2021-02-17 - Abandoned Page Updates

[Talisraye]

I might have liked a bit more than a single line of six, and yet it is still quite welcome. I get so tired of seeing mass breeds and event walls. So very tired of it.

 

8 hours ago, wbmorgan said:

THANK YOU!!! Those constant walls of hideous eggs from the same couple scrolls were ANNOYING AF! I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out and hoping that those hours, and sometimes days, of solid walls holding the game hostage are gone. 

 

Quite. Agree.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Talisraye

[Firefury Amahira]

2 hours ago, Shinsei said:

 

I think a lot of us appreciate the admission that some players DO do it just to be annoying -- along with the explanations of some legitimate reasons to do it.

 

Quick clarifying question: When you say "trying to balance ratios" are you saying that creating a massive dump of a certain breed in the AP forces the system (i.e. the egg generation script, with its algorithms to maintain certain ratios) to stop generating as many eggs of that breed in the cave?

 

Thanks for clarifying this!

That's exactly what happens, and I've been tracking my blacktip breeding results to provide solid data to that. This graph charts the result of my "mega" massbreeds since 2018; you can see that the volume of blacktips has peaked and actually started to decline in comparison to the celestials I was pairing them with. (In fact, my last mega massbreed was the first time that blacktip x celestial actually produced more celestials than blacktips; the only reason there are more blacktips total is from all the blacktip x holiday pairings once I ran out of celestials in that massbreed.) And for those interested in the detailed stats breakdown, my tracking spreadsheet can be found here, with all my massbreed data. EDIT TO ADD: Also, if you compare the 2019 and 2020 totals, you'll see that even though I had more breeding attempts in 2020, it actually produced fewer blacktip eggs compared to 2019 which had fewer attempts but more eggs.

 

So as not to risk derailing from the thread topic, I think this change to the AP will be a huge help in balancing the playstyles of the "primarily hunts the AP" crowd and the "yeet eggs at the ratios" crowd. Probably still needs fine tuning, but absent actually fixing the ratios this is a really good start.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Firefury Amahira

[Plaguenurse]

ah this explains why a row of eggs disappeared when i refreshed the page 

[TheChosenDarkness]

I think this is much needed. I have played on and off this site for years and I HATED the walls. Sometimes I look for nice lines to continue or I might find a hidden gem someone yeeted. But... a wall of eggs that lasts for days is annoying. I can understand (to a point) why it is done sometimes, but I still don't like it. I also sometimes like to send a few eggs out there for others to grab. I have a few projects on going and sometimes I breed the pairs to yeet eggs. To see how far the dragons will go, etc. If a wall happens when I yeet... it makes me sad. Since not every player who plays DC actually uses the forums. So, finding a home for some of my projects is nearly impossible. 😅

[Trenzalore]

Honestly thank god. There are specific people that mass breed and abandon seemingly nonstop no matter when I'm online. I go on a 2 year hiatus, come back, and this person is still spamming the ap daily. I've never not seen this one person's drags in the AP, it's like they never take a break. Their lines are nice and not messy but unless it's a holiday, I want exactly 0 of their drags and as 90% of my time on DC is spent in the AP, it's very frustrating. I agree with a previous commenter that 24 is still a lot in the "visible from xyz user" department, and I hope in the future it's cut back to 12 or 6. Either way,  that this is going to be regulated is such a relief.

 

However, I do wish that we would leave the holiday AP as a holiday ap until they're all gone. It ruins the second mini "event" of seeing all the non holiday eggs at such low times that they hatch immediately. If people don't like only seeing holiday eggs.. it's only a week or two, it's not the same as a single-breed wall and there's something different added every year, and it's not as if you can't trade bred nonholiday eggs in the tc still. I see a solution to this, rather than messing up the ap for everyone else, keep the valentine biome up and replace old holiday eggs with the new ones and extend the time old holiday dragons are grab-able to before the actual holiday date, rather than having new eggs clog the biomes for a week and old eggs still in the holiday biome.

 

I very rarely mass breed, and when I do it's usually pure 2g Red drags that get snapped up immediately and don't create a wall in the first place, so I certainly won't be contributing to this as a prank or just to make ap egg times go down (I have plenty of reds for that lol).

 

I also wish that each user was limited to only creating 50 eggs from breeding per day, unless it's a holiday. It would really stop walls from being made unless multiple users coordinate, because there are 30 eggs at a time shown anyways, a limit of 50 would really put a stop to that.

 

Before anyone says this is harsh, I barely use the forums and I'm sure there are others who agree but don't use the forums. I've had people on discord lash out because I'm harsh about these things so I usually keep quiet about it. But I've gotten messages.. I know I'm not alone in my strong dislike of these things.

 

And food for thought, when there are walls of non-BSA drags that no one wants that last a while, if people stop using dc to wait out the wall, the site loses ad revenue and it decreases user engagement.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Trenzalore

[Tawanda001]

YESSSSSS!

from an AP hunter who quit for a long time, due to hardly ever being able to hunt because of walls whenever I had free time. This feels like a GOOD thing. 

[wobster109]

Wow! This is something that's been a long time brewing. Years in discussion and thought. I'm really excited to see how it turns out!

[Trenzalore]

On 2/17/2021 at 2:41 AM, Charu said:

I think this is a good change, but this should have been announced or communicated before coming into effect.

 

There are people who planned for weeks around being able to AP Neglect for Valentines. I wasn't able to participate, but it had some pretty extensive planning put behind it. People were being assigned times to breed for this Valentine's Day AP Neglect. The timing on this is just enough to kill the planning those people did for the Valentine's Day AP Neglect. 

 

The timing of this and how openly hostile TJ was about even talking about Neglected Dragons for years seems a bit on the nose. Again. I think this is a great change and will be a good compromise for those that wanted to stop seeing mass-breed walls. But why would this change happen right as the planning for the Valentine's Day AP Neglect would start to bear fruit? 

 

On 2/17/2021 at 4:06 AM, Charu said:

What would have been more reasonable?

A )“Hey guys. I’m gonna change the AP in like a week so maybe if you plan on using the Holiday priority to your advantage maybe don’t.”

 

B )An change that had not been hinted at, just made at the proper time to chin-kick something a size able group of people had planned for and cooperated to make happen. 
 

Expecting communication or a warning for something that changes the rules doesn’t mean I should “chill.” I was looking forward to the AP chaos and I missed on the Christmas NDs. I was hoping to maybe, stars aligning, get one. 

I had no idea that large groups of people worked to make NDs on the forums to this length (I don'treally use forums much), and in this hindsight I think the timing and lack of announcement was very unkind. This perspective is important and I think it's worth talking about and keeping in mind, that person who told you to chill is rude. The fact that there were timed breeding slots and a mass organized user event is a big deal, what is more important than non-bug updates is user engagement.

 

By timing it like this without an announcement, TJ ruined plans that were crafted far ahead of time and disappointed many. A good gaming site should encourage users to work together and create their own events that have valuable rewards, that's what draws people and keeps them playing. It may have been convenient to do it during a holiday, but.. couldn't he have waited for the holiday to be over and then put out an announcement asking people to massbreed? He could have made a whole mini-event with rewards for people who participated. That would have created similar results, without the damage. I don't like mass breeding walls but I have great sympathy for this as it was obviously a large-enough publicly advertised event in the forums for it to be noticed.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Trenzalore

[Stormcaller]

18 minutes ago, Trenzalore said:

I don't like mass breeding walls but I have great sympathy for this as it was obviously a large-enough publicly advertised event in the forums for it to be noticed.

 

I totally agree about disliking the walls but I seem to have missed seeing anything promoting this breeding event. But then, I'm not as active on the forum as I used to be.  Do you think some NDs might still appear in the AP?

[Trenzalore]

3 minutes ago, Stormcaller said:

 

I totally agree about disliking the walls but I seem to have missed seeing anything promoting this breeding event. But then, I'm not as active on the forum as I used to be.  Do you think some NDs might still appear in the AP?

Unfortunately, definitely not. The NDs that appeared, were created because after the holiday wall is over, eggs are often at 1 hour left, 2 hours left, etc.. so it was easy for people to fill their egg slots and try to make NDs. With the nonholiday eggs visible, that event was ruined permanently now. The egg timers are too high. When you make an ND this way, the egg hatches either as a ND hatchie or as a regular breed hatchie. That allows players to grab and yeet NDs and regulars very quickly. That will likely never happen during a holiday again, unless enough people agree to mass breed annoying commons that no one wants in order to artificially bring ap egg times down low.. and even then, sonce the eggs will be visible and open to clicks and views from people who pick them up, that kind of messes up chances that it will transform into an ND in the first place.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Trenzalore

[HeatherMarie]

54 minutes ago, Trenzalore said:

 

However, I do wish that we would leave the holiday AP as a holiday ap until they're all gone. It ruins the second mini "event" of seeing all the non holiday eggs at such low times that they hatch immediately. If people don't like only seeing holiday eggs.. it's only a week or two, it's not the same as a single-breed wall and there's something different added every year, and it's not as if you can't trade bred nonholiday eggs in the tc still. I see a solution to this, rather than messing up the ap for everyone else, keep the valentine biome up and replace old holiday eggs with the new ones and extend the time old holiday dragons are grab-able to before the actual holiday date, rather than having new eggs clog the biomes for a week and old eggs still in the holiday biome.

 

 

How is having one single line of non-holiday eggs 'messing up the ap for everyone else'? The super-low-time eggs that appeared after a holiday wall ends was never an intended feature, it was a side effect of having way too many holidays bred and having holidays automatically sort first. Losing super-low-time eggs in favor of users actually being *able* to hunt the AP normally during those 6-ish weeks a year definitely sounds like it's worth it. As we can see, that one line of regulars are still fairly low-timed, and that will probably remain true with future holidays simply because with one single line it will take a lot longer for any regulars to actually hit the AP. 

 

 

16 minutes ago, Trenzalore said:

 

I had no idea that large groups of people worked to make NDs on the forums to this length (I don'treally use forums much), and in this hindsight I think the timing and lack of announcement was very unkind. This perspective is important and I think it's worth talking about and keeping in mind, that person who told you to chill is rude. The fact that there were timed breeding slots and a mass organized user event is a big deal, what is more important than non-bug updates is user engagement.

 

By timing it like this without an announcement, TJ ruined plans that were crafted far ahead of time and disappointed many. A good gaming site should encourage users to work together and create their own events that have valuable rewards, that's what draws people and keeps them playing. It may have been convenient to do it during a holiday, but.. couldn't he have waited for the holiday to be over and then put out an announcement asking people to massbreed? He could have made a whole mini-event with rewards for people who participated. That would have created similar results, without the damage. I don't like mass breeding walls but I have great sympathy for this as it was obviously a large-enough publicly advertised event in the forums for it to be noticed.

 

The way I see it, user-developed projects like this are, well, user-developed. A mass ND-making had nothing to do with actual site mechanics, it's something that people were planning by exploiting a known issue with holiday walls (ie, the super-low-time eggs resulting from holiday walls blocking the regulars). Yes, TJ could have done this at a different time, but honestly there *is* no perfect time. People are *always* planning mass-breeds, planning coordinated breeds or projects or whatever. TJ can't possible account for every single user-made project and work official features around those non-official projects, that's not realistic. I get that it's frustrating that a coordinated project was messed up because of a feature change, but honestly it's not like this change suddenly made ND-making impossible. When this change first happened there were tons of eggs in that bottom row with just a few hours left, anyone could have tried for NDs with those. Maybe not exactly what some wanted, but not impossible.

[Trenzalore]

1 minute ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

How is having one single line of non-holiday eggs 'messing up the ap for everyone else'? The super-low-time eggs that appeared after a holiday wall ends was never an intended feature, it was a side effect of having way too many holidays bred and having holidays automatically sort first. Losing super-low-time eggs in favor of users actually being *able* to hunt the AP normally during those 6-ish weeks a year definitely sounds like it's worth it. As we can see, that one line of regulars are still fairly low-timed, and that will probably remain true with future holidays simply because with one single line it will take a lot longer for any regulars to actually hit the AP. 

 

 

 

The way I see it, user-developed projects like this are, well, user-developed. A mass ND-making had nothing to do with actual site mechanics, it's something that people were planning by exploiting a known issue with holiday walls (ie, the super-low-time eggs resulting from holiday walls blocking the regulars). Yes, TJ could have done this at a different time, but honestly there *is* no perfect time. People are *always* planning mass-breeds, planning coordinated breeds or projects or whatever. TJ can't possible account for every single user-made project and work official features around those non-official projects, that's not realistic. I get that it's frustrating that a coordinated project was messed up because of a feature change, but honestly it's not like this change suddenly made ND-making impossible. When this change first happened there were tons of eggs in that bottom row with just a few hours left, anyone could have tried for NDs with those. Maybe not exactly what some wanted, but not impossible.

From a creator standpoint your argument is great, but the site is about users. This isn't just a mass breed event, this specific scenario only happens during holidays. The extreme low time eggs after the holiday weren't intended, but they've been a reliable thing that people get excited for and now it is gone.

User created events are arguably just as important as official events because they create excitement, engagement, and ad revenue for the site. Just because they're smaller scale doesn't mean it's not an important part of the DC community. If you want a successful site that retains regular users, you have to be aware of more than just these black and white cause and effect of adding new features in and when. If user events are squashed, people will stop playing because the game becomes less user friendly and customizable.

[Trenzalore]

And I didn't elaborate enough at all with my "messing up the ap for everyone else" for sure. I meant, instead of showing non holiday eggs in the ap because most people completed their collection of cb and frozen stage holiday dragons, keep the ap as it was but allow people to hunt CB regular drags. Keep all holidays in the holiday biome so that non holiday CBs can still be grabbed throughout the whole event. Then ND people are happy, and people with finished holiday collections have something to grab.

 

Release old holiday drags into the holiday biome sooner, and swap them for new holiday drags on the day of the actual holiday. And keep all holidays out of the biomes so people can still participate despite hitting their cb holiday limits.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Trenzalore

[HeatherMarie]

The site is about users. Yes, and *many* users have been complaining for *years* about massbreed walls, as well as asking repeatedly for a way to hunt regular AP eggs during holidays. That's a user thing, that's something a lot of users have asked for and talked over for years. We've finally been listened to. Something was finally done. It sucks that it interrupted a user-planned event, but this change is specifically something people have been asking for for a long time. It had to happen sometime, it would screw up *something* user-planned no matter when it was implemented.

 

6 minutes ago, Trenzalore said:

And I didn't elaborate enough at all with my "messing up the ap for everyone else" for sure. I meant, instead of showing non holiday eggs in the ap because most people completed their collection of cb and frozen stage holiday dragons, keep the ap as it was but allow people to hunt CB regular drags. Keep all holidays in the holiday biome so that non holiday CBs can still be grabbed throughout the whole event. Then ND people are happy, and people with finished holiday collections have something to grab.

 

Release old holiday drags into the holiday biome sooner, and swap them for new holiday drags on the day of the actual holiday.

 

But.... We can still hunt for non-holiday CBs during the holiday AP walls. The new-holiday all-biome drop is only for 3 days (1 day during Halloween). Hunting the biomes for CBs during holidays was never the issue, the issue was wanting to hunt the *AP* for regular bred eggs and not being able to.

edit: And your idea doesn't take into consideration that not everyone collects only CBs or wants to only hunt the biomes. Pointing to the biomes as a solution is completely missing the point of the issue. 

Edited February 18, 2021 by HeatherMarie

[Wavelength]

I like the change that allows a lot of people's eggs to be raised. I'm not super picky about my AP finds, and will raise them if they are not inbred, but it seems most of my AP find are second gens from one particular scroll that uses a surname for dragons, so much that it feels like my scroll is just a suburb of that one.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Wavelength

[random_dragon_collector]

I had no idea a big ND event was planned--why would TJ know that?  I'm on the forums all the time, but obviously not in that particular thread!

[Guillotine]

It's baseline good admining to announce major visual changes to a site before implementing them, specially if that site is a game. Even a week or two of warning would have tempered expectations better and given people time to prepare for the shift even if their actual play wasn't severely changed like the ND makers were. People in this thread early on mentioned really disliking the change bc of how abrupt it was!

 

Again, TJ has had a huge problem with not properly communicating obvious visual changes and immediately impactful decisions to the userbase the entire time I've been on this site. Mods have left over this.

[random_dragon_collector]

4 minutes ago, Guillotine said:

It's baseline good admining to announce major visual changes to a site before implementing them, specially if that site is a game. Even a week or two of warning would have tempered expectations better and given people time to prepare for the shift even if their actual play wasn't severely changed like the ND makers were. People in this thread early on mentioned really disliking the change bc of how abrupt it was!

 

Again, TJ has had a huge problem with not properly communicating obvious visual changes and immediately impactful decisions to the userbase the entire time I've been on this site. Mods have left over this.

 

Like I said--TJ would know that's in the works, how exactly?

[Guillotine]

2 minutes ago, random_dragon_collector said:

 

Like I said--TJ would know that's in the works, how exactly?

It's not that he should know, it's that if you run a game, you announce UI changes before you implement them, so that people aren't caught off guard. If you haven't noticed, I wasn't talking about the ND project for most of my post!

[random_dragon_collector]

1 minute ago, Guillotine said:

It's not that he should know, it's that if you run a game, you announce UI changes before you implement them, so that people aren't caught off guard. If you haven't noticed, I wasn't talking about the ND project for most of my post!

 

But other than the ND, what does it matter?  I'm sorry, I just don't understand.  And I hate how little info TJ gives out most of the time, but about this specific issue, I'm just kind of scratching my head.  I'm sorry that you are upset.  I know how you feel.

[Guillotine]

1 minute ago, random_dragon_collector said:

 

But other than the ND, what does it matter?  I'm sorry, I just don't understand.  And I hate how little info TJ gives out most of the time, but about this specific issue, I'm just kind of scratching my head.  I'm sorry that you are upset.  I know how you feel.

I'm not upset about this, other people were and I was talking about how they felt about a sudden unannounced change that should have been given advance warning. I'm not sure how you keep reading things I'm not typing but it's very annoying.

[random_dragon_collector]

Just now, Guillotine said:

I'm not upset about this, other people were and I was talking about how they felt about a sudden unannounced change that should have been given advance warning. I'm not sure how you keep reading things I'm not typing but it's very annoying.

 

and I'm done.   You have a good evening, now. 

[Trenzalore]

1 hour ago, Guillotine said:

It's baseline good admining to announce major visual changes to a site before implementing them, specially if that site is a game. Even a week or two of warning would have tempered expectations better and given people time to prepare for the shift even if their actual play wasn't severely changed like the ND makers were. People in this thread early on mentioned really disliking the change bc of how abrupt it was!

 

Again, TJ has had a huge problem with not properly communicating obvious visual changes and immediately impactful decisions to the userbase the entire time I've been on this site. Mods have left over this.

This. Why couldn't TJ add the news of this update to the Valentine event schedule announcement? Communication matters for exactly this reason. None of how this was implemented makes sense. And if mods have left over this?? TJ needs to communicate with the DC community.

[Tini]

Just to clarify the ND thing, it wasn't based on grabbing eggs at the end of the wall, (i'm not sure how that would work en mass?) it was based on the eggs being EXPed while behind the wall still, without the use of hatcheries so they don't grow wild like they did after halloween. Technically they could've been generated day 1 of breeding (or earlier) and ARed on valentines/before, but then the hatchies wouldn't hit the ap.

 

There was an astronomical amount of fodder generated by people, and a good 40 people looking forward to ARing them and seeing how many we could make. The timing of the change being just a day and a half before said ARing is just very...ugh, especially given it was the first time it was advertised on forums, it feels like something specifically put in place to stop us. Which is a shame because lots of people that didn't have NDs were gifted them after christmas because of the mass NDs.

[PrincessLucy]

I like the change, as many people are done with Valentine's eggs, and want to go back to grabbing regular eggs.

 

I am still grabbing Valentines as fast as my slots open up, and it freaked me out when the non holiday row appeared.