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

[Skadi]

1 hour ago, Guillotine said:

All second row suggestions involve rearranging the page to accomodate more eggs on mobile. 

Yeah idk why this is even an argument against the second row because it's easy to use media tags to make things fit on mobile screens. It would take very little time to adjust.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Skadi

[Impulsive_Egg]

Mobile seems to be the biggest issue in the way of any form of change for these mechanics, and it kinda sucks. Would rearranging the mobile layout to accommodate more dragon eggs really be that impossible to achieve? I can imagine it can be a challenge, but not impossible.

[Guillotine]

It's trivial because the biggest cause of space issues (the biome descriptions) can just be moved beneath the eggs without severe usability problems outside of the adjustment period. It's not like with some pages where rearranging things while keeping legibility is a technical and design nightmare.

[Yubelchen]

The easiest way i think would be adding one or two new areas and spread the current amount of dragons a bit more right?

We are missing Graslands/Steppe/Savannah, Swamp, Rivers, Arctic/Tundra, maybe some Ruins?

And on mobile there is easily space for 2 new areas

 

Another way it could work is putting the area description in a spoiler, which opens up space to add another row of eggs with the area description being toggleable in the options to have it in a spoiler right away or display at all times, should be the easiest way to implement for mobile players

[KageSora]

TJ is the only one who can comment on it, but keep in mind its entirely possible for him to want the descriptive text at the top and to be read before the egg descriptions.

 

While it would be the easiest way to include another row of eggs, if the intention is that the flavor text leads the biome and precedes the eggs rather than simply being the logical design choice at inception that changes how likely it is that it would be shuffled to accomodate a second row.

[Skadi]

4 hours ago, Impulsive_Egg said:

Mobile seems to be the biggest issue in the way of any form of change for these mechanics, and it kinda sucks. Would rearranging the mobile layout to accommodate more dragon eggs really be that impossible to achieve? I can imagine it can be a challenge, but not impossible.

With CSS, you can set the biome description to simply not display or display under the eggs when the screen width is below a certain point. It is not hard.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Skadi

[Fuzzbucket]

How many people know how to use CSS on their mobile though ? Those of us who can do these things find it hard to understand those who flounder.  I just spent yet another half hour explaining to my partner - a highly intelligent person - why his ancestry programme was linking to the wrong browser.... but it will happen again the next time he uses it and he will have forgotten what I told him. Some people DON'T find these things - computer things - that easy.

[ACDragonMaster]

I just want to point out, that doing just one of the suggested things--either doubling the biomes or adding another row of eggs--would only bring us to the point of having a barely manageable system.  We would rapidly run into the issue we're facing now, probably within a year or so's worth of releases.  To be a more long-term solution would require a multi-pronged approach, or something more drastic.

 

So basically, to not have this exact same issue again shortly, we'd need to have BOTH a double row of eggs AND increase the number of biomes.  Or do something convoluted like having different users access a different version of a given page at the same time, instead of 70 people trying to click the exact same egg.  But that has some real drawbacks, too.

[Impulsive_Egg]

3 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

How many people know how to use CSS on their mobile though ? Those of us who can do these things find it hard to understand those who flounder.  I just spent yet another half hour explaining to my partner - a highly intelligent person - why his ancestry programme was linking to the wrong browser.... but it will happen again the next time he uses it and he will have forgotten what I told him. Some people DON'T find these things - computer things - that easy.

most people don't. I have no idea what CSS is and if it is something that is up to the individual to use for their device or for the designer of a website. It might be easy for those know what they're doing, but the rest of us are SOL and we have to depend on the designer to fix the issue.

This thread seems to be going around in circles and it's tiring. All the solutions have been suggested and countered with their own problems; so what do we do now? I'm still voting on another row of eggs in each cave, and another person will respond by saying "but it will mess up the layout on mobile" and then the same things will be said over and over again. I guess we can only wait for TJ's input on this.

[Skadi]

1 hour ago, Fuzzbucket said:

How many people know how to use CSS on their mobile though ? Those of us who can do these things find it hard to understand those who flounder.  I just spent yet another half hour explaining to my partner - a highly intelligent person - why his ancestry programme was linking to the wrong browser.... but it will happen again the next time he uses it and he will have forgotten what I told him. Some people DON'T find these things - computer things - that easy.

this literally only requires TJ's input though, and I think TJ would know CSS.

 

Like CSS/HTML are things that players DO NOT interact with at all. I'm saying that the mobile layout is easily fixable from a designer standpoint and does not require players to speculate about it at all. The site has a responsive mobile skin already, changing the biomes would take almost no effort in comparison. As TJ is a competent web designer, I am assuming he has the knowledge to change the site layout if a second row of eggs is added.

 

that being said

 

  

1 hour ago, ACDragonMaster said:

I just want to point out, that doing just one of the suggested things--either doubling the biomes or adding another row of eggs--would only bring us to the point of having a barely manageable system.  We would rapidly run into the issue we're facing now, probably within a year or so's worth of releases.  To be a more long-term solution would require a multi-pronged approach, or something more drastic.

 

So basically, to not have this exact same issue again shortly, we'd need to have BOTH a double row of eggs AND increase the number of biomes.  Or do something convoluted like having different users access a different version of a given page at the same time, instead of 70 people trying to click the exact same egg.  But that has some real drawbacks, too.

 

Pretty much this. I really do want overall changes to the drop mechanics as a whole. Non-hostile ratios and some way of managing when certain things drop would go a long way.

Edited November 1, 2022 by Skadi

[Guillotine]

Yeah, this is a stop-gap if it doesn't come with a fix, but i think even with fixed ratios spreading out the player density across more than three slots in six biomes would help gamefeel. More importantly, it can buy breathing room to make a more permanent fix.

[Yashiro]

I support adding one more roll of eggs for every biome and/or adding more biomes. I just started (30th Sept) and the "rare" eggs I got was from trading at much sacrifice since some trade 1x3 and so.  There's too much different breeds and when you go to certain biomes they're always the same common eggs, it's kinda sad and frustrating. I need to stay hunting for whole three days to get a CB Blusang, that's not really healthy(?). Maybe a 5 minutes wave like in Halloween biome and keeping three eggs roll only would be enough too. 

[KageSora]

16 minutes ago, Yashiro said:

I support adding one more roll of eggs for every biome and/or adding more biomes. I just started (30th Sept) and the "rare" eggs I got was from trading at much sacrifice since some trade 1x3 and so.  There's too much different breeds and when you go to certain biomes they're always the same common eggs, it's kinda sad and frustrating. I need to stay hunting for whole three days to get a CB Blusang, that's not really healthy(?). Maybe a 5 minutes wave like in Halloween biome and keeping three eggs roll only would be enough too. 

 

I mean, rares are rare for a reason.  They'll always be rare and hard to catch.  Even as a long-term player I pretty much never see the rares dragons myself.

 

There also are 5 minute refreshes in the regular biomes all year round--there's just a chance that they'll end up with the same eggs as previously displayed.  Even if more biomes or pages were added there's a chance of it happening.  Heck, you might put in a second row and have SIX identical eggs because the mega commons will always show up far, far more than anything else.

 

Something definitely needs to be done, but rares will always be hard to come by and trading will always be easier to obtain them for some people depending on luck and how much time you have to hunt.

 

3 days of hunting for a rare isn't actually that bad, if they were common enough to find them easily once a day or every other day--especially for players who don't spend 24/7 hunting--they wouldn't be rare anymore.

 

(Of course, finding one is only half the battle--no guarantee you get it after all.)

[Yashiro]

2 minutes ago, KageSora said:

 

I mean, rares are rare for a reason.  They'll always be rare and hard to catch.  Even as a long-term player I pretty much never see the rares dragons myself.

 

There also are 5 minute refreshes in the regular biomes all year round--there's just a chance that they'll end up with the same eggs as previously displayed.  Even if more biomes or pages were added there's a chance of it happening.  Heck, you might put in a second row and have SIX identical eggs because the mega commons will always show up far, far more than anything else.

 

Something definitely needs to be done, but rares will always be hard to come by and trading will always be easier to obtain them for some people depending on luck and how much time you have to hunt.

 

3 days of hunting for a rare isn't actually that bad, if they were common enough to find them easily once a day or every other day--especially for players who don't spend 24/7 hunting--they wouldn't be rare anymore.

 

(Of course, finding one is only half the battle--no guarantee you get it after all.)

Yeah, you're right. I mean, I'm not complaining about the rarity of them, it's just that it seem idk unfair? Don't take me wrong, I may have expressed myself with the wrong phrasing, I like the hunting and know the significance of rarity in DC, but some people sadly don't have the time yk? Maybe putting the 2 rolls eggs and changing it to something like impossible to have more than 2 of the same egg in the biome would help? I don't know. I was just debating with the rest. :( 

[KageSora]

3 hours ago, Yashiro said:

Yeah, you're right. I mean, I'm not complaining about the rarity of them, it's just that it seem idk unfair? Don't take me wrong, I may have expressed myself with the wrong phrasing, I like the hunting and know the significance of rarity in DC, but some people sadly don't have the time yk? Maybe putting the 2 rolls eggs and changing it to something like impossible to have more than 2 of the same egg in the biome would help? I don't know. I was just debating with the rest.

 

That's fair!  There's also eggs that seem to have a very odd rarity--that is, they don't seem like they're supposed to be rare but they're hard to find anyway and some rares are kind of ridiculously rare to the point where I feel like it'd be better to call them ultra rares instead.

 

Limiting the number of identical breeds could be helpful, though.  It would stop the issue of "every egg is the same breed" while still letting people who are hunting the commons easily get several if that's what they're looking for!

[ACDragonMaster]

I mean, for the sake of comparison, when I first joined the website, drops were such that if I had a silver or gold hatchling gender wrong, I could abandon it and expect to be able to grab a new CB egg with minimal hassle.  Obviously I don't expect it to be THAT easy again, but it puts some perspective on the issue of how hard it is to get even certain uncommon eggs now.

 

[Impulsive_Egg]

yeah, with a bigger dragon roster, I haven't seen a red dragon egg in a cave in a minute

[Moriaty]

support. A total of 18 slots over 6 biomes might be enough for when the cave has 200 different breeds (which I assume was a couple of years ago), but we've hit 300 now. Something should change. Second row sounds ok, for mobile why not just move the large chunk of description of entering the cave and seeing bunch of eggs under the actual eggs.

[deleted_account]

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, hopefully TJ won't object. At least 50% of new breeds should be hybrids for now and releases should be mixed. There are so many biome breeds to work with, and most released artists have several in the game and don't need to worry about permissions from others.
I  prefer CBs myself but the game gets more and more unplayable for most play styles each month. 

 

So, artists, please consider focusing on making mostly new hybrids for now. 

 

 

edit:

he can't release more of something he doesn't have a bulky stock of and a steady supply to plan ahead.

He's not in a position to make demands on what he wants sprited since he doesn't pay his artists, so I wouldn't expect him to ask, while everyone is so scared of asking him anything as well. And everyone seems also so uninterested or even scared of even trying to make more hybrids... A vicious circle. Can't even the artists just ask what he'd like more of or has a low supply of?

In DR there is a big fat 0 hybrids! NOT A SINGLE ONE!

I just don't believe there are more than just a few at the ready from private works when I look at DR and amoutns released, and I assume TJ just can't release more hybrids each year no matter what he actually wants, of what nobody asks him but everyone assumes mindreading powers while this man hardly ever says anything except for an occassional veto, but I never heard of him expressing a want of his. 

 

And this is the ONLY thing TJ can't do all by himself, if the community doesn't supply him with plenty of hybrids to choose from, he just can't release more no matter if he wants to or not. Which is why I mentioned it - it's in YOUR hands whether TJ even has this as an option at all,and what he wants is on him, not on this thread. ALL the rest in this thread is only about his decisions, but this one is impossible without the community's cooperation!

Edited November 5, 2022 by Biel

[KageSora]

1 hour ago, 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, hopefully TJ won't object. At least 50% of new breeds should be hybrids for now and releases should be mixed. There are so many biome breeds to work with, and most released artists have several in the game and don't need to worry about permissions from others.
I  prefer CBs myself but the game gets more and more unplayable for most play styles each month. 

 

So, artists, please consider focusing on making mostly new hybrids for now. 

 

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.

[Guillotine]

Yeah, and for the non-standard breeding groups (especially Drakes, which are most restricted), even if a hybrid is added it won't really solve the problems people have with those breeding groups. If anything, it might make it worse--the way hybrids are designed, you can't really add an entirely new color to the pool, which Drakes in particularly desperately need (we only just got red! We're still missing white, black, and violet! We only have orange if you count gold as orange!), and they have to share a body type with one of the parent breeds (which affects 2-heads most, since right now we have a body type that is only represented in a Holiday breed).

[KageSora]

Actually, now that I think about it further, just to point out...  Making the dragons hybrids will not actually solve the problem, and in fact may make things worse.

 

One of the reasons I'd personally prefer fewer drops is it gets overwhelming trying to obtain that many new dragons.  Especially if I also want to work on lineage projects and I can't keep working on those during a release unless I want to risk never getting my hands on one of the new releases if they then up and vanish from the cave into ultra rarity.

 

Making them a hybrid doesn't actually solve that because now not only do I need to collect the hybrid dragon, but I now have to also compete with people for the base dragons--especially if they're a base dragon I'm not super fond of and thus don't have many but I really like the hybrids.  And then you're not just competing with everybody who's trying to increase their stock of base dragons to try for hybrids from but you're also competing with anybody who was already hunting those dragons.

 

There are some breeds that aren't rares that are still a pain in the butt to get your hands on as CBs sometimes so unless the hybrids were all made from parent combinations of dragons that are repeated cave-blockers it would be it's own level of significant frustration.  And then, of course, that makes it a nightmare for anybody who was trying to collect those breeds independently.  I mean that's always the inherent danger of a hybrid, but if we went to releases that were significantly more hybrid that would be a lot of frustration all around IMO.

 

So that wouldn't actually solve everything and would introduce it's own set of annoyances.

[ACDragonMaster]

8 hours ago, KageSora said:

Making them a hybrid doesn't actually solve that because now not only do I need to collect the hybrid dragon, but I now have to also compete with people for the base dragons--especially if they're a base dragon I'm not super fond of and thus don't have many but I really like the hybrids.  And then you're not just competing with everybody who's trying to increase their stock of base dragons to try for hybrids from but you're also competing with anybody who was already hunting those dragons.

 

Sapos basically went from cave blockers to rare finds after Ceriuths came out, so yeah this is definitely a thing.

 

There's a lot of good suggestions that might help, but as I said, this will continue to be an ongoing, recurring problem if it's not addressed on multiple fronts.  For example, having a fixed number of rows, regardless of how many there are, will eventually run into issues down the line.  The same with adding sub-biomes.

 

The most pragmatic solution would be a dynamic one: that the cave changes how things are displayed based on how many users are active/how many eggs are sitting in queue.  This could include the number of rows, going from one row for hot new releases up to potentially as many as, say, three, or multiple versions of a biome page that users get randomly assigned to that display different sections of the egg queue, the number of these being dependent on the backlog, or a combination of both.  Higher scroll limits where the extra eggs must have remained unclaimed for at least a full minute to qualify for the extra spot (like the old "four CB plus one bred egg" limit back in the day) could also be an option.

 

Or maybe something else entirely.  But it's not something that can be given one fix and done, it needs to be set up to be able to continue to expand the ever-increasing number of dragons.

[Guillotine]

Visible number of egg slots on mobiles caps out at six, unfortunately, so no more than two rows, and people have said that they have a hard time quickly scanning that many descriptions even on desktop (the only game I play that does something similar with relying purely on text to find that game's cave eggs caps at 5, with upgrades, and you aren't seeing the same Lab as everyone else so the competition element of DC doesn't exist to the same degree). Alpines 1-6 is the closest you can get.

[ACDragonMaster]

Which is why I throw out the idea of having higher scroll limits with some caveats.  A big part of why we have cave blockers and massive backlogs on the AP is that, with over 300 types of dragon and a max of 8 eggs/24 growing things at a time, people have to be discerning about what they do and don't choose to pick up.  Add more scroll space and I bet a lot of blockers would vanish; this could be balanced by, say, capping the total eggs from a new release at a lower level than the scroll limit to keep things fair.