Allow All Males to Breed within the Pack

I can definitely understand the worry about the stud/pup market for those that do use it a lot and enjoy using it, but it is definitely frustrating to have it come up all the time.

I get the game definitely encourages it and it's a good way to get currency profit (if you have the time/money/resources to dedicate to it, as well as luck to meet active trends), but studding is simply not the center of Wolvden's universe. What is most important in the game will vary between players, so it is becoming a bother that this one avenue of play is constantly brought up regarding discussions attempting to lift up other paths of play that also exist, and deserve the chance to be lifted up just as much as studding does.

I'd argue the more casual or solo routes of play need support more, since studding seems to be what the game is attempting to funnel majority of players into doing, which is why it is becoming a grating thing to read over and over. Players that want to not to stud often...exist. Players that do not want to use studs at all...also exist. I can get bringing studding into talks to balance ideas with the current systems so they can not clash harshly with one another, but the fact is that those other ways to play the game exist and are just as valid and thus the stud market should not be treated as more important (imo).

I kinda feel like Naruto sitting on a swing sometimes cuz the way I wish I could play is crippled by multiple mechanics and so unfun that it sucks a lot of joy I can potentially have with the game.

Edit: words...i really need to start drafting replies and letting them sit for 3 minutes instead of sending them off the seat of my pants

I hugely agree with everyone's sentiments about the whole 'but the stud economyyyyyyy' thing. it's just crap, not everyone can make money studding, not everyone has the time to do it, and opening other avenues to other playstyles is pretty much needed because so many people are being THROTTLED by how the game is currently set up with it's mechanics. this is a young game, and i really think they need to seriously reconsider this massive cooldown AND breeding cap. it's just plain ridiculous! 

they're gonna lose a ton of membership over the next few months if they don't reconsider how they're setting up their mechanics, especially with regards to breeding. if they truly don't want this to be like lioden then they need to actually make it not like lioden. this is barely different, and still encourages the harem system which is dumb.

Indeed 

i do have my breeding male up for stud but things are quiet for him and i know for a fact i don't want to be relying on that for income let alone looking for a stud for my females so this feature Is better for peeps like me But It Needs A Change. Fix What we Mean, Let Us Play How We Want. Not How We Have To. 

I am a solo/casual player and i mostly always will be, just like many here can be. The Stud market won't go anywhere, only trends and such. This Feature is new, what we were howling over and now we howl again to have what is flawed to be fixed. 

^^i agree with everything you said. im a casual, sort of lore player, and this system is honestly so unmotivating. i've already stopped showing up because it feels like my pack is bad compared to others, now i only hope they fix this issue. i 100% don't have the resources to get a stud

Re: the stud market, I may be biased since studding is not a feature that I have ever been interested in (I'm more of a lore breeder and prefer my lions/wolves to be unrelated to other players', as it helps to preserve the challenge of the game if the only way I can access rare bases/markings/mutations/stats is through RNG or my own hard work). But I do remember anecdotally from Lioden that the stud market ended up being dominated by four high-stat leaderboard males, to the point that virtually every lion on the site was related to at least one of them, and to the point that an entire player challenge/playstyle was created specifically to avoid lions bred from these males (this latter development also goes to show that the stud market, and what players consider valuable at any one time, is not always predictable: the sudden craze over having lions not related to the "big four" meant that many rare or high-stat lions lost market value due to a few lines in their heritage showing them to have been bred from one of these studs). This kind of market monopoly is surely something to be avoided, while changes in player priorities or cycling of popular player "crazes" (a particular marking/base/mutation, heritageless studs, non-inbreeding, avoiding popular leaderboard studs, raffle clones, having as many breed-only features as possible, etc.) will ensure that there is always at least some player interest in the stud market, since what is considered valuable in studs or lions (/wolves) will fluctuate and most players will not be ahead of the popularity curve.

Even without the (imo redundant) two-breedings-a-month limit, it's also worth noting that the pairing feature is inherently limiting - since female wolves are only breedable between the ages of 1 year and 7 years 2 months, each female has a maximum breedability period of 147-148 days (depending on whether she becomes unbreedable from 7 years 2 months or only from 7 years 2 1/2 months). Since a pair can only be bred every 30-day cycle due to the male's cooldown, this means that a paired female will only be able to breed to her mate a hard maximum of 4 times in her lifespan, and this can't be worked around with IBFs since they have no effect on the male's cooldown period. Assuming that males are breedable up until the age of 8 years, a paired male will have a maximum breedability period of 168 days, meaning that he can be bred a maximum of 5 times in his lifespan, assuming that he and his mate are paired and bred the moment they both reach adulthood; however, due to the harsh penalties and 30-day cooldown associated with disbanding a pairing, trying to squeeze one last breeding out of him by pairing him with a different (younger) female before he dies, or cycling the females he is paired with in order to maximise his breeding potential, almost isn't worth it. So this means that the majority of paired wolves onsite are going to have no more than 4 litters before they die. Since the male and female breeding cooldowns don't quite sync up (the female's cooldown is 24 days and the male's 30, which seems to me like an odd choice on the part of the devs; I would have made the male's cooldown also 24, or at least closer to 24 than 30), the player also has to be careful in choosing when to breed the pair if they want the female to be in heat again by the time the male's cooldown expires. If the female is bred on her first day of heat, she will come into heat again 6 days before the end of the male's cooldown, and thus will no longer be breedable without an Elk Heart by the time her mate's cooldown is over, meaning that if the player wants to get the maximum of 4 litters out of their pair, and doesn't want to or can't afford to buy Elk Hearts, they must be careful to only breed the pair on the female's third or fourth day of heat every time. And of course if for whatever reason the player forgets to breed the pair at the right time, or forgets to nest the female, this translates to valuable time lost for the pair, the male especially since he is unbreedable outside of it.The 100% mood loss penalty and 30-day cooldown for disbanding pairs also means that the player must be very careful when choosing pairs, and a player accidentally choosing a sub-optimal pair or changing their mind regarding the pairing (e.g. pairing a female with what seems like a decent mate only to find they produce ugly pups, finding a much better mate after the pairing is already made, or changing their breeding priorities or strategy due to a new base or genetics mechanic being released) comes with harsh financial expenses as well as potential loss of valuable breeding time for one or both wolves.

Contrast this to simply breeding all females to the breeding male, or studding out females. Since a non-paired female isn't dependent on her mate's 30-day breeding cooldown, she will be breedable every 24-day cycle, meaning that she can be bred a maximum of 6 times in her lifespan. If the player uses IBFs, this cooldown can be shortened to a minimum of 20 days, meaning the female can be bred a maximum of 7 times (assuming she is always bred on the first day of her heat and the litter instabirthed the same day). Additionally, there are none of the headaches associated with trying to sync up male and female breeding cooldowns or choosing a mate of similar age in order to maximise both wolves' breeding potential, and it's much less of a loss if the player forgets to nest the female or accidentally skips one of her heats, since she isn't constrained by a male's cooldown period (and likewise, if the player does accidentally skip a heat and ends up getting only 4-5 litters out of the female instead of the maximum 6 or 7, this is not only still more than she would have got if she was paired, it's also only a waste of one wolf's breeding potential, whereas if she was paired it would be a waste of the male's genetics as well as hers since he is unbreedable outside the pairing). Similarly, there are fewer headaches associated with accidentally making a bad breeding decision, since the female can always just be bred to a different stud next time if her first litter turns out to be a dud (without having her saddled to a dud pairmate who takes up territory space and resources while being genetically useless), and the player can always just buy more females with new genetics if their breeding project isn't working or undergoes a revamp. As other commenters have mentioned, males also require upkeep and take up territory space, and so a player looking to maximise the breeding potential of their 20-slot pack can either have one breeding male and 19 females (a maximum of 114-133 total litters, assuming all females are kept and bred until they reach 7 years 2 months), no males and 20 females, all studded out to other players' breeding males (a maximum of 120-140 litters, but with the cost of paying for studs), or 10 male-female pairs (a maximum of only 40-43 litters - essentially equal to what the player would get if they only had four females and one breeding male). Bear in mind that this is without factoring in the current two-breedings-per-month limit.

What this means is that even without the two-breedings-a-month limit, studding or harem breeding is already a vastly superior option to pairing for players interested in mass breeding or breeding for profit, even those looking to breed their high-stat or rare-based male pups (since they can either keep them male and pair them for a maximum of 4 or 5 breedings per wolf per lifetime, all or most of them to a single female, or they can sex change and instead get up to 7 litters per wolf, potentially from a lot of different studs). So I doubt the stud market, or studding as a playstyle, is in danger of going extinct or even really threatened by the pairing feature - judging by the responses in this thread, most of the players even interested in pairing their wolves seem to be so for non-profit-related reasons anyway (since the bulk of responses appear to be from lore breeders or those who can't afford "valuable/high-quality" wolves or stud fees, and so probably aren't looking to make money off pups from pair breedings in any case). So the two-breedings-a-month limit is gratuitous and an unnecessary further limit on what is already a very limiting feature, and one that is (judging by the responses in this thread) seemingly primarily going to be used by players who wouldn't have been paying for studs anyway. And if the idea is to limit pair breeding so that it can't be abused or used to simply spam the market with more unwanted pups/take business away from stud owners, I think there are other limits or caveats that could be built into the feature to limit its use and keep studding as the relatively cheap/easy alternative - the 30- (as opposed to 24-) day cooldown for males is already one, but additionally paired wolves could, for example, suffer extra mood loss upon rollover if their personalities are incompatible, be unpairable if they are too closely related (say, brother and sister - this could discourage pairing as a strategy to breed recessive mutations), or enter a 7-day cooldown or "courtship" period upon being paired during which they are unable to breed (this wouldn't change the maximum number of breedings a pair is able to have in its lifetime and thus wouldn't make much of a difference to pair breeders, but could provide an additional incentive against pairing to players simply looking to maximise their wolves' genetic potential or mass breed for profit).

Reading through Lunar's post, (lots of good points in there, by the way,) it just hit me. Did they make the male's cooldown 30 days just to ensure both pair breedings can't be used by a single male in a month's time? (Or alternatively, one male can't pair breed with two females in the span of a month due to disband cooldown.) Does that sound like it could be it to anyone else?

Because if that was the reasoning behind it, that sounds kinda... dumb.

They've essentially kneecapped a vast amount of playstyles in an attempt to force this One Specific way to play and I'm really not about that life. The stud market will be dang fine, there will never stop being a reason to use studs if you want specific genetics and that excuse is baloney. This will cost them players and will still have people playing harem style cuz what other option is there if you're trying to maximize a breeding project?? It's just dumb. 

I really hope the changes to the pup market help people accept that pair breeding isn’t the devil. (I’ve sold two male pups, it’s crazy.)

It really isn't the devil and has so much potential to be a good thing, like.

Players already have to put effort into a stud with worth. Pair breeding won't remove the difficulty but simply be another tool for a player to work on getting what they'd want for their stud. It would allow players that do not have the SC to burn or play more solo to more efficiently achieve things that people who stud can.

I can see it helping the market as a whole so much if it weren't so stifled the way it is.

Honestly though, the extended cooldownt is SO broke, so there's no worry for stud market. Like, I just had a wolf run. I now have to wait an entire month basically to be able to breed with her (unless I somehow decide I want to break my lore and breed with my breeding male).

The cooldown is RIDICULOUSLY long. Even if they do add items to make males breed sooner it still desperately needs to be shorter. At least half the time if not more. The males cooldown should be as long as the females' imo. And bonding pairs should NOT be affected if a wolf runs. If I get it back, they should be able to automatically be made pairs (without me having to set them up like with roles).