Been coming back to play releases as they come out, and recently tried out Release #40 and I wanted to suggest some changes to the variable price system having played without the UUDDLRLR cheat (I normally do a new save file, a NG and NG+ run, all character to 99 + starred prestige up per release).
I like how the prices are rise now to make it harder to scale upwards, but I think they can be a bit too strongly punishing and some seem like undersights or oversights?
The main ones that seem problematic being:
- Carrots raising in price but no other food does, leads to it being cheaper to buy +4 food's that doesnt raise in price.
- Drill price increasing becomes a bit steep to gain all the resources for maxing out, but is a major problem if you move forward to NG+ where the price raises remain and it is clear that by the 5th + you would need to do hundreds of runs to even start drilling resources again
- Villages are not worthwhile anymore, and despite hebromancer stone helping, the price raising is too steep currently, that I would only reasonably buy 2 or 3
- Drill shards are a wonderful mechanic for looping and I would even say don't need a purchase method, but I will say that the fact they are price increased makes the purchase method not worth your time and resources
- Not really a complaint, but the discount day seems to have a majorly reduced effect on the items getting price risen, which I think might be a bug
I would be okay with most of these, but personally I find the drill price problem being a huge NG+ push away unfortunate, as cycling the game with a 1000 starting price for drills is more of a chore than a challenge to overcome, and currently I would think it would be a challenge to get past NG+++. I love every other aspect of this update, I like how you made the end goal a bit more clear, the QOL of brilliant and I honestly enjoyed the codex capture syste, and the XP rewards + helper benefits you gain.
In terms of how to fix this if you agree that this is a problem for NG+ would be in order of what I think would work best:
1 - Make it so that whenever you NG+, the price raising is reset per loop, making it more rewarding to gain crowns and eventually making Villages and Drill shards very worthwhile once you have enough crowns in all categories and just want to repeat looping. (I would also recommend including all types of food in price raising).
2 - Make prices rise when you are buying them in excess/each day, but if you let time pass by, the prices of items will reduce back to a minimum of the starting price. This would then allow for more items to fit into the price rising category, as more so a push against using the same things over and over again
3 - Reduce the systems increase of price, with a slower increase on some of the higher price items and keeping cheap item price raising. This would decrease the scaling to allow for people NG+ to reach higher NG+ numbers
4 - Make Drill and village prices seperate per region. I know this would be difficult to code in, but its a system in which resources rise by a lot per drill you add, but in grass regions grass drills may cost 123, while in seashell they might cost 2, as you have less shell drills.
5 - Scrap the idea of prices increasing entirely. I personally dislike this option, but it is an option nonetheless
Sorry for the long post, just had a lot to say after quite a while in the new release and how the pricing system affected the NG+ gameplay systems