Once upon a time, there was an Omnomnom, and it came and it gobbled unwanted pets away. Alas, the problem of low priced pets persisted.

One of the suggested long term solutions was once to have a release feature where the user would be paid for their pet in gold which would give, in effect, a 'floor price' or 'base price' value for a basic pet..

This idea over time has changed, and last I heard it mentioned was intended to be scales, which may make the translation of floor price a bit tricky, and, as we know, the release feature is a ways off in the future because Krin is very busy with the Megazone, the revamp, and other important features.

As a possibly easier and quicker to implement aid, I would suggest we have a lower limit on pet prices. There is no need for pets to be selling under 1000 gold. Newbies buy these very cheap pets and find they cannot feed or house them, which causes them problems. I'd really like it if we worked to fix these problems because Newbies shouldn't suffer because Older players are either refusing to release pets they know are not worth enough to sell properly, or mistakenly believe they are helping.

I would propose that pets may only be priced at 1000 and above unless a User ID is also entered, to allow us to still send pets as gifts to our friends or host giveaways. This way pets become something to work towards again. As the way to get gold will not change, but pet prices will, pets will regain their value and no longer be a dime a dozen.

This could be a temporary change until new release features or the pound were sorted.
Users have been working to try and control overpopulation and underpriced pets, but there is only so much they can do. An admin change would make the world of difference for values across the site.

I cannot put into words how much I support this.

I've spent a lot of money over the past few days, and I'm still only managing to keep <250 clear.

It's not fair at all on the newbies who buy up these cheap pets thinking they're getting a good deal, it's not fair on the breeders who's pet values have plummeted because people think pricing hundreds of pets super cheap is a good idea, and it's not fair on the economy as a whole. It's pretty much gamebreaking to be able to log in and pick up several 6vis pets with your starting amount of gold - what's the point of playing/breeding if you're already at the end goal?

The User ID function would still allow us to give a nice pet here and there to new players, and to our friends, but it would eliminate the issue of too many pets to feed. By the time a user has amassed enough gold to purchase from public sales, we can assume they will have learned about the need to feed pets.

Sylestis should be worth something. Especially Fabled. Things left as they are, everyone will just keep on undercutting until soon all pets are worthless. Let's have a minimum price floor.

Big support!

support.

or just... bring Omnomnom back.

Omnomnom might work but then again, it wasn't a lasting solution last time. This would be until something more proper is in place and the site is out of Beta. This way there wouldn't be anyone trying to be clever and "quicksell" their pets or dump ugly pets they don't want onto public sales instead of releasing them. They would have to realise no one wants their pet, they don't want their pet, maybe they should release it for the good of the population :P

Defintiely support!

I don't sell pets much, but part of that is because I tried that once and they wouldn't sell because there was always something cheaper...It got to the point where what I could sell for (if i was lucky) wasnt even a fraction of the work i put into the pet.

I completely agree with all that has been said, the overpopulation is crashing the economy. I have a few things to add that I think could help as well.
-The 1k+ idea is great, allow me to build on it? I know this would take a lot of time, and would be far out if it happened, but what if each trait on each pet had a certain price assigned to it. For example, advanced runes on a zolnixi might equal 500g if it is visible, or 250g if it is carried. (all traits being at least 250g) This way, when pricing a pet, the game could evaluate how much it is worth based on it's traits and set that as a limit it cannot be priced under. It can be priced higher, or at the trait evaluation.
-Now as the overpopulation could still accumulate with no breeding restrictions aside from recovery, an option of reducing the pet quantities is releasing. I think a fast, efficient way to do this would be a "mass release" option, as I have seen suggested before. This would allow a user to select multiple pets at a time to release all at once, kind of like auto release in the hatchery. Think of all those stables you were dreading cleaning out, now done in hundreds of clicks and pop ups less than before!
-This being said, Krin has notified us recently that there will be a pound in the future. "Pets put in the pound will not be able to be released, but sent back to the pound and cycled." It is not going to take long for the pound to fill up rapidly when it is implanted, if the pound pets cannot be released. Also, this will be another way for newbies to get to many free pets. All it will take is one player to dump a bunch of 6v in the pound, and their value will drop, am I right? I think trait evaluation, as said before, could help here too. If the evaluator says the pet is worth more than, for example, 3k, it can not be put in the pound.

These are only ideas that I think might help, criticism and additions are appreciated :)

I think a mass-release option would be very helpful for people deciding to clear out their stables. Sometimes things just don't sell and they need to go so we have the space!

I like your idea of trait pricing but I think it may be a lot of work when we're on the brink of the Megazone, the Fall Fest and the site coming out of Beta. My other concern with it would be that pets selling for 250g would still not solve the Newbie issue - we'd need a base price and then trait pricing on top of it. I don't think 1000g is unreasonable for any pet, nor is it unreasonable for a Newbie.

I don't think 6v pets in the pound would be too much of an issue with regards to value, as I don't believe we will be able to sell pound pets, and pets not picked up would be cycled out (auto-released) eventually. You're right though, there's still a huge concern that it would be flooded with the "best" pets and then we'd be back to wondering what the point of breeding is when we could all just go and pick up 20 6v fabled from the pound.

My biggest suggestion re: Pound is that it have a limit of adoptability, like you can only adopt one pet from the pound every two weeks or something.

It is supposed to cycle the pets that are available to see at once, and I don't think it should show *tooo* many at once for the reason that it may end up filled with 6vis also.

I sort of wonder about the pound maybe offering an option to the person giving the pet up to Philter of Infertility the pet, free of cost. Maybe even something to encourage them to do so, like I don't know, they get some scales to.

Lavelle, I like your idea of the 1k base price with the trait evaluations on top of it. I think this would solve a lot of the problems of under-pricing, and over-buying, if not all. Also, newbies would adapt from being unable to feed due to having to many pets, to learning how to do missions to earn more gold.
Second, the auto-release in the pound would be reassuring. And I think Zelly's idea of not being able to pound a pet (that sounds sad, sorry) for two weeks after you've already dumped one, would do well keeping it's numbers down. Adding to this, maybe you could only adopt 2 for every 1 you dump? And on top of this, maybe the pound pets could have a max of 3 visibles and 1 carry. This way, if themes are put in the pound, they won't drop the values to drastically. Also, if you were to accidentally click the pound button, you wouldn't lose your treasured 5 vis project success.

And here is another idea, which is completely out of the box. Im not even sure if I like this, but figured maybe it's worth suggesting. Perhaps in public sales, pets priced under 1k without an ID set get "bought" by the game if they are not bought after a week. Basically, they auto-release. This would only happen with the under 1k pets, which is not much different than hard working players buying them up and releasing them manually.
In addition to this, perhaps these auto-released pets get cycled into the wild. I think it would be funny to run into a pet you had previously released.. Say it kept it's name, but all it's carries were hidden again if it was tested before. It is just a thought, doesn't really help anything, but it's a thought.