Remove Sickness (or somehow change it drastically)

[tjekan]

11 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

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'. 

 

So wait though... isn't that saying that you just want to put zyus in the hatcheries and forget about them, rather than having to go to the trouble of either managing them by giving them views more slowly to prevent them from becoming sick or suffering consequences from it? How is that different from me wanting to be able to put my eggs in AoND at 6 days and leave them there till they hatch without having to keep managing them to make sure a stupid viewbomber doesn't kill them? My method never kills them either, unless there happens to be a viewbomber there violating the rules. So why is mine bad and yours good? The viewbombers aren't even SUPPOSED to be part of the game. If they were, I could understand it, but they're not.

 

What if the eggs only got stunted at the point at which they would die under the current rules? That way it wouldn't affect anyone unless they are either REALLY poor at egg management, or being targeted by viewbombers. I'd much rather a viewbomber was able to mess up my hatching time plans than actually kill an egg.

Edited December 7, 2018 by tjekan

[Dragon_Arbock]

1 minute ago, tjekan said:

 

So wait though... isn't that saying that you just want to put zyus in the hatcheries and forget about them, rather than having to go to the trouble of either managing them by giving them views more slowly to prevent them from becoming sick or suffering consequences from it? How is that different from me wanting to be able to put my eggs in AoND at 6 days and leave them there till they hatch without having to keep managing them to make sure a stupid viewbomber doesn't kill them? My method never kills them either, unless there happens to be a viewbomber there violating the rules. So why is mine bad and yours good? The viewbombers aren't even SUPPOSED to be part of the game. If they were, I could understand it, but they're not.

 

Overviewing was always part of the game. I used to put eggs in my signature on serebii's forums and they would get sick. You don't need viewbombers to have things die.
And so, I'm taking a risk on the zyus. I could do a better job, but until they die I'm not gonna worry too much. I still have to ward them and fog them and monitor them. That's different from forgetting about them entirely and expecting the game to play itself.

 

But I digress. Things dying from viewbombing is entirely preventable on the user's end, so I see no reason for sickness to be changed outside of trading.

[purplehaze]

I do not want stunting, either. It will make it much more difficult to raise those difficult eggs that require more views than usual.

 

Of course eggs can die of sickness without viewbombing, but most of us have learned how to protect ourselves from that. It just frosts me that I have to change my play style to accommodate the possibility of viewbombing. I have had a few attacks and except for the EATW debacle of last holiday season, have managed to catch them before the results were fatal, still the danger is always present. 

 

I would be more in favor of only having sickness able to kill things that had been sick for an extended period of time without being fogged, but I'm not sure how long a time that should be -- 8 hours maybe? to allow for sleep or work. 10 hours to allow a little leeway? 12 hours seems a bit too long, but might still be reasonable.

 

By the way, something is wonky about AoND again, so be careful there.

[tjekan]

If an alternative to death by sickness was introduced (be that stunting, auto-fogging, or something else), couldn't it be set up to ONLY activate at the time at which eggs would currently die? At that point, it wouldn't interfere with people trying to hatch a stubborn GoN or something. It would only affect people whose eggs would otherwise have DIED, in which case the lesser consequence would still be preferable.

 

Has anyone on here actually had an egg die of sickness NOT because of a viewbomber? I'm really not happy with something that exists to punish people who are paying insufficient attention to their scrolls, yet only ever seems to come into play when somebody else is deliberately breaking the rules. We're playing plenty good enough attention to our scrolls if our eggs never die unless another person is blatantly cheating,. But if sickness death is something that actually regularly happens to other people and they truly need it to remind them to log in, then I guess it may be worth it.

[osmarks]

I had an egg die of sickness, once as a new player, and since then no others have.

[Fuzzbucket]

1 hour ago, tjekan said:

If an alternative to death by sickness was introduced (be that stunting, auto-fogging, or something else), couldn't it be set up to ONLY activate at the time at which eggs would currently die? At that point, it wouldn't interfere with people trying to hatch a stubborn GoN or something. It would only affect people whose eggs would otherwise have DIED, in which case the lesser consequence would still be preferable.

 

Has anyone on here actually had an egg die of sickness NOT because of a viewbomber? I'm really not happy with something that exists to punish people who are paying insufficient attention to their scrolls, yet only ever seems to come into play when somebody else is deliberately breaking the rules. We're playing plenty good enough attention to our scrolls if our eggs never die unless another person is blatantly cheating,. But if sickness death is something that actually regularly happens to other people and they truly need it to remind them to log in, then I guess it may be worth it.

 

Yes. Several times.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Fuzzbucket

[Keileon]

I'm just gonna poke back in here and say that I am vehemently against stunting. I simply don't see how it can help at all-- the same people that can deliberately kill your eggs now would just be able to deliberately stunt them.

[osmarks]

Well, yes, but it's better than them dying. @Keileon

Obviously I'd prefer no sickness since it appears to not really have any useful role except for annoying new players, but it's better.

[Keileon]

But it doesn't have to be one or the other. Suggesting a better, but still bad, alternative doesn't actually help anyone.

 

While I'd rather sickness wasn't just removed, I think the answer is just buffing Ward. Make it last longer or make it be able to be used multiple times on the same dragon.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Keileon

[osmarks]

Well, if for whatever reason TJ09 doesn't want no sickness but would be okay with changes, this is an alternative, however not great.

 

Ward improvements would help, but you shouldn't need a BSA to protect from other people attacking you (or zyus or prizes occasionally being annoying).

Edited December 7, 2018 by osmarks

[Shadowdrake]

Sickness may be preventable by the player, but it absolutely shouldn't be so easy to abuse. If someone is being harassed (and yes, that is exactly what targeted vbing is) is it fair that they should have to either fog and unfog their growing things over and over (a pain on mobile), or hide all their kids *and* adults and only unhide to stick said eggs into hatcheries before hiding again? Is it fair that they shouldn't dare reply to News threads without instantly hiding all their fresh release eggs lest they be attacked by untraceable trolls? How friendly is that, that the first thing a newbie gets told is "Look out, some people are jerks who like killing eggs and there's nothing you can do about it except hide everything you might be proud of!" DC doesn't have much you can show off, and the threat of viewbombing makes it so much less enjoyable.

 

 

Time-based stunting is not that much of a problem if you wait for eggs to actually become ER before making them sick, because at that point they actually are hatchable even if they stay at 4d 0h for awhile. They'll still hatch with 7d 0h as a hatchie, whether they needed 4 hours and hatched at 3d 20h or needed 4 hours and hatched at 4d 0h while stunted. If it's really a concern, maybe they'll only be "stunted" if they keep getting views while sick, and after a short time of fog they'll continue to grow like normal despite being sick, so zyu hatchies and such don't need extra time to grow.

[Cinspawn]

If sickness gets changed in a way that eggs can only get sick in the first 24 hours of their life, Ward gets an indirect buff. It would still work for 6 hours, but that is 25% of the entire span an egg could get sick.

[olympe]

I think that in most scenarios, we have all the necessary tools at our hands to actually protect our eggs. It may be a hassle, and a "fog all / unfog all" feature would be greatly appreciated, but it's possible. Us not doing so every day is the rather low risk (most of the time) coupled with our own lazyness.

 

However, there's still the problem of eggs and hatchlings in teleport being kill-able, especially if said teleport is a public one. That's the one chink in our armor, our Achilles' heel. And there's nothing we can do about it (for more than 6 hours) if we want to trade and it takes for a while to find someone interested to trade with us.

[HeatherMarie]

I guess I'm just not really understanding the whole 'user's responsibility and we have the tools we need' thing.... Has no one here had an ER-timed egg die of sickness? Because that happens. Brand-new eggs are not the only ones at risk. Keeping an egg fogged until ER-time does not 100% guarantee it's safe. In fact as it stands right now, *nothing* 100% guarantees that it's safe. Ward only works for 6 hours, so that's no guarantee. Eggs can and do get sick no matter *how* low their time is, so waiting and fogging for days on end is no guarantee. The thing is, sure there are precautions we can take, but if a viewbomber is determined they *can* still *kill* our dragons, literally in less then 15 minutes, and we can't do a thing about that. We can Ward, but that just means the dragon doesn't die for the time being, not that it *won't* die. 

 

I really don't understand this idea that it's all the user's responsibility, when viewbombing is literally an outside source that we can't control. That's what viewbombing is. There needs to be something changed so that, while we need to take our precautions, people can't so easily abuse the site to *kill* dragons. Sure, make them sick, stunt them, do whatever to inconvenience us, but *killing* should not be so easy!

[MiaLily]

15 hours ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

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

 

Sure! And hide your scroll while you're at it! *irony off* This can't and shouldn't be the solution. People have lives outside DC. For me personally it would mean to have growing things fogged more than 75% of the time for the small chance of being viewbombed. I personally like being able to look at my own things and also at other people's scrolls, see what they have accomplished, maybe ask them for trades, gift them things they might like or not have... That is often not possible because people don't link to their scrolls or hide them and I can't help but think that it is also down to fear of being viewbombed and the possibility of losing things because of it. And it is sad to see that a few people should have that kind of power.

 

15 hours ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

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..

 

Yes, absolutely. Maybe buffing ward needs to be discussed again if no solution is found regarding sickness as a whole.

 

6 hours 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.

 

That is your way of playing the game. Others like to do it differently. And those two hours might just be the two hours someone actually gets to spend on site doing things like hunting the cave and the AP thus viewing the page and ads if it comes down to that. (Speaking for myself, I am certainly not viewing the page the most when I'm egglocked because my eggs didn't hatch on time.) On the contrary, if eggs die one is punished doubly because the dead egg is occupying an egg slot for 24 hours after its death preventing you from being active. Which is fine if it is actually you who caused it but hardly fair if it happens through no fault of your own.

 

6 hours 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.

 

I don't forget about my eggs just because I'm not keeping tabs on them 24/7. Neither are you, I suspect, for the 48 to 72 hours it takes for your eggs to hit ER status. The hatching and growing process is not that involved if we're being honest. I will never be able to hatch or grow anything just by viewing it myself. So why would I need to be around at the exact point of hatching or growing up when I can have them in a few hatcheries on their own and be fine most of the time? In the end, DC is an ADOPTables game where the goal is to ADOPT and raise dragons to be able to ADOPT again to start the cycle anew. How you accomplish that goal should be up to the individual player. Having things die of course is in direct opposition to that. There used to be times when your scroll was burned when too many things died/were killed. Sickness might have been put in place then for various reasons but viewbombing probably was not a foreseeable problem so shouldn't alterations be made to adapt to new circumstances?

 

3 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Yes. Several times.

 

Could you maybe elaborate on this? Why, when, how? Because if this is actually a more common problem for more experienced players than I, the OP and many others seem to think, maybe this discussion is moot.

 

 

Having said all that: I've never personally been a target of viewbombing and I usually do not have many valuable things on my scroll so I've never lost an egg (or hatchling) to sickness. And no, @HeatherMarie, I have never had an ER egg die because of sickness. I do empathize with people who have, though. I am still no big fan of 'stunting' because as I said above: A few hours delay might mean no activity for me at all because of time limitations. So if something was to be done I would prefer an autofog at the point where things would die currently or as @purplehaze and probably others suggested an extended period before sickness kills.

[tjekan]

Cinspawn's idea that eggs could only die of sickness in the first 24 hours of life would solve that. It's a little clunky, but we could all just keep eggs fogged and not trade them till they were a day old, knowing wed have a guaranteed safe trading window after that. Viewbombers might also get frustrated and bored when most of their attempts to bomb eggs proved fruitless.

[VixenDra]

On 7/24/2018 at 7:36 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. 

ok, the major flaws of these:

 

"enforcing DragCave API logins on hatcheries" - Viewbombers need to use other traffic sources than hatchieries anyway (I wish I knew the exact websites/traffic generators they use, there are times I wish I could viewbomb my own things but I never succeeded - it's not as easy as you think). Sorry, but even if I put my ERs to all hatcheries listed in the Wikia, it still takes about an hour to simply hatch ERs, forget killing a 7d or below... and killed things aren't all that close to 7d after all, that's how they often aren't caught in time, I guess... Besides, honestly, if it requires me to login to just hatch anything, I'd rather leave DC than bother, I had to give up having my scroll hidden BECAUSE it was too much fuss to do the extra steps to have my scroll readable by hatcheries, and I started having unplanned timeout deaths - I normally often hatch my eggs without even loging to DC - depends if I need to Influence them or sth or simply want to hunt/breed - and I just coudn't stand maintaning a hidden scroll. Also, scroll babysitting is a thing, my bf and I do it every now and then, other people too, that's how we even got the idea. Plz, no. for both reasons. It won't solve anything (because that's NOT how "successful" viewbombing is done) and will only make things unnecessarly worse for normal players.

"buffing Ward a lot" um, another breed to hoard just for performing a basic action? why:< eh,still better than the above suggestion... Ward needs a buff anyway. Besides, another flaw: Ward doesn't work on hatchligns and a properly done viewbombing can also kill a hatchie. More flaws below:

"removing sickness at some trophy level" I actually wanted to suggest that as an alternative to removing sickness completely - after all, only newbies experience sickenss the way it's supposed to be, and they normally don't have valuable eggs anyway and aren't normally known enough to be targets anyway, experienced players simply don't make their things sick and die by accident, and for them it's only a mechanic that allows some 3rd party kill their eggs... also, speakign of potential disadvantage.... relying on Ward puts newbies in a disadvantage even more than this, becuase it requires focusing on hoarding a particular breed while newbies probably would rather focus on getting at last one of (almost/)each breed first, rather than the same sprite all over again - they need a bunch Pinks, Reds and Magis already, why add yet another breed to this minimal set? Trophy makes more sense because it's achieved much more naturally. And before a newbie becomes a potential target, they are likely to have a Bronze trophy already.
That's why I definitely favor Trophy based sickness. Eg. at Bronze Sickness still occurs but can't kill anymore. at Silver, or Gold, Sickness just no longer occurs - Lorewise it's the tamer getting more experienced in taking care of dragons and first learns to keep thier sick dragons alive, and later learns to prevent sickness completely because they raised enough dragons to master that part of caretaking.

Ofc a simple sickenss removal is what I'd also like to see, You can't insta-hatch anyway, no matter when you add your eggs to hatcheries and to how many. But if Sickness really cant' go away completely, then "removing sickness at some trophy level" makes most of sense.

[Cinspawn]

I feel like removing sickness at a trophy level really puts the disadvantage on newbies. Viewbombing is not done to kill cool and rare dragons, it is done to be a pain in the ass - whether you have 100 golds or 100 common dragons. If you could still be viewbombed at no-trophy level, you're still experiencing bad game design that is being taken advantage of. We will still have to warn newbies for viewbombers, but now also say that 'if you play enough, it won't be a problem anymore'.

It would be great for us with trophies but it feels very unfair to people without a trophy. Not to mention, new people like to post in news threads (=major viewbombing target) too. So that problem doesn't get solved.

 

I haven't heard any disadvantages yet against the "egg can only get sick for the first 24h" idea. I'm gonna quote it cause it's a new page:

 

On 12/6/2018 at 3:43 AM, Cinspawn said:

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? 

Edited December 7, 2018 by Cinspawn

[osmarks]

Wait, would it remain sick after the 24 hours, or not?

I mean, either way it's obviously much better than the current situation, but it's still not great to go around having to fog stuff just because of viewbombing anyway.

[Cinspawn]

10 minutes ago, osmarks said:

Wait, would it remain sick after the 24 hours, or not?

I mean, either way it's obviously much better than the current situation, but it's still not great to go around having to fog stuff just because of viewbombing anyway.

Nah, it would build enough antibodies after 24hrs

 

Yeah it's definitely not perfect, but so far the best solution I could think of without actually removing sickness alltogether (which I'd like the most!). It mimics the current situation the most (we don't put stuff in hatcheries anyways for the first 24hrs) but it gives viewbombers way less to work with.

 

I don't know if there's a way that gives us a disadvantage ("risk'"), but viewbombers 0 power at the same time. I don't think there is as long as sickness works view based. VBers will always be able to generate too much views, and we will always have to hide our eggs and our scrolls as a defense.

[Fuzzbucket]

47 minutes ago, MiaLily said:

Could you maybe elaborate on this? Why, when, how? Because if this is actually a more common problem for more experienced players than I, the OP and many others seem to think, maybe this discussion is moot.

 

 

It has happened at times I have left eggs in hatcheries and simply forgotten about them for a few days. Yes I am an experienced player, but I also have a memory like a sieve. I have several times and over breakfast, I've had an egg that was getting to - say - 4 days 12 hours I've thought to myself hey, if I keep an eye on this I can put it in a few more places and speed things up. Then I go read a boot, watch TV and forget about it and go to bed.Next morning....

 

I suppose it is theoretically possible that i was viewbombed as well - except that it has always been those eggs I overcooked. (I also flood the kitchen from time to time; I am prone to turning on the tap to wash up and then forgetting about it... I also specialise in running out all the hot water using the same technique...)

 

It was my fault every time. All I'm saying is that we can mess up all by ourselves - dead eggs aren't always down to viewbombing. (Though I was once viewbombed quite badly and lost four extremely common eggs - indeed, 3 were cave blockers - in one night.)

[tjekan]

4 minutes ago, Cinspawn said:

I don't know if there's a way that gives us a disadvantage ("risk'"), but viewbombers 0 power at the same time. I don't think there is as long as sickness works view based. VBers will always be able to generate too much views, and we will always have to hide our eggs and our scrolls as a defense.

 

The other way would be leaving sickness as it is, and just replacing the "dying" part with some less drastic consequence.

 

What it keeps coming down to for me is that dying of sickness is intended as a PUNISHMENT for players who aren't playing the game right. Yet as the game has evolved, it has instead turned into something that usually happens when someone other than the victim starts breaking the rules. That's a sincere problem. If the punishment were less permanent than actually losing the dragon, I wouldn't mind it. If limiting death by sickness to the first year of an egg's life would stymie viewbombers so that they weren't driving the mechanism as much anymore, I wouldn't mind it. As it is, though, it's broken.

 

I also wouldn't mind just scrapping sickness completely, but I understand and appreciate why others disagree.

[Fuzzbucket]

Not entirely. I'm a mentor, and I quite often find that new players are catching eggs and immediately putting them in every fan site they can find. That's also evidenced in threads "Why are my eggs sick ?" "MY eggs all died in the night" etc.

[Shadowdrake]

1 hour ago, MiaLily said:

On the contrary, if eggs die one is punished doubly because the dead egg is occupying an egg slot for 24 hours after its death preventing you from being active. 

Not true, actually. Only eggs and growing hatchlings you kill with an action (kill or BSA) punish you. That should be changed in the help/limit page but tj has yet to address it.

[Cinspawn]

1 minute ago, tjekan said:

 

The other way would be leaving sickness as it is, and just replacing the "dying" part with some less drastic consequence.

 

What it keeps coming down to for me is that dying of sickness is intended as a PUNISHMENT for players who aren't playing the game right. Yet as the game has evolved, it has instead turned into something that usually happens when someone other than the victim starts breaking the rules. That's a sincere problem. If the punishment were less permanent than actually losing the dragon, I wouldn't mind it. If limiting death by sickness to the first year of an egg's life would stymie viewbombers so that they weren't driving the mechanism as much anymore, I wouldn't mind it. As it is, though, it's broken.

 

I also wouldn't mind just scrapping sickness completely, but I understand and appreciate why others disagree.

While it would be less bad (I wouldn't mind it either anymore) it would still be an abuseable mechanic, which.. is questionable design choice, I'd say.

 

I guess that brings us to the stunt idea - wouldn't they be able to infinitely delay an egg, as long as they could bomb a single code? Or I guess it would grow up before death, then? 🤔 Or will that delay growing up? Because then the egg would infinitely stay at their egg stage? It's possible this would not be a "good enough reason" for viewbombers anymore, but... if it's actually still abuseable (I really don't want to lose time because someone decided to viewbomb me) then it's not really a solution.