Yharnam I feel like I agree a lot with you theoretically but in reality we disagree. As far as I understand the more casual players that aren't spending money on boosts/don't have the time to grind every day or at least a few times a week are looking at making maybe 10 gnaws or less for the entire month, and they obviously won't be buying a bunch of GMOS and saltlicks on top of that because most of them don't have that sort of GB just sitting around to mass buy them faster than other people will (the culprit of this last year rhymes with raccoon).

For ANYBODY that has a breeding project and either requires gnaws for hard to pass rosettes/hybrid marks or saltlicks for difficult manes, or just wants to breed a bunch of muties, that number of September breeding items won't last them long at all, no matter how much saving they do. Now the same players you're discussing that need these items and CANT buy them out of season because of the price of each are left with being forced to abandon or put a six+ month pause on their breeding projects because they only had the time to grind for a dozen or less items this month. Profit on sales doesn't matter to these people, they were only concerned with the amount they could work for and get during the month.

While yes, if they were EXCESSIVELY easy to get their value would diminish, but at this rate they'll be almost wiped out and their value might skyrocket, to the point it might not be worth it to have them at all because they'll be too hard to sell

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In another thread, i mentioned that i think a lot of the reason ppl arent using the items is because there's a lot less u can do with most* muties.

can't decorate them, can't pose them, a huge chunk of them you can't king. in a way, muties are less valuable than normal lions to the average player who likes to decorate and have lion just to have them.

but another problem is lioden's lack of transparency about muties and odds.

putting it bluntly, GMO cows and other items that boost breeding a mutie are gambling. sure, i am promised a boost, but i dont know what my odds are. and that doesn't fill me with confidence using these items. so i sell them.

ive actually used several gmos, lion meats, and more, but i get jack shit. so it discourages me from using them. and its not the price tag either. it's that i genuinely feel cheated.

ive done some crb projects (small ones, granted). got fuckall. ive done lion meat projects. fuckall. ive done these things in combination with one another + used buff balls and gops. nothing. i have chronically, infuriatingly, life-long bad luck in any game that requires rng and the lack of odds makes me wary.

so i sell gmo cows because it guarantees me something. gb. and with that gb, i can buy things like mutie reps for my kings, or stat reps, or stat boosts, or applicators.

and so having gmos as a reliable source of income for me means i get to enjoy the things other users with better luck, more money or more time and energy for projects get.

and the only way i can get those things, is with income. income i get from selling these and other breeding items and apps. i used to sell many kinds of lions. those markets are collapsed. and bc i prefer an aesthetic king over loading them with rosettes, or having a raffle clone, i cant rely on stud sales.

they wont skyrocket in price and they wont be wiped out. as of me typing this there are 4 pages of gmo cows listed and the tier isnt even open yet lol. gmos have seldom reached higher than 70 gb, and when i sold mine, sold for around 40 ish. 10 gb loss of profit from the year before roughly.

these items should cost more, because they affect gameplay odds.

edit:
RE: "As far as I understand the more casual players that aren't spending money on boosts/don't have the time to grind every day or at least a few times a week are looking at making maybe 10 gnaws or less for the entire month"

im not sure what casual players you are speaking to who earn so much that your upper number is 10 gnaws or less but those sound like hardcore grinders. i get 2-3 gmos or gnaws (sometimes a few of each) and sell them during summer as nest eggs to carry me during the dry months without much to sell. coz 10 gnaws sounds crazy and i'd have been rolling in dosh if that was the case

unless i misunderstood what you're saying.

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I too have a serious lack of a relationship with RNG/lady luck so I definitely understand your pains there 😅 that's why I rely on items such as saltlicks and gnaws to pass things for high reward/high risk breedings and in projects. So I guess your thoughts on the matter are people like us either sell the pittance we work so hard for for profit to continue to fund other things we want to do at other dates during the year because otherwise we're just SOL then, right?

Last year the encounter rates for JB wasn't an issue and there is still a surplus, this year it has been as far as I and others have reported on seeing. I even saw the results of a poll and just about everybody on it had experienced a serious lack in JB-rewarding encounters

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kinda. i try to have a practical approach to it. either i can spend a shit ton of money on hoping rng will pan out, or i can sell the items, buy what i need and jump several steps for a guaranteed final product or something that already has several traits of what i need. im not much of a gambler, so i tend to pick secure choices on here, because chance has cost me a lot of gb.

something i think about a lot with the polls is whenever they give the community any question that amounts to "more x?" or "easier x?" the majority voting community will almost *always* pick yes, even if yes is the detrimental choice.

The community will almost always pick the option that makes currency easier to get.
The community will almost always pick the option for more bases, markings, etc.
The community will almost always pick the option which lowers the price of items.

I think if they polled tomorrow to make free GB drop in explore, the majority community would say yes. Or if they voted to drop the price of everything universally.

But these choices above are all detrimental. Easier currency means everything in the shop risks devaluing and now nothing will sell, and players can't get money for day to day play. More bases, markings, etc means more work on the artists who still haven't delivered things like the male pose or finished art files. Lower prices of items ergo lowers their perceived worth because low cost = cheap / less value to our brains.

This has rarely not been the case, and over the years, has caused me to take a step back and look at what the 'community wants' with much more scruitiny. Is it because people are frustrated? Is it because people want things handed to them? Is it because players don't have time?

No matter the reason, when I noticed the patterns, I began to dread the polls, because I feel like sometimes the community has no idea what's best for the game - and in turn, their gameplay experience - and sometimes might not see how the momentary relief will cause a later rippling effect.

edit: using items for my projects
my current project (double ebony with 4 july raffle marks) has taken over a year and a half, and i have refused to use anything but ochre powder and 2 buff balls. i saw how quickly ochre powder replicated my available july markings across even a batch size of something like 15(iirc? idr) lions' cubs, and that horrified me to think about it being used in huge batches to completely over-saturate the market.

but ive been patient with this project because ultimately it costs me less money to just take my time rather than burn items on it. and im nearing completion. and if i had used items, i woulda been hurtin so bad. coz i didnt make any money this year til i sold jaglion boosts coz nothing was selling and prices for feb items remained abysmally, alarmingly low into july

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Do we really get "plenty" of locust wings? There's only a few encounters that give them and they only drop one each.

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I've found 70 on each account this year so far, though to be fair I am g r i n d i n g

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I've gotten a total of maybe ten this year so far.

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I think it'd be nice if they were a random drop from every locust encounter, rather than just a predetermined drop from only a few of them. Lots of them are required in so many recipes :')

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That's what I'm thinking as well; going with that, maybe the drop rate could increase after all the shop tiers are unlocked?

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Yeah. Like i think ive gotten about 12 or so locust wings. and i do feel the slowness of the jb grind, but i think a lot of it is also internalized urgency. market's shit, stuff's hard to afford, so we grind our butts off to make sure we dont gotta spend more money than necessary and i think that also makes us notice way more when we get so few.

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Weird then, because I get at least 5-7+ locust wing encounters per energy bar (ive actually stopped clicking those encounters so I'll have to retrain myself and.make some.money off em at least)

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You know, a really easy way to both give a little bit of a boost but not too much, would be to have locust kill encounters have a 50/50 chance of dropping a JB, rather than guarantee, once the bar is full, and give a few of the other ones a +1 JB drop.

I think "Sometimes" mechanics are something that can provide a little extra, without going too overboard. Because if you got 10 locust encounters and 5 of them gave you jb, it'd still be JB. where otherwise you'd get none. but it (hopefully) wouldnt be enough to ensure peoploe can buy too easily

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I'd certainly be fine with any sort of "literally anything" added to these encounters.

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