anonrerising

What I would do if I were an admin is add a counter to each dragon which increments each time it is leveled up but resets to zero when the dragon changes ownership and then weigh the counter heavily in the dominance calculation--i.e. reward dragons trained IF and weaken the relative impact of OOF/mercs/prehoarding.

Then, make being counted in dominance more of something to opt-in to rather than just exist as an active user. I.e, the way it is currently communicated is that all users who logged in the past two weeks are counted in the denominator for calculating dominance, but I would change it to only users who have exalted a level 2 or higher dragon during the week in question. Why level 2? Anyone who has observed newly hatched dragons during ID countdowns would see that casual players often immediately exalt their own hatchlings, but those players' motivation for doing so is likely to free up lair space, not to contribute to Dom. If the algorithm tried to only count players who appear to either be actively profit exalting or actively contributing to dom, it could help remove the "dead weight" feeling large flights have. Also, the self-trained counter would mitigate some problems that the opt-in system would otherwise have: even if a flight tries to game it by bottlenecking all of their dragons to a few users who opt-in, self-trained dragons are worth more so it may not help them win to do that.

I also approve of a lot of suggestions I've seen for a dom token trade-in shop which opens the week after dominance is calculated. You exalted a trained dragon this week? You get a token next Sunday! You exalt a lot more of them? You get more tokens! Tell the player how many tokens they'll get at the next dom tally could strike a medium between immediate feedback and making it feel more rewarding (generally good) but still hiding their exact numeric contribution to dom (which could be gamed if fully revealed). With this system or something else, if I were an admin, I'd be worried about how much dom coordination is done off the site on services like Google Sheets which is impossible to moderate and has user privacy concerns and do what I could to help players participate without feeling obligated to use outside apps.

Mostly agree - just not with this 'resets to zero when the dragon changes ownership' because you are immediately restricting (of sorts) all suppliers, breeders, "art for fodder" and other supporting players from dominance. I get that dominance is about exalting but that would remove most of the community aspects from it, so I'd fear it would turn more players away from dominance rather than improve anything.

Oh, sorry, I described it as if I were programming it myself (setting the counter in the database to the value of zero) rather than properly explain what impact the counter would have. Dragons with a zero on the counter would still "count", just not as much.

Here's an example of how it could be programmed:

Hatchling, training counter is zero by necessity -> 1 dominance point when exalted
Level 1 adult, training counter is zero because untrained -> 1 dominance point when exalted
Level 5 adult, training counter is zero because the exalter bought the dragon pre-trained -> 5 dominance points (1 base * 5 from levels)
Level 5 adult, training counter is four (went up four times each time the dragon gained a level, never reset) because the exalter trained the dragon -> 25 dominance points (1 base * 5 from levels * (1 base counter + 4 from counter value when exalted))

OOF dragons still have an impact on the dominance calculations and it is still worth doing raffles and buys, but the flight gets more mileage out of its IF trainers.

Thanks for the clarification, now I get what you meant! I think that maybe it could work - but only if there was some sort of incentive to go to all flights (yes, I loved that whole 'personal dom bonus' idea). Otherwise the number of IF trainers will determine the winner and the flight with fewer trainers would be 'locked' into losing just because they will neither have the manpower to train nor (possibly) even more funds to overcome that increased disadvantage.

Hell, you know what would work with this very well? A really radical idea I've seen exactly once on forums: just split the dom flight from eye flight. Like, now there's, for example, the Light flight with its eyes and dom, there's Water flight with its eyes and dom, but then there would be Light flight eyes, Water flight eyes and (randomly assigned and even changing) Sparkling and Moist dom teams.

... let me say this much: Your system wouldn't fix things.

Earth's power exalters level their own dragons. If anything, this would make them more effective.

It just penalizes the ones that need help.

Right? This does absolutely nothing to counteract those in Earth who don't buy pre-leveled dragons. Why would they? They're in it to profit.

The only thing this would impact is OOF support in battles, it wouldn't change the week-to-week of Earth easily rolling into first.

Isn't that a good thing though? The imbalance of OOF support is nerfed, individual effort and flight organisation is still balanced.

In Earth's sub-case of Issues In Dominance, OOF does not need to be nerfed (it's probably the only thing that works against them) because their "problem" is that there's nothing attracting players to Earth besides dom. Earth, ironically, actually doesn't need much individual effort/flight organisation because a lot more players are into dom at least a bit (example what I mean below), so, frankly, I'd rather congratulate the bigger flights for their organisation efforts rather than Earth who, in my view, has average - or sometimes even below average - coordination efforts and coast into being the best on their lack of aesthetics.

Example
Earth, 100 players: 80 are exalting a dragon each without looking at others = activity: 0.8 without any coordination.
Twice as big flight, 100 players: 80 players exalt a dragon without coordination, activity, scaled to Earth, is only 0.4. To match the activity level that Earth is getting passively, the same players would have to either exalt twice as more, attract more players to dom or do anything else, and everything will require more coordination (for example, have you ever tried organizing a meeting where everyone has to take active part between 10 people and between 20? Not the same thing at all).

^ And we know a large portion of Earth's exalters have nothing to do with the community / organization because of how they almost got first the week before WvE.

Targeting OOF support as the "problem" will hurt flights whose strengths lie in graphics, spreadsheets, communication, networking, or financial management. You're welcome to think these have no place in dom but I think it's kind of cool that they do in its current iteration!

SA That's the general "you" btw and not for the person I'm replying to. (Who I agree with!)

This is why I feel, and I have said this before, that a much better approach to 'fixing' dom, at least in short term (I believe that to truly fix dominance, it has to be a completely new 'game' so to speak. I don't think the way it is set up now can truly be 'fixed' or 'fair'), is to incentivize people exalting their own dragons.

Encourage people to exalt their own dragons, instead of sending off to a raffle or something like that, and it may also encourage people to get involved with their own dominance teams.

It would, hopefully, lessen the OOF support issues, but also hopefully get people who aren't interested in dominance now, interested.

Bonus: even if those players don't become interested in dominance, if they DO become interested in exalting their own dragons, they are more likely to 'contribute' to dom efforts, without needing to be a part of the team, they just need to exalt dragons.

However, even with this being done, and this is the other half of the whole 'dom issue' (that the proposals above wouldn't actually help at all), this wouldn't touch the people that change flights for dom culture. (or exalting culture).

That is the other half of why Earth is so successful, as said, because they are known as the 'dom capital' of Sornieth, and so players flock there to get in on that. However, because most people consider their aesthetic boring (sorry Earth, if it was more about minerals and gemstones, I have the feeling you would be a much larger flight, but sadly, most of it seems to be brown, brown, dark brown, oh look, more brown), people who aren't that interested in the dom benefits (but not actively contributing) aren't moving there, to inflate the numbers.

Most other flights don't have that issue. I know that many people consider water to have boring aesthetics as well (and in some ways, I agree, as there are a great many colorful fish and water plants), so it is natural that they are also one of the smaller flights. But the bigger flights, like shadow and lightning, tend to have more desired 'aesthetics', both in colors, and actual lore. This means that when they become known as 'dom flights', such as Light when I first joined, players who want the benefits, but don't want to help, are much more willing to join those flights, leading to high active numbers, but fewer active exalters.

This is why I don't think dom can be truly fixed, because how do you 'fix' the issue of flight changes?

I personally think the fix to Dom is... Remove all flight wide benefits. Let it be a king of the hill match with personal rewards for getting involved.

DA

'Addressing OOF support' doesn't inherently mean nerfing it. If the points a dragon gave were based on what element it last spent n days in, then the big flights would benefit - they're now getting earth/fire/water's dom points multiplier for the dragon instead of their own low one.

Finding a way of balancing that would be hard as hell, because boarding etc, but anything else is either a blanket solution that makes things harder for everyone or trying to affect player culture... which is a convoluted nightmare.

I might be de-anonning myself, but it makes me laugh that everyone's talking about earth's aesthetic being the reason they've lasted so much longer than other flights as the dom top dog, because when I came up with it a couple years back it was not a popular theory.

(pre-emptive edit - not saying I'm the only one that came up with it on their own, but I'd never seen it raised before I did)

ayrt

Haha idk if I'm reading your idea right but the meta if the dragon's worth was based on who owned it before the exalter would be such chaos!

Earth boarders get dragons sent to them instantly upon signing up. Fire's merc company actually gets business. OOF boarding now is super important for big flights and way less useful for small ones which means Shadow would still be screwed for IvS.

I don't think it's a "fix" but god would it be funny. I'm into it.

BINGO

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