I stopped playing it at "42.04k years" (Phase 4). I felt like there was too much manual clicking. The story is quite cool so far.
Viewing post in 500 Million Years Button comments
I thought the same thing at the same point, and I wondered why the idle activities were becoming more and more useless. Then I discovered that if I actually went back and finished off the first couple of activities, instead of maintaining proportional spending, then more activities became available, the manual activity shifted from "walk" and became stronger, and the pace of gameplay became reasonable again.
So I don't really think the balance itself needs all that much changing; rather, there needs to be better signposting that completing all 100 levels of the early activities is a thing that should be done when possible.
Thank you for playing, and for taking the time to write this up — it’s a real pleasure to read.
You actually found the intended rhythm exactly: finishing the early activities completely is what unlocks the next ones and turns the manual action into something stronger. Honestly, I think I’ll keep the signposting light on purpose — working out the efficient path for yourself is part of what I wanted the game to be, and you did exactly that. Really glad it clicked for you.
Thanks again for sharing this!
You're welcome. You're right, I did find the intended rhythm eventually, but to be fair, I still don't think the rate of idle insight collection ever became a significant factor beyond that point. The real factor that matters is the fact that investing in the idle activities boosts the strength of the manual activity by extending the time scale. And that's the part that's opaque. I could tell over the course of the first three phases that the time scale was being extended, but I didn't specifically connect that with investing in activities.
The issue, I think, is that the game was never intended to reward idle gameplay in the long run because the original goal is to run out the time, which means the only way to make any significant progress is to use the manual activity. Which means the goal of boosting idle production is at odds with the goal of collecting the advancement items if you don't know that boosting idle production also extends the time scale and therefore also boosts manual production. I thought for a while that the only way to significantly improve manual production was to buy the Awakening boosts. It all makes sense in hindsight, but during phases III and early IV, all I knew was that my manual production was starting to really slow down relative to what I needed, and idle production had fallen completely off. This only improved when I stopped using proportional investing on the idle activities and spent more on the early activities even though it wouldn't give me much of a return on the idle rate increase.
Anyway, I think you're likely to have some percentage of players bounce off the game around that point, just like the person I was originally replying to. Honestly, I had read that comment already and was debating how much longer past that point I would try to go, but fortunately I get stubborn when I'm curious, so I spent rather longer than I care to admit grinding insights to try to get the next Awakening boost to trigger. It never did (in that phase), but it was long enough for me to decide to invest what I'd gathered in the idle activities because it was literally the only other thing available at that point. It's possible that revising the structure of the phases beyond II could shift the balance of currency in order to make it more worthwhile to invest in the idle activities. I don't know exactly how, but something to tilt the balance there just a bit would go a long way I think. But also, at this point, if people read through the comments, they'll find out what I did too, so maybe that's enough.
I had finished two of the X/100 goals early, got some newer goals appearing and went on completing more than half of those. I felt the game was a bit too manual at that point, as you agreed to my observation too. I didn't feel my clicks were more and more useless - Actually, the clicks got more powerful, but the goals seem to be a little bit too far apart than I could have concentrated. Might get back to this later on.