Increasing Life Given for Pet-Related to Commands#754

Just a few suggestions, since I’ve noticed it seems like a lot of people have difficulty maintaining pet life and it seems to be something of an ever-present issue for most:

• Increasing the amount life given for running /play so the minimum is 11 minutes or more

  • right now it ranges between 3-14 minutes, so even if you run play every 10 minutes, which you can’t if you sleep, you’re most likely experiencing a net loss of life)
    • might also be helpful to have a few more “free” command to help increase happiness/life time for those trying to care for a pet solo

• Increasing the amount of life/benefits given for pet ACs

  • breaktime, in particular, can be very frustrating when it results in less life while costing more food than a normal /feed command; given that it’s an AC users spent at minimum 25 stars to obtain, it seems like the amount of life given should always be signficantly higher than a normal /feed command—like 300 or 400 mins minimum
    • simlarly, hike habitually yeilds life amounts on par with or only slightly better than /play (range seems to be 11-19, with 19 being very uncommon). Again, since this is an AC, seems like life gained should be signficantly higher than the “free” command of play
    • related to te above hike, draw, and fetch should have minimums of at least 30ish minutes (maybe higher if /play also gets a bump per the above) to ensure they’re always granting more life than a free /play command
    • stroll uses an insanely high amount of food for the lifetime given (ratio is about 1 food for maybe 20 minutes on a good day, but it’s usually in the teens–and that’s taking into account the life gained by both pets; for comparison, feed on average gives about 37 minutes per food), so I think lifetime for that AC should be bumped up, or increase the likeliood of stars
    • it would be nice if explore yielded more food and/or the minimum amount of food gained was at least 7 (the amount of food needed for a “big” feed)

• Increasing the perks for elite

  • increasing daily food gift. right now the gift is about 9 foods on average, increasing the amount so it’s 10 or 11 on average (maybe a minimum of 9 instead of the current minimum of 7)
    • increasing the minimum number of tix for weekend gifts. right now the amont ranges from 2-4, would bump to maybe 3-5 so that having elite is better/on par with just voting for 7 days and getting a giftbox, since by the time you reach level 3 you’re getting 3-4 tix per box
    • increasing the extra food you get when buying food from 32 to 35, a modest bump, I think, but one that will signficnalty increase the benefit of having elite in terms of keeping your pet alive

oml did my message get deleted im gonna crash out
tl;dr of what i wrote

• elite already gives 6 tickets on initial claim,even with the minimum rewards it’s already above 10 tix claim (not counting the other perks like badge/slower star meter/etc)
• ACs are intended to be small supplements since they’re stretch goals/side content and less intended for more vertical investment
• play is intended to mostly give happiness not lifetime, to supplement feed (the MAIN way of earning lifetime). feed is balanced around if you only feed/play but vote every 12h with no boost/pet caretaker y ou should still have a net increase of 2 to 4x.

Fair enough on points 1 and 2.

Re 3, excuse my math ignorance, and I’m genuinely not trying to argue, just to understand, I don’t see how it’s possible to gain even a net two days of life, never mind 4 just doing play and feed and voting twice a day (or am I misunderstanding the meaning of “a net increase of 2 to 4x”?)

This is how I math it out, and please correct me if I’m getting inputs wrong. /gen

Using a sample size of 150 feeds, I estimated the average life gained per unit of food as 37 minutes. So assuming you spend two tix a day on food and run all the feeds until you’re out, that gets you about 1 day and 13 hours gained (37*60=2,220 mins; 2220-1440=780; 780/60=13).

To get the remaining 2100 mins (1 day and 11 hours) needed for a life increase of 3 days, (one of the gained days doesn’t count due to time passing, so a net increase of two days), you’d have to be running play every 10 minutes for 35 hours, which isn’t possible (calc assumes you gain 10 mins per play, which is exceptionally generous, so you’d need to run play 210 times, and you can only run 6 plays in an hour, so 210/6 is 35 hours).

Am I missing something? Is my average mins of life gained per food off? Or am I mathing wrong (which is highly possible, lol)?
Again, I’m not trying to argue, just trying to understand your math (and if my inputs are wrong it would be nice to know since I base a lot of decisions on the 1 food=37 mins of life assumption, lol)”?

Thank you for responding back so quickly to the above <3 and sorry for pestering you this much on a Friday.

you get more than two tix a day with giftboxes

and idk if the average lifetime is correct because it’s not just an rng. some stuff changes based on how you treat your pet continually

Ah, ok. And oops, forgot to calculate in gift boxes smacks forehead

(Again, thank you for the responses, and sorry for the bother <3)

Hi, sorry, it’s me again.
Re ACs being stretch goals/small supplements, while I recognize this may have been their intended function, at least from what I’ve seen/people I’ve talked to, they’re treated more as one of the essential/core parts of mimu pet care, if that makes sense. I think most people see getting all the ACs as an big part of being a pet owner, and the prevalence of stars as something rewarded/sought, I think, speaks to that, since folks really want to get all their ACs. That said, as things stand, the cost/price of AC attempts doesn’t really match with the amount of extra life being awarded when you run an activity command, which is rather frustrating (see breaktime comment above re it sometimes being less beneficial than regular feed).
Just my two cents/thoughts/feedback. I really do love mimu, sorry if I’m coming off as overly critical/complaining.

i have a genuine question here just so i can understand the player perspective better!!
if ACs feel unrewarding: in the sense that the life gains don’t quite match the effort or cost, then what makes people treat them as a core part of pet care instead of optional side content? (i am paraphrasing the two points you made about how it feels essential BUT not rewarding)

from my pov as the dev, playdate/feed/play already cover the core loop, so i’m trying to understand what’s driving the perception that ACs are ‘essential’. is it completionism? social pressure? star chasing? or does the community just naturally treat anything unlockable as mandatory?

truly not trying to call out as well - i’m genuinely asking so i can align future balancing with how players emotionally interact with the system.

or maybe it is because there’s nothing to do with stars other than ACs? (which in case is a different problem in itself)

I’m not the one who originally posted, but i want to share my pov.
Getting the ACs is one of the most interactive parts of having a pet, and while the road to get there can be fun, once you get there it feels like it wasn’t worth it. I see what you’re saying about the main loop being play/feed/ect, however if you look at having a mimu pet as a game, the play/feed feel like the basic things you start the game with to help you get more better tools later, so people may see ACs as those “better tools” they are supposed to get, but then the “better tools” aren’t really better at all.

So I think the reason that people chase ACs is multifaceted. There’s probably some social pressure to get all ACs because that’s what everyone else is doing, yes, and there is probably an element of completionism as well. I think there’s also fun to be had in the effort itself, a bit of “collect them all” mentality, both with regards to the ACs and the stars. The ACs are a mountain, if you will, and it can be fun climbing that mountain and reaching its summit, but once you’re there–then what? And once you realize that all of this time and effort has been spent on obtaining all the ACs but you’re still struggling to build up lifetime for your pet (or even just to maintain steady lifetime), you start to look back on all that effort and think, “was this really worth it?” And that is frustrating.

I think another (probably the main) reason people see ACs as essential is simply because we pet owners of course want to keep our pets alive, and ACs are another means by which to do that. But they’re a very costly way, compared to feed, playdate, cozy, and play. Given the high cost of gaining all ACs, there’s an expectation that the benefits will be greater than the “free” commands. Similarly, because ACs are locked and require effort to obtain, we expect them to be more useful/beneficial than “free” commands. It doesn’t really make sense for something to be locked if it doesn’t come with sufficient perks once unlocked, you know?
But breaktime, while it does occasionally give life in the upper 400s, often provides life on par with a good feed, and sometimes provides less life while costing more food than running feed. Hike is often on par with play in terms of minutes added, while draw and fetch sometimes only provide a few more minutes of life than play. Once folks realize/notice this, there starts to be this feeling of, “why go to all that effort?” And as mentioned before, even with all ACs, keeping your pet at a steady state of life/increasing that life can still prove a challenge if you’re not running /play and /feed all the time and doing ACs whenever you can (and irl being what it is, folks get busy and sometimes need to step away).

So, bringing it all back, yes, ACs are a supplement, but considering I think a lot of folks struggle to maintain steady pet life through the free commands alone, they feel like an essential supplement if you want to keep your pet alive. But ultimately, for how much time and effort and frustration (since yeah, you might fail six times in a row and that’s a lot of stars lost) goes into getting those supplements, there’s a bit of a disconnect in terms of the additional life you’re actually receiving in return for all that effort.

thank you for your feedback and explanation!

we’ll be working on more creative ways to have different ways of not just vertical but also horizontal investment: and try to make it more worthwhile overall.

let me think more, and maybe i will update this post when i have more to share.

Thank you! (for both the response and all your efforts re mimu).
Just a quick question, might be a dumb one, but what do you mean by horizontal and vertical investment?

my apologies! this is a game design term:
vertical investment: focusing on a small portion of the game, making players want to invest deeper into the same item, stat or progression path to strengthen it.

horizontal investment: making players invest in breadth, not strength, unlocking more options, playstyles, or utility, rather than flat power.

in this context:
vertical - more lifetime, more food, etc.
horizontal - dividers, tbh, and that’s it.

ACs was intended to be horizontal investment, but from what i’m gathering, some of that intended design didn’t land perfectly for players, which is super valuable feedback for us. part of the long-term goal is giving ACs more meaningful identity rather than pure lifetime boosts. regardless, there is likely some balance to be made, even to its current numbers. when the system revamp is shaped more enough to talk publicly, likely sometime in 2026, i’ll have more to share!

** edited for rephrasing