If some flavour text in a game impacts your mental health badly enough to give you hallucinations and trigger anxiety attacks.. sorry, but the answer isn't to change the flavour text. It's a silly little joke about poop. Do you also have a problem with the flavour texts in explore that imply your lion is a pervert or a weirdo?

I say this as someone who has experienced mental illness: clearly you're not in a good place to be playing the event and you should not be doing it for the sake of your health. Period.

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I do agree with Robin. There is a bunch of other events that can impact mental health. I.e. the April event where you had to kill bunnies for the event quests.

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@BritishAce, Ah. I wasn't around for the April event. Glad to have been informed on that.

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Well, i even got a lil put down from the text. I mean, the text couldve been something more funny like "Oh so you left poop? Hmm...might be your best one yet!"
Not a text making you seem like a bad person for leaving it.

I agree with Past...
And if its their first time playing(which for him it is) and you see that, youre not going to know until you see it?
I get hurt when i see/read about people hurting themselves or suicide because ive dealt with it. You cant really say it like its their fault. People take things different ways... You may see it as a joke, but theres actually a lot of people on here who dont like the text from the poops.

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I didn't have the same reactions to the flavor text, BUT as someone who has mental illnesses, I sympathize with having some issues little-to-no people seem to understand/relate to. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if the mods are willing to change any of the scripts/messages, but there is one idea that could be possible:
Maybe Gifting/Pooping options can have different messages for Good lions & Evil lions? Like for Good Kings, pooping can say something along the lines of "Hopefully this'll make them happy!" & the more mean-spirited flavor text can be for the Evil Kings.
That's the best idea I can come up with.

However, if no one is willing to make changes to it, the least I can do is say this:
There are players that favored poop 100 times more than gifts! And the flavor text is only implying the circumstances within the fake lion's realm/universe. Lioden tends to describe a lot of things from an "in-universe" point of view. I mean, in our reality, what use could a real lion possibly have for stink bugs other than eating them? Choosing to poop in another lion's den may realistically serve no purpose in real life, but for us -people playing as these fake lions, it increases the chance for big money!

... I'm sorry if that didn't help at all, but I hope that at least a "Support" from me will help.

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Someone who also hallucinates, and struggles with mental illness; I have to say I agree with robin to an extent. The game, like life, has negative things. The game has killing, animal corpses, imagery of dead humans, etc; it’s not meant to be a super-super cheerful upbeat game in the first place. While it’s definitely funny and entertaining, it does deal with those topics and such. Hell, the flavor text for killing a lioness even calls you a monster. It’s talking about the lions. It’s not a judgement on you as a person.

I see how someone with your condition could be upset by the flavor text of popping, but I really thought it was meant to be funny. Most people I’ve talked to seem to think it was a bit humorous too. I just get the image of a lion pooping on another lion’s den, looking around nervously, did anybody see that? Yeah, that’s a little weird. But it’s a game; not bad-weird. Just a funny concept.

The biggest thing is; you don’t /have/ to poop if you find it upsetting. Pooping is a minuscule part of the event; you can gift, go to the mantis/guelta/wallowing pit, enjoy the encounters in explore, build ugly snuhlions, etc- not pooping isn’t gonna tear the whole event down.

As far as gameplay goes- you can always buy cheap gifts at the monkey business shop for SB, set your lionesses to hunt for carcasses, etcetera. I think the karma change thing is a bit of a bother too, though.

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Have you considered a browser extension that automatically replaces certain words/phrases with words/phrases of your choice? You could use them to change any flavor texts that bother you into ones that don't, without having to worry about getting the mods to change it.

(Just to see if this would be feasible on Lioden, I installed one such extension and replaced the text that appears when you click no support on a suggestion:



And also changed lion to fart:

)

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@Fart, there are such things? :o 1) What is it called, and 2) Is it available on Google Chrome?

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Yes, I'm using Chrome and I just tested out "Word Replacer II" from the Chrome web store. Of course, I don't know if it's the best or only one available, or if there are potential security issues with it.

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I think what Fart provided is a great solution. Lioden is 16+ and it's pretty clear about including many of the not-so-nice aspects of lion life.

"The game, like life, has negative things. The game has killing, animal corpses, imagery of dead humans, etc; it’s not meant to be a super-super cheerful upbeat game in the first place. While it’s definitely funny and entertaining, it does deal with those topics and such."

I totally agree with this statement by noctuema and I think it's actually a core part of what makes lioden different than other similar websites. It makes use of the darker themes in nature to add to the gameplay. In no way does it advertise itself as being super positive and kid friendly. And if you are uncomfortable with the content that a game produces, it's not the game's responsibility to change it.

Some other specific things that caught my eye in your post:

"Some people do prefer to keep their karma in a certain area, but gifting/pooping can mess it up. It doesn't affect me personally, but I've seen more than just a couple of users say it caused them stress. "

Managing priorities around karma and other rewards is a part of the game. When you're in explore you sometimes have to choose between smashing the warthog for food or panicking for impression. I don't think that causes unnecessary "stress" on players.
And like... trying to meet goals you set for yourself in a game may cause you stress but I feel like that's normal and completely voluntary? Like sometimes I get frustrated when I can't complete a certain level in a game I'm playing but I wouldn't petition the game dev to change it to make it easier.
Karma is totally optional and once you get above or below a certain number it's pretty easy to maintain being good/evil enough to get the encounters you want while still participating in events that make you lose or gain karma. If you only do positive/negative karma for roleplay reasons, that is an issue you'll have to solve on your own. If it significantly affects your mental health to make

"With gifting, one of my biggest problems was deciding on what to give a person without them hating it, and having enough items to give in the first place. This is one of the only things I saw about it, really. "

I don't really see how this indicates a problem with the event. If you don't want your name attached to the gift, you can make it anon. If it bothers you that much to leave someone a gift they may not like whether on or off anon, then you can choose not to gift at all. Not having enough items also is not an actual issue. What should they do? I just don't understand this complaint. From your suggestion you said you want a shop where you can buy small items for sb. you can do that by buying items from other users. Some people were using the forums to communicate that they wanted to buy a lot of junk items. you can also set up a raffle with items as tickets. You also mentioned giving people your energy. I don't think that would work because what if you have 100% energy when you're opening your bundles? Then all your energy gifts go to waste. There are already items that give users energy - you can gift those.

"Some users (such as college students) are only able to get online when their school/campus is going, and are unable to get online during breaks. This makes them unable to open their gifts, get currency, and participate overall. "

Again, I don't see how this is the fault of the game?? Like yeah it sucks when we can't be on the game because of real life reasons but that is entirely dependent on your own real life situation?? What are you asking for here? I also don't see how this is an example of the event affecting user's mental health.

"Currency, for many users was difficult to get. The stink beetles, as mentioned in the post linked at the top, required heavily on the users to deliver poops, but the poop flavor text was harsh. In explore, the give out was mediocre, at best. There could have been more/better encounters that'd give stink beetles."

I honestly have to disagree (in part). I rolled my side account four times this month and I have 100 without getting any from bundles. And I'm definitely not as active as I could be. In august I wouldn't let my energy bar go up past 50% so I wouldn't waste anything from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. This month I've been using anywhere from 2-8 energy bars a day when exploring. So with that in mind, I got on average 20 stink bugs a day from explore. So in a month at that rate I could get 620 stink bugs on one account. That requires me to be thoughtful when spending, sure, but in my opinion I am not entitled to every item from an event just because I played. I do however agree that more of the events could have stink bugs as rewards as when you look at the event page on the wiki a lot of the encounters don't give stink bugs. Like all the fights should imo. But anyway.

"People often think mental health isn't as important, and the staff might not understand that this event could affect some users so badly. There are so many users on this site from around the world, some are bound to have severe mental problems."

This is definitely a worldwide issue but I really don't think it applies here. This isn't something you have to use. And every single aspect of this is optional. You don't have to play lioden overall. You don't have to play lioden during December. You don't have to participate in the event during December. You can participate in the event without pooping. This really isn't something that's very clearly upsetting. I'd have to refer to Noctuema's post which I very much agree with - "It’s talking about the lions. It’s not a judgement on you as a person." If you know this and are still badly affected by text like that, then I think the answer is to remove yourself from the thing that is causing the distress. Especially when it's something as nonessential as a small, optional feature of a game that only shows up one month out of the year. You forcing yourself to endure the text every time even though it upsets you is probably not the best decision and I don't see how it's the fault of the game devs.

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