@Blizzard the issue with the upgrades is that you're essentially buying very marginal 'upgrades' for 3 dollars, and the next one's at 5 dollars. etc. While they're 'poop' for some professions like cooking, they're almost mandatory for others like mining.
And there are so many things for moonstones, every profession, dens and in such high quantities and then you also want to get some cute CA apparel but they're all selling at ~10 dollars

So I wouldn't denigrate people as entitled for wanting 1-2 updates to sink your pebble pockets as a progression milestone before upgrading to MS.

@Pizza

I do and have always agreed with you that the first expansion (professions and maybe even dens) should be pebbles, even if just to boost awareness of their existence/help people who don't realize right away that they can drop ores. But I am genuinely curious, what professions outside of mining and cooking require MS? As far as I'm aware, all the other current professions lock progress behind xp, some now with optional pebble boosts, but have no option to use MS even if you wanted to. But if I'm missing something please let me know, it'd probably be really useful lol.

So I will grant that spending MS on mining is essentially required... but as you said cooking expansions are meh at best, dens can be ignored in lieu of brute forcing space with pebble slots (if you don't mind the lack of organization), and CA are entirely cosmetic and will become less impactful as the game ages and we get more site apparel. Afaik patterns, breed changes, and companions are the the only things aside from mining that impact gameplay and cost MS, and though there definitely have been some good critiques of the price points of those things, I haven't seen nearly as much general criticism about them as I have seen for professions. That's what I (perhaps clumsily) was trying to get at; the bulk of the frustration in my eyes seems to stem from a desire to have all the MS things ASAP, regardless of their utility. Realistically, you don't even need mining expansions right away; as long as you know how to drop ore you can use the default 15 just fine for the first area, and by the time you unlock the second you should be able to afford the first expansion at least. During the time you spend unlocking the next area you will probably be able to upgrade again, and so on. It just... doesn't seem like a catastrophic problem to me, even if first expansions aren't changed to be pebbles. I can see how people would feel that way, and of course they have every right to, but the level of vitriol people seem to have for the devs/game for it seems way too overblown and kinda meanspirited. Just my $.02, feel free to take it with a grain of salt

((Soapbox: I would also argue that the consideration of virtual currency as the same value of irl currency (something that happens a lot on petsites) is flawed. The expansions don't cost $3, they cost 25 MS; 25 MS are not worth $3, they can be purchased for $3. It's a difference that seems semantic but is not. Virtual currency is always worth less than what you paid for it (especially if it can also be generated for free) because the potential of the dollar has been used up- that $3 can no longer be put towards purchases like food, clothing, housing, other recreation, etc. It's the same reason that you generally will not be able to sell irl things for the same price you purchased them, unless you manage to find a seller who values them just as much (or more) than you do. Very very few people will value 25 MS as equally as they do $3, so there is no way that one can truthfully claim that 25 MS is worth $3; can cost $3. It is disingenuous to frame MS prices in USD.))

@Blizzard please understand that premium currency is premium currency to put a wall of seperation on people so they have a harder time realising how much money they are spending, and thus, making it more likely for them to overspend.

It is one of the predatory tactics employed by free to play games and you should always be aware of that. Sometimes neglegably, other times to great effect.

And we know the worth of MS precisely from how it is priced by this site's premium shop, so that's exactly how much it is worth.

You can't buy 25 ms, you can only buy 30 ms, that upgrade will thus cost you 3 dollars or 2 1/2 dollars worth of ms.

So. "You're spending 3 dollars for what... 5 inventory slots?"

It is removing obfuscation from the discussion on pricing.

@Hawkfeather thank you for the further explanation! Don't worry about it though--@/Blizzard already DMed me your thread and explained to me.

I think it'll do okay, but not as well as Flight Rising because it didn't have the same level of attention backing behind it at launch and even now. Plus, we're still lacking a lot of content and there doesn't seem to be much of an interest in addressing the abysmal pebble to moonstone ratio. Plus, I know the team is small and needs to reach out and get some more talent when they have the time and money to do so.

I honestly think the site needs more frequent updates to have good user retention/growth, which is vital for the long-term future of LW. It's a new site - you want to keep people engaged. I think one giant content dump in the first week of the month, followed by like a couple small QoL tweaks once or twice a month thereafter but basically radio silence most weeks, doesn't really keep people engaged. Everyone runs through the new stuff in a week and just kinda nope out until the next month's update dump.