End game / Replayability

[Withermore]

I was thinking while reading some of Kevin's latest ideas and the discussions following, about replayability, progress and the like. I got to thinking about how to make the game feel fresh each time you start a new world, which was Kevin's latest epiphany to remove the Research points and having to research everything a new with each new world, which was a good call in my opinion. But I see a lot of people not liking to lose the sense of progress with their unlocked stuff being gone each new round.

A lot of people, including myself feel that the game as it is right now, is a bit too easy, which is where my idea comes together.

So my suggestion is to have each new world become progressivly harder and unlock more things each time.

Say you survived 50+ days on your world and then died or defeted the boss, etc, then you have the option to go to the next tier of world, where your stomach depletes faster, monsters have more health and do more damage, hounds come around more often, there are new enemies, crops grow slower, you name it.

I think this would make each new world feel rewarding and still challanging despite becoming a veteran at the game.

Of course, the difficulty increase could be a bit subtile, like your first next tier world, your stomach only depletes 25% faster for example. So that you won't have to go from sucking on a bottle of milk to sucking on a bottle of hot sauce.

This, I imagine could go up to a cap of 5 or so, and in the final world there could be a boss. Or a boss on each tier world, I'm not so sure. All of this is pretty much thought up on the spot, so excuse me if It is ridiculous.

But I do believe this would be a good balance between a fresh game, increased difficulty and having a progression in the game.

I'm writing on an iPad so this text might look like crap. Give me your thoughts on it.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Withermore