Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=57948&page=5#41 Author: Krinadon Time Posted: 2/22/2018 at 11:48 AM [quote=1173717] The release of the Lost Grove is the predecessor to me beginning rebuilding Sylestia from scratch and then eventually relaunching Sylestia and us finally exiting Beta. =) This is kinda covered here: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=23216 Although that's a bit outdated at this point lol. Breeding is a very complicated issue for pet sim games - as I think literally any avid pet sim player can attest to. There are so many factors that have to be considered for long term sustainability of the breeding systems. From cost, time, value, customization, etc, etc. Then you have issues with... making a system that allows new players like yourself to dive in and experience it... while also having the system allow for old players to make profits off of their large investments. The biggest issue right now with Sylestia's pet economy is that pretty much any Level 1 can buy a stable full of 4-6 visible pets for a total of maybe 1,000 Gold - sometimes as little as 50 Gold. To me, that is game breaking and ruins the experience for the new player for multiple reasons. Players can endlessly breed two 6 vis pets over, and over, and over, and over until the end of time and if they sell them for 1 Gold, it's technically worth their time. This is a very tricky issue to resolve and I'm fairly certain any proposal we'd make would probably be met with disdain from at least a good portion of the playerbase. So we basically have an issue that definitely needs to be resolved, but it's very hard to find a solution that everyone would be on board for. So we wanted to try and test a possible partial solution and see how it went so that we can use that information to continue trying to find viable solutions. So, again, just to stress, I hope everyone can keep that in mind. This is far from written in stone.

...Where's my stable full of 4-6 vises? I wanna be among the elite, too!

I want to be clear that I'm not addressing anyone in particular. I'm simply offering my opinion.

I can see that I seem to be in the minority here, but, I'm really in favor of a change of this kind. I can understand the resistance, but as a project breeder myself, I think the pursuit of a more stable and sustainable pet economy is more important than the rate at which my projects are completed. Whether or not the change comes in this specific form, I appreciate that this is something you're testing and getting feedback for.

I think some valid points have been made about the way that traits are passed down. In a way, the RNG element adds to the sense of achievement when projects are finally completed - but that element also significantly contributes to the amount of breedings necessary to pursue projects in any consistent way. Addressing this factor in some way would be a very effective way of reducing the number of "dud" pets, even if it increased the number of "quality" ones.

I understand that this would be a much bigger undertaking than simply looking at cooldowns, but if the resistance to that feature proves too much, I wonder if it would be more palatable to the userbase to consider these two factors together - kind of a trade-off: exchange the shorter cooldown times for a higher degree of control over the breeding outcomes. Questions of wait-time for completed project offspring orders could be slightly alleviated with control over the gender of the egg, for example. Perhaps that would be too game-breaking. Though I don't think it hurts to look at other options, especially with a complete site rebuild in the future.

Thanks for the heart you continue to give this world of yours. Even with the growing pains, you have a really special game here.

edit: Ive read a few other posts and Id like to add on a bit - I dont think completely removing the RNG from breeding is the way to go either. What I was thinking when I said address this factor was kind of similar to the way youve done exclusive sylesti making features during fests - an item to guarantee a female egg, for example. Or an item to guarantee that a trait in a certain slot would pass down to the offspring, rather than rely on the 25-50%chance of a carry passing down.

A limit on these items would be necessary though - only one trait affected per egg or something like that. These items could be put in the scale shop, as youve already brought up a lack of items and a need for more incentive to nurture...

Anyway. Im probably spouting pointless and impossible things at this point. Thanks for listening so closely to your players. <3

one question right now I have, is this going to be applied to all pets eventually, or JUST to the ferrikkis? And you mentioned this is supposed to fix the mass breeding but people are going to mass breeding other pets anyways especially for project pets.

I will say this is going to exponentially slow down my ferrikki plans, and what's taking me 18 months already for my kelp will likely take double that for ferrikkis. I mean, I understand it but I don't like it. I definitely enjoy breeding pets but now it'll feel more like work, then enjoyment especially with the new sweethearts. And I'm not even gonna start with breeding stats yet, as I havent fully understood that yet.

The male cooldowns I don't have a problem with. 3 breedings is okay, but thinking I'm going to have to get more essences to make up for that a bit.

Initially reading this new implementation I thought it sounded like a band-aid approach. But then everyone doesn't fully know what kind of crafting/item system is coming.

After taking the time to read more opinions about this the quote "Less is more" kept ringing in my head. The issue seems to be in the amount of pets. Players don't like the thought of releasing a pet because it seems harsh to them. Once that pet is released it stops living in the game and not have the chance to give possible joy to another player.

I liked Xovinx mentioning a token system about buying released pets. And concerning that subject there's so many different things that could be done with that. The act of releasing a pet should be made less harsh, not everyone gets emotional about it but some do.

Like seeing released pets out in the wild. And with wild encounters the randomly maded Sylestis should be limited (i.e. X amount of randomly made by the computer pets get added to the wild by X number per hour). Or, in regards to essence, being able to transition pets into essence fragments to create a full one. 6-vis could be made to be more valuable with their carried genes turning into special gene essence. (i.e. This pet had the Butterfly Wing gene and it turns into X amount of Butterfly Wing essence fragments and X amount of essence fragments is needed to make a full Essence).

On top of that so many players have mentioned wanting a special pet store where players can sell un-wanted pets. Everyone's used to the way the breeding system is now without experiencing the stepping stone of these future new items to help transition to this breeding cooldown idea. There's more than one way to do anything.

Really not happy about this. Even less happy that it is being put in after I purchased and spent diamond on getting more themed rikki eggs. People will no longer put their pets up for public breeding. I would not have purchased the chestnut or heart themed eggs if I had known this was going to occur. Without a mate, they will just sit in my stables. It is a real shame, because I was really excited for this new species.

I love doing projects for myself. I really do not care if noone else will ever buy the projects I make. I find it relaxing, this change basically kills any desire I have to even attempt doing a project with these guys. Now I am stuck with just the handful of traits I have. The ring already hates me when it comes to passing on traits I want, now I will have even more reason to curse it. That is not my idea of fun.

I had some serious concerns with how much focus was being placed on fighting and now it looks like those concerns are real. I already spend way more time than I should on here. If breeding becomes a wait two weeks before you can do anything I will not be spending that time fighting, I will just leave to do something else and may or may not come back.

I understand that overbreeding is an issue, but this punishes those of us who are responsible breeders and frankly would decrease the number of pets I would want to release since I will now need more males and females if I want to finish a project in any kind of timely manner. I also do not like the idea of adding even more stuff that I have to buy to reduce that cooldown. I already need nullifiers, pies, greater dyes and prismas and I really do not need yet another item I have to try and stockpile.

Alright, I think I've read through every post now...

Now, I admit, I don't breed pets anymore. When I first started I could breed some pretty pets and make some gold... but now there's so much competition and just so. many. pets. that unless they're max stat it seems utterly worthless to even bother. I DO like the idea of making changes to pet breeding to make it more valuable. Reading over the suggested updates doesn't seem like a huge change, and seems like it might be good. We'll have to see. It also seems to me that most of the frustration her is initial panic, a lot of which doesn't seem to be thought through (please, if you're gonna reply to me, don't ragequit reading here... read the rest before jumping on me) Overall, it would mean less pets for sale, but it would also mean more VALUABLE pets for sale. I mean, advanced search right now shows you have clogged the marketplace is. I like the idea of thinning that out and making breeding more profitable. Most of those pets are never gonna sell.

All that being said... we need a little more, I think, to offset this. For one, it needs to be easier for new players to make money. Especially since this will make buying pets harder, but selling them easier. Most newbies won't have a lot to sell. We need more ways for them to earn gold by exploring. This could be also be done, potentially, but adding simple games to the site that awarded gold.

Are we allowed to mention other sites on here? If not, lemme know and I'll delete this part. But I like how Flight Rising has games you can play to earn gold, with a gold cap everyday. It is especially useful for newbies who need money to buy pets to get into the breeding game. Something like that on here would be extremely helpful. And the games don't even have to be particularly complicated. Just give us some basic matching game or Sylestia-fied sudoku.

Another thing that would help would be, if there's going to be more cooldowns on breeding, perhaps making it slightly more likely that genes will be passed down? Because I agree with other breeders who say this will be very hard when one breeding gives you a pet that isn't what you wanted/needed.

But another thing that could help the above, that other people have mentioned, would be rewards for releasing pets, OR an NPC pet buyer. If there was a set percentage of gold you would get for each pet you took out of the economy, pets that no one was going to buy, that would REALLY REALLY REALLY help. The amount of gold could be based on what species the pet is, how many gene points it has, etc. It would help get rid of the unwanted pets and failed breedings. It would also make capturing pets potentially more interesting and exciting. There could also be days (again, I'm pulling from Flight Rising here) where certain traits or species would sell for slightly more gold. If any of these suggestions is implemented I TRULY hope this one is. It would make breeding so. much. better. It would make things so much easier for newbies, as well, who could potentially catch rarer pets and sell them to NPCs. They could even work up enough money to start buying/breeding more pets this way. I bolded this paragraph because I really think this idea would help.

Anyway... those are my thoughts. No matter what happens, I don't plan on leaving anytime soon and I'll still love the site!

Hmm this could cause problem for certain types of breeding projects. Especially if you are breeding certain traits. I usually breed my pet projects once a week. A twelve day cool down makes breeding only possible once every two weeks. A project that normally takes a year will now take two or three years. Then you still have to find a buyer for your pets. We already have the ruling allowing other breeders to buy and release multiple pets other players are trying to sell. Thus making their own pets seem more avaliable. It's unfair to other players who have low budgets in money and time to be on the site. I have year old baby and can't spend all day playing online waiting for that one chance to breed with pet that has a needed gene. As always I will accept your decisions and respect your right to make those decisions.

Since I believe criticism should be constructive I will add a few ideas for improvement that might help things be a little more fair to all concerned. First maybe the cooldowns could be limited to public breedings, at least for the males, The owner should be allowed more access to breed their own pets. You might do this by offering a diamond shop item like a charm or something they can add to their stable pets. Since you might be redoing the breeding project its something to keep in mind.

The next idea deals with finding buyers and advertising. I think it would be a good idea to add a pet shop row. A place where breeders can advertise their pet designs better than the pet auctions forum. Something that would allow buyers to browse designer pets that other players have bred. Then buy avaliable stock or place an order to the breeder for the pet they are interested in. Since you once mentioned a problem with the gold economy you could have breeders pay a certain amount to rent a stall or space on that page. Like how much it would cost too feed a fainted pet 100 to 200 gold per pet per day. Not to high a fee though since a high fee would favor only the rich players. You could also limit the amount of pets they could advertise and the breeder could advertise different stock on different days. This would also allow a cool down for advertised pets. A pet advertised for three days would have a three day cool down, and a weeks advertising would be a weeks cool down on a pet design. You could set a cap for how much you could sell a pet for both minimum and maximum prices, and you could collect a fee for every sale for the sylestia economy.

For new players and new budget players you could add a pet pound. Where players can surrender a pet for other players to adopt. You could set the standard for what quality of pets the pound accepts, the limit of pets a player can surrender or adopt per week. I think between one to three would be fair. Then you could set the adoption fee for players wishing to adopt. Less for an infertile pet more for a fertile pet as an example.

You could also add a breeding page for public b reedings with the same idea. A male could be bred one to three times a day depending on what fee the breeder pays to advertise and then the cool down. Females would of course require different rules. These are just some ideas that might make the breeding changes more fair and fun for all players new and old alike. As always it's your decision and we will accept and respect whatever you decide. Also thank you for all the hard work you have done on the sight. You guys are still the most awesome mods I know.

Krin, please keep in mind that for most species, it's extremely difficult to get 120-mana pets with particular genes. That's because the only 120-mana pets that exist for most species are the 4-star wild ones that very rarely show up in raids. The way I've generally done it is to get or create a 100-mana pet with the desired gene, breed it to a 120-mana pet until I get a 120-mana egg that carries the gene, and go from there. That can take a lot of attempts, and the same 120-mana pet often gets reused for several different projects (mine and other people's). If it takes 20 breedings to get a 120-mana egg that carries the desired gene, and one parent or the other has a cooldown of 12 days, that's around eight months to get the desired egg. Moreover, for a max-stat project based around those genes, one offspring isn't enough - you need two from each pair.

That's not even factoring in the additional wait times in subsequent early generations, in which the goal is a pet that shows all desired genes, from a starting point of pets that carry one gene. To avoid wasting philters, that typically has to be done before prisma-philtering can even start. All told, this change will probably add at least a year to projects that take an entire year already.

The idea for scale items to reduce or eliminate the cooldown isn't a bad one, but it doesn't really jive with the other statements about wanting Sylestia to be less grinding-based. There may be a handful of players who enjoy nurturing for its own sake, but for the vast majority, it's just grinding that they do to get an item or win a contest. I don't think it's reasonable say "I recognize that excessive grinding is a problem, and I'm working to fix it," while implementing limits that effectively require grinding where none was required before. Offering a diamond alternative isn't a solution to that, because requiring players to pay for what they used to be able to do for free is never a good idea.

I already think it's excessive that it takes a full year of active breeding, plus a significant diamond investment, to breed pets that have any hope of not getting massacred in newer areas of the game. I first took issue with this when the dungeon difficulty was raiesed. I know max-stat pets can be purchased from other players fairly cheaply, but for many people, breeding your team is the point of the game. That's especially true now that Ability Expertise (which I love!) makes it much more difficult and time-consuming to train a pet up to its maximum potential, which means that if you've been using a purchased/gifted max-stat team for years, it's not so simple to just swap them out for a homebred team you think is prettier.

TL;DR: This new limit will functionally add a year or so onto max-stat projects that already take a year. Doubling the time required while keeping the diamond cost the same (or, alternatively, using items to keep the time the same while significantly increasing the diamond cost, because those items have to be purchased) is just ridiculous. If we're going to continue down the path of max-stat pets being necessary to play the game, then breeding changes should be geared towards making those projects easier and cheaper, not harder and more expensive.

Ok, just my two cents in this pool of emotion and opinion. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and so no one is wrong. I can't say I'm in favor of the changes proposed, but I can't say that something shouldn't be done either. I'm new to the breeding project area. I have a vulnyx project I've been working on for a while now...not quite a year maybe, and I have learned a lot in this process. I tried reading guides, but unfortunately I'm one of those that learns from doing not just reading. I have just gotten my project to the point that I am producing the visibles that I want and now am getting ready to start with the stat portion. It has taken me (embarrassed to say this) over 40 generations to get to this point. Now granted I should have gone back and rebred parents that gave me fails rather than continuing with said offspring, but that is part of the learning process. Yeah I tried to sell some of those offspring because I didn't want to release, but honestly? I ended up releasing anyway because I didn't want to sell them for 1-10gp per. So now I'm looking at hordes of pets that I am releasing now that I should have released way back and rebred the parents to get where I am now. What does that have to do with anything here? Probably nothing, probably everything. My point is that newer players just starting with their projects may not be as organized as those that have already done several projects. (No offense to those that are, just making a point.) I have a second project that I'm beginning and am keeping better notes and planning than I did with my first bunch. Still have a long way to go on that one, but yeesh...looking at what I have ahead of me with my current project, the statting part, I will have a long way to go before those get done because I can't afford to buy the number of philters it will take for me to complete it sooner. So in /my/ situation the change in cool downs won't hurt me, not until I finish and want to start selling the final product. But still, even then, if I plan for it, I can have a stock of finished pets for sale but again that's besides the point. What I see is that it would indeed be more of a punishment for those that have been on this site far longer than I have (which is approaching 2 years) or those that are more into the breeding aspect than others. It would discourage newer players from (and those players like me that decided to give it a shot) entering into the breeding aspect of the game. I do agree that something does need to be done wit the abundance of pets out there though. I mean I was able to find a ton of pets that had high visibles for next to nothing in my early days and filled my stables rapidly with pets that now I have no room for what I want to breed. No one's fault but my own. Again besides the point.

I do agree with what Loralie and others have said in that if there is a restriction or addition to the cool down to the breeding, then maybe there can be a change to the RNG of the traits/stats being passed on. Or to encourage the release of the non-optimal offspring that they may be converted to shards or fragments of a type of philter. Like was mentioned a specific trait that you may be breeding towards that could be then used on any pet like the restricted philters that are in game now. Just ideas like this are very interesting to consider when looking at what to do to enhance the breeding aspect of the game, rather than to shackle it.

Sorry if this is a lot of ramblings and not a lot of sense. Just typing as I was thinking.

I definitely think that something along these lines is nessesary. As someone who does a lot of breeding projects though, having breeding times not be consistent between all the sylesti will be a pain and there's no way around it. I want to ask though, these huge recovery time increases will be the basis for fabled species and won't be as dramatic with other species, right?