For decades and centuries, people have enjoyed games that combine strategy/skill with chance. Almost all games that include cards or dice have thrived on this combination, and there is a reason it works. It is exciting and people want to play again - because she feels she can influence outcome - but one never knows for sure. (see: results of Skinner Boxes)
I used to play Faunasphere (as did many of your beta testers) and I've missed it terribly. Glitch is the first game that has come even close to filling that gap for me, and it is ALMOST a perfect fit. For me, the only thing that is missing is the strategy/chance combination. Please consider finding a way to add this exciting and fun element to Glitch. Some people will enjoy it. Others will not, which is perfectly fine and should not cause them any harm in the game. (like that hideous thing where one jumps between rocks that are trying to kill you. I hate that. It stresses me out, so I just don't do it. Why? Because I am responsible for my own happiness - but I digress)
In FS this element of the game caused many of us to enjoy playing longer (both on any given night and over months and months). I do not suggest that you duplicate FaunaSphere activities in order to include the strategy/chance combo. But there must be a way you could add it somewhere. I realize one sometimes gets "surprises" when donating to a shrine, or petting a tree - but here is no skill involved, so it is not all that interesting to "try again".
Just in case you are interested - here's how they did it in FS:
There we "bred" fauna - what you got when you hatched something. The species, color and pattern of the resulting critter was determined both by the ancestors' genes AND random computer-y chance. It became clear that you could influence this by planning which parents would foster the next generation. Some species, colors and patterns were non-dominant and harder to get, and had to be more strongly anchored in the genes in more generations (these, of course, were the more desirable ones). So you could increase your chances of getting what you wanted with work and strategy, but it was still chance. Each hatch was like opening a wrapped package (see traditional, western gift giving traditions). You never knew for sure what you would get and it was fun to try as many times as you liked to get the result you wanted.
There were also community projects to which we contributed. There were two ways to get rewards from these. The rewards were usually limited edition decorations for our home spheres that we could keep, gift or sell. There were static rewards for any given project. You could contribute x amount for the 3rd tier reward, y amount additional for the 2nd tier, etc. BUT you also earned raffle tickets based on the amount of your donation - and three really groovy gifts were raffled when the project was complete. These were some of the most prized decorative items in the game - but again they were totally unnecessary to the play of the game. No one had to participate.
I posted a simpler version of this idea on the FS Refugees group. Several responded (unlike here, they all seemed to be fairly level-headed) and it was suggested that I pass it to the Devs as an idea.
ETDumbdown for a knee-jerk reactor