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Cave blockages - AP

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I have looked thru MANY of the page subjects in this site and did not find anything pertaining to this subject.  If I erred and there IS one, then I apologize in advance...

 

Isn't there any way that Cave blockers can be stopped???  It can be very irritating when someone with time on their hands thinks that it is humorous to block up the cave with all Eggs from a single breed...

 

Thank You...

Edited by LadyLyzar
Specifying this is about the AP and not main cave

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A few ideas off the top of my head:

 

1) If an egg is picked up and re-abandoned by more than five unique users, it starts losing an hour of time for each subsequent abandonment. This would help make less desirable eggs a bit more appealing.

 

2) If someone breeds more than 30 of a single breed within an hour, their odds of producing another egg of that breed drastically decline for one hour (wouldn’t apply to holiday dragons for obvious reasons)

 

3) If someone breeds more than 30 of a single breed within an hour, those eggs “queue up” so that only the lowest time one is seen. Once that’s grabbed, the next lowest time egg from that breed and breeder appears, and so on. While this would in theory prolong the flood (since people would only have one egg to choose from that group at a time), it would leave the rest of the AP more open AND potentially result in that breeder’s eggs running out of time and dying unseen if people aren’t interested and picking them up fast enough. Which would, hopefully, encourage more thoughtful breeding in future.

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It isn't by any means always a matter of humour. There are deliberate mass breeds to try and shift the ratios (I WISH someone would do pipios...) as well as planned ones - as listed in the breeding threads. It usually doesn't take all that long for the AP to clear.

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But it does get annoying after awhile. Especially when you are hoping for something special. Plus, I am not sure any of the current blockers are being taken (or maybe they are...it is hard to tell when they are the same egg over and over). 

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1 hour ago, Fuzzbucket said:

It isn't by any means always a matter of humour. There are deliberate mass breeds to try and shift the ratios (I WISH someone would do pipios...) as well as planned ones - as listed in the breeding threads. It usually doesn't take all that long for the AP to clear.

 

I’ve been organizing and participating in mass breeds for years and unfortunately have seen no compelling signs that they actually help ratios. Common breeding is borked beyond what we can fix on our end.

 

”Usually.” But these multi day long mass breeds of a single breed by a single user are becoming more and more common and more and more annoying.

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3 hours ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

1) If an egg is picked up and re-abandoned by more than five unique users, it starts losing an hour of time for each subsequent abandonment. This would help make less desirable eggs a bit more appealing.

I like this idea a lot. It would benefit the AP in general and not just affect mass breeds.

 

Wary about #2 though. Not only do I enjoy seeing mass-breeds in the AP, but I don't know if it could be exploited to skew ratios. For example, you breed 30 commons before breeding that common to a Silver. But I don't know enough about the ratios to predict if it would increase the chance of no egg, or increase the chance of the other breed.

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3 hours ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

 

I’ve been organizing and participating in mass breeds for years and unfortunately have seen no compelling signs that they actually help ratios. Common breeding is borked beyond what we can fix on our end.

Forgive me for not remembering the specifics, but haven't we seen at least one case where a person hoarding and frequently massbreeding a common has made that common appear significantly less in the cave?

 

Seems like a compelling sign to me.

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Honestly my favorite idea for this has always been: Allow only a certain number of a specific breed to show in the AP at a time. 

 

Many ideas/suggestions have been talked about re AP-blockers over the years, but many of them involve screwing with the breeder in some way (screwing with breeding results, capping how many they can breed in a span of time, etc). I don't like that. But if there is simply a cap on how many of a single breed is *shown* in the AP at once, that could help a lot. Of course that means sacrificing our pretty 'walls' that some people deliberately try to make, but I believe more variety in the AP would be worth the sacrifice. 

 

To give an example, say someone breeds and sends 100 Blacks to the AP within the span of an hour. They all have roughly the same time on them, so they might end up making a 'wall'. But if the AP is coded to only show, say, 10 of any specific breed at a time, then the AP would still show 20 other eggs besides the 10 Blacks. As people pick up the Blacks, more would be shown.

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For me and many other players there are only handful of reasons to hunt on AP when you can hunt CBs on the cave and the strongest reason amongst them is the low time eggs on AP. If you cut down the walls there, their great advantage of lowering the time will also be gone. It is even better in my opinion if the breed type is less desirable so they stick there longer and drop the times even lower.

 

I have never seen eggs dying because of a huge wall of a breed. Which means all the eggs there are already being taken and noone is losing the eggs that they desire to take. Only difference is that they can't grab them until the wall ends so they must wait for it for some time.

 

So it is rather a matter of preferences here, does the person want to be able to grab various eggs from AP whenever they want, but with quite high times like 4 to 5 days, sometimes even longer and not incuhatchable or does the person want to grab occasionally but be able to hoard the hell out of the AP when the time comes.

 

I also actually think that when people say that some people shouldn't be blocking them from their desired time to grab eggs from AP they are being quite hypocritical because this really what they are doing to players who grab from AP only when it is low time and prefer cave-hunting much more. Ending the wall breedings would literally block those people from grabbing low-time eggs from AP.

 

So I don't see why we can't have both. Walls are already pretty much rare. How many times in a month are they done? I am sure that I don't see AP hitting such low days often. It is even rather rare... Yet I don't see people complaining that AP eggs are mostly high on time and why people are not making walls unlike the people who are complaining about them.

 

Therefore I'd say that people are overthinking about the AP. It is perfectly balanced the way it is. Everyone does whatever they want and everyone becomes happy and have some decent time that they can hunt as they desire. People who are against those not even that common walls would essentially be doing what they are claiming that walls do to them and block those players who only enjoy low-time AP eggs. They can hunt in AP as they desire more than 20+ days of a month. So why not let other people who normally prefer cave eggs to high-time AP eggs enjoy for at least some days, too?

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This may not be the place, but I would love if we could have a search filter for the AP. It's kind of bothersome to keep refreshing just to get some new selection of eggs and hatchlings. Of course you may not find the egg you are looking for, but why not use the unlocked Encyclopedia for this too.

Edited by Firebirdwyvern

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The problem with that is that anything that results in people seeing different things from each other on the AP is a huge no and something TJ shoots down on principle.

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19 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

It isn't by any means always a matter of humour. There are deliberate mass breeds to try and shift the ratios (I WISH someone would do pipios...) as well as planned ones - as listed in the breeding threads. It usually doesn't take all that long for the AP to clear.


My smallish 80ish pipio army is the only breed I do rare mass breeds of as I get more you may see them more <3. However for the purpose of clearing a blockage wall in the cave I prefer the first idea that AngelicDragonPuppy gave.

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I rather like the low-time AP that hits after a wall. I doubt anyone is interested in the apparently popular past time of deciding between 7-day cave eggs...and 6-day AP eggs. I'll take my incuhatchable, if not instahatchable, post-wall eggs, thank you. :)

 

And it's very rare (I can name two, maybe three, instances off the top of my head in the last year or two) where a wall has lasted more than a few hours. There's more to DC than the AP, the world isn't going to end because you choose to sit and stare at a wall of one breed for ten hours rather than do something else. You can breed stuff, you can cave hunt, you can trade, you can get off DC and do something else for a while. There's plenty to do while the wall is there.

 

Also, can you please explain "thoughtful breeding" to me in suggestion 3? Should that mean killing all messies? All commons? Anything that isn't shiny/rare/pretty/expensive af? I'm sure somebody who is interested in any of the listed would argue against that suggestion. :/

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8 minutes ago, animatedrose said:

...And it's very rare (I can name two, maybe three, instances off the top of my head in the last year or two) where a wall has lasted more than a few hours. There's more to DC than the AP, the world isn't going to end because you choose to sit and stare at a wall of one breed for ten hours rather than do something else. You can breed stuff, you can cave hunt, you can trade, you can get off DC and do something else for a while. There's plenty to do while the wall is there...

 

OK, I told myself that I wasn't going to get involved in this discussion again, but after reading animatedrose's rather cavalier comment I feel that I must post in support of the OP.  I believe he posted after enduring a whole day's worth of gray wall and I suffered through it too.  Even a  wall that lasts half that time is frustrating, but one that goes on, and on, and on, is unbearable. It does happen periodically even though this member doesn't remember it.

 

For as far back as I remember, DC has always been a game without set rules.  Everyone could play as they saw fit. If you liked to breed in a certain way, good for you. If you like to collect just a few, that's fine too. Some spend hours hunting for certain breeds, or even cbs in the AP.  Some folks just seem to come by around the holidays or when new eggs appear, and when they do, we're happy to see them.  What we never used to do is disrespect others by forcing them to play the way we want them to or, even worse, by suggesting they, "get off DC and do something else for a while."

 

Frankly, these constant mass breedings seem to be making it possible for a very small number of members to control the way the greater number of members play and this is not fair. Walls might make some players happy, but others just get shut out.  It's too important for there to be a variety of breeds, cbs, even ages, in the AP so that there can be more choices for all players.

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On 5/30/2019 at 4:21 AM, angelicdragonpuppy said:

 

I’ve been organizing and participating in mass breeds for years and unfortunately have seen no compelling signs that they actually help ratios. Common breeding is borked beyond what we can fix on our end.

 

”Usually.” But these multi day long mass breeds of a single breed by a single user are becoming more and more common and more and more annoying.

 

I believe at one point TJ had set it up so that eggs of a certain breed from one user would 'hide' themselves behind another... If that was turned off at some point, it might be beneficial to turn it back on. 

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I support OP on this, I haven't touched the AP in ages due to this problem, in the past I used this page to catch eggs I may have missed in the past, but now each time I go in Im met with walls upon walls of a single egg breed of the most common rarity; and that's kind of... extremely irritating.

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Right, I forgot to actually really address the suggestions here.

 

On 5/30/2019 at 4:54 AM, angelicdragonpuppy said:

A few ideas off the top of my head:

 

1) If an egg is picked up and re-abandoned by more than five unique users, it starts losing an hour of time for each subsequent abandonment. This would help make less desirable eggs a bit more appealing.

This would HAVE to be capped to some extent. Lose 12 hours preferably, 24 maximum. Any more than that and it either becomes too easy to abuse or it just straight up kills things.

 

On 5/30/2019 at 4:54 AM, angelicdragonpuppy said:

2) If someone breeds more than 30 of a single breed within an hour, their odds of producing another egg of that breed drastically decline for one hour (wouldn’t apply to holiday dragons for obvious reasons)

Pass. An hour doesn't do all that much, and all I can see this doing is prolonging the wall and/or making breeders annoyed.

 

On 5/30/2019 at 4:54 AM, angelicdragonpuppy said:

3) If someone breeds more than 30 of a single breed within an hour, those eggs “queue up” so that only the lowest time one is seen. Once that’s grabbed, the next lowest time egg from that breed and breeder appears, and so on. While this would in theory prolong the flood (since people would only have one egg to choose from that group at a time), it would leave the rest of the AP more open AND potentially result in that breeder’s eggs running out of time and dying unseen if people aren’t interested and picking them up fast enough. Which would, hopefully, encourage more thoughtful breeding in future.

You had me starting to support until the bolded line. Hard, HARD no.

 

Some people plan BSA massbreeds, or pretty lineages of the same breed, or what have you; nobody complains about those. The recent Nocturne wall was a very rare case, they don't normally last more than half a day, if even that. Walls are, in general, a good thing for the AP and I will maintain they are good for the ratios until hard evidence or TJ tells us otherwise.

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@Keileon in the first case, assuming an AP egg is at the average time of 4d left, it would take 100 unique users tossing it back to kill it. If something is THAT undesirable, I don’t think it’d be missed. Edit: and in the case of abuse, people can already viewbomb single handedly, whereas any attempted abuse here would require a hundred separate accounts taking direct action on a single egg; it’s highly unlikely to happen, since it would be so hard to execute.

 

Ditto with the idea of eggs queueing. The only way they would die is if people bred SO MANY, SO UNDESIRABLE things that even as they dropped to super low times, people continued to ignore them until they ran completely out of time (which would probably mean they’d sat exposed in the AP, ER, for FOUR DAYS and still been unwanted).

 

Things dying is an extreme case. It could happen, but as pointed out above—if it does, it’s probably happening to literally the least desirable things in the entire AP at the time. In the vast majority of cases, all that would actually happen is that time would drop low enough to compel people to clear out the AP faster and keep things fresh and flowing.

 

Edit: I mean if people still want some super ER cap where eggs that hit 1d would start behaving normally / not queue / not lose additional time then sure, but as reasoned above, I don’t think that situation would really even happen.

Edited by angelicdragonpuppy

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Assuming things are at 4d is all well and good, but we've had an ER AP most of the time since at least the birthday release. It even dropped to 2d at one point and things were getting tossed back all the time as people hunted for CB new releases and 2G Thuweds.

Edited by Keileon

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Suggestion 1 - yes with limitations

 

Suggestion 2 -  No. Absolute no.

 

Suggestion 3. No, absolute no. (The bolded line in Keileon's post is why.)

 

To be honest it is an individual's mode of play. Since there is no set rules regarding how this game is played and it has a sort of "sandbox" quality about it, limiting someone's ability to breed their hoard would be akin to telling me I can only have 300 vampires. No one should be able to dictate to another player exactly how they should play because it "bothers them"

 

As for suggestion 3, my take on it. the bolded line in particular. That line reads very spiteful - and that is not what DC is. And to be honest, it makes me want breed whatever dragon I got loads of. (I won't because I don't breed off my scroll)

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6 hours ago, animatedrose said:

I rather like the low-time AP that hits after a wall. I doubt anyone is interested in the apparently popular past time of deciding between 7-day cave eggs...and 6-day AP eggs. I'll take my incuhatchable, if not instahatchable, post-wall eggs, thank you. :)

 

And it's very rare (I can name two, maybe three, instances off the top of my head in the last year or two) where a wall has lasted more than a few hours. There's more to DC than the AP, the world isn't going to end because you choose to sit and stare at a wall of one breed for ten hours rather than do something else. You can breed stuff, you can cave hunt, you can trade, you can get off DC and do something else for a while. There's plenty to do while the wall is there.

 

 

I very much agree about liking lower-timed AP eggs. But your second paragraph is very simply not true, not anymore. It *used* to be that single-breed walls only lasted a couple hours, maybe 5 hours at most. That's not true anymore and really hasn't been true for some time. That last Nocturne wall lasted *over* 24 hours (in fact I think it was closer to 48 because there were *two* afternoons where I was going to hunt and only saw Nocturnes). There was also a rather recent Red-finned Tidal wall that lasted at *least* 10 hours. There was also a Brute wall that lasted a rather long time, and a Turpentine wall that lasted a good handful of hours as well, all within the past month. 

 

And yes, it's true that AP-hunting isn't the only thing to do in the game, but it *is* a very important part of the game for many people. Telling people to just do something else would be like telling lineage-makers 'nope, you can't breed anything for 24 hours or more, but don't worry because there is plenty else to do!'. That really isn't a good way to do things. If an important part of the game is being screwed with and making a lot of people frustrated, something should be done about it, not just act like it's no big deal because it's not the *only* thing to do. (Way back when, a full-AP used to mean the cave itself would be *blocked*, ie if there were too many AP eggs then it wasn't possible to hunt for CBs at all. That wasn't good either, people complained constantly, and eventually something was done about it. Screwing with a significant part of the game isn't good no matter what part it is.)

 

That said, I've *never* been in support of anything that limits breeders. There are plenty of ways to make sure the AP has variety that doesn't actually limit anyone any all. So, I guess I'm saying yes to idea 1, HECK NO to idea 2, and not sure about 3.

Edited by HeatherMarie

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I've seen in the past month 3 walls that lasted more than 12 hours each, a stone an ash and that other grey one nocturn i think. Its annoying, but no way should anyone's ability to bread a wall be constrained, they just need to know its fracken annoying and just don't be such a dweeb.

 

go on breed a wall of great lineages, nothing but second gen pb's , but that is not what people mass bread, they breed crap lineages, things that make no sense. There should be an option to kill when taking by the ap, if the egg gets 10 kill votes, it should drop out of the wall for a day, or be released. so when you click on the egg you go to a confirmation page, with a keep or kill button.

 

so occasionally egg walls are fine, just you serieal offends knock it off so often, and you mass breeders that don't pay attention to how you are breeding, you just breed anything together, you stuffs as bad, theres really only one person i could name who does that, but they seem to have cooled off from willie nilly breeding lately and the ap has some interesting lineages, still not great but better thsan before. and this person breads hundreds and hundreds a day it seems.

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I'm okay with egg walls, they're one of the reason AP times ever go down.

Also, seeing how the time jumps up as we get further away from the last release (Time jumping up to 6 Days), it might even be possible for the AP to be completely emptied if not for the egg walls.

 

I'm seeing it as a necessary evil, but if there is a suggestion that can lower time and still keep the AP well stocked, then I'm all for it.

 

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47 minutes ago, borntobefree said:

I've seen in the past month 3 walls that lasted more than 12 hours each, a stone an ash and that other grey one nocturn i think. Its annoying, but no way should anyone's ability to bread a wall be constrained, they just need to know its fracken annoying and just don't be such a dweeb.

 

go on breed a wall of great lineages, nothing but second gen pb's , but that is not what people mass bread, they breed crap lineages, things that make no sense. There should be an option to kill when taking by the ap, if the egg gets 10 kill votes, it should drop out of the wall for a day, or be released. so when you click on the egg you go to a confirmation page, with a keep or kill button.

 

so occasionally egg walls are fine, just you serieal offends knock it off so often, and you mass breeders that don't pay attention to how you are breeding, you just breed anything together, you stuffs as bad, theres really only one person i could name who does that, but they seem to have cooled off from willie nilly breeding lately and the ap has some interesting lineages, still not great but better thsan before. and this person breads hundreds and hundreds a day it seems.

 

While I understand that some people only like certain pretty low-gen lineages, that's not true for everyone. People shouldn't be scolded for breeding lineages *you* don't personally like, the very fact that the eggs get picked up eventually means that some people do like them and want them. Personally I'd much rather see 'willie nilly' lineages then boring 2nd-gen pbs! People play this game different ways and it's perfectly ok to do so. Please know that just because you don't personally like something that doesn't mean no one does.

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6 hours ago, Starscream said:

Suggestion 1 - yes with limitations

 

Suggestion 2 -  No. Absolute no.

 

Suggestion 3. No, absolute no. (The bolded line in Keileon's post is why.)

 

To be honest it is an individual's mode of play. Since there is no set rules regarding how this game is played and it has a sort of "sandbox" quality about it, limiting someone's ability to breed their hoard would be akin to telling me I can only have 300 vampires. No one should be able to dictate to another player exactly how they should play because it "bothers them"

 

As for suggestion 3, my take on it. the bolded line in particular. That line reads very spiteful - and that is not what DC is. And to be honest, it makes me want breed whatever dragon I got loads of. (I won't because I don't breed off my scroll)

 

 

Agree with Star.

 

 

3 hours ago, borntobefree said:

I've seen in the past month 3 walls that lasted more than 12 hours each, a stone an ash and that other grey one nocturn i think. Its annoying, but no way should anyone's ability to bread a wall be constrained, they just need to know its fracken annoying and just don't be such a dweeb.

 

go on breed a wall of great lineages, nothing but second gen pb's , but that is not what people mass bread, they breed crap lineages, things that make no sense. There should be an option to kill when taking by the ap, if the egg gets 10 kill votes, it should drop out of the wall for a day, or be released. so when you click on the egg you go to a confirmation page, with a keep or kill button.

 

so occasionally egg walls are fine, just you serieal offends knock it off so often, and you mass breeders that don't pay attention to how you are breeding, you just breed anything together, you stuffs as bad, theres really only one person i could name who does that, but they seem to have cooled off from willie nilly breeding lately and the ap has some interesting lineages, still not great but better thsan before. and this person breads hundreds and hundreds a day it seems.

 

Absolutely not. Your poison is probably something HeatherMarie wants !

 

2 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

While I understand that some people only like certain pretty low-gen lineages, that's not true for everyone. People shouldn't be scolded for breeding lineages *you* don't personally like, the very fact that the eggs get picked up eventually means that some people do like them and want them. Personally I'd much rather see 'willie nilly' lineages then boring 2nd-gen pbs! People play this game different ways and it's perfectly ok to do so. Please know that just because you don't personally like something that doesn't mean no one does.

 

- as she said ! And sure, it is a pain occasionally (and I do mean occasionally) but NOT many players can actually achieve this, so it's not that frequent an issue.

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