Nathicana
Growing VPL Member
- 11
- 3
The Good:
The Dragons: The art for the dragon breeds is quite nice. While some breeds do share similar characteristics (such as having long, thin, kind of serpentine designs,) the dragon art is appealing to look at and each breed has three distinct variations (male, female and baby.) Though there certainly is not a breed to suit all tastes, there are always more in the pipeline and what the site currently has to offer does suit most tastes. The dragon art is clean and rather polished, with very few instances of blatant lineart mistakes. When there are things like stray pixels or improperly aligned markings (genes), the artists fix those very quickly.
The Breeding System: Though it is extremely simplified, the breeding system works for Flight Rising. If two parents with completely different markings are bred, players do not have to worry about "faded" markings, as the offspring will all display a mixture of markings from both parents. The number of offspring is randomized between one and five, which can make things interesting, in a way-- and it takes several days for players to hatch their eggs in order to see the baby dragons. Breeds that are designated as being an "ancient breed" cannot be crossbred, but those that are classified as "modern" can -- and the offspring from a mixed "modern" pair will have the same breed as one of the parents.
The Okay:
The Color Wheel: Flight Rising dragons can come in a large variety of colors. Unfortunately, many of those colors have an additional "accent color," which, though unique, can look strange or downright unappealing. Especially considering how they look on certain genes (markings.) There are not many genes that do not have an accent color, unfortunately-- and that can make designing dragons difficult sometimes.
"Rolling" A Custom: Customs come from eggs, which can be purchased from the Auction House, though once in a great while, they are made available for free through Galore's Glorious Gifts. Unfortunately, players cannot decide what markings (genes) they want their Custom to have when the egg is hatched: they always have triple "Basic" and if players want to change what their dragons look like, they have to spend considerable amounts of money (Coins or Gems) to get the genes they want. Colors are completely randomized and in many instances, they do not look good together, no matter how hard players try to make them work.
Flights: When players register, they have to decide what group (or "flight") they want to join. Largely, the "flight" determines what color of eyes their dragons will end up having. "Flights" have their own forums (which, generally speaking, are pretty dead, since for whatever reason, the "Flights" tend to prefer communicating via Discord, which can make things very hard for people who do not like/want to use Discord.) The one real reason for "Flights" is because of the mechanic called "Dominance," where people compete to see who can release ("Exalt") the highest number of dragons and if their "Flight" gets rid of the highest number of dragons for the week, they get fairly small bonuses from the site. This is a way to artifically encourage competition among players, as well as to remove dragons from the game, the latter of which might free a small amount of server space.
The Tolerable:
Familiars: In theory, it's a cute idea to find/buy little pixel pets for your dragons, especially since those pets provide rewards every day for clicking on them. After a whle though, it gets to become very tedious, since each dragon has to be c;licked on to open its page, then each familiar has to be clicked on individually. While there's nothing inherently bad about the Familar system, it can take a considerable amount of time to click on all of them, if a player has a large number of dragons that are equipped with familiars.
The Clothing and Skins: Clothing and skins are pretty pointless, unless someone seriously wants to cover their dragon in random stuff. They don't add or detract anything from the game, they're just there. People who like playing dress-up doll games will like the idea of being able to add a bunch of cosmetic things to their dragon, while people who do not enjoy or don't see the point in such things can just ignore it. It's unobtrusive and unoffensive.
The Fairgrounds: Flight Rising has a few games that players can play in order to earn Treasure. Unfortuntely, there really aren't that many games and most of them have abyssal payouts. "Glimmer and Gloom," which many players despise, has the highest payout of all the games. The Fairgrounds are definitely in need of a revamp: new games need to be added, different kinds of games need to be added and the payouts need to be adjusted/balanced better in order to make them worthwhile. As none of the available games are anything truly unique or special, they can be a decent enough way to kill a few minutes, but that's about all.
The "Holidays:" The site's got eleven "holidays" and several "micro-holidays." In a perfect world, each of these "holidays" would have their own, interesting mechanics, but they do not. When a "holiday" occurs, new stuff is released. In order to get that new stuff, players have to spend hours or days gathering items and in the Coliseum, fighting NPC creatures, as a way to earn festival currency and hopefully get the newer stuff to drop. This wouldn't be a big deal at all, if one or two holidays used the same formula, but no. Every one of them is handled the same way, which makes them all seem to be extremely boring and uninspired.
The Irritating:
The "Deities:" Each of the "Flights" have their own "Deity," which is supposed to be an NPC dragon goddess or god. Unfortunately, while these dragons all have their own customized art and staff-run accounts, they... don't do anything. It looks like they used to interact with players somewhat frequently in the forums, but none of them have posed anything in years, which makes them seem to be completely unimportant now. If they interacted with players again, they would be interesting and fun, but just being custom dragons in accounts, they're just... there.
The Stories: Also called "lore" by players, the staff-written stories really aren't a bad idea, in theory. However, Flight Rising does not seem to know if it's predominantly an RP site with some pets, a breeding sim with some backstory, or what it is. Unfortunately, many of the stories have completely different tones than others; some seem to be very serious and grim, whereas others are very poorly-done comedy. The tone shifts make it extremely hard to know how the site's supposed to be viewed as a whole. Thankfully though, those stories do not have to be read or followed by anyone who just wants to play a little dragon breeding game.
The Bad:
The Community: Flight Rising players tend to be very vocal, which is not always a bad thing. However, you will be more-or-less ostracized and questioned if you tell people you don't care one way or another about the site's stories, you don't write dragon stories and you are not an RPer. Also, even though the site seems to be aimed at a fairly diverse player age range, many of the players seem to be extremely young children, which makes it difficult for older people to be comfortable talking to others on the site. The proliferation of abbreviations/acronyms across the forums can also make it quite difficult to understand what many people are trying to say.
Being Forced Into Flights: Solitary players are more-or-less ostracized from the get-go, as they must decide what group to join as soon as they leave. Players cannot remain neutral, even if they only play Flight Rising as a dragon breeding game and have no interest in things like Dominance.
The Limited Customization: Dragons only have three gene slots, "Primary," "Secondary" and "Tertiary." This makes it extremely difficult to customize dragons, especially if a design would look better with more markings than three. There are no mutations that can be added to dragons, either, which only further restricts customization.
Flight Favoritism: Of the site's "Flights," it is extremely clear to see that Flight Rising's staff are not at all fond of the Plague flight. Which they created. What started out as a very horror-oriented, interestingly gory, disease-ridden, pestilence-spreading flight has been extensively neutered. Now, instead of being clearly horror-themed, the Plague flight has been altered into a "wasteland survivalist" flight, rather than something as unique and interesting as it could have been, if the site hadn't decided they will not allow any kind of real (non-excessive) horror imagery. This appears to have been done because some people complained in the past about not being fond of horror.
Limited Eye Colors: The way Flight Rising handles eye colors is strange and extremely limiting, to say the least. There are red, orange, yellow, pink, purple, blue, aqua, green and brown eyes. However, each of those eye colors are limited to a specific flight (each flight gets one eye color.) Players who breed their dragons will find that their offspring only have eyes corresponding to the flight the player is in. There are several eye "types" that determine the exact shade of color those eyes are-- and Primal eyes, which are supposed to be a unique design for each flight, generally just look strange, or downright bad. There are no neutral (black, white, grey) eyes, either.
Many Unfinished Things: The Water Flight's deity has been "missing" for many years, with no explanation. The Coliseum is unfinished, there is a section that says "coming soon" and that hasn't changed in several years. Several stories have been left unfinished, not all of the breeds have their own stories, some suggestions that staff have said they would implement have not been added. No game is ever truly "finished," but there are many loose ends that have not been tied up, features that have not been finished or released. It makes the game seem largely unpolished.
Closing Threads: If players complain "too much" about things, or moderators think players' complaints are getting "heated," they will close those threads and not allow players to create others to voice their concerns about that thing. Instead of just silencing people who say rude things in such threads, it seems like they'd rather just sweep complaints under the rug, or lock those complaints in the basement, out of sight and out of mind.
There Is No Complaints Section of the Forum: Many other breeding games have a complaining or venting section of the forum, in case players need or want to complain about something that happened. Flight Rising does not have such a section, despite the fact that it clearly should have had one on opening day, even though it did not.
The Dragons: The art for the dragon breeds is quite nice. While some breeds do share similar characteristics (such as having long, thin, kind of serpentine designs,) the dragon art is appealing to look at and each breed has three distinct variations (male, female and baby.) Though there certainly is not a breed to suit all tastes, there are always more in the pipeline and what the site currently has to offer does suit most tastes. The dragon art is clean and rather polished, with very few instances of blatant lineart mistakes. When there are things like stray pixels or improperly aligned markings (genes), the artists fix those very quickly.
The Breeding System: Though it is extremely simplified, the breeding system works for Flight Rising. If two parents with completely different markings are bred, players do not have to worry about "faded" markings, as the offspring will all display a mixture of markings from both parents. The number of offspring is randomized between one and five, which can make things interesting, in a way-- and it takes several days for players to hatch their eggs in order to see the baby dragons. Breeds that are designated as being an "ancient breed" cannot be crossbred, but those that are classified as "modern" can -- and the offspring from a mixed "modern" pair will have the same breed as one of the parents.
The Okay:
The Color Wheel: Flight Rising dragons can come in a large variety of colors. Unfortunately, many of those colors have an additional "accent color," which, though unique, can look strange or downright unappealing. Especially considering how they look on certain genes (markings.) There are not many genes that do not have an accent color, unfortunately-- and that can make designing dragons difficult sometimes.
"Rolling" A Custom: Customs come from eggs, which can be purchased from the Auction House, though once in a great while, they are made available for free through Galore's Glorious Gifts. Unfortunately, players cannot decide what markings (genes) they want their Custom to have when the egg is hatched: they always have triple "Basic" and if players want to change what their dragons look like, they have to spend considerable amounts of money (Coins or Gems) to get the genes they want. Colors are completely randomized and in many instances, they do not look good together, no matter how hard players try to make them work.
Flights: When players register, they have to decide what group (or "flight") they want to join. Largely, the "flight" determines what color of eyes their dragons will end up having. "Flights" have their own forums (which, generally speaking, are pretty dead, since for whatever reason, the "Flights" tend to prefer communicating via Discord, which can make things very hard for people who do not like/want to use Discord.) The one real reason for "Flights" is because of the mechanic called "Dominance," where people compete to see who can release ("Exalt") the highest number of dragons and if their "Flight" gets rid of the highest number of dragons for the week, they get fairly small bonuses from the site. This is a way to artifically encourage competition among players, as well as to remove dragons from the game, the latter of which might free a small amount of server space.
The Tolerable:
Familiars: In theory, it's a cute idea to find/buy little pixel pets for your dragons, especially since those pets provide rewards every day for clicking on them. After a whle though, it gets to become very tedious, since each dragon has to be c;licked on to open its page, then each familiar has to be clicked on individually. While there's nothing inherently bad about the Familar system, it can take a considerable amount of time to click on all of them, if a player has a large number of dragons that are equipped with familiars.
The Clothing and Skins: Clothing and skins are pretty pointless, unless someone seriously wants to cover their dragon in random stuff. They don't add or detract anything from the game, they're just there. People who like playing dress-up doll games will like the idea of being able to add a bunch of cosmetic things to their dragon, while people who do not enjoy or don't see the point in such things can just ignore it. It's unobtrusive and unoffensive.
The Fairgrounds: Flight Rising has a few games that players can play in order to earn Treasure. Unfortuntely, there really aren't that many games and most of them have abyssal payouts. "Glimmer and Gloom," which many players despise, has the highest payout of all the games. The Fairgrounds are definitely in need of a revamp: new games need to be added, different kinds of games need to be added and the payouts need to be adjusted/balanced better in order to make them worthwhile. As none of the available games are anything truly unique or special, they can be a decent enough way to kill a few minutes, but that's about all.
The "Holidays:" The site's got eleven "holidays" and several "micro-holidays." In a perfect world, each of these "holidays" would have their own, interesting mechanics, but they do not. When a "holiday" occurs, new stuff is released. In order to get that new stuff, players have to spend hours or days gathering items and in the Coliseum, fighting NPC creatures, as a way to earn festival currency and hopefully get the newer stuff to drop. This wouldn't be a big deal at all, if one or two holidays used the same formula, but no. Every one of them is handled the same way, which makes them all seem to be extremely boring and uninspired.
The Irritating:
The "Deities:" Each of the "Flights" have their own "Deity," which is supposed to be an NPC dragon goddess or god. Unfortunately, while these dragons all have their own customized art and staff-run accounts, they... don't do anything. It looks like they used to interact with players somewhat frequently in the forums, but none of them have posed anything in years, which makes them seem to be completely unimportant now. If they interacted with players again, they would be interesting and fun, but just being custom dragons in accounts, they're just... there.
The Stories: Also called "lore" by players, the staff-written stories really aren't a bad idea, in theory. However, Flight Rising does not seem to know if it's predominantly an RP site with some pets, a breeding sim with some backstory, or what it is. Unfortunately, many of the stories have completely different tones than others; some seem to be very serious and grim, whereas others are very poorly-done comedy. The tone shifts make it extremely hard to know how the site's supposed to be viewed as a whole. Thankfully though, those stories do not have to be read or followed by anyone who just wants to play a little dragon breeding game.
The Bad:
The Community: Flight Rising players tend to be very vocal, which is not always a bad thing. However, you will be more-or-less ostracized and questioned if you tell people you don't care one way or another about the site's stories, you don't write dragon stories and you are not an RPer. Also, even though the site seems to be aimed at a fairly diverse player age range, many of the players seem to be extremely young children, which makes it difficult for older people to be comfortable talking to others on the site. The proliferation of abbreviations/acronyms across the forums can also make it quite difficult to understand what many people are trying to say.
Being Forced Into Flights: Solitary players are more-or-less ostracized from the get-go, as they must decide what group to join as soon as they leave. Players cannot remain neutral, even if they only play Flight Rising as a dragon breeding game and have no interest in things like Dominance.
The Limited Customization: Dragons only have three gene slots, "Primary," "Secondary" and "Tertiary." This makes it extremely difficult to customize dragons, especially if a design would look better with more markings than three. There are no mutations that can be added to dragons, either, which only further restricts customization.
Flight Favoritism: Of the site's "Flights," it is extremely clear to see that Flight Rising's staff are not at all fond of the Plague flight. Which they created. What started out as a very horror-oriented, interestingly gory, disease-ridden, pestilence-spreading flight has been extensively neutered. Now, instead of being clearly horror-themed, the Plague flight has been altered into a "wasteland survivalist" flight, rather than something as unique and interesting as it could have been, if the site hadn't decided they will not allow any kind of real (non-excessive) horror imagery. This appears to have been done because some people complained in the past about not being fond of horror.
Limited Eye Colors: The way Flight Rising handles eye colors is strange and extremely limiting, to say the least. There are red, orange, yellow, pink, purple, blue, aqua, green and brown eyes. However, each of those eye colors are limited to a specific flight (each flight gets one eye color.) Players who breed their dragons will find that their offspring only have eyes corresponding to the flight the player is in. There are several eye "types" that determine the exact shade of color those eyes are-- and Primal eyes, which are supposed to be a unique design for each flight, generally just look strange, or downright bad. There are no neutral (black, white, grey) eyes, either.
Many Unfinished Things: The Water Flight's deity has been "missing" for many years, with no explanation. The Coliseum is unfinished, there is a section that says "coming soon" and that hasn't changed in several years. Several stories have been left unfinished, not all of the breeds have their own stories, some suggestions that staff have said they would implement have not been added. No game is ever truly "finished," but there are many loose ends that have not been tied up, features that have not been finished or released. It makes the game seem largely unpolished.
Closing Threads: If players complain "too much" about things, or moderators think players' complaints are getting "heated," they will close those threads and not allow players to create others to voice their concerns about that thing. Instead of just silencing people who say rude things in such threads, it seems like they'd rather just sweep complaints under the rug, or lock those complaints in the basement, out of sight and out of mind.
There Is No Complaints Section of the Forum: Many other breeding games have a complaining or venting section of the forum, in case players need or want to complain about something that happened. Flight Rising does not have such a section, despite the fact that it clearly should have had one on opening day, even though it did not.
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