question to hatch. And it would save the use of a teleport. I don't see any reasons to not implement this, honestly.

[Moonwick]

Support.

 

I honestly always forget that you can't do this. I've misgendered plenty of eggs accidentally, went to go re-influence, and then the realization hits me like a brick.

 

Your idea on changing that piece of text to a link is a good one. I like your mock-up, too.

[purplehaze]

I do support this. I like the third option best -- the one you illustrated. It seems clearer as to what has already happened to an egg.

 

Random Scroll Help is great, if someone is watching the thread and responds, but that doesn't always happen quickly and may allow the egg to get beyond the point of influence. It is also worthless to someone who is not a forum user. Besides, it involves trusting someone else to return an egg you have sent them -- which has never been a problem that I know of, but things could happen that could prevent that person from returning your egg -- internet failure, for one.

Edited September 15, 2018 by purplehaze

[olympe]

Knowing me, I might try to influence the same egg two or even three times...   Unless, of course, an egg is still marked as influenced if you try to re-influence it. In which case I don't see why not.

[Naraku]

I like this idea. Support  

[Cinspawn]

Support, I always forget you can't do this and it doesn't seem to make much sense that we can't do it. 

[Rainbeetle]

Interesting idea! My thoughts-

 

First and second suggestion pros:

Both can influence an incorrectly influenced egg, in case of an accident.

First and second suggestion cons:

Both have a risk of influencing an egg again when it was already correct, thus wasting influences.

Biggest difference here is that with the second option, people may notice the text and check their Action Log to see what influence was done.

 

The third suggestion seems to erase all of the cons, leaving only pros. I really like this idea, with the gender already influenced not showing a link, but the opposite allowing it with new text. Seems to me like the best option. 

 

Either way, I support, in order of third suggestion, second suggestion, and then first.

[Terces]

I definitely like the third suggestion. I'm pretty careful when I use influence but I've still screwed up a handful of times and it would be great if I didn't have to risk sending it to another user just to erase the influence.

[Confused Cat]

Support.

 

The 3rd option (showing what the egg has already been influenced as) would be most useful. The "(Already influenced)" text should still be a link though, so we can try again in case of influence fails.

(I use precognition to be sure influence worked in case of irreplaceable eggs, so I would know whether or not I have to influence again.)

[Etude_Citron]

Support! Honestly that would be awesome, especially if you're working on a lineage project and the influence goes wrong

[Aalbiel]

Honestly I thought bouncing as a way to erase Influence was fine. I wouldn't support on that basis. BUT now with Market eggs, you can't bounce, so if you misinfluence, you're screwed! Support.

[Jack_Indivisible]

As someone who's gone through the pain of a dificult egg misgendering, I fully support this proposal.

[GhostMouse]

Support, particularly option 3, the way you have it illustrated.

[purplehaze]

On 9/16/2018 at 4:17 AM, Aalbiel said:

Honestly I thought bouncing as a way to erase Influence was fine. I wouldn't support on that basis. BUT now with Market eggs, you can't bounce, so if you misinfluence, you're screwed! Support.

Bouncing is only fine if you are a) a forum member or b) have a friend or two who play DC. So market eggs are not the only reason for needing this. I would actually consider them a very minor factor.

 

[Suzumiya]

I really like this idea. I've influenced important hatchies incorrectly by total mistake several times. I never had anyone I could bounce off of, and even if I did, some of these were REALLY special to me (like my very first CB Silver) and I didn't want to risk asking a random person, so I had to let it grow up gendered wrongly. I've had a lot of tinsels do this. Luckily, I can usually breed another and just influence it properly. Sometimes, the tinsel was a gift, though, and I accidentally influenced it wrong only because I read the lineage wrong and a mistake happened. I had no way of turning that awesome 2G tinsel that I wanted to be female into a male. So I had to make a spiral lineage, which I don't like much. Definitely support, because mistakes happen! We all make mistakes! And sometimes, influence FAILS! Letting us even influence twice the same gender...that would hopefully make the influence absolute.

[Aalbiel]

50 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

Bouncing is only fine if you are a) a forum member or b) have a friend or two who play DC. So market eggs are not the only reason for needing this. I would actually consider them a very minor factor.

 

 

Aaaaaaand everyone here asking for this to change is a forum user. (Not to mention once you're a forum/discord user it's incredibly easy to get someone to help you with bouncing.)

 

But even barring that, come on, most people know someone who plays, as this is generally how they were introduced to the game. Many families play (this has come up very often during multiscrolling controversies), I was introduced to it by friends and introduced more friends, back in the day. Or maybe you found DC through a forum or other game you play - either way that's some people playing right there. I highly doubt anyone typed "super-old-fashioned adoptables game" and somehow landed on DC, all alone.

 

As for knowing that bouncing erases Influence without being on forums, the Help page sure could use a bit more info but the wikia is so, so easy to find, and it has all that information handily organised. When I came back from a long hiatus (did not use forums at the time), the first thing I did after logging in and seeing all these confusing new breeds and functions was to google something along the lines of "dragon cave help" or "dragon cave wiki" which took me straight to the wikia with all the info I needed.

 

To me the only objective change that justifies a new system is Market change, because if you misinfluence a Market egg there's currently just nothing you can do about it. And that's enough to fustify it, really.

Edited September 19, 2018 by Aalbiel

[animatedrose]

20 minutes ago, Aalbiel said:

I highly doubt anyone typed "super-old-fashioned adoptables game" and somehow landed on DC, all alone.

 

...Uh, guilty?? Granted, I didn't word it like that but I was looking up "dragon adoptables games" and ended up here. :/

So, uh, it's possible. Just extremely rare, I'd think.

[purplehaze]

1 hour ago, Aalbiel said:

 

Aaaaaaand everyone here asking for this to change is a forum user. (Not to mention once you're a forum/discord user it's incredibly easy to get someone to help you with bouncing.)

 

But even barring that, come on, most people know someone who plays, as this is generally how they were introduced to the game. Many families play (this has come up very often during multiscrolling controversies), I was introduced to it by friends and introduced more friends, back in the day. Or maybe you found DC through a forum or other game you play - either way that's some people playing right there. I highly doubt anyone typed "super-old-fashioned adoptables game" and somehow landed on DC, all alone.

 

 

1 hour ago, animatedrose said:

 

...Uh, guilty?? Granted, I didn't word it like that but I was looking up "dragon adoptables games" and ended up here. 😕

So, uh, it's possible. Just extremely rare, I'd think.

 

And I saw a dragon on someone's signature in another forum and was intrigued. But I never knew that other person and knew no one else who played until I came to this forum.

 

But whether you are for this just because of market eggs or whether you think it is needed in general doesn't really matter. The point is, we are both for it.  

[Ruby Eyes]

15 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

And I saw a dragon on someone's signature in another forum and was intrigued. But I never knew that other person and knew no one else who played until I came to this forum.

Same.

 

I support this. It's one thing if I end up using a dozen or so of my Pinks because I'm too airheaded, or if I have to ask someone else to spend a Magi for me (or some of their time, at minimum).

Edited September 19, 2018 by Ruby Eyes

[Rainbeetle]

3 hours ago, Aalbiel said:

But even barring that, come on, most people know someone who plays, as this is generally how they were introduced to the game.

... I certainly wasn't...

I actually don't have a single person in my life who plays an adoptable game. Eh, I wouldn't assume everyone has a person they trust on site when it comes to supporting features or not. Its actually not as rare as you might think. 

 

But yeah. For both market and player isolation on site (which is 100% valid) this feature would be very useful.

[animatedrose]

Same, totally in support of re-influencing. Though having more Pinks in general would probably benefit me a ton too, lol.

[Natayah]

I still thing the easiest way to do this is to give some dragon (maybe Cassies, maybe something else) a "scrubbing" ability which means any BSA you've used on that egg thus far (maybe an exception to stun, obviously you couldn't "unfreeze" with this, even though that isn't really a BSA); is "scrubbed clean and goes away." That would include things like Influence, but also Incubate, Ward (if still active), precog, etc. Basically it works the same as a teleport, except you don't need a teleport. And that is basically what a teleport does. It "removes" or "scrubs away" any potential BSA up until that point, minus Stun.

 

I mean, sure some people might complain, it is not fair, I feel if you can "Un-Influence" an egg, to Reinfluence it, the price to pay for that luxury, which is exactly the same as the bouncing teleports back and forth is that you have to Re-Influence (which is the entire idea), but would also need to Re-Precog (obviously) but also ReIncubate. So you are going to have a few extra BSAs lying around, but again, you do the exact same things if you Trade for an egg, or bounce an egg with teleports. The reason I use the word "Scrub" vs "Dispel magic" is a lot of BSAs aren't using magic but natural abilities the dragon has. So it is more of a ninja move that breed knows vs. other dragons. That is why we collect them so much, regardless of other things.

 

I know there has been other suggestions by newer players at times that it is "unfair" they are unable to take advantage of as many or have large BSAs armies & shouldn't have to go to the forums for help. I don't know what to say to this. If you want to be a non-social player and do it alone, that is what you are working with. If you are willing to venture to various social places, you literally have lots of Threads, Groups, Individuals, Projects, etc tripping over each other trying to be the one who wants to help you FIRST, cuz people are so darn nice on this game. Take it and use it. This is why we offer it. We were all there too. And I get not having a BSA army. When I started, I purposely did *NOT* get the pretty metal dragons and other things I could have gotten as a "newb" but instead I stocked up on my BSA armies first. I understood early on that if I wanted to be able to do stuff in the future better, I needed to start building my BSA armies first, THEN worry about other things. I'm just throwing that out there as it seems to be the one objection that is sometimes raised. Games aren't games if you aren't challenged to some degree. (To be fair, the fact that my scroll was Gendering Male to Female or the reverse was literally at a 2:1 ratio thus I desperately needed Pinks from the start to stop this/fix this. Most people don't quite get to enjoy that "special" challenge [ and in the world of chaos, some people are just gonna get that luck of the draw], and it was so bad, I had to literally have other people hatch my pinks not because I was trying to get free hatchlings, but they would literally not gender to the ones I needed to stop what my scroll was randomly gendering them to be, giving me pinks also with that same 2:1 ratio]). Anyway, thanks to all those people who helped me back in the day, but BSAs are one of the most critical things you need to collect. Ain't no way around it.

Edited September 22, 2018 by Natayah

[Tetelestai]

So support this! Cannot recall how many times I messed up and gendered wrong towards freeze goals only to realize too late. Please, make this so!

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

On 9/22/2018 at 3:46 PM, Natayah said:

I still thing the easiest way to do this is to give some dragon (maybe Cassies, maybe something else) a "scrubbing" ability which means any BSA you've used on that egg thus far (maybe an exception to stun, obviously you couldn't "unfreeze" with this, even though that isn't really a BSA); is "scrubbed clean and goes away." That would include things like Influence, but also Incubate, Ward (if still active), precog, etc. Basically it works the same as a teleport, except you don't need a teleport. And that is basically what a teleport does. It "removes" or "scrubs away" any potential BSA up until that point, minus Stun.

 

I mean, sure some people might complain, it is not fair, I feel if you can "Un-Influence" an egg, to Reinfluence it, the price to pay for that luxury, which is exactly the same as the bouncing teleports back and forth is that you have to Re-Influence (which is the entire idea), but would also need to Re-Precog (obviously) but also ReIncubate. So you are going to have a few extra BSAs lying around, but again, you do the exact same things if you Trade for an egg, or bounce an egg with teleports. The reason I use the word "Scrub" vs "Dispel magic" is a lot of BSAs aren't using magic but natural abilities the dragon has. So it is more of a ninja move that breed knows vs. other dragons. That is why we collect them so much, regardless of other things.

 

I know there has been other suggestions by newer players at times that it is "unfair" they are unable to take advantage of as many or have large BSAs armies & shouldn't have to go to the forums for help. I don't know what to say to this. If you want to be a non-social player and do it alone, that is what you are working with. If you are willing to venture to various social places, you literally have lots of Threads, Groups, Individuals, Projects, etc tripping over each other trying to be the one who wants to help you FIRST, cuz people are so darn nice on this game. Take it and use it. This is why we offer it. We were all there too. And I get not having a BSA army. When I started, I purposely did *NOT* get the pretty metal dragons and other things I could have gotten as a "newb" but instead I stocked up on my BSA armies first. I understood early on that if I wanted to be able to do stuff in the future better, I needed to start building my BSA armies first, THEN worry about other things. I'm just throwing that out there as it seems to be the one objection that is sometimes raised. Games aren't games if you aren't challenged to some degree. (To be fair, the fact that my scroll was Gendering Male to Female or the reverse was literally at a 2:1 ratio thus I desperately needed Pinks from the start to stop this/fix this. Most people don't quite get to enjoy that "special" challenge [ and in the world of chaos, some people are just gonna get that luck of the draw], and it was so bad, I had to literally have other people hatch my pinks not because I was trying to get free hatchlings, but they would literally not gender to the ones I needed to stop what my scroll was randomly gendering them to be, giving me pinks also with that same 2:1 ratio]). Anyway, thanks to all those people who helped me back in the day, but BSAs are one of the most critical things you need to collect. Ain't no way around it.

 

It might be worth making your own request thread for this - this thread is only for re-influencing, but I'm sure it'll spark a lot of discussion!

 

Personally I'm really impartial to this suggestion - I don't really care either way. My instinct says no because you can't really "undo" other BSAs, but then I understand that clicking the wrong gender of Pink is probably a common mistake.

Edited September 23, 2018 by RealWilliamShakespeare