Suggestions

Greetings. I am here to fix the familiar interface systems. Because the current system is not great.

The current system:

~ A "Bestiary" that lets you know what your rank is with familiars that has no easy way to search through and see which familiars you really have or if any of them are equipped. ALSO DELETES THE FAMILIAR IF YOU ACCIDENTALLY GET RID OF THE LAST COPY YOU OWN!

PROS:

Shows the whole picture and data.
Shows the loyalty (sort of)

CONS:

Doesn't show exactly how MUCH loyalty.
Doesn't show if it's equipped or not or who it is equipped to.
Cannot be searched through or organized in any way.
Cannot hide greyed out familiars to only see your own collection.
The only one in alphabetical order.

~ Hoard/Vault that doesn't know if any of your familiars are on dragons, and doesn't show the rank you have with them, nor how many copies you really have.

PROS:

You can get extras of familiars. Being able to get copies is GOOD!

CONS:

You have no idea if the familiar you're seeing in your hoard is the only copy you have.
You have no easy way of knowing what level of loyalty it has.
You have no idea if it's safe to sell/trade/melt.

~ An equipping system in dragon profiles that hides familiars that are already equiped, but doesn't show their loyalty rank UNTIL you have them equipped.

PROS:

You can't equip the same one twice! That's good!
Has pictures!

CONS:

Not able to easily search for a familiar
Not able to know where a familiar is hiding (which dragon it's on)
Pictures are tiny and confusing.
No way to see loyalty.
No way to know if it's been bonded with already today.

* * *

FAMILIAR OVERHAUL PROPOSAL!

BESTIARY

Make it a STABLE! (EDIT: Or maybe name it your own thing, like Conclave or Embassy?)

The first copy of any familiar you get is placed in the stable. (this prevents it from being sold/melted/traded by accident)

Shows if the familiar is currently equipped or available.

You can Unequip them from the stable manually (which also removes them from a dragon who is wearing them), if you absolutely do not want to own it anymore, but any current level of loyalty is retained and is visible.

You can hide familiars you do not own if you only want to look at the ones you do.

You can order familiars BY LOYALTY, BY WHERE THEY CAME FROM, or BY RARITY instead of just alphabetically.

VAULT

No need to vault all your max loyalty familiars. They are now in the stable.

HORDE

Horde ONLY CONTAINS COPIES. No fear of melting the final version. If you have removed them from the stable, it is highlighted and states it is the only copy you own.

EQUIPPING

Equipping interface now takes you to an interface identical to the familiar stable (to be consistent) - only it shows which dragon you're trying to equip at the top.

You can see the loyalty of the one you want to equip BEFORE equipping it.

You can see who has it equipped!

If you want to steal a familiar from one dragon to another? Go for it! No need to look through a dozen dragons to find it!

If you do take a familiar from another dragon, it asks for confirmation, then asks if you'd like to equip a new familiar on the other dragon. It takes you to THAT dragon's familiar equip screen.

Sorry, over all no support.

It is interesting, but it has too many problems for me.

1. I dislike the idea of a 'stable'. Some of these familiars are sentient creatures in their own rights who have voluntarily come to live with dragon clans to learn about them (or be ambassadors to them etc..). The idea of them being shoved into a stable doesn't sit well with me.

2. I also don't want to have to constantly go to my stable to remove any familiars I don't want. I like keeping copies of nearly all familiars, but there are some I absolutely do NOT want, and would hate having to keep going in, seeing the full picture of them and having to remove them from there. The current hoard system of just placing all familiars in the hoard works just as well. It is the familiar equipping screen that we need work on really.

3. I also would not like the idea of removing a familar from the stable, and removing it from the dragon at the same time.

4. I think this would make it harder to actually keep track of familiars, because you would have to check several places. How would this work if you remove a familiar from the stable, then vault it? Your stable would show it isn't there, but if you have a lot of familiars in your vault/hoard, you still have the same problems as now.

5. I would also not want to be taken to the stable to equip. The equip area needs a lot of work, but I don't want to be presented with a huge screen that lists all my dragons (remember we can have up to 605 now, that would be a LOT of dragons to go through no matter how it is presented) as well as all the familiars I can equip.

There are some good poings:

1. We do need to be able to see the loyalty of the familar before equipping it, and I would love to be able to see it without going into the bestiary.

2. I would love for a revamp of the bestiary to include a quick 'remove/add' functions so you can go through the bestiary and equip/unequip famliars, if you want. However, the way we have now (hopefully a revamped way) would still exist, so that players can still go to the individual dragon page and add the familiars that way.

3. Being able to keep track of which familiars are where, and how many you actually have.

4. Being able to sort and hide famliars in the bestiary. Not just familiars you don't own, but also various groups, such as festival familiars if you know the familiar you want isn't one of those, or being able to show only Gem MP familiars etc..

On the name:

Would Embassy be better? Conclave? Name it yourself?

Removal from the stable = removal from a dragon

the only reason you would remove it from the stable is to SELL it. Otherwise it is best left in there.

In your hoard, you could also have "destabled" familiars show up with a highlight to show there are no current copies in your stable. And when you try to sell/melt/trade it, "This is your only copy of this familiar, are you okay to sell/melt/trade it?"

On the equipping screen:

You would be taken a page that says: "Equipping <Name>" like you do now, but there is MUCH more data on this screen.

You would be able to see a list of the familiars with their images, their loyalty, and if they are equipped already.

And if you "steal" a familiar a warning can come up like "do you really want to take <name>'s familiar?" and then a second page "<name> has no familiar, do you want to equip them with one now?"

The key is - it would LOOK IDENTICAL to the stable. So you can understand everything immediately regardless of where you have accessed it from.


Too many dragons to load:

The stable itself would have no interface (to save on loading speed). You would still have to go into each dragon to equip. It would look the same, though.

While I agree with the need for a revamp, I also don't think this is the way to do it. Jemadar (as per usual!) covers pretty much everything very eloquently, but I'd like to add the following:

Most of the issues in the first post can be fixed by four changes:
- Searching/sorting/filtering added to the bestiary
- A count of the number of familiars of that type added to the bestiary
- An indicator in the bestiary that a familiar is on a dragon (with a link)
- A marker (such as a gold border) in the familiar select window to indicate that a familiar is awakened.

No complicated 'stable' and 'stabling'. No need for familiars you only have one copy of to be missing from the stable if you want to bond with them. No need for duplication of the existing bestiary functionality.

tldr; if it ain't broke don't fix it. Just improve it.

How do you propose that final copies be protected from being sold/traded/melted?

I'd also like to know if a familiar has already been bonded with that day.

I agree.

I think the whole system is broke. Beyond broke.

As someone who joined 2 years ago, I had no idea that there was any penalty to selling them after you maxed them out. I just found that out, this year, when I sold a familiar and then noticed it was no longer in my book.

There's nothing that warns you, nothing that tells you and if you joined when they were only opening it once a month, it wasn't like you had a friend to tell you what to do. I didn't come on here because of the social aspect, I just liked the dragons. I found this website because of places like Gaia Online.

I hate, hate, hate the "Bestiary". The damn thing is confusing and doesn't explain anything. It needs searching, sorting, filtering, and the choice the lock in a familiar so it doesn't take up space in my hoard/vault, whatever. It needs not only a complete overhaul, but a new look would be great too.

The ones that are pretty much unobtainable should be mentioned as such. Maybe a note like "Only 300 in existence" for ones that are from the first years, kick starters, etc.

If not a stable, something like it.

[quote name="Dembai" date="2019-04-22 10:54:59" ] How do you propose that final copies be protected from being sold/traded/melted? I'd also like to know if a familiar has already been bonded with that day. [/quote] To be honest, I don't see a need for a warning. There are some things that the user should take precautions against themselves and the site doesn't need to constantly bombard people with popups, messages or whatever to say 'hey did you KNOW you are about to do this?) Most of the truly valuable familiars are non-hoard sellable, so you can't accidentally melt them down, most, if not all, others can be reobtained. Again, this is something I would really dislike to see, everytime I wanted to get rid of familiars I don't like, I have a popup that constantly asks 'are you sure you want to get rid of your last familiar of this type?' I am not saying that the bestiary doesn't need work, it does. However, I don't think it needs to be completely redone and integrated to the extent you suggested. I think it should be left as its own mechanic, for players to 'record' their familiar finds, with the actual main equipping of famliars left to the individual dragon pages. (a way to change familiars out through the bestiary would be nice, but I would still prefer for it to not be the sole way to do things)

[quote name="Jemadar" date="2019-04-22 11:21:41" ] [quote name="Dembai" date="2019-04-22 10:54:59" ] How do you propose that final copies be protected from being sold/traded/melted? I'd also like to know if a familiar has already been bonded with that day. [/quote] To be honest, I don't see a need for a warning. There are some things that the user should take precautions against themselves and the site doesn't need to constantly bombard people with popups, messages or whatever to say 'hey did you KNOW you are about to do this?) [/quote] Personally I would rather we have a stable/embassy rather than having to keep track ourselves, because keeping track of how many copies of each of 700+ familiar is just not practical. Although I also don't see how a stable/embassy feature would interfere with the desire of not keeping any copy of a particular familiar either. Because all you need to do is NOT put any copies in the stable in the first place, hence no need to go into stable to remove them if you want to get rid of them all. It'll be a manual feature - you'll need to manually add/take out the one copy yourselves, instead of the system adding them in for you. As for assigning familiar, what we can do is having 'adding from hoard' and 'adding from stable' side-by-side. So you can choose if you want to add a particular familiar from the hoard or from the stable, but the level of bonding will be kept in the system together. I know this sounds messy but I'm sure things can be smoothed out somehow. All I'm saying is, I like the idea of a place where you can manually put in a copy of each familiar (and assign from this group), so we don't need to check each time whether we're getting rid of our last copy or not (currently we need to check 3 places, hoard/vault/dragon X). How to execute it probably needs a bit more thoughts. Oh, just one last thing, this 'stable/embassy' feature would be a replacement of current bestiary, not an extra feature on top of the bestiary, as far as I believe what OP was suggesting anyway.

@Hat17 Except, in this suggestion, the first copy automatically goes into the stable or whatever you want to call it. that is part of my objection. If I get a brand new familiar, it will automatically be placed in the bestiary 2.0 and if I *didn't* want it I would have to go manually remove it. [quote]The first copy of any familiar you get is placed in the stable. (this prevents it from being sold/melted/traded by accident)[/quote] I have been crosstrading between CS and here, and the other day someone asked for the baldwin spiders. I don't have those for obvious reasons (if you have read some of my other posts on other threads), and so if this were a thing, for both spiders, I would have had to go into the bestiary and manually remove them. I wouldn't mind an embassy like you are thinking, where it isn't so much of a place like the bestiary, but more like a gallery that, once you put a familiar in there, it helps you keep track of them (showing the number you have, whether you have one equipped to a dragon and so on), but I don't want it to be automatic. Nor do I want something that will constantly popup everytime I try to get rid of a familiar I don't want. (see the previous spider thing) That is why I said I feel it should be more on the users to have to keep track than having more popups that simply become annoying. [quote]In your hoard, you could also have "destabled" familiars show up with a highlight to show there are no current copies in your stable. And when you try to sell/melt/trade it, "This is your only copy of this familiar, are you okay to sell/melt/trade it?"[/quote] I also would not really want the embassy to be so connected to my dragons that if I remove a familiar from the embassy, it would also remove it from my dragon. Something like you are suggesting, where it is 100% voluntary would be a great help in preventing accidentally getting rid of last copies, but only if it is voluntary and isn't something that is going to annoy everyone who doesn't need or want such features, nor wants their familiars to be automatically added. Between the original suggestion and the current bestiary with some revamped features, I would far prefer the current bestiary. Between your suggestion and the current, I think I would need it a bit more fleshed out, but I wouldn't mind yours.

@Jemadar
Got'cha. I didn't read every word in this thread so I missed the part where it suggested to be automatic. I kept thinking it'll be something like how collection works on another game I played where everything is manual. If it's automatic with warnings popping up everywhere I can totally understand how it can be clumsy and annoying. Thanks for clearing up. :)