Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-16 08:14 am (UTC)(link)
From what I can tell, there were three reasons Ancients were excluded from apparel:

(1) Art

(2) Coding

(3) Thematic

Let's strike (3) off the list right now. Gameplay and story segregation, yo. If it doesn't fit with your personal lore for your ancient dragon to have a steampunk robot pet or something, don't put one on it, but pretending that there's a sacred cohesive lore that covers all the existing aesthetics items on the site and that putting anything but a skin on an ancient would violate it is pretty ridiculous. (Similarly the 'no apparel is what makes ancients special' argument. Then don't put it on your dragons, done.)

~

(2) seems daunting but doable; there are a ton of situations already on the site where if [X] condition applies to a dragon, they cannot do [Y]. Perhaps most similarly, all moderns can have standard gene scrolls applied to them, ancients can only have their designated breed scrolls applied to them...except for remove gene scrolls, and those items are really just '[Primary/Secondary/Tertiary] Gene: Basic' scrolls when you think about it.

So universal/nonfitted apparel could function exactly like those remove gene scrolls - it could be compatible with all dragons, unlike its more specific counterparts.

The coding would be work, but it would only need to be done once.

~

That only leaves (1), and imo it's the only one that's particularly important. Ancients were intended as more limited to A) relieve crunch pressure on the artists while B) still allowing users to see new breeds more than every five years or so. Great goals, and they should always keep fulfilling that role.

But when there are so many items that would require no art effort beyond copy/pasting an existing layer (seriously, check out, say, autumn leaves on several different modern poses in succession. There are a limited number of arrangements that were simply re-used multiple times. Do the same for the ancients, pick one, make sure there isn't anything covering the dragon's eye or otherwise looking weird, done), but would add so much richness in customization possibilities, it seems frustrating for that to be a barrier.

Now, the argument here is usually the 'give a mouse a cookie' one. "If you let people have simple apparel on ancients, they'll clamor for more and more complex stuff! It'll never stop!"

...and? That seems like a feature, not a bug - as long as the clamoring is polite, which should apply to anything.

I don't feel like choosing which apparel to make universal should be a one-off deal.

First stage should be emperor's new clothes and marva's cloak - 0 art involvement there, and useful for all the reasons people put those things on modern dragons (yes, including the former, it's great if you want to protect a dragon from sale or exaltation but no design items or familiars fit with your personal lore for it) - and the simplest possible stuff like flowerfalls and auras.

Then things like floaty pets, emblems, mouth flowers, etc can be worked on slowly in the background. And it can mostly done by average humans as opposed to Capital-A-Artists (my own talents fall short of stick figures, Artists are superhuman and should be worshipped as such, but even someone like lame little me can take an existing image and move/rotate it around in a box). The existing coding can be used to convert those items to universal apparel when the images are ready.

Perhaps even simple semi-fitted things (like very small jewelry/crowns/earrings - probably nothing on wings/legs to preserve flexibility for future ancient designs, but I'm pretty sure no FR dragon will ever be designed without a head) can become universal with time - especially going forward, because from what I understand (and it seems to make intuitive sense), adapting apprel to a new pose is easiest at the time the apparel is first being designed (iirc we were told that Obelisk apparel art was drawn alongside other breeds' for years' worth of releases before the breed was actually released, and I wouldn't be surprised if the next modern breed is already fully drawn and getting the same treatment now).

Ancients wearing pants and armor? Almost certainly never. But they could be a lot more dynamic and appealing than they are now with, from what I can tell, a disproportionally small amount of effort. From this user's perspective, putting said effort in that direction would do a lot more for my enjoyment than a whole new ancient breed would - I think the new gem ancient is pretty much a done deal, but maybe after that?

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-16 08:29 am (UTC)(link)
Ok

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-16 09:28 am (UTC)(link)
Oh damn that's a lot of words

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-16 10:30 am (UTC)(link)
See again: bored. Essays happen.

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-16 01:45 pm (UTC)(link)
i mean it's an effortpost novel but at least it's nicely formatted

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-16 11:53 am (UTC)(link)
Was curious why post it here, instead of suggestions forum. Then I remember how that forum is.

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-16 02:09 pm (UTC)(link)
ya I completely agree. I have no interest in ancients currently because of lack of apparel so this would add a lot to the game for me.

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-17 11:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Agreed! I don't mind some of the ancients, but I have no desire to own any because they look so.. boring without clothes to me (even with skins/accents).

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-16 09:12 pm (UTC)(link)
I, for one, appreciate the effort you put into your opinion, anon.

It's a shame that you'd get nastier replies on the on-site suggestions forum, because this thought-out approach is far & away better than the "keysmash gimme gimme" clamoring style you mention in your post, lol.

I would also love to see some copy-pasted "environmental" apparel for ancient dragons. I am easy to please.

"In myyyy day we put ALL our dragons in flowerfalls & iri/shim/gembond because that was ALL WE HAD, and we were HAPPY with that!" (NOT! ;P)

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-18 05:12 am (UTC)(link)
I once made a similar post to the suggestions forum and got absolutely torn apart by the regulars for it... except not for the reason I expected. "It would be too hard to code! Staff shouldn't waste their time and should focus on other things!" Dear random flight rising player, are you a flight rising coder? No? Then just say support/no support if you'd like this to be a thing or not! It's not your job to worry about the backend!

No fun allowed in the suggestions forum.

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-18 05:42 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, this type of argument is pretty much what I wanted to avoid. Don't get me wrong, I know nothing beyond the very basics of coding myself, and maybe this type of function absolutely would be more complicated than other things on the site for reasons that haven't occurred to me. But if you have to proof-of-concept the code yourself in order to suggest anything, they'd require resumes. And what staff 'should' focus on varies in every single player's individual opinion. All we can do is offer them ancedata points.

(My post was inspired by a suggestion thread on letting ancients wear emperor's new clothes specifically - just as a joke - and checking that thread again, there is indeed a post with the exact slippery-slope pearl-clutching I mentioned. Oh no! If the coding is put in place, people might suggest it be used for other things! Horrors!)

https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/sug/3255704/1
https://web.archive.org/web/20230718053907/https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/sug/3255704

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-18 12:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Most of the suggestions forum regulars are really fucking annoying like that. Their heads are far up their own asses.

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-18 01:55 pm (UTC)(link)
da

for fucking real. one time one of my friends who plays FR (and isn't particularly online about it) said they wanted to make a suggestion post about adding a toggle that would make it so people couldn't exalt the dragons you hatch and i had to, politely, explain to them if they posted that people would descend on them like a pack of starving dogs

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-18 04:13 pm (UTC)(link)
While obviously suggestion forum regulars are way to cruel, that is a really dumb idea.

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-18 04:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Ayrt

lmao I can practically hear the regulars salivating at the thought of shutting your friend down as bitchy as possible

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-18 04:53 pm (UTC)(link)
While the suggestion forum regulars can be total assholes and absolutely would have been, posting this would have shown that your friend has spent zero time reading FR's policies and tos. Which is something that everyone should do when they join. A good chunk of the suggestions that get piled on are either shitty ideas, have been posted a thousand times, or show a complete lack of understanding of the site's basic rules. I don't post in the suggestion forums because the regulars are a bunch of ravenous assholes, but I do read it often.

I think FR should add an extra step before you can make a post in the suggestion forums where you have to check off something like:

1. I have used search to make sure my idea hasn't already been posted.
2. I have looked over Flight Rising's policies and TOS to make sure that my idea doesn't violate site rules.
3. My account is older than three weeks (or a better number that I haven't thought of).
4. I understand that once a dragon leaves my lair it is no longer mine.

Not sure if that would actually cut down on bad ideas, but maybe it would make people think twice.

+1

(Anonymous) - 2023-07-18 17:39 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-18 04:35 pm (UTC)(link)
imo the very fact that your own definition of "very simple and easy to edit in place" apparel became increasingly expansive as you worked through your thoughts… demonstrates the core issue here.

even though lots of apparel is really simple (and I'd love stuff like auras and flowerfalls to help fill out the negative space around my ancients in a way skins/accents by definition can't!), the boundary between what is/isn't simple apparel turns out to be way blurrier than the boundary that is "no apparel, period"!

this is something that i think could conceivably be fun to revisit once every flight has an ancient, but along the way i'd much prefer that staff stick to their guns so that they can continue their current/chosen pace with releasing ancient breeds.

ALL THAT SAID, I have seen an iteration of this idea that proposes an entirely new category of (not-)apparel that is "foreground items," which stuff like flowerfalls would be categorized under and which would be allowed on ancients. a built-in division like that is something that i think could totally work long-term.

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-19 12:54 am (UTC)(link)
DA, but I'm a big supporter of foreground items. They're one of the things I really hope we get someday. We have a ton of apparel that are basically just copypasted (like flower falls, auras, etc.) that could easily be adapted (probably by making totally new-but-actually-the-same items, not actually converting the existing ones to it for logistics reasons).

If they were just one-off art pieces (not edited to fit different breeds), it would be a low-effort way to spruce up moderns AND ancients (and hopefully permababies) and be a nice compromise between people who want something extra for ancients while still reducing the associated work load of new breeds (ancient and modern).

Plus they could probably expand the type of items beyond just 'apparel'. If they wanted to add, say, a desk item, that would be odd as apparel - but totally reasonable as a foreground item (or something along those lines - I don't know how many people want to sit their dragon behind a desk lol). Lots of cool possibilities.

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-19 02:13 am (UTC)(link)
Also DA. Foreground or even simple background items would be amazing. Treasure/coin piles. Chests. Flower pots. Clouds. Flight themed environment pieces - snow drifts, crystal shards, broken pillars. Cauldrons, potion bottles, camp fires. Crates, piles of scrolls. Baskets of yarn balls with knitting needles. Coli foreground items - bamboo, bubbles, vines. There are so many directions they could go with it.

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-19 03:45 am (UTC)(link)
Permababies are definitely a good point (and could be handled the same way as ancients, eventually, with similar coding). Considering things like pets, the NotN book piles, and the new achievement shop treasure hoards that already exist as apparel, I wouldn't consider it particularly weird to have any of the things you describe classified as such either, but I'd love to see them somehow as well. (I think pretty much anything would need to be pose-adapted to some degree though.)

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-19 01:20 pm (UTC)(link)
DDA

Oh no, now I really want separate-from-apparel foreground items, too.

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-19 03:29 am (UTC)(link)
imo the very fact that your own definition of "very simple and easy to edit in place" apparel became increasingly expansive as you worked through your thoughts… demonstrates the core issue here.

I acknowledged exactly this.

Now, the argument here is usually the 'give a mouse a cookie' one. "If you let people have simple apparel on ancients, they'll clamor for more and more complex stuff! It'll never stop!"

And I'm still mystified why this is always seen as such a dreadful prospect. Pretty much any new release of any type inspires a round of "Hey, that's really cool! But you know what else would be really cool? ........" suggestions and discussion. Unless people are running to California with torches and pitchforks, where's the harm?

What I see as positive about the 'expansion' scenario is that the staff and artists can take it completely at their own pace behind the scenes. Maybe they take note of which sorts of things people seem to be asking for most (pets? emblems?) or maybe not. Yeah, there would always be 'But why isn't [X] ancient-friendly yet?' complaints. Just like there will always be 'Now that there are chickens, I want ducks to be available as apparel!'-type complaints. I think the site would survive it.

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-19 07:16 am (UTC)(link)
NAYRT I feel like people take the "give a mouse a cookie" analogy way too far. Obviously there is a clear line between fitted and non-fitted apparel, I wouldn't see a flowerfall and expect hoods to be added. If players are asking for that, then they've really misunderstood the point of non-fitted apparel. (The beauty of this is staff can just not implement it, if they don't want to). And this doesn't mean that ALL non-fitted apparel has to be added, anyways. I would be happy even if they only added flowerfalls or the seasonal floaties truthfully. Anything to give ancients a little more spice.

"Give a mouse a cookie" is jumping a few steps ahead of the suggestion itself, which ultimately would be left up to staff to decide what they want to add to ancients. The logistics really aren't our problem, but that's always where people get tripped up about it.

ayrt

(Anonymous) 2023-07-19 08:42 am (UTC)(link)
You did say that; I'm aware!
But I was struck by the fact that even when you were deliberately trying to limit yourself rather than do what you considered to be dreaming big, there was still that scope slippage, you know?

It felt like a pretty on-point example of how the subjective definition of "simple" apparel can make things messy fast.
It is also worth noting that my perspective is partially informed by my opinion that "clamoring" for apparel for ancients (without the foreground distinction, see my post above, etc.) is still rude even when the language used is polite, because it's a boundary staff have been so clear about

At the end of the day, it kind of seems like what you want is for ancients to get as much apparel as possible, and that is principle I disagree with because long-term I want staff to continue to try ambitious new styles of breed releases, and being able to define the scope of their own workload (and stick to that definition) is what makes those projects possible to keep in the mix alongside "standard" breed development.

sa

(Anonymous) - 2023-07-19 08:57 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2023-07-19 09:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2023-07-20 21:28 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately

(Anonymous) 2023-07-19 03:36 pm (UTC)(link)
Foreground items are a GREAT idea! +10000