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.
The problem with breeding is that Commons and Uncommons are all that realistically ever gets produced, meaning breeders have to breed insane quantities of pets to get even one Super Rare. Putting a breeding charge on those Super Rares would just be a slap in the face to every single breeder who earned one (because, even with 100 charges, the chance of a Super Rare breeding another Super Rare to just break even on ALL that effort is... slim). I am dead set against the potions because things are unbalanced enough as it is (being in certain locations is incredibly unfun because practically all the nice stuff is in Quetzal's Palace). We don't need to unbalance things further. They are bad enough already. (We need to make the balance *better*, not worse).
I do, however, find the idea of daily caps on breeding within an account (though this will likely lead to multi-accounting in the end) tolerable. I would like to see the percentages tweeked so people don't have to breed thousands of a pet before they get a Super Rare. I understand wanting them to be rare, but thousands? Come on. Be reasonable.
I would also offer some suggestions. I would like to see the Stable revamped so that males are just as essential as females for breeding (such as being matched and kept together)... however this would require revamping the whole messed-up breeding system entirely. As it is, breeding pets have to be stored in your inventory/storage because the barn system is utterly ridiculous and a waste of perfectly good wood. Without fixing this problem, I would *never* support such a change as matched pairs.
In short, Furvilla already has enough terrible gameplay problems driving players away. It does *not* need to be made any worse. Of course Common/Uncommon pets are devalued. Have you seen the spawn percentages?! What did you expect? With so many players leaving or rarely playing (I rarely play anymore because there's just no reason to bother - the game carries practically no reward for players so there's absolutely no point to playing it, and the site doesn't value donations either, so there's not even a point to buying the "pretty" stuff). Lovely graphics are great, but you've just got to have good game design to back it up. This is only one of the terrible gameplay issues plaguing Furvilla and fixing it won't be easy (if it's even possible).
I believe we should wait for the site to open up before we discuss changes to breeding. Right now, the site has the same active pool of players that have been playing since July. I don't feel we can adequately discuss balancing until we see how the new blood works, especially if registration is opened indefinitely instead of monthly.
Same with balancing for everything. Everyone has had time to build up everything. It's the same player base. There's no demand as everyone had time to level everything up. I feel this has been extremely detrimental for all the other recent balancing issues (to the point it pretty much killed the site enjoyment for me)
You need to have supply/demand, and without it, balancing is too difficult. These changes hurt old and new players a like.
Breeding potions already give only one village and one village alone a bunch of money, and honestly no one else has a potion that compares. I'm super against the idea of needing a potion to perform a breeding. If anything, a new potion somewhere else to recharge breeding charges would be great. Then have the breeding charges on and limit each villager to how many breedings they can do a day. Limiting by-account doesn't make sense when we're already in the strict confines of 10-workers-only.
However, with how low the inventory sell prices are, I don't really think this is a problem that needs a fix. Rares and Super Rares are already controlled fine and well by their low percentages alone. People just need to sell what they don't want. If players seem disinclined, I think the problem would be more in motivating them then locking even more cuffs on how they can play the game. Lately game play already feels like breathing through a straw.
There needs to be more enticing players to play the way you'd like them to by making it seem appealing and less widdling it down and forcing them to play in an extremely narrow way.
Well none of these ideas on their own will really fix the issue and ill point out why down below. A combination is clearly the best way to go if the issue is to be fixed and slight adjustments will need to probably be made.
1) Breeding charges. This idea alone is probably in need of being implemented but it will present a different issue. The market and tree will suddenly be flooded with pets that can't breed and players will be angry about it. However, this idea does make it so players actually need to switch out their animals and not just breed them once a week or whatever. Switching them out wont take time because you can just breed the pets you have already bread and get rid of the parents. In the end, the over breeding will simply continue.
2) Stable Limits. Stable limits won't have much of an effect on the over breeding issue. Its mostly an idea that will try and encourage people but if its 50 stables over 10 villagers, that's 500 stables. You want to encourage players to breed their favorite pets but those who just breed for profit or fun can still breed all the pets but slightly slower. While this would technically reduce the over breeding issue, I don't believe it would reduce it enough to have the effect you are looking for. At least not on its own.
3) Account-wide breeding limits. This is probably the best of the three and is surly to have the most impact on controlling breeding amount. It would encourage players to trade and try to get more breeding charges per day for sure. However, this may cause players to find the more rare animals impossible to get. It will possibly slow down the AH a bit too much in the end.
4) Breeding potion overhaul. Frankly, I love this idea. It gives the game a bit more depth which is something I feel it needs. However, I feel it would be extremely tedious to come up with like 100 breeding potions every time you want to mass breed your animals. It would certainly stop over breeding for sure and change the AH as little as possible AND give all rarities of animals more value... probably.
As I stated above, I feel a combination of the ideas is the best way to go. Here is my idea using all 4 of the ideas posted.
Limit the animal stables to 50. Set max breeding charges per 8 hours to 200. Give animals breeding charges as suggested BUT don't allow animals with no breeding charges to be posted on the tree or sold in the market. Let them be sold to the NPC for fc depending on rarity or consider having a pet adopt section which will be flooded with non breedable animals. Revamp the breeding potion as suggested but allow each potion to be used 5-10 times instead of one. This way, its a bit less tedious to breed and still gives that connection with alchemist and AH.
To make sure everyone's happy, maybe keep the current version of the breeding potion but change the name to fit what the potion does. Currently, I feel its name is misleading.
I don't breed. That being said, these constant changes that are made to keep people from making money is what is keeping me from this game. Ho-hum.
i like the potion idea. otherwise, #3 is my favorite. breeding limits are much better than limiting stables, i think.
I really, REALLY hate the breeding potion idea. I would no longer bother with breeding because it would be more trouble than its worth in all honestly
I would however be up for a situation where if breeding charges are implemented you could use a special potion to renew the breeding charges to a certain number. This would make it so that people would be spending more funds on their uncommon and rares and could still give the alchemy connection.
Out of all the ideas, I like the idea of breeding cooldowns most, then breeding limits second. I don't like the idea of limiting stables at all. Cooldowns + the potion idea I mentioned are the most interesting to me.
I also like the 'at the end of its life cycle you can trade it in for some sort of points' idea people post.
But tbh like others said, why not just give us a new use for pets like a point turn in system or whatever. Then no one has to be punished. I mean...The pet rarities are so low ,i mean .5% for a super rare??? That right there is the reason for the over flow of pets. But turning them in for stuff would be better than a rarity change...
Very true Aelys I like your idea a lot! :) Just being limited one way or another just feel disappointing.
uhm no, using a breeding potion to breed is an awful idea. It hard enough to get rare colors as it is. Plus how would we swap their genders???
And I say limit stables, I already work on only my faves and just use my storage. I find it almost crazy how many stables people have...Then again I'm not in to it for profit.
Or 100 bredings per day wouldn't bother me either tbh.
And charges ahaha...No...Please no...I don't want to see a million animal duds on market. That would be even worse.