Remove Sickness (or somehow change it drastically)

[tjekan]

10 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

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.

 

Yes, you're right, it's still an issue for new players. It's my belief, though, that making the eggs sick but NOT killing them would be just as effective at forcing clueless newbies to go to the forum and learn how to play the game the right way, as making their eggs sick AND killing them is. Especially if some other obvious consequence were substituted for killing, like one of the ones already suggested in this thread.

 

If anything, the very harsh penalty of having their first eggs die is probably making more new players leave and never come back than the alternative consequences would.

Edited December 7, 2018 by tjekan

[Dragon_Arbock]

2 hours ago, tjekan said:

 

Yes, you're right, it's still an issue for new players. It's my belief, though, that making the eggs sick but NOT killing them would be just as effective at forcing clueless newbies to go to the forum and learn how to play the game the right way, as making their eggs sick AND killing them is. Especially if some other obvious consequence were substituted for killing, like one of the ones already suggested in this thread.

 

If anything, the very harsh penalty of having their first eggs die is probably making more new players leave and never come back than the alternative consequences would.

 

There's no point in sickness then if they don't die. Being sick doesn't prevent an egg from hatching. So.. if it doesn't stop you from getting what you want, and they don't die.. what's the point?

 

Maybe vampires should never kill then. that's too hard. And dragons shouldn't die when they run out of time because you forget about them either, totally.
Death is part of the game, and you can prevent it. It's not a 'playstyle', if you choose to be risky and not fog your stuff or hide your scroll, then you are taking that risk. It's just the reality that we live with. If fogging didn't exist and we had no way of defending our stuff, then I'd see point in complaining.

I support a fog/unfog all button, but it's really not that hard.

[Shadowdrake]

39 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

Death is part of the game, and you can prevent it.

There's a difference between being punished for something you did or forgot to do that is entirely predictable, and being "punished" for the random whims of TOS rulebreakers. The game itself insists that the only ones responsible for your eggs' fates are yours unless you have accept aid on, which is frankly untrue when viewbombing is so prevalent.

 

41 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

if you choose to be risky and not fog your stuff or hide your scroll

Yeah, why don't we just fog eggs we'd like to trade too. It's not like preventing someone from using the trade hub is a punishment or anything. /s

[tjekan]

50 minutes ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

It's not a 'playstyle', if you choose to be risky and not fog your stuff or hide your scroll, then you are taking that risk. It's just the reality that we live with.

 

It was never intended to be, though. Viewbombing was not supposed to be part of the game. It is still not supposed to be part of the game. TJ didn't put it there to make the game harder, it's an unwanted, unauthorized screwup.

 

You might just as well say about a game that is buggy and crashes all the time, "Well, if you choose to be risky and not save your game every 10 minutes then it's your problem. This is just the reality we live with." If it's a BAD, ANNOYING, UNINTENTIONAL reality, then the game designer usually wants to change that, not just tell all the players it's on them to step up and compensate for it.

[Cinspawn]

1 hour ago, Dragon_Arbock said:

Maybe vampires should never kill then. that's too hard. And dragons shouldn't die when they run out of time because you forget about them either, totally.

Death is part of the game, and you can prevent it. It's not a 'playstyle', if you choose to be risky and not fog your stuff or hide your scroll, then you are taking that risk. It's just the reality that we live with. If fogging didn't exist and we had no way of defending our stuff, then I'd see point in complaining.

I support a fog/unfog all button, but it's really not that hard.

Death by viewbombing (which is mostly the only death experienced players deal with) is not part of the game. It's absurd that malicious players have the option to kill our dragons if we're not meticulously fogging everything. Right now we only get viewbombed every so often, mostly being targeted if you post on the discord or in a news thread. But a) one should never be scared to post in either of those things and b) I want to see other people's scrolls and show my own off. With how I play right now, because of the 'gameplay mechanic', my scroll is fogged 95% of the time. I don't find it fun at all. 

 

And, way more important - I 100% believe that as of right now, someone can pretty much destroy (or temporarily disable) the game if they really wanted to. And we're trying to find a solution here to PREVENT that. Honestly, it's bound to happen at some point if you look at the past. 

 

That's not a normal 'gameplay mechanic'. That's not part of the game at all. It only ruins the game, and the fact that we can defend against it somewhat does not change that. 

[Dragon_Arbock]

2 hours ago, tjekan said:

 

It was never intended to be, though. Viewbombing was not supposed to be part of the game. It is still not supposed to be part of the game. TJ didn't put it there to make the game harder, it's an unwanted, unauthorized screwup.

 

You might just as well say about a game that is buggy and crashes all the time, "Well, if you choose to be risky and not save your game every 10 minutes then it's your problem. This is just the reality we live with." If it's a BAD, ANNOYING, UNINTENTIONAL reality, then the game designer usually wants to change that, not just tell all the players it's on them to step up and compensate for it.

 

You have to be responsible for your own things. It's not fun, but this is how the game is now, and it is very easy to avoid. I can't help it if you don't want to adapt and use the tools available to you to prevent it.

And yes, you should save all the time. Save early, save often. You only have your self to blame if something unexpected happens.

 

2 hours ago, Shadowdrake said:

Yeah, why don't we just fog eggs we'd like to trade too. It's not like preventing someone from using the trade hub is a punishment or anything. /s

 

I said earlier that something should be done to protect eggs in trades. But I think that is the only thing that should be done with sickness. Not anything else.

[tjekan]

"Yeah, it's not fun, but this is how the game is now so just deal with it" isn't the most productive attitude in a literal gameplay suggestions subforum. If everyone agrees it's not fun, that's a problem for the game, and can and should be changed.

 

Real talk here: "save early save often" is a great motto, but if you wrote a buggy computer game that crashed every 10 minutes no one would play it no matter how many times you told them the motto. And if I came across DC for the first time today, I wouldn't stay. When I joined, it didnt have this Mad Max style "avoiding misanthropic people trying to wreck your stuff" plotline. Now it does. And yeah, I can fog and unfog everything and it's not fun but not really that big a deal. I'm not about to drop out over it myself. But I guarantee you we're losing out on new players. Once a newbie gets hit by a viewbomber and realizes this game is fine with that and it is going to keep randomly happening, what motivation do they have to stick around? If it had been like this the month I joined, I would not have.

Edited December 8, 2018 by tjekan

[DragonLady86]

I think sickness has outlived it's "usefulness" to be honest.  As a newbie the only eggs I lost were my second batch due to the Lagmonster attack that basically prevented the site from functioning enough for hatchiery use.   I do, on occasion, lose some now, but usually due to forgetting to post them somewhere.  I'm on everyday, but sometimes I wait to put them up then apparently don't realize they aren't getting views. 

 

If we have to keep it around then not dying unless they've been sick for X amount of time is the best idea.  It would still have an affect, but would drastically limit the ability to be malicious about it.  And if you negelect your eggs long enough for them to be sick that long you probably deserve to have them die on you.  and yes, I said that after already admitting to my own lack of attention at times.

 

Having the hatchling/egg growth stunted would be the next choice.   I'd much rather they be able to grow up if they can instead, but I could work with this choice.

 

Auto-fogging, I'd rather not.  We'd just start getting lots of posts of 'why is my egg "hidden"?  Where did this fogball come from and where did my eggs go? etc.  Creating new issues to get rid of a current one is not the way to go.

[deleted_account]

DC is broken right now. 

 

Either remove sickness - that's the best that can be done,

or don't let anything die until it's been continously sick for at least 25h (yes, 25, that's a full day plus a bit because not everyone can login on exactly the same hour every single day, I get it majority of DC players is teenagers and sentimental young adults with loads of at-home time on them, but people have jobs and families to take care of too.)

or remove it at bronze trophy.

 

It just lost it's original purpose and is nothing but a tool for trolls and haters. I never lost an egg to viewbombing but it's probably a matter of time - unless all viewbombers like me for some mesterious reason. I also can't recall ever killing anything this way myself, for me it's always timeout, especially because I'm not getting trade offers in time. 

[Sazandora]

Sickness as it is now is way, WAY too easy for viewbombers to abuse. Remember EATW, where eggs got sick and died so fast that nothing we could do to save them worked. They died behind the fog, they died as soon as Ward's effect ended. Last year an entire hatchery was shut down because of viewbombers -- if they did it once, they could do it again. So something HAS to be done about it, or soon there'll be no one left to play DC at all out of fear that they get all of their stuff bombed to death by some malicious people.

 

While I'm definitely in favor of removing sickness entirely so that viewbombers couldn't pretty much cripple the game by abusing it, I think that is never going to happen so I'm in favor of reworking how sickness works.

1 hour ago, Meh said:

Either remove sickness - that's the best that can be done,

or don't let anything die until it's been continously sick for at least 25h

Bolded for emphasis. This is the option I like the best. Stunting, I bet viewbombers could still abuse it by bombing the egg/hatchling so it literally can't hatch/grow up because it's been stunted for so long. Plus it'll make hatching Zyus/Guardian avatars/Prizes even more annoying than it is now.

[Cinspawn]

I'd still prefer "no more sickness after 24h" to "don't let anything die until sick for 25h".

 

No more sickness after 24h:

- You only have to check for fogging for the first 24h

- After 24h or 18h + Ward you can put your eggs in trades and not worry about it anymore

- If the eggs on your scroll are older than 24h, you can basically open up your scroll

 

Don't let anything die until sick for 25h:

- If being targeted, you will still have to fog and/or check for viewbombers for the entire 7 to 4 days left span

- The egg can still be targeted in a trade, and if you noticed on time you will have to fog and keep re-making trades, potentially losing offers

- You're still at risk with having an "open" scroll

 

I feel like the latter still puts too much power into viewbombers' hands. Of course if viewbombing wasn't that much of an issue, having to check on your dragons would be a good and fair mechanic. But since it IS an issue, I'd rather not have to keep checking on my dragons just because someone decided to be malicious.

[purplehaze]

1 hour ago, Meh said:

don't let anything die until it's been continously sick for at least 25h

...without any action by the scroll owner.

Yes! I suggested something very similar a page or two back.

I know it still requires some attention to your eggs and possibly fogging, etc, IF they come under attack. But as it is now, we have to take so much preventive action just in case they MIGHT be attacked.

 

I agree that as things are now the trolls are in control. They have us jumping through hoops -- hiding eggs, hiding scrolls, having to unhide to get things into hatcheries, watch them like a hawk while they are there, then hide them again if you have to step away from your screen for more than 5 minutes! That is insane!

[Sazandora]

6 minutes ago, Cinspawn said:

I'd still prefer "no more sickness after 24h" to "don't let anything die until sick for 25h".

 

No more sickness after 24h:

- You only have to check for fogging for the first 24h

- After 24h or 18h + Ward you can put your eggs in trades and not worry about it anymore

- If the eggs on your scroll are older than 24h, you can basically open up your scroll

oh damnit forgot about that. stupid absent-minded me.

 

Yeah, as much as I'd love for sickness to just not happen after 24 hours, I have a feeling TJ won't implement that as he seems to want to keep sickness as a thing in the game that can kill any egg/hatchling regardless of how old it is.  

[Cinspawn]

2 minutes ago, Sazandora said:

oh damnit forgot about that. stupid absent-minded me.

 

Yeah, as much as I'd love for sickness to just not happen after 24 hours, I have a feeling TJ won't implement that as he seems to want to keep sickness as a thing in the game that can kill any egg/hatchling regardless of how old it is.  

@TJ09 What are your thoughts on the above? Also do you plan on tweaking things before the holidays (in case someone is planning a Big Attack)?

[tjekan]

1 hour ago, Sazandora said:

Yeah, as much as I'd love for sickness to just not happen after 24 hours, I have a feeling TJ won't implement that as he seems to want to keep sickness as a thing in the game that can kill any egg/hatchling regardless of how old it is.  

 

We don't know that. He said he didn't want to get rid of sickness entirely, not that he didn't want to put any limits on it. Also, IIRC he said that before viewbombing got this bad, so he may want to reconsider.

 

Another band-aid solution would be at least disabling sickness during the three holiday events. That's when the viewbombers usually seem to strike, when users have the least time to babysit their eggs continuously, and when the results are most devastatin (losing highly limited eggs that cant be replaced for a year.) Considering TJs repeated goal of not being stressful at the holidays, it would make sense to at least disable sickness at that time. Even if it's considered an invaluable newbie teaching tool, surely they can learn the bitter lesson it has to teach them some time other than Christmas.

 

ETA: If sickness IS disabled during the holidays, please announce it rather than doing it quietly behind the scenes. Most of the stress is preemptive, feeling that you have to check every 20 minutes in case the bombers come, needing to be fogging everything at all times instead of looking at all the pretty holiday eggs, etc. Letting us know the bombers were disabled for a week would be a really nice present.

Edited December 8, 2018 by tjekan

[Dragon_Arbock]

10 hours ago, tjekan said:

Real talk here: "save early save often" is a great motto, but if you wrote a buggy computer game that crashed every 10 minutes no one would play it no matter how many times you told them the motto.

 

You say this like it's not a trend to play terrible games on youtube. People unironically like that sort of garbage.

 

Anyway, on topic..
I still don't get what the thing is people have against fogging. I have more of an issue with having to click-on eggs and hatchlings individually to see how much time they have left. That sort of thing should just be listed all on one page somewhere. The ward menu at least lists the time for all eggs, but not hatchlings.

But, you want a solution for sickness, fogging is the solution.

Maybe ward should be able to work on hatchlings though. I'm not sure why it can't

 

Really what I would do is

-fog/unfog all button

-a page showing all times for growing things in one spot

-make ward usable on hatchlings

-protect items in trades from sickness (I would say make items in trades unable to receive views, but I've been told that messes up neglecteds)

 

I do not support a stunt, I do not support removing the ability to kill altogether. Maybe making it so it takes a few hours for things to die, not a few minutes, but no to 25 hours.

Edited December 8, 2018 by Dragon_Arbock

[Shajana]

I really don't get you problem, just fog your eggs and hatchies and your problem is gone. Sickness was always part of the game and I don't want to see it gone. I play since 2008 and just by following the rule that I hide all my eggs and hatchies until I want to hatch/grow them. That always worked for me.

[Guillotine]

19 minutes ago, Shajana said:

I really don't get you problem, just fog your eggs and hatchies and your problem is gone. Sickness was always part of the game and I don't want to see it gone. I play since 2008 and just by following the rule that I hide all my eggs and hatchies until I want to hatch/grow them. That always worked for me.

Last time I lost eggs to sickness, they were effectively dead before I could fog them after, what, 15 minutes? They didn't die immediately, but I hadn't reacted quickly enough to stop them from getting a lethal dose of views before it was too late for them. As long as that is an issue, it cannot simply be handwaved away as "just keep an eye on your eggs!"

[tjekan]

11 minutes ago, Shajana said:

I really don't get you problem, just fog your eggs and hatchies and your problem is gone. Sickness was always part of the game and I don't want to see it gone. I play since 2008 and just by following the rule that I hide all my eggs and hatchies until I want to hatch/grow them. That always worked for me.

 

Sickness was always part of the game, but fogging wasn't. It used to be that the only way your eggs would get sick was if you overexposed them. It's much more annoying today when third parties are randomly killing unattended eggs. Fogging was a tool provided to protect ourselves with, and I'm definitely glad it's there, but there's still something underlyingly broken and it's been getting steadily worse. The demise of EATW was a major problem. If AoND gets killed off this Christmas, and it looks like it's being targeted for it, it's going to be a REALLY major problem.

 

This needs to be fixed at a programmatic level. Completely getting rid of sickness isn't the only alternative. Something in the game needs to change to stop it from being possible for malcontents to turn it into a fighting game against the ToS. Make it so that somebody click-spamming an egg CAN'T kill it, and they will go away.

[Cinspawn]

41 minutes ago, tjekan said:

ETA: If sickness IS disabled during the holidays, please announce it rather than doing it quietly behind the scenes. Most of the stress is preemptive, feeling that you have to check every 20 minutes in case the bombers come, needing to be fogging everything at all times instead of looking at all the pretty holiday eggs, etc. Letting us know the bombers were disabled for a week would be a really nice present.

I agree with this!

 

@Shajana @Dragon_Arbock I'm glad you're both happy with seeing only fogged sprites on your scroll, but I and many others are not. I like to see things grow, I like to see which breed I'm currently raising (because that too is useful information that would have to be added if this would be the new standard, and at that point you're asking for a complete layout change of scrolls)

 

And not to mention - this all works great for when we're tiptoeing around the occasional viewbomber. But once someone gets real personal with you they can still kill your dragons in those hours you have left them unfogged. Are you okay with that other people can control whether your dragons live, and harass you via a mechanic that was not implemented to be used that way?

[Sazandora]

18 minutes ago, Shajana said:

I really don't get you problem, just fog your eggs and hatchies and your problem is gone. Sickness was always part of the game and I don't want to see it gone. I play since 2008 and just by following the rule that I hide all my eggs and hatchies until I want to hatch/grow them. That always worked for me.

The problem is that some people have the power to disrupt other people's playing by deliberately posting their eggs/hatchlings on fansites without their consent, so the eggs and hatchies gain tons of views in a short amount of time and get sick. They fog their stuff and hide their scrolls, but in some cases the bombers strike again at a later time, maybe even as soon as their targets unhide their stuff again. Heck, they even took down an entire hatchery and killed dozens of eggs in that attack -- eggs died even after they got fogged and Ward was used. People shouldn't be afraid of posting in the news thread or Discord as I hear the viewbombers look for targets in those places.

[osmarks]

@Shajana You can fog stuff, but then it's untradable. Besides that, sickness basically never happens accidentally to experienced players (as usual, except with zyus/prizes...) - it's almost entirely viewbombing.

[solairehighwind]

You can't put an egg in a trade if it's fogged 🤔 (You can put a screencap up and ask for PM offers, but I imagine that would get you fewer offers than just having a trade up, since it requires social interaction )

 

Honestly, sickness only really shows up for most people during viewbombing attacks. Even a lot of clicksites don't give you enough views to kill your egg if it's brand-new and you just put it in one or two sites (unless they're, y'know, being viewbombed).

For its intended purpose (teaching people how to care for their eggs/making sure people don't just put eggs in a hatchery on day 1 and forget about it), it'll likely only happen once to someone (when they don't know about sickness) and then after that the only use for it is viewbombing. Most users aren't brand new newbies, so that means like 99% of the actual usage of sickness is for viewbombing

 

Edit: Ninja'd  

Edited December 8, 2018 by lolahighwind

[Dragon_Arbock]

1 minute ago, Cinspawn said:

I agree with this!

 

@Shajana @Dragon_Arbock I'm glad you're both happy with seeing only fogged sprites on your scroll, but I and many others are not. I like to see things grow, I like to see which breed I'm currently raising (because that too is useful information that would have to be added if this would be the new standard, and at that point you're asking for a complete layout change of scrolls)

 

And not to mention - this all works great for when we're tiptoeing around the occasional viewbomber. But once someone gets real personal with you they can still kill your dragons in those hours you have left them unfogged. Are you okay with that other people can control whether your dragons live, and harass you via a mechanic that was not implemented to be used that way?

 

And this is where the API and the hatcheries need to be changed- nobody but you should be able to add your scroll anywhere- but again if I'm properly monitoring my eggs and not unfogging them or adding them anywhere before 4 days, a personal attack cannot happen.

 

Also the ward page shows all your eggs unfogged, if you really want to see them unfogged. I'd like it if hatchlings could be there too, but I'm not gonna complain. Things only take 6 to 7 days to grow from egg to adult anyway. You can look at in unfogged when it's an adult, or you can freeze it.

[osmarks]

API/hatchery changes would help (there's a thread about them) but anyone can stick an egg on a high-traffic site, and that can't really be prevented at the game level.