I am going to be releasing an early access game soon and need help balancing it. To learn more about this let me know I have a Guilded server I can send an invite to you.
Some of my main questions are math / time invested formulas. For example if I have a level system and I get exp from crafting, and quest, whats a good way to balance this? I don’t like the instant gratifcation that is in many simulators. I want it to be some what easy the first few levels then scales well and takes effort to grind later. Just trying to think of some ideas on how people accomplish this.
The shape of the xp/level curve is less important than there being reachable goals spaced nicely across the progression. You can assume players that have made it to level 90 are going to be willing to wait a lot longer for their next reward than brand new players. Avoid hitting new players with too many barriers, don’t let them take quests that can’t possibly do yet, don’t put rewards that are way out of reach in the starting area.
Its extremely important that you present the player with most of the possibilities of your game up front. Introduce more complex features later, so the player has more time between doing things to consider what those features could be used for.