Request for Livestock 'Care' Features

[FaithfulToadd]

Greetings, one and all!
Dear J&L: Please introduce more ways to interact with and care for animals.

You may have seen similar topics here before, but most of those focus on adding some punishing mechanic, e.g. 'disease' or 'unhappiness', causing more or less severe debuffs to a herd, thereby imposing additional quality grind, or restrictions on breeding.

My suggestion differs in that I want this purely for LARPy reasons. I am not asking for more tedium. But, to gently encourage using these new features, perhaps some small, flat bonuses wouldn't go amiss.



This idea is proposed somewhat loosely, to avoid getting bogged down in details, but in the interest of sparking discussion I'll mention a few specifics. Consider:

- An animal brush, used for brushing livestock. Causes them to play a special 'happy dance' animation and sound, depending on species. Gives a boost to either milk quantity or milk quality, to encourage brushing animals right before milking them.

- A new 'Treat' category of items for hand-feeding: Sugar cubes and carrots for horses, wheat seeds for chickens, etc. Hand-feeding could provide a minor, temporary boost to an applicable stat.

- Horseshoes: Changes the sound of hooves on different terrain. Imparts a temporary boost to a horse's Endurance value?

- A 'Pet animal' emote. Bonus points if it also works on certain wildlife.

- New experiences, like Udder Shudder, for interacting with animals in various ways including petting, slaughter and hand-feeding.

Finally, I propose that all boosts gained from giving an animal TLC disappear after a short time, and are never inherited by offspring.

TL;DR: Please give us more positive, and optional, ways to interact with our herd animals. I spend a good chunk of my game hours in the animal pens, and it would be really nice to pet my cows, give treats to my horses, and scratch my goats' chins. Again, this is solely in the interest of LARP - I don't mean to suggest a list of mandatory chores.

Please reply with your best ideas for animal interaction.

Edit: Fixed broken image link.

[vipes]

- An animal brush, used for brushing livestock. Causes them to play a special 'happy dance' animation and sound, depending on species. Gives a boost to either milk quantity or milk quality, to encourage brushing animals right before milking them.

- A new 'Treat' category of items for hand-feeding: Sugar cubes and carrots for horses, wheat seeds for chickens, etc. Hand-feeding could provide a minor, temporary boost to an applicable stat.

If it raises animal/product quality then it's not "optional", any more than digging for higher quality stone or hunting higher quality animals is "optional." This would just make animal tending even more tedious than it already is.

Horseshoes: Changes the sound of hooves on different terrain. Imparts a temporary boost to a horse's Endurance value?

- A 'Pet animal' emote. Bonus points if it also works on certain wildlife.

- New experiences, like Udder Shudder, for interacting with animals in various ways including petting, slaughter and hand-feeding.

These are cool suggestions though. Maybe horseshoes can make a horse go through thicket too like someone suggested in the discord.

[FaithfulToadd]

Thanks for the reply!

If it raises animal/product quality then it's not "optional", any more than digging for higher quality stone or hunting higher quality animals is "optional."

I suspect this view is only popular because a subset of players want to optimize every facet of the game, and will go to great pains to do so. Suppose TLC only gives a flat bonus of 2 points of quality. Would most industrial ranchers feel, 6 months into a wipe, that such a mechanic is mandatory when they already have Q150+ or Q200+ livestock? Many credos already give better bonuses, and lots of people don't bother with them because even the really good bonuses are not worth the tedium of doing a credo they aren't interested in.

That said, the only reason I suggest a boost to product quality is to encourage and reward people who care for their animals. I would be entirely satisfied if these 'Care' additions affected quality in no way at all.

Edit: Minor edits for clarity.

[willownezz]

I love the ideas. I am always down for more interactions with animals and some QoL stuff!

[FaithfulToadd]

I love the ideas. I am always down for more interactions with animals and some QoL stuff!

Thanks for replying!

Come to think of it, we can't shoo animals while holding a lifted object. But we can emote while holding objects. Perhaps we could have a 'Whoop' or 'Yodel' emote (complete with sound effect) that 'pushes' livestock, the opposite of the 'Whistle' emote.

[Hasta]

Those zoo furry ponybros got here as well, I see.

[jorb]

It would be neat to be able to interact with them more! Would be neat if they could give you quests and such!

[Hasta]

It would be neat to be able to interact with them more! Would be neat if they could give you quests and such!

Dude are you high rn?

No, it wouldn't .

Please don't.

[AliExpressMerchant]

It would be neat to be able to interact with them more! Would be neat if they could give you quests and such!

xD That was some good weed

[Barbamaus]

The issue with those small bonuses is that people who use bots will have them 24/7, turning them into a bigger advantage than you think.