Issues with the Extra Chance

[nvs]

For the most part the rework is excellent. It achieves all the goals it set out to accomplish. After putting in a good number of games, a few issues that need addressing have been recognized:

1. A high slate bonus is not very good. If anything, it feels unrewarding and punishing. Now, a number of players, including myself, have learned to shift from slates to Perfects at a bonus of 3x or 4x. Many players won't come to this conclusion right away, if at all. But this is only a learned behavior to avoid a bugbear. This needs to be addressed.
2. Cold streaks are still possible, albeit much less than before. But sitting at a 5x bonus for Perfects and not getting a Perfect for 2-3 rounds feels awful. Not as bad as getting to a 5x bonus on slates. But still unrewarding.

Approaching the issue with Perfects is the far simpler of the two tasks. Simply increase Perfects at a greater rate than the other qualities. Perhaps even have a bonus that goes above 5x. Problem solved.

However, with slates there is no single target gem. The target is a slate, and that requires both a Normal and a Flawed component. Simply making these pieces more likely won't cut out the possibility of getting nothing but Normal or Flawed pieces and being unable to make the target slate. Most likely a pseudo random approach is needed here. Or perhaps something else.

[nvs]

This should probably be pushed to 1.6.0 as it has the potentially to markedly change balance.

[nvs]

The idea is that everything in Gem should be simple. Presently, Extra Chance is not as simple as it used to be. It won't be that simple, simply due to some of the nuances that have been introduced in the rework. However, it could be a lot simpler.

Some potential ideas for how to further change Extra Chance:

• Keep it active so long as there is a bonus. This would help out those who get it to a high bonus, by letting them spend gold elsewhere and have it decay naturally. This would mean that gold would not need to be spend to keep it active every round.
• Let the bonus grow even when switching to a different target. This simplifies things. Spending gold makes the bonus go up. That is easy to grok.
• Rather than clearing the bonus entirely when hitting a target, simply decrease by some set amount. This would not punish those that are unlucky and reach a high bonus level quite as heavily.
• Have the bonus start at 1x and increase to a maximum value of 10x. This gives more freedom in how to adjust the numbers. And if anyone does reach 10x, they should honestly be given a prize. Assuming, of course, that the numbers aren't entirely asinine.

[nvs]

Only the topic of high bonuses feeling subpar will be addressed in 1.6, for now. That may change after some testing, however.