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 like second and third the most. It's effective yet gives some wiggle room
Though I think the first one (if used) should have something, like a potion, to ether buff the number of charges an animal has or restore the charges the animal has. (Basically treating breeding charges like item durability.) Of course they'd need to be kept rare enough as to not completely undo the whole breeding charges system, but it'd be nice for them to be availble to all villages, like being sold in the shops for a really high price or for furdollars, or maybe it could be the first potion that require plants from all the villages or something, Then the recipe could be sold in all the village shops but you'd still have to buy plants/seeds from other players in other villages. Or the recipe could be a super rare drop for Warriors to find giving them another thing they can sell so they can buy more steel/pay for repairs to their equipment.
I think that requiring the Breeding Potion to breed animals even if giving a simpler ingredient list will make breeding potion prices go up and could end up leaving out any new players that are just getting started in Animal Husbandry.
combo of 2 and 3, idk???
I would ONLY like the breeding potion required to breed animals if the potion was made available to make in ALL villages. Right now, it's Quetzal Palace only, and that would make them big bucks while every other village is stuck being fairly useless.
A factor that hasn't been mentioned these past few pages is the breeding cooldown itself. Someone suggested stables only using durability when the pet inside is bred (like herbalism works) and you could even make it so a pet on cooldown is locked into whichever stable it is in until it is RTB again to avoid abuse, but what about actually altering the cooldown periods themselves?
When I bred my first FD pets I was amazed that their cooldown was a mere 7 days, not much more than common pets. I thought to myself that their population would increase substantially fast and subsequently nobody would have to buy them anymore... and of course everyone else who realized that raced to breed them to still earn some FD before they were completely useless for sales.
That's not to say all pets need increased breeding cooldown. The 20 days for super rares are still daunting as they are, but if this is about slowing AH down, what better way to force people to not breed than for their pets to take longer to breed again?
While I am not opposed to a new, unique, available-everywhere breeding potion, people who've been milling AH for profit won't be stopped by having to buy or concoct potions. If anything it'll just slow down those who were already breeding for fun and at their own pace.
Additional/alternate suggestion, make species-specific breed potions where one of the ingredients is a common coloured pet of that species? This would be combo-able with option 1 if you choose to go there, in that you could, for example, use a wuff to make an item that gives a male wuff 5 charges. Or something.
Like with the Carpentry revamp, if charges are something put in place I'd want them to be rechargable. Heck there's so much that could be done with this to still make it fun and not have animal husbandry feel like punishing gameplay.
The root of the issue, no matter which solution is picked, remains that offspring have currently no purpose whatsoever. Give them a reason to be used, be it potions, AH specific quests or trade-ins, and you won't see them swamping up ever single place.
Make them stackable.
And last but not least, consider altering the way "Limited" Pets are treated. Admittedly I already delete about half of my FD and Referral pet offspring right from their stable to not crowd the tree too much. I didn't mind selling them for 10 FC before because they were out of the system but the entire breeding session was not utterly pointless. Now it kinda is, which is why mine go to the tree so that if I can't insta-sell them I might as well make someone else happy with them.
option 3 is the best i think! with option 2, stable limits wouldn't make it impossible, just harder. someone that dedicated to breeding every species won't let stable limits stop them lol. breeding charges would render pets out of charges completely worthless, so that isn't a good idea. people aren't buying pets that can be bred now, and they definitely won't be buying pets that can't be bred.
I'm personally not a fan of the per-villager stable limit because I think, while in some cases it might discourage mass-breeding, the primary effect would be to make breeding more tedious - as people have mentioned, players could still keep large batches of animals in storage/inventory/stalls or on non-working villagers (possibly defeating the purpose of the worker limit to some extent?) which would be time-consuming to move around but still possible to breed. Maybe if the stable cap were much higher than 50 it'd be ok?
I think I like the idea of the account-wide breeding limit (though 50-100 per day does feel a bit low to me)? Would be an issue for studding, but that's the only drawback I can think of.
Haven't thought too much about breeding charges, so I don't have much of an opinion there - it'll be interesting to watch how things play out with the contest animals. As others have said, for the breeding potion idea to work they would definitely need to be craftable in all villages.
I think something that increased the demand for common pets would be really neat - quests did a lot to raise the value of uncommon color/species pets already, and I think something that specifically targeted the huge quantites of common pets being produced might be helpful?
Re-thinking this I can see how this could possibly work..
1) As some people have pointed out wouldn't really do anything to the problem but most likely make it worse as once the pets through with breeding its now 'useless' probably would be sold by sell back or thrown under the giving tree,
2) Stable limits would work, but it already takes quite a bit of wood to maintain and make them, And with only having 10 active villagers I'm sure people who have large breeding farm wouldn't most likely be affected because 10 villagers who could each hold 50 stables is like 500 stables to breed animals with and that's only if you have all 10 A.H
3) I mean it would slow down the massive breeding but the problem is still there you have 50-100 pets you have no idea what to do with...
4) Breeding potion, The problem with that would make QP(?) herbs in super high demand and the other herbs would possibly lose value. And with the super high demand means someone will be make a bunch of FC/FD by using a herbalist and explore (nothing wrong with that <3) but all the other villages wouldn't be really able to do anything bout that... If you know what I mean.... Maybe as I said before something like "Also just read the breeding potion thing, it would be kinda unfair to the villages that aren't (QP i think??) maybe if you allow it to be unique/special to each village? (Like 100 Common plant, 50 uncommon, 10 Rare, 5 super rare but it doesn't matter the village, like wood...)"
In all honesty I don't think prohibiting breeding is the problem its where should these pets go now that I have them. There needs to be like a Pet lady or something who takes pets (doesn't give them back) and gives you rewards or like gives you a new rare pet if you give her like 100 winter ferrets.(wouldn't really work cause you can buy winter ferrets if I'm not mistaken for like 100 FC at a villager shop??) We just need a void to throw these pets into and get something back from.
I'd think a combination of 1, 2, and 3, plus the Breeding Potion requirement, and the suggestions that others have mentioned of a less than 100% guaranteed breeding would all help together.
#1 and #3 are totally fine, #2.. ugh. It seems pointless and would really suck. Id much rather have a limit than have to find homes for dozens of pages of animals i'm trying to botain the final stage of. If i've gone to this much effort, it's for myself at this point and no one else. It takes long enough to reach the rarest stage as it is, so i'd rather not see a stable space limit and instead focus on a breedings per day limit to curb the overpopulation. Do not like the potion idea, however, especially as they cost a fortune as it is. Unless their mats were reduced and the potion was easier to obtain, that's a big pita for me and probably many, many others.
An option to use breeding potions to add charges for breeding could be good if #1 is implemented. Not fond of the idea that it be NEEDED to breed.
Personally I'd like to see an additional use for the pets, perhaps a way to convert them into materials or otherwise help bring the population down while #2+#3 are being implemented. This way it helps prevent the eventual recollapse of the pet economy. As it is now there is no reason to actually tame wild pets for breeding since you can go pick them up for cheap or free and implementing any or all of the options isn't going to fix that.