An occasionally recurring correspondence that the Rare Trading Center moderators field pertain to generation patterns and generation restrictions.
Of those, the first is probably more interesting to look at: Why, for example, don’t we allow 6G even-generation commons, when they’re clearly hard to come by and very difficult to make?
The relation of the second will become apparent in a bit.
Even generations
The trouble with even generation lineages is that while they are indeed very difficult to make in the higher generation numbers, the chance someone is looking for the particular lineage someone made is vanishingly small but for some popular pairings (‘female silver + marrow’ comes to mind as an example of that). In other words, while supply is low, demand is even lower.
Additionally, it’s incredibly difficult to come up with a wording that allows clean lineages in a way that isn’t fundamentally biased in some way. ‘Even generation’ alone is unfortunately not much of an achievement (see for example this lineage – I personally adore it, but it’s hard to argue it’s an objective work of art given how much of a patchwork it is). You could make a rule akin to “Perfect evengen checkers (4G+)”, but then people who love other lineages might feel checkers are being given undue weight.
Other lineage shapes – and the pleasant side-effect of the 3G cut-off
The 3G restriction we have for several species is, effectively, a lineage cleanliness restriction.
A 3G lineage cannot be messy in the strictest sense – it has to either be the start of a stair-shaped lineage (not necessarily a perfect stair, by all means, can be an inverse design, for example, where each ‘step’ is a new species), spiral-shaped lineage, or evengen. There are literally no other options at 3G.
Okay. Now what?
We’re definitely open to hearing suggestions!
Currently, we point people to the Even Generations Trading and Gifting Centre for even generation dragons, but perhaps some sort of addition of evengens would be useful. They are certainly unmistakably the most difficult lineage-shape to continue after certain generation numbers. The trouble is finding a sensible way to include them; so if you have any ideas now that you’ve read this article, feel free to chat us up about that if you have any! :)
