Expanding Holiday Breeding Season to Two Weeks

[anetofstars]

On 9/16/2020 at 1:23 PM, tjekan said:

I like the idea of a separate Holiday AP. Then anyone who doesn't like a particular holiday doesn't have to participate, and we could expand the breeding season to accommodate the MANY more holiday breeds we have now, while still not aggravating players who don't like them.

 

Support 100 %!

[dragonico]

Big agree here! Holiday dragons are some of the nicest sprites on site imo and so I'd love the opportunity to be less constrained with what I can raise in that period, especially since each one only comes around one time per year. If you miss out on being able to raise something you wanted to because of the multitude of breeds and lineages to choose from, a whole year to wait for the next opportunity is a real bummer so any suggestions to alleviate that gets serious consideration from me.

[Pixxelation]

I fully support this. We have significantly more holiday breeds than we did when the breeding week was designed, and I think it'd help decrease stress if the period were longer.

[anetofstars]

Major support here. I would like to breed for myself and share my elegant lineages, but a week is not enough time.

[PrincessLucy]

On 9/16/2020 at 5:12 AM, Fuzzbucket said:

But surely we can get the single line of non-holiday eggs in the AP that many of us have asked for for ages ?

 

This.  Seems like a great solution to the low-time AP issue, and allows the non-holiday obsessed players to still have something.

[calankh]

I wonder if one of the issues with doing this (from TJ"s perspective, at least) is that making the breeding season longer would result in dragons able to breed multiple times in a year. Seems like they could be coded to only allow one breeding per year, though. or remove multiclutches, but that would make the holiday AP hunt less fun as fewer nice lines would end up in there. 

 

Anyway, support, specifically:

extend holiday breeding for the entire month of the holiday (so Oct, Dec, Feb)

holiday specific abandoned cave (maybe holiday themed? could even build an event adventure around creating it)

keep multiclutches but limit event dragons to one breeding per event month (that produces holiday eggs, at least)

 

 

 

[tjekan]

3 hours ago, calankh said:

I wonder if one of the issues with doing this (from TJ"s perspective, at least) is that making the breeding season longer would result in dragons able to breed multiple times in a year.

That sounds like a feature, not a bug. Part of the frustration with holiday lineages is that they can only be bred once a year, so advancing the lineages is incredibly slow. It takes literal years to build a modest sized checker. That's really too long. If people could breed their CBs twice, they could at least advance two different checkers one step each.

Would it really hurt anything if they did? I'm not seeing a downside. Maybe a little extra pocket feathering for the people with spriter's alts, I guess, but I wouldn't begrudge them that...

[Tini]

1 hour ago, tjekan said:

That sounds like a feature, not a bug. Part of the frustration with holiday lineages is that they can only be bred once a year, so advancing the lineages is incredibly slow. It takes literal years to build a modest sized checker. That's really too long. If people could breed their CBs twice, they could at least advance two different checkers one step each.

Would it really hurt anything if they did? I'm not seeing a downside. Maybe a little extra pocket feathering for the people with spriter's alts, I guess, but I wouldn't begrudge them that...

Honestly I thought multiple breedings was half the point of this. Especially with CBs. 

[HeatherMarie]

I feel like, just based on other things TJ has mentioned in the past, being able to holiday-breed a dragon multiple times in one holiday would have to come with a trade-off. What I mean is, if we were to get that 'perk', there would have to be a compromise/downside to it, and the most logical one I can think of is getting rid of multi-clutches. He has floated that idea in the past, getting rid of muticlutches. I honestly don't care either way about the ability to breed more than once per season, I would support it with certain caveats, but *not* if it's at the expense of multiclutches. 

[Infinis]

I would like an extended breeding season but not at the expense of multiclutches, because the max number of eggs from a single multiclutch (4) is double that of two breedings with no multiclucth (2, one egg per breeding). Multiclutches spread more eggs around.

 

I'm more interested in an extended season as a way to collect more lineages, or at least collect every lineage I need. I have 54 halloween kins that need mates this year, which at the current season of 1 week I'd need to breed like 7.7 eggs *per day* to be able to get all of them. So a lot of eggs in the AP halloween wall - mainly provided by multiclutches - directly benefits me because I can hunt the lower time AP eggs for what I want, so I don't have to breed an impossible number of eggs. 

[Corseiss]

Full support with this. Went looking for freezies last christmas but failed miserably due to to the one week breeding season indirectly. There's only so little time to catch and hatch freezies during holiday seasons and even if so, people who have more time to catch stuff might be locked with previous releases and new releases, limiting the time you can find and catch freezies. For scroll completionists like me its rather annoying at times, especially during halloween as there's no limit to catching eggs.

 

And as of now to actually get anything done during the holiday seasons I actually need to plan ahead or I'll just get locked and forget what i have to do. Therefore, i really support this idea.

[Ruby Eyes]

A second generation of holidays within the same season can be avoided just the way he already does it: by setting an artificial "last bred" date. That will still work when the breeding season starts a week earlier.

 

[DragonLady86]

Indifferent to multiple breeding attempts but would accept extending the artificial limit tat new holidays already have. 

 

I very much want to keep multi-cluches. Its the best way spread good lineages.

 

 

[tjekan]

7 hours ago, Infinis said:

I'm more interested in an extended season as a way to collect more lineages, or at least collect every lineage I need. I have 54 halloween kins that need mates this year, which at the current season of 1 week I'd need to breed like 7.7 eggs *per day* to be able to get all of them. So a lot of eggs in the AP halloween wall - mainly provided by multiclutches - directly benefits me because I can hunt the lower time AP eggs for what I want, so I don't have to breed an impossible number of eggs. 

I have this problem at Halloween too. Though the two-week breeding season would make the most difference at Christmas and Valentine's due to the two-CB limit, it would also help with Halloween. The truth is, with so many breeds and pairings out there, finding specific lineages in the AP can be really tough. If there's a pairing I really want I still have to either breed it myself or get someone else to. One week isn't enough time to make that happen.

As far as multiclutches go, though, I don't see why removing those would even be on the table. Why would there be the need to give us a "downside" in order to improve gameplay? As far as I know, TJ did not set the breeding window to one week to punish us, make the game harder, or anything like that. It was simply a sufficient amount of time to breed holiday dragons back when we only had a couple of breeds. That is no longer the case. As the game has expanded, now the window needs to expand, that's all.

[Ruby Eyes]

11 minutes ago, tjekan said:

As far as multiclutches go, though, I don't see why removing those would even be on the table. Why would there be the need to give us a "downside" in order to improve gameplay? As far as I know, TJ did not set the breeding window to one week to punish us, make the game harder, or anything like that. It was simply a sufficient amount of time to breed holiday dragons back when we only had a couple of breeds. That is no longer the case. As the game has expanded, now the window needs to expand, that's all.

I agree with that!

 

Technically, we don't need that extra week for breeding more - breeding can all just happen on a single day.

We need that extra week in order to be able to KEEP and RAISE more of what we breed, instead of having to rely on rotten luck on the AP afterwards!

[Odeen]

I would be cool with increasing the window that holiday dragons could breed true if it could be done in such a way as to mean that individual holiday dragons can still breed only once per year. I feel like the slow progression of holiday lineages is part of their charm.

[purplehaze]

10 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

I honestly don't care either way about the ability to breed more than once per season, I would support it with certain caveats, but *not* if it's at the expense of multiclutches. 

This very much.

2 hours ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Technically, we don't need that extra week for breeding more - breeding can all just happen on a single day.

We need that extra week in order to be able to KEEP and RAISE more of what we breed, instead of having to rely on rotten luck on the AP afterwards!

Exactly. Breeding all my holiday dragons isn't the problem. The problem is trying to find scroll space to advance the lineages that I have started as well as start new ones each year -- I mean what is the good of getting new holiday dragons if we can't build lineages with them. I know some people are simply collectors and don't care about breeding for lineages, but lineages are mainly what has kept me coming to DC all these years.

 

[olympe]

9 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

I feel like, just based on other things TJ has mentioned in the past, being able to holiday-breed a dragon multiple times in one holiday would have to come with a trade-off. What I mean is, if we were to get that 'perk', there would have to be a compromise/downside to it, and the most logical one I can think of is getting rid of multi-clutches. He has floated that idea in the past, getting rid of muticlutches. I honestly don't care either way about the ability to breed more than once per season, I would support it with certain caveats, but *not* if it's at the expense of multiclutches. 

Well, in that case I'm for a 24/7 breeding period with no multi-clutches *and* no special treatment for holiday eggs in the AP. As a trade-off, we wouldn't have a guaranteed holiday offspring ever. This would put holiday dragons on the same level as non-holidays, breeding-wise. However, they'd still only drop during the holiday week, keeping them special enough IMHO. Not to mention the still existing CB limits for non-Halloweens increasing their rarity.

 

[tjekan]

2 hours ago, Odeen said:

I would be cool with increasing the window that holiday dragons could breed true if it could be done in such a way as to mean that individual holiday dragons can still breed only once per year. I feel like the slow progression of holiday lineages is part of their charm.

 

Though I don't agree--I find it merely an arbitrary hassle, not a charm--I can certainly understand the nostalgic weight of something the way it's always been. 🙂  The mechanic to make a fake arbitrary cool-down for holiday dragons during their season is already in place, so it's not like that should be difficult to implement. And even if each individual dragon can only breed once, doubling the breeding season would STILL be a big help. The sheer increase in the number of breeds is making it back-breaking to keep up with even modest holiday lineage plans. With twice as long to collect them, even if I would still have no chance to catch up on needed 2g hollies, I could still advance more than 2 or 3 holiday checker lineages, so it would still be greatly welcome to me. And too, as Infinis says, the chance of finding and having space to pick up pretty lineages from the AP would increase at least somewhat.

I'd still support either way.

[Fuzzbucket]

7 hours ago, DragonLady86 said:

Indifferent to multiple breeding attempts but would accept extending the artificial limit tat new holidays already have. 

 

I very much want to keep multi-cluches. Its the best way spread good lineages.

 

 

Me too. And also with not being able to breed holiday dragons in the season they are collected. (as in the "fake CD")

[VixenDra]

If this doesn't come with multiple breedings, it'll be yet another thing I won't benefit from

and IF at the same time it comes with removal of multiclutches as well, it will literally harm(slow down even further) my gameplay, as it's tied to me collecting offspring from my own pairs (3-4) - right now I'm relying on multiclutches and people trading some of them back to me. I just need my dragons to produce several offspring per year in some way. And my playstyle is continuously hurt (the adult-only sinomorph was the greatest backstab so far, aside to GoN limit being too low by 2), and I'm very tired of that:(

Also, annually bred holiday dragons can only have less holidayXholiday offspring than a regularly bred GoldxGold (have seen that with my own ones)... I see no problem in letting holidays have better "pure"-breeding progeny explanding possibilities than the ultimately rarest of the DC breeds has...

Edited September 25, 2020 by VixenDra

[Ruby Eyes]

29 minutes ago, VixenDra said:

GoN limit being too low by 2

3 (which is still too low, in my opinion)

[VixenDra]

23 minutes ago, Ruby Eyes said:

3 (which is still too low, in my opinion)

I did mean 2(I'm just not sure if I used English correctly or not), like I need 5 GoNs, being allowed 3 makes it 2 short for me

[DragonLady86]

25 minutes ago, Ruby Eyes said:

3 (which is still too low, in my opinion)

She means her goal is 5

[MoonShark]

I'm going to update my original post with some of the things people have brought up--specifically the need for an AP update to go alongside this (whether that's a line of non-holiday eggs or a separate holiday AP) as well as that dragons would need an artificial last bred date to avoid double breeding.

 

Thank you all for your feedback! I'm glad that so far it seems like the majority of those speaking up are in favor of this idea--hopefully that means TJ might consider implementing it.