Abandoned Page Compendium - Display Suggestions

[LadyLyzar]

Cavers,

 

There have been quite a few suggestions regarding the functionality and usefulness of the Abandoned Page, especially when it is only showing a limited selection of dragon breeds available.

 

Here is a compendium of current suggestions regarding how eggs should be displayed in the AP (thanks, @olympe!)  I've removed commentary so that users can draw their own conclusions.  Also, this list can be added to if you come up with your own idea.  If I miss it, feel free to give me an @LadyLyzar tag and I'll be sure to update it.

 

1. Do nothing. 
2. Limit breeding per scroll. 
3. Limit the number of eggs one breeder has displayed. 
4. Limit the amount of eggs of one breed being displayed. 
5. A way to filter what you see in the AP.
6. Paginate the AP
7. Split the AP into biomes
8. Add extra egg slots for bred or AP'ed eggs
9. Incentives for raising AP eggs (raffles, etc)

 

• Combinations of any of the above suggestions are free for discussion also.

 

A previous topic about this had to be closed due to fighting, so upfront we will need...

 

**************RULES!!!*************

 

1. This thread is for AP functionality and/or display suggestions only.  Feel free to discuss any current suggestions or come up with some of your own.
2. This thread is NOT about whether mass breeding is good, bad, whatever.  Any such posts will be considered SPAM.
3. Discussion of why users mass breed belongs in Site Discussion as that is not a suggestion.
4. Attacks on other users will NOT be tolerated, nor will any snarky comments.  These will be removed.
5. This thread will be closely watched by the mod team, so please follow the rules and get along!
6. If the thread turns into a fight, it will be closed.

 

***********UPDATES************

Based on some input from TJ, some of these suggestions may not be quite as viable as others.  Here is a summary of his feedback so far for each suggestion.

 

 

1.  Do nothing.  This is looking unlikely based on this statement:
 

Quote

I'm inclined to agree that, despite claims that abandoned eggs should come with no expectations of quality (and so on), it does look a lot like a few people are able to disproportionately affect how others play—far more and far more directly than pretty much any other aspect of the site.

 

 

 

2.  Limit breeding per scroll.  TJ's feedback quoted below but this has been largely unpopular so far.

3.  Limit the number of eggs one breeder has displayed. Feedback given below but this has some risks.

4.  Limit the amount of eggs of one breed being displayed. Feedback given below but also has risks.

 

Quote

Limiting Eggs per-person/breed/whatever: This definitely sounds better, though it also presents its own interesting issue. Right now, "walls" tend to be broken up when the eggs hit a sweet spot of time where the eggs are low enough time to hatch quickly, but still e.g. influenceable and such. Grouping the eggs seems very likely to interfere with that—just look at the recent issue where eggs from certain people weren't showing up until they were low time. the biggest complaint about the side effects of that was that, even if eggs made it to the visible AP eventually, they were no often longer able to be influenced, which made them much less interesting to people. Slowing down the rate at which any one slice of eggs can be grabbed by hiding most of them seems likely to accomplish the same, though it also introduces a lot of potential versatility into what eggs are shown.

 

More feedback on limiting actual breeding:

Quote

There's a big difference between breeding 500 eggs over the course of a week and breeding 500 eggs in rapid succession. Limits on breeding would have a hard time differentiating those.

But this nonetheless amounts to the "don't let people mass-breed" suggestion that has received pretty thorough disagreement, because the eggs eventually do get picked up, so we probably don't want to stop them from being abandoned to begin with.

 

 

 

More feedback on limiting what's visible:

Quote

Eggs dropping down to uninfluencable times was the biggest complaint before--low time eggs are good, but uninfluenceable eggs actually drop off in value to many people. If a "wall" of eggs is condensed far enough that they aren't picked up fast enough before they drop too low in time, that's potentially bad; slowing things down is the explicit goal, but also a problem when taken too far.

 

 

5.  A way to filter what you see in the AP. Feedback given below

6.  Paginate the AP  Feedback given below

7.  Split the AP into biomes Feedback given below

 

Quote

Pagination/splitting/filtering: Others have already said this, but vastly increasing the surface area of visibility into the abandoned page will distribute people across that surface area. For biomes, this was good: the number of people looking at any particular egg went down to ⅙, and the number of breeds per-biome is still lower than pre-split levels. For the abandoned page, there's already 30 eggs visible (more than the biomes), and in order for any solution of this sort to have a significant effect, it'd have to increase that dramatically (based on the typical size of "walls"). This severely risks spreading people too thin, which I agree with others sounds like it'd make the AP much more of a "right place right time" game of luck than it currently is. "Cherry picking" is a one-time thing; even though I agree it's likely to happen, once the initial rush is gone, it comes down more to people happening to be viewing the right page/filters/whatever of eggs where a new "desirable" egg appears.

 

8.  Add extra egg slots for bred or AP'ed eggs Generally unpopular as it favors a playstyle, no feedback from TJ yet

9.  Incentives for raising AP eggs (raffles, etc) No feedback from TJ yet

Edited November 16, 2019 by LadyLyzar
Updates with TJ's feedback

[tjekan]

The rationale for these AP display changes, by the way, is the increasing prevalence of long walls blocking anyone from hunting in there. This has always happened now and then, but recently, it's become more of an every-other-day occurrence, and lasts for hours and hours. People with limited time to play DC are being prevented from using the AP at all, because it's closed whenever they're able to get on.

 

All of these suggestions are meant to give people a way to continue using the AP while there is a large wall blocking it.

 

2) limit breeding per scroll: would prevent massbreeds, which are responsible for most of the walls, thus reducing their disruptiveness. (However, new restrictions always frustrate people more than adding something different, so I think most of us were in agreement that we can find a better solution.)
3) limit the number of eggs one breeder has displayed: the idea here was that if only 3-5 eggs by each breeder is displayed on the AP at a time, there will be a chance for AP hunters to continue doing their thing simultaneously to a large wall or walls of eggs filtering through.
4) limit the number of eggs of one breed that are displayed: same idea but specifically targeting one-breed walls.
5) a way to filter what you see in the AP: like in the trading hub, let each player select for what they see or don't see, so that they can ignore a wall if they choose to.

 

In the other thread, I suggested a sixth option: 6) Paginate the AP (or at least the first 75 pages or so of it) so that people who want to hunt in the AP can skip past a large wall and continue to do so. It wasn't a super popular idea, as many people complained that this would make users less willing to pick up eggs with garbagy lineage from the front page and they might die. Personally, I think it's more important to give users more choice in what eggs they take rather than trying to force them to take "garbagy" ones, but I also think that users generally choose to pick up very ER eggs anyway--whether they're blocking anythig or not, whether they're inbred mints or not--so once the eggs with less desirable lineages become ER I doubt any of them will die on the AP anyway.

 

And a seventh option was suggested: 7) Split the AP into biomes. No one seemed very clear on exactly how this would work, since bred eggs don't have biomes, but if that kink could be sorted out, it's another good idea in my opinion!

 

Basically, any of these except doing nothing would be a welcome relief to me. Because #2 would interfere with other people's playstyle, I would personally prefer one of the options #3-7. I would like people to bear in mind that #1, the current status quo, is deeply interfering with many people's playstyle right now, which is also not a preferable situation!

 

 

Edited November 13, 2019 by tjekan

[LadyLyzar]

Thanks @tjekan.  I will add those suggestions.

[HeatherMarie]

I'm really loath to go through all my posts in the other thread to copy/paste my detailed points about each suggestion, but I'll do a summary of the most obvious concerns:

 

1. Do nothing. My preference. And yes I'm aware some people don't consider this to be a valid option, but I've already said my piece many times on why I don't think 'walls' are as huge an issue as some people make them out to be. 
2. Limit breeding per scroll. No no no no no. If we are operating under the assumption that AP 'walls' interfere with some people's play, this is just shifting that interference somewhere else. If you don't want walls to hinder your play, don't try to hinder other people's play! Another point is I honestly don't think limiting people's breeding would have a positive effect on the AP regardless.
3. Limit the number of eggs one breeder has displayed.  If something has to be done, I'd go for this. It doesn't negatively affect the breeder, I don't *think* it negatively affects anyone at all, and it will cut down on the amount and length of walls. 
4. Limit the amount of eggs of one breed being displayed. #3 comments apply here as well, I wouldn't mind this happening... Although I do wonder about the logistics for both this and 3 during holiday walls.
5. A way to filter what you see in the AP. No. Cherry-picking. And yes cherry-picking is a bad thing, because 'unwanted' eggs are not magically going to disappear once everyone has grabbed all the good stuff. I'm pretty sure most AP hunters would *not* want a change to the AP that results in pages and pages of 'junk' instead of just one front page of 'junk'. 
6. Paginate the AP My thoughts for 5 apply here too, as well as a simple but strong dislike of the idea of dozens of extra clicks paging through tons of pages trying to see if anything interesting is left after other people have already been to those pages.
7. Split the AP into biomes Above reasons apply here as well... I like the AP because it's *not* the biomes, I don't have to rapidly click between 6 biomes over and over and over to see if eggs have moved or anything good has appeared. As well as a fairly complicated issue here of where exactly to sort the bred eggs in the first place, especially the breeds that appear in multiple biomes (or no biome at all!).

5, 6, and 7 I honestly don't see TJ agreeing to due to things he has said in the recent past. I also think in general they are the more complicated options that have the most diverse concerns and downsides. 

 

[TJ09]

People like to talk about the AP as some hands-off "fair" system—and I see the word "fair" in particular come up a lot. In theory, it is indeed fair because its mechanics apply to everyone equally. Everyone sees the same slice of the AP, special care has been given to ensure that slice fits on the page on all devices (desktop, mobile, small screens, large screens, etc), and the mechanics for when an egg shows up apply to everyone equally. But at the same time, somewhere around 25% of eggs right how are from only 0.5% of people^[1], and I believe I've seen even higher numbers in the past. I'm inclined to agree that, despite claims that abandoned eggs should come with no expectations of quality (and so on), it does look a lot like a few people are able to disproportionately affect how others play—far more and far more directly than pretty much any other aspect of the site.

 

As far as the actual proposals here:

 

Pagination/splitting/filtering: Others have already said this, but vastly increasing the surface area of visibility into the abandoned page will distribute people across that surface area. For biomes, this was good: the number of people looking at any particular egg went down to ⅙, and the number of breeds per-biome is still lower than pre-split levels. For the abandoned page, there's already 30 eggs visible (more than the biomes), and in order for any solution of this sort to have a significant effect, it'd have to increase that dramatically (based on the typical size of "walls"). This severely risks spreading people too thin, which I agree with others sounds like it'd make the AP much more of a "right place right time" game of luck than it currently is. "Cherry picking" is a one-time thing; even though I agree it's likely to happen, once the initial rush is gone, it comes down more to people happening to be viewing the right page/filters/whatever of eggs where a new "desirable" egg appears.

 

Limiting Eggs per-person/breed/whatever: This definitely sounds better, though it also presents its own interesting issue. Right now, "walls" tend to be broken up when the eggs hit a sweet spot of time where the eggs are low enough time to hatch quickly, but still e.g. influenceable and such. Grouping the eggs seems very likely to interfere with that—just look at the recent issue where eggs from certain people weren't showing up until they were low time. the biggest complaint about the side effects of that was that, even if eggs made it to the visible AP eventually, they were no often longer able to be influenced, which made them much less interesting to people. Slowing down the rate at which any one slice of eggs can be grabbed by hiding most of them seems likely to accomplish the same, though it also introduces a lot of potential versatility into what eggs are shown.

 

[1] Out of all unique people who abandoned the eggs currently in the queue for the abandoned page.

[Ruby Eyes]

I think it really depends on how high that limit is.

If it were, say, max. 24 eggs, that would leave 6 eggs from other sources and thus break any overly solid wall while still prominently displaying the current majority-building group of eggs.

[Fiona]

I really appreciate you weighing in, TJ. I personally used to be of the "do nothing" camp but have recently changed my mind due to the frequency of walls. My personal preference is limiting eggs shown per breeder as I think that has the smallest impact on individuals' play style while showing as much variety as possible in the AP. One suggestion I made in the other thread was that a single breeder's eggs would only stack (or hide) by breed, at a certain threshold. That would have the effect of not hiding eggs of different breeds behind a wall of say, Blacktips. That would slightly lessen the effectiveness of the stack in keeping a single person from dominating the AP but also would make it so if you see a Blacktip in the AP there will only be other Blacktips waiting to take its place if it's a stack. It should help maximize the variety in the AP, which was one of the arguments for changing how the AP works.

 

I think I would also be all right with simply limiting each breeder to say, 3 or 4 eggs showing in the AP. That would be simpler. My hesitation on it is that people frequently hunt for specific breeds and what they're looking for could be inaccessible behind a breed they don't prefer right now. But of the current crop of suggestions this one makes the most sense to me.

[tjekan]

I do think there's a large inherent difference between a glitch, which accidentally withheld breeders' eggs beyond the time users wanted them, and an intentional mechanic, which would distribute breeders' eggs at the rate users DO want them.

 

In the case of eggs with desirable lineages that people care about influencing, they will get picked up at a steady clip and not suffer from that problem. I mean, you know, the first 5 Thuweds will get picked right up, and 5 more will immediately appear--they will never become severely ER. In the case of a wall of inbred mints, those will probably indeed drop down to uninfluencable ER times, but that's a GOOD thing, because then people will be less unwilling to take them and the gender of an inbred mint hatchling is not relevant to most people in the first place.

 

ETA: The concern about misgendering eggs might be a point in favor of idea #3 over idea #4, though. It would be possible for a Thuwed mint and some CB mints to get stuck behind a wall of 1200 inbred mints trickling out 5 at a time, and become uninfluencable. Whereas the 1200th egg by a breeder is unlikely to be substantially different than the 1st, and if it was, it would be a VERY minor change to gameplay for them to breed their 3g tinsels first and their inbred mints second if they want to have the best chance at people taking both. We all do little tweaks like that to improve our various success rates at things all the time on here...

Edited November 13, 2019 by tjekan

[sashocirrione]

Is it possible to test-run each solution for a certain time period, such as 2-3 weeks each, to see how those solutions actually function and affect playability? A lot of the debate and disagreement is focused on speculation about how such-and-such solution would work, but without actual experience, it is still just speculation. If players could experience each solution, then I think that players might more clearly support one over the others, based on their own experiences with it.

[Uther_Pendragon]

 

Just to add a small point and observation:

The latest one-breed walls (we're now at 6 in 5 days) have all been incuhatchable/influenceable and they've still lasted a good chunk of time.

 

So are they not being grabbed up as quickly as lower timed eggs have previously? They've also been all range of lineages, from messy, to eg to 2g. 

 

 

 

I'm still liking 3 seen per breeder which allows eggs from the most people to be seen, as well as allowing a chunk of cb, auto'd, and anything else; it allows the most variety

 

Stacking the breeds themselves seems like the wall problem is still there, just viewed in a different manner? 

[Confused Cat]

 

2 hours ago, Fiona said:

I really appreciate you weighing in, TJ. I personally used to be of the "do nothing" camp but have recently changed my mind due to the frequency of walls. My personal preference is limiting eggs shown per breeder as I think that has the smallest impact on individuals' play style while showing as much variety as possible in the AP.

 

^ Quoting this instead of typing the same thing literally.

 

As for the number of eggs per breeder: as I said in the other thread, I would prefer a number higher than 3. I was thinking of 6, but - why not more?

 

We* just want to make walls less annoying, not completely get rid of anything that even remotely looks like one.

We still want the "wall eggs" to get picked up, and they will get picked up faster if more of them are visible at the same time. (E.g. by people looking for Z or other interesting codes, messy things for freezing, 2nd gens, or just some low time egg with a clean lineage they can continue.)

 

If the number of visible eggs per breeder was limited to (e.g.) 12, we would still realize there is a wall, and we could get a good idea of what's in that wall (all inbred Mints? messy Blacktips? 2nd gen Celestials?), and either grab something from those two rows of "wall eggs" or from the other three rows.

(Of course the "wall eggs" would not necessarily appear in two specific AP rows, but in case of those big one-breed walls we're mainly talking about, I think it's likely that they will end up in the first two rows because their time will go down compared to the other eggs.)

 

I would probably not go higher than 12. But also not much lower. Keep walls visible, just limited to a little less than half of the AP.

 

"But what if a massbreeder has friends and asks them to breed their armies at the same time?"

Then that happens, and we get a wall. What if we set the limit to 3, but they have 9 friends? I think we should just find a reasonable way to alleviate the problem, not try to get rid of it completely.

 

tl;dr:

Please introduce limit of eggs per breeder visible in the AP, and set that limit to 12.

 

 

* I 

[HeatherMarie]

32 minutes ago, Confused Cat said:

tl;dr:

Please introduce limit of eggs per breeder visible in the AP, and set that limit to 12.

 

 

Agree with pretty much everything in this post.

 

I really do think 3-per-breeder is too low and will simply lead to new AP issues, and I'm glad that TJ mentioned those issues. While all of this is speculation since we haven't actually seen any of these suggestions in action, we can get fairly accurate ideas of how things would go based on what we've already seen: If only 3, say, Blacktips are shown and all 3 are messy/inbred/unwanted, they will sit there. And more desirable 2gs and pretty lineages and such are stuck behind those 3 eggs. It's basically just *moving* the problem of 'walls block desirable stuff' into a more concentrated 'wall'. 

 

38 minutes ago, Confused Cat said:

"But what if a massbreeder has friends and asks them to breed their armies at the same time?"

Then that happens, and we get a wall. What if we set the limit to 3, but they have 9 friends? I think we should just find a reasonable way to alleviate the problem, not try to get rid of it completely.

 

Also agreeing strongly with this... I think trying to actually *eliminate* walls is a hopeless task, pretty much all of the suggestions here could still potentially produce 'walls' of some sort, just in different ways. Lessening the effect and frustration over them should be the focus, not eliminating completely.

[Soulsborne]

The only really valid options for me personally are limiting visibility by breed or by breeder (if something has to be done at all).

 

Out of those two I kind of prefer "limit by breed" because it makes for a more diverse AP regardless of walls in queue or not... if we look at the non-walled AP there's often still a majority of a few select breeds, e. g. (random numbers used) 6 Electrics, 5 Mints, 8 Turpentines, 5 Dorsals, 6 Sunstones. If every breed were limited to a max. number of 3 at a time we would see at least 10 breeds every moment of AP hunting. Also, diverse breeding projects with many different breeds involved would still be seen (Freaky or others breeding checkers is such a case) while the typical common breed walls would only display e. g. 3 [random common breed] and 3 Celestials at once.

 

Limiting visibility by breeder to 3 or 5 (or any other number chosen) would stop any kind of wall, yes, which includes people breeding their Prize / SAlt / Thuwed / whatever checkers and nice lineages as well. For me, those are the kind of things I like to find in the AP so seeing less of them wouldn't be as optimal as the option above.

[tjekan]

1 hour ago, Uther_Pendragon said:

 

Just to add a small point and observation:

The latest one-breed walls (we're now at 6 in 5 days) have all been incuhatchable/influenceable and they've still lasted a good chunk of time.

 

So are they not being grabbed up as quickly as lower timed eggs have previously?

 

ER moves exponentially faster than incuhatchable. There's more clicking and an army of reds necessary for the latter. A wall of 4 day eggs can sit a long time. The wall of 1-2 day eggs built up behind the holidays was gone FAST. 

[Uther_Pendragon]

Ah, thanks for the clarity, Tjekan! 
 

I would be on board with say, two rows of one breed. It still leaves the majority of the AP for the variety I love so much, yet still has the flavor and feel of a wall. Is there downsides to this?

 

I like Soulsbourne's post.

 

 

[purplehaze]

I have stated before that I think 3 per breeder is too small a number. It almost seems like we are trying to be punitive, which should not be the goal. We should be looking for a solution that lets all of us play the way we want to with the least possible impact on the play style of others.

52 minutes ago, Confused Cat said:

We* just want to make walls less annoying, not completely get rid of anything that even remotely looks like one.

We still want the "wall eggs" to get picked up, and they will get picked up faster if more of them are visible at the same time. (E.g. by people looking for Z or other interesting codes, messy things for freezing, 2nd gens, or just some low time egg with a clean lineage they can continue.)

This is a very good point. I often do at least mouse over those walls looking for a code I like. With only 3 or 4 of them showing I would be much less likely to find anything.

 

7 minutes ago, Soulsborne said:

Limiting visibility by breeder to 3 or 5 (or any other number chosen) would stop any kind of wall, yes, which includes people breeding their Prize / SAlt / Thuwed / whatever checkers and nice lineages as well. For me, those are the kind of things I like to find in the AP so seeing less of them wouldn't be as optimal as the option above.

But you would still be able to find those in the AP. I don't understand your reasoning here. Am I missing something? We don't usually see "walls" of that sort anyway because those eggs are taken fairly quickly.

[Uther_Pendragon]

Lol Soulsborne is agreeing with you that 3 per breeder is too few, Purplehaze, and saying that x limit per breed is their possible preference.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Uther_Pendragon

[Soulsborne]

2 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

But you would still be able to find those in the AP. I don't understand your reasoning here. Am I missing something? We don't usually see "walls" of that sort anyway because those eggs are taken fairly quickly.

 

Yes, you would still find those but only very few at a time... probably not catch any yourself and only find out by looking at the lineage of something you didn't catch (which I do quite often, either for my amusement or for inspiration). You'd basically have to look a lot harder to find more of their lineages because there are only few of them displayed.

Also, I'm not browsing the AP all day, every day but I find nice lineages like I've mentioned quite often and usually those aren't just "somebody bred 3 eggs of those" but rather it's a whole flood of nice things for 10-30 minutes where you can fill up your slots with goodies and then it's back to the same old AP.

[Azuragosa]

Personally I like the walls.  They lower the AP time which is way more important to me than breed variety, and the walls break up often enough that there's other stuff to hunt too.  I'd be against any of the proposed changes to the AP because of it, as they would just cause AP times to increase and rarely dip to instant hatching times (and may permanently stay above incuhatchable times).  This was great for newer players to boost their scroll numbers a tad, especially with freezing.

 

I wouldn't want to see pagination or splitting up the AP either, it would make the occasional SAlt or Thuwed breeding too frustrating to hunt.  Furthermore, if you set X per breeder too low it just seems punishing.  If you set it too high it doesn't take many people to collaborate breed a wall anyway.

 

The only change I would be happy with would be decreasing the time of the AP faster if there's a wall going on, which would preserve the effect from the ratios, break up walls faster, and still make AP times valuable to those who enjoy walls for that reason.  I do not know how reasonable that sort of fix would be though, so I would prefer no change to be made.

[Fiona]

To add to purplehaze's point, Saltkin, Thuweds, Prizes and such don't breed in large enough numbers to stick around long, as they're very desired. Though if they were to be stacked by breeder they'd still be taken quickly once people realized what they were. They'll go, "Oh boy! I found a 'X"!!!!" grab it and run off cheering. And the next will pop up.

 

My concern with stacking by breed is what if two or more people are sending the same breeds, in whatever numbers to the AP and the first one's eggs are messies but t he next guy's eggs are pretty 2nd gens? Say Breeder X has bred a hundred messy umpteeen gen Spirit Wards and I'm breeding 2nd gen SAltkin Spirit Wards behind him? If we filter by breed the pretty and desirable ones are covered by the messies. Granted, as soon as the messies are cleared the SAltkin are going to be snatched up. But at what time remaining? That's why I was somewhat preferring to see stacks by breeder rather than by breed.

[Stromboli]

So my favorite thing about the AP is it's a way to get eggs at lower times. Like, I don't collect Blacktips very often, but if they're coming through at an incuhatchable time, I'm more likely to snag a few. And it's really great when something interesting or rare comes through at low time. So my preferences are geared toward best preserving that aspect.

1. Do nothing. – Nah. From a gameplay perspective it doesn't matter to me, but from a community perspective I'd rather the arguments about walls be stopped and doing nothing will not solve that issue.
2. Limit breeding per scroll. – I'd rather not.
3. Limit the number of eggs one breeder has displayed. – Eh. Depends on the limit. If the limit's too low, we lose some of the time reduction that's kinda nice about picking up things from the AP queue.
4. Limit the amount of eggs of one breed being displayed. – That'd be okay. I feel like we'd get less benefit of things sitting in queue to drop time, depending on what the limit is. (Like, as cool as it would be if we could have every egg in the AP be a unique breed, then you'd probably have a lot of breeds come up at 7 days, and some breeds that end up below that influenceable threshold that makes them less useful to folks.)
5. A way to filter what you see in the AP. – Not a huge fan of filtering. I do like the kind of level playing field that comes with everyone seeing the same set of eggs, however that set is determined.
6. Paginate the AP – Eh. I'd rather not just because it means that the AP will never again be a place to occasionally get lucky with a lower time uncommon/rare egg. Those guys'll get scooped up as soon as they're bred, which makes AP hunting less interesting to me.
7. Split the AP into biomes – I'd prefer this to pagination if we need something to expand the "surface area" of the AP. 

[VixenDra]

ok, so I breed 1 per breed/variant yet my eggs/pairs will still be targetted because of the walls people will cooperate to do anyway? Sad.

[Confused Cat]

I prefer limit per breeder over limit per breed. Reasons:

• When there are several eggs of the same breed in the AP, they were often bred by the same person, too, so they would be limited anyway.
• Eggs of different breeds bred by the same breeder often have more in common (in terms of "desirableness") than eggs of the same breed bred by different breeders.* So an AP that shows more different breeders will have more variety than one that shows different breeds.

Example: I would probably be able to breed 3 purebred even gens of 10 different breeds, and that would make a rather boring AP for many people. If 10 different players all breed their Deep Seas at the same time, the result will probably be more interesting and contain desirable eggs for more players with different interests.

 

[tjekan]

8 minutes ago, VixenDra said:

ok, so I breed 1 per breed/variant yet my eggs/pairs will still be targetted because of the walls people will cooperate to do anyway? Sad.

 

I'd describe it less as your eggs being "targeted" as "metered." Your eggs--and my eggs, for that matter, I often breed more than 5 eggs myself--would not be banned, killed, or anything else. They would just be released onto the AP in batches instead of in a single large lump, allowing users to see other things simultaneously to yours.

 

User choice is nearly always a good thing in game design. TJ has already weighed in that a couple of breeders monopolizing the whole AP isn't ideal (which I strongly agree with.) Now we're just trying to think of fair solutions that will suit everyone.

[VixenDra]

2 minutes ago, tjekan said:

 

I'd describe it less as your eggs being "targeted" as "metered." Your eggs--and my eggs, for that matter, I often breed more than 5 eggs myself--would not be banned, killed, or anything else. They would just be released onto the AP in batches instead of in a single large lump, allowing users to see other things simultaneously to yours.

 

User choice is nearly always a good thing in game design. TJ has already weighed in that a couple of breeders monopolizing the whole AP isn't ideal (which I strongly agree with.) Now we're just trying to think of fair solutions that will suit everyone.

 

I don't agree with the suggestion.

Holiday walls show very well what happpens if the AP has prioritised things showing up and blocking the rest - things die behind the holiday wall - massively.

If any breeder limit is ever live I swear I'll just breed rares just so they show the last then, to rise the chance of the commons' survival... they have a hard time anyway, being Bitten, Zombie-failed or not even hatched, they don't need to timeout in the AP as well...