Have you noticed we see pretty much the same personalities on nigh every king? Hyperactive being the most common, with Candid, Fatherly and Loner also being fairly popular. More niche but also regular sights are Stoic for statters, Heartless or Protective for karma grinders.

That’s not a lot when there are currently 19 male/king personalities in the game, with most not seeing deliberate use given they’re just outclassed by the others above fairly easily. Worth noting that of those common ones, only one is Evil and only one is Good.

My proposed solution is Breed-Only Personalities.

‘Aggy, we get it, you live and breathe making Lioden more of a breeding sim, cut it out’

OKAY BUT HEAR ME OUT.

As it stands, if you’re going to king an heir while keeping your king’s looks, 95% of the time people will use a mutated heir. Statty, clean, doesn’t matter, it’ll be mutated [likely a heritable one] unless it’s a heritageless Groupie or [rarely these days] an unmutated statter.

If you’re a king trying to breed cubs people will use as reps, this means a whole lot will not be useful – they’ll make for nice lionesses, sure, but if your cub didn’t inherit dad’s Piebald then that cub likely won’t be considered as a rep.

It also means that people who might not like the look of mutations are very strongly encouraged to mutie rep anyways – because of the profit resulting from the pie/patches/some primal sales.

This is also partially inspired by what goes on in a lot of cat/dog breeds – breeding not just for color and form, but temperament that matches the desired personality/function of the breed. Adding another possible way to play the game is always fun - especially one more in line with real, ethical breeding IRL, as opposed to the focus on valuable, even detrimental (Lethals I'm lookin' at you) appearances we have on LD.

Why Implement This?

My hope is that these personalities will be valuable enough to be on par with having a heritable mutation from the same stud.

Hopefully, if balanced right, this could encourage people to:

a) have kings with less desirable personalities to produce some of these, resulting in more personality diversity

b) king unmutated but breed-only personality cubs, so not everything is a pie/patches/primal

c) encourage more Red Cock use and bump its value (given, so far, these personalities are all intended for kings, thus would appear on male cubs only – unless female breed only personalities are added, in which case there would be equivalent ones that could be sexchanged into the other)

d) providing another way for users to fine-tune their experience to their playstyle

I'm clean out of spoilers to hide things under I'm so sorry

To be on par with a heritable mutation king, these personalities would need to be capable of matching a similar desirability (or potential for profit) of that 5% Pie/Patches pass chance, while also being useful/valuable enough for users to stomach having anything but the most used personalities while breeding for these. Thus, they should be a step above Stoic/Candid/Fatherly/Loner/Hyperactive in usefulness. Maybe even a liiittle OP. This would be balanced by the fact that they would be breed-only (likely with a small spawn %, but larger than 5% given the other requirements), require losing out on a better king personality to breed them, and only appear on male cubs.

If any of these were applicable, be it in the standard personality changer or in an Event Personality Changer, or otherwise easy to obtain, I do not think it would be balanced. None should be implemented in any way in which they could be just slapped onto a statter / g1 king / etc. I’d even tentatively propose they should be excluded from the May Groupie spawn pool - the point of these is that they're rare and valuable enough to cause users to try and breed for them, or choose a cub with the personality they want over a mutated/g1 rep. A shortcut defeats the purpose!

With that out of the way… how should we breed them?

I propose three possible criteria types – they could either all be of one type, or some combination thereof depending on the possible benefits of the personality. They’re numbered 1 through 3, with 1 being the easiest to breed and 3 being the hardest.

Type 1: Specific Personality x any Personality.

This would suggest that only kings with a specific personality could possibly create a specific breed-only personality. This would also allow personalities to be more clearly linked – say, an Unscrupulous (punish lionesses for failing a hunt to get a carcass) king could produce Provider (read below – helps in hunts) sons with any lioness he is bred to.

The king personalities which produce BO personalities should exclude all of the common personalities we see already – so Hyperactive couldn’t produce a BO personality, but Arrogant might. IDK how hard this would be to code, mind you.

Type 2: Personality type x Personality type.

This would imply breeding, say, a Good personality king and a Good personality lioness to have a chance at producing a given personality. So any combination of Humble/Chivalrous/Forgiving/Protective x Intrepid/Trusting/Nurturing/etc could produce this given breed only personality in male cubs. The king’s personality type should always be Good or Evil in any of these.

Notice that most of the commonly overused personalities are Snarky, Neutral and Kind, with just Protective and Heartless being outliers which are almost only used by Karma grinders – this would encourage the use of the less often used Good and Evil personalities.

The lioness personality could vary depending on the specific breed-only personality. So Good king x Evil lioness = BO personality 1, Good king x Kind lioness = BO personality 2, Evil king x Evil lioness = BO personality 3 and so on. I think this would be easiest to code.

Type 3: Specific Personality x Personality type.

A combination of the above two – so your king must have X personality and breed to Y personality type to produce sons with a given BO personality this way.

I feel this would be very difficult, thus the ‘spawn’ rate of sons with BO personalities should be bumped up a bit if this is used as the default. If it is used for the most overpowered of BO personalities, then I think it would be reasonable.

Should they be heritable?

I'm not sure, honestly. It might make this even more of a nightmare to code.

It would also depend on which of the above possible implementations is used - if it's just personality groups, and the BO personality happens to match the group [say, if Evil x Neutral can make Efficient, if Efficient is evil it could presumably breed some Efficient sons] then it could technically be heritable in the same way your Ebony king can produce Ebony cubs [or Noctis or Onyx or-] depending on what you breed to him.

I'm on the fence on this because balance might be an issue, but also producing more sons with powerful personalities could produce entire lineages of kings like in heritable mutations, which would be nice to see, so who knows!

Any examples?

You betcha.

Note that these are all IDEAS – they would need very careful balancing to be both worth breeding for while not being gamebreaking. You’re free to suggest modifications! I do not know if any of these share names or concepts with existing suggestions, this was all thought up while I was without Wifi and couldn’t check lol.

The point is less ‘let’s implement these exact personalities’ and more ‘this is the kind of personality that could tempt someone to use a g2 BO personality instead of a G2 Pie’.

I also do not know how easy or difficult these would be to code. This is just giving a ballpark of tempting but not too OP personalities that could sway people into seeking out these personalities. Some are specifically modeled after stuff already in game [Rabies/Ferus battle boost, Unscrupulous affecting hunts, Hyperactive giving a button to press for an effect, EXP modifiers, etc.]

Adventurous :
Provides a damage boost against Event NPC encounters.


Clever :
Increases [all? or just battle?] EXP gain by X%.


Frugal :
Bumps the SB from Explore cap from 5000 to 7500


Efficient :
Reduces the requirements for quests.


Intuitive :
Rarely allows your king to divine the mutation status of a cub the first time it’s seen.


Observant:
When finding items in Explore, can pick up a second copy of the item.


Passionate:
Can ‘reset’ an attempt to claim a lioness so long as she has not slapped you yet X times per RO.


Provider:
Allows your king to help bring down big game X times a day for Y% energy.


Vigilant :
Increased chances of finding unique lionesses in Explore


Virile : [I know it isn’t a personality but bear with me]
Applies an automatic 10% boost to fertility when breeding, including to Infertiles.



TLDR : Introduce valuable personalities only obtainable via breeding and requiring the father/king to have one of the less used personalities in game. These should be valuable enough to be worth considering next to a mutated heir [for buyers] and to be worth using the non-Hyperactive/Loner/Candid/etc. personality on the father[for breeders].

I strongly encourage constructive criticism! I want these hypothetical personalities to be a clear step above the current common ones to further diversify the personalities [and mutation/lack thereof] in kings and perhaps add another element of strategy in those who specialize in specific playstyles. But also don’t want any easy exploits or gamebreaking combos to be possible lol.