Suggestions for future Gens seasons

Hello,

The new season of gens has been out for a few days. I think the new updates have added really interesting and fun new gameplay mechanics, however I believe certain areas could be smoothened out for later seasons.

This post serves to collate all of the feedback I've seen and gotten from the community, as well as my own feedback from playing for the first few days.

Firstly, I think it's important to discuss the strong areas of gens and the weaker ones. The suggestions will serve to address these areas to hopefully balance the game more in future seasons.

Strong areas
I think the game's grindy aspect attracts a lot of players who like to see incremental rewards and improvements from consistent playing. The new farming and fishing aspects serve as more content for players to explore and provides that same aspect of rewarding consistent grinding. The updates make the game feel more like an MMORPG, with different areas to be explored and played through to maximize profits. Essentially, the strong areas are:

• Multiple gameplay functions to explore (gens, fishing, wilderness)
• Different gameplay areas benefit one another
• Relatively difficult goals to maximize profit from gens

Weak areas

The most abundantly clear fault, for me, of this gens season is the very short lifespan that the game has.

Aside from paying, the only way to increase your generators significantly is farming. There is a lot of farming to do to max out your gen slots, however the way its structured now, new seasons will last approximately 1 week before a clear winner has been decided.

This is due to the fact that gem profits are exponential. Essentially, the most dedicated players will skyrocket their farming levels early in the season, gaining an advantage in gems and continuing to profit more and more each day. It is due to this that it's completely impossible for new players to catch up, even if you're only one day late.

This is also boosted by the auto-sell features. Past week 1, top players will only need to log on for a few minutes a day, upgrade their generators and spin the wheel to ensure that nobody can catch up to them.

I know this game isn't entirely about competition, but competition does drive a lot of players to new seasons when they initially reset. I would like to see consistent playing reward players over the course of a season as opposed to an intensive grind in the first few days securing the season.

Another area that dampers the gameplay experience is the necessity of paywalled items to be able to compete.

Specifically, beacons are mandatory if you want to be able to compete seeing as they double your generator output. I understand that MCC is a business and has to make money, however the issue lies in the fact that ~90% of crates are opened within the first few days of the reset.

What this means is that as the season progresses, and as demand for these items increases, the stock of items entering the economy decreases. The entire season thus far, players have been scrambling to get beacons at any cost because of how powerful they are.

Another item that causes this imbalance is +gen papers. I don't have an issue with paying players receiving benefits, however the fact that you can only pay for these papers, combined with how powerful they are makes it very imbalanced.

Without getting into specifics, these, for me, are the biggest areas that I would like to see reworked. Essentially:

• Repetitive gameplay to maximize profits
• Short server life-span
• Impossible to compete past the first week
• Lack of strong items entering the economy

Suggestions
With my praise and critiques of the game out of the way, here are some new features that I think could help balance these areas and provide new content for players to explore.

Rework fishing
Currently, the only practical reason to fish is to upgrade your farming armor. I think fishing is a fun mechanic that has a lot of potential, especially with the different tiers of fish and the bait.

For me, fishing is lacking because it's detrimental to your progression. Here's why:

1. When you fish, you unlock no new generator slots.

Fishing does make farming faster, which subsequently increases your generator slots, however due to the aforementioned exponential gem gains, you can only fish effectively once you've maxed your farming level which defeats the initial purpose of fishing.

2. Farming armor reaps low rewards for a lot of work.

It takes 200,000 fishcoins to max your armor. With a rate of ~100 fishcoins per minute, you need to fish for ~33 hours to add a 10% increase to your farming XP. Maxing the armor would only be beneficial in its current state if you had to farm for 400 hours to max your farming level.

Listed below are some suggestions for how fishing can be reworked to be a fun and essential gameplay mechanic:

1. Balance farming armor
Either by increasing the boost that the armor gives you, or decreasing the requirement to max it, fishing can become a net positive thing to do.

2. Add new fish tiers/bait/fishing areas
Fishing, by nature, is relatively repetitive. I enjoy fishing because of the gambling-like aspect of not knowing what is on the other end of your rod.

As is, with only 6 tiers of fish, you've seen all of the new fishing content within ~5 minutes of fishing. New tiers of fish, new bait and new fishing areas unlocked after having fished for a certain amount of time would make fishing a lot more enjoyable.

3. Add fishing levels
Adding onto the last suggestion, fishing levels could be introduced. These fishing levels could be barriers to unlocking new fish, better baits and new areas to fish in.

If fishing levels were to also provide new gen slots, it would combat the aforementioned detrimental aspect of fishing to your overall progression. It would also give another gameplay aspect to grind for perfectionists like myself.

4. Upgradeable rods
Similarly to pickaxes in prisons, fishing rods could be upgraded to give benefits such as shorter cast times, better odds to catch rarer fish, or maybe even needing to upgrade your rod to a certain level to use better bait.

5. Add custom fish
Custom fish with aspects such as fish size contributing to their price would be a really nice addition.

6. Idle fishcoin generator
Similarly to the drill in prisons, I think this would be a great addition to the game. A lot of players don't like to fish and would likely rather spend extra resources to get them passively through a generator like the one in prisons.

7. Add fishing armor
I think this would be a great way to help balance the time needed to max farming armor, as well as a great way to provide avid fishers with more content to play through.

Rework farming
Currently, farming is the bulk of the content for players to explore. It is the only way (aside from wheel spins and +gen papers) to upgrade your generator limit, thus serving as the backbone for the server.

As mentioned earlier, the issue I have with farming is that, to be competitive, you must farm intensively in the first few days of the season resetting. Past that point, especially due to the low crop sell prices, the only practical reason to farm is to lower your auto-sell tax to 0%. Here are some suggestions to make farming more engaging, and to spread farming out over the season:

1. Crop milestones
Milestones for a certain amount of crops farmed that gives you new gen slots would be really nice to see. Not only would this provide another aspect to grind for, it could also encourage players to revisit wheat, potato and carrot farms past them levelling up.

This idea ties into most of the following ideas. I think it's a simple and effective new mechanic that would vary farming a lot.

2. New crops
For the first 3 prestiges, you get new crops to farm. Past prestige 3, you farm beetroot on your island until you max it out.

I would love to see further prestiges unlock new crops to farm. This would vary the gameplay, making it less repetitive, and would also tie in very nicely to the earlier point about milestones.

The only issue that I see with this idea is that you currently need beetroots to level up your interest and auto-sell tax. My suggestion to counter this is to change the requirement to level them up to be centered around your total harvested crop count.

3. Upgradeable hoes
I have seen countless players in chat asking for this feature to be implemented. Similarly to prisons, upgrades such as more farm experience and more crops would make a really great addition to the game.

4. Buff crop sell prices
Currently, farming is not viable to make gems past your first few generators. This, in part, is the reason why farming is not practical past maxing your farming level. Buffing crops' sell prices would influence players to keep farming if they want to stay competitive.

This would especially benefit the game because, as is, once you've maxed your farming level and auto-sell tax, there is no reason to fish or farm anymore. Without these 2 gameplay mechanics, gens has no more content to explore and becomes solely about selling your items and upgrading your gens.

General
There were a couple general suggestions I had that either didn't fit into farming or fishing, or fit into both. They are listed below.

1. Make gen wands easier to get
With the new gen slot increases, the amount of items you get is disproportional to the gen wands that you can get. This is echoed due to the aforementioned decrease in keys being opened as the demand increases, and vote key rewards are unable to fulfil the gen wand requirement past a few hours of playing.

Either by buffing vote keys, making gen wands purchasable using fishcoins, or anything else, making gen wands easier to come by would really improve the quality of life for players.

2. Allow everybody to fly in farms
With how much farming is required, and how important farming is to overall progression, flying in farms is nearly crucial to the game.

At one point this season, a donator purchased a rank upgrade for a non-ranked active player out of pity due to how difficult it is to farm whilst not flying. I think this small change would greatly improve the quality of life for free-to-play players.

3. Add mining leeches
Similarly to prisons, this is a small change that would make farming more engaging and less repetitive. Killing these leeches could give temporary farming buffs, as seen in prisons.

4. Custom enchants
Once again, taking inspiration from prisons, enchants such as more farming xp, more crops, and even fishing enchants such as faster cast times and improving rare fish % would be another fun aspect for players to grind.

Enchants could be purchased using fishcoins, or occasionally dropped by farming/fishing, as discussed below.

5. Occasionally drop rare items from farming or fishing
Again, I understand that MCC is a business and thus needs to make money. The reason why this is an entry on the list is because it would really help combat the issue regarding an increase in demand for rare items with a decrease in key opens.

By having a small chance to drop rare items from farming and fishing, these gameplay mechanics would be more engaging and more beneficial in the long run.

Items could include custom enchants, +gen papers, gen beacons, sell wands etc. Additionally, this ties in well to the point about upgradeable hoes. One of the upgrades could revolve around improving your rare item drop chance.

I do not believe that this feature would deter players from opening keys. When the server first resets, and when most players open their keys, not enough farming or fishing would have taken place to drop a substantial amount of these rare items. This feature's benefits would only be seen by players who start playing later in the season, or who consistently play throughout the season, seeing as these items could continually be drip-fed into the economy to meet the player demand.

This, to me, is the quintessential feature to address a lot of the aforementioned weaker areas of the game. It makes farming and fishing more engaging, gives players with max farming level a reason to keep farming/playing the game and ensures rare items are obtainable past the first week.

6. /gen upgrades
Similarly to prisons, adding upgrades to your island such as more crops, more farm xp, more gen drops, faster gen drops etc. would give a whole new area of content for players to grind and max out.

My suggestion, if this feature does get added, is to make gen upgrades require crop milestones to unlock. This would ensure that players can't max out their upgrades instantly and would reward farming over long periods of time. These upgrades could be purchased using fishcoins to encourage players to explore both gameplay mechanics.

7. Beetroot milestones lower wheel timer
Similarly to the interest and tax percentage, reducing the wheel cooldown by farming a certain amount of beets would be a really nice feature.

8. Replace one of the generators with a wood generator
This is really not necessary and entirely a quality of life change for us lazy players. You can smelt the drops from iron generators to get the resources to make hoppers, however there is no wood generator to make chests for storage systems. A new wood generator would be nice to allow players to get the wood they need to sustain their generators without needing to chop trees for multiple hours.

Conclusion
I have really been enjoying gens since its reset. I believe this sentiment has been echoed by a lot of the player-base and I think the game has a lot of potential.

I really hope to see continuous updates and improvements made to the game to expand the content that players can explore. This post only contains suggestions that a few players and myself have come up with, but I would love to hear the community's thoughts on these suggestions or hear new suggestions altogether.

Thank you for reading this very lengthy post.