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.
Either breeding charges enacted to keep old animals cycling out of stables, or durability loss to stables for each breeding, would be my thought. Five charges seems too few for common/common animals, but after the breeding economy adjusts for it, it may be quite reasonable. That's 20 days of use for a common female, and chances are a common male will have a successor ready to go after five breedings.
I would however suggest preventing exhausted animals from being donated to the giving tree. There's enough 'junk' animals there already, they would effectively just be replaced with exhausted breeders. Make players sell them via their shops, trade them, or sellback to the system to get rid of them.
i think 2 and 3 are good ideas, but not 1
Regarding the breeding potion addition, PLEASE DON'T!! They are already very expensive, take a lot of materials to craft, and give QP a bit of an upper hand in breeding animals and that would make it so much worse. Breeding potions are a super rare item so there should be no reason to require them every time you breed a pair of animals. It would make AH nearly impossible.
As for the breeding potion, if this is done, it would seem like a good idea to make it something able to be crafted by all villages rather than just one? Simply a thought. Though I understand that would make your ingredient list harder to craft, as not all villages have access to the same plants. Hmm...
Please do the 1st one, Stable limits wouldn't really change anything as you can import and export pets. And account wide breeding limits would be kinda annoying. (I don't really breed much but I hate having account limits ^^""")
Personally, I'm not fond of the breeding charges, so I think I'd prefer stable limits and daily account breeding limits, options #2 and 3. And in that light, as well, #3 would be more effective I think because really, the reason we have so many pets is because some users on the site stocked up on pet harems and then went breed happy. Limiting their daily breeding activities would cut down on the flood of animals produced, at least somewhat.
#2 Is my favorite, I don't use stables as much but as long as #1 isn't chosen, I'm okay with #3.
It will probably be unpopular but I really like option 1, because it means i can jsutify having pets as those will be animals that ran out of charges.
I agree with this but also think that the mods should consider giving stables the herbalist pot treatment - where the stables only decay with breedings.
Will breeding charges be retroactive if factored into the game?