Remove Sickness (or somehow change it drastically)

[HeatherMarie]

35 minutes ago, olympe said:

Not to mention that low-time eggs can take a lot of views without getting sick, much less staying so. (You can always experiment with a low-time sunrise/sunset outside their hatching windows...)

 

That's true. Certain breeds, like Prizes and Zyus, are finicky and require more views to hatch and often get sick while doing so (at least mine do!), but in general low-time eggs are less vulnerable to sickness unless being intentionally bombed. I've actually had multiple times where a normal egg got sick while hatching, but an hour or so after it hatched it wasn't sick anymore, and I hadn't fogged it or done anything at all. I really think that with these suggestions of sickness just delaying or restricting growth, the only way anything would actually die was if someone was just completely negligent, like throwing high-timed eggs into tons of hatcheries at once and then not checking back for 7 days or something.

[olympe]

In my experience, prize eggs only get sick if I Incubate them and ER them ASAP. If I Incubate and ER them when they have less than 3 d 12 on their timer, they're usually fine. 

[Fuzzbucket]

9 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

That's true. Certain breeds, like Prizes and Zyus, are finicky and require more views to hatch and often get sick while doing so (at least mine do!), but in general low-time eggs are less vulnerable to sickness unless being intentionally bombed. I've actually had multiple times where a normal egg got sick while hatching, but an hour or so after it hatched it wasn't sick anymore, and I hadn't fogged it or done anything at all. I really think that with these suggestions of sickness just delaying or restricting growth, the only way anything would actually die was if someone was just completely negligent, like throwing high-timed eggs into tons of hatcheries at once and then not checking back for 7 days or something.

 

Zyu eggs get sick. That is a Fact of Life

[olympe]

Not if you don't incubate them and don't stick them in any hatcheries during their first 24 hours. Just saying.  Yes, it's quite possible to incu-hatch anything - but it's not always advisable.

[Fuzzbucket]

I am impressed. I have never had one that didn't get sick - but they were all fine in the end. I never stick zyus in hatcheries till they are down to 5 days. (I have never LOST one, but now I am curious !)

[Sheriziya]

1 hour ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I am impressed. I have never had one that didn't get sick - but they were all fine in the end. I never stick zyus in hatcheries till they are down to 5 days. (I have never LOST one, but now I am curious !)

 

Funny how it can be different for each player. It's been years since I've had sick dragons (with one exception: I think last Christmas when the viewbombing started). I always incubate and hide my eggs, but I only put them in a hatcherie when they've passed the 5 day mark (so 4 days and "x" hours). That one Christmas bombing I did the same, but somehow a few got sick anyway when I put them in a hatcherie after that mark

Hopefully the viewbombing will stop though!

 

Also I only use one Hatcherie: Allure of Neglected Dragons. That's always enough to have my dragons hatch I don't if that makes a difference for anyone....

Edited July 30, 2018 by Sheriziya

[cyradis4]

On 7/24/2018 at 1:36 PM, osmarks said:

I thought of some other solutions:

• enforcing DragCave API logins on hatcheries - would help, but you can't possibly police all routes through which a thing can be viewed lots.
• buffing Ward a lot - would probably work well for experienced players and would end up trivializing sickness anyway if it were effective against viewbombers.
• removing sickness at some trophy level - would be unfair to newer players.

but, despite the merits of these suggestions and probably other ones, think that this would be a more effective solution.

If you have any other ideas, or personal opinions on these changes, please say so below.

 

Ok, didn't read the whole thread but.... This topic comes up every 6 months or so with the regularity of a well cared for grandfather clock. 

 

To start: SIckness is not DEATH. And being "sick" does not mean death is imminent! I've had massively sick hatchies stay sick until they literally grew up. People see sickness and think their eggs are going to imminently die. Ah no. Unless the egg is under 24 hrs old, it probably won't die even if its sick. 

 

Enforcing DC API: Won't work. Simply put, there is no way using JUST the Hatcheries that you can kill any egg over 24 hrs old. I've run viewbombing experiments on my OWN eggs / hatchies trying to get Zombie Fodder. I reiterate: ANYTHING over 2 days old WILL NOT DIE via normal hatcherie viewbombing! And anything over 3 days old just won't DIE (I've tried and tried hard. I may yet find a way but I've failed spectacularly more than once, its the 15:1 Views to UV limit, *eyes 19k views adult dragons). And anything over 1 day is pretty safe, as well, unless someone really has it in for you. Its hard to kill eggs / hatchies like that unless they are newly laid. The only way to really viewbomb is to use sites that are not DC click sites. And those can't be regulated. 

 

Buffing Ward: That would work but TJ has already refused more than once due to the fact that it would render sickness useless. 

 

Removing Sickness: also rejected by TJ because its a useful mechanic. Eggs are dead easy enough to raise as it is, it would become trivial without sickness. 

 

 

What we actually need is a way to hide just our growing things, so people can keep their at risk dragons hidden while letting their other dragons be seen. And frankly, we also need users to take responsibility for their own dragons. As I said: anything over 2 days is almost impossible to kill. If you have something valuable, for stars sake HIDE it until its been around for 48 hours! That's what I do. And I let the viewbombers raise the rest of my dragons for me. Actually, I had a very pleasant few months while a viewbomber did just that. I always wondered what possessed them to be so useful.... 

 

Cheers!

C4. 

 

PS: If you know how to kill a 2 day old egg via hatchieries, please tell me how! It would make Zombies oh so much easier. As it is, its really hard and time intensive to kill em at that point. 

 

PPS: Do NOT tell me you've had eggs / hatchies 3 days old killed via viewbombing without proof. I've tried it, again and again, and failed. And most of the people who say its happened to "someone they know" won't provide proof or the dead egg turns out to be far younger than most people think, or it just had sickness and didn't actually die. 

[Fuzzbucket]

45 minutes ago, cyradis4 said:

What we actually need is a way to hide just our growing things, so people can keep their at risk dragons hidden while letting their other dragons be seen. And frankly, we also need users to take responsibility for their own dragons. As I said: anything over 2 days is almost impossible to kill. If you have something valuable, for stars sake HIDE it until its been around for 48 hours! That's what I do. And I let the viewbombers raise the rest of my dragons for me. Actually, I had a very pleasant few months while a viewbomber did just that. I always wondered what possessed them to be so useful.... 

 

Cheers!

C4. 

 

PS: If you know how to kill a 2 day old egg via hatchieries, please tell me how! It would make Zombies oh so much easier. As it is, its really hard and time intensive to kill em at that point.

 

The bolded bit. As to the rest - you have a message (when I write it !)

[HeatherMarie]

@cyradis4 While it's true that it's a lot *HARDER* to kill a lower-timed dragon, it is definitely not impossible! Maybe you weren't here for the Christmas attack on EATW, I don't know, but that attack was aimed at a specific hatchery and was killing eggs in literally less then 10 minutes. ER-timed eggs! There is plenty of talk on this forum about that if you care to go searching. People viewbombing a hatchery CAN kill dragons. Dragons are not invincible just because they are lower-timed, and spreading that idea like it's just common sense is misleading.

 

TJ has nixed removing sickness multiple times. He has also nixed increasing Ward's effectiveness (muttergrumble). So at this point it's rather useless to argue for those things. Instead we should be concentrating on ways to tweak sickness so that dragons can't be killed so quickly by outside sources completely out of our control. There are multiple ways to accomplish that, that have been talked about in this thread.

[Fuzzbucket]

But as cy said - you can't do it with using hatcheries - and determined vandals who use bots to take out whole hatcheries will always win out.

 

We do "need" the option to hide all growing things as we can with adults, though.

[osmarks]

22 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

But as cy said - you can't do it with using hatcheries - and determined vandals who use bots to take out whole hatcheries will always win out.

 

We do "need" the option to hide all growing things as we can with adults, though.

People taking out hatcheries could not do so very effectively if sickness were redone such that it could only stunt growth (or possibly kill it if you don't catch it within a few days) or removed entirely.

[Fuzzbucket]

Bots can do a huge  amount of damage, no matter what.

[osmarks]

6 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Bots can do a huge  amount of damage, no matter what.

Yes, because if sickness only caused stunted growth and had a cap or didn't exist they would totally be able to do things.

[olympe]

I think reworking sickness so it "only" stunts growth, but doesn't cause death will take a lot of motivation out of viewbombers. Because they won't be able to accomplish more than an inconvience this way.

[Guillotine]

I really don't see why having sickness stunt growth (which would be really annoying, but wouldn't have the potential of destroying hard work while you sleep) is such a controversial idea for some players? It's still within the confines of the original reason for adding sickness (because if it's sick, it takes that much longer to get more space to raise more eggs, and presumably you're playing this because you want to complete that loop over and over), it just removes a tool for petty vandalism.
 

[cyradis4]

3 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

@cyradis4 While it's true that it's a lot *HARDER* to kill a lower-timed dragon, it is definitely not impossible! Maybe you weren't here for the Christmas attack on EATW, I don't know, but that attack was aimed at a specific hatchery and was killing eggs in literally less then 10 minutes. ER-timed eggs! There is plenty of talk on this forum about that if you care to go searching. People viewbombing a hatchery CAN kill dragons. Dragons are not invincible just because they are lower-timed, and spreading that idea like it's just common sense is misleading.

 

TJ has nixed removing sickness multiple times. He has also nixed increasing Ward's effectiveness (muttergrumble). So at this point it's rather useless to argue for those things. Instead we should be concentrating on ways to tweak sickness so that dragons can't be killed so quickly by outside sources completely out of our control. There are multiple ways to accomplish that, that have been talked about in this thread.

 

I'm sorry, but I have to strongly disagree. What you are spreading is highly missleading, letting people think that its COMMON for a hatchery to be attacked! I've been here for 10 years, and that was the only time I've seen something like that. The. Only. Time. And your average viewbomber can't do it, either. That was a highly specific, very targeted attack. 

 

Also, yes you can kill ER eggs. Its simple: Incubate it. Then when it hits 3d 23 hrs its ER... while still 2 days old. If the egg is 2 days old, it can be killed! I've done it enough, intentionally. But outside of an attack like what happened on EATW, its tough. But once an egg has been around for 3 days? Its almost impossible. Not impossible, but again: outside of an attack like what happened to EATW, its almost impossible. And certainly not going to be done by the casual viewbomber!

 

Using what happened to EATW as a yardstick is like using a hurricane to avoid living in New York! Every once in a great while, it'll get hit by a hurricane. That doesn't mean that its a bad place to live because of hurricanes. 

 

And yes, I was there for the EATW mess. And I read several posts of people trying to kill  hatchies for zombie fodder using EATW... and failing. That just goes to show you how tough it is. 

 

And that has not addressed the reason for sickness: that it makes you actually take a modicrum of care for your eggs. 

 

I hate viewbombing. But sickness serves a purpose, and removing it is the same sort of instant gratification that people want these days that drives me nuts. 

 

Cheers!
C4. 

 

 

Edited July 30, 2018 by cyradis4

[Guillotine]

It's not instant gratification considering that the cost of losing an egg to spite or trolls is often much higher than just the time spent raising a dead egg or a week cooldown to breeding. Some breeds are difficult to get out of certain pairs and require weeks of breeding; some cbs are difficult to find and require weeks if not months or years to obtain; some eggs are difficult/impossible to replace due to breed behavior or that the egg had a special code. These are all things that take a very long time to fix if they can be fixed at all.

 

It may not be common, but that it happens, at all, for such a pointless reason, is why removing the ability of sickness to directly kill keeps coming up.
 

[cyradis4]

As for the stunting, unless its severe enough to potentially cause death, it won't be any deterrent. What sickness is there for is to make people actually take care of their eggs. Ie, stop by more than once or twice a week to cathc eggs / stuff them in hatcheries and ignore. If all they do is get delayed a little.... those users will just ignore it because they probably weren't salivating over their used egg spaces anyway. A user who's here constantly will likely spot the sickness and take steps. 

 

So no, stunting completely misses the point... unless it can cause death. Which brings us right back to sickness as is. Also, it'd be dead simple to cause almost as much headache with stunt-bombing as it as viewbombing. More! Because you can still bomb the egg.... only now it'll take up an egg space for 2 or 3 or 4 times as long.... unless you hide it. Just like with fog. Also, it can easily be abused for trading purposes (to keep a hatchie a hatchie for longer). 

 

Lastly, the reason I think removing sickness is instant gratification is because you are doing no work. You don't have to watch your eggs. You don't have to keep track of their times. Literally all you have to do is toss em into a hatchery and ignore for 2 or 3 days with no risk at all. Even if we had stunting, unless it could lead to death or really significant added time (which also lets it be *abused* for trade purposes), it literally does nothing. And if it can kill or add tons of time, its abusable by viewbombers. 

 

Keeping your eggs from being viewbombed to death is dead simple, and we already have the mechanics in place: FOG. Fog the egg for 2 days, and it would take a real effort to kill the egg. Fog for 2 days, hatch, and fog for 2 more, and your eggs won't die. Unless what happened to EATW happens, and even then, your eggs will have a far better shot at surviving. 

 

I do not support stunting or removing sickness. 

- Sickness serves a purpose

- Stunting, if its severe enough to cause people to take it seriously, will be abused by bombers just as sickness is now, forcing people to use the same methods to save their eggs. 

 

What I do support:

- Multi-fog: fog / unfog all eggs at once

- "Partial" fog: prevents an egg from gaining views while still tradable. 

- Hide Growing Things: leaves your adults visable while hiding your eggs and hatchies. 

- Maaaaaybe an opt-in email or something when an egg or hatchie is sick. Opt in only.... 

 

Cheers!

C4. 

[HeatherMarie]

But stunting *could* cause death if the user doesn't do anything about it. That's the whole point of sickness, right, to make people actually take care of their dragons? Well, if sick dragons couldn't grow up, or their grow-up time kept getting lowered the longer they were sick, then yeah eventually it *would* kill the dragon if nothing is done to cure the sickness. I think stunting is a rather reasonable compromise, honestly... It takes away the ability of outside forces to kill your dragon within a few hours, but it still has *consequences* to not taking care of your dragons and there is still a possibility of death if you don't cure the sickness. Imo it makes sickness what it's supposed to be in the first place, it makes it the *user's* responsibility and allows the *user* to stay in control of their growing dragons, instead of the current sickness where unknown outside forces can kill your dragons with no way to stop them!

 

Fog is NOT a cure-all for sickness. It never has been and never will be, unless sickness is changed in some way. Fog does *NOT* cure sickness and does NOT guarantee that your dragon won't get sick if you keep it fogged for a certain amount of time. The ONLY thing fogging does is stop your dragon from getting more views, ie getting even sicker. And yeah, sure, if you keep every single growing thing fogged until it hits ER status there is a lot less of a chance for sickness or death, but that doesn't mean it never happens! Fog is *not* a reasonable answer to the sickness issues we have now. It's just not. Dragons still can and do get sick even if you keep them fogged until ER-time, and people can and will still viewbomb them the second you unfog them. Just because it's not common for an egg to die that way doesn't mean that's the best answer to sickness.

[Aalbiel]

3 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

I think stunting is a rather reasonable compromise, honestly... It takes away the ability of outside forces to kill your dragon within a few hours, but it still has *consequences* to not taking care of your dragons and there is still a possibility of death if you don't cure the sickness. Imo it makes sickness what it's supposed to be in the first place, it makes it the *user's* responsibility and allows the *user* to stay in control of their growing dragons.

 

Agree. I am still against removing sickness, but this seems like a good halfway point to me. I'm not worried if things stay the way they are, but I'd be satisfied with softshell changing to something like this.

[osmarks]

1 hour ago, cyradis4 said:

As for the stunting, unless its severe enough to potentially cause death, it won't be any deterrent. What sickness is there for is to make people actually take care of their eggs. Ie, stop by more than once or twice a week to cathc eggs / stuff them in hatcheries and ignore. If all they do is get delayed a little.... those users will just ignore it because they probably weren't salivating over their used egg spaces anyway. A user who's here constantly will likely spot the sickness and take steps. 

 

So no, stunting completely misses the point... unless it can cause death. Which brings us right back to sickness as is. Also, it'd be dead simple to cause almost as much headache with stunt-bombing as it as viewbombing. More! Because you can still bomb the egg.... only now it'll take up an egg space for 2 or 3 or 4 times as long.... unless you hide it. Just like with fog. Also, it can easily be abused for trading purposes (to keep a hatchie a hatchie for longer). 

 

Lastly, the reason I think removing sickness is instant gratification is because you are doing no work. You don't have to watch your eggs. You don't have to keep track of their times. Literally all you have to do is toss em into a hatchery and ignore for 2 or 3 days with no risk at all. Even if we had stunting, unless it could lead to death or really significant added time (which also lets it be *abused* for trade purposes), it literally does nothing. And if it can kill or add tons of time, its abusable by viewbombers. 

 

Keeping your eggs from being viewbombed to death is dead simple, and we already have the mechanics in place: FOG. Fog the egg for 2 days, and it would take a real effort to kill the egg. Fog for 2 days, hatch, and fog for 2 more, and your eggs won't die. Unless what happened to EATW happens, and even then, your eggs will have a far better shot at surviving. 

 

I do not support stunting or removing sickness. 

- Sickness serves a purpose

- Stunting, if its severe enough to cause people to take it seriously, will be abused by bombers just as sickness is now, forcing people to use the same methods to save their eggs. 

 

What I do support:

- Multi-fog: fog / unfog all eggs at once

- "Partial" fog: prevents an egg from gaining views while still tradable. 

- Hide Growing Things: leaves your adults visable while hiding your eggs and hatchies. 

- Maaaaaybe an opt-in email or something when an egg or hatchie is sick. Opt in only.... 

 

Cheers!

C4. 

Sickness doesn't cause work anyway unless you count viewbombing. Tossing them into a hatchery at 6d or 5d is not much harder and basically solves sickness anyway.

[DragonLady86]

2 hours ago, cyradis4 said:

As for the stunting, unless its severe enough to potentially cause death, it won't be any deterrent. What sickness is there for is to make people actually take care of their eggs. Ie, stop by more than once or twice a week to cathc eggs / stuff them in hatcheries and ignore. If all they do is get delayed a little.... those users will just ignore it because they probably weren't salivating over their used egg spaces anyway. A user who's here constantly will likely spot the sickness and take steps. 

 

So no, stunting completely misses the point... unless it can cause death. Which brings us right back to sickness as is. Also, it'd be dead simple to cause almost as much headache with stunt-bombing as it as viewbombing. More! Because you can still bomb the egg.... only now it'll take up an egg space for 2 or 3 or 4 times as long.... unless you hide it. Just like with fog. Also, it can easily be abused for trading purposes (to keep a hatchie a hatchie for longer). 

 

Lastly, the reason I think removing sickness is instant gratification is because you are doing no work. You don't have to watch your eggs. You don't have to keep track of their times. Literally all you have to do is toss em into a hatchery and ignore for 2 or 3 days with no risk at all. Even if we had stunting, unless it could lead to death or really significant added time (which also lets it be *abused* for trade purposes), it literally does nothing. And if it can kill or add tons of time, its abusable by viewbombers. 

 

Keeping your eggs from being viewbombed to death is dead simple, and we already have the mechanics in place: FOG. Fog the egg for 2 days, and it would take a real effort to kill the egg. Fog for 2 days, hatch, and fog for 2 more, and your eggs won't die. Unless what happened to EATW happens, and even then, your eggs will have a far better shot at surviving. 

 

I do not support stunting or removing sickness. 

- Sickness serves a purpose

- Stunting, if its severe enough to cause people to take it seriously, will be abused by bombers just as sickness is now, forcing people to use the same methods to save their eggs. 

 

What I do support:

- Multi-fog: fog / unfog all eggs at once

- "Partial" fog: prevents an egg from gaining views while still tradable. 

- Hide Growing Things: leaves your adults visable while hiding your eggs and hatchies. 

- Maaaaaybe an opt-in email or something when an egg or hatchie is sick. Opt in only.... 

 

Cheers!

C4. 

Um, yeah sickness Does NOT in anyway make people check on their eggs.  Just wait a day or two then put them up and forget them.  As many people have already posted as saying they do.  Please explain why you assume it actually makes people do anything?

Granted I have an egg that died of sickness on my scroll currently, because it was a brand new egg among a bunch of ERs and I forgot to hide it before chucking the rest in.  but other than that I hardly ever get anything sick.  I'm on the forums everyday, but I do not necessarily check my scroll everyday. 

 

I would support the stunted growth.  Still death possible if left long enough but needs to be for a long period of time. 

 

On a side note: I don't think EATW should be used as an example of viewbombing.  It was a very extreme case and whoever did had to put down a lot of money to do that.  Most viewbombing is simply being petty and is not going to go to that extreme.

[Aalbiel]

10 hours ago, DragonLady86 said:

Um, yeah sickness Does NOT in anyway make people check on their eggs.  Just wait a day or two then put them up and forget them.  As many people have already posted as saying they do.  Please explain why you assume it actually makes people do anything?

 

Because so many people in this thread have said that it does (incl. me). But anyone with a differing opinions seem to be perfectly happy to ignore this.

 

(P.S. For the love of God, can people stop quoting entire huge posts just to reply to one small part of it. If you're on mobile and can't selectively quote, just @ the person, these threads are getting seriously unreadable.)

[osmarks]

@Aalbiel Are you saying that the threat of viewbombing makes you check them more or accidental sickness?

[cyradis4]

2 hours ago, osmarks said:

@Aalbiel Are you saying that the threat of viewbombing makes you check them more or accidental sickness?

 

No, she's saying the fact that there IS sickness, and the eggs can die, makes her pay a bit of attention to those eggs. As for me, sickness + viewbombers means I also pay more attention to the eggs than I would otherwise. Also it has made me create strategies to keep them safe from bombers. 

 

But those who want to do away with sickness are ignoring the key points: 

1. TJ has stated, time and again, that sickness serves a purpose and isn't going anywhere. And many people agree with him. 

2. TJ would insist Stunt have real teeth, which means stunt will let Viewbombers cause *more* damage (see below)

 

As for Stunt? What people seem to be ignoring is:

- TJ will insist it have real teeth, so eggs will still be able to die. 

- Viewbombers will STILL be able to kill said eggs by "stunting" them to the point of death

- A "stunted" egg or hatchie (ie, a sick ER) won't move to the next stage until its no longer "stunted"

- its dead simple to hammer an almost ER egg with views to the point where it will be sick until it would have grown up, even with fog.

- BUT with Stunt, IT WILL NOT HATCH. It will die first, because it would normally have been "sick" until it grew up. (I've made plenty of zombie fails sick until they grew). 

- So not only has the viewbomber succeeded in locking you for 3 extra days, they've STILL killed your egg.... And left you ZERO way to save it. 

 

So, why on *earth* would I swap Sickness, which is handle-able, for Stunt, which has no counter and lets the viewbombers lock me AND kill the egg, anyway? 

 

Cheers!
C4.