[ADDED] *breeding update to rolled over accounts?

when i go to send a stud request to someone who has not rolled over their account it says to wait to send them a breeding request. It would be nice to not get this as I would like to not have to remember if i sent so and so a request if they have not logged on in a few days....It also affects horses from the public breedings. I can't breed to anything right now :(

Last edited on 2017-08-10 at 14:01:09 by River

I totally support this as I've had a similar problem lately. BUT I think it'd be hard to implement because of the progression button. A lot of coding would have to be reworked I imagine.

^{What alternative would you propose to the current system? I imagine it'd be more annoying to send a request and the player not log in at all.}

Just had this happen to me with every stallion I want to breed to. even the ones for public breeding. super frustrating. the manual cron has been in place for some time now and this error message just popped up for me. I don't think it would be hard to go back to how it was....

@maple
There is a new (unannounced?) feature added within the last few days or so where a stud or brood cannot be bred unless they have progressed for the day. This appears to be making it very difficult for some players to breed, and likewise for others to have their studs/broods used. The suggestion is to remove this feature and return to the old system.

If someone normally cares for their horses just after cron runs, then their own studs/broods are available for the vast majority of the day, and are more likely to have people breed to them, which gives them a pretty significant financial advantage. Those who log in quite late in the EV day will only have their studs/broods breedable for a very short period of time before cron runs again, greatly decreasing the chance that anyone will use them, and thus making them very unprofitable. Likewise, if you are looking for a stud/brood quite early in the day there will be almost none available as most of their owners haven't logged in yet. If you're not able to get back on until the same time the next day (as would be the case for most people who have daytime commitments such as work or study), then this will just be a perpetual problem and you'll always find most stud/broods are unusable when you're online.

This problem could potentially have a pretty negative impact on the horse market, so I would support this feature being removed.

@ ulysseesBlue, you hit the nail on the head!!! Thank you so so so much for putting it into better words than I

I *think* this was recently added in response to another suggestion or issue, which was that if someone has a public stud up and does not progress their account, that stud is up indefinitely. Meaning a stud can have virtually infinite numbers of offspring if the player doesn't return for some time, as the horse will never age, and never be taken down from stud.

Considering that progression was put in place partially so that players have complete control over their accounts, even when they can't log on every day, this was at odds with that, since the player loses control of how long their horse is up for stud or how many foals it may have. (Particularly if it were an unplanned absence from the game.) It was also an issue in certain breed markets because offspring of a few of these "perpetual studs" became so common that they became difficult to avoid.

I'm not sure what a reasonable compromise would be, unless a cool-down period were to be implemented for stallions, as there used to be. Maybe one foal per progressed-day, (rather than the old two-day cool-down.) That way no stallion could just perpetually be at stud forever, with potentially infinite offspring, but progression alone wouldn't determine whether it was breedable. (Though limiting how many times a stallion can breed in a day is likely to be unpopular as well.)

Maybe the solution is to give the stallion twenty - four hours after the progress button been pushed. After that time if it has not progress then it cannot be breed. 

I think that if players wish to keep their lines cleaner they should put the horse on stud request. there are still studs out there that have 120 foals because the owner wanted everyone to be able to use the stud. you will get studs with lost of foals regardless. I understand life happens, but how often does it prevent you from totally leaving the game for weeks without setting up things as you wish. I think the old system was fine as it was personally, but its definitely not working for me, and many others now :). I hope it gets resolved soon so that the majority are happy with the outcome. even if the outcome is not as i wished. 

stay calm, ride on love yall

While putting a stud up for request only is a fine way to control your herd, I never breed to studs that are request only, unless it's a deal I worked out specifically with the owner of the stud. I select the days on which to breed my mares very carefully, so I can't wait around for a day or several for someone to accept a request. I can't know whether someone is going to be back on the same day, or if they're checking their requests, etc, so it's not worth even bothering with a request-only stud. I know other players have said the same in the past, so that's not always a completely viable solution for people who do want their studs to be used. Maybe I'm wrong and that feeling is less common now, but it can already be difficult to get people to use studs at times; I wouldn't want to discourage it further.

I think the issue of indefinite and overused studs was not a common one. It required a perfect storm of a stallion placed at public stud (i.e. no owner confirmation required to breed), excessively low stud fee, and an absent owner. Granted, indefinite studs shouldn't have been possible, and ideally it should be resolved, but this isn't the solution. Considering how wide-reaching this new issue is, and how rare and limited in scope the old one was, I would suggest we simply return to the old system until we can find a better solution to the indefinite studs issue.

On the subject of alternative solutions to the issue of indefinite studs, some people have proposed a breeding cap so that stallions can only breed a certain amount of times per day, but others have pointed out that this could unfairly restrict breeders with their own horses. As an example, consider a stallion who is left until the last possible moment to breed his foals, so that he has the maximum amount of stats. A breeder may get 5 foals out of their stallion on the one day, but none on any other day of its life, and this isn't excessive. A cap on daily breedings could prevent that, and disrupt quite a few breeding projects. Or imagine the day has come for you to do your stallion's final breeding, and you find that you can't breed him at all because between you logging out yesterday and logging in today, someone has bred several mares to him since he was up for public stud, and now he has no more breeding slots before he retires.

Perhaps a better solution would be if players could choose an absolute cap on the amount of times their public stud could be bred? i.e. the amount of times other players could pay to breed to him, which would not include the owner breeding him. Once the cap is reached the stallion is simply removed from stud, and the owner has to manually put him up again if they want to stud him out more. Players would have to choose a cap between 1 and 10. That way if they did vanish for whatever reason they wouldn't come back to find their stallion has 50 foals. I know I would find this useful as I would be happy to put a stallion up for public stud if I can be confident that no matter how long it takes for me to get back to him, he won't have any more than the specified number of foals. Most of the times that I use the private stud setting it's because I want to restrict the amount of foals the horse has, not because of any restriction on the mares breeding to him. Usually I use the public stud setting, and rely on a reasonably high (but still fair) stud fee to ensure the stallion doesn't end up overbred. As Only The Wind mentioned, private stud isn't suitable for time-critical breedings, so I avoid this option for both my own horses, and when I'm searching for outside studs.

Last edited on 2017-08-03 at 22:59:34 by UlyssesBlue

This is the most ridiculous 'feature' I've ever seen. I initially thought it was a bug until Kahzie told me to look in the suggestions forums. 

I wanted to run a simple test with a test mare - no studs were rolled over, so I either need to wait or buy a store horse (this is assuming I'll just delete the foal after, what if I wanted to keep it?). I log in shortly after cron runs and maybe once again later in the day - to set up shows if they haven't run. This is the reason I play this game - it's a daily thing to do for 15-20 mins over coffee and not bother until the next day.

Overbreeding happens in all the pet sim games out there, there will always be that one stud that has 1000 offspring and whose name you'll always find if you look in someone's tree far enough.

UlyssesBlue always has sensible suggestions - a manual cap is a cool idea, though I do not know how easy or feasible to implement.

Alternative suggestion - weekly cap, a la Lioden style, throw in ability to breed for credits while we're at it:

This stallion is offering studding services, for a price of X credit(s) OR/AND $000000. 

This stallion has 10/15 studding slots left open this week. 

Voila.

<sup>I suggested a daily breeding cap in the original "overbreeding complaint" thread (which was not supported in favour of this) that led to this rollover limitation. I wasn't aware the block had been implemented. 

Personally I don't think a daily stud cap is at all a bad idea, and conscientious breeders who might want to use all their slots to their own mares on the stallions last day would more than likely take him down from studding or have him set for private studding. But as far as I'm aware people don't breed stallions more than 3-5 times a day if that's their method.</sup> 

I like the idea of a manual cap that a player could set. That would be a nice feature in general, as well as addressing the current issue!

Am I correct in understanding that this little unmentioned update was all due to *one* horse getting overused on public stud?


Edit- I think the best solution is a max time limit past not progressing. 7 days seems very reasonable. 24 hours seems isn't much longer than the current window of 24 hours after someone does progress. I *do not like* the idea of a cool down or a forced cap on breeding UNLESS it is manually set by the stallion owner. Other players should not be able to *force* me or other players into how many times a stud can be used because *they* like scarce breeding.

Last edited on 2017-08-04 at 08:36:42 by Årty- Minis