Zombie Dragons... never gonna have one

[Fuzzbucket]

2 hours ago, Naruhina_94 said:

 

A simple sentence that says: the dragon has died leaves everything up to the player: how, why, when he died etc... A detailed description of murder does not.

I left multiple options because if one or more of them are implemented they would still give more freedom of choice than currently it is now. Also it shows how the discussion is progressing and why certain choices were changed/abandoned.

 

If it dies - that was because you said it had to die. That's killing it, no matter how you try and clean it up.

[Shadowdrake]

I think "zombies can only be made by killing a dragon" is an example of circular arguing: "Right now zombies can only be made by killing things, so zombies should only be made by killing things." If you're going to argue against this idea of making zombies from nothing, this logic is a terrible way to do so.

 

Personally, I would love a way to make more zombies without being limited by kill slots but making it basically a summon wouldn't really satisfy anyone at all in the long run, unless it becomes over-complicated. If you're a sprite collector, eventually you're going to have a bunch of spares of this type and none of that type despite rolling over and over for what is presumably a very low chance of getting any zombie, at which point someone will suggest being able to select the type of dragon you're "summoning" from the dead (because I doubt TJ will release such an action with that in mind). Also I'm pretty sure TJ has expressed dislike for "summoning" a dragon from nothing in the past, so it's unlikely to be made anyway.

[LadyLyzar]

At this point we are arguing semantics.

 

The site has a nearly infinite number of methods to play.  You can choose to collect almost any sprite that you desire, in almost any number you desire.

 

I'm not a huge fan of killing things but they are pixels and I made some of them.  If anything I should feel more attached, I guess?  However it is an optional game play mechanic and not actual living things.

 

As adult dragons do NOT die on their own, you have to use the Kill action if you want to make a zombie.  Also, wantonly killing dragons is already frowned upon both by the limit and the text.  Killing something isn't pretty, and it shouldn't be.  Also, if you were being merciful to something, you wouldn't defile its remains by making it an undead abomination.  (Yes I have been playing D&D lately...)

 

Releasing to the wilderness has already been given as a "kinder" way of removing adult and frozen dragons you do not want.  I see no point in a "mercy killing" both for this reason, and that making a zombie in such a way makes no logical sense to me.

Edited September 30, 2020 by LadyLyzar
Missed a letter.

[Naruhina_94]

59 minutes ago, LadyLyzar said:

At this point we are arguing semantics.

 

The site has a nearly infinite number of methods to play.  You can choose to collect almost any sprite that you desire, in almost any number you desire.

 

I'm not a huge fan of killing things but they are pixels and I made some of them.  If anything I should feel more attached, I guess?  However it is an optional game play mechanic and not actual living things.

 

As adult dragons do NOT die on their own, you have to use the Kill action if you want to make a zombie.  Also, wantonly killing dragons is already frowned upon both by the limit and the text.  Killing something isn't pretty, and it shouldn't be.  Also, if you were being merciful to something, you wouldn't defile its remains by making it an undead abomination.  (Yes I have been playing D&D lately...)

 

Releasing to the wilderness has already been given as a "kinder" way of removing adult and frozen dragons you do not want.  I see no point in a "mercy killing" both for this reason, and that making a zombie in such a way makes no logical sense to me.

 

I don't see the action of reviving a dragon as an evil thing. Even if I just try and get a zombie instead I would see it as a failed attempt at doing something good. Lore and in game wise the dragon would have died in an unspecified manner, then the owner would have tried to revive it and failed. I don't see a malicious way of using and corrupting the body. The "Revive" description is describing someone trying to rescue the creature, not someone that purposely is trying to make an undead abomination.

I think that any back lore intention, good or evil, could be left to the player to decide... unless you want to leave the sentence as it stand because is a specific way to punish and guilt trip those who want to collect zombies... I don't see the need of limiting the death of the dragon to murder alone or to anything in general.

 

 

Edited September 30, 2020 by Naruhina_94

[HeatherMarie]

49 minutes ago, Naruhina_94 said:

 

I don't see the action of reviving a dragon as an evil thing. Even if I just try and get a zombie instead I would see it as a failed attempt at doing something good. Lore and in game wise the dragon would have died in an unspecified manner, then the owner would have tried to revive it and failed. I don't see a malicious way of using and corrupting the body. The "Revive" description is describing someone trying to rescue the creature, not someone that purposely is trying to make an undead abomination.

I think that any back lore intention, good or evil, could be left to the player to decide... unless you want to leave the sentence as it stand because is a specific way to punish and guilt trip those who want to collect zombies... I don't see the need of limiting the death of the dragon to murder alone or to anything in general.

 

 

 

It's really not, though. You (general 'you', pointing to many different posts in this thread) are reading into it that way, but that's not actually what the sentence says or means at all. The sentence as it stands right now is *meant* to show the effect of *killing* a dragon. That's it. The fact that adult zombies can currently only be made through that action does *not* mean that people are being 'punished' and guilted for making zombies. That's faulty logic. They are being guilted for killing. As you say, reviving isn't 'meant' to make zombies, well neither is killing. Zombie-ing is currently just a side-effect of those actions, really. (I feel this is an important distinction that should be considered in this thread, I'm not meaning to call out anyone or anything like that.)

 

Based on the ridiculously low chances of actually *getting* zombies in the first place, I would totally support some BSA or alternative way to get zombies *if* it includes a higher chance of success. Like, killing/reviving could stay at the current chances, but if you want to do this-or-that as well it could make it a better chance. I do not support introducing completely new mechanics *just* to ease people's minds about killing dragons though. 

[Fuzzbucket]

You know when you go to revive that you are aiming at creating a monster. There is no  "good" use for reviving something. Look at all the descriptions.

Hatchling

"It's an undead baby dragon, produced by a failed magical spell. It probably would be cute if it weren't partially decayed."

Mature Hatchling

"It's an undead baby dragon, produced by a failed magical spell. It probably would be cute if it weren't partially decayed.
And look! It somehow managed to grow wings despite being dead."

Adult

"Failed attempts to experiment with magic often result in transforming dragons into these hellish creatures. They are extremely dangerous, and will mindlessly kill any living creature without regard to friend or foe."

 

No-one is going to try to revive a dead dragon just to bring back an ordinary one. (well, unless you accidentally killed a CB gold !)

[Shadowdrake]

50 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

There is no  "good" use for reviving something.

Sick or forgotten hatchlings beg to differ.

[Keileon]

Whether veteran players use it for that or not is irrelevant, the main function of the Revive action is to revive a dread dragon, not to raise it as a zombie. Though I've never actually seen a hatchling die to sickness, the option to revive a forgotten hatchling is a great safety net for newer players.

[Fuzzbucket]

2 hours ago, Shadowdrake said:

Sick or forgotten hatchlings beg to differ.

 

You can't revive a sick/forgotten hatchling; it has to be dead.

 

2 hours ago, Keileon said:

Whether veteran players use it for that or not is irrelevant, the main function of the Revive action is to revive a dread dragon, not to raise it as a zombie. Though I've never actually seen a hatchling die to sickness, the option to revive a forgotten hatchling is a great safety net for newer players.

 

I have deliberately let a sick hatching die for exactly the reason of zombification. More than once. Sure it's a safety net - but in my experience, VERY few return as the original; dragon; it seems to be usually permanent death, and very occasionally a zombie - and even more occasionally, the original breed.. Does anyone have stats on that - I note that I have apparently a whole three "failed zombie" attempts on my own scroll. And I haven't abandoned any.

[DragonLady86]

20 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

You can't revive a sick/forgotten hatchling; it has to be dead.

 

 

I have deliberately let a sick hatching die for exactly the reason of zombification. More than once. Sure it's a safety net - but in my experience, VERY few return as the original; dragon; it seems to be usually permanent death, and very occasionally a zombie - and even more occasionally, the original breed.. Does anyone have stats on that - I note that I have apparently a whole three "failed zombie" attempts on my own scroll. And I haven't abandoned any.

35 zombies 6 returned to life (I still keep them in my undead group) and id estimate at least a 100 turned to to dust (dont track that, but I only try on Halloween, and usually only 5 adults because I always miss time it for a second group plus as many hatchlings as I can get to die in the fog.) So I would agree reanimating is rarer than zombieing 

[HeatherMarie]

10 hours ago, Keileon said:

Whether veteran players use it for that or not is irrelevant, the main function of the Revive action is to revive a dread dragon, not to raise it as a zombie. Though I've never actually seen a hatchling die to sickness, the option to revive a forgotten hatchling is a great safety net for newer players.

 

This! Regardless of what many/most players might use these actions for, both 'kill' and 'revive' are *not* specifically about making zombies. (And therefore, as I said before, the text is not meant to 'shame' or guilt people for wanting zombies.)

And actually, nothing about the text we get while doing those two actions even hints at zombies at all. Zombies really are an 'unintended' side-effect. (Oh, and in making these screenshots I just got a successful revive of the original dragon, which happens more often than I want!)

 

      

[Shadowdrake]

9 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

You can't revive a sick/forgotten hatchling; it has to be dead.

I was referring to your argument that "there is no good reason to use revive" which is patently untrue, though others have worded my argument better.

 

 

 

Also, I believe zombie odds may cut into the chance of getting a regular revive; I get more regular revives on regular nights than 31sts. So if you wait for zombie days, then of course you'll get fewer regular revives.

[Keileon]

It should be noted that the stats of zombie vs revive are naturally skewed-- most players use revive for zomies, yes, which means that they're using the action during heightened zombie chances-- which means that they're going to get more zombies than revives.

[Babbage]

I support Naruhina's BSA ideas for alternative ways of getting zombies. Mercy, Experiment, and going to the graveyard to get a random dragon all seem pretty cool. Not sure about Cure/Curse though. Also for Experiment, having a chance for the dragon to disagree with the action and refuse to take part would be nice. Maybe the refusal could be permanent, also, like breeding refusals?

As it stands, I agree that the current process of getting adult zombies is bad for sensitive users who may not want to read text like that and don't want to personally betray their dragons. Other users should be supporting them so they can enjoy the game. That is all.

[olympe]

12 minutes ago, ThatOneBab said:

As it stands, I agree that the current process of getting adult zombies is bad for sensitive users who may not want to read text like that and don't want to personally betray their dragons. Other users should be supporting them so they can enjoy the game. That is all.

If you're too sensitive, you really shouldn't want undead, highly dangerous (if not lethal) and partially rotten dragons on your scroll. 😕 And willy-nilly killing a creature you raised - be it a pet or a pixel dragon - in and of itself is a betrayal. Especially if your reason for doing so is reviving them as a rotten corpse.

[Keileon]

18 minutes ago, ThatOneBab said:

As it stands, I agree that the current process of getting adult zombies is bad for sensitive users who may not want to read text like that and don't want to personally betray their dragons. Other users should be supporting them so they can enjoy the game. That is all.

(emphasis mine)

 

This is kind of a fallacy and not a good debating tactic, imo, the mentality of "people should agree with this group because of x y and z" and implying that they're not being nice if they don't. As it stands, I don't see why a sensitive user would want a reanimated, partially rotted, mindlessly violent dragon corpse in the first place if they can't just avert their eyes to the kill text.

[Fuzzbucket]

7 minutes ago, Keileon said:

(emphasis mine)

 

This is kind of a fallacy and not a good debating tactic, imo, the mentality of "people should agree with this group because of x y and z" and implying that they're not being nice if they don't. As it stands, I don't see why a sensitive user would want a reanimated, partially rotted, mindlessly violent dragon corpse in the first place if they can't just avert their eyes to the kill text.

 

Applauds. My view precisely.

[KrazyKarp]

Alternative ways of getting Undeads is cool for just, more ways to get them. For just avoiding the kill text we can just... change the kill text. It's as simple as that.

[Naruhina_94]

16 minutes ago, Keileon said:

(emphasis mine)

 

This is kind of a fallacy and not a good debating tactic, imo, the mentality of "people should agree with this group because of x y and z" and implying that they're not being nice if they don't. As it stands, I don't see why a sensitive user would want a reanimated, partially rotted, mindlessly violent dragon corpse in the first place if they can't just avert their eyes to the kill text.

 

Averting eyes is as easy as chaning 4 words of a sentence. However the second option makes a large portion of people happy while causing no harm to the game whatsoever at the same time.

I don't believe that we're having a nice attitude here... I mean, it's not just me who's saying that I'm sorry to be forced to betray my dragons in order to obtain another sprite, there are multiple users who feel the same. It's not a good feeling. To me and everyone else feeling this way the general answer I read in this topic is: "we don't find the fact that you guys are feeling bad relevant enough to make a change. It's ok, just don't look at the sentence or don't collect all the sprites" which to me equals to a pretty brutal "you feel bad? deal with it, you shouldn't even do this, this and that then." 

I DO currently collect zombies. I DO close my eyes and make up sad stories in dragon descritions for them. I also DO see space for improvment in order to make the roleplay side of it all slighty more fitting to everyone taste.

 

Spoiler

While his eyes were closing Tutankhamon knew, his friend was doing the right thing. His human was crying, but the dragon itself asked to end his pain. However they both didn't know that this illness had an evil gift: a new dark life. Her human, horrified for his new state of madness, acted on impulse. She grab a dense crystal of life, a sliver big as her fist and she stuck it with all her strength in his heart. The anger remained, but a glimmer of awareness illuminated his eyes, too. This is the only reason he didn't attack her, but ran away instead. Tutankhamon is now back to the desert, fighting an internal battle between good and evil, to find peace. He found and warned other dragons who had the same disease. Some decided to find the human and do the same thing, refusing to go mad after death. Tutankhamon became the Ancestor of Morti, he's protecting and guiding them. It doesn't matter what they were in life: Two heads, Wyverns, Wyrms, Easterns. Death makes everyone equal.

 

Quote

Alternative ways of getting Undeads is cool for just, more ways to get them. For just avoiding the kill text we can just... change the kill text. It's as simple as that.

 

Thank you KrazyKarp. I still didn't get why keeping the current sentence is so fundamental and important to the game. Killing is indeed a bad thing and should be rapresented as such, however the last time I checked the current purpose of the game is raising, adopting, breeding and caring for the stuff in our scroll... if something is offplace it's definetly the killing action...

A neutral line would solve every doubt... The dragon is dead. Period. it's neutral, it could have died of natural causes, betrayed, violently killed, suicided, ate too much food and exploded, thought he was a fish and drowned and who knows more! It wouldn't guilt trip anyone, it wouldn't change the death aspect of it or anything.

 

BTW Fuzzbuket your lines contraddict each other here. Roleplay-wise every single dragonkeeper (not player, I mean the dragonkeeper, the one we're pretending to be) is actually trying to revive the dragon as it was before, he/she's not trying to make a zombie. The dragonkeeper failed to revive it. It's an undead baby dragon, produced by a failed magical spell. The main goal of the player may actually be to collect a zombie, but that's irrelevant since, as long as it isn't displayed, that thought doesn't exists in game and as a result it doesn't effect the roleplay.

[Keileon]

57 minutes ago, Naruhina_94 said:

 

Averting eyes is as easy as chaning 4 words of a sentence. However the second option makes a large portion of people happy while causing no harm to the game whatsoever at the same time.

I don't believe that we're having a nice attitude here... I mean, it's not just me who's saying that I'm sorry to be forced to betray my dragons in order to obtain another sprite, there are multiple users who feel the same. It's not a good feeling. To me and everyone else feeling this way the general answer I read in this topic is: "we don't find the fact that you guys are feeling bad relevant enough to make a change. It's ok, just don't look at the sentence or don't collect all the sprites" which to me equals to a pretty brutal "you feel bad? deal with it, you shouldn't even do this, this and that then." 

I DO currently collect zombies. I DO close my eyes and make up sad stories in dragon descritions for them. I also DO see space for improvment in order to make the roleplay side of it all slighty more fitting to everyone taste.it doesn't effect the roleplay.

Are you forgetting the part where I've repeatedly said I support just changing the text?

[milo]

I think it's not our place to judge or police other people based on how sensitive they are, nor is it okay to guilt people into agreeing with us because it's morally right. What I do think is relevant to this suggestion forum is the concern that the game is appropriate for all ages. DC says it's for ages 13 and up, and the current kill message, as it stands, isn't as age-friendly as the rest of the site. Zombies are okay as a neutral concept, without gore (there are lots of childrens' movies with zombie characters!) but the current kill message is rather alarming and extreme. Relative to the rest of the site, it reads as textual gore. I know there are arguments on this thread that say the shock of the message is purposeful, but I don't think most 13 year old kids would enjoy stumbling upon it unexpectedly. At 13, it would've upset me! The site is PG 13, and the content should be too. That's why there are no inappropriate names or descriptions allowed. Why should there be a gorey and not kid-friendly message on the site? I am fully in favor of a simple change to the sentence. "The dragon is dead" or something to the same effect is perfect. It communicates the necessary information, has no consequences to anything on the site, is age appropriate, neutral, and open to all lore interpretations. 

 

(I don't mean to correlate sensitivity to age, but I do think age ratings help people make choices about what content they want to consume. For example, I'm 21, but I'm sensitive to violence in movies, so I avoid ones rated R and stick to PG 13 stuff! People who are sensitive to violent themes should be able to use DC without encountering those things.)

Edited October 1, 2020 by milo
Typo uwu ;-;

[Jazeki]

Uhhh. I don't think we should be deciding what counts as PG-13 or what most teenagers/DC users do and do not like. That's up to TJ. There are plenty of teenagers who are super into gore (textual or otherwise), so as far as we know, this could be on the tame side of things.

 

*ETA for clarification that I am not saying that most DC players are teenagers. 

 

 

Edited October 1, 2020 by Jazeki

[milo]

PG 13 as a rating pretty much means "violence without gore." A quick google search can provide some helpful examples. 

 

Anyway, I did note in my comment that I didn't want to equate age with sensitivity to violence. I'm older and I dislike gore, and I remember having friends in high school who were very enthusiastic about gore despite being teenagers at the time. Sensitivity has nothing to do with age on a person-to-person basis, but sites that advertise that they are appropriate for a certain age group should uphold the general conventions associated with age ratings, as they are helpful to people of all ages who want to know how violent or inappropriate something is before investing time and energy into it. I hope that clarifies my comment!

[Babbage]

I said what I said because other users just.. don't seem to care that people are sensitive, and that not everyone is sensitive in the same way. As in, someone might be disturbed by the Kill action's success wording, but might be fine with the concept of undeads. Or the other way around. Rewording an action's success to include more of the userbase wouldn't be a bad thing, but telling people to simply avert their eyes or get over it or otherwise ignore it is a bad thing, you dig?

To clarify, I support both adding more actions and rewording Kill's success texts. Rewording has more priority to me personally.

[Jazeki]

30 minutes ago, milo said:

PG 13 as a rating pretty much means "violence without gore." A quick google search can provide some helpful examples. 

 

 

Actually, it just means parental guidance suggested because material may not be appropriate for children under 13.  The user rating on here  probably refers to Dragon Cave abiding by COPPA, like most internet sites.