Title.

What would you do to fix the economy?
What do you think is the root cause issue of the current economic problems?
What do you think could be done to mitigate the damage?

Who knows! Maybe this will give the devs some ideas! :)

I think one of the major problems beyond a general lack of content is the current state of the inventory sell back system. Essentially you can generate very large amounts of pebbles infinitely with relative ease and speed. Unlike other pet sites, there is no real limitation on the amount of pebbles that you can earn a day. Flightrising has their fairgrounds capped, Coliseum has multiple varying levels of barriers of entry and takes more time overall, etc. In Lorwolf you can refresh past every battle and spam click through the campaign until you run out of stamina, which is basically also able to be infinitely generated with little effort.

Items either need to have their sellback price reduced (or have higher sell back price items not available infinitely through the campaign) and there be some kind of limit on how many pebbles you can earn a day through selling items to the site. I don't think these limitations would be necessary if the site simply had any kind of repeatable pebble sink, though.

Here are some ideas I had for pebble sinks:

• Some kind of repeatable hunting mission that costs a large amount of pebbles related to Wild Wolves.

One major complaint myself and others have for LW is that wild wolf encounters are both rare and rare to succeed at, and the chances of getting a good looking WW are very, very low. Some kind of high cost hunting mission (perhaps using knucklebones?) that allows you to look for a WW of a certain base color, or something that allows you to have a higher chance of getting a WW you might actually want.

• Player created apparel content for pebbles

One of the strengths that LW currently has over other pet sites is the user generated apparel content. There are so many very talented CA artists, but these do nothing to help the overall health of the site's economy and I think they also hurt it because there is hardly any pebble apparel released by the devs. I think it would be amazing if the devs would host some kind of contest where CA artists can enter detailed apparel pieces (the flag contest is the exact opposite of what we need) based on a theme, or h ell, even just fulfilling player requests, that can be released as a pebble apparel items for everyone.

I have to imagine that apparel content is slow to be released because this dev team is so small, and the main artist currently has many other responsibilities. But it's getting to the point where we have drastically more non official artist artwork on the site than official.

Anyway I thought it would be interesting to hear what other people thought

I think apparel designing contests with like a general theme (the season, the holiday, etc) would be a great way to introduce unique sets to the pebble market...they already said they would focus less on official apparel, so this is a fine way to have fresh designs come through without them actually having to work on it themselves. It was their plan for CA to be the main apparel for the site. I personally am fine with designing CA, I can make an upwards of 5 per week, even...so I wouldn't mind entering contests to design official stuff so people can buy my work for pebbles. I would sell things for pebbles if gaining MS wasn't so problematic (restock fee)

I personally think it's hard to gain MS through playing the site...so if they maybe make more ways to gain MS reliably then it might balance things out more. I don't really think pebble sinks are the only answer to the economy, because I think people are just so starved for MS, that they all have ONLY pebbles to do anything with. If we got more MS output, people can easily buy the expansions, CA, scrolls, etc, through gameplay rather than through off site trading, usd purchases, or pawning off wws and CA...I know it's premium currency and the longer the site goes on, more MS will be in circulation...but it feels really dicey rn...since if you want to dress up your wolves you need CA to do so...and that takes MS

Maybe you can find moonstone shards in the campaign ? or a full moonstone ? if people are making MS perfectly fine through only playing the site, then my apologies.

With pebbles being so easily generated, but less things to spend it on, an official exchange rate could be interesting - people can use pebbles on their expansions instead of MS - people can trade for MS and get MS items more reliably. The rate could be changed per month or whatever...it could be like a stall where you can go and exchange currencies with an NPC...but then the currency wouldn't cycle back into the economy...idk, i heard someone say FR hired an actual like accountant or something to help calculate and organize their economy

I have had no problems acquiring enough moonstones, but I specifically do not care how my wolves are dressed. That's probably why I don't feel strapped for cash. Almost all apparel, currently, is CA, and we all know how very many moonstones it takes to make CATs pay for themselves (so you don't lose real world money making your apparel, or have to spend completely insane amounts of time grinding the game).

I have no idea what the best way is to fix this, but I do think that more pebble apparel would do something, even if it only bought some time while waiting for the larger fixes.

(When I've been on the game a little longer, I'll probably find myself scrambling for moonstones for something or other, but as of now it's been twenty days and I'm doing just fine.)

From what I understand, there's a lot issues surrounding the purposes for MS and the purposes for pebbles. Pebbles only have sinks early game and if you have interest in the content. They're not exactly necessary unless you want to expand your single den space.
My opinion is that the primary problem with moonstones isn't the generation, but the amount of moonstone sinks there are: CAs, Site-curated Apparel, Specialty Items, wolf converters, additional dens, activity expansions. Compare this with pebble sinks: Recipes you buy once, few 20k+ apparel, individual den slots, minor ingredients (food, crafting, seeds) for activities, fishing for 1-5k a day, stoking for 1-5k a day.

1. Revert Activity Expansions Back to Pebbles
   This would limit the amount of moonstones being spent outside of wolves/CAs, and it would allow for a decent pebble sink depending on the new upgrade rate. It could be more expensive than the original counterpart, but the point is to get rid of excess pebbles. It can be as silly as adding +500k or 1m per expansion, but it gives people something to work toward. Starting the first/second expansion off with pebbles and then shifting to moonstones would make it more tolerable as well.
2. Weekly Built-in Pebbles Raffles
   Some other sites do this, but it allows people to buy a limited amount of tickets for the chance to win a rare item. Some sites do this for pet makers and others do it for the total pot. I would suggest doing this for site-curated apparel (not CAs) or wolf patterns/specialty mole market items -- such as besprinklers. This wouldn't be a 1:1 to sink, but it'd be maybe 5-10k pebbles (or more) per ticket or the price may range depending on the item chosen that week. It's not a huge sink, but it also encourages newer players to attempt to get something that may take them a little grind to obtain.
   
3. Buying Additional Farming Slots
   This may affect the economy a bit because of more food being introduced, but it also may not affect much. I think buying one or two slots for a decent chunk of pebbles would be handy for some of us that farm. I like the few that we unlock through levels, but this somewhat relates to reverting activity expansions back to pebbles. I'm not sure how everything worked before this summer, and maybe it's a bit of personal fulfillment, but I'd love to be able to have an extra slot even if it means one more bushel of corn.
4. Event Activities with Ticket Rewards
   This one may be a bit much. You already get additional event tickets from releasing a wolf every day of the week, but I would wager that some people would be willing to drop 1-5k pebbles a day, same as fishing/stoking, to gain another activity that drops a single rotating event ticket. This could even be limited to 1 additional ticket a day for 10k pebbles, but it would still be a worthwhile sink for some players.
5. Single-Layer Besprinklers
   Allow us the option to purchase a besprinkler for a single part of a wolf's coat. This has probably been discussed many times over, but maybe it could be limited to within the parent's range so that it doesn't prove too much randomization. Of course, for wild wolves this would make it completely random. I would prefer this as an expensive pebble sink, 200-250kp per with a 5-limit per day, but I could also see it as a full-range randomizer and cost around 10-15MS each.
6. Pebble Recovery from Gauntlet
   Allow a 5k recovery price per Gauntlet. Failing on certain levels isn't fun. It allows a minor sink, but if you're above the 5k reward mark it's no loss (unless you fail the round again). The specifics could be as simple as restart the same level over with the same enemies at full health, restart the same level over with different enemies & full health, different enemies same health, same enemies same health start, etc. It's not going to make or break the economy, but it will help in losing some drops if you got unlucky on a lower level.

Gonna wrap this up with a personal opinion-
If MS is the premium currency to dress up your wolves for cosmetic reasons, then the purpose within the game should be somewhat minimal and shouldn't affect late-game process. I expanded my mining cart to make the Fluorescent Mine more manageable, and I still find myself throwing away a lot of ores because the system itself is not ideal. I don't quite want to spend the equivalent of $5 USD to expand my mining cart when there are other things that take MS for upgrades. I know myself and quite a few other players have a stockpile of pebbles (I'm wavering around 5m at the moment), and I don't find myself interested in buying anything with them except for den spots & mole market ingredients, but that doesn't really make a dent. I know not everyone shares that sentiment or is at the same point of progress as we all play differently, but that is why it's my opinion. Which, I didn't see a problem with the MS upgrades when I first joined, but I started seeing the issue after the pebble-to-MS ratio increased.

Using older, better balanced games as the floor of progress instead of the aspirational future ceiling would be a great first start; learn from games already doing it better, who already went through the pains of the trials for you to figure out what worked and what doesn't. :P

I don't think pebble generation needs to be nerfed, they just need.... any value, any actual use whatsoever. I'd strongly suggest rethinking the plan of making most apparel tied to CA sales for one. For two, more stable releases with appreciable amounts of content are going to be necessary in the near future; however that has to happen.

Not directly economy related, but LW still needs to strongly prioritize communication outside of the discord & encourage people to interact with the site. People are concerned new players will be put off by the complaints on the forums, but there isn't a lot of other reasons to interact with them as it stands. That should probably change, in addition to assuaging the present concerns of the playerbase as a whole.

...Moonstone acquisition outside of CA art sales needs major work too if they are going to keep the strange decision to make most/all appreciable progression in the profession tied so strongly to MS as well. The monetization-to-gameplay model is skewed right now, the value is just not there for how much game mechanic upgrades cost.

I have a lot of pebbles, and I haven't even sold a single item to the shop, but I don't think there is a problem with pebble generation. I think the main thing that is missing is useful things to spend pebbles on. All the "good" stuff in the shop/site costs moonstones, so it's all players want.

Need a new den? Moonstones.
Want more than a basic breed? Moonstones.
Want more than a basic pattern? Moonstones.
Want to upgrade your minecart? Moonstones.

The only thing I want to buy with pebbles is den spaces, and even then that maxes out based on how many moonstones I can buy or earn for new dens.

The game needs a significant rebalance in how much the site charges for moonstone items/features (as in, how many moonstones something costs) and if it these items/features should be moonstones at all. Players should want moonstones, but not only want moonstones, but that is what is happening. As the whales (people who buy a lot of in-game items/currency) leave because everything costs moonstones and selling them for pebbles is kinda pointless, the moonstone supply will dry up, the situation will just get worse and the site will be making less money.

In my opinion some easy changes are;

• X number of pebble-priced dens, in increasing values (e.g. 20k, 100k, 250k, 500k, 1m). Probably at least 5 dens for pebbles, then potentially moving to moonstones
• Sell basic cooking supplies at all times in mole market (salt, pepper, oil etc.) that are currently bottlenecks
• Make the first few upgrades for professions cost pebbles, rather than moonstones - e.g. if 5 upgrades are available, let the first three cost pebbles.
• More breeds and patterns costing pebbles - even consider repricing existing moonstone breeds/patterns to pebbles (ooh, controversial!)
• Make the mole market pebble-only and put moonstone items into their own shop.
• End-game premium pebble items for people with more pebbles than they know what to do with (million pebble apparel, etc.)
• More items sold at one time in the mole market - including sinks like seeds and crafting materials Suggestion Thread
• Make it easier to buy & sell on the market; including dual accept pebbles or moonstones Flea market Improvement Suggestions
• Huge release of pebble attire (i'm not a huge dress up fan but people are) - see idea; Community competitions for pebble apparel for an easy way to pump items into the site without needing extra moderation/site artist input

TLDR: Increasing moonstone generation or decreasing pebble generation will only modify the inflation factor, not address the underlying reason why the inflation is there - it will still be all the same relative to what it is now

Overall, Lorwolf has fantastic potential to cement itself in the petgame scene, and I do believe the mods/devs truly want to make this a good game that lasts a long time, but right now it seems to be dying off quick.

Make grinders get fewer pebbles, so their value is still high for them, and don't have stupid amounts of pebbles like it is now. And casual players have a bit more pebbles, so they don't feel they can't do anything ingame.

For me, that would correct a bit the trajectory alongside other measures.

I get LW wants to make money but MS itself needs to be nerfed. Make upgrades pebbles only, for starters.

ETA: I don't really want campaign grinding to be nerfed...I find it kinda painful as-is.

@DerpFox

I'm a bit curious how this would be implemented. How would you limit the amount of trinkets one gets from campaign if that's the primary method of pebble grinding?
How would it be implemented for activities?
These are the two primary methods of pebble farming, so I'm wondering how you would limit it without decreasing player engagement.

Please don't make pebbles harder to get. It's the only thing keeping me here atm. I get that there's a ridiculous amount of pebbles being generated, but making them more scarce isn't the answer to me. The answer would be having something to buy with them, something people want, like a new wolf breed(!), new markings(!!), and single color scatters(please!!!). If just the single color scatter was implemented, that would get folks spending a lot of pebbles, imo.

I really like this game. I don't even log into FR or DV anymore, but I'm concerned that every week there are fewer and fewer players on, and I just don't think achievements are going to generate long-term interest. Wolves are the point, and wolves should be the focus. That's just me, though.

@Twicup

Oh yeah a pebble raffle could go wild... imagine raffling off crazy good items; maybe even a progen wolf ticket (does not exist, but it is an idea) - there would be so much demand for pebbles...