hi! i'm not posting this to spread negativity, these are genuine concerns about the site's player base and i've had some of these concerns from day one.

i'm concerned about the use of banner ads on the website, particularly when exploring. reducing the rate at which food and wild wolves events occur will just keep people exploring longer, which in turn will generate more ad revenue. to me, it feels like an abuse of a game mechanic that we have to participate in to be involved with the story at all, especially considering that they had a kickstarter for this game, a beta AND alpha phase as far as i can tell, AND are offering premium currency.

on top of that, and it's not even entirely unrelated: the site isn't finished. i can't even check to see potential pups with wolves i dont own without using a player made spreadsheet. there isn't a useful notification system in place. the trading post is frustrating to use and sorts things strangely. the UI is so polished and smooth and i can't emphasize this enough because it feels like it was done on purpose. like yeah, we're missing basic features of a genetics based wolf collecting game, but look at how sparkly it is!

i'm posting this because it feels like there is a lack of respect for the players here and things like having banner ads and very expensive premium currency on an unfinished game do not encourage me to keep playing, personally.

I… like supporting games I play buy buying stuff from them. I'm not feeling like supporting the site in that manner at this point.

I'm willing to give benefit of the doubt for a new game, but I'm not likely to spend more if things don't seem more balanced between free to play and pay to play.

big agree!

i find it a little strange that not much (from what i can remember atleast, which is admittedly little) from EA has changed? it's important to remember that the game's only been out for like 2 weeks but its still kind of worrying to me. i don't mean to stomp on the devs and their work on this beautiful site but,, im really not liking the direction the games going into /nm

The direction its going in with prioritizing money is really concerning. I understand that money is a necessity for the devs to survive and keep the site going, but the gap between free and paying players is steadily increasing with no acknowledgement of the issues - not even a “we're taking the feedback into account”. I've personally cancelled my subscription (actually did a while ago when the communication issues became clear) and don't plan on renewing unless things change.

The recent patch notes feel like another step firmly in the direction of being a money farming mobile game. I bet some players use adblock or anti-ad browsers; making explore more tedious and less rewarding is not going to encourage them to turn it off. It just angers those who have to deal with 3x as many ads for less than half the reward.

They mentioned player polls, so it's interesting they decided to leave players completely out of the decision on the WW issue when it's been one of the biggest concerns since day 1 next to the site becoming much more pay to win overnight with the quiet switch from pebbles upgrades to moonstones according to beta players.

I do find there's a set up for a serious divide between pay to play and regular play for this game - I've only been able to get the moonstones to get certain items and such because right now there's a high demand and low supply for pups, so selling pretty pups has been getting me all my money. But once things settle down and it's harder to sell things for moonstones, how is anyone going to access that currency without paying (A lot mind you.)

I worry that compared to other breeding sites, this one feels like its heading in the direction of a mobile game designed only to sell things, which makes me really sad because so far I love what's here.

hard disagree on the banner ads. they aren't intrusive or egregious and the website needs to make money. premium currency is not enough. the more they make, the more time they can spend on updates and improvements and additional staff. plus, if you don't want to see them, you can just run an adblocker.

as for the rest it sounds like your main concern is offspring previews missing and maybe layout changes? I would hardly say that makes the game unfinished, but I'm also not really using the breeding mechanic so maybe that's just me.

now I do agree that there is a serious concern with the value of premium currency vs ftp currency, and that is the upgrades cost moonstones issue which desperately needs to be fixed

@luke no disrespect intended in this but it doesn't matter if you don't use the breeding feature. it's a wolf breeding game. wolf genetics play a big part. this is part of my issue. the way the game is currently set up, it values players that trade for premium currency here or FR over breeding (i hope this sentence makes sense!). i have high value things to trade both here and flight rising, but i don't feel i should need to be spending all of my money right out of the gate to have a good time. i play games like this to breed and play with genetics. i also only pointed out a few issues, but the game literally isn't finished. we can only level our wolves to ten and the story is incomplete. i would have preferred the game stay in early access and have the game launch with these features, but it didn't so now they have to hear about it from overly opinionated players like me, lol. i couldn't even quote your post because that feature isn't implemented yet despite it being a feature of every forum since the 90's.

also, while i do fundamentally disagree with pet games running ads, i generally don't mind it. my issue is when this is abused at the expense of the player-base, and that's what i'm concerned is happening here.

i won't come back and reply much more because i don't want this to turn into me defending myself but you made some really good points that i wanted the chance to clarify, so thank you!

@froggy totally fair I shouldn't argue on breeding features, you're right that it is meant to be the core of the game. I was just sort of assuming that since people are breeding their progens and there's an active G2 market that the breeding mechanic is working effectively, but I understand that it is very different when it comes to wolves you didn't get to customize. for that I apologize! you're right that this is a very important feature and I don't want to come off as an “it doesn't affect me so I don't care” person.

I think the explore rebalance isn't intentional on the devs part to abuse ad revenue; if it's less rewarding to campaign, people will probably do it less rather than more. I am concerned about the rebalance but that's personally encouraging me to go back to the Arena or go play Zelda instead of exploring more, which is detrimental to ad revenue

anyway thank you for your thoughtful response! you helped me understand where you're coming from for sure and I better understand your concerns. I'm sorry if I came off as dismissive initially! I think you have pointed out important issues here and it's mainly the banner ad issue that I disagree with. sometimes I hit send before I sit and think