Allow All Males to Breed within the Pack

Full support! I would love to have male wolves for lore reasons but they are just not essential when females can do all the same things AND breed. Why would I keep a wolf that is lacking a fundamental core value in a breeding sim game? 

I initially disagreed, but your arguments are really well thought out, and you've convinced me to support!! Cool idea about the breeding cool down for non-BMs. I agree there should only be 1 stud per pack (the BM).

I've already said support but I'm here to support again. This really does seem like the game's primary flaw. Breeding projects seem so daunting and unpleasant when my only options are inbreeding and hope someone out there has the right wolf for the job.

Support - I was thinking of making a similar thread myself actually.

The thing about the current breeding mechanic (along with the penalties applied to female lead wolves because of pregnancy) is it really feels like the game is trying to push players towards a particular playstyle - having a lead breeding male who has a harem of females/breeds indiscriminately with all the females in his pack (i.e. the Lioden model). Which obviously isn't accurate at all to real wolf behaviour, and creates problems for players who want a more "realistic" playstyle or those who want to play Hard Mode/avoid inbreeding (since at present the only way to breed your breeding male's female pups is by either studding them out or breeding them back to their fathers, and not everyone can or wants to stud to other players' wolves; Lioden avoids this by having a two-account system, so every player can have two kings/breeding males, and so there is an option other than studding or inbreeding). It also means that players who want their lead wolf and its mate to be a mated pair for realism or lore reasons are effectively limited to having one litter of pups per month, which makes breeding for rare bases/markings/mutations difficult if not impossible.

The Lioden model works for Lioden, partly because of the two-account system, partly because a harem breeding structure is at least somewhat accurate to real lion behaviour (and so players who want a Realistic Lion Pride Simulator can retain interest in the breeding aspect of the game and the rare base/marking/mutation market without having to sacrifice lore or realism, or vice versa), and also because the sexes on Lioden have such different roles - males have their own roles that can't be filled by females (kinging/exploring, submale sparring and patrolling), while the game is otherwise very much built around females (only females can hunt; only females can be encountered in explore; all raffle lions are female). In Wolvden, where none of these things apply, the harem-style breeding mechanic is instead a major hindrance to gameplay for anyone who doesn't simply want to play Lioden with wolf-shaped lions. (Obviously not everyone plays for realism and that's fine - total realism in a game shouldn't even be a goal if it would break gameplay - but the inability to play the game as a Realistic Wolf Pack Simulator without sacrificing breeding is a real sticking point for me, and I'm sure a lot of other players). The game is such a departure from Lioden already in a lot of aspects, the relative egalitarianism of roles for males and females being one of them - why not also extend this egalitarianism to breeding, in keeping with the different demands of a wolf-based game vs. a lion-based game?

Really, the only reason to not allow all males on-site to breed indiscriminately is that they don't have a heat cycle or breeding cooldowns like females do, and so allowing them to breed unrestricted would flood the market with pups as well as tanking the stud market. Like others on here have said, I think an easy way around this would be to just add breeding cooldowns for males that are not the pack's main breeding male - say 24 days, to match females' 4 days of pregnancy and 20-day cooldown. (Instant Pup Delivery would also obviously not work on males, and so, while the interval between breedings for females could be shortened by instabirthing the puppies, males would still have the entire 24-day cooldown with no way to circumvent it). As much as the idea of breeding male slots (especially behind a paywall) seems undesirable for many players, I can also see how it could be a decent compromise for staff to allow extra breeding males while also retaining the studding feature and not flooding the pup market. In this scenario, breeding male slots could either be purchasable like territory slots, or be limited within the pack - the limit could either be tied to territory slots (e.g. one breeding male slot, including the main breeding male, for every 10 territory slots the pack has, rounded up) or there could be a hard limit, so that even very large packs couldn't have more than 3 or 4 breeding males at any one time. And of course the same restrictions (retirement fee, 30-day cooldown after retiring, unable to be reset as breeding male after retiring from the role, etc.) would still apply to main breeding males, so players would not be able to swap out their main breeding male for one of their extra ones or constantly assign and reassign the main breeding male role among their males in order to circumvent breeding cooldowns.

I also really like the idea of being able to pair wolves, like I've said on the thread about it. Honestly I don't even really mind which change(s) to the breeding system happen, as long as they allow players going for lore/realism to play the way they want to, instead of either being forced into the Lioden style and/or studding, or having their interest in the game stagnate. Either extra breeding males or a pairing feature would work for that purpose.

I'm in full support, it sucks that getting a new stud is 20+ GC [5 USD] and if you want the one month breeding wait to be voided that's even more GC.

I have way better males already but i can't afford the almost $10 USD cost

Absolutely suggested. This at least breaks all the realism in which the creators of the game went. 20GC for change breeding male after cooldown is too expensive. I waited for the cooldown to be completed, but in the end I still had to pay, because the male can only be one. I would understand such mechanics in Lioden, but one male is a completely illogical solution.

Support, I don’t mind other breeding males having cool downs or having to pay sc for multiple breeding male but not stud slots or whatever as long as it means we can breed with multiple of our male wolves. The only one breeding male feature is just a pointless carry over from Lioden that doesn’t make sense in context. I want to have multiple male wolves in my pack that don’t feel like I’m wasting time leveling them and so on because of a silly game mechanic that doesn’t let me pass on their stats unless I want to shell out money to rotate studs every once and awhile.

Totally support this, found it deeply irritating how this system seems to be a carry over from lioden. Having one stud slot and even a limited number of non stud but breeding male slots would also work imo. But a breeding cool down would also be awesome to implement. 

please,, so much support. i really don't like the idea of one permanent stud for my pack ! i saw a "cooldown" for males mentioned a few times, i like that idea !

 To me, you shouldn't have to pay 10 bucks just so you don't get stuck with a shitty breeding male or so you can have a chance at getting nice looking puppies.