Buying more than one blessing handicaps your reputation progression.

[magic saffron]

Considering that :

• You gain reputation at a rate of 1 rep per 10 coins held at the end of your run (not "Obtained", but "Held", ie coins you spend midrun are not counted here)
• You gain reputation at a rate of 15 rep per 1 blessing bought.
• The first blessing costs 150 coins by default, and each purchase increases the cost by 50 coins.

This means that you are effectively losing rep any time you buy your second blessing onward. This encourages players (especially veteran players who just want to get to later adventure ranks) to stop engaging with the blessing system altogether.

Repros :

1. Start an adventure run.
2. For simplest repros, buy a blessing and die, while noting how many coins you had.
3. Notice your coins + blessings rep gain = (coins held/10) + (blessings bought*15).
4. Start a second adventure run.
5. Buy your first blessing.
6. Buy your second blessing and Observe it is more expensive than the first.
7. For simplest repros, die midrun and note your remaining coins.
8. Repeat step 3.
9. Notice you lost 5 rep from buying a second blessing.
10. Notice this becomes an increasingly worse deal the more blessings you would buy in a single run.

Some more stats :

• Buying 1 Blessing = 15 rep vs 15 rep from gold
• Buying 2 Blessings = 30 rep vs 35 rep from gold
• Buying 3 Blessings = 45 rep vs 60 rep from gold
• Buying 4 Blessings = 60 rep vs 90 rep from gold
• Buying 5 Blessings = 75 rep vs 125 rep from gold
• Buying 6 blessings = 90 rep vs 165 rep from gold

[thin bay]

You are absolutely right in what you say. I don't see how that's a bug though? 😅
It's just the game rewarding you for beating the harder challenge (not spending your coins) from how I see it.
Also keep in mind that once you hit max rank the reputation does not matter anymore (as you cannot get demoted).

Or am I missing something here?

[magic saffron]

Working in games development, I was taught that a bug can be defined as anything that's not intentional in the game.

It's just the game rewarding you for beating the harder challenge (not spending your coins) from how I see it.

If that was the intention, the game wouldn't prevent you from going up more than one rank per run when you perform well enough for that.

Also, any dev team will want testers to challenge what they (the devs) perceive as faulty or not. Maybe something the dev thought was objectively a good idea is actually not that great, and they'll want to know the opposing opinion. It's why professional testers are called "Quality Assurance". They're here to assure the quality of a game/product, not just report objective bugs. If the dev looks at it and still stands their ground that this is as designed, or not worth fixing for whatever reason, then it becomes an invalid report.

But past that, it doesn't make sense that the game punishes you from engaging with a central mechanic until you hit max rank.

[thin bay]

Oh yea, I by no means meant that you shouldn't talk about that, I just thought #1023980474604994800 would be a more fitting place for it 😅

[magic saffron]

Possibly. Personally, I feel like "feedback-and-ideas" is more appropriate for general "reviews" of either the game or aspects of the game, as well as brand new content/mechanic ideas for things that aren't implemented. As opposed to me saying "this looks like an oversight and feels bad", which is closer along the lines of a bug to me.

I can go and post it in feedback and ideas too though, if that doesn't amount to spamming 😛

[thin bay]

Eh, feel free to repost it there. I get where you're coming from. To me it just seemed like a clearly intentional thing - but who am I to say if it really was a conscious decision by the devs 🤷‍♂️

[dry hinge]

yeah seems intentional to me as well, but yeah we never know what the devs intention is

I see it as a bonus for not buying as many blessings and making it a bit harder on yourself for more points

[dry hinge]

also probably better like this for newer players as well

will make it so those experienced can buy less blessings to get to harder ranks faster, while newer players have a more slow ascent in ranks so it doesn't feel as punishing

[magic saffron]

I would argue the opposite

Any player can notice this

and less experienced players won't care about climbing at "their speed", they'll just want to climb faster (just like anyone prefers gaining levels faster than slower in games in general) and will not only handicap themselves but miss a core part of the gameplay

Whereas experienced players shouldn't have to skip over a gameplay mechanic that is not only core to the game but core to roguelike games, just to climb faster

And, in any game with a progression system you want players to learn things that will be useful in the endgame, in the game's hardest content. This is teaching players something that is exclusively useful before hitting the endgame, after which players who might have reached the endgame with no or few blessings will know nothing about them