Change where BSAs are displayed

[Draconiusultamius]

Basically, change the way BSAs are displayed on pages.  I'm not sure how to word it better, but for example, place the incubate BSA under the eggs' action page.  This would be quite helpful, especially for mobile users, as we would no longer have to click over to the BSA dragons and move to the page where dragons are located.  Of course, the BSA could still be accessed through the dragon's page, but this could increase the usability of the cave.  Similarly, if two dragons were being bred and fertility was available, you could choose to use fertility on the breeding page so you don't have to run around your scroll.  Of course, BSAs would still be accessible normally.  If you run out of dragons to perform the action, it would display something like "You cannot attempt to [action] this dragon as you have no available dragons." As for influence, the link could go to allow you to select the dragon you want to perform the action.

[HeatherMarie]

While I see why this would be useful, especially for mobile users where extra steps are even more annoying, I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense. BSAs are on the dragon's actions page because it's an action that specific dragon does. Yes it affects other eggs/hatchlings, but it's that specific dragon performing the action. That's why you use their action page. I'm not sure how much sense it makes to allow Dragon A's action to be accessed directly from Egg B. 

[Ruby Eyes]

Well, the Trading Hub already does display the Magi's action outside of a Magi's Actions page.

Narratively, you could "Call for an Incubate" (or "Influence", "Precognition" or "Ward" etc) since it all happens within the context of your own dragons. Maybe only display this after you have used a specific BSA the regular way a couple of times?

[GhostMouse]

I like this idea. When I am Influencing or Incubating (etc), I am thinking of the egg I want to use those actions on, not really of the dragon using the action. If I'm doing several eggs at once I go to the BSA list but otherwise I often find myself on the egg's page looking for the Incubate (or whatever) button, before realizing how dumb I am for making the same mistake yet again! 

Maybe it could say, for example:

Incubate:
Select a Red Dragon to perform this action
(And would then link to a list of available Reds, who would take you to the confirmation page once you click on one)

or

Incubate:
You have no dragons available to perform this action
(Greyed out and unavailable, either because you don't own any, or because they're all on cool down)

[Nandeenah]

Wouldn't this get confusing on an egg page if there are all BSAs displayed? I'm not sure if confusing is the right word, an online dictionary said I should use this.

 

For eggs it would be: precognition, earthquake, influence, incubate, bite, ward

Hatchlings: Stun

both: teleport

adults: influence

zombies: expunge

 

Edited October 12, 2018 by Nandeenah

[Ribombee]

Teleport could remain on the trading hub page, I think. Earthquake is an action for the whole scroll, so I think it would also be find to leave under the BSA itself. It is not specific to a single egg. That would only leave precog, influence, incubate, bite, and ward. That would make it at least a bit less messy. I could even argue maybe bite should remain on the vampire's page only, because a lot of people consider the biting vampire to be the parent and care specifically which one bites an egg.

[HeatherMarie]

I definitely think it would make the Actions page very crowded. Currently, for eggs there are 4 separate actions on the Actions page. That's two rows. If you include separate actions on that page for Incubate, Influence, Precog, Bite, and Ward, that's an additional two and a half rows of actions. Take out Bite that's still an extra two rows, for actions that aren't actually specific to that egg and probably won't be used as much as the other actions. Plus, how should it be organized? Unless those extra actions are just added at the bottom, it would get really confusing to see sudden different actions in the spot where the normal actions used to be (that is already annoying enough on BSA dragons). 

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

18 hours ago, Nandeenah said:

Wouldn't this get confusing on an egg page if there are all BSAs displayed? I'm not sure if confusing is the right word, an online dictionary said I should use this.

 

For eggs it would be: precognition, earthquake, influence, incubate, bite, ward

Hatchlings: Stun

both: teleport

adults: influence

zombies: expunge

 

 

Definitely, especially on adults like with Fertility. That would make me think any dragon could use Fertility! Say I’m checking through my Blacks to rename them and all of a sudden I see Fertility. “Blacks can influence other dragons’ breeding success now??”

 

Overall I see this as a little complicated. The “filter by Available for BSA” is a great filter to use which shows you everything that you can use BSAs with. I don’t really see there any need for a distinction other than that.

[purplehaze]

I really don't see the need for this and I think it would make the egg's page cluttered and confusing. No support here.

[Draconiusultamius]

To address all non-mobile users/people who generally don't like the idea, I do think this should be a setting.  To show BSAs on the recipient's pages should be something you can change in your account settings, like the number of dragons per page.  Three settings, on, mobile only, or off.  Why not PC only?  I doubt PC users who want that feature wouldn't want it on mobile since mobile is more irritating than PC.  I also don't think people who don't use mobile at all would care much about it being on or off on mobile.  Most of the people who dislike this are probably mainly PC users since mobile users (like myself) are more limited in certain things like their data.  Personally, if it made sense and if I could, I'd turn off all sprites on my scroll when using mobile and replace them with the breed name with a hyperlink to the page, but I doubt anyone would want that other than me, so that's not phesable.

 

I definitely think less commonly used BSAs or BSAs that affect multiple eggs or clutter the page needlessly should not be shown on the egg page.

 

Eggs: Incubate (obviously well used), influence (also very well used), precognition (I don't use it a lot, but I think some people might), ward (is it used a lot?)

Bite shouldn't show up because not everyone uses it and it's used to completely change the species of dragon.  Even for people who do like vamps, nobody's actively biting every single egg on their scroll to get them.  It's also not universal since it doesn't affect two-headed, drakes, or pygmies.

Earthquake is definitely no because it affects all eggs on the scroll, not just the selected egg.  It's also not widely used as far as I'm aware and there's good reason for that since I can't actually think of a scenario where earthquake could be used frequently enough to justify it being on the list.

 

Hatchlings: stun (it's used enough and it doesn't take up much space anyways since this is the only one right now)

 

Adults: Fertility (also used often and would make lineage building much less of a headache for mobile users.  This would exist on the breeding page since it seems silly to put it on the main actions page.)

 

I honestly don't see too much justification for teleport unless you're raising 20 of the same dragon and want to teleport one specific one without having to memorize the code.  I guess you could argue it, but it's kind of on the fence for me.

 

Expunge isn't exactly used a lot and it's basically kill, so I don't think anybody would actively complain about it being there or not.

 

Most of you probably play on PC, where you can put more dragons per page so you're not flipping through 30 pages to find a specific dragon.  If I want to use incubate, I have to go to BSA sort and go to page 3.  Fertility is worse since for lineages, I have to locate my dragon on my spreadsheet, find the dragon on the page (which can take a while if you have to figure out which page it might be on.  To give you an idea, try looking for my storm rider in my scroll while limited to 50 pages). Then I have to go to fertility and search for that dragon, do fertility, go back to the dragon's page and go to breed, where I have to search for the dragon's mate (which is annoying enough on mobile since there's no search tool and I have to scroll).  I've actually used fertility less because of this and only use it to prevent outright rejection for the firstborn meeting.  Otherwise, the amount of clicking I have to do and the data it can waste kills it's usefulness entirely.

 

Now to address other specifics...

 

@HeatherMarie It makes sense to me since calling over a dragon to do a task seems just the same as bringing the task to the dragon.  It's also downright infuriating as a mobile user to have to remember that my reds tend to be on page 3, but will spill over to page 2 if I use some actions more often.  The bigger part for me is saving bandwidth since loading all the images and such takes up my data.  It's the worst when your connection to wifi or data gets weak and you can only afford to load the one page.  Also, I don't think putting them above the standard actions would be productive anyways so below all of them sounds like it'd make the most sense.  Out of curiosity, what part of the BSA dragon's is annoying?  The actions being in the middle?  I do agree that TJ could have thought it through a little and placed them at the bottom or somewhere less disruptive, but it's not a huge deal to me and it doesn't bother me.

 

@Ruby Eyes That sound reasonable, but I think having a main setting to turn it on or off would probably achieve the same thing. Unless you only want some BSAs shown?

 

@RealWilliamShakespeare  Of course fertility won't appear on the dragon's page directly.  It will appear on the breeding page.  I'm thinking something along the lines of if you go to the breeding page, there will be a box near the password thing asking if you want fertility to be applied to this breeding and you can select yes or no before breeding.  Default would be no, so if you don't check the box fertility won't be applied.

 

@purplehaze I've set up my scroll the way a mobile scroll is set up (50 dragon's per page), so I challenge you to look for Pyrrhosoma nymphula, a red dragon on my scroll.  Then think about how many more clicks it would take to perform fertility on that dragon and breed it with another dragon.  It may not seem necessary to you if you use pc and I agree with that since it wouldn't be useful there, but it would save so much data and time on mobile.

Edited October 15, 2018 by Draconiusultamius

[HeatherMarie]

It's frustrating on BSA dragons because the Actions get moved, they aren't in the same place, and sometimes that's confusing especially if you don't realize that the dragon you are naming/describing/whatever is a BSA dragon so you go to click where the action is on all other dragons and it's the wrong action. 

 

.... However, I've been playing on mobile more and more lately and it *is* very frustrating to go through that BSA filter. I currently have 7 pages of BSAs on mobile, and those extra clicks to find the right type of dragon is a real pain. So I'm less opposed to this then I reflexively was before, lol. IF the actions were under the 'regular' egg-actions, then it wouldn't cause confusion/frustration on that point.

[purplehaze]

I admit I don't use mobile and have no idea how the BSA filter works for you. If it were an account setting that you had to choose I wouldn't have a problem with it.

[Ruby Eyes]

13 hours ago, Draconiusultamius said:

 That sound reasonable, but I think having a main setting to turn it on or off would probably achieve the same thing. Unless you only want some BSAs shown?

For once, I wouldn't actually ever want Earthquake to be displayed there for myself. It's easy to ignore on Green Dragons, but it would be just a matter of time before misclicks happen if it were to be displayed on an egg's actions page.

 

And second, having these show up right from the beginning would be pretty spoilery, and there are people who *would* like to figure out certain things by themselves. Later on, this would mostly be a matter of convenience.

 

And third, it seemed to me like TJ doesn't like the thought of adding more options to be checked and unchecked, so this would be a way to circumvent the options issue

Edited October 15, 2018 by Ruby Eyes

[cbussiere]

Sort by "Available by BSA" is already a fantastic solution. I don't know if it works on mobile, but a direct link to the BSA is listed under the link to Actions. I had been wanting that for years before it was implemented.

 

Anyway, available BSAs on the target dragon's page could be even more convenient. To avoid confusion I would clearly place the BSAs in a separate category. For instance, an adult's actions page could look like:

Quote

The following actions are available:
Breed     Rename
Describe     Kill
Release

The following BSAs can be used on this dragon:
Fertility

With the BSA name linking to a page structured like the breeding page that shows a list of available Purples.

Regarding dangerous BSAs like Earthquake: linking to a list of Greens would circumvent the issue, since I highly doubt you'd misclick then click on a Green dragon to use Earthquake. There could also just be an "Are you sure?" popup. Though I'd argue that since Earthquake affects all growing dragons, it doesn't belong on the target dragon's page, because there is no target dragon and that could mislead people into thinking it'll only affect the dragon they use it on.

Regarding spoilers: I don't remember what it was like to be a new player and not know about stuff like Influence, but it doesn't seem like something undesirable to spoil. It's more just learning how the game works rather than a 'wait and find out' thing like new dragons. Though I assume the BSA name would be either absent or grayed out if there were no available BSA dragons.

[Ruby Eyes]

5 minutes ago, cbussiere said:

I don't remember what it was like to be a new player and not know about stuff like Influence

Didn't exist back then - you probably got to know about it in the update announcement back then

[olympe]

On 10/12/2018 at 8:41 PM, HeatherMarie said:

I definitely think it would make the Actions page very crowded. Currently, for eggs there are 4 separate actions on the Actions page.

That can be easily avoided by adding only one option to the action page: BSA. Clicking on BSA will give you a list of available BSAs (Incubate, Influence, Ward, Precognition, Stun, Bite). If you choose a BSA, you get send to the BSA confirmation page. Like with Teleport, the game would use up the BSA of the first available BSA dragon - and you're done. No searching for an available BSA dragon, no mixing up eggs of the same breed...

 

To me, this sounds like a good idea. Support.

[Draconiusultamius]

@olympe this would work well for everything except for influence, where the sex of the dragon selected matters in the outcome.  Otherwise it seems good to me.

[olympe]

Then allow for "influence male" and "influence female" on that list.