Post by Arceus on Mar 14, 2023 20:11:50 GMT -6
In terms of dragon design, the Deca team has really grown considerably since taking over. I haven't had any true major gripes with event dragons in terms of design for the past few events, and I feel I can strongly say that the majority of the community is absolutely in love with all of your gorgeous egg designs. Rate a Dragon has been a huge way to facilitate community connection, and I can really see where Deca has listened to player feedback and adjusted their designs accordingly. So props to you all for that! It's not very often where one can look at a company and say "I really do think they listen to us" and even programs like the design contests, the spoiler contests, and even the game rep system are all very impressive and not very common, at least in my experience. Community is something Deca has been very good at maintaining (as well as the passion on behalf of the many game reps and community moderators/members) and I would encourage you to continue to foster this environment.
However, I do feel like the game's events, while all lovely in their own right, feel almost stale. We now have a fairly consistent theme we can expect for each event (love, spring, faire, paradise, camping, halloween, om of noms, winter, etc) and while Deca goes above and beyond in exploring unique ways of approaching each theme, I think it's important to recognize that you don't HAVE to fit everything into that box. The Zodiac event this past year was amazing, and thank you for not classifying its dragons in the "camping" category. However, I feel like events such as "Pirates in Paradise" have been somewhat skewed towards fitting into these themes... all the pirate dragons are found in the "paradise" category, and while it's not inherently incorrect, the formulaic nature of Deca's category choices sorely reflects these expected event themes. I don't think many of us would be upset if a new category was made for, say, these pirate dragons that don't really fit with the rave dragons anyways.
This brings me to my next point - I personally don't think it's necessary to add dragons to *only* one themed category per event. This is predictable now - in the love event, we'll get a set amount of new love dragons in the love category. That's just what we're used to. I would encourage Deca to of course include dragons in each event's respective category, but not exclusively in said category. This past event, for example, added a decent amount of dragons to the love category that I wouldn't necessarily say were warranted. I feel like Deca has settled into this mindset of "oh, looks like it's time to make more X dragons" without considering all the possible untapped avenues that could instead be explored. I feel this would liven the game beyond "38 love-themed dragons and counting" because it seems to me that these themes are very abstract and really don't require almost 40 dragons for just one concept. I'm utilizing love as an example, but halloween and winter are other contributors... at least their categories are broader, though. I think it might be beneficial to really stop and think about the different ways you could spin an event, including X amount of love-themed dragons but also coming up with other, new themes that DragonVale really doesn't encompass (yet). In short, I would encourage variety over sticking with the same old ideas that are overused in the Vale, not that Deca has been unoriginal to any extent. I also feel that the Dragonarium desperately needs reorganizing... but that's a point for another day.
I feel like, especially in this past event, the theme was sorely disjointed. Was it love or Beauty and the Beast or some weird amalgamation of both? This event in particular was a real offender where every other dragon seemed to fit one theme but the other dragons fit another. I know this might seem counterintuitive to my previous point, but I feel that they go hand in hand. If Deca comes up with, say, this specific Beauty and the Beast theme, I have no problem if we receive yet another set of love-themed dragons because there is a set theme to the event. We haven't always received that, and that's okay, but uniqueness and variety can be encouraged in these looser-restricted environments! Deca should have said, "okay, let's commit to one theme and run with it" instead of presenting us this half-organized mishmash of dragon designs. Maybe just a little story at the start of the event, or something happening weekly in-game to tell a story, or honestly anything different from the norm that conveys a unique theme. Obviously you all aren't Backflip, but events like the Color Guard that genuinely had a unique twist instead of "same old, same old" would likely be viewed very favorably by most players. In general, if there's not a set theme to an event, I would encourage branching out and coming up with new themes and ideas! And I don't think many people would be upset as long as we get an event at the "correct" time... there are so many themes that just aren't being explored yet, and I know Deca has the potential to explore them without following the same/similar formula they've been following for nearly three years.
I posted it in this event thread because this event's "theme" was the jumping-off point for my thoughts, but I can move it to Dear Deca if needed. Cheers!
Dragon Designs: I will say that the overall designs have been much better recently, even with the fact that some of the art styles are way different. Some of the dragons released early last year were not stellar (especially Mesmer, PonkiPong and Jumpiplop), but after the Dragon Bandwagon the designs have been phenomenal. Especially the Zodiac dragons are really, really good, and Nomnoter also (though most say otherwise).
The increased amount of swagons added is also nice as it shows how much DECA supports their community. Even if there have been multiple swagons released that are made by the same person in a row.
Events: I can see why the events are seeming kind of placid, though I don't really mind their repetitiveness. I think DECA keeps the event formats the same as making a new format for every event would be too time consuming. Making a whole new event from scratch requires a lot of effort, and the current (yet repetitive) format of events also works pretty well for both players and DECA. And honestly, I would much rather prefer the current event layout than in other games:
Dragon City is similar in how events are constantly happening, but there's only ONE WEEK to get the content, and much like DragonVale, the best prizes cost a TON of EC, making it so that you have to buy currency to even get the top prizes.
Merge Dragons is debatably worse, as you only get TWO DAYS to complete an impossibly large level, AND get the necessary points to unlock the event goods.
So why try to fix something that doesn't really have any problems right now (except for the early end; that needs to be patched).
Categories: Overall I don't mind event dragons going into one single Dragonarium category; it helps to categorize dragons by the event they are in. And honestly, I kind of disliked how Backflip put their event dragons into multiple categories, as now I feel like there is a ridiculously large number of dragons in some categories where they didn't need to be (Celebration being the worst).
HOWEVER, I would like to see additions to other categories which have little to no dragons at all. For example, the "Summer" category only has about six total dragons, and I'd like to see more in there.
