Remove Sickness (or somehow change it drastically)

[Fuzzbucket]

8 hours ago, pinkgothic said:

There was also this gem from about a year ago. This kind of thing is not easy to avoid, unfortunately.

 

I believe it is still operational but more secretly...

[osmarks]

On 5/4/2019 at 9:06 AM, Fuzzbucket said:

 

I believe it is still operational but more secretly...

I'm pretty sure there are organized groups of viewbombers, but obviously better-hidden ones.

 

@saarkin

Removing features is in general easier than adding features, so I doubt it'd be a massive time sink to turn it off.

 

Anyway, yes, sickness which happens naturally due to an accident is fairly easy to avoid as long as you just put stuff in the right amount of hatcheries at the right time. Which kind of makes it a bad mechanic, since all it does is punish new players - and makes it really easy for viewbombers to arbitrarily kill things by sticking your eggs in hatcheries. You can stop it if you catch it early, yes, but inactive players can have their stuff killed by others easily, and defending against it is more effort than their attacking.

[UnicornMaiden]

I like the idea of making sickness take longer to kill an egg. Either make it so that an egg has to be sick for a certain number of hours or buff up Ward to protect the egg for a full 24 hours. When I got viewbombed last week I checked on my egg before going to bed and it was fine. I checked the next morning, and it was dead. I had it up for trade, so I couldn't fog it.

 

A person should be able to check their scroll once a day and have time to catch sickness. It's fine to make players be involved with their scrolls, but people should be able to sleep and go to work or school without needing to check on their eggs every few hours.

[MoonShark]

It's been over eighteen months since this topic was last touched upon. I'm bumping the thread because I believe something needs to be done in regards to sickness. Removing it would be my preference, but altering it so that people's dragons can't be killed by malicious players would be acceptable as well.

 

Although I haven't read through this entire (15-page!) thread, I know that some people have raised the point that "you have the tools to protect your dragons, so this mechanic is fine as it is." While I agree that the tools (hide scroll, fog egg/hatchie) exist, I shouldn't need to hide my scroll 100% of the time to avoid being viewbombed. I shouldn't need to fog things (necessitating adding them to hatcheries again at a later time) every time I'm away from my computer to be sure nothing gets killed. I am a very active player, I check my scroll dozens of times of day, I hunt, I make NDs, I work on lineage projects... And as an active player, sickness has gone beyond being a simple convenience. I no longer feel comfortable sharing pretty things I receive or create publicly for fear of inviting further targeting, and I see friends of mine as well as other members of the community being targeted as well--sometimes to the point of stuff being killed. A dead dragon is not always replaceable. Rare things, ratio breaks, special codes--they are hard or impossible get back... Not to mention the stress of always wondering when you'll be targeted next or the heartbreak of losing a precious gift.

 

These are the solutions that I've seen suggested that I believe would help shut down the griefing the current sickness system allows:

• Remove sickness completely - I know this is unlikely, but it would remove the stress of this problem completely.
• Make sickness inhibit hatching - Not my favorite solution, but it's better than death.
• Make sickness autofog the egg - I like this idea, even if it will make a few stubborn breeds more difficult to hatch (prizes and zyus, I'm looking at you!) I'd much rather come back to a fogged scroll than a scroll of eggshells/tombstones, plus the knowledge that eggs might get sick and end up in fog, necessitating unfogging and hatchery-ing again once they're better, would still encourage site interaction while removing the stress of potentially losing an egg to viewbombing.
• Major buff to Ward - To actually help, this would need to be a huge buff like "protects egg until hatching" so players can proactively use it rather than wait until an egg gets sick, since evidence has shown that an egg can be killed in a short amount of time with the current sickness mechanic. I'm not sure this is really the best solution, but it could work.
• Sickness cannot kill an egg for 24 hours after it becomes sick - This still promotes site interaction (since you'd need to check in daily to see how things are) while greatly reducing the possibility for active players to lose dragons (but not as helpful to inactive players).

Edited February 1, 2021 by MoonShark

[camelia2]

Something probably needs to change in this mechanic.

Was never a victim, but I keep ALL my eggs fogged for the 1st day. Only once I won a user-raffle and the sick egg died before I could click fog.

 

I'm curious though, what are the records for the fastest sikness kill? I had an Avatar fresh-hatchi sick for 16h in hatcheries and it survived after fogging

[aegagrusScholarship]

1 hour ago, camelia2 said:

I'm curious though, what are the records for the fastest sikness kill? I had an Avatar fresh-hatchi sick for 16h in hatcheries and it survived after fogging

IIRC, people tested it out and eggs cannot die for the first five hours or so (to prevent viewbombing misclicks to death before they can be abandoned). So I assume the fastest kill was 5 hours. As for hatchlings, they're insanely resilient. Someone tried to kill their own Candelabra via viewbombing for three days straight and it survived.

 

Anyways, on the topic of this: yeah. Definitely need to fix something about sickness. I agree with MoonShark's possible fixes.

Edited February 3, 2021 by aegagrusScholarship

[DragonLady86]

15 minutes ago, aegagrusScholarship said:

IIRC, people tested it out and eggs cannot die for the first five hours or so (to prevent viewbombing misclicks to death before they can be abandoned). So I assume the fastest kill was 5 hours. As for hatchlings, they're insanely resilient. Someone tried to kill their own Candelabra via viewbombing for three days straight and it survived.

 

Anyways, on the topic of this: yeah. Definitely need to fix something about sickness. I agree with MoonShark's possible fixes.

Really? Ive never heard that. When Eggs around the world went down things died in minutes.

 

@camelia2 hatchlings are very hard to viewbomb. They can be sick from hatching until after they grow up. It can be done but usually fogging to get them out of hatcheries and then letting them grow up is all they need.

[Stormcaller]

Another time eggs need to be protected is after they are traded.  If the eggs are moved during the night and remain on fansites that the original owner put them on, they can be dead by the time the recipient gets up in the morning.  Could something be done to give traded eggs immunity for some extended period of time?

[Tini]

1 hour ago, DragonLady86 said:

Really? Ive never heard that. When Eggs around the world went down things died in minutes.

i'm not sure the eatw thing is a counter, were fresh eggs even being added there? i don't remember any specific stuff that happened during that. plus people were actively fogging things to save them. It was also like, above and beyond with views.

 

Unless you're talking about hatchies in which case we're not saying impossible we're saying hard, in which case the eatw thing counts. I do know that I've bombed 6d+ hatchies for 12+ hours so they gender and haven't lost anything.

[HeatherMarie]

2 hours ago, aegagrusScholarship said:

IIRC, people tested it out and eggs cannot die for the first five hours or so (to prevent viewbombing misclicks to death before they can be abandoned). So I assume the fastest kill was 5 hours. As for hatchlings, they're insanely resilient. Someone tried to kill their own Candelabra via viewbombing for three days straight and it survived.

 

Anyways, on the topic of this: yeah. Definitely need to fix something about sickness. I agree with MoonShark's possible fixes.

 

Not sure where people were testing or what breeds they were using, but it's definitely *not* true that eggs can't die the first 5 hours of their lives. It's why I always post a reminder to *not* add fresh eggs to hatcheries during new releases, they can and will die in just two hours or so if they get too many stats. I've seen it many times in the hatcheries during brand-new releases, like the first few hours of the release. 

 

34 minutes ago, Stormcaller said:

Another time eggs need to be protected is after they are traded.  If the eggs are moved during the night and remain on fansites that the original owner put them on, they can be dead by the time the recipient gets up in the morning.  Could something be done to give traded eggs immunity for some extended period of time?

 

Yes please. Just, in general we need more control over in-trade dragons. Both when the trade is up and right after. Right now if an offered egg gets sick while it's still 'pending' in the trade, you can't do anything about it, can't even Ward it. And yes, trades going through while you are away is a big risk, it's why I never offer or put up trades before bed, it's just too risky. 

[Chaos Rider]

2 hours ago, Stormcaller said:

Another time eggs need to be protected is after they are traded.  If the eggs are moved during the night and remain on fansites that the original owner put them on, they can be dead by the time the recipient gets up in the morning.  Could something be done to give traded eggs immunity for some extended period of time?

This. I was given an egg before bed one night but it was a freshly laid egg and on a fansite. It was sick by the time I woke up. It did eventually recover 12 hours later but ward only lasts for six...

[Fuzzbucket]

I hide anything I get in trade unless it comes in with no views.... That way only the fan sites that keep them when fogged will still have them when I unhide...

[Shadowdrake]

5 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

Not sure where people were testing or what breeds they were using, but it's definitely *not* true that eggs can't die the first 5 hours of their lives.

Perhaps not for bred eggs, but for CB eggs it must be true: you can't kill an egg by viewbombing to escape the cave cooldown, because that would be too simple a loophole.

 

 

This was an attempt to escape the cave cooldown early. It survived almost the full 5 hours on its own, then was warded to see if it would survive overnight. Understandably, it didn't.

 

 

 

However, this only deals with the soonest death by sickness. The fastest death by sickness probably would be a few hours at most, if I recall that time AOND's ER broke correctly. I don't recall any particular deaths from EATW because they got removed from the hatchery faster than they could die.

Edited February 3, 2021 by Shadowdrake

[Raphy]

On 2/1/2021 at 4:28 PM, MoonShark said:

It's been over eighteen months since this topic was last touched upon. I'm bumping the thread because I believe something needs to be done in regards to sickness. Removing it would be my preference, but altering it so that people's dragons can't be killed by malicious players would be acceptable as well.

 

Although I haven't read through this entire (15-page!) thread, I know that some people have raised the point that "you have the tools to protect your dragons, so this mechanic is fine as it is." While I agree that the tools (hide scroll, fog egg/hatchie) exist, I shouldn't need to hide my scroll 100% of the time to avoid being viewbombed. I shouldn't need to fog things (necessitating adding them to hatcheries again at a later time) every time I'm away from my computer to be sure nothing gets killed. I am a very active player, I check my scroll dozens of times of day, I hunt, I make NDs, I work on lineage projects... And as an active player, sickness has gone beyond being a simple convenience. I no longer feel comfortable sharing pretty things I receive or create publicly for fear of inviting further targeting, and I see friends of mine as well as other members of the community being targeted as well--sometimes to the point of stuff being killed. A dead dragon is not always replaceable. Rare things, ratio breaks, special codes--they are hard or impossible get back... Not to mention the stress of always wondering when you'll be targeted next or the heartbreak of losing a precious gift.

 

These are the solutions that I've seen suggested that I believe would help shut down the griefing the current sickness system allows:

• Remove sickness completely - I know this is unlikely, but it would remove the stress of this problem completely.
• Make sickness inhibit hatching - Not my favorite solution, but it's better than death.
• Make sickness autofog the egg - I like this idea, even if it will make a few stubborn breeds more difficult to hatch (prizes and zyus, I'm looking at you!) I'd much rather come back to a fogged scroll than a scroll of eggshells/tombstones, plus the knowledge that eggs might get sick and end up in fog, necessitating unfogging and hatchery-ing again once they're better, would still encourage site interaction while removing the stress of potentially losing an egg to viewbombing.
• Major buff to Ward - To actually help, this would need to be a huge buff like "protects egg until hatching" so players can proactively use it rather than wait until an egg gets sick, since evidence has shown that an egg can be killed in a short amount of time with the current sickness mechanic. I'm not sure this is really the best solution, but it could work.
• Sickness cannot kill an egg for 24 hours after it becomes sick - This still promotes site interaction (since you'd need to check in daily to see how things are) while greatly reducing the possibility for active players to lose dragons (but not as helpful to inactive players).

 

I second all of this. Having been/and being victim of a very malicious view bomber right now, who finally managed to kill most of my very precious eggs (which were also gifts for people) the day before yesterday due to my scroll bugging somehow and not being hidden, I wish this wasn't possible. I love DC and it helps me in many ways, but having to keep my scroll hidden instead of being able to share pretty lineages, or keep eggs fogged so I can't see the pretty colours, is starting to stress me more than nessesary. I don't know what people find amusing about this, and I wish there was so way of protecting things again this behavior.

And yes, I do shamelessly cry over my pixel dragons when someone kills them. Please please help people like me against ignorant nasty people.

[schenanigans]

Sickness is a dated and easily abusable mechanic that just needs to go. 

The only function I can see for this mechanic is to encourage players checking in with the site - however, there is 0 difference between a player adding an egg to a hatchery at 7d and then ignoring the site for 2-3 days vs. a player that grabs an egg and ignores the site for 2-3 days and adds it to ERs when they check back in. People afraid of malicious intent from other players would merely have to fog before they proceed to ignore the site for those 2-3 days. 

 

This egg is DEAD but code scratched out anyway to avoid any possible ire:

 

A friend was able to trade for this. The trader's scroll got viewbombed, and the time that the trade was accepted was in the middle of the night, and friend was asleep. It did not matter, for the number of views was enough to kill the egg after the 12h window regardless, and ward did not save it. This specific egg (as an Aegis) is breedable ONE TIME per year, and as a SAlt is incredibly difficult (and for some, impossible) to replace. 

 

This is an abusable mechanic that does not deserve a place on this website. 

We already have to deal with other mechanics that make replacing eggs a requirement (refusal/breeding compatibility, EQ alts, etc) ON TOP OF limited time frame breeding windows, this should not be one of them. This also does not teach newbies anything valuable and only gives power to anonymous and malicious players. 

 

Edited December 20, 2023 by schenanigans

[TurboSilver]

Sickness, as an abusable mechanic, rewards view bombers because they know it works, and it's unfair for players who want to play to be worried and/or consistently concerned about how others might impact their scroll. Players should not feel like they have to fog or hide their scrolls and change the way they would otherwise play due to malicious intent.

 

When players experience sickness for the first time, it's likely due to either adding to hatcheries too soon, or adding to too many too early. This is something all players learn from, and is easily resolvable with fog and ward. For more experienced players, it may be due to forcing an egg to hatch which the more stubborn breeds are prone to (looking at you zyus). Again, this kind of sickness is resolvable. At any of these points, it's a learning moment or "whoops". However, an egg or hatchie dying from malicious intent isn't fair at all -- especially when mechanics that should work, aren't of any help at all. 

 

Like Moon (and likely others) mentioned, I feel that sickness should inhibit growth. For example, perhaps sickness increases the amount of OV/UVs required for eggs/hatchies over 4 days to grow by making them more stubborn/lethargic as a result of being sick. I also support increasing the time under an egg or hatchie dies from sickness. Assuming players are checking through the day or occasionally, a 24hr window provides enough time for a player to take action. It would also be helpful if wards (and maybe stuns as well) could be applied during trades as a preventative measure. 

[Alwerien]

I agree that the sickness mechanic is outdated and as it is, it brings little benefit to anyone except malicious people (edit: okay I accept there are legitimate uses but they really are in the minority). Personally my favorite would be just removing this mechanic altogether, but I don't think that would be chosen.

 

There is a lot of ways to protect your own dragons you have picked up/bred yourself, the worst affected really is trades and rather than supporting interaction with the site, sickness mechanic makes you want to interact less. There have been some solutions suggested (this thread has been going for a long time without an official response after all) and they have their pros and their cons so I'm gonna suggest some more alternatives.

 

Wards should be buffed no matter what, either in the basic duration of BSA or allowing them to be stacked/extended. There should be enough chance for the dragon to get better while it's warded and not have it die immediately after the ward expires.

 

What I'd appreciate the most would be some sort of sickness trade protection - egg in trade should either:

1) be entirely protected from sickness for the duration of trade and some buffer period after the trade is accepted (considering we have players from many different timezones, there is always many trades that span hours and trades often get accepted while the other party is asleep)

2) or we should be able to use BSAs on dragons in trade - at least ward but it could also be new BSA that works similar to stun in that it blocks eggs from gaining views for some period of time (no need for the other mechanic of stun where it adds the time)

3) or it could be a new generic action similar to fog, but without hiding the egg, only blocking it from receiving views - ideally as toggle (though currently it's not at all possible to use actions on an egg/dragon in a trade, but it could still be used beforehand)

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Alwerien

[DragonLady86]

Maybe keep sickness but it no longer works after getting a trophy. If the for sickness argument is teaching new players to take care of thier eggs, then surely if they've raised enough for a trophy they know what they are doing?

[Shizuku-chan]

I disagree with the notion that sickness as a mechanic only benefits malicious people. As someone who likes being able to control the progeny list of my own dragons, I found it useful to get rid of misbred/miscoloured/hybrid-fail eggs easily without taking up a kill slot or an egg/scroll slot for extended periods of time. I also know of at least one person who uses it to get large amounts of hatchling zombie fodder for themselves (which is an amazing feat since it's way harder to kill hatchlings!). Personally, I'd hate to see niche uses of this mechanic go just because a few folks use it to harass others anonymously over pixel dragons.

 

To be clear, I'm not okay with sickness being used as a malicious tool against others. But a tool is just that - it's only a problem if malicious people get hold of it. I would personally prefer the following solutions that limit malicious folks' ability to inflict sickness death on unsuspecting victim(s) to removing the mechanic (and its niche uses) completely:

• Force hatcheries to require scroll login - This seems to be a significant source of anonymous viewbombing attacks so cutting this out would drastically reduce malicious people's ability to kill others' growing dragons. Sadly, the only hatchery that offers this as an option is DragHatch.
• Scroll option to hide codes and links of growing dragons - To further cut out an avenue of malicious folk making use of codes for viewbombing via non-hatchery sources of views (which is significantly more effort but I want to cover all bases). This has the secondary effect of allowing people to not have to hide their scroll as long as hatcheries stop being a free-for-all to add other people's growing things.
• Allow fogged eggs/hatchlings to be interacted with while maintaining its view-stopping function -  This solution is targeted towards people who put eggs/hatchlings up for public trade and prevents malicious folk from viewbombing those to death or even 'helping' to hatch/grow them and consuming other people's teleport.
• A major buff to Ward BSA - I like the idea of it being stackable on a single egg so far, although extending the protection period from a single use would be nice in general. I would also love for this BSA to be usable on hatchlings as well.

Just my 2 cents as someone who wants the progeny list of some of my dragons to look a certain way and use the sickness mechanic to achieve it efficiently but also is uncomfortable with how much power a random stranger has over an open scroll's growing dragons.

[DragonLady86]

2 hours ago, Shizuku-chan said:

:

• Force hatcheries to require scroll login - This seems to be a significant source of anonymous viewbombing attacks so cutting this out would drastically reduce malicious people's ability to kill others' growing dragons. Sadly, the only hatchery that offers this as an option is DragHatch.
•  
•  

A lot of view bombers don't even use hatcheries. They post on high traffic forums or just use view refreshers. 

[inghelene]

I think sickness would have been perfect if it hadn’t been for people viewbombing with intent of killing an egg they have no claim to.

Getting rid of it seems like a drastic measure.

 

I suggest that eggs that were not sick pre-trade, should be given immunity whilst on a public trade, with the immunity carrying over to the next owner for at least half a day after being accepted.

The limit of it being a healthy egg and the trade public should narrow it down to its intended purpose; preventing killing of eggs on trade, and prevent trading from being exploited to heal an already sick egg. 

Alternatively, eggs on public trades should be unable to accumulate views, for the same purpose. In this case, eggs not traded with 0 views might die at 7d, but in return, only after a trade goes through will someone be able to actively attempt to kill an egg. The longer the trade takes, the older the egg will be without accumulation of views, which works well with the older trades also being seen by more people.

Edited December 21, 2023 by inghelene

[heyninja]

I think the practical usefulness of sickness is relatively low, while the possibilities of abuse are extremely high (and frankly pretty regular and maliciously targeted).  And given that the userbase is spread out in all timezones, not every trade can be conducted swiftly or only in narrow windows of time depending on what's being traded/asked for.  That's a potentially large amount of time for malicious actors to swoop in and ruin things for people.  I do understand that some people like sickness and use it for perfectly useful, personal reasons, but the frankly cruel and spiteful use of view-bombing has been going on for years and has happened to a lot of people.

 

It just seems like a mechanic that has caused more harm than good as people try everything they can think of to try to stop it, and there's just no effective way short of ceasing any social aspects of the game or never having any high-value dragons that anyone is aware of ever.  That's really an awful position to be in and to always be on guard for, I think, but that's my two cents.

 

So.  If removal isn't an option, I think Ward needs to be expanded - either the time needs to go up or it needs to stack, or both.

 

And I think the suggestion that eggs in trade should be immune from sickness is a good one - after all, we can't perform BSAs on anything while in a teleport, so I'd think sickness shouldn't apply either.  It wouldn't be half bad to extend a cooldown on that after a trade completes, considering just how targeted view-bombing is.

 

Since trades growing up/dying from timer expirations are separate processes more dependent on time management than views, so I don't see why there should be a full freeze on teleport items.

 

So my votes, and I'd like to see them both frankly:

 

1.  Expand Ward - either longer time, stacking, or both
2.  Immunity from sickness while in teleport, and a possible grace-period cooldown after the trade concludes.

[11th]

I want to clarify something: The only way to provide true immunity to sickness is to stop views from accumulating. What Ward does, and what I assume is being suggested for trades, is prevent death from sickness. Warded eggs still get sick. This has lead to confusion in the past where Ward ends and the egg immediately dies because the owner didn't realize that they still needed to fog the egg or remove it from hatcheries. For trades, preventing death from sickness for x hours after means little if the egg can continue to gain views anyway.

 

As for sickness as a whole, I don't have any strong feelings or thoughts at the moment. I agree that it is mostly abused by bad actors and that it is easy to avoid once a player learns how it works, but that it does have uses for legitimate players. I'm just not sure how to balance the two. 😞

[Brite]

I also vote on Ward being expanded and/or stacked.