Seasonal BSA: Sightseeing (out of season Seasonals)

[Fuzzbucket]

1 hour ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

I say don’t fuss the details. How do vampires bite eggs without puncturing them so they drain out dry? How do purples do anything with fertility whatsoever? Compared to half of what we have in the cave, dragons that lay different eggs based on climate going to different climates to lay different eggs is pleasantly logical. The hows and whys of the wording and specific mechanics are easy enough to figure out later, and I imagine TJ will implement them in his own way regardless of what we do figure out. So what we need to do is—

 

Confirm this is actually WANTED first. 

 

OK. Not particularly, thanks.

[Shokomon]

1 hour ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

I say don’t fuss the details. How do vampires bite eggs without puncturing them so they drain out dry? How do purples do anything with fertility whatsoever? Compared to half of what we have in the cave, dragons that lay different eggs based on climate going to different climates to lay different eggs is pleasantly logical. The hows and whys of the wording and specific mechanics are easy enough to figure out later, and I imagine TJ will implement them in his own way regardless of what we do figure out. So what we need to do is—

 

Confirm this is actually WANTED first. 

 

People here have a tendency to get stalled up on small details, I think.

Details are what keep the thread alive!

 

Like for example the "Have" box is a suggestion that many people like, but there isn't a lot to discuss about it, and you can only say you like something so many times before it starts to sit with no updates since Sept.

 

Maybe a poll would help? Even, TJ doesnt necessarily look at polls.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

@Fuzzbucket and now I won’t spend a half hour trying to reason out the logistics of Seasonal shipments with you, because I know you don’t want this to begin with.  

 

@Shokomon I prefer to just bump things when needed. To each their own, of course—but it feels like people spend a lot of time debating the little details instead of the actual merits of the suggestion. The whole color blending BSA debacle as a perfect example. People were trying to argue the hows instead of the whys, so we all spent a lot of time on the unnecessary details just to go “oh right, this isn’t really wanted to begin with” and shut the whole thing down. Should’ve done that from  the start.

[Ruby Eyes]

Actually, I liked the original idea of Blend, but it was literally discussed to death - and essentially nixed by the OP themselves.

 

Anyway, I like the idea of a chance at out-of-season Seasonals.

If people think it's too overpowered, it could even be a scroll-wide cooldown like the trio's summoning. 12 out-of-season breedings per year is still much more than we have now - zero.

[Fuzzbucket]

1 hour ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

@Fuzzbucket and now I won’t spend a half hour trying to reason out the logistics of Seasonal shipments with you, because I know you don’t want this to begin with.  

 

 

I am always happy to discuss details. If something like this were to happen, I'd like it to happen in a way that I'm OK with !

[DragonLady86]

5 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I am rather into NOT pulling the magic card here. IF this were to happen, why shouldn't the dragon fly back with its egg in ins paws ?

 

If this has to resort to magic, I lose interest

based on the Christmas stories we HAVE teleportation spells to get to the other half of the world already.  so why can't the dragons use them too?  It's not like we need to know how it gets to the other side of the world or how long.  Dragons hatching and growing up supposedly takes hundreds of years but we see it in a week.

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

As for the question as to whether this is actually wanted: I'm afraid it's a no from me ^^; (at the moment... I might be able to be be swayed...)

 

The specifics don't do it for me, but even if it were a simple reasoning I wouldn't vote for it. I just think Seasonal mechanics are too unique to be changed.

[Fishkeeper]

I definitely like this one, albeit as something of a rare chance. 

[Shokomon]

For my actual opinion on this, I think it's interesting, but I'm honestly rather neutral toward the BSA. 

 

I like getting into the semantics of the idea though. How does it work? Is it believable? Why? Why not? Etc. 

[Keileon]

I do want this, regardless. The actual mechanics I care less about. I'd be happy with a 28-day scrollwide cooldown.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

I imagine it could work like this:

- When you pick the dragon to send, it asks you to pick a mate to send with it. The text specifically tells you that there’s a chance they could return with an egg, so people don’t think they’re just sending them off for platonic travels, haha.

- 1 week from then your dragons “return,” and it acts as if you’ve just chosen to breed them (“your dragons have returned—and it seems they brought an egg with them!”) Same chances as a normal breeding because it is a normal breeding, just wrapped in different text. The dragons will then obviously be on breeding cooldown for a week, same as normal.

>This could either only work if you’re unlocked (ie you have to remember to have a space saved at exactly 7d from when you use the BSA, adding another layer of complexity), or it could be kind of similar to holiday multiclutches, where you’re told you have a half hour to choose to keep the egg (by making room and accepting it) or it abandons automatically.

>I think it would be funny if you could send same gender dragons just to have like a gal pal trip or a dude’s night out together, with absolutely nothing happening because of it, but this might be unnecessarily complex and annoying, haha.

>Another goofy idea would be that dragons could also bring souvenirs back, if spriters wanted to make some. There could be a few for each region and they’d be amassed behind a passport shaped badge. But obviously both this and the above are just goofy ways to expand the idea, not a needed part of it.

 

I know some people are still very ehhh on the idea of changing Seasonal availability, but I stress again that this would have extremely limited chances to succeed (huge cooldown, can get a refusal or no egg—refusals would make for fun return text, actually, haha. The vacation was HORRIBLE!—and still a chance to get a non Seasonal or in season egg after all that, plus you couldn’t get CBs). There would still be a huge incentive to breed in-season. People would still go “ahhh it’s Spring, time to catch up on X Y Z projects!” Seasons would very much still MATTER... it would just give a sliver of hope to people who either completely forgot something, or got an awesome Seasonal line at the last minute, or whatever else. Even then success would be the exception, not the rule.

[Ruby Eyes]

6 minutes ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

>This could either only work if you’re unlocked (ie you have to remember to have a space saved at exactly 7d from when you use the BSA, adding another layer of complexity), or it could be kind of similar to holiday multiclutches, where you’re told you have a half hour to choose to keep the egg (by making room and accepting it) or it abandons automatically.

... 7 days plus whatever time passes until you visit your /dragons/ or /account/ page next (anywhere that requires you to be logged in). It would be kind of nasty to miss your egg just because the bus was late that day, see.

[Dragon_Arbock]

If this happens at all I think it should only be able to bring back eggs of the opposite season- as in, if it's say, winter in the northern hemisphere, it's summer in the southern hemisphere. You could do it based on climate visited, but then it becomes 'climate dragons' and not 'seasonal dragons'.. so I'd say just make it based on hemispheres.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

@Ruby Eyes I prefer my simpler original version, but if people are going to be fussy over details, it’s an option. It also wouldn’t be nearly as demanding as, say, NDs: just make sure you leave a space the night before if you aren’t sure if you’ll be on the exact time the next day. It’s only an issue if you try to cut corners and unlock RIGHT before arrival time.

 

@Dragon_Arbock realistically, seasons ARE just climate patterns, more or less. Where I live we currently have a foot of snow. A Seasonal that popped out an Autumn egg right now would not have much camouflage going for it. Likewise, even when it’s technically Autumn in the tropics, a vibrant Autumn egg would not blend in as well as a Spring / Summer egg.

 

[Dragon_Arbock]

2 minutes ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

 

 realistically, seasons ARE just climate patterns, more or less. Where I live we currently have a foot of snow. A Seasonal that popped out an Autumn egg right now would not have much camouflage going for it. Likewise, even when it’s technically Autumn in the tropics, a vibrant Autumn egg would not blend in as well as a Spring / Summer egg.

 

 

Yeah, but I'd assume these dragons come from parts of the world that do have the 4 seasons. And seasons are more than just what the weather looks like. Seasons are meteorological based on the tilt of the earth and the length of the daylight. 

It snowed here too, but it is still meteorological autumn. Though I guess we have the problem that meteorological autumn and calendar date autumn don't quite match up.

I do think this concept does get iffy though when we talk about visiting the tropics. The equator of a world doesn't really have seasons because the equator cannot be tilted away from the sun.

[Shokomon]

Seasons are climate and light based.

 

Trees depend on the length of day moreso than weather to determine whether or not to bloom or go into stasis.

 

Otherwise, every random heat wave in winter or cold spell in summer would set them off.

 

Though, an unsually warm weather during early springtime months might cause an early bloom or the reverse if unusually cold.

 

And Ninja'd by @Dragon_Arbock.

 

Edit: That means a Seasonal in the tropics will always produce Summers.

 

And Seasonals at an Arctic-like might still change though, because Acrtic Foxes, Rabbits, and Wolves are things that exist.

 

I'm not sure about an Antarctic-like region though. I'd imagine they would be perpetually in Winter mode due to the camouflage benefits.

 

Does this mean Seasonals are a Temperate zone breed?

 

Also, does this mean the entire Dragon Cave community all live in the same country in Valkemare?

 

Are we just a country of dragon raisers, shunned by the rest of the world?

 

...

 

Lol

Edited November 21, 2018 by Shokomon

[Ruby Eyes]

Seasonals seem to be already migrating, since only Winters can be found in the Alpine (where presumably some wild Seasonals laid them), while the others get dropped in the Forest ...

 

(it doesn't actually make much sense anyway to have them depend on EARTH seasons, but oh well)

Edited November 21, 2018 by Ruby Eyes

[Dragon_Arbock]

20 minutes ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Seasonals seem to be already migrating, since only Winters can be found in the Alpine (where presumably some wild Seasonals laid them), while the others get dropped in the Forest ...

 

(it doesn't actually make much sense anyway to have them depend on EARTH seasons, but oh well)

 

Well, it's not just earth. Any planet should work this way.. They could have different lengths of seasons, or erratic seasons (the moon stabilizes our planet's tilt so we don't wobble)- but any spherical planet with a tilt will have seasons, where one part of the planet faces a sun, and the other hemisphere faces away. Now I'm not quite sure what happens when you have a binary star system, but I'm pretty sure DC world only has one sun.

 

I'm gonna assume the alpine thing is because the forest biome itself doesn't have seasons, which is.. weird. Alpine is just the place we throw all ice-related dragons it seems.

[Ruby Eyes]

4 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

Any planet should work this way

But why would it do that synchronously with Earth?

Enough off-topic from me ...

[Dragon_Arbock]

Just now, Ruby Eyes said:

But why would it do that synchronously with Earth?

Enough off-topic from me ...

 

Not saying it would have to. Would be a lot cooler if DC had its own calendar and year length, but I get why it doesn't because it's easier not to.

But either way if it's summer in the north it would be winter in the south so I wouldn't know how you'd be able to breed a spring or autumn in that case out of season. It's just something I'd like to know. I'm not against the idea of the suggestion because I am a dumb who forgot to breed a spring mate for my aransi this year, but I'd like to understand how it would work.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

Seasonals are almost certainly from a temperate climate. I’m not going to argue planetary tilt or day length or so on. It’s like this: Seasonals lay eggs that blend in to the season they’re in, presumably for camouflage. So if they visited a northern tropical island that was technically in the winter season, but was vibrant, sunny and green, what season would their bodies assume it was?

 

(Again we make assumptions here. Do they change the egg pattern based on internal biological changes or magic? Would they lay an Autumn egg in an Autumn snowstorm? Does their biological clock continue uninterrupted? Who knows? Who CAN know? No one still around—which is why as I’ve said before, as long as the basic logic seems reasonable, hemming and hawing the details seems like a pointless excercise. :/)

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

Yeah, the Seasonals tie in with what the seasons are within Galsreim - that’s where the players all “live” in the game. So when Australian players are in Summer and are getting Winters, that’s because they’re playing as though they’re in Galsreim. Planetary tilt and whatnot don’t have to come into play, because Valkemere probably works totally differently. They may not ever have autumn snowstorms. So whether a player has snow outside but is still catching Autumns is kinda irrelevant, because we aren’t meant to be catching dragons from our back gardens 

 

Either way, I feel like the thread has gone somewhat off-topic!

[Shokomon]

Well, Seasonals are time affinity, so I would assume it's time-based? 

 

Actually, that would explain why they migrate. 

 

Maybe Forests in Valkemare stay relatively the same due to the mana present around, but when Winter time comes, they auto shift to Winter mode, and migrate to where they fit in better...

 

But that would work against this BSA, because they'd be in Winter mode or what ever Season no matter what because it isn't based on anything within the environment, but time itself, which doesn't care if it's a balmy 70 degrees F out side, or if it's blizzarding at -12 degrees F or if you lived in the tropics your whole life, or you literally live in an igloo. 

 

Time is much more reliable, but hardly flexible. 

 

But, that could also mean that some places in Galsreim are as one could say "time-locked" due to the amount of Time Mana around. Maybe a Seasonal could go there? 

[Dirtytabs]

2 hours ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

(Again we make assumptions here. Do they change the egg pattern based on internal biological changes or magic? Would they lay an Autumn egg in an Autumn snowstorm? Does their biological clock continue uninterrupted? Who knows? Who CAN know? No one still around—which is why as I’ve said before, as long as the basic logic seems reasonable, hemming and hawing the details seems like a pointless excercise. :/)

I asked a Really Dumb Question in the AMA, and the answer suggests the appearance change is due to climate and the four variations are set in four discrete breeding periods over the year. Them having the Time element suggests it's partially based on "when". No mention of whether the mechanism is biological or magical. This may not help at all with ironing out this BSA.

[Shadowdrake]

Given that breeding (and incubation and egg-laying) are all instantaneous in-game, I don't think there needs to be a delay in, uh, seasoning. No other action that I can think of has a delay between action and effect either.

 

I have no opinion on the plausibility of the BSA, but I'm not against giving a bit of leeway versus having to wait nine months because you forgot or didn't have time to go on DC for awhile.