Personally, I think that while the "issues" of cheap themes and cheap bred pets seem similar, they are caused by very different reasons. I don't know much about themed pets, so this is mostly about bred pets.

I. Themed pets
I don't think messing with the breeding system will increase themed pet prices. Since every festival (four times a year) we get free traps daily for just encountering themed pets, catching (not to mention adopting eggling) themed pets is generally free. (Note that these traps are both non-tradeable and can't be sold back to the site for gold, so the only opportunity cost to using one is fewer traps for a different pet. However, in personal experience, I can't use these traps as quickly as I accumulate them, which makes them effectively free to use.) Since the cost of acquiring most zone themes is so low (just a little time and luck), the price of these pets will necessarily also be low.

Of course, this is just my personal experience, so I don't know if this is what it's actually like for the rest of the site.


II. Bred Pets
When it comes to breeding pets, we have an interesting conflict between the cost of creating new pets and the cost of keeping pets. It is practically free to breed new pets (it requires only two adult pets and a few seconds) and keep them in your hatchery; however, it is quite expensive to keep pets in your stables.

Buying all the tabs in a stable costs a total of 1,880,000 gold (not including cost of stable), for an average of 9,400 gold per stall. Even for the cheapest tab (20k), the average gold per stall is 800 gold (only for a maximum of 25 stalls--buy another tab and the average price doubles to 1600 gold). Additionally, pets must be fed, which costs 10 gold per pet per day. This means that keeping a pet in your stables costs you between 800-9000 gold plus 10 gold a day (less if you have a stablehand). This has several important implications: (for the sake of simplicity, I'm assuming all stalls to have an average cost of around 5000 gold)

1. Buying a pet is significantly more costly than just its sale price (particularly for pets in the 1-10,000g range)
2. In contrast, releasing a stable pet (freeing up a stall) gains you about 5000 gold (in opportunity costs)
3. Moving a pet from your hatchery to your stables usually costs you about 5000 gold (in opportunity costs)
4. Asking someone to house your pets for you is effectively asking them to pay you ~5000 gold

Breeding pets is free, but keeping them is not. That means that the supply will be huge (even at price = 0) and demand will be low (even at price = 0) (except in special cases with exclusive pets only sold by a few players, like projects and rare themes), and the market price will drop. However, since most pets on the market are worth less than the ~5000 gold of stable space they take up, this means that the market value (equilibrium point) of most of these pets would be negative (meaning that people would be willing to buy these pets if you paid them to)--but prices are not allowed to go below 1 gold. With this artificially high price floor, there will always be more willing sellers than willing buyers, so there will be a huge surplus of cheap pets on the market. Image for clarification:


Now, for solutions.

Personally, I think the simplest and most intuitive solution* would be to charge for hatchery space--just like the stables are currently. Make hatchery space cost 1k-10k per "stall" on average, with the first few free (or you could even have the first few cost something small, like 100g each). This would raise the cost of breeding pets (supply curve drops), which would hopefully raise the market price of average pets above 0. (As a note, this is almost the same as Asviloka's suggestion, except the costs are implicit instead of explicit.)

*Aside from just eliminating the hatchery and putting all pets in the stables, which (while simple on paper) doesn't fit within the current mechanics of the game.

However, this solution does have some issues. The first is that it will require more bookkeeping & decision-making when increasing stable/hatchery space (for projects, etc.)--you will have to buy extra space twice, instead of once (as it is now). Also, if the stable/hatchery prices aren't balanced against each other, they may cause other issues (Although I don't have the data or know-how to figure out what those balanced costs would be).

Additionally, while the cost of breeding pets would go up (assuming ~5k per stall, so ~5k per pet), the benefit from selling pets would also go up (freeing up a stall would get you a 5k stall you can use for another pet), and the net benefit of breeding + selling would not change. Also, the cost of keeping a pet in your hatchery probably wouldn't be as high as 5k per stall, as pets leave the hatchery after 28 days but you keep bought stalls forever. (Interestingly, Asviloka's solution circumvents these problems.)

So, while I think the simplest solution would be to price hatchery pages, I think Asviloka's solution might also be viable (but it would be significantly more complex to use and would probably be more difficult to explain).


I also would like to say that while I would like project pets to be more valuable (specifically non-max-stat, non-themed), I think that the core of breeding on this site is that you breed for fun, not for profit. Most people don't make a breeding project because they think they can sell if for tons of gold; instead, (at least in personal experience) players start projects because they like a design and want to see it realized. Personally, I like it when people buy my pets not because I'm making money (I make way more doing missions), but because it makes me happy that people like the pets I put so much time into creating.

Well, this really long post describes what I think the issue is, but I don't really know much about the in-game economy and how other people value pets, so I could be completely wrong about all of this!

I agree with the shelter idea
But pets that go there should automatically not be able to breed any more, or to leave them breed able, the original owner has to pay AP or something

That seems like a good idea or having a shelter that lets you adopt pets but you have to pay 1k AP.

one issue with the pet shelter idea, and I have seen this on sites with similar mechanics, is that it could just simply fill up with pets no one wants, so it would really shift the problem of having a ton of pets on the AS (which these pets would probably still show up there) that aren't being sold, to having a ton of pets in the adoption agency (and again, still on the AS) that aren't being adopted.

It would probably be worse if the pets aren't breedable, because most players who would want to adopt would be newer ones who would want to start breeding their own pets and are looking for cheap/free pets to do so. When they find out that the pets from the adoption center aren't able to be bred, they would go looking elsewhere.

It would also run the risk, if there isn't a limit on adopting, of having some players camped out there snatching up any remotely good pet to resell.

Also, what would the incentive be to put the pet in the shelter vs trying to get a couple of gold from it? (honestly asking). If it is cheaper/better to try to sell pets, that is what the majority of players would do, because most of them don't care about the economy as long as they can sell their pets. (some don't even care about selling the pets, they just want to breed them and if they don't sell they will simply release them when they need space)

It isn't necessarily a bad idea, but from the examples I have seen on other sites, it doesn't tend to work like intended. (and if Furvilla is any example, you will then have players complaining about all the 'junk' pets being tossed into the shelter making it harder to find what they are looking for.... that came up a LOT on Furvilla after the giving tree was added)

Some people have a lot of AP
It could be1kAP PER trait

true tho the people who have the most AP are the most active players who nurture a lot and I don't nurture much so I only have 37k AP though that is a good suggestion cause I read somewhere that someone has 3 mil AP.

Just want to point out AP doesn't come from nurturing but rather exploring and winning battles (and I believe finishing quests and maybe missions). Nurturing as far as I know only gives scales.

oh, my mistake, I dont know much about AP points but yes I think youre right. Thanks :)

No worries, it is an easy mistake to make, but it just means that AP are actually easier to come by than scales. (at least to me)