Jump to content
osmarks

Remove Sickness (or somehow change it drastically)

Recommended Posts

There's more than one way to implement a stunting behavior, with differing outcomes.

  1. Sick eggs don't hatch / Sick hatchlings don't grow up.
    • Has all the effects you mentioned, good as well as bad.
    • On the plus side, it takes a whole lot of view-bombing to keep an egg sick until the end of its time. Because low-time eggs really can take a whole lot of views.
  2. When an egg/a hatchling is sick, its timer doesn't move forward.
    • Might be a bit illogical, but has real potential. Yes, it can take a long time for your eggs to hatch and free your scroll. But, unless the egg is hard to replace, you can simply abandon it. Meaning it's totally up to you whether you want to keep an egg at all cost or prefer to get a replacement. The punishment in and of itself is the extra time it will take you to hatch your stuff.
  3. When an egg/a hatchling is sick for x hours, it will hatch / grow up x hours later than usual.
    • Would need a change of information on the view page. Stolen on, hatched on, stats as well as a line of information like "This egg has been sick for 1 day 2 hours." With these stats, the egg couldn't grow up until it hit 2 days 22 hours - if you intend to keep it, that is.
    • Pretty much the same as #2, but with two drawbacks: The AP might get full of formerly sick eggs and nothing easier to hatch available. Plus, eggs can actually be killed this way.

Share this post


Link to post

I like the second option, better than the third which was my initial supported idea. It has a very real consequence, without being a disproportionate consequence and without causing issues with hatcheries during the transition.

 

There might need to be some fallback to prevent people from trying to deliberately make their eggs sick to keep them eggs longer (i can mostly come up with trading reasons but there might be others), but the natural increase in tolerance from an egg being internally considered older should be enough at first.
 

Share this post


Link to post

I honestly don't understand the pushback against Stunting? IF it's implemented so that sickness does *not* kill a dragon directly, and just stops it from growing until the sickness is gone, that *will* stop 99% of viewbombing-related deaths. The *only* way a dragon would be able to die would be if it remained sick until it's timer ran out, and since sickness is relatively easy to cure once you catch it, and very-low-timed dragons are a lot more hardy when it comes to even getting sick in the first place (and often don't stay sick very long if they do), that would mean that the *only* way dragons would actually die from sickness would be if someone simply didn't do anything at all. If someone didn't check on their scroll for 4+ days, didn't fog the dragon, didn't Ward it, didn't do anything. Maybe, if needed, something could be added so that if you *do* take steps to cure the sickness, it can't stay sick for more then 24 hours after you take those steps? I don't personally think that's needed though.

 

Yeah, stunting would mean that people might be inconvenienced by sickness, by slots being taken up until the sickness goes away and the dragon can grow, but I don't see how that's *more* inconvenient then the dragon *dying* from sickness before you can even try to save it! TJ has said that sickness itself is staying, but that doesn't mean things can't be tweaked, and we don't know for sure that he *wouldn't* accept a stunt-like change.

Share this post


Link to post

@HeatherMarie

 

1. I'd rather have Sickness (with death, which is easy to avoid, and viewbombing that kills eggs is very rare if you take a few simple precautions) than having a time delay when I try to hatch ER eggs. 

 

2. Stunt destroys the ability to ER eggs and have them hatch fast. End of Story. You will NO LONGER be able to hatch an ER egg in an hour. It will likely take a half day to a full day. Because that egg WILL "stunt" when you ER it. So you fog. If it has enough views in an hour to hatch, it will be sick for a day afterwards and WILL NOT HATCH. So that torpedoes clearing out the AP fast, in ANY circumstance. But *especially* at Holidays.  

 

3. Hatching sensitive eggs on time is almost impossible with Stunt: because they will keep getting sick. So Tinsels and Xenos? Forget about using incubate! It adds a full day to the hatch time, either way. If you get lucky. 

 

4. Puts you at a HIGHER risk of ViewBombing, because you have to put your eggs into hatcheries EARLY to get them enough views, WITHOUT getting sick, by 2 days. Because if they get sick? They will take much longer to hatch. And the people that are repeated targets? Will be at a severe disadvantage. Those not targeted repeatedly can get their eggs out there early. Those that are always targeted? will sitll have to ER, then fog until unsick, then hatch. Adds more time and disadvantages them more severely to those who aren't targeted. 

 

5. A few simple game mechanics additions would make protecting your eggs from viewbombers much easier, without causing the problems stunt causes. 

 

6. No more zombies via sickness death. 

 

7. TJ. I've been around a while, and in all these threads, he says that sickness and death have a Purpose. I doubt he'd do away with death, even if he shifted to Stunt. So Stunt will still kill. It just adds the added insult of slowing things waaaaay down into the bargain. 

 

I've never lost a single egg to a viewbomber. But then, I actually bother to pay attention and understand that sickness is not death. And yes, I've been viewbombed more than once. In fact, I was on the list that was targeted by a group of viewbombers. The only time I've lost eggs due to sickness, it was my own stupid fault and I knew it. In fact, I've got a pair of hatchies right now that hatched sick, and at 11 hrs to grow will likely be sick then too. I haven't bothered to hide, because I watched them over time and saw that while they were gaining views fast enough to make them sick, they were no where near the danger range. This time, it was my fault and not a bomber. :P

 

Cheers!
C4. 

Share this post


Link to post
10 minutes ago, cyradis4 said:

@HeatherMarie

 

1. I'd rather have Sickness (with death, which is easy to avoid, and viewbombing that kills eggs is very rare if you take a few simple precautions) than having a time delay when I try to hatch ER eggs. 

 

2. Stunt destroys the ability to ER eggs and have them hatch fast. End of Story. You will NO LONGER be able to hatch an ER egg in an hour. It will likely take a half day to a full day. Because that egg WILL "stunt" when you ER it. So you fog. If it has enough views in an hour to hatch, it will be sick for a day afterwards and WILL NOT HATCH. So that torpedoes clearing out the AP fast, in ANY circumstance. But *especially* at Holidays.  

 

3. Hatching sensitive eggs on time is almost impossible with Stunt: because they will keep getting sick. So Tinsels and Xenos? Forget about using incubate! It adds a full day to the hatch time, either way. If you get lucky. 

 

4. Puts you at a HIGHER risk of ViewBombing, because you have to put your eggs into hatcheries EARLY to get them enough views, WITHOUT getting sick, by 2 days. Because if they get sick? They will take much longer to hatch. And the people that are repeated targets? Will be at a severe disadvantage. Those not targeted repeatedly can get their eggs out there early. Those that are always targeted? will sitll have to ER, then fog until unsick, then hatch. Adds more time and disadvantages them more severely to those who aren't targeted. 

 

5. A few simple game mechanics additions would make protecting your eggs from viewbombers much easier, without causing the problems stunt causes. 

 

6. No more zombies via sickness death. 

 

7. TJ. I've been around a while, and in all these threads, he says that sickness and death have a Purpose. I doubt he'd do away with death, even if he shifted to Stunt. So Stunt will still kill. It just adds the added insult of slowing things waaaaay down into the bargain. 

 

 

I agree with ALL this. (So I quote a long post to reiterate the points made.)

Share this post


Link to post
1 hour ago, cyradis4 said:

Stunt destroys the ability to ER eggs and have them hatch fast. End of Story. You will NO LONGER be able to hatch an ER egg in an hour. It will likely take a half day to a full day. Because that egg WILL "stunt" when you ER it. So you fog. If it has enough views in an hour to hatch, it will be sick for a day afterwards and WILL NOT HATCH. So that torpedoes clearing out the AP fast, in ANY circumstance. But *especially* at Holidays.  

No? I've literally never had that issue except for the most high maintenance eggs and I've raised 2-day-old eggs from 0 views to hatching probably dozens if not hundreds of times now without a single sick indication, not even for semi-high eggs like nhios and fire gems. Regular eggs will certainly not be affected unless TJ for some reason makes sickness also come from view gain rate which also potentially devastates extremely low-time ERs. (In my experience, sickness is only from total view count, not view rate.) And I haven't been able to hatch an incuhatchable 0-view egg in an hour since EATW went down anyway because either it doesn't get enough unique views to avoid the 1:15 cap or just doesn't get enough views period, despite being in 5 hatchery ERs.

 

1 hour ago, cyradis4 said:

Hatching sensitive eggs on time is almost impossible with Stunt: because they will keep getting sick. So Tinsels and Xenos? Forget about using incubate! It adds a full day to the hatch time, either way. If you get lucky. 

 

These eggs aren't actually "sensitive" or more likely to get sick, they just need more views in total and thus always get sick if incubated because their hatch point also happens to be the threshold of view sickness. Unless you've been viewbombing the things beforehand they're not going to get sick until they're ER and getting much more views than normal, at which point it doesn't matter if they get sick or not because they've already passed the time threshold for hatching. They'll still be sick as hatchlings but hatchling slots are much less of a concern than egg slots.

 

1 hour ago, cyradis4 said:

No more zombies via sickness death. 

 

That's already a huge gamble because as you said before, almost anything older than 3 days is near impossible to kill by sickness. Either way it's easier to fog and wait for hatchies to starve to death.

 

 

@Fuzzbucket You literally just posted a "+1 reaction/Like" but with a ton of extra text. A simple "I agree completely with Cyradis" would have been sufficient and not look annoyingly spammy.

Share this post


Link to post
2 hours ago, cyradis4 said:

1. I'd rather have Sickness (with death, which is easy to avoid, and viewbombing that kills eggs is very rare if you take a few simple precautions) than having a time delay when I try to hatch ER eggs. 

One does not necessarily follow the other. See first post on this page.

 

2. Stunt destroys the ability to ER eggs and have them hatch fast. End of Story. You will NO LONGER be able to hatch an ER egg in an hour. It will likely take a half day to a full day. Because that egg WILL "stunt" when you ER it. So you fog. If it has enough views in an hour to hatch, it will be sick for a day afterwards and WILL NOT HATCH. So that torpedoes clearing out the AP fast, in ANY circumstance. But *especially* at Holidays.

This is 98% not true. Most eggs don't get sick if you put them in an ER, not even when they're incubated. Unless you raise nothing but Xenos and Prizes and Zyus, of course. And even with them, it only happens if you incubate them. And because that assumption of yours is almost totally false, the same goes for #3 and #4. While hatching incubated Xenos, Zyus and Prizes on time will be almost impossible, it's still possible to shave roughly half a day off their timer without consequences. Even if you only put them in an ER once they're hatchable. Been there, done a lot of that.

 

5. A few simple game mechanics additions would make protecting your eggs from viewbombers much easier

, without causing the problems stunt causes. 

That part we can agree on. (Strike through by me, btw.)

 

6. No more zombies via sickness death.

I didn't even know that actually worked, because hatchlings are pretty hard to kill in the first place.

 

7. TJ. I've been around a while, and in all these threads, he says that sickness and death have a Purpose. I doubt he'd do away with death, even if he shifted to Stunt. So Stunt will still kill. It just adds the added insult of slowing things waaaaay down into the bargain.

Stunt would slow hatching down, but only kill if you don't check your eggs for longer periods of time. Because, let's face it, an older egg can take a lot of views without getting or staying sick. Besides, it's always your choice whether to keep a severely stunted egg or abandon it. A choice between time penalty and loss of eggs is still better than losing your eggs within minutes of them arriving on your scroll. Which is a real possibility - with new releases, start of holiday breeding and the like.

 

Share this post


Link to post
2 hours ago, Shadowdrake said:

@Fuzzbucket You literally just posted a "+1 reaction/Like" but with a ton of extra text. A simple "I agree completely with Cyradis" would have been sufficient and not look annoyingly spammy.

 

I did so to reiterate the excellent points made. I am unashamed :)

Share this post


Link to post
3 hours ago, cyradis4 said:

2. Stunt destroys the ability to ER eggs and have them hatch fast. End of Story. You will NO LONGER be able to hatch an ER egg in an hour. It will likely take a half day to a full day. Because that egg WILL "stunt" when you ER it. So you fog. If it has enough views in an hour to hatch, it will be sick for a day afterwards and WILL NOT HATCH. So that torpedoes clearing out the AP fast, in ANY circumstance. But *especially* at Holidays.  

 

 

I don't know how the hell you're doing this, but aside from the very occasional Zyu (I usually don't bother ERing them), my ER'd eggs NEVER get sick. So.... clearly it can be done, since I do it literally every single time. And I don't mean soft ER like it takes 6 hours, I mean an incubated egg will take 1h-1h30 to hatch. Maybe the side-effect of this would actually be to have people pay more attention to self-inflicted softshell, aka "non-serious" sickness bc you saw it appear so you know it hasn't gotten bad yet and just fog for a bit. This way you actually have to be a bit more subtle. (Vs viewbombed sickness, which may happen while you're asleep/gone and can get p serious before you're aware of it).

 

(I agree with Shad, I guarantee nobody reread that post that you quoted in full, because it was literally just above. This just makes threads hard to read.)

 

As for the stunting options (as outlined in olympe's post at the top of the page), I personally think option 3 would be very good. It keeps the option for death, which is only logical if an egg/hatchie gets sick enough, but technically ONLY death by timer, if your egg/hatchling has been sick its whole life. So nobody can quickly kill someone's stuff, in any circumstances, but if you neglect to check on your things for several days at a time (it would really have to be at least 4 days) then they may die, but that puts the responsibility fully on the user, where it should be. I'd settle for option 2 in a pinch, but I really think option 3 is the way to go.

 

Not sure about this, but - re: AP getting filled up with sick things in option 3, perhaps APing could cure sickness, or if not cure then reset possible hatching time to where it normally would be without sickness?

Edited by Aalbiel

Share this post


Link to post

Given the recent AoND viewbombing and the suggestions being suggested to deal with viewbombing, I'm bumping this as a simple but very effective solution.

Share this post


Link to post

It’s worth discussion considering Christmas is coming.

 

After a quick read, I feel stunting would be a good move. Perhaps a risk of death can be present if the dragon is sick for a very long time, maybe over a day or something, but otherwise it would be stunted. If deliberate death by sickness was wanted, it’d leave that open, and those who may not be able to check have a bit longer to do so.

 

Severley ER’d eggs or hatchies don’t often get sick anyways, but ward could help with this as they’re covered for 6 hours. Most hatchies aren’t severely ER’d, so typically should be fine.

 

On a side note, I feel we should have an option to fog all growing dragons, and dragons in trades- the lineage and page would be visible within the trade page.

Share this post


Link to post

Ambivalent, but overall leaning towards a lack of support. I'd rather Ward was buffed, honestly.

Share this post


Link to post

So I read through the entire thread cause that's what ya do at 3 AM

 

I would like for egg sickness to be removed completely cause I think it is more detrimental than good for the game, but TJ said he won't do that, yadda yadda - 

 

What if your egg could only get sick in the first 24h of its life? 

- you'd still have to pay attention that first 24h

- it is still just as easily prevented as it is now 

- it makes viewbombers WAY less effective 

- we can still pat newbies on the head and warn them not to put eggs in hatcheries within 24h

 

Cons:

- it's... Easier? But not really, because you can prevent it exactly the way we do now - but it ALSO gives way more protection against viewbombers. 

 

Thoughts? 

Share this post


Link to post

The whole idea of eggs being able to die from sickness has always seemed ridiculous to me. It serves no purpose but allowing malicious trolls to hurt someone else's scroll. The only time I have EVER lost eggs to sickness was during a viewbombing attack. Even brand-new newbies only make their own eggs sick enough to die if they fail to read the forum, so most of the people it's probably having its intended effect on is kids, non-English speakers, and players so casual they don't read directions and will probably quit soon anyway. It's an essentially pointless feature with the large negative side effect of opening the site up to viewbombing attacks (which were never meant to be part of the game.)

 

It's possible that it's having some behind-the-scenes useful function like encouraging people to view more pages (and thus more ads) or something like that, but whatever it is I'm sure it could be accomplished without causing the eggs to actually die. The stunting options would work. Causing soft-shelled eggs to automatically fog, thus limiting viewbombers to annoying people by disrupting trades but not permanently killing the eggs, would also be an option. (This would also force people to log in more often to unfog the eggs, so it would have the same practical effects as having to log in to save them from dying.) I'd support anything like this. Right now the steering wheel has been handed to anyone who wants to viewbomb, and it's a serious annoyance. Beyond actually killing eggs, it ruins perfectly good hatcheries, and it stifles the forum (since that's where viewbombers find people to bother most often.)

Share this post


Link to post

I can understand why sickness exists. Usually I'd be okay with it. But the fact that TJ made it so easily abusable is what irks me the most. Why should some third party random person have the power to be able to massacre your stuff for no reason but their own twisted amusement? I've never lost anything to sickness but I've cut it close with sudden VBing.

 

I don't really see stunting as the answer. But then again, I don't really have any suggestions for how to fix sickness beyond either securing scrolls in hatcheries (annoying but useful) or doing away with sickness. And TJ has already shot the latter down many, many times.

Share this post


Link to post

The biggest issue with viewbombers, imo, is not that it happens, but that death can happen so *fast*. A determined viewbomber (or group of them) can kill a dragon in less then 15 minutes. That doesn't give users time to respond, time to even *try* to save the dragon. So my support goes to something that addresses that part of viewbombing/sickness.

 

I've seen suggestions for not allowing sickness to kill for a certain amount of time, kind of like Ward but just in general... Like, if an egg gets sick, it can't die until it's been sick for x amount of hours. I realize this would kind of kill Ward's usefulness, but I think in this case that's an okay sacrifice. In this case, having just general sickness unable to kill when the attack first happens, that gives us users more power, more ability to see and try to save the dragon. 

 

I've also seen (actually I may have been the one to suggest) capping views some way to where a dragon simply *can't* get enough views to die so fast. That suggestion was met with resistance because of Neglected experiments and such, but that could be fixed by having the cap automatically lift when the egg gets to ER-time. In this scenario, a dragon can get sick if it gets too many views too fast, but it *won't* get enough views to actually die right away. Maybe the cap is fixed, like a certain amount of views within a certain amount of time, or maybe it just stops getting views when it becomes sick or something. Regardless of the specifics, if the user doesn't do anything (fog, Ward, etc) then eventually those views will start racking up again and the dragon could then die. So there is still that incentive to check your dragons, still that risk of death, but it gives the user more control over their dragons and gives the viewbombers less control. 

 

Anyways. I'm sure there are other suggestions that could help with the 'dying too fast' part of sickness. But those are the ones I remember right now.

Share this post


Link to post

I've been not really wanting to say anything, but at this point, I will.

While sickness is annoying, for the most part, it is the responsibility of the user to protect themselves from it, an it's really truly not that hard to do.

Just. Fog your stuff when you're not around. There.

 

The only thing that I think should be changed about sickness/viewbombing is that things in trades should be better protected, since you cannot fog those..

Share this post


Link to post

Death can happen and has happened while I'm at my computer on a different tab. Unless you expect me to keep my eggs fogged unless I'm actively refreshing the page, which is unreasonable on a variety of levels, it doesn't change that the current system is unreasonable.
 

Share this post


Link to post
18 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

Just. Fog your stuff when you're not around.

 

Gameplay elements that are annoying and inconvenient need to be balanced out with some kind of positive effect to be worthwhile. Fogging all of your eggs every time you leave your computer is very annoying and inconvenient (especially since it disrupts the ability to leave eggs in hatcheries to accrue views or in the market to accrue trade offers.)

 

So... what's the offsetting benefit? What's good about allowing users to kill eggs on other people's scrolls when they're not looking? Adrenaline rush?

Share this post


Link to post
9 hours ago, tjekan said:

 

Gameplay elements that are annoying and inconvenient need to be balanced out with some kind of positive effect to be worthwhile. Fogging all of your eggs every time you leave your computer is very annoying and inconvenient (especially since it disrupts the ability to leave eggs in hatcheries to accrue views or in the market to accrue trade offers.)

 

So... what's the offsetting benefit? What's good about allowing users to kill eggs on other people's scrolls when they're not looking? Adrenaline rush?

 

You don't need to leave eggs in hatcheries though.. you don't need to fog and unfog every time you're at your computer. I put things in when they hit 4 days 1 hour, and they hatch or grow in only an hour or two.
And I did say that trades should get some form of protection, because that is the one thing that's open to abuse where there's nothing you as a player can do about it.

 

And it's a system that exists so that the game isn't just throw your eggs somewhere and forget about them.

Share this post


Link to post
13 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

 

You don't need to leave eggs in hatcheries though.. you don't need to fog and unfog every time you're at your computer. I put things in when they hit 4 days 1 hour, and they hatch or grow in only an hour or two.
And I did say that trades should get some form of protection, because that is the one thing that's open to abuse where there's nothing you as a player can do about it.

 

And it's a system that exists so that the game isn't just throw your eggs somewhere and forget about them.

 

This.

Share this post


Link to post
11 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

 

You don't need to leave eggs in hatcheries though.. you don't need to fog and unfog every time you're at your computer. I put things in when they hit 4 days 1 hour, and they hatch or grow in only an hour or two.
And I did say that trades should get some form of protection, because that is the one thing that's open to abuse where there's nothing you as a player can do about it.

 

And it's a system that exists so that the game isn't just throw your eggs somewhere and forget about them.

 

Actually you do need to fog and unfog, if you've *ever* been targeted by a viewbomber. They are relentless, and just 'not leaving them in hatcheries' is certainly not enough. If your eggs/hatchlings are unfogged, they are vulnerable, regardless of if they are in hatcheries or not. And as I said earlier, a determined group can *kill* an egg within 10-15 minutes, which certainly goes a little beyond 'sickness exists for the benefit of the game' or whatever. 

 

I completely agree that sickness should not be removed completely, and that it does serve a purpose. Maybe even multiple purposes. But I don't think those purposes *ever* included 'egg can die within 15 minutes before user can do anything at all'. That's not a helpful, game-enhancing mechanic, that's just ridiculous. The fact that an outside force that we have no control over can kill our dragons and we can't do anything to stop them (and no, fogging is not the answer here, they can't be fogged *all* the time or they will never grow!)... Something needs to change. 

Share this post


Link to post
8 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

And it's a system that exists so that the game isn't just throw your eggs somewhere and forget about them.

 

It would work just as well for that purpose without the eggs actually dying, though. People would still have to log in and deal with it if viewbombing was causing their sick eggs to get stunted, auto-fogged, or some other non-lethal consequence. The eggs don't need to be able to be killed in order to force people not to forget about them.

 

And when there is no viewbombing involved, just leaving your eggs fogged till 4 days and then putting them in hatcheries-- or leaving them alone for the first day and then sticking them in one hatchery, which is what I do-- is not really all that different than just throwing them somewhere and forgetting them. It's only the viewbombing that makes it more challenging than that. And it's against the rules to viewbomb, so I don't think it's good to be predicating the challenge level of the game on something that's technically illegal.

Share this post


Link to post
2 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

Actually you do need to fog and unfog, if you've *ever* been targeted by a viewbomber. They are relentless, and just 'not leaving them in hatcheries' is certainly not enough. If your eggs/hatchlings are unfogged, they are vulnerable, regardless of if they are in hatcheries or not. And as I said earlier, a determined group can *kill* an egg within 10-15 minutes, which certainly goes a little beyond 'sickness exists for the benefit of the game' or whatever. 


..you do not need to fog and unfog every time if you just leave them fogged until they are able to grow. That is what I'm saying.

 

2 minutes ago, tjekan said:

It would work just as well for that purpose without the eggs actually dying, though. People would still have to log in and deal with it if viewbombing was causing their sick eggs to get stunted, auto-fogged, or some other non-lethal consequence. The eggs don't need to be able to be killed in order to force people not to forget about them.

 

I do not want this to happen. I do not want my eggs that I am trying to hatch be stunted. Zyus get sick all the time when I'm trying to hatch them. I just leave them in hatcheries anyway, they hatch, and I fog them, and they always live. I do not need to lose a whole day to this 'stunt'.

Share this post


Link to post


  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.