BALLOON LEVITATE BSA

[Vain.3805]

ALL CAPS BECAUSE I HAD GREATEST IDEA OF ALL TIME.

 

Balloon dragons, you love em or you hate em.  Personally, I hate those little gas filled leathery fart zeppelins.  Red Dragons can incubate an egg by hanging around it.  Pink's influence their gender with their chlid-rearing.  Greens shake the ground their on to crack open the shells early.  What if Ballons made 'em float.  Maybe a different dragon, like Daydream, would make more sense (cute widdle clouds with eggs on them, just picture it) but I already like Daydreams and the hybrids they can make.  A floating egg wouldn't be able to be bitten by a vampire (can't hold it still to get through the shell), incubated (how ya supposed to sit on a floating egg...), or earthquaked (missing earth contact).  Maybe other restrictions?  Maybe they only float for a day?

Don't really have my heart set on this but seemed interesting and I didn't see anything about something like this from a cursory search.

[osmarks]

Why would  this be any use?

[olympe]

We could get the egg graphic in balloon style - egg raised by a couple of pixels with a shadow underneath...  

Of course, it would be useful for Earthquake - but then again, you can just use the kill action on your target egg instead.

[The Dragoness]

So the BSA is to block out all other BSAs? Honest question: why would this be more beneficial than just not using any BSAs, if the result is the same (minus the floating sprite)?

 

Personally, I would not use this. I like being able to incubate and influence. It would be cute for the eggs to levitate, but that sounds more like a fun holiday change (like how everything turned green for April Fools) than a BSA. The "fun" BSA we do have, Splash, doesn't actually do anything. 

[hazeh]

I find it useful if you plan on using earthquake and don't want a particular egg to die. The drawbacks being that you can't use the other BSAs on it for a determinant amount of time. 

 

I'd use it! + Support

[angelicdragonpuppy]

It seems like the main purpose of this would be to eliminate the negative risks of Earthquake. Such things have been suggested before, and as with them, I think having a BSA just to counter the negative effects of a different BSA kind of defeats the purpose of said BSA having a risk to begin with.

[Vain.3805]

1 minute ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

It seems like the main purpose of this would be to eliminate the negative risks of Earthquake. Such things have been suggested before, and as with them, I think having a BSA just to counter the negative effects of a different BSA kind of defeats the purpose of said BSA having a risk to begin with.

Hence drawbacks.  Incubate is countered by Bolt, for example.  Not as extreme since neither can kill, true, and both are temporary (a traded egg loses it's Incubate as a traded hatchling also loses Bolt).  As for specifically countering a BSA... Exhume counters zombies which are a risk when using Kill/Raise commands.

1 hour ago, The Dragoness said:

So the BSA is to block out all other BSAs? Honest question: why would this be more beneficial than just not using any BSAs, if the result is the same (minus the floating sprite)?

 

Personally, I would not use this. I like being able to incubate and influence. It would be cute for the eggs to levitate, but that sounds more like a fun holiday change (like how everything turned green for April Fools) than a BSA. The "fun" BSA we do have, Splash, doesn't actually do anything. 

It wouldn't block influence (a floating egg can be tended, same as a non-floating one) and it only blocks them the way any BSA blocks any other - only while the BSA is in effect.  You simply Incubate *before* you levitate.  You make a mistake have a friend swap the egg with you - BSA's get cleared on teleports.

[LadyLyzar]

If Levitate can be used to counter earthquake, I propose that an egg cannot hatch while it is levitated.  Since most hatchlings are born with without wings, falling upon hatching would likely injure them.

 

However, I doubt a counter to Earthquake will be implemented as it is supposed to be risky.

[Pilauli]

What if any egg that hatched while floating would remain floating as a hatchie?  Basically, the sprite's shifted up a few pixels and it gets a shadow underneath.  This would give sprite collecters something new to collect, in addition to protection from earthquakes.

 

Huh, what happens if you levitate a balloon egg?  That might have to be a special case- maybe it's forbidden "(already floating)" or somesuch, or maybe it will go ultra-high.  It'd be kind of cool if it would auto-abandon, although it would need warnings to avoid annoying people.

[HeatherMarie]

1 hour ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

It seems like the main purpose of this would be to eliminate the negative risks of Earthquake. Such things have been suggested before, and as with them, I think having a BSA just to counter the negative effects of a different BSA kind of defeats the purpose of said BSA having a risk to begin with.

 

I agree with this. BSAs to counter the risks of other BSAs just sounds like 'have your cake and eat it too', you want the benefits of BSAs without the risks. I don't agree that that should be possible, especially with BSAs that give such a huge advantage as Earthquake, which can hatch your eggs long before they could hatch normally. When you use an action designed to make the game easier/faster then it normally is, there *should* be some sort of balance, some sort of risk or cost. 

 

 

1 hour ago, Vain.3805 said:

Hence drawbacks.  Incubate is countered by Bolt, for example.  Not as extreme since neither can kill, true, and both are temporary (a traded egg loses it's Incubate as a traded hatchling also loses Bolt).  As for specifically countering a BSA... Exhume counters zombies which are a risk when using Kill/Raise commands.

 

 

I really don't think those are accurate comparisons. You are talking about a BSA that directly negates the effect of Earthquake. Incubate and Blot have absolutely no direct influence on each other, as Incubate affects an *egg's* timer while Bolt only works on hatchlings. We aren't talking about taking away a day on a timer and then putting it back, they are different timers. Exhume is not a counter to any BSA at all, it's not even a counter to the Kill action since it doesn't actually revive your dragon on your scroll. Exhume is more a replacement for the 'Release' action, since zombies don't have that action.

Edited October 12, 2018 by HeatherMarie

[The Dragoness]

1 hour ago, Vain.3805 said:

It wouldn't block influence (a floating egg can be tended, same as a non-floating one) and it only blocks them the way any BSA blocks any other - only while the BSA is in effect.  You simply Incubate *before* you levitate.  You make a mistake have a friend swap the egg with you - BSA's get cleared on teleports.

Ah, alright. I misunderstood then.

 

This makes it sound like the purpose of Levitate is to stop other BSA dragons from having an effect on the egg while it is floating:

4 hours ago, Vain.3805 said:

A floating egg wouldn't be able to be bitten by a vampire (can't hold it still to get through the shell), incubated (how ya supposed to sit on a floating egg...), or earthquaked (missing earth contact).  Maybe other restrictions?  Maybe they only float for a day?

 

Edited October 12, 2018 by The Dragoness

[olympe]

11 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

I agree with this. BSAs to counter the risks of other BSAs just sounds like 'have your cake and eat it too', you want the benefits of BSAs without the risks. I don't agree that that should be possible, especially with BSAs that give such a huge advantage as Earthquake, which can hatch your eggs long before they could hatch normally. When you use an action designed to make the game easier/faster then it normally is, there *should* be some sort of balance, some sort of risk or cost. 

Not really. While Earthquake has the (low) potential to hatch eggs way before they should hatch, so could kill. The only obvious difference between the kill action and the EQ BSA is that kill targets only one egg, while EQ targets all of them. Since egg shells from EQ kills occupy a slot like all other shells from killed eggs, I don't really see any use for EQ at all - neither with nor without the ability to keep your other eggs safe.

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

12 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

I agree with this. BSAs to counter the risks of other BSAs just sounds like 'have your cake and eat it too', you want the benefits of BSAs without the risks. I don't agree that that should be possible, especially with BSAs that give such a huge advantage as Earthquake, which can hatch your eggs long before they could hatch normally. When you use an action designed to make the game easier/faster then it normally is, there *should* be some sort of balance, some sort of risk or cost. 

 

This was my immediate thought.

 

As well as a couple of others have said, I don’t really see there much other use in this. It seems much more like a gimmick than anything. Another issue I have with it is that Dragon Cave lately has been turning away from gimmicky dragons such as Cheeses and Balloons - I think introducing a BSA for one of those dragons, especially when it incorporates one of their main features like floating, would be like bringing it back all over again, something which TJ seems to have been working against.

 

So yeah, no support from me.

Edited October 13, 2018 by RealWilliamShakespeare

[skwerl56767]

   I like the idea of giving Balloons a BSA, and it sounds fun, but it's hard to think of something useful it could do... so I'm largely indifferent on whether or not Balloons have a BSA. I have a couple of ideas we could debate over though.

   One idea that I think might be useful would be to change how the dragon receives attention. Maybe Levitate theoretically raises the eggs up too high to click them, so every time a dragon has a click it gains five views instead or something? Except I don't know how that would be helpful, if those equivalents are already in place due to the fact that we have views, unique views, and clicks as all methods of encouraging dragon growth, unless you're finding excuses to collect things and want a dragon with a very specific number of views.
   Hm, what else could a levitating egg benefit from... the Earthquake thing has already been discussed... Maybe levitate can be used to raise dead eggshells off the ground (since they can't be zombified, so there's no use for killing them)? The benefit would be that it gives you back the egg slot it was taking up, but the downside would be having only one egg levitated at a time, and/or the effect only lasts 3-4 days, so you need to hatch your eggs quickly so that when the eggshells return to their slots the eggs in their places aren't auto-abandoned or something... although that sounds really risky, and people who aren't ND experimenting could easily avoid using the BSA by just being careful with their eggs.
   Another option is something similar to Stun, but for eggs? So it adds one day to any egg with less than three days left, but the egg can only receive views while levitating (possibly not Unique Views either, otherwise it wouldn't be much of a downside). A riskier downside would be that the egg can only receive clicks, but it doesn't make as much sense lore-wise and not many eggs receive clicks at all unless they're placed in hatcheries like Daily Dragon Fix. How helpful this would be though is still debatable, since a lot of people already have set patterns for efficiently hatching eggs and don't need to worry about them being too close to death, and even if they are, Hatchery ERs+Ward fix that easily.

   Hm, yeah... it's looking like Levitate would just be a fun BSA, I don't believe we'll be receiving another one of those. Maybe TJ will think of something like this for the next April Fool's Day.

[Vain.3805]

On 10/13/2018 at 4:47 AM, olympe said:

Not really. While Earthquake has the (low) potential to hatch eggs way before they should hatch, so could kill. The only obvious difference between the kill action and the EQ BSA is that kill targets only one egg, while EQ targets all of them. Since egg shells from EQ kills occupy a slot like all other shells from killed eggs, I don't really see any use for EQ at all - neither with nor without the ability to keep your other eggs safe.

Earthquake does not use up a kill action the way a successful kill does.

[Vain.3805]

On 10/13/2018 at 5:30 AM, RealWilliamShakespeare said:

 

This was my immediate thought.

 

As well as a couple of others have said, I don’t really see there much other use in this. It seems much more like a gimmick than anything. Another issue I have with it is that Dragon Cave lately has been turning away from gimmicky dragons such as Cheeses and Balloons - I think introducing a BSA for one of those dragons, especially when it incorporates one of their main features like floating, would be like bringing it back all over again, something which TJ seems to have been working against.

 

So yeah, no support from me.

I don't think your definition of gimmicky and my definition of gimmicky match.

Gimmicks are selling points, typically obvious and with negative connotations I'll concede... but TJ is actively not working against trying to make Dragon Cave unattractive because he kinda wants to at least not lose money on this game of his?  Assuming he's not insane?

[Vain.3805]

22 hours ago, skwerl56767 said:

   I like the idea of giving Balloons a BSA, and it sounds fun, but it's hard to think of something useful it could do... so I'm largely indifferent on whether or not Balloons have a BSA. I have a couple of ideas we could debate over though.

   One idea that I think might be useful would be to change how the dragon receives attention. Maybe Levitate theoretically raises the eggs up too high to click them, so every time a dragon has a click it gains five views instead or something? Except I don't know how that would be helpful, if those equivalents are already in place due to the fact that we have views, unique views, and clicks as all methods of encouraging dragon growth, unless you're finding excuses to collect things and want a dragon with a very specific number of views.
   Hm, what else could a levitating egg benefit from... the Earthquake thing has already been discussed... Maybe levitate can be used to raise dead eggshells off the ground (since they can't be zombified, so there's no use for killing them)? The benefit would be that it gives you back the egg slot it was taking up, but the downside would be having only one egg levitated at a time, and/or the effect only lasts 3-4 days, so you need to hatch your eggs quickly so that when the eggshells return to their slots the eggs in their places aren't auto-abandoned or something... although that sounds really risky, and people who aren't ND experimenting could easily avoid using the BSA by just being careful with their eggs.
   Another option is something similar to Stun, but for eggs? So it adds one day to any egg with less than three days left, but the egg can only receive views while levitating (possibly not Unique Views either, otherwise it wouldn't be much of a downside). A riskier downside would be that the egg can only receive clicks, but it doesn't make as much sense lore-wise and not many eggs receive clicks at all unless they're placed in hatcheries like Daily Dragon Fix. How helpful this would be though is still debatable, since a lot of people already have set patterns for efficiently hatching eggs and don't need to worry about them being too close to death, and even if they are, Hatchery ERs+Ward fix that easily.

   Hm, yeah... it's looking like Levitate would just be a fun BSA, I don't believe we'll be receiving another one of those. Maybe TJ will think of something like this for the next April Fool's Day.

Oh that is a neat idea.  A way to slow down clicks without eliminating them, like if you're concerned a holiday or new release egg would receive too much attention.  I also approve of the possibility of adding to egg timers, situational use but very helpful when you realize your egg is now under 3 days but you still needed to influence it!  Would it still lock out incubate?

April Fool's would certainly be an acceptable use of this BSA for me

[olympe]

23 hours ago, skwerl56767 said:

One idea that I think might be useful would be to change how the dragon receives attention. Maybe Levitate theoretically raises the eggs up too high to click them, so every time a dragon has a click it gains five views instead or something? Except I don't know how that would be helpful, if those equivalents are already in place due to the fact that we have views, unique views, and clicks as all methods of encouraging dragon growth, unless you're finding excuses to collect things and want a dragon with a very specific number of views.

Rumor has it that clicks help keep a little one healthy, while all three stats help develop them. I don't know how true that is, but if it is, this idea would do more harm than good. Unless, of course, you're one of those players who prefer to raise stuff with zero clicks...

 

23 hours ago, skwerl56767 said:

  Hm, what else could a levitating egg benefit from... the Earthquake thing has already been discussed... Maybe levitate can be used to raise dead eggshells off the ground (since they can't be zombified, so there's no use for killing them)? The benefit would be that it gives you back the egg slot it was taking up, but the downside would be having only one egg levitated at a time, and/or the effect only lasts 3-4 days, so you need to hatch your eggs quickly so that when the eggshells return to their slots the eggs in their places aren't auto-abandoned or something... although that sounds really risky, and people who aren't ND experimenting could easily avoid using the BSA by just being careful with their eggs.

Why would that affect people who're trying to get NDs? If an egg dies of natural causes (like running out of time or dying of sickness), it doesn't take up an egg slot for the additional 24 hours anyway. The only real danger for our eggs are viewbombers and vamps - and those few people who actually use EQ.

 

23 hours ago, skwerl56767 said:

  Another option is something similar to Stun, but for eggs? So it adds one day to any egg with less than three days left, but the egg can only receive views while levitating (possibly not Unique Views either, otherwise it wouldn't be much of a downside). A riskier downside would be that the egg can only receive clicks, but it doesn't make as much sense lore-wise and not many eggs receive clicks at all unless they're placed in hatcheries like Daily Dragon Fix. How helpful this would be though is still debatable, since a lot of people already have set patterns for efficiently hatching eggs and don't need to worry about them being too close to death, and even if they are, Hatchery ERs+Ward fix that easily.

Perfect for that egg you want to trade before it hatches. Perfect for avoiding sickness - especially if it lasts longer than ward and/or they can be used one after the other.

[MysticMusician]

I actually like this idea for a counter to Earthquake. I don't see it happening, but I think it would be really neat to possibly have a way to protect an egg if you had one egg you really want, but a bunch of other eggs that you wanted to try and force. There have been a few times where I have had one or two eggs I didn't want to kill, but I would have liked to use it. I don't think I've used Earthquake in over a year, even though I think it's a really neat BSA because I almost never have a full bunch of eggs that I would be ok if they accidentally died.

[DragonLady86]

22 hours ago, MysticMusician said:

I actually like this idea for a counter to Earthquake. I don't see it happening, but I think it would be really neat to possibly have a way to protect an egg if you had one egg you really want, but a bunch of other eggs that you wanted to try and force. There have been a few times where I have had one or two eggs I didn't want to kill, but I would have liked to use it. I don't think I've used Earthquake in over a year, even though I think it's a really neat BSA because I almost never have a full bunch of eggs that I would be ok if they accidentally died.

you can individually use "kill" on the eggs you want to force.  It does the same thing.

[hazeh]

I dunno, I don't really think it matters if this is a direct counter to Earthquake. Not sure why that should have any bearing on it? Personally, I think introducing something like this would make EQ more relevant and useful. I have never used EQ because I usually have a couple eggs I want to save/not risk. If I could guarantee that these were safe, even if it meant that egg was "locked" in a Levitate (I dunno, like a day?) and couldn't be hatched (that's a good idea!) or otherwise interacted with until the Levitate expires, I'd actually use EQ. It would become a useful BSA. 

And eh, yeah, I know you can use the individual kill action, but I don't want to because it takes up a kill slot. EQ doesn't. Also, I just plain don't like the suggestion of trying to kill the egg versus unleashing an earthquake lol

[osmarks]

Okay, this actually makes sense as a thing to stop earthquake negatively (or at all) affecting an egg, and would make it actually useful. Support!

[HeatherMarie]

I still don't like the idea of a BSA specifically made to counter the risks of another BSA. Why have the risk at all if you can counter it with another BSA? If people are so interested in negating the risks of Earthquake, why do it in such a roundabout way instead of just simply changing Earthquake to not have that risk in the first place? It just seems kind of useless to deliberately have possible risks to a fairly powerful BSA and then go 'oh but you don't *have* to have that risk!'. Either do away with the risk altogether or accept that something so powerful will have risks. 

[skwerl56767]

Quote

Why would that affect people who're trying to get NDs? If an egg dies of natural causes (like running out of time or dying of sickness), it doesn't take up an egg slot for the additional 24 hours anyway. The only real danger for our eggs are viewbombers and vamps - and those few people who actually use EQ.

   Ohhh, I thought the egg slot was taken up for the same amount of time regardless of how the egg died! My train of thought was that, unless you're ND experimenting (or, with the new Siyat release, trying to hatch a Purple Siyat), most people wouldn't have to worry about using Levitate because they take care of their eggs well enough that none of them reach that low of a time/die. Basically I thought it was a "this is only helpful for a specific group of people" thing.

   For the Eggslot-Freeing and Stun-but-for-Eggs ideas, I don't know how it would interact with other BSAs... although I can see how adding an extra day to the timer would be useful for teleports holidays, etc. I have a very set, slow pattern, grab most of my eggs from the AP, and use very few BSAs, so I don't think I'm qualified to decide the limits, I'll leave that to you guys. I do think though that you shouldn't be able to Levitate and Incubate the same egg (if we're using the "EggStun" option) because that's kind of silly. We should also avoid negating too many downsides of BSAs too much, as HeatherMarie said (although with Earthquake in that case, I can still see how Levitate would be useful if it has very strong limits, like having only one egg affected at a time... or maybe instead of making the egg immune altogether, it simply reduces the chances of both death and hatching early, so you're most likely to have an unaffected egg in the end? Lore-wise, the egg might not be rocking back and forth to prompt a hatching, but something could still fall on it).

[Dragon_Arbock]

This may be a counter to earthquake, but I actually think that's a good thing. Right now nobody uses EQ because it affects everything on the scroll and most people are bound to have something hard to replace out of 8 eggs, so it's too risky at any given point in time to kill the on thing that matters. Being able to target only, say, 5/8 or whatever would make EQ more usable. I'd gladly EQ the commons I've got, but I wouldn't want my important lineage eggs dying, so I just never use it.