Change "Kill" Text for Dragons and Hatchlings

[Estellux]

I think changing the flavor text to something less 'extreme' or 'finger-pointing' is fine if doesn't actually change the mechanics of killing the dragons. Some folks don't like spicy flavors, as it were, and that shouldn't keep them from what is a more expanded part of the game. (And I say this as someone who goes full Arthas with the dragon-slaying come zombie time).

[random_dragon_collector]

I don't know...if people don't like the text, then don't kill dragons.

[olympe]

I honestly don't get the whole "inclusivity" debate. If you're too sensitive to kill your dragons, simply don't kill your dragons. But telling everyone you're too sensitive for the evil killing text, but want even more evil undead dragons on your scroll despite your hypersensitivity, I pretty much lose all respect I had for your first point. Because they pretty much go against each other. And, even though zombies haven't been brought up in here, it's where the whole discussion started. Plus, what else do you need the kill action for? Purging your scroll? There are other options like abandoning. Collecting Tombstones? You could still let hatchies run out of time to avoid the kill message. 

 

So, what this discussion boils down to is this: "I want evil, rotting undead dragons on my scroll, but I'm too sensitive for the awful killing message. No, I cannot do without undead dragons. No, I'm not able to skip the message or just not read it. Change it!" All of this garnished with politically correct "inclusiveness" as a reason. Or claiming that this is necessary for making DC more family-friendly. (Do we really want to teach young teens that killing a sentient being is just a normal, socially acceptable thing to do? Or is it better to give them a message that implies otherwise?)

 

Choices and actions do have consequences. The killing text is the consequence for killing your dragon.

 

 

[random_dragon_collector]

1 minute ago, olympe said:

I honestly don't get the whole "inclusivity" debate. If you're too sensitive to kill your dragons, simply don't kill your dragons. But telling everyone you're too sensitive for the evil killing text, but want even more evil undead dragons on your scroll despite your hypersensitivity, I pretty much lose all respect I had for your first point.

 

 

 

 

Also--you can fog hatchlings until they die and get a zombie that way.  I'd keep the text as is.

[Sundew]

This is needlessly rude; you can disagree without telling people how little respect you have for them.

 

Other people have brought up additional reasons for a text change such as simply opening up more canon possibilities for how and why the death happens.

 

I'm also not sure how neutral text preaches that killing animals is a good thing? The text are proposing is along the lines of the text we see when we smash an egg, which is also canonically a developed dragon. I've also made an argument for Neglected flavor text being neutral. Do you feel that the current egg killing text encourages teenagers to kill developing animals, or that NDs' flavor text makes kids think it's a good idea to neglect animals? The point here is neutrality... none of us are arguing for text that makes killing seem like a positive thing.

 

The consequence of killing a dragon is a dead dragon. That's all it needs to be.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Sundew

[olympe]

1 minute ago, Sundew said:

This is kinda needlessly rude; you can disagree without telling people how little respect you have for them.

I never told anyone I didn't have respect for them, I told them I didn't have respect for their reasoning. Which is a *very* different thing. I can disagree with people who, for example, refuse to wear masks. It doesn't necessary follow that I hate them.

[Odeen]

My understanding of why the text sounds so bad is that it's supposed to make you feel bad about doing it. In a game about raising and breeding dragons, in which dragons live forever until someone kills them, it seems entirely in line with the flavor of game that killing your dragons is something the game gives you negative feedback for doing. 

 

This is not the only, or even most indicative, mechanic that demonstrates a pretty universal ludology on DC that punishes the player for mistreating their dragons. If an egg dies on your scroll for any reason, you're stuck staring at the said remains for 2 weeks, and depending on how it died it still takes up space for a day afterward. If an adult dragon or hatchling dies, you stare at its tombstone forever (if zombie) or for 2 weeks. If you give your egg or hatchling too much attention you get angry sickness alerts until you correct your husbandry of that creature. Neglected dragons are created by neglecting dragons, and while the description doesn't point the finger at you it's still obvious the dragon has suffered tremendously. This game punishes users for abusing their dragons from square one - that is an intrinsic part of the game.

 

So why have zombies and neglected dragons if the game is punishing you for trying to make them? Same reason you have low karma dialogue and story options in RPGs - some people like playing that way. But if someone wants to play through the game picking all the good karma options because - like me - they can't even be mean to an NPC, then they also shouldn't expect to be able to unlock that really cool Bad Guy (tm) legendary armor set from the low karma gameplay path. It's a choice that is being made by the player. 

 

And,  at the end of the day, the dragons are no more or less real than the text being described to kill them, and they're no more or less dead, and whether you use a kill action that says you stabbed them mercilessly or one that says they suddenly keeled over, you still used the kill action to make them dead.

 

TL;DR: I think the point is you're supposed to feel bad for killing your dragons, in which case the text is working as intended. 

 

 

Edited October 2, 2020 by Odeen
clarification

[Sundew]

1 minute ago, olympe said:

I never told anyone I didn't have respect for them, I told them I didn't have respect for their reasoning. Which is a *very* different thing. I can disagree with people who, for example, refuse to wear masks. It doesn't necessary follow that I hate them.

My apologies, I misread the "first point" part of your original post. ^^;

[cyradis4]

I'm with Odeen. Actions have consequences, and this game has consequences for "mistreating" your pixel dragons. 

 

If you want to have all the sprites, you should have to make that choice and face the message. It is, after all, just a message about a set of pixels. 

 

Cheers!
C4. 

[Keileon]

I should rephrase-- it's not that I find the text needlessly dark or negative. I do find it guilting, but that's not what I mean by "out of place". What I mean is that the text for killing a dragon or hatchling is so ridiculously melodramatic that if you aren't sensitive to that kind of thing, there's a good chance you might just not take it seriously. It's not necessarily that it's uncomfortable, it's that it's extremely edgy.

 

"You smash the egg, killing the thing" is a very different tone from "You stab the thing with a knife and it stares at you in its last dying moments wondering why oh why you could do such a thing".

 

It just doesn't match the rest of the site, aside from... messages meant as jokes, like killing a Chicken.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Keileon

[KrazyKarp]

It seems to just boil down to, there are people who have issue with the kill message, but would anyone actually be opposed to just "The dragon dies"? Like, no one would vehemently be attached to the current kill message, would they? Everyone would be ok with a simpler message. So if you feel neutral about this then that's cool, if you're against it then... there's really no reason to be. As usual, people are looking way too deep into things here in the suggestions forum.

[random_dragon_collector]

1 hour ago, Odeen said:

My understanding of why the text sounds so bad is that it's supposed to make you feel bad about doing it. In a game about raising and breeding dragons, in which dragons live forever until someone kills them, it seems entirely in line with the flavor of game that killing your dragons is something the game gives you negative feedback for doing. 

 

 

 

+1

 

 

@KrazyKarp I disagree with you--I'm attached to the current message.  It's part of the game.

Edited October 2, 2020 by random_dragon_collector

[Sanguine-Roku]

Can I say that I agree with changing the text too, but for a different reason? How can you kill a literal mountain with a puny frikkin knife? I think the kill text should be replaced with an attempt at a necromantic ritual, since that's the only reason people kill dragons anyway. Combine it with revive so you can skip the middle man.

 

Quote

You gather your materials and preform the ritual, causing the dragon's flesh to rot and its body to be animated.

Quote

You gather your materials and preform the ritual, but something goes wrong, leaving the dragon unchanged.

Quote

You gather your materials and preform the ritual, but something goes wrong, causing the dragon to die.

 

 

[Keileon]

8 minutes ago, Sanguine Roku said:

I think the kill text should be replaced with an attempt at a necromantic ritual, since that's the only reason people kill dragons anyway. Combine it with revive so you can skip the middle man.

There's reasons to kill besides making zombies. Some people like to make tombstone lineages, deadlining messy rares/holidays is a thing, and sometimes people just want an Enraged Aegis without taking up a slot.

[Sanguine-Roku]

1 minute ago, Keileon said:

There's reasons to kill besides making zombies. Some people like to make tombstone lineages, deadlining messy rares/holidays is a thing, and sometimes people just want an Enraged Aegis without taking up a slot.

Fair enough. I do think people are getting *way* too heated about it, though

[Pilauli]

 

2 hours ago, olympe said:

(Do we really want to teach young teens that killing a sentient being is just a normal, socially acceptable thing to do? Or is it better to give them a message that implies otherwise?)

 

Tell me this: in a game with just as much death, which is better?  Dramatic, visceral death that will try to make people feel as bad about killing an imaginary thing and perhaps desensitize them to the feelings that would come with killing real humans?  Or abstract "death" that nobody could possibly mistake for a real-life murder?

Or in other words, which is more likely to raise school shooters?  Killing zombies in some violent shooter, or killing pawns in Chess?

 

---

 

Some people seem think the killing text is intended to act as a sort of punishment.  (I haven't seen TJ say anything either way on the issue, so I can't be sure whether it is or not.)  BUT IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY FOR EVERYONE.

6 hours ago, purplehaze said:

I have learned to avoid reading the message

 

2 hours ago, Keileon said:

so ridiculously melodramatic that if you aren't sensitive to that kind of thing, there's a good chance you might just not take it seriously

And I myself take the view that they are pixels, so they can't really "wonder why I betrayed" them, so reading the message doesn't bother me.

 

So some people ignore it and some aren't even bothered by it!  So, if it is supposed to make players feel bad, then the text IS NOT working as intended.

 

Okay, yes, it makes some people feel bad.  Why should they have to feel more bad than anyone else for the same actions?

 

There are also ways to kill dragons without seeing the text, like fogging hatchlings to death.  Are we going to teach people that starving someone to death is better than stabbing them?  That'll be great for the world.  The text penalizes certain methods of killing more than others, in a way that doesn't necessarily make any sense from a moral standpoint.

 

---

 

2 hours ago, cyradis4 said:

I'm with Odeen. Actions have consequences, and this game has consequences for "mistreating" your pixel dragons. 

 

If you want to have all the sprites, you should have to make that choice and face the message. It is, after all, just a message about a set of pixels.

It's just pixels.  Implying we shouldn't feel too guilty, right?  So why the message that tries to induce guilt?

Do you mean that the message makes you feel the right amount guilty for your actions?

 

Lots of people anthropomorphize their pixels more or less, and read/don't-read/interpret the message differently from you.  The same "message about a set of pixels" is going to affect different people differently.  It won't make them all feel the "right" level of guilty.

 

---

 

As I've said before, none of the proposed kill messages bother me personally, in and of themselves.

 

However, the fact that they do bother some people (and only some people) bothers me because of my desire for fairness, and the fact that they are not evenly distributed (fogging hatchlings to death has no kill message, for example) bothers me because of my desire for consistency.

Edited October 3, 2020 by Pilauli
Remembered to mention my opinion of killing pixels to illustrate my "it doesn't work that way for everyone" point.

[Malcorium]

25 minutes ago, Pilauli said:

Or in other words, which is more likely to raise school shooters?  Killing zombies in some violent shooter, or killing pawns in Chess?

Im sorry but are we really doing the "videogames cause violence" thing in the year of our lord 2020. Y'all nobody's gonna go out to murder people because of a line of flavor text about killing a dragon smh

 

That said im in support to change it to be more neutral because it is a needless guilt trip and completionism is a big part of this game, so why be locked out of literally 54 (18 zombie types + freezies) sprites that way.

[Paintra]

If seeing the dead body for two weeks isn't guilt enough, I don't know what is. The kill message is ancient and doesn't fit in with the rest of the "negative" action methods. That's the gist of my argument. 

 

I'm going to be taking a step back from this thread now because I feel like I've made the points I wish to make and continuing to discuss it is making me anxious.

[Pilauli]

1 minute ago, Malcorium said:

Im sorry but are we really doing the "videogames cause violence" thing in the year of our lord 2020.

If you want to compare it to Mario squishing goombas instead of chess pawns, that works fine, too.  (I admit that comparing a video game to a board game is not quite fair.)

 

I'm not trying to say video games cause violence.  However, I think violent video games are a good analogy for dramatic descriptions of dragon-murder, and I think it's pretty common "knowledge" that people worry about the graphic and realistic ones more than the abstract/non-detailed/cartoony ones.

 

Olympe said something that I interpreted like this:

We don't want DC to teach people that killing is normal and acceptable, so we should make sure the kill message emphasizes that killing is bad.

 

I was trying to point out that people do kill dragons in this game, and making the kill message feel less like real killing means that there is less chance of desensitizing people to real killing.

Unless none of the possible kill messages have any risk of desensitizing people, in which case, there's no need to bring that concern into either side of this argument.

[KrazyKarp]

What... what is happening to this thread.

 

3 hours ago, olympe said:

All of this garnished with politically correct "inclusiveness" as a reason. Or claiming that this is necessary for making DC more family-friendly. (Do we really want to teach young teens that killing a sentient being is just a normal, socially acceptable thing to do? Or is it better to give them a message that implies otherwise?)

For starters, "political correctness" is taking it to an extreme degree. It's just, some people don't like the kill message. That's it. Really, that's all there is to it. It's not any deeper than that.

 

I'm also incredibly confused by the even more extreme statement you make afterwards. Why would changing the kill message on this game teach young people that killing is socially acceptable? That's a really bizarre thing to say that you're going to need to provide quite a bit of justification on if you want to be taken seriously.

 

[HeatherMarie]

I very much agree with Odeen about why we have the kill message we have, and it's purpose. 

 

However, if people want it changed, I honestly don't think the suggestions in the OP go far enough the other way. 

Kill: You kill the dragon, and watch the light fade from its eyes as its body goes still.

Why oh why do we need to watch the light fade from our dragon's eyes? Like, imo that's still on the same level as what we have now. That's guilting, too. If we want a more neutral death message, it should be something more like 'You attempt to kill the dragon and are successful'. No emotions, no guilt, no drama. 

 

 

 

[Pilauli]

Yeah, I like that one.

 

For failure, how about this?  "You did not successfully kill the dragon.  You can try again tomorrow."

[Keileon]

20 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

I very much agree with Odeen about why we have the kill message we have, and it's purpose. 

 

However, if people want it changed, I honestly don't think the suggestions in the OP go far enough the other way. 

Kill: You kill the dragon, and watch the light fade from its eyes as its body goes still.

Why oh why do we need to watch the light fade from our dragon's eyes? Like, imo that's still on the same level as what we have now. That's guilting, too. If we want a more neutral death message, it should be something more like 'You attempt to kill the dragon and are successful'. No emotions, no guilt, no drama.

That one was an example of similar effect, less guilt/implications. I myself prefer a much more neutral approach, but it was just meant to show how you could have the same effect with a less charged tone.

Edited October 3, 2020 by Keileon

[Nine]

I am rather amused this came up after so many years. Killing dragons to make zombies is so auto-pilot for me now-- beyond boring-- I couldn't even remember the text.

 

9 hours ago, tjekan said:

But if it's making people feel like their style is cramped, it's no skin of my nose if it gets changed. Maybe they want to imagine strangling their dragons to death with a steel garrotte, who am I to judge?

 

7 hours ago, Sanguine Roku said:

Can I say that I agree with changing the text too, but for a different reason? How can you kill a literal mountain with a puny frikkin knife?

 

These aren't bad ideas. It would be neat if instead of changing the current text, we got more flavor options like in a RPG. Clicking 'Kill' brings you to a menu with the usual choices like stabbing with a sword or poisoning it, as some say they prefer the less hands-on method. Or you could have a choice for using magic to kill it, I guess the pacifist option. A nice little choose-your-murder flavor.

 

Utterly pointless and I know it'll never happen, but DC is so vanilla it can't hurt to have a few more roleplay elements added to it. Yeah, as inconvenient as it will be to click another link in order to kill things, I suppose I could experience schadenfreude from knowing the pixel dragon who dodged 20 times in a row just got magicked to death.

 

(also maybe make dodging a 0% chance during the 31st/Halloween thanks)

[Stromboli]

29 minutes ago, Nine said:

Clicking 'Kill' brings you to a menu with the usual choices like stabbing with a sword or poisoning it, as some say they prefer the less hands-on method. Or you could have a choice for using magic to kill it, I guess the pacifist option. A nice little choose-your-murder flavor.

 

Aw man, this is making me think of the BitLife game's murder dropdown. Atomic Wedgie kills, ftw. 🤣

 

The choose-your-method option would be kind of interesting. At the end of the day, it's really just flavor text. I don't feel particularly strongly about it right now, so it wouldn't bother me if it changed, y'know?