08-28-2012 at 5:03 AM

Just thought I say something.<br /> <br /> The fish oil costs about $16 per unit. Remember you get twenty uses per $360 bottle.

08-28-2012 at 1:22 AM

What I commented on the news post as well: This change was much needed. It was quite crazy how I could spend 364 training sessions on one dog in a matter of.. 15 minutes or so? For such a cheap price as well. Sure, it was fun and it was useful. But it lacked all the realism this game is aiming for and it made many other items utterly useless. Another example, when I'm breeding many litters out of a female with one go, retiring fail pups and aiming for a certain look.. usually I'd have to buy magical rubber balls in order to get the female's health back up fast. Even that was rendered useless by the fish oil as it first was. Both or either of those examples sound a little fishy to anyone? ^^; It was too good to be true. Far too good. It was too cheap and easy. Ridiculously so.<br /> <br /> So.. no support. The fish oil needs a limit. Not only because of all the other risks mentioned in this thread, but for the sake of realism as well.

08-28-2012 at 12:41 AM

I thought these might be factors worth considering:<br /> <br /> -Unlimited fish oil uses removes the need for any energy companion and renders them useless. It wipes out the need for majority of Alacrity's companions.<br /> <br /> -Drastically lowers the price of existing items since they are also no longer needed: Any mood, health, and energy companions are all also rendered unnecessary to game play as a result.<br /> <br /> -Player profit per average user would rise dramatically by more than five times in a day, which would have an effect on the economy and would more than likely call for another inflation in the monthly shop in the end. The only limit in earning money on Alacrity with unlimited fish oil would be entirely based on how much time you spend feeding fish oil to a capped dog whilst entering trials, which can always be trained by someone else and thus makes it accessible to any player, including new users who cannot do so themselves yet.<br /> <br /> I find taking the route of game logic, game balance is important. If it were purely fun, this sort of fun would destroy the game you loved in a very short period of time, making it very temporary fun that equals to a gaining access to a power trip.<br /> <br /> The pros are very strong in emotional feel-good benefit of being able to get so much done in a short period of time, and invest more money into dog slots, but overall the cons seem to outweigh the benefits for the site (and in turn, the players).<br /> <br /> I enjoyed this brief moment of insanity as a user, but was deeply concerned as an administrator.<br /> <br /> I am hoping my point of view makes a degree of sense on the subject. It is not so much an argument, but a consideration to take in before posting further replies. <br /> <br /> There's no real need in the end for an item this powerful beyond luxury, even if we limit trials and training.<br /> <br /> I do agree that mass capped dog production is a problem, but there doesn't seem to be a realistic or appealing way of dealing with the situation that everyone has agreed on yet that wouldn't upset most players in one go.

08-27-2012 at 11:23 PM

The capped dogs will trial themselves out of lower levels and eventually out of trials completely. Once they get too high, they won't be worth trialling.<br /> Just like every other dog.<br /> <br /> And if 2-dog per trial isn't working, limit the total number of trials a dog can enter instead. If every dog can only enter 5 trials a day (like in Frisbee) there's less of everything. And if we can go back to filling trials with our own dogs, our only problem is trial snipers. With more trials being made so frequently, it shouldn't be a problem to enter dogs in 5 trials a day. That's not a lot and will go by fast, even with all those capped dogs. Fish Oil won't help much with trialling then.<br /> <br /> And if that doesn't work, the problem is the capped dogs themselves. Reduce the number of them and solve the trialling and Fish Oil problem.<br /> <br /> Now, before anyone says capped dogs aren't the problem here's my reason on why they COULD be the problem:<br /> People don't like trialling because they end up pitted against caps. They'll lose. So, to prevent the loss the don't trial.<br /> Since capped dogs are at the peak, they automatically produce capped puppies. Grab a Fox Cub and a few Insta-pups (Or a timewatch) and start selling.<br /> Training takes too long, why? TP is too high. People are breeding so many capped dogs but don't want to max them so they sell them cheaply and new players who don't understand the importance of training breed the untrained dog because it'd take WAY too long to max and they can't afford training. No one buys the puppies so they end up in the pound or retired. There's no <i>quality</i> low TP (Foundation or higher) dogs for them to learn with because the lower ones are more expensive. Why? Easier to train and the lines are more sensitive.<br /> That's why I think the Capped dogs could be the problem. Feel free to disagree, it's my opinion :P

08-27-2012 at 11:11 PM

<i>oh here's a good one it should have been limited from the start that way noone could be upset by a change that never happened instead of waiting a few days to apply the limit</i><br /> <br /> Carni stated in chat that this was a mistake on her part and it was meant to be this way from the beginning. That means you had a few free days of playing with it the way it wasn't meant to be and now you get to use the item as intended. <br /> <br /> <br /> In addition, if it comes from your account, it's going to be considered as your words because you choose to post it. If your friend in the same room as you has an account, perhaps they could join the discussion from their account as well. :3

08-27-2012 at 11:07 PM

Not necessarily Cupcake.<br /> <br /> By not limiting training, I could max a capped dog in a day if I had the sessions. That means per day, I could add another $60,000 to my bank account.<br /> <br /> So assuming I start with 1 already capped dog and 1 new capped dog a day to my horde every day for a week, at trialing 4 times a day per clay's rate for a total of 60k, I would make 1.68 million by the end of the week alone. It grows exponentially, because the next week I could add 7 more. So that 1.68 million will be nothing compared with the next week's 6.3 million. And that's only 4 times per day per dog, with the last day having only 14 trialing dogs.<br /> <br /> Versus if I just had 1 dog at that rate, I'd only make around 420k per week. <br />

08-27-2012 at 11:06 PM

Oh, I know they have lives. Before school started, I was doing that and I still have a life. But many of us have school or jobs or whatever that means we cannot be here to feed and train.

08-27-2012 at 11:05 PM

last one is not from me but some one in the room with me

08-27-2012 at 11:05 PM

oh here's a good one it should have been limited from the start that way noone could be upset by a change that never happened instead of waiting a few days to apply the limit

08-27-2012 at 11:03 PM

<b>they already limited the number of dogs you can enter in a trail to limit the amount of trials makes more than the fish oil worthless</b><br /> They limited it by two per account. Although it isn't against the rules to enter from your side, it is frowned upon... so you can fill a trial with four dogs, needing only one more to get the trial running.<br /> <br /> <b>Then limit the number of trials a dog can enter.</b><br /> That wouldn't help. You could just wait until the trials ran and then add more.. or if you are talking about limiting the number of trials a dog can enter per day? We already had a poll with that option and people disliked it, so it wasn't chosen. It wouldn't hurt just the capped dogs, it would hurt the little-TP dogs as well, which includes people making breadcrumbs (compared to a capped dog) with their customs, foundies, or similar-TP dogs.<br /> <br /> <b>Unlimited usage is fine for training.</b><br /> Not when people are able to max capped dogs in a matter of days it's not.<br /> <br /> <b>I have a life and I don't have time to sit on Alacrity all day and feed my dogs so I can train them.</b><br /> Other people do spend all day training, feeding dogs, etc just playing the game. Please don't imply that they don't have lives by this, it's kind of mean. :(

08-27-2012 at 10:54 PM

they already limited the number of dogs you can enter in a trail to limit the amount of trials makes more than the fish oil worthless

08-27-2012 at 10:52 PM

Then limit the number of trials a dog can enter.<br /> <br /> Unlimited usage is fine for training. If the economy is a problem, don't let the dogs trial so much.<br /> <br /> Edit: I have 700TS on this account alone. I have a life and I don't have time to sit on Alacrity all day and feed my dogs so I can train them. Most of my TS ends up being wasted. Fish oil helped with that a great deal. I don't enter trials at all.

08-27-2012 at 10:48 PM

Yup, right ZJ<br /> and if I keep cramming mmy fish oil in my capped dogs, I can fill up every single trial on the board. Then what? It aint against the rules for me to do so.

08-27-2012 at 10:43 PM

Clay, what you forget to add is how it also makes every other trialer unhappy because they cannot enter a trial without your capped dogs in it.<br /> <br /> And before someone suggests to enter a different trial, if he's trialing 7 dogs 40 times each a day, there are no other trials to enter. Especially since he's not the only one.<br /> <br /> So basically you're going to have a lot of unhappy people with lower TP dogs who now find them "worthless".<br /> <br /> Which would mean fun for a very select few and no fun for newbies and others who do not breed for or buy capped dogs.

08-27-2012 at 10:32 PM

Let me start off by saying that I love(d) Fish Oil, I thought it was great for training my dog. I have about 200TS per day, which isn't a lot compared to other users, and it allowed me to use all of my TS on my dog so that I didn't have to rush at rollover to use them all up.<br /> I can normally use all of my TS on my dog per day, so it wasn't giving me an advantage I didn't have before it was released, it just allowed me to go AFK for a bit and not have to worry about rushing at the end of the night.<br /> I was in support of it because it was great help... but I was alerted to a very big problem with the Fish Oil earlier this night... <i>capped dogs</i>. Letting it so that someone can cram 10's of bottles of Fish Oil on their capped dog to trial is a very big problem and a problem that would dig our bad-economy hole much deeper.<br /> In my example, I will say... someone uses... 5 bottles of Fish Oil on their capped, maxed dog per night. I know that you can easily use more than 5 bottles, but to keep it simple that's the number I'm sticking with. Generally speaking, capped dogs make approximately $15,000 per trial, if they win.<br /> Capped dog runs 4 times at rollover = $60,000. Not too big a deal...<br /> Capped dog gets fed 5 bottles (20 uses each = 200 energy with each bottle = 8 potential trials in one bottle), can now run <b>forty trials</b>.<br /> Capped dog makes $600,000 PLUS the $60,000 made at rollover. That is far too much. Remember that the dog will also gain energy throughout the day so the $ add-on will be much higher, also remember that you can <b>easily</b> cram more than 5 bottles per day on a dog.<br /> I have seven capped dogs (some are over-the-cap but let's pretend they're capped). If I were to give them each 5 bottles, same math, yadda yadda... that's <b>$4,620,000 in my hand</b>.<br /> <br /> I hope that this explanation will show the real danger of unlimited-use-Fish-Oil would have on the economy. Trust me when I say that I did love Fish Oil for training dogs, but it was not good for the economy once I thought about it.<br /> <br /> <br /> <b>EDIT:</b> Also keep in mind that I am not the only person on here with capped dogs. Take the above calculation and add on everybody who has a capped dog and uses Fish Oil on it. It's an explosion of money and the explosion creates a big crater and we all fall in the crater with our fish pills and capped dogs.<br /> <b>2ND EDIT:</b> I have heard many complaints about the current cost of bones on Ala, they are averaging out at about $100k each.<br /> The general rule for bones is that the more money people have, the more they are willing to spend on bones. If someone can sell a bone for $200k, the rest will sell them for $200k. If someone can <i>easily</i> make $4 million by spending $350 a couple times, bone prices will skyrocket, as will monthly shop prices, main shop prices, etc. <br /> The bone price in the monthly shop is currently $25,000 per bone, plus $5,000. That's 1/4 the price of bones right now.. so backgrounds average out at about $155,000 or so (6 bones ea.).<br /> Pretend the bones shoot up to $250,000 each and with sticking to the 1/4 price of bones in the monthly shop (not saying this would be the exchange rate in that case, I would have no idea what it would be), and $5,000 is 1/5th of the $25,000 per bone price.. the math is as follows:<br /> $250,000 / 4 = $62,500 per bone.<br /> +$12,500 to price<br /> Backgrounds = 6 bones.<br /> $62,500 x 6 = $375,000 + $12,500 = <b>$387,500</b> per background.

08-27-2012 at 10:15 PM

Aw, jeeze. Sorry, Ev.. you and Crev changing your names, what with your duplicate digit ID's, it has me all confused. <br /> <br /> Thank you, too, for your input.<br /> <br /> You can all rest assured that all of the suggestions posed in this thread will be taken under consideration and potential revisions to this item may be made. We simply patched a very serious problem in the most realistic manner we could and, as Ala is ever evolving, future changes can be made :>

08-27-2012 at 10:10 PM

The way I see it is that this item hasn't always been on this site. The short time it was available, think of it as a temporary freebie for training and trialing. By losing the item, you lose nothing that you didn't have a couple months ago. In fact, you're gaining an item that's still pretty useful and cool. Giving free energy (even only 3 times a day) is very generous of this item. Think about how many hours of sitting online and waiting that would be. It's a really great and cheaper alternative to energy companions. If you cannot afford an energy companion, then all you need is your 3x daily use of fish oil and it makes up for that lack. We should all be celebrating this new and extremely beneficial item, and sharing some laughs about the mistake that the original item was.

08-27-2012 at 10:09 PM

<i>Ev, all of your suggestions </i>... &lt;.&lt; I haven't posted yet?<br /> <br /> <br /> ANYWAYS! <br /> <br /> I am in full support of this item not having hte 3 per day limit. Frankly, it totally looses it's value then, and there is no real point using it to me. <br /> <br /> If trialing is an issue with it (though really, I don't see why since you have a 2 dog per trial limit & you pretty much can't show past gromit anyways) just make it so that a dog would be unable to trial if it had fish oil same day. As for training, it was much nicer to just dump my sessions on one dog at one time. Training is often tedious, and I'd rather not spend all of my free time doing that sort of drudgery. I'd rather pursue the forums or hang in chat. <br /> <br /> Really, it seemed to bring a lot more people back into being interested in Ala, and having <u>fun</u>. This is important, because I think everyone can agree that if a game is no longer fun to play, there is no point in really playing it anymore. I know from having watched chat since the fish oil came out that many people were very happy with it's release and usefulness. Personally I'm pretty glad I hadn't put in the bones to buy up more kennel slots. I can barely use what I have without the fish oil, so not point really. <br /> <br /> Maybe if it wasn't such a low and harsh limit. Unlimited is kind of broken, but 3 per day makes it entirely worthless. Or limiting the amount sold in shop per day (or that any one user could buy per day). That would be much better, and less detrimental to the game.

08-27-2012 at 9:55 PM

I use it to train my capped dogs and wouldn't be able to give TS to them without this items! I would like it to go back to the way it was!. <br /> <br /> And I only get 118 TS a day! And I have left overs! And am REALLY mad about my TS waste and I can never get the dog trained in time maybe we could have a limit of how much TS we can use to train a dog and I cant afford amurs or things like that I am very mad about this change.

08-27-2012 at 9:34 PM

Let's look at this objectively. <br /> <br /> A capped dog is about 9,000 TP. We'll round up.<br /> Each training session, provided you have the trainer perk and a scholar collar, gives you 1.6 boost in TP. <br /> That means it takes about 5,625 clicks to train a capped dog. <br /> Let's pretend you don't start off the day with 90 energy and have a gajillion training sessions, so that you could, potentially, max a dog in a single day with the use of fish oil. <br /> 5625 clicks, split into half (because each Fish Oil use has enough for two training clicks), is 2812--we'll round down. <br /> Each Fish Oil carton has 20 uses, meaning you could max a capped dog with the use of 141 cartons--we'll round up. <br /> 141 cartons x $350 = $49k and change. <br /> <br /> A capped dog will make that back in a single day of trialing at Dogbert/Scooby level. <br /> <br /> Give them more fish oil and they'll make *millions* in trial winnings each day. <br /> <br /> Please, tell me how this is not completely detrimental to game economy.