Science and Research Center Innovations

Deleted • 31 July 2024 at 12:23 PM

According to the Site Blog, today is the last day to find the Ohnex in the cave. After that, it will be available in the Cash Shop Park for 200 cc for the next month. My question is why. Why is it that a Limited-Edition creature originally found in the Cave is being sold in the Cash Shop Park? Why is it that it is selling for CaveCash only? Why not Egg Coins?

I believe that Egg Coins (EC) and CaveCash (CC) should be equally important currencies. Yet, Eggcave is a game that is a bit too dependent on CaveCash. Without CaveCash, there is little you can do. The solution to this problem is to make Egg Coins a more relevant and useful currency. There are changes that must be made, but we can take the first step by improvising the SAR center.

Here are my suggestions:
- Add a prize pool for those who donate
Check out the Research Fund. Current fund is 128,586,809 EC. Another 621,413,191 more to go. Sure, anyone can go donate. However, there is no reason to donate since you will be losing your EC for nothing. What about adding a prize pool as a reward for those who donate? For instance, take the Kendo Toys for instance. That would have been a nice prize for those who spent 50k EC when donations were being collected for the Kendo. It would much more interesting if there are better prizes the more one donates. In addition, how about a special prize for top donors?

- Retire the old creatures and include limited edition creatures
The Calla was introduced on May 27, 2010. It has been there for over 14 years. It should be time for it to retire. There are species that retired after a month, yet these SARC creatures seem to be available indefinitely. I think it would be better if the SARC creatures are treated like the Limited-Edition ones. Have it available for a limited time and return sometime in the future. In addition, sell the Limited-Edition creatures (like the Ohnex) in the SAR Center for the next month instead of the Cash Shop Park. Limited Edition creatures were originally in the cave to begin with, and should be available to buy with EC rather than CC.

If you support these ideas, please show your support by pinging @ian. Also, if you would like to share your opinions or suggestions regarding the SAR center, please do so here. Thank you.

heatherm19 • 12 August 2024 at 12:06 AM

@raretreasurehunter56 Every time I donate to the newest SARC fund I think how nice it would be if we actually had a chance to get something from donating. It is a *lot* of ec needed, my goodness. I must admit it really shocked me when I first learned how expensive an SARC fund could be and no one actually gets anything from it. I don't care if it's an item or what, it would just be nice to have a chance to get *something* from 'wasting' all that ec.

I've also wondered about SARC creatures not retiring. I'm not sure how I personally feel about it, since there is never any guarantee that something retired will actually come back and I wouldn't want any of them to disappear forever, but it does seem strange that the SARC seems to be the *only* place where creatures just stay available forever. (And lore-wise I think it just makes sense for old creatures to retire from there, I mean the SARC works hard to genetically engineer these brand-new creatures that require *so* much ec to be donated, it makes sense that as they focus on perfecting the new creature they wouldn't have time/resources to continue making the oldest ones.)

dragiigy • 12 August 2024 at 9:31 AM

Add a prize pool for those who donate

Agree! Maybe one item or even better:

if research for one creature ciosts 100 mio EC and I donate 1 mio, when resarch is finished, I woul get 1% per sold creature. So if it will cost 10 mio, I will get 100k . Like Stocks and Dividends 😊

Otherwise, @raretreasurehunter56 superb idea !!

minnie298a • 12 August 2024 at 11:43 PM

At the most basic of levels, I have no problems with how the SARC runs. It is an ec sink. Pure and simple.

I view it along the lines of the Donation Centre, or throwing my real life change into a donation box sitting on the counter of the local fast food place. I donate to feel good and help the community. I donate because at the time, I can spare that "money" even if it is only small change. With the SARC, the creature at the end is what I consider the "prize", even if I have to buy it.

I also feel that offering exclusive prizes for donating certain amounts would disadvantage those without spare funds, those who struggle to build savings (I'm especially thinking about how it would alienate new players and those with FOMO).

Maybe an incentive could be that a percentage of your donation is applied as a discount on your first purchase of that creature. For example, if the discount is 50% and you donated 1 mil ec you would get 500k off. So if done with the Kendo, it would be only 7mil, not 7.5mil for the first one you buy. The percentage could be relevant to the amount raised or the amount the purchaser has to spend (eg a larger percentage for something like the Deena than the Calla). But I don't know coding and this may be too hard to implement.

I also don't like the idea of retiring any of the creatures. While the Calla may be one of the oldest creatures it is also the cheapest. It is an easily obtainable goal for a newer player, one that, currently, the goalposts aren't moving on. There are currently 19 creatures available, and 9 of them are priced at 1 mil or lower, the newest being from late 2018. I also did a little deep dive into the blog. From what I can tell at least the Drakomo was put in the SARC as a way to rerelease it.

I feel Limited edition creatures like the Ohnex that were available in the cave should be rereleased through the VEND (I know, another feature that could do with some tweaking to get it working optimally). The precedent is already there with some CRW creatures available.

avaloninallcaps • 14 August 2024 at 12:24 AM

I had thought maybe it could be something where if you donated X% to the fund, you get that % off of the new creature or something! Or if you donate over the amount the creature ends up costing, you automatically get one. But I agree. I'm poor and cannot afford to put all my EC towards it, especially cuz if I do that, there's no way I'll be able to afford it when it drops.