itch.io

I feel like these two points have been overlooked in regards to balance.

Due to how slowly gems are generated two players who have bought different red gem upgrades but have otherwise identical set ups will have vastly different progression and will take a long time to catch up, if they ever do.

Then you add the random factor, and all of these make an impact on your speed. Card set ups completely change progression for an entire prestige; which treasures and how many will obviously changes progression again; what you're able to buy from the merchant/bank is random; the entire Halloween event was random; presumably the entire Christmas event will be random. Even progression in the mines (pickaxes), horde (heirlooms) and farm (gold/rare drops) are random.

There are too many variables to be able to balance around a hypothetical "typical" player.

I don't understand the desire for the game to be even slower than it already is. I was at the point where prestiges were taking days, but you couldn't just leave it because you still needed to adjust things and buy upgrades. I was fine with that, for a "long term idle game" it meant I still needed to check every day, but it was pushing my limits. Now everything is slow and everything that boosts gain and speed is worse; it would appear that none of the costs have been updated to reflect the change in speed so progression has become outpaced by snails. I think I'm done

Are people buying the themes in the first place?

I didn't know where they were, and once I found them the cheapest cost 1000, which would take 40 days to afford. Even at my current rate with 112 achievements it would take 20 days. If you've played long enough to afford a theme I would guess that you've stopped caring about what it looks like, if you even did in the first place.

It wouldn't be choosing between buying a theme and buying an upgrade, it's between buying anything or having a currency accumulating uselessly.

And having to choose what to spend currency on is the main mechanic of idle and incremental games, and it wouldn't be so important if the upgrades didn't take so long to afford in the first place.

I'm also only getting one treasure, which I can only assume is not intended behaviour.

Additionally, the gem economy is insane. The default rate of 1 gem per hour is far too slow for the costs. If something costs 24 gems it costs 1 day of real life time, if it costs 200 gems that's over a week. And I know "it's a long term idle game and you can speed up gem generation" but asking players to wait a week for a 1.6x multiplier is too much. I think the cost to generation ratio should be adjusted and/or there should be some sort of gem exchange so those purple gems can actually have some use.