Thoughts on Sickness

[Fuzzbucket]

21 minutes ago, olympe said:

Okay, I think there are various ways to make killing by viewbombing harder. Let me offer a couple of suggestions.

• Give us a way to keep eggs/hatchlings in teleports safe through any of the following mechanics:
  •  allow the same egg to be warded more than once. Sure, it could prevent sickness altogether, but it still takes some effort while allowing us a full night's rest while leaving our teleports up.
  • Alllow eggs/hatchlings in teleports to be fogged while keeping their lineage view accessible.
• Hide all/Unhide all. Because fogging/unfogging 24 things day in, day out is a hassle.
• Alternately to fog/unfog all, add a new account setting. Not only "hide adults on scroll", but also "hide growing things on scroll". This way, we can show off our adults while keeping our little ones safe. (View-bombing attacks could still work if the attacker knew some of the codes, so it's not full protection.)

 

I would support the bits I have quoted here, but not the bits I've left out from olympe's post.... Especially I support the bolded bits.

[HeatherMarie]

2 hours ago, olympe said:

Okay, I think there are various ways to make killing by viewbombing harder. Let me offer a couple of suggestions.

• Give us a way to keep eggs/hatchlings in teleports safe through any of the following mechanics:
  • Extend Ward to work for 12 hours. This is enough for someone to go to sleep, or go through a day at work and the likes. Also, allow the same egg to be warded more than once. Sure, it could prevent sickness altogether, but it still takes some effort while allowing us a full night's rest while leaving our teleports up.
  • Alllow eggs/hatchlings in teleports to be fogged while keeping their lineage view accessible.
  • Just keep them safe on the ground that they're in a portal and cannot be petted/fed/whatever-it-is-UVs-and-clicks-actually-do.
• Hide all/Unhide all. Because fogging/unfogging 24 things day in, day out is a hassle.
• Alternately to fog/unfog all, add a new account setting. Not only "hide adults on scroll", but also "hide growing things on scroll". This way, we can show off our adults while keeping our little ones safe. (View-bombing attacks could still work if the attacker knew some of the codes, so it's not full protection.)
• Re-work sickness mechanic to put a definite stop to any attempts at viewbombing-to-kill. Maybe in one of the following fashions:
  • A sick egg cannot hatch, and a sick hatchling cannot grow up. With a guarantee that sickness stops at 6 days left so we still have a good chance to save them anyway. Adding up to 3 days of development time is a big enough penalty, especially around holiday events. 
  • If an egg/ hatchling is sick, every click, UV and view they gain gets subtracted from their total, as it only serves to make them more sick. Sickness cannot last longer than until there are 6 days left.

 

Some of these already have suggestion threads of their own, so I figured I'd link them here in case anyone wants to look:

 

 

 

 

While those are all good suggestions and all ones I support, imo none of them solve the overall issue of sickness killing dragons within minutes with no way to stop it from happening. Being able to hide all your growing dragons at once is great, but doesn't stop them from dying if they are hit hard the way they were with EATW's attack. Being able to hide all growing dragons on your scroll the way that you can hide all adults, that's great and could definitely help with viewbombing, but it's sort of an annoying work-around, ie maybe some people *want* their growing things to be visible to friends and such and that really shouldn't be the only way to successfully protect them. Making dragons in teleport safe is definitely something that needs to happen imo, but that only helps dragons in teleport, it doesn't do anything about the overall issue of sickness. 

 

 

[Andromen]

Only once my scroll has been attacked by viewbombers during which one of my Nebulae eggs (now adult) got sick 5 times (at least I was still awake when that happened) but I do agree on extending Ward's time. It would help out a lot, I'm sure.

[olympe]

I'm well aware of the various suggestions, but I figured that they all work for this thread, too. After all, this is "thoughts on sickness".

I'm just as aware of the fact that a "fog all" feature isn't going to stop viewbombing, but it gives us an easy way to take care of it on our own. Because fogged eggs cannot be bombed.

 

Personally, I don't think it's TJ's or the game's responsibility to take care of our eggs during a flu epidemic (so to speak), it's our responsibility as "dragon parents" to do so. We can take care of our eggs by fogging them, but, with up to 24 things growing up on our scroll, this is a bit tedious. Which a "fog all" feature would help immensely with. Or a "hide growing things on scroll". Sure, it's not ideal, but it's a good step in the right direction.

 

The one situation where we cannot prevent death through viewbombing is when we try to trade, as ward only works for 6 hours. So, what we absolutely need, is a way to keep eggs/hatchlings in teleports safe. Be that through changing the ward BSA to work for 12 hours (and be applicable more than once), or through allowing us to fog eggs/hatchlings in teleports while keeping the lineage view accessible (because, well, nobody will buy a cat in the bag) or a completely different method. I don't actually care that much about which way it happens, as long as it happens. Because that's the one chink in our baby dragons' armors that we cannot protect.

 

You might see a problem with a "hide growing things on scroll" setting, but then again, if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. If someone decides it's more important to show off their leetle dragons than to protect them, that's their call to make. But at least, they'll have another tool to work with if they ever change their mind.

 

ETA: I still think that these tools are good to have even if sickness gets reworked to not cause death.

Edited February 25, 2018 by olympe

[Ext3h]

Just my two cents on that topic:

 

Sickness should never have been able to kill eggs and hatchlings owned by an active user.

 

Give users a bold warning next time they log in. Give them actively a chance to react / fog / whatever. Only apply death mechanics if the user is either inactive, or chooses not to take any immediate actions.

 

As it is, the sickness mechanic is broken by design. It's meant to protect the server from being overloaded, but the design is so broken that it is instead more commonly used for grieving rather than actually ensuring system stability. It can't even be considered a "game mechanic", as users should commonly not be encountering this protection at all.

 

Fundamental mechanics in this game can change. They have before. Remember back then when trading was done by used the abandon feature? How that became heavily abused, as many users started writing themselves scripts to catch rare dragons on the AP with superhuman speed? (And by the way, there are still plenty of such users. Just far less rare dragons on the AP.)

 

Back then the game was changed. Teleport was introduced, to protect the player base from abuse.

 

That Ward BSA, as it is, is nonsense, or just as broken as the sickness mechanic itself. It promises the player to protect against death, but it actually doesn't.

All it does, is encouraging the players to continue going all-in, while view-bombers easily get around it, as they can still just go straight for overkill and view-bomb to the point where the hatchling dies after hatching.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Ext3h

[Kovia]

Has anyone mentioned the possibility of allowing Ward to be used on hatchlings as well? You're kinda screwed if someone majorly viewbombs a hatchie while you're offline and unable to intervene.

I'd rather not have to constantly fog/ward all of my eggs/hatchies, some breeds like prizes are already annoying enough to raise, but seems like that might be the only way shy of removing sickness entirely.

 

@olympe for that second suggestion about sickness lowering views, when does it wear off? Normally sickness wears off based on some hidden formula involving age and view ratio, but if you're lowering views it could drop all the way down to 0 views if you're not paying attention.

[Fuzzbucket]

Someone asked about Ward for hatchlings and TJ said no. I forget why. He has also said 6 hours is enough and he won't be changing it.

[olympe]

I... totally forgot about that. But, yes, it would be a good thing to have.

[Moonlight_Eevee]

Honestly, I know it's up to us to hatch the eggs but what happens if this massive epidemic happens again and again? What if one site shuts down one after the other? Now no one would be able to barely hatch their eggs due to the fan sites closing down. Yes, we're responsible, but without these Fansites, Dragon Cave would be doomed.

[olympe]

Not necessarily. There are still click sites like Yarold's, where it's not too hard to get the stats you need. It's just more work. :/

Besides, TJ could incorporate a fansite-like service on the site. Something like EATW would be appreciated, although I have a feeling he wasn't too fond of the site because it made things a little bit too easy. 

[ArgentiAertheri]

Here's that thread about extending Ward:

 

 

That was before the EAtW disaster though, so maybe he'd be willing to reconsider? Given the answer I got in the transparency thread though, I doubt it. And on the topic of that thread, has TJ posted in any of the recent threads about viewbombing/sickness/protecting teleports? Because, to me at least, it seems like he thinks the problem is already under control, or he's working on it but keeping that secret. In any case, see his reply here:

 

 

[HeatherMarie]

I just feel the need to point out that DC hasn't always been totally dependent on hatcheries to raise dragons. I never even *knew* about 'hatcheries' the first year or so of playing. When I first started I put my eggs in my signature on two forums I was active on, and they grew just fine that way (although it probably took a little longer then nowadays). Then I found a LiveJournal group for posting adoptables, and started posting them there. Actual 'hatcheries' are not actually required to grow dragons, though they do make it a lot easier. 

 

I would definitely like some 'transparency' from TJ about this whole viewbombing issue... That post in the transparency thread says it's easy to detect/ban sources of viewbombing, and that it's on his radar, but what on earth does that mean? Is he aware of that site that's currently gathering lists of scrolls to viewbomb, has he taken any sort of action with those people? And I very much disagree that extending Ward would make sickness 'useless', because I don't think anyone here is asking for Ward to cover the entire 2-3 days it takes an egg to hatch. We're just asking for something a little more use*ful* then 6 hours, a timeframe where most sickness isn't even cured in the first place, a timeframe where you can't even get a night's sleep or a day's work. Raising Ward to 10 hours, or 12 hours, doesn't make sickness useless in any way, especially since you can only Ward an egg once... After those hours are up it's once again vulnerable to sickness.

[ArgentiAertheri]

2 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

I would definitely like some 'transparency' from TJ about this whole viewbombing issue... That post in the transparency thread says it's easy to detect/ban sources of viewbombing, and that it's on his radar, but what on earth does that mean? Is he aware of that site that's currently gathering lists of scrolls to viewbomb, has he taken any sort of action with those people?

 

Please ask him that in that thread! You saw the answer I got, so I'd rather not try asking again (I got a direct answer once, what are the odds of that happening again?). Somebody should ask him publicly, because while people have PM'ed him (I think), the rest of us are left reading tumblr's ToS and grumbling that they don't seem to be violating it.

 

And since those  don't seem to be violating tumblr's terms, there's nothing anyone but TJ can do -- a thing I'm not pointing out in the thread about viewbombing because I don't want to end up on their radar. Which is its own kind of wrong really, censoring naughty words is one thing, there are kids around, but self-censoring out of fear, thanks to trolls? That's bad for community.

 

...aaaand that went off topic, sorry about that!

[Kovia]

There's a difference between what's possible and what people are willing to do. I for one do not have the time to be on a click exchange or forum enough to keep eggs on here alive. I've always liked that this is a nice casual game you can kinda come and go on.

If these viewbombers manage to kill any more hatcheries, I will quit, and I doubt I'm the only one. I just don't have the time to be that labor-intensive.

 

Viewbombing is supposed to be against the site rules, but you can't punish someone who doesn't even have a DC account. I don't get why they're doing this, it's stupid and does them no good we're not even losing anything real, but trolls are trolls and they're not gonna quit unless it becomes overly difficult for them.

 

Having the fansites require passwords and such would work but you'd have to get every single fansite to do it and these bombers might just make their own specifically to mess with us.

 

Removing sickness is an obvious fix but TJ seems pretty adamant about it (though I'd still love an explanation of what it's supposed to be there for, currently it's just a nuisance and a weapon and I see no redeeming factors).

 

Trying to hide eggs sounds like a fix but if the bombers watched the forums and hatcheries to swipe egg codes off of it wouldn't work.

 

Being allowed to Ward repeatedly and on hatchies and simply making an army of Whites to guard your eggs would be annoying but plausible. At the very least it'd give the owner a chance if their CB Gold or 2G Prize or whatever they have suddenly becomes extremely ill and the egg is too old to simply wait it out.

 

Anything involving trades only helps traded eggs and does nothing for the eggs you want for yourself.

 

Altering sickness mechanics depends on what sickness is supposed to be there for.

If it's just realism, realism. This is a site where hatchlings that supposedly take 2-3 years to mature grow up in just a few days, even if we say a day is a year that means our character is freaking immortal and holidays only occur once every few centuries.

If it's server strain, I don't buy it. There are thousands, maybe millions of dragons, and the server is fine.

If it's balancing, simply requiring X days for the egg/hatchie to grow already does that.

If it's to force user activity, okay, then make sickness easier to combat. Tweak Ward or add in some way of lowering views so you can save an egg/hatchie that is too far gone to simply fog and wait.

Seriously, what is sickness even around for?!

[Moonlight_Eevee]

@Kovia the CB Prize Dragons can't ever die. They are immensely warded from the moment you get them to the time they grow up

Edited February 26, 2018 by Dalek Raptor

[XiziX]

Never had an issue with dying dragons/eggs with sickness. Way back in the day when dead eggs counted towards Holiday totals, TJ changed it so those of us that got "view bombed" could grab new eggs. Which a surprising amount of people were upset about. Regardless, it was simply a lesson we all learned that during holidays these hatcheries are gunna be extremely busy. Which means, do not add your eggs to them until like the 4 day mark. Or in general, just don't put your eggs out in the open till you are ready to keep an eye on them.

 

Another way is to simply not post your scroll link in your signature. If you aren't doing anything important that requires you to be flashing your scroll constantly, then their shouldn't be much issue hiding it. Or simply keep your scroll hidden except for the two minutes during the time frame you add your stuff to hatcheries.

 

If you are trading, put up screenshots of what you have so they can spam the egg/dragon link anywhere. It's a quick process if you know what you're doing. (I use Gyazo, that thing is a life saver.)

 

All in all. I kinda like sickness. It means people don't just autopilot and put the eggs somewhere and forget about them. A game isn't really a game if there isn't risk of failure or lack of challenge. I have had 0 issues with sickness since 2009/2010. >.> So..yea. DC would be kind of lame without any challenges. If you care that much about your dragos, maybe take the extra care to keep them safe.

Edited February 26, 2018 by XiziX

[grimace]

I still don't get how people have trouble with sick eggs. I blindly throw my eggs in fansites and forget about em, and have never once had an issue.

[Fjord]

It's not people having trouble with sickness because they're newbies who don't know what they are doing, it's because people are being specifically targeted so their eggs get thousands of views within seconds and die. That's viewbombing. The user has literally no input in this unless they Ward (which is extremely limited), fog (which eliminates trading or showing off a nice egg) or hide their scroll entirely.

 

And honestly... if we're supposed to keep our scrolls hidden all the time, I don't really see the point of DC at all. I see no reason to make nice lineages and eggs worth trading if I'm the only one who's gonna see them and know I did it. I don't play games like this to keep things to myself.

 

Personally I'm not in favor of eliminating sickness, but the users absolutely need proactive ways to protect themselves against viewbombing. TJ has mentioned that viewbombing is easy to detect and ban, and just needs to be automated, but people are still going to lose eggs unless we have a way to combat viewbombing ourselves.

Edited February 26, 2018 by Fjord

[HeatherMarie]

43 minutes ago, XiziX said:

Never had an issue with dying dragons/eggs with sickness. Way back in the day when dead eggs counted towards Holiday totals, TJ changed it so those of us that got "view bombed" could grab new eggs. Which a surprising amount of people were upset about. Regardless, it was simply a lesson we all learned that during holidays these hatcheries are gunna be extremely busy. Which means, do not add your eggs to them until like the 4 day mark. Or in general, just don't put your eggs out in the open till you are ready to keep an eye on them.

 

Another way is to simply not post your scroll link in your signature. If you aren't doing anything important that requires you to be flashing your scroll constantly, then their shouldn't be much issue hiding it. Or simply keep your scroll hidden except for the two minutes during the time frame you add your stuff to hatcheries.

 

If you are trading, put up screenshots of what you have so they can spam the egg/dragon link anywhere. It's a quick process if you know what you're doing. (I use Gyazo, that thing is a life saver.)

 

All in all. I kinda like sickness. It means people don't just autopilot and put the eggs somewhere and forget about them. A game isn't really a game if there isn't risk of failure or lack of challenge. I have had 0 issues with sickness since 2009/2010. >.> So..yea. DC would be kind of lame without any challenges. If you care that much about your dragos, maybe take the extra care to keep them safe.

 

While the points you make are valid, not posting your scroll link and not putting eggs in hatcheries right away and etc, none of that does anything to stop actual viewbombers. A player can post screenshots for trades, not have their scroll linked anywhere, never put any dragon anywhere until it's under 4 days, and none of that matters at all if someone decides to target them. The EATW attack, for example, eggs were dying literally within *minutes*, ER-timed eggs, eggs that really should never be vulnerable to sickness under regular conditions, and the users themselves took every precaution they could and it still happened. We can do everything in our power to keep our eggs safe, but when random people can attack and kill a dragon in less then 5 minutes it really doesn't matter what we do. That is why we need *something* done, something changed. 

 

I am very much against doing away with sickness altogether, but I do think something needs to be done so that users actually have some sort of control over their dragons. Ward is supposed to help, but 6 hours is just too short to do much good. Fogging is supposed to help, but when eggs can get too sick to recover in less then 5 minutes fogging after the fact doesn't do any good. We need *some* way to combat this.

[JavaTigress]

On 2/24/2018 at 7:51 AM, Fuzzbucket said:

You are aware that there is actually a tumblr account specifically dedicated to viewbombing ? Password protecting  hatcheries can never stop that kind of stuff.

Agreed.

 

Besides...I don't really want the nuisance of having to put in passwords EVERY time I want to put stuff in a hatchery. I think options for combatting the problem onsite would be better.

Edited February 26, 2018 by JavaTigress

[LadyLyzar]

I currently have 8 very sick hatchlings due to someone being "helpful" and ER-ing my eggs that were in no danger of death.  No idea what hatcheries they were even placed in, and their survival is uncertain.  I myself did not add them anywhere.

 

I honestly feel there needs to be a way to have more security for your dragons.  Fogging is a great countermeasure, but the EATW attack revealed it wasn't enough when an egg/hatchling can die in minutes.  The average user is not going to be able to respond to that if someone decides to be that malicious.

 

The sickness mechanic has its purpose - it prevents the site from being "fire and forget".  However, it can also penalize someone who has done nothing wrong and that is a very big issue.  If sickness is to remain, I think it should have to be extreme to kill the dragon.  Maybe other consequences could come first, such as adding time to its hatching or maturing since it is going to need extra care.

 

Quite frankly, I think there needs to be more onsite security if dragon growth continues to rely on views/UVs from others.  It either needs to be behind the scenes (apparently some stuff already exists) or needs to be based on user action.

 

One idea I have is to rework the /view system.  Scramble dragon codes in some way unless you are viewing your own scroll page while logged in!  Cave codes would not be revealed until you pick up the egg, and abandoned eggs would have their codes reassigned upon abandonment (Yes this would stink for code hunters).  Lineage views would be scrambled as not to reveal an immature dragon's code.  As a result, only you would be able to post your eggs anywhere by using their direct code links.

 

If it were possible, I would also like to see an IP check on adding to fansites.  A fansite can only call up your scroll if you are logged into it from the same IP you are using to access the fansite.  Otherwise, you should have to enter your scroll password.

Edited February 26, 2018 by LadyLyzar

[Alrexwolf]

Please no IP checks - they only penalize people who play from multiple devices and could end up with innocent people being banned/punished for something they didn't even do. Also, because IP addresses are so variable (sometimes even from the same device!) I think it would be impossible to make that happen.

 

I also would... probably stop playing if codes were scrambled. As someone who pretty much only plays to pick up codes that interest me that would completely ruin my play experience. Every bit of it.

[Earth Gurl]

12 minutes ago, LadyLyzar said:

Otherwise, you should have to enter your scroll password.

 

I agree with everything you said except for this. That's a spoopy way for some malicious user to steal your password. I'm also not sure how the scrambling would work (seeing a different code than the actual egg is?) Otherwise, I do think the sickness system is broken. Also, there used to be a fansite that you had to log into to use (not sure if it's still around). 

 

Perhaps sickness disappears after a day or two. That way if you add an egg to a fansite, you'd have to stick around to watch it hatch, but after a day or two, you can throw it in without worry. That way you could keep it fogged for the amount of time sickness is in play (or ward). Hatchlings could also be vulnerable for a certain amount of time to add a bit of challenge, but if you fog immediately, it won't be in danger. I feel like that would deter viewbombers enough to not be able to kill even ER eggs.

 

2 minutes ago, Alrexwolf said:

I also would... probably stop playing if codes were scrambled. As someone who pretty much only plays to pick up codes that interest me that would completely ruin my play experience. Every bit of it.

 

This also. Codes are a pretty big part of my playing experience right now as well.

Edited February 26, 2018 by Earth Gurl

[HeatherMarie]

@LadyLyzar Woooah that's a lot of views on those hatchies! I hope they make it! 

 

I have a horrible memory, but didn't there used to be something where dragons would stop getting views if they reached a certain ratio of views vs unique views? I really feel like I remember that being a thing. If that were to be put in place again, with a low enough limit, that might help somewhat? Or possibly just making it impossible for dragons to gain a massive number of views in a certain amount of time... Like, for example, a fresh egg might get sick if it gets 200 views in an hour, but it would just stop gaining views at all after like 300 in one hour, so it can get sick but it wouldn't be possible to just attack it with thousands of views at once.

[LadyLyzar]

Oh, I didn't think of banning anyone - I play on multiple devices too.  You'd get a message like "You're not logged into your scroll from this device!"  It would be an extra precaution if people are against entering the password.

 

However, since entering a password takes a few seconds, I would be happy to do that if it protected my dragons from being added without my consent.  I do agree with you @Earth Gurl that it would be tricky - it would have to have a way to route through DC and not the fansite.  I dunno how the API works in that regard - it's by far not my area of expertise.

 

For scrambling codes, it would be like the gobbledygook you see on AP egg links before the actual code.  If there was a way to assign each egg some garbage characters like that, and have outside view links look like /view/garbage - but not have the dragon actually get views/clicks if you do it that way.  It would only get views/uv/clicks if its actual code is posted.  This would prevent someone adding your dragon somewhere by its code alone.

 

Scroll wide though is where security is doubly needed.

 

6 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

have a horrible memory, but didn't there used to be something where dragons would stop getting views if they reached a certain ratio of views vs unique views? I really feel like I remember that being a thing.

 

This still exists to stop one person from refreshing a dragon to death.  However it doesn't stop an attack that involves hundreds of IPs.

Edited February 26, 2018 by LadyLyzar