Remove Sickness (or somehow change it drastically)

[Dragon_Arbock]

6 minutes ago, Meh said:

*facepalms* to all of it...
"there's already a way to avoid the problem and they won't use it." if so, then do exactly this and hide your scroll, why even demand all hatchieres to be login-required (if you can already prevent others from adding your things there and with even less bother than login reguirement would cause) -  nobody needs that nor would it solve ANY problem.... but why am I even trying...
I'll just ignore the rest because you're still denying facts, hence it's a waste of time. I'm basically saying my avatar is blue but you're still claiming it's all grey...

 

You don't have to hide your scroll. Fog your items. People can still find your things even if you hide your scroll, if they know the codes.
A login requirement would help. Sickness isn't the only issue here. People add things people are trying to trade to hatcheries, causing them to hatch or grow. No death required to ruin someone's day, because hatcheries are insecure nightmares. It would help with a lot of grief, but you're so narrowly focused on this one issue as to not see every benefit.

 

And no, you're denying facts. You're saying no egg has ever died of sickness that wasn't view bombing. That simply isn't true.

[Sazandora]

@Dragon_Arbock "...playing the game the correct way"? What the heck does that mean? Are you saying that this game has a "right" way and a "wrong" way to play it? So if hatcheries are the "wrong" way to go, why does TJ even allow them to exist in the first place then?

 

Do you have a problem with people wanting some way to deal with viewbombers? It's all too easy to just go all "LOL JUST HIDE YOUR STUFF PROBLEM SOLVED :^)", it sounds like sticking your head under the sand and pretending the problem does not exist. Some people do like to look at the beautiful egg and hatchling sprites this game has instead of just staring at fogballs. People like to show off their scrolls to other people. And now you're saying that if they get targeted by viewbombers, and I remind you that viewbombing is against the site rules, they should just learn to love the fogball sprite and hide away everything and totally change the way they play?

 

Even if sickness got changed, in what way does it hurt your playstyle so much that you're against changing it?

[deleted_account]

4 minutes ago, olympe said:

Probably because they don't want to have to log into a hatchery every time they want to add their eggs? It would be highly inconvenient. They don't care about sickness because it has never hurt them, they care abuot not having to jump through any additional hoops. There already is a way to avoid the problem - fogging, hiding your scroll, watching your eggs, not adding them when they're still susceptible for sickness and so on. A forced API login for hatcheries won't change anything, really. Instead, you could simply hide your scroll, and have the same kind of protection. Save for hatcheries that also allow you to add egg codes, of course.

This. Thank you for putting that better, I'm really loosing temper over this by now, so frustrated. 
"Save for hatcheries that also allow you to add egg codes, of course." I could have missed something, but I think only 2 allow that right now (would be 3 but the 3rd is broken on this), one of them only allowing to add ERs anyway, leaving 1 (I added my egg through scroll, so I could have missed if there are more), the rest are forums and in general non-hatheries and API change wouldn't do a thing to limit views from these either. 

[Dragon_Arbock]

@Sazandora There was an intended way to play this game. You cannot deny this game was designed for forums. The only reason we have fansites is because forums have declined in use over the last decade. Maybe people are just too young to even realize that.

 

The problem doesn't exist for me. Change my mind, convince me that we can't already deal with the issue, because we can. And for the last time, I can still show off my scroll. It's not hidden. It doesn't have to be.. And you like hatchling sprites- freeze some.

You don't have to change the way you play, but you take that risk then. Better safe then sorry. I don't see the big deal with a few fogged sprites that will grow in under a week.

 

And yeah, it's against the TOS, but do you even think these are other players? I don't.

 

I think it's a pointless thing to discuss because TJ will not remove sickness, and I think it's just complaining for complaining's sake when there is a way to protect yourself already.

[BrazenChase]

At the end of the day, do we want the trolls to run the site on a culture of paranoia, or do we want to enjoy playing a game and having fun?

 

Don't waste your time on the Devil's Advocate here. They've made it abundantly clear they're not interested in the benefit of others, nor have any regard for all the damage caused since none of it was dealt to them. At this point they're just here to be contrary. Don't feed them.

 

This site should not be so easily controlled by trolls and griefers. It's insulting, really. TJ needs to take control of his site back, since clearly it's gone beyond what he has set up and to absolutely nobody's benefit.

 

It is stifling both onsite and offsite communities, has destroyed one hatchery already and potentially more, and it slams the brakes on others' ability to play the game and enjoy themselves. This shouldn't be stressful. Our playstyle shouldn't be determined by fear of sabotage. DC isn't advertised as a PvP game, and when I signed up I was certainly not aware that by speaking on the forums, engaging in trades, or in other community spaces, I would be inviting other players to destroy my things if they so felt that whimsy. I did not sign up for such a combative experience. None of us did.

 

But hey, lets just keep it as it is for the sake of some arbitrary concept of how ~difficult a game should be :^)~ and let the trolls run wild. I already have a full time job, watching my scroll shouldn't be another one. We play games to have fun and relax, not because we want even more stress in our lives.

[Sazandora]

Exactly. Just because some people haven't been targeted by viewbombers (myself included, for now) doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist for other people. Honestly, @Dragon_Arbock, have you even SEEN the viewbombing thread on the General Discussion forum? You're acting like viewbombing is not a thing at all, while it very much is!

 

And did you happen to notice, people on this thread were talking about CHANGING the sickness mechanics instead of getting rid of it altogether? We all know TJ is not going to remove it, so what we're suggesting here is that it is CHANGED so malicious trolls can't abuse it. You just only seem to notice the posts talking about getting rid of it, not the ones suggesting some changes to the thing.

[Dragon_Arbock]

*shrug more* I do have fun and am relaxed. Fogging allowed for that. I don't have to worry because of fogging. I have less fun because of the broken trade economy and Prizes than I do view bombers.

 

@Sazandora And yes I have- but if you leave yourself unprotected, knowing that is happening, am I supposed to feel bad? Some people have gotten hit 4 or 5 times and still haven't learned. I got hit once, that was all it took for me to take some personal responsibility.

 

The name of the thread is remove sickness- and based on TJ's mass thread locking we know that the OP is the only thing he reads. You want to make a topic about changing sickness, that would be more productive than continuing to talk in this one.

[deleted_account]

As I said, as long as it no longer allows any 3rd partes to kill one's eggs under no circumstances, and won't suddenly add extra steps for me to simply hatch my eggs, I'll consider this problem fixed. But I admit, removal is what seems a good choice, since one can't even kill one's egg despite trying hard to (my viewbombing experiment is 5h old and stil alive, that just speaks for itself)... except for like just mere 2 breeds of them all and something like very specific and rare circumstances (maybe the high-traffic holiday season?), not worth it...  For now, current sickness is nothing but an exploit and it needs to be fixed, and properly. 

Edited December 9, 2018 by Meh

[Sazandora]

@Dragon_Arbock Yes, it starts with "remove sickness"... and continues with "or change it drastically". Clearly you can't be blind because you're using the forums.

So what you're saying is that we should all just hide everything on our scrolls 24/7 until it's time to hatch/grow them up? Like, we should all just learn to love the fogball sprite instead of the egg/hatchling sprites we have? Instead of... I don't know, doing SOMETHING about viewbombing?

 

I like to look at all the pretty eggs and hatchies we have in DC. I don't want to just stare at a ball of fog all day every day, so because I don't want to do that, clearly I deserve to get all of my stuff killed for not adequately "protecting" them. You're telling people to drastically change their playstyle. It's like you're defending the viewbombers.

 

To get back on topic, I do agree with the idea of the timer counting upwards when an egg/hatchling is sick if it replaces the whole risk of dying. Again, it really defangs any malicious people who want to abuse a broken game mechanic to hurt people.

Edited December 9, 2018 by Sazandora

[Fuzzbucket]

22 minutes ago, Sazandora said:

@Dragon_Arbock "...playing the game the correct way"? What the heck does that mean? Are you saying that this game has a "right" way and a "wrong" way to play it? So if hatcheries are the "wrong" way to go, why does TJ even allow them to exist in the first place then?

 

Do you have a problem with people wanting some way to deal with viewbombers? It's all too easy to just go all "LOL JUST HIDE YOUR STUFF PROBLEM SOLVED :^)", it sounds like sticking your head under the sand and pretending the problem does not exist. Some people do like to look at the beautiful egg and hatchling sprites this game has instead of just staring at fogballs. People like to show off their scrolls to other people. And now you're saying that if they get targeted by viewbombers, and I remind you that viewbombing is against the site rules, they should just learn to love the fogball sprite and hide away everything and totally change the way they play?

 

Even if sickness got changed, in what way does it hurt your playstyle so much that you're against changing it?

 

I am slightly on the fence - but I do agree with this. So play the game your way, Arbock - but why spend so much time telling everyone else in this thread that they're wrong ? WE know you are fine with things the way they are. Others aren't and have every right to say so.

 

16 minutes ago, Meh said:

This. Thank you for putting that better, I'm really loosing temper over this by now, so frustrated. 
"Save for hatcheries that also allow you to add egg codes, of course." I could have missed something, but I think only 2 allow that right now (would be 3 but the 3rd is broken on this), one of them only allowing to add ERs anyway, leaving 1 (I added my egg through scroll, so I could have missed if there are more), the rest are forums and in general non-hatheries and API change wouldn't do a thing to limit views from these either. 

 

Sure - but no-one can force them all to have logins.

 

16 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

@Sazandora There was an intended way to play this game. You cannot deny this game was designed for forums. The only reason we have fansites is because forums have declined in use over the last decade. Maybe people are just too young to even realize that.

.

 

I can deny that. This game existed - AFAIK - before the forum did - and I played for a good long while before signing up to the forum -so did almost everyone I know. Many play without forumming at all.

 

5 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

*shrug more* I do have fun and am relaxed. Fogging allowed for that. I don't have to worry because of fogging. I have less fun because of the broken trade economy and Prizes than I do view bombers.

 

@Sazandora And yes I have- but if you leave yourself unprotected, knowing that is happening, am I supposed to feel bad? Some people have gotten hit 4 or 5 times and still haven't learned. I got hit once, that was all it took for me to take some personal responsibility.

 

The name of the thread is remove sickness- and based on TJ's mass thread locking we know that the OP is the only thing he reads. You want to make a topic about changing sickness, that would be more productive than continuing to talk in this one.

 

I'm so glad you are having fun. So am I - but I do not want to see another EATW event. This does need addressing, whether you like it or not.

[olympe]

I think there are some easy ways to deal with fansites. If no fansite allowed to add eggs by their code, but only whole scrolls, that would be a good thing because hiding your scroll then protects all your eggs from viewbombing through hatcheries - even those in teleports.

 

However, there's more than just hatcheries. What about click exchange sites and so on?

[Sazandora]

I'm having fun too, for me this game has been a wonderful timesink for many years. I love to just look at all the dragons I've collected and build lineages and catch more lovely dragons while chatting away with a friend. But there are some people who clearly hate it that we're having fun and decide that it has to stop, and I'm worried about it. I don't want to be forced to live in paranoia and fog everything 24/7 and be deathly afraid of posting in the news threads out of fear of getting targeted by the Fun Police. Something needs to be changed. Removing sickness altogether might be too drastic, but I'm sure it could be changed so it can't be abused.

[deleted_account]

54 minutes ago, olympe said:

I think there are some easy ways to deal with fansites. If no fansite allowed to add eggs by their code, but only whole scrolls, that would be a good thing because hiding your scroll then protects all your eggs from viewbombing through hatcheries - even those in teleports.

 

However, there's more than just hatcheries. What about click exchange sites and so on?

Which is exactly why nothing can be done with Sickness as it is, and why API on hatcheries in not a sollution... they just use different things to kill than just those, they likely have their own websites dedicated to just viewbombing. (my self-targetted egg is STILL alive since 7am...)

So we have:
sickness removal (Ward protecting in-trade eggs from getting hatched)
or
death removal
- exhanged with auto-fog that doesn't auto unfog (see below for explaination)  
- exchanged with a slow gain of time left (Ward protecting from this now)
death limitation
- to just the first 24h of an egg's life (Ward's short duration making more sense then)
-or
- to not occur until 25h of ongoing sickness (Ward useful to save targetted eggs)
-or
to occur to no-trophy players only (Ward mostly useful for in-trade eggs)

There's likely something else that wouldn't harm anyone, and I guess I'm about to describe one...

NEW SICKNESS FIX SUGGESTON:
Death removal - exhanged with auto-fog - make sickness cause the sick eggs to get fogged automatically and require manual unfogging or they die of >timeout<. 
it occured to my gf and me that... well, Sickness was made to prevent people from login, grab, put to hatcheries and forget, right? 
If sick eggs auto fogged, what it would do it would prevent the above approach, AND would make it impossible to viewbomb to kill because the egg would still have several days to die under the fog! Making it possible for even the busiest players to login back in time to unfog their sick eggs and hatch them before they die But also making very neglectful players loose their eggs if they simply grab them, submit to hatcheries, and forget for a full week - just like it does when they login, grab, don't put to hatcheries and forget.
And such a mechanic wouldn't allow alternative uses (because, theoreticaly, time gain could be used to make eggs tradeable for longer and actually benefit the targetted player, while auto-fog wouldn't do anything potentially benefitial, while punishing for actual scroll neglect just like regular timeout does)
We believe that would be the most balanced tweak to Sickness, actully keeping it back down to what it intentionally was but without letting third party kill anyone else's stuff anymore (and without forcing people to make their scroll maintenance ways unnecessarily more hectic) - with only exception of overly neglectful players who don't check back within a week after catching an egg! which is exatly what Sickness was supposed to do! 

To make it even better balanced, make this apply to eggs that are 1d left and more, while still making sickness kill eggs that are below 1d left (how often are your eggs reaching 1d anyways? how often 3rd party viewbombing targets and kills 1d left eggs? I guess that mostly applies to unsuccessful trades and ND making, normally people hatch at 3d+ and below mostly when they neglect their scroll - that's also true to me, I do get eggs die of timeout on me when I forget about DC for too long, and that's fair). This way Neglected making would remain unaffected!  

And Ward? still applicable to eggs hatchigg in trades, and would also prevent the auto-fog (useful for trades again).

Edited December 9, 2018 by Meh

[tjekan]

1 hour ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

If you protected your stuff, they'd get no more joy out of it.

 

To be more specific, if ALL users protected all their stuff at all times, they'd get no more joy out of it. Meh protecting his would do nothing.

 

We know that's not going to happen. Most users don't even use the forum. It's not written anywhere in the ToS or the site rules that everyone must keep their eggs fogged till 4 days, and in fact it IS written in the ToS that viewbombing isn't allowed, so it's inevitable that enough players will not realize they're going to get viewbombed and leave their eggs exposed that viewbombers will still be able to enjoy doing their thing. If the loophole were closed at the source, they would not.

 

Unless there's some hidden BENEFIT to viewbombing which I'm not seeing, there is zero reason to quit looking for a way to close this unintended loophole which is causing gameplay exploits. That doesn't mean we should take just ANY old solution-- we need to find one that won't disrupt the playstyle of existing users, and I'm sure TJ would reject any that is difficult to implement. But we certainly should not stop looking for multiple options to fix something broken just because it's possible to work around the broken thing in various ways. It should be fixed. One way or another, the system needs to change so that it is the VIEWBOMBERS who are drastically inconvenienced by the way it is set up, not ordinary users.

[Fuzzbucket]

Applauds tjekan. I have been lucky for a few years - but my heart bleeds for those who haven't - many of them experienced players who DID take precautions.

[osmarks]

@Dragon_Arbock Thanks for that good point, edited the OP to add more suggestions about changing it. Please note, however, the title, which clearly mentions changing it.

Anyway, we certainly can just protect our stuff. It's just that we shouldn't have to because of a minority of trolls when there are clearly simple solutions to fixing viewbombing.

 

Requiring hatcheries to require logins - or, as I'd prefer, requiring them to allow logins (which is possible, at least for any sort of actual widely-used hatcheries for use by regular non-viewbombing players) probably would at least help with "casual" viewbombing, but would certainly not entirely eliminate it, no.

[deleted_account]

2 hours ago, osmarks said:

probably would at least help with "casual" viewbombing, but would certainly not entirely eliminate it, no.

I seriously doubt it... Exactly 10hrs of actively trying to viewbomb a just-caught egg and it's still alive, stats 1,596|405|1. They obviously don't kill people's eggs this way for sure, or mine would be dead by now, casual viewbombing is just not effective at killing.

Edited December 9, 2018 by Meh

[osmarks]

Even if they can't actually kill them without ARing or whatever, it still annoys the player in question, or it can hatch eggs they don't want hatched, for example.

[deleted_account]

2 minutes ago, osmarks said:

Even if they can't actually kill them without ARing or whatever, it still annoys the player in question, or it can hatch eggs they don't want hatched, for example.

The point of what I'm saying is that non-hatcheries can be effectively used to viewbomb DC things instead, and API change to force hathery logins would only harm normal players but still not prevent viewbombing of any sort. The whole problem with the API suggestion is that it won't solve any problem and only add more...

[osmarks]

Yes, I guess it might not be worth it.

[Dragon_Arbock]

7 hours ago, osmarks said:

@Dragon_Arbock Thanks for that good point, edited the OP to add more suggestions about changing it. Please note, however, the title, which clearly mentions changing it.

Anyway, we certainly can just protect our stuff. It's just that we shouldn't have to because of a minority of trolls when there are clearly simple solutions to fixing viewbombing.

 

Requiring hatcheries to require logins - or, as I'd prefer, requiring them to allow logins (which is possible, at least for any sort of actual widely-used hatcheries for use by regular non-viewbombing players) probably would at least help with "casual" viewbombing, but would certainly not entirely eliminate it, no.

 

and @Sazandora The title mentioned it, but the post in its original form only mentioned removing it, hence the criticism. There was nothing in the OP that offered how it should be 'changed' when I actually read it.

 

And yes, with the API thing, that's what I'm getting at. Maybe have hatcheries have to require logins if you're not accepting aid. If you are accepting aid, then you wouldn't have to log in.

While some people here seem to think that won't be good enough, it takes a lot more effort for a troll to make their own system than to just direct a lot of traffic to an already existing hatchery, then add people's scrolls to that- and even normal users add things in people's trades to hatcheries out of spite, and I think that should be minimized as much as physically possible. Hatcheries are abusable. Currently they are not carrying out attacks without the use of a hatchery.

 

If anything really needs to be done beyond API changes, which I'm still not really convinced of, but just for the sake of it, I'd say make it take 3-5 hours for an egg to die, not 15 minutes that people have 'claimed' have happened during view bombing. I'm sure something could be adjusted so things don't die so fast, but if you've gone 10+ hours without checking on your 'important' eggs, maybe they deserve the death. I still think if something as important as a once-a-year egg, you might care to defend it better. Whether or not these people are doing something against ToS, they can't be caught and probably aren't even current players anymore. They might be people bitter cause they got banned for scripting or whatever and would make sense that they'd know how to do this.

[tjekan]

13 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

if you've gone 10+ hours without checking on your 'important' eggs, maybe they deserve the death. I still think if something as important as a once-a-year egg, you might care to defend it better.

 

I'm about 99% sure TJ disagrees with you on that, since he wouldn't even remove limits on holiday dragons with the stated rationale that not everyone had the time to log into DC every day over the holidays and he didn't want them to feel forced to. Based on that, and on the fact that the viewbombing is an external exploit and not an accepted part of the game, the odds that the game designer actually intends for people's eggs to die if they don't check on their eggs every 10 hours are slim to none.

 

But we'll see what he says/does; I could be wrong.

Edited December 10, 2018 by tjekan

[Dragon_Arbock]

I think the fact that sickness exists at all means that you are intended to monitor your eggs, not forget about them. You can't hatch your eggs before the 4 day mark anyhow, so it's certainly not to punish you for trying to insta-hatch, so I can't see what else it could be.
Possibly an attempt at realism with egg raising and monitoring. Gradual increases as to not cause shock and death, but I cannot say for sure.

 

And last I heard it was just that he didn't want to be a cause of stress for people over the holidays, nothing specifically about logging in every day.

[Fuzzbucket]

4 hours ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

 

and @Sazandora The title mentioned it, but the post in its original form only mentioned removing it, hence the criticism. There was nothing in the OP that offered how it should be 'changed' when I actually read it.

 

And yes, with the API thing, that's what I'm getting at. Maybe have hatcheries have to require logins if you're not accepting aid. If you are accepting aid, then you wouldn't have to log in.

While some people here seem to think that won't be good enough, it takes a lot more effort for a troll to make their own system than to just direct a lot of traffic to an already existing hatchery, then add people's scrolls to that- and even normal users add things in people's trades to hatcheries out of spite, and I think that should be minimized as much as physically possible. Hatcheries are abusable. Currently they are not carrying out attacks without the use of a hatchery.

 

If anything really needs to be done beyond API changes, which I'm still not really convinced of, but just for the sake of it, I'd say make it take 3-5 hours for an egg to die, not 15 minutes that people have 'claimed' have happened during view bombing. I'm sure something could be adjusted so things don't die so fast, but if you've gone 10+ hours without checking on your 'important' eggs, maybe they deserve the death. I still think if something as important as a once-a-year egg, you might care to defend it better. Whether or not these people are doing something against ToS, they can't be caught and probably aren't even current players anymore. They might be people bitter cause they got banned for scripting or whatever and would make sense that they'd know how to do this.

 

Actually now - that annoys me. When I was at work still, I would often be AFK for longer than that - on the road in a car, at times. I had no choice (and before you say "phone" - I don't HAVE a smart phone and can't afford a contract like so many of you have.) Not to mention that I should not have been playing on company time, actually,. And just recently I was travelling and relied on airport wifi. It failed in Dubai; with the result that I was AFK for 29 hours. While I agree that one SHOULD check one's stuff, and I am not actually in favour of sickness going away, this kind of cavalier attitude is very irritating. Also over holidays many of us have unavoidable commitments - at least over Christmas. I'm genuinely happy for you that you have a life that means you can always be on line within 10 hours. We aren't all that lucky.

 

As to hatcheries requiring log-in - they are offsite and that can't easily be enforced; also some viewbombing IS done without the aid of hatcheries, and you know this. The EATW troll WAS that determined.

 

[Alrexwolf]

Fogging, hiding scrolls, even ward to an extent... is all just a band aid. All it does is give people an excuse as to why the game should be so backwards and difficult. It's a simple sprite collecting game.

 

I should be able to look at the sprites I want to see, not have them hidden behind rather unappealing fog clouds 99% of the time. I should be able to share this game freely - but I can't. 

 

Word of mouth is a big thing for websites - it's detrimental that our userbase has to be so afraid of showing off their scroll, their hatchlings, their eggs... I've never told anyone on any other website that I play Dragcave, or put my dragons anywhere, because it's just too dangerous. 

 

Honestly, I wish we could just lock things from receiving views WITHOUT fog. I don't mind having to babysit (though I think it's.... stupid to have an activity check for a site that requires you, realistically, to log on idk every 3 days at the least?), but I do mind having to stare at fogballs when I just want to see pretty egg and hatchling sprites.

 

Just have a little lock/unlock image next to each growing creature. When you unlock, it gains views. When you lock, it can't. 

 

You can still show it off - you can still share everything. And you can do it all while controlling and being 100% certain your hatchies and eggs are safe! Because they can't gain views.