Yes, THIS, thank you. I was just about to start a thread of my own on this subject - I may still do that, to lay out all my thoughts without taking up massive space here - but I want to throw HUGE SUPPORT behind this.
Because this issue is much, much bigger in its implications than might have been assumed. And I don't want to see a site that I love go down what could be a really, really bad wrong turn while it can still be salvaged.
I have NEVER gone from the high of sheer excitement at
omg look at all the new THINGS we can do!, to literally wanting to cry at the prospect of what an update will do to the site, as fast as I just did.
5 minutes. Five minutes of thinking about my breeding projects, and what the site could look like in another couple of years, took me from REALLY, REALLY EXCITED ABOUT FR AGAIN to wondering what the point will be.
I have been here for two and a half years, and - relatively minor gripes about fest items aside - have loved and enjoyed just about every aspect of the site and the new features that have been rolled out.
Some of the newer features, like the Dressing Room, have been SO MUCH YES. The staff has done an amazing job with certain things like that - and I want to recognize that. I know they DO make an effort to listen.
But sometimes they also - inexplicably - make decisions that are just so OBVIOUSLY poorly-judged that I am at a loss to explain it.
This is one of those decisions. The worst I have ever seen, and honestly one of the worst I can ever imagine them making.
Because they just
CHANGED THE FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF THE GAME, without warning or discussion with players, in a way that potentially could lead to massive changes in the game as a whole and the user-built economy here. Changes that will
most likely affect, and
most negatively effect, the most engaged and committed players.
I'll save all the details of my thought for a separate post, but essentially the core issue I see is this:
- Flight rising is a breeding game, above all. This is the official view, and is also the most essential element of play. The point of the game is to design and then breed dragons.
- The fun of the game comes from the blending of varied customization options with varied levels and types of challenge to achieve your goal dragon.
You cannot simply select options on a menu to instantly order up a dragon, complete with accent, clothing, and familiar, that has precisely the colors and genes and breed you want, and pay whatever it costs. No challenge in that, and thus at most a very brief pleasure in owning the dragon. You have to work for it, to create it and make it your own. You have to solve problems, and be creative. You have to ENGAGE over time.
This is where the pleasure comes from. Working toward a goal, seeing the progress, achieving it and really being able to own it and celebrate it? MUCH more enjoyable than fast-food-style InstaDergs could ever be.
BUT, what is absolutely crucial here is the fact that the degree of challenge and surprise is knowable, finite, and controllable by the player. No matter what kind of dragon a player wants, in the system as it worked up until yesterday, it was definitively achievable. By the choices a player made according to the clear rules of how the system worked, the player could guarantee breeding the dragon they want. Only the number/difficulty of steps of getting to the right breeding pair could be left to the RNG, and that part was also controllable.
- That is: if a player learns the rules of the breeding system, and follows them, they were guaranteed to be able to eventually breed any dragon they wished. Only their own interest and resources could limit that.
- THAT IS NO LONGER TRUE.
Now, the most dedicated and engaged players - the ones who breed the most dragons - have the greatest chance to have their projects ruined at random, with no effective way to salvage them once the event ends and the Vials skyrocket in price as they get used up. Then it really will be "Play to Win."
- So, in essence, the implementation of this change just gave the most dedicated players a huge slap in the face. Changing the most fundamental rules and mechanics of the game out of the blue, without apparent thought for how this would IMPACT players. And then combining that with a TWO-DAY period in which to scramble for the single item type that MIGHT let you fix the mess the RNG just made of your year-long breeding project?
It makes me honestly cry. If the staff doesn't handle this well, and SOON, it could seriously hurt the site in a bad way.
Changing the most basic rules of the game, throwing out the most fundamental PROMISE of the game, in favor of a change that can at random wreck dragons players have spent months or years working towards? With no real fix?
That is how you lose the trust of your players. It takes away something they had before, the thing that motivated them to keep going with the game:
the promise that they could make whatever dragon they wanted to, if they figured out how.
Please, please, Staff, take all the criticism you are getting to heart and really sit down and LISTEN to us. I - and many, many other players here I am sure - WANT THIS SITE TO SUCCEED. We want to see it continue to grow and expand.
But implementing this sort of change like this has the potential to swing this ship around and send it straight at an iceberg.
YOU
CAN SALVAGE THIS, THOUGH.
Own the mistake, the oversight here. Own it straight out and soon, before bitterness sets in with players.
Then, AT MINIMUM, introduce a permanent, treasure-MP item to reset eyes to default / "Common" status. This is mandatory if you want to keep the serious breeders and fandragon creators as a whole. There MUST be a way to at least fix dragons back to the way they would be under the old system.
The old system worked so well, IMHO, because it combined a
controllable,
finite degree of chance with breeding mechanism that both
fixed select for traits (breeds and genes - if it's present in your pair, you can get it, otherwise you can't) and
variable-specificity select against traits (you can select to avoid colors you don't want, to any degree between avoiding all colors but 1, to including half the color wheel in your pool of possible colors). And you could repeat it whenever you wished.
I would suggest, further, that
the random-chance eyes be restricted in two steps:
DURING the event, dragons bred in user nests and hatched during the event have a chance at the random new eye types. So players who want to hatch them with pairs they already have can do so.
AFTER THE EVENT ENDS, random eye mutations STOP affecting user nests. Gen1s hatched from found Unhatched Eggs CAN still get the mutation - so the element of randomness is still there, but otherwise player projects CAN BE KEPT SAFE, and only the original eyes will appear in those nests.
A player with a nest on during the event, who does NOT want the eyes, can simply wait to hatch until the Temporary Magical Disturbance or whatever the lore ends up being is over.
If more random-mutation eyes are wanted, perhaps add a permanent scroll to the MP that
infects the nest it is used on. Any pair bred on that PARTICULAR nest has a chance of having their eggs 'infected' with the magic virus or whatever, but eggs on other nests WILL NOT.
Ok, enough for now, I have to sleep. But please, staff: PLEASE AT LEAST LET YOUR USERS SALVAGE THE PROJECTS THEY HAVE SPENT TIME AND MONEY ON.
Please.
(Apologies if this is rambly - must sleep jkdhf)
