Sorry Aequorin, tone is hard to convey over the Internet and I didn't word that well, but I full agree with the change and it was very needed, thank you all for that and everything else you do for us. Keep up the great work!
I've been thinking about how to reply to what was said here for a while as well as getting distracted by life, but it's about time I do reply to the last batch of comments. If I don't reply to you, it's likely because I couldn't think of anything to say or didn't think anything more needed to be said about your post, it is
not because I am ignoring you.
Vely wrote on 2015-11-14:
Support. (With the condition that treasure/gem amount remains private to the player.)
Currently, for example, I want to trade... well, basically any items I have for art. A lot of those items are skins/accents/festival chests. If I listed all those and added images of the rest of my hoard... well, that'd be one really long post and would take a very long time. It would be so convenient to say "Here, take a look at my hoard and vault! I'm trading pretty much everything there except (breed change scroll) and (festival sprite) and (specific accent). Take a look at what you want and we can sort something out!"
Galleries would be great, because then I could show everything except what I'm not trading. (And I could show off my slowly growing gemstone hoard too.) It would be most convenient if galleries could contain items from both the hoard and vault at one time. But even "show/hide hoard/vault" would be excellent.
Personal dragon hoards have been previously suggested. I support the idea but I don't know if I would use it.
Not much more to be said here except for the first part: I agree that treasure/gems should be a separate option if included, it's easy enough to keep two numbers reasonably updated for anything you could need it if you wanted to on your own, so the people who want to keep that hidden deserve the right to do so as well.
sraben wrote on 2015-11-23:
I find this apropos, as the two biggest suggestions I have for the site (and what drew me to the forum tonight) was a "visible vault" that could be linked to for sales, and a per-dragon item display for aesthetic. And here are both ideas in a thread which has been around for some time!
I feel that the OP has covered it well, and so I will try to both be brief and still cover my thoughts in lieu of making my own thread asking for the same things.
I spend the vast majority of my time in the forums over in Items for Sale. There you can swiftly affirm the need for a public vault: countless threads with images from various photo hosting sites trying to convey inventory. If you're lucky, there will be rough mspaint edits showing past sales as the seller who wants a current inventory is faced with either editing and reuploading their old image, or stitching together another more up to date version and reloading that.
The method of development need not be complex. A year ago, when the vault came out, oh, it was so well received. This seems to me an improvement on similar scale, and would need less new code. The transfer protocols are there from the vault, permissions would be similar to visiting another's lair or bestiary, only now there's another link to their "storefront " or whatever you would like to call it.
Perhaps nowhere is this need felt more keenly than the user made skin market. As I understand it, there are currently more skin options for male Imperials alone than there are apparel items in the game. Someone trying to sell their skins en mass are stuck with uploading a screenshot of their hoard, crippling their potential buyer's information on their skins to gender, breed and a tiny icon of art.
The second idea would be a larger coding challenge, I think, but would be seized upon by an even larger percentage of the population. Poke around many player's favorite dragons and you will find the now-standard bio formatting of Flight Rising item icons bracketing the dragon's bio. (Or in many cases, bracketing a block of lorium ipsum.) To make "slots" or "sockets" where item icons of owned items could be displayed on a dragons page would cover a significant portion of the game that currently is use-impaired. Why have trinkets, but no way to display ownership of them? I personally like to collect old Festival items, and am quite proud of how many I have collected. But while I can equip a Lightkeeper skin and a Sunchaser Jewelry and even a coveted Light Sprite on a Dragon, there is currently no way to display a Lightbound Chest, or a first anniversary cake, or perhaps highlight a uncanny attraction to moonstone. I personally found it a bit odd for the game to have tiered food (both in gathering: strawberries only come from high level foragers, and starfish only grace the luckiest of fishers) yet there's no way to display ownership of them.
Of the 8 categories of game elements represented by the auction house tabs, dragons, apparel, skins and familiars can all be showcased. That leaves half of the categories that are left out, a failing easily remedied.
How it best gets implimented, I don't claim to know. Having multiple slots on a dragons page that aren't visible until filled, maybe with optional captions (either custom or predefined "thinking about", "afraid of", "manifested in a previous life as"). Likely contraversial, but economically impactful, would be sockets akin to battle stones, where the item is permanently stored, and if overridden is lost. (Oh, that might create headaches, but imagine what it would do to the economy.) I'd really like to see an option for a total count stack to be visible: to choose to "equip" one fallout whisper, or 99, or all that you currently own. (I have a friend who has spent millions of treasure collecting them, but her sense of accomplishment is only her own, never to be shared, sadly, because food items can't be seen by others. Granted, the storefront idea would cover that angle as well, and likely better, as I don't know if the game's code can support showing that many digits on an icon.)
Like you, I have spent a lot of my time in Item Sales. However, lately I've been unable to keep my sales thread (you can see that mess in my signature, if you're curious) updated because of how much each tiny part changes constantly. Sure, keeping stuff like holiday familiars updates is easily enough as they only change about once a month and can easily be figured out by taking the number in my vault and adding 1 (for the one on my dragons somewhere). But if I wanted to keep, say Tundra Cacti updated (which used to be a very sought after Swipp item), it would involve changing that particular value every time I went Foraging in the correct region (currently daily) PLUS every time I obtained one in Boreal Woods, as well as each time Crim took one if it's an item of low enough individual value to sell to her. And then that again for EACH item. And when it gets behind... Then you have to track down each individual item, which are likely in a different order in your hoard than their practical order to update with (and mixed in with a bunch of other stuff), often meaning going through your entire hoard multiple times.
For the Dragon Hoards, it could either be alongside a Gallery or with enough space to just be able to fit all your trades into a single Dragon's and link that.
Azmetra wrote on 2015-11-24:
I'd have to say no to this....
Reason: There are mean folks out there that play this game. I would prefer not to wave around my goods where I can be targeted for hacking. It's sort of like begging to be hacked and have all your stuff taken. I guess if you don't have to use the option, that's okay, but I'd still be careful advertising what you have to that extent.
That's why it was very clearly stated the default options (what is set if you do nothing) will have things exactly like they are right now for you (or able to link an empty page). I know not everyone will want to show off their stuff and there's no reason to force them to.
Pachirisu wrote on 2015-11-29:
ok, i'm definitely for an option to put up items in a gallery to show off for whatever reasons.
i'm even more for paying for more galleries, if (and only if) they are treated as separate places. so you can choose to put just familiars in display #1, and just food in display #2, and display #3 is all things you're currently collecting, and display #4 is full of things you're wanting to sell/trade.
i think this way would be the best way of both protecting users who don't want to show everything and the kitchen sink but want to show a few things, and it will still be great for those who want to compartmentalize everything (me, lol) to keep it neat and easy to peruse.
First off, nice name! Big Pokémon fan here!
That was the idea, yes. No reason to treat them as the same if you have to pay to unlock more. I'm beginning to think this may be the most practical as it accomplishes what most, if not all, people want to do with it as well as generating more revenue for the site to stay alive. Ideally, it would allow you to name them and then you'd be able to keep it easily organized AND the people who want Dragon Hoards can name it after the Dragon and link it from that Dragon's bio.
Could be done similarly to lair space/nests where a few are initially available (2?) and then you can unlock more for gems, up to a certain number (or unlimited, if the coding allowed it) with each additional being unlocked for either a fixed gem price or increasing gem amounts (probably the latter, like hoard and nests). If it was able to be unlimited, it would be probably easy enough (of course, can't say for sure without knowing the back-end stuff) to still have increasing prices for each (for instance, if they are labeled in the code as Gallery N and Gallery 3+ are unlockable, the Nth one could be set to cost 25*(2^N) for prices of 100, 200, 400, 800, etc. or 100N for prices of 300, 400, 500, etc. Of course these are just examples and by no means indicative of actual prices or increase rates, but simply ideas of general methods if the staff chose to use them.)
Qnyxz wrote on 2015-11-29:
I certainly would not want anyone to view my hoard or vault. There are those who I am sure would prefer not to share their vaults which is why I get the idea of having settings for public or private.
It may be a bit of a challenge for coders to do, but again it may be possible. I've been here since Jue of 2013 and I have never felt a need to allow another player know what I have in my hoard. I still do not see a need now.
There are may other options I would like to see completed and implemented that have been in the works well before something such as this would be considered.
Sorry no support.
I understand your wish to keep your own items hidden and I understand your point that it is not a "free" change as it does mean they would be working on this instead of something else (I've felt that way about certain things before as well).
HOWEVER, I still believe there's a reasonable majority that would be interested in this change for many reasons based both on replies in the thread and other discussions I've had with FR users, mostly in the Lightning flight Skype chat. I have heard a few, but not many, people who do not feel the need for it as you and the person a few posts before you feel while almost all of them are eager to use some part or another of it for a large variety of reasons. Isn't it at least worth improving those people's experience, which will increase the general support FR gets (especially if gem payments are involved!) and can therefore lead to more general improvements around the site. Obviously, neither of these is a large enough sample size to be sure either way, but I would honestly be surprised if the majority doesn't, at the very least, support making this change simply for their friends, acquaintances, or random strangers who would absolutely love to use it.
ADDITIONALLY, while I cannot say for sure without knowing how the site is coded, I would imagine that at least one version of this, if not all or most of them, would be fairly simple changes. Add another structure or array of structures similar to Hoard and Vault, set
flightrising.com/main.php?p=hoard&id=##### or similar to display that data structure, potentially add more "purchasables" in the same way as new lair spaces. Again, this is all speculation based on educated guesses on how the site might be coded and some fairly basic CS knowledge (I'm minoring in CS at college currently), but I would expect that, at worst, it would take about the coding of adding a new "vault" (which is probably easier after doing it once, possibly just involving copy/pasting large segments of code or creating a new (set of) objects of the same type) plus adding more lair spaces (for the purchasable additional ones). Both of those
should be fairly simple.
So tl;dr:
• A lot of other people would be very excited to see this and are each just as important to the site as you or I are.
• Those people are more likely to stick around and therefore support the site, as well as potentially spending gems on this, leading to more general improvements to the site for everyone.
• It's probably not
too much coding so it shouldn't detract much from other changes.
• Most of this cannot be proven one way or the other based on the data available but is supported by educated guesses and some common sense.
I'm happy to hear any logical arguments that suggest I am wrong about any of these or a more accurate data set to give a better idea of general interest in this. It's hard to get such a data set as it would require a large, unbiased sample of FR users and there's not a particularly good way to do such a thing without Admin support or potentially violating ToS (which should absolutely be avoided).
Although I suppose it's worth asking if anyone knows for sure or an admin would like to respond:
Would it be allowed to post a thread in Flight Rising Discussion (as opposed to Suggestions because it would likely be a lot of effectively "Support"/"No Support" posts but doesn't require directly building on the suggestion)
simply asking people about their interest in this occuring? That's the only way I can think of to get a decent sized, mostly random (and hopefully unbiased towards or against) sample.
