Cave blockages - AP

[Fjord]

I'm in favor of no change, as I'm quite content with the AP as it is. I tend to sift though it more heavily when there are walls (as I said in player activities, I like to hatch 'n' release them) and only pop in every once and while to see if there are any CB Water Walkers mixed in.

 

I'm also fine with eggs losing time if they are thrown back in, though I think it should have a cap to 3d 1h to prevent the eggs from falling below influence-able age from being bumped around. It can also stop malicious people from throwing eggs between two scrolls and killing them.

[Fuzzbucket]

~Edited to keep this on topic~

 

6 hours ago, Sazandora said:

It's really hard to try and stay on topic when the discussion is trying to shift itself towards the amount of people using the AP itself. The AP is, again, fine as it is now. There's no need for any drastic changes to it. The walls do help, and people who make those walls do not do so just to troll others. Almost all of the "fixes" suggested here would do more harm than good, which is why I am in full support of not changing anything about the AP itself. People have found use for that place since day 1, the number of people viewing it at a time is highly flexible. Sometimes I've seen, like, just 2 or 3 people viewing it, sometimes I see 50 or more. Dragon Cave has a pretty large amount of players from all over the world. One moment there could be dozens of players viewing the AP, in the next just a small handful. I've picked up plenty of nice things from the AP over the years, and while today I'm more of a biome hunter I still check the AP regularly when I can't find anything interesting from the biomes. So I'd say the abandoned site still has its uses, even if it's not monitored 24/7 by hundreds of people.

 

Walls often have lots of messies in there, but I've also seen lots of pretty second-or third gens in there. I've gotten lots of lineage ideas from eggs I caught from the AP. And even if the place is full of 30G+ messy inbred whatever's, remember: beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

 

I agree with this, and  am one who would be happy with no change.

Edited August 10, 2019 by purpledragonclaw

[Natayah]

TL;DR: MAY be Time to break up into teams on the same page and go create a forum that allows the discussion of ONLY people who are on the same page (no discussion of opposition or argument in that thread because the team is trying to create ideas to get something suggested and implemented and/or at least create its own thread and make the best version of it, and this back and forth discussion stops that progression). I would suggest it for anyone who has any side in this argument, if you want to do it, just make a Team XYZ Thread, make sure everyone in that thread is only on that page, or tell them to go make their own thread, and get down to discussion and business.

 

I'm going to make a suggestion for this thread that will also lead to distilled formulated ideas and therefore good ideas and suggestions to make for the future of Dragon Cave to be potentially implemented. Once you are able to go back and forth with like minded individuals, you can often distill an issue down to its main components, and that allows you to formulate ideas together that are not only suggestions you make, but are better thought out, and with better formulated logic and reasons behind them, thus improving their chances of getting implemented, or at least being the best version of that suggestion/idea that it can be. Which is really the best you can hope for when you can only make a suggestion and it is implemented or not implemented by someone else.

 

There are two camps, and having one thread that is open to ALL suggestions is highly counter productive. Not because the people in the thread, the OP, or people who post here are bad people or have bad ideas. They are all great people, highly invested in this game and community and care enough to be passionate about something, or at least care enough to post, which a lot of people won't even do. And they care enough to make more than just one post and walk away. You all are engaged, and that is good and needs to continue to be encouraged. But, for best productivity and as not to create potential frustration and spinning in circles and back and forth that literally progresses nowhere for dozens of pages and may or may not be on repeat (again, I appreciate you all, so I'm just being honest so you can all get what you are trying to accomplish, this is not an insult, you are all each very generous engaged players in the community and I couldn't do what I do without you).

 

Maybe there are more than two camps, but I think at this point (I don't care, or don't change anything isn't really a camp for making suggestions lol, just expressing you are fine with it and don't want it changed) there are two. Pro Breeding in general, which may or may not Produce AP Walls/Clogs, and Anti-Breeding that Specifically Creates Walls/Clogs. Both have very valid points. But if you split off into two different threads, you can distill and come up with your main points, work together with like minded people, and go from there. If you have the other side constantly interrupting your thought progression and discussion, it stays a very shallow conversation and becomes a point of repeat because... let's be honest, we aren't convincing people here to change sides. However, if we had two different threads, or a thread that was allowed to be Anti-AP Wall/Clog **ONLY** and nothing else, and then, if the others wanted to create a Pro Mass Breeding No Matter What or Whatever Version, that's fine too. Or We Love the AP as it is Thread. And **ONLY THAT*** can be discussed with that thread. That isn't to shut the other side out, because they have their own thread.

 

This way you can get your best arguments, and people can read it and decide for themselves if they are on the fence or are unsure, or just want to follow it. Or as your discussion progresses, there may be a few fine points upon which someone would agree or see it as a very valid point who normally wouldn't agree with you. 

 

I don't know why people seem to have reluctance to split off threads and have one devoted to one group of ideas, and another to opposing ideas, and not letting the two continue to rehash. You will get a lot more accomplish and it is not like you are "taking away free speech" or "not allowing someone to express an opinion" because they can, they just need to make their own thread because your specific goal of the thread, as the OP stated in this thread, was to come up with idea for what they viewed as an issue. Arguing if something is or isn't an issue would be helpful if it progressed at some point and went somewhere. But we have been having this discussion for at least 5 years or more and I've not seen any game suggestions or real change seem to come of them. Mostly just repeat, which seems to be more of trying to convince someone who isn't going to be convinced, and going nowhere. Since we want to see some suggestions, this might be productive to finding some Game Suggestions to make.

 

Sometimes you gotta take your team, break off into a room, and brainstorm and work your ideas. That is how companies do it. But ... the team has to be on the same page. Otherwise, nothing gets done. And I am seeing a whole lot of nothing getting done more than ideas/suggestions that are well formulated and being spun off into their own thread.

 

[olympe]

@Natayah While that might work for getting better suggestions, it's a moot point if one group "suggests" to keep things as they are and the other suggests to change something. Because the first group will neither need ideas, people who spot problems with them or anything else but praise for the status quo.

[Fuzzbucket]

Also, though, if there are suggestions being made by those who are desperate for change, those of us who are OK with how things are may still be able to see serious flaws in those ideas that those wedded to change at all costs may miss in their enthusiasm. (there was something like that WAY up the thread - I forget what it was now...)

[HeatherMarie]

Do nothing - Full support, my favorite idea, etc. 

Limit by species - Think this would do more harm than good, actually.

Limit by breeder - I could kinda-sorta support this, but details need to be ironed out.

Limit by last dropped player - Uh, not sure how this would help?

Lower time of eggs abandoned repeatedly - This one I can kind of get behind, though there would have to be some limit (plenty of people don't like un-influencable-timed eggs)... Right now the AP is sitting at 3d 5h, so there really isn't much time to be lowered without getting lower then BSA-timed. 

The void - Nope nope nope.

[olympe]

I guess the easiest way to "fix" the AP is re-implementing the old rule that eggs killed by earthquake don't count towards your scroll limits...

[Fuzzbucket]

Not sure that mass murder would go down very well with breeders...

[HeatherMarie]

1 hour ago, olympe said:

I guess the easiest way to "fix" the AP is re-implementing the old rule that eggs killed by earthquake don't count towards your scroll limits...

 

That's a fairly negative option. We could also just disable breeding for anyone who breeds over a certain number in a certain amount of time. Or send mass-bred eggs straight to the wilderness instead of to the AP. There are plenty of super-negative things that could be done to 'fix' the AP, but I would hope that most people would rather compromise and attempt to think of suggestions that wouldn't hurt users as much.

 

(just in case someone mis-reads my tone, I am *not* actually suggesting those negative options!)

[RainDear]

2 hours ago, olympe said:

I guess the easiest way to "fix" the AP is re-implementing the old rule that eggs killed by earthquake don't count towards your scroll limits...

Nope. Nope. Nope.

 

Wouldn't FIX anything. Would just create more discord.

[olympe]

25 minutes ago, RainDear said:

Nope. Nope. Nope.

 

Wouldn't FIX anything. Would just create more discord.

But it would allow players to give direct "feedback" to the breeder without consequences to their scroll (if they don't have any 'valuable' eggs on there)...

[Kastriia]

Do nothing - Full support- First come, first serve basis in terms of egg times. Simple.

 

Limit by species - No, because say I breed a bunch of one breed that is messy all over, but then user 2 breeds nice checkers and user 3 puts out CBs of it. It would lock the nice and desirable ones behind the messy ones. Would still require " wall breakers" and unhappiness. 

 

Limit by breeder - No, As I mentioned. I think this would cause issues in the sense that if you are a varied breeder like Freaky and Catz for example, many of your pretty lineage will get locked behind a mini self wall. Add that if multiple mass breeders pitch in, what about the ones "behind" them that arent showing up. Its essentially a Sudo Void.

 

Limit by last dropped player - I personally don't even understand this one. But the word "limit" again.. To mean, meaning trying to tell someone how to play their scroll. I'll pass on this idea.

 

Lower time of eggs abandoned repeatedly - This is at most, the second option I can go with if I have to pick 2. There would have to be hard set rules/guidelines/limits set on how low an egg can drop, if picking up the same one over and over from the same user would decrease it,  etc. As otherwise it would also become uninfluencable, abused to replace incubates, etc etc etc

 

The void - Never again, do I want to see eggs that people worked hard to create disappear.

 

 

Overall

 

We only have a handful of people being vocal that " they don't like the AP" as is. This is a large community where many are not on the forums or discords. Shy of a mandatory poll to get the EXACT thoughts of people would be change affecting many users unsuspectingly and can cause even more chaos, discord, unhappiness.

Currently looking at this thread, more people are in favor of leaving the AP as it is. the AP is the dumping ground as mentioned many times before. We create its intent with what we send to it, and everyone has a different definition of desirable. Some people like messies, some people like inbred, some people like only CB, some people like clean, some people only like a breed or sub class of breeds.

 

if I had to come up with a unique solution it would be

If a wall contains more then n% of a singular breed, a 6th line will appear in the AP at the 5 min refreshes, that does not contain that breed and utilizing the current first come first serve rules. The moment that the n% isn't hit, that line disappears at the next 5min refresh used in the biomes. This will still allow for the benefits of walls, as well as allow variety for those who don't care for the current wall up.

This way,

mass breeders can still mass breed and their eggs still be displayed

those who don't like the walls still get a variety that they can look through

eggs aren't lost to the void

there is no imposed limits on a breeder or a breed.

[MoonShark]

3 minutes ago, Kastriia said:

if I had to come up with a unique solution it would be

If a wall contains more then n% of a singular breed, a 6th line will appear in the AP at the 5 min refreshes, that does not contain that breed and utilizing the current first come first serve rules. The moment that the n% isn't hit, that line disappears at the next 5min refresh used in the biomes. This will still allow for the benefits of walls, as well as allow variety for those who don't care for the current wall up.

This way,

mass breeders can still mass breed and their eggs still be displayed

those who don't like the walls still get a variety that they can look through

eggs aren't lost to the void

there is no imposed limits on a breeder or a breed.

I love this idea. I would even be okay with it working with the current (5?) lines of eggs. Full support.

[_DeadPool_]

4 minutes ago, Kastriia said:

if I had to come up with a unique solution it would be

 

If a wall contains more then n% of a singular breed, a 6th line will appear in the AP at the 5 min refreshes, that does not contain that breed and utilizing the current first come first serve rules. The moment that the n% isn't hit, that line disappears at the next 5min refresh used in the biomes. This will still allow for the benefits of walls, as well as allow variety for those who don't care for the current wall up. 

This way,

mass breeders can still mass breed and their eggs still be displayed

those who don't like the walls still get a variety that they can look through

eggs aren't lost to the void

there is no imposed limits on a breeder or a breed.

I LOVE this. It helps everyone. I'd even go as far to say maybe add 2 lines instead of just 1.

[Felinor]

5 minutes ago, Kastriia said:

 

if I had to come up with a unique solution it would be

If a wall contains more then n% of a singular breed, a 6th line will appear in the AP at the 5 min refreshes, that does not contain that breed and utilizing the current first come first serve rules. The moment that the n% isn't hit, that line disappears at the next 5min refresh used in the biomes. This will still allow for the benefits of walls, as well as allow variety for those who don't care for the current wall up.

This way,

mass breeders can still mass breed and their eggs still be displayed

those who don't like the walls still get a variety that they can look through

eggs aren't lost to the void

there is no imposed limits on a breeder or a breed.

If anything would be changed in the AP, this is the only "solution", I'd agree on, even if many of us don't see a "problem". This way, both sides would be happy. An excellent compromise. Thanks for this idea! ☺ 

[olympe]

12 minutes ago, Kastriia said:

if I had to come up with a unique solution it would be

If a wall contains more then n% of a singular breed, a 6th line will appear in the AP at the 5 min refreshes, that does not contain that breed and utilizing the current first come first serve rules. The moment that the n% isn't hit, that line disappears at the next 5min refresh used in the biomes. This will still allow for the benefits of walls, as well as allow variety for those who don't care for the current wall up.

As long as this extra line (or whichever way it's going to be implemented) does not contain more than one egg of each available breed. It won't help much if someone breeds a wall of mints and another person breeds a slightly younger wall of water walkers. *shudders*

[purpledragonclaw]

On 8/9/2019 at 11:10 AM, LadyLyzar said:

Y'all be nice.  Once again, this thread was about potential AP changes to prevent it from displaying a wall.  Not on the merits of mass breeding.  A discussion on whether mass breeding is good or bad belongs in Site Discussion.

 

Closing while I go through it.  There will be a lot of off topic posts removed, so don't be surprised when it gets much shorter.

 

EDIT:  Topic reopened.  Again, be nice.  If this thread keeps devolving into a fight over mass breeding, it will be permanently closed.

 

I'm not going to close this down, but I'm going to post a second warning, here and now: keep this thread on this subject. This has already been closed once, and I see the majority of members are keeping this on topic, so I'm going to leave this open. But this is strike two. A third strike will close this down for good.

[Naraku]

If a person don't like what's in the AP at the moment, and have "little time", they simply just do something else. Somebody else with more time will clear the wall.

 

11 minutes ago, Kastriia said:

if I had to come up with a unique solution it would be

If a wall contains more then n% of a singular breed, a 6th line will appear in the AP at the 5 min refreshes, that does not contain that breed and utilizing the current first come first serve rules. The moment that the n% isn't hit, that line disappears at the next 5min refresh used in the biomes. This will still allow for the benefits of walls, as well as allow variety for those who don't care for the current wall up.

 

This is the idea I'm okay with. 6th line is no problem on desktop, but it might be a problem on mobile for those with lower display resolution. A remedy could be removing the AP description at the top of the page. Timers are already shortened on mobile, removing the description should be okay too.

[Sazandora]

While I still think the AP is fine as is and doesn't need any changes to it, I do like @Kastriia's idea. :)

[BrazenChase]

I'm in favor of not touching it. Ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Firefury Amahira]

6 hours ago, Kastriia said:

if I had to come up with a unique solution it would be

 

If a wall contains more then n% of a singular breed, a 6th line will appear in the AP at the 5 min refreshes, that does not contain that breed and utilizing the current first come first serve rules. The moment that the n% isn't hit, that line disappears at the next 5min refresh used in the biomes. This will still allow for the benefits of walls, as well as allow variety for those who don't care for the current wall up.

This way,

mass breeders can still mass breed and their eggs still be displayed

those who don't like the walls still get a variety that they can look through

eggs aren't lost to the void

there is no imposed limits on a breeder or a breed.

 

While I'm in the "it ain't broke, don't fix it" camp with regards to the AP, this is by far the most reasonable and well thought out proposition so far. Certainly the absolute least malicious since it doesn't punish players for playing a specific way or leave gaping holes for abuse, and accommodates the most variety of play styles.

 

That being said, I'm not sure how practical it might be to implement from the programming standpoint. While I'm no programmer myself, I'm reasonably conversant in the subject from the webgame I help run to know that "an easy fix" is often anything but. My main concern would be how much additional load would such a system add to the server? Every five minutes it would have to call a process up to run the calculation to see if the AP is more than n% of a single species, which would probably involve loading each egg on the visible page at least (if not the entire AP backlog- I don't know if the site already can tell "egg currently visible on the AP page" from "egg in the AP queue") to fetch the species counts and make that determination. Depending on how TJ has got everything set up on the backend, something like this could balloon into a major resource hog and bring the Lagmonster back from the abyss to plague everybody.

 

Plus I am under the impression that TJ doesn't exactly have loads and loads of time to devote to development on the site, so he might be more inclined to prioritize projects that are faster to implement or have a greater benefit to the playerbase than tackling DC's dumpster.

[Keileon]

Although I am decidedly in favor of inaction, I could get behind a sixth line in the AP.

[Fuzzbucket]

6 hours ago, Firefury Amahira said:

 

While I'm in the "it ain't broke, don't fix it" camp with regards to the AP, this is by far the most reasonable and well thought out proposition so far. Certainly the absolute least malicious since it doesn't punish players for playing a specific way or leave gaping holes for abuse, and accommodates the most variety of play styles.

Plus I am under the impression that TJ doesn't exactly have loads and loads of time to devote to development on the site, so he might be more inclined to prioritize projects that are faster to implement or have a greater benefit to the playerbase than tackling DC's dumpster.

 

6 hours ago, Keileon said:

Although I am decidedly in favor of inaction, I could get behind a sixth line in the AP.

 

I'm with the 6th line option at a pinch. The least punishing to other players. Though I'm basically still in the ain't broke camp.

[JavaTigress]

14 hours ago, Kastriia said:

if I had to come up with a unique solution it would be

If a wall contains more then n% of a singular breed, a 6th line will appear in the AP at the 5 min refreshes, that does not contain that breed and utilizing the current first come first serve rules. The moment that the n% isn't hit, that line disappears at the next 5min refresh used in the biomes. This will still allow for the benefits of walls, as well as allow variety for those who don't care for the current wall up.

This way,

mass breeders can still mass breed and their eggs still be displayed

those who don't like the walls still get a variety that they can look through

eggs aren't lost to the void

there is no imposed limits on a breeder or a breed.

Basically I don't know if we NEED a solution BUT... of the ones I have seen I like this idea best.

Beauty of it IS that it could be applied to holidays as well and then people that didn't want to holiday hunt could look through the other stuff to see what they could find.

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

Limit by breeder has my support.