The Ratio Problem - and possible solutions

[Fuzzbucket]

6 hours ago, Fiona said:

"No Interest" actually means they aren't refusing but are not very compatible. So if you're getting "No Interest" messages, you definitely need to switch up your pairs.

 

Personally, while I'd like to see something done to address the issue of certain breeds dominating any breedings involving that breed I think the ratios as they currently exist are integral to the coding. (something TJ said, which I now cannot find, left me with that impression. Obviously I could be remembering it wrong, but he has said that ratios are staying) I don't want TJ to have to recode his whole game. But I agree it shouldn't be so hard to get something other than say a script, when breeding scripts with anything. Or whichever other newer breed only breeds itself....

 

I get what TJ means about ratios being integral actually, but I agree that one breed shouldn't get to DOMINATE for absolutely ages as they often do. I don't know if i's "safe" to breed Carmines in checkers yet, for instance; I gave up for a long time... and I will revisit my blue-banded x moonstones some day soon; another one I gave up on.

[Pyra]

The rarity issue is really big to me. I am really sick of seeing like the same 5 eggs in the cave constantly. Rarity really needs to be adjusted. As somebody else said, rares being rare and the way ratios work was great for when the game was super small and only had a few hundred players and less than 100 dragons, but the game gets bigger every year and the way it's run just doesn't seem very stable to me.

[Fuzzbucket]

Five eggs? *confused*

[Corseiss]

2 hours ago, Pyra said:

same 5 eggs in the cave constantly.

Hmmm? Do you mean 5 breeds of dragon eggs or 5 eggs that you keep picking up?

[DragonLady86]

9 hours ago, Corseiss said:

Hmmm? Do you mean 5 breeds of dragon eggs or 5 eggs that you keep picking up?

Breeds, they mean breeds in the biome.  If 5 eggs were stuck there we'd have a major help thread going on.

[Fuzzbucket]

But you can't just have 5 BREEDS In a biome either. I just don't get where the 5 comes into anything.

[ValidEmotions]

I think they more mean "I see the same 5 breeds in the biome a lot" not that there are only 5 breeds showing up. Like say they see A, B, C, D, and E 98% of the time, while they see F-Z the remaining 2%.

[Fuzzbucket]

Well, sorry - but they must be sitting in one single biome then.

[ValidEmotions]

I'm going to assume '5' is simply an estimated exaggeration and not a true exact stat. I mean, I know what they're saying--it feels like I only ever see three or five different breeds (per biome) because they're always there and nothing else cycles through. Even when I refresh on the new drops or try to clear away cave blockers, more of the identical breed pops up.

Edited February 21, 2020 by ValidEmotions

[Alwerien]

I think arguing about someone saying "5" is a pointless derailing of this thread that otherwise had some very good suggestions. 

 

I'm not gonna touch up on 1 or 3 but the breeding ratios......Breeding ratios of newer dragons as is are just a headache and bring a very unfun element to any lineage breeding involving newer dragons. You get hyped about a new exciting dragon, start planning lineages that look just gorgeous and then all excited get started on it. Okay, first few breedings...that's to be expected you only get the new dragon. Weeks go by.... And then by time you actually successfully breed the older breed partner, you might have long lost the interest in that lineage altogether which is just a shame. 

[tjekan]

I think if anything the massbreedings have proven how messed up the ratios are. The blacktip massbreeds have changed the blacktip ratio--BARELY. After thousands and thousands of breedings and years that have passed. Expecting that normal user behavior will ever bring a new breed to the target quota you want is unreasonable. Even the many hours spent on this over-the-top concerted massbreeding project has still not gotten blacktips all the way there. There is zero hope that any newly released common breed will naturally become breedable for years under such a system. 

Edited March 3, 2020 by tjekan

[Sundew]

Between him and her I've got 52 Purple x Aeria Gloris breedings, none of which resulted in Purple eggs. Things are a little easier when the age difference between the two breeds is not quite as drastic, but this is just silly and there's no good reason for the common x common ratio mechanic to stay the way it is.

Edited March 23, 2020 by Dew

[Shadowdrake]

I have to agree the current situation makes individual players have very little agency in the game. If it's not a popular dragon or you don't have the influence to get tons of players breeding and collecting one common type of dragon? Tough luck, time for you to waste months to years on breeding your pairs over and over without result. Even if you're willing to personally collect a massive amount of said dragon, you still can't have any effect unless you take hours out of your day every week giving yourself carpal tunnel and angering other players by massbreeding them over and over just for the chance of getting something else out of them. As interesting as ratios were 10 years ago, the game has outgrown them and either needs a drastic adjustment or a complete overhaul.

[olympe]

Ratios can't be done away with entirely, or the game wouldn't know which eggs to produce. It's not that simple, as ratios actually *are* an integral part of the game. However, certain parts of the game could have a different ratio system. Just uncoupling breeding ratios from cave ratios would do us a lot of good. Especially if market prices were used to determine breeding ratios - meaning that two 100 shard commons would have an equal chance of producing either parent breed.

[lexi_]

this isnt my pair, but i saw an egg of theirs on the AP once and decided to track its parents progeny, and its the same issue. it makes me not want to breed aqualises myself, which sucks because a simple mechanic of this game shouldnt make it extremely unfun and disheartening to play! 

[Shadowdrake]

 

On 3/24/2020 at 11:33 AM, olympe said:

It's not that simple, as ratios actually *are* an integral part of the game.

By getting rid of ratios, I mean making them fixed or non-player-based so individual players don't have to fight against the rest of both the playerbase and dragon population to, say, get a prize/other rare after others massbred theirs, or breed an aeon egg when they have been overbred so much they've hit rare breeding ratios.

  

On 3/24/2020 at 11:33 AM, olympe said:

Just uncoupling breeding ratios from cave ratios would do us a lot of good.

I feel like breeding ratios are uncoupled from cave ratios--there have been a lot of new releases that end up decently uncommon in cave after the flood, but they still breed like dirt commons for a while. Baikalas, florets, truffles, bautas, tatterdrakes, siyats. There are even older uncommons that still breed like unpopular commons, presumably because they're not actually popular enough to fill up the breeding ratio.

[Auriene]

Please, do something about those ratios - something, anything really... I'm avoiding breeding dragons for most of my lineage projects by now because I find it simply too frustrating. Week after week, I see yet another 'not-the-breed-I-need' egg, and I'm using mostly common dragons! I've even modified some of my lineage projects to avoid the 'new common x old common' problem, but even that doesn't seem to work in some cases.

 

For pity's sake - if the ratios are really untouchable for some reason, give us at least some way to obtain that one egg we need without making the process so frustrating. This is ridiculous that the lineage builders need to go through months or even years of fails to finish that one freakin' checker or stairstep.

 

My suggestion: make it possible to influence the breed of the egg by one of the parents. 100% chance of success, without 'no interest' or 'no egg' messages. Make this action available only once a week or so, which means that during the entire month, the player would be able to influence the breed of 4 - 5 eggs at most. That amount shouldn't skew the ratios of any breed much, even in a long run, but it would save a lot of lineages, and a lot of the lineage builders' nerves. Or maybe it would be possible to cut those eggs out of the ratios system altogether.

 

Make people pay in shards to use that action - if you think that giving them that ability 'for free' would be unfair for whatever reason. Make breed-influenced eggs untradeable, like those from the Market. Restrict the action to the eggs that have been bred only on the player's scroll, if you deem it necessary - just make it possible. Pretty please.

[Keileon]

On 3/24/2020 at 11:33 AM, olympe said:

Ratios can't be done away with entirely, or the game wouldn't know which eggs to produce. It's not that simple, as ratios actually *are* an integral part of the game.

They very much can. All you'd need to do is change the dynamic population ratio to a static rarity tier percentage. It's less a question of whether it CAN be done-- which it can-- and more of whether it's worth rehauling old code to fix something that's kind of by design but has gotten out of hand.

 

Personally I think it's worth it. The ratio system broke over 50 dragons ago. I don't think that a dynamic, shifting system that gives more weight to certain breeds based on population is feasible for a large site-- it would be much saner coding-wise and gameplay-wise to stick things in distinct tiers of rarity and work with percentages.

[olympe]

@Keileon Even if you change the ratio system from dynamic to static, it's still a ratio system. Thus, ratios remain and cannot be done away with.

[Keileon]

1 minute ago, olympe said:

@Keileon Even if you change the ratio system from dynamic to static, it's still a ratio system. Thus, ratios remain and cannot be done away with.

When we speak of ratios in reference to DC it is invariably in reference to the shifting population dynamic. I'm aware that flat percentages are still ratios, but they are not the ratios, if that makes sense.

[Shadowdrake]

Someone mentioned elsewhere that variable ratios in breeding don't make much logical sense either; a population of dragons is not going to suddenly breed less of their own species because another distant population of the same species had a baby boom.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Shadowdrake

[Naruhina_94]

I am not an expert of ratios, forgive me if I say something stupid.

 I just ask :

Can the game be based entirely on the value assigned by the market on the specific breeding pair? If I breed a 100 shards dragon with a 700 shards dragon you will get 1 out of 7 chances to get the more expensive breed.

Would it help? 

 

The cave drops could be scheduled so they forcefully rotate in each biome common and rare dragons, alternating the breeds. So let's say coast biome has 100-500 shards worth breeds drop consecutively for 20 minutes, then there is a window of 15 minutes where only 500-1000 shards worth breed drops and the last window of time only last 5 minutes but there are only 1000+ shards worth breeds and the biome is completely refreshed every minute, not every five. 

 

Drops order could rotate every hour to avoid people waiting just for the rarest one. every hour there are 2 common drops lasting 20 minutes each, 1 uncommon lasting 15 minutes and 1 rare drops of 5.

The same breed can't reappear in the same drop more than x times. 

 

Would it work? If it doesn't please explain me why not

Edited April 8, 2020 by Naruhina_94

[FiveSlicesPizza]

Too many breeds and slot is always 3 in cave

 

More breed = less chance of getting the egg you want 

 

 

DO YOU STILL WANT NEW BREEDS?

 

[olympe]

4 hours ago, Naruhina_94 said:

I am not an expert of ratios, forgive me if I say something stupid.

 I just ask :

Can the game be based entirely on the value assigned by the market on the specific breeding pair? If I breed a 100 shards dragon with a 700 shards dragon you will get 1 out of 7 chances to get the more expensive breed.

Would it help? 

It should be one out of eight - 1 of the 700 shards eggs and 7 of the 100 shards eggs. But yes, I think that would help immensely.

 

4 hours ago, Naruhina_94 said:

The cave drops could be scheduled so they forcefully rotate in each biome common and rare dragons, alternating the breeds. So let's say coast biome has 100-500 shards worth breeds drop consecutively for 20 minutes, then there is a window of 15 minutes where only 500-1000 shards worth breed drops and the last window of time only last 5 minutes but there are only 1000+ shards worth breeds and the biome is completely refreshed every minute, not every five. 

I doubt that's going to work out. People will just wait for the high-tier eggs they know will be coming, which leads to people raising fewer commons - which then affects the ratios, and probably quite badly. People would do that even if the order of the common/uncommon/rare drops are randomized. Because they'd still know that a) the rare drop will happen within the hour and b) for how long to avoid the biome before returning for a chance at rares.

 

4 hours ago, FiveSlicesPizza said:

Too many breeds and slot is always 3 in cave

 

More breed = less chance of getting the egg you want 

 

 

DO YOU STILL WANT NEW BREEDS?

 

YES! Absolutely. Because new breeds make things interesting.

[Naruhina_94]

1 hour ago, olympe said:

It should be one out of eight - 1 of the 700 shards eggs and 7 of the 100 shards eggs. But yes, I think that would help immensely.

 

I doubt that's going to work out. People will just wait for the high-tier eggs they know will be coming, which leads to people raising fewer commons - which then affects the ratios, and probably quite badly. People would do that even if the order of the common/uncommon/rare drops are randomized. Because they'd still know that a) the rare drop will happen within the hour and b) for how long to avoid the biome before returning for a chance at rares.

 

YES! Absolutely. Because new breeds make things interesting.

 

if a prolonged relase of uncommons / rare is to avoid, even if randomized, I would still grant tot of each species to be relased x day, no matter the ratio going on. Let's pretend that DC has a total of 100 players, i would relase 3 golds x day no matter how much they are bred/ they are numerous in people' scolls. I wouldn't use the flat numeber of player who have an account because many of them are inactive, so i would consider the number of players active in the past 3 monthes and adjust the set number of rares according to that. But this is entirely for rare breed, wouldn't solve the problem of "rarity among commons" that is present right now.

Edited April 8, 2020 by Naruhina_94