[BUG] Exploration is Unbalanced

5 minutes, 100 gems, 4700 points on Northern Plains, which costs 5 credits.
5 minutes, 77 gems, 3546 points on Eko Friendly, which costs 250 credits.
I also did an approximately 7 minute run of both, and got about 6000 points on NP, but about 4000 on EF.

Thanks Weather, this is exactly the kind of feedback I am looking for with regards to Exploration Mode.

I'll be tuning the experience gains for each Exploration Missions early next week - If you do any other trial runs, I'd be curious to see your average score differences.

~Aayrl

I sent out the MAR-BLE and got some more results. It may have gotten a little carried away which is why not all of them are five minutes, which is what I was aiming for for easier comparison.
Arctic Freeze (25 Credits): 4 minutes 38 seconds, 73 gems, 3371 points.
Arctic Freeze (25 Credits): 5 minutes, 84 gems, 3893 points.
Charlie's Chasm (275 Credits): 5 minutes, 28 gems, 1092 points.
Amazon Grind (55 Credits): 5 minutes 20 seconds, 81 gems, 5755 points.
Desert Storm (40 Credits): 5 minutes 45 seconds, 85 gems, 6029 points.
Desert Storm (40 Credits): 5 minutes, 94 gems, 6740 points.

Starting to think the Gem Experience gains could be based on a multiplicative factor between the difficulty of the level (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Professional) and some factor of the amount of credits required to start the mission.. That might balance out the credit / XP factor.

~Aayrl

I've changed Exploration Experience slightly, so it should scale based on the level requirement to start the mission as well as the planet you're exploring (e.g., Eko will yield at least twice as much experience as Earth did.)

I plan to push out Build 41000 tonight, give it a shot over the weekend and let me know if it feels a bit more balanced based on the level.

~Aayrl

41000 build:

Northern Plains: 5:41, 90 gems, 4158 points.
Northern Plains: 5 minutes, 103 gems, 4849 points.
Arctic Freeze: 5:44, 97 gems, 4699 points.
Arctic Freeze: 5 minutes, 81 gems, 3906 points.
Desert Storm: 5 minutes, 69 gems, 5148 points.
Amazon Grind: 5 minutes, 104 gems, 8116 points.
Eko Friendly: 5:18, 60 gems, 6641 points.
Charlie's Chasm: 5 minutes, 33 gems, 3657 points.
Midnight Mountains: 5 minutes, 43 gems, 7174 points.
Mysterious Caves: 5 minutes, 54 gems, 12007 points.

Some missions are better (maybe the credit costs could also be tweaked), but there are still a lot of unbalanced ones.
If you want players to come back to older levels as they level up (rather than abandoning them because newer unlocked ones give more XP), then I recommend having their level affect the amount of XP given.

Thanks for testing them out, Weather. I'd love to see some other folks post their statistics as well so I can generate a rough baseline.

My test runs were each 10 minutes, and I was able to obtain about 80 - 100% of the level's gems within that time constraint. I'm trying to avoid experience gain based on player level simply because it would overshadow the other two game modes in terms of experience grinding. I may add a small multiplicative factor to help boost experience gain on certain Exploration Missions, or provide Daily Tasks which require players to complete the exploration missions on a certain planet, I need to mull it over more.

~Aayrl