Announcements & News

The Sandsurges are gorgeous - just looking at the default art itself, not even with all the scrying I'm about to do - and I'm excited about the confirmation of Nature getting its second breed this year! I'm hoping for another Dustcarve Dig kind of situation, but no matter what since it's a gameplay and/or treasure release, I'll be able to hopefully get a lot of them so I can have actual Nature breeds in my Nature flight lair. [emoji=wildclaw tongue] I appreciate the care FR staff is taking with regard to understanding the precedents that are set with your schedule and releases, and being able to publicly acknowledge and clearly describe those precedents! Now that we're at 2 gem ancients, we have a pattern to learn from and anticipate in the future -- so I'll have to be prepared with more materials in order to brew those time-limited familiars! Thank you for your consistent attempts to manage expectations, and your willingness to adapt your communications to help us all be clear on what's coming up. I really love that the surprises on FR tend to be the details of the changes or the content, and not the fact that there will be changes and updates. I'm not sure that you will see or respond to this and I do intend these questions as mostly rhetorical (though I know the new release threads are monitored pretty closely, so who knows) but I did see the precedent of 2 gameplay/treasure dragon breed releases per year mentioned, with only breeds released [b]in addition[/b] to those 2 being eligible to be gem exclusive -- but does this mean we've established a precedent for 2+ new breeds per year, each year? Is this something that will become a baseline expectation on the site? New content is very exciting, of course, and what I think of as a fairly short time between big releases like this is honestly thrilling - but is that a sustainable amount of labor for the FR team? I'm presuming so, otherwise you wouldn't have been so clear about it, but -- wow! That's a lot of work, and if you're managing to do that much, plus all the refactoring, without pushing the team into crunch or unmanageable loads, you are the champions of organizing and output. That seems like such a lot (to me at least - no art or web dev skills here though) and it's so exciting that y'all are in a place to do that. This is so much more than I ever would have asked from a site that was wonderful even before all the work that's been done since I joined in 2017. In fact, I don't think I can take all this consistent excitement - are you sure y'all don't want to slow things down? (Joking!) I love how the consistency of releases - for breeds and genes and apparel, for everything - means that even if something is not my vibe, there's a very good chance there'll be something I can be over-the-top happy about like THESE COOL DRAGONS [emoji=sandsurge star] who will hopefully support unionization in the eventual expansion of their story. Even if several releases in a row were 'not for me' it's still so exciting that this site is recieving so much work and love from such a dedicated team and player base. [emoji=familiar heart size=1] edit to add: this is the best commentary on gem vs mp breeds that I've seen, and as pleased as I am with the site (and as much as I don't think my interest in slower releases is a popular or majority opinion) - I do think this is an interesting take and hope it's considered, even if ultimately dismissed, among the team. I've previously been unbothered by gem MP ancients, and if asked I would have said I'd rather have ancients be gem MP than moderns - but I do see how there could be an artificially slow release of gem ancients onto the AH vs with moderns, considering the cost of re-geneing, and that is an understandable cause of frustration to the userbase. I still feel positively about it, but I did want to note and highlight both in general and for my future reference that this is a valuable perspective to consider - it lessens my own bias or dismissiveness towards those expressing frustration in this thread. [quote name="Spacestorm" date="2023-07-19 15:27:08" ] Ancient breeds are really limited, they can only breed within their own species, have limited gene pools (especially on release), cannot wear accessories and most of the time, skins can look odd when mixed with certain tertiary genes. They also all have the same breeding cooldown, so adding "rarity" to them feels really odd, when they all function the same. With ancient breeds, putting them behind a paywall makes the users buy twice as much in order to get them ready to breed. Not including the fact you have to purchase twice as many gene scrolls for traits, cause changing the breed will remove all current traits from the dragon. [...] I feel like if yall want to make gem breeds, stick to modern ones. They'd feel way more worth it due to not having the restrictions the ancient breeds have! We'd get to play with accessories and we'd even only have to get 1 gene scroll (and we'd also keep the traits iirc, never used a modern scroll) and even then, unless you'd breed with a coatl or wildclaw, you'd have 3% max per egg of getting the new breed, not including the super long breeding cooldowns. That would be one way to keep the gem breeds rarer. [/quote]

Also also the new familiar is adorable! Thanks so much for the new friend! ;o;

[quote name="Undel" date="2023-07-19 19:07:09" ] [quote name="Saone" date="2023-07-19 19:01:49" ] Does anyone know what Coli venues that the Marlin gene is dropping in? I want to grind for it lol [/quote] It drops by enemy element rather than a venue, so these genes have a rare chance of dropping in most venues! To see what enemies are specifically dropping each gene, you can check out the genes in the game database here: [gamedb item=51280] [gamedb item=51279] [/quote] Oh, thank you so much, Undel! I shall go and farm now lol

[quote name="dragonflare92" date="2023-07-19 16:59:51" ] Really sad to see so much vitriol; did not at all expect this with the new ancient release. Just going to drop some thoughts that are buzzing in my head after seeing all this, take them or leave them, it's just another perspective. I was disappointed with the Veilspun not having freebies as well when they came out, and ever since then I took away from that the idea that "OK. We're not guaranteed to get a freebie with every breed release". So I have kept that information in mind going forward and have never anticipated freebies for any release. So it really wasn't a crushing blow for me here. Obviously not everybody interpreted it that way. I guess that's the diversity of different perspectives taking away different ideas from the same thing for you. I guess better communication was the issue here, and I'm glad that the FR team has acknowledged that for moving forward. But I honestly can't fault them, because I don't know if [i]I[/i] would have realized that that was something that needed clarifying. It's impossible to catch every perspective; issues will happen, even after people have improved and put out effort to be better, this is called being human. You never hit that fabled "perfection". When you get so fixated on one thing you're excited about, the rest of the world seems to disappear, I know, I've been there time and time again. But you will be disappointed sometimes, and it's OK to be frustrated and angry and sad. But once you've worked through the initial emotions, you have to look back and assess just how much of a problem this really is, in the overall scheme of things. With Veilspun I had to resign myself to being patient and waiting for auction house prices to drop; it was hard, but not the end of the world, or my enjoyment of the site. Just a temporary set-back. But sometimes things take time; it's something that I think we're losing sight of in our modern instant-gratification world. It's not about fairness; the dev team didn't do this to be unfair, in fact they've put a lot of work into making things more fair than most sites like this would. Trust me, I've seen the crushing fall of Neopets; this is [b]not[/b] what a cash-grab or paywall looks like... euuggh. All-in-all, just a small miscommunication that I think got compounded a little out of control with emotions. Big appreciation to all those who chime in with their opinions, but are very chill and respectful with it; that's how you solve things. OK sorry for long ramble, I just kind of absorb emotions from these kinds of things and wanted to get out some thoughts that were bugging me; wish I were better at wording my thoughts. Love the new genes for the Sandsurge, and super excited to hear about Nature ancient on the horizon! [emoji=wildclaw star size=1] [/quote] hugely agree. just because something on this site requires premium currency does not mean it's predatory or unfair. this site is run by an independant and passionate group of artists and devs, and any money goes towards them being able to do what they love! and the fact that dragon breeds come out so quickly now is BECAUSE so many artists are able to be supported by the profits. as much as i wish everyone could just do what they love without asking for compensation, we just don't live in that kind of world. i also think the lack of communication makes things MORE fair. the unfortunate truth of mmo's and community-driven games is that not everyone wins. it's how the AH and trade and the site as a whole can stay running. if everyone got what they wanted all the time, the game would be a lot less fun and we would have less reason to trade and help one another! edit: for example, i just don't like coli grinding. but i can buy coli genes and familiars on the AH with the money i earn elsewhere on the site with things that others don't like to do. it feels great to be a part of something so many are so passionate about [emoji=gaoler happy size=1]

Wow! The sandskink has to be one of favourite familiars. I love it!!

Great terts on these guys, and I'm glad to see Harle/Jester on an ancient...I hope more ancients get those genes in the future.

Sailfish and Marlin are S tier

[quote name="@Jouta" date="2023-07-19 18:39:17" ] Ehhh the body plan is pretty... plain.. for an ancient and a gem breed at that, but the terts are nice at least. Wish it'd get a bit more wild and out-there with ancients [/quote] iirc staff has said before that they don’t want to lock more “out there” ancients behind gems, so all the ancient gem breeds are gonna stick a lil more closely to the 4 legs/2 wings/1 head rule (the veilspun also fit this rule) I rlly like the new breed tho! Been wanting an ancient breed with fans instead of wings so this absolutely hits for me

[center][emoji=heart size=1] [emoji=heart size=1] [emoji=heart size=1] SKINK ** SKINK ** SKINK [emoji=heart size=1] [emoji=heart size=1] [emoji=heart size=1] Whoot! Thanks for the new breed, and that snazzy little buddy. [img]https://www1.flightrising.com/static/cms/familiar/art/51214.png[/img] [/center]