Doragon hit most of it on the head, there was huge quantities of time where genuinely quality feedback was given but not taken into account, so now the game is at the stage where it's reaping what the devs sowed. It's in a rather embarrassing state atm, but hopefully it can pick itself back up in the future. Never say never, but anyone from the alpha and beta is probably allowed to say I told you so at this point. :P

Will there be enough of a playerbase if it does, with it quickly falling into the low 3 digits of concurrent players? Eh, well maybe word of mouth from what's left will bring back some other old fogeys. We'll see. I suspect there's a lot of people that check in every few weeks, maybe once a month, to see if anything has changed yet.

Keeping the Discord going after Beta was also a mistake, since it takes so much socializing & interaction completely off-site, but I don't necessarily think that's an economy problem, "just" a removing interactivity from the Actual Site issue.

I completely agree about the Discord issue (off topic). It seems to keep some players from interacting on site. It's hard to get in-depth discussions there, like this one for instance, as well. I would love to see more activity in the forums, as I'm not a Discord fan, but at this point I'm not sure how they could just shut it down.

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Oof, moonstones are now at 50k each - this is really getting out of control.

Pebbles need to become much more valuable - I've got a suggestion thread about community design competitions that could help. It's disappointing that the premium currency is the only one worthwhile and the normal currency is dead.

50k???

My goodness, that's bad. I refuse to make trades for them at anything higher than 15kp lol

Welp, the market just sold out so who knows how much they are worth now haha

Hopefully it was a temporary inflation

And they came back at that price XD

Personally, I see another problem in that. The huge imbalance between casual players and grinders. Recently in a thread here I've seen someone say how easy it was to make at least 100kPb in a day. That's something as a casual player that takes me a week to do. I still have to buy so many companions and recipes in the MM. For me, everything is so expensive that I think twice before buying anything. And that's without counting den space and other things that cost Pebbles.

But I can understand how worthless pebbles can be to someone who makes 1 million of them a week. If right now, an object worth 5mPb was added to the MM a lot of people could buy it instantly, and it won't make a dent in their bank. While all the casual players will be frustrated as it will be something they can't reach.

The inflation is wild. I used to sell one of my CAs for 350kp, but I'd have to raise the price to double that amount just to make back the cost of the CA token. But I don't need to sell for pebbles anymore since I get at least 100kp a day just from paying Nana to play with my companions. I bought some pebbles with MS once when the new pebble companions were released so I could buy them, but at this point, I can make enough pebbles to buy one of the companions with just a few clicks of a button in 2 days.

I joined on the site's launch day with some friends and I'm sad to say im probably one of the only ppl in that group that still logs on - and thats after a month-long hiatus. I'm a mix of casual play & grinding, and earning/stockpiling pebbles has been.... a huge pain. The gameplay loop introduced by the constantly refreshing activities is engaging to a degree, but for only 300pb per completed activity, there's only so many times you can cycle throughout professions and campaigning before it gets monotonous and is boiled down to a waiting game. Wild wolves are a toss up and with only 1 knucklebone per failed encounter, that's ANOTHER painstaking grind that feels insanely out of reach - and that's with me breeding more wolves specifically to level+release for them on top of normal encounter rates. If i could earn companions from campaigning as well - even low-value ones - it would help make things feel more worthwhile, because at least those can be decent to sell straight from inventory.

While I'm sure the devs are all hard at work, personally i think it's shooting themselves in the foot to focus on achievement systems before basic currency sinks that aren't entirely dependent on "whatever people feel is valuable right now". That REALLY feels like a balancing issue that should've been taken care of - or at least lessened by - the alpha & beta phases.

Moonstones are ABYSMAL to collect. When the cheapest CA is going for at least 20MS, and MM items starting at 50 (afaik, these are based on observations over time) it's honestly more frustrating than anything, especially knowing the perks that paying users get. Sure, you can still earn Moonstones in casual gameplay, but it takes an asinine amount of time and effort compared to premium users and I'm sorry, but personally once you introduce a concept like that, it only makes me scrutinize the current balancing issues even more. Pandering towards whales while your casual playerbase struggles to keep up just puts a sour taste in my mouth. Maybe my POV is skewed, but personally it only ADDS to the frustration of the current state of things for me. I WANT to be spending MS more, but when even minor/"cheap" items go for 20-50MS minimum, it actively discourages me from spending them because it feels like i need to weigh my decisions: do i expand slots for my professions, save for MM items, or custom apparel? I can't decide, because i already know it could take me WEEKS to earn that currency back, because the economy is laughably unbalanced and I'm not selling CA, so that number is entirely dependant on how much effort I'm willing to put into grinding the same tasks over and over again hoping i earn some MS shards.

I'm going to keep checking up on Lorwolf, but if the only thing we're waiting on to fix these balancing issues are the devs, then unfortunately we might be waiting a while. The current mechanics just aren't enough to keep me going for more than a few days at a time w/o getting bored and taking another weeks-long break hoping there's an update while im away.

EDIT: Also, i didn't know about the 2.5MS/day cap. That's just.... stupid. It's stupid. If your players are willing to keep putting in the effort to grind, WHY ARE YOU NOT REWARDING THEM FOR IT? Makes me dislike the pay-to-play feeling of premium even more.

The inflation here is wild, and gives me flashbacks to Gaia Online when the previous CEO was still running the place into the ground. It's certainly not my first rodeo with virtual inflation, but it still makes me cringe. And I've only been on this site a single day.

Between this, the devs apparently not listening well to the playerbase, not enough worthwhile stuff being available for pebbles, the arena being pretty much useless, and the wild wolf success rate being horrifically low...it's not hard to see why the userbase has already shrunk as much as it has. People don't want to stick around when they feel their grinding isn't getting what they deserve.