[Design-Specific Suggestion] SL Economy Needs Attention

[imaginamagica]

I want to start out by saying that I know full well that the game is very early in development, and that the dev's current goals are that of content and bugfixes.

However, before further development is given to other major game features, I think a really big issue that needs to be addressed is that of the Economy.

Things I consider problems:

1) It's not possible to reduce a plort price below half value.
If I have 30 honey plorts, selling them at 37 - the lowest I've seen - still nets me over 1000 plorts per haul and doesn't deflate the market nearly as much as it should. Getting this amount of plorts is really easy due to other systems (favorite foods, largos giving double, and the grotto) that I don't think should be altered for the sake of player teaching.

2) There needs to be a steeper price curve for subsequent upgrades.
Part of the reason these strategies become so ridiculous is that the money easily covers what you need to purchase the cooler stuff. The cooler stuff lets you turn a profit easier, which snowballs pretty quickly.


Things you should not do:

1) Reduce the overall number of slimes spawning.
Less slimes = less chaos = less of the fun that is unique to this game. People will still put in the effort to farm the better slimes and get the amounts they need to do crazy things. We also need a good variety in the types of slimes spawning in the different areas (i.e. the Jungle) to really make them feel unique.

2) Make it harder to get plorts by removing the 1-1 (food-plort) or 1-2 (fave-plorts) system.
Your current system is very transparent and easy to teach. Anything more than that and you lose the beautiful simplicity that allows this. Removing the favorite foods system would make the food types not nearly as interesting as they are now. Making the plort distribution semi-random (e.g. you have a 50% chance to drop a plort) doesn't feel as fair to the player.

3) Lower the overall plort prices (i.e. whole market gets a price reduction).
Early game is fairly slow if you play your cards wrong, and lowering those initial few types of easy-access plorts will make your game opening even slower. My first attempt at this game I stuck with pink slimes way too long, and it made it very hard to get upgrades.

I will open the discussion here to potential solutions to these issues. I'm also happy to answer questions if something I said was unclear.