Pup Training And How It Should Work

Yeah, I'm talking about the stats from level up. Please don't... Shout? Idk but the bolded capslocked text feels pretty rude :/

I do not want pups I get from other people to favour whatever stats they decided. I do not want my own pups to favour one stat, only for me to find I don't want them in that job anymore halfway through their lifespan. As far as I'm aware, wolves already favour certain stats on a level up based on their role- it isn't 100% random.

And lets say this goes ahead, and I choose to pump 100% of my stats into strength. I believe, after hitting level 20, a total of 420 stats are gained across all level ups? I could be wrong, that's based on uncomfirmed data. Even if you start with a standard 50 in strength, you're now sitting at 470. For reference, the highest stat wolf in the entire game currently has 420 strength. Even if there was a cap preventing users from only boosting one stat, assigning those stats to heavily favour one while completely ignoring others is not balanced, and is unfair to those who have spent time, effort, and resources breeding specific stats to be higher.

I'd much sooner I get a more balanced level with, yeah, a few ''wasted'' stats.

sorry for bold text, i like to bolden what i consider important bc a lot of people tend to skim, ide assume so as long as a pup is a pup, it will still be maleable, and while yes it does corrolate, it really does not corrolate enough because ive consistently seen my hunters gaining a high amount of stats in some other category they have no business gaining stats for, for some the highest amount by a long shot 

and no, it shouldnt be a 100% controllable thing there should still be some random factor eg 60% is decided by favouring but 40% will still be random also it isnt mandatory, you can just not train your kid at all and their stats will just default to the usual random

also, i think that would be fine since leaderboarders tend to go for balanced flat across the board stats so their stat passrate to their children are higher so theyll be able to benefit too, leaderboarders will still be mostly unaffected though now they can pick their specialisation or choose not to, just like the rest of the players, there will be players to drift towards specialisation, there will be players that decide to stay with getting flat stats continueing to use leaderboard studs

pup training will probably be a feature that comes later on anyways, a feature along the lines of this would be a nice middle ground between 'gaining proficiency in job early' & 'pup gets a stat boost at the end of training' because the proficiency ones a bit too useless whilst the stat boost one would be too unfair for people running for leaderboards as of now

also, now would be a safe time to add features such as this because there is not many of us in the 'late game' where we can consistently pop out 500 stat kids so such a changes damage would be mostly limited to maybe leaderboard studs becoming less popular, which can be a good thing as adding a more diverse selection of studs that are plausible for stat breeders that wish to make specialised lines
(i say all of this as a player that has reached this 'end game' my own leads over 1040 stats and i have a couple 600 stat pups that were just born, and currently 3 albino wolves in my den, my main hunting team all has over 700overal stats and i have a sizeable chunk of gc in my reserve, i am aware that i may risk potentially devalueing my own wolves because they cannot keep up with the new generation of pups that could be born and that sounds like a fair price to pay long term, wolves are temporary and can be replaced if the need arises, i could grind to get another wolf to the point im at again, however theres nothing i can do about poorly done game mechanics)

Stats Gained on levelup on my wolf born as a finisher

1 :1 smr      2spd 1 str

2 :2 smr 3wis      1 str

3 :1 smr          2spd 3 str 2agl

4 :4 smr 1wis 1spd 2 str 2agl

5 :6 smr 2wis 2spd 2 str 

6 :3 smr 2wis 2spd 5 str 2agl 

7 :7 smr 2wis 1spd 5 str 2agl

8 :7 smr      4spd 5 str 2agl

9 :11smr 3wis 5spd 5 str 

10:11smr 1wis 3spd 4 str 3agl

11:7 smr 5wis 2spd 7 str 2agl

12:9 smr 2wis 4spd 8 str 3agl

13:8 smr 5wis 2spd 11str 2agl

14:6 smr 7wis 4spd 6 str 7agl

total smarts gained:83

total wisdom gained:33

total speed gained:33

total strength gained:65

total agility gained:27

total stats gained:241

i could pull the stats of my other wolves as well although its going to take a good moment for me to do so, a few of my wolves were lucky enough to have their seemingly inborn favoured stat be the same as their role though and those are nice but i really think that if theres going to be favouring it should not be some random generated value invisible to the player

That still doesn't adress my concern about other players making decisions for pups they sell that I don't want made. Nor my concern about how I may no longer want certain stats favoured as a wolf grows.

Would a better idea not be manually assigning points on a level up, probably with a maximum cap on how many can be assigned to one stat? I still don't like the idea, I still think it makes effort players have put in so far a little pointless, but it seems less complex and overall less likely to negatively impact players who buy and sell wolves.

I mean, the market speaks for itself when that happens, people will notice their pups seemingly selling for more/less when they train/dont train a pup and follow which ever trend makes them the most 

though i dont think people will train pups to sell unless they originally wanted to keep the pup  but had second thoughts afterwards or perhaps if it happens, to please a smaller subset of people that want specialised wolves but dont have the time to devote into training it

(Reply to manual stat allocation)hmm, maybe, though if thats how it is done then it should not be tied to a pup training mechanic/tied quite losely

But i agree there probably should be some “unlearner”/“relearner” added into the game, maybe an option to retrain/untrain a wolf it costs a bit of sc per use and works functionally like the pup training except it costs sc, that way it may put some value into getting a untrained pup instead of a wrongly trained adult

I'm not certain about RNG because it's tough to evaluate. I checked how some of my wolves level up (leveling up logs) and it looks like the RNG favors the suiting stats for roles but the difference might be only slight so there happen to be wolves whose unnecessary stats are raised greater than the needed ones. I won't be surprised though if I'm completely wrong and the stat allocation is completely randomized.

The idea you introduced looks really interesting. Addressing Closet's concern, I think there should be a tab on wolf's page named "Training" which shows lifetime training results. This way other users can check which stats are more likely to raise upon leveling up. Count how many times the wolf has been trained by putting the number on the tab (font: white number on red background, similar to the number of nursed puppies by a mother) - it might attract potential customers to check how wolves are trained. I believe owners will train their wolves the way that would satisfy potential customers so they're easier to be sold.

Alternatively, instead of permanent effects, make the wolf training progress reset (but training pups would be pointless) or reduce upon leveling up. Instead of daily training limits, the limit is determined by the level of the wolf. This would make less impact on buying trained pups as the first level-ups give the fewest stats and later the wolf may forget about the whole training and return to have stats assigned completely randomly.

Yea there probably should be a training tab

I think it should stay mostly a pup specific thing bc adult wolves are supposed to have jobs which would normally take precidence over something like this, having pup training decay would ba pretty annoying thing esp if its on a role like scout where ur wolf has consistently low/no energy 

I think this sounds like a pretty cool idea, although I think I'd want to see it limited to affecting no more than 40-50% of the stats allocated so we don't get insanely specialized wolves running rampant. But I like that it gives a little bit of agency to players instead of leveling up appearing to be entirely RNG.

I do get the concerns folks have about buying trained puppies so maybe include an item that will allow the specialization to be wiped clean (but not relearned for an adult) so it would reset them to normal stat gains.

I just skimmed most of this, there seems to be a lot of confusion about stat gains and relation to the role. Just wanted to add this here. Stats on level up doesn't seem to be random, the stats that get boosted most are the two highest upon level up, so the easiest way to for sure get a hunter role is to breed wolves with the highest stats for these roles. So two parents with substantial speed and agility will most likely make good chaser pups from the start.

Knowing this, I think pup training should raise specific stats/role exp. That way we wouldn't have to "unlearn" anything, just put them in a different role when they age up and let the training naturally deplete as it normally does, and you just have to carefully raise specific stats to raise their inborn and/or role biased stats as you do now, but you still get the chance to tweak those stat biases as a pup through minor stat increases.

@michelle it doesnt up the 2 highest stats, it ups the 2 highest from birth(most of the time)

also raising stats itself make it extremely unfair towards newer players because in the long run, because a older player has generations over a newer player and that player has no way to catch up