Per-scroll breeding limit

[wobster109]

I’m sure this will get a lot of gut reaction “No”s, but hear me out. Read before deciding. We have a full AP of mostly blacktips and a few celestials because a single player bred hundreds or thousands of them. It’s not fair for any one player to have the ability to impact everyone for hours or days.

 

How about a per-scroll breeding limit that’s high enough it won’t affect projects or gifting? Something like 50 or 100 bred eggs per day. Halloween, winter holiday, and valentine eggs don’t count toward the limit. That’s high enough that if you’re keeping your eggs for lineages or to gift, you won’t come near the limit. Only people who mass breed/abandon would be affected.

 

This was bound to become an issue eventually with more players, older players having more dragons, and the same size of AP. I myself have over 3000 adults. That’s 1500 breeding pairs. I could singlehandedly produce 50 APs full of eggs right now, and that’s too disruptive to everyone.

 

 

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

I think I'm also in the minority here of hating AP walls so tbh I would definitely support this. I understand why people wouldn't, but I agree with you xD

[Confused Cat]

I (really, really, really) disapprove of the current AP wall, but I will defend to the death index finger cramp everybody's right to breed as many eggs as they want.

[Sazandora]

Eh, I'm pretty neutral to this. Personally I can see why people do massbreeds and I don't mind them all that much. They drive AP times down, (hopefully) influence ratios, and... it is kinda fun to go on a mindless breeding spree. So I can't really 100% agree with a suggestion like this, but at the same time I can also see why people hate walls.

[TCA]

In order to not interfere with people who really enjoy breeding a lot of nice things to the AP for people and get enjoyment out of playing the game that way, I'd want any limit, if there WAS one, to be more like 500.

[wobster109]

13 minutes ago, Sazandora said:

. . . it is kinda fun to go on a mindless breeding spree. 

9 minutes ago, TCA said:

In order to not interfere with people who really enjoy breeding a lot of nice things to the AP for people and get enjoyment out of playing the game that way. . . .

 

I think it's all about balancing different play styles.

 

Lots of people enjoy hunting the AP for surprises and catches, but now all those players are unable to do that. Mindless breeding sprees may be fun for some players at the cost of making the AP less fun for other players. With a limit, you can still go on a spree up to 100, which is still a big spree.

 

You can still breed nice things for people up to 100. It takes time to thoughtfully, carefully breed nice things. When have you ever bred more than 100 nice things in one day? When has anyone? With a limit of 100, that's still plenty of room to breed nice things.

 

It's like eating 100 pieces of candy a day. It's a theoretical limit, but the times people actually feel it will be few and far between.

 

7 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

I will *never* support deliberate negative features put in place specifically to hinder the way some people like to play, just because some other people don't like it. 

 

Again, it's about balance. I will happily put a small hindrance on one player if it improves the experience for hundreds of other players. It's not like the play style of breeding lots of things is forbidden, with a limit of 100. You can still do what you like, and a lot of it! Just not infinitely.

 

3 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

I honestly don't understand why this particular idea doesn't get as much attention, everyone always seems to jump straight to 'let's limit people!!' instead of 'let's change the AP itself', which.... Is kind of sad, imo.

 

My guess is coding difficulty? It's easy to keep track of how many eggs a scroll has bred. It's just a counter on the scroll, and it doesn't even need to cache off the specific eggs. It's much harder to keep track of each egg's "source scroll", and to use that to calculate what to show each time someone refreshes. The order in the AP is not fixed. I'm guessing the extra coding to count the source scrolls, filter out, and replace would be much more complicated algorithm.

[Soulsborne]

39 minutes ago, Confused Cat said:

...but I will defend to the death index finger cramp everybody's right to breed as many eggs as they want.

 

This, exactly.

 

We have suggestions like this one every time there's a wall of some sort but tbh, some people seem to blow this up to a bigger issue than it is. No offense, but I bet we wouldn't even be talking about restricting people's breeding numbers if all eggs produced were "pretty lineages" of many different breeds (still all produced by one single player).

 

As it is, you can't properly influence breeding ratios of super common breeds without actually breeding them a lot and restricting the amount one person can breed would either mean

a) they'd have to space out their wall to many smaller walls which could lead to you seeing their eggs every day if you're unlucky with time zones or whatever instead of once every month or so

or b) they'd have to rely on the help of other breeders to get substantial numbers bred which would work around your suggestion anyway because several people breeding a smaller amount would still wall the AP.

[TCA]

27 minutes ago, wobster109 said:

You can still breed nice things for people up to 100. It takes time to thoughtfully, carefully breed nice things. When have you ever bred more than 100 nice things in one day? When has anyone?

If you have pre-established pairs of your nice things and a group containing them, it's actually very fast and easy. I have bred over 200 scripts in a day, all with carefully-picked out pretty mates that I thought looked nice, and throwing a few 2G and 3G altkin into the mix, multiple times.

Hence why I said IF it had to be limited--which I don't like the idea of much--500 is the minimum I'd consider a reasonable limit. But even if I wanted to spam breed all of JUST my OBJECTIVELY nice things that I know people want--I have 77 2G altkins to breed 3Gs from, a dozen or so 2G prizes, another 45 alt Arcanas to breed 2Gs from, and we haven't even gotten to the Thuweds, pretty lineage projects, or the fun word-code pairs that I would hope other people might enjoy.

You can see where 100 is too limiting, yes?

[Jazeki]

I find the AP to be limiting right now, but no. Like others, I could theoretically breed hundreds of desirable things to the AP right now, but I won't. Breeding is subjective and the walls pass. There's no reason to limit outside of "I don't like it." People can do other things than AP hunt if they don't like what's currently in the AP. It's an abandoned page, not a "specific things go here" page.

[wobster109]

50 minutes ago, Soulsborne said:

No offense, but I bet we wouldn't even be talking about restricting people's breeding numbers if all eggs produced were "pretty lineages" of many different breeds (still all produced by one single player).

 

That's correct, it wouldn't be an issue then because there would be variety in the AP, and not just all of the same one or two breeds. Is there any evidence showing that mass breeding does impact the ratios? Or even if it does, is it better to force all those eggs upon everyone? That's one player making the decision, "my random-bred eggs of X breed are better than CB ones", and foisting that decision onto everyone else. 

 

I think 100 a day would be easier to handle than 3000 once a month. It's like traffic. A few a day gets absorbed in the larger flow, but a bunch at once causes a blockage.

 

25 minutes ago, TCA said:

. . . 
You can see where 100 is too limiting, yes?

 

In your personal case, you would be at the limit once in a while. It sounds like you have about 200 breeding pairs (77 + a dozen + 45 + thuweds). They won't all produce eggs. There will be some no egg results each week. You'd get through most of your list most of the time (or space it over 2 days). And there would be a benefit too, in that players who like to stalk the AP won't see it blocked up for 18 hours at a time. Is that last quarter of your list worth everyone staring at the wall for hours?

 

It's easy to think of the way things are, with no technical restrictions, as giving the most freedom. But there are always trade-offs. One player's freedom can take away from another player's freedom, even if it's not a hard-and-fast rule. We're not deciding between restrict breeding vs. no restrictions. The choice is really between restrict breeding a little vs. massively restricted AP hunting (which results from mass breeding).

 

 

4 minutes ago, Jazeki said:

There's no reason to limit outside of "I don't like it." People can do other things than AP hunt if they don't like what's currently in the AP. 

 

How about if lots of people don't like it? That's been reason to change things in the past. The same reasoning can be said for breeding: "people can do other things than breed". It's all a balancing act. How many people want to breed thousands of the same thing? How many people want to AP hunt? I think 100 is a good balancing point. People who want to breed a lot can still do that, and people who want to hunt won't be stuck for as long.

Edited November 8, 2019 by wobster109

[TCA]

Just now, wobster109 said:

In your personal case, you would be at the limit once in a while. It sounds like you have about 200 breeding pairs (77 + a dozen + 45 + thuweds). They won't all produce eggs. There will be some no egg results each week. You'd get through most of your list most of the time (or space it over 2 days). And there would be a benefit too, in that players who like to stalk the AP won't see it blocked up for 18 hours at a time. Is that last quarter of your list worth everyone staring at the wall for hours?

 

My personal case was an example; I'm sure there are players who have even larger piles of nice things to breed.

 

Also, not everyone minds walls, and everyone likes hunting in the AP after one breaks and everything is low time. And more importantly, it's nigh impossible to get anything out of new commons other than even newer commons without breeding them en masse to try to fix the ratios.

 

Unless the way breeding affects ratios produced is changed someday, then yes, I think no limit or a higher limit IS worth some walling, so we can actually make lineages eventually. You can't tell me that my Script massbreeds didn't at all help with the fact that I have an Avatar of Change from Script, something I am very happy to have!

[Soulsborne]

12 minutes ago, wobster109 said:

Is there any evidence showing that mass breeding does impact the ratios? Or even if it does, is it better to force all those eggs upon everyone?

 

Actually, there is. I've seen it myself how mass breeding a super common finally enabled people to get metals out of them - something that can take months or even years depending on the ratios.

Also, it's not like a change in dynamic like the one I mentioned is only a win for the person that worked so hard to overcome (super) common breeding ratios... everybody profits the moment they try to breed a rare with a common breed for a lineage project.

[Jazeki]

43 minutes ago, wobster109 said:

 

 

How about if lots of people don't like it? That's been reason to change things in the past. The same reasoning can be said for breeding: "people can do other things than breed". It's all a balancing act. How many people want to breed thousands of the same thing? How many people want to AP hunt? I think 100 is a good balancing point. People who want to breed a lot can still do that, and people who want to hunt won't be stuck for as long.

The "I" was referring to the general sentiment of everyone who asks for breeding caps. We've already had multiclutches taken away and pairs can always refuse or just not give an egg. We have enough in-game options to limit breeding. We also had people who were very upset when the "void glitch" happened and eggs from mass breeds were showing up days later. There's no way to keep everyone happy, but taking things away is not the way to go.  100 seems too small a number as people who do this do it in the hundreds. 

[tjekan]

2 minutes ago, Keileon said:

There are many things that players can do when they don't want to look at the AP. 

 

This is the worst answer. Literally any other reaction to the problems caused by mass-breeding is a valid one in my opinion, but "So just don't hunt in the AP if you don't want to use it the way I want you to use it" is not.

 

No one should have the right to force hundreds of other users to stop using one of the site's core features unless they agree to adopt the eggs that breeder wants to foist on them.

 

Like you, I'd prefer a limit to how many eggs by a single breeder show on the AP at once over a limit to how many eggs a single breeder can produce in a day, but I'd prefer a limit to how many eggs a single breeder can produce in a day over telling people they're not allowed to use the AP unless they pick up all the unwanted massbred eggs first.

 

We DO have limits for how frequently we can kill, freeze, and raise dragons in a given time period, so it wouldn't be the end of the world  to have limits for how frequently we can breed in a given time period. It would be an irritant to mass breeders. They would have to breed 100 eggs, then wait, then breed another 100 eggs, then wait. It would annoy them, and I'd rather find a solution that doesn't annoy them. But making it so no one else can play in a public space for days at a time just to avoid inconveniencing the ones who want to breed 500 eggs without a break isn't reasonable, and "just stay out of the AP if you don't want those eggs" isn't reasonable.

[Fuzzbucket]

4 hours ago, Confused Cat said:

I (really, really, really) disapprove of the current AP wall, but I will defend to the death index finger cramp everybody's right to breed as many eggs as they want.

 

Agree 1000%

 

3 hours ago, TCA said:

In order to not interfere with people who really enjoy breeding a lot of nice things to the AP for people and get enjoyment out of playing the game that way, I'd want any limit, if there WAS one, to be more like 500.

 

I'd JUST accept a limit of 500... But only just.

 

3 hours ago, Soulsborne said:

 

This, exactly.

 

We have suggestions like this one every time there's a wall of some sort but tbh, some people seem to blow this up to a bigger issue than it is. No offense, but I bet we wouldn't even be talking about restricting people's breeding numbers if all eggs produced were "pretty lineages" of many different breeds (still all produced by one single player).

 

Right on, Soulsborne.

 

2 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

Suggestions of this type are often basically 'I don't personally like what is currently in the AP, so I want to change it'. This isn't *really* about one person breeding a lot of eggs to the AP, it's about one person breeding eggs that some people don't like or want.

 

Putting restrictions on *breeding* isn't the answer to walls and most likely wouldn't do as much to curb walls as people seem to think.

 

Agree here, too.

 

2 hours ago, Jazeki said:

I find the AP to be limiting right now, but no. Like others, I could theoretically breed hundreds of desirable things to the AP right now, but I won't. Breeding is subjective and the walls pass. There's no reason to limit outside of "I don't like it." People can do other things than AP hunt if they don't like what's currently in the AP. It's an abandoned page, not a "specific things go here" page.

 

It's a garbage dump that we can, if we wish, trawl through.

 

1 hour ago, Jazeki said:

The "I" was referring to the general sentiment of everyone who asks for breeding caps. We've already had multiclutches taken away and pairs can always refuse or just not give an egg. We have enough in-game options to limit breeding. We also had people who were very upset when the "void glitch" happened and eggs from mass breeds were showing up days later. There's no way to keep everyone happy, but taking things away is not the way to go.  100 seems too small a number as people who do this do it in the hundreds. 

 

And this.

 

1 hour ago, Keileon said:

Oh good, another one of these topics...

 

No.

 

If anything I'd prefer to have the solution HeatherMarie posed (only SHOWING a certain amount by a breeder) but I heavily favor inaction. Also, BSA massbreeds happen frequently and are something that the general userbase counts as a good thing-- I wouldn't want to limit those by placing a restriction on the breeder.

 

And this.

 

I do not support this. Even though I go read a book during a wall myself -  just because one person (or even many people) doesn't like someone else's playstyle is no reason to say they have to do it MY way because I am cross with the way they play.

[Keileon]

To elaborate on my position;

 

When it comes to this stuff I will almost always advise inaction as you're less likely to tick people off that way. If you make ANY change you will get an outcry from people who hate it. If you do nothing you still have people who don't like the status quo, but they're less melodramatic about it.

 

If it's a huge point of contention like this, a controversial subject that's purely gameplay-subjective, the best course of action would be to do nothing.

[animatedrose]

Also going to agree that if anything must be done, HeatherMarie's is a good idea.

 

Just because you don't like what's in the AP doesn't mean others don't. Some love pretties. Others love messies. Some want only 2gs while others find them the highest level of disgusting trash imaginable. You can't make everyone happy. You could have a wall of low-gen pretty metals and prizes and, as proven in a past version of this exact same suggestion, there will be people who hate it and cry foul and demand these "vile players" never breed again. Because they can. And that is their right, minus the name calling. Just as it is your right to hate what you see in the AP right now. Walls might not be desirable but even in a regular varied AP, you'll find plenty of people who look in there, go "meh", and walk away because there is nothing there they want. Again, can't make everyone happy, no matter what you do.

 

Everyone has their own play styles and none are wrong. The AP is a garbage heap. You don't go to the dump and expect to find golden statues. You could find one...but it's highly unlikely. But you might find some neat things, like a not-so-broken appliance or scrap wood that you need. A garbage heap doesn't care what you want. It contains what people throw into it. If you want a lot of pretty stuff in there, start chucking pretty stuff in there. Change starts with you.

 

And yes, massbreeding does effect ratios. I believe recently, you can now get metals and prizes from blacktips. You really couldn't do that a year ago because the ratio made it basically impossible. Have fun doing that with a brand new breed whose ratios swallow most every other breed into oblivion. Or breeds that just plain overwhelm breeding ratios, like most of the Infinity Stone dergs from this year's birthday release. There are reasons behind some of the walls. Not everyone is interested in spending years trying to break a ratio so they can complete a dream lineage.

 

No matter what you do regarding walls or the AP, you're going to make someone upset. There is no "maybe". It's a guarantee.

Edited November 9, 2019 by animatedrose
i forgot the at least two people have gotten prizes out of blacktips now, the lucky ducks

[Keileon]

DC's flea market is more the Hub than the AP. The AP isn't a place to buy and sell (ancient nonfunctional AP trading aside), but a place for unwanted things. There is never any guarantee you will find what you want, wall or not. You can't reasonably expect to find anything specific there, unlike the hub.

[tjekan]

Well, if you really view it as a trash heap, there's never any guarantee that anyone will want a piece of total useless garbage you decide to throw away, either. So it would still be preferable to limit the amount of useless junk people are allowed to dump there.

 

Personally, I don't find the AP to consist of mostly useless junk at all. I can almost always find something I want in there if it isn't blocked by a wall or made impossible for me to sort through by lag. But if I did think it was mostly trash, that would make me even more in favor of limiting the amount of trash being dumped.

Edited November 9, 2019 by tjekan

[Keileon]

8 minutes ago, tjekan said:

Well, if you really view it as a trash heap, there's never any guarantee that anyone will want a piece of total useless garbage you decide to throw away, so it would still be preferable to limit the amount of useless junk people are allowed to dump there.

 

Doing that would be like putting legal restrictions on how much of what you can throw away. Which... what?

 

So if someone is breeding a bunch of, idk, Pillows trying to get a Gold out of them, and they happen to pass that arbitrary limit without getting a Gold, they're SOL? And don't bring up "well why would you need a gold if you have 100 to breed anyway", as this can apply to any combination of common x rare, especially if some of those commons are Celestials. You can easily breed 100 common x rare pairs without getting a rare, let alone how multiclutches would affect that number.

 

Plus then what about the BSA massbreeds like the one before the Halloween event? I bred easily over 200 BSAs to the AP. Those didn't wall very hard because they're BSAs, but the site has no way of knowing what will or will not be quickly picked up, and TJ has pretty routinely shot down any suggestion implying that the site makes eggs more or less valuable beyond ratios.

[tjekan]

6 minutes ago, Keileon said:

 

Doing that would be like putting legal restrictions on how much of what you can throw away. Which... what?

 

 

Well, in real life, yeah. I'm limited to throwing two trash cans of garbage away every week. If I have more garbage than that I have to pay extra or save it for the next week.

 

Again, though... the AP really is NOT a garbage dumpster. It would be a garbage dumpster if the stuff that got dropped there was expected to be thrown out and destroyed, and if that was indeed what happened to most of the eggs there. But that's not what happens at all. It's more like a thrift store. People expect the eggs they dump there to be picked up and kept. Back when you could break a wall by picking it all up and earthquaking it, people were VERY upset that was happening to the eggs they had spent so much time breeding.

 

The breeders don't treat it like a dumpster, the people who look through it don't treat it like a dumpster, and most of all the game doesn't treat it like a dumpster... it's not as if the trash men ever come to empty it...

[pinkgothic]

I'm mostly ignoring the current wall, figuring walls just gonna happen', but also still in favour of instead just displaying things differently, as mentioned here: https://forums.dragcave.net/topic/185180-cave-blockages-ap/?do=findComment&comment=9851324 - which would mean no limits for the breeders.

 

(Skimming through that topic, I'm reminded that it got closed because people were fighting about mass breeds; if you (generic) too want this thread to survive, I recommend going an extra mile for mutual respect when posting. ❤️)

[Keileon]

2 minutes ago, tjekan said:

It's more like a thrift store.

I don't know any thrift stores where people dump things they don't want anymore on the ground and other people come and pick them up for free and walk away. Sure, thrift stores take donations, but that isn't the same thing as just leaving it there for someone else to find.

 

4 minutes ago, tjekan said:

The breeders don't treat it like a dumpster, the people who look through it don't treat it like a dumpster, and most of all the game doesn't treat it like a dumpster... it's not as if the trash men ever come to empty it...

See, there's a difference between a dumpster and a dump. A dumpster is just a large trash can, expected to be emptied. A dump, which is what the AP has been compared to, is a place where trash just sits. Maybe it gets compacted, maybe it gets recycled-- that process is us picking the eggs up. But otherwise there's no need for "trash men [to] ever come to empty it".

[Uther_Pendragon]

For a different perspective:

I do most of my hunting from the ap.
Why? Because we have extremely slow, rural internet, that is only a few steps above dial-up. Frozen molasses is faster.

(There is no other internet service out here)

 

I have difficulty catching anything in biome, and the ap gives me a chance to collect a variety of dragons I like, or to meet scroll goals. (Bless you wonderful players who drop cb's in there!)

 

When it's just one breed for not just hours, but days, it feels unfair. A few hours, ok, I get that, but an entire day, or even days is too long. (And it's not just a once a month thing, it's now every few days where there's a long One-breed wall.) If I were to 'go do something else' every time there's a wall, I'd soon not be playing this game at all. (And that statement I see a lot, feels yuck. My game play and scroll goals are important to me, too, and my time to work on them limited)

It may be the trash dump/dumpster dive for many users, but for me, it's my main source of eggs. It's the abandoned biome, lol.

 

I like the idea of only showing x amount of a certain breeder's eggs, if limiting amount bred per is a huge issue.

Edited November 9, 2019 by Uther_Pendragon
Forgot words

[DragonLady86]

You know why I hate these threads? (which seem to happen anytime there is a wall...shouldn't they be getting closed as duplicates?)  They operate on the assumption that "if X BREED wasn't there I could find all the good stuff I want but because I don't like X BREED everything is terrible".  This a flawed perspective. The AP is a trash heap, you are NEVER guaranteed to find nice things.  A horde of a one type of egg just makes it easier to see that there is currently nothing you want.   As apposed to trawling for minutes or even hours and still coming up with nothing you currently like/want.