Skip to main content
Main Content

Show Instances of Inbreeding

Posted 2021-09-30 08:17:16
Support! I have a NIB goal for my pack. I would love to bring in other player's wolves into my pack but it is always a hassle to go through their lineage. And it looks like other players want to inbreed  as it is their pack goal. It would help both sides without any in-game affects.
Elliebird
#3597

Posted 2021-09-30 15:08:34
Support. I often see trades listed as "NIB" when they are in fact inbred, not to mention players changing wolf names to confuse the issue. It would be nice to have confirmation that a wolf is not inbred without having to draw a family tree.

Wolfsmirk
#1626

Posted 2021-09-30 16:15:47 (edited)
I think that there needs to be a definitive understanding of what 'inbred' wolves are before counting or labelling them.

Inbred is typically a derogatory term that suggests that wolves which have inbreeding in their past are 'lesser' or 'unclean' as opposed to wolves which are not. Otherwise there would not be such a stigma against it in real life (even at the point of second cousins, where little meaningful genetic content is shared). As such I would be careful to introduce a mechanic which distinguishes wolves based on this. This isn't to say that I don't support some sort of recognition that some wolves have a closer family tree than others, but rather that it should not span the whole family tree.

If we were to judge inbreeding, then all of mankind is inbred. We share many ancestors across different branches of our family trees (and this will be even more likely if you come from geographically smaller locations). And considering that travel was often dangerous in the past, genetics were often kept in insular closely related communities. Having shared ancestors is not a bad thing (indeed it is to be expected), the concern with inbreeding comes more from recent generations being closely tied with one another.

As such, I think an inbreeding counter on a wolf's family page which only looks at 4 or 5 wolf generations will be fully sufficient if this suggestion is put into place. If people want their wolves to be have no shared ancestors in any of their family tree, then they can do that. But as wolf lineage becomes longer and players interact with other players' lineages, then it becomes harder and harder to keep track of instances where a random wolf shows up.
We should not penalise people by marking their wolf as inbred for the parents sharing a distant ancestor. That is a totally normal occurrence in both humans and wild animals, and it seems silly to mark these wolves and all their future offspring as 'cursed' for this trivial relation.

However, people generally like having wolves with no immediate inbreeding. Whilst inbreeding itself can be found throughout our family trees in some form, we don't like closely related individuals having children together due to the health risks. As such, the 4 or 5 generations rule will ensure wolves do not have recent cases of inbreeding (and therefore doesn't have the perceived health risks) but does not punish wolves with long lines or make them appear less valuable in the eyes of the site (rather than the user base).

I also feel that this approach would be a good compromise between two somewhat opposed play styles or preferences. You can still have wolves which are perceived to be 'genetically healthy' without needing to have all their lineage be squeaky clean. It will allow for more people to feel that they can pick up wolves which may be 'inbred' in that their parents have a shared couple of ancestors, and this is not something undesirable, but rather, something natural and fine. And it encourages people to not obsess over specific studs or common heritages when they can just aim to not breed with wolves that share a recent ancestor, rather than having to trawl through multiple pages of wolves.

If players want to continue to breed only wolves with no shared heritage for the challenge, then they are free to do so. But I think a 4/5 generation approach is more natural, encourages more market interactions between players, and will overall not place a permanent blemish on a wolf and all of its offspring forever.

Blue Pigeon
#15038

Posted 2021-10-01 18:53:16
Yes, please. I'm currently keeping only low-gen wolves because it's a pain in the butt to look through the history when I can only see a few ancestors at a time instead of the whole line at once. I really want to be able to see that.

I see where BluePigeon is coming from but frankly, a 4th/5th generation thing would be useless to me. Inbreeding in wolvden and inbreeding in real life are two vastly different things. Inbreeding in real life can have terrible consequences to health, this does not happen to wolvden so I see absolutely no reason to limit the feature to realistic occurrences. It would make sense to me if wolvden created genetic faults/the potential for illness if wolves were bred within 2-3 generations over and over but this doesn't happen.

Inbreed, in wolvden specifically, is more about keeping lines "clean." About not mixing and matching existing lines with other existing lines. Frankly, the feature as BluePigeon presents it would be entirely useless to me. I don't want a 12th generation wolf with several instances of breeding to one specific line,  and I'd be forced to go back and count them manually again to make sure this isn't happening, ergo I'm back ot square one.

I can understand why players geared towards realism might like this but for me realism got taken out of this the second that lethal mutations were made fun, cute, collectable stamps instead of a tragedy. I don't care what looks realistic, what matters to me is how it affects my gameplay and among other things, wovles with a repeating lineage are harder to sell because no matter how inrbeeding works in real life, repetition is not desired on the website.

We have blue wolves, magical glowing eyes, immortal wolves, a whole lunar world that crashes on reality every time there's an event, and more oddities that have no place in reality. I thus see no reason why realism should take over what's convenient (and in my opinion useful) for my gameplay. Wolvden is not and does not intend to be a realistic simulator, else I'd support this wholeheartedly.

tl;dr: I support this. There's a lot of nice suggestions but I really just want to be told if there's any two instances of the same wolf in one lineage. This is what clean breeding means to me.

Flower
#3196

Posted 2021-10-06 11:32:17
Support.
I understand people being mad about the prices going up or down, but it would be just a helping tool for both clean and "dirty" breeders. Some of us would like to see the instances of inbreeding to decide if we want the wolf or not, or if it matches what we need, be it inbreeding or lack of it.

It would be, for the most part, a cool convenience tool for all players so they can play the way they want without making it tedious and, at one point, without it driving them away from the game due to lack of ability to check it and checking for pages upon pages sucking out all the joy of playing.

Khajiit
#2754

Posted 2021-10-25 23:21:22
I agree with Blue Pigeon about only counting a few gens' worth of inbreeding instances. I agree with everything they've said but would also like to add that if the game defines inbreeding as ONLY instances that occur in the first few gens, it could be that the player base would shift its opinions to match this attitude, which would be a good thing, IMO.

Katie
#28191