What if DC was a "single player" game?

[Ashywolf]

I'm fairly sure this counts as on-topic...if not, feel free to move it.

 

I was pondering this earlier today...not for a suggestion of what DC could do in particular, but just as a "what DC could have been". Right now DC is a multiplayer experience. You see and interact with other players throughout the game in biomes, AP, and so on. What if it was a single player experience, more based on a personal outlook than a social one?That would change things such as:

 

-Eggs in biomes are yours to click...no one else can see them or compete with you.

-AP is made from computer-generated eggs and lineages only...they are generated for you, and only you.

-Marketplace currency "ratios" and "ratios" in general would be more random, not actually based on the site-wide accumulation of dragons.

-Trading might be randomly generated from the computer...haves and wants are generated based on what is a reasonably equal match as determined by the "AI".

-Bonus: direct trading is still possible between specific users, for lineage trading, giveaways, and such.

-Bonus 2: raffles may still involve the entire community--the alternative is just giving players a random percent chance to win a raffle, not actually based on the players involved.

 

The point of this is not for anyone to say "This sucks I don't want DC to be this.". No, the whole point is that DC isn't, and never will be, this way. But how would that play? Would it be fun? Boring? Interesting?

[Fuzzbucket]

With no competition in the biomes I think it would lose a lot of the excitement.

 

And if a single player game - how could here possibly BE inter-player trading ?

[HeatherMarie]

Wow, that would be a horribly boring game. No scrambling to click eggs first? Computer-generated lineages?? Wow that would suck. Most of the fun I've had in the past 2 years in this game has been finding ridiculous crazy lineages, I can't imagine any sort of computer-generated lineages would be fun like that! (I'm kind of curious, though, how that would work. Would lineages be totally random and made with randomly-generated mates, or what? I can't even imagine how that might feasibly work.)

 

As for those two bonuses, I really think it'd be better if it was all or nothing. If DC was to be a single-player game with your experience untouched by others, then there certainly shouldn't be ways to trade with others! That defeats the entire point of it being for you and you only.

[Ashywolf]

3 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

Wow, that would be a horribly boring game. No scrambling to click eggs first? Computer-generated lineages?? Wow that would suck. Most of the fun I've had in the past 2 years in this game has been finding ridiculous crazy lineages, I can't imagine any sort of computer-generated lineages would be fun like that! (I'm kind of curious, though, how that would work. Would lineages be totally random and made with randomly-generated mates, or what? I can't even imagine how that might feasibly work.)

 

What if the system was able to make checkers, steps, and pair things appropriately. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference, right? Just the knowledge that it is generated would be the only thing to turn people off.

 

[HeatherMarie]

5 minutes ago, Ashywolf said:

 

What if the system was able to make checkers, steps, and pair things appropriately. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference, right? Just the knowledge that it is generated would be the only thing to turn people off.

 

 

But I'm not interested in checkers, steps, etc. I like crazy random long messy lineages, stuff I'm not sure automatic computer coding could do. I don't know all that much about how the coding would or could work, so I guess it's possible it could do something like this, but I'm curious how something like that could be coded to be automatic.

[Soulsborne]

7 minutes ago, Ashywolf said:

 

What if the system was able to make checkers, steps, and pair things appropriately. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference, right? Just the knowledge that it is generated would be the only thing to turn people off.

 

 

@HeatherMarie isn't really into checkers, stairsteps etc.

 

I think the scenario sounds really boring and wouldn't be able to hold my attention for very long. Thankfully it isn't like this.

 

/edit: lol, ninja'd.

Edited December 27, 2018 by Soulsborne

[Ashywolf]

1 minute ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

But I'm not interested in checkers, steps, etc. I like crazy random long messy lineages, stuff I'm not sure automatic computer coding could do. I don't know all that much about how the coding would or could work, so I guess it's possible it could do something like this, but I'm curious how something like that could be coded to be automatic.

 

Actually it definitely could be done like that. But of course the point remains that this wouldn't be the enticing experience quite like DC.

[Guillotine]

You would need to massively rebuild from the ground up to make DC singleplayer at all rather than a multiplayer experience. The whole conceit of this site (and, uh, most pet sites for that matter) is competitive; even on sites that generate a unique "AP"/"Cave" per player and have few direct competition options all players are still competing for what's in the pool.

 

I'm not sure there'd be much point to it, especially if it purely mimicked current DC, but single-player. 
 

[HeatherMarie]

12 hours ago, Guillotine said:

 

I'm not sure there'd be much point to it, especially if it purely mimicked current DC, but single-player. 
 

 

That's a good point. I really like DC, been playing forever and don't see myself stopping anytime soon... But I'm not sure a single-player DC would be interesting to me, and not just because of the single-player-ness. When you play a game, there is usually something to 'grab' you, something that makes you go 'oh I want to play this!'. What would that be for a single-player DC? With all competition taken out of the equation, all user-randomness gone, what would be the 'pull'? I don't see anything in the OP that would make me want to play a game like that. I've passed over many other 'petsites' in the past, tried some out and never felt that 'pull', never been interested in hanging around. A single-player DC would need *something* to keep interest, and I can't imagine what that would be for me.

[Leidarendi]

I think this game is what you make of it.  There are plenty of people who don't participate in the forums and just happily go on collecting eggs and working on their scroll.  There are others massively involved with trades, breeding, forums, gifting, etc and interacting with others.  That's the beauty of Dragon Cave.

[Fuzzbucket]

But what the OP is asking is not whether we'd prefer it or what we like about it - but how we think it would work if it WERE a single person thing.

[Chococat0815]

That's an interesting question! I don't think that it would be that interesting, and certainly would need something more to entertain a large active playerbase.

 

4 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

That's a good point. I really like DC, been playing forever and don't see myself stopping anytime soon... But I'm not sure a single-player DC would be interesting to me, and not just because of the single-player-ness. When you play a game, there is usually something to 'grab' you, something that makes you go 'oh I want to play this!'. What would that be for a single-player DC? With all competition taken out of the equation, all user-randomness gone, what would be the 'pull'? I don't see anything in the OP that would make me want to play a game like that. I've passed over many other 'petsites' in the past, tried some out and never felt that 'pull', never been interested in hanging around. A single-player DC would need *something* to keep interest, and I can't imagine what that would be for me.

I guess that's where stuff like fighting other dragons or petting your dragons comes in. Or maybe even doing more adventures, for example those text-based events that could be breed-related and would only unlock if you got the specific breed?

[HeatherMarie]

Fighting and petting.... So, like a bajillion other petsites. I like DC because it *doesn't* have those things, lol! It would be interesting to have 'adventures' though, maybe when we 'unlock' a breed we get to go on some sort of quest or adventure with it... I could see something like in those RPG games where Snowa kept getting tasks from all the villagers, but it's the dragons who need our help. And maybe along the way we'd learn more about that breed's culture or history or whatever. I know a lot of people would love the holiday games to be playable year-round, so expanding them like that might be really cool. ... My brain just turned onto creative-mode there, oops. 

[Fuzzbucket]

Fighting and petting - Ugh. And why would that come in more for a single player site ?

[Ashywolf]

I'm thinking that before the forums, DC really was a single-player game besides egg competition. Now we have all this interaction between players that was not there previously. Besides the egg competition (which could be simulated), trading, and the AP drops (which could also be simulated), what non-single-player aspects does DC really have?

[Shadowdrake]

It sounds like the old pokemon games  catch em all, breed what you want, pray for a super rare chance of shiny/raffle and trade between different player "universes" for things, but also with lineages. Given I have never actually played a pokemon game for long I can't speak to how it'd catch me, but I'm already practically playing a single-player game myself. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Though I would ask what exactly happens to all the discarded eggs you breed or grab but toss away.

[HeatherMarie]

12 hours ago, Ashywolf said:

I'm thinking that before the forums, DC really was a single-player game besides egg competition. Now we have all this interaction between players that was not there previously. Besides the egg competition (which could be simulated), trading, and the AP drops (which could also be simulated), what non-single-player aspects does DC really have?

 

See, I think the term 'single-player' is very vague and broad. I personally *do* think of DC as a single-player game, with optional player contact. To me, the fact that we don't directly interact with users at all besides trading makes it a semi-single-player game. I deliberately play DC instead of other sites because of the lack of player-to-player interaction. The only *real* player interaction is trading. Stuff like the AP and egg competition, that's indirect at best. 

 

Anyways. I think taking away the randomness and creativity of lineages is what would totally kill any total-single-player DC. A *lot* of players *only* play for breeding and to make lineages. A lot of people *only* play this game for the lineages. Making that automated, unable to build your own carefully-planned lineage, that's the biggest issue imo. Even stuff like hunting the AP for lineages, you'd be relying 100% on some random computer generator to spit out some random lineages, there is nothing creative or fun about that. Unless there was a way to specify the types of lineages you want to see in the AP.... And then that takes all the fun out of it as well, because instant gratification gets old real fast. Maybe I'm just having a hard time picturing how exactly this would work, in a way that actually keeps the excitement and fun. 

[Aqub]

If DC was single player you wouldn't have any names already taken by other people. That could be nice... 

[Fuzzbucket]

5 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

See, I think the term 'single-player' is very vague and broad. I personally *do* think of DC as a single-player game, with optional player contact. To me, the fact that we don't directly interact with users at all besides trading makes it a semi-single-player game. I deliberately play DC instead of other sites because of the lack of player-to-player interaction. The only *real* player interaction is trading. Stuff like the AP and egg competition, that's indirect at best. 

 

Anyways. I think taking away the randomness and creativity of lineages is what would totally kill any total-single-player DC. A *lot* of players *only* play for breeding and to make lineages. A lot of people *only* play this game for the lineages. Making that automated, unable to build your own carefully-planned lineage, that's the biggest issue imo. Even stuff like hunting the AP for lineages, you'd be relying 100% on some random computer generator to spit out some random lineages, there is nothing creative or fun about that. Unless there was a way to specify the types of lineages you want to see in the AP.... And then that takes all the fun out of it as well, because instant gratification gets old real fast. Maybe I'm just having a hard time picturing how exactly this would work, in a way that actually keeps the excitement and fun. 

 

This, actually. I do trade with mates I know, usually - I rarely use the hub. What I like is the solitariness of it all.

 

And yes - a random thing doing its best with algorithms would never give me some of my favourites - LONG deliberately inbred checkers, my weird colossal mints - https://dragcave.net/lineage/0lJfH - and the like.

 

And YES to the dullness of instant gratification. Many of the suggestions I see here are nothing but "want moah, TJ must give us it NAOW because I WANT !" I hate that.

[Chococat0815]

 

On ‎12‎/‎28‎/‎2018 at 12:56 PM, Fuzzbucket said:

Fighting and petting - Ugh. And why would that come in more for a single player site ?

Honestly, I don't see DC as a single-player game like some others do. I really don't want any petting or fighting at all! It was just the first thing that came to my mind to make DC "interesting" as a complete single-player game. Of course, for people who already see the game that way and love and play it they wouldn't need any more incentives to play DC as single-player game  

 

Also, another thing with DC being a complete single-player game would be that there probably wouldn't be any massbreedings or holiday walls. Unless the game was coded otherwise, of course^^