Feed All/Play All (& how it affects mentally/chronically ill and neurodivergent players)

The difference between clicking around the different pages and explore etc (general gameplay) over feeding your wolves is that you have to feed your wolves and play with them every day or have consequences, you can take explore and everything else at a leisurely pace.

If you're experiencing a bout of pain/immobility etc you can stop exploring temporarily, whereas if you stop feeding your wolves then pups will die, wolves won't recover etc.

Also, feeding your wolves from you inventory is not mentally simulating (for the vast majority of players), exploring is, the clicking aspect, isn't the gameplay itself. 

I agree with this so hard. At the very least it should be a one time payment at a reasonable GC price, if not reworked to be included. There are plenty of other things 'were all paying for, those of us who can buy GC. I haven't bought it specifically because it wouldn't be permanent. 

As a neuro-divergent/chronically-in-pain player I feel I need to chime in with the disagreement side. While the points you make are good ones, the reasons for my disagreement are the following:

- The tool is a part of the game and is available for purchase should you feel you need it in order to play. Were it not a feature at all then I would support it being created, however it is there if you need it.

- The cost compared to the amount of time you get the tool for is a nice balance. It is low enough that it is entirely possible to make that amount by trading sc/gc with other players if you don't want to pay real money for it, but high enough that it allows for a continuous sink of money that stops the economy of the game going off and allows the staff to get paid for what they have created.

- By making it free or even a one time purchase it would reduce the challenge of saving up enough in-game currency to get the bonus feature and make game play more monotonous.

-This game is designed to be a 'play as much/little as you are able to each day' type of thing, which is why the fact that having an account is free is a huge plus. If you aren't capable of looking after a certain amount of wolves and don't want to pay for more easily caring for them then you have to have less wolves, whether that be because you have an illness/disability or are extremely busy with work or any other reason. It is a game to be enjoyed at whatever level you are able to, and if it's causing pain or real life is too busy to care for the wolves, and you're not willing to pay for the easy one click solution, then the solution is to reduce the size of your pack, but this does not prevent you from continuing to be on the site for free.

- The game does not require feeding and playing every day. If you're having a low capability day you can choose not to rollover and the game doesn't punish you for it. I frequently take days off sim games due to it being a low functioning day or because I need to rest my wrist joint.

I hope this doesn't come across as me not being sympathetic for peoples' health issues, but on a game that is already free to play I don't think the devs are wrong to request money for certain easier features.

@Chu

It wouldn't effect the economy at all; the feed all play all feature as it exists now still uses food and entertainment items, it just does all your wolves (or as many as you have items for) at once instead of one at a time

Support!

Support!!

Even the inaccessibility aside, it's a basic mechanic that feels kind of arbitrary to put behind a monthly subscription of all things. It's one thing if there's not many GC options, but there are, there are a ton and I imagine the options will continue to increase over time :O I don't expect it to be made free, but I think a one time payment or extension of activation is perfectly fine

Edit: made a misunderstanding, so I edited out a part of this post :>

Huge support. I'm perfectly healthy physically, and I was honestly surprised to find that the FA/PA was actually paywalled on subscription. I'd bought it when I got the puppy stages, expecting it to be more permanent, only for it to expire and then become increasingly dismayed each day after from all the clicking I have to do.

I'm already burning out and exhausted from having 14 mouths to feed and plan on downsizing my pack and keeping it tiny to avoid the tedium. I don't even want to think about how much work it'd be with a pack of 25, or 50, or the max 200. FA/PA feels much more like an absolute necessity that'd be 1 time purchase since we're able to have pack numbers get that high (even higher considering pups once they're weaned).

There's always a chance a player who could keep up before hits a snag or month where they just cannot keep up or save up the GC that they need to keep up with a subscription (ex pups simply will not sell, bad luck on quests, health conditions, irl circumstances where they might have to play less frequently and thus struggle to keep up etc). Too many factors up in the air that can change on a dime and turn something 'doable' or 'difficult, but feasible' for a person into 'impossible'.

I support. Initially I misunderstood the item's purpose and thought it provided food and entertainment along with it, but looking into it you still have to have the required food/toy items. Putting a QoL tool behind a paywall, that has to be re-bought no less, is baffling to me.

@RustyEyron

I don't really see how those points make good arguments in the bigger picture.

A basic functions such as "Feed all/Play all" should be free (or at minimum a one time purchase) - the fact that it isn't free or "works" when it's not free, does not mean it shouldn't be. It's a basic function that is necessary in order to keep your wolves, simple as that. If wolves didn't run it wouldn't be necessary, thus it wouldn't be as big of a deal. But they do run.

"By making it free or even a one time purchase it would reduce the challenge of saving up enough in-game currency to get the bonus feature and make game play more monotonous."
This one is especially odd to me. Firstly, the challenge and gameplay of this game isn't to make currency, it's taking care of wolves, breed, and raise them.
Secondly, how is clicking 30-40 times (easily more even with bigger packs) in a row every day or every other day not significantly more monotonous? That's not part of the exciting gameplay that this game is all about - it's simply a chore that you have to do in order to not lose your wolves.

"It is a game to be enjoyed at whatever level you are able to [...]"
Exactly. It is a game that should be enjoyable to the degree the player wants to enjoy it, no matter their health conditions (over which no one has control.)
To say "If you physically can't continue playing this game that brings you joy, because the function, which would make it easier for you to still play, is behind a paywall, then you simply shouldn't play!" isn't fair.

People can take a day off from playing, of course, but keep in mind for some people this is not just a single day. For some people it's days, weeks - and even if the game wouldn't make a significant difference to their health condition, being able to easily care for and look at your beloved wolves, and interact with people on the forums can make a huge difference to someone mentally.

I hope I explained my thoughts understandably!

Thank you for responding to my comment with your thoughts, they are understandable ^^

This may just be a differing in opinion on how we view the tool. You say it is necessary but there is already a feeding and playing system that means it is possible to look after wolves, so the tool rather than being necessary to me just makes the feeding and playing options less of an important part of gameplay strategy. If the tool were not there at all (and for those who don't purchase it) the challenge of the game comes from choosing which wolves are the important ones to look after. The only thing forcing people to click 30-40 times is choosing to look after so many wolves each day, rather than keeping a small pack or only feeding/playing with wolves every few days and prioritising the ones you most care about.

I do like that the feature is optionally there, I just don't agree that the payment system for it needs to be changed. Even making it a one time payment there would be complaints about the price being too high, because it would need to account for the fact that the game could go on for many years of play and make sure that devs are still getting payed for the extra work done to add the feature. As I mentioned previously, the paywall isn't a firm paywall in itself because you are able to trade in-game currency for premium currency. On the sister game, Lioden, I have spent many years with the feed all play all tool and have always been able to purchase it through sb/gb trades with other players rather than having to spend real money. If it cost real money to purchase Wolvden accounts then I would agree that the feature should be either free or with in-game currency, but I don't believe it's fair to ask the devs to have worked on something that changes a large feature of the game they designed without payment. This also feeds into the points I've seen comparing it to pup stages. Pup stages only changes what you are looking at, not your ability to play with any features of the game, so having it permanently on your account is very different to the idea of putting a feature that changes gameplay style permanently on an account.

Either way, I have no say in how the game is developed so I'm going to leave it at that. I just wanted to add a voice in support for how the feature currently works since the thread was so in support of the suggestion :)

@RustyEyron

"The tool is a part of the game and is available for purchase should you feel you need it in order to play. Were it not a feature at all then I would support it being created, however it is there if you need it."
- It would still be 'available for purchase should you feel you need it' if it were one-time payment, too.

"It is low enough that it is entirely possible to make that amount by trading sc/gc with other players if you don't want to pay real money for it, but high enough that it allows for a continuous sink of money that stops the economy of the game going off and allows the staff to get paid for what they have created."
- We don't need an SC money sink aimed at letting the game be more playable. Have you seen the minimum cost of studs if you don't want inbreeding? Have you counted the cost of constantly diagnosing wolves before your herbalist is good enough that it's free? Have you accounted for the fact that there are a ton of things in the Grove that are still extremely worth buying and grinding SC-to-GC swaps for that aren't unfair to make people pay for repeatedly? All combined with how hard SC is to get if you don't make sure every single option you pick in explore is the one that is most likely to get you SC? Not everyone has the mental energy to sell things in trades. (I certainly barely do.)

"By making it free or even a one time purchase it would reduce the challenge of saving up enough in-game currency to get the bonus feature and make game play more monotonous."
- Because grinding for money and clicking 30+ times is such exciting gameplay? I don't understand this point. Having to grind to make the game less tedious isn't exciting. At all. The fun of the game is exploring, hunting, breeding, interacting with your fellow players, not grinding to get a feature that makes the game more accessible to you.

"The game does not require feeding and playing every day. If you're having a low capability day you can choose not to rollover and the game doesn't punish you for it."
- I covered that right in my first post. Saying "just don't play at all that day", again, is not fair if we feel we want to and can that day, the main barrier being feeding all the wolves. The fun of the game isn't feeding the wolves. That's mandatory. Part of why I like this game is the community (tiring as main chat can be sometimes, lol). You can't hang out with Wolvden friends who you aren't connected to outside the game without, you know, being in, on, and around the game, and friends can be wonderful morale boosters.

"If you aren't capable of looking after a certain amount of wolves and don't want to pay for more easily caring for them then you have to have less wolves, whether that be because you have an illness/disability or are extremely busy with work or any other reason."
- As a person who gets highly attached to my creatures in games like these partly because of my mental condition, that is extremely easier said than done. I may be trying to work on it, but forcing someone with the problem I have to get rid of things they care about (especially things that resemble living things, which their brain connects with having feelings) on a forced time limit of space is already mentally challenging enough, much less a challenge of tedious care as well.