Remove Sickness (or somehow change it drastically)

[Dragon_Arbock]

1 minute ago, BrazenChase said:

Why should I be responsible for the malicious behavior of one or more other people on this site?

 

You're blaming victims. That's messed up.

 

You can take preventative actions. I am doing the equivalent of blaming the victim of a car crash who didn't wear their seat belt.

 

But I've tried to make my point. I see no reason to keep pointing out the obvious here.

[osmarks]

@Dragon_Arbock It's more like blaming a murder victim for not constantly wearing a bulletproof vest.

[Fuzzbucket]

26 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

 

..what are these social activities of which you speak? Really, I have no clue.

 

 

I have to agree about this "social activities" thing. Whatever I do with my eggs has nothing to do with social activity.

[KrazyKarp]

Sickness is a good idea on paper, horrible in practice. There's a huge difference between "be careful with views" and "be careful with views from malicious people". The former is the true purpose of sickness, why it was originally implemented. That purpose no longer exists. It's been unintentionally replaced by the latter purpose. There's no point in keeping something that has lost its true purpose on the site. There's no way I can break it down into any simpler terms than that.

[FiveSix]

I'm really liking Cinspawn's idea of only being at risk of sickness in the first 24 hours - it basically contracts all the infuriating things we have to/can't do to avoid sickness from the current 2-5 days to just the first day.

 

I think if I'd joined this site with that as an existing, long-standing mechanic I'd think it was pretty sensible in terms of mechanics 'challenge' and lore, which in my mind is a pretty good litmus test for whether a change is a good idea.

[BrazenChase]

3 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

I have to agree about this "social activities" thing. Whatever I do with my eggs has nothing to do with social activity.

Random users of the DC Discord have been targeted. Forum users have been targeted. Users of the Trade Hub have been targeted. It's probably happened to IRC as well but I would not know.

 

Doing anything that puts your name out there is an avenue to being attacked. How awful of a feeling is that? Users should be able to play this game and interact with the community without having to worry about their things being destroyed as a result of it.

 

3 minutes ago, osmarks said:

@Dragon_Arbock It's more like blaming a murder victim for not constantly wearing a bulletproof vest.

This exactly. 

Edited December 8, 2018 by BrazenChase

[Cinspawn]

18 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

I have to agree about this "social activities" thing. Whatever I do with my eggs has nothing to do with social activity.

When my scroll is hidden, I can't:

- show off my scroll to random people

- tell people to look at my scroll to see what I can breed for them

 

When my scroll is unhidden, I can't:

- talk 100% safely in the Discord because viewbombers may lurk

- talk 100% safely on the forums because viewbombers may lurk

 

So your solution is to fog everything - which brings us back to hey, that doesn't actually work! You can still be a victim if you don't hide EVERYTHING - including your scroll - if you do hide everything, see beginning of this post.

 

ETA: I also can't show off things I fogged, unless I do the whole unfog and fog spiel again and again. A lot of individual dragons get showed off in the Discord.

 

19 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

You can take preventative actions. I am doing the equivalent of blaming the victim of a car crash who didn't wear their seat belt.

You keep forgetting that - much like fogging everything can still make you lose dragons! - you can still die in a car crash with your seat belt on.

Edited December 8, 2018 by Cinspawn

[KrazyKarp]

11 minutes ago, ObsessedWithCats said:

I'm really liking Cinspawn's idea of only being at risk of sickness in the first 24 hours - it basically contracts all the infuriating things we have to/can't do to avoid sickness from the current 2-5 days to just the first day.

Oh yeah this is pretty cool. You can't throw fresh eggs into hatcheries and forget about them, but you also don't have to worry about malicious people after a day. Nice balance.

[tjekan]

2 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

I have to agree about this "social activities" thing. Whatever I do with my eggs has nothing to do with social activity.

 

It's not my thing either, but some users enjoy the social aspects of chatting about the game on Discord and so on, and since viewbombers are known to target the scrolls of people who post there, it has a suppressive effect.

 

Like Cinspawn said, there are a lot of really negative effects of the loopholes in the way sickness is currently working, and no discernible benefit. If people don't like individual suggestions for how to fix it (like they think stunting would be more of a pain than fogging, etc) then it's correct to argue against them, but it's not reasonable to object to the CONCEPT of fixing it. This is clearly an error. This was never intended to be a PvP game. Viewbombing is against the rules. This is not a normal gameplay challenge that people are supposed to be defending against or paying the price. It's broken. Arguing that the game designer SHOULDN'T do something to fix a clearly broken part of the game because it's possible to just work around it makes no sense. Yes, we can work around the broken thing, but it would be BETTER if it were FIXED.

 

This isn't like blaming a car crash victim who didn't wear a seatbelt OR like blaming a shooting victim who didn't wear a bulletproof vest. It's like blaming a person whose engine keeps stalling out on the highway for asking a mechanic to fix it, because you can just drive below 45 MPH all the time and avoid the problem yourself so why change anything?

[Dragon_Arbock]

11 minutes ago, Cinspawn said:

When my scroll is hidden, I can't:

- show off my scroll to random people

- tell people to look at my scroll to see what I can breed for them

 

When my scroll is unhidden, I can't:

- talk 100% safely in the Discord because viewbombers may lurk

- talk 100% safely on the forums because viewbombers may lurk

 

So your solution is to fog everything - which brings us back to hey, that doesn't actually work! You can still be a victim if you don't hide EVERYTHING - if you do hide everything, see beginning of this post.

 

ETA: I also can't show off things I fogged, unless I do the whole unfog and fog spiel again and again. A lot of individual dragons get showed off in the Discord.

 

You keep forgetting that - much like fogging everything can still make you lose dragons! - you can still die in a car crash with your seat belt on.

 

I cannot wrap my head around this. You do not need to hide your scroll to protect yourself. Your adult dragons cannot be killed. Unless you're saying fogging is way too much work for you so you'd rather hide the scroll.

 

And no, if you never unfog a dragon, it cannot be killed. If you leave it unfogged, someone makes it sick, and then you fog it, yeah, it's probably still gonna die. Don't do that.
Don't unfog unless you can watch it when you put it in a hatchery. All it takes is a few minutes on mobile to check and see if it's hatched or not so you can refog.

 

I don't use the discord, but I talk on the forums. My scroll is unhidden. I am safe.

 

Trading still need a fix, but everything else on here is just people not wanting to use the tools they already have.

[osmarks]

I'm not sure that preventing people sticking stuff in hatcheries at 7d is a particularly good goal anyway, but limiting sickness to the first 24h would definitely help a lot.

[Cinspawn]

4 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

All it takes is a few minutes on mobile to check and see if it's hatched or not so you can refog.

How do you hatch a 4 days left egg in minutes? It takes me at least an hour, usually 2-3. Which is plenty of time for a viewbomber to kill my egg.

[Fuzzbucket]

20 minutes ago, Cinspawn said:

When my scroll is hidden, I can't:

- show off my scroll to random people

- tell people to look at my scroll to see what I can breed for them

 

When my scroll is unhidden, I can't:

- talk 100% safely in the Discord because viewbombers may lurk

- talk 100% safely on the forums because viewbombers may lurk

 

So your solution is to fog everything - which brings us back to hey, that doesn't actually work! You can still be a victim if you don't hide EVERYTHING - including your scroll - if you do hide everything, see beginning of this post.

 

ETA: I also can't show off things I fogged, unless I do the whole unfog and fog spiel again and again. A lot of individual dragons get showed off in the Discord.

 

You keep forgetting that - much like fogging everything can still make you lose dragons! - you can still die in a car crash with your seat belt on.

 

You were implying that using fansites was akin to social activity.

 

I don't choose to "show off my scroll to random people". And if people want me to breed, they can ask me. It's one hell of a lot faster than - say - going through ALL my shimmers to see what I have. I do hate viewbombing but  fogging does make it impossible to bomb growing things. I DO agree that something needs to be done to protect things in trade. But no-one needs to see my growing things unless they are in trade - in fact, I would like the option to hide them and not my adults, rather than, as things stand, hiding my adults.

 

I'm not actually heavily into "showing off" my stuff anyway. But show it off when it grows up ?

[Fuzzbucket]

Just now, Cinspawn said:

How do you hatch a 4 days left egg in minutes? It takes me at least an hour, usually 2-3. Which is plenty of time for a viewbomber to kill my egg.

 

If you watch it - you can use the bombing to hatch it, and then hide it very fast.

[KrazyKarp]

4 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

I cannot wrap my head around this. You do not need to hide your scroll to protect yourself. Your adult dragons cannot be killed. Unless you're saying fogging is way too much work for you so you'd rather hide the scroll.

 

And no, if you never unfog a dragon, it cannot be killed. If you leave it unfogged, someone makes it sick, and then you fog it, yeah, it's probably still gonna die. Don't do that.
Don't unfog unless you can watch it when you put it in a hatchery. All it takes is a few minutes on mobile to check and see if it's hatched or not so you can refog.

 

I don't use the discord, but I talk on the forums. My scroll is unhidden. I am safe.

 

Trading still need a fix, but everything else on here is just people not wanting to use the tools they already have.

For me, it's more of the principle. The fact that people can take advantage of a feature on the site to be malicious towards others is absurd beyond belief.

 

Also, fogging, eh. Maybe you don't have an issue with nothing but fog on your scroll but I like seeing my growing eggs and hatchies without watching over them like a hawk every half minute.

[purplehaze]

 

3 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

everything else on here is just people not wanting to use the tools they already have.

It is more a case of people feeling that we shouldn't HAVE to use those tools for something they were never intended to be needed for. Why should the trolls be able to control the way I play the game? I'm sure you didn't start playing the game by fogging all your eggs until they could hatch. That was an adjustment you made in response to the threat of viewbombing. I am tired of having the outlaws be able to dictate the way all of us play the game!!

 

3 minutes ago, KrazyKarp said:

For me, it's more of the principle. The fact that people can take advantage of a feature on the site to be malicious towards others is absurd beyond belief.

My feelings exactly!

[Cinspawn]

5 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

You were implying that using fansites was akin to social activity.

 

I don't choose to "show off my scroll to random people". And if people want me to breed, they can ask me. It's one hell of a lot faster than - say - going through ALL my shimmers to see what I have. I do hate viewbombing but  fogging does make it impossible to bomb growing things. I DO agree that something needs to be done to protect things in trade. But no-one needs to see my growing things unless they are in trade - in fact, I would like the option to hide them and not my adults, rather than, as things stand, hiding my adults.

 

I'm not actually heavily into "showing off" my stuff anyway. But show it off when it grows up ?

 

I meant that both social activity and using fansites provide a "doorway" to your scroll.

 

Of course I can show things off when it grows up. There's a work around for everything. But the point stays it's absurd we have to dance around viewbombers just because we have some defenses. ESPECIALLY since they are not intended this way. It would be a whole different story if DC was meant to be a PvP game.

 

6 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

If you watch it - you can use the bombing to hatch it, and then hide it very fast.

I don't have the actual stats for this because I don't know exactly how sickness/growth rate works... But to give this as an example of "we can still defend ourselves!" is... pretty absurd to me. I guess we could technically adjust to this new gameplay style where we have about 15 minutes (= time that was necessary to kill their egg during massive viewbombing, according to people in this thread) to save our egg. I don't think this game was meant to be played that way, though.

[Fuzzbucket]

I agree that it would be useful to find a way to stop viewbombing. But I don't think it is actually possible, and I do think we need sickness in there.

[osmarks]

It's entirely possible to stop viewbombing, by doing this. The only significant consequence is that prize/zyu hatching would be easier and new players would have slightly less to learn..

[Fuzzbucket]

By doing which suggestion in particular ? There have been several.

[osmarks]

Quite a lot of them. Definitely removing sickness entirely.

[DuskOfTheStars]

I'm pretty sure TJ has said he's not removing sickness.

[tjekan]

9 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I agree that it would be useful to find a way to stop viewbombing. But I don't think it is actually possible, and I do think we need sickness in there.

 

Would either of the floated ideas of 1) eggs only being vulnerable to sickness in the first day of life or 2) eggs having to be sick for 24 hours before they can die still fulfill what you think we need sickness for, Fuzzbucket? Or the original suggestion, 3) eggs becoming stunted instead of dying when they reach the critical sickness point? The two arguments I've heard for keeping sickness is that it forces new players to interact with their scroll more and that it penalizes more experienced players for spacing out and forgetting about their eggs. Would limiting sickness in any of those ways still have the desired effect?

 

I don't like carelessly removing game elements that people like, but if we could ADAPT this one to close the exploitable loopholes while still serving the purpose people like it for, that would be a win-win.

Edited December 8, 2018 by tjekan

[purplehaze]

I don't think TJ will agree to remove sickness entirely, but there are a few other options being discussed here that he might be willing to try. I just think something needs to be done to keep an intended game element from being used maliciously against other players the way sickness can currently be used.

[Fuzzbucket]

I could live with them having to be sick for 25 hours before they died. Not so keen in no death possible in the first 24 hours. And not wild about stunting.