New Feature Idea: Howling Buffs for Friends!

Howling Buffs: How they work

Howling Buffs are a special perk that your lead wolf has! With a special motivated howl, they can buff specific stats of a wolf from another pack for 1 day! 

Every day, you have a select amount of howling buffs you can give. (I'd recommend 1-3) 

How to give Howl buffs:

Using my friends wolf, I mocked up what the feature could look like! 
Under the other buttons like View Family & View in Wardrobe, there'd be a button that says "Howl!" 
Upon clicking the Howl! button, you'd be presented with a popup that says: "This will use up your Howl Buff for the day. Are you sure you want to use it on this wolf?" When you press yes, you'll get an indication on the top of the page that you've used your Howl Buff on the selected wolf, and what kind of buff it got!

Types of buffs

• Pupsitter -> Increased Puppysitting stats until next rollover. (Able to provide better coverage to more pups!)
• Hunter-> Increased stats for that wolf's hunts for the day until rollover. 
• Scout-> Increased stats on scouting until next rollover.
• Puppy-> Increased chance of survival 
• Breeding Stud/Mate-> Howling at a wolf you intend to breed your lead wolf to during that rollover boosts the chance for higher stat puppies to be born!

Pros & Cons:

Like every feature, this has some pros and cons, so here's what I thought of for ease!

Pros: 

• Enhances community spirit! Friends will have more reason to talk to each other and discuss which wolves will need buffs for the day, giving more incentive to work together, chat about Wolvden, and thank each other for the buff!
• A good way to help your newbie friends who are struggling to keep new pups alive, get successful hunts, etc. 
• A way to make an ice breaker between you and a stranger you want to get to know! You'll be able to see whenever your wolf gets howled at and by who, so you'll be able to go thank them if you want!
• Possible other ways to use this feature in the mechanics, perhaps with breeding or creating pack alliances in the future!

Cons:

• Popular wolves with huge followers could potentially abuse this by mass howl buffing one particular wolf. ->Counter this with only allowing a certain wolf to get one howl buff per day. (Or a limit of 3 or something)
• People trying to abuse this by making multiple accounts and using them to howl at their alternate account wolves. I believe Wolvden only allows one account per person, so hopefully this is easily addressed. But it could also just be one more encouragement to cheat, which you don't want. 
• Possible drama with friend groups and communities arguing who to use their Howl Buffs on. 
• People trying to promise Howl Buffs in trades and scamming each other. ->Would have to make a disclaimer that Howl Buffs should not be offered in trades, similar to not allowing "refunds" in breeding stud fees. 

Other things to consider:

• Howling Buffs are for people on your friends list only. OR: Make accounts have the feature to toggle whether or not they want to allow random people giving them Howl Buffs. (It can be turned off in settings) 
• Howl Buffing a wolf will sometimes give you a random item! (chunks of meat or play items as the wolf is "thanking you", basically!)
• Maybe there's a custom base drawn of a wolf howling that your wolves colors can be added to, and when you press howl, you're greeted by an image of your lead wolf howling together with their wolf! Kind of a stupid amount of work for a little flavor image, but if used for some other aspect of the group, I think it'd be super cute to see. ♥

That's my idea! I hope you like and consider it. Thought it would just be a nice addition to inspire more friends to talk about Wolvden together and add to community spirit! :D

-Nestly

I find this idea interesting for sure!

I like that you addressed the possiblity of people abusing it to get multiple howls so I think everyone should only be able to receive one a day bc high statted studs shouldn't be able to be spammed with howls and create ultra statted pups. However theres still this to consider: Howling a stud and an in heat female. I dont think the buff should apply to the female in heat/pregnant about to give birth. Perhaps make it so pregnant females cant be howled, that way the only stat buff applied is the howled stud's.

I like this idea; with the suggested limits in place (especially each wolf only being buffable once per day) I don't see it being too strong, so it would be a nice, small mechanic that would hopefully encourage community spirit.

I think this is pretty cool, but I'd rather I could apply it to my own pack as well.  That way people without friends wouldn't be at a disadvantage, and there'd be less chance of people mass begging for howls because they could just do their own.  But you'd still also have the option of helping a friend out instead.

Anyway, yeah, the ability to strategically boost a specific wolf would be pretty cool and I like this a lot! More wolf interactions are always good.

I personally like making it so you can only howl at other packs, as it gives an incentive to be kind to others and show some love. Otherwise what's the point? People would just use all their howl boosts on themselves every day and that'd be it I feel like. At least this creates motivation to meet people and be social with each other! 

I'm glad ya'll like me idea!

I like this idea and would love to give howl buffs to my friends here on WD, especially for scouting. I would love for it to be useful for buffing your own pack if possible, but otherwise I like the limitations you've put in place.

I'm just worried that chat will be full of people begging for howls or arranging howl swaps, which seems like a lot of work when instead people could do it themselves.  I suppose it depends on whether you think asking strangers for howls is a positive social activity or a nuisance! I'm an introvert, sorry XD

Plus I do worry about people who don't have friends on WD and aren't chatty/extroverted - they wouldn't get any use out of the howl system and that seems sad to me, those people have it hard enough as it is.

i like the idea of wolvden having more ways to interact with other users within the game mechanics that aren't strictly transactional in the way that studding/trading are. i would really enjoy giving howl buffs to random wolves that i think are especially pretty/cool.

I love this idea! I want to support my friends and this sounds like a great way to!

I like the idea, although I second that you should be able to buff your own wolves as well, mostly because lots of new players or more casual players (like me) might not have close enough friends on the site that you would have anyone's wolves to buff or anyone to buff your own wolves, and that would make us feel very sad and left out heh ^^' or at least i would feel bummed lol

maybe you have 3 howling buffs you can use on your own pack, and 3 buffs you can use on other packs? that way there's still the incentive there to buff others, but it also doesn't make the less social players feel left behind!