Don't make Secret Releases

[tjekan]

The thing about "secret" releases is they're not really secrets. They're something that the most dedicated player base learns about immediately on Discord and gets to before most users even know it's there. So it's not really a "secret" release, it's an "exclusive" release as a reward for being a really active player. That's not inherently bad--most games have special rewards for their most active players--but I really didn't feel like DC was especially lacking in that respect.

 

But even so, I still don't think there's anything wrong with exclusive releases per se, EXCEPT for the fact that this one is rare. TJ has made a point in the past about not giving BSA's or other specials to rare dragons because they're already so difficult to get. Releasing a new rare dragon and also making the release exclusive so that only players in the know are there during the time it's dropping at a reasonable rate is... well, it's not exactly the kind of move that pulls in new players, let's just say that.

[Fuzzbucket]

Any player can be a "most dedicated player" and join the discord groups. It ins't a "special reward. I got my fill and I don't go near discord. It wasn't "only players in the know, it really wasn't. On the contrary - a player I traded with had accidentally got 8 staterae because they thought that was the only new derg out there - that was how many there were in the biomes at the time..

 

ALSO - I think so many people test bred that it hit the ratios with a mighty wallop. I know I did....

[Jazeki]

1 hour ago, tjekan said:

The thing about "secret" releases is they're not really secrets. They're something that the most dedicated player base learns about immediately on Discord and gets to before most users even know it's there. So it's not really a "secret" release, it's an "exclusive" release as a reward for being a really active player. That's not inherently bad--most games have special rewards for their most active players--but I really didn't feel like DC was especially lacking in that respect.

 

But even so, I still don't think there's anything wrong with exclusive releases per se, EXCEPT for the fact that this one is rare. TJ has made a point in the past about not giving BSA's or other specials to rare dragons because they're already so difficult to get. Releasing a new rare dragon and also making the release exclusive so that only players in the know are there during the time it's dropping at a reasonable rate is... well, it's not exactly the kind of move that pulls in new players, let's just say that.

This is extreme reaching here. And Fuzz summed it up pretty well. 

 

I am on the discord. I am a dedicated player in that I play on a daily basis and I check in here and on the discord frequently enough. Most times, I ignore the DC chat part of discord because it moves too fast and I have other things to be doing. I had no idea about the bred staterae until someone posted it here and no idea about the flood until I saw it posted here--also because I was sleeping during the drop.  I highly doubt that TJ and spriters could swing any kind of "exclusive" dragon (outside of the spriter alt) that you are describing here without someone leaking breeding or catching results. The DC playerbase is too spread out across time zones, interaction with social media, and game involvement. If it were exclusive, it would not be in the market, either. TJ has taken away all of the other exclusives and said that they shouldn't have existed in the first place (CB hybrids, alt black sweets). 

[RainDear]

My opinion - speaking only for myself.

 

Being on the forums, discord or the Wiki did not give anyone any special advantage in this release. Being observant, breeding for the new Xenos, visiting hatcheries, noting the descriptions in the biomes - these are how players first became aware of the staterae. Everyone had equal opportunity to be the first to see them. Granted being on the forums, discord or Wiki gave those who first saw them a place to share, discuss and speculate about them, but everyone had the same chance to see them.

 

It really irritates me that some seem to feel that being observant and willing to discuss what you have seen somehow constitutes being somehow special, privileged or having some unfair advantage. I also found it odd that those who did see and were willing to share speculate and guess were then castigated for disseminating incorrect information. No one of those observant few knew any more than anyone else what was going on.

 

I am grateful for the first to find such things or figure out what breeding creates new hybrids. I am grateful that they're willing to share their findings with others. I enjoy the speculation and discussion and discovery in the News thread, but I am really tired of the name calling and finger pointing just because a few were observant and shared.

Edited July 13, 2020 by RainDear

[random_dragon_collector]

I don't do any discord, and I don't feel they had any advantage.  Heck, the rest of us usually get info because folks from there are sharing!  The bred "flow" was reported immediately in the regular thread, and the 6 am "flow" flow showed up in the thread right away, too.  My only real beef was the lack of confirmation from TJ or the spriter that it wasn't a glitch.  I don't feel at all like only an exclusive group had info or an advantage.

[purplehaze]

1 hour ago, tjekan said:

The thing about "secret" releases is they're not really secrets. They're something that the most dedicated player base learns about immediately on Discord and gets to before most users even know it's there. So it's not really a "secret" release, it's an "exclusive" release as a reward for being a really active player. That's not inherently bad--most games have special rewards for their most active players--but I really didn't feel like DC was especially lacking in that respect.

I really disagree about that.

 

Perhaps that would be true if the people who had discovered the "secret" had kept it to themselves. But they didn't. It was shared in the news thread as soon as it was discovered. Most of us would never have known there was a special egg if it hadn't been found first by discord players who weren't even looking for it but rather were trying to see if old Xenos would breed new Xenos.

 

What is a "really active player" anyway? I consider myself one, and yet I missed all the supposed advantages that they had. As RainDear says, no one was more privileged than anyone else here.

[olympe]

4 hours ago, RainDear said:

Being on the forums, discord or the Wiki did not give anyone any special advantage in this release. Being observant, breeding for the new Xenos, visiting hatcheries, noting the descriptions in the biomes - these are how players first became aware of the staterae. Everyone had equal opportunity to be the first to see them. Granted being on the forums, discord or Wiki gave those who first saw them a place to share, discuss and speculate about them, but everyone had the same chance to see them.

Not true. I slept through both the regular Xeno flood and the Staterae flood, then had to go to work. (I started around 6:15 my time - which is 12:15 AM cave time.) Not the right time to go online and play DC beforehand.)

 

Being observant in the biomes wouldn't have helped by then, either. Because, despite hunting a lot during the first couple of days, I never ever saw one Staterae egg. Not even once I knew they should have been there. News flash: They weren't. Not when I was there.

 

4 hours ago, purplehaze said:

What is a "really active player" anyway? I consider myself one, and yet I missed all the supposed advantages that they had. As RainDear says, no one was more privileged than anyone else here.

Well, people who live in release-friendly time zones usually are at an advantage. Mine certainly isn't.

[RainDear]

34 minutes ago, olympe said:

Not true. I slept through both the regular Xeno flood and the Staterae flood, then had to go to work. (I started around 6:15 my time - which is 12:15 AM cave time.) Not the right time to go online and play DC beforehand.)

 

Being observant in the biomes wouldn't have helped by then, either. Because, despite hunting a lot during the first couple of days, I never ever saw one Staterae egg. Not even once I knew they should have been there. News flash: They weren't. Not when I was there.

 

Well, people who live in release-friendly time zones usually are at an advantage. Mine certainly isn't.

Speaking just for my opinion.

 

I became aware of the release at about 7pm cave time Saturday. The flood release was long gone. The "Flow" flood was long gone. I found out about the Staterae eggs in the News thread. I saw a flow egg in the biomes late Monday afternoon. I still have seen only a very few and not caught 1. I still feel that I had the same chance as anyone else to see them and am grateful for seeing the discussion about them and enjoyed the release over all.

[spatio]

I personally actually thought the secret release was really neat!  It was kinda fun to be clued in that a mystery was afoot when people started finding the flow eggs in hatcheries.  Like most people have said, I would appreciate longer floods of new releases in general (I didn't even see there was a release until the afternoon, and have yet to see a flow egg in cave - had to buy mine from the market haha).  It's a game, not a job.  Secrets and surprises keep it new and interesting!

[HeatherMarie]

Most definitely *not* an 'exclusive' or 'dedicated player' release. That's just not true in any way. *Anyone* who happened to be on the DC site at the time of the flood could've gotten plenty (and, as some people mentioned both here and in the News thread, multiple people got locked with the 'mystery' breed with no idea it was a 'mystery' or rare breed at all!). A user could've not logged on for weeks, and then just happened to pull up the biomes at the right time. There was absolutely nothing about this release that was limited to a specific subset of users, except 'users who happened to be hunting at the right time'. That's it. 

Now, getting the *information* gathered by *plenty* of other users in the first hours, sure, users who frequent the forums/discord may have seen that stuff before others. But as fuzz said, *anyone* could get that information if they looked. (And because my mind works in actual examples, saying this release was 'exclusive' or for 'decided players' is imo comparable to saying the raffle is (not the winning but the entering). Anyone who plays can enter the very-low-requirement raffle every month, and if some users miss a monthly raffle it's probably because they forgot to enter, or didn't have time to play much that month, etc. Not because only 'dedicated players' could enter!)

 

 

13 hours ago, purplehaze said:

Perhaps there should never have been a total flood of the Staterae? If the number of eggs released during the flood had been spread out over at least a few hours it might not have bothered people so much. They wouldn't have felt so cheated to have missed it.

 

This is actually a pretty good point. Actually, it's an interesting thing to think about for releases in general, imo. Users constantly talk about how short the 'floods' are and how many people weren't online during that time-window... Would it be better if there just *weren't* such heavy floods at all? Pulling a random number out of the air, what if instead of 1500 new eggs dropped in 8 hours it was more like 1500 eggs dropped over the course of 15 hours? Or even longer. Make the 'floods' last days, helping more people get more sooner, just with the eggs dropping more spread out so it's basically the same amount but giving more people a chance to get online and see them? 

[olympe]

Just now, spatio said:

I personally actually thought the secret release was really neat!  It was kinda fun to be clued in that a mystery was afoot when people started finding the flow eggs in hatcheries.  Like most people have said, I would appreciate longer floods of new releases in general (I didn't even see there was a release until the afternoon, and have yet to see a flow egg in cave - had to buy mine from the market haha).  It's a game, not a job.  Secrets and surprises keep it new and interesting!

I think that's what it boils down to. Loooonger floods, especially. Everything else is secondary.

[Diame]

I hated the "secret" part of this release. I hated the "flood" of "flow" eggs and then them becoming as rare as golds. I will probably never be able to catch a "flow" egg other than buying one from the market, or by breeding it, and maybe perhaps trading. Missing out on something as rare is this has me kicking myself since I guess I wasn't up at 6 am to experience the initial flood. It really is as nonsensical as it sounds. PLEASE don't make this a new trend for releases!

[KrazyKarp]

I agree I'm getting the feeling the secrecy wasn't as big of an issue as the lack of eggs during the initial release. Especially in a release this big with a new breed I assume is sticking around as a rare, I doubt the descriptions for Stats are just flavor text like the "sparsely distributed" Sandwastes and "one of the rarest breeds" Black Truffles. There need to be longer floods in these big releases. I don't think there would be as much frustration if this same situation happened to a surprise common release.

[KRABBIT]

2 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

This is actually a pretty good point. Actually, it's an interesting thing to think about for releases in general, imo. Users constantly talk about how short the 'floods' are and how many people weren't online during that time-window... Would it be better if there just *weren't* such heavy floods at all? Pulling a random number out of the air, what if instead of 1500 new eggs dropped in 8 hours it was more like 1500 eggs dropped over the course of 15 hours? Or even longer. Make the 'floods' last days, helping more people get more sooner, just with the eggs dropping more spread out so it's basically the same amount but giving more people a chance to get online and see them? 

100% this was my only problem with the release. The straterae DIDN'T DROP in the initial drop, and then randomly flooded a few hours later, with no warning or anything, and then completely vanished. I don't think that was fair. People egglocked with 8 and then missed the straterae. I don't think there should be mini drops going on that aren't with the initial drop time.

[osmarks]

13 hours ago, RainDear said:

Being on the forums, discord or the Wiki did not give anyone any special advantage in this release. Being observant, breeding for the new Xenos, visiting hatcheries, noting the descriptions in the biomes - these are how players first became aware of the staterae. Everyone had equal opportunity to be the first to see them. Granted being on the forums, discord or Wiki gave those who first saw them a place to share, discuss and speculate about them, but everyone had the same chance to see them.

No, not everyone had the opportunity to get any. Not everyone's in time zones which mean they were awake when the straterae were around.

[Fuzzbucket]

15 hours ago, RainDear said:

My opinion - speaking only for myself.

 

Being on the forums, discord or the Wiki did not give anyone any special advantage in this release. Being observant, breeding for the new Xenos, visiting hatcheries, noting the descriptions in the biomes - these are how players first became aware of the staterae. Everyone had equal opportunity to be the first to see them. Granted being on the forums, discord or Wiki gave those who first saw them a place to share, discuss and speculate about them, but everyone had the same chance to see them.

 

It really irritates me that some seem to feel that being observant and willing to discuss what you have seen somehow constitutes being somehow special, privileged or having some unfair advantage. I also found it odd that those who did see and were willing to share speculate and guess were then castigated for disseminating incorrect information. No one of those observant few knew any more than anyone else what was going on.

 

I am grateful for the first to find such things or figure out what breeding creates new hybrids. I am grateful that they're willing to share their findings with others. I enjoy the speculation and discussion and discovery in the News thread, but I am really tired of the name calling and finger pointing just because a few were observant and shared.

 

As so often, you speak for me too.

 

10 hours ago, olympe said:

Not true. I slept through both the regular Xeno flood and the Staterae flood, then had to go to work. (I started around 6:15 my time - which is 12:15 AM cave time.) Not the right time to go online and play DC beforehand.)

 

Being observant in the biomes wouldn't have helped by then, either. Because, despite hunting a lot during the first couple of days, I never ever saw one Staterae egg. Not even once I knew they should have been there. News flash: They weren't. Not when I was there.

 

Well, people who live in release-friendly time zones usually are at an advantage. Mine certainly isn't.

 

I am almost in the same time zone as you are, didn't start looking till 9 am BST (which is 4 am cave time, so in a way we do better !) even though I was expecting a release, and it was OK - though I was locked before the Staterae flood. Even so it was easy to trade with a desperate player who had missed all the "regular" eggs. I caught a regular just yesterday. And I have seen two Staterae eggs - though didn't CATCH them. I've also seen golds this week, and didn't catch those either. Same old, basically; rare eggs go fast.

 

Various work hours aren't really something TJ can really be expected to accommodate.

 

The ONLY real issue is that as soon as people were worried about a glitch, no-one On High said it wasn't. 

[Iside]

I think the "secret" dragon was a nice thing, like a present for the players. The problem was its flood. I discovered about it after seeing some strange eggs in the hatcheries and reading the posts in the release thread, and by then the flood had long gone. So I basically lost any chance of getting one from the cave (in the following hours I SAW 1 and nothing more).

Not a big problem since we have the marked, but this is a rare dragon. And it means that a single egg costs 1200 cristals from the market while other new xenos cost 100, definitly not a cost anyone can afford.

[Wolfs_Bane]

I'll add in my two bits here. Like many others, I grabbed a whole bunch of the "secret" ones. When I thought I was grabbing the new ones. Once I read that other people where like "Um? What's this? It's not on the front page." I also got spooked that it might've been another gusty glitch. I kept tabs on the release page nearly all day to see if these where going to get fixed or not. Needless to say I was worried that all of a sudden all my eggs where going to turn into something different. So yes, I would like would've like to have have been told about all available eggs up top. Not constantly hold my breath just waiting to see if TJ was going to pull a switcheroo.

 

WB

Edited July 14, 2020 by Wolfs_Bane

[Ruby Eyes]

11 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

Most definitely *not* an 'exclusive' or 'dedicated player' release.

That release was frigging exclusive to those who happened to be online in the FEW hours when these purple noodles dropped.

With which we're back to the fact that a FEW HOURS are NOT ENOUGH for a new release drop.

 

By the time I managed to get on, I saw them in hatcheries and in the announcement thread by PLAYERS, but NOT AT ALL in the first post where they should have been. Not even the slightest hint telling if it's even worth going for those things hat might just be turned into a different breed just because those beasts were accidents like the Aethers back then.

Not that it would really have mattered since they were ALREADY invisible in the biomes at that point. (And breeding a few hundred Xenos didn't yield anything either.)

Edited July 14, 2020 by Ruby Eyes

[Ruffledfeathers]

I have to agree it was semi exclusive; me being one of the players active when the strats flooded. After that, I dont remember if I even saw one again, although at the time I was only looking for a Jungle Xeno. 
 

When I did get them, I was honestly unsure whether they were indeed a glitch or intentional. While Im glad to have mine, its sad so many missed out  

[tjekan]

19 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Any player can be a "most dedicated player" and join the discord groups.

 

Sure. Anybody can! But most people don't. And when they realize that they can't really play the game fully without doing so, they disengage. It's a known problem of game design.

 

For my part, I know I would never have known the staterae existed if I hadn't spent an hour reading through back pages of the release thread. It's REALLY rare. Not having been here during the brief flood period, I have seen one stat in the cave so far--during the same time period, seen one gold and two silvers. The many users who spend less than an hour a day on the game, don't read comments on release threads, don't go on Discord, and don't PM with friends about DC things were left in the dark.

 

I don't think it's a good idea to deliberately leave information out of an official forum post that gives the visual appearance of being authoritative and something that you can trust. Yes, anybody has the ability to interact with the game and the userbase actively enough to learn the missing information. I did. I was scrolling through other users posting about their guesses about the energy of each new xeno and saw it. Will most users bother to do that? No. They will incorrectly assume the lead post made by the game designer is where the real information is. 

[Fuzzbucket]

Just now, tjekan said:

 

Sure. Anybody can! But most people don't. And when they realize that they can't really play the game fully without doing so, they disengage. It's a known problem of game design.

 

I play the game fully, have no intention of disengaging (on the contrary, I am obsessed, but still not on here 24/7)  and am not in Discord. Just saying.

[tjekan]

But you drill four pages down in user comments on a forum post, Fuzz. That's the same thing. I'm not on Discord either, and I saw it.

 

My point is there are a lot of users who don't do EITHER of those things. They're casual users. They play an hour a day or less. They check the forum, see a post from TJ, read it and assume it's accurate. They don't think "Oh, I wonder if it's a headfake, better spend some time going through all these user comments or get on social media to check."

 

Those are the people who are going to disengage if told that's not good enough, not you or me.

Edited July 14, 2020 by tjekan

[Awdz]

31 minutes ago, tjekan said:

My point is there are a lot of users who don't do EITHER of those things. They're casual users. They play an hour a day or less. They check the forum, see a post from TJ, read it and assume it's accurate. They don't think "Oh, I wonder if it's a headfake, better spend some time going through all these user comments or get on social media to check."

 

This is exactly what happened to me. I did not see that there was a seventh breed until 2 days later when it was already beyond rare. God knows how I can meet my scroll goals (CB, not market) with what should have been a lot easier since I was there on release day. Extremely frustrating!

Edited July 14, 2020 by Awdz Bodkins

[Jazeki]

It's not like the Discord is some suddenly new place for users to chat off-forum about what's going on/intentionally hide things. Before Discord, we had the IRC chat for many years and there are also fansites/unofficial chat places--discord/reddit/tumblr--as well for people to chat among themselves and figure out things. Was I upset that I missed out on holiday releases all those years ago because I didn't know the forums were a thing? Yes. Did I miss out on things done through the IRC? Yes. Have I missed out on things announced through the Discord? Yes.  Somewhere, someone is going to miss out on something. Yes, TJ could have confirmed that these were not a glitch and adjusted the drops. But there was nothing really exclusive about it.