I'm refusing to buy the expansions out of principle because of this.

I absolutely agree and support.

I spent rl-Money on the starter pack, thinking that the expansion cost of 25 Moonstones would give me the unlock to 30 spaces. I was absolutely shocked to see it only bought me 4 spaces each and even more shocked at the doubling price.

I get that the game has to be monetized in some way and I am not angry that there is a premium currency. That's gaming nowadays. Paying a small fee per month or as a yearly package to hide ads is totally fine. Having premium currency for stuff like rare breed changers or beautiful custom apparel is also totally fine. But having to pay tons of said currency for miniscule increases in convenience? So not fine. That's predatory monetization and one of the reasons why I'm not sure if I keep playing long term, to be honest.

Another option for having to pay Moonstones might be a custom token where you can create one custom wolf with a token instead of only having the starting pair. I haven't seen any such item so far and would be far more happy to pay for that than for 5 slots increases in profession areas.

But that's just me.

Support for a mixed solution. The escalating cost of the upgrades is what I am concerned about. 25 is inconvenient and its only the first one. 50 is a lot. 100 is too much.

I would have wanted to see the first two upgrades cost Pebbles, a lot of them. Then the third could have been 25 MS, and the fourth could have been 50 MS.

I'm not against upgrades costing MS on principal. It's hard to earn MS right now, but this will not always be the case. It's already getting better slowly and will continue to as more MS are circulating. Give it a few months. Progress in this game does not need to be a speedrun and none of us need these upgrades to play or benefit from Professions. I can afford the expansions, but I'm not buying them. If I had them all now, what would I do with them? Not a lot. There is much more content to come in this (very new) game and I'm happy to wait for its release before being motivated to upgrade. Point is, Crafting isn't the only way to get MS without touching USD; it's not even the best one, the FM is. Given time, MS will be easier to spend on other players' goods and services and spending them on sinks like upgrades won't seem so bad. We will need premium currency sinks like this (different from CA and scrolls) in the future.

"In the future" is the key phrase. I wonder how people would have felt about this if they had staggered the availability of upgrades that cost MS. Just about every new game's premium currency economy is like what we're seeing now, and it always evens out with time. But not everyone has been around for multiple game launches, so they are upset because they don't know it's going to get better on its own. I think the community in general would have taken this system better if the 50 and 100 MS upgrades were made available at a later date when that amount was easier to earn after Pebble expansions were available first.

Anyway, I really want to see both types of currency sinks in Profession upgrades. People seem concerned about spending MS on the upgrades now if they're going to change it Pebbles later, which is valid. But I don't think upgrades need to have a strictly linear cost increase. There could be two upgrade "paths," one for Pebbles and one for MS, for example. A player could do one or both, their choice.

support, especially the dual upgrade choice either this many ms or this many pebbles. that would make things so much better. tier jumps also need to be a bit lower since the jump is so high and the reward for it pretty low. 4 spaces or whatever is rough.

Bumping this thread with huge support!! Moonstones are way too precious to me to purchase any of the profession upgrades, but I can tell that not buying any expansions is already hindering my ability to take part in the professions. Especially if these used to cost pebbles while the site was in beta, switching it up on users feels a little underhanded.

Full support. It’s one thing for late game to get more expensive and start costing premium currency, but every single upgrade outside of den slots being locked behind a pay way is unfair to players who can’t pay money for pixel wolves.

Especially when the value of said currency is high and you need a lot of it for basic quality of life upgrades.

I have no problem spending 100 moonstones on cosmetics for my wolves, but 100 moonstones for 4 more cooking spots is not worth it.

also I feel these upgrades should say exactly what you’re getting for the price. I couldn’t find where it said +4 anywhere.

This has been a poorly received change since it got sprung on us all by surprise when the site launched, and changing it to something more reasonable would still go a long way to improving the relationship a lot of nickel-and-dime microtransaction weary (and wary) players have with the site.

The effort it would take to refund people who already purchased the exorbitantly priced upgrades would be a bit annoying, I'm sure, but should be extremely possible given the site has to keep track of what you've unlocked. Goes without saying that it should happen, of course.

MS from achievements could have soothed this a little, but they are so sparse for the effort required that it should really go without mentioning in this conversation.

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Also yeah, more transparency about what you're getting for the price should also be obligatory regardless of whatever else happens. Link did a great write up here cataloguing the total costs of upgrades, but I don't think it's really gotten the appreciation it's deserved.