I've said this before in other threads, so as to not beat a dead horse, support.

Pebble sinks in general are desperately needed to keep the currency useful and player engagement here. I'm fine even having the option to still pay for expansions in MS as long as it *stays* an option, not an expectation to continue playing. Ie, I'm not in favor of paywalling games, ever.

I don't think core gameplay aspects should be monetized, but if people wish to support dev or pay to avoid the grind, it's a good option to consider, but in general, this is a game with far too many MS sinks and hardly any non-premium currency sinks.

Support!

There are a lot of good points already made in this thread.

@/xedite wrote exactly what i was thinking “this is a game with far too many MS sinks and hardly any non-premium currency sinks.”

Support. I wanted to wait and play for a while after launch to get a feel for things before making a judgement, but having done so I definitely think this is the single biggest problem with the site right now. I actually think the general drop rates on MS shards is good, I think the ww rate is good, and I think the general gamplay is much less grindy and easier on the wrists than a lot of other sites. The problem is primarily the economy. Because everything worthwhile on the site is in moonstones, every player wants them. Because there aren't any good pebble sinks, no one wants those. Even though the MS shard droprate is actually pretty great compared to something like FR gems, players end up feeling like it isn't enough because they can't make nearly enough to buy even the most basic of profession progress without a ton of grinding. They can't trade pebbles for MS from other players because pebbles have hardly any buying power. They can't buy ww from other players because everyone wants MS so everyone is selling wolves for the premium currency. And because you need more wolves for some higher level profession progress, people then end up feeling the ww rate is too low even though it's much more generous than say getting a dragon egg on FR from coli.

I really like this game, and I genuinely feel a lot of the problems people are having are due to perception because of the economy, and not inherent to the gameplay. Changing the profession expansions be big pebble sinks instead of MS would be a great first step to fixing that.

Agreed, honestly pebbles right now are pretty much useless besies for buying recipes. But how would you deal with everyone whos already used ms? would we get refuned and booted back to the beginning? I would want my MS back if pebble expansions were added

Yeah I think if this change is made (and it should be, full support) then it would be best to refund ms upgrades and reset them all to basic. It could trigger when items are collected from the profession (after smelting ore or collecting cooking etc) so that nobody loses items gained with their extra slots. It would probably still be easy to trade ms for pebbles and reupgrade all.

Alternately it could be made optional to reset, in case anyone is really happy with their expansions and wouldn't want their ms back for some reason

Massive support.

It was just fine in early access and was a much needed pebble-sink

Finding out that expansions now cost premium currency was a nasty surprise. Putting gameplay affecting features behind a paywall, even a relatively small, is in poor taste since it locks f2p players out of upgrades. It's especially frustrating since those upgrades are minor and the price doubles each time.

And, like others have pointed out, the removal of one of the few pebble-sinks makes the in-game economy too reliant on moonstones

Strong agree, there really needs to be some better pebble-sinks and most of the expansions feel way more like a necessary part of the gameplay rather than a convenience

Support.

huge support. gameplay and premium currency just shouldn't be linked. even if the devs try to balance the feature to an extend where you don't necessarily need it. just keep the moonstone sink in the “aesthetics” area, please.

Full support, for all the reasons already stated. We are in dire need of a pebbles sink, not to mention that putting basic gameplay features behind premium currency really rubs me the wrong way.