Breeding Limits Discussion
Posted by Admin-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.
#1 sounds good. This has bothered me for a long time and i hope they find a solution that wont harm the animal husbandry trade, but rather stimulate its economy.
i'm FROM qp, and i think that requiring breeding potions is an absolutely terrible idea. i also don't like the idea of the extremely limited breeding charges- that doesn't take pets out of the system, it just means that the ones being abandoned will be the ones with no charges. i think the best idea would be limiting the amount of breedings per day. limiting the amount of stables will hurt everyone- slabs would be worth less for explorers, construction workers wouldn't be able to make much off of stables, and animal husbandry people wouldn't have room for all of their pets. out of the ideas listed, i think that limiting breeding to a certain number per day is the only viable option; however, i think the idea that many people are suggesting, that there be some sort of npc to take pets out of the system, is the best of all. maybe it could be tied in to the house decorating when that comes out- you give excess pets to an npc that collects pets, and in return you get points to shop for animal-themed furniture. or maybe minipet vistas could be a thing- donate 100 of the same type and color of minipet, and get a forum vista of it.
Spiritburn Those are nice additions!
@ADMIN-Furvilla perhaps give mini pets a lifespan if they're not attached to a user nor in the menagerie.
I like @Again 's Suggestion of having a kennel type thing to remove pets from the system. Trade the pets for points. Give a way for people to save up for useful things (like wood/steel/etc.) and if you add the breeding potions as an option for the breeding of animals, then maybe make the ingredients for the potions available for points as well. (That way we aren't forced to rely on the other players at all times, though going through other players for those ingredients would be quicker and probably cheaper)
Limiting the number of breedings per account per day also seems like a good idea.
Stable limits won't change much, though.
Another thought of what you can do for breeding: Instead of having the tamed amount be a average of the parents level, why not have it half of their level? That way the offspring have to be tamed as well. (So if both parents are 5/10, the offspring would be 3/10 instead of 5/10. And if both parents are domesticated, the offspring will be half-way there)
Suggestion 1 is good. Please don't limit stables or breeding per account. Do not force us to use breeding potions.
Definitely going with Argent 's suggestion of making the Giving Tree delete donations after a set amount of time.
I agree with Hawkfeather and like their suggestion.
[quote="Hawkfeather"]]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.[/quote]
Make the sellback price for domesticated pets actually worth the effort. I think charging for breeding is a terrible idea especially since 99% of the time it's only going to net you another worthless common. If the cost of breeding is more than the price of what it'll produce you're going to see a drastic reduction in people breeding anything. And maybe that's what you're aiming for, but it'll also reeeaaalllly anger a lot of people.
I'm too cheap to go beyond the basic number of stables so placing a limit on that wouldn't impact me. I think one of the main reasons people have a huge number of stables is because it's ridiculously difficult to try and breed anything worth having. I'd suggest tweaking the rarity numbers but that would probably create other problems.
One suggestion, and I'm not sure how well it would work of if it would just make things worse, but maybe have some kind of luck potion that increases the chance of getting less common colors.
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.