Stop Adding Ways To Get More SC Until More Ways To Spend It Are Added

Stop Adding Ways To Get More SC Until More Ways To Spend It Are Added
Posted 2022-06-15 20:40:31 (edited) #773007 Firstly I would like to acknowledge that I am aware there is another post that is in direct contradiction to this post with a fairly large amount of activity in comparison, I will explain why such a disparity like this exists in larger detail and why I think the perspective I hold is currently more important in the long term compared to the other post edit: read back and realised this sounds like i have one hell of an ego, by important i mean more integral to the games integrity, not that i think people in the post mentioned opinions dont matter Before I make my points i would like to make a few definitions: 1. SC/GC sink - A system that directly removes SC/GC from the game, think slots or scrying, the trading center does not count as SC/GC invested into the trading center is not deleted, just transferred to another player 2. Burn - i have a habit of saying burn instead of delete( eg, il say burn sc instead of delete sc from the game) I've said this many times before but currently there are few actual SC sinks in the game, with the current existing SC sinks being: 1. Slots 2. Lottery 3.Scrying 4. Gene's hollow 5. Diagnosing wolves(when low herbalist prof) 6.Buying Territory 7.Buying from the raccoon(mostly decor ) 8.Guilds 9.Fertility Snake items 10.Personality Snake items These 10, are currently the only methods in game that actively delete SC from the game with the Lottery. Personality snake items, Fertility and snake items are almost never used or so negligible in the amount they delete from the game that they do not truly matter to think about.I feel l i do not have to explain this group for obvious reasons as for the remaining systems, Slots, Scrying, Genes Hollow, Buying from the raccoon, guilds are systems that are not necessary to interact with, it is optional to use these systems, so most folks will not use them, yes there are people like me that blow thousands upon thousands of sc on checking for mutations, playing slots, buying decor from the raccoon or buying guild slots but folks that do this are a tiny minority, this still leaves a huge amount of players that dont have to spend on such things and hence, have few systems in the game that they would actively spend their SC on, this group is technically even more limited in its effectiveness when you account for how you would not need more than a couple hundred slots for a guide and 1 decor from the raccoon lasting for several wolves lifetimes(most folk let a wolf keep its decor for its entire life, so 5 uses per raccoon decor would equate to years of that decor existing) This leaves the 2 remaining systems, Herbalist diagnosing and Buying territory slots that are necessary to interact with. Both of which do not affect players in the late game due to having high prof herbalists or already maxing out their sc territory slots. These 2 systems are generally what causes the disparity between the opinion on whether we have too much or too little SC gaining methods in this game with new players feeling like theres too little ways to make SC because they need it to spend on these 2 critical things, whilst older players who completely are unaffected by these 2 systems dont feel it and hence think otherwise So seeing that these systems barely affect established players, what do established players do with their sc? Well they dump their sc into the trade center in exchange for mainly gc, causing inflation in the prices of gc which makes the game feel less and less fun especially for newer players because things become increasingly unaffordable for everyone So since older players aren't burning as much sc as newer players and the systems that cause newer players to spend more sc than older players are only temporary and take a similiar amount from all players regardless, it means that territory slots and herbalist diagnosing have become a sort of gate between sc and the market, a gate that can only hold back a very limited amount of SC, a gate that will last an even lesser time if more ways to get sc are added so til the time more late game sc sinks are added, please dont add more ways for us to earn sc, not until you give us more established players more ways to use our sc. i say this as someone who directly benefits from it if this post is not listened to as i have a large hoard of gold cones whose value will become greater and greater as SC prices inflate more, but i do care about the health of this game, inflation fucks all new players coming in the future edit: i did not mention enclave as a sink because it is temporary as the devs claim the sc rewards are to be swapped to enclave currency one of these days FAIRLY NOTEWORTHY EXTRA INFORMATION disclaimer:yes. i am aware lioden is different from wolvden, they cannot be taken 1 to 1, lioden was concieved in a different time with different conditions acting on it, but both games mechanics in terms of economy are still quite similiar at the core of it, so it can be used to roughly gauge what could happen here on lioden one is able to make sc from 3 main methods, 1 the raccoon, 2. some of the minigames drop small amounts of sc 3. beetle battles, and whilst the raccoon has unlimited sales, most dont religiously use their raccoon opting to sell their items to other players, minigames giving probably less than we get from fishing and most folks not having a gigantic army of pet beetles to battle for currency, this resulting in most folks generating probably less than 100 a day, with people tryharding selling their everything to the raccoon generating 600 give or take(though i dont see why they would sell to raccoon considering u get more selling to other players so players that are trying very hard in lioden probably dont use the raccoon at all), i dont mention their snake quests because it only sometimes gives silver sometimes when u complete it their premium currency is also worth 2:1usd with their systems gc sinks roughly reflecting this difference in price eg 2 GB for an ibf currently their premium currency to silver currency conversion rate has stablised at about 1000:1 the average player on wolvden can generate 300 a day just from quests. we can do enclave quests to generate another 75 with ease(its literally just buy child from different player on the market to generate sc) we have fishing to give us a small handful of coins on top of the fact we also have the ability to utillise raccoon like lioden while lioden doesnt make buying territory mandatory like wolvden(allowing u to battle other players for slots) nor does it have a herbalist. It has a lot of things to spend their sc on in game(they have tons and tons of thinks in their version of the raccoon wares that i would gladly buy many of them) it does not bode well for wolvden as more people reach the point they dont spend on both territory and herbalistc whilst having little to spend their silver currency on. considering the average casual player on wolvden can generate over 3 times the silver currency with a fraction of the effort a casual lioden player would have to put in to reach a hundred.i do not doubt that we will easily blast by the 1000silver:1premium at this rate, which would be worse for us than it would be for lioden players because remember, their premium currency is worth double of ours PS: i know their raccoon isnt called raccoon i just called it that to make it less confusing	Derpy #6646

Posted 2022-06-15 20:40:31 (edited)

#773007

Firstly I would like to acknowledge that I am aware there is another post that is in direct contradiction to this post with a fairly large amount of activity in comparison, I will explain why such a disparity like this exists in larger detail and why I think the perspective I hold is currently more important in the long term compared to the other post
edit: read back and realised this sounds like i have one hell of an ego, by important i mean more integral to the games integrity, not that i think people in the post mentioned opinions dont matter

Before I make my points i would like to make a few definitions:
1. SC/GC sink - A system that directly removes SC/GC from the game, think slots or scrying, the trading center does not count as SC/GC invested into the trading center is not deleted, just transferred to another player
2. Burn - i have a habit of saying burn instead of delete( eg, il say burn sc instead of delete sc from the game)

I've said this many times before but currently there are few actual SC sinks in the game, with the current existing SC sinks being:
1. Slots
2. Lottery
3.Scrying
4. Gene's hollow
5. Diagnosing wolves(when low herbalist prof)
6.Buying Territory
7.Buying from the raccoon(mostly decor )
8.Guilds
9.Fertility Snake items
10.Personality Snake items

These 10, are currently the only methods in game that actively delete SC from the game with the Lottery. Personality snake items, Fertility and snake items are almost never used or so negligible in the amount they delete from the game that they do not truly matter to think about.I feel l i do not have to explain this group for obvious reasons

as for the remaining systems, Slots, Scrying, Genes Hollow, Buying from the raccoon, guilds are systems that are not necessary to interact with, it is optional to use these systems, so most folks will not use them, yes there are people like me that blow thousands upon thousands of sc on checking for mutations, playing slots, buying decor from the raccoon or buying guild slots but folks that do this are a tiny minority, this still leaves a huge amount of players that dont have to spend on such things and hence, have few systems in the game that they would actively spend their SC on, this group is technically even more limited in its effectiveness when you account for how you would not need more than a couple hundred slots for a guide and 1 decor from the raccoon lasting for several wolves lifetimes(most folk let a wolf keep its decor for its entire life, so 5 uses per raccoon decor would equate to years of that decor existing)

This leaves the 2 remaining systems, Herbalist diagnosing and Buying territory slots that are necessary to interact with. Both of which do not affect players in the late game due to having high prof herbalists or already maxing out their sc territory slots. These 2 systems are generally what causes the disparity between the opinion on whether we have too much or too little SC gaining methods in this game with new players feeling like theres too little ways to make SC because they need it to spend on these 2 critical things, whilst older players who completely are unaffected by these 2 systems dont feel it and hence think otherwise

So seeing that these systems barely affect established players, what do established players do with their sc? Well they dump their sc into the trade center in exchange for mainly gc, causing inflation in the prices of gc which makes the game feel less and less fun especially for newer players because things become increasingly unaffordable for everyone

So since older players aren't burning as much sc as newer players and the systems that cause newer players to spend more sc than older players are only temporary and take a similiar amount from all players regardless, it means that territory slots and herbalist diagnosing have become a sort of gate between sc and the market, a gate that can only hold back a very limited amount of SC, a gate that will last an even lesser time if more ways to get sc are added

so til the time more late game sc sinks are added, please dont add more ways for us to earn sc, not until you give us more established players more ways to use our sc.

i say this as someone who directly benefits from it if this post is not listened to as i have a large hoard of gold cones whose value will become greater and greater as SC prices inflate more, but i do care about the health of this game, inflation fucks all new players coming in the future

edit: i did not mention enclave as a sink because it is temporary as the devs claim the sc rewards are to be swapped to enclave currency one of these days

FAIRLY NOTEWORTHY EXTRA INFORMATION

disclaimer:yes. i am aware lioden is different from wolvden, they cannot be taken 1 to 1, lioden was concieved in a different time with different conditions acting on it, but both games mechanics in terms of economy are still quite similiar at the core of it, so it can be used to roughly gauge what could happen here

on lioden one is able to make sc from 3 main methods, 1 the raccoon, 2. some of the minigames drop small amounts of sc 3. beetle battles, and whilst the raccoon has unlimited sales, most dont religiously use their raccoon opting to sell their items to other players, minigames giving probably less than we get from fishing and most folks not having a gigantic army of pet beetles to battle for currency, this resulting in most folks generating probably less than 100 a day, with people tryharding selling their everything to the raccoon generating 600 give or take(though i dont see why they would sell to raccoon considering u get more selling to other players so players that are trying very hard in lioden probably dont use the raccoon at all), i dont mention their snake quests because it only sometimes gives silver sometimes when u complete it

their premium currency is also worth 2:1usd with their systems gc sinks roughly reflecting this difference in price eg 2 GB for an ibf

currently their premium currency to silver currency conversion rate has stablised at about 1000:1

the average player on wolvden can generate 300 a day just from quests. we can do enclave quests to generate another 75 with ease(its literally just buy child from different player on the market to generate sc) we have fishing to give us a small handful of coins on top of the fact we also have the ability to utillise raccoon like lioden

while lioden doesnt make buying territory mandatory like wolvden(allowing u to battle other players for slots) nor does it have a herbalist. It has a lot of things to spend their sc on in game(they have tons and tons of thinks in their version of the raccoon wares that i would gladly buy many of them)

it does not bode well for wolvden as more people reach the point they dont spend on both territory and herbalistc whilst having little to spend their silver currency on. considering the average casual player on wolvden can generate over 3 times the silver currency with a fraction of the effort a casual lioden player would have to put in to reach a hundred.i do not doubt that we will easily blast by the 1000silver:1premium at this rate, which would be worse for us than it would be for lioden players because remember, their premium currency is worth double of ours

PS: i know their raccoon isnt called raccoon i just called it that to make it less confusing

Derpy
#6646

Posted 2022-06-15 22:05:24

#773027

Agree. As an addon, there are also a few Lunar Event encounters that you have an option to pay SC to… but even then it's not very much, and they're not very common.

Rippleskip
#53693

Posted 2022-06-16 02:27:58

#773064

The health of the game's economy is in dire need of a good SC sink. For an SC sink to be effective, it should be useful indefinitely for experienced players who have exhausted the main SC sinks like territory buying.

Things that could be purchased for SC that would make good sinks include:

- breeding items, because a lot of breeding goes on in this game and most experienced players do it at least sometimes
- wolf customisation items, such as SC exclusive marking applicators or eye applicators. Decor isn't good enough as most site decors available for SC purchase don't look good on lots of wolves, whereas markings and eyes are basic design components for wolves.
- battle items, that experienced players who grind their leads would make use of

Breeding items would be the best, I think. Something like black sage would be ideal, or the unavailable items that influence marking inheritance. Breeding items would be needed again and again, regularly, by many of the most experienced users in the game. Once used, they are consumed instantly, meaning more SC must be deleted to create another one.

Spontaneite
#2993

Posted 2022-06-16 02:58:08

#773066

These 2 systems are generally what causes the disparity between the opinion on whether we have too much or too little SC gaining methods in this game with new players feeling like theres too little way to make SC because they need it to spend on these 2 things, whilst older players who completely are unaffected by these 2 systems dont feel it

✔️✔️✔️✔️✔️✔️✔️

Secondly, to elaborate on Spon's post, Gene's Hollow is a fantastic sink when there's strong motivation to use it - pretty much invisible to a normal player, but capable of draining insane amounts of $$$ out of the pockets of wealthy players.

unsknown
#21142

Posted 2022-06-16 13:12:36

#773339

Support. I used to do this thing where I would move to an easy biome in winter and sell carcasses for huge profit. (No idea if this is still a good way to make sc what with the hunting changes.) This was to finance my project to get all the biome-specific raccoon backgrounds. Even after I got all the backgrounds, I still did the carcass hustle for a few winters just for fun, and then got bored and stopped. Now I have 52 thousand silver cones and nothing I want to buy with them.

As OP said, I don't need any more territory slots- I have room for 120 wolves or so and my pack has never gone above the low sixties. And of course herbalism is not something an established player spends much on.

So... now what? I'm in a weird position where I rarely see anything I want to buy, but even when I do I feel that my sc is too valuable to spend, even though I can't get a lot of GC for it. (Best value on TC right now looks to be 1 to 400, so I could spend 40k silver to get 100 gold.)

I personally love the slot machine. I would love if I could spend silver to earn slot slots. That is, I spend 1k silver (or something) to get six spins per hour instead of five, and another 1k silver to bump it up to seven spins per hour, etc. This would help by adding a sink upfront and then ALSO it would mean gambling addicts like me would spend more sc per hour because they have more spins. Alternately, a lucky foot item type thing that improves slots luck could be purchasable for silver.

Katie
#28191

Posted 2022-06-16 13:14:10

#773340

Oh the slots-slot thing is a really good idea!!! Support!

Rippleskip
#53693

Posted 2022-06-16 14:04:47 (edited)

#773379

I wasn't sure about this at first, but after thinking on it a bit, I support. If this was closer to the site's opening, I'm quite sure I would have opposed or been indifferent at best, but that was when SC was much more stingy in comparison. Since then, there's been fishing, the enclave (indefinitely,) and a quest overhaul, which all provide direct SC gain. Then we also have faster herb collecting, heightened healing salve power, and a hunting overhaul, which provide indirect SC gain. (Excess = Opportunity to sell to the Raccoon.) There's probably other stuff that I can't remember off the top of my head.

Now I appreciate that these changes have been made - it has made a lot of things more accessible to newer or casual players. SC is easier to gain and, for those getting territory slots or are just trying to care for their wolves, that is incredibly important. It shouldn't take someone two weeks for a single territory slot, y'know?

But yeah, the moment your territory slots change from SC to GC, things change. Drastically. When my slots switched over, I lost almost all interest in SC. There's almost nothing to do with it. I have tens of thousands of it now, and the only feasible thing I can picture doing is converting it to GC. Which is too much work for me to mentally handle and isn't going to delete the SC, just transfer it to someone else. There's nothing really convincing me to spend SC that doesn't have to do with giving it to other players in some form.

We needed the SC gains to not be cutthroat with everything that players required, but now we need some more optional sinks to get rid of the excess. More things that have been suggested, like Gene's Hollow additions/similarities, apps that cost SC, breeding items, and decor. Because we are SORELY lacking decor on this site. (Not talking about backgrounds or birds, I'm talking stuff more like the Event has.) Half the time I don't care to buy decor anyway since I have just as good options to craft, so some flashier items could really entice players to spend if they have extra funds.

Inflation hurts everybody in the long run, and there's no knowing how much more it'll shift in the wrong direction at this rate. It's actually crazy how much it's changed - it's really 400 SC per now? My logs still have my first-ever bulk SC trade on 2020-11-24, one month and five days after the site opened publicly. I had 2k SC and accepted the highest offer of 55 GC. That would be ~36 SC per. I wouldn't want the prices to deflate back to that degree, because that's pretty bad. But any change to encourage SC spending through optional means would be a good step in the right direction.

I'm all cool with us getting more SC gains in the future, just not right now.

Whirligig
#11137

Posted 2022-06-16 21:35:52

#773733

@katie i suggest u make a seperate post for the slot machine thing
it would make it more accessible atleast for the devs anyways

Derpy
#6646

Posted 2022-07-09 04:13:42

#791014

As a player who actively trades currency throughout the gameplay, I have gained a lot of insight into currency value changes.

Providing a few definitions: GC sale trades are trades offering GC and requesting SC buyout, typically priced higher. GC purchase trades are trades offering SC and requesting GC buyout, typically offering lower.

The cause of the mentioned inflation can be found in Development Update #12. The update was introduced on 25th August 2021. According to my user logs of successfully bought out currency trades around that time the GC sale trades were priced for at most 180 SC each but most of trades were priced for 136-155 SC each. GC purchase trades offered 105-109 SC for each. Such rates had been kept for many months. After the update was released, my GC sale trades were being bought out rapidly. Almost hundred of trades were bought out priced not more than 150 SC each within less than 2 days until I decided to sell for 155 SC each. I didn't stop getting notifications of bought out trades so I gradually increased the price to 160 SC, 175 SC, 200 SC - each of these prices had hundreds of transactions performed. After setting up GC sales for 225 SC each I stated that the inflation reached 50% within a week in this post. The remaining GC sales for 200 SC each were all bought out within the next several hours. GC purchase rates were in range 130-136 SC each but my singular GC trades weren't bought out meaning there could've been trades offering more SC. GC sales didn't stop on 225 SC though. There was further price increase to 250 SC, 275 SC. Then either I grew tired of gradually increasing the price or was short of GC and set 500 SC as the price. Within a month I was managed to perform dozens of transactions, most of which were bulk trades, offering GC for 460-500 SC each. Meanwhile, GC purchase trades were in range 225-250 SC each. Within a month from the update, we got 200% inflation, I believe the highest one in the history of Wolvden.

I hope this shared currency transaction history clearly indicates that the cause of inflation can be found in the aforementioned update. Several changes were introduced during the update. I hardly believe that extra dynasty slots giving an option to spend GC on or more leaderboards motivating to acquire guarana from the Grove, although those changes could've added some value to GC, were the reason for such huge inflation - there are only several players on Wolvden buying more than 100 slots but how NBW or stat-specific leaderboards motivated players to spend guarana might be a subject to discuss, although my GC sale trades were bought out by variety of players, which only few seemed specifically invested in stat boosting. These changes were only optional GC sinks, while there was one more change that increased SC production for everywolf - questing overhaul.

Before the update, we could take a quest once daily that rewards 100-150 SC and in case of failure we were forced to wait 2 days unless we used Snake Skull that didn't pay off. The quests were either slay quest (defeat certain type of enemy in several amounts) that required good lead, hunt quest (succeed in a bunch of hunts) that required good hunters or item quest (get different certain items in herbs/food/toys) that required good intelligence. The update has allowed us to take 3 quests of different difficulty and, as I read the guide, comparing to the old version even the hard quests have been made easier, more rewarding and less punishing for failure: slay quest requires only one defeated enemy instead of several excluding reptiles and marine animals (removed as being considered a bug), hunt quest requires the minimum hunts completed (just 6 every time instead of 6-9 iirc) and is not required to succeed, item quest requires one specific item excluding large carcasses (also removed as being considered a bug) and variety of other quests that are even easier with an exception of trophy quest; the reward of completing a hard quest alone is 135-162 SC and the reward is doubled for completing all daily quests; the consequence of failure is the quest being reset after 24 hours instead of 2 days and taking partial reward for completing other quests in the set instead of no reward at all in the older version. The update notes state that the difficulty was determined for a player that starts from nothing (no wolves in pack, empty hoard) just with minimum requirement to get a quest (such as owning a female in heat to get a breeding quest) but nearly if not literally everywolf has enough wolves and assets to complete half of the quests by being active once or twice a day for a few minutes (e.g. trade 3/6/9 items to Raccoon Wares, leave a puppy at the Enclave, train an adol, craft 1/2 items, submit items) and almost every quest by being shortly active several times daily that sometimes include daily tasks we do regardless of whether we get the quest.

I don't complain about other sources of SC income such as Raccoon Wares, Enclave, fishing - these give scarce amounts of SC that shaped the value really well. I don't mind 200-300 SC (if I get this range right) given to every player parting with items on daily basis - not every player sells the items to the raccoon for various reasons such as not worth it over TC or being a hoarder. I don't mind Enclave quest rewards being distributed up to 75 SC daily per player for choosing the right pups to disappear. I don't mind fishing leaderboard rewards being distributed in amounts of 3300 SC for the daily and 9000 SC for the weekly among the best fisherwolves server-wide as well as those up to 100 SC daily given for spending hours on fishing. The issue is how unbalanced the questing has become, giving 270-324 SC by just playing the game as always or doing the previous activities for much increased reward such as instead of getting 3-30 SC for 3 items traded to Raccoon Wares, you can get 48-84 SC for each 3 items traded depending on whether you have this quest and what difficulty (higher difficulty means multiplied reward), getting rewarded with 115-133 SC for completing Enclave quest or fishing, where 4 fish reward varies in range from 4 SC to even 40 SC assuming you catch 4 legendary fish, once you get a hard quest you can get rewarded with additional 135-162 SC. And these easy cones for low effort is how it goes everyday despite various sets of quests.

Also, I don't think that SC:GC ratio would increase over time as long as no changes are made - according to the aforementioned data, the price has been stable for the recent months without further increase. However, it's very possible that any potential updates giving more sources of SC would bring negative feedback once the community notices how GC gets more expensive such as it was published 4 months after the questing overhaul was implemented.

Dżanek
#24018

Posted 2022-07-19 16:00:20 (edited)

#797913

Hmm. Mostly I would like a way to buy grove items with SC. It doesn't build up for me since I'm constantly fixing the marks on ugly wolves. But someone said it would be too hard to give GC an official SC price, so I don't know if that's even an option.

Wait- maybe the best SC sink would be the option to keep the designs on wolves after death. I'm not too motivated to spend SC on decor. They can't keep it and it can be hard to sell used items, so why bother?

🍂 Leonca 🐆
#54339

Stop Adding Ways To Get More SC Until More Ways To Spend It Are Added

FAIRLY NOTEWORTHY EXTRA INFORMATION

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