FR BLOGS TO FOLLOW

I’ve seen a few people post these recommendation lists lately, and I really wanted to do one too! I don’t really follow that many FR blogs because I’m in the tag so often, but these people are really great. I’m dividing them into categories for ~convenience~ 

Notable personality FR blogs

Chatty/live-blogging people I particularly like :- )

Artists

Resource FR blogs

There’s a few more but I haven’t really been following them long enough to confidently recommend them to everyone else. These people are fun and most are pretty active in the community, follow them. <3

Hello new followers... sorry to say, this blog has been inactive for a few months. The old data is still available (and still interesting to look over!) but new data won't be coming in any time soon.

Lately everyone’s been talking about how they can’t get their dragons to sell. It occurred to me that I’d never seen anyone take stock of how many dragons we as a userbase have been hatching daily, so I thought I’d take some data to do some science. For a week, at roughly the same time each day, I went and found the newest dragon born and wrote down its number. I know I like graphs, so here’s a graph.

Apparently we pump out an average of 24891 dragons a day! Whoa!

A few months ago there was a dominance battle where Aequorin told us something like 30k dragons were exalted in one night. I have no idea how many are exalted daily when there isn’t a huge dom push going on, but I’m betting it’s nowhere close to 25k.

This situation is really pretty interesting…

I’ve been reading the whole conversation on this — and I wasn’t sure where in it to reply so going back to POST NUMERO UNO.

Okay. So. The most baffling thing about this is why ARE gem prices being allowed to go down? Why are gem-sinks not being introduced?

From a FR Is First And Foremost A Business a high gem-to-treasure ratio is best for the developers. The harder gems are to obtain in terms of work-on-site the more likely people are to pay cash money for them.

This is yet another example of FR Design Philosophy Mystifies Me. I realize that there is a sweet spot to hit - if gem prices go up infinitely then you’ll start losing players to I Can’t Afford Anything attrition. But, I’m not sure I know the sweet spot the devs are aiming for. I felt like 500 was… a good point in terms of attainability of gems. Difficult enough that it would encourage some players to spend money on gems while still being affordable if you wanted to put in some time.

I’d like to hear some about the design philosophy in terms of balancing gem prices, but I’m afraid of asking because we’d probably just get some “It’s a free market, players determine the conversion rate blah blah blah” BS.

And it is BS. Because while players might write up the conversion rate, the devs are controlling the demand AND the supply of both treasure and gems. Of all the markets in the game they can control the easiest one for them to control is the ratio of gems to treasure in game.

Which brings me to my second FR Design Philosophy Is Mystifying To Me point. Okay so. We can all agree that in terms of the developers… FR is a business right? They are doing this for profit. To make money. Hopefully to one day be their full time jobs. 

There are two sources of income for the site. Ads and gems. We can alllll agree on this, right?

A high treasure to gem ratio (but not TOO high) is good for the site in terms of pushing players to buy gems and keep the site funded, right?

Why then. WHY are there way more treasure sinks in the game than gem sinks?

Outside of the gem marketplace/the AH the only gem sink I can think of is the apparel slots — which, ultimately, are not a huge gem sink. Outside of the treasure marketplace/the AH you have the crippling treasure sink that is lair expansions PLUS the not-too-cheap nest expansions.

It’d be nice to see a bigger gem sink in the game. Maybe let you pay for lair expansions in treasure OR gems.

Of course, the other way to control the ratio (besides adding more gem sinks) is to add more treasure production. Which like, everybody has been asking for forever because grinding the games to hit cap after a few days becomes as pleasurable as pulling out your fingernails one by one. 

(IMO game payout on all games should be 1000t per minute at an average play speed because that is what you can make by clicking in random circles on shock switch. Until all games have a payout at that level there is no point to grinding any of them BUT shock switch.)

Anyway. I realize that a lot of the questions I have about development probably amount to ‘the developers want to eventually do something about the weird design BUT there is only so much two programmers can do in a day’. But I feel like this is actually one the art-team could handle? Or wouldn’t consume much time? 

I kinda ultimately suspect this is just another biproduct of the design philosophy we’ve seen of ‘we’re scared to change our controls to the economy in any way ever because things might get worse than they are now AND the site is ultimately meant to run with open registration AND we can sit and claim we’re running a free market (author’s note: lolololololol) and people will buy it because they’ll apply their ideas about scarcity based actual world economies to a totally controlled artificial-scarcity virtual economy”.

Biggest gem sink I can think of that this response didn’t account for is Accent and Skin blueprints? A huge chunk of Flight Rising’s player base are artists themselves.

It’ll be interesting if they do opt to shake up the economy when open registration hits.

Ah! I forgot those. But still, I think compared to the treasure sinks (primarily the lair expansions) those consume gems far more slowly.

Honestly, I’d like to see some additional “small” gem sinks to help clean out the ‘residual’ gems that build up (and ultimately lead to a lot of gems). Like a ‘bond all’ familiars button that costs like 5 gems (roughly 5 cents) or whatever to push*. There have been other small quality-of-life and cosmetic improvements that have been suggested elsewhere in the conversation (eg. forum vistas, special BBcode, etc). Something to stop people from selling gems in small quantities. Competing with people selling <500 gems for low “quick-sale” prices is one of the things that leads to chronic gem undercutting.

There’s a ton of small treasure sinks (items <10k) that are sold en masse to help nickle-n-dime away treasure that the big sinks don’t mop up.  There is nothing in that gem range, remotely, on the gem marketplace. I think the cheapeast gem items (excluding the discounts from bundles) are at least 100g? which is what… 30000 t at the current conversion rate? Which — at least right now — feels like a relatively low rate?

The small gem sinks that exist now are not something people would be using daily, or even weekly. You basically just buy up all your apparel slots and then you might buy accents for dragons… But even then there’s a hard cap on how many gems you can spend on that assuming one accent per dragon at 125 accents. 

I’d assume that without the festival accents most players have, at most, 2-3 accents purchased at a price point of 500 gems per accent. (There are of course the Accents Georgs out there, but they are outliers and should not be counted. :P). 

I think they should add in at least one big gem sink, and then a few small HIGHLY repetitive gem sinks to help prevent gem floods in the economy. Basically, make it really very difficult to resist the temptation of cheap, quality of life improvers to help prevent people from stockpiling large amounts of gems (thus keeping them potentially in the economy. The harder gems are to save up, because of the various quality of life temptations, the more likely players are to just go buy the amount of gems they need for ‘big gem sink’ because they’re blowing all of their here-and-there gems on small repetitive quality-of-life/cosmetic gem sinks.

—-

* For the record I know they’ve said they don’t plan to do a ‘bond all’ familiars button. They haven’t elaborated on why, but I assume it’s because they want to get the money that comes from visiting a bunch of dragon profiles. If they could get money instead from the gem sales of people loading up on gems for fast familiar bonding I think they MIGHT be willing to do it? Maybe? Am I vastly underestimating how much they might sell individual impressions for with ads?

This situation is really pretty interesting…

I’ve been reading the whole conversation on this — and I wasn’t sure where in it to reply so going back to POST NUMERO UNO.

Okay. So. The most baffling thing about this is why ARE gem prices being allowed to go down? Why are gem-sinks not being introduced?

From a FR Is First And Foremost A Business a high gem-to-treasure ratio is best for the developers. The harder gems are to obtain in terms of work-on-site the more likely people are to pay cash money for them.

This is yet another example of FR Design Philosophy Mystifies Me. I realize that there is a sweet spot to hit - if gem prices go up infinitely then you’ll start losing players to I Can’t Afford Anything attrition. But, I’m not sure I know the sweet spot the devs are aiming for. I felt like 500 was… a good point in terms of attainability of gems. Difficult enough that it would encourage some players to spend money on gems while still being affordable if you wanted to put in some time.

I’d like to hear some about the design philosophy in terms of balancing gem prices, but I’m afraid of asking because we’d probably just get some “It’s a free market, players determine the conversion rate blah blah blah” BS.

And it is BS. Because while players might write up the conversion rate, the devs are controlling the demand AND the supply of both treasure and gems. Of all the markets in the game they can control the easiest one for them to control is the ratio of gems to treasure in game.

Which brings me to my second FR Design Philosophy Is Mystifying To Me point. Okay so. We can all agree that in terms of the developers… FR is a business right? They are doing this for profit. To make money. Hopefully to one day be their full time jobs. 

There are two sources of income for the site. Ads and gems. We can alllll agree on this, right?

A high treasure to gem ratio (but not TOO high) is good for the site in terms of pushing players to buy gems and keep the site funded, right?

Why then. WHY are there way more treasure sinks in the game than gem sinks?

Outside of the gem marketplace/the AH the only gem sink I can think of is the apparel slots — which, ultimately, are not a huge gem sink. Outside of the treasure marketplace/the AH you have the crippling treasure sink that is lair expansions PLUS the not-too-cheap nest expansions.

It’d be nice to see a bigger gem sink in the game. Maybe let you pay for lair expansions in treasure OR gems.

Of course, the other way to control the ratio (besides adding more gem sinks) is to add more treasure production. Which like, everybody has been asking for forever because grinding the games to hit cap after a few days becomes as pleasurable as pulling out your fingernails one by one. 

(IMO game payout on all games should be 1000t per minute at an average play speed because that is what you can make by clicking in random circles on shock switch. Until all games have a payout at that level there is no point to grinding any of them BUT shock switch.)

Anyway. I realize that a lot of the questions I have about development probably amount to ‘the developers want to eventually do something about the weird design BUT there is only so much two programmers can do in a day’. But I feel like this is actually one the art-team could handle? Or wouldn’t consume much time? 

I kinda ultimately suspect this is just another biproduct of the design philosophy we’ve seen of ‘we’re scared to change our controls to the economy in any way ever because things might get worse than they are now AND the site is ultimately meant to run with open registration AND we can sit and claim we’re running a free market (author’s note: lolololololol) and people will buy it because they’ll apply their ideas about scarcity based actual world economies to a totally controlled artificial-scarcity virtual economy”.

This is one of the biggest bothers I have with FR. The economy of the game and a lot of the development that players see or should see is counter productive to running a successful game. Right now FR is run like a bad facebook game, and it really could be a great game. They should be pushing for new genes every 2-3 months, new breeds every 6-9 months, and new apparel sets each month rather than at random as it is now. Yes this will likely put a little more stain on the artists, but if they are popping out a new new set each month(3 colors treasure, 2 swipp’s/coli, 1-2 gems only), they will keep good even treasure and gems sync and further encourage players to buy gems. On top of this, adding things such as an option for players to op-out of ads for gems, new forum vistas(which no one has seen one since the kickstarter), Scroll bundles(buy x# of treasure scrolls for gems, buy themed sets such as tiger/stripes), or any number of other mostly cosmetic features(more scatter scrolls, site themes, enhanced BBCode). Basically a lot of easy to add stuff that could enhance the player’s quality of life right now. Because I can guarantee the whole site being locked down and a lot of potential players basically being forced to miss out on events because of it isn’t gonna bring in the gems in the end. It’s gonna piss those players off and they are going to lose interest eventually.

This situation is really pretty interesting…

I’ve been reading the whole conversation on this — and I wasn’t sure where in it to reply so going back to POST NUMERO UNO.

Okay. So. The most baffling thing about this is why ARE gem prices being allowed to go down? Why are gem-sinks not being introduced?

From a FR Is First And Foremost A Business a high gem-to-treasure ratio is best for the developers. The harder gems are to obtain in terms of work-on-site the more likely people are to pay cash money for them.

This is yet another example of FR Design Philosophy Mystifies Me. I realize that there is a sweet spot to hit - if gem prices go up infinitely then you’ll start losing players to I Can’t Afford Anything attrition. But, I’m not sure I know the sweet spot the devs are aiming for. I felt like 500 was… a good point in terms of attainability of gems. Difficult enough that it would encourage some players to spend money on gems while still being affordable if you wanted to put in some time.

I’d like to hear some about the design philosophy in terms of balancing gem prices, but I’m afraid of asking because we’d probably just get some “It’s a free market, players determine the conversion rate blah blah blah” BS.

And it is BS. Because while players might write up the conversion rate, the devs are controlling the demand AND the supply of both treasure and gems. Of all the markets in the game they can control the easiest one for them to control is the ratio of gems to treasure in game.

Which brings me to my second FR Design Philosophy Is Mystifying To Me point. Okay so. We can all agree that in terms of the developers… FR is a business right? They are doing this for profit. To make money. Hopefully to one day be their full time jobs. 

There are two sources of income for the site. Ads and gems. We can alllll agree on this, right?

A high treasure to gem ratio (but not TOO high) is good for the site in terms of pushing players to buy gems and keep the site funded, right?

Why then. WHY are there way more treasure sinks in the game than gem sinks?

Outside of the gem marketplace/the AH the only gem sink I can think of is the apparel slots — which, ultimately, are not a huge gem sink. Outside of the treasure marketplace/the AH you have the crippling treasure sink that is lair expansions PLUS the not-too-cheap nest expansions.

It’d be nice to see a bigger gem sink in the game. Maybe let you pay for lair expansions in treasure OR gems.

Of course, the other way to control the ratio (besides adding more gem sinks) is to add more treasure production. Which like, everybody has been asking for forever because grinding the games to hit cap after a few days becomes as pleasurable as pulling out your fingernails one by one. 

(IMO game payout on all games should be 1000t per minute at an average play speed because that is what you can make by clicking in random circles on shock switch. Until all games have a payout at that level there is no point to grinding any of them BUT shock switch.)

Anyway. I realize that a lot of the questions I have about development probably amount to ‘the developers want to eventually do something about the weird design BUT there is only so much two programmers can do in a day’. But I feel like this is actually one the art-team could handle? Or wouldn’t consume much time? 

I kinda ultimately suspect this is just another biproduct of the design philosophy we’ve seen of ‘we’re scared to change our controls to the economy in any way ever because things might get worse than they are now AND the site is ultimately meant to run with open registration AND we can sit and claim we’re running a free market (author’s note: lolololololol) and people will buy it because they’ll apply their ideas about scarcity based actual world economies to a totally controlled artificial-scarcity virtual economy”.

I’d need to date-check but—

My hypothesis is that it started going back down when the devs resumed pushing treasure-item releases, mostly the apparel but also the genes.

But there were treasure-stuff releases earlier, too, weren’t there? Skydancers, Seraph, various apparel I wasn’t paying attention to… But the gem prices pretty much kept going up all year. Are we really getting that much more treasure stuff now?

"Are we really getting that much more treasure stuff now?" tl;dr we are. Fuck yeah I even have dates: July 7 for Seraph, August(?) for Skydancers, Sept 12 Underbelly, Nov 30 Crackle. That was it. Coatl were January 4th, and we got flower apparel at some point, but the next srsbsns treasure release was, mrr… damn, I don’t have dates on sashes, but Ripple was May 16.

So yeah, we did five and a half months of nothing but them thar flowars ta puts on yer dargen, treasure-wise.

Keep in mind it’s not JUST whether there’s things to spend the money on, it’s also a matter of how aggressively they’re released. It’s not just how big a river is, it’s also a matter of how fast it flows. Something that consumers are climbing all over each other for once a month seems to do the trick for fixing the gem ratios’ worryingly infinite upward trend. (Do you remember when people blathered about 250:1 being the “true” ratio based on the daily clan fed bonus perk? *stygian black laughter*)

… I’d also want to map the registration windows to this chart. Not sure how newbies impact things.