Don't make Secret Releases

[ADN6]

47 minutes ago, Marduk said:

I never even saw the flow egg in the cave and only know it exists because of forum posts... none of which seem to have their scrolls linked so I can't see the egg myself in order to unlock it in the marketplace. 

I wish I had a flow egg for you to view. Maybe you could check out some hatcheries? That's how I got the adult views I needed. 

[Marduk]

1 hour ago, anetofstars said:

Marduk, look through the trading section via yr scroll. This tip was given to me by a helpful dragon cave player. HTH!

 

Can't sort the trading section for dragons you haven't unlocked in the encyclopedia.  Right now there's 455 offers to dig through for views.  I'll try out Silvi's Lair later and see if I can find some eggs on there to view.

[random_dragon_collector]

2 hours ago, Marduk said:

The release was horrible in general.  It was done Saturday instead of the usual Sunday, so people who don't check as frequently missed it.  The flood was less than 24 hours making it easy to miss and hard to get 1 of each for those able. 

 

I agree with the less than 24 hours part, but not the Saturday vs. Sunday part.  I was sitting there waiting at midnight with 8 empty slots fully expecting a new release when it came.  I think that they fall pretty evenly between Sat and Sun--the one time I really hated a drop when was when was 2 pm on a Sunday!  Before that, I felt like I'd know on the midnight between "no release this weekend," but now I always hold open slots all weekend long!

[Shadowdrake]

16 minutes ago, Marduk said:

 

Can't sort the trading section for dragons you haven't unlocked in the encyclopedia.  Right now there's 455 offers to dig through for views.  I'll try out Silvi's Lair later and see if I can find some eggs on there to view.

It's not that bad, you only need to view 5 eggs to unlock and the front page has a few already, plus a lot of people put their haves in the want area so you can just search "stat" and it'll bring up another batch.

[random_dragon_collector]

1 minute ago, Shadowdrake said:

It's not that bad, you only need to view 5 eggs to unlock and the front page has a few already, plus a lot of people put their haves in the want area so you can just search "stat" and it'll bring up another batch.

 

Also--I got the whole entry unlocked by looking at the parents of the many, many second gens being offered for trade.

[UnicornMaiden]

2 hours ago, Marduk said:

The release was horrible in general.  It was done Saturday instead of the usual Sunday, so people who don't check as frequently missed it.  The flood was less than 24 hours making it easy to miss and hard to get 1 of each for those able.  There were 6 new breeds anounced, and all of them rare so getting even 1 of each was impossible for those with bronze or no trophy and fully unlocking their encyclopedia entries will be incredibly difficult.  Then there's an unannounced egg added on top?  I never even saw the flow egg in the cave and only know it exists because of forum posts... none of which seem to have their scrolls linked so I can't see the egg myself in order to unlock it in the marketplace.  The frustration of digging through dozens of forum pages hoping I can find at least one egg to view only to find no links anywhere is not what I want to do with my spare time.  To have that frustration topped off with seeing a lot of people dismissing complaints about the secret release just makes me feel like DC is no longer a site I want to visit.

 

I was able to unlock it in the marketplace by finding eggs to view in a hatchery. However, this egg costs 1,200 mana. The old xeno eggs cost 500, and the new release eggs cost 100. You could buy an entire set of the new xenos in both male and female for the same cost as one flow egg.

[RainDear]

Just my opinion - not intending to speak for anyone else.

 

I'm sorry that people were so thrown by the unannounced egg. To me, it was an "Easter Egg" like many games have. Everyone had equal opportunity to see it. It was in hatcheries it was obtained by breeding, it was seen in the biomes, it was on people's scrolls and those who saw it announced it in the forums, on discord, and in the Wiki. It is usually my experience that the discovery of an Easter Egg in a game results in discussion, speculation and excitement - just like that on the News thread. I was surprised at the anger and frustration I saw over it. I haven't caught one, but I have seen them. I enjoyed it immensely, even though it appears to be a rare egg. I expect to eventually get mine and hope the reaction to this surprise doesn't affect plans for future surprises.

[Fuzzbucket]

10 minutes ago, RainDear said:

Just my opinion - not intending to speak for anyone else.

 

I'm sorry that people were so thrown by the unannounced egg. To me, it was an "Easter Egg" like many games have. Everyone had equal opportunity to see it. It was in hatcheries it was obtained by breeding, it was seen in the biomes, it was on people's scrolls and those who saw it announced it in the forums, on discord, and in the Wiki. It is usually my experience that the discovery of an Easter Egg in a game results in discussion, speculation and excitement - just like that on the News thread. I was surprised at the anger and frustration I saw over it. I haven't caught one, but I have seen them. I enjoyed it immensely, even though it appears to be a rare egg. I expect to eventually get mine and hope the reaction to this surprise doesn't affect plans for future surprises.

 

Beautifully said. Thanks RainDear.

[purplehaze]

1 minute ago, RainDear said:

Just my opinion - not intending to speak for anyone else.

 

I'm sorry that people were so thrown by the unannounced egg. To me, it was an "Easter Egg" like many games have. Everyone had equal opportunity to see it. It was in hatcheries it was obtained by breeding, it was seen in the biomes, it was on people's scrolls and those who saw it announced it in the forums, on discord, and in the Wiki. It is usually my experience that the discovery of an Easter Egg in a game results in discussion, speculation and excitement - just like that on the News thread. I was surprised at the anger and frustration I saw over it. I haven't caught one, but I have seen them. I enjoyed it immensely, even though it appears to be a rare egg. I expect to eventually get mine and hope the reaction to this surprise doesn't affect plans for future surprises.

I have to agree. I did not see anything awful about having this egg unannounced. It is always interesting to see the community work together to figure these things out. I'm not sure why people were so thrown by this. I think it may have to do with the accidental release of the Aether Wyvern a few years ago and people thinking that this was possibly an accident, but the situation was entirely different. There was no "in crowd" that had special knowledge of this egg, which seemed to be a common misconception. It was all discovered and shared in public.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

As long as they're sparse I don't mind secret releases. Even if the Strats had been announced, the results would've been the same: a huge rush in the first few hours and then desperate scrambling later on. The main difference was there was an air of mystery and intrigue during the normal course of things, which seemed quite fitting given the breed.

 

They also WERE added to the official post later on, which I appreciated. A bit of mystery followed by later clarification.

 

(Last but not least--given they didn't start appearing until several hours after the initial release, they were possibly a last minute thing, or a bit of miscommunication, which meant the official release announcement would've been a bit delayed either way.)

[Tetelestai]

I'm all for surprises and doing puzzles, but I don't like not even knowing that there was a puzzle even to be solved for a few days. I don't come to the forums often, so I didn't even know anything about the Straterae until it was as difficult to catch in the cave like a gold.

[Keileon]

Personally I liked the secret release; the fact that it was first discovered because someone accidentally bred it was frankly amazing to watch. A secret release in this way wouldn't have worked for almost any other "breed" release; Xenos have just the right conditions between breeding mechanics and a shared egg description that it was fun to watch and partake in. It's not like every other release has a secret; this was special, for a monthly release (hell, people were wanting some kind of ultimate Xeno since 2015 anyway) and for a once-every-couple-years thing... surprises and secrets are fine.

 

There's nothing wrong with how this was handled except that the flood stopped way too quickly-- which is expected, given Xeno popularity and the base rarity of the Staterae.

[olympe]

6 hours ago, Marduk said:

I never even saw the flow egg in the cave and only know it exists because of forum posts... none of which seem to have their scrolls linked so I can't see the egg myself in order to unlock it in the marketplace.  

There's this amazing invention called fansites where you can look at lots of eggs. Lots and lots of them. Just click on the "flow" eggs, and you should be done within a couple of minutes.

3 hours ago, RainDear said:

I'm sorry that people were so thrown by the unannounced egg. To me, it was an "Easter Egg" like many games have. Everyone had equal opportunity to see it. It was in hatcheries it was obtained by breeding, it was seen in the biomes, it was on people's scrolls and those who saw it announced it in the forums, on discord, and in the Wiki. It is usually my experience that the discovery of an Easter Egg in a game results in discussion, speculation and excitement - just like that on the News thread. I was surprised at the anger and frustration I saw over it. I haven't caught one, but I have seen them. I enjoyed it immensely, even though it appears to be a rare egg. I expect to eventually get mine and hope the reaction to this surprise doesn't affect plans for future surprises.

Well, there's a difference between seeing the egg in hatcheries, forum posts and the wiki and actually seeing it in the biomes. I've yet to see one in the biome, but I was lucky I had 2400 shards to spare. The anger and frustration usually doesn't stem from surprises, but from being unable to get the most special new egg.

 

Edited July 5, 2020 by olympe

[Marduk]

I'm kind of surprised how many people are focused on the difficulties I had finding flow eggs to unlock the encyclopedia entry.  It was probably the most minor issue I had with the release, and I only really mentioned it because the rarity of the eggs on top of the other issues with the release complicated any attempt to gain the eggs later.  That and because searching for eggs in the forum brought the dismissive comments to my attention and made it seem like criticism wasn't accepted.

 

3 hours ago, RainDear said:

Just my opinion - not intending to speak for anyone else.

 

I'm sorry that people were so thrown by the unannounced egg. To me, it was an "Easter Egg" like many games have. Everyone had equal opportunity to see it. It was in hatcheries it was obtained by breeding, it was seen in the biomes, it was on people's scrolls and those who saw it announced it in the forums, on discord, and in the Wiki. It is usually my experience that the discovery of an Easter Egg in a game results in discussion, speculation and excitement - just like that on the News thread. I was surprised at the anger and frustration I saw over it. I haven't caught one, but I have seen them. I enjoyed it immensely, even though it appears to be a rare egg. I expect to eventually get mine and hope the reaction to this surprise doesn't affect plans for future surprises.

 

There are three things that would have made this surprise more enjoyable.  First, if there had only been a couple of new breeds in addition to the surprise egg people could get all of them.  Having to choose which new eggs you want can ruin the fun of a fresh release.  Especially with rarer eggs that will be difficult to get from the cave later.  Second, if the surprise egg was sprinkled in with the flood of the other new eggs.  I didn't even know there was a flow flood until seeing it mentioned in this thread.  It was completely missing from the initial flood and was found through breeding close to the end of the release.  Even if there were very few of them mixed in, information about the egg would have gotten out much sooner and more people would have gotten one if the surprise egg was mixed in with the announced eggs.  Third, a hint in the announcement or otherwise confirmation that this is not a glitch.  The fact that they could be bred but were also showing up in the cave just made the whole thing look like a bug.  Even a small hint in the op ("June’s release brings a new breed. Each biome is overflowing with a unique variant, so you’ll have to do a lot of traveling to get them all.") could have gone a long way to helping clear things up.

 

As much fun as easter eggs can be, this release made some major errors that spoiled the fun of both the surprise and the new release.  These are all pretty easy solutions that I hope are at least considered with any future surprise releases.

[Mochi]

I like surprises and all but really think the way this was handled was just badly done. I only found out about the flow eggs days later and the only response I saw was 'oh it's not really a secret, people figured it out and knew about it since page 3 on the forum.' 

I'm not super active on the forums and even when there is news I'm not going to be checking/reading every single page of a thread especially when it's a new thread that quickly ends up being more than 50 pages long.

No official acknowledgement about this secret egg at all even after the cat was out of the bag and I just happened to stumbled upon it in the latest comments of the thread and even then it wasn't a specific mention of a secret egg but a difference in description that I initially chalked up to being a bug that was fixed hence why I never saw any of these 'flow' eggs to begin with. I probably would have been unaware there were flow eggs until TJ finally added them onto the main post.

 

 

[UnicornMaiden]

16 hours ago, Tetelestai said:

I'm all for surprises and doing puzzles, but I don't like not even knowing that there was a puzzle even to be solved for a few days. I don't come to the forums often, so I didn't even know anything about the Straterae until it was as difficult to catch in the cave like a gold.

 

14 hours ago, Marduk said:

There are three things that would have made this surprise more enjoyable.  First, if there had only been a couple of new breeds in addition to the surprise egg people could get all of them.  Having to choose which new eggs you want can ruin the fun of a fresh release.  Especially with rarer eggs that will be difficult to get from the cave later.  Second, if the surprise egg was sprinkled in with the flood of the other new eggs.  I didn't even know there was a flow flood until seeing it mentioned in this thread.  It was completely missing from the initial flood and was found through breeding close to the end of the release.  Even if there were very few of them mixed in, information about the egg would have gotten out much sooner and more people would have gotten one if the surprise egg was mixed in with the announced eggs.  Third, a hint in the announcement or otherwise confirmation that this is not a glitch.  The fact that they could be bred but were also showing up in the cave just made the whole thing look like a bug.  Even a small hint in the op ("June’s release brings a new breed. Each biome is overflowing with a unique variant, so you’ll have to do a lot of traveling to get them all.") could have gone a long way to helping clear things up.

 

Both of these

[Aqub]

23 hours ago, RainDear said:

Just my opinion - not intending to speak for anyone else.

 

I'm sorry that people were so thrown by the unannounced egg. To me, it was an "Easter Egg" like many games have. Everyone had equal opportunity to see it. It was in hatcheries it was obtained by breeding, it was seen in the biomes, it was on people's scrolls and those who saw it announced it in the forums, on discord, and in the Wiki. It is usually my experience that the discovery of an Easter Egg in a game results in discussion, speculation and excitement - just like that on the News thread. I was surprised at the anger and frustration I saw over it. I haven't caught one, but I have seen them. I enjoyed it immensely, even though it appears to be a rare egg. I expect to eventually get mine and hope the reaction to this surprise doesn't affect plans for future surprises.

 

My thoughts exactly, thank you. I don't have a problem with an occasional secret release. I thought this one was interesting, and noticing the speculation in the release thread and realizing there was a secret egg (about a day after I knew about the initial release) was fun in my opinion. Saying this as someone who hasn't gotten a flow egg yet, but I don't really blame the secrecy for not having one, just that they're rare.

[DragonLady86]

I dont mind that it was secret, but I do think that once it was discovered it should have been confirmed sooner. So many were panicked that it was another glitch, a simple "yes it's a real release" would helped. They weren't added to the first post until the others grew up and TJ fixed his hatchlings.  Apparently it was "funny" watching everyone flail about not knowing. 

[Chaosdawn]

32 minutes ago, DragonLady86 said:

I dont mind that it was secret, but I do think that once it was discovered it should have been confirmed sooner. So many were panicked that it was another glitch, a simple "yes it's a real release" would helped. 

 

This. It's difficult to enjoy a secret release when you're afraid it'll get taken away at any moment. 

[schenanigans]

On 7/4/2020 at 4:27 PM, RainDear said:

Just my opinion - not intending to speak for anyone else.

 

I'm sorry that people were so thrown by the unannounced egg. To me, it was an "Easter Egg" like many games have. Everyone had equal opportunity to see it. It was in hatcheries it was obtained by breeding, it was seen in the biomes, it was on people's scrolls and those who saw it announced it in the forums, on discord, and in the Wiki. It is usually my experience that the discovery of an Easter Egg in a game results in discussion, speculation and excitement - just like that on the News thread. I was surprised at the anger and frustration I saw over it. I haven't caught one, but I have seen them. I enjoyed it immensely, even though it appears to be a rare egg. I expect to eventually get mine and hope the reaction to this surprise doesn't affect plans for future surprises.

 

I have to agree with this, very well said.

 

As for the fear of the egg being unintentional, my only question is - why? There was a glitch one time with a release and everyone is suddenly afraid that everything is a glitch. The staterae eggs were OBVIOUSLY xeno related. I don't understand the fear of them being an accident at all, whether completely or as a CB drop. 

 

I think the biggest thing that people don't seem to realize is that as a collection game, you're not intended to get everything you need and want from day one. If you have a platinum trophy you could have grabbed one of each new xeno and a staterae pair when they flooded. If you missed the flood, they were still dropping frequently enough in the cave afterwards. People were swapping 1:1 new xenos for CB staterae, hours after the flood ended. 

 

The absolute outrage that this game receives from its community when anything unpredictable gets introduced is incredibly bewildering to me. I really hope this reaction doesn't deter TJ from more surprises in the future, as it is always intriguing and fun to watch when a community rallies together to discover new things.

Edited July 9, 2020 by schenanigans

[Fuzzbucket]

31 minutes ago, schenanigans said:

 

I have to agree with this, very well said.

 

As for the fear of the egg being unintentional, my only question is - why? There was a glitch one time with a release and everyone is suddenly afraid that everything is a glitch. The staterae eggs were OBVIOUSLY xeno related. I don't understand the fear of them being an accident at all, whether completely or as a CB drop. 

 

I think the biggest thing that people don't seem to realize is that as a collection game, you're not intended to get everything you need and want from day one. If you have a platinum trophy you could have grabbed one of each new xeno and a staterae pair when they flooded. If you missed the flood, they were still dropping frequently enough in the cave afterwards. People were swapping 1:1 new xenos for CB staterae, hours after the flood ended. 

 

The absolute outrage that this game receives from its community when anything unpredictable gets introduced is incredibly bewildering to me. I really hope this reaction doesn't deter TJ from more surprises in the future, as it is always intriguing and fun to watch when a community rallies together to discover new things.

 

Quoted for truth. I SO agree.

[purplehaze]

1 hour ago, schenanigans said:

I think the biggest thing that people don't seem to realize is that as a collection game, you're not intended to get everything you need and want from day one. If you have a platinum trophy you could have grabbed one of each new xeno and a staterae pair when they flooded. If you missed the flood, they were still dropping frequently enough in the cave afterwards. People were swapping 1:1 new xenos for CB staterae, hours after the flood ended. 

 

The absolute outrage that this game receives from its community when anything unpredictable gets introduced is incredibly bewildering to me. I really hope this reaction doesn't deter TJ from more surprises in the future, as it is always intriguing and fun to watch when a community rallies together to discover new things.

Agreed. I am surprised sometimes that TJ even keeps trying to keep the game interesting -- the comments he gets in the release threads would discourage most people.

 

Possibly the flooding of the Staterae could have been handled better, but it's not the end of the world. We haven't had a release of a true rare in recent history, but if this is a real true rare then it is not a given for everyone to be able to get one from day 1. I was not lucky enough to catch the flood of Staterae and I was locked with other new Xenos and not smart enough to trade for one when I could have gotten one for a reasonable cost or even hunt for one in the cave while they were more available. But I will get one eventually and hopefully more. I can wait. It took me at least 3 of the 5 years since the original Xenos were released to achieve my scroll goal of 4 CB pairs of each. I still do not have my goal of CB Golds, which I have never been able to catch in the cave (and I have been playing since 2008!). I was gifted some by incredibly generous people, won one in a raffle on the Z Project thread, and have bought the rest in the market. I still need one more. Once I have purchased that I will start saving shards for Staterae.
 

[prpldrgnfr]

I really don't like surprises (think about it-a drunk running a red light and t-boning your car is a surprise no one wants) and I was really disappointed to come home from work to discover another breed had flooded and disappeared before I got back-and I haven't seen one incave since.  Thankfully they were put in the market as that's how I was able to get "cbs".

Edited July 9, 2020 by prpldrgnfr

[Varasse]

14 hours ago, schenanigans said:

I think the biggest thing that people don't seem to realize is that as a collection game, you're not intended to get everything you need and want from day one. If you have a platinum trophy you could have grabbed one of each new xeno and a staterae pair when they flooded. If you missed the flood, they were still dropping frequently enough in the cave afterwards. People were swapping 1:1 new xenos for CB staterae, hours after the flood ended. 

 

I don't mind the secrecy and I don't mind that it proved difficult to catch those. But as one of the players who missed the release and the flood I came online to people offering CB Strats and asking for CB Golds and my firstborn child in return. Which would have been ok if this were an ordinary release of a new rare.

 

But this was supposed to be a celebration. The way this was handled it was like a birthday party where the early guests got served enough cake to make them sick while the late comers got nothing and were told to get themselves cake in the store down the street if they wanted some.

 

Besides many of us use this site and the community to distract ourselves from the not so nice things happening in real life, covid-related or not. So yes, I think, we are allowed to be frustrated and collect suggestions how to make it better for everyone next time.

 

Why could we not have a nice relaxed Xeno-b-day release we could all enjoy and an ultra-rare-release at another time?

[Fuzzbucket]

As a latecomer, I caught what I expected with no real trouble.... (I admit I bought three, but still.)