Market Voucher

[Lushwave]

Idea I suddenly came up with this morning. I'm not too attached to it being reified so... knock yourselves out.

 

A market voucher is a one-use pass that allows you to obtain a single egg from the Market free of charge - that is, purchasing it will not deduct from your shard count. That's it.

 

Persistent Market notification for visiting this page with an unclaimed voucher. The link should lead to a Market subpage with all breeds available to select.

 

Notification for having received a voucher. The link should lead to the same destination the notification above does.

 

Well, that's not entirely all of course. My full idea as I conjured it went like this:

• When your scroll birthday comes around, a voucher is automatically added to your account. You receive a notification for this occasion (see above), and visiting the Market with an unused voucher shows you a reminder to use it (see above).
• The voucher allows you to get any egg in the Market, no exceptions - even Staterae eggs, which I'm sure will be the hot topic of this discussion.
• Vouchers do not expire, but do not stack, either. You cannot hoard vouchers. If the next year comes by and you still have an unused voucher, you will not be awarded another.

 

I'm certain at least one of these details proposed above will be a deal breaker for many folks, if presented as-is. Why not make this topic a little more flexible, with some options to discuss?

 

The voucher can be awarded:

• Automatically on your scroll birthday. That is, the date you created your account, starting from one year after.
  • Pro: Forces newer players to wait a full year to take advantage of the voucher. Sounds inconvenient, but this can give them something to be excited for or return to the site later for. Plus, some mandatory time of familiarization can prevent a regretful voucher choice (intending to buy something very rare, but spending it on a Magma instead of a Gold).
  • I can't actually think of a con for this one. Help me out?
• Automatically on your real life birthday. That is, the birth month and year you provided the site when you signed up.
  • Pro: Excellent way for the site to wish you a happy birthday. Birthday-awarded voucher dragons come with more sentimental value.
  • Con: Because birthdates can be freely input by the user, this can be exploited by multi-accounting to accumulate many vouchers and dump their awarded eggs. (Could probably safeguard this by preventing vouchers from being awarded to accounts under x months old?)
• Automatically on Dragon Cave's anniversary. Every account at once receives a voucher.
  • Pro: Fitting way to celebrate the site anniversary, and the promise of a voucher can get people hyped for the anniversary / attract more activity to the site at that time. Can counterbalance the stress of a massive dragon release.
  • Con: Because this is a fixed date with no wait requirement, probably the same con as real-life birthday awarding.
• As a raffle prize. An additional raffle winner tier that grants vouchers to "runner-ups".
  • Pro: Appropriate consolation prize for those not lucky enough for the elusive Prize breeds.
  • Con: Just like some players can go their whole lives without winning the raffle, so too can players end up never acquiring this prize. My personal intention with the voucher is that every active player deserves a little free shot at what they want. Ideally that crumb of freedom should not hinge on RNG.
• None of the above, more than one of the above, or... your own idea?

 

The voucher expires:

• Never, but you can only have one at a time.
  • Pro: Prevents voucher hoarding. The voucher can be redeemed whenever the user likes, such as their own birthday (if not awarded on birthdays) or other personal special occasion.
  • Con: Having only one at a time may feel limiting, adding to the stress of having to pick one single particular breed to be awarded.
• After a set period of time, but you can accumulate multiple. The impact of this detail strongly depends on the expiration length versus the voucher's allocation period.
  • Pro: Voucher hoarding is still guarded against. If the expiration is greater than the allocation period (say, vouchers are awarded once a year but expire in two years), you have at most a small number of vouchers at once.
  • Con: Choosing a breed is still stressful here, especially with a time limit imposed. And if the expiration is shorter than a year, there is less freedom to redeem the voucher on a date the user feels sentimental to.
• Your own idea?

 

Voucher-acquired dragons:

• Have a special location name, such as "Market (Voucher)".
  • This sounds strange to include, but hear me out. It's not exactly reasonable to assume everyone with a voucher will definitely spend it on a Staterae or something rare just for the sake of it being rare. I would for sure spend it on an Alcedine and pray it's blue as they are precious to me. Problem is, without some unique identifier, there would be no visual distinction between my super duper oh-so-special dragon and any other Market-bought Alcedine (or insert breed here). Any kind of identifier - but most prominently, the location - helps boost my appreciation for my super duper oh-so-special dragon, and allows me to present the dragon to others as such.
• Have the regular "Market" location name.
• Your own idea of a unique identifier/trait?

 

The voucher takes off:

• The entire price.
  • Especially in the context of a birthday gift, freedom is most in line with the spirit of a gift. However, total freedom is possibly overpowered, and may violate some part of the intended vision of the Market. In that case, some alternative ideas are...
• A percentage of the price.
  • Medium ground between total freedom and an ineffective cost reduction. You must still pay some amount for any breed, but difficulty of saving for an expensive breed is eased.
• A fixed shard amount.
  • If a common breed is priced lower than the voucher's discount amount, it can end up being free. Rares still retain their problematic expensiveness, albeit marginally eased by the discount.
• Your own idea?

 

What problem is this suggestion meant to solve? While the Market is designed to assist with the difficulties of hunting, the price of a Gold or Staterae demands that a user cannot use the Market for anything else for six months to a year. Should a player struggle with this rare and desire for one, this makes the Market rather... "useless" for that long. A single, rarely-allocated free pass at a Market egg can do away with this long wait, allowing players to freely spend shards on other breeds they're having trouble with (and with 258 breeds in Market, that's a lot of breeds to be forgone in the pursuit of a market rare) with peace of mind. This will mean a lot to small-scrolled players for whom hunting for a rare is way beyond the scope of their ability. Also birthday gifts fun.

 

While free stuff is good, something like a voucher can introduce further problems if not appropriately balanced... hence the point of this thread. I present just the base idea of a voucher, how it should work is up to you. Would you like to see such a voucher system implemented? If so, what are your ideas to balance it? Do you have other ideas to share?

[purplehaze]

2 hours ago, Lushwave said:

• I can't actually think of a con for this one. Help me out?

I am going to withhold judgment on this idea as a whole until I have had time to consider it a bit, but I do have a con for the scroll birthday idea. It actually appeals to me more than the others, but those of us with "old scrolls" might have a problem. At the top of my scroll it says "Joined in: 2008" and when you mouse over that it says "exact date not available." So how is my scroll birthday to be determined? Perhaps by the date my first dragon was stolen? Anyway, since you asked, I thought I would throw that out there.

[KageSora]

Hm.  My initial gut reaction to this was "no", but upon reading more of the proposal I'm neutral, leaning towards potential support.  There's something...  I can't quite tease the idea out, I want to consider it further but I think with restrictions to minimize abuse it's not necessarily a bad idea.  The market is meant to supplement the cave when you're just not having any luck no matter how much you try, but we already see issues where players have to choose between using it to supplement the cave on multiple breeds they're not having luck with or max their shards every week for over a year without spending a single one to buy one Stat.  So a voucher would be useful and helpful there.

 

Even if it weren't a voucher for a totally free dragon but a fixed amount or a % of the price knockoff that would make it a lot easier to manage.

 

(One other possible idea--a combination flat shard and %.  Basically a "Takes off X shards up to Y amount, over Y amount takes off Z%"  So, say...  Just random numbers that are nice to work with.  Takes off a flat 200 shards up to eggs 400 (so anything 200 or less is free), but over 400 will take off 20% of the price or something.  That'd be more complex but would make more sense than, say, a 20% voucher that's like no point in using on anything lower priced)

1 hour ago, purplehaze said:

I am going to withhold judgment on this idea as a whole until I have had time to consider it a bit, but I do have a con for the scroll birthday idea. It actually appeals to me more than the others, but those of us with "old scrolls" might have a problem. At the top of my scroll it says "Joined in: 2008" and when you mouse over that it says "exact date not available." So how is my scroll birthday to be determined? Perhaps by the date my first dragon was stolen? Anyway, since you asked, I thought I would throw that out there.

 

Perhaps fr those it could simply be set to January 1st?  Especially as if something causes you to kill or release the oldest dragon on your scroll (or, absolute worst case scenario, if somebody else gained temporary access and killed or released it) that would change the date of your oldest dragon and I'm not sure if the records have dates for your first dragon if it's no longer on your scroll (or if they maintain some records, I don't for how long).

[Naraku]

One of the more creative suggestions S/R subforum has seen in quite a while! I really like this idea.

Voucher obtainment methods:

After thinking about the different methods of obtaining vouchers, I feel like scroll birthday works the best. For older scrolls, they could be awarded on Jan 1st (or perhaps user-set date that can only be done once).
Basing the date on first dragon on scroll creates some of potential issues: the site have to search through database for so many old scrolls to determine which is the oldest one,  user could either have already released the actual first dragon, or take a while to actually catch something-- perhaps even years later.
 

Raffle runner-up vouchers sound like a nice idea, though I'm afraid some users would get pretty salty from believing they won one of the main prizes, only to get a voucher instead.

Mitigating potential abuse:

Perhaps vouchers could only be awarded to user with at least 50 dragons (bronze trophy) on scroll?
Alternatively, this may be a bit controversial, but maybe voucher dragons couldn't be abandoned? It could be released later though.

Thoughts about Market usage:

I agree that Market is largely ignored for various reasons like "saving up only for stats", "what if prizes/new rares get added later", etc etc. With vouchers more people may be a little more open to buying other dragons than just the rare ones and/or just constantly hoarding shards for something that may never happen. Not to say it will stop people from "double-dipping". If they want to do that, then so be it.

[alyelle]

I kind of like this idea - I'll think on it a little more too, but I think as it's explained currently, I'd tentatively support?

 

My initial thoughts:

• Awarding it on scroll birthday (and not allowing multiple vouchers to be accumulated) does seem like a really cute way of celebrating your own DC journey. Failing that, your RL birthday is a nice choice, with additional limitations to stop multi-scrolling. I don't like the idea of it being RNG raffle, for the exact reasons you cite here - loads of players already don't win that.
• My scroll is also a 2008 "exact date unknown" situation, but I've always assumed that somewhere in the backend, the DC infrastructure knows exactly when I signed up. If not, the suggestion for Jan 1 (or any fixed date) for unknown scrolls seems like a decent enough solution.
• For discount, I actually think it would be lovely to take off the entire market price, because then it really does feel like a reward or a gift. Yes, probably a lot of people will go for the Staterae, but... they're kinda gonna do that anyway, by saving up shards over the course of a year. And maybe some of the other suggestions here - special location, no ability to abandon as suggested above - might make that less problematic? (I personally wouldn't go for the Stats, lovely as they are; I'd go for some of the uncommon-but-terribly-hard-to-find options I want to compete scroll goals.)
• If that undermines the point of the Market, my initial thought was a fixed shard amount would be nice, but then there's the question of what to do with leftover shards, and what amount the voucher should be to begin with. A percentage might be easier to implement - and if it was on the high side (eg. 50%) would still feel a nice reward to help those who wanted to use it on rare dragons.

[seventeendeer]

This is a super cute idea, full support. The market has a lot of kinks that need ironing out, but a yearly voucher would help mitigate some of it for sure!

 

Personally, I would prefer it on the scroll birthday or the real-life birthday. Same as others on this thread, I don't support adding it to the raffle; as OP says, the voucher should ideally be equal access for everyone, that's kind of the point.

 

I do like the idea of taking the entire price off - but if we're concerned about multiscrollers, maybe making it percentage-based (or a variation on that idea) would help combat that problem? Since someone would actually have to play on all of their scrolls in order to earn some of the shards necessary for those big purchases, hopefully they'd find that to be too much of a hassle. Or it would at least limit how many vouchers they could accumulate; creating 20 extra accounts that sit around collecting dust for most of the year aside from when a free voucher appears on there is easy, but having to grind out 100 shards on 20 different accounts every week, or even just every few weeks, would likely be annoying enough to deter most people. They might still be willing to play on 5 different accounts (as some people already do that), but that's still 15 less incidents of misuse. Might be good to consider?

 

I'd gladly support many different variations of this, though, it's a solid idea I think could be executed well in a lot of different ways.

[LadyMadonna]

This sounds like a great idea.  As a player with 15 months under my belt, a pair of Stats is still way beyond my abilities.  I've never seen one in the biomes.  I bought one in the Market a few months ago and, despite working to ensure that I earn the limit of 100 shards every week (2,000 currently in hand)  at the current market price of 5200 shards, there's no chance of purchasing a mate for another 32 weeks!  And that assumes the price doesn't rise still further.  

 

I don't think adding a voucher as a runner up prize to the raffle is a good idea - that will just lead to more disappointment.  I think the best idea is to link the voucher qualification to the start date (or 1st Jan if there is really no other way for early players to identify their genuine start day).

 

Support!

[Jazeki]

Voucher seems cute. I tentatively support right now, but please no using it as a runner up raffle prize (unless shims and tins magically make their way into the market). As much as I like all the rares that I can buy, I don't see any of them as comparable to an actual prize dragon. 

[Fuzzbucket]

I'm totally on the fence about the suggestion, but PLEASE no adding anything to the raffle. It's pretty much settled down now; let's please leave it alone.

[Brite]

I don't know about a voucher for any egg...but maybe something like a 2-3k shard gift as a scroll birthday present instead?

[Fuzzbucket]

That would be FAR too many shards for a one-off gift.

[KageSora]

I agree that a gift of shards that high would be worse--that's a whole lot of eggs somebody could buy if they weren't used for a rare or saving up for something special.  If you got 3k shards and somebody only wanted 100 shard eggs that would basically be 30 free eggs.

 

I could see a voucher for up to X amount of shards off an egg purchase so anything over that voucher amount you pay the difference but there's not leftover balance to add to your shards if you pick something less than that amount, but the idea for a voucher is just "get one egg per voucher" not "get tens of eggs as long as you get cheap ones".

[D-wing]

Interesting idea! I like the concept about a birthday gift and will not refuse any ideas that make people get market eggs easily. I really sure my bro will used it on Magma after he got a stat.

 

My opinion:

-I agree about the idea 1 voucher = 1 egg.

-I like the scroll birthday method the most but can accept real birthday / 521 method if too much workload.

-No raffle because I prefer everyone can join.

-I prefer the "only have one" method, it award people who keep focus on DC.

-Location: My opinion is simple is the best, but if need a new location to distinguish them into unabandonable to avoid multi-scroll I will agree.

[DragonLady86]

No to the raffle but otherwise this could be a nice idea. Im a 2009 scroll date unknown (March 17th if I remember correctly lol)but I'd be okay with scroll birthday or regular birthday. I'm not sure how multi-scrollers could abuse that myself, market dragons already can't be traded and if the vouchers can't be either...?

[KageSora]

1 hour ago, DragonLady86 said:

I'm not sure how multi-scrollers could abuse that myself, market dragons already can't be traded and if the vouchers can't be either...?

They could drop the egg to the AP and try to catch it on their other scroll, and there's the fact that the offspring of certain dragons can get very good prices on the market (2nd gen Stats, for example--pain as they are to breed)

 

But, honestly, I think chances of abusing it are fairly minimal.

[Quinney]

A scroll birthday voucher is a nice idea.

[Shadowdrake]

If a b-day voucher must have limitations, I think giving 1 free egg up to, say 2.5k or 2.5k off any more expensive egg would work, though personally I don't see it much more abusable than someone multi-ing for flipmints. They're untradeable and there's not much they can breed out of market dragons to be trade fodder, plus it's only once a year. 

 

I would prefer to let undetermined players permanently set a scroll birthday, possibly one that shows up on scroll info like anyone else's.

 

Joined in:       Nov 1*, 2006 - 2009

.

[schenanigans]

Oh this is such a neat idea! Support  This would keep the market supplemental to the cave, as it is supposed to be, while also keeping some of the "impossible" things in the attainable range. 
I agree that the birthday is a bit weird for those of us without an exact join date, but I am sure something could be worked out. I didn't see anyone mention the possibility of just everyone without an exact join date receiving the voucher on January 1st of their join year. 

I will say that I really don't think this is going to be that huge of an issue considering multis. If we shy away from suggestions because it would benefit multis then we would be denying every suggestion posted because obviously it would provide the most amount of benefit to someone ignoring the rules. I really don't think this would be game breaking in that department. 

[Shadowdrake]

I feel like letting a large part of the player base get One Free Rare on the same day may cause havoc to ratios and market prices.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Shadowdrake

[Hawaiianbabidoll]

Could have users that do not have a specific join date get assigned a random month. It feels strange to me to let users pick their dates, especially since I can imagine the day this is released a lot of people will just choose that day to get their vouchers immediately, then you'd still have the problem of a bunch of players getting their freebie on the same day.  Only TJ could possibly know the current distribution of join dates over the year too, so we might already have a bunch of people getting their vouchers around the same time anyway.

Also just something minor to note so its not overlooked if this is ever added - February 29th would either need to get their vouchers on the 28th, or instead of getting vouchers on the actual day of your join date, maybe we could get them on the first of your join month.

I'm not sure how big an impact it would have on the market if everyone got it on the first of the month instead of trickling them across 30 days. I guess it would depend on how many users there are each given month....if it ends up being a visible problem, maybe the site can just ignore voucher dragons when it comes to ratios.

 

I do really like the idea though. You don't need to use your voucher if you don't ever want to, and it really helps break the habit of hoarding shards because of the 'what if I need something later?' mentality.

[purplehaze]

57 minutes ago, Shadowdrake said:

I feel like letting a large part of the player base get One Free Rare on the same day may cause havoc to ratios and market prices.

But is it really a large part of the player base? For how many years is the exact start date unknown? Those are the early years when there were fewer players and many of those have probably left the game. Maybe it is still a significant number. I don't know. I for one am not really going to care much about when my scroll birthday is determined.

 

The more I think about it, the more I like this idea.

 

2 hours ago, Shadowdrake said:

If a b-day voucher must have limitations, I think giving 1 free egg up to, say 2.5k or 2.5k off any more expensive egg would work,

I would not mind having a limit on the price of the egg voucher and I like this suggestion for implementing it. It would still allow players to get eggs that they might otherwise find out of their reach, but would not be an outright gift of the most expensive eggs in the cave. I do wonder what effect it will have on the market if everyone picks a Stat egg. I know when the market first started and people saved up and bought Golds as soon as they could it did seem to drive up the market price of the Golds for a while. The Stats are already priced so high that I wonder if it would put them totally out of reach without a voucher.

[KageSora]

2 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

The Stats are already priced so high that I wonder if it would put them totally out of reach without a voucher.

 

To be fair, they're already something some players have given up on entirely due to their price.  If you aren't somebody who plays every week you're looking at well over a year for a single dragon, and that's just ridiculous for a lot of people who would like to be able to buy dragons they need for their lineages or collections instead of saving up forever--especially as the Stats do keep creeping up in price over time as it is.

[Ruffledfeathers]

I like the idea, sweet and lets people actually buy things  I know I have tried and failed to save for stats recently, it takes far too long. They need a price cap imo but thats a separate matter.

 

Is it possible to have these voucher dragons not impact ratios/market price? Like do the prizes from raffles affect them, far as I know they dont (could be wrong), so why not have these not count especially if they will have an identifier. 

[StarlightLion]

I love this idea so much, absolute support. I also don't really think it would be all that much of a problem with multi-scrollers - the easiest fix would be to make voucher dragons locked to your scroll completely, as far as I see it. Though even the abandon method doesn't strike me as all too especially problematic since there's zero guarantee of picking that egg back up again, and a legit player might get a lovely surprise out of the ap. I also agree that we can't be making policies and requests based around multi-scrollers primarily.

 

As for the actual discount, I like the flat 1 voucher = 1 egg the most; it's every player's individual choice whether to use it on an expensive egg or not. That definitely incentivises players to pick a Stat instead of a Freckled because it's just much more value, but it also frees up that player's shards so that they can more comfortably buy those Freckled dragons without as much anxiety over getting the Stat, which actually helps the Market function as intended.

(they're 5200 shards as of this post and requiring a real-time year of maximum engagement to get one single dragon is just... Yeah, no, we all understand that it's rubbish).

Failing complete discount, I think a flat amount is better than a percentage, as long as it's a significant enough value. If you want a cheaper egg, it can be completely discounted. Why shouldn't it be? Let there be benefits for choosing any of the species whose price doesn't drain the life out of me lmao

[PokeCat]

I'm a bit mixed on this, I like it but also don't, I can't really put my finger on why. 

 

I think I dislike the idea of the option of the voucher to just completely delete the price of any egg. I think someone else said that doing it up to a certain shard price would be interesting, kind of like a discount instead. So instead of just getting an egg for totally free from it, you can get one for a discounted price if it's an expensive egg, OR get it for free if it's a cheaper egg, does that make sense? 

Overall, I think it could work, but I'm really not so sure. Maybe I just don't like the idea of someone going for a stat instantly, who knows, I can't really figure out what bothers me about this idea.