Chasing-Adjacent Weekly Challenge - Minimum Trade Value + Rewards

Yeah of course, I'm talking more of presentation of the finished product (which would be a mods job to accomplish), because obviously just reading your suggestion brings up 'Oh! Like FR except a bit different!'

Yeah! That makes a lot of sense! xD

Support! I like that this not only would help players who have been playing for a while but also for new players as well since they would be able to sell pups that otherwise would hold no value. Everyone could benefit from this. 

Support! it could help keeping the economy active when it comes to low value pups, and it would help newbies get off their feet when they breed those NBWs

Support - with a bit of a word vomit add-on.

As noted, this system is used in other games and Wolvden is not these games, so it needs tailored to its own uniqueness. Flight Rising, of course, is probably the most well-known of these games and their specific system definitely will not work here on Wolvden. So, my notes.

- First, I will note that due to the time it takes to breed a wolf plus their cooldowns and how slowly they age, one week is very short for an event like this and could cause cheap pup droughts. While a drought may seem good, it damages pupsitter fodder availability, damages the ability to participate in the event, encourages people to keep their potatoes for themselves, and may potentially cause a flood later when people try to overcompensate for the lack. A one week change also creates a LOT of turnover, which just doesn't feel good. I feel a full month is most reasonable and a minimum would be two weeks.

- I do not support den size categories or any other method that would force individuals to compete for prizes for themselves rather than a group. By putting people in den size categories, you are putting pressure on newer players to compete. Newer players do not have the SC to spare, so pressuring them to cough up what little SC they have will not help the market and will drive newer players away from the site - which, in turn, is bad for GC sales and site growth. There's also the risk of someone like me. I don't need a large den and I make a lot of SC because I am active in the TC and I have a nice stud. If I have a lot of SC and a small territory space, I am more likely to be able to out compete other people in the same territory size - especially newbies - simply because I'm playing as a 'max' player despite not having max territory size. It's like having a max level toon in an RPG and ganking lowbies in starting areas. Pitting individual players against each other rather than a group against another group is more likely to cause anger and frustration in the playerbase. Only rewarding a small group of people for their efforts will cause people to lose interest and be very dissatisfied with the mechanic.

'But they don't have to -' 'Scuse me, but do you wish to be bitten? No? Then I would suggest not saying any form of 'you don't have to participate.' Those who don't wish to participate simply won't and aren't going to complain. If they are complaining or feeling forced, telling them they don't have to participate will not make them feel better - they'll just bite you. I know this from many instances of personal experience.

- I would support having players compete by biome with calculations for points taking into account player populations. (Possibly with other modifiers, but that's the only one I can think of at the moment.) i.e., if I chase a wolf in the Mountains, I get less points than someone who chased in the Glacier because there are more people in the mountains than the Glacier. This would be in order to make it a little more fair, as otherwise the harder territories would never have the top spot simply because the easier ones have more masses of pups being bred that are never put up for sale due to being project pups or bred specifically for being chased. This also means that you have a supportive group effort as opposed to a potentially mean-spirited competition between individual players. An individual will be a lot less upset over missing out on a fodder pup if that fodder pup is less important for their individual success, as there are others contributing to the same effort that will still get them rewards.

- I do not support rewards for each individual chase. This system works well for Flight Rising, as it is an easily balanced incentive there. Here, it would merely flood the market with whatever the reward was, which could cause currency inflation and item devaluing.

- I would support having having small monthly goal rewards. (Yes, monthly, regardless of whether the winner rewards are monthly or weekly.) However, these rewards should be unique to the event. These could be exclusive backgrounds for especially high chasing amounts and perhaps an amusement item that has a chance to award a stat or two when used for lower tiers. Perhaps even exclusive contacts/non-breedable eyes could be an interesting reward. (Something to turn your wolves' pupils into draconic slits, perhaps?) These would only be able to be won once per month per account, which would keep their circulation low and their value high while also giving incentive to chase even if you're not pushing for your territory to win.

- I would support deleted wolves giving more points. So, pups and adolescents that are driven off would give points. A chased adult, however, would only give half the points unless they made it all the way to deletion/were not reclaimed by another user. If they add in any more options to get rid of wolves, then any that result in the chased individual being added to a reclaimable pool would mean the wolf would not give full points unless their time in the pool expires. This is simply because the goal of a mechanic like this is usually to remove the pixel pets from circulation and sending them to a pool doesn't do that unless they expire. This isn't really all that necessary of a mechanic to add to it, as I believe the stay in the chased wolf pool is pretty short/doesn't allow for a whole lot of reclaiming, but I wouldn't mind it. It also may be a bit of a weird coding job? Not sure.

Should there ever be a mechanic that releases a wolf, but doesn't ever allow it to expire/it has to be readopted to be removed from the pool, sending a wolf to this feature would have to give zero points. We do NOT want a situation like a certain game I used to play that I will not name for fear of bringing the wrath of the 'there's no such thing as an unwanted pet' people down upon me. Their 'release' mechanic never deletes a pet from the system, which has resulted in an unwanted pet backlog miles long and there's no way to actually delete pets. I don't want to encourage use of a feature that does something like this.

- A mechanic I feel is absolutely necessary and can not be left out is that whoever won the previous round will get a point debuff/will find it significantly harder to win the next consecutive round. This way no one biome rules the game.

- To discourage people from moving biomes to take advantage of other people winning should competition be by biome, any benefits won by releasing the most pups should be tied to what biome an account was in at 12:01AM on the first of the week or month that you are competing in. So, going by months for simplicity's sake, if you compete in March for the April reward and another biome gets the April reward, moving to that biome will not grant you the reward. Whether or not you can move back to your previous biome to enjoy the month's rewards in the instance you moved during the month and they ended up winning is up for debate, but would mostly be up to how difficult the coding would be compared to 'you moved, so you are disqualified from all dominance rewards until --.'

Note: The reason this is not - or I at least think it's not - a mechanic in Flight Rising is because Flight Rising has a 6 month cooldown on flight changes and charges a pretty hefty premium currency amount to change flights. Wolvden, from what I am aware, has no movement cooldown and moves are free, making it easy to abuse if you could hop from biome to biome to take advantage of their winnings. (I am not saying add a cooldown to Wolvden, I think it is fine as is. Just pointing out this is necessary here while not necessary on Flight Rising.)

- I do not think that any rewards given for coming out in however many top slots are given should be physical items or currency. In any form. Bonuses awarded should not have a huge effect on gameplay and should not do damage to the market. So no items given directly and no bonuses that increase the likelihood of obtaining items. Personally, I like the idea of a 5% fertility boost (your 1% wolf will breed as easy as if she has 6% fertility, but would still have the same mutation chance as her true fertility), a small raccoon shop discount - no more than 15% - and maybe a small increase in battle stat gains (so, specifically lead wolves only). However, some consideration should also be taken to how long the bonuses are active. The longer they are active, the lower their boosts should be.

I do feel this is potentially a very beneficial feature to have, both for the market by raising the fodder floor and for the community by giving us a bonding experience via a group effort. I've seen the wonders of such efforts before - it's amazing what a determined group can accomplish and it opens up a very interesting variety of market opportunities. I just think it needs a lot of consideration and will need a lot of tweaking and fine-tuning. This needs to be done very carefully as to add a new element to the game without disrupting what is already here.

Sorry for the long post. I, uh, got excited 'cause this is an idea I actually really like and didn't consider it may be good for this sort of game before.

Support! I just posted my own thread without seeing this one with a very similar mechanic with FR in mind, however I omitted the whole "Flight" and competitive aspect of it. 

Would still be very down with this though. :)

Support!

I really like this idea!

Interesting ideas and i support them as theyd add a new layer to the game in general 

however i dont quite think it will work in eleviating this issue of getting rid of extra pups due to wolvdens “pro dnc culture”

I am the player that started the keeping and buying of puppies to make sick and diagnose for experience and i buy around 200-300 puppies a day to do this, most of these puppies i buy are killed off in a day or two by me or people i outsource chasing to

however something ive noticed is that many players that put up trades seem to not like that im doing this recently

they have started to name their trades things like “no abuse can chase” or “chase at adult” or “no abuse” , basically implying they don’t want me buying their pups for what i do

I believe its less about incentives to chase and more about the players of this game that wish for their pups to stay alive regardless of what happens as the incentives for what i do are rather substantial exp wise

im not sure how it will be convincing such players to change their minds however its probably the most important thing to focus on rather than providing more incentives to chase