Posted by Inbreeding mechanics

Berenos|On hiatus (#84593)

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Posted on
2017-04-02 04:03:52
Yes. Inbreeding. That thing that many players go "Why do you avoid it it does nothing anyways" about. But please read it all before hitting the "NO support" button; I'd love to hear your thoughts, but please hear me out first.

Inbreeding Mechanics



In real life, inbreeding will often cause malformations, mutations and a general detriment of the offspring's health if done to the extreme, and is used to conserve certain desirable traits in animals. We already have the second part easy enough - many breeding projects use the tactic of breeding the son that has the desired trait/s to his mother, or the contrary with a father and his daughters, to produce more lions with those same traits -, but I think it would be interesting to add a bit more complexity to Lioden. What if there was a set system that added a higher chance of miscarriage for each shared relative, with an added, smaller chance of producing a lethal cub, and generally producing offspring with lower stats than they would have normally, or even the possibility of spontaneous infertile cubs? It would certainly add another limit to the breeding system.

Why would that be useful?



The breeding system has currently a global limit, the fertile lifespan of a lion - from 2 years old to 16 years old for males, females from 2 years to 14, varying due to their own heat cycles and the use of Instant Cub Delivery, two limits to male breedings, and one for females: the males are limited by their own energy when mating with their own females, and the double of the usual energy and studding slots when mating with the lionesses of another player, while the females are limited by a cooldown after giving birth to a litter.

And yet, there are easy ways to bypass these limits: the use of Energy Roots to breed within our own lionesses, that and Cape Bulrush for the stud requests, the Black Stallion that ensures the female it's used on will get pregnant the next try, and for females there is the use of Yohimbe Bark to shorten their cooldown - granted, this last item is only available during one Event and it requires a lot of them to make a big difference.

Now, Energy Roots and Cape Bulrush are available all year around in the Oasis, and while the Cape Bulrush replenishes 3 stud slots per and costs 3GB - making those 3 additional studdings cost 1GB each at least -, it's rather easy to just buy Energy Roots and offer for people to send their females in heat to your account, along with the payment and other items that they wish for your male to use - at their own risk, that is. This means that the original 15 studdings limit - which would add a max of 60 new cubs to the game each week - is bypassed completely, and the amount of lionesses for them to breed now depends on the level of trust this player is given balanced with how much people want to stud to their male. A player could breed thousands of cubs, instead of the potential max of 24 cubs per lioness - the biggest litter is 4 and a lioness has a heat every 2 years until she's 14 years old, which means she can have around 6 natural heats - he could have in his own pride, plus the max amount of 2520 cubs if this male spent all of his weekly stud slots every week starting from 2 years old until he was forced to retire at 16, without using any of the items listed above. Even if we cut those numbers by half - because 1 and 2 cub litters are the most common - that amount of cubs produced by a single male is insane.

How many of those cubs end up clogging the Trade Center, not quite meeting the requirements of their breeders, and yet having cost too much to be used as fodder and disappear from the database? How many of those cubs in the Tree, where they get their stats lowered to NCL amounts from before the overhaul of the system, and thus losing potential owners? With the implementation of an inbreeding system the mass breeding would slow down, either because the stillbirth regulates the amount of cubs produced or more players take their time to plan for a breeding searching for a partner with whom they share goals, if they don't want to risk it with the inbreeding penalty, letting the market breath and rejuvenate itself - and before you protest, yes, I know studdings to highly sought out lions take weeks and even months, and a lot of resources. This is meant for more studs to be sought for the players, instead of the same group all the time, which would even the market by adding more competitors, and thus lowering the prices, even.

What would it consist of?



To keep it well balanced, the lethal mutations would have to be a lower chance than using a CRB - whatever that chance is - but it'd be an added thing to roll when the cubs are conceived. And we already have miscarriages when a lioness isn't nested or isn't well fed, only that this would be a cumulative chance of a set percentage per shared relative, around 1%, even when that lioness is sated and nested. To avoid having everyone suffering from the penalties suddenly, this could be introduced gradually over a couple or real time months, when players have the chance of starting to reach out for lions unrelated to their own and the coders can go over everything a bit more calmly.

The penalties could work in two diferent ways, but it's always calculated with the amount of repeated ancestors a lion has in his/her full heritage: first, by substracting the corresponding percentage of the inherited stats from a parent. Both parents would suffer this independently, before the resulting stats combined to be the ones of their offspring. If we take up to the Great-Great Grand-Parents of the parents, which would be up to a 30% of penalty per parent in the worts of cases; second, by adding a chance of the cubs of the litter being stillborn, rolling individually for each cub, and being the result of the sum of both the parents' penalties, divided by 2, which would result in a 15% of a cub being stillborn in the worst of cases.

There's a lot of controversy regarding the possibility of a slightly higher chance of lethal mutations, so there's the option of creating a unique mutation for the system - a runt lion of sorts - that would be infertile and wouldn't be able to hunt, breed, patrol or be a king, maybe have a shorter lifespan, or having no additional mutation chance at all. Along with this, there'd be a chance - the same as the penalty - to produce spontaneus infertile lions.

Summarized, inbreeding could entail:


  • Lower stats than what would be expected

  • A set percentage of an added chance of miscarriage|The chance would roll for each cub of the litter individually, not for the litter as a whole|With the lowest of chances and with a lion being and ancestor 15 times, it would mean a chance of 14 - 15% of a cub being stillborn - depending if we take it from the third time a lion is related to introduce the penalty or not

  • A whole new item to ensure that at least one cub survives

  • Spontaneous infertility

  • A higher chance of producing a lethaly mutated cub, but still lower than a CRB - it only affects the chance of having a lethally mutated cub, not the chance of having a mutated cub overall|Or|An exclusive non-lethal mutation, consisting on weak looking, infertile lions that are unable to hunt,
    patrol or be kings, an keep the other lethal mutations' odds as they are currently

  • Possible ways for the inbreeding to take place:


    • The effects above - minus the lethal mutation - would have a cumulative increased chance per shared ancestor

    • A three strike system could be added, too, and start from the 3rd ancestor shared and not the 1st for the effects to take place

    • There could be a limit to the amount of times a common ancestor can influence the cumulative system

    • The cumulative could stop working from a particular ancestor once it reaches the status of Great-Great Grand Parents or Grand Parents only

    • The inbreeding could only be considered such if the parents are directly related within five generations only




Frequent comments:




  • This would harm new players, because smaller prides means more inbreeding: A little bit of inbreeding won't be a problem, so they are safe in this regard until they get the grasp of it, like everything else in the game, and the pride size doesn't matter when it comes to inbreeding.


  • This would ruin the game for stat breeders: When this was first suggested, there was no limiting feature for stats, but the amount of time, effort and allies a player has, which means the market is controlled by a handful of people. This isn't meant to take away all their effort, but to make it so that they need to reach out for others to keep on with their breeding, and thus even the field. Now we have limited consumption of certain food items, or usage of other items that grant stats in one way or another, but this could be another way to do so.


  • This would mean I have to get rid of my offspring because I cannot safely breed them to their father: Yes and no. You could risk it and breed them anyway - a 2, 4, 6, or 10% of penalty would require you to have really bad luck to have a stillborn -, or you could seek out a stud to breed them until you reach a level of inbreeding you feel safe again or until you get another main male.


  • Lethals are supposed to be rare/This would make people stop buying CRB: For those who are worried that this would harm the mutie market making the lethal mutations more common, another possibility was added, that of an exclusive mutation that would be virtually useless. We already have the chance of claiming a CRB lioness in explore and people still buy Cotton Root Bark, so I don't see how increasing the chance of a mutant born of an inbred lioness would change it. Yet, the option of the unique mutation remains. Or not adding a mutation effect at all.


  • This would make the rare markings/bases breeders project even harder: I agree, but I don't know how this could be avoided short of increasing the drop chance of those traits to make up for the penalty that results from inbreeding the lions that got the particular trait, or the introduction of an item and ensured the base pased - but those suggestions have a controversy of their own.


  • This would be a problem for the players that have long, inbreed lineages already: Other than introducing the system slowly, with warning notices so these players could branch out their lions and avoid the worst, or plainly wiping the heritage of every lion currently on Lioden - as some of you suggested - there's no other thing I can think of currently to avoid the issue.


  • I like "insert inbreeding feature nยบ1 here" but not "insert inbreeding feature nยบ2 here", can't it be just that instead?: Now, when this idea was born - brainstorming with a group of players, with eveyrone adding their own thoughts - it was as a way to add another layer of limits to the game inspired by real life inbreeding consequences. In my opinion, there shouldn't be a feature added without the rest, because they are meant to balance each other out.


  • What if I don't want to play like this? Can't this have a toggle?: I don't think it is feasible to introduce such a change as something you can just toogle on and off, like the Events. Perhaps I'm wrong, but even if I'm not, this was thought with the intention of mending the market. If everyone could just hop off, it would be moot point.




*Note: Given the amount of feedback this has received, I will no longer reply to every single one; the OP is very clear on both the basis of the suggestion as well as the issues it was inspired of, and you are free to agree or disagree; just please don't take it on me as player. If you have doubts after reading it, feel free to PM and I'll try my best to explain myself better when I have the time. Nothing would please me more than to find a middle ground for the reasonable issues mentioned over the replies to be resolved, or even have another, better suggestion be born from this one.



This suggestion has 505 supports and 563 NO supports.



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Edited on 20/02/18 @ 07:03:58 by Berenos (#84593)

Berenos|On hiatus (#84593)

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Posted on
2017-04-02 22:25:10
@Vanagandr

Sorry I took so long, I missed your reply. I get it that it would be a "problem" to stat breeders, but just like there is people who see it like that, there are others who want some kind of limiting feature to prevent what they see as an abuse of... what? Power? Status? from the Highest Stat studs' owners. Or something like that, I'm not sure I get it. What I get is that, once on top - and yes, I know it takes a lot to be on top - there is virtually no competition that helps regulate their fees, and so they can ask for the metaphorical limbs. It's within their rights, people are free not to pay them, but there's still a lot of players that want something to be done about it, and are angry because of it. But I wouldn't like them to come here and project their negativeness, the same way I don't like how that particular reply was worded.

Really, I love all kinds of feedback, it helps me see the whole picture better, but I'd like to receive a minimun of respect. You are free to tell me you dislike the suggestion without spitting you will leave like it is the ultimate threat - that's how I felt it, at least.



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Noxis (#93407)


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Posted on
2017-04-02 22:33:15
You should put that it'll only be a 10-30 stat reduction, so that more stat breeders won't get that upset anymore.



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๐Ÿ… leviathan
๐Ÿ…#gaggle (#32060)

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Posted on
2017-04-02 22:36:17
ah, no somebody else had stated that the game isnt meant technically for fun that's what that was aimed at aah. maybe im misunderstanding though?? wouldn't issues from inbreeding make stat breeding/marks breeding harder?? cause if the inbreeding is causing dropped fertility rates, miscarriages, and killing stats that someone has tried to buld up in their pride i feel like that would be an issue. the stats are self explanatory, dropped fert rates/infertile cubs making it worlds harder to pass marks and miscarriages just being discouraging .im sorry if im not getting what's being said i have a comprehension disability and i tend to stay away from commenting on suggestions i just got worried by what this came across to me as but if i am missing this in more than one way i do want to understand it.



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Berenos|On hiatus (#84593)

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Posted on
2017-04-02 22:45:14
@Noxis

But that would depend to the amount of inbreeding the particular parent had!

I will take the "It's only inbreeding starting from the first Grand-Parent", without adding anything else, to keep it simple:

Say, Luna, a 99 stated lioness, descends from two half-siblings, the offspring of Sol, their father, and two different, unrelated lionesses. If we take the minimal stat penalty, 1%, and that Sol is repeated twice, it means that Luna had a stat penalty upon her conception of a 1%. Originally, she would have had 100. If, instead, we took the maximun proposed, a 5%, Luna would have 95 stats instead. And this is not counting the Skill stat, which is always 1 upon birth.

Then we can complicate things and take one of the two possible "three strike" rules and count until Great-Great Grand-Parents to see if it's inbreeding. It is a bit more complicated than the "substract 30-35 stats" xD



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Berenos|On hiatus (#84593)

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Posted on
2017-04-02 23:15:46
@leviathan

If you read my reply above this one, you can check how it could affect it, in theory. It's an added little challenge, but it's in no way the highest one there could be. Those who don't care about stats will not mind much inbreeding from time to time to get a solid resource of markings/bases/insert-wanted-trait-here, and this would hopefuly help to balance out the market because those who want to avoid the penalties or will tolerate the minimun ones will be forced to trade with others who want the same, and collaborate with one another. The miscarriage thing would have the highest chance of occurrence for the pairings amongst the most inbred of lions, but they've gotten something out of all that inbreeding - like karma? You give and you take? - and the random infertile ones would be very rare. To amend for the miscarriage, I think it would be possible a new item to ensure the survival of one of the cubs of the litter at the very least, but to make it more would either make the miscarriage thing moot or benefit those with the most resources, again.

Feel free to ask questions, I'll try my best to answer them clearly.



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Pardalis (#28323)

Deathlord of the Jungle
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Posted on
2017-04-03 00:09:44
This is very unfriendly to players with limited time. I never go through any heritages because I just don't have the extra time. If you want to play this way, that's totally up to you but why should everybody else?



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Berenos|On hiatus (#84593)

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Posted on
2017-04-03 00:16:06
@Pardalis

Help me a bit here. How can this be unfriendly to players with limited time? With the amount of clans and thread dedicated to help out other players, clans dedicated to specific things, and so on, it'd be a matter of posting somewhere where you can find so and so stud, or tips. Friends who can use a bit of their time to help you out? Like what you would do right now. Even posting a thread on wanted: studs/lions and taking 5 minutes to write what you want to take a look the next time you're on is easily done.



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Anonymous (#44152)

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Posted on
2017-04-03 00:20:39
I know someone suggested this so why not join a clan that is against inbreeding instead of implementing this? Also, i know some people are saying that Lioden is a realistic breeding simulator, but can i point out that we have primal mutations, pink lions, evil rabbits (right now) it's a fun game and i don't think it needs to be changed to add more realism it's perfect the way it is when it comes to breeding



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๐Ÿ˜ธ Chonk ๐Ÿ˜ธ (#54568)

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Posted on
2017-04-03 00:23:32
It would benefit the game as a whole by making breeding more complicated, and thus cutting down on the number of cubs produced willy nilly. Right now a user can just mill cubs with no repercussion, and the market suffers as a result. Does anyone really need to be able to breed tons of cubs? And if you dont have time to put into planning a breeding, how important really is that breeding?



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Anonymous (#44152)

Demonic
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Posted on
2017-04-03 00:28:01
I enjoy breeding many cubs, many times i use them as fodder for my side account and this account for Karma



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Berenos|On hiatus (#84593)

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Posted on
2017-04-03 00:28:01
@13th Nightmare

Please stop suggesting I join a clan. xD

Just like you may like how the breeding functions right now, there are other players who would like to change it up a bit. I felt like this would be a nice addition, and so I shared it, and there are at least other 70 players who feel like it, too. And again, this would by no means be incompatible with the fun part. It shakes the fundations a bit? It does, but there is fun in the change, too, and it'd be a possible answer to the market.



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Anonymous (#44152)

Demonic
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Posted on
2017-04-03 00:33:01
Just as many people want this more people don't that is why maybe it shouldn't be made into a game mechanic, unless everyone can come to an agreement which currently is not happening.



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๐Ÿ˜ธ Chonk ๐Ÿ˜ธ (#54568)

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Posted on
2017-04-03 00:40:35
If you are using them for karma, will this suggestion have much impact on that? The main aspect is that the cubs will have lower stats, or a different personality/be infertile.



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Berenos|On hiatus (#84593)

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Posted on
2017-04-03 00:42:37
@13th Nightmare

Some wish for the stat penalty to disappear, others want the miscarriage to disappear, others don't want the mutation bit to be - even if it was changed from lethal mutant chance increased to a new, useless mutation, it seems -. Take away everything, there's nothing of the suggestion left.

@Everyone

Honestly, the most inbred lion I remember seeing had Keyser Soze thrown in there like, 7 times. With the minimun penalty suggested that would mean that lioness would pass on a 7% less of her stats - minus skill - to any possible offspring. Is it that huge of an amount that makes the stat breeding business suddenly unattainable? It'd require a bit of effort in reaching out to other stat breeders, but that's it. Would it be so bad, to interact with other players this way?

Those possible ways to count inbreeding are there for you to peruse and then share what you think would be best balanced. Would you prefer it if an ancestor stopped adding to the penalty once they're repeated more than 3 times, making it effectively as if it were only there 3 times? Why? Would you instead prefer counting it as inbreeding on very close relations, and then up the resulting penalty? Again, why?

And I don't get why some people feel like this benefits mutie breeders when the most likely outcome of the most inbred pairing possible is a litter of stillborns? It's like, sure, you breed this male to those females a hundred times, and no mutant, just like you CRB lionesses a hundred times and get nothing more exciting than AMPs.



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Berenos|On hiatus (#84593)

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Posted on
2017-04-03 00:43:24
@Locust

Funnily enough, I thought the infertile bit would be the most problematic on this xD



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