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Cave blockages - AP

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Automatic lowering of egg time, with a cap of 24 hours, is the only solution posed that I can support.

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24 minutes ago, Keileon said:

Automatic lowering of egg time, with a cap of 24 hours, is the only solution posed that I can support.

Why the cap?

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A lot of people find the AP, and eggs in general, much less desirable once they get below 3 days, because then they aren't Influence-able.  Just look at the holiday threads and you'll see plenty of complaining about the under-3-day eggs towards the end of the holiday walls. Deliberately removing time below BSA-usable time would most likely make the eggs in general *less* desirable, not more. So yes, there should be a cap, though I think a more general 'not lower then 3d1h' would be better then a straight-forward hour-amount cap.

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On 5/30/2019 at 11:54 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.

 

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.


1) Consider this... when I AP hunt I toss all non-PBs, and usually all non-CBs. When people holiday hunt, many are picky about what breed the 2g is from... it doesn't mean the constantly re-tosed 2g came from an unthoughtful breeding... I bet there are quite a portion fo people who holiday hunt only in hopes to fish out some SA descendants, probably 2g... My bf helps me catch my auto-APed holidays and did complain about re-catching the same egg again and again.
OFC lower time=more desirable too, as long as it doesn't go 0, and, often, 3d.

2) - someone was wondering if that would rise the chance for a rare. I don't think it would, because, as a pure-breeder, I can deliver this: https://dragcave.net/progeny/OPSSc these 2 Golds were bred together since September 2015, for a while they were bred nearly every week (I think it was in 16/17)... Things look the same for PB Trios, https://dragcave.net/progeny/CyQKg https://dragcave.net/progeny/bOSVu https://dragcave.net/progeny/TeZXV . This could, however, potentially help with the old common x new common results!

3) - Holidays always lead to AP timeout deaths, Holiday months would have to be an exception...
And, tbh, I wouldn't hope people would learn to breed more thoughfully if their things died, because those who don't, wouldn't even notice that eggs they produced tend to die. I myself have problems with keeping track despite caring about my dragons' progenies not getting shortened (but I can't do anything about it anyway, so even I don't check often).

 

 

To me the walls aren't bad though. I just don't AP hunt when there's one¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There are some people who enjoy them.

Edited by VixenDra

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3 hours ago, VixenDra said:


And, tbh, I wouldn't hope people would learn to breed more thoughfully if their things died, because those who don't, wouldn't even notice that eggs they produced tend to die. 

 

Breeding thoughtfully is in the eye of the beholder. Things die just as often when picked up as they do when they stay in the AP (and someone said almost nothing actually dies in the AP, even over holidays.) All my holiday eggs were picked up. About half of them died.  i shall carry on breeding them. Just saying.

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1 hour ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

Breeding thoughtfully is in the eye of the beholder. Things die just as often when picked up as they do when they stay in the AP (and someone said almost nothing actually dies in the AP, even over holidays.) All my holiday eggs were picked up. About half of them died.  i shall carry on breeding them. Just saying.

This. Even IF an egg is picked up, there is no guarantee it will survive. 

 

It might be used as a neglected experiment, for example, or given to a vampire to bite. ( I admit... that is quite OFTEN how I find fodder for my vampires when they are in a Bitey mood.) Let alone the person who picked it up might be view bombed, or they might be a newbie and have not quite figured out how to raise their eggies yet.  OR They might have picked it up with the idea of making a zombie of it, one day. There are any NUMBER of things that can happen to an egg. AND I would add that EVEN keeping the eggie on your scroll is NO ABSOLUTE guarantee it will be safe from view bombers, for instance. Do eggs of mine sometimes die? Yes, and it is sort of sad when they do ( I even know of one dragon of mine who has an offspring that was turned into a Neglected Dragon XD) , BUT... somewhat beyond my control. You really CAN'T absolutely ensure that your dragons' progeny will be safe and flourish. As Fuzz said, I carry on breeding what I feel like WHEN I feel like, anyway.... and I prefer to give others that same freedom. I get your point, however, that there probably ARE people who hunt the AP looking for something VERY specific... sometimes I do as well... and that an egg being tossed back doesn't NECESSARILY mean it was a thoughtless breeding. BUT I also agree with Fuzz in that what constitutes 'thoughtless breeding' or an 'undesirable lineage' is in the eye of the beholder. There are people on here that specifically hunt for the messiest lineages they can find, after all and just because I don't want a particular egg doesn't MEAN that some other user wouldn't LOVE to have that same egg on their scroll. AND just because their preferences on their scroll differ from mine doesn't make them any less valid.

Edited by JavaTigress

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I second everything Fuzz and java have said. I dropped a second gen prize kin nebula to the ap and someone dumped it to the wild when it was a hatchling because it colored wrong. You never know what is going to happen when you dump something. People like different things. 

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19 minutes ago, osean said:

I second everything Fuzz and java have said. I dropped a second gen prize kin nebula to the ap and someone dumped it to the wild when it was a hatchling because it colored wrong. You never know what is going to happen when you dump something. People like different things. 

 

This is the crux of it all. And why TJ cannot hope to please everyone. (and shouldn't strain himself trying :lol: )

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As someone with very limited time to play DC - if I see a wall I just leave until the next day or the day after. Which means I spend significantly less time on the site. From TJ's pov I would just look at site activity. Is it higher during wall times or higher during variety times or does it make no difference - and then (not) take action according to that. 

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I like how all those in favor seem to think different eggs makes the ap more desirable.  When I suspect, most ap hunters are like myself: looking for either one (1) specific breed or one of only a small handful.  90+% of the time I go to the ap, there is nothing I want because I'm just checking for that very specific thing, more types of eggs does not mean I'm more likely to find it.  Maybe if I cared about lineages, I'd spend more time trawling through, but I don't.  "Oh darn, I need another pillow, and there is none currently in the cave....check the ap: nope none here either, maybe later." 

 

Even when I'm bored and just looking to look without anything specific in mind, there are usually only a few breeds I actually find myself clicking on.  It really is a junk pile, which is the point.  It doesn't stop you from cave hunting anymore, and it doesn't stop you from breeding.  The chances of that 1 thing you are looking for is always small, but you can refresh the page just as often with a wall to look for other options (and they will be there), a wall would actually make it easier to see "new" eggs at least of a non-wall breed.

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This too, actually. I spent AGES yesterday - in a very varied AP - looking for CB waterhorses. Didn't see ONE. And I only saw two waterhorses at all.

 

But when I was looking for ridgewings a few days ago, I didn't find CBs, but I DID find this and this.

 

Which I might just as well have found in a ridgie wall if there had been one - and which will be starting me on new lines. It's a garbage lottery - which is brilliant.

Edited by Fuzzbucket

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On 6/3/2019 at 1:59 PM, Stormcaller said:

IMHO, if there is no rule to stop individuals from blocking the AP, there certainly should be one made!

Absolutely not. I would absolutely NOT support this at all.

 

There should be no limits to what an individual can breed outside of current incompatibilities. such as dragons and twoheads. I go into the AP and hunt around for a short bit. if I see something great, if not, I come back later and hope for better luck

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12 hours ago, DragonLady86 said:

I like how all those in favor seem to think different eggs makes the ap more desirable.

 

Very good point said much simpler then I was trying to. So, some people don't like one-breed walls. But there is no guarantee that 10+ different breeds in the AP would be any better. I use my example of 2nd-gens because I prefer messies, there could be plenty of different breeds in the AP but if they are all 2nd-gen (or stairstep, or even-gen) then it's no better to me! I'm currently focusing almost exclusively on Aqualises; The AP is currently showing *tons* of different breeds, but none of them are what I want. I have the time (and lack of life...) to sit there refreshing the AP for hours on end, but even then sometimes I don't find what I'm looking for, regardless of walls or no-walls. The AP is not suddenly going to be what you want just because a wall isn't there.

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26 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

Very good point said much simpler then I was trying to. So, some people don't like one-breed walls. But there is no guarantee that 10+ different breeds in the AP would be any better. I use my example of 2nd-gens because I prefer messies, there could be plenty of different breeds in the AP but if they are all 2nd-gen (or stairstep, or even-gen) then it's no better to me! I'm currently focusing almost exclusively on Aqualises; The AP is currently showing *tons* of different breeds, but none of them are what I want. I have the time (and lack of life...) to sit there refreshing the AP for hours on end, but even then sometimes I don't find what I'm looking for, regardless of walls or no-walls. The AP is not suddenly going to be what you want just because a wall isn't there.

I know this is true. Experience tells me this is so. I must remind myself of this when I start letting the walls frustrate me. XD

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I do think Stormcaller makes a very important point that I'd just like to reiterate upon lest it get ignored. 

 

I, also, believe that the AP used to be more exciting. Trading would happen through the AP, experiments got bounced through the AP, and walls wouldn't be bred as large as almost no users had that amount of dragons of a single breed yet.

 

Edit: there was less to look for as well, simply because there were fewer breeds. This means the AP was more likely to contain a dragon of a breed you were looking for.

 

What do you think?

Edited by Vaatzes

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1 hour ago, Vaatzes said:

I, also, believe that the AP used to be more exciting. Trading would happen through the AP, experiments got bounced through the AP, and walls wouldn't be bred as large as almost no users had that amount of dragons of a single breed yet.

That ap was gone nearly 10 years ago. I'm not sure how it can be relevant to "fixing" what's happening now, unless you want to revert the cave to no teleport ap-blocker cave with 30 breeds.

 

 

Anyway, to be honest I don't care which way this goes as long as, yes, it doesn't limit me personally when I'm breeding things. Lower egg times in ap based on whatever? Sure. Lowered chance of eggs in general when I'm trying to breed large numbers for specific things? No thanks. Walls are probably the simplest way to get the ap time lower, but as I've seen by the past few days of nothing but bred eggs in the ap, even doing a lot of mixed breeding will get it lower or keep it low by pure numbers.

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5 hours ago, Shadowdrake said:

That ap was gone nearly 10 years ago. I'm not sure how it can be relevant to "fixing" what's happening now, unless you want to revert the cave to no teleport ap-blocker cave with 30 breeds.

 

 

Anyway, to be honest I don't care which way this goes as long as, yes, it doesn't limit me personally when I'm breeding things. Lower egg times in ap based on whatever? Sure. Lowered chance of eggs in general when I'm trying to breed large numbers for specific things? No thanks. Walls are probably the simplest way to get the ap time lower, but as I've seen by the past few days of nothing but bred eggs in the ap, even doing a lot of mixed breeding will get it lower or keep it low by pure numbers.

Sorry for not being clear, I didn't mean it as a suggestion xD

 

My point is just that I could see how people compare how it is now to back then and feel like something has gone wrong. Maybe it's just me but I feel like the average time you have to spend in the AP to find something you like has gone up steadily throughout the years, with maybe a spike here and there.

 

The reason I bring this up is because I fall hard into the camp that believes there's not much that can be done. Even lowering the egg time after multiple people pick up and abandon the same egg doesn't sound like a solid solution to me. But I do understand and want to legitimize the frustration of the other side as well. I feel like that's especially important when you don't agree with their solution, deep democracy and all yunno xD

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As one of those "one user with an army that can singlehandedly create a one-breed AP wall", (❤️ my salty blacktip babies!) I'll just note that such walls are already pretty limited for a whole slew of reasons.

 

1) It takes a bloody long time to massbreed enough dragons to make a 12+ hour wall. When I last bred all of my blacktips, that took me at least six hours before factoring in the time it took to corporealize several hundred celestials as well. That is not the sort of effort I can make on every available opportunity, and I imagine the same goes for anyone else with massive one-breed armies. The next time I mass breed all of my blacktips, it's probably going to be an 8 hour endeavor (again, not factoring in the hours it takes to corporealize so many celestials.) There comes a point where it literally becomes impossible for a single player to mass-breed an entire wall-producing army in one shot because the mass-breeding itself would take too long to do uninterrupted. 8 hours is already seriously stretching it.

 

2) Longer walls require almost exponentially more dragons (and thus more time to create) than shorter walls. From my own breeding stats, I can get a 5-6 hour wall from about 100 breeding pairs. So from that baseline, one would assume that breeding say, 700 pairs would result in a wall lasting 35-42 hours, when in reality that many pairs lead to only 12 hours of wall. While I lack the specific stats myself, it sounds like a 24+ hour nocturne wall requires breeding over 2000 dragons. A hypothetical 48+ hour wall would no doubt require something along the lines of 5000+ dragons being bred, probably more than that even. That quickly becomes prohibitive for any one user to accomplish with any regularity, and while organizing a mass-breeding with multiple users can accomplish similar effects that comes with the challenge of getting enough people organized to put their time into the mass-breeding all at the same time which can also become difficult to accomplish once the attempted mass-breeding effort hits a certain point.

 

3) The longer a wall takes to create, the less solid it is. Simply put, when you're only breeding 100 dragons, it's entirely possible that there are very few other eggs being produced by other players and sent to the AP during that short span of time. When you're breeding several hundred dragons, that takes hours; and during those hours other players are breeding and abandoning other things to the AP, so that bigger wall is going to have far more interruptions breaking it up. The longer a wall takes to create, the less homogeneous it becomes. The easiest way to break up a potential AP wall is simply breeding lots of stuff. If you're breeding a variety of things at the same time I'm breeding a lot of blacktips, then your variety of things will be mixed in, have similar AP times, and thus hit the AP at the same time as my mass-bred eggs. If more players are breeding more things at any given time, that means those of us with mono-breed armies aren't the ones sending the majority of eggs to the AP at any given moment.

 

4) The AP timer itself cuts wall times down already. Sure, a wall that hits when AP times are high will likely last longer simply because times are high; but the longer a wall goes on, the lower the AP time gets and the faster that wall moves through the AP. An AP wall that hits when eggs are incuhatchable is not going to last anywhere near as long as an AP wall that hits when eggs are all above 5d remaining.

 

5) The ratios do work. Even though I'm not massbreeding blacktips every chance I could, blacktips have become noticeably less frequent in the biome. For my February blacktip massbreed, 95% of all clutches produced resulted in blacktip eggs. My much smaller March massbreed had a 94% rate. While I don't yet have more data points to show a trend yet, I'm assuming that the more blacktips I breed over time, the fewer pairings are going to successfully produce blacktip eggs. (Really wish I'd thought to record how many clutches included blacktip eggs back in 2018 so I could already calculate those percentages to show folks a trend. >_< ) Maybe once I have more data points I'll make some kinda fancy graphs to go with my tracking spreadsheet.

 

tl;dr version: AP walls are ultimately a self-defeating endeavor. The bigger the wall, the harder it is to make. The longer the wall, the faster it undercuts itself via lowering AP times. The bigger/more frequent the wall, the harder the target breed and thus the wall becomes to produce. The system as it already exists effectively caps the maximum AP wall possible due to all these factors. Really, the only way you could conceivably get a wall lasting over 48 hours would require a highly unlikely perfect storm of circumstances; mass-breeding right after a major new release while AP times are high and most people aren't breeding anything themselves because they're too busy hunting the new release eggs, multiple people (maybe over a dozen) who all have 1000+ strong armies of that one breed all available and able to coordinate their mass-breeding so that the eggs aren't all bred at the exact same time, but are instead staggered out over several hours or even days (to counteract the fact that the wall clears faster the lower AP times get), etc. There simply comes a point where while in theory a bigger wall is possible, the odds of it being done successfully are microscopic.

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23 hours ago, Firefury Amahira said:

tl;dr version: AP walls are ultimately a self-defeating endeavor. The bigger the wall, the harder it is to make. The longer the wall, the faster it undercuts itself via lowering AP times. The bigger/more frequent the wall, the harder the target breed and thus the wall becomes to produce. The system as it already exists effectively caps the maximum AP wall possible due to all these factors. Really, the only way you could conceivably get a wall lasting over 48 hours would require a highly unlikely perfect storm of circumstances; mass-breeding right after a major new release while AP times are high and most people aren't breeding anything themselves because they're too busy hunting the new release eggs, multiple people (maybe over a dozen) who all have 1000+ strong armies of that one breed all available and able to coordinate their mass-breeding so that the eggs aren't all bred at the exact same time, but are instead staggered out over several hours or even days (to counteract the fact that the wall clears faster the lower AP times get), etc. There simply comes a point where while in theory a bigger wall is possible, the odds of it being done successfully are microscopic.

 

Exactly this. I was doing a mass breed yesterday (a planned co-operative one) and with only about 300 dragons to do, I gave up before I was done; I just could not FACE any more - and I have a lot of free time to spend on line. It isn't a huge issue, it REALLY isn't. And it does lower times, which is lovely.

Edited by Fuzzbucket

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As someone who has over 1k Turpentines and has created a wall twice, it takes me several hours to create a wall. It's not an easy task and not something I would ever enjoy doing on a weekly basis. That's absurd and tiring and I don't see walls that frequently enough to think it warrants any action. Like, doing the wall with my 1K dragons is a miserable and daunting task it takes at least four hours to do. You really don't have to worry about it being an everyday thing - making walls sucks and while the outcome is indeed fun, the journey is brutal. And I breed turpentines. The absolute worst to breed. 

So I don't see any reason to waste time and effort trying to fix something that honestly, it's as frequent as you think and isn't really as fun for the people making them as you might think. 

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No support for the similar reasons Firefury and Qualeo have pointed out. I don't think there is a feasible solution for AP walls.

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10 minutes ago, Naraku said:

No support for the similar reasons Firefury and Qualeo have pointed out. I don't think there is a feasible solution for AP walls.

 

I'd go further and say there is nothing that needs "solving".

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I'm with Fuzzbucket. Walling is an inherent side effect of DC's game mechanics and is healthy for the game in the long run. Nothing there needs to be solved or fixed.

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5 minutes ago, Keileon said:

I'm with Fuzzbucket. Walling is an inherent side effect of DC's game mechanics and is healthy for the game in the long run. Nothing there needs to be solved or fixed.

 

Same same, +1, etc..

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Funny no-one seems to have minded yesterday's prize wall.... :lol: 

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