Optimize Gameplay for Inevitable Big Packs

Going into this game, I was fully prepared to build up a dopamine hoard of hundreds of pretty wolves, but now the longer I play, the harder this ideal seems.

First of all, new territory space gets real expensive, real fast. At my 19th(?) expansion I can still only house 24 wolves, and my next expansion, which grants a single wolf, already costs over 600 SC. I'm hoping the WD economy will get better as more ways to earn SC are introduced, but right now this is...a lot, and I don't know when it switches to premium currency.

Every wolf I choose to keep will not only cost their TC price, but the expansion price, too. For me to just have a single wolf will soon cost me 1k SC and that's buying cheap wolves.

Ideally, expanding would give more than just one slot, maybe three? The slow grind makes sense in the current state, what with the cap being at 200 wolves (I would like to see this raised if optimization happens elsewhere, I don't think even 100 wolves can be supported in the current state)

Regardless of expansion and max pack size, there will be inevitable issues for people who build large packs. Hunting is one of them. Having only one hunting team out at a time is fine for small packs, but once you get on the other end of 50 wolves, this is gonna start to hurt. To support larger packs, hunting parties need to be able to go out in multiples at the same time (and maybe increase daily hunts based on synergy/proficiency). Similar issue on amusement items, there needs to be a way for bigger packs to meet the demand of their wolves. There also needs to be better ways to feed&play that doesn't depend on Feed/Play All, like being able to select multiple food/amusement items, their respective uses, and then which wolves you want to feed/play.

I could go on, but I hope these things will be improved naturally as players start to build larger packs, just wanted to throw out some thoughts I'm currently having.

Honestly I think the biggest hurdle to large packs (which as you said, are inevitable, it's the natural trajectory for a player who isn't deliberately trimming their pack) is feeding and playing. There are other threads on this so I won't go into too much detail, but it really needs to be optimized/improved. This feature is extremely clunky at the moment.

I didn't know you couldn't send out multiple hunting parties at a time. That seems to defeat the purpose of having multiple hunting parties. Since the point of more hunters is to bring in more food, right...? With each hunt taking 30 minutes, and 10 daily hunts, that's 5 hours of hunting, players will have to check in all day to benefit from having multiple hunting parties. Strong support there, it seems completely counterproductive.

No opinion on territory price. 600 SC can be obtained in 6 days of doing your daily quests and not spending SC. I think it switches to premium currency at slot 52, not sure how expensive it gets before then. But it seems the intended behavior is a slow pack size increase. We're only a little over a month into open registration, right? That's not very long. It's probably intended to take over a year to reach the final 200.

I had a long written response but wolvden timed out and I lost it so in otherwords: I support everything said above.

No real opinion on price for me.

However I do support a gameplay change for roles. Herbalists, hunters, scouts, all their limits are suitable for small packs and will completely screw a large pack. I myself am already finding this happening. I'm on from rollover to rollover on and off every single day, constantly hunting, scouting, foraging, exploring etc etc. I'm a GRINDER, and I am seeing SO many issues rise where these caps will completely bar suitable growth. For example I have several wolves stall at leveling because I have to keep switching out hunting parties or swapping out pregnant scouts etc. The pupsitter interface doesn't allow for suitable leveling unless you're producing mass pups too, which not everyone is doing because we cannot support the number of pups. I have one wolf that's nearly dead that's only hit level 8 as a Pupsitter, she was my experimental to see what kind of levels I could get from pupsitter only roles. Turns out, not even enough to meet my breeding standards which means I have a bunch of wolves not pulling their weight in production which means I cannot level the pupsitter because I dont have enough suitable stock to hold onto and raise for sale. I could go on and on and on.

The roles 110% need a increase of some sort. I would like to see this be proportionate with pack size as well.

Big agree. I was originally hoping to greatly increase territory size so that I could have 1 cave each be its own "pack" of wolves for lore reasons, but with limited time each day and the strict limits on certain roles like scouts means that as my pack gets larger I will have either tons and tons of hunting teams I do not need or tons of wolves sitting there doing nothing to contribute to the pack at all.

I've been trying to figure out a way to articulate ways scouts can be expanded in particular so that they can more feasibly get play items like feathers for a large pack with a high demand, but not so much that people will be drowning in items they don't even need.

Best I can think of is that you can get a maximum of 8-10 scouts as territory is unlocked and that when rescouting you can send them in 'pairs' - where in exchange for a longer wait time and decreased EXP, they can come back with more play items. A maximum of 2 pairs at once so that it's still a bit challenging to get said resources, and the lowered EXP would still give value to sending scouts out alone and using guarana on them to level. That way it's not free resources being handed to you as it is still limited, but it gives some sort of breathing room for packs with higher counts of wolves.

The reason I have difficulty fleshing it out is that it is quite easy for play items to stack a lot if you aren't careful due to their use count. 2 swan feathers can get 12 wolves at 90% amusement back to full, so it's a finicky thing to figure out how many items a joint scout idea can bring back to keep it somewhat useful to have but also not erase potential challenge the developers wish the game to retain.

It's just...A Lot to think about for my cheese grater of a brain.

But I definitely think a lot of the roles could use for some sort of tweaks or expansions so that they remain consistently useful as a pack grows. Keeping so many wolves happy and fed is definitely something that should be a challenge on its own right and not easy, but it definitely does feel like it'd be joy-suckingly dreadful down the road for someone like me who may not have time to grind a lot later down the line.

I feel like currency will be easier to grind when we get some minigames like the slots added in so I'm kinda neutral on it.

I’m fine with slots being expensive since the territory increase is permanent and the wolves have limited lifespans, so over the course of the game multiple wolves will cycle through that slot. Also long term the devs will probably add more ways to earn sc.

I think bigger territories should be able to have more scouts and herbalists, even if it’s 1 extra herbalist and 1 extra scout for every 50 slots or something - I’m throwing out random numbers, but with the current limitations on hunting (only one hunting group out at a time) once you get past, idk, 25 wolves or so you start running out of things for them to do.

I support everything said so far!!

Im noticing as I want to level up my wolves that only 2 scouts, 1 herbalist, and 1 hunting team being able to go out at a time is really hindering. I’d enjoy it so much more if I could send more out at a time, even a somewhat less controlled “scale the number of roles with the number of adult pack members” kind of way, a change to this would be really nice.

scouting is my favorite way to level up my wolves in my pack, but I found out that I can only have TWO total the other day. I pay for all of these pack slots and... I can only have 2 scouts? I really think it should scale up with the number of wolves in the pack. 

hunting is a great way to level up stats, but my main issue is I can’t send out multiple teams at once. i only have so much time during the day, and I want to level all of my wolves as much as I can. why have multiple hunting parties if it takes all of my free time to send out one party it’s max hunts per day? having it scale up makes so much more sense and would help the gameplay feel so much better. right now it feels a bit weirdly controlling, honestly. maybe instead of allowing tons of parties to be made but only one out at a time, make us pay for each additional party slot and then we can send them all out at once, similar to the way territory slots work. they cost more with each hunting party you have, but you can send them all out at once. 

pupsitting for me is.. pretty much worthless in terms of raising stats. maybe there could be an added feature where pupsitters can have a “play adventure/play stalk/ play fight/play herbalist” option with all or on individuals of the puppies it watches a day to raise BOTH the pupsitter and the pup’s stats.

training puppies could start out with pupsitters - and then training adols could be like an adolescent going out with a scout, or an adol going out with a hunting team. the adols might weigh the adults down at first but as their proficiency improves they can be a nice bonus for hunting parties and scouts, and maybe bring back like feathers or bones or meat chunks when scouting and small like rat carcasses, etc when tagging along with hunters?

Support! I have so many problems with these "small pack settings", including the fact that many of my beautiful wolves start seeming a bit obsolete without any suitable roles to put them in. Also, I always have a few adolescents about to age up and I always have to sell almost all my food and amusement to make space for them all. 

Ugh clicked bump instead of reply :c

Anyway, support. Especially with fixed slots (scout etc) being proportionate to pack size. And more teams being sent out at once.

It's getting old - being penalized for wanting a larger pack. I "need" a third hunting team purely to train the new/younger wolves I've acquired. There's no other way to really do that, other than hmm, maybe unnecessary breeding and setting the adult wolves all as pupsitters. Since my other roles are taken. If I do create three teams, all wolves will gain stats a lot slower and will go hunting less..so I'm sticking to two and just trying to figure out what to do now.