[Redd]

~**~

Hey hey guys, I have some news that you may not like! And I apologize for this, but we've been talking behind the scenes and we feel like it's absolutely necessary this change has to happen, to keep the site healthy and our lovely staff sane.

What is this change, you ask?

Well, we've been discussing the idea of removing keystone gain from breeding areas. That's a scary thought, right? We all knew it wouldn't be popular, but right now the breeding area is far too unbalanced compared to the rest of the site, kinda like how the farm was. Kinda.
See, the logic was, the number of breeding roleplays far exceeds regular roleplays, and of course that makes sense. You gain back all the KS you spent on the room (with Kuhna rooms, you even gain KS), you get new pets, it's practically wins all around and no losses. At the rate of three slots per month, you could practically roleplay there forever and not need to roleplay anywhere else. So the idea is to reduce Keystone gain to funnel users into using the regular roleplay system, earn some BP, that sort of thing.

But this isn't going to happen straight away. We wanted to touch base with you guys first, get your opinions, get any counter arguments and maybe even some fresh alternate suggestions! A few ideas we initially toyed with was to lower the slot count down to 2 per month, or was to increase the breeding room fee so it would be an overall loss, but we weren't too sold on those ideas because they had their own implications and we felt that they would be even less popular. I won't include a poll just yet, I may include one at a later date, if we see any ideas that we like. If there's no response to this, and no constructive feedback, we will just go ahead with implementing the system, not meaning to sound scary, this is just a warning.

Admittedly (because I feel like it might come up) I wanted to include more hunts in the future to entice regular users to RP, but it's really and completely my fault the hunting system has not been revamped yet. I have several coding projects lined up for the site which have been consuming my time and are arguably more important, but eventually more hunts will happen. We just didn't get the desired results from that last contest, so in addition to my workload, that's been holding it back too.

[Rainbowfox Ari]

I, personally, have no problem with this whatsoever. ^^
Although speaking of hunts, I would like to see a Mekka hunt again. XD

What would be the time-frame to finish all current Breedings before the change?

[zapdragon555]

Personally I think it would be a wise decision. As much as I dislike the idea, I think it's a necessary incentive to RP in the regular areas as well. x'D  I'm also somewhat okay with the 2 slots per month idea? That way you could do either one self breeding or two breedings with other users per month hmm. I dunno though, the three is nice. But raising the room fees, not so much; I think they're just high enough.

As for hunts, golly that sounds very exciting yes yesss <3  I miss those!

[Silver]

I like this! (Removing KS gain from breeding rooms.) Well, I don't exactly like it, but I do think it is a good idea to encourage users to roleplay in different areas of the site. The breeding rooms are often the only active threads in a day!

I also approve of only 2 slots, but I don't think that'll help pull people into outside roleplays as much. I think the increase in KS cost per room is not as good of an option as just removing KS gain all together.

[Atoli01]

Not exactly my favorite idea, but I can understand completely where the reasoning is coming from. I don't know much about the site mechanics, but would it be possible to decrease the amount of KS earned per post in just the breeding areas? Say, to 2 or 3. I don't know how popular the idea would be, but it could act as a sort of middle ground? Some KS earned back, but not enough to outweigh the cost of the rooms. Users could still (pretty easily) cover the difference by doing a few outside roleplays, without having to rely entirely on them.

On the other hand, I agree that two slots a month does sound a little... eh... Not bad, but the three we get definitely is nice. Not sure how I feel however about increasing the price of the rooms.

[Kallile]

For me, gaining new pets and coming closer to a license upgrade award is good enough for breeding rooms. I'm completely a-ok with losing the KS gain from breeding rooms!

[MillietheWarrior]

I'm personally against it. I enjoy doing breedings and enjoy the keystone reward gained from it, and many of my own plots (And I know some others) take place there because they call for or involve children from the couple. If we had other events and things going on that encouraged roleplays (like events where users had to post, or even something with the war), I'd be all for it, but right now, it seems like most users are doing the roleplaying in the breeding area. And it keeps things active, for the most part, when everywhere else would be dead. The site really isn't much for roleplaying anymore and its just really dead; its mostly about KS sinks, and very few people RP to gain those KS back (mostly we just all sell pets back and forth). And without the breeding KS...well, there wouldn't be much RPing at all, save for a few who have constant RPs. I guess I would stop doing more than a breeding a month, and probably never do self breedings, since I wouldn't want to spend all the KS for the room and not earn it back unless I RPed somewhere else as well (which I used to, but real life and work makes it hard). But I'm only one opinion, so I'm not sure it matters much.

[Freezair]

I think this is perfectly fine! It's way too easy to just do breeding after breeding. And I always appreciate incentives to RP in other places. >w< Plus, it would mean we'd no longer have to RP to trade keys and file for lisences and such, which I think would make those cleaner!

[Thunder]

Not exactly my favorite idea, but I can understand completely where the reasoning is coming from. I don't know much about the site mechanics, but would it be possible to decrease the amount of KS earned per post in just the breeding areas? Say, to 2 or 3. I don't know how popular the idea would be, but it could act as a sort of middle ground? Some KS earned back, but not enough to outweigh the cost of the rooms. Users could still (pretty easily) cover the difference by doing a few outside roleplays, without having to rely entirely on them.

We did consider this, but changing the amount of Keystones gained in an area a finicky process. Coding stuff and all :'|

I also just want to take a moment to thank everyone who provided their thoughts so far. We appreciate your opinions! <3

[Kyrit]

Millie, while you are only one person with one opinion, everyone's opinion does matter, even if they differ from most. To be honest, the staff expected to see far more posts with a similar opinion as yours, though we would like people that don't like what we've considered doing to give us different ideas, if at all possible.

No matter what it is, we do need to do something regarding the breeding area. As Krypto said in the opening post, users gain back every single KS they spent on the breeding room (and gain some with Kuhnas). This means that on top of earning KS/keeping constant KS, they gain anywhere from 2-5 pets that they can either keep or sell. It's very much a win-win situation that is very unbalanced.

This unbalanced system takes a lot of staff resources. I know I personally can spend an hour or more on a single litter until I am happy with the offspring (in the case of EoF breedings, I can spend an hour on a single child). We could sacrifice the quality of offsping if we wanted to be faster at making them, but I doubt anyone wants subpar babies. When we're spending the majority of our Evelon work time working on offspring it's impossible for the staff to work on new features or keep up with old features.

In order to be able to work on things like the war, contests (yes, contests will be coming back in the near future now that we have a larger staff), shops, ect we need to move some of the activity from the breeding area back to what Evelon is all about - roleplaying (if if you suggest that's not the case anymore). We do want to encourage roleplaying, which actually is what KS sinks are in place for. Want to change the color of your Kuhna's hair? Want to evolve your Lubshi? RP a bit to earn some KS, then you can get it done.

Being able to divert our attention from the breeding area for a little bit also means we have time to think of ways to get KS in to the system without roleplaying for those that need a bit of help (such as Salvis's Salvage Saloon) or reward those that are roleplaying (such as the return of hunts once we've finished our current major project).

The revamp of the breeding system was great, and it's still working wonderfully, but it works a little too well in favor of gains right now. We are simply seeking a way to balance it out more so that we will have more time to focus on what Evelon should be rather than just "breeding, breeding, breeding."

So far we opted not to increase the cost of breeding, because we didn't want to prevent newer users from breeding. We also decided that lowering the amount of potential breedings to 2 per month wasn't the best idea, since trying to get that third breeding room could encourage users to roleplay. As Thunder mentioned, we also thought of changing how much is earned in the breeding area, but our currency system is already pretty hard to edit.

We do appreciate all opinions being expressed though, so I thank you for being willing to admit your dislike of our potential change to the system, Millie. We are open to suggestions of other ways to help balance the breeding system.

[MillietheWarrior]

No worries. I just personally don't like the idea of taking away those KS in that area. It's just a major part of the economy, and considering it could be some time before any of the 'events' are put into place or unveiled, without anything to stimulate roleplay or without people who really want to do roleplays outside of breedings on occasion, the KS economy might go bust. I know personally I was stoked about the KS for the breeding licenses, because quite frankly, that was awesome (more KS to sink into Lakuhndra and Kuhnas) but I've also been able to do breedings I wouldn't have been able to without KS from earning them back in said breedings, like the palette potion projects. Buying potions and then doing a room can add up over time, especially if, like many of us do, we work on breeding projects to get those special babies. Without the KS coming back via the breedings, we just wouldn't be able to do that anymore.

And if some of us are too busy to keep up with a roleplay(s) that would be lucrative enough to earn us enough KS to breed or buy potions (it could take a while to earn enough to pay for a potion and half a room if you didn't have much to begin with), then those people are left out entirely. Real life and work can get in the way of doing even fast roleplays that are generally pretty boring just for the sake of KS. Those are the things I worry about. I know personally, like I said, I probably wouldn't do more than a breeding a month, if that, if we didn't earn the KS back because I want to save mine for Kuhnas and Lakuhndras and other fun things.

[Atoli01]

Ahh, so decreasing the KS a coding issue.

Hmm, I can understand where Millie's concern is coming from. I know I wouldn't have any problems with it during the summer months (due to my schedule, I have an excess of free time), but once school starts back up, I can see how it could become an issue. And then there's many users here who don't even have the luxury of a summer break. There's trading of course for spare KS, but it's not the most effective method of earning funds. Say you were to do three Lucain breedings in a month... it would be near impossible for a number of  members. 12 regular roleplay posts to earn the KS per room (assuming you're with a partner, splitting the costs), plus 12-13 additional posts required for the actual breeding. So you're looking at about 75 rp posts in a month's time to max out breeding slots, and I'm sure that wouldn't float with some people's schedules. Of course there's short five-sentence posts for the sake of earning KS, but I'd imagine that doing a pile of those just so you were able to do a breeding would take the fun out of things after a while.

Of course, less breedings does work out better for the mods. However, we don't have much to occupy us and keep users active besides breeding at the moment. I know that the site's initial purpose is for roleplaying, but we've seen already how much the breedings have increased activity. If the KS gain was taken out after other events/activities were introduced to the site, I could see it as being a more feasible option.

As an alternative, would it be possible to decrease the price of the rooms by a small amount (maybe 20 KS, per se) if the KS gain was taken out of the picture? I'm thinking it would make them too cheap in such a case, but it would cut down on the amount of regular roleplay posts users would need to write in order to earn KS.

[zapdragon555]

The fact of the matter is, breeding is not, nor has it ever been, the main source of economy for Evelon. It has always been regular ol roleplaying. The main difference between RPing in the breeding area and outside the breeding area is getting pretty pets for almost no money in the end (the meager cost of a room).

Breeding has become so commonplace (and don't get me wrong, I LOVE the new system to bits; but as we're seeing, it needs a little editing)--to the point where mods are so bogged down with making litters that almost all other site mechanisms have come to a heavy slowdown--that people have completely moved away from regular RP areas. Because hey! Why RP in regular areas when you can still get KS from breeding AND get pretty babies? This is the problem. There's no longer any incentive to do anything but breed on this website, and that was not the website's intended use.

If you're worried about the fact you might not have time to RP in regular areas, I'm just wondering; technically, wouldn't you also be worried about breedings? When you think about it, breedings are actually a lot more stressful than regular RPs! You have no time limit with other RPs, so you can go as fast or as slow as you'd like. You won't get your RP/story abruptly interrupted by the staff because you missed a post the same way it could happen to a breeding room. Technically, if you want to spread your time and still earn yourself KS, you could breed less often and handle smaller/slower regular RPs? Breeding does give you babies, so you could argue that's the incentive of breedings vs. regular RPs, but if you can manage time for breedings, technically-speaking, you could manage time for regular RPs, since they're a lot easier on your stress levels.

Maybe if people are worried about missing slots so they can do regular RPs, they could be compensated somehow with some small amounts of KS? Like half the room price for each room you don't do every month, to give you a booster for the next month's slots? Honestly I don't see what the problem is with letting a few slots slide regardless, but maybe that could be a neat feature. Of course, users would have to post to claim it, otherwise things could get extremely complicated; we'd need a thread in the breeding area where people could post and say "I'm turning in [number] slots this month for KS" which relinquishes your ability to use them that month, but gets you half the price of a room to share with someone next month. I dunno.

[Mojave]

So, like everyone else, I'm not a huge fan of this idea. However, I can see the reasons and I like the idea of bringing life back to the rest of the site. While I lean more toward Millie's reasoning that the ks payout lets us keep breeding, I also see Zap's point that if we can roleplay three breedings a month that are time constrained, we can definitely do regular roleplays that are slower paced.

Personally I do not want to see the room slots decreased or the cost increase. I too have a full time job with irregular hours and a fiance.This means I don't have time to do all the things I want to do (like game, breed pets, spend hours on FR, read, and sleep and still get out of the house to go do stuff) either. It's called time management, and it's a skill everyone has to develop sooner or later. I don't mean to sound harsh or uncaring, I'm just being honest. And if some of us can't manage three breedings a month on top of regular roleplays to keep the money coming in and real life plus other hobbies.. well that cuts down on breedings which cuts down on the time mods spend making our babies, and the overall health of the site is improved.

I know I personally can't manage all of that. xD; So I really like Zap's idea of turning in unused slots for a small amount of ks. If half the cost of the room is too much, I'd suggest maybe 1/3 of the room's cost instead? o3o

[DeadAlice]

I hate the idea however, it makes a lot of sense. While I'm probably one of users who takes advantage of currency gaining in the breeding (actually I do and I'll admit it.) I think it would be the best idea if it helps lower the staff's workload. I love doing the breedings because I enjoy the babies I get out of them.