Regarding Action Timers

[olympe]

This means major lag spikes at midnight every day, as people begin to spam all their abilities for the day all at once.

Why would people do that? It wouldn't matter when the ability is used, does it? I mean, how bad is it if your eggs get laid six hours later? Besides, the next reset wouldn't be affected of when in the day the ability is used, so people really wouldn't have to rush to their scrolls at midnight.

[Lythiaren]

Why would people do that? It wouldn't matter when the ability is used, does it? I mean, how bad is it if your eggs get laid six hours later? Besides, the next reset wouldn't be affected of when in the day the ability is used, so people really wouldn't have to rush to their scrolls at midnight.

Because people who have a set routine like to get that routine out of the way as fast as possible to get on with the rest of their day.

[00n0b0dy]

Uniformity would be great. And so would giving more specific time, at least when you're getting close to the end. The last day before my dragons can breed or my reds can incubate always drives me bonkers.

 

Also, for specificity as an argument, one which I have brought up every time the whole "but mass breeders could do it even more efficiently!" complaint comes up on the breed timer, to be honest they're probably doing it already if they really want to. If I'm dead set on breeding my silvers as soon as they're able and I can't remember when precisely I bred them last, I do sit on my scroll and refresh the actions page every 10 minutes. Many other people do this as well. It just strains the site needlessly while we refresh for an hour or 3 or 20 waiting for our dragons to be ready again. Precise timers, even if just in the last day dropping to hours or something, would be far more convenient and may lessen site traffic a little bit, and I don't think the masses of abandoned bred eggs will show up all that more frequently.

[Lythiaren]

Refreshes are less strain on the server than generating eggs, though. It spends some bandwidth, yes, but it doesn't take all that much processing power to spit out a couple values. Generating eggs involves randomizers and creating database entries.

[iarsma]

It would be handy to have it specify a date up to the last day, then count down in hours on the last day, but I'm not sure how easy/hard that would be to program.

 

Edited the first post, though.

[Aeris]

The bit about going down to very specific times has been argued against quite a few times, actually. It's more an issue of the spam breeders who don't track their breed times; if you know exactly when you can breed again, you breed closer to the sametime every week. If you're not quite sure, it starts to stagger and gives us a lighter server load overall.

This doesn't quite make sense to me. I have, right now, 22 pairs that I am trying to breed regularly for certain results.

 

If I know exactly when I can breed them, I'll always breed whoever is available, right when they become so. This will keep them naturally staggered most of the time.

 

However, if I cannot recall when, I won't check back for a number of hours, or a day. By the time I check back, 6 pairs are ready to go at the same time, and I'll likely breed all six at once.

[FosterMom]

AS TO: Resetting the timer at midnight - what time zone?? EST? Or GMT time?? Seem like MORE confusion to me. I mean, if people can't figure time zones from EST (site time) anyway ....

 

Standardizing is good. I know I get confused still on my pinks - it says you can't influence until 'DAY" and it actually MEANS the day after. I don't watch any other actions that closely. I've only bred a few times (mostly trying to get colored stripes) so I really can't comment there.

 

The '0' hours isn't an issue to me. Generally, that means after the next top of the hour, the action is available - and isn't that really what you want to know? Does it really have to be down to the minute?? But then, I'm not that picky - but I guess I can understand how some might be ...

 

Perhaps all counters in the form of "(action) cannot be used again until after day / hour??

 

Too much TJ?

[blah]

I'm bumping this because I'm having the problem again. I want to incubate my yulebucks so that they'll grow up before the 28th to breed them.

 

My red is saying "This dragon cannot warm another egg until Dec 22, 2009."

 

For me it is already 21:27, the 22nd is almost over. I know, the timer counts down to the exact hour, but what do I know what time I last used it? So I'm checking up on my red every hour or so.

 

It would be so much easier if the timer said "you have to wait x more days/hours".

[Sadako]

...what if a dragon had a BSA that could use its psychic/magic powers to 'divine' the time when your actions would be available again?

 

Standardize the timers so that they all count the same way but still only to the day, and then if you use X BSA, you get hour and minute counters added on to all of your action timers, say, for the next 10 minutes. (Including egg/hatchling timers? Could be handy for neglected experiments!) Use the BSA, go check all your timers and remember or record what it says before they disappear -that's the challenge. If you need to check again before the cooldown on the BSA is up, you need to use a different dragon.

 

Alternately, you could use the BSA to select a single action (target one of your dragons, and then select which of their actions you want to 'divine' the time for) and reveal an hour/minute timer for it, which stays permanently until that action next becomes available. If you want to divine a second timer before the cooldown is up, you must burn a second dragon's BSA.

 

[scratcher_cat]

One thing I'd also like is that if you look at an egg on your scroll that is under one hour, that it count the minutes also. Instead of only seeing minutes on the AP adn having to keep track of the minutes yourself which can be confusing if you're forgetful.

[trystan]

i'm glad i found this, because i too would like a standarization. i actually like the date version, like the Influence/Influence/Earthquake actions. i'm all right if it doesn't give me a time, just the actual date i can do the action again.

 

 

[n00biito]

I think it's a neat idea. As long as I'm able to know exactly when I'll be bale to do an action again.

[Ashywolf]

I have some hatchies sitting around waiting to be frozen and I've fogged them in hope that the action will replenish itself sooner or later before they die.

 

I would really want some note that tells you how many days are left (similar to Red Incubate, Pink Influence etc.) until you can freeze again.

 

 

I would really find this helpful. It could say something like: You will be able to freeze again in X days.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Ashywolf

[Ashywolf]

Hey mods, don't you normally leave a message if you merge topics :3?

 

I was wondering where my thread went >.> Had to check "Find all posts by this member" on my account to find it.

 

And this thread is more about more specific times (into hours) for BSAs than actually having a countdown at all....

Edited April 10, 2012 by Ashywolf

[Laurarockstar]

Sounds good, and if timezone affects the date style then perhaps countdown style instead. "This dragon can't breed again for another 6 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes." Or whatever.

I agree with this ^

:3

[Alse15]

I have noticed a lot of people (like myself) who use up their BSAs frequently due to gifting/trading/personal needs. It has caused people a lot of worry when they see they need to teleport/influence something to someone and all that displays is the dragon coming off cooldown in 1 day. This, of course, can mean anything from the dragon coming off cooldown in a few minutes, to another twenty four hours.

 

I believe it would be more helpful if it had a display like eggs have where it days days and hours. Also, it would help users be more careful in pacing themselves when using their BSAs.

 

I would like to hear other people's thoughts on this.

[5icky]

1UP from me(+1,let's be mature )

i love this! i only have 6 magis, so i have no idea.. i have used half of them today just gifting and such..

[TemperedBreeder]

I am completely for this. I hate having to tap my finger on the table wondering "when can I do this again?" for what seems like forever.

 

The thought of knowing when you last performed an action down to the hour seems like a win. Timing it down to the minute, though (as I have read in previous posts), seems like a bit much. Maybe, once 1 hour is hit, it counts down in 15 minute intervals (1 hour, 45 minutes, 30 minutes, 15 minutes) to give us a rough guess at to when we can use the action in question.

 

That's my input for the moment.

[tridymite]

would like to!

[Fuzzbucket]

Your action log shows the exact time, if you didn't do it too long ago....

[tridymite]

Your action log shows the exact time, if you didn't do it too long ago....

thats the point...

 

when i go and breed tinsels or my geodes... action log doesnt show the timer anymore

[Fuzzbucket]

thats the point...

 

when i go and breed tinsels or my geodes... action log doesnt show the timer anymore

Whut ? Mine does. Or do you mean it's too long ago....

[Pokemonfan13]

It depends on how many actions have been performed in the meantime. There is a suggestion somewhere to let you CHOOSE which actions get recorded in the log, and if you choose to ignore the right actions the log would fill slowly enough to allow important things to be still there when you need to reference them.

[Red2111]

would absolutely adore having a time stamp added to the "Last Bred:" bit thats shown on the dragons bio page

 

 

so it would show

 

"Last Bred: Jul 12, 2013 15:33 EST" or "Last Bred: Jul 12, 2013 03:33PM EST"

Edited July 12, 2013 by Red2111

[Becka]

would absolutely adore having a time stamp added to the "Last Bred:" bit thats shown on the dragons bio page

 

 

so it would show

 

"Last Bred: Jul 12, 2013 15:33 EST" or "Last Bred: Jul 12, 2013 03:33PM EST"

I am absolutely YES on this idea, would be very helpful!