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

[Skadi]

I categorized all my tercorns recently, and noticed that my CB tercorns were starting to be spaced weeks, even months, apart. I play weekly, and have the shard count to prove it. This means there are entire months when I don't get a tercorn, a relatively low-rarity dragon.

 

And now I need 10 CB male tercorns to even out my potential generations, which could take an entire year of hunting for a common dragon.

 

I think this is a little ridiculous to punish common hunters this much. Commons should be COMMON.

 

If we must have ratios, I want a list of dragons that are "underpopulated" in ratios so common hunters can hunt those numbers down and make the common situation feel less miserable. I miss the Holly Contest and how it'd make a notable impact on "cave blocker" problems. I think something similar but on the site would be nice. A bounty system that rewards nothing but the knowledge that you've helped the cave. Maybe "points" that can't be spent on anything. I miss the playstyle of hunting specifically caveblocker commons and seeing how many I can get.

 

Actually, if anyone's interested in this, we can start a community initiative for bounty hunting. Pick a dragon for a few months, as a community we hunt the dragon until its numbers go slightly down; if it's a particularly annoying breeder, we can breed to even out ratios. Community-added prizes, maybe? But I would like some numbers available on the site to make this sort of playstyle easier.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Skadi

[ravensunset]

Just going to bump this thread as I think it would be a more productive fix/discussion to some problems I'm seeing mentioned in other threads.

[StarlightLion]

I am back once again to remind everyone this problem is still overwhelmingly present. I've been picking up every Freckled dragon I see because I need a lot to finish off the CB group I have for them - they're holding lines of a poem - and I haven't seen one in days. I'm like barely halfway through the poem lmao, and Market price indicates they're intended to be commons. Please T.T

[Cireth]

Bump. The cave needs fixing.

[GhostMouse]

I've followed this thread from the start (almost three years, wow) but just realized I've never commented. I definitely agree that something needs to change, and honestly I think about the non-hostile ratio suggestion a lot. Especially around new releases when I'm worrying about being able to catch enough of the new eggs for my scroll goals, instead of just enjoying the new dragons. I only got the last CB Copper I needed this year, and I have fully given up on the idea of ever catching (or seeing!) a Gold, Silver, or Stat in the cave. It will take years of playing to earn the shards to purchase them, too, unless the prices drop dramatically.

[Magellan]

Support the second row idea.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Magellan

[ArgentiAertheri]

I was really hoping we’d get something, anything, to attempt to fix this for DC’s birthday… instead stats now take over a year of max shards every week.  

[St0rmbringer]

Supporting any feasible fix to this because yeah… it’s getting harder to find even non-rare stuff. I hunt lunar heralds and in the span of the last two releases I’ve watched their drop rates get worse. I thought they were supposed to be uncommon or at least on the lower end of the rare scale! A second row would be harder to hunt for a bit but really I’d take anything that’d give me extra chances to find stuff I’m looking for, rather than not finding specific things for literal days of hunting :’)

[StarlightLion]

We just got seven new releases and they're great dragons, really, I love them, but we're somewhere over the 300 mark for breeds available in the caves, now. Eighteen visible eggs - total - is simply not enough of a pool to support that many breeds. Creating space for more dragons to be available - whether by adding new biomes, sub-biomes, more rows of eggs in our current biomes, or literally any other method - won't solve the underlying problem but it will offer some short-term relief from the symptoms of it.

We have to treat both things at this point, long-term solutions will work but they'll work slowly. Short-term solutions in addition to long-term ones will help alleviate the problems that have stacked up over the course of dc's lifespan to this point.

[Brite]

I also support this. In retrospect, I don't know how we even survived back in the days where there was only one cave lol 

[rabbithaver]

well, it'll be almost three years ago next week that i made this initial post. and what's been done? approximately nothing. meanwhile the problem has gotten so, so much worse with every release.

[seventeendeer]

(In response to both the last post and the edit made to the first post in this topic)

 

While I 100% support doing something to fix this issue and I'm completely in favor of the majority of ideas I've seen on this thread, I do want to gently remind OP that this site is run by one guy in his spare time who provides this game to us for free. I don't think getting snippy with him or outright demanding he fix up the experience for us is fair to him. I totally understand that it's frustrating to put a lot of effort into coming up with ideas to help him improve the site and then be ignored, but if someone creates something in his own time and shares it for free online at no cost to those he's sharing it with, yelling at him because it has flaws isn't cool. No amount of effort put into trying to help him entitles us to see improvement - or to get hostile with the admin if we perceive a lack of improvement.

 

Playing the game less or quitting entirely is well within anyone's right, and yes, if TJ wants to keep players, he might want to look into doing something about this issue soon, but remaining civil really is the baseline of respect we owe the man.

[rabbithaver]

i have a right to be frustrated, i think? especially on behalf of all the people in the June Release thread who have said they're giving up on new releases. i've had an account on DC since 2008. i remember what it was like before we had this problem, and knowing that we could get back to that point with just a couple changes that seem pretty universally wanted... it hurts. this site is so much fun when finding the right egg isn't a nightmare.

 

i want better for the players who don't have the time i have to be searching for new drops. they deserve a chance to get the new eggs too.

[Fuzzbucket]

7 hours ago, seventeendeer said:

(In response to both the last post and the edit made to the first post in this topic)

 

While I 100% support doing something to fix this issue and I'm completely in favor of the majority of ideas I've seen on this thread, I do want to gently remind OP that this site is run by one guy in his spare time who provides this game to us for free. I don't think getting snippy with him or outright demanding he fix up the experience for us is fair to him. I totally understand that it's frustrating to put a lot of effort into coming up with ideas to help him improve the site and then be ignored, but if someone creates something in his own time and shares it for free online at no cost to those he's sharing it with, yelling at him because it has flaws isn't cool. No amount of effort put into trying to help him entitles us to see improvement - or to get hostile with the admin if we perceive a lack of improvement.

 

Playing the game less or quitting entirely is well within anyone's right, and yes, if TJ wants to keep players, he might want to look into doing something about this issue soon, but remaining civil really is the baseline of respect we owe the man.

 

I couldn't have said it better.

4 hours ago, rabbithaver said:

i have a right to be frustrated, i think? especially on behalf of all the people in the June Release thread who have said they're giving up on new releases. i've had an account on DC since 2008. i remember what it was like before we had this problem, and knowing that we could get back to that point with just a couple changes that seem pretty universally wanted... it hurts. this site is so much fun when finding the right egg isn't a nightmare.

 

i want better for the players who don't have the time i have to be searching for new drops. they deserve a chance to get the new eggs too.

 

No-one has a RIGHT to demand anything of the creator of a game that we all get to play for free. If I were running something like this in my spare time, I'd give it up if people kept shouting at me to do what they want. I've been here almost as long - since January 2010 - and I don't believe "a couple changes" would fix what troubles you.

[rabbithaver]

okay but when dozens of members have been asking for something, anything to change for years and nothing does -- literally nothing -- while the problem keeps getting infinitely worse, you guys don't get to complain when people start leaving. and they WILL start leaving, because this is ridiculous. i don't blame the newer members for quitting, honestly. the new release has been amazing but it's been a nightmare to actually catch them after the flood. people shouldn't have to resort to the AP to catch NEW releases. it's just sad.

[Fuzzbucket]

I would never complain because other players chose to leave. That is entirely their prerogative. It doesn't seem to be happening all that much. And I think this release is exceptional in that we have a much less common variant, so that people were catching and dropping in he hope of finding it. That's not happened before that I recall.. I don't remember ever seeing an AP full of new release eggs - because in the past people catch and keep almost all of them. This time was different and they didn't. Which actually meant that people who were catching them there got mostly incuhatchable eggs - that's a bit of a plus in a way ! I almost wish I'd got mine that way - instant spaces for more.

[rabbithaver]

57 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I would never complain because other players chose to leave. That is entirely their prerogative. It doesn't seem to be happening all that much. And I think this release is exceptional in that we have a much less common variant, so that people were catching and dropping in he hope of finding it. That's not happened before that I recall.. I don't remember ever seeing an AP full of new release eggs - because in the past people catch and keep almost all of them. This time was different and they didn't. Which actually meant that people who were catching them there got mostly incuhatchable eggs - that's a bit of a plus in a way ! I almost wish I'd got mine that way - instant spaces for more.

 

i've thought on what you've said, and you've made some very good points when it comes to this release. i do wish the floods lasted longer and i still think a second row or maybe a change to drop mechanics would be a good long-term solution, but the difficulties with this particular release i think are definitely partly because of the rarer white variant.

 

i've seen a couple people mention leaving the site in the past few weeks in various discord servers and the facebook group, specifically mentioning the dated drop mechanics making it hard to find the eggs they want. it just really sucks that they feel that their experiences playing the game have been impacted by the lack of change.

[Fuzzbucket]

I just feel that there are enough pluses in the game to outweigh the minuses. And as people always say - it's just a game, just pixels. I'm having fun; and for me that counts. I'm frustrated about the whites - but I used to be frustrated about red dorsals and now I have LOADS !

 

I do think that the instant everything culture hasn't helped this or other games - patience isn't such a bad thing. And at the last couple of releases - even the multi-breed birthday release - there were people on forum (I don't do discord or FB) people were saying how easy they had been compared with past ones, so TJ must have changed some things at some point. I guess angry people vent more than happy people say good stuff

 

Peace and all that - off to try and add to my single white drake....

[Aurora-Silver]

2 rows of 6 eggs sound nice and do able. I may not know much about coding but it would definitely give a better chance to everyone.

Also we had the idea thrown in to increase limits yet again with another trophy.

 

The latest release was the first one to frustrate me with the drop flood ending so fast. I was not able to get any of the whites, also because of the abandon waiting time. And then, the eggs were so scarce... It wasn't fair.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Aurora-Silver

[seventeendeer]

2 hours ago, rabbithaver said:

okay but when dozens of members have been asking for something, anything to change for years and nothing does -- literally nothing -- while the problem keeps getting infinitely worse, you guys don't get to complain when people start leaving. and they WILL start leaving, because this is ridiculous. i don't blame the newer members for quitting, honestly. the new release has been amazing but it's been a nightmare to actually catch them after the flood. people shouldn't have to resort to the AP to catch NEW releases. it's just sad.

 

In my previous comment, I did say it's fully within people's right to leave if they're not having fun. It is by far the healthier option for both themselves and the playerbase VS getting hostile on the boards. Better to have a smaller playerbase of people who make the best of the free browser game than to have a large playerbase forcing themselves to continue playing a game they no longer enjoy and bringing the resulting frustration to the forums.

 

Either way, even if the site straight up shut down altogether tomorrow, that would still not justify being rude to the admin. He's the one who puts in the labor without asking for a penny in return, so he retains full creative control. Giving him constructive feedback is fine, politely expressing frustration is fine, but entitlement is completely out of line in this context. No one is entitled to a stranger's labor just because they really want it, whether it's one person demanding it or a thousand.

 

 

27 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I just feel that there are enough pluses in the game to outweigh the minuses. And as people always say - it's just a game, just pixels. I'm having fun; and for me that counts. I'm frustrated about the whites - but I used to be frustrated about red dorsals and now I have LOADS !

 

I do think that the instant everything culture hasn't helped this or other games - patience isn't such a bad thing. And at the last couple of releases - even the multi-breed birthday release - there were people on forum (I don't do discord or FB) people were saying how easy they had been compared with past ones, so TJ must have changed some things at some point. I guess angry people vent more than happy people say good stuff

 

Excellent points all around, I especially think the part I bolded here is a good bit of insight. I do wonder if this might not be the reason newer players sometimes drop the game after a very short time - patience is absolutely key when engaging with games like DC, but it is unfortunately not something most of us are trained for in our daily life at this point in time. I honestly think I'd find it difficult to get into as well, if I hadn't been playing for as long as I have and know how to manage my time on here from experience.

 

But yeah, again, I definitely think the site would be objectively improved with many of the excellent ideas developed on this thread, but Fuzzbucket is right, a little patience does also go a long way.

[Fuzzbucket]

29 minutes ago, Aurora-Silver said:

2 rows of 6 eggs sound nice and do able. I may not know much about coding but it would definitely give a better chance to everyone.

Also we had the idea thrown in to increase limits yet again with another trophy.

 

The latest release was the first one to frustrate me with the drop flood ending so fast. I was not able to get any of the whites, also because of the abandon waiting time. And then, the eggs were so scarce... It wasn't fair.

 

I think the issue with the whites is simply that they seem to be a much less common alt. Think if this drop had been of dorsals - the same would have happened with red ones...People would have dropped purples in the hope of a red - which are so much less common that it wouldn't happen easily..

 

How was it unfair ? We were all in the same position. Desperate for the less common alt.

19 minutes ago, seventeendeer said:

Excellent points all around, I especially think the part I bolded here is a good bit of insight. I do wonder if this might not be the reason newer players sometimes drop the game after a very short time - patience is absolutely key when engaging with games like DC, but it is unfortunately not something most of us are trained for in our daily life at this point in time. I honestly think I'd find it difficult to get into as well, if I hadn't been playing for as long as I have and know how to manage my time on here from experience.

 

If you think patience is needed here - try the flowergarden game. Another free one with the added frustration that their spriter died and so nothing NEW happens at all. But - it's still playable - just not all bells and whistles.

[KageSora]

I would say that patience isn't the issue--I was patient and still was forced to pay 4k+ shards each to obtain my Stats because all the patience in the world didn't help me find them in the cave, it just let me eventually save up for them.  When there are dragons that all the patience in the world won't help you obtain without buying them in the market because they're simply so rare that you need a minor miracle to even see one after years much less grab one, yeah, I think that's a point where people have every right to express their annoyance and frustration with the mechanics in place.

 

The game is made by one person in his free time, which is good to keep in mind in terms of expected timeframes or complexity of requests--but the game also has a very strong feel of "small project that has grown well beyond the creator's original ability to properly keep up with" and yet the game does continue to expand with new dragons most months.  Perhaps it's time to stop or slow the new releases entirely until TJ has the free time to try to address and solve what are clearly issues with the way the game is currently functioning at the size it's already at.

 

Or at least it would be helpful to say if this is intended and the frustration with trying to find various dragons is an intentional gameplay element.  Some games are very much designed to have elements that will be frustrating to players and people do still enjoy them!  It's just kind of important, in my opinion, to know that as a player if your frustration is a feature or a bug so you can tailor your expectations and consider how willing you are to engage with various elements in the game.

 

The other issue, I think, that causes people to get very frustrated is that, well...  There's not usually tons of communication.  Obviously I don't expect TJ to just start being 100% transparent about every single decision and thing he considers or not but it would be at the very least nice if he were to somewhat more frequently able to say let us know if he's even willing to consider certain ideas or not.  It becomes very easy, when people see little communication, to get frustrated and start feeling like they're talking to a wall or that they're being allowed to waste time hashing out things that have 0% chance of ever happening.  I'm not saying TJ is deliberately ignoring users or that he's purposefully letting people waste their time, by the way--just that when people are already frustrated it can feel that way even when that's not what's actually going on.

 

To be more on-topic, it's been 3 years and the situation has in fact gotten worse.  I still don't think simply adding an extra row of eggs will solve the problem at all--it'll just mean 6 blockers instead of 3--but something needs to be adjusted somewhere to keep the game from continuing to get more and more annoying to play over time.

Edited June 29, 2023 by KageSora

[seventeendeer]

(Just reiterating again that I did not say people are not allowed to be frustrated, I did specifically say that being frustrated is no excuse for being rude to TJ, since arguably we owe him for all the free stuff he's made for us over the years.)

 

While slowing down releases looks good on paper, I think it unfortunately comes with its own host of issues - new releases may be frustrating to some players, but I'd say they spark more interest and excitement for the game than annoyance. As Fuzzbucket says, people are more likely to vent frustration than to comment positively on aspects of the game they do enjoy. Audiences tend to lose interest in games when regular updates cease, which is understandable. We also have to consider the constant backlog of dragons ready for release; it's likely the dragon requests section would have to be slowed down significantly, closing off another source of active engagement.

 

It's true that DC has the vibe of "hobby project that grew beyond its creator's ability to keep up with", but I think for that exact reason, for the longterm health of the playerbase, it's important that we just ... accept that TJ might simply not be as invested in fixing up its flaws as the players are in seeing those flaws fixed. I'm sure he's well aware he doesn't owe us squat. He gives us free stuff when he feels like it and he polishes it up when he feels like it, and that's perfectly fair. If the game is put "on pause" while TJ works out the kinks in the system, there's a risk he'll simply never get around to it and the game will just die off. I'd personally rather see the game continue to update as it does now than have it be shelved for an indefinite amount of time. I'm still having a lot of fun catching new dragons, even though getting a hold of the older ones reliably is a bust at this point.

 

A big, drastic update to how the game works would indeed be best, I think - I personally love the idea of new biomes. Maybe sub-regions of the ones we already have, to preserve things like biome-specific variants that already exist in the game? I don't remember if it's been suggested before, but if every biome had its own 4-6 sub-regions, and every dragon was limited to appearing in one sub-region per biome, I think they would all be easier to actively search for (high-value breeds would have to be distributed carefully though). As the game continues to develop, more sub-regions could be added? Potentially?

[KageSora]

Oh, no, yeah, I don't think you were saying people can't be frustrated--and I definitely agree that people should do their best not to be rude about it.  That's where keeping in mind the one person team is really important for sure.

 

I just think that there's multiple factors going on with users becoming frustrated.  While I do think that 3 years is a more than reasonable timeframe if there were some big rework going on, I don't believe we've gotten any indication such is being seriously considered much less underway and people have been asking about tweaking the ratios to be less frustrating for far longer than this topic has been around.

 

While that's a fair point, also keep in mind that there is eventually a breaking point where the new content is so much more frustrating than it's worth for enough players that it becomes a sore point rather than a source of engagement.  We're seeing more and more incidents of that during releases that aren't terribly easy such as this one with the annoyingly hard to obtain white variant as well as other releases that have had mechanics that annoy users to try and obtain.  Releases like the birthday one are frustrating from their size but their ready availability keeps grumbling about the release itself to a minimum once it's proven they won't be a huge pain to obtain post-flood.  (And suggestions on dealing with releases that size are for another topic).

 

That said, IIRC, I've heard there's a private area where established site artists work on concepts behind the scenes that never make it to the public requests list (since, well, they're not public requests)--I was under the impression that was more than just holiday dragons or things for very special events.  I'd need that confirmed or denied by an established artist, however.  If so, though, I would have to ask--are most of the releases ones that have been long removed from the public request list to make it a surprise when they finally drop, or are most of them projects of established artists created in private?  The answer to that would, ultimately, determine if "but the request list is so long" is a useful point or if it's a moot point, IMO.  But, again, that's not something we can consider properly without input from an established artist and I'm not sure if they can say that or not now (I recall seeing something about that a long time ago, and things could have changed since then even if it was the case back then...  Or I could be remembering wrong, lol)

 

I also agree that it's important to keep in mind that he may simply never bother to update certain things and, as this is simply his game, that's entirely his right--but, since he is running a publicly accessible game it's also important to recognize that with that comes the understanding that players will have desires and become frustrated if it looks like those are being ignored (which is where communicating a simple "sorry, this is the intended game design" can be useful.  It's still helpful to let players express their dislike and discuss issues with an intended design element--sometimes they bring up very good points, and never underestimate the power of letting people blow off steam with a good whine--but plenty of players do appreciate being told bluntly the game is not for them so they don't continue to waste time thinking that what they believe is an addressable flaw will be touched on when there's no intention of doing so.  That said, I also get not wanting to because this playerbase does have a long history of being...  Less than perfectly polite when angered, so I can see where staying silent seems like the least headache-inducing choice, all things considered).

 

I believe sub-biomes and such were discussed!  There was some contention on it, IIRC--the general annoyance at something being suddenly very different if dragons were shuffled to a whole new biome instead of being available where they used to be was, I think, the greatest concern with that.  Personally I think the best thing for a new biome or sub-biome would be to add dragons to it without taking them away from where they currently show up since it would give more places to find a single dragon.  However, even a new biome or sub-biome will eventually have the same issue of blockers filling it...  Still, it's not the worst idea.  IIRC another related one was biome pages, like Apline-1, Alpine-2, etc. where each page would show it's own shuffle of eggs from that biome.  That would be most useful for things like new releases by giving people more spots to hunt, but I think it would also quickly run into the "well now EVERY page of the biome is filled with blockers" issue...

 

That's the crux of the problem, really--pretty much everything we can think of is, ultimately, "treating the symptoms" or a temporary solution.  Tweaking or overhauling the way the ratio system works is, ultimately, the only way to really "cure" the core cause of a lot of the frustrations we're seeing, I think.  (But also, at this point, I don't think that alone can fix it--ideally a ratio rework in conjunction with one or more other solutions is probably what's needed to fully address things)

[StarlightLion]

Specifically about the June Release - I haven't even bothered. I saw it on flood and I avoided it, knowing that I would miss the eggs, because frankly trying to field my eggslots when I am still trying to catch up to the last release of seven new dragons sounds like a goddamn nightmare.

I wish TJ would at least slow down a little on the releases when this problem is so overwhelming and so prevalent. Even just acknowledgement instead of permanent crickets would be something.

 

And, for the record, TJ does make money from this game. I've no idea at all how much or if it covers just the domain costs but the cave hosts ads and offers premium subscriptions. It's not just some backroom project he looks at occasionally when he has a spare minute. Anything more than that is pure conjecture afaik

(and yes, as players we have every right to be frustrated and to talk amongst ourselves about being frustrated)