Communication about the site updates, and the decisions made have left me weary about the future of the site. Was there no play testing of these changes before release? The changes feel quite reactionary and not well thought out.
In any case I won't be spending any more money until I can be sure the devs are doing best by the site and players.
I do not envy being in the dev’s position here. ^^; I know their team isn’t very big (two people not counting volunteers I think?) and being good at community management is a whole huge skill to have alongside the art and writing and design and programming demands. While I personally wasn’t upset by the update—once the 50kb change was made that is—I am more worried that the user base will dwindle and the site will feel empty. It already feels quiet because so much of the site activity is actually on discord instead. It’s too early for me to tell, but it does sound like it will be difficult as a first time player after this update. I do personally think that the game is intended to be slower pace than it was before, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it‘s the right move in the long run. It may be better to let the economy take big risks while it’s still early if it means the gameplay itself is more fun for the casual majority.
Mainly though, I really do agree that it would be worth it to be open about the thought process behind changes or lack of changes. Writing good patch notes is an art. While I could understand maybe being afraid of saying something that makes people upset, I really do think if reasoning was explained, people will understand. And if they still disagree, they will be better informed to make worthy counter-arguments. For the playerbase to trust the site, the site needs to take the leap of trusting the players. It’s on the site to establish that relationship.
I do want to say though, as a game dev myself, that I can basically guarantee the team isn’t just in this for the money… pet sites are not a lucrative business, it’s incredibly niche. If someone just wanted a lot of money, there are billions of other ways even just in the games sector still that would be way more successful. It requires loving this genre to make a game like this. That’s something I wish more people could understand, but I know why that idea spreads—because of how often it does happen with big companies. Free to play is tough to balance, especially in a niche genre.
I do think the right angle is leaning into trusting and supporting artists. Tbh the best part of the game is the custom apparel system, and it’s well designed. I really do think that if the site was overall easy to play the core loop of, and had a large f2p user base, custom apparel could continue to be the main successful monetary support.
So all that to say, I hope the dev team takes the leap of faith in trusting the community to understand their thought process, and be willing to make mistakes while being open about them! I absolutely still think it’s possible. <3
I don't have a whole lot to say on the topic, but I want to say that maybe they can take another bit of inspiration from Flight Rising and do a tiny announcement box on the front page. It would allow them to make tiny announcements without the need for a whole update post, and maybe they could post polls or ideas there so people can take to the forums to discuss things, and they can get a lot of live, active feedback as they're working through things. They could also post when tiny updates happen, instead of working on things over the course of however long and then making an official collected post. Probably one of my favorite things about FR is how they try to be very clear about what's happening, and why. It's not perfect, but they try.
With the WW thing, I think it was a bit of an over-correction, in this case, and they lacked the numbers they needed to make a proper assessment of the situation. I've seen people go for more than 300 wolf encounters without managing to recruit one, and people who are drastically above the 1/10 recruitment ratio. And that's with a lot of hours to grind, so they have a lot of encounters (and usually a lot of wolves to show for it). Meanwhile, as a very casual player, I'm at like, 21 encounters, playing for a few minutes to an hour in campaign each day since launch, roughly. (Of which I have gotten one wolf from so far.) These are very different numbers, which all need to be accounted for.
I appreciate the devs here and can see that they really are trying their bests, but it's going to take some time to sort things out entirely. But I think with clear communication and good intentions, things can be okay. Getting feedback on things directly from the many people playing the game is key to ensuring things land as they should. We can do far more testing than their small team allows, and have varied opinions, so it should give a pretty good idea of how things are and what needs to be addressed, and which things are a priority.
@Orgetzu
Sorry for the ping, but I wanted to say that was my thought about the WW token too!
It feels like the high numbers were chosen possibly based on how many wolves the community as a whole encounters a day- or it might have been because they're supposed to be rare like FR eggs from the Coliseum? Which actually I would understand a bit more- but only if the item instantly spawned a wolf, just like an egg- rather than it resulting in a hunt. (Or the hunt could give this item- maybe that's how it works, I of course haven't seen said hunt yet)
And we don't have any idea if an event like “Night of the Nocturne” might be planned, or anything where Wild Wolves might be easier to get for a bit. So we're seeing this as the only way to get guaranteed wolves at all.
Of course we look at this update and think of how difficult and punishing those numbers are- but maybe it was chosen to future-proof the rarity, and it feels excessive now. Even still though, I feel this was a feature that might be received better if it launched “too easy” and was nerfed, rather than launching in a way that felt impossible to achieve. And feedback for the planned rates, etc could have been gathered before launch if it was perhaps teased. Just gently throw those numbers out there, explain why they were chosen and if people get upset, tweak them before it launches- this might soften the blow.
It's great we got a response so quickly to this situation, I just hope the balance of transparency and communication is figured out. This kind of feature launch is no doubt hard for the devs, and scary. The approach may need to be changed to keep the community from having burst reactions like this, and to keep everyone happier.
support
monetization practices can very easily break a game (source: i used to play kmmos, check out the history of Archeage someday for a laugh). LW has a great foundation with a fun site loop. it has so much potential. but if the playerbase gets nickel-and-dimed, they will find another site to play. MS valuations need to be looked at and i would also remove the cap for how many MS we can make in a day. it's only a few each day with grinding as it is, which feels about on par with how “generous” mobile gacha games are. the cheapest WWs on the FM are usually 8+ gems, and one Besprinkler is 35 gems, which doesn't leave free/casual players a lot of options because the alternative is 100 tokens for a guaranteed wolf that they will likely want to Besprinkle multiple times. too much time investment for too little reward.
i don't think the site is on the brink of death or anything, but i do think that could change if greed overcomes good game design. sure a few whales can keep two staff members fed and eating well… but whales like shiny things and move on quickly when the fun dries up. see all those stories on reddit of gacha whales deciding one day to just quit after regularly spending money since day 1.
if the game is good and doesn't make us feel ripped off, people will come, and more people means more money with less frustration – if MS and WWs are balanced well.
thanks for reading my college thesis ok cya!
Playing a couple Campaign rounds, as far as the KB tokens go it's not so bad now, I don't think. 100 and a hunting quest, especially with lowered encounter rates when they're so low to begin with, was definitely not the right direction. I still don't agree with it requiring pebbles, but what can you do.
The wolf market, including WWs, is already crashing, steadily falling down, so no matter how many tokens it takes it will eventually cost more to recruit one than buy one off of the FM. It's just inevitable unless people always price above the quest pebble price.
People will complain, but they will adapt as well; even I overreacted to the change to 50 since it did still seem like a slap in the face, but that's my fault for not remembering I can still bring WWs home along the way and it's not a combo I have to keep up.
Moonstone shards though…I think the issue here is scaling. 35 seems like a high number when you can only get about 2 a day. If the prices were doubled but the drop rate was increased and the cap removed, I'm sure it'd feel a lot better, since our numbers would be going up much faster. This is probably why FR's pricing and distribution of gems works, because they give you so many, which seems like a whole lot because of the higher numbers you get, even if the ratio is the same as LW's.
So much support for this!!
The "wwe chance rate lowered\100 knucklebones" thing was reverted pretty quickly, and I was so glad to see it! But now, everything is so… silent? Some transparency would be nice, and yes I'm still sad about food nerf, so naturally I am very eager to hear more about the reasons it happened in the first place. I am afraid it was the “two steps forward, one step back” maneuver, when one outrageous thing was fixed, and now it's the waiting game to see if we will just forget about the second nerf and move on in a couple of days. Grinding for food and praying for lucky encounters aren't giving us the feeling of pride and accomplishment. (Not to mention the new, much tougher, boss fights, which would need three wolves at least, and hence much more food. Oof.)
I know it's always a bit rocky with the updates and change logs at the start, which is exactly why we need communication!
I do want to add one thing. Having read a lot of the suggestions about the game in the Suggestions forum and reading over the patch notes again, I can see some things from the suggestions forum that they implemented:
I applaud them for having listened on these fronts, which gives me hope that other concerns will be addressed in the future. However, I am still concerned about the total silence on the moonstones-for-basic-expansions issue (which should have been addressed at the same time as or even before the WW issue) and about the fact that we've had total silence on some of the updates as well. Like I only saw the change that people noticed in the TOS because somebody in the Discord server spotted it and posted about it there. And I would have had no idea that Lorwolf has a community manager now if not for the fact that someone pointed it out on the forums (as well as pointing out that this was only silently added and not announced). I also see this thread being put in the Suggestions index, which indicates they have seen our complaints and are potentially listening. But once again I would really like staff to not maintain a “suggestions will not be responded to” rule and actually try to engage with us on threads like these, especially as we've all seen player discontent start to bubble up.
@Rebel
Quiche is actually working on a formal introduction post, so I wouldn't worry about that part (I reached out to her and she mentioned it to me). She'll have a formal announcement when that's ready, I assume.
It does seem that staff, including the volunteer moderators, aren't allowed to post on suggestions to remain a neutral party. So, unfortunately, I'm not so sure that rule is going to change, especially since it seems to creep into more social corners including not being able to respond to price checks.
@Ninetales oooooh, thanks for the info about the community manager position!
