[FROM: Caferyer Johnson]
Yeah I don't complain much, because the developers at Pixel Federation are so responsive and don't resort to the incredibly annoying practice of forcing you to bug your neighbors to DEATH for materials like every other game does.
In this case, however, I see my progress stalling very quickly. Expansions for your camp escalate in price so fast. 2,000 and 3,000 coins to expand by one segment is a lot.
As Jim said, the caravans are now nearly pointless. The cost to get a very small amount of materials is nowhere near worth it, I've basically determined that at this rate I won't ever send another caravan (except for apples, sugar, and grain when i can afford it), because there's nothing to be gained. It would take me far longer to earn the coins it would cost to buy the materials than to actually mine the materials on my own.
I'm not saying that they should necessarily bring back the coin caravans, but the current caravan prices are exorbitant for the materials you get in return. Combine that with the high cost of expanding your camp, along with the somewhat small coin rewards for digging and completing quests, and it seems like it's going to be very, very difficult to get coins.
Just as a math example: I have expanded my camp to the point where digging a new camp grid piece will cost me 2,000 coins, 220 wood, and 150 stones. In order to get 220 wood with caravans, that would cost me $11,000 coins. For the 150 stones via caravan, it would be $11,250. So to expand one camp grid segment at this point using only coins to purchase the materials, I would have to spend $24,000 in coins, not to mention it would take many, many 8 hour caravan runs to collect those materials.
I guess my point is that I don't mind having to grind out a bit of work, but the caravans now provide nothing useful. There's no point in spending $11,250 to get 220 wood. At this rate, collecting 220 wood means having to either 1) clear the abandoned tunnel approximately 11 times, or send 22 eight hour caravans at a cost of $11,000+.
I could almost understand these changes if there were special gem items in the store that allowed you to bypass some of this grind. Like a camp item that gave you 50 wood every day when you click it, or 500 coins per day when you click. But the only gem items that you can buy are decorations or items that are just slight upgrades of the standard camp items. I would love to buy something like that, and it gives you a big incentive to return every day to make sure and collect that reward.
I realize this change is probably to combat the few people who are progressing through the game too quickly, and they don't want those players to lose interest if there's nothing more to do. I know it's hard for programmers to keep up with creating new levels, art, dialogue, and programming, along with doing all the routine fixes and updates. I just think some of these corrections to the cash-flow of the game are too corrective to the point of hampering any feeling of progress. It will slow things down TOO much. People like to see visual evidence of their progression in the game. If you can only expand your base camp one dig segment every couple weeks, you don't get to really see that change.
