Suggestions

Yes, another eye topic. I am sorry.

As someone who is pretty content with the eye mechanic I should probably pull my hands away from the debate but the truth is that I want to see people happy and honestly I think things can be improved to achieve this in a way that doesn't provoke another uproar and that doesn't require a complete re-work of the feature because realistically that isn't likely to happen.

Similar methods have been suggested here but what I feel they all have in common is the possibility to abuse the new system in ways that would pull away from the breeding-only and RNG approach that was intended in the first place. They would in general please people but I personally believe that good looking primals and multi-gazes should remain a hard to achieve goal that is different to traditional geneing.

I intend to stray away from the idea of eye-vials and instead take an approach similar to the flight-change mechanic, which as we all know has a cooldown and price that are implemented to prevent it from being spammed making the choice of changing elements a more relevant one.

What if a similar feature allowed you to transfer the natural eye-type of a dragon in your lair to another? No item generated in-between that would turn this into Unnatural eyes 2.0.

The cooldown and price of such an action would vary proportionally to the rarity of the eye-type one wishes to transfer, so uncommon and unusual would have lower cooldowns and prices than primal and multi-gaze.

Prices and Cooldowns:
(these estimates are just for the sake of helping people envision the mechanic and are subject to change, I am just too tired rn to make the math for these to represent the actual hatching odds)

Uncommon - 100 gems/1 month
Unusual - 150 gems/2 months
Rare - 200 gems/3 months
Goat - 500 gems/6 months
Faceted - 500 gems/6 months
Primal - 1000 gems/9 months
Multi-Gaze - 1000 gems/9 months

What is the point of a cooldown?
This would basically be a buffer to prevent players from mass-purchasing (insert eye-type here) to build a fancy eyed lair in a single day. This could also help give some stability to the market, avoiding sudden drops and rises in eye-type prices due to a drastic rise of demand and a sudden death once most eye-goals are achieved (I enjoy chaos but not THAT much chaos).

Why pay when you already beat the RNG odds?
Because this gives the player the option to either aim to get the eyes for free via planned nest spamming/egg hatching or just save those fodder primals to give their special dragon their cool eyes without provoking a massive sense of unfairness between both methods. Much like how some players would rather do massive egg hatches instead of saving up for the already available doubles and triples in the AH. The choice is YOURS.

How will this affect the dragon Market?
This is just personal speculation but I do believe this has the potential to lift the market as typical ugly dragons would earn an added purpose other than being fodder or scatter material if they happen to hatch with cool eyes. Lairs in the process of revamping their old permas would start sniping low-priced dragons with their desired eye-type creating some competition with the Dominance purchases, rising demand and pushing the prices up.

You can never know if your fodder goat is the ticket to someone's dream derg so better aim a lil higher.

And the Lore?
The canon is pretty vague but the general idea about natural eyes is that they resulted from the sudden and violent rise in elemental/magical activity in Sornieth, so every hatchling born from that point onward had a chance to be affected by these magical energies and manifest unique peepers when born.
With this concept to work with the idea of dragons just dropping their special eyes in the form of a vial when they are exhalted is a bit weird, but a transfer? Willing or unwilling (yass for dark themes 7u7) could make sense for those oldies for which you really want to get that primal/multi/whatever. They weren't born during or after this large-scale event but if they take the essence of someone who did it is kinda realistic for them to develop the same mutations.
The cooldown and price only add to this sense of an important exchange. Those old (but pretty) dergs in your lair won't go stealing every cool eyed dragon's essence they find as if they were browsing through a cosmetic store, they would need planning and resources to get it done.

Gem sink:
GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK! GEM SINK!
...Yeah, we all love a good ol money sink to save FR from economical enthropy.

Details and balancing
By now you should have already noticed that I don't want to get rid of the old mechanic but rather just add something that makes the whole thing a touch less frustrating and inclusive (#OldDragonEyesMatter). If you just can't get behind a system that is this hard, unpredictable or you just believe that breeding shouldn't have more than one type of system involved... well that is fair and there are several other topics that likely cater more to your tastes which you can go an support instead, no hard feelings.

If you kinda get what I am trying to do here we can move on to the minutia one such system would need to keep things fair and cohesive with the already implemented eye system.

• Generations - Given how different G1 and G2+ acquisition methods are it would only be natural for both generations to be treated differently. Either transferring an eye-type to a G1 costs substantially more gems or we make it so G1s can only get eyes from other G1s.
  
• Elements - Plague primal and Light primal aren't the same, so they shouldn't be exchangeable. Some primals are much more coveted and in turn more expensive than others, so how about every eye type is exchangeable only between dragons of the same element. That way your hunt for those "ugly" special eye-types is a bit more challenging. A bonus here would be to include the ever popular suggestion about adding a way to change the elemental allegiance of a dragon. Perhaps this system includes that option with the highest price and cooldown for dragons with common eyes exclusively, then the dragon can have other eyes be transferred to it from its new element normally.
  
• Clanbound dragons - This is either a hit or miss suggestion and I myself am not 100% sold on it but I feel like it is worth discussing. Even with a cooldown and a gem price to pay it is possible for someone to somehow get a triple or a double G1, make the investment to transfer primal to it and make a massive profit out of selling it, which again makes the goal of actually hatching or scattering one such dragon pretty pointless.
  A drastic meassure to counteract this would be to make it so dragons that got transferred eyes become clandbound, so once you did the do that fella is stuck in your Clan forever like a progen (unless you exhalt it of course). Again, this is meant to make this feature all about customization instead of an abusable profit tool.
  A less extreme option would be to put a default cooldown on dragons that got new eyes so that they can't be listed in the AH or exchanged via CR for a certain ammount of time after getting their makeover. This wouldn't entirely eliminate eye-rotation from happening for profit but it would further hinder it.

ALTERNATIVES
+Seeing as gems are often viewed as direct link to someone's rl purse (tho you can always exchange treasure for gems in those fancy player-run banks) the prices could be converted to treasure instead with the standard 1 to 100 ratio.

+In order to eliminate the cooldown which hasn't been well-received in general the system could be changed so that you can only transfer eyes between dragons that you have hatched yourself. This would force every player to beat the RNG odds but it will mean that you don't have to conform with whatever dragon randomly got the special eye. The downside to this would be that the demand of the dragon market would remain virtually untouched while the prices of pretty special-eyes will still be likely to decline.
Given that you will still have to wait for months to get all the eyes you want because an unlucky streak can mean that you go up to a year without seeing your desired primal the cooldowns for the rarer eye types are close to equal to this default waiting time but without the added benefit of being able to just purchase someone else's lucky hatch. This would hit Lairs that don't really like to do breeding quite hard so keep this in mind.
Upon reviewing this and getting more feedback it should be possible to eliminate the cooldowns without restricting the transfer to dragons only hatched by the player via a tag that differentiates between hatched eye-types and applied ones.

That is pretty much what I have for now. I'd love to hear your opinions about this and also answer any questions that may arise because of my tendency to ramble and my bad english.
Any kind of suggestion to fix my suggestion (suggestion-ception) is welcome but as always I ask everyone to keep things nice and non-personal. This is an open debate and we all are FR enthusiasts here. My opinions are just that and I will never claim to hold the ultimate truth about anything.

Edit log:
~The clanbound idea was discarded as this system's goal is to make the eye mechanic less restrictive to certain playstyles and a clanbound or extra-cooldown addition is basically a restriction for people who are more profit-oriented. I believe the initial cooldown and the G1 to G1 rules would be deterrent enough to keep super-rare matchy primal G1s from from popping up too quickly.

~Added Alternatives for the aspects that other users have brought up as potential problems with the system.

~After some feedback I have decided that cooldowns are likely too punishing as a whole. ALternative balancing measures are being considered.

I forgot to mention the small detail which is. What happens to the donator of the eyes?

Honestly I am not sure which would be best. For a donator's eyes to just turn to common after the exchange or for it to be exhalted kind of like it has been suggested for the eye vial alternative~

In general I think this suggestion is probably unnecessarily complex, in that I don't see a need to make the tints costly or have a cooldown, and in general it seems like these cooldowns are a bit too long for my taste. I also don't think I like the idea of staff implementing a fix for natural eyes after three years that costs gems, it just feels vaguely predatory given everything that's been discussed among the playerbase since. I don't think I can articulate it better than that, sorry. I definitely do not support anything that makes a dragon clanbound, and in general I don't like the idea that the G1 niche should be this limiting to what the rest of us can do with our dragons. A short cooldown could be okay I guess, but even then it feels unnecessary. You say it'd stop flipping, but it... wouldn't? "I'm auctioning this G1, it comes with a free included fodder dragon with Multigaze for you to put on it," problem solved. Sorry :/

[quote name="BlueJaysFeather" date="2021-03-06 22:32:52" ] I definitely do not support anything that makes a dragon clanbound, and in general I don't like the idea that the G1 niche should be this limiting to what the rest of us can do with our dragons. A short cooldown could be okay I guess, but even then it feels unnecessary. You say it'd stop flipping, but it... wouldn't? "I'm auctioning this G1, it comes with a free included fodder dragon with Multigaze for you to put on it," problem solved. Sorry :/ [/quote] Yeah, I was particularly iffy about that whole deal but while I discussed it with a rl FR player friend it was mentioned that it may be a viable option... however I guess that like any system if something like this came to be it should also be inclusive for all playstyles, so that particular idea may be completely discarded. In regards to the long cooldowns and gems it is again because of my (almost obsessive) need to make things fair to the already existing mechanic, tho shorter cooldowns and prices can totally happen since the prevailing need for someone to actually hatch the special eyes may balance out with those players who would rather forgo the hatching and invest in an existing dragon to transfer.

[quote name="BlueJaysFeather" date="2021-03-06 22:32:52" ] In general I think this suggestion is probably unnecessarily complex, in that I don't see a need to make the tints costly or have a cooldown, and in general it seems like these cooldowns are a bit too long for my taste. I also don't think I like the idea of staff implementing a fix for natural eyes after three years that costs gems, it just feels vaguely predatory given everything that's been discussed among the playerbase since. I don't think I can articulate it better than that, sorry. [/quote] ^This. This is not a personal attack on you, OP, so please don't take it the wrong way, but: no support. The staff needs to fix this, but they don't need to charge us an arm and a leg for it, that definitely feels predatory. Also those cooldowns are wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too long.

[quote name="JonSnOwO" date="2021-03-06 23:48:54" ] ^This. This is not a personal attack on you, OP, so please don't take it the wrong way, but: no support. The staff needs to fix this, but they don't need to charge us an arm and a leg for it, that definitely feels predatory. Also those cooldowns are wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too long. [/quote] It does read quite complex in paper but it is something like the different cooldowns on species breeding. It is a part of the system and the user doesn't really need to think about it unless they want to be extremely precise in their project planning. About the cooldowns and the prices these are all adjustable of course, but to me they are a must. Instant gratification is nice but it goes against the long-term goal approach of most breeding games. The player is in a sense cheating the RNG system by transfering the luck of a hatch from one dragon to another so once more the feature must be hard by itself. I must make it clear that my goal is to make this a fair way to make eyes more inclusive while also keeping the RNG/hard-goal essence of the whole thing. It can be compared to geneing investment-wise. The cheaper genes are around 200 gems in the AH while the gem market ones are around 1200 (not the ancient variants), in that regard the prices are well within what people is already willing to pay to customize a dragon. An alternative for this not to feel so "predatory" is to make the eye-transfer an unlockable feature like HD slots, or turn it into a treasure purchase like Lair expansions.

I would support this if it didn’t have a cooldown and possibly a treasure sink? We do need a treasure sink. If you think about it, some of the wealth can move to special eye fodders. Yeah, the market will probably change. The G1 primals, without these eyes, would be worth fodder most likely. The high prices may not be worth it if they don’t sell for a while. For G2+ with good colors, it would likely go down in prices, but they would be cheaper to buy for yourself rather than using them to transfer. This is just my predictions based on some posts I seen.

[quote name="DarkVixen" date="2021-03-07 09:12:16" ] I would support this if it didn’t have a cooldown and possibly a treasure sink? We do need a treasure sink. If you think about it, some of the wealth can move to special eye fodders. Yeah, the market will probably change. The G1 primals, without these eyes, would be worth fodder most likely. The high prices may not be worth it if they don’t sell for a while. For G2+ with good colors, it would likely go down in prices, but they would be cheaper to buy for yourself rather than using them to transfer. This is just my predictions based on some posts I seen. [/quote] Hmm the only way I think it would be possible for the system to work fairly while removing the cooldowns completely would be by making it so you can only transfer eyes from a dragon you hatched yourself, so you can't finish every single eye project you have by saving up and sniping all the cheap primals you find in the AH at once. You still have to beat the odds and pay for the added benefit of getting the special eye type in the dragon you actually wanted and the dragon market would remain at large untouched because you can't simply purchase someone else's lucky hatch, but you will not have to wait months to be able to customize your dear permas. The elemental restriction would still stand, making exchanges such as "I transfer your Light primal if you transfer my Plague primal" a viable new service(?) This would probably make Flight moves more common, which can be a good thing(?)

This is a genuine question and not an attack, but, why would it be so bad for people to be able to finish their projects? Someone hatched a primal, someone else bought it to transfer eyes, there's the same number of primals in the game. Restricting by element, especially for non-primal, seems unnecessary unless they plan to open it up to changing a dragon's flight via the eye transfer. Encouragement of unsanctioned dragon lending ("I transfer your Light primal if you transfer my Plague primal") is not something we need more of, and while I'm generally in favor of letting people move flights if they want, I'm not sure what actual site benefit it has, or what motivation this adds over the current need to move flights if you want any real chance of getting another flight's special eyes without, again, a whole lot of unsanctioned lending. I just feel like this suggestion would make for a begrudging "okay fine you can technically transfer eyes now (at a rate of 1.25/yr for primal and multi, and a whole 2/yr for goat and facet, for 1250g and 1000g total, respectively) so stop complaining" and there are a lot of options that aren't this restrictive. Like... any one of these restrictions could be okay if implemented right? But it feels like this is trying to throw them all in and that's a lot.
tl;dr if the choices for mechanisms (especially for OOF primals*) are 'buy/hatch primal->exalt (or 'exalt' bc I like the sanctum idea from the original thread by gema) primal->get vial->apply primal' or 'find primal of the same element->double check generation of primal->buy primal->pay the cost of a gem gene and go on nine month cooldown->exalt primal(?)->apply primal' I know which I want.
Again, this is not a personal attack, I just really don't think this is a version I can support over the other options.

*I'm using primal because it's the most commonly mentioned in these topics, personally my first goal if we got a way to use natural eyes would probably be Multi for one of my TMA fandergs

@/BlueJaysFeather

Totally valid point of view.

Honestly the only way I can explain why I am making this system so hard in general is because I am completely against re-working the eye update to be any easier. I am just trying to work around it in order to make it more inclusive without turning eye-types into gene projects 2.0.

The way I see it the natural eyes were meant to add another layer of complexity to all projects, an aspect that I don't want to lose. Instant gratification came in the form of unnatural eye-types as a compromise but Natural eyes are meant to be more special, RNG from start to end.

...However this doesn't excuse the fact that certain irreplaceable permas are excluded from the mechanic due to poor luck or hatch-date. So I am trying to give that choice without completely destroying the luck based essence of the whole thing. This would be an easy repair if scatter vials were re-implemented somehow but that suggestion has been refused pretty harshly so I am not going to beat that idea around anymore.

If the eye vials were implemented and you were able to get them from basically any dragon with those eyes without restriction what could be considered a lucky hatch (a dragon that is pretty and has good matchy and rare eyes) would then become pointless given that the same thing would be achievable quite easily without going through all the breeding hassle and at a much quicker rate, because you would basically be able to buy someone else's luck and instantly translate it into your own completed project.

While this isn't very different from other aspects of the game that also have different possible approaches like mass-hatching eggs for a triple G1 instead of saving up to purchase the triple G1 someone else hatched, natural eye types are meant to be even more exclusive. Allowing for their acquisition to become independent from the luck aspect of things without adding proper balancing to make both pathways less uneven is something I am almost certain the devs just won't do, no matter how many people suggest it.

I know this is a really unpopular opinion but that is basically my goal here. To find a way to give people what they want in a way that the devs may actually consider.