Suggestions

I'm inclined to agree with Ningyo and Almedha on the subject of ancients. I don't expect their introduction to be as controversial or problem ridden as the eyepocalypse. I don't think we need ancient dragons, but I understand why they're coming. The apparel and gene backlog will only become longer and longer and with all the threads discussing new breeds, it's clear that a lot of people want more breeds. I expect that for the most part, they will be able to co-exist with all the current breeds just fine and the limitations create the advantage of designs that wouldn't be possible for modern breeds largely because of apparel. The key difference between this and the eyes is that ancient breeds are totally optional unlike the switch from the original eyes to Common (there's quite a bit of crossover between this thread and the Legacy one, so please, give us Legacy eyes). The other thing is that there is no indication that our dragons will be locked out of becoming an ancient and thus being able to have those exclusive genes. In fact, they directly address and explain ancient breed scrolls. I'm not very enthused about the gene exclusivity and know there will be upset about not being able to apply a super cool ancient gene to a modern dragon, but if someone wants that gene that much, they can change that dragon to the right ancient breed. It's not great, but unlike the eyes, they actually have the option to apply these things to their dragons.

All that said, I've been observing this and similar threads for a while as well as mulling over these problems. It all comes back to two chronic issues with this game: 1. Staff don't communicate very well or frequently. I completely understanding taking a while to make statements. However never commenting on issues that the userbase keeps bringing up isn't a good thing. I do not claim to know how the staff operates or handles decisions. I want to make it very clear that I'm not saying this is how it actually is, merely how their silence is perceived by some. Not talking to the userbase about problems that are continually brought up and discussed can say to that userbase that they aren't being listened to and their concerns aren't considered at all. Actions such as releasing Goat with absolutely no way to apply it to any dragon do not help with this issue. 2. A lot of things just don't get fixed. Take a look at the bug report thread for gene coloring errors. It is chock full of errors that have existed for years and have never been addressed. A lot of those errors are minor errors with the artwork and not the coloring. When the additions to flower sets rolled out, it was immediately noticed that the colors don't match the older parts of the sets. Those have been out for how long now? There are other things too, like Eliminate still not dropping in every venue, things that one would think would be easy to fix or make a statement about, but from the perspective of the user are completely ignored.

Explaining the reasons why modern breeds take so long, explaining that they don't want to overwork the art team or create crunch time, telling us about a game changing feature ahead of time are all good moves, ones that I'd like to see continued, but doubt will because of the track record of not communicating. I'm not as cynical as some, I do think the staff is learning from past mistakes, but it's not going to get much better unless they also learn to communicate better. They have told us about certain points of communication (such as not giving ETAs, which I understand), but that doesn't mean this isn't poorly handled. They can explain their reasoning for replacing the original eyes and their reasoning for making it nigh impossible (or just impossible) to apply a whole swath of eye types to dragons. I also wouldn't at all be upset if they take a break from working on new content so they can properly fix all the art errors and other issues that have been around for years.

And now that I've said all that, we return to the real point of this thread. All natural eye types should have, more like need to have, a vial in the interest of customization. With ancient breeds coming, it makes even less sense to have these options locked away when we're going to have a whole category of dragons with significant customization limitations. Having natural eyes appear randomly when breeding doesn't need to be touched. Having these vials wouldn't impact the hatchling market, which is already oversaturated and babies with Goat are already being sold at fodder prices. It's already been thoroughly discussed here that the market of users who want to apply these eye types and the market of users who want to buy dragons specifically for their eye type are different. Vials wouldn't impact the specialness of hatching a dragon with rare eyes. Adding these vials is beneficial all around and anyone who doesn't want them doesn't have to go through the effort to obtain them.

still no word, but not giving up support on this

I was told in a reply to a Contact Us I sent earlier this month that “The Flight Rising development team is aware of and discussing the community's feedback and overall response to the natural eye type implementation”. (Quoted from the ticket- hopefully that’s okay to share)

So... it’s not completely dead in the water, at least. 10 months is a long time to be discussing problems that have such easy solutions (cycling Scattersights and/or Natural vials, as well as Legacy vials), but if they were really dead-set against ever changing anything, they probably wouldn’t still be talking about the feedback.

Still going to hold out hope for Legacy eyes and some sort of way to change a dragon’s eye type to other Natural types. :c Please, staff, we sincerely want to love this update more- it’s a great concept!- but suddenly, irreversibly changing the eyes of all dragon breeds, and locking dragons out of having Natural eyes they weren’t hatched with, sucks the fun out of it.

[quote name="Ningyo" date="2019-04-21 14:48:46" ] I was told in a reply to a Contact Us I sent earlier this month that “The Flight Rising development team is aware of and discussing the community's feedback and overall response to the natural eye type implementation”. (Quoted from the ticket- hopefully that’s okay to share) So... it’s not completely dead in the water, at least. 10 months is a long time to be discussing problems that have such easy solutions (cycling Scattersights and/or Natural vials, as well as Legacy vials), but if they were really dead-set against ever changing anything, they probably wouldn’t still be talking about the feedback. Still going to hold out hope for Legacy eyes and some sort of way to change a dragon’s eye type to other Natural types. :c Please, staff, we sincerely want to love this update more- it’s a great concept!- but suddenly, irreversibly changing the eyes of all dragon breeds, and locking dragons out of having Natural eyes they weren’t hatched with, sucks the fun out of it. [/quote] Except they could just be saying that. We have no public acknowledgement of the community feedback. There is no on-site evidence that they have any intent to change the implementation of the eyes. In fact, the goat eyes release only solidified that it's unlikely they care and are going to continue on with what is already in place. I'd consider the issue as dead in the water as it was 10 months ago. 10 months is a long time to work on a solution- or at the very least communicate some ideas/possible solutions before working on implementing. It's a huge shame, too. The eye update could have been an incredible and positive change for the site. Instead it became a source of resentment and bitterness from a good chunk of the playerbase. The idea was great, the execution was bad, and the communication since has been abysmal. At best it upset many players, at worst it added a layer of distrust between the players and staff. Part of why I used to love FR back in the days of week long downtimes was how engaged and open the staff were. We didn't mind the downtimes because of how well the staff communicated and kept us updated. One of my most fond memories of those days was when Undel was working on fleshing out the coli monster drop table with new art for items. There was a thread where people could suggest what coli enemy should get their drop's art done next. It was a small little thing, but it meant a lot. At the time we knew the staff was at least listening and considering the concern's of players. I miss those days. I guess I've just about lost any hope for any means to change the eyes of my progens, gen 1s, and other sentimental/old dragons. It's a real bummer and has killed my enjoyment of the game. Again, I don't care if it's a really hard process that would require lots of funds or work- that'd at least give a goal to work toward. Not an impossible project that relies on increasingly expensive rolls of the RNG with incredibly bad odds.

As someone who only recently returned from hiatus, I missed all the initial turmoil with the release of new eye types and such.

But as some people have pointed out, the customization of dragons is the main point of this site. Especially for older players, there are a lot of older dragons we have with sentimental value to us for various reasons. Of course it would be irresponsible to just flood the market with items that completely destroy the value/rarity of these cool eye types, but I agree there there should be some sort of non-retired item to change eye types. Ideally, there would be a vial for each different eye type that would be difficult but not impossible to get. This would allow players to customize their old dragons while not taking away from the value of dragons with these "natural-bred" eye types. There are already vials for dark sclera, swirl, and glowing eyes, so why not for the others as well? If not a vial for each eye type, at the very least, the scattersights should be brought back/un-retired. That way even if the chance isn't great, there's still a way to modify the eye types of older dragons.

I was lucky and was able to scattersight my progen until I got the eyes I wanted, but what if I had returned not now but in another two or three years? By that time, scattersights (as a retired item) would probably be way too expensive to justify. Even now, I wouldn't be able to justify to myself the funds needed to scatter another dragon though there are several old dragons that would look cool with different eye types. For older players like me who go on hiatus and then come back to new features, it's sad to see a new customization feature that we can't enjoy on our old dragons. Of course we can try and breed dragons of the same color to try and get these eye types, but what's the point? Our old dragons have sentimental value for a reason. Plenty of people in this thread have made lots of good suggestions that could be implemented to fix this issue, and I don't know much about coding, but it seems like many of them shouldn't be too difficult/time-consuming to implement.

In short, I agree there needs to be some method to change a dragon's eye type, and this method should be difficult but not impossible (i.e. it should be something that is continuously or seasonally available, not something that retires). Otherwise, this update merely serves to lock out older dragons from a cool customization feature.

The only feedback we got publically was "we'll discuss it" and afterward we got radio silence, so it certainly strikes me as odd that they do announce these things via tickets. Makes no sense, I was honestly hoping they'd say something or ANYTHING regarding the eyes in the developer's update but nope. Even a simple sentence like "We've heard your feedback about the eye system and we'll be discussing it" at the end would've been fine, at least it'd be some indication that they are listening.

I'm certain it didn't even take them this long to address that the first NOTN didn't run as smoothly as they had liked. But we did get a surprise news post about the Joxar's spare inventory, so I'm partially hoping they'll make a big news post again but yeah def think they could at least give some sign they are listening

Even if it's been ten months, I'm willing to argue for the next five years to show the pros of this suggestion. That's how long I waited for something like Roundsey, after all. And individual eye vials and legacy eyes have even more positives and less negatives than the debate that led up to Roundsey.

[quote name="gemajgall" date="2019-04-22 07:48:31" ] Even if it's been ten months, I'm willing to argue for the next five years to show the pros of this suggestion. That's how long I waited for something like Roundsey, after all. And individual eye vials and legacy eyes have even more positives and less negatives than the debate that led up to Roundsey. [/quote] This is how I feel. I have seen it so many times 'well people got over X update' only because people realized it was hopeless and moved on. No, they didn't get over it, they are still upset by it, however, they realized nothing is going to come of it. (referring to various art updates over the years and things like that). So, to show that I am NOT over it, yes, I will continue supporting ways of making the eye update more fair to everyone, no matter their play style (it can't be fair to EVERYONE, because no matter what they do, some people will be upset and consider it unfair) and continue mentioning my disappointment on any natural eye updates we may get in the future (of which I hope there are none until this is actually addressed)

I like to collect old dragons and gen ones, and I wasn't playing during the time the vials came out (life things), and I missed the time to gather them.

I have too many projects to mess with expensive retired RNG vials, but I do wish I could get some nice eye variations on my old dragons - goat would have been very nice to have, actually, and I was sad to see it was also a breeding thing.

I don't understand why staff hasn't at least mentioned they are looking into this in their updates.

[quote]Even if it's been ten months, I'm willing to argue for the next five years to show the pros of this suggestion. That's how long I waited for something like Roundsey, after all. And individual eye vials and legacy eyes have even more positives and less negatives than the debate that led up to Roundsey.[/quote] just hope we're not going to be accused of being whiny lmao XD