I know this is a big statement to make, but I feel like this actually makes the game way less enjoyable than it could be so i'll make a thread to address this issue:
I think Ray tries too hard to make the power difference between old vs new and P2W vs F2P too similar.
And this happens with a lot of systems, but not all. (for example I think levels and pets scale fine).
But some things just barely scale or scale too steeply.
I think mostly of fishing, orbs, guild buildings and challenges.
I'll start with challenges I guess:
The current system is mostly fine actually, but groups are ridiculous. IMO if the entire party has equal DPS they should be able to clear a group challenge before they reach the individual damage required to do the solo of the next tier.
Example:
If Solo Silver 5 rats requires 100B damage then the damage required for Group Silver 4 rats should be lower than 600B, but higher than the individual damage needed for duo. Currently there are several exceptions to this.
Aside from that I have no issues with them.
With the other systems I have way more issues.
Reaching goals feels rewarding, but if the goal takes too long to reach it will feel more like a chore and the feeling is no longer rewarding enough.
Orbs are the perfect example of the scaling being terrible:
On 40 sacrifices/day it takes 1.2 days to get to 2 stars. A week to get to 3 stars, a month to get to 4 stars, half a year to get to 5 stars, 2 years to get to 6 stars and 20 years to get to 7 stars. Also you'll die before you'll ever be close to reaching 8 stars on any orb.
For a system made to scale infinitely this is unacceptable.
Fish are another one:
There's 48 different types of fish. You'll reach the first 22 types in a reasonable time. The game will most likely die out before you even reach the last 23. I understand that fishing is something that's never supposed to end, but additional types of fish could easily be added within a short amount of time. Since the clam rewards are diminishing for every type of fish it makes it a lot easier to make a system that doesn't scale neither too fast or too slow.
And then there's the guild buildings.
They're nice numbers but the rewards are bad, ST maxes out at +15% which just feels really low. Shrine is also capped at 15%...
None of the buildings feel as if they even give that much, except for fortress which is amazing early on and then becomes completely useless as you get inferno levels.
I understand that Ray wants to not make the gap between P2W and old members compared to newer and F2P too big, but it's at the point where F2P users suffer from it, since they will hardcap and softcap on everything because of hard limits (like crit max level etc) and steep scaling of a majority of features. (I am saying this as a fully F2P)
Systems I think scale fine:
- Support level (aside from the pack rewards being handled weirdly month --> day --> week?)
- Levels
- Pets
And there's a few ones that I think are problematic but I haven't talked about:
- Forest areas (one third of a year for a forest area?)
- Treasure claims (hurray for 0.01% of my G/M gains 7 times a day that I can increase by 50%!)
- Mine (mostly the random diamond rewards are so rare they practically never happen) also wood/upgrade requirement rises so why does extra mine rewards scale as well? 100 for the first one but then 250 for the second one?
I really hope that some of the mechanics are thought over again so that the game doesn't feel like a standstill.
I do enjoy this game and I really want to like it more.
I think Ray tries too hard to make the power difference between old vs new and P2W vs F2P too similar.
And this happens with a lot of systems, but not all. (for example I think levels and pets scale fine).
But some things just barely scale or scale too steeply.
I think mostly of fishing, orbs, guild buildings and challenges.
I'll start with challenges I guess:
The current system is mostly fine actually, but groups are ridiculous. IMO if the entire party has equal DPS they should be able to clear a group challenge before they reach the individual damage required to do the solo of the next tier.
Example:
If Solo Silver 5 rats requires 100B damage then the damage required for Group Silver 4 rats should be lower than 600B, but higher than the individual damage needed for duo. Currently there are several exceptions to this.
Aside from that I have no issues with them.
With the other systems I have way more issues.
Reaching goals feels rewarding, but if the goal takes too long to reach it will feel more like a chore and the feeling is no longer rewarding enough.
Orbs are the perfect example of the scaling being terrible:
On 40 sacrifices/day it takes 1.2 days to get to 2 stars. A week to get to 3 stars, a month to get to 4 stars, half a year to get to 5 stars, 2 years to get to 6 stars and 20 years to get to 7 stars. Also you'll die before you'll ever be close to reaching 8 stars on any orb.
For a system made to scale infinitely this is unacceptable.
Fish are another one:
There's 48 different types of fish. You'll reach the first 22 types in a reasonable time. The game will most likely die out before you even reach the last 23. I understand that fishing is something that's never supposed to end, but additional types of fish could easily be added within a short amount of time. Since the clam rewards are diminishing for every type of fish it makes it a lot easier to make a system that doesn't scale neither too fast or too slow.
And then there's the guild buildings.
They're nice numbers but the rewards are bad, ST maxes out at +15% which just feels really low. Shrine is also capped at 15%...
None of the buildings feel as if they even give that much, except for fortress which is amazing early on and then becomes completely useless as you get inferno levels.
I understand that Ray wants to not make the gap between P2W and old members compared to newer and F2P too big, but it's at the point where F2P users suffer from it, since they will hardcap and softcap on everything because of hard limits (like crit max level etc) and steep scaling of a majority of features. (I am saying this as a fully F2P)
Systems I think scale fine:
- Support level (aside from the pack rewards being handled weirdly month --> day --> week?)
- Levels
- Pets
And there's a few ones that I think are problematic but I haven't talked about:
- Forest areas (one third of a year for a forest area?)
- Treasure claims (hurray for 0.01% of my G/M gains 7 times a day that I can increase by 50%!)
- Mine (mostly the random diamond rewards are so rare they practically never happen) also wood/upgrade requirement rises so why does extra mine rewards scale as well? 100 for the first one but then 250 for the second one?
I really hope that some of the mechanics are thought over again so that the game doesn't feel like a standstill.
I do enjoy this game and I really want to like it more.