Pup Training And How It Should Work

I really like this idea because some friends and I have had some oof-worthy level up stat distributions. I had a lot that I remember but I didn't take screenshots, and I think it's important to see the stats the wolf had at level-up, so I'm only including the screengrabs but blocking the names of the owners because I don't want to drag other people in, but we have:

Finishers with stats overwhelmingly given to #2 stat:

Chasers with tons of points in strength for some reason:

Herbalist with no points at all given to the highest stat: (Please excuse the blue light filter, I have it on constantly)

I like the idea of not having training increase base stats for the reasons already stated, so I think an optional feature that could help bias the stat gains of our wolves would be awesome! 

It was confirmed by an admin in this bug report that stat gain on level up "will try to prioritise whatever the highest two stats the wolf currently has" with some random chance thrown in. But as shown above, sometimes the random chance heavily outweighs anything else, even when one stat in question is twice as high as any other (which happens a lot to finishers). Being able to train pups would benefit both specialized breeders who want to push the relevant stats to the max, or generalized breeders where if one stat is lagging in a certain area they could try and bring them back up by training the wolf in the area it is weakest in.

I agree there should be a visible tab that lets everyone see what the wolves are trained in so potential buyers could use that to make informed choices.

To address concerns, perhaps the training should have a daily decay like proficiency, and should be something that adults have to do as well to maintain. This could introduce some strategy about what you want to do with your adults: do you use their energy to maintain their training, or send them out on more hunts/scouts/foraging trips? This would also help if someone wants to switch roles - they could spend a few days training before switching to shift the balance towards the new stat(s) they want to favor. 

And if you don't want stat gain to be biased, that's simple: don't train your wolves and don't buy any that were trained.

Perhaps it could also be limited to a mentor/mentee relationship, whereby a wolf with lower stats would have to be trained by one with higher. This way you couldn't mass-train puppies with a few clicks sending them out to do their thing, but would have to have an adult to train them as well. In this way, an adol could join the adults on hunts or scouting expeditions with an increased chance of failure or injury for everyone involved (or less % of the biome discovered) because the adult has to focus on the inexperienced kid bumbling around and so can't do their job as well. And adults would only be able to train one puppy at a time, so you would be limited by how many adults you have.

Omg, if it’s prioritizing the two already highest stats there may be a really simple solution then (I think).

Have the code still prioritize two stats. But have it randomly pick from a pool that includes the two highest stats still, but add in the trained stat as a third possibility. Whichever of the three stats isn’t randomly selected levels up as normal. So you still get some chance that the stat you don’t care about levels up but it gives a chance to even things out somewhat.

(And if there has been no training, randomly select a third stat to put into the pool.)

support! and bumped!

I support! This would a great feature to have!

This would definitely be cool, and give people something to do with adolescents as we wait for them to hit 1yo so they can do jobs of their own c:

It would be really cool if adol training implements something like this 🙏