After playing for a little while, a few things have come to mind that would make the game more enjoyable and a bit more balanced for everyone. I know that everyone does not share the same bias for what they wish to do in the game, so not everyone will think these things are important. Hopefully enough people will that they will be taken seriously when the designers are looking for ways to improve game play.
Gardening. The Seed Bag. For those who are avid gardeners and are constantly wishing to try something new, you may notice that your inventory space is getting smaller and smaller. Harvesting becomes a chore, as you must insure you have room in your bag for the seeds you hope to recapture if you wish to replant a fully matured group. While this can be spread into your bank, shared bank, and attic, it limits the other items you may want to store for the other parts of the game. There are already separate item limits for spell cards, treats, and reagents; and these can also be obtained through multiple methods. Perhaps seeds should follow those models instead of that of normal treasure items. Energy for Mastery Levels. One of the largest drawbacks to gardening is that in order to continue to benefit from gaining rand, and ultimately to continue to gain rank, the ability to raise pets clearly suffers. With the energy being shared between two very different activities, people must either choose between the two activities, or spend a lot of crowns buying energy elixers to be able to both maintain a garden and train a pet. As there are a lot of benefits to prudent pet owners from gardening, particularly the pet treats obtainable, is seems unwise to completely separate the two methods of using this energy. However, perhaps the balance can be better handled by providing some multiple of energy for levels obtained through gardening. This would allow people who want to be serious gardeners to also continue to raise pets at a reasonable, if slower rate. The major drawback is the increased plant products this could bring into the game, which would be offset by the money sink intrinsic to attempting to hatch pets. Stinkweed Friend. While not a high priority, it seems that stinkweeds are left out of all possible plant interactions save being hated by everyone else. Is there not a single plant imaginable that could co-exist with the stinkweed? Many of the other plants are exclusive by group, liked by some but hated by others. Maybe we can find a No-Nose that may thrive on the nitrogen rich atmosphere produced by our lonely weeds? Could a Fog-Horn find its way not to hate these poor flatulant herbs?
Social Friend Request Cooldown. While I have not a lot of problems making friends with me in the course of the game, there is a distrubing pattern I see frequently. While I cannot judge what specifically would make one person request another persion as a friend, I think it is fairly safe to assume that once a person is turned down for friendship, it should basically end the request. Too many times I have gotten an invited friend request that I have turned down, typically for having never had any other interaction with this person, only to immediately get a request from the same person again. I am not sure how many repetitions of requests would be considered harassment, and I don't really want to take the time either to have to report someone when they go to far or to call them out on it in public, with all the other factors that can come into play. I also don't want to ignore these people simply because they asked to be a friend and have poor judgement on what is the polite way to ask. Perhaps if there was a cooldown period of a minute or two before you could get asked again, higher level players would be less unwilling to tread the main areas of Wizard City, where now we lurk in fear of being bombarded with incessant friend requests. Alternately, perhaps getting a decline from the request made would close the friends box, preventing the sender from simply clicking on the request button a second time. Bag Space Limits. Unless you dump or use everything you get immediately, the longer you play the game, the more full your various bag equivalents become. For those who like to decorate and change their houses, this becomes a nightmare of shifting things around to find that look you are trying to build. And many times this becomes horror as they cannot collect items gained in missions and combat because they are still trying to get all the pieces of their dinning room set together. While one solution is the dump house, where all the odds and ends are stored that are swapped out, having a larger attic would make decorating much easier. Of course, this may slow down the continued sale and resale at the bazaar for some items, it would be difficult to anticipate a major change as even items with large individual storage, such as reagents, tend to cycle through quickly. From another perspective, it is something on which many people would be willing to spend crowns, perhaps for different sized storage areas. One could envision everyone getting the basic bank, but being able to buy upgraded versions of it for the characters.
