Additional variant of breeding: setting pairs

@Raine- I genuinely think the problem is with the players. Making all males breedable with restrictions similar to females might help, because those who are forced to play harem-style won't have to, but the vast majority of players are still going to go "oo, shiny animal" and breed everything to death.

Look at merle. The game hasn't been going for more than 3 months, and people have already hopped on the 'rare' trait bandwagon, producing quad merles and more, until the single mark isn't worth anything. I bet half the players breeding for 6 instances of merle at 100% don't actually want the redundancy of only being able to see the top colour, it's just what happens to be popular.

More than anything, I think this suggestion (and the cooldown-based one) will make people put a little more thought into breeding, rather than waiting for the latest top RMA-marked stud and throwing females at him, haha.

Unfortunately, there will always be people who undercut until something is worthless, so whether it's 20,000 players doing it or 200, the only way to fix the value of traits is to add so much variety that everyone can have their 'niche'.

@vagueShapes I certainly agree with you, it's going to happen regardless. And I definitely support this idea for the same reasons you do. 

I think the issue, at least with Lioden, is that there is so little else to do in game other than rare color hunting. I was kinda hoping they wouldn't do the every-update-there-is-a-new-base-or-color-or-mark thing here and instead focus on adding more things to do with our wolves. If all of the updates just focus on new ways to make your wolf appear, then unfortunately that's all the players will care about and that's all the game will be, I think. 

Maybe a "send to nature reserve" or some kind of auto trade-a-pup-for-two-sc location in game where unwanted pups are taken out of the system would help people not be so desperate to make pup sales. Maybe also a minimum sales fee built into the wolf selling system without making it any easier to get sc would help people be a little more choosy about which animals they try to sell and which ones they are willing to buy. But that would be another thread entirely, haha. 

At least the harem style is what lions actually do. What bothers me about that on WD is that it's so far from real wolf systems that it feels like the devs gave no thought to this extremely important part of a *wolf* sim.

I do think it's funny how people immediately hopped on the rarest markings, merle & RMA-exclusives, and starting exclusively caring about that. And as a new player, not even coming from Lioden, I went for that too since I wanted my pups to sell. I honestly have no idea how you'd prevent that though, I think it's inevitable. I'm a little worried that no one will like tier II anymore once tier III is released. xD

Definitely support. This is an idea I'd really like to see implemented, just for those of us with lore packs or who want to play according to realistic wolf behaviour without having to sacrifice the breeding aspect of the game.

My initial idea for breeding pairs was a bit different, though - you would be able to set two wolves as a breeding pair, meaning that they cannot breed with any wolf other than their mate, and be unable to split up the pair without paying a fee and/or having a cooldown before the wolves could be paired or bred again (this cooldown would presumably still apply even if one of the wolves in the pair died or was retired/chased). In this case, though, the breeding pair would have a Synergy bar much like that of hunting parties, with their synergy as a pair increasing for every day they spend paired (this could also be dependent to some extent on personalities - paired wolves with clashing personalities could lose synergy or suffer synergy penalties due to the clash, while paired wolves with matching personalities could get extra synergy boosts). The female's breeding cooldown would shorten depending on the pair's synergy (say, one day for every 10% synergy), so at 100% synergy the breeding cooldown for the pair would be halved, and the pair would thus be breedable every 10 days instead of every 20. (If the breeding pair feature was implemented on its own, without also allowing extra males in the pack to breed, then this perk wouldn't be necessary at all, since being able to breed pairs itself would be the perk. But if extra breeding males in a pack were to be allowed (presumably with breeding cooldowns), then this could be included as a benefit to pairing wolves at the cost of being unable to breed them with any other wolf, and the GC cost/cooldown/resulting unbreedability if the pair were to ever split up. I can definitely see how a shortened breeding cooldown could be way too much of a perk though).

I also quite like the idea of pair slots, whether purchasable or dependent on territory slots (so, for example, the number of pairs you can have in a pack increases by 1 for every 10 territory slots the pack has, rounded up).

The only thing I could maybe take issue with in the original suggestion was the idea that the pack's breeding male would not be able to be paired - I think, if implemented now, this could screw over people like me who have already set the male of a lore pair as the breeding male so he can breed with his mate. I think it would be fine if there was a window period after implementing the feature where players who wanted to pair their current breeding male with another wolf were able to do so, or were able to reassign the breeding male role without the cost or cooldown.

Whether additional breeding males or the mated pair feature was implemented, I think it would provide a lot of flexibility in terms of gameplay and breeding, and make things a lot more enjoyable for those of us who feel disadvantaged by the current system - that way, players who want to use the Lioden-style harem breeding system would still be able to do so, while players who prefer a more realistic playstyle would be able to have multiple breeding pairs within a pack at the cost of not having the ability to stud/mass breed, or players could even have elements of both styles and have a main mated pair while also having a breeding male that they mass breed to NBWs or offer for stud.

I personally have 2 wolves in my pack who are a confirmed pair and this sounds interesting as well as another thread i read. This or the other could work. 

I support this as well ^ ^

Mm. So, after reading through the comments, I would support this without ridiculous penalties. The only penalties I would think reasonable to removing a pairing would be three days of 20% mood loss instead of 10% on both wolves in the pair, the inability to re-pair for those three days, and maybe a small SC or GC fee to remove them before 24 days of being together.

I see people all the time complaining about amusement items being 'hard to find' - I personally have no problem, but I'm also obsessive over my timers - so having that 20% drop on two wolves might be enough to discourage them from impulse-breaking their pairs, especially if they were wanting to break them to re-pair them with wolves from another pairing they'd have to break up.

The three days of not pairing them wouldn't even be for any real reason, just that it's kind of screwed up to try and pair up and breed a depressed animal. :P It would, however, mean that people wouldn't be able to just break and re-pair if they found a pretty female in heat right this instant and would need to do some planning.

When I say small on the SC or GC fee, I mean no more than 300SC or 3GC - about 100SC or 1GC per week on the cooldown. Something that will make most at least pause a moment before hitting that button. I know this means another SC sink, but if your male is only locked for one breeding, then the SC sink isn't as tempting as it would be if he were locked for two months. (I am also always in support of non-premium currency sinks. From what I've seen, you can never have too many, as long as none of them - or very few of them - are 100% necessary to gameplay.)

I must also point out something people seem to look over... You can not join a game like this with a heavy breeding mechanic and expect to make money off offspring or even studding. This has been proven time and time again - people will always be chasing the newest and rarest thing. While it may not be one particular person's play style, it is the play style of the majority. Unless you have newest, rarest thing or a proven mutation carrier, you will not make money off pups or your stud. Currently, Tier II bases are what will get ladies for your stud, rare Tier II bases with high stats are what will get you money with pups. The moment a Tier III base is released, all Tier II studs will practically cease getting stud requests and Tier II puppies will drop to being worthless merely because there will be zero demand. In every game that has something 'special' in breeding that isn't complete RNG, it ends up overhyped, overbred, and in so much supply that demand can't keep up, plummeting its value.

Every time something new and shiny comes out, you will have a limited amount of time to make money off it before it becomes worthless due to overbreeding and horrible undercutting due to impatience - or something newer being released. Every time something new and shiny comes out, it will outshine everything that came before it and you won't be able to make money off the 'old' stuff.

Allowing males other than your stud to breed will not 'ruin' the stud market because the stud market is going to go to crap every time something new is added anyway. On top of that, all the big buck players and the tedious savers will have that new and shiny thing for their studs, so there will still be studs in use - just because it's not your stud doesn't mean there's no stud market. It has just moved on.

I would like to warn that adding a pairing mechanic like this could also cause other lore issues and calls for changes to the system no matter how it's implemented. As an example, my own pack is going to be designed to be an all female pack minus my healer and my stud in which the healer and stud are a pair and all the females are paired with each other. Now, notice I said paired. While I don't care if I can have these pairs 'officially' recognized by the game itself, other people might. Some people may be bothered that their stud can't be part of a pair due to having the breeding male role. Some may be bothered that they can't pair one male to two females, as that is how it is in their lore.

'But they don't have to use the mechanic,' you say. Oh-ho. Let me tell you just how well telling them this goes over. Do you like your throat intact? Yes? Don't say that to them. Ever. This may not apply to every single one of them, but oh boy do the ones it does apply to go after you like a rabid zombie goose intent on feasting on your buttocks. Don't ask me why, because I'm not entirely sure, but I have been bitten many a time by people I've said 'if you don't like it the way it is, don't use it' to. (In specific, this was about adding a mechanic to remove unwanted pets from another game. The users attacked me, stating 'no pet is unwanted' and that it stepped on their play style despite the fact it was an opt-in feature. They also wanted me to give them these supposedly unwanted pets for free - including the ones worth thousands and even hundreds of thousands of the game's currency.)

In the interest of avoiding the 'but it's not how I want it' drama, I would heavily prefer it if all males were able to breed on a simple breeding cooldown (half a female's, as he doesn't go through the stress of the actual pregnancy, delivery, and nursing, but still needs time to recharge his stuff and lower his threat level to the breeding male). This would also open up a secondary studding market - I would personally love auctioning off the limited studding this would provide. It would also make it easier to keep breedable mutation lines clean and free of entanglement. However, if the devs decide they like this idea better or that they want to try this first, I will give my support - provided there are no unnecessary restrictions, penalties, or perks.

THANKS DEVS <3