Suggestions

[quote name="SparkyLurkdragon" date="2021-04-05 18:41:25" ] I maintain that the natural eye system is, in no uncertain terms, currently the worst part of the site experience, for all the reasons outlined at the top of the thread. It works against every other aspect of Flight Rising as a game. Nothing else as core to customizing dragons is even a fraction as much out of the player's control. It has broken the dragon diversity in the AH (hi, I'm an XYZ breeder, and finding starters is indeed an absolute nightmare now), and it has changed targeted breeding projects from a fun challenge to an exercise in bashing one's head against an incredibly obnoxious RNG. I don't believe and will never believe that pushing players who want to have That Perfect Dragon to breeding up to seventy clone dragons that they mash into each other ad nauseum is a reasonable thing to do, especially with how lairspace works on Flight Rising. I do not believe that propping up tiny markets like Gen One Primals is remotely worth hamstringing so many other parts of the site and so many players' playstyles. I see it as exactly the way Eliminates were before Galore gave them out and they were added to various venues, most critically the Mire. Crashing the Eliminate market was necessary for the good of the site, and I say that as someone who lives in the Coli when I'm playing who was therefore technically negatively affected by the change. So I feel confident in saying that yes, crashing any markets the natural eye status quo currently supports is also necessary for the overall good of the site. I started a thread about my current efforts to get a Primal on an Imperial. I've currently got 63 dragons related to the project in my lair, and I haven't even hit the point of breeding a bunch of clones. After getting a Primal on a completely unrelated dragon, I just. I can't. That hatch is everything wrong with this broken system in a nutshell to me. It didn't feel like a special bonus, even though it somehow managed to come from a pair that did mean something to me (the dragon is the grandchild of my progenators). It just felt like the site was mocking me. And I know that it wasn't, it was a case of bad luck. Yeah. Hatching a Primal felt like bad luck. Fundamentally, if the natural eye system is meant to add value to the play experience, it is not doing that for me. I would support almost anything else besides this, as long as it gives me the ability to put eyes on existing, already-hatched dragons, no matter how old and no matter their Gen One status. I have a slight preference for exalt-for-vial solutions and direct eye transferals, but mostly only because it seems to me like they have the highest chance of being implemented. Really, I don't care, as long as it isn't RNG on top of RNG like a new roulette item, set of roulette items, or exalting for a chance at a vial. But even then, those solutions would be better than what we have now, so I would put up with it while still agitating for change in that case. I've hit the point of throwing in the towel and taking another hiatus from Flight Rising over this. I might stick around long enough to answer any responses to my comments on this thread, but otherwise, I'm out for the next month and a half, at least. This frustration also factored into my decision to not buy anything from the Gem Marketplace cycle-in. And it stinks, because Flight Rising is otherwise my favourite pet sim. I love the immortal pets, I love that they're dragons, I love how I can take years-long hiatuses without fear if I have to, I love writing lore for them and drawing fanart. I love how I can make my little fandragons, or I did, until the natural eye system corked it up. I love customizing my dragons on this dragon customization game. Wild. I am trying really, really hard to keep my temper here, but frankly it feels like no one who matters is listening. And hey, no one has to listen. No one has to play Flight Rising, either. [/quote] This. I agree with this so much. The thing I hate the most about this system is hatching unwanted special eyes and not being able to do a whole lot with them. It’s so restrictive in a game where you can customise your dragons with so many things. I’ve been breeding a primal gaoler project since Gaolers existed. Slowly gaining more pairs as I could. I don’t have a primal gaoler. I’ve hatched 5 primal eyes. All of them on non Gaolers. Now I know that’s just how RNG goes, but I would absolutely love a use for these primals I don’t want rather than trying to sell them, because primal eyes are rare and it feels like a waste to exalt something like that and not get something for it. So I’d love to see some other option. Exalting & Brewing vials appeals to me the most but honestly I’d just take exalting for the vials too. At least that way I could do something useful with the primal eyes.

And here I thought I was done posting to this thread and I also thought I’d be on hiatus by now but rng loves to work against me.

As some of you are aware I’ve had an ongoing project for a few months now that I am calling Smooth sky to which I’m not having much success and I’m here to explain my woes about it which does include many of the stated affects eyes have had.

To begin with I’ve been questing for a male imperial with smoke/sky/stonewash to no success. I started this project shortly after marbled and swirl were added. I saw how beautiful swirl was with its two toned looks and I fell in love with this scry I had made of a male imperial with smoke/sky/stonewash.

So my project began but it had a rocky start it took some time to find two unrelated dragons with color ranges that would work.

Why is this related to eyes you ask? Well people don’t breed xyz fodder as often as they used to and so finding dragons with color combos like this are rare because people just don’t throw two random dragons together because of the off chance that they would hatch a primal on a dragon deemed undesirable to most of the community.

I cannot find dragons unrelated to my own except g1s and people don’t sell g1s for reasonable prices if they have matching colors. There’s one dragon in particular I’m ready to throw in the towel and ask their owner if they will sell their XYY g1 to me for a discounted price because I just want to breed it a few times and exalt it.

But continuing on today I hatched 11 hatchlings all very close to what I’m after and some just mocking me by being off by one color. One of these particularly close hatchlings had goat and for whatever reason I decided to scry my project dragon with goat and I regret it.

I regret it because I think it looks amazing and adorable and I would love my project dragon to have goat and it hurts me to know that even if I wanted it I’m not likely to get it. The chances of me hatching my dream dragon with goat are very slim and there’s so few dragons in the color range that aren’t related means it could takes months to just get an unrelated female or male if I just got the right colors let alone goat.

I still have my two goat vials don’t get me wrong but because those are the only two I’m ever going to get I’m afraid to use them and I never will use them. What if I fall out of love with this dragon in a few months? That goat vial would fundamentally be wasted on what most of the community views as fodder.

I love this eye type and I would love to have it on my dragons but I don’t think it’s worth wasting months or years to get when it’s an aesthetic choice and barely visible on most dragons.

And the affects of eye types on the fodder or xyz markets are very apparent to me especially to all of my xyz projects or projects I considered but never went for because there just wasn’t enough dragons to start working on narrowing color ranges.

I just want yall to know that I support yall 100%. there's people all over the place going omg its been 3 years shut up already but like.. yeah it's been three years, almost like it was incredibly upsetting!!!
anyway, if nothing else, i want an end to the radio silence. in the old days, they directly asked for community input. there's never NOT going to be drama, its inevitable, but for gods sake at least it wasnt complete silence and even 'we regret giving you the tiniest chance of giving the special new thing to your old dragons' lol

oh and to corroborate a couple claims in the op with my own personal experience, guess what. I'm Plague-born, baby. but I left. because I hated most of the Plague eyes. it took a while for me to warm up to the primal and overall thought the other ones were way too dark and kinda ugly. So I left for Light. AND, i absolutely started engineering pairs around the possibility of nice eyes. so yeah theres that anecdote based evidence lol. I adore the eyes, mostly, it really is just the implementation that sucked and made me and countless others upset..

oh and another thought on exalting for eye vials, idk if it was said already, but I think it should be dependent on the element of the dragon itself and not the lair. why would a nature dragon give lightning eyes?? yeah maybe the lore would be weird but just logically it seems a little silly to me

[quote name="Doodlepede" date="2021-04-07 01:56:55" ] oh and another thought on exalting for eye vials, idk if it was said already, but I think it should be dependent on the element of the dragon itself and not the lair. why would a nature dragon give lightning eyes?? yeah maybe the lore would be weird but just logically it seems a little silly to me [/quote] This makes no sense to me as you aren’t applying the element just the eye type. It shouldn’t matter if I exalt the nature primal I hatched on a fodder and apply the primal vial I received to the fire dragon I want primal on as I am just applying primal not converting that fire dragon to a nature dragon just switching his eyes to primal. In addition if it was elemental dependent certain flights vials would be worth more than others because certain primals eyes invoke body horror in players or because certain flights are much larger so their vials would be more numerous

[quote name="DragonSage" date="2021-04-07 03:24:33" ] [quote name="Doodlepede" date="2021-04-07 01:56:55" ] oh and another thought on exalting for eye vials, idk if it was said already, but I think it should be dependent on the element of the dragon itself and not the lair. why would a nature dragon give lightning eyes?? yeah maybe the lore would be weird but just logically it seems a little silly to me [/quote] This makes no sense to me as you aren’t applying the element just the eye type. It shouldn’t matter if I exalt the nature primal I hatched on a fodder and apply the primal vial I received to the fire dragon I want primal on as I am just applying primal not converting that fire dragon to a nature dragon just switching his eyes to primal. In addition if it was elemental dependent certain flights vials would be worth more than others because certain primals eyes invoke body horror in players or because certain flights are much larger so their vials would be more numerous [/quote] The thing is, we don't have elemental vials for any other eye type, so why would primal give them. You aren't taking the 'element' but rather just excess magic, according to BotE. Beyond any lore, I feel this would be VERY confusing, and lead to a lot of 'I got lightning primal to put on my plague girl, and I can't, why didn't it change the element to lighting!!!' and it would also lead to some people having worthless primal dragons (plague, shadow, earth are all primals that I have seen people say they dislike so they all might be ones where they would have a harder time selling), or there just being so many of that particular element, that, again, their primals are worthless (larger flights). Basically this would mean that probably only a couple of primal elements would be popular, because those are the ones that are considered 'prettier' and/or just better over all, so those primals would shoot up in value, while the other primals would get the occasional sale, but mostly just sit around like they are now.

me and @Devonix were discussing this earlier, and they said that the rarer eye vials could be a cycling gem item, and I think that could work out. You can still access it, but it's still fairly rare. I would be okay with buying primal vials from the marketplace if they cycled.

Edit: oops i meant scattersights >_<

@mangoe01 I didn't say primal vials I said Vials of Scattersight
(I can delete this post)

I really disagree with the notion of changing the eye type system at all. The only exception I could maybe (MAYBE) support would be a more feasible way to get primals or other rare eye types on progens. I think the element of luck does add something to the game. Have I been frustrated when hatching rare eye types on fodder or when I wasn't expecting them? Absolutely. But I've also been frustrated by hatching weird color combos from eggs and one egg nests and the realization that I'll probably never own a G1 of one of my favorite breeds (Imps.) It happens, it's part of the game. Saying that you're disappointed is one thing. Of course you can be disappointed, it makes perfect sense to be miffed, but saying that not having all your dragons just the way you want them is [i]hurting you[/i]? Insinuating that FR is ruined or falling from grace as your favorite game because of eye randomization? Frankly, it makes me dislike this suggestion even more. Taking a hiatus over the changes to the eye system makes it sound like there wasn't a whole lot keeping you here anyway. For me, it's about the accessibility. There are so few things on FR (especially dragon-wise) that can't be achieved with gems and patience. The rare eyes are one of the only elements of dragon breeding that you can't throw gems at to fix. The element of surprise is fun and has made me work with and consider dragons I wouldn't have otherwise. It adds value to newer dragons as a whole and while I agree, it has been disappointing to realize that my older dragons will most likely never have the precise eyes I want, I've moved on to breeding new dragons and taking the occasional rare eye type as a pleasant surprise. And many of the replies to this topic are correct: the eye system is the "odd one out" of the various dragon customization features. And that's [i]fine[/i]. You can manipulate a dragon's colors, genes, and breed and if that still doesn't do it for you, you can create endless combinations of apparel and scenes and attached familiars. You can breed for almost precisely what you want, down to a t if you know what you're doing. You can scatter a dragon over and over until you get colors you like. The eyes are the outlier. And I don't think that's a bad thing. It means that there's one (small!) thing left up to chance, one thing that no amount of money can change, and I like that. It makes primals, goat, faceted, etc a special and rare thing that's equally available to every single player who breeds dragons. If anything, we could use more [i]additional[/i] eye vial types in the marketplace, like how we have spiral and glowing. Under no circumstances should we [i]ever[/i] have rare vials or vials for anything that's already been released as a natural eye type (multigaze, primal, etc.) It kills the fun of random rare eye hatches and takes away what is currently a unique opportunity for complete fairness (anyone has the same chances of hatching a rare eye type regardless of wealth, account age, etc), not to mention that there would undoubtedly be outcry from people who poured time and money into scatter vials when they were first available. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. As @mangoe01 already stated in this thread: [quote name="mangoe01" date="2021-04-05 08:30:23" ] I'm not usually a big advocate for eye change, but the exalt for eyes idea seems like an excellent solution! I'm placing my support on that one. But, I don't support any rare eye vials in the marketplace. The more common ones are fine, but it just seems too easy to just slap something on a dragon and make a huge profit, no matter if it costs 1kg or 2kg. [/quote] NOTE: Bringing Baldwin and/or exalting into the equation is going to make things more confusing and less accessible than ever before, as well as alienate people who don't focus on exalting or brewing in their playstyles.

The cycling is an issue in itself. I do not want eye vials cycling unless there's very clear dates on when they come in. I was literally just discussing with my friend (who's trying to get me to play Overwatch) that I have a hard time with fomo tactics. My heart already goes out to the people who couldn't afford wc scrolls but got them anyway, If one of my favorite aesthetic pieces was locked in the wc cycle I'd have to leave the site, or I'd spend like $50 on them. I don't want to be locked out of any more games because of this.

Also I think that no matter what happens, primal would become much more common if it was buyable, no matter where you put it. That's why I find the idea of getting an item from breeding a rare eye type so appealing, it keeps them at whatever rarity they have right now.


On the xyz topic I do dearly miss throwing together wide range xyzs or being able to have lore-only pairs (read, they're so far away in range all their kids look... bad. but they love eachother very much). I used to do that all the time but I've been slowly training myself away from that because every time I get primal or multi I've been horribly disappointed. I have a bloody obs/obs/stained pair. It's so boring. Finding a matching mate every time I get a new dragon is boring too, I hate having everything copied across my lair. It goes against what they wanted for the eyes, to be special and exciting, and I really truly want eyes to get the love they deserve without all of this malice and disappointment surrounding them.

[quote]Saying that you're disappointed is one thing. Of course you can be disappointed, it makes perfect sense to be miffed, but saying that not having all your dragons just the way you want them is hurting you? Insinuating that FR is ruined or falling from grace as your favorite game because of eye randomization? Frankly, it makes me dislike this suggestion even more. Taking a hiatus over the changes to the eye system makes it sound like there wasn't a whole lot keeping you here anyway.[/quote] People say that changing the eye system to allow people to put new eyes on old dragons would also "hurt" them too. It's the terminology people use. It doesn't necessarily mean physical pain. It can also mean taking a loss of something. And it's very hard to deny that with the standardization of common and the exclusion of old dragons, that yes, there was loss that occurred. [quote]For me, it's about the accessibility. There are so few things on FR (especially dragon-wise) that can't be achieved with gems and patience. The rare eyes are one of the only elements of dragon breeding that you can't throw gems at to fix. The element of surprise is fun and has made me work with and consider dragons I wouldn't have otherwise. It adds value to newer dragons as a whole and while I agree, it has been disappointing to realize that my older dragons will most likely never have the precise eyes I want, I've moved on to breeding new dragons and taking the occasional rare eye type as a pleasant surprise.[/quote] Eye types aren't accessible though. Unless your point is that it's good to have inaccessible things--which I disagree with to the root. Why wouldn't a game want things to be earnable through the players who put forth the effort? RNG is literally the most unfair mechanic in existence, as one player could get primal with the first hatch/vial, and another player could never get primal ever. I am glad you enjoy breeding for new dragons. But not everyone does. Collecting old dragons and customizing them was a fully acceptable playstyle for five years. Until FR themselves came forward and singled out some dragons as valuable. IMHO, that is something the staff should not do, and it should try to accommodate as many play styles as possible. And doting on old permas is hardly a tiny minority playstyle. [quote]And many of the replies to this topic are correct: the eye system is the "odd one out" of the various dragon customization features. And that's fine. You can manipulate a dragon's colors, genes, and breed and if that still doesn't do it for you, you can create endless combinations of apparel and scenes and attached familiars. You can breed for almost precisely what you want, down to a t if you know what you're doing. You can scatter a dragon over and over until you get colors you like. The eyes are the outlier. And I don't think that's a bad thing. It means that there's one (small!) thing left up to chance, one thing that no amount of money can change, and I like that. It makes primals, goat, faceted, etc a special and rare thing that's equally available to every single player who breeds dragons. [/quote] I'm glad you like it. But not everyone does. I know I'm not alone in thinking that this is [i]not fine[/i]. If you enjoy breeding for eyes, great--because that can and should continue to exist regardless of what solution is implemented. Both can coexist. But this comes across as saying "I enjoy something; therefore, everyone should also enjoy it--or take a hiatus from the site." With tens of thousands of FR players, it's not reasonable to think everyone will enjoy the same thing--and that is what is truly fine. But those who don't want to replace 2-600 permas shouldn't be expected to accept the fact that their playstyle has been walled and their dragons were pointed out as being less valuable and that they are being excluded from enjoying something that was supposed to celebrate five years of them helping the site to exist. [quote]If anything, we could use more additional eye vial types in the marketplace, like how we have spiral and glowing. Under no circumstances should we ever have rare vials or vials for anything that's already been released as a natural eye type (multigaze, primal, etc.) It kills the fun of random rare eye hatches and takes away what is currently a unique opportunity for complete fairness (anyone has the same chances of hatching a rare eye type regardless of wealth, account age, etc), not to mention that there would undoubtedly be outcry from people who poured time and money into scatter vials when they were first available. That sounds like a recipe for disaster.[/quote] Yes, I agree we need more eyes. No way do I agree that individual vials would kill the fun. It would make things more fun. Because, see, "fun" is subjective. And if two different playstyles can coexist without infringing on each other, that's great. And they can. But by saying "I can't have fun if other people are having fun in a different way"--well, that just comes off as elitist, and it's really nothing FR needs. On the topic of money. I repeat...what about all the money I spent on my dragons? Gems and treasure and time alike? Isn't my money as good? I didn't ask for the eyes on my dragons to be changed in the standardization. I never asked for my seafoam dragons to get changed either. What about the people who spent money on the original Saturn and Jupiter? Isn't their money good too? Or all the apparel updates? Why should people who use scattervials be protected when so many other players weren't? We're already living in a recipe for disaster. Keeping things as-is is flat-out not fair and is only making the whole situation worse. The majority of dragons should not be sacrificed for the minority.