Breeding and Evolution Cost Changes

[AldanAlx]

Summary

We have been monitoring community sentiments and breeding data since the new cost of breeding was implemented as per CUIP-017 voting and we concluded that the current costs are a big obstacle in our path to growth. As time is a rare comodity in the crypto space, we think that we need to react now, before it becomes a bigger issue.

Motivation

CUIP-017 proposal, while correctly addressing the community request of increasing the breeding and evolution fees, came with an unfortunately bad balance to UNIM/RBW which in turn caused unim sinking to breeding to reach all time lows in the past 2 weeks. We consider that the best path forward to protect UNIM and set a good foundation for potential growth would be to incentivize breeders to use as many breeding points as possible, especially breeding fully to all 8 breeding points.

Details

After CUIP-017 breeding/evolution costs went live, even though we have an ongoing breeding event, breeding numbers decreased by 70% while UNIM sinking by 50%.

Considering our economy depths, we believe that a dynamic RBW fee to breeding is a liability to UNIM sinking, especially as RBW emissions were tightened from both staking and game loops. As of now someone that wants to breed has to sell UNIM to cover for the RBW portion of the cost.
We consider that with our proposed costs, RBW sinked through breeding will stay pretty similar with current numbers, since we expect a major increase in daily breeding numbers.

To incentivize sinking through breeding we propose to change breeding and evolution costs to a more balanced approach.

Conclusion

As you can see, UNIM is going through a lot of downward pressure coming from the current breeding costs. Since RBW has its set role in the RMP and is spendable on land upgrades, UNIM relies on breeding, an aspect where RBW shouldnt weigh as much.
With native delegation coming, it is crucial to have a healthy system for potential growth. UNIM and unicorn utility are strongly connected, cant have one without the other, hence the need to correct the current situation.

The voting system will be Single choice and will have only 2 available options:

Yes (Change to proposed cost)
No (Keep current cost)

EDIT:
Proposal was updated to final form following comunity feedback.

Summary of changes:

1. After carefull considerations, we lowered the UNIM portion in a balanced manner that incentives both regular breeding to lower scale of BP and quality breeding for the upper scale of BP.
2. We added a 25 RBW “quality breeding fee” per parrent to the upper half of the BP scale.
3. After analizing the EVO data we noticed a roughly 25% decrease in EVO numbers. While this isn’t an issue per se - since in current utility babies act as a “secondary supply” for adults - based on comunity sentiment and the need to have a secondary stronger source of sinking, we lowered the UNIM Evolution portion to 6500 while keeping RBW cost at 150.
4. Following lgNanessa’s review, changed the proposal options to Yes (Change) and No (Keep).

We strongly believe that the proposed system, along with the other existing incentives tied to our economy depth, will bring a healthier relationship between NFTS value-UNIM value-RBW value. Our concern was never regarding assets USD price, but the need to set up a proper foundation for future growth, where none of the ecosystem elements are overstrained and will naturally pick each other up. As a beneficial side effect, in the event of not reaching our team’s projected short-mid term growth, the system can sustain the existing player base for much longer.

[AldanAlx]

Comunity input so far:
-users mostly agreed to proposed cost or suggested a 10%-20% reduction in unim cost
-decrease evo cost too by 10-20%
-make more appealing cost from 5x to 3x BP
-most users stressed they breed less/stoped
-more relevant data from keizer (thanks for that)
-incentivize more the casual breeders
-Lg should step in and handle the breeding fees without DAO intervention
-decrease unim but keep an incremental RBW cost of about 50% of current values

[Neviolo]

I am totally behind this proposal, all the concerns expressed by Aldan are real and a major barrier for UNIM sinking via breeding, the biggest sink for UNIM.

I was breeding quite a lot before new breeding changes, even going full to 0/8 breeding points in case of double+ mythic or high stats.

After new breeding costs, it makes no sense for me to go beyond 3-4 breeding points, no matter how valuable the parent is. The RBW increase beyond 5/8 breeding points is extremely high, on top of the UNIM scaling.

Basically, there is a huge barrier now to spend beyond 4/8 breeding points, exactly where the biggest chunk of UNIM was sunk.

It’s a shame that this barrier came exactly when breeding is smooth and we have an active leaderboard that incentivise it. Or maybe why we don’t have a total collapse on breeding…

I am sinking now 75% less UNIM via breeding, that’s a FACT.

[cuppy]

I suggest changing breeding costs to 500 unim +50rbw, 1000 unim +50rbw, 2250 unim +50rbw, 3500 unim +50rbw, 5000 unim +50rbw, 7500 unim +50rbw, 10000 unim +50rbw, 15000 unim +50rbw

and changing evolution costs to 6000 unim + 100rbw

I think the team should make these changes immediately without a proposal.

[ForsakeN]

Agree with the proposal & proposed new costs.

As a small/mid tier breeder, I had to make a complete stop to breeding with the disbalanced RBW/UNIM ratio even though I have a few doubles I would surely would like to breed to 8 points.
We have had a couple weeks of data after the last changes & can see the issue with ratio. DAU being where it is, we simply do not have the luxury of time to wait too long between changes.
New entrants look at the utility token when entering a game as that is majorly linked to any ROI calculations, ergo, we cannot afford to have it in freefall due to lack of breeding. The given proposal provides a flat 50% to both UNIM & RBW from the old values (before CUIP017), which I feel is a balanced & necessary update.

[KeizerMc]

im actually agreeing to this more.

One of the main concerns of the casual players is that they need more unim. here is the different of @AldanAlx 's proposal to the current one. check the difference

it barely touches the UNIM side of things. this will still not sit on casuals specially those who wanted to expand from cart 6 like i’ve mentioned in my previous document

Docx Data

20230525 Breeding Analysis.docx

Xlsx Data

20230525 Breeding_Analysis_Data.xlsx

if you looked back to that table . there is a decrease in of about 50 unim and an increase to the other. just playing around the UNIM values. it will still NOT be seen as a solution for the unim concern

from what I posted and what I saw from Cuppy’s I feel like Cuppy’s suggestion makes more sense than what is proposed.

casuals will still not breed as we are still not solving unim utility if you keep these numbers. compared to cuppy’s it was more acceptable if you compared it on both original value and the current

for reference this was my suggestion:

please further explain the thought process on this . really appreciate the input!

Thanks!

[ForsakeN]

Just to clarify on the UNIM part in original proposal, it is clearly just made to round off the numbers to be easily memorable rather than referring a chart every time you wish to breed. The proposal focuses on RBW & not UNIM, but happy to see possible solutions for UNIM tiering as well

[timetraveler]

I am one of those people who pretty much stopped breeding as well. I will say I do plan on breeding for Milestone 3 in a week. But only to complete milestones. Any and all breeding under current system will be minimal in future. Only using a few points of unicorns. I do see prices of Unicorn floor improving. If this continues to a level where it makes sense to breed more I will. This proposal would likely encourage me to breed more if passed. The focus at the moment should be breeding better Unicorns to compete in game loops. I believe this proposal would encourage players to sink more UNIM breeding. I believe the balance of increased breeding would sink more RBW in the long run then our current breeding system.

[inb4emotion]

At the current exchange rate, the current max RBW cost is about 4.7K UNIM. Thats a good reduction (20%) , but at 5 BP it’s just over 1k UNIM which is about 17% reduction.

This reduction is designed towards helping out the max breeders more than the min breeders. To account for this ideally we reduce more UNIM in the middle or ladder down the RBW.

[ArtToRich]

You could also suggest breeding six points at least with the fourth booster
seven points with the fifth
and eight points only with the sixth booster
In this way to further stimulate the production of boosters

[KeizerMc]

you see this is the average from the timeline

I would agree this will be an ease in the RBW front. We have to also find out why users are not breeding. and based from the average numbers . you also need unim to be decreased. that is why i said it makes much more sense to have cuppy’s UNIM values instead of what is proposed because these numbers should encourage more casuals to breed for their own utility.

[Kice]

I have a question, how many unicorns and lands do you think is appropriate?

[Segarion]

Another breeding price change proposal. As i have stated in all prior proposals of this type, I don’t want to do this every month. I implore LG to develop a dynamic pricing system that is relatively free of manual intervention. Something robust where prices are fully or partially governed by demand and not guesses by some.

[enillyddjens]

Supporting this. Costs are subjects of change tho. Worth discussing.

[lightman]

I think many people stop breading after the last breading cost increase. If this proposal passes, I think I can go back to try to make good unicorns for jousting.

[wasper]

I like the fact that the changes are not too drastic and I like this proposal. I was expecting something completely different like a revert to the old breeding costs. I can also see people not being happy about the UNIM staying the same cost as the current cost so to a lot of people this won’t be satisfying. What do you think about a more balanced approach where both currency are being changed but we still keep some of the changes. Hardly anyone breeds to the last breeding points anyways. What do you guys think about something like this?

[GoliathRulz]

So, I am a relatively new player (within the last 3 months as most know) and I really struggled to try to breed anything this milestone. My breeding slowed to a crawl and I barely made the milestone. I only did thanks to some really lucky breeding to get some of my corns finally above the 1350 line. The cost change was too extreme as can be seen by the data and we need to fix this before it becomes a real problem… like ASAP. Like before the next milestone event starts if that is possible.

I think the proposal is much more balanced and would also assume that we will continue to monitor the data and see if the change needs to be moved further.

I will say, at current costs, I have no plans to breed out. The prices are insane for trying breed out meh-corns. Also, at current costs the costs are still too high for breeding anything beyond the 3rd point. I personally will not do it, and if you want more new blood into the community playing you need to incentivize them. At present there is no incentive to breed out, which means less play, less gamers and less positive vibes.

Also, it is clear, the whales are not breeding or burning. The current path was intended to burn RBW/UNIM but it only burns new money. So, basically the current path makes everything cost more and essentially forces new player just to grind more to try to get somewhere. It is clear that the whales will continue to hold their UNIM/RBW until … something… not sure what, but in my opinion it is a price increase so they can dump it is the only motivation they have. Breeding cost increases will not fix that.

[swmartin19]

All for the proposed changes!

I would also prefer LG just made the changes over requiring governance vote. I think RBW cost per parent could be higher for the proposed cost… say 60-75 RBW. But not a hill I would die on.

[kora]

One comment I have regarding the UNIM values is the a new player will be trying to get their UNIM through the Gathering Cart (GC). If they upgraded their GC to level 5 (since that can be done with buying materials on RMP), they can expect to get about 95 UNIM per trip when using berries and a matching corn. To breed a pair of 8 point unicorns would take them on average 10.5 days to collect enough UNIM. If they were a recipient of the corn drops, generally they got a unicorns with 8 and 5 breeding points. That means they need 4.5k UNIM (which a lvl 5 GC jackpot still covers) and that would take on average roughly 47.5 days. Then, if they want to evolve that baby, 7.5k UNIM (which a lvl 5 GC jackpot does not cover) will take them 79.5 days. That means the UNIM they get is not used for anything else, like crafting materials for upgrades, boosters, or questing.
How much of a grind should getting to their first breed be?
Is that the impression that new players coming into the ecosystem without entering discord should have for the game? Would that impression be healthy for growth?

With the first breeding proposal change it set a precedence for the DAO to set the prices moving forward. Bickering over exact values should not be what the DAO should be used for. The next proposal I’d like on breeding would be “Keep current; Lower current (LG Calibrates); Increase current (LG Calibrates)”. That would give the team the flexibility to adjust as needed depending on market data. The proposals should instead focus on what market reactions should trigger what pricing levers.

@KeizerMc The uptick in breeding coincides with the LG announcement of the Season of Advancement Season of Advancement Event 2023. Spring has sprung and flowers are in… | by Laguna Games | Apr, 2023 | Medium so it may not have been entirely a reaction to the proposal. But it does show that people were willing to breed heavily with the old values given the proper incentives.

[AldanAlx]

Thank you all for all the inputs so far . We are definetly on same page regarding the fact that LG has the relevant data and have to act on their own without DAO intervention, but while thats not happening we cannot let things go out of hand.

Going forward, I will give the current form two more days for debates, then I will adjust the numbers to their final form based on the feedback received. It will go for council review on 30th and if it passes hopefully LG can implement the changes in 2.2. We cannot afford the luxury of waiting more .