So I brought this up in the Sylestia times post, and someone mentioned it should be posted here...

I know the price of pets is dismal, the economy on this site is limping when it comes to pet sales. I had a few ideas for how to fix this, or at least improve the pet economy.

Idea 1 - Limited pet sales
Limit the total number of pets a user can have for sale at a time. Perhaps start with 5, and have an upgrade available for gold with an exponential increase per "sale slot." This would cut down the number of pets available for sale, and force users to pick and choose what to sell and avoid mass stable/hatchery clearance sales, which I think are the source of the economy downside.

Idea 2 - Create a minimum price
This guts the price problem all together, simply by preventing ANY pet from being priced at 1g.
a) Have a minimum price for all pets (perhaps more for fabled.) This would require the creation a free pet trade system for people who wish to give pets to others.
b) Create a NPC pet buyer who purchases pets for a minimum depending on fabled/common and GP, creating a minimum simply because this NPC would always be there to purchase pets. Something along the lines of 25k base +5k per GP for fabled/1k base +500 per GP for common pets. (The NPC is my favorite here, and worked very well for another pet site I used to play... I think Wajas?)

Idea 3 - Limit breeding
a)Limit the number of times a female can produce offspring, say 50 for common and 25 for fabled. Additional breeding points could be purchased via a philter. This is the most extreme option, and would probably be unpopular, but it would automatically drive up the price of pets depending on their colors and GP since they would produce a limited number of offspring.
b) Limit the total number of times a user can use the breeding generator per day, and have an upgrade available for gold with an exponential increase in price.
c) Raise the number of days a female must recover before breeding again.

These are all just some ideas I came up with. :)

Some of these are pretty good ideas!


I like the limited sale slots, though I think it should be more like 10 to begin with. I know a lot of people wouldn't like it though, as auctions would probably increase greatly!

As for Idea 2, the NPC idea has already been planned out by Krin and Fai. I think they plan to release it relatively soon.

I don't like Idea 3. As good an idea it is, I would hate it. Limiting the breeding generator isn't a bad idea, though.


One of my ideas would be to limit hatchery space. I've seen users with 10+ hatchery pages. Where do you think all those hatchlings are gonna go! Either for sale, released, or into already crowded stables. If you limit the hatchery space to....say 5 pages? It'll reduce the amount of unwanted pets exponentially. I know when I was a newbie, I bred all my pets, all the time. I didn't know it was a bad thing. If I'd had a cap on my hatchery, I wouldn't have bred so much.

All the ideas have their ups and downs. I think your hatchery idea is really good!


I'm glad to hear the NPC is in the works, I think that will help new users get some gold as well since I know I struggled horribly between buying traps and healing my pets!

Not going to lie, that last one is rather a horrible idea. While it might bring the site more profit to have to buy a philter to raise a breeding limit, it completely eliminates the purpose of having a pet offspring leader board. Now I've worked hard to get my pet up there, as have a lot of other users. Putting a cap on how many pets can be bred per sylesti, or user, or at one time will just frustrate users. Breeding is a way to have pets to nurture. Nurturing pets brings in scales. If you put a cap on that, then it makes it much easier to run out of pets to nurture after a while. Sure there are a bunch of users on here, but how many of them are truly active anymore? Plus once pets reach a certain 'age' they become unable to be nurtured. That already cuts down on the number of pets available each day. That's why there's limitless breeding, so the supply of pets doesn't wear down.

As for the 1 gold thing, that is there so that people may purchase their pets for the closest thing to free since there's no such thing as a 0 gold amount. Raising a minimum price from 1 to 5 doesn't stop it. :p You'd just see a bunch of pet set for 5 gold rather than one. As an older, more experienced user, we also set up pets for 1 gold so that new users may have a chance at nice pets without being ripped off by other users. We also do it when we've got spare pets and we want to start a new breeding project. I know I've got a bunch in my hatchery for one gold and do all of them sell? Not hardly. A greater majority of my pets are released because I've got it set to that option. As do a lot of us who have multiple pets for sale for one gold. So even if there are 'too many' for 1 gold and some people see that as a dilemma, it's really not. They're either released, sold, auctioned off, or raffled off so it's not that big a deal. It's certainly not an economy problem.

I think you have the right idea on limiting breeding, though I have my own thoughts on how it would be best done.

I think rather than limiting how many times a person can breed, it would be better to put greater limits on the hatchery. It's been brought up before, but it would be best if hatcheries were treated more like stables, in which there was a limited number of pages you could have and you could get more through whatever methods (gold? diamonds? based on player level? I'm sure Krin and Fai would be able to determine the best method).

This would of course limit mass breeding, which we all know is a problem, but it may also both raise the price and the quality of hatchlings. People would put more thought into which pets they are breeding rather than just every nonrecovering female. I believe we could expect better planned genes and mutations, including seeing more than just the most dominate traits, as well as better matching colors.

Not related to the pet economy, but this would also be really helpful to newer players. A know a lot see older players with stables and stables of pets and think they should also fill up their stables right away. While there are some other issues involved with this (like people giving newbies a full stable of pets right away, which then puts them in a position where they cannot feed their pets or get any new ones, and would feel guilty releasing) newbies being able to breed more pets than they can afford to fit in a stable is certainly a part of the problem.



Of course this is only one of many different ways we could help the economy, but it's the one I feel most strongly about. Your other suggestions are interesting as well (I am pretty excited about the future pet buying NPC, and seeing how it ends up affecting the economy).

I'm going to say now that i cannot stand limits. Thats what i absolutely love abotu sylestiaright no is that there is only minimal limitatons here and there (like female recovery times). I think any limit on anything would completely deter me fromt he site. ESPECIALLY a limti on breeding.

My comments on the breeding limits: Think about projects. It is super hard to get a projet to come out right. If you limit how many ties a pet can breed, that means that you only have that amount of times to hope and pray your project baby comes out well, and then hope you can also manage to snag a few spares to sell/give out. No. Just no. and ahving to buy a philter for mroe chances would be horrific. that really deters the free players as well. That's another thing i love abotu sylestia, is that you don't ahve to pay to get all the perks. Yes, there are avi items for diaonds. Yes, there are stables to buy with diamonds. But neither of those are absolutely necesary to enjoy the game. A philter to be able to breed your pets WOULD be encessary. And that just stinks.

I also do nto like the limiting pet sales idea, either. One of my largest places of income is my puff profits. If I could only sell 5-10 of my puffs at a time, I wouldn't be able to do anything in terms of money. And having to buy mroe sltos with diamonds? Well, I dont have any rl money,s o i'd have to buy my diamonds with gold. Which iw ouldn't have. yes, i am jsut one case, but i know there ar eothers who would nto like a limit on selling either. (Ad ocne again, limiting is a bad idea.)


The only one i agree with is the minimum price. I have always thought that was a good idea. especially if each ept had their own minimum price (or at least rare and fableds being different than commons) I don't thik we need to do a minimum on gene price as well, although it could be a good idea, but at least a base price minimum. And then yes, a way to trade pets for 1g or even free for testing and gifting.

tl:dr: Litis=Bad. Price floor=good

We've said here and there a few times about some ideas we have to improve this situation. I think we will try to get some of these improvements flowing in the first quarter of 2014.

We will be adding an NPC to town(s) who will buy pets at a base price of either gold or scales (undetermined at this time). This will act as an incentive to sell off unwanted pets without just simply releasing them or selling for 1 gold. It should also act as a way to give all pets a baseline price above 1 gold.

Second, we are looking into limiting breeding in some fashion. Let me say that I hate limitations that are just there to be a limitation. So we will never just arbitrarily add something like... "you can only breed 5 times a day" to the game. If the limit can't be justified, we won't have it.

This means that the limit will probably be Hatchery space, which makes sense. I'd love to see some of you guys managing your 30+ pages of Hatchery pets on a daily basis. =P However, it will function like Stables where the more you play, the more you'll be able to expand the Hatchery up to an unlimited amount. I can't provide further details though.

Lastly, we'll be adding a brand new pet auction feature sometime in the future. This will make it 100x easier for all players to sell and buy pets. Atm, part of the reason pets are so cheap is because many people price pets at say... 3k. But after a week, nobody's bought it. So they lower it to 2k. Then 1k, then finally 1g. Yet, the entire time, there may have been a user willing to pay 3k for the pet but they just couldn't find it.


But please keep posting any suggestions anyone has. We appreciate all of the ideas that are suggested and it helps us to figure out the best way to address problems like this.

This may prove to be a very a unpopular opinion, especially since I'm relatively new... but here I go anyway.

I don't feel like there is anything "wrong" with the Sylestian economy. Pets seem to sell like electronics do. Everyone wants the newest rarest and they are therefore priced the highest until they become relatively common. I think that it's great. If you want to sink all your gold into buying the newest 6-vis Bloodscream, by all means! Go right ahead. Just know that 6 months, or however long from now, many more people will be able to get their hands on them. That's how economies work.

My favorite thing about it is that no one can complain that any pet on this site is unattainable. Even if you can't play often, or know how to make a lot of gold really fast, if you want something you can get it - only patience is required. Imposing a lot of limits on breeding (in a breeding game) isn't going to make anyone's game play more enjoyable.

I do really like the "sell a pet to an NPC" idea and I'm glad that will be implemented to give a baseline, but I honestly don't see the point in trying to drastically raise prices on any pet. All it would serve to do is keep new and inexperienced players from obtaining certain pets - as gold is not exactly hard to come by in this game.

I also think that when the search features are updated and people can more easily find the specific type of pet they are looking for prices will change as buyers have easier access.

Dislike the limits on breeding,


What if the lowest possible price, lowest possible price to breed, price to use the generators, and prize gold for releasing a sylestia were the same? Then people wouldn't feel like they are losing money when the are releasing there pets. Or earning money.


Then a gifting pets system would probably have to be added...

If there is a limit on how many times we can use the generator a day, you should possible be able to get a breeding license that allows more, since some people have breeding projects.



Just some thoughts...

*sniffles* Aw my little thread is growing up. Look, even a Krinadon appeared!


I agree that the limitations would suck, part of the appeal to breeding is the unlimited nature, but unfortunately this just drives the price of pets in to the ground, which... I don't know, it means there is severe, and I do mean SEVERE, overpopulation.

I really like the idea of doing a stable-like system with hatcheries. I think this is a brilliant solution and will keep some people (*cough*) from overbreeding and having 4 pages of Ny'Venes in their hatchery and oh my god why did i do that *sobs*