Matchmaker Gift Balancing (for next year)

The Matchmaker mini-game is a really nice event and I have enjoyed it a lot!

Except for one thing...

Wolves that want Decoration gifts.

TLDR Version; The value of different gift types in the Matchmaker games are currently too unbalanced, and I would like to see some things reworked slightly to make all gift types valuable as well as accessible for the player.

🚩 The Problem 🚩

The difference of value between the different gift types is too big.

Now, don't get me wrong; it isn't an issue that the gifts have different values. It makes sense that some people wolves have a more expensive preference than others. But the range is a bit too much.

For example, take Gemstones/Flowers/Lore items. For me as a player, these feel like "trash items that I have a lot of and have no other use for anyway". You come upon them regularly in Explore. At time of writing this post, I have hundreds of various flowers/gemstones. The only reason I'm not handing out the majority of them for free is the chance that they might have another use some day.

All in all, I feel completely indifferent when giving those away in the mini-games.
No sacrifice is made.

Compare it to Decorations. If I'm lucky, I happened to find something at random that I don't care for, that also wouldn't sell for a good price anyway. But in most cases, I'll be scouring the Trading Center looking for some of the cheapest available decors I can think of, or the ingredients to craft them myself. And so is everyone else. The price ramps up quickly.

I currently have 5 wolves in my "Dating" tab who want (or don't want) Decor.  (I'm-sorry-not-sorry Brad, but your angry face amuses me)  That's 10 pieces a day, just for those. Add the Matchmaker wolves to the mix. Sure, I can send those away, but I might not want to if they got a good match or I just don't have a lot of wolves in my agency.

Giving away decor items doesn't feel good.
It feels like a rather big sacrifice for the same amount of points/lovebugs I'd get for matching any other gift type.

Comparatively to the above, there's the "in between" gift types. Food, Amusement and Herbs. It's all stuff I need myself, some variants are worth a good price, but all in all, it's stuff I can acquire by common gameplay. Herbs can sting a little to give away, but all in all, I feel those three types are balanced fairly among each other. (With exception of one point, which I'll get back to in my first idea).

Giving Food, Amusement or Herbs feels fine.
I give away something that has some value (but not a ton), and get some points/progress in return.

🎯 Goal (Regardless of solution) 🎯

I think the goal should be that all gift types should have some value to the player (so it's not "just trash items"), but they should also be accessible and feel sustainable for the player to continuously give away throughout the month.

But as for getting to that goal, I can think of multiple ideas/solutions... and I can see a big potential for discussing it! Here's hoping this thread can kickstart that conversation? :) If you too feel that the system is too unbalanced, please share all your ideas and theories here - and point out if you see any issues or oversights in someone's ideas!

💡 My Ideas 💡

1) Item Uses = Gift Uses

Your great team of hunters bring home an entire Elk Bull. Yes! Awesome! 20 uses of food!
Or.. you know... just as impressive to Halcyon as that partially-eaten Dead Fish you found. Of course you can say the good boi is just being kind, but it's odd from a gameplay perspective.

Now, you can get around it here by using your Food/Amusement items until there's 1 use left before you use it as a gift. And here's hoping your memory is better than mine and you've never given someone an entire elk...

But Decor items are a bit different. It makes no difference to me whether I equip-and-unequip a Bone Decor to wear down its Uses before I give it away. When its gone, its gone.

I think, that if the "giving a gift" interaction only takes up 1 use of a particular item, Decor gifts will feel a lot less frustrating. A simple full use Bone Decor would go from being worth 1 gift to 5 gifts. Or, you still get some personal value out of your item if you hold on to the last use. Just like you can with Food/Amusement now, where you can use those 19 uses of an elk before giving it away.

This idea does not solve the issue with flowers/gemstones though.

—

2) Flowers/Gemstones = Crafting Reagents for Decor Items

Flowers and gemstones are easy enough to come by, but outside of giving them away as gifts, all they do is fill up your inventory.
So here's a solution that I think would not only solve that, but also help the issue of Decor items being too valuable.

Make some decor items that only use the flowers/gemstones as reagents.

I don't know what the exact ratio should be; but I'm sure the devs have plenty of data and logs to find out how many excess lore items people generally have, compared to how many decor items were handed away for this event. They could find a ratio that would be fair much better than I can guess up anything.

I think that at least one recipe should work with "Any Flower" or "Any Gemstone", rather than a specific flower/gem, in order to not skew the value of the individual variants too much. For example, a generic decor item called "Flower Crown" could be crafted out of combining any of the flowers. Or another decor item, "Pile of Gemstones" could be crafted out of any of the gemstones.

But of course you could have multiple recipes for these items, and it would make sense then to craft something cool all out of Sapphires, or something beautiful out of Phantom Orchids.

Only imagination sets the limit here.

This idea would solve the issue of flowers/gemstones being worth too little, while also making decor items a lot more accessible during the month/during the event. I believe this idea would work either on its own, or in combination with my other idea above.