Suggestions

Having been an ancient lair for a good while, here are my thinky thoughts: To some extent it makes mechanical sense that keeping a large lair fully fed is a luxury, since even having a large lair requires that you unlock the slots for it, and that doesn't come cheap. I suppose it's also the case that if every lair could fully support itself via gathering turns, there would likely be no real market for the food that drops in the coliseum. There's also this view: [quote name="Corviknight" date="2023-06-22 17:38:28" ] I don't keep my dragons fed because the well-fed bonus are just that, a bonus.[/quote] ...but whether something is actually a bonus, or just the baseline state (with its absence being a penalty) comes down to how the game was balanced, and how it feels. [i]Was[/i] FR truly designed to be played with unfed dragons? Only the devs could really answer that one. I personally view it as a penalty system, owing to things like how the food meter uses warning/danger colours as it empties, and one of the "perks" being 15% coli exp. It [i]feels[/i] like a penalty to me. This is also because I'm familiar with the history of "rested exp" systems in MMOs and the importance of framing ([url=https://www.psychologyofgames.com/2010/03/framing-and-world-of-warcrafts-rest-system/]short but enlightening read here![/url]). (tl;dr: whether something in a game is a penalty or a lack-of-bonus is straight up just a matter of how you make the player feel about it) - Fully agree with the criticisms of food gathering that have already been raised, but I have an additional one: It makes absolutely zero sense that you can send out 150 dragons to find food and have them come back with a single bee. None. Zilch. I shouldn't be pulling in the same amount of food when I've got five dragons in the lair as another player does when they have over a hundred. To some extent, the amount of food you find should scale with how many dragons are out looking for it. Max lair size has gone up quite a bit over the years. I don't know how much food gathering yields have gone up in the same timeframe as that's a much more complex thing, but it's definitely not kept pace. - Personally I got so sick of the hunger mechanic and its massive food requirements for larger lairs that I threw the vast majority of my dragons into the den, more or less stopped breeding them, and often let the few outside go hungry until I need them to fight. It's not ideal, but it is an option. It's kind of freeing, in a weird way.

[quote name="Crowbar" date="2023-06-22 21:02:15" ] I used to keep an active, fed lair of about 70 dragons and never found it difficult to keep them all fed with gathering alone, 85 doesnt sound unreasonable at all. I usually always had an excess of food - hell I could get my current lair fed easily I'm just not that particularly interested in the game anymore. I do think gathering needs to be tweaked though (assuming it hasn't) so you pull more food points as you level the skill. It makes sense that higher levels would be more easily able to support larger lairs. maybe gem foods that give 1000 points per or something. I gotta say no support, otherwise it feels asking for the mechanic to be removed. It's not mandatory to fill all 100s of lair slots, and you can selectively feed the dragons you want to use for features such as breeding and coli. And if you do those other things, you can buy food to fill the gap between gathering and needs. [/quote] No support for these reasons. This is practically asking for the mechanic to be removed, and AH food is already pretty inexpensive.

I have a fully upgraded lair, and for a very long while there had only a dozen or so empty spaces, and have always had a large excess of food. I don't do dedicated fodder grinding, and I don't use my gathering turns for food items unless there's a specific item I need (these darn black tulips...), so basically all of my food comes from festival grinds. I definitely support rebalancing gathering turns, but I feel like it's really not hard at all to keep your lair fed if you are at all active so it has to be carefully done.

Now for my two cents, I actually quite like the food mechanic as a concept but find it far too easy. It is such a nothing mechanic because it's already so stupidly easy to keep a lair fed I quite literally spend zero effort in doing so. I haven't worked for a single ounce of my food, it's all been an afterthought from other activities I do. I feel like it just doesn't accommodate very many playstyles, so while some players find it unfun because it's too much of a challenge, some find it unfun because it has zero bearing on their gameplay experience.

This is an extremely non-in-depth idea so take it with like 50 grains of salt, but what if there was some sort of "hard mode" option where your dragons get hungrier much faster but you get more daily rewards from it? That would allow people who have too much to do something with it, those who want more challenge to have more challenge, and those who want it to be easier to have it easier. I welcome anyone to expand upon this extremely shallow idea.

[quote name="Niceless" date="2023-06-24 15:08:47" ] This is an extremely non-in-depth idea so take it with like 50 grains of salt, but what if there was some sort of "hard mode" option where your dragons get hungrier much faster but you get more daily rewards from it? That would allow people who have too much to do something with it, those who want more challenge to have more challenge, and those who want it to be easier to have it easier. I welcome anyone to expand upon this extremely shallow idea. [/quote] Honestly sure. The treasure reward for feeding dragons is pennies and the gathering turns are necessary to keep feeding them so not much of a reward there. 365 gems a year is about the only 'reward' feeling part of the current feeding mechanic. and for those who want to go on about how 365 gems is a lot of money well lets do math... a stack of 4pt food (and 3pt but lets go with this one) is roughly 16g 365g / 16g = 22.8 but lets round up to 23. 365g will earn you 23 stacks of 4pt food. single food stack amount: 4 x 99 = 396 food points per stack 396 food points x 23 stacks = 9,108 food points If you have 100 dragons you will need to pay 300 food points in a day. If you have 200 dragons (215 is the current limit) you will need 600 food points in a day. So how much is the 365g 'reward' worth? 100 dragons - 9,108/300 = 30.3 days 200 dragons - 9,108/600 = 15.18 days Not even slightly close to breaking even. laughably far really. Feeding is the [u][b]only[/b][/u] consistent never ending thing you are [u][b]required[/b][/u] to do on this site before you lose the ability to do some site functions. Exactly why does everyone call this a bonus????????????? If my dragons aren't fed I can't do anything I actually enjoy on this site. You can keep going with starving dragons? Good for you, i don't care. I can't. - Let me trade lair space for hibden space . 100 spaces traded. Easy. done - toss out these 'rewards' if it means I only need to feed dragons once a day - let me have a baldwin/cook things/garden where I can grow food stores instead of fight to break even - straight up make higher point food items in higher lvl gathering drop and drop at higher rates.

the well-fed bonus is a bonus, as others have said, and you can selectively feed the dragons you want to use for coli & breeding. do you really use all of your dragons in the hunger-locked features?

I agree that gathering needs an overhaul. It needs to actually have functioning leveling. Increasing the pool of items you can draw kinda feels like the opposite. That said, I think I'd support removing the fed requirement for breeding, or changing it somehow. I don't particularly like the idea of making the game's core mechanic unusable for... feeding. You can feed individual dragons to be able to coli with them. I don't think there's anything else feeding affects except for the 80+ bonus? Is it? I don't remember. The site overview is particularly unhelpful. [quote=Site Overview]In order to participate in several site features (breeding, combat, etc.), dragons must have enough energy.[/quote] Breeding, combat, and...? What else?? Feeding is a requirement to apparently play the game so this is important information. But anyways. [quote]1.) Increased frequency of site-wide gathering and hunger replenishing events.[/quote] Sure? I don't think this will help too much. I'd be more for increasing the duration of things like Prowl or whatever. [quote]2.) Increase the threshold of daily gathering from the present amounts[/quote] I'd rather increase the amount of things gathered per turn. That way your leveling up in food gathering could more reasonably keep pace with the amount of dragons if you start out at the beginning of the game, you know? [quote]3.) Outside of events, coliseum battles are the only other way to earn food aside from gathering and alchemy, both of which lack player interaction (aside from clicking a button and waiting for a while) and are dependent on the passage of time to make advancement.[/quote] I think it would make a ton of sense if there were a way to queue [i]brewing[/i] at Baldwin, as right now that is our "cooking" mechanic. It's silly to have to take 40 minutes to brew 40 food points, and then go back and do it again. For 40 food points. It's just really very irritating and feels bad. [quote]4.) Food items with higher points.[/quote] Yeah, why not. Bosses should always drop their high-value food items and there should be 10+ value foods that drop in gathering at high levels as well. I want to see actual elephants as a food item with the relative number of food points. We are feeding 10-ton dragons, here. Not that I want the amount they consume to be relative to that. Anyway, yeah, higher point items. [quote]5.) Calculate average total of food points gathered per day in each food category based on lair size (and corresponding gathering allotment) then and tweak numbers (Amount of food items received or points per food item) to be able to recover a diverse* lair from 0% after playing consistently for 5-7 days**[/quote] I'm not sure about this one. No strong feelings about how long it would take to recover. [quote]6.) Introduce special "food" items that replenish the hunger of one or all dragons:[/quote] This seems like a real neat specialty item. But I think it would be ultimately unneeded if other adjustments were made.

[quote name="bbirder" date="2023-06-24 20:01:34" ] the well-fed bonus is a bonus, as others have said, and you can selectively feed the dragons you want to use for coli & breeding. do you really use all of your dragons in the hunger-locked features? [/quote] So glad you asked. I have 15~ permas in my lair. Some coli dragons, some dragons i actually like so i don't look at breeding pairs i don't care about every time i look at my lair. Currently i have 32 pairs, that's 64 dragons, that i will nest in a rotating schedule. Most are WC/Coatls so they are only up once a month anyway. That amount increases/decreases depending on projects (i loathe empty nests). I have 1 sales dragon right now (can range up to 10~), people tend to not to want to buy a starving dragon. If i start a new project/oops, i can have anywhere from 1-20~ dragons just sitting waiting hibden cooldown off (going to be stored so i don't need to feed them until i can use them for breeding). 15-40 dragons are newly hatched dragons that i need to sort and decide if i'm keeping (going to be used for breeding) or sold as fodder once they reach adulthood. Again, people tend to not want to buy starving dragons. I typically only check hatchlings once a week/every other week cuz, this may shock you, some of us have rl jobs and not the time to spend hours on dragon game every week. Who prefer highly passive gameplay like baldwin or arlo or nesting.

No support. If you can't get food from coli then buying it off the AH isn't that expensive, it just takes playing the mini games.

Selectively feeding your coli dragons and then using them to earn food in the coli is a great way to restore your food stock.

I do agree that Gathering needs revamping, my hope is that is going to come in the next year or two.

Thought of something like this before.

Would love a gathering rewamp, (gathering but it's gathering) no limited turns and you send up to 3 dragons to a coli venue mainly fetching food. Pretty much coli lite


Have it work like baldwin having it on a timer and get a chance for fest currency and other more common coli drops. If you only can log in 1min a day you can still get food and get a chance for useful items and fest currency

Selective gathering runs between 30min-6h

Longer runs give more items and slightly higher chance for rarer drops

Cons:

1. Coli is locked until the team has finished gathering
2. Limited amount of different items can be gathered at once
3. No exp gain (for the sake of simplicity)

Pros:

1. Players who have irl reasons(lacking in time or physical cause) making them unable to do coli can still get food, hibden items and fest currency.
2. Active players can't use it to gain extra drops in coli by having a team running while training/farming



Not every one can do fairgrounds due to joint issues, eye sight, color blindness, sensory problems and the payout is pretty low and not really worth the effort.