Opinion(s) About Breeding

Just as a side comment I think eventually combo bases will be released so that specific low tiers can breed up to specific high tiers, but not sure. 

Still mulling over "the breeding male problem."

@red

I think so too, Auburn has already been suspected to be a combo base.

I really don't like it. It's exactly like LD. I'd rather wolves be locked into breeding pairs or just be able to breed whoever I want with both males and females having cooldowns.

Responding to the general prompt rather than any particular user:

I’m fine with the system we have, and since my gameplay focuses on the Lead Wolf, their mate, and their pups, gender really doesn’t play much of a role. Female pups have exactly the same usefulness as males, as in, if they aren’t going to be part of the next leading pair, they won’t breed at all.

The fact that any female can breed and that studding is a thing is a bonus. It means I can breed toward the next leader’s mate rather than rely on other users breeding something I’d want to buy (or using NBWs with their low stats). But again, the gender of their offspring only matters in that it doesn’t match the next lead’s gender. Yes, female offspring will be able to continue breeding within the current generation to get even closer to my goal, and yes, only females will be able to be part of the non-canon breeder hunting team, but I’m much more excited about lead succession than maintaining breeders.

The same is true for Lioden - I don’t care all that much about lions I breed unless they will be able to be the next leader. For that reason, I get excited when a male cub is born (at least until I look and see he’s a potato). While a very nice female is “okay, I have a few more chances at passing these genes onto a male.”

A large part of this is probably that I don’t interact with the cub/pup market other than chasing and finding chased individuals (and the Giving Tree on Lioden). I get money enough from the game itself and selling items. I play these games to roleplay as a lineage of animals slowly getting stronger and prettier over the generations, not to make virtual money. I’ve learned from other games that being virtual rich just makes me bored since I can afford anything I want without trying.

And getting back to the topic, I wouldn’t mind being able to breed pack males, too (and it would further allow me to isolate my gameplay), but it would just be another bonus. I don’t feel strongly that it shouldn’t happen, but I also wouldn’t be upset if staff came out and said “this will never happen.”

The breeding male system is bad because it leaves your pack stagnant. It virtually prevents breeding projects. It makes males genetically useless. It forces people to spend more gc. It prevents almost any lore with pair bonding. It's not even realistic. Unless you spend gc, it's almost half a year between breeding male replacements. This completely ruins the game for me. I came in here assuming that you could kill off your breeder with illness. I was ecstatic. I hated having a completely garbage breeder on lioden, and I knew that i would hate it here if it happened. I really wanted to breed a lineage from purely nwbs, no customization anywhere in the lineage. Then I realized that if I wanted to do that I would have to spend hundred of gc, and eventually hundred of real dollars. I came late to the party on lioden. All of my good lions were handouts. I never bred my lead, only ever studs. I thought i could change that here. But here I am, having all my good wolves come from other people. From customized parents. I didn't bother breeding my lead, a wolf that I had designed myself, that I loved, because her pups still wouldn't be good enough.

One good point I can give is that you aren't required to choose a breeding male immediately. Rather than being stuck with a terrible king for half a year, you can be stuck with no king for a week or a month, and then the one you actually want from them on.

I've bred two wolves. A total of five pups. All were male. A 3% chance of that. (Sure, it happens. Rng can be mean. But it sucks.) All are probably going to be thrown in the trash. They're pretty. They can't pass on their genes. I could make them hunters or scouts, but what's the point? I have to wait for them to grow up and never breed them. I would be better off befriending random females. Ncls can't pass on very good genes, yeah, but they can at least pass on some.

Also, the pregnancy debuff argument is dumb. You don't get a debuff just from being in heat, so males are the same as females that you choose not to breed, except that you can't change your mind.

I'd really like to hear from someone who actively likes the system the way it is. So far I've only heard people who don't like it or don't care cause that isn't how they play. We must be missing something if its still in the game, but people who know what we don't get just aren't saying so. (or maybe I'm just bad at finding them in which case please link it)

The people I've talked to who like the system mostly like it on the game-wide level - they like that it means people need to use studs and/or buy puppies from other packs instead of being able to do all their own breeding project, because it improves the market, lets people make money on their studs/puppies, and generally makes you have to interact with other players more instead of just doing your own thing. I don't know that we're going to find anyone who just likes not being allowed to breed their own non-lead males, because if all they want is to not breed their males, well, they could do it anyway. So all the meaningful advantages are on the game-wide level, not on the personal playstyle level.

I do think that the stud system is cool, but I don't think it'd disappear if people could breed their own males - people's studs are still generally going to be way more fancy than my fifth-best male, and it's fun to be able to try things out with outside breeding.  But I'd rather also have the option of doing my own thing.

@Bluefire,

Mostly agree but just wanted to point something out. "We must be missing something if it's (the one breeding male system) still in the game" -- the game is like a month old; even if devs had decided to change the system day one it probably wouldn't be implemented by now. Game development is complicated and takes a lot of work, so I don't think we're missing anything attractive about the current system, they just haven't had time to change it.

@red

very possible, but keep in mind that beta was active for several months before ea, which may still not be enough time to code it, but it's certainly enough time to tell people they're thinking of changing it. Code takes a lot of time, announcements do not. People have been complaining about this since at least around public release, probably during ea too. You would think they would take note. I'd even accept a "we're never changing this ever stop complaining" if just to say we can safely stop talking about it and resign ourselves to our harem filled fates. I'm sure they have other things on their minds. It'd be nice to have more transparency about what they think of player suggestions.

Mm from what I saw not a lot of people were complaining about it during EA, but also people typically only had like 5 wolves in their pack at that point anyway, and needed every one. And during beta testing, accounts were wiped so often (usually every 1-2 weeks) that the same thing would happen. I don't know about anyone else, but since I came from LD I didn't think anything of the one breeding male system until I had several male wolves I realized would never breed and saw someone mentioned that we could have a different system. Not to say that NO ONE was talking about it earlier, but the outcry just wasn't as present because people didn't have any surplus wolves at all, regardless of sex, and because packs never lasted long enough for people to start encountering inbreeding. 

I think devs are open to at least changing the system, as they didn't put it on the list of things not to make topics about.