Allow Chased Wolves to Keep Their Age (Again)

It seems like a majority of the wolves being found right now average out around 4 years or older, too.

I was only just alerted to this... and I am very upset. I bought Drak'vaen, an expensive purchase of 120GC with another 50GC worth of customization, all with the intention of breeding raise and chase puppies. I spent, what, $40 on this wolf with the intention of producing young, potentially decently-marked TIIIs of less common base genetics to chase in the hopes someone else would find the puppies and make the heritageless TIIIs their studs. Now I hear that I could chase a 1yo pup with great potential only to have it wind up 5yo and have either a very short stint as a stud or only two - yes, TWO - litters as a female before dying, three if the person is spot-on with their breeding? I haven't even started yet - I can't bring myself to retire Meziki early - and I already feel like my gifts I was planning to give have been torn up and chucked away by someone they weren't even intended for. :/ My will to raise and chase has definitely been dented. Knowing the wolf may well be deleted is sad, but I was ready to deal with that. I am not ready to essentially make donations worth hundreds of GC to the people if those donations aren't going to be kept in pristine condition. It sucks more to find a TIII chased at 5yo than it does to find a 7yo chased TI or TII. I don't want to be the cause of someone's disappointment despite having given them a chance for what should give them great joy.

I also really don't understand the reason they changed it in the first place. I mean, what's so bad about encountering and befriending an old wolf? Yeah, you might be sad that they can't do anything in your pack and it's not likely anyone will buy them off you, but it's not really a waste since you can just chase them again - and they'll likely be deleted that time - so you don't have to waste resources on them. Worst thing is that they take up space you need for the two hour befriending cooldown. Note: I don't really stand on the 'they take the place of good wolves' train. From what I understand, the chased pool is not 'we have -- slots that can be filled at a time,' but rather 'this wolf has --% chance of making it into the pool and will eventually be found if they make it to the pool,' so the chance of a wolf being deleted is the same regardless of how many wolves are released. I release 5 NBWs and someone else releases 1 TIII. If I didn't release my 5 NBWs, the TIII's chance of getting in would NOT be any higher than when I did.

Plus, wouldn't it, I dunno, make more sense to give the players a way to choose to delete the wolves themselves? I know the karma system is coming, which makes me assume we'll get a kill and reserve button - if you kill or reserve a wolf, it's not going to the chased pool, so this solves both the age and NBW problem. Or, at least, some of it if they put an energy requirement for either button like on Lioden. -_- (I will fight it if they do.)

Anyways, I stand behind option two. Like others have said, it's really not exploitable because of how many things already go into how the chased pool works making it a very small chance a wolf chased a second time will ever be seen again. It would be a pity if someone chased a 5y1m triple Merle beauty only for it to be immediately deleted. There's also the GC problem - I don't want to pay 5GC because I KNOW that wolf in front of me is an Opal or has a minimum of two rare, breed-only markings only to have it come up as 5yo. No one would buy it off me, no one would train it, no one would sink any actual money into it. Last I checked, the monthly bills and paychecks of the staff want you to sink money into your wolves.

Hey, I'm breaking protocol this time to reply to this, but I'd just like to offer the following:

Information was given out to an admin, by me, which was passed onto mods, who then informed some players in tickets. I unfortunately told the admin that chased wolves had their ages/stats rerolled as I thought that that had been implemented right at the start. Unfortunately, I hadn't checked the code to confirm this as I felt pretty sure and we are super busy with bug reports and development at the moment. A bug report then came in about a really old wolf found that had been chased, and then I realised that my information must have been incorrect, and thus I checked the code. Of course, very annoyingly, I then discovered that chased wolves weren't getting their ages and stats reset as I had previously thought.

The immediate fix was to simply implement this - it fixed the issue of finding super old wolves in explore, which, had this been in as I had thought, would never have happened. It didn't feel fair to come across a wolf that old in the wild that wouldn't last very long in your pack - especially if you auto friended it. Also, to reroll age, rerolling stats had to come too so we didn't end up breaking the game with really young wolves with stats much higher than they should have been able to reach.

I didn't realise that there was a large group dedicated to raising and chasing wolves into explore that would be so affected by this.  After doing some reading up on your concerns and chatting to a few of you, I understand why this upsets your plans and I have absolutely no problem in reverting this fix to something that's a better fit for all of us, so long as it doesn't upset game balance.

I can see that the main support seems to be for option 2, which is fine for me (as is option 3), and I will make sure this gets implemented in the next development update, which is due in just under a week. 

I just wanted to write this to explain our/my side, and to explain that there were no sinister or evil developer reasons for this (not that there ever is!), and to reassure you all that I'm going to patch this up as a matter of priority. It's very humbling seeing mini communities such as raise and chase working together for such a lovely cause and the last thing we as devs want to do is go and mess it all up for you guys.

Thank you for listening to our concerns. 

Thanks Kitty for the in depth explanation!!

Being a former beta-tester, I know how much work and love you all put into this game and, at least personally, I never thought the change has been done with evil intent.

I'm happy to know we were able to find a suitable option and that the issue will be fixed soon!! <3

Thank you so much for your reply! I really appreciate you taking the time to write this out and I hope I can speak for all of us and say we do as well. 

Unfortunately, because we do only see one side, it can get confusing as to why some changes are made and why things don't work the way we expected.

Thank you kindly for giving us your reasoning behind this and for letting us know what we can expect.

And thank you to everyone else for your support and discussion! I almost never made this post because I had a huge headache that night and was almost just going to go to bed but I am glad I did!

Edit: oh and I agree with piffle above that I also didn't think the change was malicious, but just an unfortunate case of unintened consequences of a small change affecting a lot more than forseen. It's really great how responsive you all are to the players and makes me very excited for what's to come!

Thank you for the reply! It really does help clear things up for us. I never thought it was done in ill will as I understood the very valid reasoning behind why the change was implemented.

I like option 3 the best.  Old wolves should be deleted to prevent them from just being recycled endlessly.  Even if only a few are refound its still putting wolves that have already lived their lives back into the system.  If anything we need pupsinks not a wolf rejuvenation method.

I hope that chased wolves at age 5 years or younger will be encountered with the old system: the age is not changed but the stats are reshuffled independently of the age.

I was more quiet about this issue than other people who raise to chase, but It's so refreshing to have a community's wishes listened to and taken seriously. Thank you, Kitty.