Buy hatchies in market

[Shadowdrake]

>accusations of instant gratification

>several weeks' worth of saving for the equivalent of 2-3 days of care

pick one

 

 

I'm neutral on the suggestion itself, but I do have several things to say. One, unless the shard equation is complicated, the effective difference between commons and rares will be lopsided one way or another.

3x price = 100:300 for a blackip hatchie, versus 2000:6000 for a gold (favors commons)

+300 flat rate = 100:400 for blacktip vs 2000:2300 for a gold (favors rares, low comparative price)

Now, personally I don't mind the version favoring commons because most of them need any help they can get, and if the hatchie market allows directly buying a specific color, prices for dragons with many colors often increase faster than single-color dragons, so the extra price for choice is kind of factored in.

 

Now, regarding thread arguments: why would I buy a common egg over a common hatchie? Because I'm cheap! Why would I buy one xeno hatchie when I could get 3 eggs?

And regarding fears of """massbreeding""" for shards, 100 eggs is not as many AP eggs as you think it is, and if people actually bred for shards more often the AP would be a lot more varied with a nice low time without needing massive massbreeds. Expecting a casual player to log in 3 to 4 weeks in a row just to do tedious breeding so they can pick up... one hatchie... is ridiculous. If that's how they play they could have bought an egg the first week, put it in silvi's, and be done with it.

[Falorni]

I dunno why people are making this to be some kind of 'cheat', while idk if I'd personally use this I could see it working as long as a good way to balance the egg/hatchie price ratios is implemented.

[Lost_Unicorn]

@Shadowdrake I came up with a flat rate because I can't imagine anyone willing to pay more than 200-300 to insta-hatch their rare, on top of all the time and shards they are already paying; and you can't even influence it. It would also be a clean and simple equation.

I don't understand why are you comparing price ratios of common eggs-to-hatchies vs rares. I am not saying you are wrong, I just don't see the reason to. Insta-hatch doesn't suddenly become more useful if the egg is rare, it's still just 3 days of saved time.

How about a +200 flat rate like I initially wanted? If that's bad, then I think rares should just be +200-300 and commons +100.

[Stromboli]

Eh, I wouldn't mind it. idk how often i'd use it, depending on the premium for hatchlings versus eggs, but it'd be cool to have the option.

 

I disagree with the "instant gratification" vein of arguments a bit since, y'know, let's say the very cheapest you could buy a hatchling is 300 shards. You've got a platinum trophy and want to completely stuff your scroll with store bought hatchlings. At 300 shards each, it'd cost you 7,200 to do that. That's like 16 months of saving. For the dirt-cheapest hatchlings. It's not like a feature like this would let you "skip" raising eggs most of the time.

[HeatherMarie]

1 hour ago, Stromboli said:

Eh, I wouldn't mind it. idk how often i'd use it, depending on the premium for hatchlings versus eggs, but it'd be cool to have the option.

 

I disagree with the "instant gratification" vein of arguments a bit since, y'know, let's say the very cheapest you could buy a hatchling is 300 shards. You've got a platinum trophy and want to completely stuff your scroll with store bought hatchlings. At 300 shards each, it'd cost you 7,200 to do that. That's like 16 months of saving. For the dirt-cheapest hatchlings. It's not like a feature like this would let you "skip" raising eggs most of the time.

 

I know what you mean, and while I agree that amount of shards isn't necessarily 'instant gratification', to look at it a different way: I'm currently sitting on 8210 shards (the only thing I actually buy from the Market anymore are Cantors, lol). It's not like all users will have to spend tons of time *saving up* for the hatchies, we've had the Market for a long time now and plenty of users have at least a couple hundred at any given time. By that measure, while 'instant gratification' may not be the right term, it's still skipping over a whole stage of dragon-raising for just a few hundred shards that many users probably already have. 

 

..... The more I talk it out in my mind the less against this I am, I think moving more towards neutral now, but I do kinda feel like it's unnecessary in general. 

[Keileon]

An addendum to my earlier post:

 

I'm not inherently against it, but I don't *support* it, which to me feels different from my usual "neutral with no reason to be against so I'll support". It feels unnecessary and, yes, instant gratification. I'm not talking about the "save up shards for several weeks to get one hatchling" or  even "most active players probably at least have a few hundred shards just casually". I'm talking more about the instant gratification of skipping a locked egg slot without any real effort. Even AP CBs take a bit to hatch nowadays.

 

I probably wouldn't complain too much if it was implemented, and I might even use it, because why wouldn't I? The only things I'm saving up for are Stats anyway.

 

Not gonna get into the balancing of it as math has never been my favorite subject, a simple rate of base + modifier will always be lopsided on the low or high end, and I don't really see the point to figuring out a formula when that specific a detail would fall to TJ anyway.

[Fuzzbucket]

OH - yes - skipping an egg slot. Maybe a market hatchie should take an EGG slot rather than a hatchie slot. Because that DOES feel like a bit of a cheat.

 

Not that I support the idea anyway - but that is a bit of an exploitation.

[Jazeki]

I'm really neutral here. I don't think I'll use it unless the cost of what I want isn't too high.

 

I would like to see more info on whether you can somehow influence the gender of the hatchie or not or how slots are addressed because this seems a lot like summoning sinos (instead of collecting zyus, you're paying shards). If I'm going to get a rando CB hatchie, I'd rather do what I'm doing now, which is breed my dragons to trade in exchange. It's free and at least I'm not wasting shards by playing hatchie roulette. 

 

I understand the desire to collect/grow things faster, but I'm not sure this is the best way to go about it. You don't even have to have super trading abilities to go about it either. Lots of people gift CB hatchies and you can find them in the AP for free if you don't want to trade anything. 

[pinkgothic]

On 3/3/2021 at 11:41 PM, schenanigans said:

For commons/uncommons I don't think 2-3x the price is enough; why would you ever buy a common egg for 100 shards when the hatchling is only 200-300 shards? 

I might very well be an outlier, but I've got to admit I'm a bit baffled anyone would do the opposite unless they were desperate for a hatchling because e.g. they need to breed it to a seasonal before the season ends or something like that. 😮 You can buy three times as many dragons that will only each cost you an egg slot for two days (or three without Incubate). 7 + 2 days for a hatchling is less waiting time than 21 days, which is what raising the shards for a hatchling direct from the Market would cost you (in time) in the hypothetical 300 shards price (also less than 14 days, which is the hypothetical 200 shard price). Sure, you can save an egg slot for two days, but at cost of a week or two of waiting for sufficient shards. To me it reads like: Would you rather be egg-locked or 'shardless-locked'? It's a trade-off that needs to be made. I for one would rather be egg-locked in the vast majority of scenarios.

 

(Yes, I realise some people have a bunch of shards saved up, I'm even one of them -- but if these people were to go on a binge-buying spree, those shards are going to disappear very quickly. Me personally? I wouldn't. For one, I'm close to hatchling-lock most of the time, so eggs or hatchlings make almost no difference to my play style, so I would definitely go for the egg unless I had a desperate need to cut growing time short for breeding season reasons. For two, you never know when the next Staterae is released. I'm keeping my shards as long as I can. 8D)

 

Also, I've alluded to this before, but I'd like to say it again:

 

- People give hatchlings away on the DC Community Notice Board already

- Trading for hatchlings can be quicker than ERing even a low-time AP egg

- People trade for async hatchlings (IOUs) fairly regularly, e.g. to get more CB Halloween dragons -- i.e. they don't actually have an egg on their scroll during Halloween that they're trading for, but traded something months ago to someone, who then hatches a CB Halloween for them and sends them the CB Halloween (this phenomenon is not exclusive to CB Halloweens, but most prominently seen then)

 

It's honestly been quite normal for me in my trading history that I would get dragons that were not eggs (although if you go digging, you can't really see it in the IOU history notes I keep because I use egg sprites even for hatchlings, and often don't bother mentioning the growth phase, even when it's part of the deal).

 

This means I'm a little confused about the arguments that consider egg slot bypassing a fundamental problem. Yes, in all cases but "egg has been sitting in the AP most of the time" someone else had the egg slot problem, whereas it disappears in the Market scenario, but, seriously, hatchling lock happens really, really quickly if you're a power-trader and appears to be quite sufficient to dampen dragon acquisition speed (e.g. I lament not being able to pick up more Arsanis each Valentine, though it's probably for the best, given I can stop any time, no, really ).

 

In fact, getting Market hatchlings wouldn't be nearly as efficient as trading for hatchlings, where you can, if you're motivated, stagger your hatchling acquisitions so they're only on your scroll for a few minutes to hours, bypassing almost all of the dragon growing phase by letting them sit on someone else's scroll until just before they grow up. (If you're wondering, I did indeed get some Arsanis this way! But I didn't optimise it anywhere near as much as I could have if I'd put even a bit of effort into it.)

 

tl;dr:

 

- Given we have total scroll limits, I honestly don't see an exploit. Am often close to hatchling lock anyway.

- I don't see a need for a significantly higher price (though I also don't super mind if they are expensive, because [see below]).

- I for one would only use hatchling-buying in an emergency, as return-on-investment is catastrophically low when buying hatchlings for even at as little as double the price.

[HeatherMarie]

37 minutes ago, Jazeki said:

 

I would like to see more info on whether you can somehow influence the gender of the hatchie or not or how slots are addressed because this seems a lot like summoning sinos (instead of collecting zyus, you're paying shards). If I'm going to get a rando CB hatchie, I'd rather do what I'm doing now, which is breed my dragons to trade in exchange. It's free and at least I'm not wasting shards by playing hatchie roulette. 

 

 

I must agree here. While I personally feel 'buy a hatchling from the Market' is essentially just a 'get it quick' scheme that totally bypasses the egg stage (and therefore don't totally support it), I also wonder how exactly it would work. With no egg to influence, would you be able to choose if you are buying male or female? With different variants, would it be random chance or could you choose which variant to buy? What about breeds with time-based mechanics, for instance Glories are night/day depending on when they are *laid*, with no 'laid' time would it just be random, or would the time of purchase act as 'laid' time? What about Siyats, their color is completely tied to when the egg hatches, how would that work?

[G'lant]

I'd like the option as well. Sometimes you just got shards to spend and no egg slots.

[Jazeki]

@HeatherMarie brought up some excellent things to consider, like breeds that are based on time of day that they are picked up or hatched.  There are a lot of vague aspects to this suggestion right now.

[Murkydepths]

11 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

I must agree here. While I personally feel 'buy a hatchling from the Market' is essentially just a 'get it quick' scheme that totally bypasses the egg stage (and therefore don't totally support it), I also wonder how exactly it would work. With no egg to influence, would you be able to choose if you are buying male or female? With different variants, would it be random chance or could you choose which variant to buy? What about breeds with time-based mechanics, for instance Glories are night/day depending on when they are *laid*, with no 'laid' time would it just be random, or would the time of purchase act as 'laid' time? What about Siyats, their color is completely tied to when the egg hatches, how would that work?

 

Male of female - would be random. Hatchies are only s1, this is in the first post

Random variants - random, again, in first post.

Time-based mechanics - time bought is same as time 'laid' so would depend on time of day

Siyats - hatchlings would act as if they've been hatched normally from egg, so you'd only be able to get blue.

 

OR

 

We do allow people to purchase exactly what type/gender of hatchie they want but at additional cost. This is too complicated for me though so I prefer the random version.

[Miltank]

There's a weird hostile energy in so many of these replies for what is essentially a harmless suggestion lol. I'm good with this happening. I was thinking about this a couple days ago. Waiting is part of the game but it's not a part that requires any skill or finesse. You put your egg in a hatchery and wait. I'm not sure why people are so vehemently against skipping that, unless they're also against trading for hatchlings or finding them in the ap. 🤷‍♀️ At the end of the day it's the same difference for whoever has that hatchling, isn't it? They didn't do the waiting. Make them prohibitively expensive and it's fine, imo.

[MissK.]

I guess I'm not outright opposed to this, might even use it a couple of times here and there if I was egglocked I suppose. We already have mechanisms such as incubate to speed things along, but I think the reason this suggestion seems different and maybe a bit 'wrong' is that a hatchling would just be generated as-is out of nothing. Right now I technically don't have to put in the time/effort to hatch eggs, I could simply trade for hatchlings, but they are still always generated as a 7 day egg and someone has it on their scroll for the amount of time it takes to hatch. That process still takes place regardless of who ends up owning the adult (or frozen hatchling) in the end. So while I don't outright dislike the idea, I am not sure if it fits that much into the game and can see why others view it as too much of a shortcut. Just something to think about.

[Ruby Eyes]

On 3/6/2021 at 5:57 AM, HeatherMarie said:

What about Siyats, their color is completely tied to when the egg hatches, how would that work?

If you start giving a price tag to days (as you effectively would do with this suggestion), you may as well apply the same formula to Siyat colour.

Say, a regular hatchie can be acquired in 2 days, if you use Incubate. Let's assume that the trader uses Incubate, too, because they have no time to waste. So 2 days for each hatchling.

 

I'm going with the flat price of +300 shards for a regular hatchling that was mentioned somewhere in thread.

 

That means that a hatchling price tag of regular egg price + 300 shards equals 150 shards a day. This translates to:

Green Siyat = current Siyat egg price + 300 (2 days)

Blue Siyat = current Siyat egg price + 450 (3 days)

Purple Siyat = current Siyat egg price + 750 (5 days)

 

That's just some random numbers used - of course, the formula would need lots of tweaking before going live.

 

Likewise, gender choice could come with a price tag, too - the trader used Influence or Precognition on the egg (it doesn't really matter to the customer which one it was, except for Cantormaris hatchies. Could the trader ever offer pink Cantos? They'd need to move their eggs by foot, not by teleport.)

 

Colour choice of Gemshards or Nebulas, on the other hand, should probably be free or nearly free, as the trader cannot really influence either.

 

Stuff like breed-only alts (Black, Dark Green, Spinel) should *probably* not be available. Otherwise, if they were, why not add hybrids, too? 😁

Things like Ridgewing alts? Maybe. *shrugs*

 

I still don't see this happening, though.

[Fuzzbucket]

1 hour ago, Miltank said:

There's a weird hostile energy in so many of these replies for what is essentially a harmless suggestion lol. I'm good with this happening. I was thinking about this a couple days ago. Waiting is part of the game but it's not a part that requires any skill or finesse. You put your egg in a hatchery and wait. I'm not sure why people are so vehemently against skipping that, unless they're also against trading for hatchlings or finding them in the ap. 🤷‍♀️ At the end of the day it's the same difference for whoever has that hatchling, isn't it? They didn't do the waiting. Make them prohibitively expensive and it's fine, imo.

 

This. Bypassing the normal process should have a price. A big one.

[Jazeki]

@Ruby Eyes The OP said having different prices for different variants seemed too complicated, so they preferred only blue siyats and everything else random/the time they were laid/purchased.

[Ruby Eyes]

29 minutes ago, Jazeki said:

@Ruby Eyes The OP said having different prices for different variants seemed too complicated, so they preferred only blue siyats and everything else random/the time they were laid/purchased.

Thank you, I saw that. That doesn't mean I can't just speculate on how it COULD work with Siyats. It is not forbidden to add details to suggestions.

[Jazeki]

3 minutes ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Thank you, I saw that. That doesn't mean I can't just speculate on how it COULD work with Siyats. It is not forbidden to add details to suggestions.

Yes, I know it's not forbidden, which is why I said they preferred things a certain way. People can always change their minds. I was just sharing in case you missed the post.

 

I would much prefer different options available over one single color.

[Murkydepths]

I'm totally open to a more customisable hatchie market, it's up to Tj if he'd prefer things simplified, but it's good to consider how it might work either way.

[HeatherMarie]

3 hours ago, Ruby Eyes said:

If you start giving a price tag to days (as you effectively would do with this suggestion), you may as well apply the same formula to Siyat colour.

Say, a regular hatchie can be acquired in 2 days, if you use Incubate. Let's assume that the trader uses Incubate, too, because they have no time to waste. So 2 days for each hatchling.

 

I'm going with the flat price of +300 shards for a regular hatchling that was mentioned somewhere in thread.

 

That means that a hatchling price tag of regular egg price + 300 shards equals 150 shards a day. This translates to:

Green Siyat = current Siyat egg price + 300 (2 days)

Blue Siyat = current Siyat egg price + 450 (3 days)

Purple Siyat = current Siyat egg price + 750 (5 days)

 

That's just some random numbers used - of course, the formula would need lots of tweaking before going live.

 

Likewise, gender choice could come with a price tag, too - the trader used Influence or Precognition on the egg (it doesn't really matter to the customer which one it was, except for Cantormaris hatchies. Could the trader ever offer pink Cantos? They'd need to move their eggs by foot, not by teleport.)

 

Colour choice of Gemshards or Nebulas, on the other hand, should probably be free or nearly free, as the trader cannot really influence either.

 

Stuff like breed-only alts (Black, Dark Green, Spinel) should *probably* not be available. Otherwise, if they were, why not add hybrids, too? 😁

Things like Ridgewing alts? Maybe. *shrugs*

 

I still don't see this happening, though.

 

Honestly something like this would make me much more supportive of the suggestion in general. I think one of my issues with this suggestion is simply how many caveats and weirdness would have to be added, random gender, random variant, only a certain Siyat color, when it comes to creating hatchlings out of thin air (which is what this is, basically) there are just so many different scenarios to consider. Having it all laid out like that and being *able* to control all those different variables for a price would be much better imo than all these different caveats. 

 

I do agree breed-only alts shouldn't be available, the same way you can't get a breed-only alt from a Market egg. (..... Right? I've never actually bought any.)