I realize this is a grab bag thread, but I feel it's an appropriate grab bag that needs to be talked about as a whole in order to grasp the situation ingame.
Issues I'm personally aware of:
-Due to important things requiring all three qualities (curios, mining tools, bearcape bonus), the effective "common" quality in game has been reduced from Q50-60, down to Q20-25. This is significant in the feeling of slowed progress.
-Kilns can no longer take advantage of bonesaw quality to boost output quality (this one really hurts actually because it impacts both tree and metal quality through equipment).
-Wrought iron does not get the % boost or quality loss that made metal spiraling possible.
-Mining tools use the average quality. This effectively renders what used to be Q40-50 in quality (in commonness at this stage of the world) down to Q20-25 for mining effectiveness. With hardness nodes being more common and powerful than in previous worlds this is being felt pretty heavily. Level two and lower is effectively off limits for anything except medium size and up towns.
-Ore quality nodes are incredibly rare (at least on L2) and make this an ineffective avenue for metal quality increase. But you need better quality metal to get deeper to find better nodes.
-Stone quality cannot be found on mountains or at all underground. Smelters don't boost stone Q easily, which matters due to stones being included in some buildings (oven off the top of my head).
-Livestock have become glacial in progress due to needing so many attributes raised. Needing 5-6 attributes to all increase at the same time is really brutal.
-Chickens being hardcapped in quality by fodder, instead of capping their outputs, combined with harsh haven rounding and triple qualities to watch for has made chicken farming far too tense to be enjoyable. And they have other issues that compound this.
-Quality pushing trees and silkworms past their input qualities was possible with a single quality in legacy. Due to the RNG being the same, but 3 qualities now, I don't think this is possible anymore.
-Lack of trade compounds the above effects
Having so many crucial items rely on the average quality feels frustrating. How armor and weapons work is much more satisfying.
The biggest net effect is that metal has a lot of things weighing down its progress. One of my suggestions to help with that would be changing pickaxe from relying on the average to relying on the highest of the three qualities for its effectiveness. The rock ingame is very hard, and if it's kept as an average mining L5 might literally never happen except for one or two villages by endgame.
Bonesaw quality boosting kiln outputs was pretty central to quality raising in old haven, and if that were to be re-introduced I could see a bone axe surving that purpose since split branches get a quality bonus from the tool.
Livestock RNG definitely needs to be looked at. My personal suggestion would be to use breeding as more than a softcap to help curtail the insane amount of RNG required. If breeding were somehow included in the "base stat" RNG was played from, you could take temporary losses in quality knowing that a better breeding value would still be helping your future generations.
Tree/Silk RNG could do with some looking at if pushing them past the inputs is intended.
Smelters influencing stone Q might as well exist at this point, but with newbies having trouble with stones for axes it might be more palatable to implement a stone forageable that is 100% visible at 1exp 10 per, and let that have quality nodes for stone quality changes.
Well there's my take on it after having played with the system. Feel free to discuss, disagree, or make your own suggestions.
