Dragon Story: Criticisms and Suggestions to Improve the Game
EDIT: For some reason, all my apostrophes and quotation marks were turned into question marks. I tried fixing it and it did not work. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Hi. I?m been playing DragonStory for a long time (I?ve been on and off with ur for about 6 years), and while I love the game, it has a lot of problems. I?m making to this post to talk about these issues so that my feedback will hopefully be considered. I?m definitely going to criticize the game harshly, but that?s because I really enjoy the game and want it to be better.
So here?s a list of what In going to talk about:
-lack of quality of life features
-events
-competitors and what to learn from them
-farming
-breeding
-ingame monetization
Some of my main gripes are that
-the game is very anti-consumer. ads are nonstop shoved into your face, specifically an unstoppable and unavoidable ad plays every time you get on the app (every time you breed, hatch an egg, mine, etc.). This is extremely annoying and makes me not want to go on the app at all.
-Events are nonstop and very difficult to complete without paying for Gold (Ex: in 4 or 5 month long events I did, I only got 1 monthly goal dragon of of the 5-10 that were possible).
-there are so many dragon that are available yet very few you can actually get because you can only breed 1 at a time, and many are not breedable. The amount of dragons you get slows to a crawl as you get to high levels.
-Many older event dragons that aren?t part of the events but seasonal aren?t available through breeding (like many Halloween themed dragons such as the spider, skeleton, etc. that were part of a prize wheel)
-the weekly events are extremely difficult, requiring massive time sinks and resource sinks, in which the current economy cannot keep up (we need more farms, higher level crops, and more breeding dens, etc.).
-gold is extremely scarce and you?re only real source is 3 a day from friends, which can be inconsistent if they don?t play everyday.
Quality of Life
-The game makes everything very tedious and time consuming because of how poorly some features are implemented; such as mining, sending map requests, planting and harvesting, collecting habitat coins, etc.
This can be remedied this by
making a ?collect all? button for habitats.
A ?send to all? button for map/material requests. This would save a lot of time. I barely even send out nap requests because it?s so tedious and time-consuming to send requests for my very long friend list, worsened by the fact that a lot of my friends list may be inactive and there?s a glitch that resets all my requests so I have to reclick on a bunch of names.
-An easier gold gifting system, where instead of having to sift through my friend list to send my gifts, I have the option to simply click ?gift back? and it will individually send the gold without opening a menu. I want this because I, like most players, have a set three people that I have been sending gold to for a long time, so making this daily process quicker and easier would be very nice.
-A more intuitive farming system, with a vertical scroll for planting, instead of a horizontal one; the tabs for each crop are smaller, so you don?t have to slide far down the list every time to plant each crop; and it automatically moves to the next farm after planting one.Another change would be a ?replace all? feature. Implementing these changes would save a lot of time.
-A search bar in storage would be fantastic, and perhaps an option to delete old items would be cool too (I have a lot of random stuff throughout the years)
Events
-Events are constant and nonstop, and while the amount content is nice, there?s a host of problems in its design and overall is really stressful and exhausting and therefore not very fun. I would really like to see more quality events instead of quantity. There is never a break in between events and that?s very exhausting to have to constantly plan and plan and plan so that you maybe get what you want. The food and good economy for most players just cannot sustain these events. For example, in one event you might need to upgrade a dragon to level 12, which is very costly, and then 5 days later another event will want you to do similar. It?s impossible to get enough food for this.
-Additionally, plenty of events require breeding a Dragon, but breeding can be extremely inconsistent and completely throw you off an event and stop you from being able to complete it. This is partially remedied by the inclusion of those scaled egg things, where you can turn in 15 of them to get that event?s breedable dragon, but not all events have this. The best fix would to have this dragon crafting in all events, and also another breeding den, which I will talk about later in this post.
-Another large problem for events are that paying players and grouped with non paying players. Not only in this kind of unfair, but it also heavily pushes you to pay if you want to keep up, which is really annoying. Perhaps a solution would be to have separate leaderboards for payers and non payers.
-Lastly I would like to talk about he nature of events in general. It is extremely difficult to complete events, and while I don?t expect to get all rewards, I should be able to get most of them if I play to my maximum efficiency without paying. The events are very punishing if you make a mistake or aren?t always vigilant. For example, I have never gotten the third dragon In a dragon tales event because the challenges in it are so tedious. What usually happens is that I run into an issue like food or I can?t breed the right dragon because of bad luck and it completely ruins my chances. Also, the monthly dragons are near impossible to get without paying. Out of the many monthly events I?ve played, I?ve only gotten one monthly dragon (the skeleton king dragon). The amount required needs to be lowered and more sources are needed for the materials.
Dragon Story has a lot of content but the problem is that much of this content is inaccessible (many dragons are tied to events where getting the rewards is extremely difficult without paying), strenuous (a lot of tedious stuff to do, like mining, farming, map requests, etc), and slow-moving (only one breeding den [the idea of ?charging? a second one with gold on top of buying it with gold is absolutely absurd, so I wouldn?t count this as an accessible breeding den for the average player] and hard to get nests), so its hard to enjoy the content we?re given. and I think with these quality of life changes and some more consumer friendly practices (such as easier and more accessible events, more ways to obtain gold in-game, less bombardment with involuntary ads, etc.), this game can easily get way ahead of its competitors because of its great art design and sheer amount of dragons and content.
Farming
Along with the UI changes mentioned before, we need more farms and also a new upgrade. Simply put the amount of food we can get from the farms is not enough to sustain the amount of food dragons need to level up and the amount needed for events. More farms (perhaps a maximum of 10-12) would be very helpful. Additionally, an upgraded farm that gives food yields but at high growing times would be nice. Perhaps 3 new crops at like 24, 48, and 1 week growing times might be nice.
Breeding
The largest problem for breeding is that there is only one breeding den that?s available for most players (you have to pay an exorbitant amount of Gokd for the second den, so unless you want to spend a lot of cash, it?s not a viable nor a consistent option). Games like dragonvale allow you to have many such as the breeding island, rift island, and community breeding, but this game allows you only two, the second one being a very expensive option that requires you to not only but gold, but also keep charging it for continued use. This charging system for the breeding den (and also the diamond shrine thing) makes an already terrible system worse. It?s very tedious to get dragons in this game because the pool of dragons is so large, types like pink and black can break down into components, and for the majority of players, you only get one breeding den. Even if you pay, unless you have money just lying around to buy gold with, the second breeding some isn?t worth it. There needs to be more breeding dens that are affordable because it?s really boring and disheartening to only have one chance at breeding. and the same for the egg nests:
They should be cheaper. Additionally, the breeding den you have to buy with gold should not cost gold to use.
An example of how poor the breeding system is, is my journey to get the Skeleton Dragon. About 5 or 6 years ago the Skeleton dragon was available to obtain via breeding, and because I loved its design, I tried to get it. For a whole month I bred for it and never got it. Now, years later I recently got it... from a wheel of fortune. Frankly, I think this really shows that they would rather you buy your way into getting what you want instead of getting it yourself (the ?price? here was I watched a bunch of ads to gets this dragon, so regardless of whether I actually bought gold, I generated them a lot of money, on top of other people who bought and used gold to spin the wheel). This needs to change, especially since I also got other years old dragons (like the spider dragon) from the wheel as well. It?s not satisfying at all to get what you want this way.
The Tournament and Dragon Fighting
Big changes are needed here. Currently winning is tied to luck which can be increased with level or having effective elements (dragon categories like fire, water, diamond, dinosaur, etc.). The problem is that there are a lot of elements to keep track of and it?s terribly balanced. Champion dragons for example are strong against nearly everything and weak against next to nothing, which is great if you BUY one, but for most, Champion dragons are extremely hard to get because you either have to buy them from the store or earn them from certain coliseum events, which by the way, either require 100 wins in a month or 30 wins in a span of a week. And not only that, but chances are you?ll have to fight high level, high rarity, champion dragons to finish these events. All of this makes it seem like it was designed to make you feel frustrated so that you either pay for champion dragons or use gold for guaranteed critical hits when in fights.
To improve this, the least that needs to happen is that the chances of defeating a dragon need to be higher. Personally I think that it should be solely determined by dragon element, not level or rarity, but even that has many flaws since I essentially have to use the wiki for every fight because the of the amount of types and the fact that there seems to be no rhyme or reason to many of the type advantages.
Long Term Play/ End game
There?s no incentive for long term play: there is not an in-depth daily reward system, nor is getting to high levels really rewarded much. Throughout the whole game gold income is fixed to 3 per day from the moment you start playing, so getting higher levels doesn?t matter towards that There?s no extra nests or breeding den you can buy as you level up or ways to min/max your island effectively (by min/max I mean it?s very difficult to make your island very efficient, mostly due to tedious designs of farms, breeding, mining, marble keys, unlocking new land, etc.). Changes to these things would make continued play more fun and rewarding.
Quests:
The quest system needs to be overhauled or taken out, realistically. For new players it?s decent because it gives you some direction as you start off, but you quickly become overwhelmed by sheer amount of Incompletable (incompletable without paying or without a lot of time and effort and luck) quests that I stopped caring about that whole tab altogether. That, and the rewards for completion are usually not much, if any are given at all. Perhaps purging this system would save a lot of space for the game, allowing for more features, but I?m not a game designer so I wouldn?t know.
Lastly, I think one of the most important topics of the game is monetization, and I?ve talked about it plenty in this post, and to end it I have some ideas on how to improve the gold economy.
Ideas for obtaining Gold
-Maybe Glacius the Ancient (whom from what I can gather has no purpose or reward for getting him) in the Arctic Isles can give you 1 gold per day.
-watching adds to get 1 gold
-implementing a tournament/colosseum (or anything, for that matter) similar to DragonVale that can give you 2-5 on successful completions, and a few more if you watch an ad
-Make gold dragons breedable! They can be really rare to get, but I think this feature would be great to add
Other Monetization
I think prices are far too high for this game. Take level 3 habitats for example. It costs 500 gold to upgrade one green habitat, which is about $20. It?s the same thing with dragons. Spending $50-$100 dollars will likely get you only one or two dragons! That?s insanely expensive, and even discounted dragons will still cost you like 250-500 gold. Lower prices means higher demand, and while I?m not sure, I think the increase in demand by lowering the prices by a bit would generate the game much more money, since the increase in gold through in-game and nonpayed methods coupled with decreased prices would make people much more inclined to pay and spend gold. If people make good spending more of a habit, then perhaps they will be more inclined to buy gold.
That?s all I have, thank you for reading all of this and I hope my criticism is considered. The last thing I want to touch on is what I love about this game. The amount of content in this game is fantastic, and while it might be very slow, there?s always something to do and get. The art style is great and I like it. Not only that, but the game is very creative and interesting, and there?s some inkling of a story in the game I think, which might be cool to explore. Overall, the game is great and I really think this can be better than all its competition.
Thanks for reading
