I’ve seen and been involved in many chat debates about the state of the Lioden economy. Many players talk about the changes they want to see, so I want to offer a compiled variety of suggestions that have been talked over by the community, and put it into a developmental suggestion that can be improved upon.
PLEASE, I urge you to read thoroughly and take a moment to suggest any changes or improvements you’d like to see, I am not aiming for a mass of supports off the bat. I just want to provide an actual place to make these suggestions and refine these ideas into a development that can improve gameplay and make an actual dent, instead of defending our ideas in chat in going nowhere with them. (This is not to fault any players, it is no easy feat to organize this amount of information, and I will be crediting heavily to those who have helped)
I am aware this is a lot of information and some repetitiveness and I plan to clean up and simplify a lot of it to make it an easier read as I edit ^_^
Issues I will be addressing:
1. Overabundance in the form of cubs, mutations, markings, etc and how this is detrimental to lion value.
2. No incentive for karma aside from karma-specific titles and events, leading to a large “chased” pool filled with more fodder lions, and the energy penalty for killing/nature reserving a lion
3. Fodder solutions are not readily available aside from scarce event storylines or features such as the “Celestial Portal” during the July event, alongside the enclave which does not offer enough quests to keep up with the amount of fodder cubs available
Disclaimers on the following:
- All estimations are just that. Estimations. I will clearly identify estimations versus facts.
- I may refer to dirty and/or long gen/heritage lions and undesirable or an “issue.” This is not to attack or offend any players who have lions with extensive heritage, ongoing “dirty” breeding projects, etc. I am just acknowledging the market trends as follows: Clean and short heritage lions are considered the most desirable and valued much higher than dirty and long heritage lions.
1. Overabundance.
As of the time of drafting this forum, a player can obtain just about any mutation (patches, pies, overgrown, amp mane, primal variants, etc) for less than 5gb, and often closer to just 1-2gb or less. I, alongside many others, view this as a problem.
For example: Kinged mutations of the patch/pie variants can pass at a rate of about 5%, meaning a casual player, who breeds say, 5 lionesses a day, will amass about 7+ cubs with their king’s mutation every month. That multiplied by the amount of users in the past 30 days, who have patch/pie kings means nearly 8500 users are breeding an estimated 60,000 variants of this mutation monthly. This does not account for female patch/pie lioness, which also pass at the same rate. This is just in relation to piebald variants. Taking into account every other passable mutation that does not require breeding items, this leads to an incomprehensible number of lions on the market. (disclaimer, this is an ESTIMATION, not based off of any mass breeding patterns.)
This scenario, in different breeding and passing rates, applies to every trait a lion is able to have in addition to a mutation.
So what does all this information mean?
We have an EXTREME abundance of traits, causing the value of most individual lions to plummet, with no way to control these populations. And let’s be honest, if the average player comes across a lion with traits of any value, they usually can’t afford to take an action that erases that lion with no incentive or reward.
This brings me to my next point: Karma Incentives
2. Karma Incentives:
As it stands, the only incentives that encourage players to achieve good, neutral or evil karma is titles, which are included in your king’s name, and karma specific encounters in explore. Karma can be gained through item uses (like hatching or eating vulture eggs), choices made in explore or choosing to either kill or nature reserve a lion in your pride. The issue? This costs 5% energy PER lion, for only 5 karma. Energy is one of the most valuable resources in lioden, and takes time or costs currency to replenish, and the karma increase/decrease is the only reward for these actions. This leads to a lot of players to chasing lions or abandoning cubs, the karma neutral option that does not require energy to use.
As similarly stated in my first point, this also contributes to a huge abundance unwanted lions still circulating, and players cant afford to chose an option that deletes the lion entirely.
In terms of cubs, most of the year there is anywhere from hundreds to thousands of unwanted cubs at the giving tree that don’t hold much value, who get either abandoned at the tree again, or chased as an adult into the already wide chase pool.
In terms of chased adults, players typically chase more “plain” lionesses/NCL’s after breeding (alongside many other reason). This creates the illusion that the chase pool is very small, when in fact, a large portion of lions you encounter in explore may very well be chased NCL’s.
3. Enclave
What are we actually able to do aside from spending energy to delete these lions? Right now, the only year long option is the Gorilla Enclave. There is only 1 quest available every 24 hours, which means only one cub under 1 year of age can be eliminated from the lion pool per day, per account. I could make an entire suggestion about the changes needed to make the enclave effective enough for populations control, so that will have to wait for another day. My point is, that is our only readily available resource, and it is not nearly enough to make a dent in this issue.
How can we reach a solution that will actually make a difference?
- Permanent July event portal equivalent
I think the vast majority is huge fan of the July event portal. You give it your unwanted lions or adolescents, and receive a random prize of either energy, experience, impression or silver beetles! I believe a similar concept that is available all year long would benefit everyone, the portal equivalent could have a randomized prize for handing lions over to it. These prizes could include a less dense version of the July portal prizes, a prize from a pool of useful items or unique/rotating decors, or a new currency and a shop style similar to the gorilla enclave.
There are several ways this portal equivalent could be coded to help the economy issue I am addressing (please suggest!):
- Requesting lions based on traits or mutations that are at a surplus OR Bonus rewards for submitting lions that have these traits
- Several lions able to be submitted in one day, even if there is a cooldown or fixed amount(ex: 1 lion every x minutes/x amount per day), as to not deplete the market quickly and cause a shock
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