rasteroid wrote:Hi guys, just to share a few thoughts.
Psi is not correct, you can not yet win enough gold to pay for autoharvest, nor terraforming.
To justify autoharvest just a little bit: It's not unreasonable to charge for because it takes a little more processing power to check for autoharvest.
It takes me just that little bit longer to code for and accommodate for autoharvest, it's a perfect balance point to inflect value in the game.
Look around you at every other farming game ever. The whole point is that you log in to occasionally click things.
Imagine if you'd never known about autoharvest, would you still have been upset? This is clearly extra material.
Well, I guess that's why I don't play the genre much. The idea that it's the "whole point" of the genre seems strange to me though, because obviously battlemines isn't a different genre or a game with less of a point once autoharvest is enabled, it seems like resource management is more central.
I don't understand why the hypothetical no-autoharvest point is relevant because autoharvest does exist and that changes the situation: non-paying players are having a less
convienient experience (as opposed to simply having no bonus items etc.), this is what I mostly dislike about the situation and that doesn't apply to a game with autoharvest for all or no autoharvest.
I can't really object to the current situation if there are technical reasons for restricting autoharvest. In a world where that wouldn't be a concern I would prefer that monetisation improved pretty much anything other than the interface.
There are several factors involved in the spy hunt, which factor beyond time consumed.
One is the material composition and the largest cities of your neighbours.. bigger spy hunts are worth more.
There is the occasional destruction of actual spies, there's the building type it ends up on that determines the prize.
The problem itself does have a fairly closed solution, but it still involves estimation and memory on the part of the player.
It's a reasonable test of skill for a result that's more beneficial and situational than the wheel of adventure.
It's a fascinating conflagration of game elements. And yet, it's totally optional.
You can still pick which city to spy hunt in, which is an interesting question, with a "decide to spy hunt, where to spy hunt, instantly get the results" design of spy hunt. If memory was a factor, I would write down the messages and it would no longer be a factor.
With regards to estimation, if I understand correctly, the messages directly correlate with the distance of the spy from your last click (nearby, in a certain direction, etc) so once you have these figured out (through trial and error, as you can't infer anything concrete from them as a new player) they don't make spy hunts require skill either.
The "it's optional" argument would be fine if the wheel of adventure was better than spy hunt in every circumstance. If there are circumstances where spy hunts are better, and I want to play as well as possible, there is a situation where I need to compromise between my interest in not playing an annoying minigame and my intereste in playing as well as I can. This isn't a decision that contributes to my enjoyment of the game (but it's very minor so it doesn't really change my overall positive impression of the game much).