anonrerising

Dude, that is not the whole point of a battle. A flight does not have an obligation to line the pockets of OOF members. Yes, it is smart and necessary to entice OOF members to participate. But there is no rule saying that OOF people are owed insane payouts or kickstarter raffle items. Plenty of people will send dragons for any amount above a normal payout. And plenty of people will enter raffles where they are getting a chance at a prize while making a profit.

I find it interesting that everyone is judging the OOF raffles before they've even seen them. Just because they don't plan on having Light Sprites, doesn't mean that the raffles won't be worthwhile. Last time I checked 25kg wasn't pocket change. There's really nothing to lose if you are leveling fodder anyway. You'll still be making a higher than usual profit and will have a chance to win prizes during a week that wouldn't usually have them. Why all the bitching?

the point of battles is to win by any means necessary, including spending money, not to make a profit for everyone else. if people are going to buy mercs anyway they might as well be bought as part of an overall strategy using communal funds.

Flights are already hemorrhaging money to pay for raffles and public buys. Why should they be forced to also pay for mercs just because people want more profit on top of the profit they would get by selling to a public buy? I'm saying this as someone who frequently profits off of mercing. If someone wants to pay more for dragons, let them. But flights shouldn't be required to budget them in if they don't want to. It takes resources and volunteers away from other flight efforts. You can't blame any flight for not wanting to spend that kind of money for dragons they can get cheaper through other channels.

My issue is this isn't going to eliminate mercs, it's just tossing the cost to individuals in a flight when things get desperate. It's an illusion of battles being cheaper, because an individual buying mercs doesn't get added to total spending.

No one is trying to eliminate mercs though? They just don't want to spend communal flight funds on them. If individuals decide they want to spend their money on merc dragons, that's their choice? People have always chosen to spend their own money during battles. It's not an illusion of being cheaper, it actually is cheaper for the flight as a whole. Personal spending is never included in the total spending. Are flights supposed to start trying to calculate what individuals are spending from their personal funds on fodder as well?

Anon, is there the expectation in your flight that individuals will lose money buying fodder during a battle?

Trainers (as well as attendants) shouldn't lose money because it creates participation barriers and they're already volunteering their time and other resources. (Lair space).

Flight funds should be paying to flip fodder to trainers at payout prices. I thought this was the norm but some flights don't do this???? So yeah, internally trained fodder is a visible cost for some flights and not for others.

nayrt

I don't think that's what AYRT means. During battles there are lots of people who will largely ignore what their coordination team(s) is up to during a Dominance fight and spend their own money for dominance their own way. A very hands off approach but still contributing in their own way. (I am one of these) I don't even know who my dom coordinators are tbh. if I see my flights symbol is first on the dom board I will throw dragons into it because why not.

sa

and if anyone is curious as to how I 'contribute' in a hands off approach: I will either just train/exalt dragons from my massive and full hibden over the course of the fight and then donate that money to the dom bank, OR, I will sell my fodder to my flightmates at a massively "reduced" price and then give that money to my dom bank.

Reduced, meaning, like 7.5kT per dragon when the fodder prices are like 10kT on the AH. My hibden is huge so I give millions to my dom bank that way lol

ayrt

Oh, yeah I know that, I think I communicated what my actual point was poorly lol

I meant that the "illusion of cheapness" is totally a thing and was providing another example in how some banks totally already budget for a lot of those "personal fodder costs" when they subsidize thousands of fodder dragons and some banks don't!

It's a flight culture thing. Some dom teams want mercs on their budget and some don't.

Not sure how it goes in your flight, but in mine, the point of a dom bank is to provide funds for dom efforts, so that you don't have to rely on wealthy individuals doing everything for the week. No matter how much people hate it, "dom efforts" is going to necessarily include buying mercs if you want to win. I have no idea where you're getting this notion that it somehow costs less when individuals are the ones buying, but it doesn't track, and I'm baffled that you seem to think it's fair to cover other dom efforts that cost money, but just leave people to their own devices when it comes to this one.

The point of a dom bank is to fund flight programs that run during a dominance push. If both flights choose not to purchase mercs, then no, buying mercs is not necessary to win. You do realize that flights had dom battles before mercs were a thing, and that flights have chosen not to use them on multiple occasions since then, right? Putting limitations on battles is not a new thing. Individuals can choose to purchase mercs if they would like. No one is forcing them to do so. Yes, dom banks should ease the personal cost for flight members during a dom push. But dom banks should not be required to cover every expense that individual players have during dominance. It's completely unfeasible and unrealistic.

Exactly what I was getting at. ( I'm the one that called it an illusion of being cheaper)

This feels like a shitty strategy from the era when mercs first started and no one wanted to make buying them official.

I'm not sure what flight you're in, but mine handles buying mercs, providing fodder at prices so that I don't have to eat losses to fodder floor, and lots of other things. And they keep logs of all of the fund usage. When you're used to those logs, you see it as a part of the whole cost.

This may come out cheaper than Water vs. Earth, but it's only by hiding merc costs by burdening individuals with them.

AYRT
I think we agree on about everything!

My flight does buy mercs, and I'm happy to have my donated funds used for that purpose. I got some of that currency by doing my own mercing, turnabout is fair play!

Sometimes it's annoying, but it's also very funny to me when people complain about mercs and yearn for the mystical before-times when dom battles didn't cost anything. Those days never existed, and mercs are far from the only strategy that costs the flight. The focus on them feels very ahistorical and silly. Battles have always been expensive, and will only become more so as the site grows. We're never going back, and the attempt just makes people look silly and cheap as hell.

Who exactly is yearning for mystical before-times? Dom battles have always been expensive. With or without mercing. I don't think anyone expects to go back. Calling a flight cheap for not mercing once in a while is ridiculous. The amount spent on raffles alone is astronomical. That's not even including in-flight programs that drain banks once fodder prices go up. Even if you don't factor mercing into the equation, both of these flight's dom banks are going to be mostly dry afterwards because no one is battling anymore and everyone's hib dens are huge.

Mercing is literally a cash grab for levelers who decided that public buy prices weren't high enough. Why even bother with public buys at all at this point? There's no benefit to sending to them when you can get higher prices for mercing and you get zero raffle tickets. Let's be real. This has nothing to do with whether a flight decides to spend money on mercs or not. It has everything to do with the fact that other flights expect increasingly large payouts for their support and are mad when they don't get it.

So true, bestie! Why bother with having merc buys at all, when it's even more profitable to list on the AH and make everyone buy at the maximum price? It's not like people have various levels of commitment to helping another flight in their battle vs wanting to profit! It's not like raffles and PBs continue to pull in large numbers of dragons in every battle, proving that they're still useful strategies! This is definitely all about the nasty mean people who don't want to go broke over somebody else's battle, and you should continue to whine about them because it's not the least bit entertaining to see how intelligent and in touch with reality your opinions are.

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I'm not saying they should do it BECAUSE other people want to profit, I'm saying they should do it bc their rich players will do it anyway so they might as well use it as part of their strategy. Other people profiting from battles is just a side effect of like, participating in an economy lol

I think this anon would rather go back to tossing the invisible burden of winning onto wealthier players.

Nothing is further from the truth. I just don't think that flights deciding to not to fund mercing for one battle is unfair. And I don't think it's unreasonable for players to spend some of their personal money on a battle if they choose to.

If you spend money, someone else is profiting. Otherwise, no one would bother. It's not the point. It's just a direct effect

Profit is literally the point of mercing.

I'd like to disagree; yes, profit is a large part, but it's a lot less of a hassle than PB. In particular looking for attendants. And as someone who hired Mercs themself in a past battle, man, it's so buttery smooth and easy...

And yeah, Merc companies haven't been there from the beginning, but before that, you still had AH mercs, which is usually more expensive than straight ordering from a Merc Company.

mercs would be cheaper and less stressful than this flash sale shit that's for sure

No, mercing is 100% about profit.

OP here -- I was not judging the Raffles on the prize price cap necessarily, I was judging them by the poorly chosen previews on Nature's part.

When I checked (I did not take a screenshot, sorry for that) Nature's preview had: a Nature egg, a Loga, a Sprouting Gemini, a Growing Jeweler, while Plague's preview had a Fire Sprite, Boneyard Tatters, a gorgeous WC skin by Phenri, and an Arcane Sprite.

Nature has since moved their preview to the Fodder Farm Raffle ("Inspired by Shadow's Fodder Farm, Nature has opened our own") and updated their Raffle preview to a Plague Spire, an Akirbeak (current LAH 27.5kg, so technically in violation of the max 25kg rule?), Leafy Gladeboughs, and a Nature Sprite. When clicking through to the Boarding thread, they also have some Boneyard chimes in there.

https://i.imgur.com/so2oKDm.png

What actually surprises me more (yeah, this OOF Boarding setup just keeps on giving me pause) is that their offer for unfilled slots is a flat 2 tickets per slot offered (5 tickets per day per dragon). The last time I boarded (though I do not remember which flight), you got tickets regardless of whether your slots were filled or not, just to avoid you offering those slots to the other flight if that flight didn't fill it fast enough.

Idk. I'm feeling a lot like an old woman shaking my cane at the sky, and maybe I am. I liked the way things were done in the past, and NvP just making it all worse and putting it like they're re-inventing the wheel just feels meh. Like their reinvented wheel is square in shape and they're all proud and try to convince you it's secretly way better because it's easier to clean. Yeah, no, I liked my wheels round, tyvm.

... Yea, that is definitely breaking the rules there. Even if they got it for less than 25k, the value exceeds that limit.