Every update from the devs/staff feels like one step forward, five steps back.

I'm just so tired.

This is exactly how I felt about Dappervolk: Tired.

I'm too tired to type out more paragraphs of the same thing I've been saying for the past few years. No one seems to be listening so why should I bother anymore?

Player apathy is a very real but silent killer.

Edit: It shouldn't need to be said but I agree: Quiche has done nothing wrong. In my opinion I think it's pretty unprofessional of the devs to allow a staff member to promise something, not fulfill that promise, and then not even comment as to why the promise couldn't be fulfilled.

Quiche is the messenger, and Alaunis really needs to step up and acknowledge when THEY fall short and NOT the staff.

Edit 2: Reading back through this thread I'm also really sick and tired hearing about how many coders this site has.

It is legitimately unacceptable how poorly optimized this site is. Even as someone who has a very high end PC, Lorwolf STILL freaks out my browser and PC if I have more than two tabs open. And campaign grinding? Every few hours I have to open a new tab to continue on so things stop being weird.

It is unacceptable that the site was released in this state.

It is unacceptable that bugs and other issues present since alpha and beta still exist and HAVE NEVER BEEN ADDRESSED OR ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE DEVS.

It costs the devs nothing but time and effort to simply communicate and talk to the players DIRECTLY about the issues that people want and deserve answers for!

If they would just say: We aware of the site's poor optimization and drain on players hardware. We will be addressing this concern before any new content updates.

That would be fine! We wouldn't be here!

People literally can't play your site without their laptops overheating and the devs don't give the impression that they care? Or notice? Or anything?

Stop giving them the "small team" excuse, please. There are real issues that are not absolved by that fact.

I don't want to repeat the same paragraphs everyone has already covered, but I do want to add one thing.

There are changes made that were not listed in the updates.

The "catfish machine" that gave you 12 catfish in Icerun after reaching level 20 fishing was reduced to 6. That's fine, honestly, it's still so frequent that it's so many fish that I'm extremely concerned for Icerun's ecology, but this was still a silent change.

The Pageant page was fixed to fully support dark mode. I saw no mention of this in any of the update threads. This is a good fix, tell people about it!

The forums were updated so that you can reply from previous pages instead of having to go to the latest page. This is also a great change, people should be informed about it!

Please tell people everything that changed, even if it seems minor! We want to know and I certainly celebrated the latter two, and went "oh ok" at the first.

There are great steps forward being made. The roadmap is more than I ever expected and I'm quite excited about it, as I am about achievements and how they'll hopefully help with the MS problem. But the things people have been begging for communication about haven't been properly addressed, silent (good!) changes are still being made, and it feels like Quiche got thrown under a bus here. Things need to be addressed, not sidestepped.

Also, yeah, "small team" is a weak argument. I acknowledge that the team is small and probably burdened by negative feedback at this point, but small teams and even single developers are the norm for this genre. Every other site manages to not BSOD players and most of them manage to actually address concerns. And the negative feedback aspect can be highly mitigated by, you know, doing that.

These stealth updates that Tserin mentioned is why it's really hard for me to trust the devs.

I made a topic how there needs to be rate transparency on the Wild Wolf encounter rates and success/fail rates, because it's been noticably different for my friends and I since the knucklebone update was reverted slightly. If you would just be actually transparent I wouldn't have this suspicion!

It's not a good idea to release these stealth updates? It makes you look almost dishonest or like you're trying to hide them? I have also noticed that some of these patch note updates go into effect days before the patch notes come out? This was most noticeable when cooking was changed so clicking an item defaults to the max items you can put in the pot. That change was around for days before ever mentioned in patch notes.

Why are you releasing changes and then days later telling us about them? Are you... patching the live site? You know that's... a really bad idea, right?

Seriously, what is going on guys?

Also quick addition: The site currently has 500-1000+ users online at any given time. That's pretty good for the site's size, actually, given that retention rate for petsites actually tends to be very low. But to keep the retention rate as it is, or even improve it so you have more players ( = more money being spent on moonstones), these things need to be addressed in detail, not sidestepped and distracted from. Otherwise, that number is going to dwindle more and more. I really enjoy LW! I don't want it to turn out like Dappervolk where the lack of communication pretty much destroyed the site's playerbase.

Support.

As much as I want to be optimistic, as much as I want to give the benefit of the doubt, it's getting harder and harder with how things are being handled. It's starting to feel a lot less like a new dev team feeling things out and making honest mistakes, and more like the monetization choices were deliberate and they have no intent in communicating about it, much less making any major fixes. I really don't have the energy to deal with people claiming "You're just entitled/overreacting lol" or "You're expecting too much from the devs" when I have been merely asking for communication on the pebble vs. moonstone situation since the first "communicate with us" suggestion. When a majority of the playerbase is experiencing a major problem and they are given radio silence on whether or not the devs A. Are aware of its severity or B. intend to do any major fixes, it's going to breed resentment and negative speculation. Right now feels like the playerbase's concerns are at best not being heard, and at worst being actively ignored and placated with a handful of small, temporary solutions.

Again, also echoing the fact that Quiche doesn't deserve to be blamed for this situation. It's very clear to me that they are constantly trying their best to bridge these communication gaps, and likely weren't given all the details themself.

Ohhkay, this is a lot to get into, but I do want to voice some of my own thoughts on this for once.

Firstly, @Tserin @Loki the forum reply update is mentioned in the patch notes under forum updates, and I think the ‘Profession scenarios now have accurate text to reflect requirements.’ bit was also referring to the catfish thing, though I'll admit it's a little vague. As for the dark mode compatibility, they could have just forgotten, it was a pretty big update after all. Just wanted to point that out, it doesn't seem like they are trying to hide these updates on purpose to me at least.

That aside, I definitely agree that there should be better communication, and that the recent update didn't do much to solve the actual moonstone problem that has been talked about. As the problem wasn't so much that pebbles are used for so little things, but rather that moonstones are used for too many. Even so, I don't think the dev team and staff deserve as much hate as they are getting right now.

And okay, I don't have much experience with new/starting petsites, so maybe I'm too naive. But looking at this new update, it really does seem the staff is trying their best to keep things fun for us. And I've heard a lot of people point out the odd priorities the staff seem to have. When to me it seems more likely they were just quick fixes, or things they had already planned to do anyway. Whereas other updates are much bigger and probably won't be implemented before they're given enough thought. At least, I would hope that's part of the reason. And I would much rather have some small updates, than none at all.

That being said, the communication still isn't great. I get they want to keep certain updates a surprise, but I don't think that is very smart, as we've seen. I recall someone saying that moderators are not allowed to post in suggestion forums to avoid bias. And while I think it is great that they want to keep mods unbiased, I feel it would be much better in terms of communication if they did post, at least something. Right now if a suggestion is made, it's just a waiting game to see if it gets implemented or not. And if it doesn't, you are forever left with the question as to why. It's understandable that not every suggestion gets implemented, but I do feel all of them should get a reason exactly as to why not, or even a heads up if they are being considered! This way players can offer counterarguments against the staff's reasoning. It can bring certain issues or ideas to light, that the staff might not have considered before. Or even the other way around, it could show people that what they thought was a good idea, actually isn't, and it could avoid a huge backlash this way. Players might not always know what is 'best' for the site, but they can most definitely offer a different perspective on things, and this way it could make players feel much more heard. Whether or not something gets implemented will always be up to the devs in the end, so at least give us the chance to partake in the discussion a bit more. And, for bigger update ideas, why don't the devs make their own suggestion thread to see what the players have to say about it first, before implementing it?

@Ocean

I can agree that it's definitely possible leaving certain things out of patch notes can potentially be an innocent accident, but when it happens numerous times I have to question the reason why. Especially when they never address it.

I've absolutely seen game devs forget to include things in their (actually large) patch notes. We're all human! But they own up and edit and make corrections.

This is a business, a job, for these devs. I don't think it's asking much to expect them to be able to accurately report the changes that they themselves approved and implemented.

I get that these are first time devs but it gives the impression that there is a lot of disorganization internally and that's not a good look and doesn't give people like me confidence in their abilities to improve

A lot of my post is trying to point out that even though my assumptions may not be true, because all staff give are silence, people are prone to negative assumptions when they're already dissatisfied with the state of the website.

@Ocean

Oh, I missed the forum reply thing, thank you for that! However the catfish change has nothing to do with requirements - it gives you 6 catfish now instead of 12 previously, the only requirement was that it needed level 20 fishing. No text was changed, no requirements were changed, the reward was changed. I don't think they're trying to hide updates either, but I still think that these things all need to be communicated - and if they are being communicated, they're being communicated too vaguely. Because there's no way for anyone to know "professions scenarios now have accurate text to reflect requirements" means "rewards for encounters were lowered".

I absolutely agree that they don't have malicious intent, they're not trying to hide things, and they do genuinely want to improve the game for everyone. I even praised the steps forward being made here, especially with the roadmap. But there are still things that have gone unaddressed for now a month after opening worth's of begging for them to be addressed. It still feels like sidestepping the issue with vagueness and platitudes. We were pinged by Quiche and promised that the MS issue would be addressed, which got players' hopes up, and those hopes were not met because it was so vague.

I would also rather smaller, more frequent updates instead of infrequent but larger updates, but I also... want those updates to be communicated better and for certain things to be communicated at all.

Thank you OP for taking the time to post this. While I am not sure I agree with having an official website currency exchange, I do share a lot of your concerns. The devs are not totally deaf to community concerns I believe, but the way they handle it isn’t very confidence inspiring. I think the site can survive having profession expansions locked behind premium currency, but only if other ways to increase moonstones obtained from gameplay are listened to/implemented—such as the player suggestion that moonstone shards drop when releasing wolves, or such as giving out enough moonstones from Achievements to expand professions while still having some left over. As things stand? I have only shaky confidence that those sorts of things will be happening.

In any case, I already posted in the June dev update that I would be canceling my monthly membership and if I wanted to make any further purchases on LW, I would buy gems from FR to convert to moonstones instead of giving LW money—until players’ broader concerns about moonstones are addressed. I encourage other players to do the same.

I don't have much experience with new/starting petsites, so maybe I'm too naive. But looking at this new update, it really does seem the staff is trying their best to keep things fun for us. And I've heard a lot of people point out the odd priorities the staff seem to have. When to me it seems more likely they were just quick fixes, or things they had already planned to do anyway. Whereas other updates are much bigger and probably won't be implemented before they're given enough thought. At least, I would hope that's part of the reason. And I would much rather have some small updates, than none at all.

I recall someone saying that moderators are not allowed to post in suggestion forums to avoid bias. And while I think it is great that they want to keep mods unbiased, I feel it would be much better in terms of communication if they did post, at least something. Right now if a suggestion is made, it's just a waiting game to see if it gets implemented or not. And if it doesn't, you are forever left with the question as to why. It's understandable that not every suggestion gets implemented, but I do feel all of them should get a reason exactly as to why not, or even a heads up if they are being considered! This way players can offer counterarguments against the staff's reasoning. It can bring certain issues or ideas to light, that the staff might not have considered before. Or even the other way around, it could show people that what they thought was a good idea, actually isn't, and it could avoid a huge backlash this way. Players might not always know what is 'best' for the site, but they can most definitely offer a different perspective on things, and this way it could make players feel much more heard. Whether or not something gets implemented will always be up to the devs in the end, so at least give us the chance to partake in the discussion a bit more. And, for bigger update ideas, why don't the devs make their own suggestion thread to see what the players have to say about it first, before implementing it?

These are all great ideas in terms of communication, especially with future features and updates, in my opinion. The big problem is that the devs aren't making direct verbal reponses to player feedback (bar the KBT scenario). How are we supposed to react when we bring up our major concerns with the site and we get no verbal responses to it? We're all just speculating at each other about what we think the devs think and it just needs to stop.

I agree that the update doesn't feel maliciously evasive at first glance but it's clear that Quiche was told that there would be an update to the economy and it just wasn't mentioned AT ALL in the dev update. And I mean verbally, not just 'new pebble items' on the dev map. The dev update would have been the perfect place to say something short and to-the-point. It's no wonder that people are starting to worry that the moonstone situation is just a money-grabbing scheme. It's either malicious or clueless and that's awful. Why are they just trundling along with planned updates without paying attention to what players would like to be prioritised?