Either Fix Levelup RNG Or: The Stat Ceiling Is Too Low
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Posted 2022-03-22 13:20:41
https://www.wolvden.com/bug/3477 Aa low stat wolf to an extremely high stat wolf, and had barely a difference in stats compared to another top stat wolf bred to it. If the pup of that low stat parent was raised and leveled, we could easily see it outshine the wolf from the two highest stat pairing. I've already given up on stat breeding. I sent my stalker project to a friend who doesn't roll anymore so that he doesn't age. I chased all of my old hunters. I sold off my others. I would say G4 is a long stretch. G2 is where things are optimal. A g2 stalker can see Glacier mediums by level 20. That's no different than a g4 stalker with the same amount of work put into breeding raising and training it. I highly doubt the intended path of game play for stats is to continue with fresh NBWs every other generation - I vaguely recall something from Beta testing that said the goal was for people to reach Glacier after multiple generations. That was the reason for the 101 stat floor for rainforest and Glacier, and the reason behind having to rescout in the first place. Theoretically we were supposed to be breeding long generations of stats within our pack, so by the time our lead died we could re-scout faster than before. Shouldn't this carry over to hunting too? |
Sɪʟᴀ #37396 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 15:47:20 (edited)
I have the program calculate the avg between the two parents' stats AND the avg between the litter's stats, then compare them. Here is a sample of 27 of my 40-and-counting trials (29 rows are shown but the #DIV/0 ones don't have data, so ignore them)  For these purposes, please pay attention to the second column. This shows that puppy birth stats average to about 50-66.67% (1 half to 2 thirds) of their parents' stat average. The average between the stats of the parents is 1.5-2x that of their litter's birth stats. My current total of 40 breedings with all puppy stats recorded are consistent with these 27 findings. I just wanted to share my data as potentially a discussion point! :0c Edit: also I'd be happy to share the document itself with viewing permissions c: New edit: didn't know generation had any effect at all lol.. straight up I'm not going to stat breed anymore, that really blows |
 BeastOfTheyRoad #52596 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 15:51:26
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 wormdelivre #42154 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 15:58:37 (edited)
@BeastOfTheyRoad said: "This shows that puppy birth stats average to about 50-66.67% (1 half to 2 thirds) of their parents' stat average. The average between the stats of the parents is 1.5-2x that of their litter's birth stats." There are diminishing returns at higher stat levels. I keep track of parental stats and pup stats, and here's some of my data: Raubritter 857 + Snickerdoodle 503 = 1360 = pups 400, 401, 404, 408, 409 At the low end, you can see the pups are getting roughly 30% of the combined parental stats. Kyuubi 1092 + Mireya 908 = 2000 = pups 524, 527, 527, 538 Here are some mid-tier litters. The pups are getting around 25% of combined parental stats. Howlthorne 1802 + Janloon 1306 = 3108 = pups 676 [runt], 697, 699, 701, 715 [largest] And the high end, where the stat drop-off is the sharpest. For the biggest litter, the pups are only getting 20% of the combined parental stats. That's a pretty harsh reduction - none of those pups, as pack members, are going to come anywhere near their father's stats. And it's quite discouraging. You work hard to get the parental stats higher, but the pups inherit a lower percentage of the stats, so it's like you didn't do much of anything. You can also compare the final two litters in that list. A difference of 200 parental stats leads to only 10-15 difference in pup stats. RNG can also swing a litter 10-15 stats, so the gap is basically negligible. |
 Lionel #34199 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 16:32:55
I don't want to solely focus on early-gen breeding. But that is the place where the fun is, bluntly speaking as someone who doesn't grind. The increase in birth stats at earlier gens is so much more than in later ones. For example, in the most recent litter from one of my G2 level 20 wolves, the pups had an average of 438 starting stats (mom had 700 stats, stud had 800 at time of breeding). Combine that with a solid +63 from puptraining, and the pups will reach adulthood with just over 500 stats. That, to me, is awesome! The momma wolf started with 210 stats, thats about a 300 stat difference. But pretty much after the second generation, I feel the stat dropoff. A G3 litter I had where the mom had 930 stats and the stud had 1100 resulted in the pups having an average of... 508 starting stats (571 with puptraining). Compared to the jump between a G1 and a G2, the jump from G2 to G3 is more like a baby step. It feels disheartening to me to see this, I can only imagine how you folks who put more time and effort into stat breeding feel  And I, like most people, can attest to the stinkiness of level-up RNG. I feel like I generally get decent level-ups, but there are times when I want to give a little screm after seeing another level-up drag my wolf into the dirt. The most recent example of this is my current herbalist. I don't remember exactly what he started with for stats, but I do know that his wisdom/smarts was significantly higher than any of his other stats. But after a few bad level-ups, his strength is now higher than his smarts. Looking at my user log, I can see that in all of his 12 level ups, Smarts was NEVER favored. However, strength came out of left field and took over. Here's his five most recent level-ups. Even when he was lower-leveled he never got a good smarts boost (which he was supposed to get since that should've been a favored stat). He's a herbalist for crying out loud! I know stats don't matter for herbies but these level-ups make me want to throw something.  Leveled up Romboen (#3725907) from 12 to 13. Gained +1 Max HP, +5 agility, +6 strength, +10 wisdom, +3 speed, +2 smarts. HP was fully refilled. 2022-03-14 11:23:07 Leveled up Romboen (#3725907) from 11 to 12. Gained +1 Max HP, +8 agility, +6 strength, +1 smarts, +8 wisdom, +1 speed. HP was fully refilled. 2022-02-27 19:28:03 Leveled up Romboen (#3725907) from 10 to 11. Gained +1 Max HP, +4 smarts, +4 strength, +7 wisdom, +6 speed, +1 agility. HP was fully refilled. 2022-02-15 13:23:21 Leveled up Romboen (#3725907) from 9 to 10. Gained +1 Max HP, +8 wisdom, +8 strength, +3 speed, +1 agility. HP was fully refilled. 2022-02-05 09:11:28 Leveled up Romboen (#3725907) from 8 to 9. Gained +1 Max HP, +9 strength, +5 wisdom, +4 agility. HP was fully refilled. 2022-01-28 12:50:04 |
 Food? #20022 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 17:11:52
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BeastOfTheyRoad #52596 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 17:21:47
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Lionel #34199 |
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Posted 2022-03-22 17:42:31 (edited)
Heavily support! This is a serious topic I know a number of long term active users have been talking about so I wanted to go in depth with my feelings on it: --- Level UpsRNGThe way the current level up system works means that the stats are weighted to be allocated towards the two highest stats. However it's not guaranteed that these will be the highest each time, and this additional RNG is what puts it out of the player's control and makes it frustrating to deal with. Concerns that these scores are too RNG based have been brushed off multiple times as the stats generally balance out, but there is no guarantee that they will and for as many winners there are also losers. Suggested fix: Having the level up stats always favour the points in order of highest to lowest would alleviate the lack of control players currently feel. Second highest stat FavouringSomething I don't understand is why the second highest stat is favoured over the highest one when allocating level up stats. We've been told it's to "balance them out", but why do we need that? Chasers and Stalkers need two stats - and from what we understand - these are added together when calculating success or trails. Having one stat higher than the other wouldn't affect the outcome if they had the same total, so why does it need to balance them? This makes it so roles like Finishers lose out on that prime stat increase in favour of a stat that they will never use which is a big disadvantage compared to dual-stat roles. Suggested fix: Swapping the priority to the highest stat would help, as right now it feels like Finishers (and any role that specs into a stat for 3h mentoring) are being neglected. --- Stat Breeding CeilingCeiling too LowThe fact that stat breeding plateaus the higher the stats get is an expected mechanic - you don't want to be able to infinitely boost stats with each generation, but currently this plateau seems to start too early and you see less and less reward from well trained wolves after only a few generations. From what the devs have seemed to imply in the past, they want people to breed long lines of wolves with legacies and history, but from a stat breeding perspective these lines only end up being 4-5 generations long before they feel like the time that's put into them has very little effect. I have here a comparison of my main stalker's line, and how 6 months of contant hunting only gained me 27 additional stats: Comparison of stats: Cefin (G3) starting stats - 121 wis / 118 sma / 239 total Far Shore (G4) starting stats - 157 wis / 163 sma / 320 total (81 increase) Far Shore's Pups (G5) starting stats - 172 wis / 175 sma / 347 total (27 increase) I'm the sort of player who sends out every hunt, every day. These guys had close to all of their hunts in their lifetimes and had every opportunity to gain stats. I've only had this line for 3 generations, so I can't talk for the rest of their lineage, but each time I bred them to one of the highest stalker wolves in the game. The fact that I put all this effort into them, only for the outcome to be the equivalent of 1 additional stat every 6 days is incredibly demoralizing Suggested fix: Increase the ceiling! If right now pups can only be born with a max of 1k stats, increase it to 1.5k! It's a bandaid fix, but you expect power creeps over time. Glacier & Rainforest Large TrailsSpeaking of stalker stats, the last challenge we have with them is Large Trails in the Glacier & Rainforest. Previously we complained that Tundra / Swamp trails were too hard, but we did find them eventually (my Cefin was one of the first!) and I'll concede that I was wrong there that they were impossible. But we've had multiple wolves hit 900 combined stalker stats and they haven't found any in these hardest biomes, suggesting that it's past that - even possibly at 1k. Right now my Far Shore has one of the best stalker stats in the game (she should hit 900 total tomorrow I'm so proud! <3 ), but she's old and will start death rolling soon after. Even if she finds a large trail at 7y 5.5m, her pups would only find these trails in the last two weeks of their life (assuming they get the same level up stats & daily bonus stats). With that number getting smaller each generation, I have no idea how you are supposed to get to the point where you don't have to have an ancient wolf to find large trails, if at all. It feels, and mathematically looks, impossible. Suggested fix: Either increase the pup stat ceiling as noted above, or tweak the stats needed to find these trails. It should be hard, not impossible - something like 850 - 900 combined stats seems fair to be seeing them at least once a day. --- ConclusionDevs, please read the messages and suggestions of everyone here carefully. We get that this is a criticism of one of the games features, but we want this game to be the best it can be and have longevity so people can keep playing it for years to come. I'm running out of things to do and I'm entirely restarting in a month in an effort to make the game interesting again rather than giving it up. I love this game you've made, and I want to keep playing <3 |
 Embers #3501 |
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Posted 2022-03-25 14:35:25 (edited)
Also in general, love the ideas you people are throwing out- great stuff! |
 Katie #28191 |
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Posted 2022-03-31 00:13:28 (edited)
So maybe a way to define that would be how many wolves in total are in the family tree? As in how many aren't' "unknown". That would give a concrete number at least, something that can be counted and is an uncontested fact. It wouldn't be the same as generations because a G6 pup could have an "uneven" family tree with just one wolf stretching back to the end of the page, or another G6 could have the family tree completely full, but it would at least be an unambiguous definition. Personally I feel that will never happen. Even though the game doesn't acknowledge inbreeding, people still avoid it due to playstyle preference. People who prefer low gens will probably continue to prefer them even if the stats were tweaked based on what generation a wolf is. So making generation a factor isn't really the issue; it just so happens that higher gen wolves tend to have higher stats. But not necessarily! Generations aren't the thing that matters in an absolute sense, it's that stat inheritance goes down -sharply- the higher the stats get. Dreamwalker, the highest stat NBW who ever lived (so far), had just as harsh of a reduction as some of the higher generation leaderboard wolves like Ero. Here is what the leaderboard used to look like at the end of 2021 (and yes I only kept this screenshot as a memorial to Advesperascit, RIP)  Here's the leaderboard now:  I think people just sort of stopped trying once they realized getting such big numbers wasn't really worth it. Or some of the people who were really good and persistent at stat grinding stopped rolling. And I know from Advesperascit, it cost a lot of guarana to get there. So if stats aren't something people want to do any more, that's definitely a revenue stream for the admins that's dried up. Aside from what everyone else mentioned about making the stat inheritance curve less severe or making the level up RNG less punishing, I think think a good idea is to tweak the way wolves can gain stats throughout their life. We've painstakingly combed through our user logs and have determined that pack members can really only get +2 "bonus" stats related to their role per day. Sometimes, a scout can get a +1 and then a +2 afterwards, but that's happened to me like twice and not recently, so I am wondering if that wasn't a bug that got silently fixed. But regardless, sometimes they don't even get 2! If they are unlucky even if they get all 10 hunts, or 15 pup training lessons, or as many scouts as their energy allows, sometimes the "get bonus stat" just doesn't proc, which again can be frustrating to have to try and keep track of who got what, babysit your wolves, and make sure they get their stats. There's also the issue of living in harder biomes being ...not really worth it. We know from the item catalogue that large prey in glacier is presumably a walrus with 30 uses, but as stated before we can't even find one, much less catch it. There's no point at all in staying in the glacier (where a critter option is a stoat. Yes, a ONE USE stoat) when my hunters hover around a 30% success chance at a medium when I could just scoot over to the coniferous where last generation I had about 90% chance at larges. Bison live in the coniferous. They have 28 uses each. The only thing you get out of harder biomes is more exp, but it's very possible to get your hunters to level 20 in even the desert or tiaga. So yes we can get stats, but we aren't really rewarded for doing so. There's no reason to punish your pack and cap the number of wolves you can feed by staying in the harder biomes. You limit the amount of food you can get and once your wolves are level 20 there's no point. Ok I've been rambling a little but this actually all has a point! Gonna make a suggestion now!My proposition is to scale the number of bonus stats you can get per day based on biome your wolves hunt in.Those who don't care about stats can easily stay in the starter biomes and get +2 stats per day like usual and get enough food to feed their pack no problem even with low stat and low level wolves. Then once their hunters have high enough stats to move to the paririe or coniferous, maybe you get a guaranteed +2 with all 10 hunts and a chance at a +3. Then one up to the desert or tundra for a guaranteed +3 with a chance at +4 and so on. The exact numbers don't matter and can be tweaked in the interest of game balance and whatnot, but I think it would help that staying in a harder biome would be actually worthwhile. This would also lessen the gap between bonkers stat leads (who aren't capped except by how many battles they can win and how lucky they are) to dedicated hunters who spend their whole lives toiling away for not much benefit. Since stats really only currently matter for leads and hunters, and you can't reliably choose which stats your lead will get, this could be a way to get a good stat distribution for a certain role without breeding to a high stat lead and hoping that pup training will fix a gap that could just get screwed up by bad level RNG anyway. Elismir was certainly impressive, but he was really only able to breed finishers because his super high strength eclipsed all his other stats. Same with Advesperascit; I wanted to be able to breed chasers with him. I could get enough agility by fighting cats and anacondas in the rainforest but I could not get enough speed with him to keep pace, and eventually his strength got ahead of both of them anyways. Allowing hunters specifically to get more stats per day in a harder biome would be a decent way to make hunting and stat breeding breeding more rewarding without overhauling the system completely, and it would give a purpose to living in different biomes that could be enjoyed by stat breeders but wouldn't affect those who don't stat breed at all. |
 Zea #27549 |