Suggestions

edit: Support for trying with and without a cap to see the effects.

I'd support this with a cap around 500.

From my understanding of how this works, for every dragon a player exalts they get a point towards some future dom. Capping would not only limit how much a player can stockpile (thus rendering the difference between a heavy exalter and a casual exalter more of a moot point) but also give a boost to larger flights who are finding the OOF effects on small flights harder and harder to overcome.

Consider Shadow and their 60k vs. Earth and their 12k. Right now Shadow's OOF would need to take in nearly 6x as many dragons as Earth's OOF. While Shadow technically can put 6x as much into their OOF raffle it's hard for other flights to compare raffles given how threads are organized. I mean, does anyone actually count the number of prizes and their comparative worth before sending dragons?

This suggestion would give a little more boost to larger flights (more members to accumulate and spend points) without completely giving larger flights the advantage (cap effects).

@Nightwind
The problem with the cap is that 500 points in earth would have a bigger impact than 500 points in shadow because of dom taking the number of active players into account.

Having no cap means flights would be able to strategize how many points to stock pile, when to use them, etc.. Flights like earth might have less points, but they also have less players, so their 500 points might be equivalent to 1000 points in shadow.

I think it would actually need to be tested if there should be a cap on points or not.

@Mohenjo

Ah, that makes more sense. I wasn't taking the size disparity into account (despite going on about it) since I was thinking it would be a separate sort of accounting.

@Mohenjo

Even if the size is taken into account, the point still stands that if you are now expected to earn points for the push during it you, with this you would be expected to be earning points all the time. I don't see how that would help anyone

Casual exalters wouldn't have any bigger impact than before since the amount of expected contribution would also be bigger

@Sopheroo

If you exalt your own hatchlings to not be broke when leaving them unleveled and unnamed... why are you complaining about unnamed exalts? Just.. name them?

In any case unnamed debate has nothing to do with this. Whether the owner wants to name a dragon they exalt or not is not level related at all.

@Elaendorlien

I don't think "expected to contribute" is a wise thing to argue with. This here could be a thing that lets casual exalters participate regardless of anyones expectations. What do people even expect of me? 1 dragon per push? 100? 10k? I give what I can - that is what I can part with. Which usually means not much since I might have just exalted 50 dragons the week prior to push due to not getting a ping, forgetting about a push or even just because I could not wait around any longer holding onto them.

@Ekon I agree with Elaendorlien about the expectation to contribute more, even if it only comes from ourselves. I've taken "days off" (still exalting maybe 50-100 dragons) in the middle of battles before because I've been getting burnt out and can't keep up my pace for the entire week - and in doing so I've felt that I've been not contributing as much as I could and that I've been letting my flight down.

In a system where the stored points were uncapped, even if no one was explicitly asking it of them, many heavy exalters would feel the pressure to go hard for several weeks before a push, at least. While, yes, casual exalters could build up points over those weeks, it would be the heavy exalters feeling the need to stockpile thousands of points, driving themselves to burnout and further widening the gap.

and @Mohenjo I'm not sure I agree with no cap meaning that flights need to strategise how many points to stockpile - because surely the answer to that will always be "as many as possible", leading to the constant pushing and burnout.

I personally don't feel that personal expectations are a good reason to cap. For instance, my own personal expectations, when I first started, was that I had to buy every festival skin, even if I would never use them. Does that mean that FR should have had fewer skins because it was hard for me to buy them all? Or that they should have only had skins I would use? No. It means I had to deal with my own personal expectations. It is up to users themselves to manage their own personal expectations.

Users who are getting burned out, need to learn to manage that themselves. I have pushed myself hard before on games and felt like I Never wanted to see that game again. However, that is all on me, not on the game itself.

I feel a cap could cause more problems for casual exalters as the heavy exalters will reach it quickly, while casual exalters will take a much longer time. Thus, when the flight says they want to use those points, the expectation will be that everyone should be at a cap, especially if it is a relatively low cap. This would potentially create a negative attitude for casuals (you had 5 months, why aren't you at cap yet!). While no one would know exactly how much everyone contributed, I am sure that there would be people who would say how much they could contribute, and even if it weren't directed at anyone, there would still be threads about players who didn't contribute 'their fair share' during the last push, especially if the flight lost the push.

I could potentially agree to a cap per week, IE, exalt 100 dragons per week, but no cap to the total amount of points allowed, but even that I think wouldnt' really be good.

re: expectations. That's only a problem if the number of points a person has stockpiled is made publicly available. I don't doubt that if it were, harassing Dom leaders would become the sport of the day. XD (Since Dom Leaders are often busy organizing and co-ordinating, they might not have time to exalt a ton of dergs themselves.)

Otherwise, regular players can't tell the difference between progress made with points and progress made with levels, and they certainly can't tell which individual users are driving that progress unless they choose to write their own data in (for example) an In-Flight raffle spreadsheet.