Either Fix Levelup RNG Or: The Stat Ceiling Is Too Low
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Either Fix Levelup RNG Or: The Stat Ceiling Is Too Low
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Posted 2022-03-22 09:10:52
While rng has been stated to prefer the two highest stats link , the way that it affects stalkers and chasers seems to indicate that it doesn't do so heavily enough link to justify long-term breeding projects for stalkers and chasers, despite them having two highest stats to dump points in rather than simply one. When we brought this up to the site, we were essentially told to suck it up. This behavior is disappointing, especially considering that at this rate, between the diminishing returns of parent to pup stat ratios and terrible levelups, there is a good chance we will not be able to reach the stalker stats required to find large trails in extreme biomes, something that many of us stat breeders have been working towards for over a year. There's a good chance that with the current stat ceiling and levelup algorithm, eventually raising stalkers that will be able to find large extreme-biome trails will be impossible. This is because due to terrible levelups, even offspring that were dedicatedly ground up all the way from birth can still end up with nearly identical role stats to their parents. The solution for the levelup algorithm favoring the second highest stat in finishers has been achieved by using lead wolves like Spontaneite's Khatvana and Naike's Elismir, but this is an unusable solution for stalkers especially due to a mix of it being impossible to guarantee lead stats other than strength (via bears), parent-offspring diminishing returns, and the levelup algorithm being less than optimal. In short: assuming that you grind your project wolves sufficiently, the stat ceiling is hit around generation four. Many stat breeders are burning out due to these massive diminishing returns. Proposed suggestions have included: Raising the stat ceiling: allowing pups to have higher birth stats (basically a logarithmic curve that starts tapping out at a higher stat ceiling than it does now, allowing for more generations to build up before we reach the point of diminishing returns), countering the effects of terrible levelups. OR: changing the levelup algorithm to more heavily favor the highest two stats. |
 orderup #35470 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 09:13:48
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 Kay 🦄 #4251 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 09:26:38
The stat cealing, diminishing returns and the sheer randomness of levelups have made the only multi generational aim in the game frustrating and useless. All appearance based projects can be achieved through mass breeding and Raise&Chase enabling NBW wolves with any aesthetic features one wants. Up until now stat breeding has been the one multi generational possible aim but the mechanics of the game have made it tedious and ultimately useless. |
Nyx #34215 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 09:30:13
Having puptraining helped a ton to bring the two stats one needs high enough but still, especially the last months I experienced a lot of bad lvl ups which are extremely frustrating (like Chaser getting wisdom the most and I was ??) :/ so your ideas sounds good to me! Im not long enough in the game to be burned out just yet but I hear that a lot from other stat breeders as well. |
 Okunor #44813 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 09:43:07
My goal in Wolvden is to breed stat wolves, and since we can only sent out one hunting group at once it already limits the number of wolves we can stat grind a LOT. Add on top of that the nbw we painstakingly corrected for a certain role via puptraining to be screwed over by RNG, and the fact that even after a life time of 10 hunts a day, pups after the 3rd generation get hardly any better than there parents and you can see why most of us stat breeders get more and more frustrated every time, asking why we keep investing time and irl money into the game. (not too mention I don't even know why we are stat breeding anymore. its not like food from glacier has any advance over food from the starter biomes but thats a topic for a different suggestion) |
wormdelivre #42154 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 09:59:37
However, this goal is increasingly being shown to be....if not impossible, then very close to it, and so utterly at the whims of RNG that two bad levelups could easily destroy an actual real life year of work, or even more. I like working for long term stat goals. I've painstakingly built a wide range of chaser bloodlines in my favourite bases so I could raise amazing g3 and g4 chasers down the line, and same for stalkers. These goals have kept me coming back again and again to wolvden over the last year, even when the sheer time investment began to burn me out, but recently something significant happened. Rhallwyn reported the terrible levelups of her stalker Tok'ra in our group, where he was losing enough points to irrelevant stats that there's now a very good chance his end of life stats will barely exceed his parents'. Rhallwyn has been working on his lineage for so long, and put so much time and effort into it. Watching RNG completely ruin this dedicated, loyal gameplay has been absolutely gutting. The diminishing returns from stat breeding are so punishing they're actually, as far as I'm concerned, game breaking. It's normal to expect the stat ceiling to peak somewhere, but it absolutely shouldn't be as early as generation 4, especially when glacier and rainforest have such incredibly high stalker stat floors for large trails. There's not even any reward for that far off goal - you get a decent amount of exp for bigger trails in extreme biomes, but it's already easy to raise a hunter to level 20 within three years in biomes as low as Taiga, and daily stat gains are capped at a usual +2 no matter what biome difficulty you hunt in. The carcasses are a bit bigger, but not enough so to be a worthwhile reward for grinding for actual real life years to get a stalker capable of them. What's the actual point? I'd personally be happy to stat breed ad infinitum without any concrete reward for high stats, simply because I like to make the numbers get bigger, but the diminishing returns are so severe I can't even do that. I'm still in early days with my stat projects, as I've frozen many of my lines so I can work on them one at a time, but looking at Tok'ra...now I'm wondering what the point is. Why bother? In a year, I too will be watching my wolves level up so badly that literally a year and a half of effort is completely ruined. In two generations, I will be in a position where my wolves absolutely must get their +2 every day, absolutely must level well, and absolutely must breed at the very end of their breeding lifespan, or their pups will be born with the same stats as their parents. The gains from generation to generation will be so incremental as to be utterly demolished by a single awry levelup. We the playerbase have tried to raise these issues multiple times in the past, only to - as orderup said - essentially be told to suck it up. It doesn't take much to keep us playing, but recent months have been a massive blow to our enthusiasm. There's no point to breeding rare bases, because they're not rare anymore. There's no point in breeding raffle marks or eyes, because those aren't rare anymore. Introduce a new mark and base and it will be common in a couple of months. What then is the point in playing for the long-term players like us? Getting pretty wolves that you like and dressing them up, I suppose...but little else. As a breeding sim with stats as a component, the long term viability of stat breeding is something I feel should be a priority to the game developers. They're allowed to feel differently, but the longest term investment in this game will come from people who want to breed for stats, as it requires the most amount of time and consistent play put in of any playstyle. Surely wolvden should want to make that kind of loyal and consistent playstyle worthwhile? I, personally, now find the most rewarding part of wolvden to be drawing and submitting custom decors. Very few players are decor artists, so I doubt many others will have this enthusiasm to hang onto. Among my friends, many of us are rapidly losing motivation because of this issue. We're shelving our long term projects in droves, withdrawing from group projects we'd been arranging, and taking varyingly long rollover breaks that we never did before. The spirit in our group is becoming low and frustrated. I anticipate that many of the leaderboards players - some of the most loyal players of the site - will become significantly less active in the months to come. It has already started happening. This is my take on the issue, and reflects a sentiment many of my friends have been feeling. Others are allowed to feel differently, especially where their respective playstyles differ. |
 Spontaneite #2993 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 09:59:45
Breeding long lines of specialized hunters is a really fun way to see dedication and commitment paying off, because stats are one of the only things that really can't be bought with items from the grove (other than leads and guarana, but I am mostly talking about hunters here). It requires logging in every day, checking in regularly to send out hunts, and babysitting your wolves and even setting up puptraining lessons in the last few hours of the day if they don't get their +2 each day. It's tedious and a lot of people who do this experience burnout from doing the same thing, over and over and over again, only keeping going because of the promise of bigger and better pups. When that doesn't pay off and the pups aren't actually as big and as better as we thought, it's really discouraging and demotivational. Pairbonds, the level up formula, and the way hunters gain stats throughout their lives is really conducive to having two (or three, if you are crazy) hunting teams and breeding each role together to get super-pups. But this game isn't really that old and we're starting to see that might well be futile because from a maxed out G4 to a G5 (which we as a playerbase are just arriving at right now), it seems as though it's a toss up as to whether the pups will end up with higher role stats than the parents. I want to restart at a new generation to see how high I can get my stat lines with the benefit of pup training right from the beginning, but if the stat cliff is so steep it seems like all I would be doing is hastening the inevitable stagnation. The higher the stats, the more severe the handicap on the pups, as demonstrated in this bug report. So to stat breeders, spending all that time (and in some cases money) on getting better stats on their hunters ceases to be worth it as the wolf you poured so much effort into dies, and even the best heir you have is left with but a fraction of their dam or sire. I'm not saying stat breeding is the "right" or "best" playstyle! But it's one of them, and one that is a truly longterm commitment. It's kind of a gut punch when all that time seems wasted when the stat inheritance formula is geared to cripple the best of the best. It would be akin to the more rare markings a wolf has, the harder they are to pass. If this was discovered to be the case, I am sure it would be very discouraging to the beauty / rarity breeders as well! TL;DR
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 Zea #27549 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 10:14:19
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Kay 🦄 #4251 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 11:34:57
It shouldn't be that random to begin with, at least in my opinion, especially if pup stats in a G4 arent that much higher than a G3 and so on. My stalkers belongs to the best in the game right now but with what happend lately I'm not even sure if they will be better than their parents (if they can even find large trails eventually which are what I'm breeding for.) I like long time goals, I like working long and hard on stuff, my stalker line is proof of that. However it needs to pay off eventually or even I might lose motivation. So big support for all the points that were made! |
 Rhallwyn #29990 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 11:41:07
I'm fast approaching the point (or maybe have already reached the point?) where this will no longer be the case due to diminishing stat returns. I'll just be running in place. I love Wolvden, but I'm not sure if it will continue holding my attention if there's no way to advance/progress my pack over time. |
 Lionel #34199 |