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.
If you go with the breeding potion idea, I feel it MUST be made so you can use ingredients from any village - otherwise only alchemists in one village will receive the 'boost in value' you describe.
#1 is cool except that the animal with no more charges is now useless to everyone, and has no value. To do this, I feel you need to add a feature so these pets can be used for something else, and that takes them out of the system.
#2 I don't feel will be very productive in this, because we can breed and breed, get what we want, import new species, breed and breed...it might take a liiiittle longer, but not by much
#3 I like this idea a lot, and out of the three I think this is your best shot, even if it's not perfect. At any rate it will cut down on the number of animals flooding the system. It might not make them rise in value much, but it might help the problem a little.
Quoting another user: "Yes, Calixita brings up a great point--part of why it's such a pain and WHY people breed so many animals in the first place is because of the percentages.
There is less than a 10% chance to get anything that isn't Common. Even with Rare and Super Rare pets, it's still only 5% to even get an Uncommon. Less commons would be thrown away like this if the percentage wasn't 1/200 to even get a Super Rare because people wouldn't feel the need to have to be breeding several hundred pets.
Any limits to how many pets can breed a day or with charges just makes it all more frustrating and as I mentioned before, the market would be filled with pets without charges which is even worse than the current situation."
As for the Revamp Idea: NO. This would destroy the economy in a way that it would never recover from. Breeding potions cost way too much to make as they are already, and this Revamp would mean the recipe needs to be redone so they can be made more easily, which as far as I can tell, will not be done because if it IS done, how does one become compensated for all the potions they made at the far more expensive rates? It'd be far more effective to make a new breeding potion and change the current potion's name to 'gender potion' or 'genetics potion' (I prefer the second because gender and genetics are two different things, but I digress). This NEW potion could be sold by the animal husbandry shops in town for a low cost of like 50FC each or something so that no one village has an advantage over letting the other villages actually get into the AH career.
I think option 3 is probably the best, every other profession has it so it's not so out of the blue and harsh. I feel like it would help keep things okay AND be the most fair to players.
I feel like charging for breeding would make things brutally unfair to the player. I am in support of 2 and 3.
Tbh that idea of the breeding charges is nuts if they do not recharge or something.
100 breeding charges are not even close enough to breed a damn uncommon color sometimes. HOw do you ever keep up with getting a rare or super rare coloration wth.
(( also i just feel the need to clarify that limited stables would indeed help when you look at people with A LOT of stables ))
I see a lot of users saying that people can just do the good ol' inventory shuffle, which is definitely true, I would do it too!
but if I cleared my inventory/storage/stall just for animals, I could hold and shuffle about 700 animals, which is 500 less animals than my stables currently hold.
rn if I were to try to fill my inventory/storage/stall anD stables with animals I could hold nearly 2000 animals. it's a miserable shuffle to move things around that tightly, but iT COULD BE DONE.
so yeah, think big when thinking of stable limits !!
they really will help scale down some of really big AH operations ;w;
I kinda feel like choice #3 would be the best, although I wouldn't be all too against choice #2 either. Choice #1 could cause a lot of problems i.e. the common animals who lose all their charges become completely useless, and getting unlucky with using a rarer animal that just produces more commons and uncommons with all of its charges would just be frustrating.
I definitely disagree about the breeding potion change. That would probably make QP even more of an economic powerhouse than it currently is, if it remains a QP-exclusive recipe.
I would want to try a combination of 1 and 3. in general, I think using both 2 and 3 would be excessive? and probably anger players a lot more than whatever good is done by both that can't be accomplished with just one. I say 3 over 2 because it'd be easier for players to plan their limited breeding while having all their animals in front of them, and many players are persistent enough to continue breeding as much as they can while swapping out animals in their limited space. I think that'd just concentrate who is spamming animals in the tree and filling stalls further instead of meaningfully lowering the amount floating around the site
not sure how I feel about the breeding potion idea. I'd have to see exactly how much easier to obtain you'd make them
Thank the lord you're speaking to us about this instead of just putting it in!!
I kind of like #3 the best, personally! Or a combo of #1 and #3 maybe? The breeding potion idea isn't too bad either; it would help price things better and get some trade going I think!
Idea 3