Removing/Reworking Sickness

[Syiren]

I think its well past time to stop rewarding trolls.

 

Random people should not be able to have any impact on our dragons - be it killing them or forcing them to take much longer to hatch. Regular users should not be at the mercy of jerks just to "make it harder"... that's honestly just not good game design. Older players might just say "tough luck, get over it, that's the game" but newbies aren't necessarily going to stick around if their eggs are killed by someone else. Its not fun. Its not enjoyable. It adds nothing to the game except troll bait.

 

Dragon Cave is already a "grab/breed eggs and be unable to do anything for days" game. There's a hard limit (egg/hatchling slots + timers) to what you can actually do before you're forced to stop playing. Personally, I think its a flimsy excuse to say removing sickness makes the game too easy because imo, it doesn't. DC is not a hard or time-intensive game; its extremely casual and very easy at its core. All you do is catch or breed eggs, add them to a separate hatching website, wait days, name them, wait days, they become breedable, repeat. The goals you make for yourself are what make it have any difficulty.

 

All that removing sickness would do is help the vast majority of players by allowing us to gain control of our own dragons and what happens to them. Viewbombers could still mess up stats if you're going for something specific but that's nowhere near as bad as being able to kill/delay hatching of your eggs.

I second this so much. I've mentioned a few times how my CB Cavern Lurkers never got to hatch thanks to an outside source who thought it'd be fun to kill my only chance to get that CB Halloween.

 

I've learned since then, but it makes trades and playing forum games difficult when my scroll has to remain hidden because I'm still targeted every other day. It really does take away some enjoyment of this game and while I have no plans on leaving anytime soon, it's taking its toll on me especially when I've had an account on here since 2013 and had a scroll since 2012. Sure, I haven't been on since the beginning, but five years is still a long time.

[Bison]

So no, removing death from viewbombing will not magically make DC immune to trolling.  And since it wouldn't defeat trolls, you might as well keep sickness as a control for people not paying attention to their dragons and getting too many views, just not with a death consequence.

Of course it won't. But at least it would prevent people from being able to kill eggs that do not belong to them in a matter of hours. That absolutely should not be possible.

[SkyWolf25]

I support the idea of completely replacing the penalty of death from sickness with something else, like the timer stopping or views no longer collecting. Preferably the former, as there's the off chance that the latter option could meddle with ND making. I think dying from sickness is doing more harm than good these days.

 

Quoting myself from the other thread because I'd like this to have an effect an all eggs, not just newly released ones.

[The Dragoness]

I would really like to see something happen. Anything, really. The viewbombing has gotten considerably worse since Valentine's Day - to the point where dozens of new release eggs were killed out of spite and my raffle thread, which has never had issues before, has lost multiple donations, like others.

 

I can understand why sickness was originally implemented, but shortaxel has a point: DC is an easy game. Sickness doesn't make it challenging; it introduces stress to the game for some of us. I don't see why TJ would refuse to either remove or replace this feature when it’s used negatively against others for the most part.

[Amaterasu-sama]

I have realized through recent events not to my trade but some other trades (like how one user lost their first 2g shimmer because they had to be hospitalized and couldn't attend to it in the short time it got viewbombed to death or how someone put a trade up and went afk for few hours knowing hatcheries can't kill eggs so fast but came back to find ridiculous stats and dead dragons) has me convinced no amount of vigilance is full proof against trolls. For e.g. in other thread a user posted some trolls might ask for help to kill eggs on places like 4chan. I can totally imagine people in such places will be more than happy to cause such damage for "lulz". We keep passing the buck on hard working members who are trying to do their best to avoid such things yet we won't acknowledge that the game makes it very easy for trolls to harm other users and actively promotes this behavior by making no checks in this direction. There are sites with extremely heavy traffic that can rack up views so fast if there are actually groups of people aiding someone to AR and viewbomb an egg that nothing less than fogging would work. Tell me again the joy of playing a collecting game where you can't view things growing up, can't keep your scroll open to show off your collection and live in constant paranoia. It is easy to say the problem clearly isn't bad because it never happened to me, but that is not the right approach. I feel really bad for some members who have recently been put through this kind of harassment and very disappointed that we are not more persistent about pushing for change to current sickness mechanism. I am not calling out anyone in particular, just saying the progress on this topic has been so far less than encouraging.

[Obscure_Trash]

Okay, expanded post! Let me preface this with: I absolutely think something needs done, and that is 100% because of viewbombing. I think it's unfair to not change a mechanic in which users were very successfully navigating until some viewbomber lost their job and now has too much time on their hands. I'm not exactly a fan of some of the suggestions I'm about to post (and some have already been suggested, but I'm trying to compile), but I'm trying to get thoughts flowing! I hope that people will either like some of the suggestions or will have some inspiration for another suggestion.

 

So, here are some of my ideas to rework sickness:

 

Removing Sickness

 

These suggestions will all relate to removing sickness entirely.

 

I know TJ has posted saying he doesn't want to do this because then the game is "too easy" but honestly this is where I'm at. Many of us already know how to avoid sickness, so sickness might keep newbies coming back, but for most experienced players, the game is what keeps us coming back. Coupled with users having their eggs maliciously targeted, I'm not sure sickness is really serving any purpose right now except to aid viewbombers.

 

But I also tried to come up with some ideas that could be done in addition to removing sickness, so that people are interested in coming back or that require a different kind of attention so users can't just check out while raising their eggs.

 

Drastically Change to Timeless, Click-Based System

Many games are based on raising creatures by getting them a certain amount of clicks. There is no time of death, but in exchange, the amount of clicks their creatures need to hatch are much higher than ours. This would be the most obvious way to require more involvement in raising dragons without having sickness.

 

I will note I am personally not a fan of this idea, as the more laid back nature of DC works a lot better for my schedule and my energy. I would probably quit playing if this is how DC was played. When I first started, I had the energy to do this kind of clicking, but after playing for so long, the game being more relaxed is a lot more engaging for me.

 

Make Clicks Required

Related to the above but along a different vein: currently clicks are helpful in raising dragons, but it is quite possible to raise dragons with no clicks. If we want to make raising eggs a little more engaging, let's just make clicks required like views and unique views are. I'd say that we don't need to require many clicks, but requiring a low amount would get people clicking around again and needing to come back and stay engaged in DC to click other's eggs.

 

The con here is mostly for those users who like to raise 0-click eggs, for which this would now be impossible. On the plus side, their 0-click dragons will be very cool for new users to look at and see.

 

Require Owner Views for Growth

Apparently hatchlings already require for the owner to view them at least once before they'll grow into adults. So let's just expand on to this and say that an owner needs to view their egg on two or three different days (and again with the hatchling - maybe two days for an egg and three days for a hatchling? or just two and two) or it will get "stuck" and die. This would be the simplest way of requiring a little more engagement/attention from users.

 

The con here is that when a user is busy, there's less chance of successfully raising dragons and losing track of time could be the downfall of some of us.

 

Add a Store - Suggestion here

Add a store where you rack up points/"money" by doing DC actions. That'll keep people around and working towards things you can buy in the store.

 

Add Minigames/Quests/Fun Other Things

There are a ton of suggestions for other things to do on DC that aren't required but that people would enjoy. Let's add some of them. Give people something to do besides just raise eggs to keep them interested in DC and coming back.

 

To get an idea of the kind of stuff this could be, here are many of the said suggestions:

Inventory

Ascension

Battling

Hoarding

Search

Rewards for long term players

Play Old Holiday Events

Explore

Race BSA for whiptails

Race BSA for horses

Prank BSA for misfits

Treasure Hunt BSA for deep seas

Beagle Puss BSA for misfits

Origami BSA for papers

Dig BSA for terraes

Balloon Animals BSA for balloons

 

Altering Sickness

 

These suggestions will all relate to changing how sickness works. Creatures could still get sick and die, but these suggestions could make that harder or at least offer more options to those who lose dragons.

 

Slow Time

If a growing creature gets sick, time will move slower for it until it stops gathering stats so quickly. Death would either be removed as a possibility or be made much harder to achieve, only in the most extreme of circumstances. There could be a range depending on level of sickness or a simple ratio for how much to slow time. For example, it could take three hours in real life for one hour to be removed from the timer.

 

The biggest con to this is that it still allows viewbombers to control and mess with other user's creatures. The pro is that it would annoy them and their scroll limits, but they could simply fog their egg for a few days and only be put out a few hours to a day or so.

 

Stop Time

Similarly to above, when a creature gets sick, its timer could stop moving altogether until it gets better. Death would either be removed as a possibility or be made much harder to achieve, only in the most extreme of circumstances.

 

The biggest con to this is that it still allows viewbombers to control and mess with other user's creatures. The pro is that it would annoy them and their scroll limits, but they could simply fog their egg for a few days and only be put out a few hours to a day or so.

 

Raise Standards for Sickness

Simple solution: let's just raise the number/rate of stats required for a creature to get sick. This would give users more time to catch the sickness in time and make it harder on viewbombers to kill dragons.

 

The con being, of course, that viewbombers can still kill eggs. Users will still lose eggs.

 

Exchange Successful Revive for Egg/Total Slot

We could leave sickness alone, but change how reviving works. Imagine that when you click on revive, there are two options: self revive and group revive. Self revive is you using your own magic to try and revive the creature, which we know doesn't have an extremely high success rate. Or you can choose group revive, where you get together a group to help channel your magics together to try and revive a dragon (this is all lore text, you don't actually have to get people to do this with you). This would give you a much higher rate of success of revival (maybe even 100%), but in exchange for these people's help, you loan them out an egg slot - or maybe you're too tired to raise the normal amount of dragons. So, for 24 hours, that successfully revived dragon now takes up two scroll spaces instead of one.

 

The biggest con would be that if you're really locked when you lose some creatures or you have really bad luck and lose them all, you might end up having to pick and choose what to revive. However, if revive is available for two weeks as per usual, this should be more easily workable. (This would still allow a viewbomber to control your scroll and give you grief, but at least you could have a second chance to fog the eggs and raise them successfully.)

 

Add a Spoiled/Overstuffed Dragon

We have neglected dragons for those rare circumstances in which dragons barely get the views they need to survive. So how about a spoiled/overstuffed dragon that occurs when a dragon gets too many views too quickly? The egg is so stuffed with food and attention that its unstable emitting of magic/interaction with magics in the surrounding environment, that it becomes dependent on this overviewing and transforms into a new dragon. This dragon is breedable, but it does look different. It is a balance of pushing past sickness just enough to create this dragon and to continue to get a high volume of views. Once it is spoiled/overstuffed, death is less likely, unless the views stop and the dragon starts to turn normal again.

 

The pro being that viewbombers are now helping us create this dragon. The con being that it could mess up people's lineages.

 

 

~

 

 

This is what I came up with a bit of spitballing. Hoping we can come up with some more ideas and a desired compromise from here.

[Amaterasu-sama]

The idea I posted in other thread is related to stop time but not exactly. Here is what I propose as one possibility to discuss:

 

TJ knows what stats is needed for eggs to die due to sickness, we don't. Let the sickness stay there for lore/RP perspective, but when the egg or hatchie is close to death due to sickness, the no stat period should trigger (much like how stun's two days of no views works but longer). This no view will not wear off until the counter goes under 3days. And then it will reset. Even with normal breeds, it is very difficult to kill an ER egg while it is hatching with viewbombing, it will almost always hatch and then the hatchling could or couldn't be sick. The counter to no view should reset upon state change from egg to hatchling. Meaning, if hatchling becomes sick and reaches too close to dying, again the no view will trigger. This provides protection from death, as view bombing itself isn't the problem to me if death wasn't involved. And 3 days counter will make sure members do not abuse the system for high stats because the stats will likely freeze before it goes to impressive height and they will simply end up with one extra day of waiting for adult and no gain. Whereas in other case, I would more than happily trade one day wait if it saves something from dying due to attack. Theoretically the viewbombers can continue to troll you to slow your time down, but I doubt they will do this much because the main incentive to viewbombing is to KILL WITHOUT FAIL to deprive the person attacked of what they would have owned and probably desperately needed.

[Fuzzbucket]

Would it perhaps be possible to rig it so that for eggs and hatchies over - say - 3 days getting views too fast would trigger a stop mechanism. For anyone who isn't creating neglecteds (and that's why I say 3 days; a view bombed egg at 3 days would probably just hatch instead !) that shouldn't be a problem.

 

No player is actually going to try to get 3000 views on the first day, or even that kind of number in any one day. So if that kind of things starts to happen to an egg/hatchie, it could trigger a stop for 24 hours thing. The trigger would be the RATE views are clocking up, rather than the number.

Edited March 26, 2017 by fuzzbucket

[HeatherMarie]

I do *not* want the drastic "No sickness" changes that Sock put forth. Completely changing how eggs/hatchlings grow is *not* something I want, and I doubt the majority of DC players would want it either. Please no.

 

I would be fine with a *change* to how sickness works, and I support a time-stop based on views or rate of views. I personally don't mind if sickness causes death, because it's a good learning experience, but I could totally get behind a "no-death" sickness if it still had consequences, like stopping time.

[Estellux]

Just a quick thought about the idea of replacing sickness with a time-stopping mechanism: While I could see where that would be frustrating to some players, I could just as easily see people abusing it by intentionally putting their eggs in too many hatcheries to keep an egg/hatchling for as long as possible for trade fodder.

 

I think slowing would be more effective than stopping in this case, as it wouldn't allow people to make eggs that would never grow up. However, I think the slowing/stopping time mechanism would not be the best option because of this exploit.

 

I'm afraid I don't have a good solution at this point (I'm up well past my bedtime), but some of the suggestions I've seen to replace sickness feel like they'll encourage exploits.

 

I do, however, like a lot of the suggestions and threads that Sock listed. If the idea of sickness is to keep people invested in Dragcave, then having little side activities would be a wonderful way to do that. Also, I know a lot of other people have already said this, but I'll say it too: The reason I log on to Dragcave so often is not to check on whether or not my dragons are sick. I log on as often as I do to look at how close my eggs are to hatching, to barter with others, to name and (occasionally) describe, and even just to look proudly at the lineages I've worked on. I return because I want to see the fruits of my labors, not just go "oh, okay" every now and again.

[Pokemonfan13]

The time stopping exploit is why I prefer delayed hatching. The time until death still counts down, but instead of being able to hatch at 4 days left, the sick egg might not be able to hatch until 3 days left. Sick enough and it might stay an egg until 1 day left, but I think the mechanism should cut off at 1 day left, or else viewbombers would still be able to kill eggs. It still gives viewbombers power, but at least they can't kill people's priceless eggs.

 

I agree with Marie that I don't like any of the suggested changes to the basic mechanics. If sickness is the problem, we should focus on a solution to sickness. I don't think sickness is a mechanism to make people stay, it's just there to make people have to pay a little bit of attention or give a little bit of thought to their eggs, rather than being able to stick 7 day eggs in three hatcheries and never look again.

 

Some sort of mechanism that the site determines that the egg is getting views -way- faster than any normal method could give and stops the egg gaining views might be a good way to specifically target the viewbombing problem. Of course it would have to only apply to eggs that are not ER, since ER eggs have normal ways to give them lots of views. The problem is, it would have to be delicately balanced. Make it too conservative and some people are going to have their eggs cut off when the user was giving them a short term view boost intentionally, but set the cutoff too high and it wouldn't do enough to stop viewbombers from being able to kill eggs. It would have to take into account view rate, sheer numbers, and the age of the egg. It would also have to not protect from sickness from a normal cause like adding an egg to a hatchery too soon (either current form sickness or an altered sickness), since then you might as well remove that mechanism entirely.

 

The nice thing about a cutoff system like that is it would make viewbombing a lot harder. They would have to delicately balance the rush of views to not trigger it, especially if once triggered it would stop views for a period of time. That would give the user more time to catch a case of viewbombing before it became terminal.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Pokemonfan13

[silver_tiger]

The time stopping exploit is why I prefer delayed hatching.  The time until death still counts down, but instead of being able to hatch at 4 days left, the sick egg might not be able to hatch until 3 days left.  Sick enough and it might stay an egg until 1 day left, but I think the mechanism should cut off at 1 day left, or else viewbombers would still be able to kill eggs.  It still gives viewbombers power, but at least they can't kill people's priceless eggs.

I like this idea best, if we have to have sickness. No way to outright kill eggs, unless the scroll-owners aren't paying attention of course, but it's still a form of punishment that will make people pay very close attention! I like the cut off at 1 day left as well, so that it will not impact Neglected experiments, and I think it seems to be an idea that isn't easy to abuse in any way.

 

I'm still for doing away with it altogether honestly, but there have been several points made about why that's not a great idea and I like something that supports the most playstyles as possible.

Edited March 28, 2017 by silver_chan

[Obscure_Trash]

Some sort of mechanism that the site determines that the egg is getting views -way- faster than any normal method could give and stops the egg gaining views might be a good way to specifically target the viewbombing problem. Of course it would have to only apply to eggs that are not ER, since ER eggs have normal ways to give them lots of views. The problem is, it would have to be delicately balanced. Make it too conservative and some people are going to have their eggs cut off when the user was giving them a short term view boost intentionally, but set the cutoff too high and it wouldn't do enough to stop viewbombers from being able to kill eggs. It would have to take into account view rate, sheer numbers, and the age of the egg. It would also have to not protect from sickness from a normal cause like adding an egg to a hatchery too soon (either current form sickness or an altered sickness), since then you might as well remove that mechanism entirely.

 

The nice thing about a cutoff system like that is it would make viewbombing a lot harder. They would have to delicately balance the rush of views to not trigger it, especially if once triggered it would stop views for a period of time. That would give the user more time to catch a case of viewbombing before it became terminal.

I'm trying to wrap my head around this one - I missed something somewhere. xP

 

So sickness would still be a thing. Creatures would still get sick if they get too many views too fast. However, if the rate is over some reasonable limit, then it's deemed a viewbomber and the views are automatically cut off.

 

What I'm not sure about is how this interacts with death. Would this stop only viewbomber death or would it make it harder for users to (accidentally) kill their own dragons? Could people use this as an exploit to, as TJ worries about, throw their eggs into fansites immediately as they get them even sooner and not have to check up on them until they're almost adults?

 

I just want to be clear that I'm not against this, I'm just unsure of how it works entirely. I'm probably really overthinking this, though, lmao.

 

 

~

 

 

I'm honestly surprised that no one is for expanding just a little on an already existing mechanic, and requiring users to check in a few more times to raise their dragons, rather than just once for hatchlings. We could even lower it a bit: one view for an egg, two views for a hatchling. In my opinion, this is one of the simplest solutions to user problems with sickness and TJ's problem with believing the game is too easy without sickness.

 

I guess I fall on the side of not caring if we get rid of sickness because, as far as I see it, sickness really only serves a purpose for an extremely limited group of people: very new users. And I have to wonder if more newbies get their eggs too many views or more newbies don't get their eggs enough views.

 

Like, sure, I've gotten a handful of sick dragons in the past few dragons, mostly from random blips, but otherwise... I know how to raise dragons. One sick dragon a year is not a challenge to me. I'm not even out here actively worrying about sickness (except for the viewbomber, of course - and now that I've mentioned them, I should probably go hide my scroll *sigh*). What keeps me around the cave is my desire to raise my dragons quickly and grab new ones as soon as possible. Not to check for sickness.

[Pokemonfan13]

It would mostly be another layer of protection, and could go with either form of sickness. Yes, if the view rate is abnormally high the site would decide it's a viewbomber and cut it off. But abnormal would be above the rate you could get on a 7 day egg by putting it in multiple fansites. So, if sickness stays as death, someone could still kill their own egg by being careless with the views. A viewbomber could also kill the person's egg by putting it in multiple fansites, but at least then there is more -time- for the person to notice something is wrong and fog. I'm not sure users could use it as an exploit to not pay attention to their eggs. It would have to be balanced to let the kind of views that a user who isn't paying attention to what they're doing might get through, while blocking the 3,000+ views in an hour on a 7 day egg levels that were being reported in the news thread. I'm also pretty sure that the egg would still get sick before the views are cut off, it would just hopefully cut off at a low enough time to avoid death. The user should notice and fog to protect their egg, because those views wouldn't be cut forever, maybe 12 or 24 hours. Maybe there would be a specific message "This egg was receiving abnormal views. The views were temporarily cut off, but please fog for its protection" so that people know there's a problem when they check their scroll.

 

 

To me there's a difference between the "be careful and thoughtful about raising your dragons" mechanic of sickness (you can still never check in on the site if you know what you're doing and add your dragons appropriately a time after you catch them) and the "you must log back into the site if you want anything to happen" mechanic of what you're suggesting. My friend's friend already loses eggs because she gets them and forgets to ever add them to a fansite (probably because she can't just add them right away because of sickness, ironically). I think she'd probably stop playing entirely if her eggs would still die if she did remember to add them to a fansite but forgot to look at them enough times.

[cyradis4]

I'm of the opinion that adding a way to protect eggs is a better way to go, like a Guard or heal BSA or modify Fog.

 

Thing is... once an egg is over 24 hrs old, its *hard* to kill. And once its over 2 days old? Extremely hard to kill. You can't do it with hatcheries. Let me repeat: once an egg is 2 days old, you can't kill it using hatcheries! It hits the 15 / 1 limit waaaay too fast, and while it'll get sick... it won't die.

 

I know this because I've been doing extensive experimentation on hatchies at Halloween, because I haven't the patience to wait for them to die in fog balls. What I've found is, the only way to hit the RATE of views to kill is to have near 1,000 UVs at hatching *with* incubate and then to AR the life out of it. And even then..... if you don't hit near 1,000 UVs for-get-about-it, and if they aren't incubated? Not killing them. I have, however, made hatchies sick from shortly after they hatched until they grew up, but they stubbornly didn't die.

 

So long story short? We need a way to protect eggs from getting any views but still be view-able and trade-able. That way, people can put the eggs they are posting to trades or raffles and such into this "transparent fog". Everything else, can go into regular fogs.

 

Or, a Guard BSA or a Heal BSA.

 

It sucks loosing eggs to viewbombers, but.... I don't think re-working sickness is the way to go about it. Right now, egg owners have a simple choice: protect their eggs by hiding them from all, or risk them by posting them. I think if we can give egg owners another tool to defend their eggs while letting others see them that will solve the problem.

 

I'd suggest that "Transparent Fog" be usable on eggs in teleport and let people view the eggs to their heart's content, but that the egg be totally unable to gain any views or other stats while in the fog.

 

Actually.... I'm going to suggest the modification to Fog, in a new thread.

 

Cheers!

C4.