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Remove Sickness (or somehow change it drastically)

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1 minute ago, Aalbiel said:

 

There is literally no such thing as perfect security, and if you think there is you watch too many movies. And revealing the details of any type of security will always give clues to how to take it down/work around it.

It's not like we need perfect security just to make viewbombing a lot harder.

 

Anyway, discussion of the security of discussing viewbombing mitigations is kind of orthogonal to the point - it can be fixed, completely, forever, by removing sickness.

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10 minutes ago, Aalbiel said:

 

There is literally no such thing as perfect security, and if you think there is you watch too many movies. And revealing the details of any type of security will always give clues to how to take it down/work around it.

 

Thanks. MY point precisely. It's easy enough to say oh well this and that were errors - but the fact is there IS no perfect answer.

 

6 minutes ago, osmarks said:

It's not like we need perfect security just to make viewbombing a lot harder.

 

Anyway, discussion of the security of discussing viewbombing mitigations is kind of orthogonal to the point - it can be fixed, completely, forever, by removing sickness.

 

Which is not going to happen. TJ has been unequivocal about that - and many of us agree with him.

 

And you did strongly suggest that making a foolproof security system was "easy", and that posting the details wouldn't  create a problem.

Edited by Fuzzbucket

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15 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

Thanks. MY point precisely. It's easy enough to say oh well this and that were errors - but the fact is there IS no perfect answer.

 

 

Which is not going to happen. TJ has been unequivocal about that - and many of us agree with him.

 

And you did strongly suggest that making a foolproof security system was "easy", and that posting the details wouldn't  create a problem.

Preventing some forms of viewbombing (where one IP/group of IPs loads stuff rapidly) is probably quite easy to do and shouldn't be affected by its workings being explained.

 

Other types (legitimate hatchery traffic on illegitimately submitted dragons) probably not so much though.

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I don't see how a little more information or update from TJ would somehow make any security vulnerable... He hasn't said *anything*, to my knowledge, about this topic in months. I agree that detailed explanations of security measures might lead to people being able to get around those measures, but *something* would be nice. 'Hey, I have put something in place and am collecting data to see if it's working' or 'I think what I'm coding now will help and it should be live soon', anything like that would be very very welcome and would perhaps make us users feel a little better about the whole situation, without giving away anything at all that might make the security vulnerable. 

 

In general, though, in my opinion 'preventing viewbombing' is probably going to be a heck of a lot harder to do in any real, substantial way then simply tweaking the actual sickness mechanic. As has been pointed out, there are soooo many different ways to viewbomb, and blocking certain IPs or even requiring log-ins on every single hatchery will only affect those specific ways. Viewbombing can and will still happen. That's why sickness *itself* needs to be changed, because from what I've seen it really might be completely impossible to stop every single type of viewbombing. But if sickness is simply tweaked a little bit so that viewbombing can't kill a dragon so dang fast, it wouldn't be such a horrible thing if some types of viewbombing were still possible.

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We'd all love to hear from TJ about anything that's happening. But no, expecting him to give out information on how protection would work would not be a hot idea.

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Well, I once suggested to change sickness so that a sick egg/hatchling does not develop further (extra views count towards sickness, but not towards hatching/growing up). If the sickness is still there when the egg could hatch / the hatchie could grow up, it won't. => You might get a penalty for sickness, but have to really mess up in order to lose eggs. (Because, let's be honest - we do check our dragons every once in a while.)

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41 minutes ago, olympe said:

Well, I once suggested to change sickness so that a sick egg/hatchling does not develop further (extra views count towards sickness, but not towards hatching/growing up). If the sickness is still there when the egg could hatch / the hatchie could grow up, it won't. => You might get a penalty for sickness, but have to really mess up in order to lose eggs. (Because, let's be honest - we do check our dragons every once in a while.)

 

That's an interesting idea, I vaguely remember it from before but I guess I forgot about it. To clarify, you mean that death-by-sickness would be removed entirely, and the sickness-consequence would instead be that the dragon wouldn't mature/hatch/etc as long as it's sick? Unfortunately that sounds like it might possibly be too big of a change for TJ to be on board, given how stubborn he's seemed to be about sickness in general, but it does seem like a rather good change. There is still incentive to 'fix' the sickness, still consequences for sickness, but malicious viewbombers couldn't *kill* a dragon so dang easily. I like it.

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1 hour ago, olympe said:

Well, I once suggested to change sickness so that a sick egg/hatchling does not develop further (extra views count towards sickness, but not towards hatching/growing up). If the sickness is still there when the egg could hatch / the hatchie could grow up, it won't. => You might get a penalty for sickness, but have to really mess up in order to lose eggs. (Because, let's be honest - we do check our dragons every once in a while.)

I agree somewhat with this idea of sickness just slowing growth, although viewbombers could still use it quite easily (if it stays sick and the timer runs out it'll die, or it could even just keep people scroll-locked more, which would be bad).

Edited by osmarks

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Well, if you have an egg that's sick until it hits 7 days - which is almost impossible to do, I think - then it could die by running out of time (because it's unable to hatch), so it's not a complete removal.

However, most cases of sickness, even by viewbombing, get cured within 24 hours. Unless, of course, your egg gets viewbombed for a full 24 to 48 hours, in which case... things could get touchy. XD 

 

@osmarksPersonally, I'd rather accept being scroll-locked for another 24 hours than lose the eggs I already have, but that might be just me. Besides, it does take some effort to get something so sick that it doesn't get cured until it hits 4 days left. And yet, it gives us a much longer window of opportunity to catch the viewbombing and hide our stuff. It might be at a cost (=> longer time until unlock), but it seems to be the way, waaay lesser of two evils.

 

Come to thinnk of it, incu-hatching prizes will be almost impossible if sickness works like this. Stubborn eggs are stubborn.

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23 minutes ago, osmarks said:

I agree somewhat with this idea of sickness just slowing growth, although viewbombers could still use it quite easily (if it stays sick and the timer runs out it'll die, or it could even just keep people scroll-locked more, which would be bad).

 

That's where the 'player responsibility' comes in though. I mean it's one thing for a viewbomber to be able to kill your dragon within a half an hour, that's something no player should have to deal with. But if sickness simply pauses growth, viewbombers have a whole lot less power. And if a dragon dies from running out of time while sick, *that* is totally on the player, since they will have had 4 full days where the dragon could grow up and the only way a dragon would possibly stay sick for 4 full days is if nothing at all was done to help the sickness (fogging, etc). Sickness, if caught in time, normally clears up within 12-24 hours, so a dragon actually dying because the user didn't fog it for 4 full days.... That's tough luck, imo.

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3 hours ago, olympe said:

Well, I once suggested to change sickness so that a sick egg/hatchling does not develop further (extra views count towards sickness, but not towards hatching/growing up). If the sickness is still there when the egg could hatch / the hatchie could grow up, it won't. => You might get a penalty for sickness, but have to really mess up in order to lose eggs. (Because, let's be honest - we do check our dragons every once in a while.)

I always voice my support for this when it comes around, and was about to type this up and schemed how to do so before I hit page 3 and saw you'd chimed in yourself. XD But yeah.

 

(One potential problem for the most extreme cases of sickness is that you could theoretically get so many views on a dragon in a short time that it just doesn't recover before it hits 0d. That's possible with less than 24h exposure - but definitely way, way, way harder to pull off than the average viewbombing. But just because there might be the one or other case where this isn't foolproof doesn't mean this isn't worthwhile. ❤️ I'd like to see this happen.)

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This type of sickness would make sickness a lot more engaging and eliminate the problem where the only way sickness is being used is by other people to kill dragons spitefully.

 

I would support, with this change, Ward being changed too - a 50%? chance to heal sickness at the end of 12 hours, or something of the like, instead of having to wait a full 24-48, usable multiple times per sickness. Just to give low time eggs a chance should the need arise.

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I wouldn't mind at all the slower-growth of sickly dragons. As long as they have a chance to un-sick (in fog/shows you're 'caring for' the dragon) before their timer runs out. It's really very realistic, as sickness doesn't necessarily mean doomed. On the farm, my mother sometimes had sickly calves. Yes, some of them didn't make it, but many grew to lead a normal life. They just took a little longer to catch up.

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2 hours ago, olympe said:

Come to think of it, incu-hatching prizes will be almost impossible if sickness works like this. Stubborn eggs are stubborn.

 

That WOULD be a real pain. Incu-hatching anything would be much harder.

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3 hours ago, olympe said:

Come to thinnk of it, incu-hatching prizes will be almost impossible if sickness works like this. Stubborn eggs are stubborn.

 

That would affect me a lot, almost every single Prize I hatch gets sick while hatching (as well as most Zyus....). But honestly I still *totally* support that sort of sickness change and I'll gladly accept any hatching-delay it causes with Prizes/etc. I don't know about others, but my experience has been that eggs that get sick while hatching because they are a stubborn breed, like Prizes and Zyus, don't tend to *stay* sick all that long. Most of mine tend to get better within 5-10 hours, usually less, and while I'm sure there would be some complaining about not being able to hatch an egg as soon as possible if it gets sick, I *much* prefer that to what we have now.

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I tested a sunrise/set egg once to see how many views it could get at the last hours of life between the hatching periods and it hatched at 10k+ views without even getting sick. So the threshold for dying of sick-stall would be already extremely generous. Maybe less so if incubated but still a tremendous amount.

 

However there is an issue: if you ER a heavy-view egg and it gets sick but won't hatch, it'll keep racking up views and getting sicker until it gets fogged, it runs out of time or it gets too old to be sick anymore. It's a very big departure from the current ER norm and I expect a lot of people will have issues with that at first.

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At first ? I would TOTALLY have issues with that at all. I like to be able to viewbomb my own things into hatching.

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2 hours ago, Shadowdrake said:

I tested a sunrise/set egg once to see how many views it could get at the last hours of life between the hatching periods and it hatched at 10k+ views without even getting sick. So the threshold for dying of sick-stall would be already extremely generous. Maybe less so if incubated but still a tremendous amount.

 

However there is an issue: if you ER a heavy-view egg and it gets sick but won't hatch, it'll keep racking up views and getting sicker until it gets fogged, it runs out of time or it gets too old to be sick anymore. It's a very big departure from the current ER norm and I expect a lot of people will have issues with that at first.

Probably, yes. But it would make hatching dragons more involved. Right now, we stick our stuff in hatcheries after about 24 hours, incubate somewhere in between and stick them in at least one ER once they hit 4 days left. Who cares if they get sick from it? We all know that this kind of hatching sickness goes away quickly and is usually not lethal.

With sickness preventing hatching, though? We'd actually have to pay attention to our eggs while ERing them.

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4 hours ago, Shadowdrake said:

However there is an issue: if you ER a heavy-view egg and it gets sick but won't hatch, it'll keep racking up views and getting sicker until it gets fogged, it runs out of time or it gets too old to be sick anymore. It's a very big departure from the current ER norm and I expect a lot of people will have issues with that at first.

 

Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people would have issues with it. But as olympe pointed out, all it would *really* do would make the game more involved and make users be more hands-on with the hatching process. I know a lot of people have work/school/etc and can't be online 24/7, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect that most players would check on their dragons at least once a day (in general, of course there will be exceptions where someone can't get online...). With that proposed change, instead of shoving an ER-timed egg into ERs and leaving, and *hoping* that it doesn't get viewbombed to death while you are away (while that's harder to do with ER eggs it *is* possible)... The *only* way it would be able to die would be if you simply didn't check on it for the next 4 days.

 

Okay, so it might take longer for it to hatch, if it can't hatch while sick... So users might have to be a little more responsible with checking their dragons and curing sickness to let them hatch/mature.... I'd *much* prefer that little bit of inconvenience to the *major* viewbombing-death inconvenience we have now. I'm pretty darn positive users would complain about the change, for multiple reasons, but honestly what user would *rather* their dragons get killed by viewbombing then have to take a little more effort to hatch them?

 

(Honestly I think there are better ways to deal with the sickness/viewbombing issue, but I do completely support that proposed idea.)

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On 7/25/2018 at 4:22 AM, Fuzzbucket said:

It is fairly well documented that railing against viewbombing here very often leads to an attack.... Just saying.

 

That it is. There are people who do it out of spite. Same type of mentality that causes people to enter sandbox games and break the builds.

 

However, to the OP, Sickness has always been a part of this game, it always will be. It adds some level of danger. I find sickness then I hurry over and hide some stuff. It gives you something to play with. That way, as someone mentioned before, its not a matter of dumping your eggs in hatcheries and return in a few days. At least we don't have to grind like mad to supply our dragons with food to maintain their upkeep. I found other sites too work intensive for that very reason. DC has always been a go do for its simplicity and fun.

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7 hours ago, Starscream said:

 

That it is. There are people who do it out of spite. Same type of mentality that causes people to enter sandbox games and break the builds.

 

However, to the OP, Sickness has always been a part of this game, it always will be. It adds some level of danger. I find sickness then I hurry over and hide some stuff. It gives you something to play with. That way, as someone mentioned before, its not a matter of dumping your eggs in hatcheries and return in a few days. At least we don't have to grind like mad to supply our dragons with food to maintain their upkeep. I found other sites too work intensive for that very reason. DC has always been a go do for its simplicity and fun.

Instead of dumping your eggs in hatcheries immediately, you dump them in hatcheries later! So much more immersive and exciting!

Most sickness is either caused by inexperience or viewbombing. Inexperience is usually quickly resolved; if you're suggesting that the threat of viewbombing makes the game more fun, I disagree.

 

Your mention of other games having food which is hard to get is completely irrelevant.

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12 minutes ago, osmarks said:

Your mention of other games having food which is hard to get is completely irrelevant.

 

Well, no, it isn't. In other games there are loads of other things you have to watch for and also if you don't show up every day and feed (or water, or put plants in the sun or whatever) they die. That is too annoying for me too. The simplicity of this one is a big part of its appeal - but I do like that we have sickness to keep us that bit more involved.

 

And I do hope we don't lose the ability to viewbomb our own stuff for a quick hatch when we need one.

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53 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

Well, no, it isn't. In other games there are loads of other things you have to watch for and also if you don't show up every day and feed (or water, or put plants in the sun or whatever) they die. That is too annoying for me too. The simplicity of this one is a big part of its appeal - but I do like that we have sickness to keep us that bit more involved.

 

And I do hope we don't lose the ability to viewbomb our own stuff for a quick hatch when we need one.

"Viewbombing" your own stuff would work perfectly fine without sickness.

 

My comment about it being irrelevant is due to the fact that other games being more tedious doesn't  mean that DC must also be annoying.

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Viewbombing my own stuff wouldn't  work with some of the "solutions" suggested here - and I don't want to see sickness go.

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1 hour ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Viewbombing my own stuff wouldn't  work with some of the "solutions" suggested here - and I don't want to see sickness go.

I still don't see why you enjoy a mechanic which basically just allows people to kill your stuff easily while not involving that much actual gameplay.

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