Perhaps I'm confused over the limitations given in the news post about the pound, I don't know, but if I understand correctly, every time you send a pet you get 1000 silver. Everything else in the update is great, and I think it will fix the economy. I also think that the 1000 energy thing will also really fix the pet auction economy. I'm just worried that someone could just pick up a pet in the pound and then send them right back for a free 1000 silver. Maybe that isn't enough to warrant concern, I dunno. Perhaps you could put a time limit on how soon you could send a pet back to the pound, even if it was just a day, or maybe be unable to send the pet back unless you researched a certain amount of genes? Maybe I'm just worrying too much. Thoughts?

I wouldn't like being forced to gene research, as vermillion is hard to come by. I was just talking about this with Wes earlier though. I don't quite understand what the thought process was behind the cash reward. If it was simply 'Encouraging people to use the pound', well, people are just going to breed a bunch of bad pets to dump and make money off of, and that's going to totally wreck the economy. In one morning, we went from 0 pets to 90 pets in the pound, so clearly people are already taking advantage. A bit shortsighted, this addition was.

I agree with the sentiments so far, it's concerning, but honestly - perhaps selfishly, I'm appreciative of the change. I see it as a way to help maintain pound population, it encourages a healthier pet economy by adding a bottom line to a pet's theoretical value, and gives players a way to recoup the cost of pets that are captured and pan out with bad stats. And, truth be told, I think this is really nice for me, personally, because when it comes to monetary income from quests I'm left out because I choose to breed one species - so this is actually a nice way for me to supplement my income and give players who use the pound pets that didn't turn out the way I wanted them to in my breeding projects that I can't seem to get to sell, hell or high water.

I'm not sure how it can be played to make sure that players can't abuse it by breeding bad pets or adopting/dumping again. It's a lot like the portal service, I guess. Yet another method to simply be rewarded, this time with cold hard cash instead of resources and exp.

tbh, i dont know if being able to grab a pet from the pound and send it back is really an issue, since you can only get a pet from the pound once a day anyway......tho i agree that some people could breed bad pets to put in the pound.....only way to avoid it really would be to put a cap on that too......

Honestly I don't see any problem with it but I am certain that if it becomes a problem they will cap it at one pet limit reward a day. If you breed bad pets to throw in the pound you're wasting your time because you could be using that time to breed good pets to complete the higher payout quests (something which I've almost 100% mastered) and be getting up to 20k a day just spending 20 seconds doing quests. Why is 1k a day going to make much of a difference? In a YEAR you can make 365k whereas in quests I'll be making at least 3.5 mill in quests (that might be a little conservative though since I think I average anywhere from 10 to 15k a day).

Long story short, the game economy is already flooding with money because all trading is player-to-player with VERY LITTLE sinks to take money out of the economy.

Sure, buildings cost a lot... but they only have to be built once and with how cheap blueprints are, it costs only half of what it used to to make ALL of the buildings.

Sure, gene research is kinda costly... except for the fact that vermillion is and forever will be the rarest material in the game. With the HARD CAP on exploring, you can't just go out and earn 100 vermillion in a day anymore. You get 24 explores A DAY FLAT plus 25 if you dump 5 pets into the toilet service. Admittedly they did raise the vermillion from seals back to 1-2 so we're finally getting a tiny bit of vermillion back. But we will never get enough vermillion in a day to blow through the money we make questing.

Feeding pets drains money very slowly from the site but again, doesn't compensate for quest gains.

So what else is there to draw money out of the game? Nothing much. If vermillion wasn't so scare I would breed and research WAY more to go towards my goal of perfect pets, which would help drain money from the economy because I'm sure a lot of other people would spend lots of gene research; but as it is I breed 2-3 pets a day and hardly have enough vermillion to do selective researching.

So, my point is, in the long run 1000 silver a pet is not going to ruin the economy because it is already on its way there anyways.

Wow, iirimn. That's really far-sighted. I'm sure they'll add more features before the economy becomes that inflated, though.

...how the heck did it not occur to me to just cap the reward for pets pounded. Gosh, I'm dumb. That'd be far better than researching.

The good thing about offering a reward for pounding pets is also the obvious "send to the pound rather than the portal service" bit. It adds at least monetary value to pets that would otherwise be sacrificed for more explores (more money, resources, and XP). I'm sure there will be a cap eventually, especially for people like me who have thus far managed to hoard tons of pets. Irony is, I sent about 30 pets for the first time to the pound today...ten minutes before the update.

The pound system is a lot easier on the mind if there is some sort of exchange involved. For people like me who research genes before deciding to do anythin with a pet, getting some monetary return for it helps a bit. It also encourages the pound to be full for people who want/need a pet from the pound like beginners and also helps beginners who may get unwanted pets to get more money quickly. For some people, 1k silver can feed all of their pets in one go so that the price of feeding them with the explore cap becomes a bit easier.

The reasons why the Pound gives 1000 silver for every pet are already mentioned here by other players, and there are quite a lot of them. To be clear:

1. Balancing State Portal Service (even right now 5 explores are a lot more profitable than 1000 silver but it's a lot better than nothing, and we already see that it works)
2. Setting a minimum value of a pet
3. Giving some fast silver for players who can't get it in other way and need it for the rest of their pets
4. Increasing Pound population so there will be some pets for newbies at any game time, not only when we have maximum online

I don't see any reason for adding a cap. 1000 silver isn't an overpower like 5 explores. A free 1000 silver per day which can be get by those who will adopt a pet and then send it back in a week is nothing and won't affect game economy at all. Breeding pets for Pound is senseless - like it was already mentioned by other players, breeding good pets gives a lot more profit than breeding bad ones and sending them to Pound. Even if a player decides to try this, his income will be a lot smaller than normal breeders have, and he just won't be competitive. It's a dead-end for those players who don't want to put  efforts in breeding planning.

As for money sinks, right now we have 3 unlimited ways to spend money except the limited expenses for buildings. Researching, training, daily expenses for feeding. Until new game layers will be added, there won't be other ones. There always will be players who like to accumulate silver, and they don't spend it for research or training right now preferring to buy good pets with this silver instead of breeding/levelling them themselves. They won't be spending silver for other money sinks even when we have them. It's not an issue, it's just another mentality and approach to get succeed in game.

I don't know how other people are using it but I sent a pet there today, I was going to sell it after I figured out which of the 4 oranges I didn't need but I look in the pound daily & I found several pets I wanted the option of getting & I'm capped again what with all the pets I've been breeding trying to get construction pets, still don't have the right 1 to do a lvl 3 stable, so I sent an orange female Puma to the pound & picked up a grey female, I think I lost out money on it though because I payed a stud fee for her grey siamese father & I think it was probably more than the 1000 I got from the pound. I may do it again with 1 or 2 of my other unneeded orange females or with some of the white female unicorns I keep getting that fall short of what I'm breeding for. My colored foals seem to be colts & my females are white unless I bought them.

Problem is gene research. Being unresearched sends the value of a pet CRASHING. An unresearched pet with all black stats can go for as low as 200 silver. Giving it to the pound gets you 1000. By researching it, you could sell it for more, but it would have to be twice as much to cover the research costs. I also second what irrimn says.

Angel, I totally understood those reasons when I saw the update, especially the minimum pet price. I was just worried for the economy. But I guess I shouldn't judge too quickly, eh? Well, I suppose if pets are going to cost more, it's more fair to have a bit of extra silver anyway.