Can killing dragons be a good thing?

[Sir Barton]

I can see you and I aren't going to agree upon this, so I would rather peacefully agree to disagree.  Regarding inbred golds, yes it's true that the cave may not create a replacement immediately.  And it's true that I could personally gift that egg to someone and make their day today.  But I am the kind of person who is content to make someone's day without getting to witness firsthand how happy the person is.  Like, I don't need to hand-pick someone in order for them to be deserving enough to benefit from my actions. 

 

Not long ago, I caught a CB silver for the first time.  That CB silver means more to me than my six gold dragons combined.  I believe that the actions of people who kill/vamp/freeze-release inbred rares, or who refrain from breeding their inbred or messy rares, probably contributed to me catching this CB silver.  It made my day.  THEY made my day.  No, they didn't get to gift it to me personally.  But their actions helped me enormously and I am grateful.  Conversely, people who breed long-lined or inbred rares are indirectly taking CBs away from other users.  I guess I just can't see why I should prioritize the joy of a user who would accept any gold over the joy of a user who has been playing for three years and still hasn't caught their first CB metal.  You're right, it's a question of personal values.  And I personally take great satisfaction in knowing that my actions might lead to people catching more CBs.  But I don't see what's so wrong with that, as we all have a right to value things that are important to us.  I mean, it's not like I'm forcing anyone else to neutralize inbred rares. 

 

I am reminded last year of all the Holly breeders who were pitching a fit because they didn't think they'd be able to gift ALL of their eggs to specifically chosen users.  As if letting an egg go the AP where it will be snatched up and loved and adored by a perfect stranger whose reaction you will never get to witness somehow makes it less of a gift than if you specifically chose someone, who may or may not be any more or less deserving than anyone else. 

 

With Hollies, I think it's a much different story than it is with golds and silvers.  If I caught a Holly that I didn't want because of lineage, I would not harm it.  I would throw it back to the AP or give it to someone.  With golds and silvers, an inbred egg is quite literally taking away a spot that could have been a CB egg.  With Hollies, there are so few of them that some of them having messy lineages isn't going to mean any fewer with nice lineages.  Plus Hollies only come around once a year but golds and silvers are being made every day.  Compared to Hollies, golds and silvers are common.  It's up to you, but I think you should breed your Holly.

Yes, agreeing to disagree seems the best option and I would like to apologize for coming off as aggressive and asinine. I respect your right to play the way you want and like the things that you do kinda struck a nerve by referring to a lineage that I've been working hard on as "just-a-tad-less-revolting." I don't expect everyone to like it but that seemed a little rude and insulting and set me off. Sorry about that.

 

As far as the holly goes, I'm sure I'll breed her and just hope that the people who catch any offspring that I may get will appreciate them for what they are. If the following year I see the babies killed off as people attempt to make the lines prettier by turning them into pseudo second gens then I'll rethink breeding her again and would most likely retire her since she would have already done her job in adding to the numbers.

Edited August 8, 2011 by Sir Barton

[AngelKitty]

There are people who want them. Why should anyone else say they can't have them. Those who DON'T want them don't have to keep them.

 

So what? Yes, they could abandon it for someone else to get, but it's on their scroll and if they don't feel like it, then nobody has the right to demand they do otherwise.

 

If someone wants to keep and breed a dragon that's its own grandpa, that's their prerogative and nobody else's. If someone wants to kill said dragon's egg and dance on the shell fragments, that's their prerogative and nobody else's. I wish people wouldn't breed inbred metallics, but again, it's their scroll and their dragons and I haven't got a right to demand that they stop because I don't like it.

 

Like Outer Space said, if killing has nothing to do with ratios, then theres no reason to kill the inbreds, if it's about avoiding long inbred lineages just send it back to the AP if you don't want it, there's a lot of people who would appreciate inbred eggs.

 

My justification is, even if killing a single inbred metallic egg picked up off the AP does nothing for the ratios, it does at least remove that inbred egg from the gene pool. That egg that could have grown up to produce twenty to thirty more inbred metals no longer exists, so in the long run, I feel like it helps at least a little.

[Sir Barton]

My justification is, even if killing a single inbred metallic egg picked up off the AP does nothing for the ratios, it does at least remove that inbred egg from the gene pool. That egg that could have grown up to produce twenty to thirty more inbred metals no longer exists, so in the long run, I feel like it helps at least a little.

Frankly if it and it's offspring were capable of producing 20 to 30 metals it would be a miracle dragon. I can't even get commons out of my metals... and no, none of my metals are inbred.

[Renorei]

I respect your right to play the way you want and like the things that you do kinda struck a nerve by referring to a lineage that I've been working hard on as "just-a-tad-less-revolting." I don't expect everyone to like it but that seemed a little rude and insulting and set me off. Sorry about that.

Yes, that was very rude of me. I apologize for that comment; I'm sure it was hurtful. Those even-gen deliberate inbred lineages are not really my cup of tea (though they are fascinating to look at), but I can appreciate that a lot of hard work must go into them and their owners are probably very proud of the results.

 

[w4rg4zm]

More effective I think is to freeze hatchlings and then release them, since (I think) dragons in the wilderness don't count for ratios, and if they're frozen as hatchlings then they have no chance of breeding an egg in the wild. I'd rather see an egg get removed from circulation somehow, whether it's vamped or hatched and frozen or killed or quaked or anything else, than to see the same egg get picked up and dropped repeated times to the AP when the breeder doesn't want it and people who pick it up don't want it either. I know some people don't mind inbred eggs and appreciate them, all the same a lot of people don't and seeing the same egg go through the AP so many times is discouraging.

[AngelKitty]

Frankly if it and it's offspring were capable of producing 20 to 30 metals it would be a miracle dragon. I can't even get commons out of my metals... and no, none of my metals are inbred.

 

True lol...I probably should have said "descendents" and not "children." When you take into account the dragon's hypothetical children, and then add the grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and so on, it adds up over time. Take this gold here. It's my first gold, non-inbred. He's had 9 gold children, 7 gold grandchildren, 7 great-grandchildren, 3 great-great grandchildren and 1 great-great-great grandchild. That's 27 golds out there, from a single gold dragon over two years or so, and I'm sure in the future more gold descendents will be produced.

 

He had another gold child, making a total of 28 descendents, but I killed that one a couple of years ago because it was accidentally inbred. :/ It made me sad, but I didn't like the idea of inbred metals, even back then.

 

Now assume Phebean had been an inbred gold egg that someone had killed. That's 27 total inbred golds that would have been prevented from existing. So, in my mind, every time I bite an inbred metal, I'm preventing at least twenty more from being generated from those over time and, over time, providing a small chance for non-inbred metals and CBs to be generated.

 

That's how my logic works, anyway.

Edited August 9, 2011 by AngelKitty

[SeaSong]

Why kill inbreds? Just release them or freeze them or abandon them. And seriously, why is inbreeding such a bad thing? They're just pixels. I do like collecting pretty lineages, but I don't care whether a dragon's inbred or not. I also have an inbred Gold and Silver. I still try to breed them every week because I barely have any golds or silvers. If I get an egg from them, I'm not going to kill them or freeze them.

[MysticTiger]

I don't kill dragons. Ever. But, even regardless of that, I wouldn't kill an inbred. I've been more into collecting Even-Gens as of late, but back in the day when I just grabbed whatever looked good on the AP, I got a LOT of inbreds. And I didn't mind at all. I don't ever, ever breed them unless i'm 100% keeping the egg. They just sit on my scroll and look pretty, generally.

 

I think, as long as no one is breeding and abandoning inbreds, it'll be fine. I very rarely seen inbreds on the AP anymore, anyway.

Edited August 9, 2011 by MysticTiger

[Katie]

I think, as long as no one is breeding and abandoning inbreds, it'll be fine. I very rarely seen inbreds on the AP anymore, anyway.

I can see what you are saying, but I do sometimes pick up inbreds from the AP that I have not bred. If I don't want them I abandon them, but I don't have anything against inbreds. I just don't want a lot of them on my scroll.

 

[Sundew]

Just because YOU don't want that inbred, doesn't mean nobody else does. I don't really care about the dragons (unless I've decided to keep one), I care more about the other collectors, newbies and hoarders out there. When I accidentally grab a common egg that I don't want, I never kill it, a lot of the times I might actually raise it, just for kicks, or I release it. If some of my inbreds and failures had been killed by their original owners, I'd have very few dragons left.

[Stephanie_B]

No, I don't think killing a dragon is good. For me, killing a dragon is very sad because I love dragons and if a dragon is killed I would cry for it.