Dog Aging / Running proper errands

[lunarwolf4]

Sooo considering that we will be getting breeding soon which involves dogs being born, and growing up, how about adding life spans and aging to dogs? Dogs are born, they grow into adults and eventually become elders. When that happens, if you wish to avoid them "dying" you can simply add a "Retire" option for us to use when the time comes to say goodbye to a dog. I think that would make managing dogs a lot better as it will allow us to cycle through the dogs we have and the ones up for hire/breeding, instead of just having a loooot of them (I am not sure what the max number of dogs is at the moment). It would encourage if not make breeding and hiring new dogs vital because no dog lives forever. Sooner or later you would need fresh blood because the old ones are no longer capable of running. You could also add that for example, skills become weaker with dog's age. The older the dog, the less frequent or effective their skill is and maybe their fault becomes more frequent due to old age. That would make difficult, but important races even more challenging. Should I risk putting a younger, less experienced dog into the race, or risk by putting an older dog which has a TON of experience but is old and still may not run well??

On the other hand, one other idea I had, that I mentioned in my review some time ago, is having real errands to do for money and maybe some other rewards which could be added as you further develop the game. For now, you could have small errands like delivering mail, transporting a person or supplies or something and you would get a smaller or bigger money prize depending on the difficulty of the tiral. The way it would work is the same as with the races except that it wouldn't be a race and there wouldn't be other mushers trying to beat you. You wuld just be mushing your dogs for lenghts of a typical race (short, long, medium), facing everything from obstacles to winds, etc. Just like you do in a standard race. The "Rival" that you plan to add could be added here as well, as a, well...rival! That would be a great pass time activity, a great way to try out new dogs and a great way of training yourself as a musher, practicing managing more than 3 dogs in a sled, etc. Plus, it's another expandable feature, meaning you could build on it in the future and add tons more to it. :))))

I seriously hope I ain't asking for too much. These are just some things I have had on my mind ever since I bought the game a couple of months ago, but never got down to submitting my ideas. :)) And yeah, if this has been mentioned already, my aplogizies.

[AuthorOfSwords]

I think that's actually a pretty cool idea. It makes a lot of sense, too. Just to clarify, would retiring a dog make it just kinda hang out in your kennel in retirement, or would it remove the dog from your kennel? It sounds like it'd be the latter, but I'm just wondering. Anyway, the only thing I don't like about the suggestion is that I don't want my dogs to die or go away, I like my little immortal doggies, haha,
However, if an aging system like that were to be implemented, I like the idea of having older dogs have lower performance. A simple life span with three stages could work well, the stages being puppy, adult, and elder. When a dog reaches the elder age, their skills could lower then. Again, my only problem is that I don't like the idea of my dogs dying.

Errands would also be a pretty cool thing to be able to do. The only problem for me though, is that being in League 7 for a while, I've now got tons and tons of money ($100,000 or so) that I don't really have a use for. It's more than enough to cover my monthly dues and I don't think I'm going to be getting many more dogs soon. So doing errands for money makes sense, but I don't need to make any money. Since the game is, at this point, still in development, I'm sure they're going to add elements to the game to make it so players don't end up with a bunch of money they can't really spend. When that's no longer an issue, I think that errands like that would actually work out pretty well!

[lunarwolf4]

I wouldn't mind them being gone as that is a normal thing to happen, but maybe they could make a separate kennel or page where you could take a look at your past dogs who you retired. :)))
And dogs wouldn't die actually. You would simply retire them so they could spend their remaining time relaxing. :) That's my idea. To have that instead of dogs dying. :D

As for the errand things, it could have many kinds of rewards. :D That's the good thing about it. It can be tailored and expanded in many different ways. :D

[i4icrg]

yeah that sounds cool

[Shawn]

The retiree kennel would be a must have for the dog aging idea. Overall, I like the idea of breeding/buying new generations. It would likely add more depth to the mid-game. You would want to add mix-breeds to the game before further pushing more players toward the breeding option.

I suppose the errands would be a low risk place to check out your new pups and learn their quirks.

[lunarwolf4]

Exactly. :D It's a very flexible and expandable feature. In the future it could be used for a variety of things, and the rewards could be different depending on the task and stuff. But most importantly it would be a great way of practicing before going into races. :D