Per-scroll breeding limit

[purplehaze]

1 hour ago, tjekan said:

Has anyone yet suggested simply paginating the AP? That would probably be a lot easier to code than filtering, which I otherwise like, and would allow people who weren't interested in a massbreed to just skip over it, while people who wanted to see all Terrafreaky's eggs at once still could.

I dislike that idea because it would allow cherry-picking all the good stuff from last page or two. People would be less likely to take even low-time wall eggs if they can go past them to get to better stuff. If you have a choice between even a low-time or ER messy inbred or a 7-day rare or uncommon, a lot of people will go for the "gold".

[Fuzzbucket]

17 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

I dislike that idea because it would allow cherry-picking all the good stuff from last page or two. People would be less likely to take even low-time wall eggs if they can go past them to get to better stuff. If you have a choice between even a low-time or ER messy inbred or a 7-day rare or uncommon, a lot of people will go for the "gold".

 

That was my immediate thought too.

[Astreya]

I agree with purplehaze, too.

 

While I'm occasionally annoyed at the egg walls, I simply decide that this gives me the opportunity to do more important stuff than looking at the wall, watching the paint dry waiting for the wall to come down. ^^

[Stormcaller]

22 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

.... People would be less likely to take even low-time wall eggs if they can go past them to get to better stuff. If you have a choice between even a low-time or ER messy inbred or a 7-day rare or uncommon, a lot of people will go for the "gold".    (Emphasis mine)

 

This is just the point...  A lot of people don't want the messy, inbred, or even many of the flood of otherwise decently bred eggs in the AP. They want a chance for whatever they consider to be the "gold' pop up so they can try to catch it.  A wall denies us that opportunity by preventing variety.

[Uther_Pendragon]

Sure, I can 'go do something else' as well, but with the increasing frequency and length of one-breed walls, that large section of the game is becoming unplayable for me.

Once in a while, or short walls is not an issue for me, it's the all day, to days long, and increasing frequency of them that is my concern.

 

For me, it's not about 'better stuff', it's about allowing variety, and not just one breed, or one person's eggs, as my only choices, if I want to play in this specific area of this game.

 

As a few of us in this thread have voiced, it's unfair that one person can control a large part of the game from hours to days. 

Reading back a bit, pagination was brought up earlier, and point was made that if there were thousands of one-breed eggs bred, then it could be all pages of the same thing, which is what we're dealing with now. So prob not the best option if we're seeking variety.

** It looks like the proposed compromise of allowing x number of visible eggs per breeder is the least disruptive.

 

[HeatherMarie]

56 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

I dislike that idea because it would allow cherry-picking all the good stuff from last page or two. People would be less likely to take even low-time wall eggs if they can go past them to get to better stuff. If you have a choice between even a low-time or ER messy inbred or a 7-day rare or uncommon, a lot of people will go for the "gold".

 

Very much agree here. I actually think pagination in the AP would be *worse* than pretty much any other suggestion in this thread. At least with most of the other suggestions (except filtering), everyone is still seeing the same thing and eggs are still showing in a specific way. Being able to just go through the entire AP 'backlog' and grab whatever you want no matter the time on it... No. Lower-timed 'valuable' eggs will cease to exist, since they will be picked up immediately. And if this thread is trying to lessen 'walls', well walls will still happen the exact same way here, but no one will take them because they can just page past them... That's not actually 'fixing' the wall issue at all, that's just ignoring it. 

[tjekan]

1 hour ago, purplehaze said:

I dislike that idea because it would allow cherry-picking all the good stuff from last page or two. People would be less likely to take even low-time wall eggs if they can go past them to get to better stuff. If you have a choice between even a low-time or ER messy inbred or a 7-day rare or uncommon, a lot of people will go for the "gold".

 

Why would that be a problem? The "cherry-picking" you refer to happens anyway, as soon as the better stuff gets to the front page. Pagination would just mean the cherry-picking would be happening on one of the later pages instead of the front page. If anything it would mean the cherry-picking was more accessible to players who aren't online as much, instead of only those who can camp out at all hours waiting for a wall to go away so they can be the first in line to cherry-pick.

 

People will eventually pick up low-time eggs anyway, even if they're junky. There are NEVER enough golds and 2g prizes on the AP to egg-lock everyone. If you breed 250 of something you KNOW nobody wants, it's really your own fault if people don't pick them up for a long time-- but once they get to be ER, somebody's going to end up taking 'em anyway.

 

Besides, aren't a lot of the arguments people have been making on here against restricting eggs per breeder that the massbred eggs often are NOT junky and they want to see them? If that's true, the people who want them would take them and the people who don't would page past them to look for a CB or whatever else they find valuable, and everybody's happy.

 

Let supply and demand loose to handle this. That would be the easiest and most sensible thing.

 

But if not, I'm still good with the limit on eggs showing per breeder, or with AP filtering if that's possible.

Edited November 11, 2019 by tjekan

[LadyLyzar]

Whew, we have strayed pretty far from the original suggestion.  I admit to being part of this, oops (Mods are human too y'all...)

 

That being said, there is some really good discussion going on here about potential display changes to the AP.

 

@wobster109 Would you be okay with editing this topic to be a general AP suggestions thread?  Or, I can split off the other suggestions into a new topic?

[olympe]

2 hours ago, tjekan said:

 

Why would that be a problem? The "cherry-picking" you refer to happens anyway, as soon as the better stuff gets to the front page. Pagination would just mean the cherry-picking would be happening on one of the later pages instead of the front page. If anything it would mean the cherry-picking was more accessible to players who aren't online as much, instead of only those who can camp out at all hours waiting for a wall to go away so they can be the first in line to cherry-pick.

Cherry-picking from a very limited number of eggs is one thing that pretty much keeps people motivated to stalk the AP. However, if you know that all the good and intermediate stuff will have been taken ages ago, you won't have that kind of extra boost. It'd make the AP pretty boring. 

 

[Lyncerta]

3 hours ago, tjekan said:

Besides, aren't a lot of the arguments people have been making on here against restricting eggs per breeder that the massbred eggs often are NOT junky and they want to see them? If that's true, the people who want them would take them and the people who don't would page past them to look for a CB or whatever else they find valuable, and everybody's happy.

Except for people who want to catch something nice with low time (like me). I use the AP to stuff up my scroll with incuhachable CBs and maybe holiday checkers, when I happen to have free egg space and I'm lucky to find them (what happens suprisingly often)

 

But you have a point, pagination would solve problem with blocking AP by one breed. It would also help people who would like to hunt normal eggs during holiday events and help normal eggs which are running out of time behind holiday wall too. I tried to find disadvantage of the "cherry picking" eggs from the last pages, but besides the fact that those egg will be gone from AP long before I would like to pick them up, I could find one thing that seems pretty reasonable.

With all eggs in AP accessible for players, the motivation to pick up ones with lowest times will decrease, as they will not block the rest anymore. This may cause those eggs to actually start dying because no one will take them. Not sure how likely it is overall, and if it's bad thing actually, but it may be a bigger problem in case of walls of holiday eggs. People will most likely catch hatchies or certain breeds before less desirable, lower time eggs. And when those hit 3D 0H mark, they will become even less desirable, as they can't be influenced anymore. And there will be still tons of eggs available that can be influenced.

 

Also, having tens of pages of AP eggs may be a bit overwhelming. Imagine something like a hundred pages of AP to search. And people sitting only on a few first and few last ones.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Lyncerta

[HeatherMarie]

19 minutes ago, Lyncerta said:

 

With all eggs in AP accessible for players, the motivation to pick up ones with lowest times will decrease, as they will not block the rest anymore. This may cause those eggs to actually start dying because no one will take them. Not sure how likely it is overall, and if it's bad thing actually, but it may be a bigger problem in case of walls of holiday eggs. People will most likely catch hatchies or certain breeds before less desirable, lower time eggs. And when those hit 3D 0H mark, they will become even less desirable, as they can't be influenced anymore. And there will be still tons of eggs available that can be influenced.

 

This is definitely something that would need to be addressed in some way if any sort of filtering/pagination comes into play. The thing is, regardless of what users *want* in terms of hunting the AP, the overall site is regulated by ratios. I can see how 'unwanted eggs sitting and eventually dying' might actually seem like a positive thing to people who dislike those walls..... But that 'wall of breed X' isn't just going to go away when the eggs start dying. What's actually going to happen is that anyone doing breeding with that breed, whether breeding to something rarer or more common than breed X, will start getting more and more breed X eggs. Breed X eggs will spawn more often in the biomes, too, if the number dying is significant. There has to be enough breed X eggs around to fit the actual site-wide ratio, so any mass-dying that happens with 'unwanted' eggs will only spawn more 'unwanted' eggs. (It's possible enough people will pick up 'unwanted' low-time eggs regardless, and this wouldn't be much of an issue, but we don't really know.)

[purplehaze]

I think the idea of only displaying a few of any one breeder's eggs is far better than pagination. It will still allow for a variety of eggs on the displayed page without depleting everything interesting from the next 8 or 10 or 20 or however many pages of AP eggs there are.

 

And I think HeatherMarie makes a very good point about ratios if we do end up with eggs dying.

[tjekan]

1 hour ago, Lyncerta said:

I use the AP to stuff up my scroll with incuhachable CBs and maybe holiday checkers, when I happen to have free egg space and I'm lucky to find them (what happens suprisingly often) 

 

That stuff would probably still all be findable. I don't think most people would grab high-time CBs from the last page (not much better than grabbing them from the biomes at that point,) and checkers are a specialty item that most hunters pass over. It's the rarely dropped items like metals, aeons, low-gen prizes, and SAltkins that would all be grabbed early.

 

It would be a change, but I don't think it would be overall a bad one.

 

It's just one of several ideas, though.

 

1 hour ago, Lyncerta said:

People will most likely catch hatchies or certain breeds before less desirable, lower time eggs. And when those hit 3D 0H mark, they will become even less desirable, as they can't be influenced anymore.

 

That's really only a big issue for eggs someone wants to use in a lineage. Nice checkers, 2gs, CBs, tinsel stairsteps, and so on will be the eggs getting picked up before 3 days; a messy celestial for freezing or an army doesn't matter as much which gender it is.

 

In the past, things at 2 days have been snapped up very quickly regardless of whether they're less desirable or not. There were a lot of unexceptional lineages sitting in the AP at ER times after the holidays were gone and they were snapped up very fast. They're basically free hatchlings. People take them.

 

And if no one DID take them and they died on the AP, that would be a really glaring piece of evidence that no one ever wanted them in the first place and that maybe people would need to breed more desirable lineages if they want 250 of their eggs to find homes. But... I seriously doubt that would ever happen. All observation to date has been that even a humble inbred mint is desirable in ER form. And people have twice as much room for hatchlings as for eggs.

Edited November 11, 2019 by tjekan

[Fuzzbucket]

1 hour ago, purplehaze said:

I think the idea of only displaying a few of any one breeder's eggs is far better than pagination. It will still allow for a variety of eggs on the displayed page without depleting everything interesting from the next 8 or 10 or 20 or however many pages of AP eggs there are.

 

And I think HeatherMarie makes a very good point about ratios if we do end up with eggs dying.

 

I agree. If "unwanted" eggs start dying en masse because people are looking at page 423 instead of the low time eggs, lord knows what it might do to ratios. This is one area we NEED input from TJ.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Fuzzbucket

[osmarks]

I'm against tweaks to the AP like the ones suggested here, because I think they go against the fundamental, well, meaning, of the AP as somewhere where you get whatever random stuff people dumped there.

[Uther_Pendragon]

I personally prefer the 'x eggs per breeder visible' idea as it keeps things closer to the current ap style. But, I'm game for whatever helps with reduction of the extended one-breed walls.

 

[tjekan]

24 minutes ago, osmarks said:

I'm against tweaks to the AP like the ones suggested here, because I think they go against the fundamental, well, meaning, of the AP as somewhere where you get whatever random stuff people dumped there.

 

I don't think there's any inherent conceptual difference between getting to choose between 30 eggs of random stuff people dumped, getting to choose between 500 eggs of random stuff people dumped, and getting to choose between 30 eggs of differently presented eggs people dumped. In all three of these cases, we're still dumpster diving, if you will. In all three we still have SOME measure of choice over which randomly dumped eggs to pick up... though the increasing wall problem is slowly eroding that in the status quo, but in the past, it almost always existed, and I for one would like to take measures to see that it continues to.

 

If we are conceiving of it as a dump--there shouldn't be a policeman at the dump forcing everyone to only take one of the 30 eggs they think will be best for ratios. If people are throwing away their trash, they shouldn't have any more say in what happens to it after that. If they want to influence the ratios of their favorite common but people dont want hundreds of messiest of that breed, they could try breeding 2nd gens of it, or another more desirable lineage. It's not reasonable to expect a DUMP to be first come first serve, is it?

[Shadowdrake]

I don't support pagination because it rewards multi-ing and stalking specific dragons such as Spriter alts and thuweds even further; people already love watching them for offspring during holidays, but if you know what time zones someone is in or when they're usually active you can check up every day around that time and potentially be the first to grab every single egg right out of the AP before anyone else. And for thuweds, which seem to usually be bred around evening time, that basically means anyone active in the other 3/4ths of the day are consistently out of luck unlike now when the time frame they can hit AP any time of day.

 

 

Also, regarding the trash dump analogy you can shuffle around the trash all you want but there's no way you can get to the bottom of the pile without removing the stuff above it.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Shadowdrake

[tjekan]

26 minutes ago, Shadowdrake said:

I don't support pagination because it rewards multi-ing and stalking specific dragons such as Spriter alts and thuweds even further; people already love watching them for offspring during holidays, but if you know what time zones someone is in or when they're usually active you can check up every day around that time and potentially be the first to grab every single egg right out of the AP before anyone else. And for thuweds, which seem to usually be bred around evening time, that basically means anyone active in the other 3/4ths of the day are consistently out of luck unlike now when the time frame they can hit AP any time of day.

 

 

Also, regarding the trash dump analogy you can shuffle around the trash all you want but there's no way you can get to the bottom of the pile without removing the stuff above it.

 

What if only the first 50 pages were accessible? That would be 1500 eggs--enough to allow people to look past all but the very worst of walls--but would still leave freshly laid eggs inaccessible, thus avoiding the stalking problem you bring up.

 

26 minutes ago, Shadowdrake said:

 

Also, regarding the trash dump analogy you can shuffle around the trash all you want but there's no way you can get to the bottom of the pile without removing the stuff above it.

 

 

30 eggs, even if they were a foot long each,  wouldn't cover more than a 5x3 patch of ground. It makes no logical sense for those eggs to have to be moved in order to see anything else in a pile of thousands of eggs.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2019 by tjekan

[Uther_Pendragon]

Regarding 50 pages and 1500 eggs: is it possible for someone to breed that many of one breed? Could we still have a wall issue but then spread over 50 pages? 
ETA: I should've added even a variety of eggs bred by one person at those numbers is still one person controlling the AP. ---if this is a dumb Q, I apologize l, I've not bred large amounts before so don't know how many is truly feasible to do at one sitting.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Uther_Pendragon
Clarified

[tjekan]

4 minutes ago, Uther_Pendragon said:

Regarding 50 pages and 1500 eggs: is it possible for someone to breed that many of one breed? Could we still have a wall issue but then spread over 50 pages? 

 

It'd be possible, but 1) much less common (perhaps a return to the old days when there'd be a wall every month or two, not every day or two), and 2) much quicker and easier to break, since you'd have to clear 1470 fewer eggs before having a clear page to hunt in.

Edited November 12, 2019 by tjekan

[Firefury Amahira]

1 hour ago, Uther_Pendragon said:

Regarding 50 pages and 1500 eggs: is it possible for someone to breed that many of one breed? Could we still have a wall issue but then spread over 50 pages? 
ETA: I should've added even a variety of eggs bred by one person at those numbers is still one person controlling the AP. ---if this is a dumb Q, I apologize l, I've not bred large amounts before so don't know how many is truly feasible to do at one sitting.

It is extremely possible, I've sent over 1500 blacktip eggs (out of a total batch around 2000- the rest were celestials) to the AP on multiple occasions this year. It's not easy, it takes me several hours to corporealize over 900 celestials and breed over 1000 blacktips to do it, but it is very much possible. Especially when breaking the work up across multiple days (corporealize the celestials a day or two before, breed about 600 pairs in one sitting, another 600 pairs a few hours or a day later...), the thing can definitely be done for anyone with a large horde of commons, a large horde of celestials, and the time to breed it. For anyone curious, I keep pretty meticulous stats on my mass-breeding, which can probably give folks an idea of what scale of effort is required to generate one of those super-massive walls.

 

As for ideas to change the AP display (FIRMLY against anything that restricts breeding), I think the "limit the # of eggs displayed from one breeder" idea is the most plausible and least likely to spawn much complaint.

 

Though to toss another oddball idea into the ring, eggs already come from distinct biomes in the game; what about breaking the AP up into biomes too, with abandoned eggs going to the appropriate biome for their breed? (And to a random biome for breeds that can spawn in multiple places such as metallics.) That would make more sense with the lore to have people dumping eggs in multiple locations close to where they get eggs in the first place than people trucking all these eggs from diverse places to a single dumping ground, it would allow a psuedo-filtering of the AP, but prevent the abuse that actual filtering would enable, and it would effectively quintuple the number of AP eggs available at any particular time. Sure, one AP-biome could still get clogged up by a mass-breed, but it wouldn't render the entire AP clogged without extremely unlikely and extremely difficult coordination among multiple players to simultaneously do 1000+ pairing massbreeds of appropriate biome-cloggers. (And even if someone was able to organize it, I would imagine that these AP-biomes would not always move at the same pace, further making it difficult to block them all.) And as an added bonus, if the AP-biomes take after the cave biomes, there could be a holiday AP-biome that the inevitable holiday flood could go to so that the rest of the AP would still be usable during holidays.

[Fuzzbucket]

@Firefury Amahira - can you say WHY you do this ? Just curious - it is such a lot of work.

[random_dragon_collector]

6 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

@Firefury Amahira - can you say WHY you do this ? Just curious - it is such a lot of work.

 

Yes--I'm really interested to know, why do you do that?  What are you trying to accomplish?  I'm very, very curious about it! 

[Firefury Amahira]

2 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

@Firefury Amahira - can you say WHY you do this ? Just curious - it is such a lot of work.

Improving the odds of getting something OTHER than blacktips from blacktip x whatever pairing by punching the ratios repeatedly. It is working (slowly)- at the start of this year I had a roughly 95% chance of getting a blacktip egg from blacktip x whatever, as of my most  recent massbreed it's down to around 91%- and I've gotten multiple metallics from blacktip x metallic recently. It'd probably work faster if I was massbreeding my entire collection every month, but 1) That is a LOT of time and effort to be doing every month, and 2) that'd be a heck of a lot more annoying to everyone else to have those super-massive blacktip floods that frequently; that's why I generally limit my full-army massbreeds to a few times a year.

(I do have enough CB blacktips I should sit down and try a solid PB 2g wall one of these days though...)