Breeding Fail Rate

[Highroller]

Well I was on track to fail 10 out of 10 but after failing the first 6 in a row, I shock gasp actually didn't fail all 4 of the last 4 tries. Of course sterile rate has been insanely high lately to compensate.

[Pocketcow]

I guess we can at least be thankful there's no chance of the parents eating their young here. hehe.

[KnitePrince]

It seems, that I somehow have little spurts of luck, in between LONG harsh dry streaks there comes a little rain... I am now "again" using ALL character slots to breed with... When my daughter starts this evening i am going to make her create her extra characters as tamers as well... with 8 - 10 characters alll trying to breed it may be possible to have at least one success a day. If it still doesnt work then i will get my wife to make an account, my sister in law across town... and then there are friends and family I have scattered all over the world.... hmm... maybe thats his ultimate plan!

[Highroller]

Well I had a 0 for 10 tonight. Cycled through all 5 tamer characters and did 2 crosses with each solo. All 10 failed. That makes about 14 in a row fails on the nobles. I say again Col, if your intent is to make breeding impossible, just say so. In that case, I can stop beating my head against a stone wall.

[+Colibri]

There's the hard caps, which are visible to where you can level the pet. And there's the soft caps, that is, when you get to a certain level, it's harder and harder to breed. Same goes for luck, where although it's not capped, having 10k luck will only give you a slight advantage over having 5k luck.

I'll try to drop by to see those pets you're trying to breed.

[fingers]

+ Colibri, I would like to know why this subject (success rate) made you reply as fast. I have two threads that, imo, are worthy of replying on. Why do harder monsters give less xp points than easyer monsters (by a frikken big marge), and why would new players be able to camp parts of the mage inquis quest making it hard for the players who actually want to complete the quest from beggining to end to do so.

Now I have a few theories about it.

The first one would be that you find these posts so stupid that you don't even bother about answering them.

The second would be that you played alot before being administrator of a shard and that you used to be a tamer. Therfore you wouldn't give [a thought] about players that use weapons to kill things here.

Third but not least, I beleive that this small server, that was once borned from a passion, has come to a point that you can pay your house, your scholarship, your car, and alot of extras out of the donations of the players. Looking at the thousands of uni tubs (10$ each) that have passed thru my hands, you can fool anyone, but not me, saying that this is a free shard. Therefore maybe this has become more of a customer service where the players like me that can't donate are seen as a necessary pain.

I would like alot of feedbacks, especially from other players that can't donate, to say if they felt treated as well as players who donated hundreds-thousands of dollars.

Yes, I realize that speaking up might bring me in trouble, but i just can't help it.

Polar Bear

[amadman]

Man.. Polar. I must say I am a bit disappointed by your post

I can see how you could be a little frustrated but there is really no need for such comments.

Just because they have not commented on a thread don't mean they have not read and considered it. They may just not have anything to contribute at this time and are giving people a chance to discuss these suggestions.

As for your point on +Colibri not caring about the shard as much... I can see how he would grow away from it. It sounds like he has a busy life away from Excelsion. And he does not even play anymore. Fact is that the players whether donating or not have made it where Colibri can not even really do what he wants with the shard. The last 3 changes he has wanted to do have been shot down in flames. The majority don't want changes made that effect them negatively so the shard really cant grow the way he had intended it to. I dont know about +Colibri or others but this would take the wind out of my sails.

[+Colibri]

fingers...

there's like 100 things that need to be done urgently, possibly by yesterday. Each of those things require either an hour, or an afternoon of coding or thinking. I am one man, and there's 400-500 players that play in a 24 hour time span. Some things get priority. And as new stuff come in, they still have priority over the old stuff, which means that some things have been on my list for years now.

And we the staff are doing or best to be organized, to handle incidents as they occur, and try to even put together an event or new content.

You could remind me again by PM to read your post. But criticizing me because i replied to someone else first, is not a productive thing.

Again, there's a ton of things that are in need to changing on the shard... and I plan to get to that, but there's just so much that can be done.

[fingers]

I must apologize, I have been carried away. I know there is alot to do, but a few days ago, I did ask you (+Colibri) in game to take a look at my thread when you have a minute. I was checking every now and then for a reply from staff to know their position about it. And then I see a reply to an other post. I guess I was too disappointed to post in a constructive manner. Sorry again.

[Highroller]

Well Col, you still haven't agreed that your intent is to make breeding impossible but you have bloody well changed it to the point that its close enough to impossible to take virtually all the fun out of it. If its your intent or not you are punishing pet breeders with the current fail rate/sterile rate. When I fail quite often breeding a gen 1 to a gen 9 you need to change your message about it being hard to breed 2 strong pets and just make it "its hard to breed pets". I apologize if I have offended you with my continuing comments about the current fail rate/sterile rate but I still think they are messed up. Of the half dozen or so shards I have bred pets on, this is the only one with limits on how many times each pet can breed, its the only one with pets born sterile, its the only one with more than approx a 50% fail rate on maxed pets. Now on the plus side its the only one with solo breeding and its the only one with some of the custom pets. PLEASE reconsider a bit on either fail rate or the sterile factor. 5% sounds low until 3 out of 5 of your breeding line is born sterile. I have had it happen way too many times to not be paranoid.

[Licos]

Okay, something has to be said here...

What the hell is with the tag team you (Polar Bear) and Highroller have here? Just curious, how often in real life and in a non-retail (retail being the environment where you can do just about anything short of punching the guy, and he will still do what you want because "the customer is always right" and he doesn't want to get fired) situation have you harshly criticized someone and even downright insulted them, and they put your needs and opinion as a priority? If either one of you say "all the time" or "quite often", you're a liar.

This guy has plenty on his plate. Pretty sure he goes to school, does some studying, and maybe has a list of jobs to do (I believe website development?). That's a lot of stuff to have on his mind, and then MAYBE have an hour a day to stop by and check on things.

Polar, I especially love the whole use of the money from donations to get your point across. Like someone held a gun to the head of each player and made them donate. You know what, if I was CA like Colibri or a higher-up staff member like Rayne, Veritas, or Hina, and had to put up with the constant forum complaints and disrespect and harsh criticism from some of the players made on here (and I have witnessed plenty), you'd bet I would make a way to get some profit from this effort that CLEARLY took time to create and maintain since 2006. What? You think he would do this for free? Maintain a shard where he tries one thing out for a week and he gets slaughtered over it? You think he would go out and buy a new router to fix the lag issue caused by events, without some help from the player base and knowing full well that he will eventually come back to the forum here and see the next angry and disrespectful post? Would YOU do all the work he has done and endure the criticism without penalty to you, for free? Please... If he does get a lot of money, who cares? Do you think he would've received that money if he had a crappy shard? I don't think so...

On the breeding fail rate, I can't really speak on that since I hardly ever did any breeding. But, maybe put your point across and every so often post again respectfully [My bad, you have been doing that. Still, maybe should've waited?]. Meanwhile, if your pets are not breeding well with the current system...take a break. Why, if something isn't currently yielding good results, would you continue to do it when it's something that could potentially be fixed when he gets to it? Why not save the good breeders for when there is confirmation that a change will or will not occur? Saves you time and money...

Nothing like beating your point across...how has it worked so far?

-Licos

[fingers]

As much as for a tag team, I never talked to highroller in game or elswhere. As for my post where I named a few POSSIBILITIES why some ideas where left on ignore, I did admit to pushing it too far and apologized. I think it's a good idea that player can speak their mind here, and that it can result in a better shard. But it needs to stay in a respectfull conversation, wich was lacking in my first post here.

[Dash Ravishing]

<Please Remove>

[Kile Morgan]

Ea would be the least of the problems. I know in the US a couple of shards have closed down because the owners were using the donation money for personal gain. The IRS loves to go after those. Thing to remember is different nations have their own laws. Copyright law wasn't something I studied under criminal law but I know some people who if bored enough would look into the case law. Really the best thing is to avoid the appearance of impropriety in the first place. You could as some places do give a listing of the monthly costs and how close to or over the goal they came. If it matters I'm usually willing to just except the statement that donations are used for the service and upkeep of the game. Though knowing the rest makes me feel I actually was useful for something other then a doorstop.

I know this sort of thing comes up from time to time, usually when tempers get short. No reason to go attacking someone over it, just state you don't agree if you feel you must and move on. To do otherwise isn't helpful(which is why I rarely post anything any more).

I believe this was about breeding so how about the rest gets left behind.

As I've said before I have never had a sterile pet from breeding, I rarely have higher level pets not want to breed either except for some fire steeds that took 5 tries. Have close to max mules, cu's, nightmares, some white worms, really don't remember the rest offhand. I have said this before and really am sorry that others have the opposite. Though I'm sure that after saying this my luck will go to dirt for a while just so I feel the pain.

[Highroller]

First I haven't chatted with fingers at all. I have kept this thread alive for a good while. I feel very strongly about it because I spend a lot of time breeding up lines of pets. This has gone from difficult to much much much harder to do with the changes. If you don't believe me then go max out a pet type and try to breed enough of them to actually have some to sell in the game. Giving it a rest would help in short term but would not change things at all in the long term. As for the donations, going by my experience running a free BBS in the pre-internet days, the odds of Col making a profit on the shard are very slim. I mean I HOPE what he takes in at least defrays most of his equipment and month to month costs but the bigger the shard gets the more and more equipment upgrades he has to do to keep up with the increased numbers. I am annoyed by lag as much as the next player but I try very hard not to complain about it and be grateful I get as little of it as I do. I would gladly donate to the shard except for the minor problem of being out of work for a year. Several months of which was taken up by caring for my terminally ill wife and a fair amount of the time since her death missing her. UO in many ways is my refuge from my problems. Col is trying to balance easy availability of maxed pets against need for pets in game. I think he has taken it too far but in the final analysis he and the rest of the staff makes the call. I would say my attempts to influence his decision have failed and will no longer attempt to keep the thread alive.