As a new player I was so thrilled with the artsy look and feel of Glitch. The sound effects, original story, quirky quests involving talking hairballs and a friendly atmosphere all contributed to my initial Glitch Addiction. I love the peaceful/cooperative nature of the game. There are so many things being done right. But as the newness wears off I am feeling like the game (apart from the social aspects, because I love my friends here) has become a bit like a hamster wheel going something like this: Grow, mine and forage items then eat, use or donate items, repeat over and over in different areas wearing different clothes. And if you like a little competition, run a race.
One of the things I think Glitch needs is the element of surprise results. One possible way of achieving this would be repeatable goals/actions/quests that would give us a different end product based upon the ingredients we could choose to add to the mix. The skills of animal kinship, cooking, alchemy and gardening could all be combined to give a higher level player new abilities enabling them to choose the amounts, order and type of ingredients to use in a various experiments. The results of these experiments could be rare and interesting foods/animals/herbs and so on that would have different buffs, patterns, colors etc. I can imagine spending endless hours trying to get that elusive flower or butterfly pattern so that I could sell the seeds/eggs or give them to my friends who could use them as ingredients in their own experiments. I think it would be a good thing that an experiment not be impossible to repeat but also not always predictable so that we don't just end up with more rinse and repeat recipes.
Not having any clue about how these things are programmed into a game, I'm not sure how it would work in Glitch. What are your thoughts about adding surprise and unpredictability as an element in the game?