Suggestions

edit: I've made some edits to this to clarify some phrasing and some additional ideas.

So I've recently returned to the game and while I've really been enjoying myself, I'm finding myself hitting a wall again. I think I kind of figured out why, and a lot of it is money related. This is probably going to be a big, blabby post, so apologies in advance if something doesn't make sense or if you get really bored. Let me know if you want clarification! These are just suggestions, not demands, and ultimately the goal here is to reduce grind and make it easier to engage with the core aspect of the game.

How this post works: I am going to describe a bunch of problems, and then provide a list of solutions. These things all kind of work together, so I feel like I need to get overly detailed with it to show my perspective on why.

Like anything in life, the crux of the problem seems to be the money. I want more dragons. Dragons cost money. Dragons take up lair space, and lair space costs a LOT of money once you start getting more dragons. Making the money for continuous lair space upgrades can feel grueling, especially if you can't spend hours a day grinding, and all the items you ever seem to get are worth 2kt a pop at best.

The first way to get dragons is via The Auction House. There is so much in there. With a detailed but somewhat cumbersome search system (I am aware that staff is looking to address the gene bloat! Yay!) it's possible to get lost for days scrolling through pages and pages of dragons in a way that can turn a fun dragon-shopping trip into an overwhelming nightmare. A lot of them are dirt-cheap hatchlings that don't even sell!

The second way to get dragons is via the Find a Dragon forum. While I have many-a beautiful dragon thanks to posts in there, we all know it comes with downsides: people replying multiple times with the same dragons, people ignoring the guidelines (or REALLY stretching them) for what you want.

The third way to get dragons is via posts in Dragon Sales, which are often just one off posts, but the real big thing is Hatcheries. Hatcheries are often a much easier way to browse for dragons if you are looking for a specific aesthetic, want to "pre-buy" dragons, or so on. Unfortunately Hatcheries also come with their downsides:

• Entirely user-run and maintained. While this allows users the flexibility to run their hatcheries the way they want, there is no recourse if something goes wrong.
• Many hatcheries rely on pinglists, which often require users visit external links to enter their information. This has a few issues, from users who may be concerned with their privacy, to the hassle that arises if you change your username.
• While there are user-run directories, they require LOTS of maintenance.

On top of this, there is a WHOLE swath of people who use the site that just never interact with the forums. Whether they're shy, or young, or do not speak English as a first language, there is a significant number of players who cannot engage with the last two options here.

What this all means is, at the end of the day, buying and selling dragons feels weirdly difficult for a site that revolves around doing so. You want dragons, but finding them can feel like a chore or be inaccessible, and you never seem to have enough treasure for the lair space you need -- especially if you want to breed dragons, and especially if you can't sell the hatchlings!

There are a few things, I think, that could solve this, by revitalizing and opening up the dragon economy.

The simple fixes:

1. Raise the daily cap of the Fairgrounds treasure (e: everyone got mad at this so whatever, again, just a suggestion)
2. Raise the Fairgrounds payout for all games so that they are at par with Glimmer & Gloom. Variety offsets the feeling of grinding.
3. Raise the amount of money/reward you receive for exalting dragons significantly. The significant part is important here. If there is more incentive to exalt dragons you can't sell, then that would also ease the burden on the Auction House. (by significant I mean like... more than 2 treasure. Not 20000)
4. No more blank Coli drops

A much bigger project that I think would help all of this too: Site-Integrated Hatcheries

I am aware this would be an absolute enormous body of work, and all my suggestions here might not work 100% with how the site is built, so again, these are just suggestions.

1. Storefronts. These would function like a user-run shop in other games, but with a significant degree of customization afforded to the user, including things like:

• The ability to title pairs, order pairs, upload custom pair cards, and link to each parent's profile.
• A section specifically for sales, where dragons can be listed for Treasure and/or Gems, Offer Only (in which a user can make a Crossroads offer for the dragon), or On Hold
• You could list ANY dragon in this section, and purchase sales tabs for further customization
• When you hatch a nest, you are given an option to list the hatchlings automatically, or just send them to your lair
• The ability to highlight pairs that are currently on a nest
• The ability to customize sections of the storefront similar to the way people can customize their forum posts, so people can retain their custom banners, art, and other pieces of their hatchery's unique personality

2. Site-Integrated Pinglists. I know there was a forum topic about this not too long ago where everyone seemed pretty supportive, so I won't rehash it too much, but allowing users to simply click a button to be added/removed from a specific pair's list would save everyone a lot of maintenance.

3. Keywords. There are benefits and negatives to both allowing custom keywords and having a list of pre-set keywords, and I don't feel particularly strongly one way or the other. But allowing you to set a few searchable keywords for your hatchery might make it easier for people who buy based on vibes. eg. Are you looking for a dragon with water vibes? Search for Stores by using the keyword "water" and you'll get any Hatchery that has chosen that as a tag. Have a ton of G1s from a mass hatch that you want to get out there? Tag your Store with "G1s". This would probably require some degree of moderation but could be useful.

4. Hiatus Features. To avoid search bloat, accounts that have not had activity for a certain amount of time could have their stores dormant. There could also be an option for the user to initiate a hiatus themselves, either by simply "closing" (making private) the store until they reopen it, or setting a range of dates to go "offline". Dragons in the store would still count as being part of your lair and require feeding.

5. Rebranding? There might be some lore headbutting over what is essentially site-supported baby mills. If that is a problem, I think it would be easy enough to frame these storefronts as "Recruitment Offices" or something to the effect, if any lore integration is deemed necessary. Though I don't know if giving jobs to babies is much better This is a suggestion that is a simple workaround for people who have concerns about getting the feature to fit into site lore -- I, personally, don't care that much, so please save your snippy comments about how dragons aren't real. That's not the point.

6. Nest Rentals. Okay this is more of a bonus suggestion, but I'm tacking it on anyways as it's related to the breeding/hatchery aspect. Allow people to toggle a "nest for rent" switch on a specific nest, and two further options: listing the nest for rent at a specific price (even if it's zero), where anyone can request to rent it, or some kind of private option. There are some logistical things here I'm fuzzy on, like how a private request would actually work, and there would need to be some kind of way to ensure fair/agreed upon distribution of hatchlings, and some kind of hatchling waiting room void in case, for instance, one party goes dormant without claiming them. A lot of debatable details here but overall I think it would be a good thing to add a safe site-supported way to do this as it's a fun way for other users to interact with each other.

And I think... that is about it for the post. Thanks for reading, if you had the patience for that, and sorry again for the wall of text and overthinking!

Edit: nowhere in this post do I discuss selling items. If you want to talk about changes to selling items in the Auction House, go ahead, but this is specifically about making selling and exalting dragons easier and more appealing.

Like I said earlier in the post, these are just suggestions - not demands - on things that might help the game feel less grindy, encourage people to exalt more (which will unburden the forums/auction house AND the servers), and provide a more streamlined and safe way to buy specific dragons. If you don't agree with some or all of these suggestions, that's fine, but the idea is IDEAS and discussion. This is not a legal bill going to your governor it is a petsite forum post. Aggression is not necessary.

The trouble with posts like this is that they assume everyone is having a universal experience for universal reasons.

Even without a maxed lair, I don't struggle for lair space. The only difficulty I have finding dragons is that the focus on XXYs and XXXs makes my weirder goals difficult. I don't think an AH full of dragons that'll never be permas is a problem.

Here's why.

1. I'm really picky about my dragons, and I don't think every dragon deserves a permanent home no matter how pretty it is. I have about 550 slots, but less than 200 permas.

2. Because I rarely impulse buy/adopt, I can go into the AH or Dragon Search or the forums with something specific in mind and avoid wasting time on stuff I'll never want. I also save lots of money by avoiding the cycle of rapid interest loss.

3. We're not meant to sell most of our dragons as permas. We're meant to exalt them. The site owners have said selling permas isn't supposed to be our main income source, and several site functions encourage exalting. High production rates are there to make it easier to achieve a specific combination. That's it. There's no way to give every hatchling ever produced a permanent home. The site's servers can't handle it, and neither can the players. Making lair expansions expensive forces players to balance their wants and their ability to provide instead of getting angry because they can't feed 1000 dragons on 15 gathering turns.

When I look at this suggestion, what I see is a list of problems some users choose to create for themselves. If people want to play certain ways, they can! But they have to accept the consequences.

I do too! I don't get many chances to squeal over unexpected finds. I can't play trading games or haunt the giveaway forum. I have to exalt lots of dragons I wish I could save. I have to pass up lots of dragons that are pretty, but not pretty enough. I need to be patient with my breeding projects. My lair isn't suited for some Dragon Share games. These are my consequences, and I accept them.

Anyway! Official hatcheries. Because most dragons are meant to be exalted, I believe hatcheries need to stay user run. The site already provides ways to sell dragons that match its intentions for them. Hatcheries are different. They center around selling as many dragons as possible to permanent homes for big money. Players who want to do that should have to take on the adjustment burden. This includes the storefront, hiatus features, and rebranding categories.

Keywords are too dependent on individual perception to work well. Gather five players in a thread and ask them to show you "fire dragons" and you'll see eight different concepts. It'd be a headache. And there's already an AH option to only show G1s.

Site integrated pinglist widgets would be good though. General play and lots of forum activities rely on user interaction. It'd be a great step toward making the site experience more secure and getting rid of problems like pinglist-based harassment.

I always think ways to get different eye colors is a good idea. It makes no sense that we're told we should be able to create a perfect dragon with hard work and time, yet official site functions don't provide for eye changes and lending transactions are unsupported. Something about that needs to change for everything to make sense.

No support for most of this, sorry.

The Devs have stated that dragons are meant to be plentiful and therefore, generally inexpensive.

Most of your "simple fixes" would create a huge influx of treasure with no sinks to counter it. This would actually make it harder for players to buy and especially sell dragons. It'd also create a "Neopets Situation" where, because treasure is so plentiful, players buy up items from the game's marketplace and then list them at hugely inflated prices.

It creates a game where players can have large amounts of the game's currency, but the items themselves cost huge amounts of treasure due to inflation. Games with economies like that tend to be very difficult for new players to get a foot hold in to get nice pets or items because everything costs so much from the get-go.

Flight Rising's economy right now is very stable and fairly newbie friendly. So no support for any of those fixes.

I like the idea of Storefronts, but only if they're basically an easy to access "store" of ALL a players' listings. As in, I want to be able to have a place to easily display all of my item sales as well as my dragon sales.

Site-integrated pinglists and Keywords, I don't have distinctly strong opinions on but they feel like a lot of coding for a feature that's not going to be as flexible and customizable as players want and if it's not moderated, it'll become a mess. For example, with the keywords feature, players just listing dragons with ALL available keywords in order to get their dragon in as many searches as possible. Your suggestion would at least cut down on pinglist harassment since presumably people would only be able to add themselves, but it risks making pinglists badly hampered or outright useless.

No support for a hiatus feature, it'd be too easy to abuse and is unnecessary. There's no penalty for not feeding your dragons, they don't die or run away. All you lose is an Activity Bonus, which by rights, you shouldn't be getting if you're not being active. FR also auto-feeds dragons upon your return if you're inactive for more than 40 days I believe.

I honestly don't understand what you're getting at with "Rebranding", my apologies. Flight Rising is billed as a Dragon Breeding game. Anybody who has issues with pretend breeding imaginary dragons is in the wrong place.

Instead of Nest Rentals, I would prefer the ability to convert one of my own nests to a particular element, either via an item or a boon or what have you. I believe this would be easier to code and less fraught with issues.

1. I like the idea of storefronts, but not the way you describe them. I would far prefer one where a player could list their items (any items, not just dragons) for sale, and maybe make it pretty, but not with a lot of customization, I still think not so fondly of Neopets stores where you couldn't find your cursor, had to wait for dozens of images to download and often had trouble seeing the name/price of the item you wanted to buy. I also feel that this should be tied to the auction house, as you can already make a storefront for the forums.
2. I would like site integrated pinglists, as there tends to be people who cannot stand that other people enjoy/don't enjoy something they do, and they use offsite pinglists to harass people.
3. Keywords are iffy for me. I do support a site created set of tags, for all pictures, but I can see issues with it. The site would have to create the lists, otherwise it would be practically useless. As an example, a fanfiction site allows author generated tags, and way to often I will filter out the types of stories I don't want to see, but *still* run into them, or the user doesn't even bother to tag for that particular thing. The first is because everyone creates their own little tag, which doesn't get caught by the bigger tags, and the second is just an issue in general where the author, as I said, doesn't tag. (then there is also the problem from like tumblr, where a post will end up with ALL the tags, which also doesn't help)
4. Hiatus features, I just don't see a need for. Since I feel that a store front should be tied to the auction house, listings on the auction house already expire, so no need to delete storefronts. They would just be empty.
5. Rebranding feels like a you problem. I am not saying that to be rude, but not only are these dragons, which are mythological creatures that, while sapient, don't necessarily have the side ideas nor maturity rates as humans, but they are also pixels on a site that focuses around the breeding of said dragons. In a pet breeding sim, you are going to have people who will churn out offspring. It is a simple fact of that type of sim.
6. Nest rentals. I would far rather just have some sort of token to temporarily change the element of a nest than nest rentals, but if the only way we can get the ability to breed dragons in elements other than our own (without having to change for six months) is site sanction nest rentals, I wouldn't mind.

Now, for the last big two: Raising the amount of treasure pouring into the game and site integrated hatcheries.

Absolute no support for the first, and no support for the second.

For the first, I have played games with out of control economies. I had I believe several billion (yes, billion) free currency, and a couple of thousand pets on Aywas when I quit, and I gave it all away, because it was pretty worthless. Most items that were useful were in the hundred of thousands or millions of BP (the free currency), and that was in SITE stores. User stores they either just weren't there or were for more. Any pet that wasn't from adventure was the same way. Stuff that was given out in adventure mode either was worth a ton of money (but also exceedingly rare) or worth nothing. Pets were the same way. Either they were exceedingly rare, and worth a ton, or they were absolutely worthless.

It is very hard to balance an economy in a game, and once it starts spiraling out of control, it can be nearly impossible to get it back under control. One of the biggest and fastest ways to spiral an economy out of control is allow the free currency to pour into the economy.

While it might seem like casual players are at a disadvantage (and they are, but that is the way it goes in any games, what you get is proportional to the time you can/do put into it), if it were easier to get money, casual players will be even more disadvantaged if the economy becomes unbalanced. Non-casual players will be earning money at a rate faster than most casuals do, and so the gap between them and others will just widen. Yeah, you might be able to get all the expansions within a couple of weeks, but any dragon that isn't fodder is now going to be even more expensive. Scrolling a dragon is going to be nearly impossible because most scrolls will be immediately bought out of the stores and relisted for much higher prices, even ones where demand is low.

This also happened to neopets. Any of their site stores would be emptied within moments, unless the item was one that could be gained in other ways, and thus was dirt cheap. So, the stores filled with junk items, and anything worth it disappeared within seconds of being restocked.

For site hatcheries, I feel that this is fine as a user run thing. Not everyone wants to run a hatchery, and I feel that having it be in the forums makes it so that users have more control over it than they would if it were a site feature.

I like the Store Front idea + being able to rent a nest :) I would even go so far to recommend the ability to breed a dragon with another user's dragon.

@Snek Having a full time job and other real life commitments where I cannot spend all day grinding for treasure to be able to expand my lair is not a "problem I create for myself", thanks. People want to feel rewarded for putting time into this game and right now treasure earnings are a pittance without extreme dedication to extremely repetitive site tasks that we literally do not have the time of day for. It is hard to return to this game because you hit a wall where you do not earn as much as it costs to play.

I get the issues with keywords. I like the idea of it being easier to find things that fit specific themes, but there ARE a lot of logical issues involved.

I also do not in any way understand the logic behind "you are supposed to exalt dragons" while simultaneously refusing to up the payout for doing so. The dragon sales forums and auction house are filled to bursting with dragons destined to be exalted but nobody wants to actually exalt them because you get pennies for them, making the entire endeavor of breeding them feel like a waste of time if you can't sell them. The whole point of my section about exalting was to make exalting more appealing so that people do not feel like they get nothing in return for what we are "supposed" to be doing with the dragons to begin with.

@Twizz The lair expansions, which are prohibitively expensive for casual players dealing with a daily treasure earning cap and trying to sell low value item drops, ARE the treasure sink. Genes are a treasure sink, especially gem genes. Skins are a treasure sink. Even more treasure sinks can still be implemented after that. The entire issue is that there are a ton of sinks in this game, now more than ever, and yet treasure earnings are relatively the same as they've always been. You're also reading a lot of things into the Hiatus feature that I sure didn't say. All it means is closing the storefront so dead stores don't fill up the listings. Your dragons would still be considered to be in your lair and still in need of food.

@Jemadar I'm genuinely curious as to how site-integrated pinglists would work without integrating hatcheries as well. What would that look like as a feature? And to be frank you are being rude about the rebranding thing lol, I added that simply as a suggestion if the devs are hesitant about in-game hatcheries because it poses some overall conflict with the lore they are trying to establish. I do not actually personally care and am fully aware that dragons are not real.

In addition to what @Ogerpon said, I understand the worry about the economy. I don't know how to prevent the gem ratio -- which is, mind you, user-established -- from skyrocketing. However at this point it is easy to completely hit a wall and be unable to make enough to be able to actually buy the genes and other items that are continually implemented, or the dragons that are bred, because methods of earning treasure have remained rather limited (with common items selling for EXTREMELY little) for the site's existence while those item and feature pools have expanded.

@eeep Yesss I'd love to be able to "stud" dragons. I'm not really sure the best way to implement that without being confusing or abusable (eg. random people spamming you with breeding requests), but I think a lot of people would find that very helpful.

Again, the thing about the economy is that, while yeah, it may seem like a pittance, believe me, even if you could make 100,000 gold from exalting one dragon, it would still feel like a pittance after a couple of months, because *everyone* could make that amount of money from exalting dragons.

Thus it would raise the prices for anything else that isn't directly to the site and buying from the MP would be an even larger issue than it is now, because anything worth anything would be immediately bought out and resold for much higher.

Thus, you would still hit that wall, no matter how many zeros there were on the amount of treasure needed.

Because, again, everyone would be able to cash in on the methods. If you can only exalt three dragons every day, you now have 300,000 treasure. But, that person who can exalt 100 dragons every day now has 10,000,000 treasure.

Then the prices of everything raises to match that new 'normal'. Dragons, even fodder ones, would start being priced at 100,000 treasure, because that is the bare minimum you get from them. Any below it would be like any below fodder price now, immediately bought and usually exalted.

I understand that it can be hard to make money. I am only doing dailies and bonding with familiars. It can be slow going. But, again, I don't really want to play another site with a messed up economy, because I have played others, and it is not fun. *Especially* for a new player/returning player.

@Jemadar Exalting a dragon for 100kt IS too much. The rewards should be more than they are now, but not to that degree. I guess there could also be small other rewards, like a couple of food items, to make the exaltation not feel completely useless. There's no way there isn't a middle point between "exalting feels unrewarding and useless outside of coordinated dom pushes, nobody wants to exalt and they spend too much time trying to sell dragons nobody wants because of it" and "ruins the entire economy instantly". I definitely get your reservations based on what happened with other petsites, but to be frank... I think Flight Rising is run more competently than most other petsites, and that the devs have room to add other features that can balance things a little better, whether that's additional treasure sinks, improvements to the Marketplace, or whatever.