Pack/Den Synergy: Amusement

So I kind of like that amusement items aren't as common as food, but I feel like a balance needs to be found, because I don't think players should HAVE to buy from outside their pack just to keep their wolves. I explore pretty consistently and still don't have enough amusement items to entertain my wolves, and when you take into account feathers needed for nesting materials, it grows increasingly difficult to self-sustain a pack once it's beyond 20 wolves. I also think realistically, a pack of wolves would gain amusement from interacting with each other, not just toys. So I have a few option I was wondering what people would think of

TO BE CLEAR: for ALL of these suggestions, our current mood settings would probably be about 0-10% synergy. To have lower synergy, you would need to try really hard to make your wolves' personalities not match. Also, I know someone else has a pack synergy suggestion, but mine is pretty much all about amusement levels whereas their's was more about flavor texts— if this suggestion looks too similar to another, feel free to link it to me and maybe me and that person can collaborate! I think flavor texts are super fun, but I also think slightly rewarding players who put in the effort to play with the game's given features (in this case, compatible personalities) without punishing players who don't, makes sense and, in this case, makes the game more realistic.

1. Pack Synergy: pretty basic. The more wolves in the pack that have matching personalities, the better the synergy would be. I think the way I'd imagine this working is the higher your synergy percentage, the slower your wolves lose amusement. 100% synergy would be having a pack of only one personality type wolves. I think in order to keep amusement items relevant and to keep a reasonable amount of challenge in the game, even 100% synergy wouldn't make amusement items completely unnecessary because amusement would drop eventually and you'd need items to replenish it. Also keep in mind that a player would need to make some big sacrifices to have wolves of only one personality type (tons of studs wouldn't be options for them, they would only be able to buy wolves of that personality type, etc), so it's not like everyone would be using this system to cheat their way out of amusement items. In my mind, it would only be a slight benefit that would just make things more realistic and make your pack dynamic feel more real. Depending on your synergy, you could also get flavor texts each roll-over.

2. Den Synergy: same idea as pack, except instead of taking the whole pack's synergy into account, it would just be each den. I feel like this has the potential to be very cool and semi-realistic (some divergent vibes going on haha)— but I also know that many people, myself included, use dens to sort their wolves. Personally, I would still be happy for the change and wouldn't mind working around it to sort my wolves because I appreciate the realism, but I also understand that some people would probably be very strongly opposed to this. I could be wrong though, so let me know! For me, though, this is my least-preferred option.

3. Play: this one is more complicated, but I also think I enjoy it the most. This idea would add a new feature that allows you to have your wolves play with each other. Similar to the Lioden feature of the leader playing with each lion, but because the leader has their own personality and wouldn't be compatible with everyone, this feature would allow you to select up to X amount of wolves of compatible personality types and have them play together. OR, they wouldn't have to have compatible types, but if they don't, the amusement boost is MUCH lower. Either way, I think this would be cool because people generally have a dominant personality type in the pack, so those wolves with outsider personalities would actually have a harder time staying happy in the pack, which is realistic, because they wouldn't feel as though they belong. In packs with an even distribution, it brings in lore aspects that wolves of different personality types stay separate from each other even within the same pack in their play. I think there's a ton of fun options this could have, and I'm eager to hear others' feedback. It would also be the most complex to code, though, so there's that.

• "A kind of play buddies group would be cool too where you assign wolves into a little group and they play together for around 15 minutes or less. The amount of amusement they gain from playing would depend on their compatibility with the other wolves in the play group. So, X wolf could gain +5% amusement while Y wolf could gain +10% amusement if there are more wolves with personalities within Y wolf's personality category. Or all wolves could gain +10% amusement if they all have compatible personalities." - SleepyMegalosaurus #36996

More than happy to hear criticism, I only ask that you voice your opinion respectfully ^^

I'm not too sure about den synergy since I have a mish mash of wolves in my pack dens and sort them by their job/how much I like their design. I don't usually take into account their personality when sorting them. However, I like the pack synergy and the ability to play!

Wolves are social creatures and play with each other in the wild so it would be awesome to be able to have the ability to play with your wolves!

A kind of play buddies group would be cool too where you assign wolves into a little group and they play together for around 15 minutes or less. The amount of amusement they gain from playing would depend on their compatibility with the other wolves in the play group. So, X wolf could gain +5% amusement while Y wolf could gain +10% amusement if there are more wolves with personalities within Y wolf's personality category. Or all wolves could gain +10% amusement if they all have compatible personalities.

Some flavor text after they play would also be cool! Like "X wolf dashed into a field of butterflies, racing to catch one!" or "Y wolf watched the clouds until they were inevitably squished into cuddles by X wolf." The type of flavor text would depend on the wolf's personality!

@sleepymegalosaurus personally i agree with you in terms of preferences— play sounds the most fun to me, although it would also be cool if both a play feature AND pack synergy could be incorporated (maybe playing more frequently could help pack synergy, so people who don't care about personality type aren't completely left out of the feature and can still boost their pack synergy with more effort)

I'll add your idea about the percentages to the initial post, if you don't mind! Thanks sm for your feedback ^^

I adore this idea.  I would feel more motivated to gift my wolves feathers particularly with the Play portion of your suggestion implemented.  Both for lore ideas and like y'all said, real wolves do be playing.

Den (Cave) might get awkward with nurseries, but it do be making sense there might be chaos if an aggressive female and friendly female are nesting at the same time in the same general area. And like you said, you don't intend to punish those who use 3 or 4 types.  I'm not at the moment able to posit the maths rates involved.

My Snow Hearts accept every personality purely for the challenge and we know they already plan to give us more things to do with personality interactions so this is a very welcome set of ideas.  Thank you for bringing your thoughts to the table for discussion!

Mind, I don't know much about coding, but as far as I know, we seem to be doing consistently good running the calculation between 5 wolves on hunting teams.  I have ran hunting teams with conflicts for fun, and it hasn't messed up at all since now they (finally) agree - by that, I mean I shifted wolves around without disbanding the Party. 

Cave conflicts may be new and bring their own bugs, but I'm fine if it means bringing Mood up in more interesting ways, which could bring down stress overall eventually. :D

@zeraki im so glad you like the idea!! i really look forward to them enhancing the personality aspect of gameplay and i feel like them implementing things like this would reinforce that this game is meant to be a sim and not turn into a collect-rare-animals thing. Of course, rare things are super fun and playing the economy is a great challenge, but i hope that this game at its core stays a wolf pack survival simulator, and in terms of enriching gameplay and flavor text, i think the play option has huge potential!