*Please note: I do not want this to devolve into bashing of the dev's decisions. This is a genuine attempt at a discussion- if you have grievances about this topic please use some other outlet for sharing them.

I did not play the beta of Lorwolf, but I have seen several times that expansions for professions (cooking, mining, and hunting) previously cost pebbles to unlock instead of moonstones. If anyone from the beta remembers the pebble cost for each expansion I would be very interested in hearing what the previous pebble prices were- if you remember!

Prices are now premium currency based, and scaling at that, doubling at each purchase. (25-50-100MS for each 3 places expansions are available- correct me if I'm wrong here!) This seems to be a super controversial decision from the dev's- I have seen several suggestions to just completely *undo* this decision and return to pebble expansions as they were in Beta. This idea is interesting to me and a big part of what I'm hoping to discuss: as someone with pretty limited knowledge of decisions that would influence petsite economics- how would this idea even work? Do members who have previously bought the expansions get refunded the moonstones to their account? Do the expansions just switch to pebbles and members who paid moonstones just.. move on?

I understand with sites like this you either have to pay in time or cash; there are a fair amount of moonstone sinks but I understand that LW *does* need to profit as a company. I have more time than most (and also the type of brain that doesn't mind mindless click tasks) so I have profited pretty well for a mostly f2p player. I have had enough moonstones on my account at once to fully update all professions, but have mostly chosen not to. When I look at the cost of extra slots for one of the professions I would almost always rather have a pretty CA instead. Mining seems like the only one that might tempt me into buying another expansion- but mostly out of my own laziness with that profession but still having a desire to reach the fountain. The rest I feel I could very easily live without and pretend there are no expansions. I'm curious about how many players feel similarly. Have you purchased any profession upgrades? Which? How many? Do you feel they were worth it? Do you plan to get them if you haven't already? Or do you just have other things you'd prefer to spend your MS on so you probably won't bother?

I'm also curious to know general ideas on if/how this should change. Since I feel like I can live without the expansions at their costs, I'm not sure I have any major desire to change them (altho I would probably buy them if they were pebble based). I have been thinking about the possibility of pebble expansions alongside MS expansions. MS expansions all seem to be for extra slots- more mining inventory, more cooking inventory, and more hunting spots. What if you could spend pebbles to improve professions? Same set up- 3 pebble expansions that benefitted professions in some way. Perhaps buffs for wheel/pickaxe durability, a permanent reduction in smelting/reroll/rush order cost, queuing a second cooking order, etc. Would these be well received or would it just add to the chaos of (what seems to be) player dissatisfaction with a whole other set of expansions to pay for? What would you as a player like to see?

I'm guessing moon stone exapnsions are here to stay, but I think a flat fee of 25 moonstones a row, capping out at spending 200 total, would go over better with a lot more people. I also think they should include some profession based expansions so it doesn't feel like it's 100% required. I know I also suggested a Gem bag, for single smelting ores and gems which would help with the mining clutter and give an extra wolf some use.

I'm Picky with CA, so while I've upgraded to the max, I think the flat fee would feel better to more players than how it is now. I know the expansions are pretty powerful, so I'm not regretting buying what I had, but I wouldn't be pressed to expand the next professions because I have other places to spend money, and I'm fine with passively playing for free at this point.

@Vissyn

I really, really, don't like mining because I just... don't really care about metal bars. I'm perpetually crafting bone paste and don't really care about the apparel- I genuinely think I'd rather just buy any apparel that needs metal bars than get all the ores to craft them myself. The only thing I use my metal for is when I rarely need to craft a new batch of wheels/pickaxes which isn't super often because I really only think about mining when I'm not ignoring my activity tasks. I went a few rounds without a wheel the other day and it was at my same exact pacing because I check so rarely.

That said I am tentatively more curious about mining now that gems are a thing, especially when I saw someone post a screenshot of huge xp gains from babysitting their cart and dropping until they got a lot of gems. I've been tempted to do this but I honestly think I can't be bothered to check in and drop ores that often. I would really love a second wolf or something that allows more focus on getting gems and being able to ignore ores more passively, even if it took a lot more time for the 'gem bag' collector to mine!

Since the account data has to be saved for a player to access their purchased expansions, it cannot be impossible for refunds to occur if they desired to change how upgrades worked~

But if they are unwilling to completely remove ms expansions, then having them side-by-side with pebble expansions-- or making pebble expansions tie in with requiring some bars of ore and maybe a small quest, while letting the premium option be the "time skip" option-- would probably help with the negative perceptions the ms upgrade change has had since launch. I doubt it would totally fix it, because it did damage to some people's trust of the game and that isn't easily repaired, especially as it occurred so early in the game's launch, but, well... You can't undo that initial perception, alas.

@Reave

Certainly not impossible but would it be... easy? I know very little about programming so I'm unsure of the options if they even wanted to go back on the MS route decision. Would it be possible to just mass refund the MS for players who have bought it, or would they have to manually do it somehow for each individual account?

I hadn't thought of pebble + some task activity to potentially work as an alternative to paying MS, that is super interesting! It definitely seems like it gives you more of the option between the 'time or money' aspect which seems very fair. I do wonder if it would bother users who have already paid MS for the expansions, tho.

@Brunette

Only the devs can answer that, I wouldn't dream of implying I know what it looks like behind the scenes, but we aren't quite at overwhelmingly large numbers of users at the moment either! It's one of those things that gets bigger the longer it's ignored though, because of the nature of linear time. :P

I don't think "some number of users will be annoyed, but not materially harmed since they keep the upgrades they have" is a reason to not make a mechanic of the site uniformly better for everyone else-- whichever form it takes-- including potential future folks everyone is hoping to continue to come play the game though. I do think people in that scenario should still be refunded, ideally-- but if that was impossible for... some unforeseen reason, for the sake of argument, I still think it would be a worthwhile thing to do.

I can only speak my own opinion here, and I will repeat what I said elsewhere.

First some context, I'm a very casual LW player, but I love the game, so I come back every day. Also, I'm a KS backer, so I have some interest to seeing the game strive and be the best experience for everyone. So you guessed it, I participated in Beta phases and early access. And the change from pebble to moonstones was unwelcomed, but I didn't really care because during the test play I never used them. I think because everything was going faster, I never felt the need to try them, as I could still do everything without them and without struggle. I didn't see them as that powerful. Boy was I wrong.

The game can/will be unfairly hard for casual players. I was really struggling with mining, it was to the point I had nearly all the metal related crafting recipes, but I was having difficulties unlocking the second mining zone and when I finally did, I really was stuck there. The too small mining inventory added to the copper "problem" made me unable to consistently smelt ores into bars without being constantly micromanaging mining. Which as a casual player with limited time is close to impossible to do.

So, out of curiosity and a lot of thinking (I really don't like the idea of paying real money for that), I decided to buy 2 extensions for mining. First, I was surprised because I completely forgot extension prices doubled each time. (not a good thing to do) Then when I started to mine again. And let me tell you, these 2 extensions are a really unfair advantage I have over anyone else. Not only, I'm not struggling anymore (I don't need to micromanage mining at all guaranteed 3 bars per run), but I have started to move forward in mining really fast. In around a month, I already unlocked mining zone 3. While it took me nearly 3 months to unlock zone 2 without the extensions, and I don't know how long it would have taken to unlock zone 3 in the same condition.

The advantage is so unfair that I want it gone. And I wouldn't care if I wasn't given back my moonstones. I only have 2 extensions, imagine what someone who got them all is getting out of them. And I can only imagine if someone had all the moonstones extension in the game.

Honestly, I don't know what kind of solution there is, and what would work. Having half the extension for a profession for pebbles and the other half for moonstones? @Reave solution? I honestly don't know, the only thing I'm sure is extensions for moonstones have to go away.

I have partially upgraded most things, and they won't be getting upgraded any further at this point because the cost is just far too high. The only thing that would maybe justify another upgrade is cooking, since I can't keep up with making food as fast as I go through it, but 4 more slots? For 50 moonstones? And then 100 after that? Over a whole month of me saving up my shards and daily ms for 4 more slots, and then another THREE months of saving for the next one, and that's just one of the professions. At least with CA, those ms aren't just... gone into the void.

I honestly would accept cutting my losses and getting no refund on any of my upgrades if it meant future people were able to adequately expand their professions with pebbles. It feels weird knowing I have upgrades I could do that'll make things easier, but they're prohibitively expensive. The last upgrade for each profession is ten freakin' dollars. Each. That's excessive.

The game is quite mean to people who are FTP players, or those who don't do CA to get those large amounts of ms otherwise. I would be pretty sad if I had to spend all the ms I got from achievements on profession upgrades, when there's so many better things you could buy.

I like the idea of having pebble upgrades as well, but I think the pebble upgrades should be for the bulk of the upgrade (the extra slots) and the ms upgrades improve things about that profession, like faster rush order, or maybe 8 slots extra per rush order instead of 4. I feel like it's too late to change, but at the same time, sunk cost fallacy hitting hard here.

@Reave (wish I could quote lol)

I don't think "some number of users will be annoyed, but not materially harmed since they keep the upgrades they have" is a reason to not make a mechanic of the site uniformly better for everyone else

This is very true- I think sometimes the people pleaser in me thinks about avoiding backlash more than... actually pleasing the majority.

@DerpFox

I bought the first mining expansion after I got I think to the 3rd location because that's when it started to become too tedious to *not* have those extra slots. I would absentmindedly not bother checking if I had 5 of a certain ore to smelt and needlessly send my wolf to the furnace and back without actually having done anything because I had some weird combo of stuff that didn't actually leave me with 5 of any ores. I'm still in the same location and leveling very, very slowly. Mining and fishing are my lowest professions by a long shot- my crafting is above 70 and almost everything else above 50 so I do really think me not purchasing expansions it is hindering my ability to actually level these. I also was caught super off by the scaling prices for everything- Dens REALLY had me shocked when I excitedly went to buy my 3rd one and it was suddenly 30 MS instead of 20.

@foxriddles

Yeah CA is just so much more tempting than worrying about my levels- I would rather let those rot, even with achievements, than not have very pretty wolves. Even MS options that are on the site I'm much more attracted to- Sprinklers, Genes, I would really like to get a Zerda/Vol BC as well so like.. I have tons of interest in spending MS on the games premium currency sellers with almost the exclusive exception of profession expansions.

I know I come across as quite critical about a lot of the post-launch decisions made, but it is because I'm really wanting the game to be monetarily successful in the long run! Just without being needlessly focused around the microtransactional nature of the site as a whole.

I'm not against monetization entirely, they need to be able to keep the lights on and pay people fairly-- but I certainly balk at the way it's been implemented currently! There is a good core here that could be genuinely much better, and I think would make more people feel better about giving the site money to support something they love, ultimately, if they didn't feel like they were being so aggressively pressured to spend ever-increasing amounts of premium currency to access upgrades. ):

The big rub is, they have already utilized much fairer ways to monetize cosmetic things-- breeds, markings, and even some apparel! They are things accessible to ftp players over longer stretches of time, or through breeding and sales. But they allow people with spare cash to show off a little with their fancied up wild wolves that everyone knows can only be caught with certain markings, etc. There aren't that many available right now, but every one they release will remain there perpetually. The main "problem" here is that they also really badly need to release more pebble content for players as well, but unlike the first problem... This one gets easier in the long run, as time goes on and they have more things available for both currencies. CA is very visibly a money-printing machine as it is for them, people seem to really be in love with that site feature!