Was Resource 3 disappointing to anyone else?

[Devccoon]

Now that I'm comfortably in the nono zone between Beast and the last adventure zone on Evil and I spoiled myself on how Cooking works, I find the uses for R3 disappointingly limited given its prominence right next to Energy and Magic.

I had hoped that unlocking R3 would be one of those really cool moments in a game that changes the way you think about everything, opening up new options all throughout the experience for you to explore. I expected that you'd unlock a bunch of new options in old menus, most of which you wouldn't be seeing much of a benefit from until later on when you'd upgraded your R3 a lot more (in classic NGU fashion, the new stuff you just got access to is barely helpful at first).

I'm not sure most of it could be done at this point, but my wishlist would have been:

• Time Machine - More of an aesthetic thing than a balance point, but you have E/M inputs and no R3 one, makes R3 sad.
  
• Wandoos - Same thing here, really. Another E/M menu with no R3 component.
  
• BEARDS - I'd like to make a legit suggestion that I think could still be added for this one. It was a great idea to give 'bars' relevance, but I always felt like 7 beards was a bit too few, and now that they're dropping off hard in late Evil, I wonder why this one feature has such a short window of relevance in the game's progression. I submit to you the Beard-beard: your beard was so powerful it grew its own beard! Grows based on R3 bars/power (add a wish for a beard slot, maybe) and boosts the maximum growth rate of other beards. Basically, it lets you overcap beards to gain additional levels per tick. Get this bonus high enough and your stat beard is like 17x above its cap? You could get it growing up to 17 levels per tick! (but probably not easily. Your progression with R3 would limit how overcapped your beards can go, and then you still have to meet the speed requirement to actually run them that fast)
  
• Yggdrasil - Let's get some R3 fruits! Again, more reason to build up R3 bars so it's not obnoxious waiting for it to crawl back up to cap again after you start a fruit. What could they reasonably add? IDK... daycare progress, maybe?
  
• NGUs - Name of the game doesn't even involve R3, I mean come on! I can't imagine adding a whole new NGUs menu and not breaking the intended progress rate unless it's a pitifully small bonus, so... I get it. But still~
  
• Advanced Training - IDK, it's kinda sparse. Just 5 bars? It's energy only so there's not a 'real' reason to have a R3-based input, but I see blank space and the gears start turning, you know?

Yeah, ultimately it's more a disappointment to me that R3 didn't pan out to be a more integral part of the game. I'm not sure what the history of the game's development looked like and at what point the third resource became a part of the plan, but it is a shame it's really only used on two menus. The beard suggestion aside, with a lot of these, it's more "I wish 4G did this because it's cool" rather than "4G should add this because I'm lazy and want to progress faster".

[Fel]

The fact that it only had two places to go also meant that you don't have to divide the already comparatively low amount between many places, it's wishes if you put your energy and magic there as well, hacks otherwise.
Simple maybe but the bonuses related to those two are varied and pretty powerful.

So I was pretty happy with R3, until I hit the point where wishes and hacks are completely finished.
Now I have to look at R3 being useless in a corner because there is no "sink" for it, which is a bit sad.
(not that I have to look at it anymore now that I finished the game I guess but still)

[Hypertext Eye]

The game is feature complete. There will be no more content updates, only bug fixes.
Also I would like to point out:

Originally posted by Devccoon:

• NGUs - Name of the game doesn't even involve R3, I mean come on! I can't imagine adding a whole new NGUs menu and not breaking the intended progress rate unless it's a pitifully small bonus, so... I get it. But still~

Hacks are the R3 equivalent of NGUs. Basically what you're asking for is double dipping.

[Даша]

Originally posted by Hypertext Eye:

The game is feature complete. There will be no more content updates, only bug fixes.
Also I would like to point out:

Originally posted by Devccoon:

• NGUs - Name of the game doesn't even involve R3, I mean come on! I can't imagine adding a whole new NGUs menu and not breaking the intended progress rate unless it's a pitifully small bonus, so... I get it. But still~

Hacks are the R3 equivalent of NGUs. Basically what you're asking for is double dipping.

They are not. Because Hacks can be completed a lot quicker if you have enough R3, while ngu is time gated.

[Hypertext Eye]

Originally posted by pinguiniv (Антон/Даша):

Originally posted by Hypertext Eye:

The game is feature complete. There will be no more content updates, only bug fixes.
Also I would like to point out:


Hacks are the R3 equivalent of NGUs. Basically what you're asking for is double dipping.

They are not. Because Hacks can be completed a lot quicker if you have enough R3, while ngu is time gated.

time gating is irrelevant. They serve the same purpose.

[Даша]

It is relevant. You will not finish evil ngu before you finish the game, but you will finish hacks and wishes, or at least run out of usable ones.

[Hypertext Eye]

So?

[Даша]

So time gating is relevant. R3 is dissapointing because you always have enrgy and magic stuff to do until the end. R3 becaomes irrelevant because everything it is connected to is not time, but rather investment gated...

[Hypertext Eye]

No, time gating is not relevant. The function and purpose of NGUs and Hacks is the same.

[Fel]

You might argue that NGUs are not really time gated, at least nowhere near as hard as you make it out to be.
Getting the first million levels or even the first hundred thousand gives you a major portion of the bonus you can get from that NGU (and in the case of the flat ones it's still true because the diminishing returns are on the feature they boost instead).

Hacks on the other hand give increasing bonuses per level but at a cost that increases at a much faster rate, making it kind of time-gated as well.

[Hypertext Eye]

And of course on top of that, I'm sure 4G didn't expect people to finish Hacks as quickly as we do when it was added to the game. Consider that Hacks was added in April 2019, and Sadistic difficulty wasn't added until October that same year. Even then, Sadistic was limited to one titan and two adventure zones. "Finishing" Hacks was still a long way off.

(source: https://ngu-idle.fandom.com/wiki/Build_History)

[muljostpho]

Yeah, the game just is the way it is. For better or worse. But there's definitely a lot of room for this type of thinking:

Originally posted by Devccoon:

"I wish 4G did this because it's cool"

Lots of places where we could wonder "what if he had designed this part differently?" Just to ponder about hypothetical alternatives.

Anyway...

As I understand it, 4G started a lot of the original core of NGU's programming based on another game, Idling to Rule the Gods, with some help from that game's creator (Ryu). Although there were some fundamental differences here and there (for example: energy and magic resources here where ItRtG only had shadow clones as its resource to invest into features), and then 4G started fleshing things out in his own unique direction as he added more content to NGU. NGU's basic training tab is like a more condensed and streamlined version of ItRtG's physical training and skill training tabs. NGU's bosses are equivalent to ItRtG's gods. NGU's advanced training tab seems like it was intended to fit into a similar role as ItRtG's might training tab, although I guess 4G wasn't happy with it and didn't really do much with it. NGU's augments tab is kind of comparable to ItRtG's monuments tab, and that puts NGU's time machine tab in a similar role as ItRtG's divinity generator tab. NGU's adventure mode is like a much more fleshed out and much more interesting version of ItRtG's special fights tab (a massively underused feature in that game (Ryu has said that he might consider revisiting it eventually to expand it into something better, but he has several other things that he wants to work on first)). NGU's titan enemies could kind of be compared a little bit to ItRtG's ultimate beings (although the lack of a real equivalent to adventure mode means that they're found in a different place in the game).

R3 came about long after 4G had grown NGU beyond that original core that it started as. All of that stuff (plus a few other early features) were all baked into the first difficulty's portion of the progression through the game. And for the most part 4G has tried to avoid tinkering with anything that could affect game balance in earlier progression that he's already moved on from.

[Devccoon]

Originally posted by Hypertext Eye:

The game is feature complete. There will be no more content updates, only bug fixes.
Also I would like to point out:

Originally posted by Devccoon:

• NGUs - Name of the game doesn't even involve R3, I mean come on! I can't imagine adding a whole new NGUs menu and not breaking the intended progress rate unless it's a pitifully small bonus, so... I get it. But still~

Hacks are the R3 equivalent of NGUs. Basically what you're asking for is double dipping.

Isn't the entire point of NGU double-dipping? Triple, quadruple, quintuple-dipping? I can scarcely think of a single mechanic that isn't affected by stacking boosts on multipliers on doublers on boons on perks. There are like half a dozen completely different menus where you can find direct boosts to NGU speed, even though another half dozen menus grant you boosts to E/M cap and power, both of which are 1:1 boosts to NGU speed, themselves. Safe to say, just because Hacks serve a similar purpose doesn't mean there couldn't have been R3 NGUs. Not that they could be added *now* without breaking things, but it's hardly beyond the pale for NGU.

Anyway, hacks hit different. NGUs are there to get BB'd constantly (at some point) for a consistent and achievable cost, whereas hacks are a lot pickier and slow down so quickly I can't imagine BBing any of them for very long even way later on. Those milestone bonuses would be massive if you were picking up levels at 50 per second. But maybe you do eventually get to that point.

[Даша]

Originally posted by Devccoon:

Originally posted by Hypertext Eye:

The game is feature complete. There will be no more content updates, only bug fixes.
Also I would like to point out:


Hacks are the R3 equivalent of NGUs. Basically what you're asking for is double dipping.

Isn't the entire point of NGU double-dipping? Triple, quadruple, quintuple-dipping? I can scarcely think of a single mechanic that isn't affected by stacking boosts on multipliers on doublers on boons on perks. There are like half a dozen completely different menus where you can find direct boosts to NGU speed, even though another half dozen menus grant you boosts to E/M cap and power, both of which are 1:1 boosts to NGU speed, themselves. Safe to say, just because Hacks serve a similar purpose doesn't mean there couldn't have been R3 NGUs. Not that they could be added *now* without breaking things, but it's hardly beyond the pale for NGU.

Anyway, hacks hit different. NGUs are there to get BB'd constantly (at some point) for a consistent and achievable cost, whereas hacks are a lot pickier and slow down so quickly I can't imagine BBing any of them for very long even way later on. Those milestone bonuses would be massive if you were picking up levels at 50 per second. But maybe you do eventually get to that point.

Hacks are capped at couple thousands. You will never bb them.

[G-$u$]

Originally posted by Hypertext Eye:

The game is feature complete. There will be no more content updates, only bug fixes.

how about challenge rewards though? still some missing saying "will be added over time", which probably will never happen.


saying that lets face the facts: there wont be any major updates or changes. sad for R3 as its sitting around useless but at the same time it gives some feeling of accomplishment and finishing the game of not having to use it anymore.

[kevinshow]

Yea I was hoping for some Evil rewards for doing the Laser Challenges. Even if it's another multiplier for augments, that would have been just as cool...oh wait, I guess devccoon's statement is true!

"I wish 4G did this because it's cool"