I discovered recently that everyone has access to everything in Slimefun and noone has to spend XP to unlock stuff like I had to do to begin with. This means that all players no matter how little they have invested in the game, they have full access, taking out the reward element of building and growing their Simefun portfolio.
It appears that previously players were unhappy with the Tome of Knowledge Sharing being available as players could just sell a cheat book with full access. Staff had the option of just disabling the feature or making everything available and chose the latter.
Removing the investment reward means players are more likely to feel non-committal towards activity as they haven’t gained anything. It’s bad games design and Slimefun is more of an endgame function anyway.
It also means those established companies are less likely to get workers to gather and sell in factories to support those who have invested in slimefun setups and new players can instantly compete with these factories. In the old days you had wool farms and we could have had slimefun farms.
It has also added to the devaluation of the cost of Slimefun parts when sold.
Not long ago staff changed the reward from XP farms so people couldn’t make as much money so there’s no reason why the unlocking feature can’t be added back.
Doing this would at least help stabilise the economy and a bit more of a challenge, which HM seems to not provide economically. If we’re worried about difficulty level, remember it doesn’t stop younger players setting up shops.