Ask The Staff: Egg Cave Version 3

sony • 29 November 2016 at 9:37 PM

@jazzyleia

Thank you so much for addressing all the questions I have.
I read through all of the posts (unbelievably) and thought that the problems:

1. of expanding coves is a pain. Cove expansion, personally, I think should be proportional with the creatures we have on site? -- or at least there should be an increment every now and then, especially with the current overflow of creatures. Or, can we at least get an expansion of 10 - 20 creature slots per 200EC increment, instead of 1 slot per 200EC increment?

2. of merging side and main accounts. I think it'd be hard, but if there's a way to get good riddance of all the hassle of switching and multiple emails we'd have to use among accounts.

3. eCode font size maybe?

4. and more interactions with the creatures aside from aesthetics and hoarding values. xD

Thank you all once again.

shadowy_overseer • 29 November 2016 at 9:38 PM

@jazzyleia Nobody's given me a response about my earlier post, so mind looking into it? Thanks! 😊

jello • 29 November 2016 at 9:38 PM

@Zac YOU CAME BACK! YAY

izziebee1017 • 29 November 2016 at 9:41 PM

@element @valorie100 @fakeworld

Brilliant ideas! ❤️

Ian • 29 November 2016 at 9:46 PM

Whoa! Amazed at all of the questions so far. Let me sort through some of the biggest questions and I'll post a big first response from me in the morning. 😊

Keep 'em coming!

netherling • 29 November 2016 at 10:06 PM

@spiritkeeper5

Omg, personalizing your user page would be awesome!~ ❤️
Kinda like the cover photos on fb but with more stuff

jello • 29 November 2016 at 10:09 PM

Yeah, just don't refer it to facebook.

poptarts • 29 November 2016 at 10:51 PM

I know already asked this on the blog but I thought it would be cool to add more places in ark. Would ian ever consider adding newer places to travel to? Not sure if someone already asked this in this topic, to lazy to check.

takaedakumi • 29 November 2016 at 10:57 PM

This may have been asked already, but will we eventually have the option to change our usernames--by Cave Cash or otherwise?

leafstarofskyclan • 29 November 2016 at 11:05 PM

Could there be more emoticons? i don't know if this was already asked and I don't have time to look...

brad • 29 November 2016 at 11:18 PM

It's awesome you guys are progressing so nicely. I know that's a good feeling!

I've seen the previews of what's coming, and it looks really good visually. That would be what my question is about.

Being a web designer myself, with an average to below-average pc, I know that if you start adding too many pictures and such, it doesn't take much to start slowing down the page.

So that being said, you guys didn't go super image heavy trying to make the design look good, did you? Sticking with mainly CSS you can keep with a simple design, that looks good, and isn't too taxing on computers.
I'm hoping that's what you guys did? Just stuck with the basic, clean design that works well for function and looks.

Basically, how's it score on Google's PageSpeed Insights? 😋


Also, how moblie friendly is it going to be?


That's all for now. Can't wait for it to go live to be able to play with it!

immortalraven • 29 November 2016 at 11:27 PM

Suggestions:
1) With every new critter added we get a free cove spot or the amount of EC goes back to 2ooEC at some point? I know some others that like this idea me very much included lol cause it's starting to get really expensive ;-; Or maybe we can buy a certain amount of spots with CC?

2) Be able to change our username once? I am getting tired of my side's name immortalravens_storage xD Or be able to pay a fee for it or something.

3) Be able to buy a 5th cove for real money or CC. I like organizing my coves and with so many new critters and types of critters like commons, cave monthlies, CCs, and regular LEs and my hoarding issues so I don't hoard real animals in real life has gotten very cluttered and not as organized o-o Now along with this something that tells what are sides and something to block sides from going to the cave, events, etc if at all possible. Or like have sides connected to out main like someone else suggested before I think. If this isn't then scratch this idea since it'd be harder to keep track and enforce that probably. o-o

4) Updated item storage. Like We have different tabs for different objects. Like Toys has their own tab we can click and just shows us toys, food shows only food, travels only travels, trinket travels only trinket travels and so on o-o It's hard finding some sometimes cause there's so many and I don't remember their names all the time.

5) An updated creature travel viewer. Like thief shop critters have a broken image when ya try to see it with a travel. So maybe if possible that if we already have that stage we can see it on the viewer or the image unlocks for us?

Um, I think that may be all. I think I had one or two more but I forgot. Today's been long sad day and can't keep my mind straight ;-;

alastrine • 30 November 2016 at 12:02 AM

Will animation or 3d modelling ever be added to eggs and animals?

valorieviolet • 30 November 2016 at 12:07 AM

I just thought of another suggestion, I'm not sure if it has been mentioned yet.

Many times, I miss out on rebidding in an auction because I forget when it's going to end, so I think it would be a good idea if we could be notified when an auction is about to end. Maybe 10-30 minutes before. Or have a option where we can chose to be notified and pick a specific number of minutes from a drop down list.

It could say something like "Auction #### is ending in X minutes, want to bid again?"

burn • 30 November 2016 at 12:07 AM

Might there be a Tim's Food Shoppe option where you can select all your non-immortals to be booked?

Will a Auto-Tims-Booking feature be added for those who are inactive/on hiatus?

Would inactive accounts/coves be removed?

Thank you!

333 • 30 November 2016 at 12:47 AM

Oh no, I keep forgetting what I was thinking about. Ah, what was it??

OK, while I think on that, another idea I had--

Zodiac creatures, as in a seasonal creature that comes into the Cave every time a new zodiac period starts. If that makes sense...

I really can't think of that other one. It's bugging the heck outta me.
Oh yes, I think it already got said, but an option where you can delete your own topics, and/or clear/ erase your own posts... I dunno. I dunno. I don't think that was it. Hm. 😋

novrain62 • 30 November 2016 at 1:16 AM

My Ideas:

1. The option to change my page header image. Like a travel/trinket, it could be purchased with ec/cc.

2. The option to send FEED/CLICK/VIEW Bottles from the CS to my friends.

3. A Card Shop. A place to purchase greeting cards for our friends; birthday, sympathy, graduation, thank you, Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, Hanukkah, even Welcome cards, etc.

4. An option to add such a card to a gift. When I gift someone a creature, or an item, I want to be able to place a card/message with iit.

5. More REAL Eggs and Less Fake Eggs at the Thief Shop. I've lost a billion ec at 500k increments which is truly devastating. We work very hard to get that ec and that ornery Thief steals a fortune.

6. My #MLEC2 group mailing list needs more member room. I can only have 20 members on the group mailing and that is not enough! Some members are left out, but I also want the option to remove people if they no longer are in the group or participate. Not everyone removes themselves when they leave. I want that ability as founder of the group.

7. MEMBER/CREATURE of the Day, Week, Month. Showcase a Creature of the Day, Creature/Member of the Month. Members should be recognized and there can be a little information about that member. Can be totally random. With so many members, how can we know them all? Creature of the Day would also help us get to know other members.

8. Leaderboards that aren't hoarded by people that use outside sources to gain stats. I find it very frustrating and unfair to those of us do not use outside sources to gain these outrageous stats, in a day. Stats should come from our own click exchange and feeding on Egg Cave, to be fair to all!

9. A Chance to Win an Onny!

10. A way to know what ITEMS I need from the Shops for my Beanie, then having to go through all those pages.

lucie1677 • 30 November 2016 at 1:40 AM

@ian

just a question - would we be able to win CC from quests? though of course it should be rare to get that - that is if we get prizes at all from quests XD

vos • 30 November 2016 at 3:28 AM

@Ian

I have a main and a side account. How will our creatures be transferred to the new version?

I don't want to have to start again.

*A feature I would like to see is a block on nuisance feeders. Not just written contact but their ability to act on your cove.

*I'd also like an opt out of the star system of auto feeding etc.

Ty and the team for your hard work on gen 3 😊

moonwolfstar • 30 November 2016 at 3:37 AM

@Ian
would we be able to have our own character?
I think that would be cool.

thedarkarcher • 30 November 2016 at 5:18 AM

i was thinking maybe the archives could be viewed by dates for example the year of 2015 or 2014 that way you can see what creatures was made it that year easier. sorry if this has been suggested ☹️

leafmelody • 30 November 2016 at 6:19 AM

@cloud-n-bolts
IKR?! I get so annoyed when Idk the date and I think it would be nice to have that new installation to Egg Cave Version 3 😊
@moonwolfstar
That would be really nice 😊

I would love it if you could transfer creatures easier, like have a center for it 😋 But, firstly, for the safety of your creatures to ensure that your creatures don't get sent to the wrong user, mods have to verify and make sure the information is correct? 😱 Not too sure, but I would appreciate it if something was done to make transferring easier ^^" Here's the topic that I made awhile ago 'bout it 😊 http://eggcave.com/forums/topic/57581 It seems popular, the poll is 100% yes with 11 votes... But I dunno XD

And also, I most likely cannot fit 140 characters into a status, comment, etc.. Trust me, I ❤️ writing, and I am gonna write moar than that XD Usually, I sit down, read my comment (moar than 140 words sometimes) and I have to delete words LOL 😋

It would be really cool if a creature could move, but that would be a bit hard so I'm not sure :S TBH, all of these are hard to change, thank you for putting so much effort into improving Egg Cave ❤️ 😸 😃 😊 ;D

It takes a lot of work to colour text, bold, underline, etc... So much coding and stuff; whereas, on a word document, you just do it in a click of a button like WATTTT XD It would be nice if we had the same feature 😊

All for now 😊 As stated before, thank you so much for improving Egg Cave 😃 I totally understand if you cannot add these new features that I suggested: it takes hard work to change these features 😋 (I think? XD)

acerry123 • 30 November 2016 at 8:33 AM

Feature suggestion:
Ever since I've joined the site, I've wanted a "random" button that will take to me to a random, currently alive, egg or creature, so that I can feed it. And then there would be a "refresh random" or "next random" button to take me to another random creature, etc.

The click exchange kind of facilitates this, but the click exchange has a limit - I always reach a point in the exchange where I've fed all of the available creatures, for the moment, at least. And I'm looking for a way to jump from creature to creature to creature, so I can feed and rack up points.

I know that's not easy to code... but you asked what I wanted, so thanks for considering! 😊

moonwolfstar • 30 November 2016 at 10:26 AM

@Ian
I'd like our eggs to be able to grow up quicker.
I think that would be nice.

libra • 30 November 2016 at 11:41 AM

@Ian

Username change! It could be a Cash Shop purchase and should have a frequency limit (how often you could change it). It would be a great addition for those of us that picked out our usernames a long time ago, like seven years ago, and want to keep our account, but change our usernames.

sparklefox • 30 November 2016 at 11:41 AM

Haha, you don't realise how great it feels to know you'll experience another EC redesign! This site has grown so much, it's great to have watched it grow along with myself.

I know, such a ridiculous question, and it shows that I haven't payed attention to screenshots, but... will the seasonal backgrounds be included within V3? I'd hate to see them go, as they look so amazing and make this site much more pleasing to look at.

No other questions or any suggestions for now... Maybe I'll think of some later?

Ian • 30 November 2016 at 12:55 PM

@greengrass100100: What really pumps me up is the New layout. It's so modernized and I cant wait to navigate around the site again. Will the maps be updated too?

We are hoping to give maps an update gradually, after the version 3 public release but not initially.

@raitonchidori: And also, in the "Search" option, we can search for Users, Creatures and Forums. It would be useful to have a "Species" option.

For the version 3 initial release, Trades and Auction searching will feel slightly better. The rest of search will feel familiar, although our goal is to have a more unified search, yep.

I’ve noted your suggestion about multi-page Trades Center. We need to make more trades more accessible.

@element: Does unified trades mean that the need of a "junk egg" for creature trades will be eliminated?

We are planning to implement a one-way send/receive creatures and items feature separate from the Trades Center. The receiving user would need to “accept” the request for it to go through. This would eliminate junk eggs with transfers and wouldn’t require “private trades.”

@jellifysh: We should be able to search selected creatures, with feature filters like Mackatron Stage 1, Muska Frozen, Immortal Keras, or Most Viewed Flor. Just like adding filters to the Creature Search.

An advanced creature search is long overdue, I agree!

@asi: And will current (active) forum threads be in any danger of being erased for the new version?

No. We are not planning on archiving anything in the transfer.

@jellifysh: Oh yeah, what if we increased the length of the creatures names to 18 or 20? I really want a creature named HoneyBunchesOfOats, but it exceeds the limits.

The reason creature names are limited as they are right now is because an increased character limit would be cut off on creature images.

@foreigners: Will anything be redrawn, or will the art for items, creatures, ect. stay the same? Will the quests allow players to gain cc, items, or ec? Will players be able to put an unlimited amount of items and creatures in unified auctions and trade lots?

At the version 3 initial release, no redraws will be released. Questing, for the initial functionality, would request an item (or items) and you would receive an EC prize and/or plus or minus 2-5 rarity item in return. This is just one idea for questing though — questing can take many forms with different features.

For Trades and Auctions, any combination of up to 20 items and creatures will be allowed. It is capped.

@valorie100: if there can be a species indicator next to the picture of our dead eggs, that would be great! Sometimes I don't know what the creature is and have to spend five minutes looking through the archives just to find it's name.

Good call. I’ll implement this in version 3.

@elluwah: The biggest thing I want is an easier way to expand cove size without using my diminishing supply of EC. As more creatures are added to the site, I'm struggling to afford to collect them all. If this means buying a specialised CC item (similar to those that give bulk feeds/clicks/views), then I'm all for buying one!

Great suggestion. Noted.

@poptarts: I know already asked this on the blog but I thought it would be cool to add more places in ark. Would ian ever consider adding newer places to travel to?

Of course! We would love to add new places to explore.

@takatheeducatedkid: This may have been asked already, but will we eventually have the option to change our usernames--by Cave Cash or otherwise?

At the moment, this is not in the roadmap. Changing your username breaks all previous pings, leaving older data (i.e. older topics, comments) somewhat irrelevant and/or confusing.

@o_o: So that being said, you guys didn't go super image heavy trying to make the design look good, did you? Sticking with mainly CSS you can keep with a simple design, that looks good, and isn't too taxing on computers. Also, how moblie friendly is it going to be?

The version 3 design is a bit cleaner. The page layout does contain less images, although most repeatedly-loaded images that are parts of web site layouts can be cached with extreme speeds these days.

Version 3 will be much, much more fluid and responsive to changing browser sizes. There are parts of version 3 that we’re trying to refactor to play friendlier with mobile, but stuff like feeding and browsing your Coves from mobile will be lightyears ahead of what we have right now.

@alastrine: Will animation or 3d modelling ever be added to eggs and animals?

3D? No. Animation? Possibly.

@valorie100: I think it would be a good idea if we could be notified when an auction is about to end. Maybe 10-30 minutes before.

Love this suggestion! Doing it.

@novrain62: More REAL Eggs and Less Fake Eggs at the Thief Shop. I've lost a billion ec at 500k increments which is truly devastating. We work very hard to get that ec and that ornery Thief steals a fortune.

Chances at the Thief Shop in version 3 will be improved.

@vos: I have a main and a side account. How will our creatures be transferred to the new version?

You’ll access all of your accounts at eggcave.com like you normally would. Version 3 is just a new look. No work required on your part, just keep playing.

@acerry123: Ever since I've joined the site, I've wanted a "random" button that will take to me to a random, currently alive, egg or creature, so that I can feed it. And then there would be a "refresh random" or "next random" button to take me to another random creature, etc.

Love this. Doing it!

@sparklefox: I know, such a ridiculous question, and it shows that I haven't payed attention to screenshots, but... will the seasonal backgrounds be included within V3? I'd hate to see them go, as they look so amazing and make this site much more pleasing to look at.

Yep, seasonal backgrounds as you know them will be used in version 3.

Keep the questions coming! Thanks everybody for participating.

klauenwolf • 30 November 2016 at 1:26 PM

Would it be an option to make creatures immortal from the beginning?

I know, they will be immortalized at level 2000 and there is a option to keep them feed with the Food Shoppe, but (in my opinion) it would make more fun, if creatures can not die in any case.
I dont have much time to be online here and i dont have much other sides i could link them...only one. But it took to long to get them to level 2000.

Please think of making them immortal from the beginning.

You could make some special bonus, if the pets are well fed or happy. So there will be a incentive for users to be online ;-)

Greetings,
Klauenwolf

spectaclenest • 30 November 2016 at 1:52 PM

@ian rather than a ginormous comment here i've posted a proposal for creature rerelease from myself and @fainne_24 over here 😊

netherling • 30 November 2016 at 2:39 PM

@Ian & Mods

I think we should have a wishlist section on our pages. Like how there are icons on our pages showing our lots we have up, our recent topics, and etc, there would be one leading to a page with the creatures, names, and travels we might be seeking. You would go through a list of creatures and add them -kinda like with the cove lists-, then through a list of travels and add those too. The names you're looking for could be entered in a text box. Since a lot of users don't have the space in their profiles to add their wishlists and instead have to redirect to a creature's profile and list them there, I think something like this would be cool ^-^ and easier for people to see what a user would want.