Alende

beautifulglitter

"2019-09-15 21:10:56"
From https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/sug/2685458/28#post_40634694

((Forgive the monster post, but this is most of what I want to say about this whole thing))

As always, forever supporting increasing the ability for players to earn/work towards customizing their dragons as they see fit. Eye types could be super fun and actually matter; any of these brilliant options mentioned (Marketplace/Coli/Gathering/Swipp/Baldwin/New NPC/Transferring/etc) would be fantastic, and they're all really well thought out, and I'd honestly be thrilled to see any combination of them implemented. There are no concerns that this would "ruin the market for x eyes", because there's not really a market to begin with; eye types don't matter as is- at most, they may add a couple gems to an already nice dragon's price.

As-is, the eye type mechanic isn't fun. It isn't exciting. It isn't a reward; it isn't special. It isn't earned, or something you can work towards. So what is it? To understand, let's look at an example from the dragon search forum.

On my handful of visits to the Find a Dragon forum, I've found threads where someone, usually a newbie, is looking for a specific Primal/Multi dragon. A good number of these people designed these dragons right after or even before they even joined the site; when I see FR being recommended on other petsites, the link to the Scrying Workshop, not the home page, is usually what is shared. These poor souls post their "Dream Dragon", many times a stunning Primal in a color combo that has no business being as rare as it is. At first, they bump their thread naively looking to buy it outright with what little cash they have; eventually they switch towards looking for pairs; then they may start looking for pairs that could create pairs; eventually, they just give up and accept they may very well never achieve their dream. It's disappointing and discouraging to see- and that's exactly what the current eye type mechanic is. Which is a shame, because it has the potential to be so cool with any of the proposed fixes!



In regards to previous discussions, just a couple things I want to point out:


Quote:
I think the FR team knew exactly what they were doing when they implemented this system. I believe it's working as intended - to give new, poor players the same exact odds of getting something special or unique as players who have the cash and resources to throw at a breeding project.
-snip-

Although staff themselves have offered this as a reasoning for the eye type mechanic as is, it is also blatantly incorrect reasoning. Newer players are at a distinct disadvantage to older players, as they have neither the nest or lair space to accommodate the continuous hatching getting a "special" eye requires, not even to mention that they are not likely to have many nicely matching pairs- a hideous fodder dragon with Primal/Multi is still nothing more than a hideous fodder dragon. Newer players (or just those who choose to keep their lair small) are at a large disadvantage, because hatching special eyes is solely a numbers game (as I'm about to demonstrate).



I'd also like to point out that the "12 years to hatch a Primal Imp of a specific gender" math is also technically incorrect; if only the odds were that good! :')

For those that want to see the math:
First, let's lay down the odds of hatching Imps, and see how many we can hatch in a given time frame to determine the optimal pairing. For simplicity's sake, decimals are rounded off after 4 places. Sources for statistics given where appropriate.

Clutch size for 2 dragons of same breed:X

4 eggs (12%)
3 eggs (40%)
2 eggs (38%)
1 egg (10%)

Average eggs per clutch: 2.54

Clutch size for 2 dragons of different breeds:X

5 eggs (5%)
4 eggs (10%)
3 eggs (45%)
2 eggs (30%)
1 egg (10%)

Average eggs per clutch: 2.7

Odds of any hatchling being an Imp in an Impx(WC/Coatl) pair: 0.97X
Average number of Imp hatchlings in an Impx(WC/Coatl) pair: 2.619

Imperial breeding cooldown: 30 daysX
WC/Coatl breeding cooldown: 35 daysX

Days in a year (post 2000): 365.25X (as we are just past 2000, I've decided to exclude the slight change the millennium rule has on leap years)

ImpxImp pair:
Number of nests per year: 12.175
Imp hatchlings per year: 30.9245

Impx(WC/Coatl) pair:
Number of nests per year: 10.4357
Imp hatchlings per year: 27.3311

->CONCLUSION: ImpxImp pairs are more efficient at cranking out Imp babies. This more favorable pairing is what will be used for the rest of the calculations.
Now on to calculating the odds of hatching a Primal! For this, we are only interested in the odds of the event occurring at least once (AKA the inverse of the probability of failure).

Odds of Primal: 0.0042X

Odds of at least 1 Primal in an average nest: 0.0106

For a 50% chance of success at hatching at least 1 Primal, you need:
164.6882 hatchlings
64.8379 nests
5.3255 years (5 years and 118.8865 days)

For a 75% chance of success, you need:
329.3765 hatchlings
129.6758 nests
10.6510 years (10 years and 237.7731 days)

For a 90% chance of success, you need:
547.0824 hatchlings
215.3868 nests
17.6909 years (17 years and 252.3537 days)

For a 99% chance of success ("certainty"), you need:
1094.1649 hatchlings
430.7736 nests
35.3818 years (35 years and 139.4574 days)

Keep in mind that even that long does not guarantee you a Primal; you could theoretically keep breeding/scattering for an infinite amount of time with no success (though you'd have to be quite unlucky), and there's nothing you can do to improve your base chances. And that's only if you don't care about gender. But what if you do?

To breed a Primal Imp of a particular gender:
50% chance of success:
329.7234 hatchlings
129.8124 nests
10.1814 years (10 years and 66.2423 days)

75% chance of success:
659.4468 hatchlings
259.6247 nests
21.3244 years (21 years and 118.4915 days)

90% chance of success:
1095.3174 hatchlings
431.2273 nests
35.4191 years (35 years and 153.0696 days)

99% chance of success ("certainty"):
2190.6348 hatchlings
862.4546 nests
70.8382 years (70 years and 306.1393 days)

Note: these times can be shortened some if you have multiple pairs of unrelated dragons of the exact same color, that can be loaded onto nests non-stop. (For best results, you would need to dedicate enough lair spots to accommodate 30 pairs of unrelated Imps, so you can hatch 1 nest a day)
If you were to hatch 1 nest a day and wanted a Primal Imp of a particular gender, it would take you 2.3613 years to have a 99% chance ("certainty") of success. However, this does not factor in the time to obtain 30 unrelated pairs of the exact color combo you want as well as the time it takes to expand the lair to hold all 60 breeders; assuming you are going for a relatively uncommon combo, it can take years to develop that many pairs alone.
#Ididthemath

With all that being said, the current eye type system is objectively, mathematically flawed, and I don't really think there's any room for debate on that (unless you want to argue that you shouldn't want/try to get a particular eye type, in which case... why do they even exist?).