Aeon Dragon's Precog Ability

[Redds]

Can Aeon Dragons predicit more than just the gender of the hatchling? I feel like its underused or an understatement for its power. Now that there are more variations of dragons than there used to be.
For instance, if it is an alt for indistinguishable eggs(black/green/alcedine/undine), and the type of fire gem/gemshard/glorydrake/nabula/solstices/etc

It'd be especially useful for AP eggs in which we would be able to skip hour calculations where it matters or would be ambiguous. It could also facilitate the in-cave trading feature(granted people could lie about that leading to another issue)

Edited January 14, 2021 by Redds

[ShorahNagi]

Personally, I only use precog on eggs I can't influnce.

 

On the one hand - this WOULD come in handy for various lineages that require certain colors (ex. Alternating Nebula colors) as it would cut out the waiting game to see if it's right or not. And less headaches of trying to trade for the right one.

 

But on the other hand, I can see this resulting in a lot (more) of the breeds this would affect being tossed to the AP because they're not the right color/alt. Plus, though rare - there have been cases of people lying (and in at least one case doctoring a precog screenshot) about precog...and this could just add to that.

 

Not to mention, there's such a small amount of breeds this would affect [Black, Dark green/vine, Undine, Nebula, Gemshard, Solstice* (sorry if I forgot any with alts. That are not time/parent based)] that I don't see much of a point to it.

 

With that, I'll admit I'm on the fence but leaning more towards No to this being implemented.

 

*Solstice is only a problem once a year

**Glory drakes can be told in egg form (provided you've got the encyclopedia entry) when you pick them up so they don't need precog.

**Fire Gem eggs are the same color as the dragon so you can tell as an egg

Edited January 14, 2021 by ShorahNagi

[Ruby Eyes]

As far as I'm aware, alt-ness of Blacks and others is determined at hatching time, at which point you'd see it anyway (ungendered Nebula hatchies sort with their future colour in breed sort). Pargulus eggs seem to be the only exception there in that they sort colour-based already before hatching.

(There was a site outtage some years ago that resulted in the database being restored to an earlier point in time, and some eggs that had hatched as alts before and were reverted back to eggs hatched regular afterwards, while a few other individuals did that the other way round.)

[Ruffledfeathers]

4 hours ago, Ruby Eyes said:

(There was a site outtage some years ago that resulted in the database being restored to an earlier point in time, and some eggs that had hatched as alts before and were reverted back to eggs hatched regular afterwards, while a few other individuals did that the other way round.)

Huh, didnt know that. Thats pretty interesting.

 

I would love a BSA to predict the colour variant of an egg. Even if people doctor images in trades, I think that is a pretty rare occurrence and is possible with any BSA.

[HeatherMarie]

Honestly, I feel like this would defeat the purpose of ambiguous egg-to-hatchie variants? There are *very* few breeds that have such a mechanic, and those that do were made the way they were deliberately. It feels like this is just making a loophole for a very specific mechanic that was deliberately put into place on a few special breeds. 

Add to that the fact that many of the breeds the OP listed are *not* ambiguous (as has already been pointed out), and it's fairly commonly accepted knowledge that Blacks/Greens are only alted upon hatching so you wouldn't be able to tell with an egg regardless (I phrase it that way because most users believe that but I don't know if it's ever been officially confirmed).... Yeah, no support.

[Fuzzbucket]

No support here either. I'm not OK with making everything as easy as possible.

[DragonLady86]

7 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

and it's fairly commonly accepted knowledge that Blacks/Greens are only alted upon hatching so you wouldn't be able to tell with an egg regardless 

I seem to recall TJ stating this years ago when someone wanted a BSA to identify alts as an egg. Back when we had a BSA suggestion fourm. (Also the rollback incident described above seems to support the idea.)

[Chaos Rider]

I thought whether or not a Black/Vine would alt was determined when the egg was laid. But the different sprites for alt eggs were removed because it lead to a lot of abandoned Black/Vine eggs

 

Quote

Prior to November 2008, Alt Black eggs were a slightly different shade from standard Black eggs, allowing users to identify alts before the eggs hatched. Currently, there is no way to identify an alt until the dragon has hatched. 

 

Quote

Alt Dark Green eggs originally were a slightly different shade of green than standard Dark Green eggs. Both forms now use the same egg sprite making it impossible to determine if a Dark Green will be an alt until it hatches.

 

Edited January 15, 2021 by Chaos Rider

[HeatherMarie]

It's true that over a decade ago you were be able to tell from a difference in the egg, but that doesn't necessarily mean eggs are alt-coded now. In fact I would think it *most* likely they were changed to alt when hatched at the same time the eggs were changed, that seems to make the most sense based on everything users have experienced.

[Wisadel]

There's a reason why you cant tell alt green, undine, and black apart from normal eggs. I'm fairly certain that's a deliberate decision - and while it is sorta annoying that you have to hatch the egg to know if it alts or not I still think that's the essential "rule of the game" for alt lotteries and am against this suggestion if people just want easy life, to be able to tell alt eggs apart from normal ones, with this suggestion.

 

That being said it could be useful for nebula, gemshard, alcedine, Pargulus, and even solstice coloring, I can see how that's gonna be super useful (as someone who is frustrated by trying to breed that damed right colored gemshard). I don't see a huge problem of miscoloring things being tossed to AP...I mean it already happens, and I don't think the problem of doctoring precog images will really cause that much issue. But as others have pointed out some things are deliberately made the way it is and however frustrating it is it's a deliberate decision that either fits the lore or something else, so I'm kind of not decided on this part. 

 

tl;dr Precogging alt/reg, no; other color varying breeds, maybe

[Ruby Eyes]

I'm pretty sure it was deliberate, as TJ nerfed the "sort by breed" trick for eggs suspiciously JUST when that one became public knowledge. Maybe that's when the alting was moved from egg-laying to hatching time.

As such, I don't see a BSA like the proposed one happening in the near future.

[MissK.]

I don't support a way to tell alts apart, as that kind of defeats their purpose. Back when eggs had different colours the ap would be flooded with green/black alt fails, and I think the way things are now makes more sense (even though they're a pain to get).

 

I would not be entirely against some way to differentiate between variants of equal rarity, but that would require all of them to be determined at the egg stage and it might just make things unnecessarily complicated. As people have mentioned, for some we can already tell based on where they land with breed sort; I used that a lot with solstices this last Holiday to skip the confusing calculations.

[purplehaze]

This seems to be really overpowering the Aeon and I am not really in favor of the basic suggestion of being able to foretell all of those variants. They work the way they were intended to work.

[Ruby Eyes]

Narratively:

What can you really do when you know in advance that an egg would hatch the wrong colour hatchie? Abandon it, gift it, trade it (to whom?)

Of course, the Aeon sees that as well, and might just refuse to tell you anything about the colour, due to the dragon's own ethics.

[Fuzzbucket]

 

Indeed. NO support.

[_Charky]

It might be helpfu if it determined things a user could work out themselves (Solstices, which have two forms from the same egg, spring to mind) since that's not really a secret? It's not particularly obvious, just a pain to work out.

Predicting anything that's meant to be a surprise would still be a no in my book.

[Keileon]

I would like this for "random but equal chance" variants like Nebulae, Gemshards, and Alcedines, but not for the 1/6-chance alts like Blacks/Vines/Undines. The former is a die roll; the latter is meant to be rare.