We Need New Drop Mechanics. It's Just A Fact.

[rabbithaver]

2023 EDIT: as of 6/27/23 it's been almost 3 years since i made this post. nothing has changed. the problem has gotten worse. it's becoming almost impossible to get new releases once the flood is over. this is absurd. FIX THIS.

 

2021 EDIT: it has been nearly a year since i made this topic, and it remains a serious problem. it's been getting worse as time goes on and we REALLY need an update. i know DC's userbase is very resistant to changes, but these limitations are making it harder than ever to play the game. i went inactive for MONTHS because it just became too much of a hassle to find decent eggs.

 

WE NEED A CHANGE. be it a fourth egg in each biome, a second row of eggs, a new biome, shuffling drops more often... just give us something, please!!!

___________

 

between adding more breeds and the recent explosion of new users, i think it's becoming clear that three mystery eggs dropping per biome is no longer enough to satisfy demand.

 

with more breeds added to the cave every month, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find rares. even uncommon breeds are hard to catch these days. i remember how much easier it used to be to find Copper dragons, but now? i haven't seen any since January. i spend hours on this site hunting for eggs. seriously-- i've browsed the cave for entire evenings, refreshing once per minute. i have done so for many years. yet i can count on one hand the number of times i've seen CB golds and silvers. it's to the point that they might as well not exist. i understand they're supposed to be rare, but i have played since 2008 (i had to move to a new account in 2015) and i have never been able to catch one. i know many veteran players who can say the same.

 

with the new Xenos, it's become so much worse. i've only caught three since they came out - to put that in perspective, by this time at the Copper release, i had five! i barely see any of them, even during the five minute drops... i love dragcave but it's getting to be too difficult to complete my encyclopedia because of this. i believe increasing to four (or possibly six) mystery eggs per biome would ease the situation.

 

just please do something. it's becoming frustrating. this site has grown so quickly that the original infrastructure no longer works, and as a veteran player, it's genuinely made me consider going on hiatus. something has to change!

Edited June 28, 2023 by rabbithaver
it's been almost THREE YEARS.

[Windy]

I support this idea, even an entire new row of eggs would help hunting. There are just too many breeds for three eggs / biome to be enough.

Edited July 6, 2020 by Windy

[Aqub]

I've found it difficult to find common breeds, even. Support. 

[syasa]

I support you, too.
I guess I'm not the only one not coming out. I'm tired of waiting for hours to see when the eggs I want come out.😥

[Wymsical]

I'm in favour of adding more eggs to the biomes, the clogging due to the sheer number of breeds (regardless of rarity) is really starting to show. I used inspect element to make the above, achieved with minimal CSS tweaks. Had to add some margin to the bottom of each egg div, made them vertical-align text-top so that they're aligned nicely (alignment was wonky otherwise), got rid of the float so the preceding thing would work in the first place, and change the egg holder div to min-height so that it would automatically accommodate additional eggs.

More consideration would have to be taken on the mobile side, but I did this in a few minutes while tired and bored at nearly 2:30 in the morning. I hope that it helps people envision the suggestion a little better.

[Corteo]

I would be concerned with how a fourth egg would be added on mobile in a way that would create the same hunting experience across platforms.   I would support a full extra row over simply a fourth egg, but that also looks a bit busy for me.  I don't know how much of it that it is too busy or how much of it is that my brain noticing the difference....  For me though it does seem difficult to hunt with having to scan six different descriptions.

 

 If the desired goal is more variety in the drops I almost wonder if shuffling the eggs more often would fill that gap without creating more design issues?

[DragonLady86]

The black marrow release had 6 eggs. Granted, we only had one cave then, but it is doable.

[Fuzzbucket]

It was a nightmare at the time, though.

[osmarks]

I agree with the general idea of more eggs, what with how many breeds exist now. It might be a problem for mobile devices, but four would fit nicely into two rows.

[Confused Cat]

I have complicated thoughts about the mathematics of this suggestion, but I'm not sure if thinking about it even makes sense without having background information that only TJ has.

 

Such as... how many % of rares (let's say Gaias for example) that are created at the top of the hour are usually taken from the cave before they get destroyed?

If that number is already near 100%, this suggestion only helps if the cave also creates more eggs.

Of course it would have to increase the number of all breeds (because ratios). However, the number of Gaias taken from the cave will increase more than the number of, for example, Teimarrs.

And then the ratio program shows up and says "oops, too many Gaias, let's make fewer", and then a lower percentage of the eggs the cave creates will be Gaias.

So we might end up with the same number of available rares as before. The only difference would be that they would be gone faster because they'd be more likely to be displayed (and immediately taken) earlier during the hour.

 

[osmarks]

10 minutes ago, Confused Cat said:

Such as... how many % of rares (let's say Gaias for example) that are created at the top of the hour are usually taken from the cave before they get destroyed?

That is an interesting point, actually. It could be more useful to tweak the way stuff is added to the "shuffling queue", perhaps by having new eggs swapped in every half-hour instead of every hour, than to do this. Alternatively, I think if the total number of eggs added each hour was increased as well as the amount displayed at a time, the effect would be similar.

Edited July 6, 2020 by osmarks

[Naruhina_94]

I agree with you. My preferred solution remains to add more biomes: 

These two suggestions combined would help to spread the players and show more overall eggs per minute for sure.

[olympe]

2 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

It was a nightmare at the time, though.

And the 2nd row of eggs helped alleviate the problem. I know I didn't manage to catch any marrows before the 2nd row, but got my scroll locked with (then only) 4 eggs without too much effort once the 2nd row was there. (I used to have proof of saying that the 2nd row helped a lot in my warn history... Before the forum upgrade, that is.)

 

Personally, I'd prefer more biomes, but this is an intermediate solution I'm more than willing to support. Although - what's wrong with an extra row of eggs in combination with new biomes?

Full support anyway. Because even if you're looking for a common dragon, these beasties are hard to find these days.

[Jazeki]

I don't really care about rares being harder to catch because...well, they're rares. But I do support adding another egg or row of eggs to accommodate hunting. 

 

I also support a change in the shuffle time. 

[Guillotine]

It's not even just rares and uncommons, it's less-common/older commons as well. I personally support combining more biomes with an additional row, just because with recentish hourly troubles I'm not sure how well the servers would be able to handle it happening more frequently, but I recognize that adding new biomes (gotta adjust all the non egg-gen code referencing biomes, of which there is probably a very great deal, probably would need new art/a redone map, on top of making the new page(s) themselves and plugging them into the egg-gen code...) is far more work than adding another row.

[kathy5]

I like this ideas also

[redwolf]

I also support either a 4th egg or a whole new row of eggs. Edit to add: I also support having more biomes. As for adding more eggs to the biomes, I personally would also prefer just adding an entire new row of eggs

Edited July 6, 2020 by redwolf
Clarification

[HeatherMarie]

I do *not* support just adding one egg, making it 4 eggs. That wouldn't help anything, imo. Three eggs right in a row is relatively easy to move between, adding a 4th in a separate row could easily make the difference between successful grabbing and missing it because you have to move your mouse farther. (I know it's not a large time difference there but hunting does require split-second clicking.) And I don't really see any good way to add a 4th in the current row, without having to stretch the scroll-background farther (and with mobile 3 eggs can fit on the screen, *barely*, 4 definitely could not without scrolling...).

 

I do, however, support new biomes. Possibly a change to how shuffles work. And, I guess I'd support a full 2nd row of eggs. That wouldn't be my first choice, I think there are better options, but I would support it. As long as it's a full 2nd row, not just one misplaced egg.

[Paintra]

1 hour ago, HeatherMarie said:

I do, however, support new biomes. Possibly a change to how shuffles work. And, I guess I'd support a full 2nd row of eggs. That wouldn't be my first choice, I think there are better options, but I would support it. As long as it's a full 2nd row, not just one misplaced egg.

 

Agreed ^^ One extra egg seems like it wouldn't do too much. I'm all for new biomes or another row.

[DragonLady86]

10 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

It was a nightmare at the time, though.

I'm going to agree with Olymp here. The extra row was added because the release was a nightmare and many of us only got any eggs because it was added. Myself included.  Honestly, it worked so well at the time I'm not sure it's never in other limited releases. (Maybe less of issue now with holiday biomes)

[pegasi1978]

This would put mobile users at a disadvantage. If your screen is vertical there's no room for a fourth egg/description.

If your screen is horizontal there's a little more room for a fourth egg, but the screen is so shallow that the description font has to get smaller. Adding a fourth would make the text almost too small to read.

[A. L. Aljan]

While I need more time to decide which of the excellent suggestions I like best, I think at least one of them is necessary at this point. I'm grateful that the Stat's were in the Market, or I wouldn't have been able to get them at all, and they're far too spectacular to miss out on!

 

Isn't it great that we've got so many breeds and so much variety that these kinds of changes are something we need to discuss?

[Chaosdawn]

I support another row of eggs. I'd love more biomes but I feel like that would take so much more planning/coding. =/

[Tini]

The mobile view could be helped by getting rid of or at least shrinking the text at the top. Maybe even an option in the settings for whether or not to display it. Maybe even getting rid of just the second paragraph would be enough? Rephrase into one paragraph and/or maybe make the text size match the egg desc? The intro text is clearly larger. A 4th egg would not work on mobile but I think we could find a solution for a second row instead.

[Keileon]

Yeah, just make the biome description text the same size as the egg description text. It's not something we need an option for.