There's 36 pets in the pound right now. 36. That's not good. That's more than twice as many pets as I own. Many of them are white unicorns. We need a way to control overpopulation, especially as the site gets bigger and bigger. Here are some suggestions I'm throwing out, feel free to add your own.

• Longer pregnancy times. I'd like to see pregnancy take 2 days, maybe more.
• Only 3 gene combinations to make white unicorns- perhaps Grey and Cream could have a pale gray mane.

• A release feature with rewards for releasing- perhaps one of the weekly charts could be "most pets released" Releasing would be free, and permanently delete a pet. Even if there were no rewards for releasing, I would pay people with my own money for every pet they released.
• Wild pets are harder to catch- instead of 3 pets on the grid at a time, 2. What's the point of buying a pet for 600 silver when you can catch one for about 400?

As it stands right now the closest thing that we have to a release option is the Reserve, which, for its function, players have already said that it's expensive to build. If the release option were to be made a feature, if there were to be any reward at all I feel like it should be very small or nonexistent. What stops owners from simply breeding crummy pets to get a reward for their release?

I don't see why there isn't a pound timer for pets - pets who spend so long in the pound without any interaction should be deleted/ made into dog food rainbow jars (aka white unicorn extract). I would give it three days, personally. If there's cases of pets being adopted and thrown back over and over, I'd say that there could be a strike-system incorporated where if a pet visits the pound X number of times, the pet would get deleted. Maybe 5? Just tossing out numbers to give an idea.

I don't see why players not wanting to buy pet sales is a bad thing - or at least, I can't blame em. So many of them are unresearched and, at times, unapproachably expensive for what they are, at least imo. I think that more players would be willing to keep their pets if they were more able to discover its genetic worth, which means vermillion. I've been trying to think of a way that could possibly address that without it being game-breaking. I personally like the idea of the vermillion system and having to choose which pets to research - it gives the sense of a challenge and a gamble. But at the same time when most pets on the market go unresearched for the aforementioned 600 silver, it makes the pets more unappealing because there's nothing to warrant that 600 silver versus catching your own.

Don't you know you can build a reserve and release pets from the game right now?

I haven't released any pets yet because I don't want them to suddenly appear on my account in a 'released pets' list later :P If I knew they were being deleted I'd start doing it. But Angel said they needed to code a 'vewing' page thingy for the released pets, so I don't think they're actually being deleted. I don't want cruddy level 1 pets in my reserve. ;)

I don't think people should be rewarded for creating pets no one wants, which is what a reward for releasing would be.

Also you buy pets because you know the one you're buying's stats. xD You don't know the one you're catching is going to be good; it's a crapshoot.

I know you can buy a pet by analyzing its stats, Restless.

But take a look at these two pets, for example: Whitegrass and Nameless

With Whitegrass you never would have been able to tell he had those recessives - whereas with the nameless one...she is literally the most white-bread cockatrice I have ever seen. And the thing is, no one would have even taken so much as a second look at a pet like Whitegrass if he wasn't researched to reveal those recessives because of his crummy character sheet. Being able to research pets creates value and desirability.

I don't see why there isn't a pound timer for pets - pets who spend so long in the pound without any interaction should be deleted/ made into dog food* rainbow jars (aka white unicorn extract). I would give it three days, personally. If there's cases of pets being adopted and thrown back over and over, I'd say that there could be a strike-system incorporated where if a pet visits the pound X number of times, the pet would get deleted. Maybe 5? Just tossing out numbers to give an idea. 

- Zenith

Or printer ink. My dad likes to say that printer ink is made from Unicorn horn, because of the cost. I do like that suggestion a lot- if they spend that much time in the pound, nobody's going to get them out. I also think you sould be able to see the number of red and green stats a pounded pet has. Not even what the stats are, or which ones are which color, but knowing that a pet has no reds could be the difference between an adoption and being turned into ink.

Now that I think about it, a good way to get more people to buy is just to wave aroumnd signs saying "Don't take a wild gamble, see the stats and support the economy- buy pets!" There could also be a guide to responsible pricing, which factors in species,color, researched vs. not researched genes and stats to estimate how much to sell your pet for.

@ Restless- while you can Reserve your pets, in the future they won't be gone forever, and the cost of the reserve is not worth the bonus.

By a reward, I mean something around 100 silver for every few pets released, just to get started. The rewards suggestion comes from Felisfire, but on Felisfire, even a bad pet could have the baby genecoded to produce nice offsspring, making incentive needed in order to get people to sacrifice, the equivalent of releasing, so we may not need it here. You'd get more money by breeding good pets and selling them, even at the low end of the market. We'd need to find a balance between "Breed bad pets and release them to make money" and "Why should I release my pet instead of pounding it?"

 

(e) I've been looking on the "how much silver do you have" thread and some people have over 100,000. When a pet put up for 700 silver doesn't sell, that's a bad sign.

 

* What do you think your pets eat when you pay to feed them...

longer pregnancy times = eww, I would just quit.  They're already longer than I like. T_T  I prefer the approach of quests that permanently use up pets/npcs that buy pets.  That would set a minimum value for pets so they wouldn't be worthless and thus getting dumped into the pound.

no support for longer pregnancy time - it already takes long enough to somply raise the baby.

Also, as it is people can dump pets they dont want into reserve.

I've been on sites with 3 day+ pregnancy times, but if this isn't that kind of site, that's okay. NPCs buying pets is a good idea, but those pets would have to be judged in a lot of categories (rarity of colors, genes, number of red and green stats, level) to make sure nobody's being under- or over- paid. The NPC would also have to pay less than the market value so that it makes more sense to sell to users than the NPC and people are using it only if their pet won't sell at all and not just breeding pets with whatever genes and shuffling them off.

I do not want an NPC buying pets based on any traits, I've been there on another site and it didn't work. People used it to farm money, it's just a bad system. I think alternative systems work best, either a small flat rate or tokens/points that can be redeemed at some building somewhere. Maybe even add some quests that remove pets but make it very clear you won't be getting that pet back in the quest description.

I also think it's a good idea to have pets that have been in the pound a certain number of days "auto-released."

Finally, I think changing some of the white skins to be unique would help too, even if the only difference is a cream colored mane at least they wouldn't all be identical. That may make certain varieties of white more desirable at least.

Guys, honestly you're over-analyzing this.

Due to the fact hat this is a BREEDING GAME, there WILL ALWAYS be over-population. Old, useless pets, with bad stats need to have some sort of outlet for deletion.

So far, the only suggestion I approve of in this thread is the 5-day timer on pound pets and then they get deleted.

Either that or I think only a certain number of pets should allowed to be in the pound at a time. Once that cap is reached, the oldest pet in the pound should be deleted for the new one to take its place. 

I just looked in the pound and saw that there are 63 pets.  That is only 15 more than I have right now and way less than the highest achievable pet cap for a single player.  I don't it's a sign of overpopulation that there are a lot of pets in the pound.  I think the best sign of overpopulation is what pets can be sold for and how quickly.

The only way I can see the number of pets in the pound being a problem is if the pets that are actually worth adopting are being drowned and no one can find them.  In that case, I support the timer on pound pets.

But at the moment, I don't think overpopulation is serious enough to warrant attention.

I think everything's fine as is, personally. If there's a lot of pets in the Pound, that's a sign that people are breeding.

It would be great if there was a limit to how many days a pet has in the Pound, but I honestly think the Reserve is worth building. That way, you can toss crap pets in the Reserve, and we can toss semi-decent pets in the Pound for new players ;)

Really, I'd love to see bad-statted pets cleared out, because they're in the way of my current project -.- If we could only all get those Reserves built...

@NiteThorn - I'd rather not have any deleting based on red stats at all. Lots of pets I have have red stats but excellent recessives. A few bad genes can make a pet look horrible even if it'll make incredible babies.

Zero support for longer pregnancy times.  We already have to wait the 24 hours for them to drop the sprog, THEN we have to wait another, what is it, three days?  For them to grow up so that we can do ANYTHING with them.

I call them dog food.  In fact Nebraska is named for "Nebraska Brand Feline Diet" what they feed a lot of zoo animals, which is mostly made of ground horses.

I do agree with the count down timer for pound pets. Since this is primarily a breeding game, we are going to see an influx of white unicorns and green cockatrices...and they're kind of going to languish.  Keeping the pound fresh is a good idea.  Also, keeping them in order and giving us a pagnation option would be fantastic...becuase trying to get a look at all the pets by refreshing a whole lot is kind of a hassle.

I don't think I'm ever going to be able to make a reserve, because my pets eat the food faster than I can gather it...  Right now, I hang on to them so I can level them pretty well, and hopefully sell them.  :D  In, case, y'know, someone needs a level 50 white unicorn.

@NiteThorn - I'd rather not have any deleting based on red stats at all. Lots of pets I have have red stats but excellent recessives. A few bad genes can make a pet look horrible even if it'll make incredible babies.

Agreed so much. If there is a deletion feature it should be completely unbiased and based on time spent in the pound. A pet with positive genes in every trait would still be deleted before a inbred pet with horrid genes if it had been in there longer.

We can't even see their genes, it's such a gamble, but I've gotten a couple of really good pets out of the pound that were chucked in there because of a couple red stats. One even was dominant for gracefulness, which doesn't cause a green stat so was hidden.