Life skill professions depth: animal husbandry...

My favourite thing about playing mmos with thousands of other players is the fact that you have to progress your character.
And in order to progress you need to get involved with the economy of the game.

Many mmos fail in this area, mostly because they make the advancement of life professions super easy, to the point when one character can produce any tradable item in the game.
This may be fun to people that treat mmos as achievement checklist instead of a live community game, but it's not good for the value of tradable items or the social aspect of the game.

So let's look at animal husbandry, the potential it has to be satisfying, profitable, extremelly prestigeous and sought after. Let's see how it works with two other AoC systems, homestead and caravans, as well as mounts. Let's see how deep this lifeskill can be if we focus on quality over quantity.

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George_Black

In many games players can lv up their mounts and so increase its stats and functions (endurance, speed, defence and active skills).

Personally I find this extremelly boring; just a matter of time before I lv up my mounts to max stats. Max speed? No prob I got it. Endurance, carrying capacity, HP? I got it all maxed out in no time.

I suggest that players cannot improve ANY mounts. Not unless they choose the animal husbandry profession.

For benefit of giving each lifeskill more depth, in this topic the breeders, only those players that have furnished (communal interaction with players of another lifeskill, carpentry) their homestead with interest in breeding animals will be able to increase stats, passives, actives etc of mounts. Other players will have to buy these animals in their finished form. If they want a better mount they need to find and buy a better one.

Mounts (and other animals) will have great market value. Players will admire owners of good mounts. They will think "oh I need to get gold to buy a good mount with the skills I want. Let me go do some fishing and start getting gold."
Good mounts will be very sought after since only advanced breeders can create good combos. People will place orders. "I want this this and this from my mount." The breeder will reply "Come back with the agreed amount in X days".

George_Black

It may not be realistic that the rider can lv up riding/mount skills, but I think if we limit the mount leveling/improving only to homestead owners specializing in animal husbandry, we will have a very meaningful profession.

Animal breeders will need to buy furniture, food or other items from other players.

I really want to see depth in lifeskills for the sake of a healthy economy and an interesting character progression, all within communal gameplay.

I dont care for housing in mmos, but the idea that I could be the horsemasker of my guild could sway me in building a homestead.

CROW3

Good post! This is one of the systems I’m most excited about.

I’d like a system similar to ESOs alchemy discovery, but with genetic traits. Can I tame animals figure out what traits they have then determine a path to making those most desired traits dominant… I’d also add a quality dimension and a random dimension (genetic mutation). There could be also be a dimension of rarity. If I beat an Uber hard end game rare and can extract DNA, can I then introduce that DNA into breeding a rare trait. Like I don’t know fire-breathing.

JustVine

George Black wrote: »

It may not be realistic that the rider can lv up riding/mount skills, but I think if we limit the mount leveling/improving only to homestead owners specializing in animal husbandry, we will have a very meaningful profession.

Animal breeders will need to buy furniture, food or other items from other players.

I really want to see depth in lifeskills for the sake of a healthy economy and an interesting character progression, all within communal gameplay.

I dont care for housing in mmos, but the idea that I could be the horsemasker of my guild could sway me in building a homestead.

Are you open to a hybrid form of your idea where the mount still grows with their rider?

My propsal is this: Only breeders can unlock skills on a mount but the strength of those skills are based on usage like in bdo. The breeder can level up these skills faster than a normal rider and can sell the mounts with the skills maxed out art a premium. The mount still levels up its stat spread with rng based stats with a nonbreeder rider, but the breeder can unlock true potential to max when they level the mount (maybe via items they buy from other proffesions?) This means min maxers will still pay breeders big money, but if I really want to just 'bond' with it myself I could level it up with some lesser success (or even just roll really badly and fail, promptly learning why you buy certain qol increases from a breeder instead of being a smarmy cheapskate.)

I think your stated goals and intentions are solid.

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