Level 15 Dragons, Mining, and More!
Since the addition of Level 15 Dragons I'm certain everyone at a high enough level to do so has been gawking at the outrageously high food prices. Here's an example of what I mean.
To raise a standard Champion dragon, the Chariot Dragon for example, (Cost Pattern G, one of the more common Cost Patterns) from level 10 to 15 costs 612,700 food.
Completing 4 full harvests of Diamondates per day yields 22,500 food.
To raise one Cost Pattern G dragon from level 10 to 15 at the rate of 22,500 food / day, it would take a player roughly 27 days.
That's almost an entire month of a relatively expensive harvesting schedule to raise up just one dragon. I know I'm not the only one that thinks that's crazy! Now, there have been plenty of posts on this forum requesting better crops or higher level crops for the wealthier players, but that, too, seems harsh. I'm going to try to look at this from a different angle, just to see how it goes.
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Use a Different Variable (AKA: Not Food)
Perhaps you guys shouldn't overhaul the entire food productivity curve in an attempt to balance the food costs, since that would likely leave us players worse off with drastic increases in coin costs per harvest (resulting from the addition of either more expensive crops or more than 7 farms). Thus, I propose a different variable other than placing more of a burden on the already understaffed farm hands. For the purposes of this post, the variable I suggest would go by the name "Primal Fragments", since it would ultimately be used to breed the rarest, most powerful Prime Dragons.
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How to earn it? A new mining area.
Simple enough, the new mining area's rewards would consist mainly of "Primal Fragments" rather than craftable parts or expansion pieces. The new area could be unlocked at a very high level, possibly level 100. The "bombs" of the new area would be earned through growing crops, similarly to how dynamite is earned by breeding and bombs are earned by evolving. The Primal Fragments collected in the mine would be used to "feed" level 10+ dragons, meaning players would use the already in place food and farming systems to raise dragons to the traditional "Epic" form, and from that point on dragons would only be raised using Primal Fragments.
This system allows and encourages players to continue evolving and leveling their lower-level dragons simultaneously with the 10+ dragons. It also promotes more time spent in-game by adding a new objective, further rewarding those that put more time into the game. This is a consistent theme in the game, lead by examples such as habitats' coin limits and the increased productivity of faster growing crops, which require players to check the game more often.
Rather than adding "better crops" or more farms, this variable would be a new burden all its own. In my experience there is no such thing as too much food as it is, but with the addition of Level 15 dragons the maximum food cost of raising a dragon from 1 to max level has just jumped from 125,00 to 886,450 food. As you can see, this is a massive increase, and attaining 125,000 food was enough of a task on its own! No small tweaks or slightly higher yielding crops are going to do us players any good in this situation. Keeping the current food system would mean either massively buffing the player production (which would be impossible to balance considering the now relatively low costs of lower level dragons) or leaving the player production alone and hoping we don't mind saving up for a month or so to evolve a single dragon (and that's assuming we have the coins to blow on that). The latter of which seems to be the opposite direction any game design team would vouch for, considering it slows gameplay from a crawl to a hopeless dredge.
On the contrary, my suggested system works hand in hand with the current one as well as promoting more player activity. It does not disrupt the current balance of feeding costs vs food productivity. In addition to this, it would speed up gameplay, or at least provide the illusion of doing so, by allowing players to work towards two objectives at once by splitting into two different variables and thus two different costs. Two dragons with one stone, one might say.
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The final benefit to adding a new mining area is sort of unrelated to Level 15 dragons but is important to mention nonetheless.
The mining area, much like the current area, could host two digs sites. The fourth dig site could be an advanced treasure hunting site for those that have reached the much higher levels. I'll try to make this as brief as I can... here goes.
A FOURTH DIG SITE:
Unlocked at: Level 125
"Ammo" or "Bombs" Used: Dynamite
Rewards: Small Gemstones, Gold, Coins, Food
Reasoning: Simply put, this would allow players more freedom. Already unlocked every mining expansion? Want to prioritize basic necessities over expansion slots you don't really need? Not to worry, since you can now use those otherwise useless dynamite charges to give yourself a boost in the food and coins departments! The basic rewards would be a step up from the mining for land bonus rewards, for example:
100/1,000 Food Reward --> 500/2,000
1,000/10,000 Coin Reward --> 50,000/100,000
As secondary, more alluring rewards, the mine would also offer rare drops and bonuses: Gold and Small Gemstones. This Treasure Mine would act as a step up from the Quest Outpost, which I know has been particularly disappointing the players especially regarding the "Quest for Gemstones!" quest.
From a game design standpoint, this utilizes a variable already in the game and uses it to place more freedom and decision making power in the hands of the players.
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OPTIONAL ADDITION: Now this one might be a bit of a stretch, but personally I would love to see it implemented. Either in addition to or instead of the regular treasure drops discussed above, allow players to mine for expired mining and battle arena dragons. I know, I know, a crazy idea, but hey, I don't know anyone that would turn down the chance to get expired dragons! My suggestion here is to add an "Expired" tab to the crafting menu where all the expired craftable dragons would be listed. The required number of crafting items would be reduced to something quite low since the chances of finding pieces of the same dragon among the many expired dragons would be fairly low. Maybe 9 or 10? Now at this point you're probably wondering how this wouldn't be exploited by people who still had leftover mining pieces or failed to reach the goal and had somewhere around 150 in their inventories-- and to that, I would say: automatically clear all player's inventories of expired crafting materials once the dragon has been removed. Again with the concept of two dragons with one stone, I'd like to point out how much everyone wishes they could get rid of their expired crafting materials always cluttering up their storage. It's become a nightmare over time for veteran players like myself.
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FLASH MINING EVENTS!?:
The other option I propose either on top of or alongside the above is only re-releasing one dragon at any given time to be available for mining, sort of like running through a repeating queue. Think "flash mining" events lasting only 24 hours or so each, allowing players to save up dynamite by passing on dragons they didn't want or already had and then binging to get those drops when a dragon they actually want rolls around (for me that would be the Platinum dragon). For this method the required crafting number would be raised to somewhere between 30-50, whatever sounds most reasonable. Exciting flash events, promoting keeping track of day to day changes, rewarding to newer and veteran players alike, even a bit of house cleaning for our inventories, what's not to love!? (P.S. - on top of all that, I'm sure there are those who would spend gold to get extra dynamite to ensure getting a preferred dragon or instantly restock for the next flash event... basically what I'm saying is that it's $$$ for TL, too)
EDIT: These "flash mining events" could also feature new dragons rather than expired ones if TL would prefer not to re-release expired dragons (which is perfectly understandable and might cheapen the feel of the once thought to be "Limited Time" dragons).
The other change or integration that could be made would be to have both mines available-- that is to say, both the aforementioned Flash Mines and Treasure Mines. For the duration of the events (one day once a week, one day once every two weeks, etc.) the regular "Treasure Mine" mentioned above could be replaced by the "Flash Mine", giving the players a chance to earn a new mining dragon.
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What was meant to be a quick little post slowly evolved into a sort of monstrous wall of text. I tried to make my ideas as clear and concise as I could manage, so my sincerest apologies if it seemed like rambling at all. Congrats and thank you to everyone who made it all the way through!Please leave a comment below to share any opinions or additional ideas you think my ideas could benefit from.
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Originally Posted by SacredSloth
