Dragcave metaish stuff
Sep. 25th, 2009 01:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelI had sort of half known about DC before I joined, vaguely, and I have no idea what it is that got me to join. Most virtual pet sites, particularly click-to-grow ones, I don't end up with the patience for. But anyway, I ended up getting kind of somewhat addicted. Obviously.
And for a while it was all just about the ooh-shiny. About finding cool eggs, and discovering what they hatched into, and being all a-squee over them regardless of anything else. (Well. I still take exception to the balloon dragon [which was one of my first four], but that's just me.)
But then things changed. I looked for, and found, egg guides, that showed pictures of egg/hatchling/adult stages, which was a mixed blessing, because it meant that I could aim for the ones I wanted, but also took some of the mystery out of it.
And then I got more into it, and ... okay, you know how you pick up something (like, say, knitting) as a hobby, and you're fine with craft-store-quality needles and cheap acrylic yarn, and then you start learning more and obsessing more and all of a sudden you're buying the expensive but Proper[tm] yarn and a full set of hand-carved bamboo needles and a swift and ball-winder; and you've promised socks to a bunch of people and you have to finish up the baby blanket before the baby graduates college, so you can't just work on whatever you feel like; and it starts getting more restrictive than fun?
That kind of happened here too.
It got especially bad when I went from being more or less solo to being involved in the community; the forums are another of those mixed blessings. As are the things I learned about -- lineages, and breeding, and rarity, and trading, and all that.
I didn't care, when I started, what the source of my eggs was. Whether they were bred eggs that had been abandoned, or whether they were caveborn. I didn't care whether they were popular overall, or common, or whatever. I just cared about Teh Pretty.
But now my view is skewed by popularity. Some of the dragons I found pretty (magi, purples, frills) are considered common and therefore "low-value", which means I'm not as likely to go for them any more. (Not as "undesirable" as pinks and mints, but still not as "valuable" as other dragons.)
And there's also the trading factor. You can trade with other players, and there's an informal currency based on how "valuable" the dragon is. Being CB tends to raise the value of a particular egg/hatchling, especially for rare drops (gold, silver, even black); being of a popular lineage can raise the value; being inbred (where, for example, A and B are bred to produce C, and A and C are bred to produce D) lowers the value, even though inbreeding has no actual effect on the dragon itself) drops the value. There's a general exchange rate of what people will trade for what: I have a stripe with CB parents and a CB summer, will give 1:1 for sun dragons, 2:1 for a gold or whatever.
...which means that even though I don't like the gold quite as much as others, I'm still happy about having one just for trade leverage (if it is ever willing to breed).
And lineages have been a mixed bag, because it's given me Dorkfaces (I am so in love with DFs, it's insane) and it's given me breeding projects, but it's also meant that I want CB for most things, except for Dorkfaces (or sometimes short-lineaged eggs), and some breeds can be hard-to-impossible to find in the cave. Metallics, obviously, but I almost never see blacks or stripes.
(there's a mechanism in the coding that tries to balance out breed ratios, which means not just that common dragons drop more than rare ones, but that it depends on the ratios of existing dragons as compared to the ideal ratios [e.g. if it's supposed to be 30% pink dragons, but people are raising and keeping other sorts so that over all the scrolls it's only 10% pinks, the cave will drop a heck of a lot of pinks to try to get the ratio back in balance], which inevitably means that the commonest dragons appear way more often than wanted, and the rarer dragons, which people are trying to breed as well as catch, appear way less often.)
AND there's times when I look at someone's scroll and go "I could/should have done that." Like ones that are just one specific breed. Or ones that have one adult of each gender with a family of frozen hatchlings in between. (I actually wanted to do that with my whiptails once I got my original one a mate, but they refused each other, and it seems weird to have CB or other-parented hatchlings.) Or ones that have naming schemes. Or...
...
...I kind of wish I could go back to when it was just OMGPRETTY.
And for a while it was all just about the ooh-shiny. About finding cool eggs, and discovering what they hatched into, and being all a-squee over them regardless of anything else. (Well. I still take exception to the balloon dragon [which was one of my first four], but that's just me.)
But then things changed. I looked for, and found, egg guides, that showed pictures of egg/hatchling/adult stages, which was a mixed blessing, because it meant that I could aim for the ones I wanted, but also took some of the mystery out of it.
And then I got more into it, and ... okay, you know how you pick up something (like, say, knitting) as a hobby, and you're fine with craft-store-quality needles and cheap acrylic yarn, and then you start learning more and obsessing more and all of a sudden you're buying the expensive but Proper[tm] yarn and a full set of hand-carved bamboo needles and a swift and ball-winder; and you've promised socks to a bunch of people and you have to finish up the baby blanket before the baby graduates college, so you can't just work on whatever you feel like; and it starts getting more restrictive than fun?
That kind of happened here too.
It got especially bad when I went from being more or less solo to being involved in the community; the forums are another of those mixed blessings. As are the things I learned about -- lineages, and breeding, and rarity, and trading, and all that.
I didn't care, when I started, what the source of my eggs was. Whether they were bred eggs that had been abandoned, or whether they were caveborn. I didn't care whether they were popular overall, or common, or whatever. I just cared about Teh Pretty.
But now my view is skewed by popularity. Some of the dragons I found pretty (magi, purples, frills) are considered common and therefore "low-value", which means I'm not as likely to go for them any more. (Not as "undesirable" as pinks and mints, but still not as "valuable" as other dragons.)
And there's also the trading factor. You can trade with other players, and there's an informal currency based on how "valuable" the dragon is. Being CB tends to raise the value of a particular egg/hatchling, especially for rare drops (gold, silver, even black); being of a popular lineage can raise the value; being inbred (where, for example, A and B are bred to produce C, and A and C are bred to produce D) lowers the value, even though inbreeding has no actual effect on the dragon itself) drops the value. There's a general exchange rate of what people will trade for what: I have a stripe with CB parents and a CB summer, will give 1:1 for sun dragons, 2:1 for a gold or whatever.
...which means that even though I don't like the gold quite as much as others, I'm still happy about having one just for trade leverage (if it is ever willing to breed).
And lineages have been a mixed bag, because it's given me Dorkfaces (I am so in love with DFs, it's insane) and it's given me breeding projects, but it's also meant that I want CB for most things, except for Dorkfaces (or sometimes short-lineaged eggs), and some breeds can be hard-to-impossible to find in the cave. Metallics, obviously, but I almost never see blacks or stripes.
(there's a mechanism in the coding that tries to balance out breed ratios, which means not just that common dragons drop more than rare ones, but that it depends on the ratios of existing dragons as compared to the ideal ratios [e.g. if it's supposed to be 30% pink dragons, but people are raising and keeping other sorts so that over all the scrolls it's only 10% pinks, the cave will drop a heck of a lot of pinks to try to get the ratio back in balance], which inevitably means that the commonest dragons appear way more often than wanted, and the rarer dragons, which people are trying to breed as well as catch, appear way less often.)
AND there's times when I look at someone's scroll and go "I could/should have done that." Like ones that are just one specific breed. Or ones that have one adult of each gender with a family of frozen hatchlings in between. (I actually wanted to do that with my whiptails once I got my original one a mate, but they refused each other, and it seems weird to have CB or other-parented hatchlings.) Or ones that have naming schemes. Or...
...
...I kind of wish I could go back to when it was just OMGPRETTY.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 11:12 pm (UTC)So the balloon dragon you took exception to -- does that mean you didn't like it? Because I find mine kind of dopey and am not sure whether I want to keep him around. >_> (But then I'd feel bad for abandoning him and... I dunno!) But I'm trying to grab up pygmys and sea serpents, because they are SO CUTE I CAN'T STAND IT. Those two are definitely my favorites right now. :D
I am a little cross about my dragons not breeding. What's wrong with him?! Does his hoard smell bad or something?!?! C'mon, dragons, get with it!
no subject
Date: 2009-09-26 12:11 am (UTC)Pygmys are definitely ADORABLE. (I'm sad I had to freeze my one hatchling for a trade.) I need to get myself a mating pair >_> (along with a bunch of other dragons, heh.)
As to why they won't breed, dunno, but it amuses me. Kind of the opposite of that one Kalu-ak daily where you make a random pairing that turns into Twu Wuv.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 04:28 am (UTC)My Silver is the worst for not breeding! She has bred ONE TIME. Out of the dozens and dozens I've tried! She refuses every male I've got! They either "show no interest" or "refuse to go near each other". I've come to the conclusion that she's sterile, that first egg notwithstanding. :D
no subject
Date: 2009-09-26 05:54 am (UTC)(I hate balloons too.)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 04:25 am (UTC)I collect what I like the look of -- my almost random "thing" is having them all be female, started because my first four hatchlings all gendered that way and I thought it would be neat to have an all-female scroll. This turned into "and one of each, when the sprites are different and I like the look of both of them".
I don't care about the "famous" lineages, or inbreeding, or CB vs. bred; I only pay attention to those things when I'm considering trading something, so I can note in the offer "CB" or "clean lines " or whatever might entice someone else to want it. I do kinda like it when my bred eggs have parents with neat names. :D (One of mine has "I'm Blue - Da Ba Dee Da Ba Die" as its mother! Another is the child of "Lelagarious Darkqueen!") Oh, and it was nice when the recipient of my split egg named it along the same lines/"theme" of the parents.
I kind of want to have a scroll where all the dragons have Discworld swampdragon-style names ("Lord Mountjoy Talonthrust III of Ankh" etc.). Or maybe a scroll with totally outrageous random names (possibly also with random-name parents?). Or one with poetry lines used as names, like that awesome Robert Frost "Snowy Woods" set I saw. ...You get the idea. :D
(Hey, think you could breed me a red stripe egg? Or better yet, a female red stripe hatchling?) :D (I'd breed -- or attempt -- anything you like off my scroll!)
no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-08 01:45 am (UTC)Sorry; I didn't see the notification for this comment somehow! *smacks forehead* But if she's still available I'd LOVE to have her -- I even have free scrollspace right now! :D
no subject
Date: 2009-10-08 02:15 am (UTC)But I'm quite happy to breed you another one, once I finish a pending trade. Can give it to you as an egg if you have any female pinks to influence it, or I can influence it myself and keep it until it genders, though the second obviously has a smaller window of available transfer time. Whichever you'd prefer.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-08 08:04 pm (UTC)I just checked my pinks, and I'll be able to Influence again on the 11th, so an egg should be fine. Just let me know when! And thanks again!