Let everyone who enters the monthly raffle win a prize.

[Paradisiske]

7 minutes ago, DragonLady86 said:

So this is basically "give me free dragons every month". And that is not happening. Why have a raffle at all? Why not just auto generate an egg on every scroll that was online that month? 

 

There are ways to make the raffle better. This is not it.

Not free. You still have to go out of your way to enter in the raffle. The prize dragon doesn't just magically appear on your scroll without you doing anything.

 

And technically the raffle is already "give me free dragons every month."  

 

The reason why I didn't suggest to auto generate is because I felt like there still had to be some choice involved on the individual level if a player gets a prize dragon or not. 

[Fuzzbucket]

Just now, CellyBean said:

Not free. You still have to go out of your way to enter in the raffle. The prize dragon doesn't just magically appear on your scroll without you doing anything.

 

And technically the raffle is already "give me free dragons every month."  

 

NO - it's "let me buy a ticket every month." Just like any lottery in life. If it were "give me free dragons every month." - you'd already have what you are asking for here.

[DragonLady86]

1 minute ago, CellyBean said:

Not free. You still have to go out of your way to enter in the raffle. The prize dragon doesn't just magically appear on your scroll without you doing anything.

 

And technically the raffle is already "give me free dragons every month."  

 

The reason why I didn't suggest to auto generate is because I felt like there still had to be some choice involved on the individual level if a player gets a prize dragon or not. 

Most players make the requirements the first week, often first day. Unless the entry requirements are drastically increased ie: raise 50 dragons rather than 3, its way to easy. And yes, it is basically free.

[purplehaze]

I have never yet won a Prize dragon, but I would hate to see this happen!

1 minute ago, CellyBean said:

Not free. You still have to go out of your way to enter in the raffle. The prize dragon doesn't just magically appear on your scroll without you doing anything.

How hard is it to meet the requirements? Raise 3 dragons and click a button. I almost never have to do anything that I wouldn't have done anyway. So, yes, they would be free!

2 minutes ago, CellyBean said:

And technically the raffle is already "give me free dragons every month."  

Not for every single person on DC! There is a big difference between a few awarded each month and one awarded to every player who wants one -- because quite honestly every player could easily get one every month.

 

This just totally destroys the whole idea of Prize dragons in my way of thinking. I would not feel like a dragon that I "won" this way would be special at all.

[Paradisiske]

16 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I haven't seen any evidence of that at all.

I rather agree.

And there often are.

Stats for that - just this year:

 January - 30 pages

Valentine - 20 pages

March 13 pages....

 

 

As to "wait a month to get another one" - that would mean everyone who entered every month would have 12 prizes by the end of a year. This is not going to fly - nor should it.

Whenever someone says that, it usually seems to mean  "the fastest and easiest way for me to finally get one."

 

Takes me back to the early days of summoning. As one of those who had to wait three years for my first - patience does one no harm.

 

13 pages is around 10 pages which is what I said.  To get more

April 2021 6 pages and counting

March 2021 13 pages

Sept 2020 11 pages

August 2020 10 pages

April 2020 10 pages

March 2020 10 pages 

December 2019 10 pages

Sept 2019 16 pages

June 2019 16 pages

April 2019 12 pages 

March 2019 16 pages

 

Now compare this to the early 2010s which would go up into the 50s and 80s for holidays and new releases. It is a big drop with a few exceptions in between. If I messed up a year please let me know. 

 

Why shouldn't it fly for everyone to have 12 prizes in a year? What is bad for the game about that?

 

I don't care if it benefits me or not. 

You're right that patience does no harm for those able and willing to be patient. 

Just now, purplehaze said:

I have never yet won a Prize dragon, but I would hate to see this happen!

How hard is it to meet the requirements? Raise 3 dragons and click a button. I almost never have to do anything that I wouldn't have done anyway. So, yes, they would be free!

Not for every single person on DC! There is a big difference between a few awarded each month and one awarded to every player who wants one -- because quite honestly every player could easily get one every month.

 

This just totally destroys the whole idea of Prize dragons in my way of thinking. I would not feel like a dragon that I "won" this way would be special at all.

Yes this whole suggestion is about these sprites being arbitrarily special in the first place for no good reason and trying to rectify that. 

 

6 minutes ago, DragonLady86 said:

Most players make the requirements the first week, often first day. Unless the entry requirements are drastically increased ie: raise 50 dragons rather than 3, its way to easy. And yes, it is basically free.

Okay so keep those requirements and those who complete the requirements still win a prize. 

[DragonLady86]

This suggestion equals "When everyone is special; No one is."  People want prizes because they are special. People will quickly get sick of them if this happened because they would automatically go from rare, special dragon to cheap trash. The fact that even people that support EVERY how to get more prizes thread are against this should say something.

[Jazeki]

Page counts in a forum posting do not equate to user retention. Looking at the DC discord right this moment, there are 681 active users online that aren't mods or chat admins. Lots of people just don't like the forum because they prefer Discord or the trade hub. 

 

@DragonLady86 kinda sums it up here. Many users were upset with the return of raffles and the bump of prize winners. What is the point of having a prize dragon in this case except to say "yes, I have a CB prize now?"

Edited April 25, 2021 by Jazeki

[purplehaze]

4 minutes ago, CellyBean said:

Yes this whole suggestion is about these sprites being arbitrarily special in the first place for no good reason and trying to rectify that. 

By making them worthless? Because it would.

 

[HeatherMarie]

12 minutes ago, DragonLady86 said:

This suggestion equals "When everyone is special; No one is."  People want prizes because they are special. People will quickly get sick of them if this happened because they would automatically go from rare, special dragon to cheap trash. The fact that even people that support EVERY how to get more prizes thread are against this should say something.

 

Very much so. Proof of that: When two-headed lindwyrms were released they were super-rare for a long time and considered among the highest tiers of rarity. Now I can barely *give* them away. At one point *any* bred Gold or Silver was coveted as Super-Duper-Rare, now you rarely get any interested in anything over 3-4gens because there are simply so many more of them now. 

 

This suggestion would take Prizes from 'special I want the shiny special dragon!' to '.... Well okay this dragon is super common and worthless'. There are suggestions to make the raffle better, to help the frustration over not winning for so long, etc. But making Prizes not special at all anymore is an answer I don't think anyone wants. Why would anyone continue to enter the raffle after recieving every variant in just a handful of months? Why would the raffle be important or interesting at all anymore? Why would *Prizes* be interesting or special anymore?

 

People want CB Prizes *because* of their rarity and uniqueness. You don't see people clammering this hard over commons that show up every cave shuffle do you? Prizes would cease to be wanted after every single person gets a ton. 

 

 

11 minutes ago, Jazeki said:

Page counts in forum posting does not equate to user retention. Looking at the DC discord right this moment, there are 681 active users online that aren't mods or chat admins. Lots of people just don't like the forum because they prefer Discord or the trade hub. 

 

This, too. As well, Discord isn't even an accurate representation. There are plenty of people who play DC who aren't on any off-site spaces like the forum or discord or whatever. Trying to calculate average userbase based on those things is useless. 

Edited April 25, 2021 by HeatherMarie

[Fuzzbucket]

12 minutes ago, CellyBean said:

13 pages is around 10 pages which is what I said.  To get more

April 2021 6 pages and counting

March 2021 13 pages

Sept 2020 11 pages

August 2020 10 pages

April 2020 10 pages

March 2020 10 pages 

December 2019 10 pages

Sept 2019 16 pages

June 2019 16 pages

April 2019 12 pages 

March 2019 16 pages

 

You carefully ignore the ones this year that were way above that.

 

January - 30 pages

Valentine - 20 pages

As for April - for god's sake, they only started dropping today; of course it isn't that long yet - but it's rocking on !

 

13 minutes ago, CellyBean said:

I don't care if it benefits me or not. 

 Good - then you won't mind that no-one else likes this idea.

[UnicornMaiden]

No support. This would completely devalue the breeds. I don't know how many raffle entries there are, but I'm willing to bet there are hundreds of people entering. This would mean flooding the site with hundreds of Prize dragons every month. It would probably throw off the ratios horribly. With a flood of CB prizes every month it would be near-impossible to have successful breedings.

 

Also, consider this: Most months the requirement to enter the raffle is to raise three dragons. Depending on how you get your eggs (biome, breeding, or AP) raising a dragon yields 7-11 shards. If you catch an egg from the AP, trade it for a hatchling, and raise that to adulthood you only earn 4 shards by skipping the hatching. That means that raising three adult dragons is equivalent to possibly as little as 12 shards, and not more than 33. Even the cheapest breeds in the market cost 100 shards. In terms of market value this suggestion would put Prize dragons at the fraction of the value of a Mint.

 

I would absolutely support increasing the chances of winning the raffles in order to make CB Prizes more accesssible, but I don't like this suggestion.

[FortyTwo]

To be honest, I'm at the point with the current setup where I just fill the requirements every month and forget about it. It's pretty disheartening to see people with two or even three CB prizes and I still have none. But at the end of the day a raffle is a raffle, it's based on luck. I've won other things in life, so I guess that makes up for not winning in the monthly raffle.

 

Even with that in mind, I still wouldn't support this idea. CBs are supposed to be exclusive, it's not about the 2nd gens they produce (which I agree are kind of worthless now).

[Stormcaller]

10 minutes ago, FortyTwo said:

CBs are supposed to be exclusive, it's not about the 2nd gens they produce (which I agree are kind of worthless now).

 

Yes, I agree that CB prizes are supposed to be exclusive. If everyone had them, what would be the point of it all?  On the other hand, I disagree with your comment that 2nd gens are worthless now; they are not.  Maybe they are not as valuable as they once were, but as a collector I've noticed quite an active trade in them in the hub. If you breed them, you might not get rich overnight, but in the long run you can often get quick trades with little effort. 

 

 

 

 

[lexi_]

4 minutes ago, Stormcaller said:

Yes, I agree that CB prizes are supposed to be exclusive. If everyone had them, what would be the point of it all?  On the other hand, I disagree with your comment that 2nd gens are worthless now; they are not.  Maybe they are not as valuable as they once were, but as a collector I've noticed quite an active trade in them in the hub. If you breed them, you might not get rich overnight, but in the long run you can often get quick trades with little effort. 

this ^
i always feel a bit shy putting my input on these threads because i have the privilege of having two CB prizes (2015/2017), so i don't think i will ever fully be able to feel the same way that someone who has been playing since the very beginning who never won a prize dragon. (especially considering that ive gone on a few hiatuses over the years too!)

that being said, i can attest to second gens still holding some value, and that value is not to be underestimated. i can't fully remember how much they used to be worth, since i wasnt on the forums and i don't believe the trading hub was a thing the last time i went on hiatus and came back, but still stormcaller is correct in saying that having the privilege of owning two prizes means that i can breed for a trade or put something up on the hub and get a couple of hatchlings for even just a prizekin. it makes things marginally easier, so i do consider myself lucky to have mine, but i empathize with the frustration of the people who don't have any. 

 

but still, i don't support this thread, and many people before me have made points that i won't bother repeating. 

[Jazeki]

@VixenDra I feel like your suggestion should be in its own thread. I also am iffy about free dragons because it becomes a lost cause for the people who are unable to enter raffles all 12 months of the year for whatever reason. 

[HeatherMarie]

8 minutes ago, Jazeki said:

@VixenDra I feel like your suggestion should be in its own thread. I also am iffy about free dragons because it becomes a lost cause for the people who are unable to enter raffles all 12 months of the year for whatever reason. 

 

Same. While I would much more likely support a suggestion of 'guaranteed prize after certain amount of time not winning', that's very far from what this thread is suggesting. Still think that's a rather long-shot of actually happening, and yeah it would be super-frustrating to miss one single raffle and have to start all over in the 12-raffle count, but... Yeah, that's a totally different suggestion.

Edited April 25, 2021 by HeatherMarie

[Laugh]

2 hours ago, CellyBean said:

It is just from what I have seen. I remember there being more than 500 active players on the site. I remember the new release threads getting more than around 10 pages of replies before being shut down. I remember the trading forums being a lot more active. Coming back to this game has been a small shock as how much more quieter it is.

 

I stopped playing around Late 2015-early 2016, came back pretty much the last day couple of days of February 2021. I don't remember it being at 500+ players besides on a NR or holiday event. Seems to be the same to me at around the 200-300 range. At the moment we have 350+ active right now because of NR. 

-

Trading forums definitely was a lot more active back then and isn't now because of the trading hub. I remember getting a forum profile just to exclusively trade, but then I started taking interest elsewhere in the forums. As a returning player I have mixed feelings about the trading hub. I believe if we didn't have a trading hub the forums overall would be more active, which I think is part of why some people feel the game is losing players when it probably isn't. To me, it seems like the game is keeping a steady player base. If there are any losses or gains to the player base it's probably very minimal. We wouldn't know that unless TJ posted stats for that as I'm a bit iffy about analyzing NR threads as a sign of player base for a few reasons. There's more that I want to say about the trading hub, but that's for another thread. 

-

As for the suggestion itself. I'm all for more accessibility to prizes, but I'm not for just giving it to everyone. Coming back to the game I definitely appreciate that there are more raffles. I still rather it was all went back to the New Year's raffle, just with a lot more winners. I don't remember exactly how many winners there were. If I'm not mistaken, there was a flat amount of players that won, right? I'd like seeing raffle winners based off a percentage of players who entered instead of: "30 bronze winners, 20 silver winners, 10 gold winners", etc. 20-30% sounds good to me.

 

[Fuzzbucket]

I don't think your idea would meet the OP's needs. Cellybean wants everyone who enters to get a prize - and that isn't going to be achieved by your suggestion.

Just now, GrimmyYA said:

 

Trading forums definitely was a lot more active back then and isn't now because of the trading hub. I remember getting a forum profile just to exclusively trade, but then I started taking interest elsewhere in the forums. As a returning player I have mixed feelings about the trading hub. I believe if we didn't have a trading hub the forums overall would be more active, which I think is part of why some people feel the game is losing players when it probably isn't. To me, it seems like the game is keeping a steady player base. If there are any losses or gains to the player base it's probably very minimal. We wouldn't know that unless TJ posted stats for that as I'm a bit iffy about analyzing NR threads as a sign of player base for a few reasons. There's more that I want to say about the trading hub, but that's for another thread. 

One thing that does make the forum itself less active is the two discords - official and unofficial. Many people prefer them. I hate them myself, but I believe I may be in a minority. Even so - counting the activity there as well as here will give a very different picture, I'm sure.

 

There is also - sorry to mention it - the small matter of covid. EVERY FORUM I AM ON is less active than before the pandemic. People are tired, stressed and fed up. It does impact on on-line activity,

[Laugh]

5 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

One thing that does make the forum itself less active is the two discords - official and unofficial. Many people prefer them. I hate them myself, but I believe I may be in a minority. Even so - counting the activity there as well as here will give a very different picture, I'm sure.

 

There is also - sorry to mention it - the small matter of covid. EVERY FORUM I AM ON is less active than before the pandemic. People are tired, stressed and fed up. It does impact on on-line activity,

 

I'm also with you on that. I definitely prefer forum over Discord, but I will say I prefer Discord over the IRC chatroom we used to have. 

 

DC is currently the only forums I use so I can't say much about that, but I do remember the first couple weeks of Covid shutdowns ALL gaming servers that I frequented on were heavily strained due to Covid such as Dead by Daylight, Smite, Rainbow 6 Siege, etc. All totally different genres of gaming and servers just being over flooded by people who had to stay inside. We are definitely seeing less now because more places are lifting restrictions. 

[HeatherMarie]

30 minutes ago, GrimmyYA said:

 

As for the suggestion itself. I'm all for more accessibility to prizes, but I'm not for just giving it to everyone. Coming back to the game I definitely appreciate that there are more raffles. I still rather it was all went back to the New Year's raffle, just with a lot more winners. I don't remember exactly how many winners there were. If I'm not mistaken, there was a flat amount of players that won, right? I'd like seeing raffle winners based off a percentage of players who entered instead of: "30 bronze winners, 20 silver winners, 10 gold winners", etc. 20-30% sounds good to me.

 

 

I don't think we have actual numbers/stats for how it is now, but winners *do* scale by number of entries. TJ made that change awhile back. 

 

[Falorni]

As someone terminally unlucky with no CB prizes I greatly sympathize w the frustration, but still - no support for reasons most users have already stated.

[ShorahNagi]

I'm with the No Support crowd for a lot of the reasons listed.

 

About the only "Prize for all" idea that I ever supported is/was/would be a 4th variant that is much more readily available but still rare (think on par with cave caught CB Gold/Silvers). This way, the metallic prizes keep their "value" and the raffle stays the way it is while allowing everyone the chance to have a CB Tinsel/Shimmerscale. 

 

But other than that, no support to anything that makes the raffle pointless

[dragongrrl]

No support.

 

This is just begging for handouts, where's the fun in that?

 

And I'm another longtime player with no cb or 2g prizes.

[Seriva Senkalora]

Definitely no support for this.

 

What's the challenge in a raffle if everyone wins?

This would turn it into a giveaway...

 

There aren't many challenges left in this game to keep it apart from being a boring "one click gives you everything"-game. I was curios about the market killing the challenge but with the prices for the rare breeds (staterae...) it got it's own challenge.

 

Even when it can be frustrating to not have won a single price since the raffles started while other got three - it is a game and if you can't handle disappointment about not getting a pixel dragon, this might be the wrong game? I also would love to have tons of CB golds and prizes and neglecteds for free every day, but I'm totally sure this would bore me after a while and I would quit, because everything was just too easy.

EDIT: To make this clear: I am not a native speaker and don't want to offend anyone. I see this from the view of my personal experiences: When I discover something to be too frustrating for me to handle, I try to avoid it (at least for a while) which can result in not playing a specific game or not visiting an always crowded place etc.

Edited April 26, 2021 by Seriva Senkalora

[Ruby Eyes]

15 hours ago, CellyBean said:

And now that I think about it we really shouldn't be judging suggestions on what we assume TJ will or won't do.

Yeah I think that every single time He has changed his mind in the past, after all. Human etc.

 

Personally, I'm fine with more people getting a Prize dragon. Once a month or once a year - I don't mind.

They are such pretty sprites I feel it's a shame that they are artificially limited that way.

(And no, I'm not here for challenges, thank you. Life has enough of them.)