Award a prize dragon with each trophy.

[blockEdragon]

Lots of people think that prize dragon's current luck based implementation isn't great. You read the title, here's my solution:

Once you get X number of dragons you are offered a prize of the corresponding color. You can have any prize breed with enough work but you won't have them all so they're still worth something and you'll need to trade/ap hunt for 2gs of the other breed* (see below) It'd probably be a good idea to give trophy-born prizes the same protections from sickness and trading as a market-born eggs and the game should probably throw in the GON safeguards and disallow abandonment as well.  Alternatively, for an even simpler, safer, process, maybe an adult prize of the selected breed and gender just joins your scroll because it thinks you've got a pretty good thing going on. An instant adult would also negate the possibility of new users loosing their precious prize to all the hazards that a growing egg/hatchling may face.

 

I think the prompt to redeem your prize should not put you on the spot, you should be allowed to redeem it at any time when you feel that you're ready. This is also important for users that already have their trophies so that they don't get swamped with an immediate "make space now OR ELSE" situation if they're given out as eggs. At-will redeeming also gives everyone as much time as they need to make up their minds. It also allows people choose not to redeem their prizes at all if they don't want any prize dragons.

 

Why trophies:

Few reasons, 1. it allows users to earn them while allowing them to remain as prize dragons, 2. they remain rare and special without being exclusive, overpowered, and luck-based, 3. this is a collecting game so most users can reasonably attain this goal without having to go out of their way to grind, 4. the trophies match the prize colors already.

 

What about the raffle:

What about it? Just leave the lottery alone. A free CB prize would still be pretty cool to receive.

 

The platinum problem:

I hadn't made a thread for my idea until today but the idea has been in my head since before the platinum trophy was added, so a 4th trophy was not part of the equation originally. Here are my suggestions for what to do with it:
 

Spoiler

Idea 1. You have prize dragons at home!

Nothing happens, you already have three CB prizes of the corresponding trophy colors, good for you. This would be simpler but kind of anti-climatic.

 

Idea 2. New prize breed

A new prize breed is made and handed out to the platinum trophy owners. New prizes have been suggested a few times before and almost universally rejected by users because of how prizes function, the trophy system would completely invalidate those reasons for not adding new prizes.

 

(The specific lore and appearance of a new prize breed is a discussion best left to TJ and the artists, this is a suggestion, not a dragon request)

 

Idea 3. The completionism option

For every 1000 dragons you get to pick a prize of any color or breed from the existing pool. Prizes would be less precious, but you'd have a reliable (if time consuming) means of getting more prizes. I think this option would create the most contentment, it's not as glamorous as a new prize but it's far more practical. The moment that honeymoon period wears off people are gonna want CBs of the ones they didn't get, more pairs, and the ability to hoard them.

 

People who already have 8000 dragons are a minor issue with this option, either Mr. 8000 gets 11 prize "vouchers" instantly, or all that work he did is wasted when compared to people who don't yet have 8000 dragons but will one day. Personally, I think just giving out the 8 dragons is better in this situation. Mr. 8000 has the numbers so Mr. 8000 meets the criteria, so he gets the prizes he's earned. All that matters is the numbers, not when anyone amassed them.

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by blockEdragon

[seventeendeer]

Oh I like this!! Very nice and streamlined. Keeps prizes very rare, as they were intended, but not entirely luck-based. Puts the 'game' back in 'gameplay' LOL.

 

I'd be happy with several of the suggestions for implementation here. Really, I'd love to see several of them combined.

 

I agree it would be anticlimactic for the final trophy to reward no new type of dragon, but it's also more practical to simply let people choose another prize every 1000 shards - so how about doing both? Add a platinum prize dragon, and then every 1000 dragons after that one, let people pick a new prize dragon from the entire pool available. I think having a platinum prize dragon be the 'mascot' or whatever of this new feature would make it more exciting and feel fresh, but also continued grinding would be rewarded. Sure, long-time users with huge hoards of dragons would have a big advantage for trading in the beginning, but I honestly don't mind! They've spent tons of time playing this game, I think rewarding all the time they've sunk into this game is perfectly fair.

 

I also like the idea of leaving the raffle as it is. A bonus CB of stuff this rare would still be a cool thing to have and worth doing the raffle for.

[KageSora]

I actually have to disagree with this idea. 

 

This method favors specific playstyles and denies others a guaranteed prize that's being handed out to everybody else.

 

There's a lot of people who only collect one of each sprite, or who only collect a breeding CB pair of each applicable dragon, or who only collect a few breeds.

 

Currently, with the raffle, it's frustrating and it sucks but at most you have 3 dragons you need to release after raising them if you want an entry but don't want to collect those dragons permanently.  This would be way more frustrating seeing other people able to grab prizes readily.

 

(Though I suppose the consolation you'd have is nobody would be able to trade their 2nd gens for too much because the value of them would tank.)

 

Honestly, if you're doing something like trying to make them accessible to all players I'd rather see, say, them able to be bought in the market.  Something like 5200 shards (set price) would mean an entire year of maxing your shards earned every week to obtain one of them.  (of course if they fluctuate in price then you could have well over a year, or under a year depending...)  That would require work, but would not require people to raise and keep hundreds of dragons they don't want to just be able to get a prize.

[Fuzzbucket]

I agree 1000% with @KageSora. Not least because it would discriminate so heavily against people with playstyles that don't require vast total numbers.

 

And especially absolutely NO NEW EXCLUSIVE DRAGONS. Things have almost settled down after the disaster that inventing prizes n the first place caused. Please don't stir it all up again. I could live with them being in the market at vast expense, more than 5200, actually - but those with prizes already would probably cry foul. (Full disclosure: I have one and I wouldn't mind but some would.)

[AnthillDragon]

I really like this idea! I remember trying to amass dragons in the beginning to get the trophies was really fun for me, I would love more incentive. I understand that not everyone would, though, but the base idea is really good. I have a prize myself, but it isn't actually that useful for trading any more, the rarity has gone down enough that I would vastly prefer to be able to get a second one and build lineages with her more easily ^^

 

Just spitballing some ideas here - one option, once you've reached each trophy level, you unlock that colour prize dragon in the market. So you get one for free, and if you then want more, you have to save up shards.

I really like the idea of one new platinum dragon added too, as a mascot. Seeing as most players have the platinum trophy, they would be pretty plentiful from the beginning, but still be a little extra incentive. But alternatively, platinum trophy could be when you unlock the other prizes in the market. Lots of options, long story short: I support this!

[seventeendeer]

I will say, I'm one of those people who keep as few dragons as possible (been playing since 2008 and I only have 2195 right now), but I personally would rather have a bunch of dragons I don't care for lying around than have to save up shards for so long. Arguably, having to save up shards favors the subset of players who play every week, while those of us who play constantly for a couple of months and then go do something else for half a year are left out, as we can only earn so many shards a week.

 

I like Anthill's compromise, where you get 1 prize of your trophy color for free and then unlock both variants of that color in the market, actually! Someone with my playstyle probably will still never have enough to buy the second set, but trying to cater to every playstyle also seems unproductive in the long run, if you ask me. It's the superior option to certain people never getting any prizes because of pure luck, at least.

 

EDIT: Actually, why not combine both options? Say, when you get a bronze trophy, you get to pick between a bronze tinsel and a bronze shimmer, and both then unlock in the market. And then after you get the platinum trophy, for every 1000 dragons you obtain, you also get one prize for free. Give people the choice between collecting more dragons or saving up more shards! Choice is always good!

Edited February 25, 2023 by seventeendeer

[UnicornMaiden]

I love the idea of getting a prize dragon for every thousand dragons we raise. It keeps the prize breeds feeling like actual prizes for the effort that has been put in, and it seems to hit a good balance between difficult and obtainable. It also guarantees that a person will eventually get the desired reward instead of being left to RNG chance.

[Fuzzbucket]

4 hours ago, AnthillDragon said:

I really like this idea! I remember trying to amass dragons in the beginning to get the trophies was really fun for me, I would love more incentive. I understand that not everyone would, though, but the base idea is really good. I have a prize myself, but it isn't actually that useful for trading any more, the rarity has gone down enough that I would vastly prefer to be able to get a second one and build lineages with her more easily ^^

 

Just spitballing some ideas here - one option, once you've reached each trophy level, you unlock that colour prize dragon in the market. So you get one for free, and if you then want more, you have to save up shards.

I really like the idea of one new platinum dragon added too, as a mascot. Seeing as most players have the platinum trophy, they would be pretty plentiful from the beginning, but still be a little extra incentive. But alternatively, platinum trophy could be when you unlock the other prizes in the market. Lots of options, long story short: I support this!

 

Most players certainly do NOT have the platinum trophy. And I don't see why people should have to collect loads of things they don't want just to achieve this. Ma\king them available in the market for VERY many shards is something else, as you can get shards without collecting loads.

 

[AnthillDragon]

5 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

Most players certainly do NOT have the platinum trophy. And I don't see why people should have to collect loads of things they don't want just to achieve this. Ma\king them available in the market for VERY many shards is something else, as you can get shards without collecting loads.

 

Are you sure? I just had a look at a random smattering of people in the trading center, found about ten visible scrolls and only two of them were missing the platinum trophy.

[StarlightLion]

6 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Ma\king them available in the market for VERY many shards is something else, as you can get shards without collecting loads.

 

This hits the same problem that you just espoused for trophy-based rewards. A good portion of the playerbase don't play every day/week and don't collect the maxed out shards because they play for new releases and events and just kind of vibe the rest of the time. The way the Market works isn't a viable replacement for CB availability, and Prizes took a decade to lose their insane economic advantage and huge swaths of the playerbase still don't have access to CB Prizes.

 

Reaching the Platinum trophy seems perfectly reasonable to me. This game has never been about fairness, and completing the trophy collection has an actively positive effect on your scroll already in the form of eggslots and hatchling slots. Tying Prizes to the trophies just streamlines their existence and doubles down on an already extant feature.

[PrincessLucy]

7 hours ago, UnicornMaiden said:

I love the idea of getting a prize dragon for every thousand dragons we raise. It keeps the prize breeds feeling like actual prizes for the effort that has been put in, and it seems to hit a good balance between difficult and obtainable. It also guarantees that a person will eventually get the desired reward instead of being left to RNG chance.

 

Since I have over 30,000 dragons, do you really think I should get over 30 CB prizes? I don't.

 

Not that I wouldn't want several prize dragons, but that is excessive.

 

I disagree with people getting prizes per trophy level as well, especially bronze. I think it would lead to even more fake accounts, and then people dumping prizes off the spare accounts and trying to pick them up on their main account.

[KageSora]

3 hours ago, AnthillDragon said:

Are you sure? I just had a look at a random smattering of people in the trading center, found about ten visible scrolls and only two of them were missing the platinum trophy.

 

The thing is, I'd imagine that the players who are into the game heavily enough to be trading are going to skew towards the "players who collect lots of dragons" end of things.  Not all, absolutely.  But I feel like you'd most likely run into platinum users there.

 

(Anybody know if your scroll being visible is enabled by default?  Because if your scroll is not listed on your dragons' pages by default then it's probably pretty safe to assume that a very large chunk of users simply never turned it on and that could really skew things if a huge chunk of users who have less trophies because maybe they play less are simply uncountable by us regular users.)

 

Terrible sample size but I'm lazy...  So I checked on 5 different hatch sites and the AP.  The vast majority of what I found I couldn't use because it didn't list the name of the owner on the egg so that right there already tells us that we, as regular users, can't ever get accurate data because so many people simply do not opt to be visible in a way that we can collect that information readily.

 

I looked for 10 different scrolls on each site and the AP.  This for a total of 60 different users.  I'm not 100% sure I got them all unique but I did try.

 

Here's the numbers I got:

 

Platinum:  33

Gold:  8

Silver:  16

Bronze:  3

None:  0

 

So, out of 60...  Uh, if I math'd wrong lemme know numbers are hard lol.  Should be roughly this:

 

Platinum:  55%

Gold:  13%

Silver:  27%

Bronze:  5%

None:  0%

 

If that were accurate, that would indicate a little over half the players had a platinum trophy.  Which is technically "most" or the "majority" but it's a far cry from a vast majority.

 

But, honestly, I don't think my data is reliable simply because 60 is such a pitiful sample size.  If we didn't have the xeno-walls in the AP and I had a way to filter out everything that was from a scroll that wasn't visible on hatch sites I'd be tempted to try and get an actual, useful sample size but even then the sheer number of scrolls that aren't listed on the dragons' pages makes it impossible to get any kind of actual, reliable data as users.  Plus, it's hard to know if things like the AP or hatch sites tend to skew towards certain types of users.  And without access to that sort of data it's hard to try and account for skews inducing bias into your data.

 

So, trying to find out the trophy level of the average user would really be TJ's domain since he'd be the only one who had even a chance of accessing that sort of information.  (And even then you'd need to decide on parameters because you'd want to exclude accounts that got used for like 2 weeks then abandoned and such.  Would you want to include things like "accounts that got to platinum but then haven't been touched for 5 years so they're not representative of current players" and such?  Lot of variables to consider--and, like I said, I don't think we average users have a prayer of getting anything close to accurate data simply because we can't access enough accounts.

 

3 hours ago, PrincessLucy said:

I think it would lead to even more fake accounts, and then people dumping prizes off the spare accounts and trying to pick them up on their main account.

 

To be fair, that could be mitigated by having the prizes locked to the scroll so there's no trading or abandoning them.  That said, however, there'd be nothing stopping them from just using the second account to try and breed 2nd gens to send to their main scroll.  Though...  Honestly 2nd gen value would probably tank if they were all a lot easier to obtain so while there might be a surge of cheating attempts at first it might even out once the trading market re-stabalized and they were trading for a lot less due to being more common

[UnicornMaiden]

4 hours ago, PrincessLucy said:

 

Since I have over 30,000 dragons, do you really think I should get over 30 CB prizes? I don't.

 

Not that I wouldn't want several prize dragons, but that is excessive.

 

I disagree with people getting prizes per trophy level as well, especially bronze. I think it would lead to even more fake accounts, and then people dumping prizes off the spare accounts and trying to pick them up on their main account.

 

Why not? There's no scroll limit on prizes, and you could make some lovely lineages. Besides, CB prize eggs can't be traded, so multi-scrolling wouldn't do any good.

[blockEdragon]

^You are not obligated to claim all your prizes, reread the last sentence of the first paragraph for details, prizes are opt-in.

 

In regards to less active users I understand that some players don't collect and play as much as others but you have to do stuff to get things. If your playstyle involves doing less stuff you're gonna get fewer things. It's a fundamental fact of game design that every game rewards players who play more, and players that play more will have more than those who play less as a result. Even the market's design understands the simple concept of action and reward, you don't get shards for free as part of a weekly payment for having an account, you have to breed, catch, and hatch things to get them, you have to devote time to get shards. The market isn't obligated to cater to people who can't or don't want to play very much in order to be a worthwhile feature, if you play less, you get less, that's not an issue of playstyle, that's just how games in general work.

 

 

 

[PrincessLucy]

2 hours ago, UnicornMaiden said:

 

Why not? There's no scroll limit on prizes, and you could make some lovely lineages. Besides, CB prize eggs can't be traded, so multi-scrolling wouldn't do any good.

Right now. you can drop your prize. Someone else picks it up

[KageSora]

1 hour ago, blockEdragon said:

In regards to less active users I understand that some players don't collect and play as much as others but you have to do stuff to get things. If your playstyle involves doing less stuff you're gonna get fewer things. It's a fundamental fact of game design that every game rewards players who play more, and players that play more will have more than those who play less as a result. Even the market's design understands the simple concept of action and reward, you don't get shards for free as part of a weekly payment for having an account, you have to breed, catch, and hatch things to get them, you have to devote time to get shards. The market isn't obligated to cater to people who can't or don't want to play very much in order to be a worthwhile feature, if you play less, you get less, that's not an issue of playstyle, that's just how games in general work.

 

 

I mean.  They're not necessarily playing less than somebody with 10x as many dragons.  They may spend 10x as much time on the site, hunting for things, breeding the exact dragons they want, scouring trades, searching for the specific breeds they want, meanwhile the other person pops on 2x a week to load up on a bunch of random eggs and dump them in hatch sites and forget about it until next time.  Doing that you can amass quite a few dragons with very little effort.  I can say that with confidence because I've done both.

 

If you want shards but you don't want a dragon you're not forced to keep it--you can grab and dump eggs from the AP to farm shards if you want to, even.  And even if you don't make max shards each week, every time you do play you'll get a little something that you can work towards without being forced to keep hundreds or thousands of dragons you don't want.

[seventeendeer]

The downside of relying exclusively on buying prizes from the market is that having to save up for a very long time completely bars those of us who play in short, intense bursts from using the market for anything else for years. If we ever want a shot at buying something rare we just ... can't buy anything else for an insane amount of time, putting us at a disadvantage.

 

Having to 'save up' excess dragons on your scroll instead allows for intense play for a short time (grabbing and hatching from the AP every day for three weeks, for example), then dropping off for a few months without losing out on potential progress (since, again, shards are limited per week).

 

Again, why not allow for both? Let people save up shards or save up excess dragons depending on preferred playstyle. Giving players different ways of achieving the same goal is objectively good game design. It sure leaves out fewer people than the raffle does right now, and no one says we can't add more ways of obtaining prizes as we come up with them.

 

8 hours ago, PrincessLucy said:

 

Since I have over 30,000 dragons, do you really think I should get over 30 CB prizes? I don't.

 

 

I actually do, haha. You've done tons of work! You've sunk countless hours into this game, you've earned it! I've played a lot too, but trying to reward every playstyle is bound to stunt a game's development, and since this is fundamentally a collecting game, I think it's perfectly fair that someone with your playstyle should get to unlock stuff that I don't. I know some people in my camp might feel differently, but idk man fact of the matter is, sometimes the most important part of being able to enjoy an online game with other players who occasionally get stuff that you don't is knowing when to hit that copium LOL

[Fuzzbucket]

11 hours ago, StarlightLion said:

 

This hits the same problem that you just espoused for trophy-based rewards. A good portion of the playerbase don't play every day/week and don't collect the maxed out shards because they play for new releases and events and just kind of vibe the rest of the time. The way the Market works isn't a viable replacement for CB availability, and Prizes took a decade to lose their insane economic advantage and huge swaths of the playerbase still don't have access to CB Prizes.

 

Reaching the Platinum trophy seems perfectly reasonable to me. This game has never been about fairness, and completing the trophy collection has an actively positive effect on your scroll already in the form of eggslots and hatchling slots. Tying Prizes to the trophies just streamlines their existence and doubles down on an already extant feature.

 

If they want to buy a prize enough, they can just spend a little time picking up and dropping AP eggs - you can get to 100 shards very fast that way.

 

11 hours ago, PrincessLucy said:

 

Since I have over 30,000 dragons, do you really think I should get over 30 CB prizes? I don't.

 

Not that I wouldn't want several prize dragons, but that is excessive.

 

I disagree with people getting prizes per trophy level as well, especially bronze. I think it would lead to even more fake accounts, and then people dumping prizes off the spare accounts and trying to pick them up on their main account.

 

Yes indeed.

 

7 hours ago, KageSora said:

 

The thing is, I'd imagine that the players who are into the game heavily enough to be trading are going to skew towards the "players who collect lots of dragons" end of things.  Not all, absolutely.  But I feel like you'd most likely run into platinum users there.

<snip>

 

So, trying to find out the trophy level of the average user would really be TJ's domain since he'd be the only one who had even a chance of accessing that sort of information.  (And even then you'd need to decide on parameters because you'd want to exclude accounts that got used for like 2 weeks then abandoned and such.  Would you want to include things like "accounts that got to platinum but then haven't been touched for 5 years so they're not representative of current players" and such?  Lot of variables to consider--and, like I said, I don't think we average users have a prayer of getting anything close to accurate data simply because we can't access enough accounts.

 

 

Exactly this. Guessing how many would insta-qualify will never work.

 

2 hours ago, seventeendeer said:

The downside of relying exclusively on buying prizes from the market is that having to save up for a very long time completely bars those of us who play in short, intense bursts from using the market for anything else for years. If we ever want a shot at buying something rare we just ... can't buy anything else for an insane amount of time, putting us at a disadvantage.

 

You can pick up and drop from the AP. It only takes half an hour to get to 100. I tested once. This already applies to stats - it can be done. You don't need to buy most things; they can actually be found in the cave or traded for.

 

 

[seventeendeer]

29 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

You can pick up and drop from the AP. It only takes half an hour to get to 100. I tested once. This already applies to stats - it can be done. You don't need to buy most things; they can actually be found in the cave or traded for.

 

This is true, but please consider that being forced to log into the site every week for a year or more to save up for something is just ... really, really not fun for some of us, especially us long-timers who have always enjoyed being able to take breaks from this slow-paced game and then returning when we want to without consequence for our absence. It puts pressure on people to play even when they don't want to so they don't feel like they're "wasting" a week, which is frankly kind of a scummy game mechanic. Similar to those phone games that give you a log in bonus for every day you play in a row; it incentivizes grinding at the expense of having fun, for fear of missing out on something other people are getting.

 

Allowing people to save up dragons means handing control back to the player. It lets us play super focused and put a bunch of hours in when we want to, it lets us grind when we want to grind, and rewards us for having fun at our own pace. Combine it with the market idea and we have two separate playstyles satisfied, with the only downside being ... that some people might get jealous that they're not getting as many prizes as someone else might. A small sacrifice for at least giving every player the option to work toward getting any prize VS the pure luck mechanic we have now, IMO.

 

I don't understand why forcing people to have a couple extra dragons on their scroll is considered a big problem (even though those dragons can be put at the end of one's scroll and safely ignored with little further input from the player), while forcing people to play every week (taking autonomy away from players, eating into personal time, forcing players to fit DC into a schedule like it's a job) is just a bump in the road that some people have to get over if they want prize dragons. This is doing exactly what you initially spoke out against - discriminating against people with certain playstyles.

 

('Forcing people' of course being a bit of an extreme word, it's like ... if they want to have prize dragons, they have to do a certain thing. Does that make sense? Sorry if this is worded a bit unclearly!)

[Fuzzbucket]

I can see that - but then again, if someone shows up that rarely - how much do they actually want a prize ? (I am a long timer too, BTW, far ;longer than you - I've been playing since 2010.). As you say - 

2 hours ago, seventeendeer said:

if they want to have prize dragons, they have to do a certain thing

 

Yes, they do. That applies to every single thing in this game.

[seventeendeer]

If you have a peek further up this thread, you'll see I mentioned playing since 2008 - have a gander at my scroll, if you'd like, same name.

 

Also, I can't help but notice you took that last sentence completely out of context. I was clarifying what I meant by "forced to" in the previous paragraph, where I was very much in favor of being "forced to" collect many dragons. I am just also in favor of having a choice between being "forced to" do multiple different things, depending on playstyle. Does this scan? 😂

[AnthillDragon]

@KageSora I see! I'm sorry, I wasn't clear enough in my message - I wasn't trying to get everyone on a wild statistics goose chase and I apologize! My point was simply that I wanted to make sure we were talking about actual problems with the idea,

or if we were making up a potential player and getting defensive on their behalf.

 

Anyway, back on track to the actual subject:

I am 100% in favor of adding both options, shards AND milestone prizes. It allows both playstyles to participate.

 

 

2 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I can see that - but then again, if someone shows up that rarely - how much do they actually want a prize ?

Fuzzbucket, I'm sorry to say, but I think you're being a little hypocritical.  I could just as well argue that if people don't want to have a thousand dragons, they probably don't want the prize that badly - but I'm not going to assume that, because I don't know their playstyle, their life, their preferences. It's true that not everyone wants to collect lots of dragons, but also, not everyone wants to play every week. Not everyone wants to grab from the AP for no reason. Not everyone can remember all the descriptions of the eggs to grab them, or check in often enough to be a reliable trade partner. Why is that different from forcing people to get more dragons? Why is this way of playing more valid than the other? Why are people who prefer getting shards more important than those who prefer to collect dragons? I don't get it. I personally think gathering dragons is much easier. What's the problem with letting there be two ways?

[Fuzzbucket]

Sorry - looked at your forum profile - my bad ! ☮️

 

But what I meant - and stick to - is that in any game y HAVE to do xyz to achieve abc. And so many people seem to think one has to collect unwanted dragons to get shards - and it simply isn't the case - as you know.

1 minute ago, AnthillDragon said:

Fuzzbucket, I'm sorry to say, but I think you're being a little hypocritical.  I could just as well argue that if people don't want to have a thousand dragons, they probably don't want the prize that badly

 

No - I meant if they take such long periods out of the game they don't feel to be that engaged. I entirely agree that not wanting 1000s of dragons doesn't mean you don't want a prize - but not showing up for months - even years - at a time does inevitably mean that you miss out on stuff, and that in most cases that is a matter of choice.

[AnthillDragon]

5 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

No - I meant if they take such long periods out of the game they don't feel to be that engaged. I entirely agree that not wanting 1000s of dragons doesn't mean you don't want a prize - but not showing up for months - even years - at a time does inevitably mean that you miss out on stuff, and that in most cases that is a matter of choice.

Well, I disagree! From my viewpoint, I consider people who don't want to collect in a collecting game to not be that engaged. But I'm not going to deny them stuff, because they deserve to have fun too. So I support buying with shards as well as getting prizes for milestones. So both parties can get to have fun. Also, you're not really answering my question. As it stands, my mind is unchanged, I think having both options is the way to go here.

[seventeendeer]

15 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

But what I meant - and stick to - is that in any game y HAVE to do xyz to achieve abc. And so many people seem to think one has to collect unwanted dragons to get shards - and it simply isn't the case - as you know.

 

Oh sure, that's definitely true! We are on the same page there. 👍

 

But I'm afraid I have to agree with AnthillDragon - I feel a collecting game should reward players for collecting (having many dragons), not for logging in every week (to get shards). Not logging in for months at a time doesn't actually mean you play less than someone who does. I play for several hours a day every day during the months where I do play, meaning that if you add them all together, I actually play more per year than someone who only plays for half an hour once a week all year. But because of the way shards are given out, it would take way longer for me to get prizes. That's more playtime for less reward, prize-wise. How does that factor into "more effort = more prizes"? I feel like it doesn't ..?

 

Again, to be clear, fully in favor of both. We can easily have both trophy and market prizes. I want wörm