Should players be responsible for keeping their own game fun? Mind Thread.

Benji:
Change Golden Seedlings or Seedling Heaven in some way so that that making the decision trying to grind for Tangy Berries doesn't impact EXP and in turn prevent Bug Me Not from killing the Wild Grassland encounters. This is probably more of a "Fell For it Again Award" kind of thing considering this is probably the second time I accidentally over leveled myself from the decision to grind a resource, but I still think it's worth mentioning as it would be nice to not break the game from the enticing treasure that is Tangy Berry windfall. (edited)

𝒶ntehmin✨:
there *is* that guy on metal island that just.
Sells Them.
for Moni 🫐
you can grind Moni 🫐 through                          many other sources to get tangy berries that way
nerfing golden seedling exp drops in seedling haven kind of defeats some of the point i think??????????

Benji:
I just didn't do that cause greed and ""foresight."" You can learn about Seedling Heaven naturally because of Stratos and Dalila and you can also learn how to get more Gold Seedlings per encounter by accident when you look up how resetting room encounters work with a search. In the end, one hint and a bit of research can easily go a long way and lead to a sudden power spike just from a bit of reading so I wonder if that should change or not.

NatalieRK: (replying to Benji's 1st post)
i think this is a self-control thing more than anything LOL

Benji:
I should talk about the designer weirdness when accounting for player decision making in a blog post sometime. It's too late out to be thinking too much right now. (edited)

NatalieRK: (replying to Benji above)
idunno, it's just a fact of how some games work (esp. rpgs) that grinding can and will trivialize parts of the game
it's up to the player to regulate themselves and choose what they want to do
grinding tangy berries alone is one way to skip a lot of the game's difficulty already
the designer can do what they can do but sometimes it's up to the player to set their rules and regulate their experience
it's called play and imagination ✨

Keygem:
+ Seedling Heaven is only really there so there is a consistent way to see golden seedlings at least for me thats what it is

NatalieRK:
dark souls is a game infamously heralded for its difficulty but it's full of ways to grind away the difficulty
most of the games, atleast

Benji: (replying to NatalieRK's 2nd post)
That's the question though. Should players be responsible for keeping their own game fun? I know there is a cut off point where too much effort to strengthen the game leads to very little gain, but designers with good understanding of human behaviors "could" create tighter designs to accommodate for players. I haven't gotten to a point to actually start asking that question and putting design into practice, but it's something I have thought about that I know I'll need to find answers for. (edited)

NatalieRK: (relpying to Benji above)
games are about play, it's a playground, and ultimately the designer has to hand off responsibility to the player at some point
this varies on a game-by-game basis but there is no "correct" way to do things

Benji:
Exactly. Where the lines are drawn is the designer decision making question. (edited)

NatalieRK:
if you optimize the difficulty out of the game, sometimes that's a you thing! sometimes the expectations and standards are just different
every designer has their own rules
i think that's the fun of game design
it's why bug fables has the menu codes to begin with, which imo are a fantastic feature
it's all up to how you play, what restrictions you set for yourself, and what difficulty you want the game's challenges to be
in short i think it would be silly to nerf the golden seedling exp gain because of that
grinding for tangy berries is already a "difficulty shortcut" for what's meant to be a rare, expensive resource

Keygem: (replying to Benji's 3rd post)
just take off bug me not if you wanna over level but still do fights thats your choice (edited)

Benji:
I guess to conclude, Bug Fables (and BF+) is a bit of an emergent gameplay machine where the designer makes a game and let it do it's own thing in weird situations like mine. Despite that, I still decided to selfishly ask the question on if my extremely weird situation is working as designed like it even matters at that point. I'm definatly gotta write about this tomorrow so I don't forget and actually learn something. (edited)

NatalieRK: (replying to Benji above)
"emergent gameplay machine" is a funny way to put it but yea i get whatchu mean
anyways yea what bry said, you can buy them at metal island

(end)