I'm echoing what everyone has said here already, unfortunately. I
completely empathize with the feeling of disappointment of having a dragon you worked hard for and/or loved deeply be exalted, especially within the day of being bought. That's happened
many times to me before. And I think it's really admirable that you want to try and have dragons find loving forever homes! (/gen)
I just don't think it's possible for the site. We're nearing dragon #90000000 now, and even having just a 10th of active users listing their dragons with criteria of any kind could create a humongous amount of backlog in dragons.
It can be hard selling dragons above fodder price, even if it's just 15kt. It can even be difficult to sell dragons at fodder price when dom-pushes are low. I see dragons in the giveaway forums going unclaimed for weeks because the common consensus is that you take those dragons in good faith (i.e without the intention to exalt). I can only imagine how hard it would be to sell dragons with exalt-criteria attached to them.
And say someone buys one of these criteria-bound dragons. If this person no longer wants the dragon and wants to get rid of it, they're now either stuck selling it for lower in hopes of it selling quickly, or (assuming the new owner can edit/remove criteria) they would relist the dragon for fodder price, effectively negating the purpose of criteria as a whole.
If that leveling criteria was implemented, especially the level 4 one, these criteria-bound dragons (who will be selling at much lower prices than fodder for reasons like the one mentioned above) would just be seen as cheap and easy fodder. That would also negate the use of criteria and also sort of bring incentive to exalt these dragons even
more.
I think by
far the best and only remedy to this problem would be to do what Almedha mentioned.
Almedha wrote on 2023-10-14 13:04:57:
... A similar affect is achieved by pricing dragons for, say, 50kt on the AH and then just waiting for them to sell for however long it takes. Dragons at this pricepoint are rarely purchased with the intent of exalting...
While it's not a 100% guarantee that high prices will prevent exalting (I've had hatchlings from an old pair get exalted despite selling at 150kt each), It's absolutely the best method to prevent immediate exalting. It's the idea of "I'd be ok with a dragon running the risk of being exalted so long as I get x amount of treasure/gems for them." That's already criteria, and one that you can change the "intensity" of by raising or lowering price!
I had quite a few dragons I hoped to sell to forever homes, so I set them at high prices (100g+) in hopes they'd be bought. It took
months, but eventually a good bit of them sold! The majority of them last I checked are doing great and are very well loved! Though I had more than 1 exalted a week or so after being bought. I'll miss them, but that's just something I ran the risk of by not keeping them.
And I can attest to this strategy working on the buyer's end as well! Many of my permas (not g1s, random g2+s) were bought at very high prices (upwards of 600g for one) because I loved them and was willing to pay the price for them. None of those dragons have been exalted and I don't intend on doing that.
It's sort of a situation where you can either:
- List a dragon for cheap and sell it quickly - Higher likelihood of that dragon being exalted.
- List a dragon at a bigger cost - Less likelihood of that dragon being exalted.
Again, I really can understand the viewpoint of someone trying to ensure dragons they love find a new home that may take care of them. Having those dragons be exalted not even a few hours after being bought is very disheartening. But the site just can't handle this. Exalting is a
vital part of the game, and FR lore wise it's a pretty good gig for dragons to end up in!
edited to clean up funky grammar and clear my points a little better