Something I would love to be considered for Fractured, is some sort of animal breeding system. Animal taming is not a new idea in the least. Most games have it in one form or another; whether it be capturing, befriending, or merely an ornamental reward. What I would like to see is something that has been touched on by a very rare couple of games, but never pushed past a certain point. The two instances I know of personally in games are: first, Black Desert Online's horse training system, where you train up a horse and each level has a chance to breed up to a higher tier animal. When one achieved the highest tier of animal, the goal became getting a horse to have a specific set of skills. When a horse had that specific series of skills, it could be turned into a dream horse, which was highly sought after. I never did see one available to purchase in my time playing Black Desert Online. The second instance I saw any sort of decent breeding system, was on a free Ultima Online server that had been heavily coded to become it's own world with Ultima Online's graphics. In this system, like in Black Desert's horse system, a player began with creatures they "tamed" out in the world, and skilled them up to at least a certain point. Once the creatures reached that point, they could be bred male to female, to have a chance at having offspring that were a higher tier of creature than the parents were. The goal with that was to get the creatures to their highest tier, with a high amount of abilities that the wild tamed animals did not have access to.
What I would like to see in a breeding system, would be similar, but far different. I would like to see a system where there is little initial reward, but the more time and effort a player put into it (or the better connected they were with other breeders) the more they can improve an animal. My idea is this: A breeder in control of an animal has the option to breed it to an animal of the opposite gender that is also in their control. Either that animal would need to be leveled up past a certain point to have a chance (VERY SMALL, RARE CHANCE) of it's offspring being born with a mutation that would subtly alter either the creature's stats, or else it's appearance (the hue of the creature for example) or else the breeder themselves would need to have obtained certain abilities or done enough breeding to have gained enough "Knowledge" about it. This mutation would, at that point, only have a chance to pass to the offspring of the creature that had the mutation. What this would do, is make it so that the mutation would stay valuable, and be carefully cultured. An offspring that successfully obtained that same mutation would, additionally, have a VERY SLIGHT RARE chance to have a second random mutation added to it's genetics, thus adding to the value of the creature depending on the genetic mutation combination the creature had. A way this could happen, would be that a creature with a genetic mutation that slightly influenced it's color: say we started out with a grey horse. One of the offspring of that grey horse obtained a mutation that made it a dark grey horse. Generations down the line, the breeder ended up with another lucky mutation of the same form that caused the dark grey horse's offspring to be born a pure black horse. Now...another breeder with a dark gray horse had a different cosmetic mutation than the original breeder had. this mutation caused the horse to have paler dapples on it's flank. Because the second breeder had an agreement with the first breeder, the second breeder gave the first breeder access to this dappled mutation in the form of one of the dappled horse's offspring being given to the original breeder. The dappled offspring would then be bred into the black horse's line. Eventually a lucky roll of the dice caused the two darker hue mutations and the lighter dapple mutation to all come together into a single offspring, creating a black horse with lighter dapples.
As per the example above, the more invested a player becomes in the system: the more time they spend working toward results, the more opportunity they have to create more unique creatures. Another thing that could be implemented with this sort of system, is breeders actually making an animal worse if bred improperly. If they did not have the skill or the "knowledge" and still tried to breed, they have more than a small chance of having mutations added to offspring that would negatively impact the effectiveness of the animals. At first it would be less obvious, having only a little influence on the animal overall, but if those negatively mutated animals are bred again, the mutations have a high chance of passing on to their offspring, compounding the effect until the animal becomes almost useless.
The whole point of the system would be to be very difficult to advance in, yet still be able to if a player had the patience and the willingness to invest the time into doing so. It would reward a balance of working with other breeders, but also closely guarding your own investments so that they do not become too common in the worlds. A breeder could loose all of their work through carelessness if they allow all of their special animals to either die, or be given into the hands of other people.
