@Loki As a Head Mod elsewhere, if the players aren’t happy, then I want to pass the concerns on. Players mean I actually have a job and things to do. I just need to not promise anything but to pass the concern along.

While I disagree with the proposed solution, as Economists are very pricey especially for a 1-month-old petsim site.

I do see the benefit of at least getting some kind of "professional" insight and advice to help balance the site's economy. To expand on "the economy" I assume it's all of the complaints many have had so far. Pebbles are abundant and have very little use, Moonstones are highly sought after but not everyone can/wants to spend IRL money, and core gameplay mechanics are locked behind a premium currency paywall.

Many people are selling on the FM and charging MS, and yes you can buy people's MS on the FM, the inflation and irregular exchange rates are volatile.

I do understand many of the future features can help mitigate these issues, like the Achievement system rewarding MS and more apparel/items will offer things of value for people to spend Pebbles on.

I don't believe we're facing a "market crash" or anything too dire, but some good and healthy fixes should be implemented and soon. You can't let things get to the point of no return, with the site currency being so abundant with nowhere to go and players feeling like the only way to fully enjoy the game over time is to invest IRL money.

I can imagine there's some form of advisor or analyst freelancer out there, potentially even on Fiverr, that the Devs could invest a little bit in now to save and get a really good roadmap of their own to help the issues we're facing.

Are we in dire straights? I don't think so, we're a month in and unfortunately I think the Devs didn't realize how unbalanced the currencies were gonna end up. They have some (albeit unspoken as far as directly addressing the economy issue) ideas and plans coming out that should help mitigate, but it certainly won't be a proper fix without a good look at how its all functioning right now and why.

Heck, I'd offer my services as a data analyst if they ever considered it.

Like others have said; I'm not sure an economist can help too much at the current stage of the site. They likely won't work on balancing elements like recipes, professions, encounters, etc, which is where a lot of users issues seem to stem from.

Most virtual, and to some degree IRL, communities follow the philosophy of laissez-faire, which tends to work well enough if developers are considering supply/demand of various items and currencies. If the developers do not have a way to monitor these statistics, this is where they should start. Back end should be able to see what recipes are being crafted how often, what amount of individual items are being utilized, what is being hoarded (and research why), and what is never being used (and why, and if it was supposed to be used much more often when designed).

Also, general progress should be monitored as well. Late game should not be immediately hit by a majority of users, likewise most players who are active should not be just sitting at the beginning of the gameplay loop. If Pebbles are in excess and getting hoarded, they need natural game sinks for them that enhance normal gameplay and push people back into the loop.

What I imagine an economist would be able to impact would be monetization and long term consideration of where the site will eventually leak money - perhaps that's their database/server hosting cost will exceed the amount they gain through CA Tokens and current forms of monetization e.g.; expanding dens costing MS = eventually, will the amount of data called/stored negatively impact the site beyond what they were 'paid' initially for this expansion? if the site is only paid for 100 calls of that data, what happens at 1000? for a thousand people with that expansion? -- you might think this is a silly question, but we've seen sites like GaiaOnline and Subeta encounter this issue, resulting is massive lag they could not pay their way out of for better/faster servers/more hostage spac.etc. Features get rendered unusable, and take tons of time away from other projects to get redesigned or simply end up removed or barely usable. (This is normally handled by a company's CFO.)

You do not have to have a PhD in economics to start asking questions and reviewing your own site; How and why do bubbles form? (For those without insight; what a bubble even is.) What drives economic growth? What causes inflation? Even then, we likely don't have the data for them to start working from at this point in time with everything being so new.

From a user's perspective, looking into the market at what you want to do, how you COULD do it, and what is stopping you from doing it. If there is something stopping you, bring up your concerns.

What are you noticing about the market that is broken?

1. You cannot sell user created items, because there are too many on the market and no purpose for them? (Staff Could: Address how users are meant to use these items, address drop rates for materials.)
2. You cannot sell your wolves, and cannot get rid of them? (Staff Could: Incentivize releasing)
3. You don't know where to get XYZ? (Staff Could: Release better guides and references.)
4. You cannot get enough MS to pay for the things you want? (Staff Could: Study what they need for sustained income, what breaking even means for them, and what sustained profit they need, and work on slowly adding more ways for users to gain MS. Maybe this is friendly competitions, forum games, sponsored user events, etc.)

Things like this can help staff figure out where they need to look, what the userbase wants, and if general concerns brought up are actual concerns or are personal wants that have no place in the greater gameplay loop and site longevity.

An economist might be a bit much for a small pet site. It's not even THAT complicated, if you've played enough games like this.

First, you want small, medium and large goals for players to work toward.

Currently, looking at my mole mart, the recipes all are 500p, 1000p, 2500p, 100kp <that's.. a jump lol It's discouraging. It's a good idea to make sure everything is staggered well.

Den spaces do work very well in that aspect, the first 10 or so are pretty affordable. I really like that they start back at 1000p in a new den tab. The first two tabs or so should have been pebbles, and after that they could have gone to moonstone. Have that entry level not be so steep.

Same for the professions. First upgrade(s) pebbles, to get players going, and then moonstones. They could've reduced the initial size of both the cart and the cooking pot to give the appearance of the player achieving something, by having a fairly painless first expansion for a low fee.

I like the little added options to hire Koda, to rush order, to stoke.. those small pebble sinks will help a lot.

Any pet site needs a way for pets to leave the game and encourage use of it by having a good reward system. It's an absolute death sentence to not do that. Taking off the ticket limit, raising pebble output, or having a chance at a moonstone shard from time to time would help a lot.

I have high hopes for the promised achievement system, and perhaps there will be rewards for releasing x amount of wolves. Sadly, achievements tend to not be repeatable.. so we will have to see. I know the weekly events encourage my personal gameplay a lot, and running out of ticket goals really puts a stop to my playing.

That's so much money to spend when you could just talk to the playerbase instead.

Also, I think Ninetales' "talk to your mods" comment was aimed at the devs, not meaning players should approach random mods with economy critiques and concerns.

@Loki

Sorry, my comment was aimed towards the devs, not players. Tserin is right! I thought I typed that but apparently didn't.

I'll have a proper response once I'm off work, I just wanted to clarify that first. I'll also edit my post for clarity.

i don't think this is needed yet

if things get worse and more complicated (which i doubt will happen) then yeah, they should have a professional look at the economy for a bit. but like how @/crb said, it's fairly easy to figure out where the economy's problems are stemming from.

the games only been out for slightly less than a month, the economy needs time to even out as more updates & more uses for pebbles roll in. we aren't doomed yet !

Alright, full thoughts:

Like I said in my first post, it is way too early to actually consider hiring an economist. As a company, you're likely going to want to hire someone with credentials, even if it's just a college degree in economics. You're not going to be hiring someone random from the community for this proposed position, just like you wouldn't rope someone in as an artist with no portfolio or a coder with no prior experience outside of a high school web design class.

The general "economy issues" tend to veer towards two things: 1) Pebbles are essentially useless and 2) Gameplay mechanics should not be locked behind moonstones because they are way too hard to get.

So, let's address the first concern: Pebbles being useless. Let's examine what we can actually use pebbles for:

1. Den slot expansions.
2. 99% of Mole Market (ok, maybe not exactly, but close enough).
3. Profession Assists (Koda fishing for you, rush-orders, etc.).
4. Flea Market and Custom Apparel, but this doesn't take Pebbles out of the economy.

Let's examine what these actually mean:

1. Den slot expansions are good, since they're cheap and stay cheap. This is very good as wolves breed a lot and often. This is especially good for new players since they won't be tight on space at the beginning.
2. Mole Market is definitely in need of a revamp, and I hope how it handles items is addressed. The Food section is the weakest since Food isn't required to play and can be gotten through other avenues. Materials are good, but there are so many of them and not enough slots to accommodate. The Apparel section is also lacking, but a bit more on that later. Seeds are fine. Recipes are one-and-done, and I don't actually mind that later game recipes cost more. Companions have an issue that you don't need to buy them from the Mole Market, so they only take pebbles if you don't like Arena. Trinkets are mostly unused I think (and would benefit from higher quantities you can buy at a time). Featured Items are fine. Breed & Pattern Changes I'll touch on later. Forum and Specialty stuff is fine.
3. These will take pebbles out from players who like to minmax and play a more dedicated style. And they'll be good if you don't like a profession...like me and Fishing. :P
4. This doesn't take out Pebbles, which is the main concern people have for Pebbles right now.

Obviously, these are not sustainable as the only Pebble sinks. So, let's look at the roadmap that was posted.

By the end of the year, we should have:

1. An updated Mole Market, which may or may not address player concerns with how it functions rather than just how it looks.
2. New apparel and companions for pebbles.
3. New items for pebbles (whatever "items" means).
4. A new wolf breed.

All of these are good, and DO address the economy issues. This is especially true for #2 and #4. Why?

1. Most of the wolf customization is locked behind Custom Apparel, where a majority of items are sold for moonstones. Customization options are needed for players who cannot afford dozens of pieces of CA.
2. The only Pebble wolf breeds are the three starter breeds. This makes them super common and unappealing as the market is not yet saturated with the other three breeds, and has an influx of the starter breeds. There's also the chance that a new wolf breed will come with new patterns for Pebbles as well.

As a reminder, the roadmap goes to the end of the year, so all of these have a suspected six-month turnaround with no significant delays. So, let's get back to the proposal at hand: hiring an economist.

This is not as simple as hiring someone and the economy is fixed in a week. All of the following will, at a minimum, need to be completed:

1. Designing the position, including their responsibilities, hours, and pay.
2. Advertising the position and accepting applications.
3. Interviewing potential candidates (which, for anyone who has been on the hiring side of things, can take either a few days or 1-2 months).
4. Selecting a candidate, sending them an official job offer, having paperwork/contracts signed, and giving them a start date (which isn't always the next business day).
5. Onboarding the new hire with orientation and meeting the rest of the team.
6. Grace period of getting into the flow of their new position.
7. Observing the game economy and researching player feedback on the economy as a whole to brainstorm ideas.
8. Develop and draft potential ideas to pitch to the team, which then need to be implemented. This may or may not require help from the programming team or art team, which will require a turnaround.
9. Monitoring the release of these changes to see if they work.
10. Repeat 7-9.

Now, this does seem super formal, but given how Bashful Games is operating as a company, this isn't going to be as easy as super old pet sites from 2013 made bringing staff on to seem. So, I'd be willing to bet that they'd follow something similar.

Let's pretend they put up an ad for the economist position right now. Items 1-4 will already take at a minimum a month, putting us at July. By this point, Achievements should be released, which is another avenue of getting moonstones. Items 5-6 will probably take another month if things go slow (especially if the position is part-time because things will take longer with shorter shifts), which brings us to August. New Pebble Items, Companions, and Apparel should be out by now. It will definitely take a few more months for the first round of economy updates to be launched, which will probably take us to the end of the year, when the new wolf breed should be out (or close to being out).

The June Dev update is a communication issue. The economy is addressed specifically in this roadmap of things to come. Could it be better stated? Yes, of course, but that's a conversation for a different thread.

As for the second concern from the very top of this post: this is also mostly a communication issue. We can't change the minds of the developers if they refuse to change expansions to Pebbles. So, focus on the feedback first, there.

I am still team the-economy-needs-some-attention, but this is too extreme for this point in Lorwolf's life cycle.

I agree that it is wayyy too early to do something so... drastic (and expensive), but I think it would ease some concerns to get some more professional insight at some point. That said, a lot of what's been suggested in various other threads and this one could probably do the trick in making the economy feel more stable and worthwhile. But I'm no economist!

Yeah, petsites/MMOs hire a dedicated capital E Economist only when they are a Huge Entity, we're talking absolute giants like RuneScape, WoW, etc, and usually only when something Drastic happens suddenly to begin with. [ party hats anyone?]

Managing a petsite/MMO's economy usually falls on a game designer shoulders outside of these absolute outliers with millions of real world dollars on the line if the economy crashes and players quit.

Not saying there Aren't issues with the economy but sinking large amounts of money into expensive insight from someone potentially wholly unfamiliar with petsites, mmos, or video games in general would mostly just be a lot of money spent for very few returns