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.
A mixture of 2 and 3, and also another item sink in order to trade pets (also bringing back inventory sell for limited pets!) for points/tokens that can maybe be used to trade for rarer pets.
It would be like this: Trading a common pet gives you 1 point, and uncommon is 5 points, a limited is 10 (they're basically flooding the market), a rare is 25, and a super rare is 50. Starting at 100 points are limited pets that go up in value at a max of 10 000 points. This gives incentive to take pets off the market, and can be further aided by a mass trade in feature. We saw a small boost from the similar quest feature, but even implementing this w/out prizes and bringing back limited hoard sell would definitely help.
If you do implement number 1, I think it should only apply to "limited" pets, as it corresponds with the name. I would separate the value of limited (prize and referral pets) and create a new value for Furdollar pets which would retain regular breeding. Regular limited pets could have a max of say 20 breedings, keeping value high for them.
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...)
Also the breeding potion thing would be terrible--Breeding Potions are already largely in demand and adding more reasons to need them would just make it even crazier along with putting more people in QP and the towns genuinely need to be more balanced.
I like the breeding potion idea, but I think it would require making breeding potions accessible to all towns, otherwise QP's going to have a huge advantage over everyone else, considering how popular Animal Husbandry is.
I'd also still keep their original function as a gender swapper. Perhaps introduce a new potion all together? Either way, I'm loving the sound of no longer having a near-useless alchemist.
I honestly think just having them as common quest fodder that's asked for would be a good idea?
i'd be ok with option 2, as i dont have many stables. i'm ok with option 3, but i'm not too keen on option 1, but i could like with it. i like the 4th idea, but it depends on how much they plan to simplify the potion. if it's a very small handfull of plants, then cool! im down. but if it takes the more than or equal to the amount of stuff it takes to make a durability potion, then i'm not so down
And I have 206 pets that I breed even without Stables by using the Storage system, so that'd be easy to bypass and wouldn't really change anything. I'm also okay with account-wide breeding limits. Last post from me, sorry. I keep thinking of things to contribute, aha. Bun, out!
If you make Breeding Potions required to breed animals (which I don't think is a good idea), then it has to be available in all villages, and the time to craft and materials needed should be reduced significantly. It's already a very expensive potion to buy when you're not in QP, and this would only make the price skyrocket -- I'm not sure people would even be able to keep up with the demand for them.
I'm definitely with a lot of other users here, I'm in favor or #3. Less chaotic and a lot more reasonable in my honest opinion.
#1 seems like the best economical factor, but I'm super against the idea of Breeding Potions inflating 10x what they are now, so the 4th idea shouldn't exist at all, in my personal opinion. (and this is just my own personal opinion! please be gentle ;w;)