Allow Chased Wolves to Keep Their Age (Again)

EDIT: Ok this got long, TL;DR = read the first paragraph, that's really all you need. (Pre-script? So it isn't missed: When people refer to Option 1, 2, and 3 for possible solutions, that is discussed HERE!)

(Another EDIT: don't miss the staff response HERE!)

Yesterday I was made aware of a recent and silently implemented change that affects ALL wolvden players. It was known that before, chased wolves kept the age they were when they were chased. This is now mod-confirmed to have been changed (I will explain why/how below). Now, the age of all chased wolves is randomized. The only thing this change benefits is the edge case of finding a very old wolf. This does not happen often, as it only was brought to the admin's attention recently. So a better proposed change would be to either randomize the age of only very old wolves [EDIT as suggested by Nyx] or delete them outright like is done to pups or adolescents. 

I don't believe the recently-implemented solution of randomizing the age of all chased wolves is the optimal fix as it harms all players, but principally two rather popular types of playstyles while benefitting only a very very few edge cases. The main groups impacted are:

1) The Raise and Chase-ers (R&C). There is a large cohort of players that raise good wolves (even T3s!) to adulthood just to chase so that others have the chance to find them. As there is no gifting system, they are doing their best to "give" back with the systems in place, and using up lots of food and toys in the process to keep pups happy and fed for nearly an IRL month. They do this with the knowledge that when being chased, that wolf may very well be deleted. It is extremely common to chase wolves at 1 year old, so that they can join their new pack young and have lots of heats (if female) or lots of time to stud (if male).

Randomizing the age at which chased wolves are found devalues these contributions. R&C-ers already know their efforts might be wasted if their really nice wolf is instantly deleted, and having them come back aged up is twisting the knife, so to speak. Older wolves are less valuable because they cannot have as many offspring, and have less time to level up and get high stats. Overall, this decreases the quality of wolves available to everyone, and makes it even more disheartening to raise and chase.

This ends up hurting all players, because it makes it less exciting to find chased wolves. Everyone doesn't raise and chase, but everyone certainly has the chance to find. And if claimed heritage-less T3s, merles, and other valuable wolves keep coming back old, it only makes sense that people would get stingy with them. They will most likely not be female if they only have 2 or 3 heats left, and will likely be studded out for a very high price. Because if you have almost 6 wolf-years of stud fees to collect, you can still make lots of money over a long period of time with even a small stud fee. If you get a 4 or 5 year old wolf, to make the same amount of money you will have to set a high fee that will be inaccessible to most players, keeping desirable low-gen wolves firmly in the hands of the Wolvden bourgeoisie.

2) The stat breeders. Normal NBWs have stats that tend to correlate with age, that is, young wolves are low stat (around 200 or even less) while old wolves (4.5 years old) are high stat (around 280). Finding any chased wolf, even potatoes, used to be an exciting opportunity because you could get lucky with a young wolf with low stats, which people would then be encouraged to pretty up with base changers and marking apps, or a full customization. With dedication, they could go on to start a fantastic new line of scouts of hunters, or help new players advance and get a jump start on higher hunting success. 

Because young and high stat wolves are starting with high stats, they have a higher baseline that they will reach at level 20, but moreover, they have a very long time to gain relevant stats by performing their role for the longest amount of time. This helps people produce very specialized-line pups, and helps role-specific studs be a viable option.

People have known about this for a while and have already collected teams full of high stat and young NBWs. I know I have a few in my hunting parties. So I would argue this change is unfair to new players, because if it works the way I think it does, this is no longer a possibility. Anyone joining after this change has zero chance of assembling as good of a G1 hunting team (stats-wise).

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When nearly everything is randomized about chased wolves, it lessens the player's agency in both providing and finding a wolf that they like that will suit their needs. Unnecessarily stymieing certain playstyles without a corresponding benefit lessens the diversity in wolves available, and drives down the value of mediocre wolves that may fit a certain niche. This is discouraging to new players, who realistically only have mediocre wolves, and everyone else that finds a "bad" chased NBW. Before, there was a chance the "bad" chased (just a recycled NBW) could have some value. Now, there is not really any chance of that.

Re-rolling the age of only old wolves would be most preferable to the R&C group, as they usually chase very young wolves with the specific intent that they be found very young so they can bring a long lifetime of happiness to their finder. The code could check the age of a chased wolf, and if it is over X (4.5 years? 5 years? Whatever the maximum currently is?) it could run the randomization. The stat breeders would be happy about it too, as it means they could continue finding and training new lines indefinitely, and gives a new market to chased wolves that may not be the best looking, but will be useful and cherished for their stats. It also creates a market for NBWs that don't look the nicest, but were blessed with good stats.

Please consider a different solution to the old chased wolf conundrum! 

I also don't really like how the change was implemented secretly, with no announcement or documentation even on the homepage (unless I just can't find it?) but that is a discussion for another day. For those of you in the dark, here is what happened.

Recently someone found a wolf that was quite literally at death's door at about 7 years 5 months old (or somewhere around that), and it died just a few ROs later, which is really disappointing! A bug report was made about this. Since bug reports are viewable to anyone, I think it is ok to link. However, I do so with a caveat: I DO NOT BLAME THE PLAYER FOR BRINGING THIS TO THE ADMIN'S ATTENTION AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU. Please do not harass the player over this because I would have done the same thing and think about it you probably would have too.

Three days ago on 09April, a change was rolled out by an admin to fix the bug. Which it did, technically. However in doing so, it created other issues as discussed above. The playerbase was made aware this had happened by an astute R&C-er who, by searching the base and markings, rediscovered one of their chased Wulfenites. However, it was older than it should have been, so they asked the modbox about it. Here was the response that owner received from the mods (obtained through personal communication):

""When a wolf is chased their age gets randomized so that when they are found again and then claimed, they will not be the exact age they were when they were chased. This is not a bug, and is actually a feature of the game so we would be unable to age him down for you. If you have any further questions about this situation, we would be happy to answer them for you!""

Which is a little strange, because that makes it seem like that's how it always was. Previous mod responses, like the one found here on the original T3 Chase Event Thread, do not make any mention of age being changed, and from keeping track of all the T3s chased, the ones that were found reliably kept the age they were when they were chased.

Hope this explanation is useful or interesting to those of you who made it this far. If so, congrats!!! Thanks for reading! Please toss your thoughts below!

I agree with everything you wrote. 

I'm willing to take the gamble that the wolves I chase could be deleted, but if they ARE found I'd like for them to be as good as possible for the player.

Please i don't want my striped flints to be found (IF they are found) at 6 years old :(

I'll just tack on that many of us wouldnt mind if wolves over a certain age just werent added to the chased pool and got auto deleted same way that pups and adolecents do, as there are no easy ways to get rid of a wolf beyond chasing it this may be a viable solution.

Support wholeheartedly! Something like an age cap if possible (similar to the age floor that exists for wolves younger than one year) would allow for wolves too old to be of any use to a new pack to be left out of the chase pool- this could also help catch older plain NBWs that were chased to save space, auto-deleting them as well.

Thanks for your support! Nyx, I added your suggestion to the main post, that's a really good idea!

I can also confirm that prior to the change, several of my found wolves were kept at exactly the age they were chased, aka 1y0m (I found out they were found a few days after the fact, but they were still low-1y so i'll count that as confirmed).

Full support on this and I have to say I'm a bit surprised (and sad) to learn about the age change.

Old, chased wolves are way rarer than plain, ex-NBW chased wolves that took up a lot of spots in the chased pool, "stealing" the chance for a better looking wolf to appear, so I think the priority should be to maybe code the pool to reject those befriended-and-immediately-chased wolves instead of the elderly ones (I know there is already a suggestion for that change and maybe devs are already working on it).

And there are players like me that don't mind the idea of befriending an elderly wolf and giving them a place to die peacefully of old age.

So I'm in favour of having things going back to how they were, since it was great to find 1yo chased NBW and it was a pleasure to raise and chase good pups knowing they would be found and appreciated by other players. Or I'm okay with the randomizing being applied only on wolves past a certain age, so that the young ones could stay young.

I brought this up again in chat after the bug report was updated to confirm that all chased wolves would have their age rerolled, and the admin who dealt with the bug began talking with us. They're happy to change the system to something that the players agree with and suggested 3 options for what those changes could be-

1. Keep the system as it is now (where all chased wolves have their age rerolled)

This prevents wolves from being "too old" compared to regular NBWs, but as pointed out in the first post it will usually shorten the amount of time you have with that wolf, whether to breed them or just have them in your pack.

2. Only reroll wolves that are over 5 years old (confirmed that 5y is the oldest a normal NBW can be so it would be in line with that)

This also deals with the issue without affecting the ages of R&C pups. There's a concern that wolves could become effectively "immortal" through this method where a wolf older than 5y could be chased, encountered & befriended at a lower age, and then chased and encountered again when they got too old. However as re-encounter rates are pretty low this is unlikely to happen.

3. Stop wolves 5 years and older from being encounterable (assuming this means that they will either be deleted from the chase pool immediately or they will be excluded like any wolf under 1y)

This still lets R&C wolves happen while cutting off the older ones. It's a more drastic version but prevents the "immortal" problem.

Personally I think that option 2 is the best option for this. The only potential exploit is the "immortal" chasing, but as we saw during the user-run T3 chase most wolves are not found even if users are looking for them. The chance of a wolf being chased and found twice is likely so low that it would be virtually impossible to do to a wolf with any real "value".

If Option Two would be possible to implement, I would love to see it in use!