Tweak Chased Pool to Accept Fewer NBWs

The huge T3 chasing community event going on and the rise of people raising decent wolves just to chase them, has me thinking about how the chase mechanic could be improved. First, I think that even as-is, it is awesome and a really fun way to get people excited about exploring and raising wolves for a chance to let someone else find them. But in my four months of playing I would guess that about 85 to 90% of chased wolves I've encountered are just regular NBWs that (I presume) were friended, checked for mutation carrier status, and chased immediately when nothing came up.

I understand why that is. It's a big investment to feed and play with a pup for almost an IRL month to chase them for even the very small chance that they show up to another player. The chaser truly gets nothing out of it and are actually losing a lot of resources for an anonymous act of kindness that will likely never go recognized. On the other hand, if you have the den space, you can easily befriend 20 NBWs a day. But no one has the resources to keep all the possible run-of-the-mill, common NBWs they could find with sub-par stats and markings. And since there is no other way to get rid of wolves, they get chased, and the chased pool becomes flooded with recycled NBWs.

So I propose to tweak the formula used for which wolves actually end up as a possible encounter. I know some get deleted right away, so increasing the odds of wolves with certain characteristics such as T1 bases, less than 3 common markings (Edit based on suggestion by Dżanek) , and common eye colors to be deleted right away (edit: added this for clarity) would make seeing the purple shooting star something to be really excited about. They could still make it into the pool of course, just at a reduced rate disproportional to how often they are chased. Conversely, the probabilities could be worked out so that wolves with T2 or T3 bases, a higher number of markings (or more "special" markings like combo colors or RMA only), and uncommon eye colors have a higher chance of being included.

This would require more coding and since I am not sure how it is set up, a possible overhaul of the behind the scenes chase mechanics, but I think it would be well worth the effort for the following reasons:

1) Chased wolves are quite rare anyways, so it wouldn't cause a huge imbalance of people getting better wolves. My lead is level 19 and he sniffed just one out yesterday (with no guarana used, but otherwise exploring as much as I can). I don't think it would cause a big disruption in the market, especially because stats of NBWs are quite low so they would not replace good breeding.

2) In fact, it could spur the economy because people place more value on non-inbred wolves. This is evidenceed by lots of people advertising their studs / pups / etc as having "No big names". So with more unique wolves available that aren't just regular NBWs, it would encourage people to explore to find them, or trawl the markets more often.

3) It would help bridge the gap between "rich" established players and "poor" newer ones. People that are raising and chasing valuable wolves are really just doing so out of the kindness of their hearts, as there isn't any in-game incentive to do so. Increasing the odds that special wolves are found encourages more people to do so, meaning they need more food and amusement, which new players with fewer wolves and territory spaces can then sell. This helps counteract the sentiment that the rich players (who can afford many RMAs, fox items etc) just keep getting richer.

4) It's fun! When I find a chased that was clearly very special (either claimed myself or I just find it in someone else's den) I love to put different combinations if their marks into search and try to guess who the parents were. And in my experience, people are just So Excited when their chased wolf is found.

5) It's a win-win for the admins as well, because this could encourage people to buy guarana or always have some spare GC on hand to auto-friend a particularly lovely wolf they don't want to lose. Seeing an "OMG Must Have!!" wolf to befriend just doesn't happen enough now to make that something most people worry about - it's happened to me exactly once in almost 4 months of playing daily, and I was lucky I had the GC and extra territory space.

This could introduce some fun into the game without completely overhauling the existing system or adding a new feature (like getting rewards for chasing or some such), so it would be easier to implement and would have a positive impact on the game.

EDIT: WOW this post got long. Adding paraphrased suggestions by others below!

Adding a great suggestion from Snow #21142 below that a Much Easier way to implement this would be to delete heritage-less wolves from the pool upon being chased, because those are necessarily NBWs (or customized / created wolves). It would just depend on if the developers want Zero NBWs to end up in the pool, or fewer, because this way would eliminate them entirely.

Vyskar #32153: a new system on top of the chase mechanic to specifically disallow NBWs

Or as suggested by gnoll #37507: allow the players to choose! For example, have a option next to chase that says "allow this wolf to be found again?" Salt&shell #20526 added that the retirement fee could be removed, so players could retire wolves they don't want instead of chasing. Combining these into a lore-friendly option, there could be a "kill" button (for evil leads - removes wolf from your pack, do not enter the chase pool) or retire (for good leads). It would be essentially the same (the wolf enters the dynasty) and the difference would only be for flavor/lore, but allows for expansion if a karma / alignment system is introduced. 

From Dżanek #24018: Give chased pups a chance to appear as chased adults after they age up, perhaps proportional to how old they are. Unweaned = no chance, young pups = small chance, old adols = bigger chance. This would be good for balance as "potato" pups would probably make it, but it would definitely reduce the proportion of NBWs making it back. 

Idea by Bluefire #9279: use how long a wolf has been in the pack to determine eligibility to the pool. No ROs = probably an unremarkable NBW, very small chance to join the pool. 24 ROs = pup that was raised, better chance. Or Eelai #1355 - Any NBW that gets chased within 48 hours of being claimed is deleted instead.

100% Support. I've only encountered one Chased this whole week while actively exploring and it hurt me to see it was just a recycled NBW with no markings whatsoever. I think that either the chances of encountering a Chased wolf should be significantly raised, or the filtering system should be in place. Maybe both. I am 100% sure nobody will be excited about finding a 0-marking T1 NBW as a Chased, so why not just delete them upon chasing?

Edit: Snow's suggestion below me is very laconic and effective, imo! Really great solution!

Support! Another, very simple way this could be done (or in addition to the above) is to simply not allow wolves that are already heritageless to enter the chased pool - they came from there in the first place, so it stands to reason that if someone is tossing them back that they're not something worth finding again (even if they're starred NBWs, the game already generates those for the starred encounters, so we don't need them in the chased pool.) Presumably people wouldn't re-chase chased wolves that are any good, either.

Yes! I suggested this in another server but it wasn't well recieved, people thought others may be upset because their cute wolf wouldn't have as fair a chance of appearing as other wolves, but I think it's a silly reason not to implement such a thing?

Please I 100% support, tired of seeing the purple star for plainass NBWs that have been chased. Finding a chased should be exciting!

Edit: rereading snow's suggestion - what were to happen if, for example, I had customised a beautiful 10m t2 NBW, but had no use for them anymore and chased them? While I do think it's a good suggestion, it definitely has it's flaws.

Yes please!!! I literally never find chased NBWs anyway even without this t3 event, but there’s nothing more annoying than finding one only for it to be someone’s ugly ass chased NBW. 

Perhaps an easier way to implement it, as it wouldn't require working out a formula for which ones to keep vs delete, would be to simply have some kind of checkbox for users to select when chasing. It doesn't matter to me whether it's "check to allow this wolf to be found again" or "check to delete this wolf permanently" as long as, if the "delete permanently" option has been selected there is some kind of an "Are you sure?" popup to prevent accidental deletion of good wolves.

Thanks all for the feedback all! I added your suggestions to the post!

@ snow - that would be an easier solution, but as Ren #1314 points out, some people could customize their NBW / created wolves, so maybe add another ceritera? Such as no heritage AND less than 4 markings, which should weed out all the NBWs.

@ Gnoll - oooh that would be really nice too! I know I feel bad when I "dilute the chase pool" so to speak so I would use that option a lot! I think it's great to give the player more agency. But if that happened, I would also really like a separate chase menu - kind of like pupsitters? So you could chase a lot on one screen. I can see it getting quite tedious having to go to each individual's page then settings then click another box on top of the chase button. Chase was probably made hard to get to on purpose, but now that we can secure our wolves I am less worried of people accidentally chasing ones they want to keep.

I think having the option to delete/chase might still be iffy and may still cause plain NBWs within the chase pool. What if a new player chases their plain NBW because they don't fully understand what it means and the rarities of their wolf, and (I know this would be a very small minority of players,) what if some players chased plain nbws out of spite? I think a system that calculated odds of them entering the pool based on markings, bases and eyes would be best.

(Also feel free to call me Ren! Name is changed as a joke for the t3 chase xd)

(Thanks, I KNEW your name was different! I remember stalking you because of the Brachy [OMG] but I forgot what it was haha)

Also good point, maybe the "no I don't want it found" button could be a perma-delete and the "Yes I want it found" could still be governed by the same rules, that is, might be deleted, might be found? Either way thanks for the discussion all, this is really great!

Yes! That might be the better option.

It's weird, I've never experienced this issue on lioden, but that may be because lioden doesnt have an indicator for chased wolves...