Suggestions for a more challenging gameplay

[Gobledigmus]

In the playtest version of the game I already played multiple savegames till my farm was so upgraded that I didn't even need to do anything anymore and got rich on Newbucks out of nothing.
Because of the upgrades that do everything for you by themselves (sprinkler upgrade for the garden, plort collector, autofeeder, etc.) I nearly had nothing to do anymore and the game got boring, forcing me to start a new game.
So my opinion is that in the alpha version of the game that situation occurs way too fast and too easy and I would wish a more challenging gameplay in the full version.
EDIT: [Of course the publishers will make the game more interesting even without suggestions, but making suggestions can only help them developing an even more interesting game that fits the interests of its community.
That should be self-explaining, because that's why this forum exists, but some obviously still needed that to be explained to them.]

I'm aware of the fact that not everyone wants a challenging gameplay so I suggest multiple game modifiers that can be checked/ unchecked before starting a new game (not possible to change them in the already started savegame afterwards).

I have multiple ideas that could make the game a little bit harder and I think that some could be implemented in the main game and those of them that are maybe too challenging for some players could be implemented as the already mentioned modifiers.

One thing is that there have to be a lot more dangers in the full version, especially ones that can make it more important to build ponds or incinerators in your ranch to be able to defend yourself against Tarr outbreaks or other dangers. In the playtest version you don't need anything of that yet, because you can easily build a safe and (still highly-profitable) ranch where the chances of a Tarr outbreak or unwanted largos are against zero.

Also I wish way more dangerous zones in the wild areas, but I bet that this is already planned by the publishers. I hope that there will be some areas that make avoiding contact with dangerous slimes (such as Tarr, Boom Slimes, or radioactive Slimes) very hard, for example by implementing a lot of tight paths and areas, where you have to jump a lot to progress through the wild area. That could also make the jetpack and it's upgrades more useful.

So here are my suggestions:

market price-changing Intergalactic Events:
There could be events that have a chance of occuring, which additionally affect the market price (most times negatively) and create more atmosphere. You will be messaged about those events either by mail or by an electronic news window that you can open by pressing the button next to the market (because the button seems to be quite useless right now, but I assume that a use for it is already planned).
Most of the events will make it more useful to have a flexible farm with different types of Slimes, because right now it's easy to be very productive with a ranch full of only one type of largos.
Also it prevents that you get rich too easily and too fast without having to do much.
Examples for events:
- "Tabby Plorts get banned in the competitive sports, consuming them counts as illegal doping and the material can easily be detected in the human body" (Tabby Plort prices go down drastically a little bit over a long time, until they are legal in the sports scene again);
- "discussions about banning Tabby Plorts and declaring them as an illegal drug on Earth" (Tabby Plort prices go down over a long time, until they are not seen as an illegal drug anymore);
- "Many ranches had to close because of sudden heavy Tarr outbreaks" (all prices rise a little bit);
- "worldwide Inflation on one of the most important planets for plort trading" (all prices go down, especially the price of the Pink Plorts);

Make growing fruits/ vegetables harder and the pond more useful...:
...by increasing the price of the sprinkler upgrade and making the player able to use fresh water to frequently water the gardens (and add something to make visible if the garden has enough water at the moment or is too dry).
The balance between "growing" meat and having gardens is very uneven right now.
In the current playtest version it doesn't make any sense to grow chickens because they populate way too slow compared to the food you can grow in your garden, even if the coops are fully upgraded and nothing unwanted ever gets in there.
If you want to get Tabby- or Boom Plorts you can easily mix them with another kind of Slime that eats fruits or vegetables (or both) to avoid having to grow chickens.
I also recommend to increase the base worth of the Plorts from meat-eating Slimes so that the player has a reason to hold largos that only eat meat (for example a mix of Tabby Slimes and Boom Slimes).

Implement events that make it worth building and incinerator and/ or ponds to protect your ranch against dangers.:
Right now it is way too easy to build a safe ranch where nothing unwanted happens. No unwanted largos, no Tarr. The chances for that are against zero if you play right.
I want at least a game modifier that I can check before starting a game which makes it possible that even when I play safe there will get some dangers into my ranch that can't be stopped by just equipping my corals with air nets and high walls.
Dangers that make it worth to build at least one incinerator or pond in the ranch (because in the playtest version right now I don't need any of those). Especially when you already have a lot of days behind you.
The game is already counting the virtual days you played in the ranch, but there doesn't seem to happen anything at the playtest version that makes the later days more challenging, except of some price changes at market.
So I thought it would be great having events you have to be equipped against, such as an incoming Tarr invasion at the ranch. Of course the player has to be warned some time before the event really starts so that he can prepare for it even if he is new to the game and doesn't know every possible event from memory. That could happen by mail like a day before the event goes active.
But not only Tarr invasions are possible events. There could - for example - be incoming swarms of big angry bees (Honey Phosphor Largos) that are carrying rock slimes they want to throw at your head. Your job then would be to either remove the swarm and their cargo by incinerating them or throwing them into the Slime Sea, or feeding them something they eat to calm them down and put them back into the wilderness or into one of your corals.
Another possible event that would be easier to solve and could happen earlier in the game: A single wandering Pink Tabby Largo that is carrying either a Pink Plort or a Tabby Plort into your base (only one of those two to go sure that it doesn't instantly transform into a Tarr) and by that carries the danger of a Tarr outbreak in your ranch.

It would be possible to make some buildings have certain Plorts as an additional cost.
That would make it less easy for the player to progress as long as he didn't manage to get enough of a certain plort type. Also it would make it harder to have a fully upgraded ranch where everything works nearly automatically.
But not only for building upgrades, but also for high-level player-upgrades there could be added Plorts as an additional cost.
You could even give the plorts more possible ways of being used, for example for an item-producing building that needs a certain amount of various Plort types for its recipes to create something.
I don't know which kind of items would be balanced if they could be produced that way, but if you needed about 20 to 40 Plorts for one recipe including also the fact that you need about three different kinds of plorts that wouldn't be hard to balance.
To make that even harder the recipes could only be found randomly in the already existing crates and the created items are all consumed after their use.
With that mechanic in the game you could make areas where it becomes hard to progress if you don't have at least one of those consumable items with you or make a game modifier that can be checked before starting a new game that makes the already dangerous Slimes even more dangerous so that you can hardly progress without those consumables.
If consumables appear to be a bad idea I could also imagine that the building functions like a less-productive Range Exchange that gives you the ability to create a pack of a certain item (for example Cuberries) out of a huge pile of certain Plorts.
Or it could even create a better Plort type out of a pile of weaker Plorts (that are together more worth than the Plort that is produced out of it). But that would only make sense at very certain market situations or if you needed rare Plorts for certain upgrades. To mention that again: You would have to collect the recipes for every item you want to create there first.

So that are my current suggestions. I will add more if I get more ideas.
What do you people think of that? Don't you also feel like the game - even if it isn't meant to be very challenging - is way too easy right now?

Feel free to write what you think about those suggestions and write your ideas to make the gameplay more challenging.

[skydart]

I like the idea to have game options, which can be switched on or off to adjust difficulty, like events or market prices or such things. The problem always is to get it right for people who wants an easy game just to relax - and those who wants a challenge. That system could do this.

[IceThatsCool]

I love the idea of events, maybe crazy stuff could happen that could summon new slimes :D

[xenxander]

I really don't think you should be asking for changes to gameplay when it's PRE-alpha.

Honestly, let the devs add content, observe mechanics, read feedback, and go into beta. Once in late beta, we can talk about such things.
I feel it's far to early. I know we can explore all the content in about 10 game-days and have nothing left to do by game-day 20, but it's (like I said) Pre-alpha, right now.

[DeltaStorm]

I really don't think you should be asking for changes to gameplay when it's PRE-alpha.

Honestly, let the devs add content, observe mechanics, read feedback, and go into beta. Once in late beta, we can talk about such things.
I feel it's far to early. I know we can explore all the content in about 10 game-days and have nothing left to do by game-day 20, but it's (like I said) Pre-alpha, right now.

Says the guy who wants an upgrade that can vac largos.

[Gobledigmus]

I really don't think you should be asking for changes to gameplay when it's PRE-alpha.

Honestly, let the devs add content, observe mechanics, read feedback, and go into beta. Once in late beta, we can talk about such things.
I feel it's far to early. I know we can explore all the content in about 10 game-days and have nothing left to do by game-day 20, but it's (like I said) Pre-alpha, right now.

Really? Guy, you obviously didn't understand what I am trying to accomplish there. My goal is not to criticize the publishers for anything, but to make suggestions to help the game at becoming a game I and others enjoy.

Everyone here - including me - knows that the game is in a very-early phase of development, even if you weren't ignoring what my post actually is about and printed PRE-alpha fat to slap this unnecessary info right into my face, proving that you didn't understand the purpose of this thread. Its called "suggestions for a more challenging gameplay", not as you probably read by mistake: "change the game please, it is so bad".
That the game is in early development is an even better reason for us to make suggestions, so that the publisher can react to the feedback.

Why not make suggestions? There's no reason why we shouldn't do that. Suggestions don't damage anything and nobody gets hurt by them, it can only help the game becoming even more interesting.
The publishers still can do what they think is right, but maybe they will also get inspired by some of the community's ideas. That's the point behind this whole forum.
We are not only here to post bugs, glitches and other game problems, we are also here to make suggestions for how the game could look like in the future.

You can sit down and do nothing, I don't care about that and I didn't force you to participate in this thread or even anywhere in this forum. But why are you even playtesting the game and writing in this forum then?
If you don't want to suggest anything you can leave this forum and play other games while waiting for the game to be finished.
But let us - the whole community - write and suggest what we like to, because that's why we're here.
It's a really bad attitude to stop others from being creative and to fear saying anything only because you don't know what plans other people (in this scenario the publishers) might already have in their minds.

It should be self-explaining that we are just making suggestions so that the game will be even more interesting for its community in the future, but some people obviously still don't get that and need that to be explained to them.
I think that's all that's needed to be said about your post.
Let's go back to the actual topic now, pretending that this didn't happen.

_________

I added a new idea: Having Plorts as an additional cost on certain upgrades to make getting to a full-upgraded ranch with all types of buildings and upgrades less easy.
They could even be used as an additional cost for high-level player-upgrades.

[Greenly]

Here's another suggestion for a bit more challenge:

Boom slime's (and any largo combination) could destroy pens over time with their explosions. Of course a new upgrade would be needed, called a blast shield.

[Regal]

Its called "suggestions for a more challenging gameplay", not as you probably read by mistake: "change the game please, it is so bad".
That the game is in early development is an even better reason for us to make suggestions, so that the publisher can react to the feedback.

Some people just don't understand that. I feel you. You got some good ideas.

[Elskah]

In general having the possibility of slimes wandering onto your ranch would make the entire game seem more cohesive. That would give a reason for your gardens to have scareslimes, and for your relatively ground-bound slimes (like honey slimes or rock slimes, which don't jump much) to have high walls and air shields. But if that were to happen, I'd want my chicken coops to be able to have higher walls or an air shield, to keep those wandering slimes away, since as you mentioned, chickens don't grow fast enough as it is.

I also really do want plorts to be used for more than just money. Maybe you can use honey plorts to feed chickens, fresh water and/or puddle plorts to speed up your plants' growth, boom plorts to destroy unwanted upgrades, rock plorts to build things, etc. etc.? I was also thinking of a new type of slime, a Compost Slime, that eats fruits and/or vegetables to make Compost Plorts, which can fertilize your gardens.

I also think the market could be based not only on those random events, but also how many plorts of a certain type you're putting in it. For example, if you toss in hundreds of honey plorts in a day, their value will sharply decrease the next day, and then steadily go up by small amounts over the next few days until it's back to where it used to be. And if you don't use pink plorts, their value will slowly go up until it's actually worth going out and grabbing about 50 or so.

Boom slimes being able to destroy their pens makes a LOT of sense. I honestly thought that they would be able to destroy their pens when I first saw them, though I was kind of glad they couldn't. :P

[Gobledigmus]

Some people just don't understand that. I feel you. You got some good ideas.

Thank you. ^^

Boom slimes being able to destroy their pens makes a LOT of sense. I honestly thought that they would be able to destroy their pens when I first saw them, though I was kind of glad they couldn't. :P

Yeah, I also think that the idea sounds reasonable. And I really thought when I played it first that they could do that, just like you.
But in the case that you implement a Shield Upgrade for the corals to prevent the damage from destroying them it would be quite important that it protects you against more than only Boom Slimes.
Yes, they are very valuable Slimes, but still: Implementing a new upgrade only for one single type of Slime wouldn't be worth the time you invest in implementing it.

I could - for example - also imagine that the Tarr are also able to destroy the corals if they hit them long enough.
They attack them as long as there isn't any other Slime or rancher outside of the coral within their sight. As soon as they got enough attacks in the coral will look damaged. You can repair it by pressing the coral's green button and paying some money for repairing it. If you don't and the coral gets the same amount of damage in again (or more) it is destroyed.
A Shield Upgrade will fully protect the corals against that (or at least make it so much more durable that it is technically nearly indestructible).

Also the Rock Slimes should be able to slightly damage the coral over time, too. That still wouldn't make a Shield Upgrade necessary: You could also just pay everytime again when it is visibly damaged to repair it, but over a long time a Shield Upgrade will cost less Newbucks than always having to repair it again.

That would also be a reason to make the Rock Slime's Plort mabye a little bit more valuable.
And that would make sense because this type of Slime is already really annoying in terms of damage if you freerange it or try to get their Largo's Plorts without buying a Plort Collector.
The other thing also is: You can only combine them with Slimes that will make High Walls and/ or an Air Net Upgrade a must have in the early game if you don't want to combine it with a Pink Slime that just doesn't give you much money for ranching it. So if you want a Rock Largo combination you won't be able to afford a Shield Upgrade immediately, because you first have to either buy High Walls or an Air Net Upgrade. So you will be forced to repair your coral at least one time in most situations or to freerange them even though they do lots of damage. All those factors will make the game a little bit harder for players who are searching for a challenge, especially if their Plort's price will still stay the same.

Having the need of such an upgrade to prevent the Slimes from breaking through the coral's walls would also make the Boom Slimes more unique and make the player possibly choose to freeranch the Boom Slimes even though it is harder that way to deal with them because you would have to collect the Plorts "by hand".
I already tried that out in the playtest version and it actually works quite well as long as you don't blindly run into them right before they explode. You don't have to put everything into a coral to make piles of money. I rather think that it can be hugely efficient to not buy any coral at all and have one of the most valuable types of Largos you can get freely wandering in your ranch. In every ranch expansion you buy you could keep another type of Largos that way. That enables you to fill all the available construction places with other buildings you need (and a lot of gardens without the Scareslime Upgrade so that you don't even have to care anymore about your Slimes because they can feed themselves there) and have more largos there than you could ever possibly hold in your corals.

And that's exactly one of the things that make the current playtest version so easy: You don't even need to keep your Slimes in corals because there is nothing that could wander all the distance to your ranch to create the danger of unwanted Largos or even a Tarr outbreak. That allows you to instantly just invest the money in gardens and player upgrades.
Also the Tarr aren't dangerous enough for the player, yet. Even if you just watch them eating everything and multiplying endlessly. They are not fast enough yet and don't deal enough damage to kill you before you just walk away easily or throw one of them after another into the Slime Sea or into the Incinerator, especially if you get some Upgrades on your maximal healthpoints.

I also think the market could be based not only on those random events, but also how many plorts of a certain type you're putting in it.

In one play I already had the feeling that this was already implemented, but it could also just have happened by accident. ^^
I would really like that. It's quite simple and still makes a lot of sense. =)

But if that were to happen, I'd want my chicken coops to be able to have higher walls or an air shield, to keep those wandering slimes away

I already thought that the chicken coop needs some upgrades like that. At the moment they don't only populate very slowly, but also don't have very effective upgrades to keep Slimes away.
But I also think that exactly that would be the challenge and we shouldn't give the coop more upgrades than it already has. So you can't fully protect everything against the wandering Slimes without being there at least sometimes. And a single wandering Pink Tabby Slime stealing one or two chickens before you come back to throw it out of your ranch wouldn't be a game breaking problem. It's not like those events would happen every single minute. And as soon as they happen they are exactly meant to be a little danger for the player and/ or his ranch. =)