Breeding Limits Discussion
Posted by Mat on 2 Nov 2016, 6:08 pm
It's no mystery from looking at the Giving Tree and the User Shops that many common and uncommon animals have lost their value due to overbreeding. In animal husbandry, players should still be able to sell their common animals and make money from their breeding. It appears that exponential growth of animals, overbreeding, and unlimited breeding charges have devastated the value of animals, and will continue to do so as more players join animal husbandry and continue breeding.
So, the question is, how do we curb overbreeding to reduce the amount of animals entering the economy? There are a couple of good suggestions that have popped up over the last weeks and months which can be boiled down into the following:
1) Using the breeding charges. Some may have already noticed that the contest prize animals have breeding charges. This feature is built into all animals, and limited breeding charges ensure that animals cycle out of the economy and do not continue to produce more animals indefinitely. Common animals should have low breeding charges (say, 2-5) so they cycle out fast, while rarer animals should have more (upwards of 100 for Super Rare animals) so they can be used for a long time, as they took a while to be earned.
2) Stable Limits. It's been suggested that stable limits would help with the economy as players would no longer be able to farm animals of every type, and instead would be encouraged to focus on their favorite animals. This encourages trading as players focusing on one type of animal would trade with another player focusing on another, as both players cannot focus on all animals. Disrupting the massive breeding farms ensures that there isn't a large amount of commons being born and devaluing animals as well. One common suggestion has been limiting each villager to 50 Stables.
3) Account-wide breeding limits. Another suggestion has been simply to limit the amount of breedings a single account can perform per day. One common number has been 50-100 breedings per day. Similar to stable limits, this helps disrupt large breeding farms and limits the amount of animals entering the economy, while also encouraging players to focus on their favorite animals.
Our opinion is that some combination of #1 #2 and #3 would help the value of animals immensely. What would you change to ensure that common/uncommon animals retain their value?
Another idea: revamp the Breeding Potion to be required to breed a pair of animals. This would give Alchemy a good new kick in value. The Breeding Potion could use some adjustments like making the ingredient list simpler, but it would add a dimension of complexity to breeding and connect Animal Husbandry to Alchemy.
I definitely feel like a way to take common animals out of the system is the best way to go.
Honestly, having an NPC that you give animals to in exchange for something exclusive to that NPC would be an awesome way to do it. I agree that we need to be taking animals OUT of the system instead of slowing down what goes in. Maybe we can do both, but having a way to actually remove them would be best.
My suggestion:
If people want to get rid of their "junk" animals, they can give it to a kennel with a hoarding problem (that effectively deletes the animals from the system). The kennel will then reward the player based on the number of animals given, or just an even 1 point per each common animal, 5 for each uncommon, 25 for rare, 100 for super rare as suggestions, but values can be determined based on actual statistics of the site.
The points can be used for enticing things like the basic amount of points will get you wood slabs from your village and steel.
Ultra versions of current potions could be available (for a hefty amount of points, of course) such as miracle growth and durability;
And to make things really enticing: forum vistas, gembound morphing potions, and maybe even paintie tickets can be rewarded for really large amounts like 5,000 points.
Introducing some use for the minipets besides collection would be interesting. Perhaps something like a butcher? Not sure entirely how that would work, maybe a butcher/Skinner combo or something similar where you could collect bones and pelts for things. Idk.
Going with what Tevie said, maybe an option right in the breed window whether to keep or release (or donate or whichever) the offspring. Skips the extra pageload needed after breeding to release stuff XD
What about a simple failed to produce a pet in the breeding options. We can already fail when going out to find an animal so what about failing to even breed.
Frankly I just release common colored Common pets so would prefer not to even get them. This would decrease the # of pets available as well
What about a new option where you can trade in animals to say a 'Shelter' for points to use to buy new Pets from the Shelter store?
And considering the protection quotient affects ALL villagers, it would encourage everyone to participate.
I like Hawkfeather's idea about a Beast Master NPC you could donate excess pets to to "train" to fight monsters. Each pet donated could help the protection quotient to give Warrior villagers a break, based on the rarity of the pet.
I really dislike all of these ideas. The very nature of animal husbandry means you're going to end up with TONS of worthless commons, and I none of these will solve the problem.
1-All this does is delay the flood, and then flood the market with ACTUAL worthless animals. People will just breed, and swap out the old animals with the new ones. The old ones will be actually worthless to other players. Currently a new player could make use of a male, and anyone breeding can make use of females.
2-All this will do is cause more frustration with inventory space and management. People who want to breed large scale will still do it.
3-You'll still have an overabundance of commons. They'll just take longer to generate, but they'll still be worthless.
4-This is a horrible idea. Absolutely not. It's already enough of a pain to get the rarer animals. Having to make a million potions on top of that would be ridiculous.
I think a much better plan is an entirely new career/feature that uses animals. Similar to quests, but in a larger scale. Maybe a Beast Master that can help warriors defend the towns? This can either be a full career, or an NPC you send your animals to. They use the armies of animals to help fight off monsters or something.
Basically, you need a way to take animals OUT of the system. All your suggestions just slow generation slightly, or make the career more frustrating. None of them actually solve the problem of once the animal is created, no one wants it.
Personally I think these ideas would be very beneficial to players!
I would also like to report a glitch that happens to me. Every time I sell something in the stalls I don't receive the FC
Something similar to FR's exalting option would be great, so people can breed, and then "exalt" or in our case, release pets back into the wild for a small sum of FC, or even some FD rarely.. Even adding more animals and coloration a will add demand and drive their economy up in a positive manner.
Or y'all could just wait until the site opens to drive up economy too. I'm only here for making art lmao.