I wanted to like idea so much. I really did - and if it had been HANDLED properly it could have been so cool. More eye options, great!
But no. The mechanics of it, and the implementation of the change, are done in
just about the worst way possible.
I am honestly
heartbroken by this change. And the more I think about it, the worse it gets.
The prospect of hatching a new nest used to be exciting and happy.
Now the very idea of hatching a nest fills me with dread.
Am I going to get the dragon that
I carefully planned and bred for,
according to the rules?
Or am I going to get a complete monstrosity, with puke-green blisters instead of eyes, THAT I CANNOT FIX?
And this is what EVERY HATCHING is going to be like, from now on?? No matter how carefully I buy, gene, and breed my dragons, the result at any time can be
completely ruined, permanently?
I just finished selecting and buying properly-colored G1 dragons for two long-term lineage projects I had planned. A friend is already running a raffle to help me get the gene and breed scrolls I need to get them into final form.
And now I wonder what the point is, if the result can be ruined at random and not necessarily undone.
I want to cry.
I was all excited for Anniversary, but now I am just heartbroken. For the first time I feel, not just upset at, but
genuinely betrayed by the FR staff.
I didn't expect them to completely change the most basic rule of the game, with no warning, forever.
STAFF, please understand that we know you meant well, but in impact you seriously messed the game up specifically for your most engaged and dedicated players. In a really bad way.
And if you don't quickly introduce some permanent, affordable way to AT LEAST erase unwanted weird eyes, you may very well permanently lose the trust and business of
your most dedicated players.
Because the players this is
most likely to affect are
by definition the ones who breed the most. And the ones who it will
most negatively affect are the ones who have taken
the most time and care to learn and use the breeding system rules. Who work for
the most specific - and therefore challenging and fun - dragons.
A randomly-determined, unavoidable, non-breedable characteristic that after a couple of days will be essentially unalterable for the majority of players?
Is a huge slap in the face to everyone who took the time to learn how to breed carefully and spent money doing so.
~*~*~
This is a breeding game, and the most involved players are the ones who
breed lots of very specific dragons. Who could do that - and have built in-game
businesses doing that - because the breeding rules were set up to make it possible to
guarantee you would get exactly the dragon you bred for, and
nothing else:
- trait inheritance that's complex but finite and knowable
- degree of randomness that's player-controllable, down to zero if so desired (breeding two identical dragons together)
- ability to select either for or against any given trait
- ability to remove or alter genes/breeds that you don't like, so that no matter what you can either FIX a correctly-colored dragon you don't like, or create two correctly-gened dragons to be able to breed a third of the right colors.
The whole
PROMISE AND JOY of this game was that you could breed any dragon you wanted, that the breeding system was A SET OF TOOLS you have to figure out how to use - the challenging part of the game - but that would ONLY EVER PRODUCE WHAT YOU CHOSE.
That's the
promise and motivation that makes all that time and effort spent buying, geneing, and breeding and re-breeding WORTH IT. That players WILL get EXACTLY what they bred for.
That ONLY player choices determine dragon appearance.
Now you have fundamentally changed the actual nature of the game.
Without warning.
Not only did you introduce a
significant change to dragon appearance that
literally has nothing to do with breeding, but is random - and therefore not something players can
work for.
You also took away players' ability to be sure they can get the dragon they want.
Now every single nest becomes
just another chance to see if all of your effort and time and money was wasted. You can breed however many times you want, but you have NO ability to guarantee that your dragon will not be ruined by pure random chance.
AND NO REAL ABILITY TO FIX IT IF IT IS! Just a very, very limited, very, very expensive item to play dragon roulette again.
YOU CHANGED THE CORE BREEDING RULES. WITHOUT WARNING OR CONSULTING WITH PLAYERS.
Not just the rules around a side aspect of the game, like familiars or apparel, but THE MECHANICS OF THE GAME ITSELF.
You just turned 'breeding the perfect dragon' from a tough but achievable goal into a crapshoot, dictated by the RNG, with permanent results.
Player effort NO LONGER MATCHES game outcome.
Except for the very, very rich players who can afford to throw a dozen soon-to-be-extremely-rare vials at every dragon they bred for.
~*~*~
TL;DR
Staff, you made a MASSIVE blunder with this. If you want the most engaged part of your player base to stay with you, and TRUST you, then you need to jump on fixing this SOON.
You just changed the most fundamental rule of the entire game, without warning.
You just took away the whole POINT of putting in the effort to learn the rules and breed carefully. You made it both random and permanent, with NO opt-out choice. NO chance to at LEAST AVOID OR FIX a feature that could RUIN dragons players have spent months or years breeding towards.
And you added insult to injury by springing this surprise on us, not as a one-time change across the board, but instead as something that
has a chance of being fixable by players who either:
a) happen to be registered now and able to dedicate themselves entirely to the game
for just two days, ever,
or
b) are or will be rich enough later to be able to buy up and use what will be the extremely limited stock of consumable eye-change vials. While they still exist.
Congratulations. I didn't think it was possible to turn
the most fundamental part of Flight Rising into an actual pay-to-win situation. But you just did.
~*~*~
To salvage this, the absolute minimum I can see needing to be done is introducing a permanent, affordable means of reverting a dragon's eyes back to the default. A treasure-MP item or something like that. At minimum.
Otherwise I honestly don't know if I will have the heart to keep playing and breeding. I don't want to dread every new hatch.
And neither do a lot of other dedicated players.
Please, PLEASE, at least give us a way to affordably fix our bred dragons going forward. That's the only thing that could make this change at all workable for me, and a lot of other players.
Please. Don't take away the very founding promise of the whole game.
Please.
