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

[KageSora]

I'd say more that let new releases remain unlimited but have them flood longer to compensate if we got more scroll space.  As it is some of them seem far too short before other eggs mix in again.  (Personally I'd rather we have more scroll space in general with the size of some releases being so big even Platinum Trophy isn't enough to grab a male/female of everything)

 

Couple that with biome pages or something and it would work better.

 

Especially if down the line we also got a ratio system overhaul.

[deleted_account]

On 11/2/2022 at 2:22 PM, KageSora said:

 

Just to point out, that won't mean anything if TJ wants to release CBs instead of hybrids.  There's a lot of dragons on the request list and we have no idea how many things there might be that aren't being publicly worked on that are designed as a CB so if TJ doesn't want a ton of hybrids he has plenty of options to choose from as-is.

 

Making a hybrid won't guarantee that it will be added, after all.

 

There are 0 hybrids in DR. 

My wife was out there when finished DRs were public and before the DR clean up, and she says there were always very few hybrids in there, barely any.

Evidence says that the safer assumption is that he has too few rather than too many.  But there are tons of CB breeds in stock for sure. 

 

TJ can't possibly release more hybrids if he doesn't have a bulky supply of them to choose from.

This is the only thing he can't do by himself even if he wanted and relies on users entirely, after all he doesn't pay his artists so can't make demands. Which is why I mentioned it here, because people seem too uninterested or scared to make hybrids... Without any solid evidence against.
Everything else in this thread is only up to TJ, but making a better hybrid supply for him to have an OPTION to release more hybrids at all if he wanted is up to artists, not him, he can't release 6 hybrids in a year if he only has 5 in stock and receives 2-3 in a year in general. And what he wants and doesn't want is not known, so better skip that part.

 

Making ANYTHING won't guarantee that it will be added, hybrid or not!
Perhaps TJ should be asked if he has a good supply of hybrids or maybe could use more, worst that can happen is that he won't respond.

0 hybrids in DR and very few in the past suggests that hybrids were never what artists wanted to work on and there's no reason to assume there is a good stock of those. Never hurts to make more.

 

 

• Small edit: Market exists and would be helpful in the first week.

 

 

I also agree the scroll space is too small.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Biel
I don't want to continue but needed to add a small reminder about the Market.

[KageSora]

23 minutes ago, Biel said:

 

There are 0 hybrids in DR. 

My wife was out there when finished DRs were public and before the DR clean up, and she says there were always very few hybrids in there, barely any.

Evidence says that the safer assumption is that he has too few rather than too many.  But there are tons of CB breeds in stock for sure. 

 

TJ can't possibly release more hybrids if he doesn't have a bulky supply of them to choose from.

This is the only thing he can't do by himself even if he wanted and relies on users entirely, after all he doesn't pay his artists so can't make demands. Which is why I mentioned it here, because people seem too uninterested or scared to make hybrids... Without any solid evidence against.
Everything else in this thread is only up to TJ, but making a better hybrid supply for him to have an OPTION to release more hybrids at all if he wanted is up to artists, not him, he can't release 6 hybrids in a year if he only has 5 in stock and receives 2-3 in a year in general. And what he wants and doesn't want is not known, so better skip that part.

 

Making ANYTHING won't guarantee that it will be added, hybrid or not!
Perhaps TJ should be asked if he has a good supply of hybrids or maybe could use more, worst that can happen is that he won't respond.

0 hybrids in DR and very few in the past suggests that hybrids were never what artists wanted to work on and there's no reason to assume there is a good stock of those. Never hurts to make more.

 

 

 

I also agree the scroll space is too small.

 

Again, we only see what's in public--IIRC there's other dragons that are worked on privately by the artists that never make it to the public request list.  We have no idea what might be being made behind the scenes.  There may be hybrids in the works we don't know about.

 

Also, some artists/creators may not permit you to make a hybrid from their dragon(s).  Just to keep that in mind--telling people to make hybrids does not mean the creator(s) of the dragons they're hybrids of will be okay with it.  I imagine trying to get permission from the original concept creators and artists means people may not be interested in trying to suggest a hybrid.

[Rosedamai]

On 11/2/2022 at 9:07 PM, Biel said:

And until TJ decides and codes a solution, I'd like to encourage artists with dragons in the game to shift much more attention towards making HYBRIDS instead of biome breeds to slow the growth of this problem without hurting the game with fewer new releases

I'd like to say a few things abt this, firstly for people who don't have a massive army of whatever dragon sprite is being used for the making of said hybrid, like myself, who only collect 1 sprite each, hybrids are literally one of the worst things that can happen for a release. For example, and I'd like to say that I have nothing personally against dusk pygmies and this is just an example, when dusk pygmies were released, I had 1 adult crimson flare pygmy, the rest were frozen hatchlings. And so apart from the 1 successful dusk pygmy I bred, the rest had to be gotten through trading, the DC community Notice Board, the AP, etc. Not fun. This happens every single hybrid release. Secondly it's not like there's a guaranteed chance that the hybrid's parent breeds will always produce a hybrid in the first place, which makes it frustrating when your adult parent dragons are on cooldown. Thirdly, you are annoyed by all of this, and you decide to catch parent dragon breeds for hybrid fodder. As someone else said, the sudden introduction of hybrids now make the parent dragon breeds rarer, so there's more frustration in general. 

 

Honestly the "let's make more hybrids" argument is, I feel, relies on the same logic as, say, someone arguing that having more variants of the same dragon, like how it was on DC bday on the 2021, would somehow satisfy users and create less crowded space on dc, since users are not hunting for new breeds but rather existing breeds who have different mechanics added to them. But if I remember correctly not all people were happy about all these additions, sapphires and electrics in particular were very desirable for a certain amount of time and so trading value changed for a while not to mention cantomaris dragons, and people actually complained more abt caveblockers and such bc there wasn't necessarily a flood of new dragons, they had to go and catch dragons that already existed that didn't get the benefits of a flood precisely bc they were not new releases. 

 

ETA: I do understand your argument that through hybrids we can focus more on already existing breeds which might alleviate spme of the pressure caused by overcrowding, but I don't think people who are used to non-hybrid NRs are all going to act positively to hybrid NRs which require you to play the game at a slower pace. Nor would it solve the overcrowding problem, it's just going to make it harder to catch parent breeds. 

Edited November 5, 2022 by Rosedamai

[Skadi]

yeah this is why i think "headhunts" for overly common ratios are an easier short-term solution to the cave issue. but unless you have a valuable reward to offer for it, it's not really going to take off on a community level.

[KageSora]

2 hours ago, Rosedamai said:

people actually complained more abt caveblockers and such bc there wasn't necessarily a flood of new dragons, they had to go and catch dragons that already existed that didn't get the benefits of a flood precisely bc they were not new releases.

 

This, right here, is precisely the problem with "just introduce more hybrids".

 

The blocker thing will not get better if everybody is camping out trying to catch the same existing dragons that are now suddenly super hard to grab in order to make the hybrids.  It will calm down eventually, yes, but it will not actually fix the issue--just rotate which breeds are in high-demand.  And if some breeds are used to make multiple hybrids?  Those will become even harder to obtain even if they're supposed to be common.

 

And, of course, makes like way harder for anybody who was actually collecting that breed already to suddenly be unable to keep collecting it because now everybody else is trying to grab them all at the same time.  Turning a bunch of old breeds into the annoyance of a new release where you can go months after the flood drops without being able to catch many is not going to make most users happy.  There's already those of us who don't bother with most hybrids beyond maybe getting one or two because it's too much of a pain trying to get the previously common now suddenly high-demand parent breeds (especially if we aren't interested in or actively dislike one or more of the parent breeds) for a while after they drop.

[Fuzzbucket]

12 hours ago, Rosedamai said:

I'd like to say a few things abt this, firstly for people who don't have a massive army of whatever dragon sprite is being used for the making of said hybrid, like myself, who only collect 1 sprite each, hybrids are literally one of the worst things that can happen for a release.

 

But for someone like me, who makes specialist hybrid lineages, they are an absolute delight. We can't restrict what happens because it doesn't fit OUR playstyle as that spoils the playstyles of others.

 

12 hours ago, Rosedamai said:

For example, and I'd like to say that I have nothing personally against dusk pygmies and this is just an example, when dusk pygmies were released, I had 1 adult crimson flare pygmy, the rest were frozen hatchlings. And so apart from the 1 successful dusk pygmy I bred, the rest had to be gotten through trading, the DC community Notice Board, the AP, etc. Not fun. This happens every single hybrid release.

Just for the record - there are loads of people here like me, who will breed them, for you for free. Ask me, another time. I rarely refuse ! So that isn't really a huge reason not to want them to happen !

 

12 hours ago, Rosedamai said:

 

Secondly it's not like there's a guaranteed chance that the hybrid's parent breeds will always produce a hybrid in the first place, which makes it frustrating when your adult parent dragons are on cooldown. Thirdly, you are annoyed by all of this, and you decide to catch parent dragon breeds for hybrid fodder. As someone else said, the sudden introduction of hybrids now make the parent dragon breeds rarer, so there's more frustration in general. 

 

Honestly the "let's make more hybrids" argument is, I feel, relies on the same logic as, say, someone arguing that having more variants of the same dragon, like how it was on DC bday on the 2021, would somehow satisfy users and create less crowded space on dc, since users are not hunting for new breeds but rather existing breeds who have different mechanics added to them. But if I remember correctly not all people were happy about all these additions, sapphires and electrics in particular were very desirable for a certain amount of time and so trading value changed for a while not to mention cantomaris dragons, and people actually complained more abt caveblockers and such bc there wasn't necessarily a flood of new dragons, they had to go and catch dragons that already existed that didn't get the benefits of a flood precisely bc they were not new releases. 

 

I am one who doesn't want more hybrids to help the biomes; I just WANT them. I'm not alone. That said - no, it won't help the biomes at all.

[Rosedamai]

2 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

But for someone like me, who makes specialist hybrid lineages, they are an absolute delight. We can't restrict what happens because it doesn't fit OUR playstyle as that spoils the playstyles of others.

Oh no! I'm not saying that the game should play to someone's playstyle at all, let alone mine. I was trying to point out that there are people who are used to the New Release -> catch more dragons -> leave for the next 3 weeks sort of playstyle, even though I don't think that is ideal for either the site or as a player's experience. While having more hybrids would slow that cycle down so that said person would engage more with the site, like trading or logging in every week to breed or grabbing more of the parent breeds as hybrid produce fodder, etc, it would also lead to an increase in frustration for people who are used to the quick grab -> leave alone -> quick grab (Idk how else to describe this sorry) cycle of gaming. Which would make at least some of them leave, or just like during the DC Bday event of 2021, make people complain more. 

 

But yeah, honestly I have a lot of respect for lineage builders on this site, bc you all put so much effort and care into building whatever lineage it is that you are currently interested in. Which is why I wanted to ask if New Breeds and how they are being released monthly with multiple variations and/or numbers interfere with lineage building, bc every time there are more new breeds it opens the doors for a new number of combinations, and I thought that the sheer number of combinations could be overwhelming for some people. 

[KageSora]

Actually, I don't think you can conclusively say that hybrids would slow people down and cause them to spend more time logging in to breed them.

 

Many will just see the new release is a hybrid and log back off until the next month because they're not interested in fighting to grab CBs they don't care about for hybrids.

 

Hybrids are okay and all, and yeah more would be nice for those who like them, but the idea that suddenly changing over to releases that are primarily hybrid would do anything to help the in-cave situation doesn't hold any water, IMO.

[StarlightLion]

With any (or all!) of these options, I think it's crucial that we get a way to access more slots. 8/24 slots was okay before I took my break (way back just as Kohraki released) but even then, I was seeing trouble balancing collecting new releases, building up a baseline stock of cb breeds, and working on lineages (especially my Snows/Floral-Crowned). It was manageable, but I still had to compromise on some babies if I wanted to be able to hold space for rare-hunting.

Now? It's drastically worse. Granted, some of the problem is down to my taking a break at all and now needing to catch up on cb breeds between new releases, and creating such a backlog is my own fault, not the game - but between trying to build that baseline and trying to hold at least one space for when I hunt the cave, I just don't have the space to do everything anymore. I've cut plenty of cb dragons I'd have otherwise kept for the sake of rare hunting or pursuing trades. And I need to be able to rare hunt for trading, because I cannot make non-inbred lineages higher than 3G with just my own dragons when my main two pairings are my Snows and my Floral-Crowned. I have to trade with others - and many users are absolutely delightful, wonderful people who are happy to help me out with mates, but I can't source all the dragons I want from the player base's good will. I just don't have the scroll space to manage needed cb collection with my insatiable need to hoard Labradorites and Fire Gems with my lineage projects. Right now, it's the lineages that have gone on the back burner. I've bred and kept maybe one lineage dragon since coming back. It's just incredibly frustrating to have to so severely cut which parts of the game I want to play to have a shot at reaching my goals in a reasonable time frame.

And we get frequent new releases on top of that, too. We need more dang nab scroll space.

Edited November 7, 2022 by StarlightLion

[sorenna]

I would even just be happy if *hatchling* slots increased at a certain point past Platinum Trophy, even if egg slots remain the same.

 

I feel like the current release schedule - with a minimum of 1 breed coming out per month, and often enough more - is going to continue, more scroll space (AND longer initial flood-drops, or several staggered ones) would really help. 

[MissK.]

On 11/6/2022 at 2:06 PM, Rosedamai said:

Oh no! I'm not saying that the game should play to someone's playstyle at all, let alone mine. I was trying to point out that there are people who are used to the New Release -> catch more dragons -> leave for the next 3 weeks sort of playstyle, even though I don't think that is ideal for either the site or as a player's experience. While having more hybrids would slow that cycle down so that said person would engage more with the site, like trading or logging in every week to breed or grabbing more of the parent breeds as hybrid produce fodder, etc, it would also lead to an increase in frustration for people who are used to the quick grab -> leave alone -> quick grab (Idk how else to describe this sorry) cycle of gaming. Which would make at least some of them leave, or just like during the DC Bday event of 2021, make people complain more. 

 

As someone who mostly collects CBs and doesn't bother much with lineages nowadays, save maybe for prizes, whenever there's a hybrid release I immediately know I need to spend even less time on it. I'm not going to use hybrids for anything, so I'd just need one of each gender for collection purposes (and frozens but those come from AP later). That generally takes much less active effort than if there's a CB release that I might catch a few pairs of. It really differs based on the person's playstyle, others collect hybrids just cause they like the sprites...I don't think we can easily say that more hybrid releases would influence the general DC population one way or the other. A mix is probably the best to keep everyone happy.

 

But yeah I agree with others that something needs to be done. More slots would be great, I'd sure love them, but it's still a bit of a bandaid fix. Something needs to be done on a larger scale to make the constant addition of so many breeds sustainable.

[ACDragonMaster]

I just want to point out that regardless of whether more hybrids would be good or bad, I strongly suspect that people get somewhat turned off by the idea due to the need to contact the artists of the original dragons.  The guidelines say that getting permission beyond the general permissions info post isn't strictly necessary, but they do mention contacting the artists if the suggestion is approved.

 

Now, for some dragons, this means only contacting one artist each.  But for others, there may be two, three, perhaps even four artists involved.  Do all of them need to be contacted, or just the one(s) who did the main concept/adult sprites?  It could easily feel overwhelming, not to mention that people may worry "what if I put thought into this awesome idea and then it just gets shot down?" which also makes it harder to follow through.

 

So I think that, IF we want to see more hybrid suggestions, it would help if there's a way to facilitate or streamline the process so that it doesn't feel so intimidating.

 

That said, I think the crux of the issue here is that all of the suggestions here are still just bandaid fixes, even if all were implemented at once, unless something is done to dynamically scale with the numbers of dragons and numbers of users.  It might postpone the inevitable for a good long while, but ultimately, any static fix WILL eventually cease being effective.  So say part of the issue is egg limits, maybe instead of just having a strict number, the actual number is determined as a percentage of total available breeds and then rounded off to the nearest whatever.  It would take some code rewriting to implement, but on the other hand, this is just plain old boring MATHS and once implemented something like this would continue to function basically indefinitely.

 

Similar approaches could be taken with things like sub-biomes, where the site would begin automatically "spawning" them based on criteria like current egg backlog or such.  Again, a lot of potential work up front, but it'd save so much trouble down the line if it's designed to be able to scale dynamically based on the circumstances!

[XiziX]

1 hour ago, ACDragonMaster said:

I just want to point out that regardless of whether more hybrids would be good or bad, I strongly suspect that people get somewhat turned off by the idea due to the need to contact the artists of the original dragons.  The guidelines say that getting permission beyond the general permissions info post isn't strictly necessary, but they do mention contacting the artists if the suggestion is approved.

 

Now, for some dragons, this means only contacting one artist each.  But for others, there may be two, three, perhaps even four artists involved.  Do all of them need to be contacted, or just the one(s) who did the main concept/adult sprites?  It could easily feel overwhelming, not to mention that people may worry "what if I put thought into this awesome idea and then it just gets shot down?" which also makes it harder to follow through.

 

 

For some reason I assumed that artists, when they make a dragon, basically give prior permission for such things to avoid this issue....?

Example; A list of permissions agreed upon by the spriter - or group of spriters - that gives future permissions to allow hybrids, alts, updates, etc. If that isn't the case, I have a feeling that would be a good option to exercise for future breeds added to the cave, to avoid the gymnastics that seem to be implied by having to reach out to every single artist.

But, as for the topic, we desperately need some kind of change, and I love most of  the suggestions here. Something has to be done.

Edited November 9, 2022 by XiziX

[Library_gremlin]

I have revised my opinion (see below). 

Edited November 19, 2022 by Library_gremlin

[KageSora]

3 hours ago, Library_gremlin said:

I just think there need to be more tiers beyond the Platinum trophy. It could be more extreme numbers, like you get X/X at 5k, and more slots at 10k etc. That would cut down on casual users being affected, and just help out those of us extreme players. 

 

I mean you can't really assume anybody with less than 10k is a fairly casual player because the game isn't NOT only about collecting as many dragons as you can.  That's merely one playstyle.  There are many players who are a far cry from casual who don't have anywhere near 10k yet, and might never get to 10k.

 

Only worrying about improving the ability to keep grabbing dragons you want for the most extreme hoarders does nothing to actually address the fact that these are issues all players are dealing with--especially with how big some releases are.

[D-wing]

<-- The one who was never get to 5k/10k dragons. A little bit off topic but I would prefer more trophy type to get more slots, maybe a Unique Breed Collecting Trophy.

 

For the hybrids, I love them as same as another dragons, but I don't think they can solve the problem. I'm the another one who collect 1 sprite only, but my opinion is near to KageSora's. First, I don't think they would let people keep on log in. If someone no interested on them, the highest chance that what would happen was, they just skip them and wait until another NR. I think one of the important reason that why the hybrids don't attractive than a CB is, they're not easy to build up lineage. Such as they're restricted on Checkers/SA lineages. In my experience, I seldom got a satisfying pairing in AP. Seem that people don't have highly interest to design their lineages. If turn the CB-base NR style to the hybrid-base NR style, I would worry if lot of people complain it's too boring. Also, I would worry about when lot of hybrid-fail eggs go to AP, will they become AP blockers and make it harder to find some CB/lineage eggs which people really need? ( And about the breeding ratios, not sure will they let other breeding pairs become harder to get the hybrid's parents egg? )

 

Edited November 11, 2022 by D-wing

[ACDragonMaster]

On 11/10/2022 at 6:19 AM, Library_gremlin said:

I just think there need to be more tiers beyond the Platinum trophy. It could be more extreme numbers, like you get X/X at 5k, and more slots at 10k etc. That would cut down on casual users being affected, and just help out those of us extreme players. 

In addition to what KageSora and D-wing pointed out, this is still, ultimately, a bandaid fix.  It's a static fix that won't change or scale at all.  It means nothing either to people who collect just for sprites (as opposed to those who will pick up massive numbers of CBs for lineage breeding) who will be permanently stuck having too few slots to grab even a PAIR of each CB for any releases that have more than 3 or 4.  And we've had a fair number of 6+ releases now!  My suggestion is that the number shouldn't be fixed, but should scale.  Maybe 8 egg slots slots was more than enough back when we surpassed 100 dragon breeds, but now that we're at over 300 perhaps it should be more like 12.  And if/when we reached 400 breeds, it would bump up to 14.  Or so on.  This can be done with just a mathematical formula so that it automatically updates as needed, which would mean all the work would be up front with minimal maintenance later.

 

The same thing would apply to things like extra rows of eggs, sub-biomes, etc.  Make it dynamic so that it can increase as needed over time without further intervention.

[KageSora]

Hm, we could combine extra slots AND trophies with more slots, actually.  Bump all curret slots up by 2, and add a new trophy level with further slots available (kept in proportion to existing trophy slot boosts).

 

That both rewards players who collect heavily for whatever reason and eases a little bit of the struggled for everybody else.

 

It would, of course, need to kept done in conjunction with other fixes to address issues, but it could work better than just adding a new trophy or something.

[JOTB]

Having more egg slots pops up in lots of suggestions that are not about egg slots and is generally not pertinent to the topic of discussion, which I think hold true here too. 

[Library_gremlin]

Yeah, upon further thought, I think that the amount of TIME that major events should be increased. Take whatever year we started having major problems, an east 3 years or more, and add at least 3 days to the time that breeding is open, and then as an additional day for each new year. 

[Skadi]

Has anyone done a sort of study? Take note of what they see on refreshes, etc? Might do good to have concrete evidence that certain commons are now too rare.

 

I'm considering doing it myself, as CB hunting is my favorite playstyle anyway.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Skadi

[ACDragonMaster]

On 11/17/2022 at 8:41 PM, JOTB said:

Having more egg slots pops up in lots of suggestions that are not about egg slots and is generally not pertinent to the topic of discussion, which I think hold true here too. 

 

How is it not pertinent to this discussion?  The problem observed is that the way drops work, it's extremely difficult to find even common dragons sometimes.  Having more egg slots could be part of a solution because it would mean players would pick up more eggs and thus cause the biomes to cycle through more of their available drops, instead of getting stuck on the same eggs for long periods of time.  It's not a complete fix but it's a perfectly valid potential partial fix, because egg limits absolutely do cause people to be a lot more choosy and a lot less likely to pick up random blockers.

[KageSora]

On 11/17/2022 at 8:41 PM, JOTB said:

Having more egg slots pops up in lots of suggestions that are not about egg slots and is generally not pertinent to the topic of discussion, which I think hold true here too. 

Mmm, I think however here it does pertain to the discussion, because more egg slots is cropping up in the context of being a partial solution of "it's getting hard to find any given breed, some especially barely ever able to be found, and the same ultra commons block everything else for the most part"

 

Would it solve the problem on it's own?  Nope, definitely not!  But then, none of these--not even a ratio rework--would entirely solve the issue alone.  More egg slots at the very least permits keeping up with new releases better and letting players get more before they all but vanish from the biomes once the flood stops and allows cycling the cave a little more reliably.  More slots would also entice at least some players into collecting more of the common breeds because they wouldn't be sacrificing their ability to work on lineages or collect the dragons they're really keen on in order to pick up some more commons.

[StarlightLion]

2 hours ago, ACDragonMaster said:

egg limits absolutely do cause people to be a lot more choosy and a lot less likely to pick up random blockers.

 

1 hour ago, KageSora said:

More slots would also entice at least some players into collecting more of the common breeds because they wouldn't be sacrificing their ability to work on lineages or collect the dragons they're really keen on in order to pick up some more commons.

 

About sums it up, yeah. I'm so picky to the point of sometimes choosing not to pick up CBs of dragons I actively hoard in order to maintain my slots how I like them, and my breeding projects have been significantly stripped down for the same reason.