Insights are useless, here's how to improve them. Part 1: Key Insight

[ChickenGaming]

Insights are useless as of right now. But I have ways to improve it.

The first one: Key Insight.
Key Insights give you access to more key rich locations on the map.
Now this might sound cool and all, but the key bonus tend to be around 3-5% in my playthroughs which isn’t that worth it for the price you get it from, even if a Shady Dealer happens to bring it up.
Plus you need to travel to said location, which may cost you Fuel, so the investment may not be that worth it overall, unless you use the system against itself
(which I guess is what most people do, but that ain’t fun to be honest)

This could be far more interesting, when combined with another special wave type: Key Rush.

Here’s what I’m planning:
Key Rush should be a set of levels that appear randomly across the entire map, with more chance of appearing in explored locations (said set of random levels refresh once per week, when it does, the locations change).
With Key Insight you can tell where those are in the map (hinted using a yellow key icon).

Since you get a ton of keys from Key Rush Levels, it would also be fair to raise the price of the new Key Insight up if you choose to do it this way.
To introduce this awesome new mechanic, on tier 30? players will get a free 1 day use of the new Key Insight so they could take it for a spin, and see why exactly does the key amount for this item is that high.
(Those who are already beyond tier 30? gets + 1 day on their current Key Insight if they have it.)

(30? since that number could be changed)

Also, on the topic of keys, I don’t think they should spawn on random chickens at random locations like in the other games since this could be abused to get tons of keys if you’re patient enough - and if this is the only way to get a lot of keys, then it’s not gonna be fun for most players, especially if they didn’t know they had to do this to begin with, like, waiting around all day to get keys just isn’t that exciting.

[GuestUniverse]

@ChickenGaming

Key Rush should be a set of levels that appear in random, explored locations across the entire map.
(said set of random levels refresh once per week, when it does, the locations change)
With Key Insight you can tell where those are in the map (hinted using a yellow key icon).

Key Rush changes have been suggested by a lot of players, but iA is facing problems trying to allow missions to be automatically generated and randomly change locations once in a while. Hopefully iA can change it to make Key Rush more impactful.

A Key Rush detector, I’m not sure if I want it. It is extremely rare and should be a suprise to players that manage to discover it. For normal players, they are not dedicated enough and not lucky enough so they shouldn’t discover it that easily, and pretend that they never know this exists unless they check online. I said this probably because I get a lot of keys from other missions and Key Rush does not impact me that much, many may disagree with this.

@ChickenGaming

Also, on the topic of keys, I don’t think they should spawn on random chickens at random locations like in the other games since this could be abused to get tons of keys if you’re patient enough - and if this is the only way to get a lot of keys, then it’s not gonna be fun for most players, especially if they didn’t know they had to do this to begin with, like, waiting around all day to get keys just isn’t that exciting.

You can’t do this anymore, if you wait for chickens to shine the rate will diminish over time. Getting a lot of keys quickly isn’t exciting, but at least you don’t just wait around if you play missions that automatically provide keys, they are much more effective.

[ChickenGaming]

The Key Insight only shows planets that have a Key Rush mission in an explored location, so if you’re exploring new locations, the suprise element is still a thing.
Also, didn’t know about that last part (diminishing thing),
but still, doing the missions that give you keys at the end of each level is good for keys, but it’s still not fun since that gets repetitive and boring real fast.

[PlasmaX]

Overpowered.

[ChickenGaming]

Not if it’s balanced properly. Such is the case of everything, really.

[MaybeOrandzaIdk]

@GuestUniverse

A Key Rush detector, I’m not sure if I want it. It is extremely rare and should be a suprise to players that manage to discover it.

This kinda depends. If the changes mentioned in the post are implemented to key rushes, the key rush detector would be nice because no one wants to keep going back to already-explored planets. It’s too costly, which is an issue on its own, the game gives more keys than you need to use for exploring for the first time but then if you ever want to revisit anything, it becomes very costly depending on how many things you’re going to explore. On the other hand, if the insight change is implemented without changing key rush missions, I don’t think it’s that useful.
Anyways I’m honestly not sure how to feel about these suggestions to be honest. Using an insight sort of ruins the rarity of key rushes. I wish that exploration was revamped instead to encourage finding them but I don’t have any ideas how to go about doing that sadly.

[ChickenGaming]

If you’re lucky, you could also stumble upon Key Rush Levels in new planets (which isn’t displayed by the new Key Insight). So that feature still exist.
It’s also exclusively avaliable for a limited time so you can’t really share its location to other players if you know where it is. (it won’t be avaliable for that long)

PS: I edited the post so the Key Rush Levels appear randomly across the entire map, with a higher chance that it’ll be in explored locations.
So the more locations you explore, the more chance a Key Rush Level (or more) will be avaliable to you (which you can see via the new Key Insight), which somewhat encourages galaxy exploration, since those who explored alot has more Key Rush Levels found when a Key Insight is enabled.