Creature happiness/dying suggestion

sungrave • 24 July 2013 at 9:12 AM

So I was thinking about it sometimes, that some users leave without a sign or forget about the page or just their other accounts and don't sign in. And when Eggcave pops up in their mind they come back and facepalms that all of their creatures have died since nobody took care of them. So I would suggest or ask about what if the creatures happiness wouldn't decrease if the eggcaver doesn't sign in to play. So if they don't appear for a week or two,their creatures happiness would be the same when they last signed in. Of course if they come online every day and don't feed the creatures happiness would decrease so it would connected to the signing ins not to the days. I know that this is an adoption page and we should be responsible and take care of our creatures. I'm just thinking about those who can't come up everyday because of holidays, lost internet connections, broken computers or phones, school work etc. Or simply go on a hiatus and haven't got enough ec or friends to immortalize or take care or etc. Or that secret storages where they wanna keep their creatures without views,clicks,feeds.

So once more, the suggestion is: creatures' happiness may decrease only when the person signs in.

Come, tell me what ya think~ I'll gladly accept every positive or negative criticism~

karamel • 24 July 2013 at 10:04 AM

@sungrave Just because it may not be unfair doesn't mean that you have to resolve it. There's Resurrection Stones, people that may actually feed your cove whilst you're gone (you'd be surprised at how many people find dying coves), and immortalising. How is this realistic? What about the responsibility?

Also, if the time was "a week or two", wouldn't the creatures be dead by then? (Assuming the circumstances you listed - "haven't got enough ec or friends to immortalize or take care or etc.")

sungrave • 24 July 2013 at 10:33 AM

@karamel
Hm well it doesn't really concern me, telling the truth I just thought about the others since I heard a lot of time that " I can't buy cc but my creatures died" "I wasn't there and my creatures died so help me pls" but most of the time nobody can help in trading only in feeding so it's all the same ^^" I just popped this up to see how the others think about this.hm well I may put this into the general dicussion rather than here.. Though it wouldn't change in my current opinion if nothing happens and I wouldn't be surprised since I found new dying coves every day I get on to feed as well.. ^^

fakeworld • 7 September 2013 at 7:16 PM

@sungrave

There's actually somewhat a movement here on Eggcave, to help the dying coves from dying (which you can find here). You have to treat your creatures as if they were your babies, or you, someone you had to feed everyday. That's the point of adoptable sites, there's always a responsibility, and without a responsibility the site would be kind of pointless. Unlike others, Eggcave actually has a way for users to retrieve their deceased creatures, and I find that a good thing.

dionaea • 2 October 2013 at 2:42 AM

@sungrave

I agree that forgetting about eggcave is a problem (guilty of it twice), but I think the happiness decrease is integral to eggcave and should stay. A better idea would be to give users the option to have an email sent to them when one or more of their creatures are below a certain amount of happiness at reset.

kollais • 2 October 2013 at 9:27 AM

@sungrave

If you worry about dying coves you can help - in this topic.

It's DCF group, and we find and try to immortalise abandoned creatures. That's all we can do for them now.

hathor89 • 7 October 2013 at 3:52 AM

@sungrave I started some other discussion about dying creatures some time before. It's "hopeless" to want to change anything. Only thing you can do is help. E.g. by feeding. Just use the forums search and you will find at least two big topics about feeding dying coves.
Maybe a remembering Email when your creatures are about to die could be possible. That's a really nice idea of @dionaea

metaphor • 16 October 2013 at 2:11 AM

Haha, I actually lost a lot of names on sides recently because I was negligent. Does it suck? Yeah, kind of. But it was my fault for just being more interested in other things. Honestly, though, I like the system. It's a nice way to get names to free up, since people who aren't actively working to immortalize usually aren't active anyway. Names don't rot then.

victorythevaporeon • 17 October 2013 at 3:21 PM

I lost the name Clamperl (A Gen 3 Pokemon although I could get the name back). It's not because i'm not dedicated,it's just I have things going on with an amazing thing called real life.Hence why I probably won't get any Halloween prizes this month. I've been breaking my horse in and actually began to ride her recently.

jennifer • 20 October 2013 at 1:21 PM

@sungrave If someone becomes unactive. The responsible and reasonable thing they would do is treat their creatures to Tim's Food (as you should do everyday).

Agreeing to @fakeworld @kollais and @karamel, you could simply search up an active friend and say 'Hey! I'll be gone for a few days or maybe a week. Could you feed my cove til then?' or hire somebody to do that. It's quite simple actually, and not something to fret about. 😊

krazykat1980 • 21 October 2013 at 7:16 AM

One little problem with asking a friend for help or booking them at Tim's... Awhile back I lost my internet and phone for 3 months unexpectedly... I don't have any friends except my 'significant other' and my neighbors (but back then where I was living I didn't have any neighbors) cause I'm kinda a hermit in a way... and to top it off I couldn't even go to the local library cause they have limited hours and my 'better half' had to work... and even if I drove I couldn't have because I had a sprained ankle... I lost like 80 creatures and had to start over... and that wasn't the first time I lost my internet and probably won't be the last.

I think there SHOULD be a vacation mode kinda thing... maybe set it so that if your egg is going to die and you haven't logged in for awhile it resets the happiness meter to full.... I don't like the fact they can die, and that's why this is the only pet site that I've joined that I've considered quitting... it's bad enough how horribly slow the site loads on dialup, but to have to endure that for at least an hour a day just to feed my own cove so they don't die is frustrating... it takes at least 30 seconds for a pets page to load far enough to click feed and have it count, and that's with pictures disabled! My cove takes 3-5 minutes to load, and I have to do that before adopting so I can see which eggs I already have, and I can't even disable images on that page or I can't read their names since it's included in the image!

Sorry, think I decided to vent a little bit, but yeah... definitely in favor of some kinda safety net if you can't access your account for awhile.

cnm0604 • 1 November 2013 at 12:33 PM

I actually like this 😃

megadash • 1 November 2013 at 11:03 PM

@krazykat1980:
The problem with that is that EVERYONE would ALWAYS have "Vacation Mode" on…or at least until they're all immortals.

My irritation with creatures dying is that it means that you could actually get certain species to go extinct (I could deal with them dying if cave creatures didn't do this). But, then again, if they didn't die, this would just be a over-glorified "adoptables" site with nothing to really do but feed your cove. It's quite the conundrum…

krazykat1980 • 2 November 2013 at 6:29 AM

@megadash
That's easy to solve... just set it so the person can't adopt pets or get paid for clicks when on vacation mode and the pets can't receive clicks... and better yet, have it automatically kick in if a person hasn't logged in for a certain amount of time (or when a creature is about to die... either way shows a person is obviously "on vacation") so that they can't turn off vacation mode, do their stuff, and turn it right back on... In other words... I would turn on vacation mode in my profile... but it wouldn't actually keep my pets from losing happiness until I hadn't logged in for a certain amount of time...

Or of course you could always make it easier to grow them up... seriously, 2000+ clicks? And you can adopt 10 a day... that's 20,000 clicks... Do you have any idea how long it takes to earn that many clicks on Yarolds? And this isn't the only game some of us play... How about changing it so that if we keep them alive for a certain amount of time they become immortal? Or make Tim's add feeds, clicks, and views...

I actually adopted my first eggs on here before I realized they could die and they were so hard to level up... if I'd realized what it was really like I never would have started playing... I was just looking for more pixels to collect lol.

I DON'T spend real money on these online games... but I would be more than willing to pay $10 once to protect my cove from my unreliable internet... I just lost around 10 creatures again because I couldn't log in for a couple days...

Well, it doesn't help that with dialup I don't have the 2-3 hours a day that it would take to feed my cove of 80, so I let them get to about 30 happiness then book Tim's for 1 day to put them back at 100 (since I don't have time to click enough to earn enough to keep them in there permanently)...

I have enough to do with taking care of 5 cats, a house, and a business... I want to be able to collect pets without having to worry about losing them if I can't/don't take care of them too!


And what happens if the server itself crashes or there's a hurricane or something somewhere and hundreds of players lose all their pets to hunger?

whereiscupcake • 2 November 2013 at 9:27 AM

@krazykat1980 I see exactly what you mean with immortalising taking a long time, even with Yarolds which makes it considerably faster. It still takes at least a month for one creature since you need a total 'stat count' (feeds, clicks, views total) of 9000 for immortality.

I think the idea for Tim's supplying view/clicks/feed would be good so long as it is an option. Like, before you pay you can check whether it adds or not. A lot of people use Tim's because they want to keep their creatures alive and happy without raising their feed count or whatever else.

I can also relate on the internet being unreliable, as well as life not allowing as much time online as is 'needed'. I spend a lot of time on here, but there are some times when I don't come online for one day...then I don't on the next...or the next- it's these times when we really do need that automatic 'service'.

megadash • 2 November 2013 at 2:04 PM

@krazykat1980:
Or, it could be as easy as 6,000 views. In order to get your creatures to Lv. 2000 (and therefore, immortality), you need 6,000 of a combination of views, clicks, and feeds.

1 feed already translates to 1 feed, 1 click, and 1 view. I'm part of the EC fansite, Egg Cavern. They have a "Click Exchange" program to help creatures get, at least views and clicks. If the person feeds them as well, and I always do, since I'm already there. That helps their creatures evolve faster. You'd be amazed how easy it is to help a dying egg.

As far as losing the whole site? I'm sure that Ian has a backup and would be willing to help players keep/get their stuff back. He also runs The Daily Neopet and these sites help his income, so I have faith that he's a smart businessman as well as programmer and would have a back up system. I just work simple webpages, but I remember to back up my coding. If a stupid designer (I'm not a programmer by any real stretch of the imagination…I'm actually amazed that I can remember ANY HTML) like me can do that, then I'm quite sure that Ian has thought of all of the reasonable that cold go wrong and taken precautions.

If you're going to say, "What happens if the backup fails," I'll respond that it happens. Failure is always an option…especially with computers. You're going awfully close to the realm of, "What if zombies rise from the dead and aliens take control over the Internet?"

Just find solace that, if you eggs die, you didn't spend any REAL money on them. Then you can decide if you want to quit all together or try again. I know hat you don't believe be, but I understand how you feel. I've been there. What annoys me is the over-inflated economy, but I've decided to stay an try to help figure out help instead of just complaining (and trust me, that's something that I can do QUITE well).