Raise the Hours on Ward

[Fuzzbucket]

I have to say I haven't noticed more sickness - except with zyus. Who need LOADS of views. So I waited till they got sick; fogged  them as usual and warded them when I let them out, and they all came out of it fine. I thought it was great.

 

It would be great if it lasted long enough for a night's sleep...

[cyradis4]

I really, really really want to see someone post who's had a *hatchling* die of sickness. 

 

I say, because I've had the devil's own time getting even super sick hatchies to die for Zombie fodder intentionally, so if you are getting hatchies to die in some way by accident, other than running out of time, I'm very interested!

 

It takes 10,000+ views in under an hour on a just-hatched hatchling that was incubated to get the hatchling to die reliably. Don't incubate? Hatchie isn't gonna die. Wait a few hours to AR after hatching? hatchie isn't gonna die. Proof, that I've intentionally killed hatchies with sickness for zombie fodder: 

https://dragcave.net/lineage/dybJP

• Overall views:15,021
• Unique views:1,006
• Clicks:38

(that's a Zombie hatchie by the way)

 

There's about a dozen dragons running around on my scroll with huge views as testament to my (repeated) failures to kill hatchies with sickness.... 

Ah! Here's one: 

https://dragcave.net/lineage/a6q8B

• Overall views:19,251
• Unique views:1,547
• Clicks:71

And grew up just fine. >.< Stayed sick the whole time, but didn't die the annoying twerp... And that wasn't the only one, but with 8,000+ dragons and no way to search (that I know of) for high views.... Can't find the others right now. 

 

Once a dragon hatches, you need truly horrendous view totals to actually *kill* it. I haven't experimented on eggs, to see how easy / hard they are to kill (my recent attempt at force gendering failed, I think TJ changed something to keep it from working....) but it wouldn't surprise me if eggs that have a day and a half on them are actually quite hard to kill. Again, haven't tried on eggs. 

 

As for Zyus..... I'm seeing truly appalling levels of views / UVs to get them to hatch, gender, and grow. 

 

 

 

 

tl;dr

Are you concerned with sickness, or death? Because death in hatchies is super hard to do as is, and really needs no protection other than fog. If you are worried about "sickness", well then that's just a visual marker on hatchies, unless you are trying for a sickness kill. So no support for anything to do with sickness and hatchies: they are just hard to kill, people get bent out of shape over nothing with hatchies. 

 

For eggs, that's another story. I'd support a Ward increase to 12 hrs for eggs, so people have time to get back, because its very easy to kill an egg (intentionally or unintentionally) in the first 6 to 12 hrs. I've never used Ward, myself. I don't worry about sickness, just death, and I've a pretty good idea when an egg / hatchie is getting closer to death-level views. 

[Fuzzbucket]

Right on about hatchies. I too try desperately to get them to die for zombie fodder - NADA.

[silver_tiger]

Y'know what I really want, and I'm not even sure if this belongs here but...

 

When you use the BSA, the message you get is '[Dragon] casts protective magic over the egg, warding it against sickness'. That to me implies that there will be no sickness whatsoever, that the egg is completely shielded against that. That's misleading, imo. Is there any way we can get it changed to something else like.. idk, 'warding it against death'?

[Shadowdrake]

For those who wanted samples, my only ever dragon that died as a hatchling: http://dragcave.net/lineage/ZsxJY

ovs: 6220

uvs: 491

clicks: 3

hatched: Jun 08, 2017

grew up on: Jun 23, 2017

 

This is admittedly a sample size of one, but I remember this one because it was my first zyu and, not knowing about their fragility, I'd left it in the ER of several hatcheries and didn't notice it had died as a hatchling until several days when I next logged back onto my scroll. When I revived it after midnight for that chance of a zombie it instead popped back up again. I'm fairly sure I didn't add it to any hatcheries after revival either, so it either hatched and died quickly, or slowly grew sicker as it continued to gain views until it just dropped. (I vaguely recall it being about a day from growing up when I revived it.)

 

Oddly, my other zyus have been fine hatching at that amount, possibly because I let them have an extra 12 hours before hatching rather than ERing at 4 days. They hatch sick, I fog them for a while, they're no longer sick.

 

It looks like the chance of dying of sickness may not actually correspond to views, past a certain point. There might be some RNG or timer based aspect. Alternatively the mechanics have been changed relatively recently, or this one zyu was just really really sensitive, which is also possible.

 

I agree that ward could use a longer time, although I don't know how sickness works exactly. If it's simply "stays sick until x time: if it doesn't die and doesn't gain views, then loses sickness regardless of current views" then I can see why Ward is implemented like this. Still, at least 8 or 10 hours for peace of mind would be nice.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Shadowdrake

[cyradis4]

@Shadowdrake
Are you sure that was a sickness kill? I ask because that's..... really, really, really low views, and I've stuck incu-bated just-ER eggs into 5 or 6 hatcheries and gotten far more views and not died. Is it also possible it got stunned? I'm not certain, but don't you have to give a stunned hatchie one last view before it'll grow up, so a stunned hatchie could die with low views? I don't know, I've never used Stun. 

Cheers!
C4. 

[Shadowdrake]

29 minutes ago, cyradis4 said:

@Shadowdrake
Are you sure that was a sickness kill? I ask because that's..... really, really, really low views, and I've stuck incu-bated just-ER eggs into 5 or 6 hatcheries and gotten far more views and not died. Is it also possible it got stunned? I'm not certain, but don't you have to give a stunned hatchie one last view before it'll grow up, so a stunned hatchie could die with low views? I don't know, I've never used Stun. 

Cheers!
C4. 

@cyradis4 I'm like 95% sure because way back when I checked and saw it had died none of the other hatchies in that hatch batch were even ER time, I hadn't even ever used stun yet, and I'm fairly sure I recall seeing the flavor text on the bottom saying "this hatchling has died from sickness" because I definitely remarked on it in chat.

 

If anything I'm wondering if not checking up on your scroll for a while makes sickness death more likely to happen, since in-universe you're not taking care of them.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Shadowdrake

[angelicdragonpuppy]

On 7/9/2017 at 3:42 PM, SockPuppet Strangler said:

I'm wondering if anybody has had an egg die when ward was used on it? Or has it only been cases of new hatchlings dying after ward wore off? Because ward was helpful to easing my mind during the zyu released and it served me just fine, tbh, so I'm interested in gathering some actual information on how ward isn't that useful and why the time needs raised. (I would support ward transferring over to hatchies, but that goes in a separate thread.)

 

I haven't had anything die, but it didn't put my mind at ease, either. I remember the zyu release and ward did nothing to ease either of the two sickness related fears that I always have: that something would die from getting sick during incuhatching, or that something would die by viewbombing if I didn't fog it when I went to sleep. I still had to worry my newly hatched hatchies would die (even if experience has shown me it's probably an unrealistic worry, it's still there), and I still had to go through the tedious effort of fogging them all before I went to bed, because ward wouldn't keep them safe while I was asleep (and honestly, even if ward was raised, it'd still be useless here since it's only a one time thing...)

 

So yes, as others have said, ward is sitting in the useless BSA pile for me as well. Right now it only seems to be useful if you're online and catch an egg getting sick and for some reason don't think six hours of fogging will be enough to save it... and I don't think that's the usual problem most of us have with sickness.

 

Edit: honestly rather than ward I'd rather see a new set of BSAs. Heal for whites, which automatically knocks the views down on a sick thing until it's not sick, can only be used once per creature, two week cooldown, and guard for Guardians, which lasts 12 hours and auto-fogs a growing creature if it gets sick during that time period, can be used as much as you like with a week cooldown.

Edited July 13, 2017 by angelicdragonpuppy

[Moonlight_Eevee]

No offense guys, but I'm going to get this back on track and I have to say if you want to discuss further sickness on hatchies, please do so in another thread. 

 

The original purpose of this thread is to raise hours on Ward and I would hate for this to close

[Sazandora]

Well, I haven't had any issues with my eggs getting sick after the birthday release. I still put them on one site when they're newborn/newly caught, then adding them to a few other sites at 6d15h or so. Zyus and Prizes are still prone to getting sick -- when I'm trying to incuhatch them. Other than that everything's normal, so Ward does not get much use from me.

 

So it sure could use a duration boost -- or even replacing it with something else. But that'll probably not happen, so I say bump up Ward's duration to, say, 12 hours.

[Moonlight_Eevee]

Okay, someone suggested we move Ward onto Guardian Dragons and update the White Dragons with Cure! I approve of that happening.

[Fuzzbucket]

That's not going to happen. Whites have it now, and I am sure they will be keeping it. But it would be good if it could last long enough for "overnight".

[TJ09]

The choice of length was very intentional, and this thread doesn't seem to present much argument for changing that. The general claim seems to be that it "doesn't last long enough to be useful." To understand that, it's important to know what is considered "useful." It seems to be that "useful" means reducing the amount of risk being taken to zero. The specific example given here requests that one can put ward on, go to sleep, and not worry about whether or not the egg will die. While I agree that you shouldn't be altering your sleep schedule for Dragon Cave, if through normal play there's such huge windows where an egg is actually at huge risk of dying then there's other issues at play that shouldn't be masked through changing Ward.

1. This is explicitly not the intent of Ward. The timing was very specifically picked to only cover eggs in their most vulnerable period. It is not meant to be a blanket protection; it is not meant to be a substitute for checking in on your eggs, etc. If Ward were supposed to effectively remove all risk of sickness, then I wouldn't have added it in the first place; why bother when I can just remove sickness instead?
2. Despite Ward supposedly being "too short" to be useful, it seems to be doing its job. Of the eggs that have died of sickness in the last two weeks, so few of them had been previously warded (less than half a percent, on top of the already low number of eggs that die of sickness) that it's not even possible to draw any statistically-viable conclusions from them, but most of the previously-warded eggs died long after ward had expired, which means barring increasing the length by over double, even the time extension requested here would not have helped.

I know the thing that was asked for was for a stronger protection from sickness, but again, there's literally no reason to do that over removing sickness, and I maintain that the sickness mechanic is an important one to prevent raising eggs from being too passive.

[Moonlight_Eevee]

@TJ09 while you make valid points, you got to look at it from the player's point of view. If one has been here long enough, they know how to play this game. Get an egg, leave it alone for a day and then put it in a hatchery. Viola! Your egg will successfully hatch without a problem! What was the point of Ward in this case? Absolutely forgotten. And even if the egg got sick, you could just, y'know fog it. 

 

And then there are the people who get viewbombing. What would be the purpose of Ward if you get targeted by being view bombed. There's literally no point for Ward to begin in the first place. We went 11 years without it and everyone managed to be just fine. It's the most useless BSA to exist for us. 

 

So tweak it or leave it. In the end, I'm probably never going to use it again 

Edited August 11, 2017 by Dalek Raptor

[Fuzzbucket]

Nothing would totally help with viewbombing - except of course, stun. I could have used another 2 hours, but I agree with TJ otherwise.

[FoxintheBox4]

I don't understand why Ward can't and doesn't work/transfer to hatchies when the egg hatches.... Why can't 6 hours last out even if the egg hatches- hatchlings get sick too, so why give us a sickness protection for eggs only and nothing for hatchies? 

 

 

[Fuzzbucket]

Hatchies get sick hugely less often than eggs. And can safely be left fogged for longer - almost till they grow up.

[Sundew]

Think it'd make sense for Warded eggs to carry over if the egg hatched while sick, but otherwise Warding hatchlings doesn't sound too useful -- they are much harder to kill, generally.

[Nakeisha]

Although I initially thought it would be good to raise the number of hours that Ward lasted, after further thought TJ's logic for six hours makes a great deal of sense.

 

However, what I really would like to see is Ward carrying on after the egg has hatched and protecting the hatchling - up to the remainder of the six hours. As it stands if your egg hatches whilst it's sick, the hatchling could die because the moment the egg hatches Ward no longer exists. If you're at your computer when the egg hatches that's fine, you can fog it. However, if you're away for a short time, then the hatchling might be dead before you are able to fog it.

[Starscream]

Waiting 24 hours has always worked for me in regards to avoiding sickness. That and only putting it in one or two hatcheries and avoiding the high power ones

[VixenDra]

@TJ09 the major problem sickness causes is viewbombing - basically sickness on DC is a mechanic that mostly just allows 3rd parties to take away something you already had; with rare exception of new breeds' acknowledgment (like with Zyus), sickness doesn't actually affect anyone much UNLESS one is viewbombed, nearly only then it does take some effect and it is certainly not the effect it was made for, right? Sickness nearly only serves its purpose for newbies who are still learning how to play, but other than that it only serves the trolls. (well, I'm lucky enough to not be affected by sickness AT ALL, for me it could be there or removed, I wouldn't notice - unless I'm finally viewbombed too, this is the only danger of sickness I can ever potentially experience, other that that it's like not there to me). Idk why keep it and for older players - other than simply letting 3rd parties ruin sth someone already had...

 

" it is not meant to be a substitute for checking in on your eggs, etc. " - but even 12h wouldn't be a substitute for checking on egs... 8h is a proper sleep, 8h is a minimal work time(my bf will have 11h! +commuting makign it over 12h), people won't be checking on eggs while they're sleeping or at work anyway... also if people don't check on their eggs at all, won't they rather have them die of time-out? A better way to keep people log in frequently would be to reduce the number of days an egg needs for hatching, this way people could come back more often to get more dragons, as this is the most exciting thing about DC, not the wait or being viewbombed...it's action that makes people play, and the absolutely primary one is getting more dragons...

 

I see sickness as sth that should not be possible for eggs that are over 6d12h and below 1d. When it would be possible, it would serve some purpose other than viewbombing, It would put Ward to some use (with its current duration it would protct for half of the sickness time, which would still make it possible for egg to die of sickness if done wrong, like e.g. if sb wards in the beginning, drops at hatcheries, and doesn't check back - the  egg would probably die between 6d18 and 6d12 especially as Warded things still get sick.) and would make NDs still possible without changing anything about them. And hatchlings don't need to go sick either, I think...

 

Atm Ward has little to no use for players... and doesn't help against viewbombing because it's too short and doesn't carry over to the hatchling and doesn't prevent sickness.

[Fuzzbucket]

Ward will not help with viewbombing  - the views will still rack up and the second ward ends, the egg will die. If you haev any concerns - fog. That's ALL you need. The only times I've used Ward was for trades that needed to be visible. Hide your scroll; fog when you are concerned.How hard is that ?

 

As for sickness - removing it would make extreme laziness even easier. It is the only thing that actually means you HAVE ot pay attention to your growing things.

[KrazyKarp]

Even with sickness though, I don't have to pay attention to my growing things. Anything valuable I fog, and who's gonna viewbomb a couple common eggs? The only time I keep watch is with Prizes, GoNs, and Zyus when they're in the ER. Honestly, removing sickness... wouldn't make a difference to me with gameplay. I forget Ward exists because I simply don't need it and don't see much of a point in it's existence. The BSA suggestions subforum closed down because nothing came out of it, but there are some BSAs that were there that seemed much more useful than Ward (and Earthquake).

 

Suppose what I'm trying to say is... even if the time is increased, Ward is still pretty useless in my opinion. It's not that hard to hide valuables and heck, even commons if you want to be extra safe. Now, looking at the front post, a Heal BSA would be more useful; even though I most likely still would not have much use for it, it's something I can at least see others using. I can't find reasons for Ward at all.

[Fuzzbucket]

THE reason - for me - is for trades that need to be visible. One can warn the other person that it may get views, bu they can still see it and it can be fogged as required.

[silver_tiger]

2 hours ago, fuzzbucket said:

THE reason - for me - is for trades that need to be visible. One can warn the other person that it may get views, bu they can still see it and it can be fogged as required.

 

A very good point. I guess that's all I'll use Ward for, then. It's useful in that context.