We want your opinions! Subject: GOLD | Comment by March 31st!

[Rosehill]

Let's talk about the shiny hot topic of GOLD!

The team has been racking their brains over the issue for quite some time now, and many users have also already chimed in in several threads. In the near future a few adjustments to gold mechanics will be made in any case (increase gold gotten from posting, reduce renaming costs, possibly remove gold from adults) and in addition to those we'd like to hear more from all of you, especially if you struggle with getting gold, or find it hard to afford stuff. Please read the whole of this post and feel free to ask questions and give your input on the matter.

Stated problems:

• It's too hard to get gold!
• Things are too expensive!
• Goldmining may crash the site!

Current ways to gain gold:

• Maximum of 200 gold when posting
• 1 gold for clicking an adult or an unfrozen hatchling or an unfrozen egg. 5 gold for clicking an unfrozen egg if you have the Alicanto Heart item. Double these amounts if the creature's element is the same as your own element, so 2 gold for hatchling and adults, 2-10 gold for clicking and egg.

Personal anecdote: I've registered on the site on July 24th 2009. On July 27th I've bought my first shop creature, a Storm Leviathan. Which means I'd had gotten at least 4,2k gold by then in 4 days. On July 28th I've bought two Direwolves: 3k more gold. On July 28th I've bought my first Ice Phoenix: 6k gold more. That means at the very early days of Magistream I had managed to get around 13,5k gold within a week. Goldmining wasn't a thing quite that early on, and my trades show me selling stuff for gold only on August 1st the first time, so all the gold I managed to collect within that first week came from posting (maximum gold at that time for posting was 50 gold) and clicking (everything gave you 1 gold, there were no element or Alicanto Heart bonuses). Of course a counter-argument can be made that the forums were a lot more active back then, and discussion forums in general were much more in favour than nowadays so it was more natural and engaging to post and things moved faster, and also that there weren't that many things to buy with gold, no expensive spells or quests that took over 10k gold. All this is true, and the point I'm not trying to make is that "why change anything now when you could very well get gold before without problems?!". The amount of players is drastically smaller nowadays than it was 15 years ago, and especially donation creature prices in gold per shard rose quite a lot in between. Going rate for donis back in the day was around 5k gold (so 1k/shard), whereas at its highest it was common to get as high as 65k per shard, and then the regular going rate settled into 45-50k per shard.

How much things cost:

• Buying one of every shop born creature at shop price (included are Remy's Inn, Trading Post, Dark Shop, Water Shop, Herbalist Shop, Artificer Shop, Preservationist Shop, and Black Market originals): Total of 666,058 gold
• Doing every quest that requires gold: Total of 103k gold (not included: Face Changer quest or retired limited time quests. Included are all three of the guild entrance fees, 10k a piece, but in order to be able to do all of those you need to do the Face Changer quest twice.)
• Spell of Cloaking: 75k
• Spell of Protection: 75k
• Face Changer quest: 100k
• Getting a pair of every shop creature as well as both spells, and doing every quest TOTAL: 1,785,116 gold

How much gold do people have in general:
To support our discussions and help in decision making we have periodically pulled some hard numbers from the site data instead of guessing what "a lot of" or "a little" gold would be. We checked the gold amounts of every user who has been online within a specified time range (barring spammers, search bots, and NPCs). The numbers shown in this post are pulled on March 1st, and include the statistics of everyone who has been online starting from January 1st. That is a total of 1591 people. The statistics take into account both the amount of gold on a user's account as well as if they have gold in unfinished trades.

• The average amount of gold people have: 393,000 gold. The average is calculated by summing up all the gold the users have and dividing that with the amount of users.
• The median amount of gold people have: 2948 gold. The median is the middle value in the dataset. It means 50% of values are above it and 50% of values are below it. For our purposes it means that 50% of the 1591 people have less than 2948 gold, and 50% of the 1591 people have more than 2948 gold. For the purposes of the discussion this figure is more meaningful than the average.
• Number of people who have 0 gold: 176 (11,06%)
• Number of people who have more than 0 but less than 1k gold: 416 (26,15%)
• Number of people who have more than 1k but less than 5k gold: 295 (18,54%)
• Number of people who have more than 5k but less than 10k gold: 127 (7,98%)
• Number of people who have more than 10k but less than 50k gold: 214 (13,45%)
• Number of people who have more than 50k but less than 100k gold: 60 (3,77%)
• Number of people who have more than 100k but less than 250k gold: 88 (5,53%)
• Number of people who have more than 250k but less than 500k gold: 67 (4,21%)
• Number of people who have more than 500k but less than 1 million gold: 60 (6,77%)
• Number of people who have more than 1 million gold: 88 (5,52%)

Alright, what to do then?

In our team discussions we have had a couple different angles that we've been pondering and discussing. These angles are not necessarily contradictory, or mean that only things from one angle should be considered and implemented. These are the things we'd especially like to get your feedback. Do some things sound more feasible than others? Is there something that you feel would be tedious and boring? Is there something completely outside of these things that you think could work to remedy the gold situation?

Angle one: How to make getting gold easier/more fun (instead of just a new or old way of mindless grinding)

Discussed possibilities:

Minigames like "match 3", "tower climb", "solitaire" etc.:
Pros: could be fun
Cons: Have a risk of steering away from the spirit of the actual heart and purpose of the game. Take a lot of time to implement.

Daily quests:
Pros: you'd have a regular and steady way of getting some gold
Cons: You'd need to remember to do them. Depending on what kind they would be, some might feel tedious or not worth it. Could feel a bit separate from the normal game play unless well executed.

Daily login bonuses:
Pros: Steady and reliable way to get gold even if you're tight on time, just log in and get some gold.
Cons: Relying solely on this would require quite a bit of patience to get enough cold to afford something. A bit more tedious to implement.

Gaining gold from various activities like breeding, crafting, and otherwise interacting with the site:
Pros: Could be quite easily tied to the normal game play and existing mechanics, making gold a by product instead of the main goal.
Cons: Need to be mindful that the gold gains remain meaningful instead of becoming yet a new way of grinding.

Sell your creatures for gold to NPCs or some other non-player function:
Pros: You have a pretty good control over when and how much gold you get
Cons: another more tedious grinding mechanic?


Angle two: How to make things more affordable without increasing options to get more gold drastically

The issue with the site economy is not just that things cost "too much", or that it is hard to get gold. One major aspect of the problem is that there is a way to create infinite amount of gold, and it doesn't flow that much between players. With more and more gold in the system and without it being a "closed" gold system, inflation occurs. This angle aims to solve the issue from another point of view: instead of encouraging more and more gold to be generated in the system, introduce other ways of obtaining creatures. Another aspect would be to recognize a resource or something else that users with low amounts of gold have, and make that desirable for users with more gold, so that the users with more gold would be willing to pay for that and thus get the gold flowing.

Discussed possibilities:

Encourage trading and making the gold flow between players, make the system a closed gold system:
Pros: Works more like a healthy economy, gets the resources moving instead of gold piling up on the top 5-10% richest or those who at least in the past have been able to goldmine
Cons: How to do this, what would be the incentive?

Create non-gold ways of getting shop creatures:
Possibilities would be e.g. quests, crafting like mechanic, exchanging a number of creature X to get a creature Y, or something similar
Pros: You don't have to rely on gold to get the creatures you want
Cons: Could take a bit longer to get the creature, could feel like just another type of grinding mechanic

Reduce prices in shops and/or quests:
Pros: things are more affordable
Cons: shop history statistics need a tweak so they don't get skewed

[Ayakashi]

Just my two cents, a good way to get gold to flow is to make the usable items in inventory tradable/sellable. The workaround now is to trade the creature you want the item to be used on to the person with the item. They use the item and send the creature back to you. I mean, it works, but it's tedious. And if you're like me, you're not watching your trades constantly it takes longer to do the number of trades involved. If we could add items to trades that would easier and encourage people to transfer gold to others.

Another option that I don't know if it is possible to give us an automated shop page. Somewhere we can list creatures/items for sale at a gold price we set, and a button would be created. Someone who wanted the creature could click the button and the sale goes through automatically like the other existing shops. Gold and creature are transferred instantly. In the past there were fears, that adding it would kill the Merchant District and it would kill the Mercado District for sure, but there are four (not counting the Nursery Shopping Front) more districts of the MD that would still be active and available even with this implemented. Of course, this depends on if impletmenting player owned automated shops is possible in the forum software.

Again, just my two cents.

[BeeNme]

Looking at the statistics, turns out that I have lots of gold compared to most people. I got most of my gold from events/group competitions, and I'm stingy spending it. (I tend to buy no more than two of a creature, then breed them to get the others that I want.) Black market creatures are so expensive that I rarely buy them, I wait until I can get ones that other players have bred and breed more from them. I make 1k - 3k gold daily by posting and clicking in the click threads. I have never gold mined, but I do sometimes click in the image-free nursery.

My thoughts:
Angle one: How to make getting gold easier/more fun (instead of just a new or old way of mindless grinding)
of the Discussed possibilities for Angle one:

Minigames like "match 3", "tower climb", "solitaire" etc.: I would enjoy this

Daily quests: I would probably do a couple of these each day, if they didn't take much time

Daily login bonuses: meh, this would be nice, but wouldn't want to much time/effort spent implementing it

Gaining gold from various activities like breeding, crafting, and otherwise interacting with the site: I like this one the best, because I'd be getting gold for things I already do

Sell your creatures for gold to NPCs or some other non-player function: might be ok, but not sure I want to get creatures just to sell when I could be getting creatures that I want for myself or for gifting


Angle two: How to make things more affordable without increasing options to get more gold drastically
of the Discussed possibilities for Angle two:

Encourage trading and making the gold flow between players, make the system a closed gold system: not sure how I feel about this one, I guess it depends on the incentive. (I don't trade very often, because interacting with others takes a lot out of me, so I tend not to do it much. Unless it's throwing things; I love throwing pumpkins, flowers, etc at people. )

Create non-gold ways of getting shop creatures: I like this idea

Reduce prices in shops and/or quests: this, definitely.

I really like both of Ayakashi's ideas. I would love to be able to sell/trade inventory items. The automated shop function would help me as a buyer; being able to buy with a click would be great, but I would think that this might be a nightmare to code for creatures, but may be possible for items.

[CinnaminDraconna]

Minigames like "match 3", "tower climb", "solitaire" etc.:

I like minigames in general, but I would hope they were more MS related. I play a few 'match 3' games now and wouldn't mind playing them here. I don't see how 'solitaire' could be made MSish.. and I have no clue what 'tower climb' is.

I was thinking more like creature related games.. racing, jumping, halter shows for our equines.. using a random number generator for the initial functions, then something that uses the results to influence later performance. If your equine does well, use the same creature next time.. if not, choose a new creature.

Or cat shows/dog shows.. or gryphons, dragons, hippocampus, etc. like a 4H club type deal.. same RNG to start and then getting better with experience. Maybe limit the number of times any one creature can compete before it is retired.. then you breed it, get an offspring from it and maybe it is born with a small bonus. Howrse used to do something similar, so the software should be out there somewhere.

Minigames for the sake of minigames doesn't really fit the MS dynamic, but a minigame that relates to our MS creatures would be awesome.

Daily quests:

This one I'm all for. Knowing myself, I would probably do as many as I was allowed to every day. It might depend on what you have to do the earn the gold, but if it's a simple game function, I'd probably do it. Things like breeding would depend on what I had to breed, I wouldn't just breed for the sake of breeding unless it was something I tend to breed anyway. Clicking others creatures, I do every day; so as long as I'm not totally wasting my time, I'd do them.

Daily login bonuses:

I stay logged in, so logging in and out would annoy me to no end. Doing something to prove I was here daily, no problem, because I am anyway. So it would depend on how this worked.

Gaining gold from various activities like breeding, crafting, and otherwise interacting with the site:

Another one I'm all for. I'm going to be here doing things anyway, so earning gold for it would be awesome.

Sell your creatures for gold to NPCs or some other non-player function:

It would depend on how this one worked.. how much gold you got.. how many hoops you have to jump thru, etc. I would definitely need to see this one in action.. I can see it being very good or very bad.

Encourage trading and making the gold flow between players, make the system a closed gold system:

This one isn't something I'd like; I'd prefer something automated.. I'm not really an interactive person. I've been here 14.5 yrs and most players probably know nothing about me, except that I have a lot of lineages/creatures.

Create non-gold ways of getting shop creatures:

Not sure how this would work, so I'll reserve judgement on it.

Reduce prices in shops and/or quests:

Definitely yes. I don't know by how much.. that list was surprising.. had no clue I was in the top 5%. I always feel like I'm broke due to the current/recent prices for donation and/or limited event creatures (especially parentless ones).

Making ALL quests repeatable would also fall under this heading. I like having parentless breeding pairs, and only getting ONE questborn with no chance of ever getting another is not cool.

-------------------

Ayakashi #1

Would love to be able to sell items.. but with the way inventory and mystery bags work.. not sure I'd sell anything. Now a shop where I could purchase 'exactly' what I need/want would work. I absolutely HATE how mystery bags/inventory works.

Ayakashi #2

I like the idea of automated shops, but who sets the prices is the big problem I see. If the prices are set, I'm all for it.. as long as most players agree with the price structure. If it's a set your own price thing, no thank you. Humans are greedy.

[faedemon]

this is a smaller response, but my personal 2 cents—as a less social player (i.e., i post on the forums intermittently and in ways that don't require extensive interaction, and i pretty rarely engage in trade/purchasing from user shops/et cetera), i would really appreciate the more independent ways of gaining gold. daily quests really appeal to me personally! same with daily login rewards and rewards for doing normal site activities.

i don't dislike or disapprove of the ideas geared towards getting players to trade with each other more, but just wanted to point out that there are different sorts of players and i'd love if you could appeal to both sides, the more social and the less

[falsanthin]

My thoughts on this would be something like this:

Games/Gold Gain
Minigames like "match 3", "tower climb", "solitaire" etc.: I've found everytime i have joined a site with "games to make currency" i would probably play things like this for a week or 2 then it would totally lose my attention. It all depends on the difficulty of the games and how long it takes to gain gold from them, for example if i spent like 15-20mins playing a game to only make like less than 1k gold i would likely not bother. Besides that i would like the games theme to match the site theme if possible or it might break the immersion for some people

Daily quests: Again it depends on the quest itself, if its something like hatch 5x water element eggs or npc wants you to donate x amount of hatchlings or frozen eggs or something i'd be okay with that. Personally i wouldn't like the quests asking for a specific breed of creature because again i would lose interest if i need to spend ages grabbing and freezing stuff from the stream just to look for a specific creature, even more so if everyone has the same daily quest and is doing the exact same thing making them harder to find

Daily login bonuses: I think this would be a good way to go about it. Maybe not as the be all, end all solution to the problem but this combined with another way to make gold i think would help

Gaining gold from various activities like breeding, crafting, and otherwise interacting with the site: Again i like this idea it would both help keep the site active and reward you for doing things you would be normally doing anyway

Sell your creatures for gold to NPCs or some other non-player function: I also like this idea depending on the amount of gold it gives. Of course if this becomes an option there needs to be a gold sink to counter the gain or it would eventually lead to the same problem with gold being horded over time

Angle two: How to make things more affordable without increasing options to get more gold drastically:
Encourage trading and making the gold flow between players, make the system a closed gold system: As a fairly unsocial person i'm not a huge fan of this but it depends how it would be implemented. I do currently trade creatures for gold at the moment but i would prefer the gold being gained from the game side of things and not having to rely on interacting with other people, I mean its nice to have the option to trade things between people for gold but i would not like it to be the ONLY way to get gold

Create non-gold ways of getting shop creatures: I really like this idea. Maybe like earning tokens everytime you trade unwanted creatures to an npc, part of a log in bonus or clearing a daily quest etc.. then using the tokens to buy creatures. It both gives you an incentive to earn the tokens by doing things around the site and completely takes away needing gold for a million different things. Of course it will be a bit grindy but as long as the trade in prices are realistic i think it would work out pretty well.

I would also like it if we could have a similar system to earn items (eg. gender potions, moon/sun shards, fine tuning glasses) without having to rely on rng gendering donecs correctly for a quest or waiting on event bags/drinks

Reduce prices in shops and/or quests: This depends if it is a needed gold sink in the future for one of the other options such selling creatures to npcs etc... as long as there is a correct gain/loss balance for the gold i don't mind the prices of the creatures.

At the moment though i feel the prices are on the high side and could do with being lowered especially with some of the creatures in the black market, if a creature is going to sell for 90k for only 2 weeks (using ice kitsunes as an example) there needs to be a way to make that gold in that period of time WITHOUT having to sell donation creatures or rely on someone elses charity. 5k each is a reasonable amount for a LIMITED time release (events, black market etc..), anything in the 25k+ territory needs to be in a PERMANENT shop release or have other ways to obtain it so people have a chance to save for it in my opinion.

The protection/cloaking scrolls definitely need to be reduced or just outright removed and made a free feature, 75k is a lot of gold for something that should be a standard part of your gameplay if you want to protect things for trades/don't like freezing creatures. It just seems like an odd choice to have to buy something like that

Those just are my thoughts on everything and i'm not trying to be rude or adverse to change or anything like that so hopefully i don't come across that way, i just have a hard time expressing my opinions on things there might be a reason i might not have considered or something i have misinterpreted

[Airasyraye]

Is this supposed to be a one-only thing? Why can't there be more than one new way? Regardless, my favorites:

Daily quests/Daily logins: (same difference)
Pros: you'd have a regular and steady way of getting some gold
Cons: You'd need to remember to do them. Depending on what kind they would be, some might feel tedious or not worth it. Could feel a bit separate from the normal game play unless well executed.

While it is "you need to remember to do them" so? I'm a casual player. I show up a few times a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. I forget, I forget, and anyone who is as casual or even more so than I am deserves to lose out if you forget. In the meantime, these can easily be fun, if they're done right. (Well, not login, that's genuinely just a login.) You can even change them per month or quarter or whatever doesn't kill you programming it. Like others have pointed out, though, you'd have to either constantly boot people out mechanically the way Felisfire does or implement a "push button here to gain" way. I'm not and have never been a fan of Ff making you sign in for even being idle more than like 10 minutes, it drives me up the wall, BUT, that is a way to do it. You definitely need to be careful about how much you get. Doing a quest, even one that takes 5 minutes, to get 100g would make me so mad. But 500, 1000, the way Ff does? Well, it does add up faster than you think IF there's also a way to limit how darn expensive stuff is in the first place.

Gaining gold from various activities like breeding, crafting, and otherwise interacting with the site:
Pros: Could be quite easily tied to the normal game play and existing mechanics, making gold a by product instead of the main goal.
Cons: Need to be mindful that the gold gains remain meaningful instead of becoming yet a new way of grinding.

This one seems like the most "MS true" option there is. It's doing the game as it's meant to be done, without limiting gold making to sales or opening a ton of links that kill the site's performance. What we have is so difficult because A: only rare stuff is being sold *for the most part* from people who can afford to use real money on DPs and DP breedings, lucked out in being here for limited-quests, or are able to amass so much gold from limitless grinding such as stream cleaning and hatching and B: a lot of it crashes us out opening a lot of links at a time or is mind-numbingly boring clicking one link at a time.

Sell your creatures for gold to NPCs or some other non-player function:
Pros: You have a pretty good control over when and how much gold you get
Cons: another more tedious grinding mechanic?

Yes, please. I have a ton of frozen eggs I want to get rid of and clicking "release? yes? are you sure?" on every single one is so annoying that that's why I have so many in the first place. IDC if you get 1g per egg or have to go a bundle of 100 eggs to get anything, just please implement an easier way to get rid of a backlog. I know that that's my fault, but still. Although, please don't make it so you can only sell adults to NPCs. You can cap it, though. X-amount a day or this amt for common, rare, whatever. It's another programming nightmare, I bet, but it would feel more like I do something as a magi. Lord knows I can't sell to players to save my life.

Create non-gold ways of getting shop creatures:
Possibilities would be e.g. quests, crafting like mechanic, exchanging a number of creature X to get a creature Y, or something similar
Pros: You don't have to rely on gold to get the creatures you want
Cons: Could take a bit longer to get the creature, could feel like just another type of grinding mechanic

Another yes, please. Quests are fun. Yes, they can take a bit if you need a specific gender, but they're still more fun than just grab, hatch, grow. Crafting....eh, no. That doesn't make sense for a living creature. Although, you could make it so you need so many of the gems, feathers, whatever in our inventory to trade. That makes sense as a trading system, especially ye olde timey. A lot of stuff in there just sits unless you're a rabid collector of the creatures that need items to turn.

Another option you didn't seem to list is get rid of gold sinks, period. Why do we still have the koi pond as hard as it is? I can't tell you how many times I've gotten po'd from throwing 300k or whatever to get rewarded with a fricking Amethyst Koi for the third time in a row. Or the black market bag/remy's drinks to have another stupid box of chocolates when I need breeding and gender change potions like it's going out style. Yeah, there's the Lady, but her quest requires you using your egg slots to hatch donecs.




No matter what you do, it's going to be a "grind." That's how games work. Whether it's XP, gold, items, fetch-quests, grinding is as old as gaming itself just about. The rewards to effort ratio matters much more than the fact grinding exists.

IDK if I agree with any solution that takes away gold from players or lowers the true value of what they already have. I suppose some of it is going to be unavoidable, but as a person who has rarely had more than $200k in a shot, it is not fair for some who played since 2009, grinded, and got lucky with sales and has 6million gold to suddenly be knocked back to the same value as someone who started last year. They earned their gold, did their time, or just has the luck of being able to throw down real money on pixels. Any form of MS communism or wealth reallocation beyond making stuff accessible to all is a please, don't from me. DPs and limited-quests should remain expensive and rare. But regular shop creatures and quests shouldn't cost 10k-100k gold.

[Ayakashi]

Ayakashi #2

I like the idea of automated shops, but who sets the prices is the big problem I see. If the prices are set, I'm all for it.. as long as most players agree with the price structure. If it's a set your own price thing, no thank you. Humans are greedy.

Except prices are already set by individual players. Everyone lists what they are willing to pay (LTB), and what they're willing to sell at (QS/Shop threads). Yes people are greedy, that cannot be avoided. Automating the sales through a player shop page would be the same as setting up a QS thread or a Shop thread. Whether someone is willing to pay that price will be dependent on if another player agrees with the price set by the selling player, just as it is now. We will probably have the same guidelines we have now that people will follow, but even now, prices are set by the player selling for the most part.

[Rosehill]

Is this supposed to be a one-only thing? Why can't there be more than one new way?

No, this is not supposed to be anything. That is why we are asking all of you for thoughts and ideas about these things: To help us gain insight into which would work, and which would not, exactly for the reason to know which all, if any, we should proceed with.

Another option you didn't seem to list is get rid of gold sinks, period. Why do we still have the koi pond as hard as it is? I can't tell you how many times I've gotten po'd from throwing 300k or whatever to get rewarded with a fricking Amethyst Koi for the third time in a row. Or the black market bag/remy's drinks to have another stupid box of chocolates when I need breeding and gender change potions like it's going out style. Yeah, there's the Lady, but her quest requires you using your egg slots to hatch donecs.

The Koi pond has already gotten a major tweak on the drop rates, and the issues with the pond have been in a separate discussion with the team and is thus not included in this one.

Things with random gains will remain part of the game play in any case. There are other things planned, that now that I think of it, will probably affect this one as well.

At the moment though i feel the prices are on the high side and could do with being lowered especially with some of the creatures in the black market, if a creature is going to sell for 90k for only 2 weeks (using ice kitsunes as an example) there needs to be a way to make that gold in that period of time WITHOUT having to sell donation creatures or rely on someone elses charity. 5k each is a reasonable amount for a LIMITED time release (events, black market etc..), anything in the 25k+ territory needs to be in a PERMANENT shop release or have other ways to obtain it so people have a chance to save for it in my opinion.

The Black Market will be going over a few changes in the near future in any case, but it will most likely still sell things that are somewhat expensive, like parentless hybrids at 20k or so, but it will not be selling limited event creatures. That way the more expensive things it sells are more like a curiosity, something you can easily get from other sources as well, only a bit more special, that doesn't really affect collection goals etc.

The protection/cloaking scrolls definitely need to be reduced or just outright removed and made a free feature, 75k is a lot of gold for something that should be a standard part of your gameplay if you want to protect things for trades/don't like freezing creatures. It just seems like an odd choice to have to buy something like that

I like this idea actually! It hadn't occurred to me, as we've been mostly focusing on creature prices!

[audrei9]

I think there should be a quest system where, every day, there's a bunch of creatures that come up, and the site asks you to enter your creatures in that quest for gold. They should ask for creatures which are kind of rare, but still very available.
Example: some guy wants to hire some of your ruby koi for healing, but you can't complete the quest if you don't have ruby koi.

Also, if you're worried that the mini games on the site take away from the site's vibes, then why not have these minigames recharge after you click a certain amount of eggs/ creatures rather than just being based on time? Maybe they start with a week of cooldown, but every creature clicked takes away from that hour or something.