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

[Petasos]

DS still has 10 second diamond/red and 20 sec diamond/green. Once you get a diamond dragon you can fill your land with just a little time and farming. They are too invested to change DS. My guess is they do not have as many staff working on this game until they see the profit margin. Which is why we see changes after about amonth or two. All games follow that cycle within reason.
You are a CS player, there are certain "things" that will not change and that is by design. No matter how long and how many people ask. There is nothing wrong with that so long as you know your place in the environment. Changes will be made so long as they help the bottom line. That doesn't make the game less fun, just more frustrating until you do get an ultra.
Then you have other decisions to make. To be honest compared to what you are dealing with now an hour wait time is a godsend. But like DS we will eventually have 20 hour fails on diamonds and likely percent increasers and all of that. Why recreate the wheel when you have one that works very well?

I am not trying to be negative just realistic. I am pretty sure things are going to stay the way they are. TL may throw us an occasional bone but that will be to placate us. Sorry just my experience playing online games for 20 years. And being a tech director who has a programming department.

[BlueCanary]

I like this game and have no Unicorn. I also have no trouble making enough money to keep up. I just keep throwing my four elements into the nest with crossed fingers and hope that the right number gets rolled I didn't get a diamond until I was in the 90's in DS, it can be frustrating to wait but its just a matter of luck.

I honestly think it seems a lot worse than it really is because there's some people who go on about their good luck in pretty much any thread about anything here. The game is young and things will get adjusted, sometimes to our advantage and sometimes against. It happens in all games.

[Petasos]

I like this game and have no Unicorn. I also have no trouble making enough money to keep up. I just keep throwing my four elements into the nest with crossed fingers and hope that the right number gets rolled I didn't get a diamond until I was in the 90's in DS, it can be frustrating to wait but its just a matter of luck.

I honestly think it seems a lot worse than it really is because there's some people who go on about their good luck in pretty much any thread about anything here. The game is young and things will get adjusted, sometimes to our advantage and sometimes against. It happens in all games.

I don't think it can be said any better.

[chalupa2030]

I like this game and have no Unicorn. I also have no trouble making enough money to keep up. I just keep throwing my four elements into the nest with crossed fingers and hope that the right number gets rolled I didn't get a diamond until I was in the 90's in DS, it can be frustrating to wait but its just a matter of luck.

I honestly think it seems a lot worse than it really is because there's some people who go on about their good luck in pretty much any thread about anything here. The game is young and things will get adjusted, sometimes to our advantage and sometimes against. It happens in all games.

Well said!! I think that is very true ^. Very passionate players are hurt and feeling slighted when others go on and on about 9 unicorns 10 emeralds.

I just play and have fun! It is what it is. A game. Evey time I breed I try for my unicorn. Some day. But I am getting some rare and super rares.....and duplicates!

And I love to battle!

[Sefyre]

Firstly, I wanted to say that I sympathize and empathize on the feelings of frustration regarding breeding and its mechanics and how changes to the game affects the outcome of breeding and related things.

Secondly, I wanted to say that I would support such a feature if it was implemented; I know of some 'breeding' type games that implement it (or they used to) and where I have no idea if it works better in practice, it seems like players at least feel a little more secure in knowing that someday, their chances of that 'ultimate' breed will be high enough for their game to finally give them one.

Thirdly, I would like to share my own experience regarding breeding and individual RNG results with the hopes of illustrating another crazy side of the RNG spectrum.

Though the experience I am going to share is related to Dragon Story, I think the thoughts related to it could very well apply to Fantasy Forest (I'm currently level 11 on it, so I'm fairly new to the game) and to any other TeamLava 'breeding'-related game.

It's a bit long so if you don't want to read, then just skip on over - I honestly won't mind.

I'm an old-ish DS player who used to also play Monster Story before it got retired (I loved it!). I'm now playing Fantasy Forest and given that I've played several 'breeding' games put out by TeamLava, I can say that luck and an individual's RNG is seriously just plain weird sometimes regardless of the game and regardless of 'changes' made to the games by the devs in attempts to 'balance' the game out more.

As an example:

When playing DS, I sincerely thought that I was just destined to have the worst individual RNG, EVER. One of my best friends was playing DS at the same time and while they were breeding Rares and Super Rares like many of the forum members here were and with some kind of regularity, I kept breeding not just Commons, but the exact same Commons every single time, no matter how many colors I was using. As a result, I can hardly stand to look at Firestorm Dragons even though I love their design.

So after having an island filled with a bunch of Commons, repeated Commons, and a sparse handful of Rares and Super Rares and then REPEATED Rares and Super Rares and after having no luck with Event Dragons (insult to injury), I kind of quit and then came back and got started breeding again when Halloween Dragons were once again released.

I once again failed to breed any Event Dragons whatsoever and shortly after, the winter-themed Dragons were released and that was when my RNG did something spectacularly crazy.

I was only level 40something and I was trying to breed either an Elf or a Fireworks Dragon during the winter breeding event, but as always, I was having no luck with it whatsoever. Remember the Firestorm pest problem I had? Well, here it was AGAIN and almost nothing BUT Firestorms! I started from using pure colors to using hybrids to finally throwing in the craziest combos at my most desperate and would you guess what happened?

Somehow, I ended up breeding TWO Diamond Dragons nearly back-to-back and I bred both of them using the same parents. So not only did I breed two Diamonds but they are ALSO 'blood' siblings since their parents are the exact same!

You would think I would have been jumping for joy but the real truth of the matter is, I wasn't looking for one, and having two so close together completely clogged my breeding and nesting areas and since this was the tail end of the Event, that was the end of the Event as well for me and I very much wanted to breed the Event dragons but couldn't.

I ended up quitting the game because I was 'stuck' babysitting two Diamonds while most everyone else was still busily working on trying to breed Elves and Fireworks. I got neither of the Event Dragons and since they were Event-only, I COULDN'T breed them later unless they were re-released and given my previous failures at breeding Dragons in general for my park, I just called it quits.

What kind of park gives you a horrible rate on even the everyday-available Rares and Super Rares but suddenly throws out two Diamonds within the span of not even a handful of breedings? I never thought such a thing could be possible, but it did and does and my park stands as testimony to this and I think my old rant thread is still around.

At some point, I picked the game back up but didn't do much but within the last two weeks, I started breeding more aggressively to see if I could - once again - breed some new Dragons for my park (and I'm just talking about the OLD Rares and Super Rares from before the Pink Dragons were released!)...

And what do you know?

A couple of days ago, by some unknown chance, I tossed in a Super Dragon and my Olympus Dragon to breed for HOPEFULLY -some- kind of Olympus Dragon or just any other Dragon I missed over the months I've been gone (remember, I quit the game before) and wouldn't you know?

Out popped ANOTHER Diamond.

I'm speechless.

This third Diamond Dragons means that within no more than two dozen breedings, I managed to breed -3-Diamond Dragons... and none of the other Dragons I was trying for.

My park is still missing a ton of older Rare and Super Rare Dragons. My Quest List is HUGE because of not just the NEW Quests that pop up but also because of the OLD ones that I haven't been able to fulfill no matter how I try to breed. I breed Commons like nobody's business and when I get frustrated and toss in rainbow colors, apparently a Diamond is very possible.

I don't think that's supposed to happen, but that's... just my park's 'luck'.

Am I happy about it?

No, I'm not.

Why?

Because, still, I want my -other- Dragons, first, and that's the other side of the coin.

I had so so SO many missing Rares and Super Rares I could have bred instead of those Diamonds, but for some unexplained reason, tossing in rainbow colors gave me a relatively high chance (in comparison to breeding Rare and Super Rares that I don't already own!) for Diamonds and my RNG decided to go for it.

All that said, 'luck' is relative. Yes, TL tweaks a bunch of stuff and they've tweaked a TON of things in DS over time, but nothing - even adjusted breeding chances and 'crazy' whatevers (there was a time where the timers weren't accurate and breeding pures was possible; not sure if breeding pures besides Purple is still possible in the same way) - are a 'guaranteed' thing.

Some people might say I got extremely lucky (I would have to say so from a statistical standpoint given what was possible and just how many OTHER Dragons I could have bred), but I'm the person who couldn't and still can't seem to breed Rares and Super Rares no matter who I try or how hard I try and I'm the person who has a really odd looking park where there are Commons galore, multiples of certain Dragons galore (because if I managed to breed certain ones, they kept getting repeated despite the variety of color choices possible), a sore need for more Dragon variety... and three very out of place and very random Diamond Dragons.

Believe it or not, I'd so totally trade someone a Diamond to get a lesser Rare Dragon or two that I tried my heart out for and never could get. People turned green when I got my Diamonds, I turned green during almost every Event because I could never breed any of them even though their rarity was lower and in some cases, MUCH lower.

It IS possible to breed creatures when you least expect them and even when you think the odds are totally against you (because of changed game mechanics, too early in the game, etc) and especially when thinking back to my experience with DS, I really feel your frustration at breeding.

[zenobia42]

Sefyre, thanks for sharing that story! I can totally empathize with how frustrating that must have been for you! A 45-hour breed is the LAST thing you want when you have a clock ticking down. That must be considerably more agonizing than the just waiting forever we are having here. And yes, we totally get each other in terms of altering the parameters in which the RNG operates - that for those of us whose lame RNG always pops up a number at one end of the spectrum, the idea is that the net being cast eventually is big enough to catch that unlucky number we seem to always throw. And that once you've finally caught it, you actually want to revert to the small net.

Also want to add, if there is anyone reading and wondering WTH RNG means: RNG = random number generator. In any chance-related game, it is like a digital dice roll. It pops out a number which is then translated into the outcome you see. For example, in a breeding game, if there is a 1% chance of a certain outcome, it is like rolling a 100-sided die, and only if the number 100 is rolled do you get that one. If you roll a 1-40, you get this one, if you roll 41-60, that one, etc. My suggestion in the OP is that if the RNG for the crystal unicorn is 1-200, and only the number 200 being "rolled" gets you the unicorn, after a bit, rolling either 199 or 200 will get it. Then 198-200... So that if your RNG sucks and you are never rolling a number over 180, eventually even the number 180 will get you one. Then you are back to only getting it with the number 200. And I want to note again that I have no CLUE what the actual odds are on anything in this game. The numbers I use are just as an example.