I do not think the changes should have been removed. I do think they would help balance the site's economy.

I could see the pros and cons of the spirit behind the idea. And I'm a bit disappointed to see it go. But I'll agree that it would hurt lots of project breeders as well. Hopefully we'll be able to find a better way to fix the issue :)

I've always liked the idea of having a hatchery limit, seeing people with 130+ pages of hatchery pets always bothered me to no end. I feel like that might be an interesting solution.

I'm really new here, so forgive me if I don't quite understand the mechanics of the breeding feature and might be missing something here, but here's some ideas...

Since there is an influx of unnecessary pets, why not find another way to have these removed from the site? Instead of just having the options of "selling" and "releasing," why not implement something to have these pets do. For example, send them off to join the Guard, or to assist the fairies. Maybe have bonuses for certain pets doing certain things. These would be permanent things, too, so it could essentially help clear up space on the site! For example, a Kelpari can be sent off to join a fishing boat. In return for "donating" your pet's assistance, you can get X amount of gold, AP, maybe even "job"-related items (like, idk, fish or something for the fishing boat.) I could foresee a special type of currency only obtained by doing something like this, too, which can be exchanged for super special (untradeable) items... Which would make this all the more necessary for game play! This could 1., give other things for people to do to earn monies, cool stuff, etc., 2., give people more incentive to play rather than just making a cool pet., 3. Clear up room and memory on the site, and 3., most of all, keep that influx down; even if there are 200 "junk" pets being sold, people can buy them and turn them over for profit or whatever else.


As for breeding cooldowns, why not have it set to where the parents (both of them!) cannot breed again until the egg(s) from the current go-round(s) have reached the adolescent stage? I feel as if this would not only be a little more realistic, but it helps two different things: not having an insanely long breeding cooldown (some sites have a month or more on their virtual pets!) and to help prevent these influxes from happening. What I mean is, is say pets A and B have an egg, Pet C. Pet C takes 3(?) days to hatch and 5(?) days before it is an adolescent. During this time, Pets A and B cannot breed again (with each other or any other pet!) until their offspring, Pet C is an adolescent. Let's face it... To prevent the influxes from happening, there has to be a breeding cooldown of some sort. It's inevitable. And it doesn't have to be super complicated, either, which was the impression I got trying to understand whatever it was y'all were trying to do here to begin with haha.

You know what? I actually like this idea. I do a lot of breeding (I'm not even sure of how many ongoing projects I have right now), and although this would add a little bit of difficulty, it could potentially help a lot with the economy.

And now, a list of thoughts/suggestions/requests/worries about this:

- Items to reduce/eliminate the extra cooldowns: Yes, please. Maybe some cheaper ones to reduce them, medium priced ones to eliminate the cooldown once per use, and an expensive Diamond Shop item that would make it so a pet would never be affected by extra cooldowns (basically making it so that the pet would be bred as per the original system: males immediately, and females every 3 or 7 days).

- Different cooldowns for the owner and other players: Most of my projects depend on the ability to breed with other people's pets, and I fear that these cooldowns would discourage people from setting their pets up for public breeding. I have no clue if this is feasible, but I'd love it if every player had their own individual cooldowns, so that I could breed a male 3 consecutive times, and somebody else could breed him 3 consecutive times, and every player who wanted to could breed him 3 consecutive times too.

- NPC buyer: I've always been in favor of this idea, but I don't know how effective it could really be, since you'd probably need to implement a cap on how many pets a player can sell to them to stop people breeding even more just to get money from the NPC.

- Releasing contests: I love them. I'd even support having them more often, but making them some sort of unexpected surprise so that people wouldn't start breeding extra pets just to release them.

- Sales that linger on forever: Maybe you should consider setting an expiration date on pet sales, just like in the Broker or the Exchange. Maybe a limit on how many pets a player can have for sale at once?

- Unlimited hatchery space: I seem to recall there were plans for this somewhere along the line? Limiting the number of hatchery pages would definitely stop some of the unchecked breeding.

- Making releasing pets more "attractive": Some people feel sad/guilty over the idea of "abandoning" their pets. This might be a bit silly, but changing the releasing text so that it says that the pet will be released in a safe and comfortable habitat where they will have a home, and friends, and plenty of food, and never have to fight if they don't want to, might encourage the people who are reticent to release pets.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but that's all that comes to mind right now.

Guess I'm late to the party here. Glad to hear that this is no longer in effect, that's a relief. Was really looking forward to Ferrikki and don't think implementing a different system for them would have worked out very well.

Not that I would mind it that much, it probably wouldn't have any effect on veteran players breeding habits overall or people with a lot of pets..

Was reading through it and just thought it was a little overly complicated. I particularly didn't understand the males cooldown thing.

There is a really good discussion about improving the pet economy on Imperium's thread if anyone wants to join.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=57948&page=12#113 Author: Syvvie Time Posted: 2/22/2018 at 10:33 PM I'm really new here, so forgive me if I don't quite understand the mechanics of the breeding feature and might be missing something here, but here's some ideas... Since there is an influx of unnecessary pets, why not find another way to have these removed from the site? Instead of just having the options of "selling" and "releasing," why not implement something to have these pets do. For example, send them off to join the Guard, or to assist the fairies. Maybe have bonuses for certain pets doing certain things. These would be permanent things, too, so it could essentially help clear up space on the site! For example, a Kelpari can be sent off to join a fishing boat. In return for "donating" your pet's assistance, you can get X amount of gold, AP, maybe even "job"-related items (like, idk, fish or something for the fishing boat.) I could foresee a special type of currency only obtained by doing something like this, too, which can be exchanged for super special (untradeable) items... Which would make this all the more necessary for game play! This could 1., give other things for people to do to earn monies, cool stuff, etc., 2., give people more incentive to play rather than just making a cool pet., 3. Clear up room and memory on the site, and 3., most of all, keep that influx down; even if there are 200 "junk" pets being sold, people can buy them and turn them over for profit or whatever else. As for breeding cooldowns, why not have it set to where the parents (both of them!) cannot breed again until the egg(s) from the current go-round(s) have reached the adolescent stage? I feel as if this would not only be a little more realistic, but it helps two different things: not having an insanely long breeding cooldown (some sites have a month or more on their virtual pets!) and to help prevent these influxes from happening. What I mean is, is say pets A and B have an egg, Pet C. Pet C takes 3(?) days to hatch and 5(?) days before it is an adolescent. During this time, Pets A and B cannot breed again (with each other or any other pet!) until their offspring, Pet C is an adolescent. Let's face it... To prevent the influxes from happening, there has to be a breeding cooldown of some sort. It's inevitable. And it doesn't have to be super complicated, either, which was the impression I got trying to understand whatever it was y'all were trying to do here to begin with haha.

I think this might actually be an excellent idea for the site. Based on personal experience and what I've seen from other players, simply releasing pets is to be avoided if possible (if they're not unnecessary failed project pets that is) and difficult to do (I hate releasing even a pet I don't like). I also like the idea of getting something out of it, say like some small amount of gold or maybe even scales or AP, which would mean that those people who mass breed for projects would be getting at least some small amount of their investment back every time they release a subsequent generation or a failed pet.

I personally like the idea of having some sort of further restriction on breeding mostly because it makes me sad and slightly angry that some people will just mass breed and then set those pets up for 1g regardless of traits, stats, etc. And even if longer cooldowns are implemented, maybe it could be until the offspring is an adolescent for the females and until the egg hatches for the males. That way, there is still some sort of control but it isn't unreasonable and doesn't restrict all breeding for both of those parents for a long period of time.

I don't do much breeding anymore as it's a waste of time.

Pets never sell and even if I wanted to sell them, I can't use the search accurately enough to find out their current value. For example, if I wanted to sell a Reindeer Griffi offspring, I can't search to see what those are currently selling for - thus having no idea what I should be selling them for. So I have to guess at what the current market for them. The only way to really tell is to do a broad search of ALL griffi offspring currently up for sale and then weed through hundreds of pages of random griffs to to see what prices people are selling their reindeer griffs for. Unfortunately, I don't have that many hours in my day.

I think being able to search for offspring from a specific theme would help immeasurably in stabilizing pricing. If you can see what others are selling theirs for, then you know what to price yours at.

I'm on the fence for adding an NPC who buys offspring. I think initially it would clear out a lot of current offspring floating around the site, but then we'd just have people mass breeding to sell to the NPC. Value of gold would drop at the huge influx of gold from the NPC. I suppose if the NPC paid in scales or some other type of items or currency, it could prove to valuable - but again - it might quickly turn into an even bigger mass breeding problem..

I think what we need is an incentive to breed LESS. Not more. An incentive to purge rather than letting ugmo fails languish on the sales search and in our stables. And also I whole-heartedly agree there needs to be a breeding nerf of some sort. People are not going to like it. Newbies will feel like it's unfair to them because they can't afford to breed as freely as they used to be able to and oldbies will feel like they are being punished because of other's irresponsible breeding. But I think what we can all agree on is that we are all tired of the pet market being over-saturated and nothing having any value anymore. If we are going to fix it, then everyone needs to be willing to do their part in making that fix.

I think it's going to take a number of things to stem the tide that is mass-breeding. Here are just a few ideas of things to try....

How about site wide incentives to not breed. What if the site auto-awarded Items/gold/etc to players who don't overbreed. Say the limit is 200 eggs a month. Those who breed less than 200 eggs a month will receive a reward - Exp: gold, special untrade-able avatar items, armor, potions, special themed pets, etc.. This way those that want to breed for projects still are able to do so if they wish and those that are choosing to mass breed just to breed may instead choose to restrict themselves for the monthly awards.

Someone mentioned a limitation on the number of pets that can be put up for sale. I like this idea and think I can even improve on it. What if everyone had their own pet shop (yes, all pets would still appear in the search) BUT they would have limited sales slots available in their shop. More sales slots can be purchased with AP or Gold or even a new special currency that they'd have to earn some other way. This would severely cut down on the amount of muck pets put up for sale in the search as users would have to be way more choosy at what they are choosing to sell. On top of that, let's add some sales expiration times. If a pet hasn't sold in 30 days, then it's auto-removed from sales. Then the owner can decide at that point whether to relist it/amend the price/or release. This in effect would eliminate all pets from the search listed by users who are no longer active on sylestia which would free up even more space on the search.

Breeding potions - Lots of different kinds of breeding potions could be implemented into the game to help reduce mass breeding. With the implementation of these breeding potions, it wouldn't be as hard to on everyone to nerf the breeding cooldowns as they would have some power to affect how those limited offspring would turn out.

~ A potion to breed in of itself would an interesting add-on. It could be purchased with gold, scales, or heck even crafted with items found in the world. You would need to have a potion in your inventory before you could breed a pair of pets. 1 potion per breeding. Now I know project breeders won't care for this option, BUT if you included some other potions/items in conjunction with this one then project breeders wouldn't have to breed so much to attain the result that they want.

~ A potion to choose gender of offspring before the egg hatches - this would be a BOON to project breeders and would cut down on some the mass breeding they have to do just to get the correct gender to continue on their project.

~ A potion to help (not guarantee, but perhaps up the odds) with the passing of certain traits/genes (again project breeders would love this as it would cut out the massive amount of breeding they'd have to do to get traits to pass.

~ A potion to bypass a cool down nerf on breeding (should it be implemented) - again these could be a scale shop item, a craftable item, a reward item while battling, etc.

~ 30 day breeding passes (someone in a previous post mentioned something like this?) - for those project breeders who want unlimited breeding without the use of breeding potions. These could be a diamond shop item or item earned from release contests or found in event rewards or mission satchels, etc.. They could be trade-able so those that don't do a lot of breeding would have something of value to sell to those who do a lot of project breeding.

Someone mentioned Hatchery Limitations. I think this idea has merit as well. Limit the number of eggs you can keep in your hatchery thus limiting the amount of breeding you can do. I think being able to increase your hatchery size would be valuable as long as it was in small increments and required some effort - i.e. gold, scales, AP, etc.

While we are on the subject of... SCALES...

I would love for there to be another way to accrue scales (omg tediously nurturing eggs makes me want to eat my own hands out of sheer boredom)

How about a fishing hole. We already have a code for 'fishing' from one of the events. What about setting up a permanent fishing hole where you can pay a small amount of gold to fish or heck even fish for free once a day (say 5 casts) or even make finding fishing poles to use at the fishing hole an option while battling around in the zone... Some casts you catch a fish, some you catch a super rare prize (like gold or a breeding potion), and some casts net you nothing.

Once you have caught a fish/fishes, you can turn the fish into an NPC that will award you a certain amount of scales for the fish you caught. Bigger fish net larger amounts of scales and smaller fish give you a smaller amount of scales.

If more items/philters/potions are to be implemented into the scale shop, can we make it a bit more fun trying to earn scales for those items??

Anyhoo, this is a huge wall of text so I will wrap it now. Hopefully with all the suggestions everyone has mentioned, you will be able to come up with a way to battle this severe overpopulation problem we have on our hands.

i'm all for limits to hatcheries. something like a 10 tab cap, pay extra for more tabs, up yo a higher cap - the way stables are run.

And what about implementing a setup of Sale Stables separate from current stables? (like how some sites differentiate between shops/ item galleries.) Buying more tabs to put in more pets. that would also help with organizing current stables. and as a gold sink.

i know fabled pets have longer cooldown - but themed festpets could benefit from that too. and the special exclusive themed pets from the diamond shop.

How about a stablehand that gives feeding discounts for smaller stables? that helps new players who don't earn a lot at first, and encourages older players to release more.

take away the breeding option on starving pets. keeping pets above a certain feeding percent to keep them breedable, not just waiting for unconsciousness. that also gold-sinks. also the 'feed to breed' option. we shouldn't be able to feed someone else's pet just to get a bunch of eggs.

I know there's a diamond payment 'reclaim pet' option, but maybe purging pets that aren't reclaimed after a certain amount of time? say, a year? (longer for fables/ exclusives/ themed) there are probably a lot of pets that won't be reclaimed sitting in the servers that can be safely cleared out. but not really sure how that should work. :/

I am simply going to say that while I didn't personally have a problem with longer cooldowns, nor male cooldowns, I do think this system was overly complex, which would have made it rather difficult to explain to new players. If looked at again, hopefully it will be done in a bit more of a simplified manner.

I've read through this entire thread, and I'm still not sure exactly what problem we're trying to solve here, because "overpopulation" seems to mean different things to different people. Are we talking about having to wade through pages upon pages of 1-gold random-bred pets when combing through search results? While that's annoying, that's all it is: a rather trivial annoyance.

Or are we talking about a decline in value of organized projects like themed 6-vis, max stats, etc., that some attribute to market-flooding? That's a much more complicated issue that may ultimately be unsolvable, and I could make an argument that manipulating the market to produce higher profits for those breeders isn't a great thing for the admin to be doing. Regardless, that problem certainly won't be solved by making it harder to breed across the board. It also won't be affected either way by things like an NPC that pays 500 gold (or whatever amount) per pet.