Sign in to follow this  
Sevenless

Deed ratio: Should we be able to pay for breeding slots?

Recommended Posts

I have a smallish deed, but I really love breeding animals. I'm perfectly fine with the expense of paying for breeding slots, but I'm landlocked with my neighbours. I really love them, and don't want to move.


 


If I'm fine with paying silver so I can have more animals, is there any reason why I have to take up more tiles of the game world that I don't intend to use? I'm actually deeding ocean right now just for that purpose.


 


Far as I see it, I'm not circumventing the idea of having a form of upkeep per animal I own. I just don't want to deny other players land that I've no intention of using purely for the sake of breeding slots. I'd envision it as some cost/upkeep value per 15 "phantom" tiles that increase the ratio without changing anything else about the deed.


  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Would be nice if ratio were removed, but if not, at least remove it by paying extra like removing the citizen limit.


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Would be nice if ratio were removed, but if not, at least remove it by paying extra like removing the citizen limit.

 

It was put in place to solve an issue. We'd definitely need to figure out an alternate solution to the problem in order to remove it, and I agree it's a bit of a pain.

 

But without getting into that mess it could be made a less onerous restraint if it weren't just hard locked to tile number.

Edited by Sevenless

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Its already pretty pay to win as it is.


The "unlimited ratio simmilar to unlimited citizens might be a idea, although it might be cheaper to just start a new deed close by. I mean 1s a month can buy you enough space for ~30 animals.


 




It was put in place to solve an issue. We'd definitely need to figure out an alternate solution to the problem in order to remove it, and I agree it's a bit of a pain.


 


But without getting into that mess it could be made a less onerous restraint if it weren't just hard locked to tile number.




 


No, there was no issue. This has always been a problem with the animal pop cap, hunters claimed they couldn't find stuff to hunt because of breeders, ######, because i've always had more than enough to hunt, problem is people want stacks of critters on their doorstep, and they have to be spread throughout the servers. Doubling the animal cap solved the issue mostly (except for people on chaos, they still don't want, or are too afraid to leave the doorstep to hunt, so they hunt on exodus, apparently).


The ratio is a way to solve their inability to optimize the game code, just like the item limit per tile. There was someone that complained to Rolf his FPS dropped near a breeder deed, and that was the origin of the problem. One guy that was playing the game with settings too high for his PC, basically cascaded into Rolf breaking the game for anyone that bred animals. And the current iteration of the ratio is tons better than what was released.


 


Basically deed ratio is the consequence of that time's "Disintegrate" thing. Rolf seasonly breaks the game for a big majority with a out of the blue change, its kind of a ritual to Wurm players.


Edited by KanePT
  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

+1


I'd also make it so deeds with good animal ratio have the following new benefits: autofeed animals, completely prevent disease, prevent animal terrain alteration actions.


 


The ratio works to limit hording. It is the only thing that has worked after YEARS of trying different limitations. There are simply not enough resources to let people has as many animals as they want  (at least with how animals are treated, if we had Barns you could have as many as you wanted).


 


Get rid of all the old limitation that didn't work (excessive food-starvation, packed together animals-disease). Adding benefits to deeds will add player perceived value to a product that is a core element in Code Club's financial plan. Deeds are essential to Wurm's revenue, why not make them more attractive to players?


  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Make the ratio a bit more rewarding instead of a number that means bad things after going under 15 :T


 


joedobo has some good ideas, I like them. :(


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ahh the old barn suggestion joe, it was a good one too. Though imo until a better way is mitigated to give breeders the animal ratios they'd truly like I don't think anything needs changing myself. However, speaking as someone who loathes looking after animals I am biased. I also don't see anything against giving some tweaks to encourage a good ratio wither however.


 


But barns, yes barns would be nice.


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

No, there was no issue. This has always been a problem with the animal pop cap.

 

Whether or not that's true doesn't matter unless the devs believe it. From the Dev's perspective, clearly they felt something was amiss and put the ratio into play as a result. I'm not chanting MattSquare's mantra, because if they really thought there wasn't an issue anymore they could probably have removed it by now. Frankly, having 2 animals per tile of a 100 tile deed producing a foal's worth of butchering mats with little effort every 5-7 days is a little broken, but I'd address the effort required for maintaining a horse while pregnant rather than making a per deed animal limit. The issue lies with how easy animals are to maintain (especially while pregnant) as I see it.

 

Anyway: I'm trying to reason with the Dev's here over the painfulness of their fix, not getting into the old debate of what the fix was addressing and how effective it was.

Edited by Sevenless

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

  • Back in the 'old days' (2~3 years ago(?), when Indy/GV was the only PVE server), it was a real issue. You would walk for hours, possibly find 1 deer and a spider and back then some deeds would have 150+ animals, where nowadays most deeds around barely have 40. My understanding it was one cap for the animal/mob population, so if there was 1000 mob/animal cap, 999 of those were horses, only 1 thing would randomly spawn in the wild.

It got a lot better when they sorted the domesticated vs wild ratio out as I remember it. Again, for example purposes; 1000 cap broken down into domesticated vs wild; say 500/500, if domesticated was at 500, animals would either miscarriage or take longer to produce a baby as they waited in a 'queue', but there would be 500 wild monsters spawning around.

Then they brought deed ratios to encourage disease/miscarriage on deeds with excessive animal counts.

 

At least, that's my understanding of it, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Were getting by, by having an open animal system in our town, each villager gets a limited set of stables (some animals have higher priority than others, eg; cart horses), if you want more stables, go ask a villager with empty stables attached to their house if you can use theirs. Most villagers don't lock the pens, so everyone grooms and gets more AH skill overall. Only the highest breeders mate the animals, seems to be working ok so far.

It would be nice to have the ratio lifted, but at the same time the phrase "it's never been so good" is something I'd like to hold onto a while longer.

 

Paying for ratios will quickly get things out of hand I reckon.

Edited by Mishia

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The ratio is a great tool to keep people from hoarding too many animals. It's actually refreshing to see someone who wants to pay for keeping more animals rather than just deed more for the sake of having more animals. I personally don't see anything wrong with it... especially if the option is already there in a different version (a version that would take up land for nothing)

  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Don't see why not. If people are willing to pay for extra breeding room, then let em.


 


TAKE MY MONEY!!! :P


  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This would be great. Then I'd spend less time running around to check them and more time enjoying them.


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sounds like a shitty situation. But NO, you should NOT be able to (have to) pay for animal slots... You are getting shafted by the devs and ratio change. Welcome to 1.x wurm online. Breeding and caring for animals was a rewarding and classic activity in the game and now it's just a pain in the neck. From what I've seen that ratio change only affected a dozen or so massive deeds that were exceptionally packed; but it's only created problems for.. everyone else.


 


Remove ratios and re-address the hoarding problem with a more logical solution IMO.


Edited by Versai
  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The ratio is a great tool to keep people from hoarding too many animals. It's actually refreshing to see someone who wants to pay for keeping more animals rather than just deed more for the sake of having more animals. I personally don't see anything wrong with it... especially if the option is already there in a different version (a version that would take up land for nothing)

 

 

Don't see why not. If people are willing to pay for extra breeding room, then let em.

 

TAKE MY MONEY!!! :P

 

Yes, yes, yes.

 

Not that i ever have a problem with the ratio (i'm no breeder) but allowing people to pay for things like this would be great.

 

With the new 1 side deed expansion you should be able to work around paying for tiles you don't need.  Also i have seen players build wooden long house's (1x10/20 etc..) in there perimeters as a back wall for animal pens, so animals are off deed but the pen gates are on the deed boarder, allowing deed management for the gates.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

+1

I'd also make it so deeds with good animal ratio have the following new benefits: autofeed animals, completely prevent disease, prevent animal terrain alteration actions.

 

The ratio works to limit hording. It is the only thing that has worked after YEARS of trying different limitations. There are simply not enough resources to let people has as many animals as they want  (at least with how animals are treated, if we had Barns you could have as many as you wanted).

 

Get rid of all the old limitation that didn't work (excessive food-starvation, packed together animals-disease). Adding benefits to deeds will add player perceived value to a product that is a core element in Code Club's financial plan. Deeds are essential to Wurm's revenue, why not make them more attractive to players?

Doesn't really limit hoarding, simply makes it more expensive or risky to do so. I've rad of people that have more horses now than back before the ratio. "Hoarding" in itself isn't a issue, the issue was the lower animal cap back then, which in some servers meant there wouldn't be enough wild animals to please the most hardcore hunters. Nowadays my area is constantly overrun with animals, latest fad, lava spiders.

 

 

 

  • Back in the 'old days' (2~3 years ago(?), when Indy/GV was the only PVE server), it was a real issue. You would walk for hours, possibly find 1 deer and a spider and back then some deeds would have 150+ animals, where nowadays most deeds around barely have 40. My understanding it was one cap for the animal/mob population, so if there was 1000 mob/animal cap, 999 of those were horses, only 1 thing would randomly spawn in the wild.

It got a lot better when they sorted the domesticated vs wild ratio out as I remember it. Again, for example purposes; 1000 cap broken down into domesticated vs wild; say 500/500, if domesticated was at 500, animals would either miscarriage or take longer to produce a baby as they waited in a 'queue', but there would be 500 wild monsters spawning around.

Then they brought deed ratios to encourage disease/miscarriage on deeds with excessive animal counts.

 

At least, that's my understanding of it, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Were getting by, by having an open animal system in our town, each villager gets a limited set of stables (some animals have higher priority than others, eg; cart horses), if you want more stables, go ask a villager with empty stables attached to their house if you can use theirs. Most villagers don't lock the pens, so everyone grooms and gets more AH skill overall. Only the highest breeders mate the animals, seems to be working ok so far.

It would be nice to have the ratio lifted, but at the same time the phrase "it's never been so good" is something I'd like to hold onto a while longer.

 

Paying for ratios will quickly get things out of hand I reckon.

 

Sorry, back in that day there was no real lack of animals. The issue was that they were (and still happens today) mostly crammed on rock surfaces. Just a round trip on inde and skimming rock surfaces with a boat you'd see dozens of animals. I have pics.

 

The ratio is a great tool to keep people from hoarding too many animals. It's actually refreshing to see someone who wants to pay for keeping more animals rather than just deed more for the sake of having more animals. I personally don't see anything wrong with it... especially if the option is already there in a different version (a version that would take up land for nothing)

Isn't that the exact same thing? Paying for a deed, or paying for animals?

 

Sounds like a shitty situation. But NO, you should NOT be able to (have to) pay for animal slots... You are getting shafted by the devs and ratio change. Welcome to 1.x wurm online. Breeding and caring for animals was a rewarding and classic activity in the game and now it's just a pain in the neck. From what I've seen that ratio change only affected a dozen or so massive deeds that were exceptionally packed; but it's only created problems for.. everyone else.

 

Remove ratios and re-address the hoarding problem with a more logical solution IMO.

This.

 

Whether or not that's true doesn't matter unless the devs believe it. From the Dev's perspective, clearly they felt something was amiss and put the ratio into play as a result. I'm not chanting MattSquare's mantra, because if they really thought there wasn't an issue anymore they could probably have removed it by now. Frankly, having 2 animals per tile of a 100 tile deed producing a foal's worth of butchering mats with little effort every 5-7 days is a little broken, but I'd address the effort required for maintaining a horse while pregnant rather than making a per deed animal limit. The issue lies with how easy animals are to maintain (especially while pregnant) as I see it.

 

Anyway: I'm trying to reason with the Dev's here over the painfulness of their fix, not getting into the old debate of what the fix was addressing and how effective it was.

You really must be new to Wurm. Devs have little to no clue how the game actually progresses in reality for players.

But if you believe there was a problem, and the ratio was instituted to solve it, then your suggestion would simply work towards bringing back the same problem, wouldn't it? Because basically, you'd bring back the option to crap 100 animals in a 4x4 pen (not that you don't have it already with a big enough deed -which is basically why the ratio thing as is really doesn't fix anything).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Isn't that the exact same thing? Paying for a deed, or paying for animals?

 

 

 

Partially, which is why I have no issue with this suggestion. The option to pay for more ratio is already there (buying more tiles for your deed) so I see no harm in adding this. if anything, it's better that people do not have to take away more land then they want to, just for the sake of breeding. It's silly that people have to buy land (and thus, take it away from others) just so they can have more animals, if they are willing to pay for just the animals without the land.

Edited by Alyeska

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You really must be new to Wurm. Devs have little to no clue how the game actually progresses in reality for players.

 

Even if it's true, that doesn't matter. You're never going to get someone to do something for you if you call them an idiot. And whether or not they understand ingame processes (Despite players being familiar with the game world, even they often are clueless about the grand scheme development wise anyway), they are the ones in control of it.

 

I'm all for a rework of this system wherebye there is action timer based work in order to create a healthy/high trait offspring. Breeding without the ratio is definitely "too cheap" effort wise for pve servers (I think the kicker is that on PvP they have such a high turnover of horses this system suits them, but it's an issue for pve).

 

This minor fix would likely be quick to code and would mean breeders could opt to pay for more slots. But it's by no means free, and I don't think it'd be more abusable than the current system, just more convenient.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Partially, which is why I have no issue with this suggestion. The option to pay for more ratio is already there (buying more tiles for your deed) so I see no harm in adding this. if anything, it's better that people do not have to take away more land then they want to, just for the sake of breeding. It's silly that people have to buy land (and thus, take it away from others) just so they can have more animals, if they are willing to pay for just the animals without the land.

Although i agree with this. Isn't it even more silly that how many animals you can have is tied to how much land you own, and not how much of it is dedicated to the animals? Also check my last comment on Sevenless's quote for why i don't like this suggestion.

 

 

Even if it's true, that doesn't matter. You're never going to get someone to do something for you if you call them an idiot. And whether or not they understand ingame processes (Despite players being familiar with the game world, even they often are clueless about the grand scheme development wise anyway), they are the ones in control of it.

 

Never called them idiots. Clueless, rash, unprofessional, those are my words. Although they don't apply to all devs individually, as a whole, that's how CC operates. And this isn't me saying so, their actions say so.

 

I'm all for a rework of this system wherebye there is action timer based work in order to create a healthy/high trait offspring. Breeding without the ratio is definitely "too cheap" effort wise for pve servers (I think the kicker is that on PvP they have such a high turnover of horses this system suits them, but it's an issue for pve).

 

There's already a action based timer for this. Its called GROOMING, you can only groom once per 40 minutes per animal. If that timer went away you can bet your socks people would start hoarding way less animals. In fact this was one of my two suggestions for fixing the animal problem back in the day. The other one was implemented, called increasing the animal cap. If you're clueless about something, and aren't a dev, maybe you should refrain from suggesting stuff.

 

This minor fix would likely be quick to code and would mean breeders could opt to pay for more slots. But it's by no means free, and I don't think it'd be more abusable than the current system, just more convenient.

Here's the problem. Atm the current system is capped by available land. Your suggestion is capped by, well nothing. And sincerely, if Wurm needs something it isn't more P2W stuff.

Edited by KanePT

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

We've already had page after page arguments about how to best decided who gets animals. Its a simple fact that there are not enough server resources to give people as many animals as they want (If we had barns you could easily have hundreds). The most basic argued question is what is the fair way to decided who gets what?


 


1. Fixed slot equal animal allotment for each premium player (1 slot for F2P).


2. P2W mechanic where bigger deeds can have more animals.


3. Make it so hard to breed animals that only a few can do it. Only those who either completely dedicate themselves or play 16 hours a day with many alts could successfully breed.


 


I like 1 best, 2 is still pretty good and is what we are using now. But 3, ( what a couple people are asking for) is a horrible idea. Something to pull my carts/wagons is very important now. Such a necessary tool needs to within the reach of any player. I'd love a magical vehicle-pulling substitute. Something that once made just needs imping and repairing to maintain like other tools. If we had that then Wurm can do whatever with animal breeding.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Although i agree with this. Isn't it even more silly that how many animals you can have is tied to how much land you own, and not how much of it is dedicated to the animals? Also check my last comment on Sevenless's quote for why i don't like this suggestion.

It's a mix of both. You need to dedicate time, space and care to the animals in the current system, too. Quite a bit actually with diseases, a messed up ai, old age taking out animals and enchanted grass getting packed. Not even to mention aggressive animals attacking livestock and horses. Like the person above me, I would hate to have to invest even more time into maintaining something so vital to core gameplay. Having to login nearly daily just so your mount/wagon pullers don't die is actually a terrible system in my opinion.

Currently it's a choice between cost and space, or effort and time. Either you spend a lot of space and a lot of money, or a lot of time and effort to maintain animals. The game prefers paying over effort in this case, and so seem most players. To me that makes sense since its the use (no matter how large or small) of limited server resources.

There was a thread not long ago of a Dev asking how to best keep animals alive if leaving on a two week trip. The responses are quite insightful to how much dedication it requires already, reading it makes it easier to understand why people don't want to raise the neediness of animals even more :)

Barns would also be nice. :)

Edited by Alyeska

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

We've already had page after page arguments about how to best decided who gets animals. Its a simple fact that there are not enough server resources to give people as many animals as they want (If we had barns you could easily have hundreds). The most basic argued question is what is the fair way to decided who gets what?

 

1. Fixed slot equal animal allotment for each premium player (1 slot for F2P).

2. P2W mechanic where bigger deeds can have more animals.

3. Make it so hard to breed animals that only a few can do it. Only those who either completely dedicate themselves or play 16 hours a day with many alts could successfully breed.

 

I like 1 best, 2 is still pretty good and is what we are using now. But 3, ( what a couple people are asking for) is a horrible idea. Something to pull my carts/wagons is very important now. Such a necessary tool needs to within the reach of any player. I'd love a magical vehicle-pulling substitute. Something that once made just needs imping and repairing to maintain like other tools. If we had that then Wurm can do whatever with animal breeding.

1. Is called Care for. Devs beat you to it mate.

2. That's a bad idea.

3. If you replace breed with breed high traited horses, then this is the current system.

 

Barns would be nice, but they can't work like Bulk storage bins, so the "unlimited" thing doesn't apply. We've debated this through and through before. There's just too many variables in livestock to have a "container" for animals that would reduce all the content to a single entry. Basically either a barn wouldn't allow you to have different traits in animals, not to mention different ages, colors, names, etc. or it wouldn't be able to reduce the stress on the server from animals. No more than having a saddle on your horses would (no more movement updates to do).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

1. Is called Care for. Devs beat you to it mate.

2. That's a bad idea.

3. If you replace breed with breed high traited horses, then this is the current system.

 

Barns would be nice, but they can't work like Bulk storage bins, so the "unlimited" thing doesn't apply. We've debated this through and through before. There's just too many variables in livestock to have a "container" for animals that would reduce all the content to a single entry. Basically either a barn wouldn't allow you to have different traits in animals, not to mention different ages, colors, names, etc. or it wouldn't be able to reduce the stress on the server from animals. No more than having a saddle on your horses would (no more movement updates to do).

1. the cared for system is not the same as saying everyone can ONLY HAVE X number of animals. There is no need for disease, cared for, or other population controls if there is a hard cap in place.

2. P2W isn't ideal but its better then what Seven is hitting at(excessive work to maintain and breed).

3. The difficulty to breed factor could be far worse. Again, Seven was hinting at making animals care more difficult to limit breeding.

 

Barns ...You don't know what your talking about. They would work. spoiler since its OT.

I'm not the only one who has pointed out youre confused.

1. Specific values for an animal can be archived. Archiving and very infrequent-accessed storage space is cheep. How many animals do you think Wurm could store compressed and archived on a terabyte storage drive? My event file is 294k lines and 14.5kb size. Using zip-z to compress it I can make that file be 690kb. if one terabyte is 1,073,741,824 kilobytes....well I could store  1,556,147 of my event files archived on a 1T drive. Keep in mind that each animal's unique data is in no way as lengthy as my event file. 

 

2. simultaneous math (the basic mechanics behind a barn) equation that only needs a handful of values: 1. food level, 2. animal count, 3. tile size of the barn. 4. over time nutrition metric, 5. maybe a few others too (water, cleanliness).  For this equation it doesn't matter if animal count is 1 or 10,000,000.  

 

3. If the simultaneous equation determines that an animal(s) must die for whatever reason, a random animal(s) is killed. The barn stores a unique id for each animal inside it. killing an animals would erase that animals archived data.

 

4. removing an animal can be done too. Either the barn or the animals archived data could have a data for when it was put inside. Age, fat levels, and other values that need updating from the archive before reinserting into the creature cap can be done with the barn's data (nutrition over time, age, ect.). 

 

5. The barn could use a seeded random number generator and client sided resources to move animals around the barn.  This would give the illusion that animals are moving around. The server just sees that they are inside a barn. The seed random part makes it so each client will see the same movements.

 

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

1. the cared for system is not the same as saying everyone can ONLY HAVE X number of animals. There is no need for disease, cared for, or other population controls if there is a hard cap in place.

2. P2W isn't ideal but its better then what Seven is hitting at(excessive work to maintain and breed).

3. The difficulty to breed factor could be far worse. Again, Seven was hinting at making animals care more difficult to limit breeding.

 

Barns ...You don't know what your talking about. They would work. spoiler since its OT.

I'm not the only one who has pointed out youre confused.

1. Specific values for an animal can be archived. Archiving and very infrequent-accessed storage space is cheep. How many animals do you think Wurm could store compressed and archived on a terabyte storage drive? My event file is 294k lines and 14.5kb size. Using zip-z to compress it I can make that file be 690kb. if one terabyte is 1,073,741,824 kilobytes....well I could store  1,556,147 of my event files archived on a 1T drive. Keep in mind that each animal's unique data is in no way as lengthy as my event file. 

 

2. simultaneous math (the basic mechanics behind a barn) equation that only needs a handful of values: 1. food level, 2. animal count, 3. tile size of the barn. 4. over time nutrition metric, 5. maybe a few others too (water, cleanliness).  For this equation it doesn't matter if animal count is 1 or 10,000,000.  

 

3. If the simultaneous equation determines that an animal(s) must die for whatever reason, a random animal(s) is killed. The barn stores a unique id for each animal inside it. killing an animals would erase that animals archived data.

 

4. removing an animal can be done too. Either the barn or the animals archived data could have a data for when it was put inside. Age, fat levels, and other values that need updating from the archive before reinserting into the creature cap can be done with the barn's data (nutrition over time, age, ect.). 

 

5. The barn could use a seeded random number generator and client sided resources to move animals around the barn.  This would give the illusion that animals are moving around. The server just sees that they are inside a barn. The seed random part makes it so each client will see the same movements.

 

You either don't get how Bulk storage bins work or you don't really get what you're talking about.

Thing is the mechanic for how barns would work there is pretty much what's being handled by the server WITHOUT BARNS, thus not solving any issues.

The reason why BSB remove database entries, and thus server loads upkeeping and checking each entry is that it turns:

Rock Shard ql 50, 20 kg damage 0.0

Rock Shard ql 52, 20 kg damage 0.0

Rock Shard ql 52, 20 kg damage 0.0

Rock Shard ql 51, 20 kg damage 0.0

 

Into

4x Rock Shard Ql 51.25, Volume xxx (shows as weight though)

 

That's a single entry which the server KNOWS it doesn't need to update for damage ticks, and basically doesn't need much database handling, no need for much indexation or upkeep, just an update when you add stuff to the bsb.

 

A barn, wouldn't have the same effect because its a "living" animal, and still needs constant updates, like i said, only change a barn would give you would be that no updating the position on the map would be required. Basically, same thing a saddle does.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this