ANSWERED:Disable sickness during holiday events

[tjekan]

There are a lot of suggestions being batted around right now regarding how to deal with viewbombers abusing the otherwise-little-used sickness mechanism to kill other people's dragons. I'm sure those will be considered in due time, and hopefully some useful compromise will be reached.

 

For RIGHT NOW, though, viewbombers are clearly testing something new out on at least one major hatchery at the moment, and the holiday events are always the big viewbombing seasons. They are also by far the worst time to get viewbombed, because A) people are AFK with holiday events and cannot watch their scrolls like hawks, B ) people are trading all the time and traded eggs cannot be fogged, and C) holiday eggs are limited and usually not replaceable for an entire year.

 

In light of TJ's oft-repeated desire to not be a source of stress around the holidays, could we just... turn sickness off completely for the three holiday breeding seasons? Just say that the Guardians of Nature have intervened with their powerful magics to ensure peaceful holidays (or a loving Valentine's, or a fun-filled Halloween) for all.

 

No, it does nothing to solve the long-term problem, but it spares people from the worst of it, and it would be super easy to do. We can continue discussing the other ideas like protecting eggs in trades, limiting sickness, etc., but it would be really good to at least do something about these recurring holiday attacks right now.

Edited December 9, 2018 by tjekan

[Sazandora]

Support. I'm the kind of person who doesn't really celebrate the holidays so I can keep watch of my eggs and hatchlings all the time, but not all people are as "lucky" as me.

[osmarks]

As a thing which would at least briefly alleviate the issue, support.

[Naraku]

I like this idea. Support.

[HeatherMarie]

Total support! Holidays are stressful enough around here (yes, sorry TJ but they are for some of us) without worrying about viewbombers killing the eggs we only have one chance a *year* to get. 

[olympe]

While I would support it, I don't really see it happening because it's an exception. *sigh*

[Jazeki]

Not too sure how likely it is to happen, but I will throw my support in anyway.

[tjekan]

29 minutes ago, olympe said:

While I would support it, I don't really see it happening because it's an exception. *sigh*

 

Holiday eggs are already exceptions. They're monogender, unlike any other eggs. They're scroll limited, unlike anything but GoN's. They appear only once a year. They have a special biome that appears for them out of nowhere. They're already weirdos. Being immune to sickness wouldn't make them any more different than they already are. 🙂

 

And, like I said, it would be simple to support with lore.

Edited December 10, 2018 by tjekan

[Pilauli]

More support!  Just for this holiday season.  We have two holidays coming up in quick succession, with no agreed-upon solution.  After those holidays come about three-quarters of a year with no holidays.  Plenty of time to work something out, which could then replace the "no sickness on holidays" so it doesn't set a precedent.

 

So: pleasepleaseplease?

[olympe]

Way back when yules and the original Vals and pumpkins were introduced, we still had one regular breed that was female-only. Not to mention the then-retired bright pinks. The once a year thing has been part of the holiday breeds since 2007. The new holiday biome was introduced to help preserve old CB holidays, and upon user request. (Years of user requests, actually.) So, not nearly as weird as it might seem now.

[tjekan]

43 minutes ago, olympe said:

Way back when yules and the original Vals and pumpkins were introduced, we still had one regular breed that was female-only. Not to mention the then-retired bright pinks. The once a year thing has been part of the holiday breeds since 2007. The new holiday biome was introduced to help preserve old CB holidays, and upon user request. (Years of user requests, actually.) So, not nearly as weird as it might seem now.

 

True. On the other hand, aren't CB prizes immune to sickness? So there's already precedent for that as an exception, too.

[Starscream]

I would support this during holiday events. People have a lot going on during the holidays and may not have time to helicopter over their scroll.

[osean]

I support this during holiday events at least until a better solution is found. Cb prizes are protected from dying from sickness so it is nothing new as far as coding goes. 

[JavaTigress]

I would say that I support SOME sort of protection , especially during the holidays.

 

That is... given the unfortunate history of attacks often being timed then.

Even better, IMO, would BE some WAY of protecting things in trades.

 

 

[animatedrose]

Definitely support this.

I'm usually here because as much as I like celebrating, my family isn't a big holiday celebrator so I'm usually stuck celebrating all alone. Very few are as lucky as me in terms of having all the holiday time to stare at my comp screen and keep my stuff alive. I'd love if holidays had sickness turned off because then I could, you know, solo celebrate instead of wondering "okay, my eggs are in so-and-so hatcheries, which could be attacked in the minutes/hours that I'm away, will I be lucky like last year and lose nothing, will I lose everything and get boned for a year", so on and so forth.

 

Trade protections would also be nice. I don't really trade during the holidays because I'm still scrambling to gather the last of my CBs (there's quite a lot I still need to get) and don't have time to sit and wait for hours/days for someone who may have what I need to offer on my trade. But for those that rely on trading for their stuff, it'd be nice if they didn't need to worry about trade-VBing either.

 

For having the holidays be low stress...sorry, TJ. They aren't. Especially xmas and vday.

[Psykotika]

This would be nice, I haven't had much of a problem with sickness deaths but I don't play very much anymore either. There's also warding, though that only helps for 6 hours, perhaps the warding effect could last longer?

[Kaini]

While I wouldn't mind this per se... we DO have some sort of protection? Fogging your eggs. I usually just fog mine overnight or while I'm at work, whenever I'm not watching them.

[osmarks]

Yes, and we should not constantly have to do this. Also, eggs can't be fogged if they're in trades.

[Fuzzbucket]

I would like protection for stuff in trades. But I say again, there is no should here. We can be cross all we like, but it's TJ's game, and to him belong all the shoulds.

[Keileon]

Ambivalent support. Sickness is easy enough to catch early if you're attentive, but newer and more busy players (as well as those who trade) would benefit from this.

[VixenDra]

7 hours ago, Kaini said:

While I wouldn't mind this per se... we DO have some sort of protection? Fogging your eggs. I usually just fog mine overnight or while I'm at work, whenever I'm not watching them.

Everyone who's ever said that in similar topics, just forgets about trading...

[tjekan]

5 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

But I say again, there is no should here. We can be cross all we like, but it's TJ's game, and to him belong all the shoulds.

 

Underlyingly that's true, yes, but we DO know that TJ believes 1) viewbombing is not an acceptable part of gameplay and 2) that he wants the game to be low-maintenance and stress-free during the holidays.

 

To achieve those two goals, he SHOULD make it so that players do not have to constantly be watching their scrolls to guard against viewbombers all holiday long.

 

That's not a moral judgment kind of "should," it's a logical conclusion kind of "should."

 

I haven't seen any viewbombers yet this season, but considering what happened last season, I still feel like I have to be checking my eggs every half hour and fogging and unfogging them obsessively, and that anxious feeling of chore-tending is pretty much the opposite of what I usually play games for. I don't think this is winning the hearts of new players, I dunno.

 

It's too late to implement this idea for this year anyway, though. Maybe Valentines. 😕

[reddof-f6]

i am back and forth on this. i DO agree, some sort of step should be added to help with the sickness bombs during holidays. but i DONT want sickness 100% disabled. i don't want it disabled because really its the only challenging matter of this game. whats the point when the one threat is just missing?

 

maybe make eggs "tougher" during the holidays. (see if i can explain this well 🤔)

for ex: an egg needs say 1000 views and 3 day mark to hatch. view bombers end up giving the egg like 25000 views on first day 7.

instead of getting sick at day 7 with the 25000 it continues hatching normally. and instead will get sick after say 1 mil views. so view bombers have to work super hard to get the eggs sick, meanwhile the eggs hatch normally with only 1000 views really needed to fully hatch. (the view # are ridiculous just for this ex. i really don't believe the sickness # should be like a mil.)

 

AND maybe this should only apply to the holiday specific breeds as they come only so many times a year. meanwhile every other dragon can be snagged or breed year round.

 

another suggestion is a BSA of "anti pestilence" with a VERY high cool down, like a few months or heck a full year. so you can protect eggs, but not fully spam the action unless you collect a MASSIVE hoard of that BSA holding dragon. making them something worth saving until the holidays.

[anetofstars]

I support the OP. We all have enough stress to be going on with, especially during December. Making DC less stressful during the holidays would increase enjoyment for us dragontenders.

[TJ09]

I'm not strictly against the concept, but the data doesn't support the hypothesis that this is an issue to be solved. Despite the significant bump in activity during holidays, the raw number of sick eggs is relatively unchanged, and so the percentage of eggs that are sick is lower than normal.