minim's post reminded me of the situation around WWs with 2 letter names.

Quiche asked a player to hold off on trading a wild wolf they got that came to them with a randomized 2 letter name. The reasoning was that wolves could not, at the time, be named anything shorter than 3 characters and selling a "bugged" wolf may be against TOS, but they would check with the devs. Topic for reference: https://www.lorwolf.com/Forum/View?id=3632

Until today, when I asked my friend if I was remembering correctly, I never actually knew what the end result of this situation was. Outside of when I saw the patch notes that confirmed the change to wolf names.

What if I had been a casual player who saw that mod interaction? What if I had traded for a 2L WW, not realizing that it was a bug and I could have just named and wolf that? I don't blame Quiche for only notifying the players in the thread, not at all. Alaunis should have included this in the patch notes! With a plan of action for anyone who was potentially scammed by this bug!

It's just really, really weird. I can tell that Quiche is trying really hard to be helpful and do a good job, but the devs are not giving them the support they need.

I'm really sorry but these sound like nightmare IRL corporate bosses who blame you instead of accepting they need to do better.

Edit: Devs please listen to these posts. I'm an old, diehard neopets fan and a lot of these communication SNAFUs remind me a lot of neopets.

The site has a TOS but countless unlisted rules and rule clarifications are not included in the linked TOS. Wanna know where they are? Why in the WEEKLY Editorial of course! What's that? You want to know which of the 984 weeks have rule clarifications? 🤨

Ummm well haha who knows why you'd want that! But you need to go to one of the countless FAN ran and operated sites that have spent the hours cataloguing them for the site!

@Loki

It's funny you bring that up because it's one of the first examples I think of when I think of how unclear the patch notes are. This is the wording used to say that wolf names can now be two characters (link to patch notes post here):

"Updated wolf username limit to be 2 characters instead of 3"

I saw a few people get confused about this, since they used the word username and not... wolf name. By using the word "username", it was assumed that they meant the player account character limit, not the wolf name character limit.

It's things like that that make me agree with the sentiment that the patch notes are too vague, or even that their wording needs some work. Sometimes it's not entirely clear what got fixed, or where such features are added to. It took me a solid 15 minutes to figure out where the polls were, for example... All we were told was "log in to vote!" uh yeah I'm already logged in, what's the next step? (hint: you can find it by hovering over the More tab)

"Your economy is exploitative, requiring excessive amounts of time and/or real money to participate."

All pet sites can be criticized in this way. They basically all function on the games as a service model, where there's a premium currency or premium benefits that allows the buyer to circumvent much of the grind. Someone on FR recently bought a boolean with gems that they obtained from opening their wallet, which is undeniably faster than earning them through gameplay (and honestly is unreasonable for a new player to buy a boolean from gameplay earnings alone). Did they need a boolean? No. But by the same argument, nobody "needs" an expanded mine cart (you can discard extra ores manually, freeing up space, and the pebble tasks never ask for more than the base amount). At least with the pet site model, most of them let you buy the premium currency with the free currency from other players. The reason why it's not official is because basically all pet sites have inflation or deflation issues and the player to player exchange is much more flexible.

I do think the staff addressed the economy in indirect ways. The new pebble items are meant to be a solution to the complaint that there's nothing to do with pebbles. I've even seen another thread suggesting one of the new companions are 'overpowered' so it seems clear to me that they want players to just buy these new things and be happy. They also did release pebble upgrades for the professions, so I think it's meant to be a 'non paid' alternative to buffing the professions. I made a suggestion about it myself, though I said that it would be preferable if they just introduced new pebble expansions to the professions.

There's calls for "more communication" but I'm not sure what exactly would be the desired outcome here. I think it would also come off as quite rude if staff just went 'no, we already designed the site this way, so we're not backing down on the MS expansions. But look here's some new stuff for you to spend pebbles on, and we'll continue to release new pebble stuff"

So, I don't think Quiche was really lying or anything, but it's kind of an awkward situation where staff don't really want to follow the demands, but made some concessions, but also it would be a bit rude to explicitly say it

i don't think quiche was lying or trying to be purposefully malicious. we don't really know how much they were told about the update's contents, and she is trying to build a bridge of communication between devs and players

i do agree though. i was pinged by quiche in a few suggestion threads that were about improving the divide between moonstones & pebbles, and i was a little,, confused to see that the update did little to address the actual issue ? like yeah they added a few minor pebble sinks but this isn't. nearly enough to solve the divide

apparently the achievement system (which is close to being finished) will award moonstones for larger achievements (said in the roadmap post). maybe that will be the update quiche spoke about was that one if it's being released this month? maybe it'll be addressed then??? i've no clue

i really hope something happens soon though, my motivation for playing this game is quickly dwindling //

> There's calls for "more communication" but I'm not sure what exactly would be the desired outcome here. I think it would also come off as quite rude if staff just went 'no, we already designed the site this way, so we're not backing down on the MS expansions. But look here's some new stuff for you to spend pebbles on, and we'll continue to release new pebble stuff"

I would genuinely prefer this over the complete absence of talking about the specific issue. Then I know to stop spending energy on asking for it. Like I said, there's good steps forward being made in the communication department, but what we're asking for is like... more specifics, more direct communication, not just "here's some pebble stuff and achievements will come with moonstone rewards". If that means being told "we already designed expansions this way, it's not changing, stop asking", I'd still be satisfied with getting that answer even if it's not the answer I want.

@Lycoris

I don't know how I feel about your equivalence to a familiar, as rare as it may be, whose only real use is to be an aesthetic/bragging rights/personal reasons (as completing your bestiary can be done without it through Fiona) to an upgrade to a profession. I feel like one is significantly more important gameplay-wise than the other. Yes, all pet sites can be boiled down to requiring premium currency/lots of grinding to get x item, but it's what exactly requires such grinding that people find to be such an issue on Lorwolf. It's everything!

Yes, you can just drop the ores, but that's time-consuming and just adds more unnecessary clicks, and when you get to the later levels, it becomes such a problem and a huge time waster. Yeah, I don't technically need the minecart upgrade, but I also don't technically need to buy a new sword or level up my stats in a video game to beat the boss if I can just chip away at them instead with my current gear or stats. But I do, because it makes things easier. It's a game and games have progression, and naturally, players will want to progress to make the experience smoother and easier. Upgrading your minecart is without a doubt a quality of life enhancement that is almost integral to progressing through the mines that is behind a premium currency wall, and thus is a bigger benefit to players who can just straight up buy MS as opposed to regular players who can only grind for MS and pebbles to try to trade for MS at a snail's pace. It's going to turn players away when they see the giant paywall.

And in regards to being able to buy the premium currency with regular currency from other players, that is also an issue that has been brought up, since the regular currency, pebbles, does not have a lot of power or use right now and has been inflating. The new companions and apparel have helped mitigate this a little, but I suspect it will just inflate back up once the companions/apparel are no longer new. And yeah, the companions do seem a little overpowered probably to encourage more pebble spending, but it's such a shallow fix to what is a core issue. It won't last.

When we ask for more communication, we want transparency. We want to know that staff know about these issues more so than glazing over it and tacking it on the suggestion index and are actively working towards fixing these issues. We don't want to be left speculating whether x update was supposed to fix it or address the issue, or the intentions behind feature y, we just want staff to be like, "we know there are concerns here, here's how we're going to work to address them" like they did with the WW encounter issue. Yeah, it'd be rude for staff to say "we're not going to back down but here's some shiny stuff instead" but... by their silence, that's already the type of message a lot of us are receiving. If anything, them saying they're not going to do anything about it would at least put this topic to rest and stop all of us from wondering if something can be done and if there's still a chance for staff to go back on this decision.

No one is accusing Quiche of lying, but it does not do well for morale or for impressions of the staff when we're told to expect something and have it just... not be there.

edit for clarity: this was intended to address lycoris's post

to be quite frank, the devs need to be willing to say things that are uncomfortable for players to hear. "we reviewed our budget and we determined that we can't afford to make any changes to moonstone locks on professions at this time" would be a clear, reasoned statement that, while we might not like it, has at least been thought about. and if the pebble-cost additions are intended to be an alternative to buff that profession without premium currency, tell us so!!! i don't think "here is what we're doing and here is why we did it" is too much to ask for.

the way it is, players feel like the devs do not consider us to be reasonable, intelligent people that are capable of understanding and accepting hard truths. we are being treated like children, who are too young or too naive to be allowed to know why adults are making the decisions they make. i don't know about anyone else, but the phrase "because i said so" has always made me see red.

(for the record i don't think children should be treated this way either. oxox)

> to be quite frank, the devs need to be willing to say things that are uncomfortable for players to hear. "we reviewed our budget and we determined that we can't afford to make any changes to moonstone locks on professions at this time" would be a clear, reasoned statement

100% this.

Even if I don't like the answers, being given really honest communication tells me that the devs respect their playerbase enough to be honest with them.

It shows a lot of maturity and professionalism.

> to be quite frank, the devs need to be willing to say things that are uncomfortable for players to hear. "we reviewed our budget and we determined that we can't afford to make any changes to moonstone locks on professions at this time" would be a clear, reasoned statement

YES,THIS IS THE POINT.

I'm sorry if this message makes you feel rude, I still use a translator to communicate.

As a pure player, someone who pays more attention to the joy that games bring me, I don't think LW has enough user viscosity yet to support some of the strategies it is implementing now. I signed up and played it shortly after the start of the FR server, and for a long time I had the impression that the T:G ratio was 1:20, then around 1:300, until the nearest 1:1000 or so, but throughout the process, the official did not increase the difficulty of the game too early, nor did it diminish the revenue that players can get, and their main way of regulating the ratio is still to launch new items that are eye-catching enough and more in line with the theme of the game (and their mini-games are fun enough, I am addicted to match-3 game when I started to played it. Look at the elder one: neopets, their mini-game system is more complete).

I can also use some mobile games as examples, although they are full of consumption scams, but their update messages and probabilities are mostly open, transparent, and have enough artistic ability to grab the user's attention to increase the user's viscosity. I don't expect officials to respond to player suggestions one by one, and I understand their hard work, but with so many people asking the same questions, I think communication is still important, at least, the courage to say "we can't do it for the time being" is important.