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.
Will breeding charges be retroactive if factored into the game?
pleeeaaase dont do 1. 2 and 3 are the better idea...
but i agree with users below maybe using animals for quests moreso and potions so there is somewhere to put them into the website.
2 and 3 are best.
2 and 3 seem reasonable and useful. 50 stables may sound like a lot to a casual player like me, but there are people who have several pages of stables and several animals per husbandry villager. As for 3, it would essentially just be adding a daily limit to something else, which is a feature that has worked pretty well so far (seeing as every other career has that daily limit, and husbandry already has it for gathering. I don't see why we couldn't also implement it with breeding daily as well).
I don't say 1, simply because even just reading it seems too complicated to keep up with. Actually putting int into practice may just cause more confusing work to keep up with for users that simply can't keep up with that much at one time. Avoiding 1 would at least keep your website's game accessible for users who have trouble managing too many elements at once, while 2 and 3 are things you can watch out for without even really thinking about it.
Regarding your Breed Potion Edit, that seems a baaad idea if it remains QP exclusive. It is already one of the few potions left that has any value whatsoever and would give QP even more of a monopoly on Breeding.
I really like the idea for the breeding potion idea! but out of 1 2 and 3 I like a mixture of 2 and 3.
I think you would have to add something else to the game as I guess from the giving tree that Animal Husbandry is the only thing keeping quite a few people here so making it harder and more complicated may push more people away. As not everyone has a long time to spare on the site to keep up with repairs on stables and when you have to wait 20 days to breed a pet the higher charges isn't going to mean much I feel.
My vote is for stable limits please
glad to see you guys are asking the users of what they think instead of a very sudden change 0w0)/! don't really know much about AH, but i'll go for #2!!
any of them sound alright as long as you don't do 2 and 3 at the same time. I just wish it were easier to move up the ladder so to speak