Randomize AP

[sh20000sh]

I heard some complaints that AP often has single breed wall recently. As I know, eggs in AP was aligned by their time so I think if we add some randomness it can prevent those. What I think was all eggs that left less than certain time(24 hours from least left one?) has chance to be viewed on AP and they will be randomly picked in short term of time repeatedly.

[DragonLady86]

What makes you think that would do anything?  Some mass-breedings by a single user have been reported to take a number of hours to get through and others are organized events on the forum: breed X breeds on this date, with people all over the world participating.  They are not all on at the same time.  It also comes down to ratios, commons are always more likely to breed and the more likely a particular type of egg is to be produced the more likely that it is a breed that less people are trying to collect.  Because that is sadly how the ratios work,  less popular breeds are under populated and thus produce eggs better.

 

And what happens during events when it's showing, for example, all Yulebucks at Christmas? Trust me, people want those holidays even if it sometimes seems to take awhile to move. or when the AP is very low time? Is it okay that eggs may die because something else was cycled ahead of them?

 

I honestly can't see this doing anything useful.  Mass-breeding is annoying if its not something you want to pick up, but it is necessary to balance the ratios so the things you do want become available.  If more people would help by taking time to raise one or two of those "blockers" a week, we could see a better balance to the problems.

[Confused Cat]

I'm not sure how to phrase this... If you have a box of cereal with some chocolate chips, and people grab all the visible chocolate chips because the rest is boring, and you try to solve the problem of the boring cereal "wall" by shaking the box so more chocolate chips become visible... and then you shake it again when all the newly visible chocolate chips have been eaten... this feels like it's not a good solution?

[sh20000sh]

19 minutes ago, Confused Cat said:

I'm not sure how to phrase this... If you have a box of cereal with some chocolate chips, and people grab all the visible chocolate chips because the rest is boring, and you try to solve the problem of the boring cereal "wall" by shaking the box so more chocolate chips become visible... and then you shake it again when all the newly visible chocolate chips have been eaten... this feels like it's not a good solution?

I thought everyone who seeing that box doesn't have same taste when they saw it. The cereal that forming wall could be preferred by someone but even if they likes it, they can take at most of eight of them. That is not enough for removing the wall and other people(who doesn't like that) should still see that wall. But if there are various cereals are visible and favorites of ones who seeing that box are all different, they can take whatever they want. If their taste is exactly same or quite similar, I agree about it can't be good solution though.

[olympe]

While many players do hunt for commons in the AP, most of them wouldn't pass up the occasional rare or special lineage that can be found in there.

[purplehaze]

I'm going to agree with @olympe here. I don't think it would work as you imagine.

[Nokturna]

I also don't think the randomization is a good idea. And AP walls- despite being quite frustrating sometimes- help to lower the time in the AP.

The only thing about the walls that bothers me a little bit is that it's mostly the same breed... Nocturnes, blacktips etc. Would be cooler in my opinion if there was a wider variety of breeds that get chosen for AP walls. 

[Sazandora]

The one main advantage AP walls have is that forces me (and likely some other people too) off the computer and go do something else instead of browsing Dragon Cave. Because of this I really don't mind AP walls, I actually find them pretty impressive whenever I see them. So, no support.

[Fuzzbucket]

Just now, Sazandora said:

The one main advantage AP walls have is that forces me (and likely some other people too) off the computer and go do something else instead of browsing Dragon Cave. Because of this I really don't mind AP walls, I actually find them pretty impressive whenever I see them. So, no support.

 

Yeah. We'll never get away from them entirely anyway - mass breeds will always happen. I think time order works way best. After all - if a wall ever gets down to 1 day, it is snapped up.

[animatedrose]

Yeah, I don't see this working how you think it could. If the AP would just randomize all of its contents, why have the "time left until death" thing on them at all? I could see this causing a lot of grief. Walls help bring AP times down and this solution...would probably never do that. Ever. You'd have the usual scenario of all the rares and valuables getting snatched up, leaving a wall of unwanted things that basically won't get touched until everything's timer goes down in a few days to the point where their desirability takes a back seat to "oh, I can insta-hatch this, awesomeness".

 

I like the walls for the same reason Sazandora does. They bring AP times down so I can get low-time eggs to build my scroll numbers more. If I don't like the wall breed, I can do plenty of other things. I can breed my current dragons, I can hunt the biomes, or I can hop off DC for a few hours and do other things, like hang with my family or friends. I don't really see why people treat the AP as the only thing to do here. It's...not. The AP is cool, I've gotten loads of amazing things from it...but there's plenty else to do if there's nothing interesting in the AP for me to grab.

[Fuzzbucket]

As someone here said in another thread - the AP is a garbage heap of things people didn't want, where occasionally treasure shows up. As someone who is throwing away heaps of things at this moment IRL, it works like a combo of my overflowing bins which include large piles of college notes (all the same size and shape !) and the smaller pile I am taking to charity shops, which has some really good stuff in it. 

Edited February 26, 2019 by Fuzzbucket

[osmarks]

Even ignoring all the other issues, how exactly would this work? Every user sees a different subset of the AP and it's randomized every time they refresh? It gets reshuffled every minute or something? It gets reshuffled every time an egg is added/removed? None of these sound like good solutions.