I know this is likely going to be an unpopular idea but...breeding cooldowns for males would be nice in my opinion. Cut down on the mass breeding and at least raise the value of male sylesties. Right now all you need is one male and a whole bunch of females to breed almost constantly. It's kind of insane and...a check for that might be nice. Or at least put a limit on how manY times a male can breed before getting a cooldown.

Well, you're right about that first part. The females needing the cooldown already limits breeding enough as it is. Adding a cooldown on the males would just make things aggravating. Like, I would hate to wait a week for a fabled female to recover only to find that someone bred with my planned mate and activated the counter. The whole thing with females needing time to recover and males not is more realistic. I'm not going to get into all of the nooks and crannies on that, but you know what I mean. Having two counters to keep track of would just be annoying.

This kinda transition would affect some breeders, but I kinda see this as one suggestion to help curb overpopulation and overbreeding.

I would suggest only that if this kinda thing happens (or something similar that is a pretty big change), I would want at least a 1-3 month notice of this before it is implemented. It would be fair to let everyone know that this is happening a fair amount of time before a big change like male cooldowns are put into the game.

No way nu-uh, coming from someone who has more female pets than male pets, the last thing i need is a male cooldown when sitting here waiting for all my females is already a pain.

I agree in part... I think we need something to help with overpopulation. Though I think it would be awesome to have less of a cooldown on males and more of a each male can only breed x amount of times per day/week/whatever. It would involve a little more finesse and forethought when breeding to make sure all your females are covered, but it would help with overpopulation by setting some sort of a limit without irritating breeders with a cooldown.

As a player with countless massive 6-vis projects, I have to disagree completely.

I use many of my males as mass-breeders for dividing specific traits, which is vital to my projects. Taking the Lighira as example, my goal is to breed for matching G1 and G2. Through breeding, I can use one of my 2-4 males with NO traits in G1 and G2, and breed them to my females who have mixed traits in those slots or who have recessive traits (like having G1 Tiger and G2 Bengal, or G1 Tiger with recessive Bengal hidden beneath it.) Usually those males are used for 5-10 females per breeding cycle each, if not more, and their offspring bring my projects one step closer to pure G1/G2 combinations.

If males had a cooldown as well, I would need 10 times the number of studs that I have now, just to give each female a proper mate. From 2-4 males, to 20 or more. Not to mention having to line up the timing with each and every one of them would be a big pain in the butt, as there are a few females up for public breeding from others that I use whenever I get the chance. Breed the wrong male to one of my own girls, then miss someone else's female's cooldown and possibly never have their times line up again? No thanks. Female cooldowns are more than enough.


For projects that are farther along, males who have all traits that I need, but who have recessive traits or carries in the way of the end-goal, are the ideal breeders. In those cases I'll breed one male to as many as 30 females in the hopes of getting everything visible and avoiding the dominance factor that puts the right trait as a hidden recessive. As for failed breeding results more than half of them are released immediately, and while I give some of them a chance to sell on the open market, most of them end up released anyway when I purge the hatchery. Once the project is complete, everything that was used to build up to it is also released. So though I do mass-breed my pets it's done entirely for myself in an organized fashion.


While male cooldowns may cut back the randomized over-breeding of pets, it would be a nightmare for people with carefully planned projects who aren't just breeding for the sake of breeding, or to have an endless supply of pets for sale.




Also, there's one solution in the works already to curve the overbreeding, and it's much more amiable. As Stable space is limited, with the Hatchery revamp the space there will be limited as well, and adolescents will no longer be allowed to chill in the nursery.


"Hatchery
-We plan on completely revamping the Hatchery. This will improve user friendliness and add new features.
-Allow various sorting to more quickly find the pet you're looking for.
-Allow nurturing directly on the Hatchery page instead of having to visit each pet's profile page.
-In order to improve the pet economy, Hatcheries will have limited space. However, you will be able to purchase infinitely more space similar to how you can purchase additional stables. With set space, Hatchery pets will also be able to be moved around.
-Pets will be able to be moved to Stables as a Hatchling.
-Pets will automatically be moved to Stables once they reach Adolescence.
-All of the above will help to prevent current situations where players have 10+ pages of Adolescents just sitting in their Hatchery priced at 1 gold."

- Krinadon



Rather than tacking on more cooldowns, limit the space. Sounds much, much easier to work with, especially being able to move hatchlings into the stables which is a plus for projects.



=== End Wall of Text :D ===

/more input lel

If there was such thing as male cooldowns implemented at the very beginning of the game, then the breeders we all know today would learn to adapt to whatever they're given.

But since breeding on this site has been used to a female cooldown and unrestricted male cooldown, I think breeders have done exactly what the restrictions entailed: use quantaties of females and gradually pick quality of males.

I think it's particularly harder for the breeders in the game to adapt to such a big change as introducing a new cooldown when they worked without it for a long time. As you can tell already, breeders would see this VERY negatively. And adapting to change is sometimes hard to bear lol. (I have seen users get upset or leave site completely because of tiny changes that they take personally. I fear that breeders take this personally lol)

Like Xav said at the end of the lengthy breeding post, one way of curbing overpopulation was to limit space.
I personally look forward to being able to exchange pets for scales as another way to curb overpopulation.

Maybe new species in the future that mean to be more illustrious and rare may have a cooldown, but for now, for the sake of consistency, retrograde pets (the ones with males with no cooldowns) should probably not be changed.

Tldr I wanted to provide input that didn't sound too biased as an already-breeder. So instead of "NO nononono breeding is alright as is we have other solutions", I wanted to give a different point of view. S:

I know that the admins don't want to add changes that have no reason, but mass breeding without a way to curb it wasn't expected. So they'll take consideration on whatever is fair for the players.

I think this suggestion would be great for new species that can work differently than fabled pets to curb a new overpopulation. (IE ny'venes were the first pets as fabled pets to have a 7 day cooldown, who's to say that a new species can have the first male cooldowns)

Isn't the hatchery going to be limited with the option to buy more space in the future, just like the stables are now? I think that should reduce mass breeding in the future too, without the need to add a cooldown to male sylestis.

I'm not much of a breeder at all, I should add that as a precursor to my post.

I think this could be very reasonable, especially if it wasn't very long. Say, 24 hours. I am aware that it is more realistic that females need an amount of time to recover, but well. Males aren't exactly raring to go 24/7, and a small cool down would enhance and not decrease the realism.

I do believe it would be a shock to the system to see this implemented, but I don't necessarily think it would be a bad one.

But either way, I think the only way we'd know if we needed this to help with overpopulation is to see how much it gets cut down after the improvements are made. If it's still a big problem perhaps something like this could be revisited as an additional fix.

But as it stands now, I think most players will indeed not like this suggestion, because it would make things harder, they have a system that works, change is inherently hard to adjust to for some, and it would require a different stratagem.

Tl;dr I wouldn't mind, but it should be significantly shorter than females, we probably shouldn't stress about this until after changes have been implemented, and I don't think most people would like it at least at first.

Perhaps have the non-fabled males can have a 3-hour cooldown after 10 or so breedings and the fabled can have 5 or so breedings before they need a 3-hour cooldown?

This will also be a little bit better for those poor males who's stud fees are ridiculously low. With males being more profitable due to the cooldowns, it may entice a more people to put their pets up for stud because of their increased profitability.

Right now (11/29/14), only 4 male HF Nephs are up for breeding. With a higher demand due to a male-cooldown, more of those nephinis might be put up for stud if the owners could get a bit more of gold from them per cover, rather than 1 or so gold once in a while.

This might be a bit frustrating for high-volume breeders, but in the end it will make every pet they sell a bit more valuable.