May I point out that I have been playing this game since 2015,
Tournament did not happen untill 2016?
Fire phoenix was introduced in 2019?
This means the game worked just fine for the 4 years before there was a phoenix, tournament existed for 3 years before the phoenix was introduced.
The game will not end, when you cannot feed your pets. there is no thing as too scarce.
btw I did a large sample test about a year ago counting over a thousand of MA cycles and found out there is about 7-8 opportunities per week* to get a pet food in the MA, to me thats not scarce. yes it showed there are bad weeks with 4 opportunities and amazing weeks with 12-15.
But you have to sieze the opportunity and thats where it lack for most people, it requires dedicated logins and pickups during each cycle.
And as Karvest said work towards the end of chapter 14 and unlock timewarp to get a more favorable use of your petfood. while i prefect that wonder earlier in the tech tree (it has a lotmore benefits that pet food use, and you could argue no pet food can ever beat timewarp)
* note: during easter and autumn events the droprate of petfood drops down a lot due to exessive droprates of event related recipes, also since the counting a few more very low chance recipes have been added possibly lowering the pet food drop rate with a little bit so it might be more like 7 opportunities than 8.
There are challenges now that weren't in the game before, which makes your historical argument irrelevant.
Your sample test a year ago is irrelevant if the scarcity of pet food has changed since then.
In game design, a resource can become too scarce if nearly all options for spending are ignored because the resource is too valuable to waste on anything other than a specific use. In a situation this extreme, increasing the supply can lead to more difficult decisions since there is now a disposable supply to spend on things other than a specific use.
Yes, getting more pet food does require dedicated logins and pickups during each cycle, and that's precisely what I'm objecting to. My schedule has changed in a way that I can't do that anymore. I've found workarounds for every other aspect of the game, except that one. Pet food is the one sticking point that makes the game not work for my schedule.
Now, every time I log into the game, I curse it and resent it for requiring that. If I'm feeling that way about the game, that's a problem with the game.
Oh, and timewarp only does so much without a polar bear -- now that I'm down to 2 rounds / day, more levels won't actually do anything for me. Theoretically, I could get it down to 3 rounds in a day, but my schedule doesn't allow for that in practice. I would need to get it down to ~3 hours for a round before it could benefit me any more.
In summary, this one aspect of the game is the only thing that makes the game not particularly viable with my current schedule. Thus, it is a source of resentment for me, and I want the devs to know that. Bad play experiences are relevant.