Combining pet capturing/breeding and mmo marketplace

Mix Master has a system in which you combine monsters to create new types.
It's F2P, so you can try it out if you want some ideas for your design.

I'm not sure if you can trade or sell monsters, but I'm pretty sure you can trade their cores.
It's been a while since the last time I played, though.

I don't really like the system you're proposing, to be honest.
I'd much prefer that two players can choose to breed monsters with each other, with each player recieving a resultant 'egg' that is contained within an on-screen incubator, so that players can only have one egg at a time.

This way the breeding process is more social, as you can breed monsters without owning monsters.
The incubator could be powered by steps taken or battles, it's up to you.
But punishing people for idling with incubated eggs by causing the egg to maybe hatch a weak monster or even cause it to die would be a good idea.

If you're going to sell pets, just make them tier one. Like starter pets.
Their evolutions and such stay tier one, but resultant breeding would change up their tier.
And only monsters within their tier range (one above or below) would be breedable.
Unbreedable pets would be tier zero.
This could create enough possible breeding trees to keep players playing for a while.

I guess there's also the consistencies, how can players hold hundreds of pets?
Where can they breed them?
How can you downplay the generally sexual theme of the game so it's suited for all ages?
And what is the key to predicting successful breeds and incompatible pairings?

I'm no expert on these kinds of games but artificially limiting the trade in an MMO is a big no, after all, trade is its own minigame :).

I agree with you that the higher level pets would be more valuable on the market and these would probably be in limited supply due to requirements of breeding and such (meaning, they can't be found 'in nature'). With this in mind, I would allow trade to be free, people could buy pets of all levels, however, there ought to be some mechanism for the sellers to neuter their pets, that is, they can be sold neutered or not neutered. Most high-level sellers would probably neuter the pets they sell anyway to maintain a demand for their pets. Consequently, the not-neutered high-level pets would probably be going for a very high premium price due to further potential of breeding and selling offspring.
The lower-level pets would probably flood the market in the beginning and the price of these would go way down due to the ease of which one can acquire them by hunting.

The market would stabilize itself in essence. The hard part will be instead to balance hunting/breeding.

About the score book, yeah, only count the captured ones, not the purchased ones. However, do count breeding, since higher-level 'breedable' pets are more expensive, the risk of people just buying them and breeding for scores are lowered. You could also make it harder to breed bought pets (unless they come neutered), the pets bought could come with a higher 'stress level' making them less likely to breed (just throwing out ideas here). The stress level would go down by time if you take care of the pets.

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Original post by Cpt Mothballs Mix Master has a system in which you combine monsters to create new types. It's F2P, so you can try it out if you want some ideas for your design. I'm not sure if you can trade or sell monsters, but I'm pretty sure you can trade their cores. It's been a while since the last time I played, though. I don't really like the system you're proposing, to be honest. I'd much prefer that two players can choose to breed monsters with each other, with each player recieving a resultant 'egg' that is contained within an on-screen incubator, so that players can only have one egg at a time. This way the breeding process is more social, as you can breed monsters without owning monsters. The incubator could be powered by steps taken or battles, it's up to you. But punishing people for idling with incubated eggs by causing the egg to maybe hatch a weak monster or even cause it to die would be a good idea. If you're going to sell pets, just make them tier one. Like starter pets. Their evolutions and such stay tier one, but resultant breeding would change up their tier. And only monsters within their tier range (one above or below) would be breedable. Unbreedable pets would be tier zero. This could create enough possible breeding trees to keep players playing for a while. I guess there's also the consistencies, how can players hold hundreds of pets? Where can they breed them? How can you downplay the generally sexual theme of the game so it's suited for all ages? And what is the key to predicting successful breeds and incompatible pairings?

I did try mixmaster, you can sell pets but they don't have a world marketplace so it's too annoying to sell anything.

Allowing two players to cooperatively breed pets is interesting, I'll consider if I can implement that without it turning into game-breaking power-leveling. But personally I find tying the hatching to combat or breeding to be repulsive. My intent is for monster-breeding to function like crafting, as a minigame the player can play as much as they want whenever they want a break from combat, and an activity that fighting-focused players don't invest time to master. I also have strongly disliked tier systems (or egg groups) in games which have them. I'd go with a simple genetic system instead, everything breedable with everything to mix and match body shape, and have a standard set of maybe 20 textures available for all pet models. So for example you could capture a brown wolf, then use it to breed a blue wolf.

I see no problem with designing into the game a reason why each player has a pet storage area and breeding area. Perhaps pets not being used could be magically stored in a book or disc like in the monster rancher series. This could double as a gallery to show off one's pet collection to other players. I definitely don't want to limit the player's ability to store pets, I want to encourage the player to work toward owning one of every pet.

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Original post by nem123 I'm no expert on these kinds of games but artificially limiting the trade in an MMO is a big no, after all, trade is its own minigame :). I agree with you that the higher level pets would be more valuable on the market and these would probably be in limited supply due to requirements of breeding and such (meaning, they can't be found 'in nature'). With this in mind, I would allow trade to be free, people could buy pets of all levels, however, there ought to be some mechanism for the sellers to neuter their pets, that is, they can be sold neutered or not neutered. Most high-level sellers would probably neuter the pets they sell anyway to maintain a demand for their pets. Consequently, the not-neutered high-level pets would probably be going for a very high premium price due to further potential of breeding and selling offspring. The lower-level pets would probably flood the market in the beginning and the price of these would go way down due to the ease of which one can acquire them by hunting. The market would stabilize itself in essence. The hard part will be instead to balance hunting/breeding.

This is the way they did Dragoturkey breeding in Dofus and it sucks. Sellers don't neuter what they're selling because neutered ones are worth a lot less. The market on a given server starts high then enters a perpetual crash until it finally stabilizes... with the mounts worth less than the effort it takes to breed them and the cost of the items necessary to breed them.

Well the way I see, it punishing players for being social seems to be a bad idea.
I understand you don't want 'power breeders', but the solution to this is either limiting breeding, in either amount or by species exclusion.
Punishing players for actively seeking other players to extend their collections seems to defeat the purpose of it being an MMO.

You can add breeder points gained through breeding as opposed to buying/trading, that designate who a player can trade with and who they can breed with and what monsters they can control.

I mean, if breeding is just a mini-game then, why restrict it so harshly?
I think balancing the battling and working on the logistics of monster raising should take priority in that case.
I mean there are much simpler solutions to balancing the way breeding, trading and battling work together.

Having trainers choose to allow traded/bought monsters in battle could just fix the whole thing.
Even those traded in origin (parent was traded and not partner paired).

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Original post by Cpt Mothballs Well the way I see, it punishing players for being social seems to be a bad idea. I understand you don't want 'power breeders', but the solution to this is either limiting breeding, in either amount or by species exclusion. Punishing players for actively seeking other players to extend their collections seems to defeat the purpose of it being an MMO. You can add breeder points gained through breeding as opposed to buying/trading, that designate who a player can trade with and who they can breed with and what monsters they can control. I mean, if breeding is just a mini-game then, why restrict it so harshly? I think balancing the battling and working on the logistics of monster raising should take priority in that case. I mean there are much simpler solutions to balancing the way breeding, trading and battling work together. Having trainers choose to allow traded/bought monsters in battle could just fix the whole thing. Even those traded in origin (parent was traded and not partner paired).

I really don't think auto-neutering all traded monsters is a harsh restriction. It doesn't limit what can be sold at all, the only thing it disallows is buying breeding stock. Breeding is supposed to be a do-it-yourself type of fun, and allowing breeding stock to be sold would destroy much of the enjoyment of being a breeder, and breeders are the only ones who would want to buy breeding stock anyway so the restriction is for their own added enjoyment. It's not any kind of punishment - breeders aren't being penalized. Selling stuff in a world marketplace is not terrible social anyway, for the most part you won't even know the person you are doing business with.

I don't want to balance breeding with battling, I want to separate breeding from battling (except for capturing, and that's not true battling because it doesn't produce loot). Generally the people who want to play a breeding minigame and the people who want to fight all day are not the same people - I want to allow each type of person to do what they enjoy without being forced to do the other types of activity. The overall design goal for the MMO is for almost every activity within the game to be optional so everyone can pick and choose what they do and when they do it.

So basically, to battle without breeding you buy the bred monsters, but miss out on filling out of the scorebook.
Which is by your first post, the main goal of the game.

So, really, you're giving players an option that betrays the original vision of the game in attempt to please everyone.

Which is the first flaw I see.

The next flaw I see is that by not allowing traded/bought monsters to breed, you're allowing breeders control of the marketplace. As their stock increases so does their potential income from materials.
Meaning you're giving priority to what is an 'optional' exercise from the beginning.
Because only breeders can make money.

Then there's the obvious opening for gold farmers to exploit the game by supplying battle ready pets to people who are that lazy.

So, just for a second, I think you really need to flesh out your design and just find what you want the game to be and stop worrying about anything else.

What if instead of breeding you have genetic engineering?

Player who want engineer buy the mad scientist kit and dna sampler and then go out into the world ad acquire dna samples from the various creatures. You might night need several samples from the same creature to fully map their DNA pattern, but as you decode it you gain access to more creature building blocks.

Then you can use your dna collection build the creature you want. You could mix the body of the wolf, with the colouring of a panther, with the fire breathing qualities of a dragon, to create your own fire breathing black wolf.

Engineered creatures can’t be DNA sequenced so they don’t add to your DNA database, only regular creatures can do that.

In this way you can create a whole new social and economic activity based around customer creatures competitions and trading. Want you very own pegaus but don’t want to go to the trouble of building one? Just post a request on the mad scientist message board and another player can build and sell you one.

I'd allow fully unrestricted trading of pets, However for the breeding program to be worthwhile, i'd set up (if technically possible) unique benefits for having a pet and a certain level of breeding skill

for (a pretty lame) example, say you had a monkey style pet that can fetch things or attack things, if you buy the pet he can do the above, but if you have say, 50 skill points in breeding, he gets a special attack, or he can fetch things that are out of the reach of normal 'bought' pets.

Could be tricky to implement, depending on how everything is set up, but i'd say it'd be worthwhile as it would let everyone buy and use pets but if you want the most out of them you need to do a bit of tradeskilling. If you get a decent benefit from it you'll end up having more people doing the breeding tradeskill (even people that won't find it that fun, but depends if you're aiming for a totally fun MMO or a MMO like all the others that you always end up doing stuff you don't enjoy that much for a tradeoff) which means more people playing for longer, arguably what you want from a MMO.

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Original post by sunandshadow Quote: Original post by nem123 I'm no expert on these kinds of games but artificially limiting the trade in an MMO is a big no, after all, trade is its own minigame :). I agree with you that the higher level pets would be more valuable on the market and these would probably be in limited supply due to requirements of breeding and such (meaning, they can't be found 'in nature'). With this in mind, I would allow trade to be free, people could buy pets of all levels, however, there ought to be some mechanism for the sellers to neuter their pets, that is, they can be sold neutered or not neutered. Most high-level sellers would probably neuter the pets they sell anyway to maintain a demand for their pets. Consequently, the not-neutered high-level pets would probably be going for a very high premium price due to further potential of breeding and selling offspring. The lower-level pets would probably flood the market in the beginning and the price of these would go way down due to the ease of which one can acquire them by hunting. The market would stabilize itself in essence. The hard part will be instead to balance hunting/breeding. This is the way they did Dragoturkey breeding in Dofus and it sucks. Sellers don't neuter what they're selling because neutered ones are worth a lot less. The market on a given server starts high then enters a perpetual crash until it finally stabilizes... with the mounts worth less than the effort it takes to breed them and the cost of the items necessary to breed them.

And this would be a rather large clue to a severe balance issue imo. If higher-level pets sell for less then the cost and effort it takes to breed them then you obviously have a flaw in your design.

Pokemon handles breeding surprisingly well. With proper breeding you can tweak a creatures base stats, then you have control over specialization of stats(40% control rather than purely random), and you can have the child start with moves it can't learn any other way. However where it really takes the treat is hatching the egg, where you need to carry the egg with you removing one of your party members for a pretty long period of time.

Essentially by having a mechanic like hatching the egg that forces players to weaken themselves for a long period of time breeded creatures will always have value, and other problems you're seeing like breeded creatures being to common, or being to much of a short cut is something you don't need to worry about.

It's also worth noting that pokemon is slowly making moves to be as multiplayer as possible. In one or two iterations you'll be able to invite other players into your world then a few more after that something a bit closer to a basic MMO.

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Original post by Cpt MothballsSo, really, you're giving players an option that betrays the original vision of the game in attempt to please everyone.

Erm, what? Can you explain what you mean by the original vision of the game? I'm designing this game with the intent that each player plays only the parts which seem fun to them, so the ability to decide to not be a breeder and the ability of breeders to supply pets to non-breeders is part of my original vision for the game.

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The next flaw I see is that by not allowing traded/bought monsters to breed, you're allowing breeders control of the marketplace. As their stock increases so does their potential income from materials. Meaning you're giving priority to what is an 'optional' exercise from the beginning. Because only breeders can make money. Then there's the obvious opening for gold farmers to exploit the game by supplying battle ready pets to people who are that lazy. So, just for a second, I think you really need to flesh out your design and just find what you want the game to be and stop worrying about anything else.

Actually the design is already more fleshed out than this and there are several ways to make money other than breeding monsters. I started this thread specifically to look at the monster breeding part, but I'll describe the game in general a bit more. Breeding monsters is just a single crafting profession. Ideally monster breeding will be balanced in terms of money made over time with other crafting, PvM combat/questing, PvP combat, and other minigame play, which are the game's 4 other major activities. The idea is that each activity produces results useful to other activities, so a player can do any single activity and sell the results on the marketplace or if rewarded directly with money, use it to buy products from the marketplace. Or a player can split their time between multiple activities, using the results of one type to further another type.

So, in shape the game is like a starfish - the player begins at the center and can do any or all of 5 optional types of gameplay. Although each activity has unique rewards, these are redistributed by the marketplace and the five paths are economically equal such that no player is penalized for opting out of types of play they don't enjoy. That's the core vision of the game, to make pvm and pvp equal, and crafting and combat equal, so people aren't being pressured into types of play they aren't interested in to advance in the game, and all types of activity are available to beginning players, no grinding is required to unlock them.

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Original post by lithos Pokemon handles breeding surprisingly well. With proper breeding you can tweak a creatures base stats, then you have control over specialization of stats(40% control rather than purely random), and you can have the child start with moves it can't learn any other way. However where it really takes the treat is hatching the egg, where you need to carry the egg with you removing one of your party members for a pretty long period of time. Essentially by having a mechanic like hatching the egg that forces players to weaken themselves for a long period of time breeded creatures will always have value, and other problems you're seeing like breeded creatures being to common, or being to much of a short cut is something you don't need to worry about. It's also worth noting that pokemon is slowly making moves to be as multiplayer as possible. In one or two iterations you'll be able to invite other players into your world then a few more after that something a bit closer to a basic MMO.

I really don't like the Pokemon games very much, especially the breeding system. What I want to make is really a different sort of thing like Fish Tycoon or a farming sim as a minigame within an mmo. I think it's extremely desirable to separate breeding from combat. I want pet breeding to be alternative gameplay which people can do instead of combat. I don't want to penalize people for choosing to breed pets, nor do I want to penalize them for choosing not to breed pets.

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Original post by TechnoGoth What if instead of breeding you have genetic engineering? Player who want engineer buy the mad scientist kit and dna sampler and then go out into the world ad acquire dna samples from the various creatures. You might night need several samples from the same creature to fully map their DNA pattern, but as you decode it you gain access to more creature building blocks. Then you can use your dna collection build the creature you want. You could mix the body of the wolf, with the colouring of a panther, with the fire breathing qualities of a dragon, to create your own fire breathing black wolf. Engineered creatures can’t be DNA sequenced so they don’t add to your DNA database, only regular creatures can do that. In this way you can create a whole new social and economic activity based around customer creatures competitions and trading. Want you very own pegaus but don’t want to go to the trouble of building one? Just post a request on the mad scientist message board and another player can build and sell you one.

Yeah that's an interesting idea. I was thinking of having minor magical control over the breeding so it wasn't too random (I think that's a major source of the imbalance in Dofus' dragoturkey breeding, too random resulting in flooding the market with 'trash' turkeys). Engineered creatures not being able to be sequences is functionally the same as traded pets not being able to be bred, except that it replaces breeding gameplay with engineering gameplay. I'm not sure that would be an improvement. But needing to sample multiple animals to get a complete genome is a nice idea. I'll consider that.

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Original post by condemn I'd allow fully unrestricted trading of pets, However for the breeding program to be worthwhile, i'd set up (if technically possible) unique benefits for having a pet and a certain level of breeding skill for (a pretty lame) example, say you had a monkey style pet that can fetch things or attack things, if you buy the pet he can do the above, but if you have say, 50 skill points in breeding, he gets a special attack, or he can fetch things that are out of the reach of normal 'bought' pets. Could be tricky to implement, depending on how everything is set up, but i'd say it'd be worthwhile as it would let everyone buy and use pets but if you want the most out of them you need to do a bit of tradeskilling. If you get a decent benefit from it you'll end up having more people doing the breeding tradeskill (even people that won't find it that fun, but depends if you're aiming for a totally fun MMO or a MMO like all the others that you always end up doing stuff you don't enjoy that much for a tradeoff) which means more people playing for longer, arguably what you want from a MMO.

That does sound very complex to design and implement, although interesting. But I think having unrestricted trading of pets would result in pets being worthless on the marketplace, regardless of what other benefits were granted by breeding pets. This same issue is what makes crafting un-fun in many games, that crafters end up spending more money on ingredients than they can get for the crafted product. I want to come up with a design to guard against this for both pet breeding and regular crafting. The player should never be in a position where doing what they enjoy within the game results in them losing money over time.