Opinion(s) About Breeding

Maybe one option would be potentially a "one time" breeding item (Think talas quest) that allows you to breed a non-stud male a single time.  Of course that would be expensive, and maybe not do so much, but an option that wouldnt alter the teams vision as much as free for all breeding.

 **Or perhaps an even better way of implementing this would be males have an extremely low chance to randomly breed with special wolves either while doing an action or on rollover, and you either have to temporarily house an extra mother until they're weened or maybe he just brings back a little of weaned puppies. (These special mothers would have some sort of special marks/bases/traits maybe even hybrids, that you can only get through having males bring them back, or passed down by breeding)

But I think an important way to balance this is to give a different set of perks to males.  Maybe they're born with higher stats to help make up for the loss of usefulness, but that still doesnt help much since that makes little difference in actual practice unless the end goal is to make them your breeding male.

 Overall I think some sort of activity that only males could do, that is as useful as breeding, would be the best way to fix this issue in my opinion.

Just a note to everyone, please don't make obvious suggestions. I personally don't have an issue with it, obviously; I love seeing different ideas on the matter. But I really don't want this thread closed like the other one. :/

(Sorry if this seems rude in any way, I just feel like we're walking on eggshells here.)

Honest to goodness, I don't have any problems with the breeding system, but that's because of my playstyle and limits I have placed on myself. I may be the minority here, but I just enjoy having a pack of largely males, which is what I had before public release (more like, before my female pups grew up lol). I'm not really here to advance like crazy or push for certain markings/looks/stats in my pack or to make a lot on sales. I'm playing as a casual player. I love the fact there's no male limit like on LD (though I guess realistically, it makes sense there with lions and all), but now I can instead limit the number of females I have as to not overrun myself with pups. Essentially, I have four main breeding females (my lead, the companion wolf I made, my herbalist, and a pupsitter I customized slightly. Oh, an a scout who I have technically bred, but that was more to just see if I wanted her as a breeder, and maybe replace her with a pup for the next generation of scouts). Any others are their daughters (or at the moment I have some temp sitters, but I'm working on weeding them out right now). I came into WD with the full intention to mainly focus on my pack's lore and story. I did not make my lead a male, but I may in the future have a male lead, and it's entirely possible I may or may not have him as the breeding male. Honestly, some day I'd love to have a dynamic of two brothers leading the pack, one's a lover (the breeding wolf) and and one's a fighter (the lead wolf) lol That's something I've done on LD before too, by keeping a sub-male who is the brother of an heir I bred myself, but as mentioned before, sub-males really don't have much use, so I literally had him to sit there, look pretty, and for story purpose. I guess that's probably a major factor as to why I really have no issues with the breeding. "Everyone" is supposedly avoiding males, but here I am avoiding too many females. 

Anyway, the strategy I'm finding to work (for me) is breeding male should either be a scout or lead male, as my scouts seem to earn stats very well-roundedly, unlike my hunters who earn essentially one stat based on their role. My breeder having pretty evenly distributed stats means his pups are pretty okay to fill any role. When you have a situation like that, personally I think it doesn't matter how good your other males may be, chances are they're good at one thing, not generally good. Honestly, this argument that the non-breeding male's genetics are "wasted" doesn't make too much sense, since the same is to be said about any pup you chase. Sure, your never going to breed him, but you also never going to get to breed those chased pups either. And the only possible "wasted genetics" is hidden mutation stuff, which you are never going to know until you get a mutated pup out of a pair that one or both carry the mutation(I could be wrong, but I think both parents need to at least carry for it to show in the pup). It seems a bit like "crying over spilled milk" to me, but also, again, I'm probably in the minority as I don't care for mutations either. Let's face it, anything else you could probably find on another breeding male out there or a female, because it had to come from somewhere (if not just customize/applicators). 

The only thing I'm really glad did not carry over from LD's early days of breeding was the whole community-made term of "custom heritage" which was basically the "big deal" before stats and before "clean/dirty" lol (Breed-only bases and markings weren't a thing yet, neither were genetics, and high stats were basically what are now considered very low stats.) Basically you had things like "100% custom cubs for sale!" or "1/2 custom cubs for sale!", but thankfully it died out after a year or so and I'm pretty sure hasn't been a thought for anyone here on WD. 

EDIT: Oh gosh, this seem shorter in my head XD

@Darklily i mean im fully with you on not caring very much for chasing super valuable markings or anything like that (although i do breed for markings i like, but i hardly care what they're worth besides having a few valuable wolves to make SC off puppies to provide for my pack and such), but i think you might have overlooked why me and a lot of others are unhappy with the current breeding system. a lot of people are super lore-motivated, including myself, and its for that reason i want males to have the ability to breed. i don't really want to have to either fit the weird harem life-style into my lore (which isn't realistic anyway, for the amount of wolves most people have in their packs), and i also don't want to have to breed my female to my breeding male and pretend she bred with her lore-partner and make up some reasoning why the pups look nothing like him lol, or have to breed outside my own pack to a male who kinda looks like him. i don't mean to sound presumptuous or overly-sensitive, i just felt a little like when you said "crying over spilled milk" it felt like you didn't really understand why a lot of people want their males to breed. again, hoping i don't sound rude, i do think the play style you have is super unique and interesting and it's cool that it works for you and i totally respect it, it's just (as im sure you know) uncommon both as a play style and as a form of lore ^^'

also, even for people who don't have "lore", im sure it's kinda a bummer to have a male who you grow attached to and have a personality for in your mind be unable to have puppies. it just kind of seems like an unnecessary dead-end that clearly upsets a lot of players and has plenty of ways to be fixed without hurting anyone (i had my own idea on page two, but i won't restate it here just cuz i want to heed the mods' and saeginko's reminders and keep this more of a discussion than a suggestion thing, but just mentioning it in case you wanted to see it haha)

@Sneep, I get what you're saying too (you are definitely not rude sounding, so you're good there ^^), but whenever I hear "males are worthless to keep..." it typically is always associated with "I can't make money off them if I can't breed them so what's the point" arguments. Also, I didn't read through the replies here, literally, as the OP was kind of asking for, was posting my own opinion unrelated and uninfluenced to anything else posted here. Like I said, I'm probably the minority because I don't want that many females, as that way it's also less "harem" style too (like one of my breeding females I will not breed to my breeding male as in lore she's his aunt). I may have gone a little overboard with the "crying over spilled milk" saying (sorry about that. It's late and I'm a little sleep deprived >.<), but it was with the line of thinking I mentioned in mind purely. I've seen that way too often since the wording of "worth/worthless" in LD/WD (less so here, but that's also probably just because how new the game is) will typically be associated with "value" based on these few things: can you make anything off of it, can it aid you in a project, and does it have "x" (which is really both the former two, and can be stats, mutation, base, etc.). I love my males to death, regardless whether or not they have "value" in other people's eyes <3 (I legit almost customized some of them even with knowing they'd never breed.)

I should I guess be more clear: I don't have any issues with the breeding system as it is, but I'm also not against ideas to change it (I simply decided not to mention such things, because the admins don't want suggestions yet). I'm not saying I wouldn't like it if you had ways to breed your other males, in fact I'd probably enjoy that, I just have personally found ways to work with the system as it is now. I mean, I loved the fact that I was actually able to at least once breed one of my other males during the breeding tutorial, but I know that's going to be a one-time thing. I will admit that is a bit of a disappointment, but I also didn't expect to be able to do that in the first place. I figured going into WD once you pick your breeding male that was it until you retired him (be it to old age or early retirement).

Aside from the plight of the males. 

You only get a rank II base through breeding if you breed to a rank II base? 

Like if you breed two wolves with matching rank I bases, you don't have at least a small chance of a rank II in their litter?? 

What kind of system is that?? (ﾉ｀Д´)ﾉ

(And thank you to everyone so far for sharing your opinions!)

I'm playing the game from a more lore-based goal, where I want to keep my pack as is now, and slowly replace individuals as they die off with the second generation. I've been into roleplay/creative writing in the past, and it's super easy to get attached to my pack and make stories for them mentally.. and ship them. xD

My pack's hunting party is mostly male, with one female badass keeping them in check. I don't have prejudice against keeping males even tho you can't continue their gene pool, BUT it really makes me sad only one of them (two because I'm saving the free Tala quest just because of our limitations) can breed?? Because I'd love to have a pack of mated pairs! It's limiting my own lore to the point I'm thinking of trying to find similar looking studs when the time comes and "pretend" they were my boys.. 

I'd love to be able to breed my males just once with my girls to carry on the next gen of wolves in my pack and be self-sustaining without having to look for studs and work that into my story.

@Treeling there are probably some more combo bases that can give you Tier II out of two Tier I bases; the only one we know right know is Auburn (Red x Black). So it is possible.

I'm w this. ppl say all the time that you shouldn't expect things to be like LD, it's a different game, about things like amusement items, HP, battling, difficulty getting currency, etc-- I'm fine w that! I think this game could be less like LD actually; hence my support of submale breeding!

While I do think there should be some restrictions on non-stud breeding males (lower chance to pass markings, adding a cooldown,  whatever), I would like to see this implemented! I play for lore and for breeding, and RN I have, both here and back on LD, pack/pride members that are 'male' in my lore but that I've sex-changed in-game so I can actually use them for my projects, & that gets a bit confusing! (I've HC'd some of them as trans in case anyone was gonna suggest that, but that feels like... a weird thing to do for all of them? like. making a character trans just so they can get pregnant? feels Off^TM plus the game constantly uses she/her pronouns for them so that feels weird too. that's off topic tho)

Anyway yes! As a hybrid lore & breeding player I'd love to see some version of sub male breeding implemented! Pretty please!

Much the same with what @Crickets said!

I also want to add that I saw it mentioned in one the older posts that when enabling all males to breed you give them a breeding cooldown too. I liked this idea and it still work for people who just want to play by lore because in theory each mate would come off cooldown around the same time.
I also suppose you could make the male cooldown even a bit shorter so say he could comfortably breed with 2 females regularly or something for breeding projects or whatever you want to use that for.

Kind of spitballing here, but I think there should definitely be some sort of restriction with males when it comes to breeding