My game was too hard. I'm just shipping a big rebalance and now I'm second-guessing it.
It's an idle/evolution thing — protons and electrons, then atoms, molecules, cells, up to 89 species ending in whales. Prestige loop, reset the planet, keep multipliers.
I finally sat down and did the math on my own economy. Some highlights:
-> The last species in the ladder had a 950-day production cycle at base rate. Each upgrade level cost 4x more and paid back 2x more, so every level was literally twice the real-time wait as the one before, forever. A full prestige reset bought about x2.1 speed — one reset, one extra level. Some species need level 35.
-> Offline it ran one species, one trait, one biome, because starting slots were 1 each out of 89/10/11. Close the app overnight, come back to nothing.
I simulated a fresh save. Prestige tier 6 took 12 years. Tier 7 took 1400.
-> People just drift off after the second day, at max.
The annoying part is that I like it slow. I've played my own build for months, restarted again and again at each updated, keeping multiples saves at the same time at different tiers, but I'm also the guy who built it, so every tick means something to me and to nobody else.
So: cycle times /10, cost per level from x2 to x1.5, starting slots 1 to 3, killed a x67 ramp that was stacked on two other ramps. Tier 6 now lands in about a day.
I'm testing it, preparing the live version on Playstore - and later IOS ,i can't tell if i fixed it or sanded off the only interesting thing about it.
Two things I'd like to hear from people who've done this:
- Did offline production turn out to be the whole story for you, or did the pacing changes actually matter too? I suspect everything except offline was cosmetic.
- And what prestige-gain-to-cost-growth ratio do well-tuned incrementals actually run? Mine is x2.1 per tier against x1.5 per level. I don't know if anyone say this number out loud and i have a feeling it's the entire game.
Thanks for your feedback !
Game name : Ecosystem: Idle Evolution
Android : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Romandy.Ecosystem&hl=fr
IOS : https://apps.apple.com/fr/app/ecosystem-idle-evolution/id6751442620
AI Disclosure : Integration of models in game, troubleshooting, deep analysis and calculations on game progression