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

[Alcyone]

I totally support what the thread starter said! Every.single.word.

Rares right now are not rare - they are IMPOSSIBLE to find! Also, the market is not really an option to obtain some rares that you can never find in the cave because prices are absolutely ridiculous. I'm playing since 2008, with an interruption of 3 or 4 years, I've never bought anything at the market yet but don't have enough shards to even buy ONE rare.

For the mobile problem: The egg rows could be placed on a new window. So we'd see the usual dragon hunting text and than a button "click here to check for eggs" or similar, that forwards to a new screen with the egg rows.

[HeatherMarie]

Since this thread is getting attention again I'm going to repeat what I said earlier: *one* extra egg per biome is not going to make a ton of difference. It's just not. If the main idea here is to have more of a chance at seeing rares/uncommons, or even just more variety in what commons we see, one extra egg showing really isn't going to make much of a difference. There is absolutely no guarantee that the 'extra egg' won't be the exact same super-commons showing in the other slots, for example. Instead of two Spitfires and one Freckled it will be... two Spitfires and two Freckled. (Just picking random breeds I'm currently seeing a lot of in the biomes.)

 

While I'd much rather have more biomes or more shuffles, I'd still much prefer a *full* 2nd row rather than one extra egg.

 

6 hours ago, Alcyone said:

 

For the mobile problem: The egg rows could be placed on a new window. So we'd see the usual dragon hunting text and than a button "click here to check for eggs" or similar, that forwards to a new screen with the egg rows.

 

This is a good idea. Mobile layout is definitely something that needs to be thought about with a suggestion like this, and I've seen people mention making the intro-text at the top of the biome smaller or cutting it off, but this seems like a pretty good solution too. Except when it comes to moving between biomes, an extra click and extra page load every single time would mean a significant delay in seeing the eggs.

[kerrikins]

To be honest, I'm not sure even three more slots would make much of a difference. The eggs that show up, show up because of the ratios. I'm not sure spreading those ratios out over six slots rather than three would change things much other than on the initial drop. 'Blockers' are called that because nobody wants to pick them up. 

 

I think a better mechanism is to make 'commons' more desirable, tbh. Like, now there's more demand for florets, for example. Maybe new releases or BSAs would also help with some of the other commons. It's not a problem that's easy to solve, because this debate has been going on for years

 

 

[Tetelestai]

Support, support, support X pi!

[rabbithaver]

7 hours ago, kerrikins said:

To be honest, I'm not sure even three more slots would make much of a difference. The eggs that show up, show up because of the ratios. I'm not sure spreading those ratios out over six slots rather than three would change things much other than on the initial drop. 'Blockers' are called that because nobody wants to pick them up. 

 

I think a better mechanism is to make 'commons' more desirable, tbh. Like, now there's more demand for florets, for example. Maybe new releases or BSAs would also help with some of the other commons. It's not a problem that's easy to solve, because this debate has been going on for years

 

 

 

it'd be nice if eggs could only spend so much time in the cave before getting chucked back into the queue or deleted altogether. i think that'd keep the cave flowing somewhat without demanding too much effort from the userbase.

 

i was a member in 2008 (on a separate scroll) and i remember vividly when biomes were introduced in 2011. not only did it blow our minds, but it essentially resolved the problem-- the very same problem that's reared its ugly head for a second time. back then we had fewer breeds so spreading them out through six biomes pretty much solved the problem for like... four or so years, i think? so this second recurrence has been an ever-increasing problem since at LEAST 2015. that's six years ago, and with every new release, it becomes even more unbearable.

 

also i absolutely ADORE your idea of more BSAs, but i think there's only so many mechanics that can be introduced to the site... your example of florets makes me think that adding new alts to existing breeds would be an amazing idea. adding alts to breeds that are known to 'block' the cave would also help resolve the issue. if demand for them skyrockets, then things will flow much better.

[FiveSix]

If having two rows of eggs in one biome is a problem for mobile users, and adding brand new biomes would be a coding/coordination nightmare, what would y'all's thoughts be on just adding more biomes exactly like the ones we already have?

 

A North and South or North, South, East and West version of each existing biome, depending on how much stretching is needed. It would spread out hunters in the biomes and give folks with slower internet a better chance of being the first to see a rare, and it would reveal more commons at any one time. There would be no need to re-assign any dragons, because all existing Jungle dragons would be available in all the new Jungle biomes. More commons visible means more chance that that specific common you haven't managed to find all day, and more of that means overall more biome movement.

 

To be honest I think compression of the ratios so that the gap between commons and rares is less significant is the real solution here, but failing that this would be my suggestion to increase egg visibility at least.

 

edit: Or something completely out there, some kind of shard incentive for picking up breeds valued at 100 shards that doesn't count towards the weekly limit (maybe its own limit if necessary).

Edited May 31, 2021 by FiveSix

[HeatherMarie]

39 minutes ago, narumitsu said:

 

it'd be nice if eggs could only spend so much time in the cave before getting chucked back into the queue or deleted altogether. i think that'd keep the cave flowing somewhat without demanding too much effort from the userbase.

 

 

This has been suggested as well, and again wouldn't really solve the issue. If 'blockers' go to the back of the queue after a certain amount of time, eventually they *will* get to the front again; If they are then sent back again, eventually *all* that will be available are the blockers. All the desirable eggs will have come to the front and been grabbed, and those end-of-the-queue blockers will be all that's left. At which point we have the exact same problem we have now. Same for just deleting them, ratios dictate there must be so many of a certain breed, if blockers just get deleted after sitting around for awhile those exact same breeds will just be re-spawned to keep the ratios. 

 

 

28 minutes ago, FiveSix said:

If having two rows of eggs in one biome is a problem for mobile users, and adding brand new biomes would be a coding/coordination nightmare, what would y'all's thoughts be on just adding more biomes exactly like the ones we already have?

 

A North and South or North, South, East and West version of each existing biome, depending on how much stretching is needed. It would spread out hunters in the biomes and give folks with slower internet a better chance of being the first to see a rare, and it would reveal more commons at any one time. There would be no need to re-assign any dragons, because all existing Jungle dragons would be available in all the new Jungle biomes. More commons visible means more chance that that specific common you haven't managed to find all day, and more of that means overall more biome movement.

 

To be honest I think compression of the ratios so that the gap between commons and rares is less significant is the real solution here, but failing that this would be my suggestion to increase egg visibility at least.

 

edit: Or something completely out there, some kind of shard incentive for picking up breeds valued at 100 shards that doesn't count towards the weekly limit (maybe its own limit if necessary).

 

Expanding biomes to include directional versions is a pretty cool idea actually. It completely gets around the biggest issues with the idea of new biomes, ie re-assigning breeds or figuring out biome-specific breed changes or how to populate the new biomes. It would spread things out more, give users more visible eggs to hunt. I like it. 

 

I would never support a shard incentive for picking up commons, that's way too far on the 'bias towards certain playstyles' scale for me. Adding useful BSAs to commons is one thing, but just outright paying people to pick them up, definitely not.

[Tawanda001]

I don't think more rows will change things much. You're still going to have the same problem you have now, everybody shows up at the same time for the same 3 (or 4 or 6) eggs, nabs the one or two good eggs and then disappears leaving the others eggs to more or less just sit there. I've always wondered if the egg shuffling needs to be randomized across biomes. Would it encourage people to stay and hunt and actually pull eggs instead of just hovering waiting for that 5 minute guaranteed auto shuffle. Right now it's basically just a contest to see who is fastest, but if people didn't know, couldn't predict when the shuffles would happen...?

Edited May 31, 2021 by Tawanda001

[Paradisiske]

Kicking eggs leftover in the cave at the hourly drop into the ap will help solve the ratios. Things will end up more balanced in the cave. 

 

The ap will be clogged for a bit but as the ratios get balanced there will be less overall kicked to the ap.

[Guillotine]

Yeah, the core issue is that the ratios, as-is, don't care about popularity and player fatigue when generating eggs.

[love_HP]

3 hours ago, narumitsu said:

 

it'd be nice if eggs could only spend so much time in the cave before getting chucked back into the queue or deleted altogether. i think that'd keep the cave flowing somewhat without demanding too much effort from the userbase.

 

i was a member in 2008 (on a separate scroll) and i remember vividly when biomes were introduced in 2011. not only did it blow our minds, but it essentially resolved the problem-- the very same problem that's reared its ugly head for a second time. back then we had fewer breeds so spreading them out through six biomes pretty much solved the problem for like... four or so years, i think? so this second recurrence has been an ever-increasing problem since at LEAST 2015. that's six years ago, and with every new release, it becomes even more unbearable.

 

also i absolutely ADORE your idea of more BSAs, but i think there's only so many mechanics that can be introduced to the site... your example of florets makes me think that adding new alts to existing breeds would be an amazing idea. adding alts to breeds that are known to 'block' the cave would also help resolve the issue. if demand for them skyrockets, then things will flow much better.

I say it'd be nice if eggs could only spend so much time in the cave before getting kicked to the AP. This way it doesn't alter the ratios (the eggs are still there for people to get) AND it adds attractiveness to the eggs. Someone who does not want to click a common from a biome, may very gladly take the same egg from AP, because it's near ER hours, and if you change your mind and don't want it anymore after five minutes you just toss it back instead of having to wait for 5 hours - by then you'd probably be asleep, at work, school, etc.

 

Edit: if we can't do that, I guess just removing the 5-hour limit basically does a similar thing. People just have to manually throw the commons into AP instead of having the system doing it.

Edited May 31, 2021 by love_HP

[blockEdragon]

Okay, here's an idea that I've had for a while:

Non-Hostile Ratios!

Because a collecting game shouldn't punish the playerbase for collecting what they like.

 

Two dragons are released with the same base rarity called Gourami dragons and Gravel dragons...

 

With the current system:

The users like Gourami dragons, everyone wants to play the game to get them so the game responds by gradually taking them away, people don't like the Gravel dragon for whatever reason the game responds by spawning more and more. They sit and sit for an hour until they mercifully despawn...And then even more gravel dragons pop in to sit some more ad nauseum, possibly even making them more unpopular! Because of this mechanic Gourami dragons become rarer and rarer in a snowball effect that eventually leads to them only being seen in the biomes like once or twice a day/month/year, they're starting to trade for frankly ridiculous rates, and all the desperate breeding just makes them even rarer!

 

This is not very fun and just makes every problem with hunting worse.

 

With Non-Hostile Ratios:

People really like Gourami dragons and demand is way up, the game responds by making them more common in the biomes than they normally would be so they're able to meet demand a little easier, overtime value goes down and things balance out due to people having enough. Gravel dragons are unpopular so the game decides "people have had enough of these guys" and they spawn less, this causes them to become rarer and now hold a more comfortable place in the game.

 

Rarity would obviously still matter quite a lot, golds wouldn't start flooding because everyone wants them, but CB golds would probably at least be spotted more than once a year by your average user instead of being cryptids and the biome would have a more balanced population of breeds instead of the one or two uber commons that outweigh everything else on the spawn table.

 

Side effects that would need to be taken into account:

-While this might lead to common breeds becoming the new blockers if done poorly, it would be balanced out if done correctly due to the fact that if they're blocking then they're going too far over demand which would cause the NHR to make them rarer in response. It would also probably help to have the the "make this breed rarer" reflex be stronger than the "make this more common" reflex in order to prevent blockages. 

 

-For mercy's sake this system should not effect breeding in the same way. Breeding could probably remain the same or be ran by a much weaker version of the NHR than the cave's. Mass breeding eggs do not despawn on the hour so the having the hypothetical new ratios work the same for breeding would be disastrous and ruin the AP *Gets swept away by a never-ending wave of AP Goruami eggs* Avenge meeeee!.

 

 

 

(On a side note I'd also love some new biomes because we're missing a lot of basic environments like plains, tundras, bodies of freshwater, swamps, and caves, but while it would definitely help, it would only prolong the inevitable and not address the root of the problem)

Edited January 25, 2022 by blockEdragon

[Astreya]

@blockEdragon

I really like your suggestion. This sound like a very elegant way to alleviate a lot of Cave hunting frustration for the users!

 

The important part is not to make breeding more tedious, though. Right now I get a large amount of "no egg" and "no interest" already, if it would become worse it really would be no fun.

[Nakti]

4 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

All the desirable eggs will have come to the front and been grabbed, and those end-of-the-queue blockers will be all that's left. At which point we have the exact same problem we have now.

Not exactly. I agree that only blockers would be left, but for desirable eggs situation would change very much. Now we can take them only from first part of queue until everything is blocked. And with that idea we would take them from all the queue. So number taken would increase.

 

1 hour ago, blockEdragon said:

Non-Hostile Ratios!

Incredible idea! I love it!

However I'm afraid that developers had made spawns hostile intentionally, so reverting ratios to be player-friendly might be against their will...

[Nakeisha]

1 hour ago, Astreya said:

@blockEdragon

I really like your suggestion. This sound like a very elegant way to alleviate a lot of Cave hunting frustration for the users!

 

The important part is not to make breeding more tedious, though. Right now I get a large amount of "no egg" and "no interest" already, if it would become worse it really would be no fun.

I too really like @blockEdragon's suggestion. 

 

I also echo Astreya's comment that breeding should not be made harder. At the moment the number of 'no egg/no interest' I get, even when breeding common x common is very demoralising.

 

[HeatherMarie]

While I think @blockEdragon's idea is an interesting one and one that would definitely cater more to what the userbase wants than some random unknown 'ratios', I also think it's a *lot* less likely to actually happen than the other ideas in this thread. We've been talking about and asking for an overall change in how ratios and rarity works basically for the better part of a decade now. There have been plenty of Suggestion threads revolved around changing the ratios, evening out the common vs common imbalance, etc. Nothing suggested has ever really gone anywhere and it really doesn't look like a total rehaul of how ratios work is likely to ever happen. 

 

Something more targeted and simple like 'kicking blockers to the AP' or 'increasing shuffles' is much more likely to actually be implemented, imo. 

[rabbithaver]

9 hours ago, blockEdragon said:

Okay, here's an idea that I've had for a while:

Non-Hostile Ratios!

Because a collecting game shouldn't punish the playerbase for collecting what they like.

 

Two dragons are released with the same base rarity called Gourami dragons and Gravel dragons...

 

With the current system:

The users like Gourami dragons, everyone wants to play the game to get them so the game responds by gradually taking them away, people don't like the Gravel dragon for whatever reason the game responds by spawning more and more. They sit and sit for an hour until they mercifully despawn...And then even more gravel dragonspop in to sit some more ad nauseum, possibly even making them more unpopular!. Because of this mechanic Gourami dragons become rarer and rarer in a snowball effect that eventually leads to them only being seen in the biomes like once or twice a day/month/year, they're starting to trade for frankly ridiculous rates, and all the desperate breeding just makes them even rarer!

 

This is not very fun and just makes every problem with hunting worse.

 

With Non-Hostile Ratios:

People really like Gourami dragons and demand is way up, the game responds by making them more common in the biomes than they normally would be so they're able to meet demand a little easier, overtime value goes down and things balance out due to people having enough. Gravel dragons are unpopular so the game decides "people have had enough of these guys" and they spawn less, this causes them to become rarer and now hold a more comfortable place in the game.

 

Rarity would obviously still matter quite a lot, golds wouldn't start flooding because everyone wants them, but CB golds would probably at least be spotted more than once a year by your average user instead of being cryptids and the biome would have a more balanced population of breeds instead of the one or two uber commons that outweigh everything else on the spawn table.

 

Side effects that would need to be taken into account:

-While this might lead to common breeds becoming the new blockers if done poorly, it would be balanced out if done correctly due to the fact that if they're blocking then they're going too far over demand which would cause the NHR to make them rarer in response. It would also probably help to have the the "make this breed rarer" reflex be stronger than the "make this more common" reflex in order to prevent blockages. 

 

-For mercy's sake this system should not effect breeding in the same way. Breeding could probably remain the same or be ran by a much weaker version of the NHR than the cave's. Mass breeding eggs do not despawn on the hour so the having the hypothetical new ratios work the same for breeding would be disastrous and ruin the AP (*Gets swept away by a never-ending wave of AP Goruami eggs* Avenge meeeee!).

 

 

 

(On a side note I'd also love some new biomes because we're missing a lot of basic environments like plains, tundras, bodies of freshwater, swamps, and caves, but while it would definitely help, it would only prolong the inevitable and not address the root of the problem)

 

YOU ARE A GENIUS THATS ALL IM GONNA SAY

[Tini]

11 hours ago, blockEdragon said:

 

 

-For mercy's sake this system should not effect breeding in the same way. Breeding could probably remain the same or be ran by a much weaker version of the NHR than the cave's. Mass breeding eggs do not despawn on the hour so the having the hypothetical new ratios work the same for breeding would be disastrous and ruin the AP (*Gets swept away by a never-ending wave of AP Goruami eggs* Avenge meeeee!).

 

I'm impartial on the overall idea. But I'd just like to say the hostile ratios as is is killing breeding ratios. I shouldn't have to breed 30 eggs from a common x common, TWICE, to get the other dragon. I'm not sure changing the ratio to your idea would help any with that. (Frankly I think breeding should be pulled Out of the ratio system and just a flat 50/50 in rarity brackets.)

 

I think kicking things to the ap instead of deleting would help a lot. People don't want to wait 2-3 days to hatch a cb common, on the other hand, if they can just incuhatch it? Lots of people love any cb incuhatch from the ap.

[blockEdragon]

43 minutes ago, Tini said:

I'm impartial on the overall idea. But I'd just like to say the hostile ratios as is is killing breeding ratios. I shouldn't have to breed 30 eggs from a common x common, TWICE, to get the other dragon. I'm not sure changing the ratio to your idea would help any with that. (Frankly I think breeding should be pulled Out of the ratio system and just a flat 50/50 in rarity brackets.)

 

Breeding definitely has issues but this is a discussion on cave issues so I mostly threw breeding to the wayside for time's sake.

Edited May 31, 2021 by blockEdragon

[Falorni]

On 5/31/2021 at 10:50 AM, blockEdragon said:

snipped bc long quote but its non hostile ratios

100% agree with this!  Was chatting with UoD and for breeding ratios maybe sth like:

 

baseline rates for breeding two commons (1 and 2) = 50/50 chance of each offspring ... of course, that wouldn't work on its own because not all commons are exactly the same rarity, thus add a factor of said non/hostile ratios!

 

What I mean is, instead of commons 1 and 2 breeding 50/50 both offspring, because common 1 is in higher demand the ratio would adjust to something like 70/30.  Later on, when demand goes down (maybe everyone finishes their breeding projects) the ratios fall back to 60/40 or even 50/50.

 

numbers are pulled off the top of my head i do not do math or statistics pls dont get too hung up on whether they specifically woud be accurate in the game as is

[Skadi]

I don't care about rare eggs because I hunt commons now, but the commons I do collect are becoming harder to find. I support more eggs because it will make common hunting easier, especially if there's a cap on how many of the blockers can spawn.

 

When I started collecting Tercorns, they blocked the coast a lot too. Now I'm only getting three or four a week :/.

[MysticMusician]

Support this idea a lot! I have been here for a long while now, almost 9 years I believe and it is crazy how some things I have still never found in the cave, whereas there are always certain eggs in the cave. The amount of times I have seen "This egg is sitting in front of the others" is just. I get they are common, but even so it is still always the same commons in the caves. 9 years and I still have not found most rare or unbreedables in the caves ever, but have definitely sat there are refreshed waiting for Guardians and others to hopefully disappear. Even many commons are rare at this point. 

[firedrake2]

On 5/31/2021 at 4:50 AM, blockEdragon said:

{snipped}

Non-Hostile Ratios!

Because a collecting game shouldn't punish the playerbase for collecting what they like.

 

I just want to say, from a game development perspective, that this is a genius idea. Everything in your post is very clearly thoughtful and measured; it's pretty feasible to have a "demand" variable attached to the spawn rate of each egg, especially because we've seen something similar in the Market prices changing over time. I'm pretty sure @Nakti is correct in saying that the devs made spawning intentionally hostile, but I also think it would be a somewhat belated overhaul to a system that hasn't changed very much in the past ten years.

 

I think implementing new biomes would be a fascinating idea, but as several people have pointed out, it would take a lot longer than making a duplicate of an existing biome. Especially if it's a wholly new environment and not just "Alpine 2", as the dragons would have to be reshuffled and redistributed to where they'll spawn. I don't know. I'm definitely in support of the idea, even if it's just adding a second row of eggs.

[Sundew]

support for non-hostile ratios + for more frequent refreshes (once every minute feels reasonable to me, provided the cave starts making enough eggs to cover that).

 

i also feel that this is just kinda an issue that is going to keep happening. we have close to 300 types of dragons and this game is.. mostly memory, or cross-referencing; you need to learn the names and descriptions of dragons you want, and where you get them, and you have to have the time to dedicate to getting them. Nowadays i get most of my commons from the market, actually, because i do not have the time to spend refreshing through dozens of commons to get the one i'm looking for. DC's hunting mechanics just weren't built for this volume, and the non-hunting methods of obtaining eggs feel.. obscure, and next to impossible to figure out or even realize they're there if you're not on the forums or checking the wiki. That's not terrible, this can just be a game you need a wiki to play, but it does make everything feel super bloated to me as we get more and more types of dragons.

 

All that to say i'm opposed to something that expands upon these basic mechanics without actually altering them. This includes adding a new biome, duplicates of existing biomes, and additional rows of eggs. I want friendlier methods of collecting eggs; I don't want a busier version of our existing mechanics.

[Murkydepths]

I really want a grasslands biome.