07-16-2016, 01:41 AM
(07-15-2016, 11:26 PM)Segan Wrote: You complain about scaling, and you list off half a dozen different features that you don't think scale well, and I'm just sitting here looking at the fact that you listed off half a dozen different features.
Many of these features compound on top of the others. If they all scaled well, the effect on your personal stats would grow exponentially.
If they make it so that you can more easily get higher tiers, they'd need to cut back on the bonuses provided by each tier (if their goal is to maintain current game balance). Perhaps that would be a good idea? We'd gain bonuses more regularly; they'd be smaller, but that sense of accomplishment would be more frequent and potentially feel more rewarding (since it wouldn't drag as much). But if they increase the rate of bonus acquisition without scaling down the bonuses, your power would grow too quickly (I think -- maybe you disagree).
Note, that unless they regularly "rebalance" these features, there will always come a point when scaling feels too slow. Whether you hit a soft wall at tier 7 or at tier 14, that wall is inevitable. If they increase scaling, will you come back here in a few months and complain that it takes a year to go from tier 14 to tier 15?
While this is a real issue, I think it is solvable. You can give around the same rewards but in smaller portions so it feels better, very much like you suggested. Let's say instead of orbs costing 4 times the orb before they could cost 2 times the orb before, but the new 10 star orb would be only as powerful as the old tier 5 orb (the idea is that the same amount or SO would give the same bonus but you would get unlocks more often). Or even every 100k XP could give a new unlock while keeping that the amount of Xp needed to unlock 4 star orb would give the same bonus. These all could reduce the amount of wait needed to see some value of your effort while not changing the balance.
Another thing is that there are cases where I think the scaling should actually change, as I said in my previous post even if you could increase faster your fish gains you would still have the very harsh diminishing returns on orb level prices, so it would not be a huge change in balance at all (but it would be a change, of course).