Raffle Lionesses are bad at spreading BO traits
Saying this seems a bit counterintuitive, doesn't it? The entire purpose behind RLs is to spread new and rare BO traits, such as mane colors, bases, eyes, markings, mane colors, etc. And, I mean, they get drawn. They go to their new home. They, more often than not, get bred and have cubs. Well, let's take the new BO mane colors, introduced in August Development Update #47. These numbers have been gotten through search, which has been known to be a bit weird as of late, but should not be off by more than a few lions at most.

While yes, these manes are new, I'm going to bring up some numbers of some other new, breed-only traits that have been in the game longer.

Algae and Pistachio Markings were introduced into the game via a newspost in April 8th, 2022. The first RL with any of these traits appeared three weeks later, on April 29th, which meant players who wanted these traits have been waiting nearly a month for them. But this isn't about the wait associated with BO Markings, this is about how poorly they spread. So, nearly eight months after these markings were first introduced through the April 29th RL, let's see how they're doing. We'll be looking at Slot 4: Algae Crumbing, Slot 6: Pistachio Lace, and Slot 7: Pistachio Shine.

Oh, wow... that's... that's bad. And keep in mind, this is an RL that has been bred and cloned, in fact, she herself is still alive, so are her two clones! They're still breeding age, as well, so they have time to clone. And it doesn't get much better the more Algae and Pistachio slots you look at. In fact, almost all of the algae markings have less than 100 lions in total with the marking, in all slots, and half of the Pistachio Markings are in the same boat. I didn't cherry pick these to show RLs suck at spreading slots and why they're bad, all shapes of the marking have less than 1,000 lions on site with it.

But maybe green markings just aren't popular? Maybe people just don't like them. Which I totally get, I'm not the biggest fan of them either, so let's turn our attention to Fiery and Goridhe markings, released a month later in May. We will be ignoring Feline Fiery markings, as they were not added during this May.



Goridhe markings aren't doing much better, despite being a much more popular color than fiery.


You may try and say I'm being a bit unfair, by having all these markings introduced in 2022. After all, where's the evidence that studs would do better?
Look no further than Lioden's very own August Event. Let's look at Vagabond Markings, which were released August 2022. While I don't have data on how much the markings spread originally after the first maneater cycle was complete, we can look at the slot count for these markings today.

Even if we cut these numbers in a fifth to try and find what the original cycle would have been, it's still over ten to twenty times what RLs have shown in 2022!

Now why are RLs so bad at spreading markings? Why do they struggle so severely? What could be the reason why they're so bad at this? Simple, the system can't support this many players. RLs, as a system, functioned fine when Lioden was a smaller site. Most players knew what breed-only markings were, they knew why RLs were special and what they did. After all, when one lioness only has to provide 1,000 weekly users with a marking, that sounds almost... doable. But now, we have around 10,000 weekly users. And still, this one lioness has to provide us with this marking. The burden is on the player who wins her, with hundreds if not thousands of players desperately clawing for that new marking, mane color, base, a clone, or whatever they personally need from the RL. Even with the current systems put in place, this is incredibly stressful for their winners. Once they reopen their PMs, they deal with the flood of players who are absolutely desperate to get their hands on these traits. And even with the measures staff have taken to make winning an RL a better experience, it's still incredibly overwhelming, in part because these RLs are the only reliable way to spread most breed-only traits.

So what can we do about this? Like I said, this isn't a suggestion thread, and I'm not going to propose a solution as if it is one. I will, however, point you guys towards a few suggestions my friends and I personally like as possible solutions, including Raffle Lioness Confirmation RL System Overhaul, and Raffle Studs. The important thing here, though, is NO ONE wants raffle lionesses to go away. We love them. They're already basically ready-made kings, and keep their value for a reason, but very, very little of their value comes from them having rare attributes. And there's no reason to only keep them as the sole distributors of these traits, when it's shown time and time again they're just bad at it. In order for an RL to spread all of their traits effectively (via kinging), let me walk you through the process that has to happen.

1. The raffle lioness has to roll onto an active account.
2. The active account has to either sell their heat to someone who uses a Crunchy Worm, or use a Crunchy Worm on the raffle lioness herself.
3. The Crunchy Worm has to succeed
4. The owner of the clone has to king it.
5. The king has to breed and successfully pass on the traits of that RL, via studding or mass breeding within their own pride.
6. The cubs born have to pass on those traits as well, and those cubs have to be sold rather than hoarded.

And this has to happen for every new trait introduced via RLs. These same six steps have to happen time and time again, week after week. Every new marking, every new slot, every new mane color, every new base. Meanwhile, the process for spreading BO attributes on Wolvden, Lioden's sister site (which is REMARKABLY more BO breeder friendly) are almost laughably simple when compared.

1. The raffle stud has to pass these traits
2. One of the many breeding winners has to sell a pup.

It's genuinely frustrating, as a Lioden player, to see this. People have been bringing up the problems with the RL breeding system for years, one of the suggestions I linked is from 2017. While it seems like Wolvden learned from the troubles BO breeders have here, I don't want to play Wolvden. Most of the other BO breeders I've spoken to don't want to play Wolvden. We love Lioden, enough to spend hundreds of dollars on it every year, enough to continue to play this game year after year after year. Many of us have played since the start of Lioden, or close to it, although I personally haven't. And we love this site. We just want more help. We are the only category of breeders on site who has to worry about if a marking we need is available in the specific slot we need, if it's not being hoarded and sold for extreme prices, or if it's even on an active account. It's frustrating to have all these hoops to jump through just to have a specific marking in a specific slot, or in some cases, even a specific marking at all.

Non-RL Systems are Gambling (literally)
We've gone through why RLs are kind of bad at their job. And, well, they're not the only way of spreading these markings, just the primary way. Well, they're only not the other way if you're after a base or a marking. If you're after a mane color, or any potential future raffle exclusive traits, such as eyes or skin, well, you are shit out of luck.

So let's get into these other methods.

Random Marking Applicators can apply Tier 2 markings, at a whopping 0.5% per RMA. On top of this, they're also blocked from applying new Tier 2 markings until they've appeared on a raffle lioness, or for Tier 3 breed-only markings, until they've appeared in their event. Outside of raffle lionesses, this is the primary way new marking slots appear. And it is pure gambling. People dump hundreds of dollars into their RMA projects, aiming for newly released markings or rare slots of already released markings. Just to try to make their already valuable lions a little more valuable, or just to even have a hope of getting a specific marking they so desperately need. Any time you see a slot of a marking take off that wasn't on a raffle lioness, it's almost always resulted from someone getting lucky enough to RMA it on their king and mass breeding cubs with that marking slot.

May Groupies can spread both rare breed-only bases and rare markings. However, groupies also bare the burden of being butt-ugly a solid 90% of the time. They are also randomly generated, meaning there's no guarantee any rare slots will even be generated on a groupie. Groupies might have it even harder than RLs, since due to being ugly and only having two markings, they're usually chased or killed. This means a groupie can generate with either a brand new marking slot or an absurdly rare one, whoever got it finds it ugly, and kills it, meaning this slot is once again unavailable. The only way to try and save a groupie is to send a PM to the owner asking to buy it, which, in most cases, is outright ignored. At least the groupies with special bases usually make it to TC, though, instead of getting killed like their rare-marked brethren.

And, for an honorable mention, Wenet Cousins can generate with certain breed-only markings. However, all BO markings that Wenet Cousins can generate with as of 2022 are currently available in slots 1-10, and show no signs of being scarce as a marking. There are still a few rare slots, but I have full faith that by April 2023 these rare slots will be mostly filled.
Another honorable mention is August Savage Males, which can have any marking in game on them, and, as of late, have seemed to include more and more BO markings on them! The markings that have been placed on past Savage Males have also done amazingly well, alongside the markings on Wenet Cousins.

I, personally, don't have a problem with these methods of spreading BO marks. These are wonderful ways to supplement a successful primary system of spreading these markings, but as have been established, RLs are unsuccessful more often than not. The only thing I would like to change is maybe swap Raffle and Event marks chance in RMAs, since event markings are almost all applicators and those that aren't are often well established markings. A 0.8% chance instead of a 0.5% chance would help spread markings a lot more.
There's also been talks of item such as Random Eye Applicator including BO eyes, or the creation of items such as Random Mane Color Applicator, Random Mane Shape Applicator, etc. I can't find these threads right now, but if you do find them (or create them), please reply to this thread with them!

Hoarding Made Easy
And now, we reach the (currently) final big essay of this thread. And as you can guess, this is about the big scary H word, Hoarding.

The current systems in place make hoarding new traits extremely easy. In fact, the mention of players hoarding markings can even be seen on the Raffle Marking Slot Rarity wiki page. To quote the page:
"It mostly depends on the marking and the slot, as well as personal preference. When Gold Panther was first released in its most common slot (Slot 8), it was being hoarded, and lions with Slot 8 Gold Panther were being sold for roughly 200 to 250 GB each. Lions with Slot 4 Vitiligo 3 were, at one point, valued at about 20 to 30 GB each. These sales took place many years ago, though, and it seems that Tier 2 marking values are dropping more and more each day."

Why is hoarding made so easy by these systems? The answer is really simple, because the systems require luck. To win a raffle lioness, you have to be absurdly lucky. You have to be lucky to get her to pass her markings. And, if these markings are new, you're probably the only player in the game with these markings. While this in itself isn't hoarding, it can easily snowball into this, after all, if you're the only player with a marking everyone else wants, why sell it and drive the value down? And if they do choose to sell cubs at high prices, why would the buyer sell it and devalue their expensive purchase?And if you get lucky and RMA a brand new marking slot, there's a big chance you'll be the only one in game with it for a long while, unless it's on your king.

I would go as far as to say these systems almost encourage hoarding. Many players are hesitant to sell cubs with rare traits because they don't want to risk the trait's value being crashed instantly. After all, they're just the ones lucky enough to get it. Other players are frothing at the mouth for new markings, but once the markings spread enough, they become worthless. It's understandable for someone to want to make the most value they can out of a marking, after all, this game has an economy and some rather rich users willing to shell out for new traits.

But when only one person has this trait, it cuts it off for everyone else on site. The rest of the ten thousand or more weekly users who weren't lucky can't get this brand new trait, unless someone else somehow gets their hands on it and is willing to sell. While Tier 2 markings themselves are no longer the gigantic cash cow they were years ago, this is because BO breeding is popular. And yet, due to the demand around it, the supply simply cannot keep up. This scarcity of new BO traits is not due to a lack of people chasing after them, but rather, the people who want them simply giving up.