Why Does the Scrying Stone cost SC?

...Why?

I know hearing about all this "why does this cost money" stuff is probably getting annoying, but I feel like this should be its own thread, because it seems like a more obviously baffling decision.

The scrying stone, both in Wolvden and over on Lioden costs silver currency to use. A trifle of silver currency, but it can quickly eat into your money stores if you want to see more predictions than just one or four. Is this some sort of silver sink?

In a game where one of the playstyles is breeding wolves to obtain a certain look, why on earth would there be a punishment for wanting to know what the theoretical offspring of a pairing can look like? Especially since the color systems aren't all that straight forward!

Is it for realism? Like, trying to prevent players from overusing an "unrealistic" site feature? If so, why even have it?

Lessening server strain? No, because other petsites have progeny predictors that don't cost currency, and they're fine.

Is it just to discourage players from doing organized breeding projects?

I used Scrying Stone once, and that was because I hadn't realized it costed SC until after I'd already clicked it. (I'd gotten too used to FR where that sort of thing is completely free.) After I saw it took some money, I decided I would never use it again. I'm not wasting my hard-earned SC on seeing pups I might have.

Maybe there is some bigger reason for it not being free, but if that's the case I guess I just don't see it. I get it's probably something that's carried over from LD, and I didn't really like it there from what I remember, but it's even worse here. SC is so hard to get, I don't want to waste it to see something that, genetically, probably isn't even going to become a real outcome anyway. If spamming it and causing server strain is the problem, it could be limited to a few times a day or something. I don't get why it needs to cost SC if that's the reason.

And going to be one of those annoying players here for a second, but I really hate that the hunting party evaluation costs so much too. Not being free, fine. Costing 50 SC? Why? The main people who suffer from the choice of it costing that much are new players - they're the ones who are most likely to click that, but they're also the ones struggling to get even 5 SC. They can't drop 50 SC making sure their hunting group is good, they need that money. It's especially nonsensical since more experienced players really don't need the feature - they already know how personality works so they know the combinations that mesh well for hunting. You can figure out that information for free if you know where to look, so why make it cost a fortune?

Maybe this stuff is just nitpicking and I'm a minority with my opinion, I don't know.

No, no you're right and you should say it! Both the scrying stone and the hunting party evaluation are things you can technically just do on your own. You can guesstimate looks in the wardrobe and use the wiki to find personalities. It seems like the only reason these are paid tools is as a silver sink to keep the economy stable, but then, if you aren't using it and I'm not using it and not many others are either, what's the point?

Personally, I have never used the scrying stone since I just calculate the bases I can get beforehand. And I think whether a pup comes out the way you like is 50/50.

As for the snake, you can simply check the personalities yourself? There is chart in the befriending guide and an image you can download to check if they clash yourselves.

@Sienna Snow

I know you can check the personalities, that's what I was talking about. A new player might think the evaluation is the only option when they can easily get that info for free. That's why I was mentioning how crazy the cost is.

One thought on why it maybe costs money is to figure out if you have a carrier or not? I mean couldn't you theoretically just scry your wolves 50 times each with a melanistic or albino mutant and see if any of the pups come out scry'd with the mutation, and now carriers are much easier to come by/find making breeding them more trivial? I can get behind it costing 10SC tbh. Plus, I'm new so I'm not sure how people assume tier III bases are found but I think especially in the beginning of a game like this where there's a lot of mystery in combos and such, free scrying would ruin a lot of the discovery for the community. 

The secondary mutations are recessive, but tbh I don't know if that's based on real recessive gene inheriting or Wolvden's own system, but real recessive genes would be a 1/2 chance if you have a carrier x mutie, so in that case with four pup predictions per scry, wouldn't you only need to scry once or twice?

As for ruining discovery, I think database peeps might already be combing the combos for testing, like I can see the spreadsheet/EA folks not minding shelling out 100s of SC to complete their archives. Figuring out base colors on the pup art is actually pretty hard rip

Edit: aren't tier III bases event exclusive? like you can't get them from breeding ones and twos?

We had another player ask the same question (whether scrying shows mutations). Only sending a ticket would answer that question, I don't beat testers would know either.

My guess though is no since it then basically be a "carrier tester" people could abuse to test all for carriers without breeding.

As for the percentages what parents can create those are listed on the genetics guide! 

It is speculated that tier 3 wolves will be introduced through raffles but it's not confirmed. As of right now, we cannot get them.

Hi, I'd like to shed some light on this.

The Scrying Stone uses the breeding script in order to generate potential litter outcomes.  It goes through nearly the entire breeding process... it just doesn't actually create a pup.  Generating outcomes via script causes server strain, even if it's a slight amount.  The more players that scry, the more strain there is on the server.  The Silver Cone cost is in place to avoid players mass-spamming the Scrying Stone and overloading the server.

It's a bit unfair to say "it's free on other sites, so it should be free on Wolvden, too".  Wolvden is Wolvden, it is not these other sites, it is not trying to be these other sites.  Each site has different mechanics and features, with different coding, different features, and completely different functionalities, so it's best to avoid comparisons between different sites and why a feature works one way when it works a completely different way on a separate/unrelated site.

I just use genetics guides to calculate what the pups may look like. It's free, it's fun and you can see what the adults will look like.