This isn't the first time this has happened to me - but never so dramatically. I spent almost two hours making food to donate. I used EHSP, did the math (or so I thought) and donated to Lem to cut down on the time - but I was over by one Tasty Pasta.
Instead of getting 2699 (or whatever) favor that I could spend to take over 7 hours off of my skill, I got an emblem. Worth 1000 favor - 2 hours on this skill.
Why must this happen? It punishes players for poor math skills or simple errors in a really, really punitive way. With all the other scaling that happens in the game, would it be too much to ask that emblems scale to represent the favor they're worth or took to get? Or could we have a return slot? Or at least a confirmation warning when you're about to earn an emblem? There has to be SOME kind of simple solution...
Okay, possible problems with scaling - I get Lem up high - 3000 favor for an icon - but I haven't spent any of my previous emblems yet. Are they all worth 3000 now? Disproportionate reward. Same problem can crop up with trading emblems I can get cheaply to other players who have extra Lems.
But.. ARGH! So frustrating and unnecessary, this current system is.
It seems like functional scaling would be the best solution. They could introduce tiers of emblems - bronze emblems are worth 1000 favor, silver 1500 favor, gold 2000 favor when spent. That way, the emblem itself can't be hoarded and spammed just because the player has been dutifully earning new emblems. Glitch metals could be used for the tier names. This could even impact icons, perhaps - 2 gold emblems + 9 bronze emblems = 1 icon. Or not! Keep icons a pain to earn. Makes em worth more (except for their outrageous tithing costs - more on that another day).
Very, very simple math here. And if there are reasonable tiers - like every 500 - that's not a whole heck of a lot to program. It gives players something new to collect, and it rewards them instead of punishing them for donations. Emblems become worth collecting again!
I mean, really, after you get all 11 icons and the emblem-collecting accomplishment, getting an emblem is just a bad idea right now.