I'm just curious how many people are voting for number 2 because 100 sb doesn't seem like a lot? How many days is that sustainable though? I don't make nearly enough SB to pay even 300-500 SB per day to hunt, which is what I might need to do if I wanted to get in 10 hunts per day every day of the week. Talk about pay to win? I'd need to buy gold beetles to sell to other players for Silver beetles just to pay the silver beetles for the hunts during the week. On weekends when I have more time and can do the added hunts, I'd be making up a few hunts...

Why can't we just have a few hunt skips at 100 sb each (say max, 5? 10?) and then jump to 1000 SB each hunt after that? Would it be so difficult to code? Then we could still have the added hunts for the people who have the time to do extra hunts. Isn't that kind of the point of a game like this? For those people who spend the most time playing a game, shouldn't they be at an advantage over players who only play the game for 45 minutes a day? The events work that way. The more time you explore, the more event currency you get. IF you want more energy, you spend gold beetles to get energy boosts. Is that pay to win? Why is it any different for stats and hunting? Why should it be any different for stats and hunting?

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What Bilby said. The whole point is to figure stuff out and if no one even says why, how can they make an informed decision? I know they're not obligated, but it would be nice if there were a little more to responses than "2!!!" over and over again.

As Alli didn't, some people might not even understand how stats work so how can they make an informed vote? Bilby already explained that.

@Eliora
The problem is, this isn't leveling the playing field. This is making it completely static. I'm not saying I think that it needs to be 1000 SB to skip. I honestly think that limiting skips is much more fair. The first 10 Skips being 100 SB and then 11+ (basically for extra hunts) being 1000 SB. That way people who enjoy the current skips can still use them without worrying about the extra hunts.

This doesn't level anything though. It just means anyone that has high stat lions will always have the highest and they will corner the market in stats. If you want to get stats, you have to pay, either real money (to get GB) or in GB that you earn some other way. A big part of the site is not being "pay to win" and being unable to level our own lionesses means that in order for many of us to reach our goals we would have to pay to win. This will really hurt the worth of any lions with lower stats and the market for breeding will get worse as well.

People with stats will charge more so it will be harder for newer players to breed outside of their own studs. People without stats will have far less ability to sell their cubs. Now, they can breed to a decent statted male without spending too much SB. If there's no other way to get stats, the prices will go up. While a lot of people breed for color, even those with color studs often try and get stats. Not being able to work and level our own lionesses up will effect everyone and for the worse, in my opinion.

I definitely say, in light of the "fix", that limiting skips is a far, far better answer for the entire player base than completely removing extra hunts. I don't think the skips should be super expensive, at least not the first ten, but I think punishing those that work hard and don't even use skips isn't what's best.

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@Alli, Stats do nothing atm except help a male lion in combat[lionesses' hunts seem to rely on level only], and affect the stats of the lions' offspring[though there is ample loss when breeding]. It raises the value of lions because some people care for having high stats, too, but essentially they are just a number.

While people do not elaborate on their choice of option 2, it is not fair to assume they all choose it because they did not think it through or the change does not affect them. The market changes springing from option 2 or 3 would affect even casual players, and they would also feel the effects of the higher SB prices for skipping hunts, especially if they have limited time to log on each day. it is very important not to disregard or alienate any type of player in this kind of decision. Neither the majority casuals, the regulars, or those ultra-dedicated enough to pay tons of GB or SB to get the stats.

I voted for 2 for the time being, for reasonings already mentioned in my other posts on this thread, but I could roll with option 1. Or some kind of modified version of 3 or 4. As is, though, they are too punishing for players with limited time.

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Eh...
I don't really like any of these options. I'm not sure if it'd be too difficult to code, but I've been thinking, perhaps a timer to how often the skip could used? The timer would be ideally attached to the lioness, and it'd allow 5 skips per every 2 hours, skips being priced at 250 SB, and additional hunts at 10 SB.

I've also considered ideas on completely revamping the hunt system. Perhaps if we could have preset "hunting groups" they could be sent out to a location of our choice, rather than picking tiles, it'd be a system where the group can be selected and the location chosen. Depending on the number of lions in the group, the availability of different prey would be based on RNG. I was thinking that if you truly want to curb stat increases, then use leveling to gain stats, though opposed to 2 stats per level number, like in lions, the number could be 3 or 4.

Of the ideas already presented:
Option 1- Reverts the game back to pay to win. But it will always be pay to win. No matter what, whether it's time or cold hard cash, all games will be pay to win to some extent. It limits skipping to the rich and wealthy and drives food prices back up.

Option 2- To me, this completely breaks the game. No matter what, skips or not, every single lioness will be in the exact same place. Nothing will ever change. I had hoped to get some girls up onto the leader board, but this makes it impossible, simply because as soon as my 10 hunts are up, I'm stuck and I don't have the chance or opportunity to get anywhere. This effectively breaks the game for me, and for many others. Even if we can skip hunts, it emphasizes stats being bred into lions, and the only way to get higher stats is to breed them and train them in. But if the max gain for a lionesses is 3340 stats only is the lionesses is hunted 10 times a day and gets 2 hunts per day and that she lives until 16 years old. If every single lioness gains exactly that and there's no bonus for someone to play all day, there's no chance for anyone to be get above anyone else. There's no glory to getting on the leaderboards. In fact, the leader boards might as well be taken away. It only emphasizes the pay to win, forcing lionesses to players to pay for higher statted studs, for a slight edge against others.

Option 3 & 4
These are almost completely identical, so I don't feel the need to separate my feelings for these. It's still play to win, even more so. People who can afford to spend money on hunting will do so. The highest stats will remain with the wealthy. These also for that matter punish the people who skip hunts because they need the food and don't have the time to wait around.

I had one last idea, based of another sim game I played. In order to counteract the effect that older players would have an advantage breeding and stat wise, they used the overall stats of the game and took a percentage of that as the "starter" stats for the game's new players. I suggest increasing NCL stats using the stats of all the lions in the game, and taking a small percent of that. It would give newer players a better place to stand on and would mean that people could breed better lions without spending a fortune, which would eliminate the play to win.

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Honestly it would fix the feeding system altogether if when we have a full king the food that would have gone to him from the leopard kills goes to one of our hungry lions. That way people with bigger prides won't have to suffer losing all their SB to feed their prides. That's the best option I think, and maybe also leaving the options open to encounter animals in explore that you can kill for food after you fight them rather than just having them run from the battle. Both of those things are a way to help us out with our larger prides and to keep our lions from running.

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Cytosine:
Because I think the most of those OPTION TWO [2] people don't really understand what is wrong with that option.

Just the other night (it's morning here in Germany), I did explain to someone who told me they voted option two, that those with 6k lionesses will rule the market.
A 1k lion/cub/adol already costs 10GB or 10k SB and those people with those 'steriod' lionesses or who happen to have over 1k lionesses, will be able to breed to a high stat lion and will produce 1k cubs or 2k => being able to sell their high stat cubs for 10GB OR MORE, if this system shots us all down to gain extra stats with additional hunts (excluding skipping here, 5+ hours is what I mean, i.e. spending time on this game).

Then she started to realize, because she didn't really get what people were on about with the stats and the leaderboard and she kind had the "Oh ..." moment, where it seems she would have voted for a different one, if she knew all that beforehand.

"Sitting it out" is not an option either and it is NOT fair, it's only frustrating.
These lionesses, their offspring and the lions that come out of it will now dominate the economy, if you ever want a high statted lion, for *years*.
Since it would take one of those 4 year old sterioid lioness to get to age 15, what ... 120 days?
Let's think about those massive stat grinders aren't dumb and use one of their accounts to "freeze" a few of those grinded lionesses, i.e. they just don't rollover on their main or side account.
Then they could use one until their stat gain there is drained more or less and just then reactivate and roll over the other and BAM the same problem again.

So, to stagnate the system
a) takes the competition out
b) takes too much time to sort itself out
c) is not fair for people who really enjoyed putting time into the game

The last system had less people complaining, no?
SO, why not implement such a thing similar, only with a higher SB amount and the tiers => Option 3
People who will be able to spend money for the game will always do so and they will always have a kind of advantage, the only thing that should be done is to drain on their money more.
Even, if this comes around as money hungry.

Also, someone mentioned that this was also a problem, because this was the only SB drain which mattered and it's correct.
We have skipping on Explore, too - why not take this down to SB as well?
Explore still is a kind of Pay To Win, especially in those events where you need to explore more to be able to move on or gain more.

A lot of the GB items are called "luxury" items.
While it may be true, these also dictate the economy and the marking value and all that, so in a way Lioden, even if not intentionally wanted by the staff, shifted to a Pay To Win with the GB items or rather marking appliers and all that.
Especially since there is no exact GB value, other than the little 150 SB for 1 GB in the Oasis, which the players seemed to have thrown aboard and made their own course.


Maybe the whole issue is explained a bit better.
Xylax you remember in your art livestream that we talked about how Germans go to Poland, because dentists are as good and cheaper and you told me that Polish people LOVE our cleaning products, because that is the same way with them?


Now, imagine a cleaner bottle (always 1 liter) from Germany would always cost 20 Euros (which is a lot for one liter XD).
Not everyone could afford it, only the richer people or those who spend a lot of time and effort to hoard their money for it.
Poland would do this to not ruin their economy and still be able to sell their own cleaning products, BUT suddenly someone decides to drop the German Cleaner to 1 Euro.

What do you think will happen?
The same thing that happened with the 100SB drop of the skipping button.
People will (ab)use this situation like MAD and storm the stores, buy as much as they can and ONLY that product, maybe for their families, maybe tons of cleaner for a whole year or longer.
Then OF COURSE the Polish cleaning companies will get mad and demand a change.
So, the easiest thing would be to skip to the old system and think of a better one.

But kind of what happened here was like, you let those cheap things roam around still, but take away the scrubbers and all other items you need to clean.
I.e. you still have the cheap German cleaners, which caused the issue, but nothing to pour it on (not counting shirts and all that in here :P) and use to clean.


I.e. the most logical solution would be to highten the price back up for the cleaners and maybe also hinder people to stockpile them, by increasing the amount they are trying to buy, because at one point, nobody will pour money into it, especially when it reaches heights that it won't be for a benefit for them.
Or hinder them by limiting the amount they can buy per day and per person.

The last thing would be the option I was suggesing before = Limit the hunts you can add per lioness AND the skipping times, with the later cost more and more.
Maybe you can do 2 free skippings, after that it will cost you 100SB with the tiers going up.

So, 10 hunts per lioness are free, she can have 10 additional hunts (or 5 or whatever).
And 2x free skipping, every other would start with 1k SB and going up.

To hinder the abuse on accounts, you could try to track the lioness and in how many skipps she has been at that day, giving you an error message when you try to skip and abuse the system then, like:
"Sorry, but you have a lioness in this hunting party, who already was in 2 free skips today, so you cannot skip right now".

To give you guys time to implement this, it really would be better to switch to the old - WAY LESS problem causing system and then work on the new fiddly one.
I don't get why we have such a drastic change, when the new one just proved to be wrong.
That's also what you do in business, if a new thing failed, you go back to the old one and try to figure out a newer, better and more efficient way for all or more than 50% of the customers.

~takes a deep breath~
That was a long post in English for just waking up XD.

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@Griff

I'm not "alienating" anyone. I said in my post, I don't think the first 10 skips should be priced differently. I'm not saying any type of player should suffer.

Shichibi explained what I was about to post before I refreshed. I think a lot of people just don't understand the ramifications of Option #2 in the grand scheme of things.

I don't think most of them have enough information as the poll is very short and I would bet most of them are just going "1 GB is expensive! I don't want that!" without reading into the posts where the admins said that the 1000 SB wasn't set in stone and could change. They were just using it as an example.

I think a modified version of Option 3 is better for the game than the others.

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Then, this poll should be redone with informations given to the newest players. Because the obviously don't think about this thing as a whole, they don't see how this would badly affect the game on the long term.
I'd like to make a long post explaining why, but my English is too bad....

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@Sphinx. I didn't say you were alienating anyone. I was saying the SOLUTION shouldn't alienate anyone, it was just a bit of general musing about the kind of solution needed for this issue. I am sorry if you felt singled out by that as there was absolutely no intent of doing so.

And while it is a fair assumption to make that some people may not understand the ramifications, it's not our place to make that assumption, that is for staff to decide.

I see the currently overstatted lionesses as a separate issue [which in my opinion, will need to be resolved, preferably by stat resets/refunds for affected lionesses only] They were the result of the scrapped implementation, though, so I am not using their existence as a factor in deciding on a NEW system.

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Well. The good thing is that I will be able to come back to an "outside" life if I lose my addiction to Lioden. Because I will obviously lose it, like most of the players who spend a lot of time on it. This is getting good for casuals who come here a few minutes a day, but the most addicted players will lose all challenge, all their chances to take a good place in the market, and will probably get bored of the game.

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There are regulars with other reasons to be online than stat breeding, though. The issue with this, well, issue is that there are so many different playstyles it is hard to accomodate them all and not make it impossible for casual players as well.

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Thing is: I agree people should be able to have cheap skippings, but either limited or low priced for a limited amount and then the price shots up.

Casual players will always have a fall back against players who make time for their games.
In mostly any kind of game, which will cost you time, be it hunting or be it the events who can sometimes be time consuming, because you need to explore as much as you can or be it training in an RPG game, etc.

That's also what happens in RL ..
If I put time and effort in my school subjects (i.e. really learning), I will get rewarded with better grades, especially when I didn't get them at first and put time and effort to get my head around them.

So, if I put time and effort to even make time for LD, then I should be rewarded with being able to hunt additional times and of course there should be a limit so I won't just "cheat" my way through with "skip, skip, skip, skip", which surely was lowered to make it possible for casual players to skip easier, to get at least 10 per day done.

But the solution cannot be to make it easy and nice for just the casuals, while the other, more dedicated players get completely crippled in their playstyle =/.

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Frankly, I believe it's too soon to consider changing the price again. Of course people are complaining. People tend to complain about any change. We should let the new system run for at least 4-6 months to allow people to adjust, and then see if it's really good for this site.

And...let's be honest here. This is just a time skip for hunting. I don't think it's that big an issue. If someone can afford the time, they can just wait out the time skip, and get the same results for free. 30 minutes isn't really all that long. I know there are several "hard core" liodenners out there putting way more then five hours into the game just about every day.
It's a very limited system. It's not exactly something I would spend my hard earned real-life money on.

Hunting stat gain seems pretty small to me. My lionesses usually only get 1 stat per hunt. Unless you have an endless supply of game money and time, you're not exactly going to be gaining stats in leaps and bounds over that, regardless if the price is in SB or GB.

Players who pride themselves on having high stated lions will still be way ahead of the average player. However, now the more serious players who are earning everything with hard work and time will see a better reward for their work, and newer players wont be as overwhelmed, and may even be able to catch up to older players provided they can find a way to earn the SB.

Now.. if paying for a time skip increased the amount of stats/exp earned, or had some nice surprises you couldn't get otherwise, then it might be a feature worth paying GB (or the SB equivalent) for.
But for now, the skip feature is just one itty bitty thing that really only makes you run out of hunts faster, and gives the time-restrained and money-poor players a decent chance at building a "worthy" pride.

If some people are really that concerned that non-donating people might actually be able to have a decent stated lioness in a quicker time, perhaps there should be an oasis only item that can give 1-5 extra stats. That way, people who are playing just for stats will still have the incentive to donate, and players who just want to get their hunting over with asap can still earn a few stats without loosing their savings.




With all that said, I voted for number 2, because to me, that's the one that made the most sense. It's fairest to all players, regardless of their ability to donate as the static price of SB allows anyone to gain the same feature for equal work. By increasing the price in tiers, all you're really doing is penalizing the "poorer" players by making sure they can't afford to max out their hunts, while allowing those who have amassed a lot of SB to widen the gap between players even more. Part of being a business is that you need to get more consumers. Overwhelming new players by making it too difficult to get a "decent" stated lion (in the eyes of the society) from gameplay is only going to dishearten them and make the new consumers more likely to just give up quicker.



Before I end this post, I wish to state that I believe the ability to skip time should removed all together and the cool down can merely be changed to only 10-15 minutes instead of 30. That way, time-restrained players can still get a few good hunts in when they can get on, and nobody can argue that spamming the skip wait button is giving anyone an "unfair advantage".

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If everyone gets the same things, there is no point at spending more than 30 minutes on that game. If everyone have the same stats, if rare markings are not rare anymore (thanks to the prophets), then, we're just here to mix lions to see what colors are going to be born. No game, no challenge, just mixing markings. Woah. That's nice for people who just quickly login after school to feed their lions and don't spend more than 10 minutes of the game. Dedicated players would just leave to look for another game with challenge and rewards to dedication. Is it really what you want?

I'm not a stat breeder, but this new thing still annoy me. Because I don't want the market and leaderboards to be owned by an handfull of people who add lots of money to invest or are the ones who took advantage of the new features.
But if nothing changes, their lionesses and offspring will rule the market and leaderboards for a really long time, with no chance for others to reach their level.

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Oclock:
But a big part of the business is also to keep customers and especially the more dedicated ones, that might bring in more money, happy.
Btw. also with site VIEWS, not just by donating money into the game, but also by *traffic*.

This way you will make Oasis items EVEN MORE luxury and then they give you stat points makes the game EVEN MORE Pay To Win.

If I /need/ GB, to buy Oasis items to get stats on my lions or rather lionesses, then poor people have a wide gap as always or even worse.
So, this cannot tbe the solution and this system now, is not a solution either, it was more like a rushed-hectic solution to slow down or rather hinder the abusive people to be abusive.

Problem is that the people who abused it, didn't have SB worthy stuff to spend it on and had it stockpiling in their dens.
Then you lower something that gives them the chance to highten their lionesses and of course they will pour all the unneeded SB into that one option, since there are not really any other options which will give them an advantage or useful use (lol).


Also, some people think that a lot of dedicated players buy money from the game or whatnot.
I'm one of those dedicated players and I never bought GB, because I cannot afford it money wise.
So, when I joined as a little poor, which I am still kind of are, player ... I put a lot of time and effort into my pride and my first two lionesses died with 800+ stats.
They birthed 600 stat cubs, where I was sooo happy about and those cubs are now my hunting lionesses with barely over 1k or 900+ .

This was also only doable, because when I didn't have the time, I knew I could make up for it to buy additional hunts the next day or the days when I have the time.
I never skipped, it was 1 GB .. dear lord, I would have better things to spend 1 GB on than skipping 30 minutes XD.
^ And this is what probably most players thought and why this 100 SB lowering escalated so quickly.

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