A proposition to TL on how to save this game and maintain "balance"

[zenobia42]

Team Lava,

If you read the forum at all, you can see there is a lot of frustration here. I have a simple idea I have put forth before in different contexts I would ask you to consider. You worsen the odds on breeding a unicorn, then make breeding an emerald nearly impossible. This has resulted in a privileged few having more than a handful of ultra rares, a significant number with a unicorn who will never get an emerald because they won't try after you changed the rules on us, and a very large group who every day are nearer to quitting the game because it refuses to give us the unicorn it so easily gave the early lucky ones. To make matters worse, those who have ultra rares are able to actually continue to develop their park with the income they rake in, while those of us condemned over and over again on a daily basis to being unlucky, we have that bad luck magnified hugely by the inability to expand. Because expansion and obstacle removal prices are clearly only reasonable for those with huge incomes.

And yet, you claim the changes you are making, the same changes that keep widening the income gap, are in the name of "game balance." So I ask, HOW does this ever-increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots create BALANCE? All I can think is that your idea of balance is not that everyone, at the end of the day, have as much chance of filling their albums as anyone else (because those who did not begin when the game was released AND get lucky early clearly do NOT at this point have anywhere NEAR equal odds to the others at this point). You don't care how incredibly imbalanced it is from that perspective. Your idea of "balance" can logically only be some sort of overall ratio you go for: how many ultra rares are there in the total game divided by number of players. That is the only way that what you are doing could possibly have any twisted sense of "balance." A few folks got more than you expected from the odds you set up, so making everyone else worse off, but counting only total number of ultra rares and total number of players, gives you the overall ratio you want. But how can you NOT see that what you are doing is in fact creating a huge imbalance growing wider by the day from the perspective of each individual playing the game? Because we are not just a number. We EACH, INDIVIDUALLY need to get something out of the game. And we each deserve an EQUAL CHANCE to fill our albums. Make it harder for those already behind makes it more IMBALANCED, not balanced, to us.

You want to keep the number of ultra rares down. Fine. That makes sense. I just beg of you to do that FAIRLY. To allow everyone a decent chance to get one of each. Not make it super easy - it should be challenging, but not as impossible as it is now. Then make it more difficult to get multiples. My proposed solution for this huge inequity is the following:

• Make the odds of getting a unicorn increase a very small amount over time for those who do not have one. Then revert back to the low odds permanently for that player.
  For example, let's say that the odds right now of getting a unicorn when 4 elements are in the den is 0.5%. After a player puts 4 elements in the den 10 times and has not gotten a unicorn, those odds become 1%. Another 10 fails and it becomes 1.5%. Etc., etc., up to a cap of let's use 5% in this example. Once that player has a unicorn egg, the odds drop back down to the baseline (0.5% in my example) forever for him/her.
• The cap on the unicorn odds should = whatever the odds were the day the unicorn was first released.
• If a player has zero emerald dragons, they get the 20 second panda fail. When a player has 1 or more emerald dragons, they get the 1 hour panda fail.
• The same rules for the emerald dragon apply to any future crystal hybrids.

That's it. In this way, there is no sudden explosion of dozens of each in a kingdom. But those of us who were unlucky early in the game are not condemned for life to never get decent income unless we get rid of nearly all our other animals and only hatch & level up super rares, giving us suky and un-fun parks.

Please.

[mysticfrost]

I second this!

[zenobia42]

I second this!

Thanks!

I really do think that they are only looking at the overall picture (or, I should say, overall numbers, not an actual fleshed-out picture). And forgetting that it is individuals playing this game. They are not looking at this from the right perspective. They are not putting themselves in our shoes and seeing if what they are doing is something to cause most individuals to keep playing, or to leave.

[Petasos]

I think you are misunderstanding the word balance from TLs perspective. The game is not balanced because too many super and ultra rares are currently being given out. That results in less gems being purchased to try breeding for those items. Full album players do not spend money.
As for the increasing breeding times for new animals that will get worse and worse. Once again to encourage gem purchasing and speed breeding. Everyone is forgetting that TL is not in the fairness, customer service, or build a community business. They are in the making real money business. That is the way all of their games are designed to operate. That is why you will never get what you are asking for. Nor will a 20 sec panda ever return to 20 secs. Why? Because we are paying 5 gems for the one hour wait. Why would they change it?

I like what you are saying and I empathize. But all of you need to take broader look at this. More money is more balanced, period. And they are very good at getting it from us.

[zenobia42]

I think you are misunderstanding the word balance from TLs perspective. The game is not balanced because too many super and ultra rares are currently being given out. That results in less gems being purchased to try breeding for those items. Full album players do not spend money.
As for the increasing breeding times for new animals that will get worse and worse. Once again to encourage gem purchasing and speed breeding. Everyone is forgetting that TL is not in the fairness, customer service, or build a community business. They are in the making real money business. That is the way all of their games are designed to operate. That is why you will never get what you are asking for. Nor will a 20 sec panda ever return to 20 secs. Why? Because we are paying 5 gems for the one hour wait. Why would they change it?

I like what you are saying and I empathize. But all of you need to take broader look at this. More money is more balanced, period. And they are very good at getting it from us.

How does giving a few people tons of ultra rares and a lot of people none or maybe one generate money? If they wanted to force people to buy them for gems not breed them, they should have made it as difficult as it is now from the get-go. By making it really easy, then making it really difficult, all they do is anger everyone that it is really difficult for. It does NOT make me want to spend money on the game. It does the opposite!

But I get what you are saying. When they use the word "balanced", it is a smoke screen. Just an ambiguous word that is not at ALL what they are doing, intended to make us think that what they are doing is fair, when in reality it is just greedy.

[Petasos]

They made a mistake at first and fixed it. Now very few ultra rares are showing up. They also learned from DS, and are not allowing the 10 and 20 sec ultra breeds. They are "balancing" the low breed time ultras. It also benefits them to have members with lots of ultras showing off their stock. Envy is a powerful motivator.

[igames4me]

I like your suggestions.... I also think that tl instead if making panda 1 hr is unfair.. Instead they should have limit the number of crystal hybrids to 2-3 and then they were capped.

I think when tl says balance is that they don't want people to finish album/battles/ expansions to fast
So the way to slow them down is increased breeding times

[benjessie]

I have one unicorn and one emerald dragon, so I have two ultra rares. If players like me who already had one emerald dragon and went for another one, then the breeding time for a panda should be one hour, but for people with just a unicorn and want an emerald dragon, there should only be twenty second panda fails. Same with the unicorn. If people who wanted their first unicorn, then it should be just a little easier than it is right now. Then if they went for a second it should be like it is right now (hard). By the way for those that want my combo for unicorn, I used Chromadile+Armordillo. I got it on first try.

[zenobia42]

They made a mistake at first and fixed it. Now very few ultra rares are showing up. They also learned from DS, and are not allowing the 10 and 20 sec ultra breeds. They are "balancing" the low breed time ultras. It also benefits them to have members with lots of ultras showing off their stock. Envy is a powerful motivator.

But isn't it true that they had already "balanced" DS (as in, changed to the long ultra rare breed fail) before rolling out the emerald dragon in FFS? If what they wanted was very few emeralds in this game, they already knew that making long breed fails was the best blocker and they would have done that from the start. If that is the case, then the bigger revelation is the bolded part of your quote. That they intentionally created a situation in which a few players win the lottery and constantly show that off, then make it near impossible, in order to rile up everyone else... hoping that the result of that mass discontent will be to buy gems?

I'm sorry but that is 100 times WORSE than what I had even suspected. That is, to be perfectly frank, evil, if that is what they did.

[my607]

It's unfair that some players have many of these ultra rares while many of us have none or maybe just one. TL you need to increase the chance for us non ultra rare players to get the ultra rare. It's so frustrating time and time again we end with a common animal or a duplicate of other animals.