Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=57948&page=4#37 Author: Anubar Time Posted: 2/22/2018 at 11:39 AM [quote=1173706] It is not the experimental feature that makes me want to quit. I am breeding Lighira at this point. The difference in breeding times for me is at most a few extra days. The outrage is more that it is somehow felt that new players require yet another 'ceiling' to strive towards. We've got plenty already. If you already know that your ancient 'beginning' is the ore of the problem for new players, do not start brainstorming ideas to make our interest in this game even less. Instead, please focus on correcting the existing problems. It is very nice to see new content continuing to come out for people trapped at the current endgame. It means there is a future to head towards. I am sure I do not understand all the difficulties you face in running this site, or in implementing all of the changes you would like to make. I just want it brought to attention that when you make such comments about adding in things that would make it even more frustrating for the people at the bottom of the heap, that maybe your attention should be less spent on adding in such new features, until the existing difficulties such people are already struggling through, have been alleviated.

The release of the Lost Grove is the predecessor to me beginning rebuilding Sylestia from scratch and then eventually relaunching Sylestia and us finally exiting Beta. =)

This is kinda covered here:

https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=23216

Although that's a bit outdated at this point lol.


Breeding is a very complicated issue for pet sim games - as I think literally any avid pet sim player can attest to. There are so many factors that have to be considered for long term sustainability of the breeding systems. From cost, time, value, customization, etc, etc.

Then you have issues with... making a system that allows new players like yourself to dive in and experience it... while also having the system allow for old players to make profits off of their large investments.


The biggest issue right now with Sylestia's pet economy is that pretty much any Level 1 can buy a stable full of 4-6 visible pets for a total of maybe 1,000 Gold - sometimes as little as 50 Gold. To me, that is game breaking and ruins the experience for the new player for multiple reasons.

Players can endlessly breed two 6 vis pets over, and over, and over, and over until the end of time and if they sell them for 1 Gold, it's technically worth their time.

This is a very tricky issue to resolve and I'm fairly certain any proposal we'd make would probably be met with disdain from at least a good portion of the playerbase.

So we basically have an issue that definitely needs to be resolved, but it's very hard to find a solution that everyone would be on board for.

So we wanted to try and test a possible partial solution and see how it went so that we can use that information to continue trying to find viable solutions.

So, again, just to stress, I hope everyone can keep that in mind. This is far from written in stone.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=57948&page=4#39 Author: Xovinx Time Posted: 2/22/2018 at 11:43 AM Okay, this is a big and complicated issue, so I'm not going to make any big and complicated statements about the breeding changes until it's been tested for a bit (and probably not really even then). The relatively free breeding of pets has made a very over-saturated market, and no one would deny being able to buy a six-vis Nixi for 1 gold is broken, but there are other ways to decrease the market that I think might be more agreeable with the big-time breeders? Has the NPC pet-buyer been considered recently? With so much breeding going on, we need a place to drain off the failures and almost-theres, and just releasing them feels like such a waste of your efforts getting that far. The release-pets leaderboard was a great idea in that respect, but it is only once a year. If it is a concern about generating too much money, then perhaps the buyer could buy them with tokens for a special shop, or even just a slight chance at a rare avatar item. Even a small potential for gain is far more motivating then no possible gain at all. I know I'm commenting on the underside of the reason for the change (the value of the failures rather then the value of the successes), but I am not one of those big breeders who actually sell their six-vis max pets, so this is the only part of the market issue I feel qualified to comment on. ^^ Hopefully it's not too off-topic... I just felt it should be mentioned. P.S. (After a re-reading of the initial post... mothers would rack up impossible cool-downs with an uncapped increase system. Eventually that Sylesti would simply become unbreedable, and that would be a devastating loss in some cases, especially with the rare themes. My suggestion: There should be a cap for how long the cooldown can become; the females have to stay usable in a practical sense.)

It is capped at 12 Days for Fabled - so 5 extra Days max on the 7 Day base.

YES.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=57948&page=5#41 Author: Krinadon Time Posted: 2/22/2018 at 11:48 AM [quote=1173717] The release of the Lost Grove is the predecessor to me beginning rebuilding Sylestia from scratch and then eventually relaunching Sylestia and us finally exiting Beta. =) This is kinda covered here: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=23216 Although that's a bit outdated at this point lol. Breeding is a very complicated issue for pet sim games - as I think literally any avid pet sim player can attest to. There are so many factors that have to be considered for long term sustainability of the breeding systems. From cost, time, value, customization, etc, etc. Then you have issues with... making a system that allows new players like yourself to dive in and experience it... while also having the system allow for old players to make profits off of their large investments. The biggest issue right now with Sylestia's pet economy is that pretty much any Level 1 can buy a stable full of 4-6 visible pets for a total of maybe 1,000 Gold - sometimes as little as 50 Gold. To me, that is game breaking and ruins the experience for the new player for multiple reasons. Players can endlessly breed two 6 vis pets over, and over, and over, and over until the end of time and if they sell them for 1 Gold, it's technically worth their time. This is a very tricky issue to resolve and I'm fairly certain any proposal we'd make would probably be met with disdain from at least a good portion of the playerbase. So we basically have an issue that definitely needs to be resolved, but it's very hard to find a solution that everyone would be on board for. So we wanted to try and test a possible partial solution and see how it went so that we can use that information to continue trying to find viable solutions. So, again, just to stress, I hope everyone can keep that in mind. This is far from written in stone.

"The biggest issue right now with Sylestia's pet economy is that pretty much any Level 1 can buy a stable full of 4-6 visible pets for a total of maybe 1,000 Gold - sometimes as little as 50 Gold. To me, that is game breaking and ruins the experience for the new player for multiple reasons.

Players can endlessly breed two 6 vis pets over, and over, and over, and over until the end of time and if they sell them for 1 Gold, it's technically worth their time."


IF that is truly the issue. Then why not just limit how many offspring a single pet can have? Because there are pets on here with 100+ offspring and their not project pets.

I have put 5-6vis pets for sale at 20 gold and still ended up releasing them all cause no one was interested in buying. What people are mostly wanting to buy now is the 250K+ max stat infertile pets.

Also there are players who give away 4-6 vis pets to newbies.

Would it be a possible thing that, say, if the breeding interval reaches its max, and that pet is sold, could that person then have the timer reset. I don't know if its possible, but it'll be for only if the person as never owned the pet for the first time. Just so that new players buy pets, not knowing, and when they try to breed they have to wait ages for it.

So, can I get better stats from breeding them from max lvls. and breeding the sylesties together? I have been breeding pets together like that for a while now and if that is so that would be awesome for me than buying a lot of potion type dealies and trying that way to better the stats. I'm sorry if I was completely off when asking about this. If this could be implemented that would be great!








@Krinadon

I side with Abs, Xav, Frawn and the others. While some people may focus more on the storyline and battling, there's a huge chunk of people who simply enjoy the breeding aspect. Adding cooldowns for the males seems unnecessary, especially since even with the cooldowns, if the females have such long recovery periods the price inequality would still remain. Now, the females. 12 days may seem short enough, but it really is not. Not everyone has the funds to have a ton of base pairs for a project, so having cooldowns compound with each offspring produced sounds horrible. I'll defer to Xav's argument about the wait with 12 days, the 7 day wait on fabled is plenty long enough already. I know the market is flooded with pets, but wouldn't an easier way to solve that be to (during the complete site revamp possibly) impose a minimum price? As far as the new players thing, I, as a new player, enjoyed being able to profit from others' generosity (or overstock lol) of pets. While I understand the idea is that patience and time pay off and that eventually players will get those pets, I will speak from my own experience. I. do. not. have. that. time. I love this game, but I take all AP, ECE, and honors classes, along with a college class. I'm stage manager for our musical, constantly have auditions and performances to practice for on two instruments, and play a minimum of 3 varsity sports per year and have work. And, as far as players go, I'm on the low scale of IRL conflicts, I'm not a parent, I'm not in college and I don't work full time. If I had to save up a few hundred thousand for every 5 or 6v pet, or more considering what those cooldowns would do, I would likely have lost interest in the game for how much time I would have had to invest. I admire the complete dedication of some players on here, but most of us just don't have that time to dedicate to the site. As far as items being available for diamond purchase, I beg you to reconsider. I know buying diamonds funds the site, but there are a lot of younger players, or players without extra money that would be put at a huge disadvantage if overcoming long breeding cooldowns and recovery periods required spending real-world money. I see where you're coming from, but this is not the solution. I understand this is an experimental feature and you don't want us to freak out, but I think the reaction is coming more from "this should not go beyond a temporary experiment" than a misunderstanding of the current effect.

"Then why not just limit how many offspring a single pet can have? Because there are pets on here with 100+ offspring and their not project pets. "

I would be very against this. People spend a lot of time trying to work on projects and then eventually sell offspring from that project. I wouldn't even like it for non-project pets, but there's people that spend tons of real money to work on projects.

This would also cause issues with theme pets. I have a large collection of theme pets that I set up for breedings (though I'm currently really behind on that). I like having them available to other players so if others are working on a project that they can also have access to that trait. I might have traits that are harder to come by as well. You could eventually make it where a tagged theme would never be able to breed again. This would be harmful in particular for those that could have added a new trait in by being mutated.

And say the answer would be for themed to not be included, I think it wouldn't be able to be coded. There are themed pets that pre-date the tag system. These pets are not tagged but they are still wild caught themes.

OMG. NO.

"Why keep things simple when you can make them complicated!"

I breed a lot myself, and like many others here, I think this is the most unproductive change ever. Projects take about a year indeed to complete, Krinadon. It's long enough!!

The only way I would be fine with this new "feature" is if traits become automatically passed on, even carried traits, 100% of the time.

Otherwise, well, experiment with the ferrikki all you want, and I'm OK with this being a ferrikki's special restrictions, but DON'T APPLY THAT TO THE OTHER SPECIES PLEASE. Such retrictions are NOT warranted in any way, shape or form. Pets already have a reasonable cool down, and traits passing-on is far from being effective. Don't add more obstacles!!

For the rest of my thoughts on this, I'll echo Xavion, GoldGryphon, Anubar, Savynn, Frawn, et al.

On the one hand, more extensive breeding limitations are fairly reasonable in theory. On the other, many veteran players are pretty upset (I would be but I'd usually rather just do the legwork and grind for money to buy what I want instead of breeding it).

One theme I keep seeing is that stat projects will take eons like this, and they're right. That's why I don't do them myself; I just don't have time or patience for a project that might take a year. Stats are pretty important, especially with the MZ being as tough as it is. To me, the issue with stat projects is that they create a huge number of "waste" offspring. Most responsible breeders release those rather than selling them, but that still presents a potential area of improvement.

What if it were easier to pass on positive stat changes?

Traits are harder to work with, what with the whole Mendelian genetics thing (though even there, some sort of philter of trait selection could help). But stats? I think there's room to work with that. Better philters? A tendency for offspring stats to gravitate towards those of the stronger parent? Some other mechanic I haven't thought of yet? Better nurturing potential?

Essentially, the cooldowns would not be as much of an issue for stat breeders if it wasn't so difficult for them to get what they need out of a breeding in the first place. Compensate for the cooldowns by lowering the number of breedings needed to achieve the desired result and there might be less public outcry.

Edit: Maybe this could work for traits too. A few others have had suggestions of items that would cut down on the chance element of breeding. Philters for turning a carry into a vis (though maybe with a limit on how many can be used per pet), or for removing a hidden are a good step. Maybe another item could be introduced that would allow a player to choose from which parent an offspring inherits one of their traits (similar items are used in pet building festival activities, so maybe it could also be applied here).