Making Earthquake a better BSA

[4002sacuL]

Now it's just too risky to use it.

 

Tried on group of dragons (4 were 2h away from hatching, une was just picked), and all were unaffected except for one (of the older ones) that died.

 

I have no doubt that I was unlucky, but still, it could really be a much better BSA

[Stromboli]

It's a high risk/high reward action. You're taking the gamble of possibly killing things in the hope that you will have something hatch much earlier than they could naturally.

[Jazeki]

As Stromboli said, it's a high risk action. You are warned ahead of time that your eggs could die.

 

As for making it a better BSA, what do you propose could be done to make it better? "Better" is subjective here. 

[Fuzzbucket]

It's something I  never use, myself. FAR too risky. As Stromboli says - it's high risk. 99% of the time, it simply isn't worth it.

[HeatherMarie]

Is there an actual suggestion here? How do you propose to make it 'better'? Yes, it's a very risky action now, because it has the chance of a very big reward. That's kind of the point. But I don't actually see any suggestion here of how to make it better?

[Ruffledfeathers]

I assume the best method of making the BSA more useful would be tweaking the odds. I.e. reducing the ‘unaffected’ or death chances. 
 

I would personally find myself using it to clear the AP if it didn’t take an egg slot for a day after a failure. However I don’t know how popular that idea would be. 

[Paintra]

I don't find a lot of use for Earthquake myself, so I'm kind of neutral on this one. I think one potential way of making it more useful would be to have a guaranteed "no effect" on eggs that would not be able to hatch through the use of the BSA (eggs under 24h and eggs that have not started cracking yet) but I don't know if that would be too powerful of a buff.

[HeatherMarie]

17 minutes ago, Paintra said:

I don't find a lot of use for Earthquake myself, so I'm kind of neutral on this one. I think one potential way of making it more useful would be to have a guaranteed "no effect" on eggs that would not be able to hatch through the use of the BSA (eggs under 24h and eggs that have not started cracking yet) but I don't know if that would be too powerful of a buff.

 

Do you mean instead of the chance of death they just get no effect if they are too young or have too little views? Yeah, I definitely think that takes away the entire point of having the risk-side in the first place. 

[Toyo]

I wouldn't mind the high risk, as long as eggs I fogged (or used ward on, etc) were not affected. All other BSAs i can think of only work on a single egg that we intentionally select. This would make earthquake more like a vampire bite - it could die, but maybe not. 

 

edit: weird autocorrect stuff

Edited October 8, 2020 by Toyo

[Stromboli]

Eh, you can attempt a similar process on one specific egg by using the kill action to attempt a forced hatching, though you lose the chance at a "not affected" result by that method. So the increased safety of only affecting one egg comes with the offset of increased risk of actually killing it.

[Infinis]

For earthquake to have any chance of success, eggs must be at least 24 hours old and have begun cracking. I don't know how well that information has disseminated from discord, but that's the best knowledge we have based on some folks who took the risks on discord and recorded the results.

 

It makes sense that EQ works on warded eggs, because ward is designed only to protect against sickness, and it makes sense that it works through fog, because fog doesn't magically lift something away from the ground. (We could make the argument that balloons should be unaffected by EQ...but maybe EQ makes a tree fall on it, instead.)

 

Vampires are also high risk/reward - I have had many more deaths than turns or repulses. I like the fact that EQ is functionally bite but on a larger scale - you have 3 options (1 good/1 neutral/1 bad) - but that means EQ has to have some kind of significant downside to counteract the reward it offers, or else why not suggest that eggs just hatch earlier altogether, since most folks use EQ to force eggs to hatch early? EQ also seems to actually have better chances than vamps of unaffected/hatch; I haven't used it a whole lot but I don't get so many deaths with EQ than with bite.

 

That said there isn't really a suggestion here; it's more of a complaint. @4002sacuL do you have a specific suggestion on what could be done to change the BSA?

Edited October 8, 2020 by Infinis

[Shadowdrake]

Going by testing, Earthquake needs eggs to be at least a specific age and crack stage to be able to hatch at all. If you get a lot of deaths and fails, you probably didn't have what EQ needs. Frankly, doing EQ on eggs that can be hatched by it seems to give over a 50% success rate, which is pretty good odds for being able to hatch them at 6 days left. So it's very specific in its use and many casual players may not be able to figure this out for themselves, but this is true for several other features such as zombies or neglecteds, and EQ isn't even necessary if you want to collect everything.

 

Tl:dr earthquake is very niche but has its uses and, like some other mechanics, if you can learn how to use it the success rate is a lot higher, so it doesn't really need improvement.

[UnicornMaiden]

I never use Earthquake myself. It's just not worth it. People say it's high risk/high reward, but personally I see it as high risk/low reward. The risk of dead eggs is very high, but what's really the benefit? If I want my eggs to hatch sooner I just Incubate them.

Edited October 9, 2020 by UnicornMaiden
fixed typo

[Firefury Amahira]

Rather than a change to EQ, what about adding a BSA to Balloons?

 

Call it Float or Levitate, basically the Balloon grabs one egg and protects it from EQ. Obviously as a downside it would need a lengthy cooldown (at least the same length as Incubate, IMO). Probably also make it last X hours (one day?), and until it wears off you can't float any other eggs. That way the high risk of EQ is maintained, but it gives players a way to protect That One Egg they absolutely do not want to risk while still being able to use EQ.

 

Or I'm just throwing sleep deprived rambling out into the aether, but who knows?

[HeatherMarie]

@Firefury Amahira  Here you go!

 

[Firefury Amahira]

9 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

@Firefury Amahira  Here you go!

 

LOL! That's probably why the idea seemed so familiar! 🤣

[Keileon]

8 hours ago, UnicornMaiden said:

I never use Earthquake myself. It's just not worth it. People say it's high risk/high reward, but personally I see it as high risk/low reward. The risk of dead eggs is very high, but what's really the benefit? If I want my eggs to hatch sooner I just Incubate them.

The unofficial Discord has done extensive testing and there seems to be very real reason to EQ at least new releases to get them to adulthood ASAP. However as I don't participate in these experiments I don't follow them too closely and thus don't have a lot of detail. I will however mention that the death rate actually doesn't seem very high under the correct conditions for EQ.

[Fuzzbucket]

Nothing would induce me to risk new release eggs.

[4002sacuL]

On 10/8/2020 at 11:38 PM, Infinis said:

That said there isn't really a suggestion here; it's more of a complaint. @4002sacuL do you have a specific suggestion on what could be done to change the BSA?

 

My suggestion is just to have greater chance the more cracked and less time it has. As I stated, 4 eggs were fully cracked an with 4d1h left, three of which were unaffected and one died. That just seems really wrong to me

[ShorahNagi]

On 10/11/2020 at 6:51 AM, 4002sacuL said:

 

My suggestion is just to have greater chance the more cracked and less time it has. As I stated, 4 eggs were fully cracked an with 4d1h left, three of which were unaffected and one died. That just seems really wrong to me

Earthquake isn't meant to be some magic "hatch all" BSA (even if it DOES hatch all your eggs. Theres still a chance you wont get any hatchlings [hatchlings run when forced out and theres a chance you won't actually catch the hatchling *I've lost quite a few this way*])

 

Personally, I don't see a problem with how the BSA works as it stands. No support on changing it

[purplehaze]

I think earthquake is exactly what it is intended to be -- a way for the impatient who are willing to take the risk to try to hatch eggs earlier.

We can choose to use it or not, knowing the possible consequences.

The Red dragon's incubate BSA reliably takes a day off the egg's time to hatch without risk -- unless you fail to get the required views. That is good enough for me.

[Fuzzbucket]

On 10/8/2020 at 10:38 PM, Infinis said:

That said there isn't really a suggestion here; it's more of a complaint. @4002sacuL do you have a specific suggestion on what could be done to change the BSA?

 

This - what exactly is the OP asking for ? It works as nature intended.