ANSWERED:Remove chance of failure from Influence

[Nagapie]

Hi. This thing has been bugging me a lot lately.

 

As a relatively new player, I personally don't understand why Influence even has a failure rate. Is there any drawback to simply letting people guarantee a gender with it? Given that the ability is usually reliable as is, I really don't see a point in keeping a small failure rate in it. It just feels like something that can potentially slap the player in the face at the worst possible moment and leave them helpless to stop it. I'm not a fan of random punishment in games so just knowing that there is a chance it might fail someday bothers me. It would also be more consistent overall if Influence didn't have this small inconvenience as similar BSAs such as Incubate, Precognition, Stun and Ward already have no chance to fail.

 

Shortly put, the possibility that Influence can fail is something that doesn't serve any other purpose than to randomly screw players over and should be removed.

[Moonwick]

Yeah I don't understand this either. My influences haven't failed too often, but when they do I get so annoyed as it's really unexpected sometimes. I'm sure there was some intended purpose for it having a fail rate, but it's just frustrating to be honest. The pink dragon uses its knowledge of egg rearing huh? Guess they weren't too attentive in egg rearing school.

 

But yeah, this BSA having a fail rate doesn't make the game any more engaging for me.

[animatedrose]

I've never had an Influence fail, but I'm guessing it's for lore reasons. Since Influence is based on the IRL reptile trick of changing the egg temperature to raise the chances of certain gender offspring, a failure rate is to be expected.

 

While it is annoying, a guaranteed Influence would essentially render Precognition a useless BSA. Aeons would lose a lot of their value as a result and Pinks would suddenly be more sought after...making them harder to actually get, I would think. And THAT would be even more annoying. I'd rather have loads of Pinks and risk a failure...than only have one way to control my eggs' gender, yet have to pay an arm and a leg to acquire the derg that lets me do that.

[Rainbeetle]

38 minutes ago, animatedrose said:

I've never had an Influence fail, but I'm guessing it's for lore reasons. Since Influence is based on the IRL reptile trick of changing the egg temperature to raise the chances of certain gender offspring, a failure rate is to be expected.

^ This. Totally correct. Reptile eggs generally have a higher hatch rate of a certain gender depending on egg temperature. For example, keeping Leopard Gecko eggs at a higher-range temp means it's more likely to have females than males. However, irl this is never guaranteed, actually much less so than the odds we have with influences in-game.

 

I feel like it's meant to add a little more difficulty to the game. Honestly, games aren't meant to be easy. Pinks are pretty easy to get. Someone could easily acquire a ton of pinks and influence with basically no worry for cooldown at all. (I know a number of users who have already accomplished this.)

So, if influence always worked, anyone with a lot of Pinks would have absolutely any sex on any egg they could want. It would almost completely erase the challenge factor of eggs having randomized genders in breeding.  Plus, as stated above, Aeons are not only used to check if influenced is needed, but also much used to check if it worked. 

But, I see where this is coming from. It can be totally upsetting/annoying to get the wrong gender.

[Natayah]

There is a really easy answer to this. Influence, then cast Precognition. I mean it requires 2 BSA's, but you know for certain. If they are "certain" then Aeons have no use anymore, except for if the egg is below influence time and you want/need to know how it is going to gender.

 

Perhaps a better idea would be to "scrub" the BSA influences prior to that moment and then have a chance to start over. Although, as long as you have someone you trust, you can send it thru a teleport to someone you trust, and once it goes thru the teleport, everything is erased. They just return it and you start over/try again. Not likely to have it be an ongoing issue where the influence continues to fail again and again and again.

[Dracaena]

I am in favor of removing the failure possibility for influence.  Personally I haven't had an influence fail *knock on wood* though I've heard horror stories of when it does fail it tends to be a valuable, irreplaceable dragon.  

 

To bring up market "value" seems silly.  Though if you want to talk about it, I find it strange that I see pink eggs sitting in the biomes where they were gone in a blink when I started playing.  I did an IOU for my first tinsel as a new player for some cb pink and I found it quite a challenge to find all the pink eggs I needed.  I don't think that is the case now.  I find it ridiculous that aeon as a bsa dragon are so hard to find or breed.  I thought I read somewhere (years ago) that a bsa wouldn't be put on a rare dragon.  So I wonder are aeon that rare or is player demand for them that crazy?  If it's demand and not that they are really rare then some "devaluation" could be desirable.

 

I don't think having 100% influence rate will put aeons out of business.  They are incredibly useful at holiday times when you can't know what that hatchling you got or below 3 day egg you picked up is going to be.  Holiday scroll room is much too precious to have something sit there that will be useless to you.  

[BlueLatios]

Seeing the BSA Earthquake, I'm sure there are reasons for negatives in BSA.

 

Chance-based actions and mechanics are what make games like these interesting, and worthwhile, I think.

[HeatherMarie]

While I get the whole lizard-comparison thing, I definitely support removing the chance of failure. Incubate, which also messes with the egg's temperature, has no fail rate, so I'm really not sure that's a great argument against the suggestion. As far as 'games should have risks', again, most BSAs don't. Ward is 100% successful, so is Fertility and Stun. You don't see any Teleports failing! Regardless of 'lore', if all those other BSAs have no fail-chance, it doesn't really make sense for just one specific BSA to. And I really don't think Aeons will become 'useless' if Influence can't fail, Precog will still be needed with eggs under 3 days and whenever you get a hatchling that you didn't have as an egg, and of course there are plenty of times where you might simply forget to Influence before the egg hatches... I don't really see how this would affect Precog much at all honestly.

[Aalbiel]

Has anybody actually kept track of how often this happens? Because it's still pretty rare....

 

And HM, it would affect the use of Precog because very many people use Precog after Influence to check that Influence has worked, which would be pointless if there was no fail. Not saying this in a positive or negative way but it does very much affect Precog.

[Nagapie]

6 hours ago, animatedrose said:

I've never had an Influence fail, but I'm guessing it's for lore reasons. Since Influence is based on the IRL reptile trick of changing the egg temperature to raise the chances of certain gender offspring, a failure rate is to be expected.

 

I acknowledge that it's based on this real world phenomenon of animals incubating their eggs differently, but I for one have never liked having harmful features in a game for the sole reason that it's realistic. Games are not fully realistic, nor should they strive to be. Sticking to realism too much is often detrimental to the fun of the game.

 

5 hours ago, Natayah said:

There is a really easy answer to this. Influence, then cast Precognition. I mean it requires 2 BSA's, but you know for certain. If they are "certain" then Aeons have no use anymore, except for if the egg is below influence time and you want/need to know how it is going to gender.

 

Perhaps a better idea would be to "scrub" the BSA influences prior to that moment and then have a chance to start over. Although, as long as you have someone you trust, you can send it thru a teleport to someone you trust, and once it goes thru the teleport, everything is erased. They just return it and you start over/try again. Not likely to have it be an ongoing issue where the influence continues to fail again and again and again.

 

I'm already aware of this trick, but I wouldn't call this a 'really easy answer' to any new players such as myself. I simply do not have the resources to do this to all of my eggs that I want gendered correctly, and would honestly prefer to enjoy the game without having to amass a massive army of BSAs first to have full control of how my eggs gender. Not even mentioning that if influence did fail and I'd have to send the egg over to someone else to reset it I could be taking a pretty big risk depending on the rarity of the egg. You should not be forced to go through all this hassle and waste so many resources simply to guarantee a gender. I don't see how simplifying all this wouldn't be a good thing.

 

5 hours ago, LightningBug said:

I feel like it's meant to add a little more difficulty to the game. Honestly, games aren't meant to be easy. Pinks are pretty easy to get.

 

Given the way that Influence nearly always works as is, I don't really see the failure rate as a difficulty thing but more like simply having the odd chance that the game will flip you off and stop being responsive to your Influence interaction while it usually is. That's hardly added difficulty since you can't do anything about it unless you have your army of BSAs which will guarantee the influence anyway. It's merely an annoyance, at least to players without the said army of BSAs.

 

5 hours ago, LightningBug said:

Someone could easily acquire a ton of pinks and influence with basically no worry for cooldown at all. (I know a number of users who have already accomplished this.)

So, if influence always worked, anyone with a lot of Pinks would have absolutely any sex on any egg they could want. It would almost completely erase the challenge factor of eggs having randomized genders in breeding.

 

Surely there are other challenges in this game than simply getting a dragon to gender right, given all the different mechanics around some species like Gemshards, Siyats, Luminas and Lunar Heralds and again, the fact that Influence still pretty much always succeeds as is even with the failure rate. This 'challenge' does not even exist to begin with since Influence is generally so reliable. Is it really such a bad thing to let people choose the gender of their egg anyway, when having it gender wrong can often ruin the entire dragon in this game?

 

I also don't think it should be the Aeons' bread and butter to check for influence fails in the first place, especially given that the chance of failure is so low. What sense does it make to have a BSA completely dedicated to checking whether another BSA succeeded or not? Every BSA dragon should have their own thing and for Aeons that could be checking the gender of hatchlings or eggs below the 3d time. And as other players have already mentioned, Aeons are currently ridiculously valuable and a bit of a decline in value could actually be desirable to make them more accessible. Right now Aeons have more power and value than an individual BSA dragon should have have given that they also have a place in securing influences. Therefore, removing failure rate from influence could potentially serve to improve overall balance between the BSA dragons.

 

5 hours ago, BlueLatios said:

Seeing the BSA Earthquake, I'm sure there are reasons for negatives in BSA.

 

Chance-based actions and mechanics are what make games like these interesting, and worthwhile, I think.

 

Chance-based actions are all fine and dandy if they actually are like Earthquake, where it's a high risk high reward situation that you can completely opt out of if you don't like to gamble. That's fun to have. Forcing you to deal with RNG at every part of the game is not, when you already have to deal with the RNG in breeding and the cave to begin with. When you finally manage to attain a desirable dragon, you should be able to guarantee that it genders correctly.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Nagapie

[Pilauli]

Where does it actually say that influence has a fail rate?

I think I saw somewhere that most of the "fails" can actually be put down to forgetting to influence or influencing it the wrong gender.  I know I influenced an egg once, later looked at my actions log, and then panicked because I had influenced it wrong.  (Fortunately, I was able to bounce it with someone.)

[Ruby Eyes]

8 hours ago, animatedrose said:

While it is annoying, a guaranteed Influence would essentially render Precognition a useless BSA.

No, it wouldn't. There are still times when you cannot influence anymore, such as acquiring an ungendered hatchling, or an egg at 3 days or less.

Also, Pinks are much more common than Aeons - I find Aeons tough to come by, actually.

 

edit: ah, I just realize HeatherMarie has stated the same already.

 

3 hours ago, Aalbiel said:

And HM, it would affect the use of Precog because very many people use Precog after Influence to check that Influence has worked, which would be pointless if there was no fail.

Really?! I never do that, I trust Influence enough to not bother with that. The fail rate is so low that in all my DC life I never had an Influence fail (other than me using the wrong Pink!)

Edited September 18, 2018 by Ruby Eyes

[Aalbiel]

I personally haven't had any Influence fails either, but anyway most long-time players I know use that double-BSA combo pretty much every time ^^

[Moonlight_Eevee]

While I haven't had an influence fail, I did have a precognition fail at one point with a purple dragon. It said that it was going to be male but it turned out to be female instead o.o

[purplehaze]

59 minutes ago, Dalek Raptor said:

While I haven't had an influence fail, I did have a precognition fail at one point with a purple dragon. It said that it was going to be male but it turned out to be female instead o.o

Whoa! I thought precognition was 100%.

 

I'm not sure I have ever had an influence fail. One time that I thought I had I went back and checked my action log and found that I had forgotten to influence at all. I'm pretty neutral on this suggestion. Fails happen so seldom that I'm not sure they really serve whatever purpose they are supposed to have, but when they do happen with rare pairs they can be devastating.

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

I don’t think Precog will be useless at all. If you have a lot of Pinks on cooldown and don’t want to waste a BSA but you still want a specific sex for an egg, you can always Precog it. 50:50 chance you’re going to get what you want anyway, and you can check first with Precog to check you aren’t going to waste an Influence

 

Personally I don’t mind this suggestion. Earthquake has a massive fail rate, Bite has a couple of different fails, Fertility doesn’t guarantee successful breeding. I don’t mind that Influence has a fail rate to be honest. Something as drastic as changing a dragon’s sex should probably have a higher fail rate than it actually does, but the fail rate is small and it’s a chance the user takes. I don’t see it as something worth changing, because the fail rate is already so low, and there are a couple of features on this site where we just have to shrug and say “tough luck”. There have been many times where I’ve bitten eggs for a Vamp but they’ve been killed instead, sitting on my scroll for 2 weeks. It’s a risk I take, and sometimes it goes wrong. Sometimes in life we don’t get to decide things like that, so it’s pretty realistic. 

Edited September 18, 2018 by RealWilliamShakespeare

[Moonlight_Eevee]

35 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

Whoa! I thought precognition was 100%.

 

I'm not sure I have ever had an influence fail. One time that I thought I had I went back and checked my action log and found that I had forgotten to influence at all. I'm pretty neutral on this suggestion. Fails happen so seldom that I'm not sure they really serve whatever purpose they are supposed to have, but when they do happen with rare pairs they can be devastating.

I precoged a purple egg one time and it said it was going to be male so I didn't influence it for that reason and it turned female instead.

[Ruby Eyes]

It's probably too late to check if it was accidentally influenced ...

[Nagapie]

28 minutes ago, RealWilliamShakespeare said:

Earthquake has a massive fail rate, Bite has a couple of different fails, Fertility doesn’t guarantee successful breeding. I don’t mind that Influence has a fail rate to be honest. Something as drastic as changing a dragon’s sex should probably have a higher fail rate than it actually does, but the fail rate is small and it’s a chance the user takes. I don’t see it as something worth changing, because the fail rate is already so low, and there are a couple of features on this site where we just have to shrug and say “tough luck”. There have been many times where I’ve bitten eggs for a Vamp but they’ve been killed instead, sitting on my scroll for 2 weeks. It’s a risk I take, and sometimes it goes wrong. Sometimes in life we don’t get to decide things like that, so it’s pretty realistic. 

 

I wouldn't really compare Earthquake and Bite to Influence, as both of those could be considered high risk high reward actions and are generally regarded as such. Fertility has clear reasons why it should not be be tampered with - guaranteeing an egg for example could have some very noticeable effects on how many rare bred dragons are available and as such it would not be recommendable. Influencing on the other hand is just a basic tool action that is generally reliable and doesn't really have the same kind of high risk high reward set up as Earthquake and Bite. Therefore it would make more sense to group it up with other BSAs that could be considered 'tool actions' like Precognition, Incubate, Ward and Stun and let it have no failure rate. I would also consider Fertility a tool action but that one is the sole exception for me as changing it could legitimately take away from the from the game and make things less interesting due to reasons I just stated. Influence on the other hand has no good reason to have its tiny existing failure rate as far as I can see - it does not take away from anyone if a dragon is simply guaranteed to gender desirably. It's almost guaranteed as is and the odd chance it will fail is just pointless and potentially harmful. Well, save for the aforementioned Aeons which benefit from it like crazy and are ridiculously valuable for a BSA dragon because of it as stated before. Quoting what I already said about Aeons:

 

5 hours ago, Nagapie said:

I also don't think it should be the Aeons' bread and butter to check for influence fails in the first place, especially given that the chance of failure is so low. What sense does it make to have a BSA completely dedicated to checking whether another BSA succeeded or not? Every BSA dragon should have their own thing and for Aeons that could be checking the gender of hatchlings or eggs below the 3d time. And as other players have already mentioned, Aeons are currently ridiculously valuable and a bit of a decline in value could actually be desirable to make them more accessible. Right now Aeons have more power and value than an individual BSA dragon should have have given that they also have a place in securing influences. Therefore, removing failure rate from influence could potentially serve to improve overall balance between the BSA dragons.

 

Also, as for the realism argument I still stick with this statement.

5 hours ago, Nagapie said:

I for one have never liked having harmful features in a game for the sole reason that it's realistic. Games are not fully realistic, nor should they strive to be. Sticking to realism too much is often detrimental to the fun of the game.

 

[Aalbiel]

It's definitely either an error on Dalek's part (we've all clicked stuff we didn't think we clicked) or just a bug, as Precognition has been stated to be designed to be 100%. (When Aeons were released maybe? I'll dig it up if I have to).

[Ruby Eyes]

If realism was actually a design requirement, we would have CB hybrids already. Because in real life hybrids *have* escaped into the wilderness and are procreating there happily!

Likewise, "breed-only" alts.

(Besides, we are talking about DRAGONS, of all things. Not of animals that you can see in a zoo or at least in some documentaries, we're talking about creatures that exist just in FICTION!)

[Soulsborne]

Just for the new or slow among us... How does this work? If influence fails do you get feedback on the influence screen OR does it look like everything worked perfectly and you only find out when the hatchie genders?

[Ruby Eyes]

1 minute ago, Soulsborne said:

Just for the new or slow among us... How does this work? If influence fails do you get feedback on the influence screen OR does it look like everything worked perfectly and you only find out when the hatchie genders?

It appears to work perfectly, until you see the hatchling gender.

 

That's the rumour, at least.

[Soulsborne]

Ouch! Then I'm all for removing the chance of failure.. because it IS rather hard to come by enough Aeons to double check every influence.

[cyradis4]

For myself, every time I've *noticed* an Influence Fail, it was actually user error (me), having used the wrong pink.... or influenced the wrong egg. Checked via Action Log. Now, I've had, over the years, many wanted but not necessary dragons gender what I thought was wrong. Those I didn't care enough about to check, so can't say if they were influence fail or not. But a lot of failures, in my experience, can be traced back to user error. 

 

In short, I have NEVER seen a screen cap of an Action Log of an influenced egg that then gendered different from influence. I'm sure it happens, but I've never seen proof, and never seen any myself. 

 

For myself? If its something I'm going to regret miss-gendering, I use Precog after influence.... And have found multiple eggs *I* influenced wrong that way. 

 

Just saying: lets see some proof that the influence fail is actually there, and prevalent, before we start jumping to conclusions. The fact that the failures seem to happen regularly for some and not at all for others suggests either huge differences in eggs influenced, or perhaps more casual influencing practices. 

 

Cheers!

C4. 

 

PS: The influence failure rate can be dealt with easily now using PreCog.