The Problem With Silver Cones

I play a LOT and I grind for Sc as much as possible, but I still freak out about having space for all the pups I want. Also about having roles for them, but that’s a different problem.

Yeah, agree that grind =/= difficulty. It's just arbitrary softcaps being placed on SC to create the illusion of difficulty.

Like there's a reason bigger games get taken to task for arbitrary grind, and it's usually because it encourages pay-to-win spending, especially among people who simply don't have the time to devote to Paper Doll Wolf Upkeep for multiple hours throughout the day. And having a premium currency at all just encourages devs to keep it that way.

Interesting discussion. I agree with a lot of the points that people have been raising. I've been playing pretty obsessively since PA started and recently got lucky with getting the arnica flower decor recipe, and even with that I'm only making enough sc to buy another territory slot every few days and nothing else.

I definitely agree that selling things to the raccoon needs to give you more money, and the cap needs to be raised. The disparity between the money they expect you to spend on the raccoon and the money they'll give you from the raccoon is ridiculous. 1000sc for a background you can only use on one wolf at a time...

I think my favorite suggesting in the original post was a way to sell wolves you don't want instead of just chasing them. I breed pretty conservatively, but I still wind up chasing most of the ones I don't keep because I can't find someone who wants them for free. Even if it was a low price, maybe a base price for the tier, and then an addition few sc for each marking(like how they do stud pricing).

I like that idea! 10 sc base price tier 1, 20 for tier 2, 50 for tier 3, and 2 sc per marking? Or something like that?

There's been a pretty lengthy discussion about pup trading mechanics in particular over on this topic. I encourage everyone who supports the idea to go over there and make comment!

I've had this thread bookmarked for a while and have finally got the chance to read everything over.

tldr: the sources of sc, and the sinks of sc in my opinion are unbalanced and need fixing.

non-tldr:

I remember in the days of early access, the same grumbles, annoyances, and concerns were voiced, and the general consensus from us then was: "well, the game is new, the economy is new, most of us here can afford to buy gc, which is why its value is deflated in comparison to sc and we should all just wait."

Months later now, and we are still having this conversation to me proves that sadly it wasn't just the economy needing to balance itself out, but a problem with the way sc is given out. Right now sc is valued more than the premium currency. In all the online games, whether sim games or mmos or whatever, I have never really seen the premium currency having objectively less value than the non-premium currency, even when said premium currency was used solely for cosmetics.

Having spent some time musing over this it feels like so much time and effort has been spent trying to prevent inflation by limiting the amount of sc given to players instead of increasing the number of crucial sinks. By sinks, I mean purchases that remove sc from the economy, like the raccoon wares and den expansion. Right now, I am at a stage where I can go weeks with making less than 100sc a week, yet I don't spend any money, because my hunting teams get food, and my herbalist does her thing of finding and gathering herbs and making medicines. There is nothing in the game forcing me to spend sc to get it out of the economy. Every sink in the game is optional (including den expansions. While in early gameplay they aren't optional, late gameplay-wise, if you plan your pregnancies right, they are), and because every sink in the game is optional without limiting the number of sc players can get, inflation could get pretty high, especially for players like me, who hoard sc without spending it. This in my opinion is not only why sc gain is throttled but is also why buying things from non-players is so expensive in comparison to the number of sc players can gain. Because they are optional and aren't bought regularly, the price of these items has to be inflated to compensate for the lack of sc regularly leaving the economy.

As such not only do I think the amount of sc given to players needs to be re-evaluated, but the ways in which sc is removed from the economy needs to be as well. Especially because it becomes very quickly right now to fall behind the system if you can't devote the same amount of time you spent at one time later on. A few weeks ago I would only come online to check the forums, and sadly still had to feed my wolves even though I couldn't be bothered. I hunted a lot less, and within about 3 days I was struggling to get sc to buy food for my wolves (as I didn't have enough time in the day to send my hunters out for the entire time). Not only did this hinder some of my long term goals but was demotivating, and made me want to come on WD less because it felt like I was just losing all my money.

I agree! Definitely need to re-look at some elements to make playing the game more rewarding and accessible. I'm not saying it should be easy, but I can only just feed and play with my wolves. In terms of affording decorations or any items to personalize how they look or make my account feel more...like my own? I find it's not even worth trying. 

I support and agree with this and Rum's comment whole heartedly.  I spend waaay too much time getting items, herbs, and battling in explore to hardly earn anything that equals the amount of time I spent.  The time I spend getting the SC has a lot more worth than the SC itself

full support! ive been grinding a lot lately to expand my territory and its honestly bullcrap how much time i spend on this. and on the topic of trading wolves, ive had to give off wolves for free before just to give them a new home without chasing, and they had really good markings. it makes me sad to see what the market has become :/

Support. Prices are low bc SC is a pain to get unless you're grinding tbh, and selling to the raccoon is not even close to worth it. I'll admit I sell my stuff cheap (2sc per user of food & toy) but I'm doing so in the hopes it'll help out newer members who can't get a lot of their own food yet, nor pay 30sc for two uses of food.