Man, every time FR competitors come up either in FR discords, on this comm or elsewhere, it feels like some people are sitting at the edge of their seats and circling like vultures over any tiny little misstep in the hopes that it will fail, and I just... honestly don't get it? Like, if you love FR and want it to be a good site, healthy competitors are great for that. Every time a new possible competitor comes out, FR finally gets around to launching some new update or species or whatever else.
Like with Lorwolf's launch recently, do you REALLY think we would be getting SO MANY previews of the new ancient and such interactive and behind the scenes looks (& fast progress) if it weren't for LW's popularity? Like genuinely, do you think FR would be showing and giving us what they are if LW hadn't lit a fire under them? If you do, that's great -- you have more faith than I do, but I'm not gonna say you're wrong or anything, and I really wish I had your level of faith. Given their patterns of doing this every single time something comes out (FV, DV, and LW are the ones I'm aware of, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more), though, I really do think it's content released to specifically combat LW's popularity.
And yet, every time a potential competitor comes out, people seem to grab their popcorn and pitchforks and watch like vultures hoping that FR will return to being 'The One True Petsite' (no I don't count dragcave & its clones, that's a somewhat different genre and not direct competition). I just genuinely don't understand it. It seems to me to be in the playerbase's best interest if BOTH LW and FR do well and thrive because it will spur both dev teams to try and make their site the best it'll be. (At least unless one ends up able to buy out the other, then RIP.)
So like... If you've been rooting for LW to fail simply because you love FR, and you still do after reading this, can I ask why? Like genuinely, and I'm not trying to criticize or anything -- I just want to know why. Is it just like a sports team tribalism thing or is there something else behind it, or..?
(Also, not saying everyone who expresses dislike automatically wants LW to fail, nor that everyone who dislikes LW does so only because they like FR and no other reason. There's plenty of completely valid reasons to dislike the site, and I'm not trying to discount those. I'm talking specifically about the subset of players that are rooting for its demise solely because of their love of and loyalty to FR, not because of specific LW grievances.)
Honestly, I've been having fun with LW- even if I am still giving the Moonstone prices/expansion costs a side eye.
There's a lot to do and it doesn't feel like there's a focus on breeding.
I honestly hope it does well, if only to give those of us burnt out on FR something to do, and because I hope the Campaign mode in LW will kind of nudge/inspire FR to finally do something with the promised Adventure Mode.
Yeah, I'm really hoping the popularity of Campaign will nudge FR toward adventure mode again too. Honestly, I wonder how much of the Campaign on LW was inspired by a former FR player wanting adventure mode. I'm assuming we'll never know since I doubt they'll want to say how much of their site was/wasn't inspired by elsewhere, but it would be something I'd love to have my curiousity sated on someday if I could.
DV created a bit of a lack of faith for new petsites going forward for a lot of people from what I've seen, and given that LW is showing those same signs of mismanagement and fumbling, maybe it's a kneejerk reaction at this point. People love FR, and it's a high bar to reach, but that should just become a motivator for new competitors to come in and do better than what any of them are doing right now. I've had people specifically tell me that LW looks interesting, but that they're not going to play or trade their FR stuff for anything because as it is right now, the foundation looks shaky. I've never encountered someone like you described though? And I'm in a ton of Discords and I think I've seen every post about LW so far on here...
I've been critical of LW in other posts, but I'm not rooting for it to fail. I highly doubt anyone is, really. My frustration, and many others is because I want the game to succeed, but everything I've discovered in the Early Access (which was never addressed nor changed come launch, hell they made things worse with the upgrades costing premium currency) gave me the same warning signs that DV gave me. And the fact that all of this fell on deaf ears is an exact repeat of how DV went. They fixed things at launch, finally, (talking about both LW and DV here) but it was too little too late for some people, and for others they just see it as a way to retain those new people joining in before everything all crumbles and it goes to shit, which is how DV went.
I agree that competition is important, though I'm reluctant to agree with you that all of this behind the scenes stuff is due to LW. Didn't this happen with Veilspuns, too? FR staff had already began livestreaming more with the carousel recolors and gene fixes, and this was months before LW was set to launch. DV was dead in the water at this point, so...
I won't deny that FR staff is probably more motivated to do some of their stuff because of a new petsite launch, but honestly when LWs launch hit I hardly saw this pattern in behaviour you're talking about. FR is very anti crunch, so I doubt they would try to push something out to try to take some of that hype back, as well. These ancient streams started a few weeks after LWs launch, you'd figure it'd be sooner if that were the case.
I know you're trying to differentiate people who express dislike from those who automatically want LW to fail, but... "it feels like some people are sitting at the edge of their seats and circling like vultures over any tiny little misstep in the hopes that it will fail" in relation to the people in this comm, at least...
Have you seen what people have been talking about here? The monetization system and layered RNG? I would hardly call those tiny missteps. I'd love to know more about what you're talking about, because I've never seen these vultures here nor in Discords.
I just started LW, and no I don't want it to fail.
However, I have also played a LOT of pet sites, most of which are no longer there (or the site is there but haven't gotten updates in years). The sad fact is, a lot of people create pet sites thinking it is going to be a huge and easy cash grab, then realize it takes a LOT to keep them going. They have an idea of how they are going to make it *different* and/or *better* than this other site (what ever site it may be) and try and then realize why that other pet site did something the way it did.
I am not sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for LW to fail, but I sort of expect it to, because that is the fate of a great many pet sites, even if they have the best of starts or great premises.
As for FR reacting to LW opening? I really doubt it. I think it is more because FR is getting to a place where they ARE able to do these things. They are nearing the end of a, what, pretty much 10 year refactor/revamp/rewrite of the sites code, and are getting popular enough to be able to hire more artists. They have resources to do these things now, when before they didn't.
Sure, I won't deny that there may be an element of 'we have a competitor' in them wanting to get more things out, but honestly, with the way pet sites are set up, there aren't really 'competitors' in the sense 'oh no FR's player base will up shop and leave for LW'. Those players who DO leave, would have left FR anyway. It is possible to play the two games at the same time. The only way I could see LW as a true competitor to FR is if it were about dragons and was basically the same game as FR, or both games required players to be online for hours at a time.
I have 4 or 5 petsites I 'play' each day, because most petsites are a 'come and click for a few minutes and then wait to click again' type game.
Oops. I had a previous draft that specifically mentioned a bit more detail than the final draft of my OP, but between drafting the first version and then trying to cut it down for length (yes, that was the SHORT version by a significant %), I omitted some content including details that would've clarified a few things. For example, I specifically remember writing that ARR specifically hadn't been too bad about the pitchforks (minus the one Anon who outright lied about MS to $ pricing, which was quite odd), but that must have been in a paragraph I cut. My apologies.
The post was not directed toward ARR anons hyper-specifically so much as a global FR audience. This particular time on LW's release, I've mostly seen it on the site (before posts got deleted), but in the past I've seen it more in community discords and various salt communities. However, given that this is one of the few places I'm active and that I know won't just immediately shut down the conversation, this was where I had to post it. So it was less in direct reaction to comments here (where I agree with you that people have been very reasonable with very few exceptions), and more about broader FR sentiment as a whole. That was also part of why I felt comfortable drawing the sports team tribalism parallel (assuming it was largely going to be people responding with observations rather than directly, though I certainly hoped to draw a couple direct people in), but again, looks like I cut a LOT of that paragraph too. I really fucked up on not editing for content rather than just spellchecking after cutting it down so heavily; a lot didn't make it through. lol
As for veilspuns, I admit I don't know on that one. I'll take your word for it, but iirc that was during a time in my life I just didn't have the energy to devote to even logging in once a month to FR, so I missed most of the announcements at the time, and so my impressions were based on older breeds where I hadn't seen similar streams or in-the-moment content (or when occasional sneak peeks popped up, not nearly as whole as an entire stream).
Again, that's totally my bad on fucking up the cuts badly. There was more to the post too, but it was obnoxiously long and I figured no one would read it at the old length (and I was getting it checked over by someone to make sure it read okay so I didn't want to subject them to a full novel). I really should've been more careful about what I cut though, that's mb, and I'm sorry.
I've hardly seen anyone here be vocal about explicitly wanting LW to fail tbh. I'm fairly neutral to it; I like the concept, NPCs are cute, etc, but after playing early access it's just not for me right now and that's okay.
I sometimes still think back on the development shitshow that was Clanheart and even though I never invested anything into it (RIP to the people who were actively commissioning custom skins prior to the lineart changes and furthermore the game itself dying during Alpha), it certainly made me wary of involvement with games towards the beginning of their life cycle. Which, I understand that games obviously can't succeed without a playerbase early on, but I'd rather see how the growing pains work out before I choose to invest my time and energy into it. Maybe I'll come back around to LW after it's more established, but for the most part my attention span doesn't have a lot of space for two petsites and FR is meeting my needs at the moment.
Yeah, that was my bad in phrasing. I'd had a draft that made it clearer before, but it was more than twice as long as the version I ended up settling with in the end (which is already probably still too long, but I'm a mess lol), and in the cutting process I unfortunately cut the part about this comm (and this instance of LW specifically) being pretty good about it (minus a specific singular anon), and that I was talking more broadly about historical trends across multiple launches of different sites and the pitchforks directed to them. I'd thought I had it in multiple places (because half the other stuff I'd cut was repeated multiple times), but it seems not to have survived. My apologies; I really should have double checked and made sure the specificity stayed in. ><
Huh, I hadn't really heard of Clanheart, which kind of surprises me. Might be a good read-up for me someday when I'm bored. Makes sense to be wary of early access (or the FR genre equivalent) games though, so I get that. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
to be honest I didn't really consider the fact they're showing us so much of the new species to combat Lorwolf's recent launch. I thought it was more, like "hey check this out! we're still doing stuff, don't worry!" on the topic on whether I want Lorwolf to fail or not, I genuinely don't see how it would benefit me. If people are happier on Lorwolf, then I'm happy for them
>So like... If you've been rooting for LW to fail simply because you love FR, and you still do after reading this, can I ask why?
Because there are things that people have been pointing out as issues or bugs or problems since the alpha and beta. They are still not fixed. If anything the devs made the game more pay to win than it was in the previous versions of the game. For instance, upgrading inventory space for certain professions used to start out costing site currency (think of hibden spaces costing items) and then later would cost the premium currency (again like the hibden spaces that cost gems). Now they can ONLY be upgraded with premium currency.
When this was pointed out after the site launched, the co-founder confirmed that this was intentional when they "re-balanced" the site, and that she expects players to earn 3-6 moonstones (premium currency) a day. Which is pretty insane considering that the cap to moonstone shards (10 shards = 1 moonstone) earned from free-to-play activities is 25 per day. https://www.lorwolf.com/Forum/View?id=3066
I don't WANT Lorwolf to fail, but there is certainly an amount of schadenfreude that I get when I see the devs ignoring still ignoring all the problems pointed out years ago, and seeing how poorly the site is going as a result.
There are so many features missing, very basic features (posting quoting the forums, subscribing to threads, page numbers only appear on the bottom of the page, acct emails can't be changed on site and have to be done manually by admins, the list goes on and on), that have been missing for years. And the site comes across very... too focused on money for the state that the site is in.
There are parts of Lorwolf that I like, and I can see myself getting attached to my wolves and wanting to collect them like I do my dragons on Flightrising. But the site needs an incredible amount of work and the devs are not very upfront about acknowledging still present bugs and missing features that were pointed out years ago. I want the site to succeed but it's really hard to be confident when there is little transparency or communication.
As someone else said, these are a lot of the warning signs that Dappervolk gave early on. And look where that's site is at now. People are just aware of what's going to happen because they've already experienced the death of a website they were excited about.
The cross-site trading has honestly been pretty even, tbf. There's a lot of KS items available for gems that aren't really moving in the market (FR favored), but wolves are going for insane gem prices on a semi-regular basis (arguably pretty even), and it's nearly impossible to exchange gems for moonstones (HEAVILY LW favored, though that's to be expected with premium currency on a new game vs one that's been around 10 years). So it doesn't really seem to be that it's a one-way LW->FR, and more that different markets are moving in different directions.
Definitely agree that it's not going to kill FR, don't get me wrong, but I do feel that it's fair to consider it a threat in that it's a growing competitor (not in terms of like, "X game is gonna be the Y game killer!" but in terms of taking a portion of marketshare that FR had a virtual monopoly on previously). How many people bought moonstones with $$$ that would've otherwise put that into gems? Probably not a ton, but definitely more than none. A competitor doesn't have to be a lethal threat to still spur competition within a market and get market players trying to draw eyeballs back to them specifically.
Not sure how actively you've been involved in the LW to FR cross-site trading market, but it's not as active as you're making it out to be. There is a very heavy offset of people trying to trade for FR, compared to those trying to trade in the reverse.
I honestly thought the site-to-site trades were more or less equal, going by the threads on Items sales talk about both wanting lorwolf stuff and fr stuff.
I've sold a lot of my moonstones and all of 4 digit wild wolves. I just have a few 5 digit WW's and a handful of moonstones left. Not holding much hope of selling items, but eh. I've made like 10kg.
OP/poster of the "Different markets moving in different ways" post -- it really depends on what you're looking at.
LW KS items for gems are moving very slowly, but people willing to do LWKS for FR items is moving reasonably. The REALLY hard items to get like the alpha Golden Unicorn has been selling reliably the few times it shows up, and Bracchus scrolls are hit or miss depending on price point.
Wild wolves, when not priced extortionately (random-color 5d for $50 worth of gems) are hit or miss on sales, but as another user pointed out, they're not unreliable in that regard. I've made a few purchases and sales myself, and know several people who have as well.
Moonstones sales for gems are being devoured near instantly (or so it feels like), while threads buying Moonstones with Gems are fighting amongst each other for the almost non-existent supply.
So it really depends on what market you're looking at, as I said originally. Some things are FR favored and get bumped with no changes (especially people with outdated prices like people trying to sell LWKS for 10kg when the price is closer to 5 now), while some things are LW favored and get bumped without any success (threads trying to buy ms with gems).
Yeah, it's honestly been really interesting to watch LW specifically. Trades are a lot more even and long-lived than most other sites I've seen released. When Furvilla released, the first 24h was basically 100% FR->FV, but after the second or third day, it was almost entirely reversed to be FV->FR. DV I was paying a bit less attention to, but seem to remember a few friends saying that turned within a week to be mostly DV->FR. LW by comparison has had a really interesting diversity in that it really depends on what market you're looking at, and most of them have remained relatively stable across the last month-ish.
I think, personally, it points to LW having staying power barring some sort of active colossal fuck-up that sends people away in droves (nerfing WW encounter rate looked like it had potential but also felt like people overreacting, and it was reverted within hours). It'll be interesting to see how it goes.
In LW's favor, the daily activities are arranged so that you can do as little or as much as you want, provided you have the time, and it doesn't punish you for not logging in every day -- on the contrary, the wolves recover stamina on their own over time.
If enough people join and start spending real money to buy currency and put that into circulation, it might get closer to FR's levels of feasibility of acquiring premium currency without spending money.
AYRT. I've been pretty actively involved in it, mostly on the FR->LW end (since I'm pretty much set for life on FR wealth.)
As someone who's been trying to trade gems -> MS and competing with about 5-6 other threads of the same recognizable users who have also been trying to do the same for quite some time, I have found the demand greatly exceeds supply in that regard, hence saying it was so difficult to find. (It's also driven up the ratio, but people still aren't selling MS to G very commonly even when offering the best rates in ibaz.)
WWs are extremely subjective, but I've been seeing a bunch change hands. Difficulty with that is that because it's such a subjective thing, it's hard to say whether the ones that don't sell are because there's no interest, because they were priced too high for their actual value, or because they're just not finding the eyes of the right people to find them worth buying.
LW KS items, as I said, have been mostly languishing but I've seen a few sales here and there, and I've been seeing them fairly commonly used in larger ticket sales as item-to-item transactions.
My summary of "There's a lot of KS items available for gems that aren't really moving in the market (FR favored), but wolves are going for insane gem prices on a semi-regular basis (arguably pretty even), and it's nearly impossible to exchange gems for moonstones (HEAVILY LW favored, though that's to be expected with premium currency on a new game vs one that's been around 10 years). So it doesn't really seem to be that it's a one-way LW->FR, and more that different markets are moving in different directions." still stands as an accurate summary of what I've seen.
To be fair, I would say that all of those fall under the "plenty of completely valid reasons to dislike the site" that I had mentioned. There are those reasons and more (overly simple genes currently, not liking wolves, too large of a colour wheel, disliking the food/stamina system, disliking timers in general, etc.) to dislike the site and/or enjoy seeing it misstep, and that wasn't really what I was questioning. To me, that makes sense. My post was largely directed at/about people who didn't have specific reasons they disliked LW (or its predecessors), but still wanted it to fail. I tried to make that distinction clear, but I probably could've done better.
Having not played until launch, it's definitely discouraging to see that more things than I was aware of have gone overlooked and unfixed for so long. (I knew some, but not all.) Hopefully the new community manager will help with that, though only more time will tell.
If you'd look at any of the recent drama exemplifying developer/moderator [mis]behavior, and then looked at all the longstanding quality control issues and lack of developer communication with users, you would indeed understand why some people expect the game to fail.
NOt sure this is the right place to ask this, but the name Alaunis sounds familiar, as in they have been associated with another pet site? But, I can't remember, and it could just be a case of a similiar sounding/looking name getting mixed up in my brain.
So, does anyone know if the head developer of Lorwolf has worked on/been part of other sites?
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-27 01:39 pm (UTC)(link)Like with Lorwolf's launch recently, do you REALLY think we would be getting SO MANY previews of the new ancient and such interactive and behind the scenes looks (& fast progress) if it weren't for LW's popularity? Like genuinely, do you think FR would be showing and giving us what they are if LW hadn't lit a fire under them? If you do, that's great -- you have more faith than I do, but I'm not gonna say you're wrong or anything, and I really wish I had your level of faith. Given their patterns of doing this every single time something comes out (FV, DV, and LW are the ones I'm aware of, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more), though, I really do think it's content released to specifically combat LW's popularity.
And yet, every time a potential competitor comes out, people seem to grab their popcorn and pitchforks and watch like vultures hoping that FR will return to being 'The One True Petsite' (no I don't count dragcave & its clones, that's a somewhat different genre and not direct competition). I just genuinely don't understand it. It seems to me to be in the playerbase's best interest if BOTH LW and FR do well and thrive because it will spur both dev teams to try and make their site the best it'll be. (At least unless one ends up able to buy out the other, then RIP.)
So like... If you've been rooting for LW to fail simply because you love FR, and you still do after reading this, can I ask why? Like genuinely, and I'm not trying to criticize or anything -- I just want to know why. Is it just like a sports team tribalism thing or is there something else behind it, or..?
(Also, not saying everyone who expresses dislike automatically wants LW to fail, nor that everyone who dislikes LW does so only because they like FR and no other reason. There's plenty of completely valid reasons to dislike the site, and I'm not trying to discount those. I'm talking specifically about the subset of players that are rooting for its demise solely because of their love of and loyalty to FR, not because of specific LW grievances.)
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-27 01:50 pm (UTC)(link)There's a lot to do and it doesn't feel like there's a focus on breeding.
I honestly hope it does well, if only to give those of us burnt out on FR something to do, and because I hope the Campaign mode in LW will kind of nudge/inspire FR to finally do something with the promised Adventure Mode.
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-30 01:05 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-05-27 02:18 pm (UTC)(link)I've been critical of LW in other posts, but I'm not rooting for it to fail. I highly doubt anyone is, really. My frustration, and many others is because I want the game to succeed, but everything I've discovered in the Early Access (which was never addressed nor changed come launch, hell they made things worse with the upgrades costing premium currency) gave me the same warning signs that DV gave me. And the fact that all of this fell on deaf ears is an exact repeat of how DV went. They fixed things at launch, finally, (talking about both LW and DV here) but it was too little too late for some people, and for others they just see it as a way to retain those new people joining in before everything all crumbles and it goes to shit, which is how DV went.
I agree that competition is important, though I'm reluctant to agree with you that all of this behind the scenes stuff is due to LW. Didn't this happen with Veilspuns, too? FR staff had already began livestreaming more with the carousel recolors and gene fixes, and this was months before LW was set to launch. DV was dead in the water at this point, so...
I won't deny that FR staff is probably more motivated to do some of their stuff because of a new petsite launch, but honestly when LWs launch hit I hardly saw this pattern in behaviour you're talking about. FR is very anti crunch, so I doubt they would try to push something out to try to take some of that hype back, as well. These ancient streams started a few weeks after LWs launch, you'd figure it'd be sooner if that were the case.
I know you're trying to differentiate people who express dislike from those who automatically want LW to fail, but... "it feels like some people are sitting at the edge of their seats and circling like vultures over any tiny little misstep in the hopes that it will fail" in relation to the people in this comm, at least...
Have you seen what people have been talking about here? The monetization system and layered RNG? I would hardly call those tiny missteps. I'd love to know more about what you're talking about, because I've never seen these vultures here nor in Discords.
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-27 06:51 pm (UTC)(link)However, I have also played a LOT of pet sites, most of which are no longer there (or the site is there but haven't gotten updates in years). The sad fact is, a lot of people create pet sites thinking it is going to be a huge and easy cash grab, then realize it takes a LOT to keep them going. They have an idea of how they are going to make it *different* and/or *better* than this other site (what ever site it may be) and try and then realize why that other pet site did something the way it did.
I am not sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for LW to fail, but I sort of expect it to, because that is the fate of a great many pet sites, even if they have the best of starts or great premises.
As for FR reacting to LW opening? I really doubt it. I think it is more because FR is getting to a place where they ARE able to do these things. They are nearing the end of a, what, pretty much 10 year refactor/revamp/rewrite of the sites code, and are getting popular enough to be able to hire more artists. They have resources to do these things now, when before they didn't.
Sure, I won't deny that there may be an element of 'we have a competitor' in them wanting to get more things out, but honestly, with the way pet sites are set up, there aren't really 'competitors' in the sense 'oh no FR's player base will up shop and leave for LW'. Those players who DO leave, would have left FR anyway. It is possible to play the two games at the same time. The only way I could see LW as a true competitor to FR is if it were about dragons and was basically the same game as FR, or both games required players to be online for hours at a time.
I have 4 or 5 petsites I 'play' each day, because most petsites are a 'come and click for a few minutes and then wait to click again' type game.
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-30 01:17 pm (UTC)(link)The post was not directed toward ARR anons hyper-specifically so much as a global FR audience. This particular time on LW's release, I've mostly seen it on the site (before posts got deleted), but in the past I've seen it more in community discords and various salt communities. However, given that this is one of the few places I'm active and that I know won't just immediately shut down the conversation, this was where I had to post it. So it was less in direct reaction to comments here (where I agree with you that people have been very reasonable with very few exceptions), and more about broader FR sentiment as a whole. That was also part of why I felt comfortable drawing the sports team tribalism parallel (assuming it was largely going to be people responding with observations rather than directly, though I certainly hoped to draw a couple direct people in), but again, looks like I cut a LOT of that paragraph too. I really fucked up on not editing for content rather than just spellchecking after cutting it down so heavily; a lot didn't make it through. lol
As for veilspuns, I admit I don't know on that one. I'll take your word for it, but iirc that was during a time in my life I just didn't have the energy to devote to even logging in once a month to FR, so I missed most of the announcements at the time, and so my impressions were based on older breeds where I hadn't seen similar streams or in-the-moment content (or when occasional sneak peeks popped up, not nearly as whole as an entire stream).
Again, that's totally my bad on fucking up the cuts badly. There was more to the post too, but it was obnoxiously long and I figured no one would read it at the old length (and I was getting it checked over by someone to make sure it read okay so I didn't want to subject them to a full novel). I really should've been more careful about what I cut though, that's mb, and I'm sorry.
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-27 04:35 pm (UTC)(link)I sometimes still think back on the development shitshow that was Clanheart and even though I never invested anything into it (RIP to the people who were actively commissioning custom skins prior to the lineart changes and furthermore the game itself dying during Alpha), it certainly made me wary of involvement with games towards the beginning of their life cycle. Which, I understand that games obviously can't succeed without a playerbase early on, but I'd rather see how the growing pains work out before I choose to invest my time and energy into it. Maybe I'll come back around to LW after it's more established, but for the most part my attention span doesn't have a lot of space for two petsites and FR is meeting my needs at the moment.
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-30 01:23 pm (UTC)(link)Huh, I hadn't really heard of Clanheart, which kind of surprises me. Might be a good read-up for me someday when I'm bored. Makes sense to be wary of early access (or the FR genre equivalent) games though, so I get that. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-27 10:59 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-05-27 11:02 pm (UTC)(link)Because there are things that people have been pointing out as issues or bugs or problems since the alpha and beta. They are still not fixed. If anything the devs made the game more pay to win than it was in the previous versions of the game. For instance, upgrading inventory space for certain professions used to start out costing site currency (think of hibden spaces costing items) and then later would cost the premium currency (again like the hibden spaces that cost gems). Now they can ONLY be upgraded with premium currency.
When this was pointed out after the site launched, the co-founder confirmed that this was intentional when they "re-balanced" the site, and that she expects players to earn 3-6 moonstones (premium currency) a day. Which is pretty insane considering that the cap to moonstone shards (10 shards = 1 moonstone) earned from free-to-play activities is 25 per day. https://www.lorwolf.com/Forum/View?id=3066
I don't WANT Lorwolf to fail, but there is certainly an amount of schadenfreude that I get when I see the devs ignoring still ignoring all the problems pointed out years ago, and seeing how poorly the site is going as a result.
There are so many features missing, very basic features (posting quoting the forums, subscribing to threads, page numbers only appear on the bottom of the page, acct emails can't be changed on site and have to be done manually by admins, the list goes on and on), that have been missing for years. And the site comes across very... too focused on money for the state that the site is in.
There are parts of Lorwolf that I like, and I can see myself getting attached to my wolves and wanting to collect them like I do my dragons on Flightrising. But the site needs an incredible amount of work and the devs are not very upfront about acknowledging still present bugs and missing features that were pointed out years ago. I want the site to succeed but it's really hard to be confident when there is little transparency or communication.
As someone else said, these are a lot of the warning signs that Dappervolk gave early on. And look where that's site is at now. People are just aware of what's going to happen because they've already experienced the death of a website they were excited about.
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-27 11:03 pm (UTC)(link)I also seriously doubt that FR is even remotely afraid of LW to the point that they feel like they need to show everyone the new ancient lol
Even before these recent livestreams the large majority of players have been trying to trade LW goods for FR goods.
LW has a long way to go to being any kind of threat to FR.
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-30 01:39 pm (UTC)(link)Definitely agree that it's not going to kill FR, don't get me wrong, but I do feel that it's fair to consider it a threat in that it's a growing competitor (not in terms of like, "X game is gonna be the Y game killer!" but in terms of taking a portion of marketshare that FR had a virtual monopoly on previously). How many people bought moonstones with $$$ that would've otherwise put that into gems? Probably not a ton, but definitely more than none. A competitor doesn't have to be a lethal threat to still spur competition within a market and get market players trying to draw eyeballs back to them specifically.
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-30 05:07 pm (UTC)(link)Not sure how actively you've been involved in the LW to FR cross-site trading market, but it's not as active as you're making it out to be. There is a very heavy offset of people trying to trade for FR, compared to those trying to trade in the reverse.
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-30 05:43 pm (UTC)(link)da
(Anonymous) 2023-05-30 09:41 pm (UTC)(link)Re: da
(Anonymous) 2023-05-30 10:58 pm (UTC)(link)Re: da
(Anonymous) 2023-05-31 01:23 am (UTC)(link)A lot of my sales were done via PMs.
Re: da
(Anonymous) 2023-05-31 04:41 pm (UTC)(link)LW KS items for gems are moving very slowly, but people willing to do LWKS for FR items is moving reasonably. The REALLY hard items to get like the alpha Golden Unicorn has been selling reliably the few times it shows up, and Bracchus scrolls are hit or miss depending on price point.
Wild wolves, when not priced extortionately (random-color 5d for $50 worth of gems) are hit or miss on sales, but as another user pointed out, they're not unreliable in that regard. I've made a few purchases and sales myself, and know several people who have as well.
Moonstones sales for gems are being devoured near instantly (or so it feels like), while threads buying Moonstones with Gems are fighting amongst each other for the almost non-existent supply.
So it really depends on what market you're looking at, as I said originally. Some things are FR favored and get bumped with no changes (especially people with outdated prices like people trying to sell LWKS for 10kg when the price is closer to 5 now), while some things are LW favored and get bumped without any success (threads trying to buy ms with gems).
Re: da
(Anonymous) 2023-05-31 09:18 pm (UTC)(link)If wolf customization leads to cooler/prettier wolves at some point, LW might have some staying power.
Re: da
(Anonymous) 2023-06-01 04:41 am (UTC)(link)I think, personally, it points to LW having staying power barring some sort of active colossal fuck-up that sends people away in droves (nerfing WW encounter rate looked like it had potential but also felt like people overreacting, and it was reverted within hours). It'll be interesting to see how it goes.
Re: da
(Anonymous) 2023-06-01 05:37 am (UTC)(link)If enough people join and start spending real money to buy currency and put that into circulation, it might get closer to FR's levels of feasibility of acquiring premium currency without spending money.
Re: da
(Anonymous) - 2023-06-01 12:05 (UTC) - ExpandRe: da
(Anonymous) - 2023-06-03 22:02 (UTC) - Expandno subject
(Anonymous) 2023-05-31 04:36 pm (UTC)(link)As someone who's been trying to trade gems -> MS and competing with about 5-6 other threads of the same recognizable users who have also been trying to do the same for quite some time, I have found the demand greatly exceeds supply in that regard, hence saying it was so difficult to find. (It's also driven up the ratio, but people still aren't selling MS to G very commonly even when offering the best rates in ibaz.)
WWs are extremely subjective, but I've been seeing a bunch change hands. Difficulty with that is that because it's such a subjective thing, it's hard to say whether the ones that don't sell are because there's no interest, because they were priced too high for their actual value, or because they're just not finding the eyes of the right people to find them worth buying.
LW KS items, as I said, have been mostly languishing but I've seen a few sales here and there, and I've been seeing them fairly commonly used in larger ticket sales as item-to-item transactions.
My summary of "There's a lot of KS items available for gems that aren't really moving in the market (FR favored), but wolves are going for insane gem prices on a semi-regular basis (arguably pretty even), and it's nearly impossible to exchange gems for moonstones (HEAVILY LW favored, though that's to be expected with premium currency on a new game vs one that's been around 10 years). So it doesn't really seem to be that it's a one-way LW->FR, and more that different markets are moving in different directions." still stands as an accurate summary of what I've seen.
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-30 01:31 pm (UTC)(link)Having not played until launch, it's definitely discouraging to see that more things than I was aware of have gone overlooked and unfixed for so long. (I knew some, but not all.) Hopefully the new community manager will help with that, though only more time will tell.
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(Anonymous) 2023-05-30 03:56 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-06-01 05:21 am (UTC)(link)So, does anyone know if the head developer of Lorwolf has worked on/been part of other sites?