Lore Writers Blog - The future of Nesting (Patreon)

It's the end of the month so it's time for another lore-writer's blog. As I write this, I'm pretty burned-out. I've worked 3 weeks straight without a day off to rest and relax because of deadlines and schedules and other things beyond my control. 

Yesterday we pushed out an update that everyone loved until they noticed some changes made to the nesting mechanic. When players experience a "nerf" to something they have gotten used to, they get upset and often take their anger out on the developers. It happens in every game but that doesn't make it ok. Being a dev can be tough. But this post isn't about expressing my woes, it is to alleviate some of your woes. So let's talk about the future of nesting and why things needed to change. 

Before the Beta was officially released, most players were playing as just Acid Spitters. At that time + and ++ were not possible to nest in as, A was the highest stat. That was the intended mechanic, + and ++ would remain hidden from players until later in development when the nesting mechanic was fully realized and complete. But by not allowing + and ++ we were not able to balance the stats for gameplay, or see how it would affect how players played the game, so with the beta launch and the Shadow Scale, we changed the system and made + and ++ nestable via nesting crits where certain things like Dominant mutation gave players a crit chance bonus. 

After months of gameplay, we realized that several things needed to change. One such thing was the +/++ "breeders club" where no one would be accepted without ++ and + genes. This was not good for the game because it was hard to get and prevented players who had A stats from even being considered because they had no crit chance bonuses. That had to change and it did with 1.M. +/++ now give no crit bonus so are no longer needed to produce +/++ eggs. This eliminates the "you don't have enough crit stats to make eggs" problem.

Another issue was the clan "super soldier" breeding program where giant clans had huge advantages in breeding the best dragons over smaller clans with smaller gene-pools. + and ++ give great bonuses and were becoming very common stats, with 10-14++ being a thing, when it was never intended to be a common thing, more like a super super super lucky thing. But with constant nesting, it became a thing and while not so much of a problem with just 2 closely-balanced dragons, it would become a problem in the future with the larger species like the Flame Stalker if allowed to continue, so it had to change with the release of the Flame Stalker. 

The last issue we needed to address was that the Nurse dragon's special ability was becoming less and less "special" because who needs a nurse when you already can produce 10 or more ++ on your own. The special incubation stat bonuses the nurse offered were in danger of being useless unless something changed. 

And something did change. Let's talk about the changes and then we will talk about the future.

The first change is that A- is no longer a spawn stat. B+ is now the highest stat a player can spawn in as. A- became the only acceptable spawn in stat for players and anything less was being killed. So players could get "A" from 2 fresh spawn A- with no real work in it, then they could then produce +/++ rather quickly. All "A" stats including A- is now obtained through nesting. 

The second change is that the crit and super crit chance bonuses for fertility points were removed and the bonuses for Dominant slightly increased. Since +/++ is an end-game breeding mechanic, it should not receive bonuses from Fertility point but from Dominant only, which is the Breeding line mastery mutation. This requires players to have allocated at least 4 mutation points before being able to produce +/++ offspring which means that only the dedicated nesters will be able to do it as intended for gameplay.

The final change is that + and ++ no longer give crit/super crit bonuses. ++ male and ++ female would grant a 100% chance to produce a + and a 50% chance to produce a ++. That is why players were so strict about only using ++ genes for breeding and the main cause of the 10 or more +/++ egg stats, it also caused the issue mentioned above where +/++ was a requirement and A was no longer good enough. So that also changed. A genes now give the same crit chance bonus as A+ and A++. 

So how do we get +/++ crits now in the new system? Both parents need A bloodlines, a pair of A(+)(++) genetics, and one of the parents needs Dominant mutation. If both parents have Dominant, it doubles the crit chance and super crit chance. 

With the removal of the crit chance bonuses from +/++ and Fertility points, the overall chance is much reduced, but this is intentional because of the upcoming updates to the breeding system.

So let's talk about the future of the breeding system.

There are 4 updates that are going to affect the breeding system. Those are, the recessive gene mechanic which will find its way in a 1.M.? patch, the Nurse dragon which is the next dragon after Inferno Ravager (which is the next dragon), the Nest UI update, and then there are Dragon Pearls which will give various equippable bonuses.

Recessive genes will allow players to produce eggs that carry grandparents genes and pass them down to their offspring instead of the parents genes. This will allow players to carry certain skin recessives and gene recessives that will allow for quite a variety in the eggs. Having A quality dominant and recessives will slightly increase crit/super crit chance on the eggs.

The Nurse Dragon, when she makes her way to the game, will have the ability to incubate any dragon's egg, increase its stats, and also to move eggs and nests to new locations. The way it will work is that the native species make a nest and lay their eggs (but don't incubate them), the nurse then can join their group, pack up their eggs in her pouch (which removes the old nest), incubate them, then drop the incubated eggs in a nest she built - or move them to a new location. The eggs are then ready for the parents to reclaim and send out their invites. While incubating the eggs in her pouch, she has the option to upgrade any one stat of the eggs 2 grades. So she can make an "A" an "A++" or a "B+" an "A+" or an "F" a "D-". The corresponding recessive gene of the egg is also upgraded 2 levels along with the dominant gene. This makes the nurse a clan-favorite for nesting any species, both as a protector and a gene-upgrader for that one-stat a player wants the most to be perfect.

The Nest UI has been in a half-finished state for quite a while, but it will be improved upon in a later Nesting update. The nest UI will show dominant/recessive genes of each egg, allow players to check egg incubation status, and more that I don't want to talk about right now.

Lastly there are coming loot items in the form of Dragon pearls that can be carried in the dragons crop and equipped for stat bonuses. The pearls can also be traded and the active pearls can be looted off of bodies. One of the bonuses that is possible to get on a pearl is egg stat crit chance bonus. This pearl will be highly prized by breeder dragons. 

All in all, we have a lot of good things coming for the Nesting system in Day of Dragons and we hope that today's blog helped you to see the changes in 1.M were needed for the current health of the game with its current ecosystem and to prepare for future updates. 

Remember, be kind to everyone, even gamedevs, because everyone is dealing with something. 

Lore-writer out.