Smooth the Players Progression

I did a few discord messages in holder chat around this, but here is some summary:

Current issues:

1. Key Abilities are needed to progress deep into Playa 5/6+

2. Ability drop is very low.

3. You can get multiple of the same ability dropped, effectively useless-frustrating

4. Can't exit after stage 5, leading to a bottleneck at stage 6, as need higher tier resources mostly dropped on 5/6 to progress past the Sunmetal gear.

5. Upgrade rolls on level up are based on all equipped abilities, not currently unlocked (as per previous Rug Busters).

6. The need/greed/pass is hard to understand.

7. Mining nodes are quite random, and playing with random team mates can lead to getting less.

8. Abilities vanish on ground after 10 seconds.

9. Incentive to create multi-account to #1 use more energy, to get resources. Plus, finish quests again to get the food, and drop to main accounts.

10. Balance between solo/party. I don't know stats on this though.

Suggestions:

1. Link more abilities to quest completions. This guarantees steady progression. When you need to select one of 3 abilities, new players will have no idea what is good, and can regret later when find out they picked a 'worse' option.

2. If the above is implemented, you can keep the ability drop low, BUT ensure you can't get duplicates.

3. Allow users to exit after stage 5.

4. Previous versions had an item (I saw on stream also) that allows the playa to extract with their full bag even if die, and there was also one that allowed players to extract all teams bags. Add a new item which is a small pouch, that can allow the player to extract a single resource (or resource type). Make it worth like 40-75 gold or something. This again will allow players who are getting a bit stuck to slowly get the key pieces, while burning all the low tier resources.

5. Make upgrade rolls only based on your current weapons. Questionable about the first 4 upgrades, as right now you benefit off it, upgrading your first ability.

6. If above not implemented, ensure new players don't keep equipping extra abilities and making it hard on themselves.

7. Re-work the need/greed, or explain it better.

8. Give player specific mining nodes, rather than party wide.

9. Ensure dropped abilities do not vanish, as sometimes people brb between stages.

10. Remove last hit requirement for bulkatron quest, make all that finish it get a kill counted.

11. Lower bomb damage requirement so a decent player can get it in a single run, say 20k. Because bomb is generally weaker, you are 'wasting' a run to some extent, and 'wasting' 2 is a bit too much, as you will struggle to get to the 5/6+ as needed.

12. Lower price of food, so players are burning the resources, sea salt chips are only viable, and are still very over-priced. Players who spin up multi-accounts can keep getting burger/pizza and dropping to main accounts.

13. Ensure party vs solo can roughly represent in similar rewards (loot + mining), and also difficulty, assuming all players are of same skill/gear.
    

    The goal of all of the above is not necessarily to decrease the overall time needed to reach certain points. But to decrease the 'lumpyness' of it. A player who gets a lucky ability early on can accelerate and get far ahead of a player who keeps getting bad or no abilities. These things compound significantly. In addition, playing a full days worth of energy and getting 0 new resources needed for the next set is very discouraging (which seems to happen with the Yoku, stage 5/6 stages).
    
    To confirm, if you want to keep the 'time' as in how many runs or days it takes to get to certain points, you may need to increase prices of gear, but as long as the progression is steady, that is far more motivating.