Actually, what the third random factor does is "drags" the new horse's stats toward the mean (on a sufficiently high umber of breeding trials). So yeah if you start off with 2 good horses all odds are the newborn will be worthless.
Weird design choice as it makes breeding worthless unless it is to get all horse types, not good horses.
For example, let's say you have 2 horses which are 90% of the maximum value in all 3 stats. (rare!), and let's say the random value is linearly distributed too.
The odds of getting an even better horse through breeding are:
Per stat: 1/10
All 3 stats: 1/1000!
Given that it requires nearly 2 gold per breeding (2 golden carrots), that is a LOT of time and gold.
True, but the OP is incorrect as you would have to check 1000 wild horses as well to get a better one in all three stats, given your assumptions, so actually it's not easy to just find a better one. Breeding good horses makes you almost guaranteed to get a decent horse but unlikely to get a better one. The system is actually a passable model for a foal's characteristics given its parents. What the system misses from the real world is that selective breeding (generally) gradually changes the average over time as well.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
They should take a step from pokemon and release an item that "locks" a statistic when breeding so it does not change.
Better yet, we have gold, iron and diamond horse armor right? Give them another usage, make it so if a parent is wearing diamond armor their speed stat is passed down 100%. Iron can be health and gold can be jump, but limit it to only one effect per pair of parents.
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Drah_Werewolf
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This is why games suck these days.. People get so worked up because they have to actually play the game to actually be good at it. Then the developers get tired of changing everyone's diaper & end up Nerf-ing their game for their children. Really sucks for us hardcore gamers but I guess we are no longer the majority demographic. It really does suck..
Horse breeding right now I feel they implemented for RP's & Single Player's. Not for mechanic junkies.. -.- I'm sure they'll give ya'll your little horse breeding update in the future but for now you're not important & the quicker you accept that understanding, the quicker you'll be able to enjoy the game to it's fullest once again.
True, but the OP is incorrect as you would have to check 1000 wild horses as well to get a better one in all three stats, given your assumptions, so actually it's not easy to just find a better one. Breeding good horses makes you almost guaranteed to get a decent horse but unlikely to get a better one. The system is actually a passable model for a foal's characteristics given its parents. What the system misses from the real world is that selective breeding (generally) gradually changes the average over time as well.
Actually it is, I ran around for 30 minutes to multiple plains with horses, and in 10 herds I found a horse that ran 13.9 blocks per second with 27 hp and 4.5 block jump height. It takes me more than 2 days to breed a horse with at least 13bps speed from horses that run 13bps, I would be lucky if the other two stats managed to come out better than the parents, in most cases it is worse and makes breeding even more frustrating because every stat group is randomized.
The problem is you don't need to check 1000 wild horses, because there is always going to 5 or so with great stats and easily obtainable in 30 minutes compared to breeding those same stats which takes 3 weeks starting with ok/decent stat horses.
One thing to keep in mind, the horses are really still in "beta-stage" development.
While I totally agree with the OP, the horses do still need tweaking, it is important to remember that they are not fully implemented yet.
The plan is to have a "tiered" system for breeding, so that breeding different tiers produces different results. This tier system is still in development and was not released along with the horses themselves so look for it in future updates.
For those who have been playing since the alpha days, you may recognise this pattern. For example, when cows were first introduced, they only produced leather, you could not eat them. It was only in a later update (and possibly through player involvement) that steak was introduced.
You may also remember the days when you had to kill the sheep to get wool, though why lambchops have never been implemented is beyond me. Or when eggs were first introduced, they hatched fully grown chickens.
While I am really glad the OP has brought this to public attention, as this may be an oversight on the part of the developers, (or may be only part of a formula that will be introduced later to even things out), please understand that the horses and horse breeding are still a work in progress and are essentially at a fairly early stage of development.
At the least, the average should be an equivalent horse, not an even worse one. I don't want to have to donate almost all my newly born foals to the great rainbow factory in the sky.
Did you ever stop to consider that there is no better cow? You can't get a better cow if there is no better cow.
Regardless, the whole point of horse breeding is so that you can selectively breed a better horse. The whole point of breeding other animals is so you don't run out. The problem here is that the horse breeding system acts too much like the regular animal system when the normal animal breeding system would not allow you to breed a better horse.
I think you mean that's what you want, how are you gonna just say that's the whole point, you didn't make the game you can't decide the point.
I think you mean that's what you want, how are you gonna just say that's the whole point, you didn't make the game you can't decide the point.
Apparently your apathy has contributed nothing to this conversation or your knowledge of the game.
If you have read Dr. Zhark's (the developer of the horses) wiki you will find that breeding a better horse is indeed the whole point of the breeding system.
As for your "OMG Who the hell cares" video, if you don't care then why are you trolling this thread?
If you cannot contribute something useful to this conversation, either pro or con, please refrain from posting anything at all.
Apparently your apathy has contributed nothing to this conversation or your knowledge of the game.
If you have read Dr. Zhark's (the developer of the horses) wiki you will find that breeding a better horse is indeed the whole point of the breeding system.
As for your "OMG Who the hell cares" video, if you don't care then why are you trolling this thread?
If you cannot contribute something useful to this conversation, either pro or con, please refrain from posting anything at all.
Raven
***
I contributed something useful, my opinion, it'd be a pretty dumb topic if there was no debating, I see no difference between my opinion and the op's opinion
I contributed something useful, my opinion, it'd be a pretty dumb topic if there was no debating, I see no difference between my opinion and the op's opinion
That's because you're an idiot troll.
Let's compare contributions. OP's opinion is based on carefully recorded and analyzed testing of 900+ bred horses, while also comparing those results to horses found in a 5000 block area. After all that testing, data, and analysis, OP correctly concluded that horse breeding, as currently implemented, is not an effective, efficient, or realistic method of acquiring a horse with excellent stats. So, he has now suggested that horse breeding to be altered so that it can be made a useful game mechanic.
You posted a four second clip from Family Guy and then said nothing other than self-fulfilling nonsense. "It's in the game, so it's intended" is neither a useful argument (because even if it is intended to work in this manner, it is unquestionably sub-optimal for breeding to be a less effective means to acquire a good horse), nor is it a rational response to the argument presented (obviously OP is expressing his own opinion on the matter by advocating for change. Arguing that the game mechanic to be working as intended is not a coherent response to someone saying "I think the current game mechanic should be changed).
You seem to think that your spiteful ignorance is somehow the equivalent of OP's carefully acquired knowledge. It is not.
Let's compare contributions. OP's opinion is based on carefully recorded and analyzed testing of 900+ bred horses, while also comparing those results to horses found in a 5000 block area. After all that testing, data, and analysis, OP correctly concluded that horse breeding, as currently implemented, is not an effective, efficient, or realistic method of acquiring a horse with excellent stats. So, he has now suggested that horse breeding to be altered so that it can be made a useful game mechanic.
You posted a four second clip from Family Guy and then said nothing other than self-fulfilling nonsense. "It's in the game, so it's intended" is neither a useful argument (because even if it is intended to work in this manner, it is unquestionably sub-optimal for breeding to be a less effective means to acquire a good horse), nor is it a rational response to the argument presented (obviously OP is expressing his own opinion on the matter by advocating for change. Arguing that the game mechanic to be working as intended is not a coherent response to someone saying "I think the current game mechanic should be changed).
You seem to think that your spiteful ignorance is somehow the equivalent of OP's carefully acquired knowledge. It is not.
I honestly can't understand you, but yet again Who The Hell Cares. All I basically understood was that you're disagreeing with my opinion which is fine by me because everyone's entitled to their own opinion
Horse stats are stupid and pointless regardless. Horses are too god damn complicates for this game, so complicated mojang crapped itself half way through, scooped up that crap, and implemented it as the breeding mechanic.
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if it was too hard for you to find me...
It's funny how the most you analyze Minecraft's gameplay mechanics the most you realize they're so broken they often accomplish the opposite of their intended result like they have no clue about gameplay principles at all. Thanks to the OP for contributing some science. I've got nothing else so I'll show myself out.
I measured the speed of my horses by measuring the number of cobblestone blocks that a hopper delivers in the time it takes for the horse to run 64 metres(- the time it takes for a redstone signal to travel the 64 blocks and switch on the timer). Unfortunately it's a pretty crude and imprecise measurement.
Well yeah I have one of these systems activated by tripwire (I have a 1-second redstone clock and a 150 block stretch, but thats in my creative world) but I mean a *simple* way.
This is why games suck these days.. People get so worked up because they have to actually play the game to actually be good at it. Then the developers get tired of changing everyone's diaper & end up Nerf-ing their game for their children. Really sucks for us hardcore gamers but I guess we are no longer the majority demographic. It really does suck..
Horse breeding right now I feel they implemented for RP's & Single Player's. Not for mechanic junkies.. -.- I'm sure they'll give ya'll your little horse breeding update in the future but for now you're not important & the quicker you accept that understanding, the quicker you'll be able to enjoy the game to it's fullest once again.
Posts like these are why communities suck these days. Furthermore, how you somehow arrive at the conclusion that a post that points out that horse breeding mechanics are counter-intuitive after extensive testing means people are lazy and don't want to get better at the game is beyond me. Not to mention that when it comes to heavily mechanical things, understanding how the mechanics work is the first step to getting better at that aspect of the game; it's a different process than what you may be used to, but it's valid nonetheless.
Now, as for the topic at hand, the formula presented will essentially give a random number between (1/3)(PA+PB+m) and (1/3)(PA+PB+M) with a flat distribution, where M is the maximum value and m is the minimum. Let x = (PA+PB)/2, that is, the average of the parent's stats. Then we're picking a random number between (2/3)x + (1/3)m and (2/3)x + (1/3)M. This means our average resulting stat is going to be along the line (2/3)x + (1/6)(M+m), and the parent's stats are going to be around x. If you take a look at the graph of this, you can see the problem:
The blue line is the average of the parent's health, and the purple line is the average offspring's health. The green and red lines are the maximum and minimum, respectively. So repeated breeding steps without selection will ultimately push all the stats toward the middle of the range; breeding horses with bad stats has a better chance of giving you better stats than the parents, and breeding horses with good stats gives you a better chance of getting worse stats than the parents. It's also interesting to note that getting a stat at the maximum value requires two parents with that stat already there to even have a chance of getting it with the offspring.
I think a better system would use a weighted average of the two parent's stats (with weights r and 1-r, where r is a random number between, say, 0.2 and 0.8) along with a small random mutation either up or down. Values outside the desired range could simply be rounded either way.
breeding horses with bad stats has a better chance of giving you better stats than the parents, and breeding horses with worse stats gives you a better chance of getting worse stats than the parents.
Isn't that the same thing? I suspect you mean in the former "with good stats has a better chance..."?
Breeding a Kentucky Derby winner takes time, and tons of cash!
It's a good point if in fact the breeding results are self-defeating. Seems like the logic would be that traits can be passed on, to the extent those traits result in a potential improvement. The odds should go up when better stock is used, but a better foal shouldn't be guaranteed.
The whole point of using better horses is that they tend to produce better horses, ergo thoroughbreds.
Also you can breed down a line by using less quality horses, like mixing a race horse with a quarter horse.
It's a natural result of increasing the sum total considered. The larger the selection, the less the average will swing, with progressively smaller and smaller changes to the average as the total number of horses involved is increased.
Isn't that the same thing? I suspect you mean in the former "with good stats has a better chance..."?
Breeding a Kentucky Derby winner takes time, and tons of cash!
It's a good point if in fact the breeding results are self-defeating. Seems like the logic would be that traits can be passed on, to the extent those traits result in a potential improvement. The odds should go up when better stock is used, but a better foal shouldn't be guaranteed.
The whole point of using better horses is that they tend to produce better horses, ergo thoroughbreds.
Also you can breed down a line by using less quality horses, like mixing a race horse with a quarter horse.
It's a natural result of increasing the sum total considered. The larger the selection, the less the average will swing, with progressively smaller and smaller changes to the average as the total number of horses involved is increased.
Actually, no, that was a bit of a mistake I made when typing it, thanks for catching that. What I meant to type was that breeding horses with bad stats tends to give you offspring with better stats than the parents, whereas breeding horses with good stats tends to give you offspring with stats that are worse than the parents. This is because everything tends toward the middle. Thus, breeding better horses gets increasingly harder as the breeding stock gets better, and is thus self-defeating. Also, as I had noted, the maximum stat is unachievable with any parents except two with that stat already.
True, but the OP is incorrect as you would have to check 1000 wild horses as well to get a better one in all three stats, given your assumptions, so actually it's not easy to just find a better one. Breeding good horses makes you almost guaranteed to get a decent horse but unlikely to get a better one. The system is actually a passable model for a foal's characteristics given its parents. What the system misses from the real world is that selective breeding (generally) gradually changes the average over time as well.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Well, they didn't really say that, but it's an expectancy from fans that Mojang will listen to what fans want -_-.
Better yet, we have gold, iron and diamond horse armor right? Give them another usage, make it so if a parent is wearing diamond armor their speed stat is passed down 100%. Iron can be health and gold can be jump, but limit it to only one effect per pair of parents.
Horse breeding right now I feel they implemented for RP's & Single Player's. Not for mechanic junkies.. -.- I'm sure they'll give ya'll your little horse breeding update in the future but for now you're not important & the quicker you accept that understanding, the quicker you'll be able to enjoy the game to it's fullest once again.
Actually it is, I ran around for 30 minutes to multiple plains with horses, and in 10 herds I found a horse that ran 13.9 blocks per second with 27 hp and 4.5 block jump height. It takes me more than 2 days to breed a horse with at least 13bps speed from horses that run 13bps, I would be lucky if the other two stats managed to come out better than the parents, in most cases it is worse and makes breeding even more frustrating because every stat group is randomized.
The problem is you don't need to check 1000 wild horses, because there is always going to 5 or so with great stats and easily obtainable in 30 minutes compared to breeding those same stats which takes 3 weeks starting with ok/decent stat horses.
1 horse power lol!
While I totally agree with the OP, the horses do still need tweaking, it is important to remember that they are not fully implemented yet.
The plan is to have a "tiered" system for breeding, so that breeding different tiers produces different results. This tier system is still in development and was not released along with the horses themselves so look for it in future updates.
For those who have been playing since the alpha days, you may recognise this pattern. For example, when cows were first introduced, they only produced leather, you could not eat them. It was only in a later update (and possibly through player involvement) that steak was introduced.
You may also remember the days when you had to kill the sheep to get wool, though why lambchops have never been implemented is beyond me. Or when eggs were first introduced, they hatched fully grown chickens.
While I am really glad the OP has brought this to public attention, as this may be an oversight on the part of the developers, (or may be only part of a formula that will be introduced later to even things out), please understand that the horses and horse breeding are still a work in progress and are essentially at a fairly early stage of development.
I think you mean that's what you want, how are you gonna just say that's the whole point, you didn't make the game you can't decide the point.
Apparently your apathy has contributed nothing to this conversation or your knowledge of the game.
If you have read Dr. Zhark's (the developer of the horses) wiki you will find that breeding a better horse is indeed the whole point of the breeding system.
As for your "OMG Who the hell cares" video, if you don't care then why are you trolling this thread?
If you cannot contribute something useful to this conversation, either pro or con, please refrain from posting anything at all.
Raven
***
I contributed something useful, my opinion, it'd be a pretty dumb topic if there was no debating, I see no difference between my opinion and the op's opinion
That's because you're an idiot troll.
Let's compare contributions. OP's opinion is based on carefully recorded and analyzed testing of 900+ bred horses, while also comparing those results to horses found in a 5000 block area. After all that testing, data, and analysis, OP correctly concluded that horse breeding, as currently implemented, is not an effective, efficient, or realistic method of acquiring a horse with excellent stats. So, he has now suggested that horse breeding to be altered so that it can be made a useful game mechanic.
You posted a four second clip from Family Guy and then said nothing other than self-fulfilling nonsense. "It's in the game, so it's intended" is neither a useful argument (because even if it is intended to work in this manner, it is unquestionably sub-optimal for breeding to be a less effective means to acquire a good horse), nor is it a rational response to the argument presented (obviously OP is expressing his own opinion on the matter by advocating for change. Arguing that the game mechanic to be working as intended is not a coherent response to someone saying "I think the current game mechanic should be changed).
You seem to think that your spiteful ignorance is somehow the equivalent of OP's carefully acquired knowledge. It is not.
I honestly can't understand you, but yet again Who The Hell Cares. All I basically understood was that you're disagreeing with my opinion which is fine by me because everyone's entitled to their own opinion
runescape:fred da kiko spiral knights:freddakiko steam:freddakikoif it was too hard for you to find me...
Well yeah I have one of these systems activated by tripwire (I have a 1-second redstone clock and a 150 block stretch, but thats in my creative world) but I mean a *simple* way.
Posts like these are why communities suck these days. Furthermore, how you somehow arrive at the conclusion that a post that points out that horse breeding mechanics are counter-intuitive after extensive testing means people are lazy and don't want to get better at the game is beyond me. Not to mention that when it comes to heavily mechanical things, understanding how the mechanics work is the first step to getting better at that aspect of the game; it's a different process than what you may be used to, but it's valid nonetheless.
Now, as for the topic at hand, the formula presented will essentially give a random number between (1/3)(PA+PB+m) and (1/3)(PA+PB+M) with a flat distribution, where M is the maximum value and m is the minimum. Let x = (PA+PB)/2, that is, the average of the parent's stats. Then we're picking a random number between (2/3)x + (1/3)m and (2/3)x + (1/3)M. This means our average resulting stat is going to be along the line (2/3)x + (1/6)(M+m), and the parent's stats are going to be around x. If you take a look at the graph of this, you can see the problem:
I think a better system would use a weighted average of the two parent's stats (with weights r and 1-r, where r is a random number between, say, 0.2 and 0.8) along with a small random mutation either up or down. Values outside the desired range could simply be rounded either way.
Isn't that the same thing? I suspect you mean in the former "with good stats has a better chance..."?
Breeding a Kentucky Derby winner takes time, and tons of cash!
It's a good point if in fact the breeding results are self-defeating. Seems like the logic would be that traits can be passed on, to the extent those traits result in a potential improvement. The odds should go up when better stock is used, but a better foal shouldn't be guaranteed.
The whole point of using better horses is that they tend to produce better horses, ergo thoroughbreds.
Also you can breed down a line by using less quality horses, like mixing a race horse with a quarter horse.
It's a natural result of increasing the sum total considered. The larger the selection, the less the average will swing, with progressively smaller and smaller changes to the average as the total number of horses involved is increased.
Actually, no, that was a bit of a mistake I made when typing it, thanks for catching that. What I meant to type was that breeding horses with bad stats tends to give you offspring with better stats than the parents, whereas breeding horses with good stats tends to give you offspring with stats that are worse than the parents. This is because everything tends toward the middle. Thus, breeding better horses gets increasingly harder as the breeding stock gets better, and is thus self-defeating. Also, as I had noted, the maximum stat is unachievable with any parents except two with that stat already.