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I am just restarting the game after a long absence. It looks to me like a reset is very much over due, with many dogs at or near 100 sop in every breed (thats my assumption after reading a bit). I would love to see a reset. Is admin still "Jeff", if so, howdy!!

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posted by Kimoko
I am just restarting the game after a long absence. It looks to me like a reset is very much over due, with many dogs at or near 100 sop in every breed (thats my assumption after reading a bit). I would love to see a reset. Is admin still "Jeff", if so, howdy!!

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I also came back after a long long absence, but personally don't think we need a reset. It's great that a lot of people have worked so hard, for literal years to get their lines where they are. People have spent a lot of time, energy, not to mention $$$ to get where they are, and it doesn't seem fair to take that away from them.

The challenge is for people like us to get starter dogs or less desirables to create new lines and breed up to the competition. I've got several projects going on right now. One of them is with a breed that has topped out at 100 SOP. I've just been creating starters, breeding them, breeding some to SOP dogs etc. Creating my own lines. I know it'll take years, but that's what it takes for everyone.

The game isn't as active as it was years ago when we likely played, so there's going to be some unique challenges for us. I'm soloing all of my projects except for 1. I've seen some decent suggestions out there for people who are breeding from source dogs (such as source only shows, kind of like Owner-Handler shows IRL), but personally I wouldn't feel a reset is the way to go.

I "lived" through a couple resets. It does not change the quality of dogs, it just sets stats back so we can continue to build. Those new great dogs would still be the best dogs. A reset would show you more precisely what you have, as it would reveal actual areas that are not really 10s. I understand what you are saying though. I worked very hard to get where I was back then. I just feel a little blind right now as everything is the same and there are few players in my breed and even fewer players selling dogs. I hear you. I don't disagree. I am trying to find source dogs but it seems darn hard! Looks like we probably did play at the same time years ago but I actually predate you, I joined in 2005. OMG I'm old.

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Last edited by Kimoko on 12/1/2022 3:46:27 PM

You mention creating source dogs? How? Other than buying them from others?

I say I'm old all the time these days XD my body constantly reminds me of that fact lol.

Thanks for that information by the way, I've never personally lived through a reset so my automatic assumption was that all dogs are literally "reset" back to being starter quality. Perhaps that's where the whole old system vs new system thing came from?

And yes! If you go to "My Account" on the Miscellaneous menu on the right of the screen there will be a link where you can purchase Starter Dogs.
https://www.showdog.com/users/newstarters.aspx

Prices vary by breed, and I think those prices are influenced by genetic diversity and quantity of the dogs. One of the breeds I started in is completely bottlenecked. Almost everything is related to one kennel, and 2 of the 7 active breeders are the same person lol. So those dogs are like $20. But my main breed is over 1k to purchase starters because there are a LOT of them (even if most of them are also related to the same kennel it seems). Not sure how it is in Malamutes.

Welcome back by the way! I've seen a few people return :3 Hopefully you can find a groove to get in. It took me a little bit to re-understand and establish stuff for myself.

I'm pretty sure Jeff has abandoned the day to day of this website. There will be no reset.

But starters here: https://www.showdog.com/users/newstarters.aspx

THANK YOU!!

Yes when a reset was done, we were all pretty shocked to see those reds and yellows in stats but it was all relative , no dog got reset to worse than it really was, just the numbers went backward. It was actually cool to see what you were successful at and where you were weak when 10s turned into 7s or something. I enjoyed regrowing from there but I guess I'm weird.

OMG $1800 for one starter dog?????? and if I want it red, it's $3600? why in the world?

No.

The reaction to the last one a long time ago pretty much ensured it wouldn't happen again.

Honestly, a reset, or a disease that wipes out certain bloodlines wouldn't be a bad idea. Or some random shakeups from time to time.
Having a dog reach maturity, bred, & then learn it's sterile or only throws starter type pups for example.
Having a random illness cause dogs to be non-showable, too weak to breed, lose litters, for a set amount of time, etc.
It might not affect a whole kennel, just some.
A vet service could be part of the game, complete with annual immunizations & missing some could increase the odds of illness. Pups would be more susceptible as well.
Just tossing out ideas here.

(I'm also a returning player from years ago. Just couldn't get back into my original kennel so had to make a new one.)

With so few people in certain breeds, there is no way to really be top tier competitive, so while you can work & spend $, if you're not already #1, odds are, you never will be. Even for a day.

Personally I love the straightforwardness of this game and specifically that it's not complicated (beyond planning litters). I find source breeding plenty challenging lol.

I love the inventiveness behind those ideas, but not for a paid account. Or to balance them, be able to use a vet service to make a bitch immediately breedable again after a loss. Or allow for frozen specimins so you wont actually lose a line. I mostly don't like the idea of losing lines/dogs cuz I wouldn't be too happy losing actual time & money I spent. Real-life already does that to me enough lol.

Perhaps less permanent things like a dog can get sick or injured during a show and be excused, or high COI resulting in lower quality litters. Or even using a popular stud resulting in "stuck" traits that require a few generstions of new blood to move. Or dogs have difficulty producing as they get older (smaller litters, quality starts to dwindle etc)? I wouldn't mind a Health Testing aspect, as long as it wouldn't kill existing lines (clears and carriers at most, so you have to plan breeding to avoid affected scores - and you cant show affected dogs, but can breed them).

I know sickness was originally supposed to be part of the game but it was wholeheartedly voted against as people felt it would be way to stressful. With a lot of players having real dogs that have medical conditions/vet worries I think the consensus was that would be way too stressful so it was not added. I highly doubt it would be revisited.
Personally, think wiping out lines would be way to severe. Some people spend years developing their lines and to have them “wiped out” and random would be devastating even if they are fake dogs. Now something like message saying “Your dog is feeling a little under the weather, and will not be able to participate in shows for the next 3 days” or whatever would be a bit more reasonable, but once again I don’t think this topic will be revisited as it was already decided on in the past.
There are other goals to reach besides being number 1 in a certain breed though! Focusing on certain traits, color breeding, obtaining gold merit badges, GChs, making top current dog in a breed (still possible even if you only dabble- I know a basic kennel who’s amazing and will usually have one dog in one of my breeds, and without fail that one dog they show is usually on the top of the charts. I’m sure it’s similar with the other breeds they dabble in I just don’t keep track as I am not in those other breeds usually).
Color breeding and trait breeding is a favorite of mine to work on as I feel it helps the breed and also it’s also something you can do regardless of what other kennels in your breed are doing.

I have to say I too wish there had always been "frozen" samples that we could save long term. When I restarted, all my old kennel was dead but I am happy to see a very large proportion of my breed actually goes back to my original dogs so I guess I didn't lose anything and gained from all the work done by others with my original dogs behind their own. I think I was one of the people that did not want "sick" dogs in the game as I was (at the time) dealing with some pretty horrible things with my own dogs. About the only breeding thing I think would be of help is to have the stats move out in decimals so we can see what is what. Like a 10 might actually be a 9.96 or it might be a 10.4. Then again, that is the challenge, the guessing and proving and deciding which to breed and how to breed. I still love this game.

I'm not sure how feasible it is from a work effort perspective but I see a potential in expanding the traits we see.

Head, for instance, has several components. Ears, bite, muzzle, eye set&shape can all be important elements for some breeds.

Body is not specifically mentioned at all. It has width and depth (well sprung ribs in some breeds, depth in others - think Bulldog vs greyhound) and length (not relative to leg length - loin). This would be a breakdown of TNB. Tail - set and carriage - might be added as it is also not specifically mentioned currently, although perhaps implied in the TNB number also.

I guess basically how this might look is that the trait "Head" might be replaced with Ears, Eyes, Teeth, muzzle&skull, and so on. A 10 Head might become a 8 Muzzle&Skull, a 5 Ears, a 7 Bite, a 6 Eyes. Muzzle&Skull might be the old Head with the other elements added at near "starter" values.

Perhaps a "Colour" value might be added to. In many breeds the typical common colours have become rare or extinct - these are often the genetically dominant colours. Not sure how that might work. Just a thought . . .

Showshine I would already consider an offshoot of Temperament - a dog that growls at or pulls away from the judge would not be very showshiny I would think. It is also connected to dog-handler relationship (Owner or consistent handler = greater showshine).

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Last edited by gaylanstudio on 12/4/2022 12:54:56 PM

I think admin probably just rolled off a chair and fell into a ball. LOL I remember the great color genetics prep. I did malamutes (with help from a friend) and it was a hell of a lot of work. As it was, we had to keep it simple. It resulted in some loss of "dominant" colors because every one addition to darken or lighten a color, required input into hundreds of codes. I recall that we were going to add domino factor but it wuold have resulted in an increase of 100% on the already massive codes. So I am willing to bet adding all the things you mention, or even one of them, would be a HUGE undertaking. Fun to think about though.

Oh I remember the color prep! I worked on Collies, but fortunately colors for them (what we knew at the time anyway) was extremely straightforward. So they were no doubt much easier to deal with than Malamutes lol.

It's probably just luck with popular/less popular colors. Colors can become extinct when focusing on a dog's quality rather than colors. If you get a popular stud that's Merle, you're going to end up with a lot of Double Merle's after a while, which is something I noticed happened with Cardigans (seems almost all of them are Double Merle). I remember when prepping for Collies one of the things we had to find was how popular the color was IRL. At least for me, I ended up speaking with someone in the AKC to get statistics about frequency of colors in registries.

I didn't know about the health thing already being shot down. On some other games I've played and in the Dog Art world, health testing is something of a staple. I'm so used to it that it doesn't even phase me anymore lol. Even when my dogs were going through health stuff, but that's just me personally.

Still do love the idea of being able to "freeze" specimens, and having a random "your dog wasn't feeling well and was excused from the show" might not be that hard to implement?

We have the percentages of RL color occurance in Malamutes. As it happened, color inheritance was something I found interesting so I had some research and I also showed and bred them in RL so I knew which colors were predominant. That of course, was because of exactly the opposite of what you mentioned. In Mals, in RL, people tend to breed away from red or solid white and blue is extremely rare. Some would say reds are rare but that is not true. There are fewer of them because they had a bit of a stigma (and still do) with breeders, who then influenced judges to also avoid them. So when I say my friend Majesticmals and I did some spectacular things with our reds, it is saying a lot. I'm rambling now. lol

Methinks one/some of us has to learn programming and make another game. Lol

I really enjoy the text-based way this game is with the emphasis on showing rather than all the realistic stuff about breeding like medical, nutrition, health, and care needs. I've also suggested frozen semen as well but I can see why it was never added.

I'd rather this game stay the way it is than a bunch of random new aspects of it which would totally affect gameplay.

It’s fun to think of ideas but I do agree with lynx that I’m honestly happy with what the game is already. Always some new goal to work towards if you want, whether trait breeding, color breeding, source breeding, show related, merit related etc.

The only thing I would really like to see is some culling - of the judges and the handlers.