Haha yeah, the FAQ hasn't been updated in a bit so it can still be confusing to some people. The event is going to end on the 29th, which gives users 8 more days to grab an infection which usually progresses for about 4-5 days (it lasted close to 6-7 days this first round because of the error on day 1, and then the error of duplicate skins for the 2016 users on the last day), so I think most people, if they started yesterday or today, will be able to grab another one & then most likely finish progressing after the event ends! Hopefully, of course. xD

That is what I am hoping, but still kind of a bummer, since I got four skins last year. :C With the extra wait times on the stages and stuff, it really cuts down my skin collecting time. Maybe we should bring back organ stealing and just... eat one another to progress faster. Biting is nice to get infected, but I think eating other people should progress us faster. LOL IT IS THE ZOMBIE THING TO DO.

HAHA YES. Give me brains so I can progress this virus fasterrrr! I mean you're right, we ARE zombies. ;)

Yeah it's a bit of a bummer cause I got 4 last year too, and I don't remember it being that difficult. I'm hoping that since lobsterface has 7 stages only I may be able to sneak by and grab a 4th (although the likelihood of that is.. very very slim, I'd probably need to pick another virus that was short and something I didn't necessarily want).

Yeah, the fact that we need to even consider picking shorter viruses just to get more in is really silly. :C Sounds like they may speed things up as we get close to the end, but I really wish they would do that now. It doesn't help if you speed things up in the last day only!

EATING BRAINS TO PROGRESS FASTER SHOULD TOTALLY BE A THING. Or someplace we can go in the underground to like, buy illegal zombie enhancers to speed things up. Or the hustler. I could see him selling like 'Zom-B-Quick' which speeds up your stage a little bit. It could be a good sP sink. XD Or even bring back Lockheart and have him give our more mediocre meds that have adverse effects and speed up zombie stages. That would be great!

Ooh! Yeah that'd be awesome. I mean I definitely wouldn't mind tacking off like an hour or 2 off the stages. At this point I think anything would help. xD

Plus where even is Lockheart these days hmm? HE MUST BE UP TO SOMETHING!

I get that this is a pretty social event, but I feel like my personal progress on my strain shouldn't be affected by other people, especially if it's all about who clicked a button before I did. If this site was as popular as the competing pet site, meaning lots and lots of other players, I can't say that this method would be acceptable. At all.

Why even list the wait time as 3 hours when in reality it doesn't matter? I'm actually kind of confused about what the 3 hours is supposed to mean, when there could be tons of people ahead of you in the queue, resulting in the 3 hour wait time meaning nothing. (Which.. um... is the case.)

Maybe Lockheart is the one behind the queue, like the man behind the curtain or something? He was never good at his job, so he could easily be the reason that the queue runs so slow... in fact, that would be a nice addition. Like, add queue numbers instead of a wait time (since that is Hella inaccurate) and then be like 'The doctor will see you now' when you are ready to be infected via the queue, and you just see him to get an injection. I know he isn't a zombie, but he is such a bad doctor, that it works so well! And maybe that would make the queue not seem soooooo bad. At least it would add some lore to the mechanism, which currently seems to have no rhyme or reason to it.

This is exactly the problem, or at least one of the biggest. We shouldn't be forced to wait days and days just because we want an unpopular strain. That's only going to make the problem worse and worse, especially since we can't bite people while progressing a different strain. There shouldn't be such a huge difference between people who participated in the SP sink and those who just ran in going for anything. That doesn't make any sense.

Personally, I don't think it should take longer than a few hours for any disease to kick in but I don't mind the idea of 24 hours. That should be the maximum though. Pandemic is so short already. We should be able to get at least a couple skins every year.

It took me about 2 hours to get another 2016 strains, so not all hope is lost.

I find it really ridiculous that at this point after being infected (though I signed up in the first few hours of the event starting if I recall correctly) for about 24 hours after the beginning of the event I am still only at STAGE FOUR of my FIRST VIRUS. This is just absurd. And I paid a million sP for this?????

Edit: Sorry if I sound ranty but I am really kind of pretty upset about this at this point.

I feel like biting for old strains should be more incentivized. I reached 100 bites no problem for people who wanted my virus, but there are very few people who got my virus that are biting, they're just collecting more skins. Right now there's way more incentive to sign up for more skins than to bite.

Or is getting an old strain just supposed to take a long time and be really irritating? If so, I'm ditching biting and going to get myself some new skins. :P

Can I add in that the cache delay is also messing with things. I just redeemed my skin, but now I have to wait for god knows how long for things to catch up so I show uninfected and can pick up another strain.

Can someone logically explain why there's such a long wait between stages? Really it shouldn't be more than 12-14 hours per stage. Biting should be instant. Initial infections should be done quicker (like, 1 hour.)

I'd suggest maybe we could get a vial we drink to get infected in the same cache rate that the wardrobe works on instead of waiting in a queue (which is asinine I'm sorry), but then I'm sure that would have it's problems too.

To summarize, things like this make the event lose it's appeal. :/

I feel like the biggest reason people are not biting is because of how long the stages take right now. There is no time to waste biting (unless you are in Stages 6 & 7 of progression, since you might as well). Honestly, I would have loved to bite people between viruses, but since I am a day behind (despite signing up immediately when the news was posted), I just do not have time to waste biting people. There are many skins I still want, at with 16+ hours per stage, I have to constantly be progressing or I will not get many new viruses. If I didn't want any others, I would bite a lot, but there just isn't time for that. The wait time is just breeding longer times for everyone because we are almost half way through the event, and most are just starting their second virus. We are way behind schedule because of a stupid wait time none of us could control. So now people who are not on the same virus cycle are stuck without biters. :C

- I didn't see many people biting old strains on stages 6/7, it's like they're only focused on getting their strain done and moving on to the next one. I don't think they really consider biting much. I'd be interested to see the stats on how many bites the average user does while they're waiting for a strain to mature. Yes, decreasing time between stages would fix much of the problem(people wouldn't feel so rushed and behind) and I agree with a lot of your suggestions, but you still have a massive delay (what, 48 hours?) on getting an older strain if no one is biting. Incentivizing biting will get more people spreading the virus when they're on stages 6/7 so you have more than 3 zombies biting the population that desires a strain at a given time.

Pretty much.

I ran the Butterfly Bruise thread last year, and unless I'd be paid (like, get candy hearts from the site each time I bite), I wouldn't bite people again. I got the achievement, so really, I don't really have a reason to go and not get my own virus.

I mean, while I'm biting people, I can't progress on strains, so I don't really get a benefit from it.

- I feel like 5 candy hearts per bite would make a huge impact in people's willingness to bite.

I think a lot of people were going for newer viruses this year, so that may have been why. I saw a ton of people willing to bite the newer strains when they hit 6/7, but I think there were just more people with those stains. The people who did have older viruses that were progressing were willing to bite... just didn't seem like there were as many of them. Though, they may have been maxed out on the achievement as well, which would not motivate them to bite. Of course, I am all for more incentives for biting, such increasing the achievement tiers on that one. That might help. Or candy hearts for biting too (or harvested organs for biting, since that would be pretty funny, and we could find another use for them).

People shouldn't go for 2016 strains just for biting, because it's not going to work well. Too much supply, not enough demand.

plz no, this achievement is a pain to grind if you have an old strain that's not popular (HI DEATHWORMS)

I don't really think that they did it for the bites. Biting almost seems to be an afterthought anymore. Getting the strains and the hype around them seems to be more what drives people.

I could see how it would be a problem for people with less desirable strains, but I am not sure candy hearts would really drive everyone to bite, since we can just kiss and not have to worry about delaying our virus from progressing or wasting time when we could be infected with something we like. (Ugh, deathworms freaks me out so much. NO WANT. NO WANT.)

Maybe a suggestion board to get ideas on what would make people want to bite... or even a board in the Survival boards to get some ideas would be good.

Biting and kissing = double the hearts

I am always hype for double the goodies. Meanwhile, less grindy achievement in my life is always something awesome.