I always get nervous when increasing breeding costs starts to get thrown around. I love doing breeding projects. It is what I do on this site. I dont really care about selling (I hate haggling) and I dont really like the fighting.

With how long it takes for a single breeding project, however, I wouldnt have much to do if I was only doing one at a time. If costs are increased such that I pretty much have to only do one or two at a time, I will get bored pretty quickly and frankly will stop playing. I dont need another gold sink. I spend plenty on prisma philters, pies and gender swap philters.

It is really a shame that I will lose the game I love due to other peoples inability to release pets. Unfortunately that seems to be the road we are heading down.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=80202&page=9#81 Author: Faeyla Time Posted: 10/19/2019 at 11:04 PM I always get nervous when increasing breeding costs starts to get thrown around. I love doing breeding projects. It is what I do on this site. I dont really care about selling (I hate haggling) and I dont really like the fighting. With how long it takes for a single breeding project, however, I wouldnt have much to do if I was only doing one at a time. If costs are increased such that I pretty much have to only do one or two at a time, I will get bored pretty quickly and frankly will stop playing. I dont need another gold sink. I spend plenty on prisma philters, pies and gender swap philters. It is really a shame that I will lose the game I love due to other peoples inability to release pets. Unfortunately that seems to be the road we are heading down.

To be honest, this is how I feel.

Adding costs to breeding, to me, feels very newbie unfriendly, as well as not conducive to players with projects. I am just starting to get into a breeding project, and if it cost to breed them? I would not even attempt a breeding project, because most of the offspring are going to be released. It simply wouldn't be worth it to me to breed, because I am horrible at selling and thus would likely never recoup the costs I invested.

The hatchery thing I could live with, as it is how I thought the hatchery worked anyway, and as long as the upgrades were permanent, it would be just like the stables, with simply needing to keep within my limits.

Thanks Krin, for your detailed reply...

Its good to know that this issue is being looked at, as I feel it is one of the major issues in Sylestia at the moment...

...yet having seen Faeyla's reply, she makes a good point. A lot of the fun of sylestia is breeding, and when I first started, randomly breeding was a lot of fun, even if I just released them a few weeks later...

A price floor is a good idea...and the question becomes is a breeding price floor more beneficial or a selling price floor? i.e. is it better to limit the total number of pets created, or only allow sales over a certain amount?

I dont have the answers to that, as it would require a lot of statistics, and would be influenced by where people are spending rl money as well... (there is no point upsetting breeders, for example, if they are spending rl money to breed and are not disrupting the game economy, etc.)

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On a different note, its nice to see a more realistic outlook on the site as a whole! If the lost grove is taking this long to code, an entire site revamp would be a nightmare! I agree, more frequent, but meaningful updates (like the wardrobe) are the way to go...

I also hope that the lost grove is being set up as an easy to code/modify situation! If it is, then switching maps & adding some new puzzles/ boss dynamics can be relatively painless (as it should be). Coding everything from scratch sounds like a nighmare, frankly. >.<

If new areas are simple to create, then whole regions wouldn't take much more time than a revamp (a few months at most), as it would be mainly artwork/etc. The underlying coding should stay the same? Couldn't new areas be like what the lost grove is now? So no need to re-do the whole site?

Are there problems leaving the first 3 zones "as is"? And focusing on other things? Anyway, you have my encouragement, and you do an amazing job Krin. :D I know some areas are a real mess coding-wise, but
hopefully enough "new" things will make the old sylestia obselete/disappear...

Some of the incremental changes (like proficiencies or the wardrobe) have improved the site hugely! :D

Yep. Those are very valid points. Whatever the decision ends up being - it will be a very tough one. Obviously, we will do everything we feasibly can to make sure players are satisfied with the changes and that things can continue forward for everyone without major gameplay changes.

I imagine we would also discuss such things w/ the community as well before they become permanently solidified in stone.


As for the Lost Grove questions, actually, no. =\ The Lost Grove was built on top of the foundation of old exploration/battling code. At this point, it's a massive convoluted mess. Creating explore areas is painstaking. Creating new enemies is painstaking. Adding new loot is painstaking. Adding in quests/events is beyond painstaking. Basically, everything has to be hand coded and the vast majority has to be hard coded directly into the pages.

A LOT of brainstorming has been going on in regards to the future of Sylestia's exploration lately. I am really excited with where the ideas have led and when the time comes, down the road, more information will be shed on that. While that doesn't mean the Lost Grove won't see any new content before then, it does 100% mean that exploration and battling will receive a complete rebuild/overhaul down the road at some point and morph into its 'final' version. The focus would be on less grinding and more re-play-ability of content, while offering more customizable challenges for the player to tackle.

And again, going back to my last post, a couple years ago the plan was to rebuild Sylestia's code and database from scratch and introduce all these updates all at once as some mega-massive relaunch. In reality though, it's looking like that isn't feasible and that we're going to have to focus on projects one at a time and try and take Sylestia from Point A to Point Z one step at a time.

Yeah, one step at a time is better!

One thought...how tightly integrated is the lost grove? If everything is painstaking, what about coding the battle screen/mapping.layout/etc from scratch for the last section (making it easily modifiable)? Then reuse it wherever for other areas (like fests/new sections/whatever) in the future?

If the base code is easy to modify, then it also makes it easy to add new features (like crafting/less grinding/whatever) in the future...

...it just seems silly to me to spend so much effort coding the last lost grove sections onto a mess (and then discard it!) than to just use that time to code one part of the site cleanly for the future...

(or is a new battle zone/screen much more major than updating the lg?) Going step-by-step... 1) Code "clean" zone without really new features. 2) Add in new features easily as they are made. (I mean the adding in is easy, not necessarily making them!) 3) Work on other parts of the site one by one. 4) Less stress for Krin?

As a project breeder, I'd like to say that #1 would definitely hurt project breeders over mass breeders, and would have a negative effect on the economy.

I'm going to try predicting what would happen with math, because I like math.

In my experience, I breed an average of 10 pets every 3 days. It takes me 10 months(300 days) to complete a project, and a minimum of 30,000g to start a project (cheap essences cost 10k).

Player X is an project breeder that breeds non-themed pets.
Player Y is a mass breeder that also breeds non-themed pets.
Each of them breeds 10 pets/day before this change is implemented, and so in a period of 10 months, breeds 3000 pets.

Player X has three projects(they breed 1 project a day), so they spend 90,000g (30,000g per project*3 projects) for the starting pets. For each finished project, they put one pet on sale, which means they end up with 3 pets on sale.
It costs 30,000g per pet they put on sale.


In the same period of time, Player Y spends 120g(2 male+10 female*10g per pet) to buy their initial pets. In this period of time, they breed 3000 pets and put them for sale.
It costs 0.04g per pet they put on sale.


Let's say the baseline price for non-themed pets becomes 10g.

Player X now has to spend 30,000g to breed as well as the initial 90,000g for their project. Player X cannot reduce the amount of pets bred per day, because RNG sucks.
It now costs 40,000g (120,000g /3 projects) per pet they put on sale.

Player Y needs to spend 30,012g (30,000 from breeding + original 12g) to breed the same # of pets, 3000. They decide not to reduce the amount they breed.
It now costs around 10g (30012g/3000 pets) per pet they put on sale.

It costs 10,000g more for Player X to make a pet to sell.
Meanwhile, it only costs 9g more for Player Y.

You can't differentiate between a project breeder breeding non-themed pets for a project and a mass breeder breeding non-themed pets for the sake of breeding.
Therefore, charging for breeding would hurt project breeders over mass breeders.

This entire thing is assuming that the project breeder is using non-themed pets. If the project breeder is a max stat breeder or a theme breeder, they would be in an even worse situation.
Mass breeders are unlikely to breed 'quality' pets due to the cost of buying/breeding them. If they do breed quality pets, it's usually to a random 28th generation 'dishwater' pet, and results in another dishwater. Meanwhile, project breeders are more likely to breed the quality pets. If the cost was higher to breed higher quality pets, mass breeders would be barely affected by these extra restrictions while project breeders would struggle with the higher costs.

#1 would be detrimental to the economy's issue with dishwaters, and I would suggest striking it out as a possibility. I withhold judgement on #2 because I haven't tried working it out yet.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=80202&page=9#85 Author: Malikas Time Posted: 10/20/2019 at 12:21 AM Yeah, one step at a time is better! One thought...how tightly integrated is the lost grove? If everything is painstaking, what about coding the battle screen/mapping.layout/etc from scratch for the last section (making it easily modifiable)? Then reuse it wherever for other areas (like fests/new sections/whatever) in the future? If the base code is easy to modify, then it also makes it easy to add new features (like crafting/less grinding/whatever) in the future... ...it just seems silly to me to spend so much effort coding the last lost grove sections onto a mess (and then discard it!) than to just use that time to code one part of the site cleanly for the future... (or is a new battle zone/screen much more major than updating the lg?) Going step-by-step... 1) Code "clean" zone without really new features. 2) Add in new features easily as they are made. (I mean the adding in is easy, not necessarily making them!) 3) Work on other parts of the site one by one. 4) Less stress for Krin?

The code isn't really useable for any new projects that I'd want to do. It's basically just all custom coded specifically to the events that you've experienced for Section 1 and 2 because that's just unfortunately how the old code was originally created because I just did not know better at the time.

To make the next section of the Lost Grove, I have to:

1. Hand decide every single tile of the map in regards to layout, objects, spawn locations, etc. I can run some manual scripts to mass do something, like "put grass all in this square". But that's really all I can do. The rest is by hand.

2. Hand create every NPC. This includes figuring out how they look and then one variable at a time, placing them into a row in the database. I also have to create an entry for them in the actual zone file itself for their static image. I also have to calculate their battle statistics and manually enter those as well. I also have to hand craft their unique abilities and spend many hours testing them for balancing purposes and for bugs and for logic. This is why every Named in any festival for years just uses the exact same moves... because I haven't felt like doing that for those Named. ><

For quest NPCs, I have to again hand craft and insert their look. For each step of dialogue they have, I have to write that out and check over it for spelling/grammar and just coherency / RP'ness. This isn't too bad. However, it's a pain in the butt to coordinate when they should say something, how they should say it, and what the player responses are - and what the NPC's responses are to the player's responses. This is all entirely hand coded and hard coded into the files. Very unflexible. Not dynamic at all. Takes a long time to sync everything up, check it over, make changes, check it over, rinse repeat.

3. Hand create all of the loot. This requires creating new item entries by hand. If it's an Equipment, a lot of calculations and balancing is taken into consideration. More hours of testing and such. If it's just an item, then I'm more concerned w/ figuring out its graphic/name/use. Adding tracking for the item. Figuring out its drop rates and who drops it - both of which are hand coded and hard coded into the files on mostly a per NPC/Node basis.

4. The Barracks. Basically, everything in the Lost Grove revolves around the Barracks. So anything I do, I have to tie it into its respective place inside the Barracks. A lot of this is also just custom/hand coded. While a lot of the Barracks is way more dynamic than everything else... all of the buildings are entirely unique features. So they're all just created from scratch and anything new that they do has to be hand created from scratch.

5. Then there's things like Themed Pets. Figuring out what to add and the designs and putting them in. There's also artwork requirements for all of this. New areas, new assets, new objects, new avatar items, new pet traits, new item icons, etc, etc. It's managing these w/ the artists and then putting them all into the game.

6. And then just lots and lots of play testing once all the pieces are together. I probably spent close to 100 hours doing nothing but play testing the Forgotten Caverns. Just trying to find bugs. Trying to test balancing. Trying different pet set ups to make sure encounters are balanced. Testing drop rates. Testing requirements to do things. Testing all the processes. On and on.

7. Probably other things I'm forgetting as none of the above bullet points are as easy as they sound lol, even if doesn't even sound easy. ><


All in all, I'm probably looking at ~50 hours of artwork and ~300 hours of my time to finish the Lost Grove's Section 3. At least... to do it in a way that I would be satisfied with. In a typical month, I probably only get about a third of that available of pure development time. I typically work about 6-7 days a week and maybe I can spend like ~6-10 hours a week on actual pure future content/development projects. The rest is daily 'maintenance', administrative stuff, festivals/events, etc.


If I rebuilt the Exploration system from scratch - EVERYTHING would be automated and held within database tables like the Wardrobe is now. I'd also create tools for myself that auto create abilities, auto create buffs/debuffs, auto create enemies, etc, etc. Once all those foundations are built, I can then just fill in a few forms, hit submit, and the code does the rest for me.

I am also looking into utilizing procedural generated exploration maps where I can just insert base assets as a one-time thing, and then basically anytime a player goes to explore an area - it's a new randomly created layout using those assets. This not only saves me a ton of time, but also keeps things fresher for the player.

I would also have encounter difficulties, ability adjustments, equipment statistics, etc all automated on sliding scales where I can just make adjustments to the base numbers and the code figures out the rest for me. So if I add in a new area, the code just figures out what all the actual #'s should be based on whatever difficulty/level I designate for the area.

That's where I want to get w/ Sylestia's exploration. And at that point, then yea, I could churn out new content 100x faster than I do now. But all of the above is probably a solid 500-1,000 hours of development.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=80202&page=9#86 Author: Asphodels Time Posted: 10/20/2019 at 12:28 AM As a project breeder, I'd like to say that #1 would definitely hurt project breeders over mass breeders, and would have a negative effect on the economy. I'm going to try predicting what would happen with math, because I like math. In my experience, I breed an average of 10 pets every 3 days. It takes me 10 months(300 days) to complete a project, and a minimum of 30,000g to start a project (cheap essences cost 10k). Player X is an project breeder that breeds non-themed pets. Player Y is a mass breeder that also breeds non-themed pets. Each of them breeds 10 pets/day before this change is implemented, and so in a period of 10 months, breeds 3000 pets. Player X has three projects(they breed 1 project a day), so they spend 90,000g (30,000g per project*3 projects) for the starting pets. For each finished project, they put one pet on sale, which means they end up with 3 pets on sale. It costs 30,000g per pet they put on sale. In the same period of time, Player Y spends 120g(2 male+10 female*10g per pet) to buy their initial pets. In this period of time, they breed 3000 pets and put them for sale. It costs 0.04g per pet they put on sale. Let's say the baseline price for non-themed pets becomes 10g. Player X now has to spend 30,000g to breed as well as the initial 90,000g for their project. Player X cannot reduce the amount of pets bred per day, because RNG sucks. It now costs 40,000g (120,000g /3 projects) per pet they put on sale. Player Y needs to spend 30,012g (30,000 from breeding + original 12g) to breed the same # of pets, 3000. They decide not to reduce the amount they breed. It now costs around 10g (30012g/3000 pets) per pet they put on sale. It costs 10,000g more for Player X to make a pet to sell. Meanwhile, it only costs 9g more for Player Y. You can't differentiate between a project breeder breeding non-themed pets for a project and a mass breeder breeding non-themed pets for the sake of breeding. Therefore, charging for breeding would hurt project breeders over mass breeders. This entire thing is assuming that the project breeder is using non-themed pets. If the project breeder is a max stat breeder or a theme breeder, they would be in an even worse situation. Mass breeders are unlikely to breed 'quality' pets due to the cost of buying/breeding them. If they do breed quality pets, it's usually to a random 28th generation 'dishwater' pet, and results in another dishwater. Meanwhile, project breeders are more likely to breed the quality pets. If the cost was higher to breed higher quality pets, mass breeders would be barely affected by these extra restrictions while project breeders would struggle with the higher costs. #1 would be detrimental to the economy's issue with dishwaters, and I would suggest striking it out as a possibility. I withhold judgement on #2 because I haven't tried working it out yet.

Thank you very much for the detailed example. I do greatly appreciate the feedback.

I suppose we could maybe turn pet selling into a "Tradebroker" type feature where pets have to be officially listed in order to be sold. And that Tradebroker would then require an up front fee for listing a pet. And then have that fee adjusted based on the pet being sold so that more exotic pets require a higher up front fee.

I mean, regardless of the actual solution, the main goal is to just mainly bump up that minimum sale point from 1 gold to a couple thousand for all of those 6 vis "dishwasher" pets. For your typical newbie pets, they would largely remain cheap - probably under 100 gold minimum. But I think what has decimated the economy for so long is the mass selling of 6 visibles, of even Fabled species, for literally 1 Gold. That, coupled with species revamp Re-Generations where people can then buy random 1 Gold 6 visibles and turn it into dream pets for free... well, there you have a pet economy with stifling demand.

Unfortunately, it's just one of those things... complaints come in about how pets are so value-less and it's so hard to make money off of projects... and then complaints come in that any change to restrict how many pets a player can breed in a certain period of time (from breeding restrictions, or from limited hatchery space, or from increased costs/maintenance) would be game killing. So it's kind of like, well... which side of the coin do you want?


Also, one thing to keep in mind, is that the economy is dynamic. Regardless of what solution is eventually put in place, if the cost of a pet increases by such and such amount, it would also mean that that type of pet becomes more rare/exclusive/hard to find. Which would then in turn, over time, increase the value of those pets being sold. While the short term results would be hindered projects - the long term result would hopefully be the ability to have more meaningful and prosperous projects.


And lastly, we can ALWAYS adjust things based on any changes put in game. For a simple example, let's just say we did add in a minimum breeding cost for pets. We could then offset that by adding in more ways for higher level players to make Gold easier... or ways to somehow offset the cost through other means. So the baseline would still be present (Say.. nobody sells a 6 Vis Draeyl for less than 2,000 Gold now), but a high level breeder has ways to offset that extra 2,000 Gold per Draeyl cost.

I'm tired and I feel like I'm kind of rambling at this point lol. But what I'm trying to say - is something definitely has to be done. And even if the short term effects made some things difficult, I would 100% do whatever I could to offset and balance everything back out. The core goal of Sylestia is for players to come here and do whatever they want to do and do it how they want to do it. I love how we have some players who literally do nothing but breed. And then we have some players who literally do nothing but battle. And then some players who mainly just use Sylestia as their social grounds. That will never change. And that is only going to expand as time goes on. So any changes ever made will always be with that in mind.

Lol, we are agreeing with each other! ^^

What I am asking, is instead of all that work (300 hrs+ !!!) for section 3, why not treat section 3 as a whole new area (that you can portal to or something) not using the current lost grove code at all? And spend the 300hrs toward building a (basic but easily modifiable) battling/exploration zone from scratch...?

It just seems silly to me to put so much more effort into coding the LG when it cant be used for any other purpose... and since we are taking a long break anyway... instead of waiting for more handcoded LG, why not wait for something from scratch that can be reused?

Edit: even if the a new exploration area takes 500+hrs to build from scratch, but can be reused easily, it is still *much better* than waiting 300hrs for just that one thing.

Imagine if after that long wait, each new fest zone (or even new syletia areas!) could be added. Or all those new dynamic content/ideas you are so excited about could be added as mini-updates, etc...

In regards to recoding exploration. Personally, as long as I knew things were still being worked on (ie the site wasn't abandoned) I think I would prefer to wait and have everything recoded so that the foundation is better to work with rather than have more content added on top of code that is eventually going to need to be redone. But, that is just me, and I know a lot of players are already at the end (or close to it) and are waiting for the next section.


Okay, now in regards to Krin's last post (would quote, but it is rather long, and I get rather long, so didn't think two long posts in one would be a good idea).

"Unfortunately, it's just one of those things... complaints come in about how pets are so value-less and it's so hard to make money off of projects... and then complaints come in that any change to restrict how many pets a player can breed in a certain period of time (from breeding restrictions, or from limited hatchery space, or from increased costs/maintenance) would be game killing. So it's kind of like, well... which side of the coin do you want? "

This is why, when topics like this come up on sites, I prefer to work it from the other end and leave the breeding part alone. IE, we have tons of pets coming into the economy, tons of pets in the economy already, but relatively few pets LEAVING the economy, which creates the problem, so instead of limiting pets coming in (which can definitely negatively impact a lot of different types of players), focus on getting those pets out of the economy.

As I said in earlier posts, right now, the only reason to really release, other than personal desire to not sell unfinished pets (and the ones doing it for the economy) is the lost grove encounter rate. But, for many that isn't really an incentive as they aren't in the lost grove yet, don't plan to go there, don't really care for nest pets etc...

So, it ends up being something that relatively few players really want to do (especially combined with how hard it can be, with needing to have the name).

I feel that even introducing an NPC that buys pets for scales would have limited appeal, especially to players who already nurture a lot, or players who simply aren't interested in scales (for me, I would probably toss the pets at the NPC enmasse, because I need scales, but haven't worked out the best way to nurture large amounts of pets yet).

I think a wide variety of ways to remove pets from the economy would be good, as it would then be able to appeal to a wide variety of players.

Maybe split the different ways up, so that Releasing pets still increases the nest encounter rate in the lost grove. The NPC would give scales, but not be tied to releasing (which is how I assume it would work anyway). Perhaps other ways, such as a 'quest' system where the pet will go off and bring back something, but the 'cost' is that the pet doesn't rejoin your stable. IE basically like releasing but you get an item instead of an increase in encounter rates. Or, rather than a 1 pet = 1 item, another NPC that is looking for certain pets in certain amounts ('the Qitari herds are getting rather thin, so I need 100 Qitaris to release back into the wild. If you bring me that many, I can give you this strange essence I found while wandering'). The number of pets and the types of pets would be random, and it could be specific species, or perhaps they want themed pets or anything like that.


Small changes to breeding, such as hatchery space, would work to curtail new player mass breeding, and probably a bit more casual mass breeding, but I think wouldn't really affect the more established players, unless it was a recurring cost, in which case it would turn out like a breeding fee and hurt project breeders and the ones who are already releasing their own pets just as much as it would the mass breeders who want to sell their pets.

Other ways to increase value of pets, albeit only certain ones, is to introduce ways to make pets more valuable. Right now, the only really valuable pets are max stats. Leveled pets aren't really valuable because a player can go into the lost grove and get level 70 pets from there.

However, introducing things like a questing system where you can send your pet, and the more you send a specific pet, the higher level that pet becomes and the better loot it brings back (not tied to battling level, as even with mission pets it can be pretty easy to get high level one for cheap, but rather a unique system that cannot be found in the wild, but has to be 'trained' to be high level) or more gold, or something like that. This would give specific pets more value, at least in the short term, especially if these traits are NOT able to be passed down to offspring. (Flight rising has run into that, where any trait that can be passed down becomes fodder priced within at most a couple of months. They tried RNG non-inheritable traits, but those are so hard to get on the dragons you want, they aren't worth anything either except on very specific dragons) Various mechanics that allow users to train pets in certain disciplines that give certain benefits (with perhaps not being able to have 'super pets' where one pet is highly trained in ALL disciplines), with those benefits not even having to be monetary, but could be things like 'having a pet with a high level of tracking increases your chances of encountering a themed pet' but only by a small percentage. Doesn't do anything for capturing the pet, or defeating it, or even choosing a specific themed, but you are more likely to see a themed pet.

There could be other benefits as well, such as missions maybe give a bit more gold when this pet is used, or perhaps an extra satchel, or, like a stablemaid, it costs slightly less gold to feed your pets, or your pets heal faster if you have a pet with a certain discipline in your stables. Various things like that, and have a wide range of benefits that either do not stack (you can't negate feeding entirely by having an entire stable of pets with the same discipline) or only stack in a limited way (you can reduce costs by 10% total, with each pet contributing a .5% decrease in price)


Basically, I have always felt that breeding restrictions are things that really should be in place before a site opens, or added close to its opening. Once players start getting established and start signing up because breeding is a certain way, there will always be resistance to changing it, and it has a chance to negatively impact the site itself, because players will not only leave and potentially tell other players to not sign up, but players that stay might be less likely to spend money on the site, due to the fear of sweeping changes being done.

However, getting pets out of the economy is ususally something that is overlooked and not utilized very well, and making sweeping changes to it often won't have the same impact as adding breeding restrictions/changing how breeding works.