Suggestions

I also support this. As it stands right now, I am not active in dominance much any more. The system as it is, needs an overhaul, and until it is, the fun is gone in that part of the game. I won't hold my breath that anything will be done, as there has been discontent with it for quite awhile, and nothing is ever done about it.

[quote name="Cheystar" date="2018-12-08 08:19:39" ] I also support this. As it stands right now, I am not active in dominance much any more. The system as it is, needs an overhaul, and until it is, the fun is gone in that part of the game. I won't hold my breath that anything will be done, as there has been discontent with it for quite awhile, and nothing is ever done about it. [/quote] frankly after reading through this thread and its responses, this summarizes my feelings. i've become... [i]discouraged[/i] over the past year and a half towards dominance participation as it's slowly gotten to this point. it seems like the ideas in this thread (both in the first post and throughout the thread) would to varying degrees boost and refresh dominance in ways that would make it feel worthwhile again, and not like a lost cause. i myself don't know of a good solution to bring to the table, but i do agree that at least SOMETHING should be done, and i think the ideas here are excellent starts to do so

I have to agree, I tend to get stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to dom. I'd love to help with dom, but I feel like my I might not qctually be of all that much help. Also exacerbating that issue is that i need so much money for both gening and scatterscrolls, that its more lucrative for me to just sell my hatchlings rather then participate. It just doesnt feel all that fun anymore, and i think counting active exalters rather then active players mught be a step in the right direction.

I support this. The current dom system seems to be... struggling. As an active dom player in Shadow flight, it kind of sucks. I don't want to salt on anyone who isn't an active dom player, but the simple truth is that 200 or so active dom players cannot carry a flight as large as Shadow. We beat Earth once in 2014, but there is no way that we would be able to do that again. I think it would be much more fair to count active dom players, rather than every active lair, as that would balance out some of the flight size discrepancies.

I miss the days of big flight battles, they were pretty awesome. But nowadays, that rarely happens, because the flight size problem is too big. Shadow is going to fight Fire, which will be fun, but I'm not sure if we have a chance of winning because of how much smaller they are than us (no salt against Fire members, just against the dom system in general). Heck, even casual pushes are pretty much useless now, because a flight like Lightning can be pushing hard, and still be beaten by Earth even with weeks worth of dom fatigue applied.

I guess one problem with this is what other people mentioned, that more casual dom players or newbies will be discouraged from participating. I don't really know how that will be dealt with, to be honest. Maybe make newbies count for less in terms of active players for a few months?

There's a lot of great discussion in this thread. Unfortunately, we just don't have the raw numbers to know which side of the debate would work best. I think ideally the staff would do some research of their own into all these different numbers, and then they/the community could figure out where to go from there. As players we have no way to know how many active exalting lairs are in each Flight, how many dragons are being exalted per player, how many active non-exalting lairs there are, and so on. All of this discussion and suggestions are based on our speculations about other flights. To really fix the system, you'd need the real numbers. For example, we're assuming that some % of each flight is active exalters, and most discussion I've seen assumes that it's roughly the same % per flight. So, let's say 10% of lairs in each flight, with a flight like Earth or Fire have a higher % which is why they're better at DOM. But that might not be the case, and those percentages might be all over the place! For all we know, Earth has 3k active exalting lairs, and Wind has 300. And maybe Plague has only 200 people who are active in DOM, but they each exalt 1k dragons, while Light has 10k people who each exalt 20. We just have no way of knowing, as players, what's really going on. I do think the DOM system needs some TLC, to make sure it's working in a fair way and to encourage more people to participate. I just don't know if any of the suggestions in this thread are the way to do that, bc we don't know if they're actually applicable to whatever problems the system has. For one of our pushes Lightning published their stats. (Number of dragons exalted, all the money stuff, OOF help, etc.) (Of course, it couldn't account for players like me who play solo and don't record their contributions.) it'd be really interesting to see those stats for all the flights. [quote name="Zhukov" date="2018-12-08 10:31:05" ] Heck, even casual pushes are pretty much useless now, because a flight like Lightning can be pushing hard, and still be beaten by Earth even with weeks worth of dom fatigue applied. [/quote] It's been pretty discouraging. I haven't been able to do as much as I wanted, I think I've only trained and exalted about 60 dragons? But I know other people have been. Outside of a brief flip last night Earth hasn't budged, even with all that fatigue.

Huh, that's interesting, @Division: I have long been assuming that the percentage of exalters is not similar between flights, and I haven't been involved in exalting discussions very often, so it's a surprise to hear that conventional wisdom is that percentage is similar. I mean, it seems like the staff might think (or, more realistically, might have thought five years ago) that percentages were similar, but if that were the case we'd be seeing a much more "balanced" dom board.

I don't think "balance" is good in itself: if Flight A has a much higher percentage of exalters than Flight B, Flight A should win more often than Flight B, and should be likely to defeat Flight B. (It's a team sport, not an individual competition.) And I suppose it's possible that Earth not only has a higher percentage but a higher absolute number of exalting lairs than, say, Plague, and so flattening Plague without any flips was to be expected, but, like you said, we don't have the numbers.

It would be really helpful if the staff picked some week where there wasn't a planned conquest or festival push and then, some weeks later, said "For the week starting February 32nd, Light exalted n dragons, Water exalted n` dragons, Plague exalted n`` dragons," and so on until they've listed all eleven flights, in order of who won that week. I understand that there's been a concern that players would game the dominance mechanic, but I think it would be much better for Flight Rising as a whole if the players who have been most invested in dominance were able to help tune the system.

Support for changes that re-balance the Dominance system. The system as it is now works better when all Flights are roughly similar in size, but totally falls apart when populations gap as large as Earth and Shadow's.

Ok, I will admit that as a person with dyscalculia, I can’t always parse the numbers & percentages used here, and I also haven’t been actively involved in Dom for awhile due to coli burnout + lack of lair space (which will probably change once the hibernal den is released, as I will most likely use it to hoard up leveled fodder in preparation for large Dom battles.)

BUT I can tell you one thing for sure- I am NOT in favor of any solution or system that penalizes players (or whole flights) because they are casual players and not heavy Dom participants. ALL dragons that are exalted should count towards a flights total, whether it is a single hatchling exalted by the freshest noob, 400 dragons exalted by a hard pushing Dom fanatic, or the regular quota dragons that are regularly exalted by those who do so for a living. It shouldn’t matter at all how many dragons have/haven’t been previously exalted by those people, the dragons should count the same as they normally would regardless of the players exalting history. Why on earth should it be otherwise?

And I can’t tell from context here if “funneling” is referring to flights sending unleveled dragons to their best/fastest exalters or teams to be quickly trained or exalted, or the OOF buys where many dragons are sold to one flight or another that is pushing, but either way...why does this matter, and why does anyone care? This is not gaming the system, it’s OPTIMIZING it, and I don’t have a problem with that at all.
It only makes sense for flights to send dergs to the people who can level & exalt them most efficiently (not to mention many flights have badges/awards for ‘number of dragons exalted’, or in-flight raffles where every dragon/level counts for an entry), and POF buys are technically no different than people buying dragons off the AH or in forum threads that are sold by users from every other flight- is this new system you propose going to take into account THAT kind of ‘OOF support’ as well? Or if I decide to exalt a dragon for a push that I bought off a non-Shadow member months ago for a non-exalting reason but I’m now tired of? Would you just count all dragons exalted that are not of the element of the deity they were exalted to? I just can’t see this being applicable in any way that is workable or fair across the board.

I know for sure that when I’ve sold dragons to other flights buys, it’s because they were offering a juicy payout + great raffle prizes, not because I cared a fart in the wind about that particular flight or whether they actually won Dom or not. I suspect most who sell to them are the same. Does that make us ‘mercs’? I don’t actually care, I just care about increasing those numbers next to the coin & the gem at the top of my screen.

And lastly, I have nothing but side eye & disgust for anyone who complains about ‘freeloaders’, because 1. Dom is supposed to benefit the ENTIRE FLIGHT, not just those who participate in it 2. To not be a ‘freeloader’ every single active person in your flight would have to participate in Dom, which is a farking ridiculous & totally unrealistic expectation (and so is excluding players who did not participate from receiving Dom benefits) 3. Dom itself is only meant to be an incentive to EXALT DRAGONS, a necessary and required function of the site/feature of gameplay. It’s the players themselves that have made it into a competition. Don’t get salty because not everyone sees it the same way you do. 4. Anyone who is bitter that ‘non-participatants’ (and how would you even KNOW?) open Dom shops needs to just shut up, stop whining, and open their own. I for one am GRATEFUL to each and every Dom shop I’ve ever purchased from, and I’ll add that it’s not like the Items For Sale forum is overflowing with them- both my husband and I have needed treasure genes these last two weeks and had a helluva time trying to find anyone running a Dom shop AT ALL.

Similar to what Jemadar said, I don’t want to see the system tweaked to penalize flights that work hard to achieve Dom, even if it’s week after week. I guess I feel that if Dom is really that important to someone, they can switch to flights that emphasize Dom and are consistently the top placers. I don’t doubt that the whole Dom system needs an overhaul (...as do many things related to this game) but trying to game it because some people are bitter that one flight is winning consistently (and Plague, Ice, and Light have all had their turn at it) isn’t the way to go.

Mostly I'd support an overhaul, not necessarily penalization. Stacking the exhaustion penalty isn't working so perhaps something else like the others have suggested should be put in place.