Cave blockages - AP

[Mewtie]

The judgmental aspect of the proposed changes puts me into the opposition, and I'm actually not sure whether there even is a way to prevent "walls" without losing the reasonable chronological order and neutrality of the AP.

[cyradis4]

I'm in the "not broken" group, but I'd be ok with a 6th line. 

 

Cheers!
C4. 

[BlueLatios]

Not much to add but the idea of adding a 6th line gave me a different idea.

How about pagination of AP? :v

 

As for the time being, I'm not much of an AP person but regardless of the situation, I sometimes get lucky thanks to the generous people abandoning the eggs into there. So however the eggs are handled doesn't bother me too much, but when told to choose between the current options I support nothing to be made done, no planning needed to handle nothing :v

[Fuzzbucket]

24 minutes ago, Mewtie said:

The judgmental aspect of the proposed changes puts me into the opposition, 

 

This is what grates the most for me. I don't myself think anything needs fixing, but all the "wall builders are evil and malicious " stuff is enough to make me absolutely rabid in my opposition.

[olympe]

@Mewtie @Fuzzbucket Could you please keep this on topic so we can still discuss this? Thanks.

 

My personal favorite would be the ability to ignore eggs from certain breeders - just like you're supposed to be able to block PMs by certain forum members. However, this would display the AP differently to different people, so it's a no-go. Pity.

 

I'd definitely support limit (of displayed eggs) by breeder.

 

I'm not sure a limit by breed will help at all. Someone will just decide to breed the worst lineages imaginable so they can show their power and dump everything (from a couple dozen different breeds) in the AP. (As has been announced in this very thread, but the post seems to have been deleted.)

 

The idea of adding a row of non-wall eggs, while not ideal, seems like a compromise. Neither side will be 100% happy with it, so I figure this would make it a good compromise. If this option is going to be implemented, though, I'd like to propose two different things:

1. The eggs in the last (extra?) line show only one egg of each breed. Because what's going to happen if the AP is full of breed X, and the other line is full of breed Y (because there's another wall happening right behind the current one)?
2. For the purpose of this suggestion, all holiday eggs should be counted as the same breed. So the people not hunting for holiday eggs can save what's dying behind the holiday wall. (Which is definitely not me, but this kind of suggestion has come up in regards to holidays - so why not include it?)

@Firefury Amahira When it comes to coding and how difficult/reasonable this is, we're supposed to let TJ be the judge of that. He seems to be a rather smart guy, so who knows he isn't looking for something to challenge him? 

[BrazenChase]

I would once again like to point out how awful the void was. I'm very much in opposition to any change because it will impact the chronological nature of the AP. One way or another, it will screw up hunting for lost eggs, or special eggs like Thuweds etc. 

 

A community wall breaker initiative would be good. Hate walls? Break them down, then. Don't want to deal with it? Go do something else, then. Check your breeding projects, check the cave, spend some shards--there are plenty of options.

 

After what happened with the Void I feel like if anything gets touched there will be much further reaching consequences. 

[Fuzzbucket]

13 minutes ago, olympe said:

My personal favorite would be the ability to ignore eggs from certain breeders - just like you're supposed to be able to block PMs by certain forum members. However, this would display the AP differently to different people, so it's a no-go. Pity.

 

I'd definitely support limit (of displayed eggs) by breeder.

 

I'm not sure a limit by breed will help at all. Someone will just decide to breed the worst lineages imaginable so they can show their power and dump everything (from a couple dozen different breeds) in the AP. (As has been announced in this very thread, but the post seems to have been deleted.)

 

The idea of adding a row of non-wall eggs, while not ideal, seems like a compromise. Neither side will be 100% happy with it, so I figure this would make it a good compromise. If this option is going to be implemented, though, I'd like to propose two different things:

1. The eggs in the last (extra?) line show only one egg of each breed. Because what's going to happen if the AP is full of breed X, and the other line is full of breed Y (because there's another wall happening right behind the current one)?
2. For the purpose of this suggestion, all holiday eggs should be counted as the same breed. So the people not hunting for holiday eggs can save what's dying behind the holiday wall. (Which is definitely not me, but this kind of suggestion has come up in regards to holidays - so why not include it?)

 

 

Many have suggested a non-holiday line before but TJ has not followed up. I'd kind of support that, as holidays are different.

 

1 minute ago, BrazenChase said:

I would once again like to point out how awful the void was. I'm very much in opposition to any change because it will impact the chronological nature of the AP. One way or another, it will screw up hunting for lost eggs, or special eggs like Thuweds etc. 

 

A community wall breaker initiative would be good. Hate walls? Break them down, then. Don't want to deal with it? Go do something else, then. Check your breeding projects, check the cave, spend some shards--there are plenty of options.

 

After what happened with the Void I feel like if anything gets touched there will be much further reaching consequences. 

 

This is what worries me. The void was worse than any wall we have ever had. And I DO like the AP being properly chronological - it's the best way not to lose things through any future void.

 

But am I the only person who feels it is running exceptionally well at this moment ?

[olympe]

The void, like the Lagmonster Attack, was a glitch. Of course, it didn't work properly, as is the norm for glitches.

However, a carefully planned "void" where everything but your 3 (or so) oldest AP eggs go is a different matter. Because it would be controlled, and your three guaranteed display places (if your eggs are of the correct age group to be displayed) will not glitch into and out of existence without rhyme or reason. They'll always be there for you - if you actually fill them.

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

15 minutes ago, olympe said:

The void, like the Lagmonster Attack, was a glitch. Of course, it didn't work properly, as is the norm for glitches.

However, a carefully planned "void" where everything but your 3 (or so) oldest AP eggs go is a different matter. Because it would be controlled, and your three guaranteed display places (if your eggs are of the correct age group to be displayed) will not glitch into and out of existence without rhyme or reason. They'll always be there for you - if you actually fill them.

 

I agree with this! It wouldn't necessarily be a void so much as a shared space where more people's eggs can be seen, and I'd approve of that.

 

At the very least, if limiting by breeders would be an absolute no, I'd vouch for an extra line of non-wall stuff. Just anything to let more than one person's stuff be seen imo.

[cyradis4]

12 hours ago, BlueLatios said:

Not much to add but the idea of adding a 6th line gave me a different idea.

How about pagination of AP? :v

 

Pagination has been suggested time and again, and has been shot down again and again. When you can troll through the whole AP, people will do so and cherry pick the best stuff out of the backlog. And that's been the death of that idea, again and again. 

So, can't support. 

 

As for the ability to not see eggs from a certain breeder, that suffers the same thing: you can ignore the most common breeders, and by doing so cherry pick the AP backlog. 

So really can't support. 

 

Cheers!
C4. 

[olympe]

13 hours ago, cyradis4 said:

As for the ability to not see eggs from a certain breeder, that suffers the same thing: you can ignore the most common breeders, and by doing so cherry pick the AP backlog. 

So really can't support. 

I figured as much, which is why I classified this as a no-go. Only displaying a limited amount of eggs per breeder would be a close 2nd, but it seems people are offended by being "limited" that way even though it does not affect their game in any way.

[cyradis4]

15 minutes ago, olympe said:

I figured as much, which is why I classified this as a no-go. Only displaying a limited amount of eggs per breeder would be a close 2nd, but it seems people are offended by being "limited" that way even though it does not affect their game in any way.

 

If enough breeders were breeding to the AP to support that, then we wouldn't have nearly so many walls. 

 

As it is, its not uncommon to go through the AP, and see most of the eggs showing be all nice 2nd gens or checkers, and all from the same breeder. Limit that to 2 from that breeder, and you start to get some really weird behavior. Not to mention the fact that you'd not see most of the good eggs you *want* to see, anyway.... defeating the purpose of doing it. Unless you are only after CB eggs, in which case.... again... that would let you start to cherry pick them as the CBs would all be from the same "breeder", and once they've been driven to higher time than most of the breds (very likely to happen quite fast), they would generally always appear in the same area.... since you know what time the CB eggs in backlog are at. Which again, lets you cherry pick. 

 

So the problem with the "limit by breeder" is the same as the other ones: it either eliminates what you want, or lets you cherry pick the CBs. 

 

Cheers!
C4. 

[olympe]

I'm not going for CBs only, or 2nd gens only or something. But I do like checker lineages above all others, especially those involving Holidays. Plus, there are certain breeds I honestly don't like and thus, don't collect more than necessary. And if someone decides to flood the AP with one of those breeds I can't stand for who knows how many hours without reprieve, this gets pretty annoying.

[Fuzzbucket]

I chuck checkers in there - especially when I hit the wrong breed; I have on occasion sent a shedload of waterhorse checkers in one session. I sent a few BEAUTS there the other day - not a holiday one, though. Others do the same. The AP varies hugely from day to day; that's what makes it appeal to everyone at different times.

[LadyLyzar]

Any change to the AP display or mechanics would have to apply to everyone equally.  Lineage is a player ascribed value.

 

However, I feel CBs should be assigned to the player who last abandoned them.

[Fuzzbucket]

36 minutes ago, LadyLyzar said:

Any change to the AP display or mechanics would have to apply to everyone equally.  Lineage is a player ascribed value.

 

It is - which is why the charge of "a wall of undesirable messies" is a not-OK complaint,.

[LadyLyzar]

I didn't get the vibe that the original suggestion was regarding "messies" (again subjective).  It seemed more for walls of one breed.

 

I still maintain that no one person should be able to clog the entire AP display regardless of what is in it.  It should not matter if they have massbred one breed or a hundred breeds.  Other breeders have eggs in there too.

 

If there are hundreds or thousands of eggs in the AP, it makes sense that more options should be visible for people scouting a "huge pile" of eggs rather than just one type of egg.

[olympe]

44 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

It is - which is why the charge of "a wall of undesirable messies" is a not-OK complaint,.

Who made that complaint? While I stated that the recent wall of messies was an annoyance to me, I never said that this was the very reason I'm arguing in here. It's mostly the one-breed walls, though. But in any case, both issues would be solved if everyone only got a limited percentage of the AP to clog with their stuff. And, honestly, 10% isn't shabby.

[Fuzzbucket]

Many MANY people - some of their posts were deleted yesterday. There were rebuttals from HeatherMarie in particular, who pointed out that that is exactly what she is looking for.

 

ETA run a search on Messy in this thread !

Edited August 12, 2019 by Fuzzbucket

[_DeadPool_]

5 hours ago, olympe said:

I'm not going for CBs only, or 2nd gens only or something. But I do like checker lineages above all others, especially those involving Holidays. Plus, there are certain breeds I honestly don't like and thus, don't collect more than necessary. And if someone decides to flood the AP with one of those breeds I can't stand for who knows how many hours without reprieve, this gets pretty annoying.

This still sounds like a complaint that is really only valid once in awhile, unless you don't like more than just a few breeds. All these complaints are super subjective and I really don't see there being a true problem with the AP the way it is/was. It wasn't ever broken.

[Natayah]

 

I am happy to see the variety of ideas being tossed around & discussed. I have done some cleaning and reorganizing of the Players Breeding & Clearing the AP Thread. If this idea is something you would support or be interested in, while you can check it out, I would also like some feedback on it, however, I would like the feedback to be not in that thread itself (as I am trying to make it as neat and clean as possible and this weekend was insane), please send me a PM or post it in the Player Activity & Events Thread (link in my sig) as that is one of the reasons I created the Player Event thread was so Players could get feedback for their Threads for Player Run Events/Activities. So that includes myself. Just wanted to add that update since the idea kicked around here a few times if anyone would like to add any other thoughts to it who thought it had some merit and are interested in using it, or helping me clean up my verbiage. Thanks!

Edited August 13, 2019 by Natayah

[Tears in Rain]

Personally I don't think anything should be done about the AP  It seems to me like that system kinda regulates itself already. If the AP gets stale--due to walls of the same breed, due to high time stamps, or for any other reason--it will start moving more actively as timers get lower. In general, special events like Holidays aside, I don't think the regular AP even ever gets below influenceable timers (the critical threshold which would make eggs even less wanted, let's say) no matter its content, with all its single-breed walls and stuff. But as timers get below 5 days, especially below 4 days, demand for eggs grows no matter what they are, and eventually they'll be picked up in a timely manner. In other words, effectively eggs in the AP, no matter their breeds and lineages, gradually grow in demand as long as timers get lower and not higher. So where's the problem? 

 

If a player doesn't like what they see in the AP, they can either keep hunting if they wanna spend more time on that or simply switch to something else, on DC or outside it.

The AP doesn't have to cater to some specific player's/players' needs and wants, no matter how popular or unpopular. It doesn't have to be pretty, varied or interesting in any way, that doesn't even seem to be part of its design tbh...

(And no, I don't believe that players who mass-breed stuff actually get any exclusive "gains" from their activity and walls in terms of gameplay, regardless of their intentions, emotions etc.: it's not like you can catch anything you abandoned yourself, plus there are scroll limits even if stuff gets reabandoned so the thousands eggs bred are of no use to them personally, aaand the lower timers the AP gets pushed down to as a result of some walls benefits those specific players no more than the rest of the community!)

 

Anyway, the AP is just a wall of eggs that were tossed away by players for absolutely any reason, displayed in chronological order. I don't like the idea of making it more complex than it currently is, and artificially "fixing" it in one way or another to make it (subjectively!!) "better", thus getting rid of its neutrality. And yeah, just in case, personally I don't mass-breed anything (heck, I don't breed much at all even for myself) and I do find monobreed walls annoying! But the idea of changing the current nature of the AP rubs me the wrong way. IMO the AP doesn't have a real problem worthy of intervention and should be kept as it is  

 

 

Edited August 13, 2019 by Tears in Rain

[tjekan]

I've been skimming, and haven't seen this suggested yet--what about an option that shows the lineage of an AP egg when you hover over it, or at least whether it's CB or lineaged?

 

I know this is possible because I've seen other players with outside scripts that reveal that, but it's against TOS to use outside scripts, so we law abiding players can't do it.

 

I don't have anything against players who want to breed 800 mints, but it makes the AP a useless place for me to look for a lowtime CB common, much less anything with a lineage I want. I usually just stay out of there except at holiday times. It takes eight clicks plus a typed password to grab an AP egg, check its lineage, and drop it. A way to skim the lineages would be awesome, and would make it more likely I'd pick up more of the wall items (I like checkers and 2nd-gens and things, but only from named lineages without "CB" in them and other picky stuff like that, so I usually have to catch and release 20 things before I find one I want... if I could locate ones that fit my criteria quickly, I'd raise and keep bunches more AP commons.)

 

In terms of the ideas that have already been suggested, though, I'd be in favor of limited eggs per breeder being shown at a time. It would at least give me a chance of finding something I want in there--enough of a chance for me to try giving it a shot, anyway. And there's nothing inherently worse about the massbred eggs being the ones to be held back and become lowtime rather than the other eggs which would otherwise have gotten stuck behind the wall. In either case, the AP still ends up with lower time eggs for hunters to pick up. All the change would do would be to ensure that there'd be a greater variety of eggs along the way. It wouldn't punish the breeders.

Edited August 13, 2019 by tjekan

[olympe]

16 hours ago, Tears in Rain said:

Personally I don't think anything should be done about the AP  It seems to me like that system kinda regulates itself already. If the AP gets stale--due to walls of the same breed, due to high time stamps, or for any other reason--it will start moving more actively as timers get lower.

This very thing means that the AP is being useless to most interested player for quite a while - until the unwanted eggs hit a certain threshold.

 

16 hours ago, Tears in Rain said:

The AP doesn't have to cater to some specific player's/players' needs and wants, no matter how popular or unpopular. It doesn't have to be pretty, varied or interesting in any way, that doesn't even seem to be part of its design tbh...

Well, there were and are a lot of things on DC that weren't intended parts of its design. Breeding, much less a lineage view. AP trading (now replaced with real trading through teleport, later we even got the in-cave marketplace added), you weren't supposed to be able to trade/gift/keep more than one egg from a clutch (and yet, due to AP trading in combination with walls, it was possible to have control over where you sent all eggs of a multi-clutch, albeit with a little risk), NDs seem to have been intended as punishment for neglectful players, sickness was not intended as a way to kill other people's eggs ("viewbombing"), EQ was not meant for clearing the AP (which happened a lot when EQ kills didn't count towards your egg limits), rare x rare / rare x holiday breeding wasn't an intended part of DC's design, either, Geodes were designed to only breed true with either other geodes, stones or pebbles (greens), drake eggs weren't designed to look different from other eggs, pygmies/two-headed dragons/drakes were designed as a one-species breeding group, unbreedables weren't designed to be ungendered, pumpkins weren't designed to breed outside their own species, vampires weren't designed to create more vampires, CB holidays were meant to be released only once and never again, you weren't allowed to own more than two of any one Winter Holiday or Valentine breed, spriter's alt weren't a thing originally (Snow Angels were the first breed to have one, SAs for pumpkins, Vals and Yule were added retroactively), Prizes weren't meant to be distributed beyond the Tree Decorating Contest, being able to buy eggs most definitely wasn't part of DC's design, scroll pagination wasn't a thing, badges weren't part of DC's orginal design, either, nor were trophies and accordingly increased scroll limits, the AP was meant to block access to CB eggs once filled with more than 30 eggs (I think that was the actual number), eggs in the biomes weren't meant to shuffle every five minutes (originally)... The list goes on and on. And yet, here we are. 

 

As the site grew, some features needed to be added (like biomes, an encyclopedia) - and others needed to be added for the fact that scrolls grew a lot since the beginnings (see pagination, filters...).

 

16 hours ago, Tears in Rain said:

If a player doesn't like what they see in the AP, they can either keep hunting if they wanna spend more time on that or simply switch to something else, on DC or outside it.

The AP doesn't have to cater to some specific player's/players' needs and wants, no matter how popular or unpopular. It doesn't have to be pretty, varied or interesting in any way

Personally, if you ask me, the suggestion to only show a limited number of eggs from every breeder goes in the same direction as the five-minute shuffle in the biomes. Because the biomes didn't need to be pretty, varied or interesting, either. And if a player didn't like what they saw there, they could either keep hunting [...] or simply switch to something else, on DC or outside it. And yet, these shuffles have been implemented upon player request even though the biomes didn't have to cater to their needs and wants.

[tjekan]

...You know, it just occurred to me that the other thing that would make the AP more diverse and interesting would be if an egg that somebody picks up and drops again simply goes to the back of the line. Maybe eggs with less than 4 days left could be exempt from this, since unwanted eggs dying in the AP makes players unhappy. But in the meantime they'd stop sitting in the way of hundreds of people who don't want them. I personally don't enjoy the AP because it gives me the impression of being forced to eat my broccoli before I'm allowed to have a chance at eating anything I like. The only time the AP stagnates is when it's full or almost entirely full of eggs *nobody* wants to keep. If somebody mass breeds eggs everybody wants, like TJ breeds all the Thuweds or somebody drops 40 2nd-gens from their alt Halloweens, they won't create a wall because people will take them. When it stalls is when there are a ton of UNWANTED eggs in there. And if they're unwanted--as signified by people picking them up and dropping them--why not just shuffle them to the back? Someone would probably take them later on when they're lower time, but in the meantime, this would cause the AP to change more quickly and be more interesting to hunt in, instead of everyone just having to wait a day till the timers of the blocking eggs go down.

 

ETA: It's basically the same benefits as allowing only a few eggs per breeder to show at a time, only without making breeders feel specifically targeted by it.

Edited August 20, 2019 by tjekan