2nd gen parent-in-litter re-releases

[Wired]

Forgive me if this has already been suggested…

I was thinking, while adopting my pets today, about the whole “zebras have a very small chance of appearing in the monthly horse/pony litter” thing, and I had the idea that this could be implemented on a larger scale. Possibly with 2nd gens.

Wouldn’t it be cool if with 2nd gens, you had a chance of getting a pet from the parents’ original litters? A “he’s the spitting image of his dad!” sort of situation. It could still be a low chance, but it would be a good way to trickle older pets back into the playing pool without having to do a mass re-release of a bunch all at once. My only worry is that this could skew into a bias for making second-gen litters based off of rarer pets only, when it’s supposed to be about the fun of the designs being combined in general. But it might be a nice way to give users some opportunity where there hasn’t been before, and without it making the market become too saturated.

I’m curious about whether this has been discussed before and whether it would be plausible, but I browse this forum section semi-frequently and haven’t seen anyone mention it.

[Pyromaniacal]

Hmm... This idea is interesting in principle but I have a few practical concerns.

First, I worry that users just wouldn't reliably identify that they've adopted something valuable in this system. At least with zebras, they generally look so different from the littermates they're adopted with (different lineart, totally different design, etc.) that there's a certain "what the heck is this" factor people get when they adopt them. They are very obviously different from their littermates and it spurs people to investigate and ask about it in the forums if they aren't already in the know. A rerelease where the rare drops are related to the common ones would end up being the opposite—even experienced players might not notice that they had adopted a rare rerelease and would just swap it for a missed littermate. I doubt most people remember exactly what most pets looked like in their baby stages, much less their littermates, and this would be compounded by the fact that the common drops are explicitly designed to look similar. It would be incredibly easy to miss that you had adopted something rarer than normal.

Second, I can say that I would personally find this very limiting as an artist. If this was introduced as a way to introduce rares back into the economy, I would feel a lot of pressure to pick older, rarer parents for the sake of the userbase... and truthfully, those pets are generally the ones I'm least likely to want to pick for 2nd gen pairings. I like that 2nd gen pairings can shine a bit of a spotlight on unknown and overlooked outcomes and make even recent commons feel a bit special—picking a 2nd gen pairing is pure aesthetic appreciation, with no rarity baggage attached. That's nice. Plus, the old rare pets generally have much simpler designs that give me a lot less to work with by and large. Knowing that the pets I select for a pairing would become contenders for a rerelease would impact the 2nd gens I ended up making in negative ways, I think.

Honestly, I like the idea of more rereleases in standard monthly adopts in principle. I think a version of this that I would like better is to rerelease pets that explicitly *don't* look anything like their littermates in 2nd gens—like an ugly duckling "how could our genes have possibly combined to create THAT?!" sort of situation. Maybe do a limited rerelase with 2nd gens, but you can only adopt cats from dog litters, etc. Some sort of regime where it's obvious that the rare pet is something special.

[trickyLA]

This seems like a really neat idea, so support!

[Space Cadet Marz]

Hmm... This idea is interesting in principle but I have a few practical concerns.

First, I worry that users just wouldn't reliably identify that they've adopted something valuable in this system. At least with zebras, they generally look so different from the littermates they're adopted with (different lineart, totally different design, etc.) that there's a certain "what the heck is this" factor people get when they adopt them. They are very obviously different from their littermates and it spurs people to investigate and ask about it in the forums if they aren't already in the know. A rerelease where the rare drops are related to the common ones would end up being the opposite—even experienced players might not notice that they had adopted a rare rerelease and would just swap it for a missed littermate. I doubt most people remember exactly what most pets looked like in their baby stages, much less their littermates, and this would be compounded by the fact that the common drops are explicitly designed to look similar. It would be incredibly easy to miss that you had adopted something rarer than normal.

Second, I can say that I would personally find this very limiting as an artist. If this was introduced as a way to introduce rares back into the economy, I would feel a lot of pressure to pick older, rarer parents for the sake of the userbase... and truthfully, those pets are generally the ones I'm least likely to want to pick for 2nd gen pairings. I like that 2nd gen pairings can shine a bit of a spotlight on unknown and overlooked outcomes and make even recent commons feel a bit special—picking a 2nd gen pairing is pure aesthetic appreciation, with no rarity baggage attached. That's nice. Plus, the old rare pets generally have much simpler designs that give me a lot less to work with by and large. Knowing that the pets I select for a pairing would become contenders for a rerelease would impact the 2nd gens I ended up making in negative ways, I think.

Honestly, I like the idea of more rereleases in standard monthly adopts in principle. I think a version of this that I would like better is to rerelease pets that explicitly *don't* look anything like their littermates in 2nd gens—like an ugly duckling "how could our genes have possibly combined to create THAT?!" sort of situation. Maybe do a limited rerelase with 2nd gens, but you can only adopt cats from dog litters, etc. Some sort of regime where it's obvious that the rare pet is something special.

I really enjoy your alternative suggestion.. or, I was thinking something like adding a 2nd gen box to the Dec 18th re-releases where you have a chance to get two (or maybe four? IDK) random parent pets from all the 2nd gen litters out there, that way it isn't just throwing rare old pets in there, and shouldn't too much effect what people decide to use as 2nd gen parents because there are so many various 2nd gens over the years and their parent pets would all be up for dropping from the box. At this point we've had 2nd/3rd gens for so long that there are definitely some rarer parent pets in the mix already.

It's fun to speculate on various ideas, but I do agree with you that it might really sort of color the choices artists make for 2nd gens if it's a chance in each litter, because they'll all know that most CS users want the old, rare pets, and they don't want to disappoint them or cause people to feel biased against their designs for not choosing old rares.