by Sinnshaft » Tue Mar 26, 2013 12:04 pm
Ths is going to be a long post, so aplologies in advance, I can be longwinded. Firstly let me say how much potential this game has and what a great job you've done of it already. I'm going to be critical and I'm going to offer suggestons, but what you've made so far is a great game without them and I only offer this up to help you make the game better, not to point out flaws.
Now where the game suffers so far (at least where it seems to me) is in money management, the monthly payment and in the actual attachment to breeding the animals themselves. What do I mean by this? Well, the game can be broken into three main resources. Time, space and money. Space is pretty much perfect as is, five slots per animal seems very reasonable especially when considering the amount of animals that may be added into the game. So, let's start with money. Money makes the world go around, and in Breeding Season it's really very apparent. At present cashflow is a massive issue when you start, a real struggle to make ends meet. One that most casual, first time players would not manage to meet. They don't know the raw money making power of consumables or how to best breed an animal quickly to produce them. Then like many games, money becomes a complete non-issue to the point where you earn more than you can spend (or give as monthy stipends). The reason they have this much is that the player is made to care more about getting money (to pay the bills) than the actual animal breeding. You don't need to sell animals when you just breed a bunch of money makers who churn out consumables.
Now part of the reason this is an issue is because of the ease with which it can be done, but also how difficult the other source of money is in comparisson and how unreasonable the demands of the 3 people buying can be. After a few sensible sales a client will demand something you just can't do without a whole host more animals, which needs time, farm spaces and most importantly, money. By the time you've bought the necessary animals, bred the necessary animals and made them ready to sell the amount you could have made just selling consumables outweighs it tenfold. Once all three become unreasonable you just don't bother, which is a real shame. Of course. this will be made even worse when longer pregnancies is implemented, since the breeding stage will take even longer making consumables the only real option.
So on to the second point, attatchment to breeding the animals. Since it's easier to sell consumables than sell to clients a player will just breed their animals toawards this goal from the outset. As the game progresses you end up throwing away newborns at an alarming rate. The only animals you 'care' about are the ones who are near perfect (perfect animals produce better consumables). Once the breeding stage is longer this will change immensely, since the time spent would be a wasted resource if you throw away every slightly inferior newborn. It will still happen, but ideally there would be something in place to make this less of a simple throwing away of the creature.
Now what could you do to solve all of this? Well the easy way out is to nerf consumable selling, but that will have negative effects in itself. Being able to sell masses of consumables isn't really the problem, it's how money is so important to game progression. My suggestion would be to merge the clients, gold, silver and bronze into the monthly demand. Instead of just wanting a butt-ton of money, Delilah wants very specific animals and her appeasement will alter based on the quality (gold, slver, bronze). This also makes sense story wise. Dililah recieves a gold wolf and happy that you appeased her, she grants you permission to own more land or different types of animal (upgrades are unlocked in the ranch upgrade store). She recieves a bronze wolf and she's not so appeased, but your month's contract is filled. Fail to meet a contract and she's got you where she wants you. Game over man, game over.
With this, you are given a month (resource: time) to complete the breed instead of being pushed for money, which can now be spent in order to complete the breeding insead of being hoarded to pay an ungodly sum. This would also give you as a designer more control of the gold, silver and bronze rewards, since each month would represent a different difficulty insead of it being deduced from the last animal sold. Month one could be easy, month 2 slightly harder - and so on until things become too crazy and subsequent monthly demands are capped.
Along with this change (a big change, I grant you) you could also implement somewhere where some of the newborn animals who are sub-par could be sold to, rather than simply disposed of. The cash given to you for them could be based on their stats, similarly to how the gold, silver and bronze clients already do, just without the stat demands and a lot less monetary gain. This would be balanced with selling consumables to make both a viable source of income rather than one being more effective than the other.
Ok, heavy block out of the way, there were some last few things I wanted to mention. The perk 'Fertile' improves the chance of that animal bearing offspring, when I saw it in the store I was unsure initially whether the tooltip "This monster is 10% more fertile" meant for breeding or in terms of FER stat, since both share the same name. Fertility in terms of breeding makes a lot of sense, more than being able to feed. Does FER need to have this name or could it be renamed something else? Maybe consitution (CON)? Or at the very least, a little clarity in the tooltip would make it better for new players.
Also, I read that people suggested making the sprites for the existing pens smaller in order to clear room on the farm for the animal areas you are planning to add. I'd actually suggest that the sizes at present are good (easy to click, easy to see), and a second page to the left or right (or both eventually) which is purchasable at the farm upgrades store would be better. Why? Well, say you want a woodland animals, the extension left could be a forest upgrade allowing you to purchase forest animal pens for Elves or Centwhores. Maybe to the right, there's a lake that could be purchased for sharkgirl pens or other water animals. Following from them a snowy mountain area perhaps where harpies could be relocated, and other more hardy snow creatures like Yetis. Jungle, swamp, magically tainted... there are plenty of options and all viable sources of extending land and spending your cash. I'm just throwing ideas around here, but I feel like shrinking the pens will only go so far when so much could be gained from added areas. It's more work, but will be worth it in the long run.
Again, great game. Keep working at it and it could be something legendary.
