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.
Tevie , not Trevie ouo sorry
I like @Trevie's idea a lot!
I also want to add in that it should be considered how much less valuable male pets are to females in the current market. Breeding charges surely would help with some of this, but the fact remains of less males needed than females since males are always RTB.
I support 3, but think it would work better to create an entirely new potion. The potion to change sex is useful, and shouldn't be removed. Then again, maybe it should...? That might also help the growing amount of animals. A breeding cap would also help, though 100 seems too high.
I like the idea of all three of them, though 2&3 more since it does take way too much to get the different colors and would suck to try to get that one cool super rare but your rare just ran out. What if there was a way to recharge the charges, like with a potion or other items? That way you're not totally forced to throw out your really cool but now useless rare, and might maybe stim the economy a bit?
I also think it should take into account both parents colors when breeding for rarer colors, rather than the one with the highest. A rare and a rare (or rare and uncommon) should have a higher chance of producing a more rare color than a rare and a common. You know? But this falls into the make rarer colors easier to find, which I don't think will necessarily solve the problem because then uncommons and rares might start flooding the market too.
Wish I could Edit posts.
Want to make a clarification with the breeding potions that I just thought of.
What I wrote is "I suggest that all alchemists across all villages are able to make a breeding potion and not just QP alchemists"
What I mean is "I suggest that all alchemists across all villages are able to make a breeding potion using items that are found or grown within their villages instead of the potion requirements being locked to one village.'
This is how I feel on this and on each of those points. So here I go.
1: I understand the idea of breeding charges and how they could be used to up the value of the animals. The limit of 2 or 3 though on commons feels a bit to restricting though. Perhaps something more like 5 or 10 on the commons would be a bit better.
2. I agree on this immensely as the giving tree has shown there are MASSIVE amounts of commons just thrown onto the tree. Heck I farmed the tree and have managed to get a breeding pair of most commons and uncommon in the game including the gem shop pets. I also breaks up the massive breeding farms that that's all they do.
3. I like the idea of the breeding limits and limiting how many animals are breed in a day. As of right now I have two AH's and I'm not going to go over three pages of stalls with both of them because it would cost to much wood to upkeep much beyond that. Each page is one animal basically with the attempt to get the super rare colors. To me the 50 breedings a day sounds like a good idea. It will make a person plan out who is breed on what day.
Breeding potion: Though I like the idea of 'fixing' the breeding potion I am not a big fan of seeing this type of an idea. Mostly because if that potion is required of all breeding then that makes it a bit of a nightmare for any person who's NOT in the QP to be able to breed the mini pets. If this is looked at significantly then I suggest that all alchemists across all villages are able to make a breeding potion and not just QP alchemists.
OTHER IDEAS:
* Male cool downs that way its all the same.
* Fixing Rarity breeding rates! I feel like the breeding rates for getting some of the rare colors from the same rare color is a little skewed. Right now if you breed two rare color mini pets your more likely then not to get a common (also flooding the market with more commons) then you are a rare color or at least the next color up. I think as the rarity of the mini pet color goes up the chances for the common color to come out of the breeding goes down.
* Some use for the mini pets outside of just collecting them for each color and having a pet on a villager. There's literally no use for the mini pets outside of that.
* Releasing a mini pet could net a small amount of FC and the sever sell back I feel should be perhaps a bit higher. I release most mini pets I collect because there's not enough money in spending the time to tame vs the sever sell price for commons.
A combination of #2, #3, and the Breeding Potion requirement sounds best for preventing mass farming. It would take more time to switch out animals with the limited stables, and even then you'd reach the breeding limit rather quickly for the day. If the Breeding Potion is also thrown in there, that would further hinder mass farming.
Option 1 seems a bit cruel, if you think about how hard it is to get rarer colours, because not only would it be hard to get a more valuable animal to begin with, but that one would soon be unable to breed anymore. So no support, personally!
Option 2 sounds doable, and definitely better than the first, but it would also make stables less valuable. Whether that is good or bad, I can't really say. They seem kinda expensive right now.
Honestly, I like option 3 the best. It makes sense to have hourly or daily limits to breeding (as long as they aren't ridiculous), because while that would slow down the breeding of new animals, you could still own many at once if you have enough stables.
I also don't support the Alchemy idea, because that would slow it down too much in my opinion, and would make Animal Husbandry a more complicated career. Right now it's not bad to start with (although Explorer should be everyone's first pick), but if you'll need an Alchemist in order to breed, it would be impossible until you also have an Explorer, a Herbalist and of course an Alchemist. Or alternatively, a lot of money. No support though.
And no support for the "kill animals for ingredients" one either, simply because it would be sad. :c
Another idea that I saw and liked however is making either the sellback prize bigger or adding a releasing prize or both. I don't think the sellback prize should be lower than the release one though, because then taking the time to tame an animal would be a waste.
Glad to see you taking our suggestions into consideration by the way!
Actually merging animals for increased breeding might make #1 a decent option for me. WHERE the highest rarity is the pet that remains.
Ex. My super rare wuff is out of breEdina charges. SO I take a few black wuff's and merge them, similar to med mixing and poof my moonlight wuff can now breed again while the black wuff's disappear
Ugh I really wish there was a way to edit my comments I swear XD