This post has been updated to try to explain points more clearly, and bring in new ideas.

This came about due to this thread: Puppy mills on Ala.

What I propose, rather than coded checks for 'mill' behavior in player actions (which I retract now due to the coding nightmare involved), is something that should be fairly easy to implement and will bring a lot of unfavorable breeding and the resultant market flood of low-quality dogs to a halt:

A feature that tells you, if your dog is untrained, that the dog must have somewhere between basic and 25% training prior to breeding. A possible addition to this is that if you decide not to breed this way, it could be fairly easily coded in (I think) so your dog cannot be run in trials, for those who told me there are a lot of users who breed without training at all, strictly for looks. I imagine it would work similarly to the INBRED tag that I suspect will be coming back, and would utterly prohibit a dog from running. It would also mimic the real world. Breed only for looks and your line changes- in this case, making the dog inept at agility. The initial suggestion (train to breed) would help, and the users who breed for strictly appearance still get to do so without dealing with training. Any users who try to bypass training to mill, well.. They're probably not going to be breeding the prettiest dogs, and the pups would have a big glaring 'no trial' on top of it, putting mill users out of business. I'm NOT saying these two suggestions MUST go hand in hand. You can support one without supporting the other, just specify so. Users prior to this 2/16/11 update who supported were obviously doing so for the training to breed suggestion alone.

Another suggestion presented earlier in the thread, by Carni, was to make sell price of dogs a minimum of 3k. I'll put this up here so it can be more easily seen and discussed.

This isn't just about TP alone. It's about improving the quality of dogs and getting rid of the flood of Ala 'mill' dogs. I am not targeting any individual users. I am targeting a behavior that exploits the game and messes with the economy for everyone.

As mentioned.. more than once, I am not trying to make anyone play the game my way. I have worked on games before, I've had to knock kinks out of game mechanics before. I am not trying to take away anyone's fun.. I'm just trying to offer a suggestion to make the game more enjoyable for everyone. To make things run smooth and well, sometimes smaller things (like milling) need to be sacrificed. And on a site like Ala, letting the milling continue has unfortunate implications. This is Alacrity, where users try to breed the best dogs. This is not Alacrity, where users try their best to mimic a puppy mill.

And to finish up, while this grew out of a Debate thread, this thread is posted in Suggest Something. I will explain myself gladly and defend my points if I must, but I do not want a debate. Go to the thread linked above for that. If a discussion grows into anything even resembling a heated debate, I'll either stop responding myself or request you to take it to the debate thread. If you do not support, then do not support. If you do support, say so- and bring your own ideas to the table! More input can only help to make a suggestion like this work for everyone.