I've now had a bit more of a chance to play the spire, and the new negotiate option has allowed me to get much further that I could previously. I used to struggle to get half way through map 1, now I'm well into map 2. For context, I am a chapter 4 player. These are my impressions of it in its current form, which seems to be reasonably complete:
- The concept itself is fine, and the mini-games are fun, but some significant balancing changes are needed.
- Both the negotiation and the fighting are far too expensive. They should be more similar to the tournament in costs and difficulty.
- Once you're on to the really difficult negotiations where it's impossible to logic out the answer and you're instead still guessing several things on the third turn, it's very expensive because it relies on too much luck to get right, so most such chests require several attempts to get past. These should allow more than 3 turns. Alternatively, if negotiation was changed so that if you offer a spirit something they don't want they just hand it back rather than keep it, then this would significantly reduce the cost of negotiating, in which case multiple attempts to get past a chest would not be unreasonably expensive.
- The prizes do not justify the expenses or effort. Some of the offerings are fairly good, but the probability of actually getting them is far too small, while the probability of getting useless prizes is in some cases so phenomenally high as to be not worthwhile even trying for a chest.
- Coin and supply instants are still useless. If these are going to be present they should at least only have a tiny chance of being won, e.g. 10%. Not 65%. Even when I end up spending lots of coins or supplies on the spire I still don't need instants, as I can get these from other sources readily enough. I just visit a few of the inactive neighbours that I don't normally bother to visit, or do some of the cycling quests, or put my workshops on shorter productions.
- Gate timers are still far too time consuming. Either they should be shorter, or the way they're timed should be changed, such as starting the countdown earlier, rather than only when you reach the gate. If their purpose is just to create some delays to stop people bolting through the whole spire at once, then you're already achieving that when people have to take a break to build up goods or similar, and having the gates there as well is just excessive. Perhaps if the gates started their countdown as soon as you passed the previous gate? Or when you start the map?
