@Ho-Hyong Yoo: Just like, you know, in real life! Some animals are resources, some are companions. With all of the emotional whiplash, too.

It is a fundamental difference between survival crafting and monster taming genre. In former, animals are another resource. In the latter, they are your comrades. It is tough to mash them together without a serious tone whiplash.

Than again Palworld went all out for the shock value

Fortunately breeding traits into pals isn't that hard, and the failures who don't materialize the traits you want are still useful in powering up the one that eventually does.
That being said, if it wasn't for ingot smelting you could in theory complete the entire game without ever catching a pal

“Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.”

@Ovis Militaris: And thus huge props to games that ignore PvP on purpose (like KanColle or Genshin that I play, but there are loads of others), so I can ignore meta as much as I can and people can suck it up.

@Mighty Annihilator you just buy them from a merchant you captured heh

Why'd you kill the only pal who can lay eggs? What will you make cake with?

@???: It's not something only survival games suffer from. No matter how much fun the gameplay or concept might be, eventually players will meta the crap out of any title.

And this is why I don't touch survival games. They're a trash genre.