Suggestions for optimizing actions

[hippocamus]

I suggest that the standard actions with dragons, hatchies and eggs should also be made dependent on the presence of certain dragons on the player's scroll.
All BSA are offered to early (primordial) dragons, which are found in all biomes.

 

Killing is the BSA of a Black dragon.

Resurrection - the BSA of the Sunset and Sunrise dragons, and the first increases the chance of turning into a zombie, the second - a normal resurrection.

Hide and Unhide - the BSA of the Storm dragon. Cooldown is only 1 hour.

Freezing is the BSA of the Seasonal dragons.

 

Two ideas not so formed, but still...

 

Release - BSA of Skywing.

Abandon - the Guardian dragon's BSA.
 

In addition, I suggest that all possible effects from other dragons are offered in the Action menu of a specific dragon, hatchie or egg (like Precognition, Teleport, etc.).

Edited July 11, 2021 by hippocamus

[HeatherMarie]

First, this should go in Suggestions, if you are suggesting changes for the site. 

 

Second.... No, please no, no way. Nope. Nuh-uh. Please no. 

 

BSAs are great and all, and we have some *very* useful BSAs.... But there is absolutely no reason to *change* actions we've been able to do on our own for a decade to strictly-one-dragon's ability. That would be absolutely horrible, I can't even imagine how frustrating that would make this entire game!! Especially with actions that are *needed* for regular gameplay like hide/unhide and abandon. That would be so upsetting!! Something you've been able to do freely for years, suddenly you can only do with one specific dragon? Why would this be at *all* wanted? 

 

Can you explain why you would want such a huge fundamental change? What would the benefits be to tying such actions to one dragon breed? Why would it be a positive change? 

 

With this sort of change, gameplay would come to a screeching halt for a good portion of users. People like me who hunt the AP and regularly pick/toss dozens of dragons a day will be suddenly unable to play the way they always have. People who are regularly targeted by viewbombers would see more and more of their dragons dying because they can't just hide them themselves (and yes, even with a cooldown of 1 hour it *will* affect things!). 

 

edit: Also, when suggesting BSAs for dragons it's normally expected that the action will make sense for the dragon, that there is something in the dragon's description/encyclopedia that shows it makes sense to have that BSA. Some of these I definitely don't understand in that respect, would you like to explain why you picked those dragons for those actions?

Edited July 11, 2021 by HeatherMarie

[Pourlemoment]

14 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

First, this should go in Suggestions, if you are suggesting changes for the site. 

 

Second.... No, please no, no way. Nope. Nuh-uh. Please no. 

 

BSAs are great and all, and we have some *very* useful BSAs.... But there is absolutely no reason to *change* actions we've been able to do on our own for a decade to strictly-one-dragon's ability. That would be absolutely horrible, I can't even imagine how frustrating that would make this entire game!! Especially with actions that are *needed* for regular gameplay like hide/unhide and abandon. That would be so upsetting!! Something you've been able to do freely for years, suddenly you can only do with one specific dragon? Why would this be at *all* wanted? 

 

Can you explain why you would want such a huge fundamental change? What would the benefits be to tying such actions to one dragon breed? Why would it be a positive change? 

 

With this sort of change, gameplay would come to a screeching halt for a good portion of users. People like me who hunt the AP and regularly pick/toss dozens of dragons a day will be suddenly unable to play the way they always have. People who are regularly targeted by viewbombers would see more and more of their dragons dying because they can't just hide them themselves (and yes, even with a cooldown of 1 hour it *will* affect things!). 

 

edit: Also, when suggesting BSAs for dragons it's normally expected that the action will make sense for the dragon, that there is something in the dragon's description/encyclopedia that shows it makes sense to have that BSA. Some of these I definitely don't understand in that respect, would you like to explain why you picked those dragons for those actions?

 This. 👆

[Fuzzbucket]

I agree with Heather and Pourlemoment. The BSAs work fine with the dragons who have them. What on earth is the need for a change like this ?

[dragongrrl]

No. No. No. This would just turn the everyday basics into an unnecessary hassle.

No support.

[Stromboli]

Since hide/unhide is the only way to protect eggs from sickness, requiring users to raise a bunch of Storm dragons in order to be able to use it doesn't seem reasonable.

 

Same for abandoning, if you're an active AP hunter the number of Guardians you'd need quickly becomes unreasonable. Also given Guardians' nature of being protective and nurturing, having them be required to ditch an egg in a random cave to die doesn't really seem to work.

[dragongrrl]

Just for today, I've used hide/unhide 39 times so far, and I still have 6 hours to go. 36 times yesterday. 35 times on the 9th. 50 times on the 8th. That's 160 times over the last 3 and a half days. I have only 35 adult Storms, enough for my basic scroll goals. 

 

This is just not a realistic suggestion, and would destroy my play style.

[Silverwatermist]

In my opinion, BSAs should always be for actions that are extra/not actually NECESSARY for playing. You don't have to Incubate or use Fertility or use Teleport to be able to catch, breed, and hatch a dragon. These days, you do in fact need those to acquire specific alts of breeds, but even if you have none of those BSAs, you can still raise a healthy dragon of SOME type. Locking an action such as Hide/Fog behind a BSA would actually prevent players from raising a dragon if their dragon gets sick and they have no access to the BSA to stop it from getting views. To me, that means Hide is a necessary action, and should not be tied to a BSA.

It can be debated whether Kill, Freeze, or Release are necessary or extra, but Hide and Abandon are basic actions that I believe all players should be able to do instantly. Being able to drop eggs into the AP should be doable at every play level, for every play style, and not be prevented by not having enough of a particular dragon.

[Darkrat]

Absolutely no support, I agree that it would be impossible to keep eggs alive without hide.

While some older users have enough dragons to be able to keep up with this to some degree, this would destroy newer users who would likely have no storm dragons to hide eggs with. 

Newer users would probably quit pretty quickly due to storm dragons being hard to grab at least for a while as everyone is trying to rebuild what they previously had. 

Not to mention as far as I know bsas are to add new things to the site not to take away features to make them more limited. 

[ShorahNagi]

As someone who plays from mobile - it would be a pain and a half for me to have to jump to page 62 [where I find my skywings] just to release an AP egg I picked up on accident...not to mention the other actions I'd have to jump around for.

 

6 hours ago, hippocamus said:

addition, I suggest that all possible effects from other dragons are offered in the Action menu of a specific dragon, hatchie or egg (like Precognition, Teleport, etc.).

 Also have to say no to this as I feel the level of coding required (as it would need to keep track of how many of X dragon you have available for the BSA versus how much time remains until you could use one again) wouldn't be worth the benefit.

 

Sorry, but I'm with everyone else on saying this would be an unnecessary complication to playing.

[schenanigans]

57 minutes ago, ShorahNagi said:

 

 

I misread and I can't delete this I am so sorry for the ping lol.

 

I am firmly against this suggestion. Some of the actions suggested are essential. I don't see this as optimization at all. This would just feel incredibly clunky and unfun.

Edited July 12, 2021 by schenanigans

[Nakti]

6 hours ago, ShorahNagi said:

 Also have to say no to this as I feel the level of coding required (as it would need to keep track of how many of X dragon you have available for the BSA versus how much time remains until you could use one again) wouldn't be worth the benefit.

 

Well, count is already implemented - magis in trading. So it's really an interface issue. And even that I hate interfaces, I think it would be worth)

 

I like this idea simply because it would make more breeds desired. However, the hide and abandon actions are really essential, and new players will have hard time beginning. Other actions aren't needed to keep first eggs alive and raise them, so they might as well be tied to some breeds.

I have conserns with kill - this action has a limit which is also affected by BSA of other dragons. Will kills be affected by EQ/Vampire, or they will be only tied to count of blacks? I've seen the kills count questions before, so I think it should be a separate sugestion

Edited July 12, 2021 by Nakti
sent early

[KageSora]

Without a doubt one of, if not the, worst suggestions I have seen in terms of what it would disrupt from a gameplay perspective.

 

Even if you made some of them zero-cooldown BSAs, this also would throw a wrench into the fact that certain actions are limited intentionally.

 

There's also something about how it would unbalance the playing field--users with a ton of dragons that permit them to kill or freeze, for example, would be able to use those actions a ridiculous amount of times while users who have few to none would suddenly find their ability to use basic actions wiped out.

 

As it is, everybody has the same number of kill and freeze slots (well, accounting for trophy differences--but everybody with the same trophy level has the same number of freeze slots, and permitting additional freeze slots is a reward for raising enough dragons).

 

Plus, kill is severely limited.  (If it should be raised or not is an entirely different suggestion).  It's much lower than freeze and I imagine that's for a reason, rather than just "oh hah wouldn't it be fun to limit killing??"  If you tied this to black dragons, for example, I would instantly be able to kill 20+ dragons every cooldown period.  To balance something like that it would likely need a much higher cooldown--but then that disproportionately punishes users who only have one or two.

 

I understand if you want more BSAs and such, but this would decimate gameplay and be incredibly unbalanced while action limitations (or lack thereof in terms of abandoning and hiding/unhiding for example) are one of the things that are explicitly leveled between all players.  Disrupting that would be a poor idea, especially so long into the life of the game as it is now.

[DragonLady86]

Hard no for reasons already stated. 

[calona]

I would not be very happy either with this change (not at all actualy), but I feel this massive rejection could be perceived as a bit brutal. 😅

Thank you @hippocamus for this suggestion, all ideas are worth discussing, and well we know that it will not be received well and we know why !  And thanks everyone for nicely formulating the ideas, I particularly agree with @HeatherMarie and @KageSora that took the time to explain what I couldn't find the words for !

[Stormcaller]

There's no way I can support a plan like this one.  The game's just fine as it is right now.

[KageSora]

10 hours ago, Nakti said:

I like this idea simply because it would make more breeds desired.

There are ways to do that which don't involve completely disrupting and unbalancing gameplay in ways that simultaneously give some users near unlimited uses of previously limited actions AND stripping the ability of others to use basic gameplay features.

 

There are other ways to give them useful BSAs, or hybrids possibly, for example.

[HeatherMarie]

17 minutes ago, KageSora said:

There are ways to do that which don't involve completely disrupting and unbalancing gameplay in ways that simultaneously give some users near unlimited uses of previously limited actions AND stripping the ability of others to use basic gameplay features.

 

There are other ways to give them useful BSAs, or hybrids possibly, for example.

 

This. I totally support giving less-valuable/wanted dragons BSAs and maybe helping them be more wanted and helping users see them as valuable rather than an overcommon. But *these* specific suggestions would completely break the game for many users, would make users literally unable to play safely and simply, and that is a no-go.