I do not support trade limitations either. As someone who played pre-launch however, I highly support bringing back pebble expansions for professions. Right now I don't see myself expanding even apparel slots for months, which is ridiculously long in my opinion while I'm sitting on hundreds of pebbles and less than 10 moonstones.

It simply isn't worth it when expansions are so costly. Grinding in games is a good way to increase playtime, but there's a fine line. Premium currency shouldn't be more used than the game's main currency. That's how you make the economy frustrating to deal with, and make the game become pay to win, which people do not like.

I want to add my perspective to this topic.
Game is new, maybe something will change for the better but right now I am worry about future of LW. The majority of items in flea market are for moonstones, also majority items and expansions on site require moonstones. Pebbles seems to have little value right now and it is problem for the site.

From my observations from playing different games like this it should work this way:
♥ Pebbles should be main site currency needed to buy almost everything (upgrades, items, apparels - with small % of exclusive items). Poorer players or those who don't want to spend much money could farm pebbles to sustain their gameplay. Richer players would buy moonstones to quickly exchange them for pebbles from other players. This way both sides would get everything they want. This is how it works on Flight Rising - most succesful site like this.

Sadly for now it looks like this game going the wrong way. Pebbles starts to feel worthless with most prizes on the site being made with moonstones. So…players only want moonstones in flea market. Moonstones are really hard to farm so if you don't have much money or/and don't play other games like this for off-site trading there is no chance for you to get even half of the thing richer players have. And you can't farm pebbles to exchange for moonstones because noone want them.
I was playing on one polish pokemon browser game with this kind of economy where in-game currency was almost worthless and everyone only wanted premium currency. This game died because too little players was willing to constantly pay to play.

I recognize why this seems unfair, but I firmly believe this would make the site significantly more, not less, playable by F2P players.

Please explain the logic behind how this will work. I already explained why this will enforce more players on how much they'll “need” to purchase moonstones because they will no longer have access to trades with other players. But to explain it further…

These are the current things you spend your pebbles on, without any interaction with other players:

• Den Slot Expansions*
• Mole Market - Food (can be freely farmed via other methods)
• Mole Market - Materials (some can be freely farmed via other methods)
• Mole Market - Apparel
• Mole Market - Seeds (can be farmed during the farming event and from farming itself)
• Mole Market - Crafting Recipes
• Mole Market - Companions (some can be farmed from Arena)
• Mole Market - Trinkets (can be freely farmed from campaign)
• Mole Market - Breed Changes (all 3 pebble breeds can be found as WW)
• Mole Market - Wolf Patterns (all pebble patterns can be found on WW)
• Mole Market - Forum Banners (you get one for free from your first pack)
• Mole Market - Forum Profile Decorations
• Mole Market - Eye Besprinkler
• Nana's Babysitting Service (will give you some pebbles back)

*Den slots for new tabs reset their slot upgrades back to the starting price

Meanwhile, here are all the things you can spend moonstones on, without any interactions with players:

• Mining Cart Capacity
• Cooking Pot Capacity
• Den Tab Expansions
• Pack Changes
• Apparel Slot Expansions
• Mole Market - Apparel
• Mole Market - Companions
• Mole Market - Breed Changes
• Mole Market - Wolf Patterns
• Mole Market - Forum Banners
• Mole Market - Misc Section

Now, on first glance, it seems like pebbles “wins” because it has more options. But take note how many of them have parenthesis explaining alternate ways to acquire the item, whereas moonstones has none. Also take note how many of the moonstone sinks are not simple cosmetic items like the forum banners or apparel, they are core gameplay mechanics like profession upgrades or wolf customization options. And this is just the core gameplay assuming a player never interacts with anyone in any capacity, so this is what a totally asocial player would have to sink their money into.

This is why players trade only in moonstones, because the things most players really want require moonstones with no alternate way of buying them. Without the ability to trade moonstones from other players, f2p players would be required to slog it out the long way or spend money on the site. They would eventually hit a point where they'd amass pebbles infinitely without any need for them.

Now, there will be some things that alleviate this issue, primarily when people get high enough level crafting to want the high level recipes. But those are finite, too. The reality is that moonstones have a much higher buying power in the eyes of the users, while pebbles do not. Fixing that imbalance requires fixing why players value moonstones so much, which means lifting up pebbles to have more desirable uses, especially for large amounts.

Stopping players from trading moonstones will simply grind the player economy to a halt, because most players simply don't want pebbles.

I think it is important to acknowledge that the game came out a week ago. On any pet site, new pets coming into the economy will always be extremely expensive at the beginning. I have been lucky enough to have been around for the launch/early days of 3 pet sites (excluding DV cause idk if that counts as a pet site? more like an avatar site?, and this number includs lorwolf), one of them is quite similar to lorwolf as it is a wolf breeding sim, the other I joined roughly 2 months after it started and it is a very slow progressing horse breeding sim. In both of them, offspring and new pets were extremely expensive in the early days, and I definitely got robbed on some deals lol. But as the weeks, then months progressed, the prices started to severely drop and then stabilized. This is because the supply outstripped demand.

You can already see this happening. The cheapest WW I found today that to me has a fairly decent colour mix is listed for 20 MS. In fact, I found tons of wolves around the 20-50 MS mark. Two days ago people on Discord were saying the average price was 100-150 MS. The price is already plummeting. As time goes on, more wolves will be bred, ID numbers will get so high no one will really pay attention to them unless they are really low, and the common breeds with good colour combinations will be really cheap. Rare breeds will take longer to reach that point, cause of their long breeding times. My brach can be bred again in roughly 3 days, but my volmyr is going to take roughly 11, both were bred on launch day. However, even they will eventually become plentiful enough that their price drops. I understand that there is probably some sense of FOMO happening for players who can't afford to spend real-life money, and grinding can be miserable. And to be honest, it is completely understandable, as richer players are actively speeding ahead of everyone else

However, I don't think pointing to the current flea market as an example of a rebalancing between pebbles/moonstones is a good, or right idea, as you can't base what the game market will be like, on how it is right now. It is in a turmoil state because everyone is rushing to get what they believe will be higher value wolves in the future. I do agree however that we need a lot more pebble sinks, from extra wolf decorations, expansions, etc, as it feels like I can gain pebbles easier than I can get rid of them.