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ankalagon
07-06-12, 06:16 AM
Breeding is the main idea behind DS .. but currently there is nothing you can do to improve your odds of getting the dragons you want. A new player breeding two level 4 dragons is just as likely to get a rare dragon than a player 3 months in the game, trying to get that dragon for weeks in hundreds of attempts. The odds never improve, and there is nothing else in the game you can do to improve the odds. This makes the game boring, and discourages playing.

There are a couple of good suggestions in the "new items" thread that make the game more engaging. Combining and simplifying them here for a suggestion for TL dev team.

1. Add an item (statue) that improves odds of breeding a certain dragon. This can be a whole new category in the market, and the statues can be fairly expensive in coins.

The initial suggestion was to add specific statues for each dragon - this may be a bit hard to do, and would require a new item for each new introduced dragon. Instead, a better idea may be to add COLOR statues (5 different statues) that help increase the chance of getting a rare with that color.

You can only have a limited number of statues (4?) and each one would affect your chances by 2% units to get a rare in that color scope. If you want to change to trying a different color rare dragon, you would need to sell an existing statue to replace it. This would make a dynamic coin sink, something else to spend instead of only expansion.

2. Add a counter in breeding, that slowly increases your chances and resets when you get a rare dragon. This would encourage multiple attempts, and give the player a feeling he will EVENTUALLY get a rare dragon. If each attempt adds 1% unit, then it is guaranteed the 100th attempt will give a rare... (likely to happen before that).

Pseudocode sample .. assuming current chances are 1% for Diamond, 5% for super rare, 10% for rare.


// Basic breeding random roll .. the smaller the better.
roll = random(100)+1;

// Add incremental 1% for each attempt, tracked in new player attribute breeding_counter.
roll -= breeding_counter;
breeding_counter++;

// colors[] is the array of unique colors used in breeding
// Check for Diamond (chance = 1% + incremental)
If size of colors[] is 4 AND if roll < 2 ... get the Diamond

// Choose the colors used in breeding
color1 = pick one from colors[], remove it from the array
color2 = pick one from colors[]

//Add statue bonuses
roll -= 2*(number of color1 statues + number of color2 statues)

// Get the breeding result
If roll < 5 ... get the super rare of color1 & color2 if it exists. breeding_counter=0; return
If roll < 10 ... get the regular rare of color1 & color2. breeding counter=0; return
otherwise get the common dragon of color1 & color2


Hope that makes sense to someone. There is still room for a lot more ideas and improvements, but some basic changes like this would be a nice start...
--ank

Chulliedoo
07-06-12, 06:49 AM
This is actually a very good suggestion!! I love the breeding counter!! :D

LUCASYAU
07-06-12, 09:01 AM
I like these ideas very much. I agree, the whole premise of breeding is basically " You're lucky, you get a Rare no problem. Not lucky? Try again another 20 times".

shompy
07-06-12, 10:35 AM
Excellent idea

qwertywert12
07-06-12, 12:32 PM
Great idea! TL should think about it :)

PuppyFart
07-06-12, 12:44 PM
The main question is... Would TL make more money by doing this? If so is the money earned more than programmer man-hour ?

ankalagon
07-08-12, 04:34 AM
The main question is... Would TL make more money by doing this? If so is the money earned more than programmer man-hour ?

Well, TL would make the quickest profit by introducing the second breeding area (at 1000, 750 or 500 gold..) ... Right now they are losing players due to the boredom and inability to progress in the game, and these are the early adopters who are very likely to use gold and real cash.

But these decisions are probably made at the level where they have no idea how the game is doing, and just look at pie charts showing new installations - probably not tracking quitting players at all, since the game has no quit option :-)

music908
07-08-12, 05:15 AM
Wow... great idea. I would fully support this idea.

squilibob
07-09-12, 07:26 AM
My idea for improving breeding is that you have less chance of getting a dragon depending on how many of that dragon you already own. For example, If you have 3 islands then you would have three times less chance of getting an island the next time you breed.

Luna_Septembee
07-09-12, 08:34 AM
My idea for improving breeding is that you have less chance of getting a dragon depending on how many of that dragon you already own. For example, If you have 3 islands then you would have three times less chance of getting an island the next time you breed.
Thats a good idea. Maybe I should have kept all those islands and firestorms I bred. :p

tinwren
07-09-12, 01:36 PM
I like this idea! I do think breeding times should be significantly shorter as well. It does get boring and frustrating when you have to wait days between breeding and hatching.
It is 44 hours for a diamond right? that means 2 days breeding and two days hatching! Any time over 24 is really ridiculous

ak2001
07-09-12, 06:48 PM
Great!!!

ckhalfblood
07-10-12, 03:09 PM
This is a great idea:)