Here we go again, this is similar to the 23325235234 threads on FR I've seen over the years.

Though the release payouts are less lucrative than FR's right now, the level caps will be raised in the future and that will change the calculations. When we get to the level 30 cap one day, maybe we can release+level grind wolves in a similar 'mire flyer' build and the time it takes will be comparable

Right now I think it simply takes too much time and that's why the floor price is basically the same as the level 1 release price. It probably also takes too much food and most people don't want to wait repeatedly for the stamina bar to fill up for free. But maybe the theoretical new stages and new level caps will change that.

And no, it won't change the fate of most wolves on this site. Most of them will be released, just like most fr dragons are exalted

Also echoing Wolfbyte here. As a buyer, I'm picky, and there's a LOT of wolves that I just don't like because the color combos aren't nice for me. There's been a lot of breeding for the ID, which is fine, but it's at a cost of well thought out pairs.

well, while the releasing incentives are better than before, i still think they can be buffed. i like the idea of adding moonstone shards as a potential reward. this was going to happen eventually. many wolves will never find a forever home, because the number of wolves generated outnumbers the amount of space users have to keep them. that's part of the game, and it's okay.

i think a lot of this 'are wolves worthless' thing is coming from is the shock of prices rapidly dropping now that the cross-site trade boom has sort of ended. prices for g2 wolves were incredibly high, honestly much higher than they should have been early on in the site. the MS:P ratio is pretty high right now too, so that doesn't help. i also echo the sentiment that wolfbyte has, a lot of g2+ wolves being bred just aren't appealing to me. i'm picky, i have very specific aesthetics i like, so most randomly bred wolves that don't fit that category are worthless to me unless there's something inherently special about their ID number.

Yeah, agreeing with others here - as a buyer, I'm picky, and I'm not going to waste den space on a wolf I don't love. I think the site would benefit from more incentive to relase wolves, because the fact is that most wolves just aren't going to be worth anything. That's fine, and that's how it should be - it's just the nature of games like this!

Yeah I've seen multiple posts like this on FR so... it's inevitable that there would eventually be similiar problems here.

But yeah, it's a combo of it takes a lot of effort (and food) to level wolves so I don't think the current rewards are enough incentive, and yeah, a lot of the prettier wolves seem overpriced to me, and the cheaper ones tend to be less attractive. Since there might not be enough incentive to release, the uglier ones take a lot more time to sell since people are likely more picky and buying to keep. I'm one of those; I can't buy the real expensive ones and most of the cheap ones do not suit my tastes/characters/den (and I'm mostly gonna focus on G1s/WW anyways).

Funnily enough, this thread made me check bracchus prices and I have a new bracchus now xD

I feel there's gonna be a lot of these threads, so I'll just throw my opinion in this one because I've been holding it all in. It's just my opinion, so don't hate me lol.

There are so many wolves in this game that honestly it's not realistic for all of them to hold value. We already have over 100,000 wolves in existence (including those already released)... that's A LOT of wolves, and that number is only going to increase. I think the increase in release payout was a great step because as the level cap increases so would the payout. Plus, we get knucklebones now. I also know that while a lot of people have no problem releasing wolves, I realize that a lot of people may not like the idea of it and would much rather just sell their wolves for bare minimum if theyre not pretty. So an increase in payout won't help for those sales. I feel at this point that whatever the increase is people are going to ask for more.

While we were in the 5 digits I was willing to pay hundreds of moonstones for good looking wolves. There will already be no more 5 digits in existense, so those wolves are only going to increase in value over time. Will they be worth the price I paid by tomorrow? No, it will take time, but I plan to be here for the long run. The better looking 5 digits will be desired and will eventually equal what was put into them, and more as the site gets older. Now I will be really picky and pay far less than what I was willing to pay before.

The site is extremely young and things will balance out over time. On a side note, I was concerned about having enough food for leveling to release, but I recently realized that farming provides a TON of food with minimal effort, so that's worth putting time into.

Like folks have been sayin' the whole time, release payout needs to improved in some way-- not necessarily through raw pebble output, because there is already almost nothing useful to spend them on, but reliable dog-churn needs to be established if people don't want breeding to be a sluggish endeavor where finding odd color combos is difficult because interacting with the mechanic is actively disincentivized. Dogs don't need to die or have life spans at all, I'd be against that-- but something needs to be put in place to make releasing them worthwhile. Something like a random small number (1-3?) of tickets from any weekly fest maybe? A chance for MS seems nice, but maybe not quite enough on its own.

Lorwolf might be young, but 1) These things have been on the forefront of tester's minds since beta, which was not a short period of time & 2) There have been sites in existence since far before Lorwolf and Flight Rising that had to overcome these same challenges. Lorwolf is not having to solve unique problems in this regard, this isn't a brand new struggle for any pet site. Looking at what has been done in the past to solve these problems and seeing what worked before launch would have been the best time to fix it. The second best time is now.

Does that mean that breeding wolves is absolutely meaningless until they add something in to compensate?

@Saltysparq If your measure of 'meaning' is 'can I reliably sell most of these wolves for several moonstones/x thousand pebbles each?' Then yes, largely useless. If you just like breeding and don't mind releasing the resulting wolves, then no it's not.

Breeding right now is very far from a reliable way to generate decent currency.

Only skimmed this thread so sorry if I repeat stated points again but i think a huge factor is how truly young the site is and thats going to impact EVERYTHING. People are generally poor and den space is expensive so people don't want to spend tons on wolves that will take up space quickly. A lot of the LW userbase are pet site oldies more interested in WWs and nice IDs than bred wolves on top of that which lowers demand for most wolves as well. And a LOT. Of wolves. Are super ugly right now. And I see that being the case for probably the next year until people start seeing large amounts of good results with breeding projects that make their way around the site. Unless you had amazing RNG luck with a few WWs or carefully curated your progens your bred wolves are gonna be largely multicolor nightmares no pattern changes will fix, and there are only a handful of patterns right now to try to work with.

There's hope, give it time. Early pet site economies are more often than not hot messes. Something definitely needs to be done to raise the incentive to release though.