Honestly I think they should just change it up.
Upgrading your tools increases the amount of X resource you can carry, otherwise there's really not much of a reason for upgrading things like the hoe/sickle. Abstract it by saying since it's sharper/more efficient you can get less of the stuff you have to get rid of by hand so you're just able to carry that much more of X resource, be it 'carried' or in the pack.
Please for the love of god let me actually use a shovel to pick up ten clods instead of 3-5 until late game, without needing a mod.
The change to give them more carry capacity lately already was a compromise we made requiring at least progression, given many in the team (me included) don't think that should be possible at all - we ultimately agreed on that players at least shouldn't be able to pick up that amount of stuff from the start without machinery. Terraforming, often used as a absolutely valid argument for it, is just specifically not supposed to happen that early as of the design intention of the vanilla game. It is one prime example of what should feel really hard to do until you get into later game.
Chances for us to do that are hence currently near-zero. (And then we'd need a mod to revert it, as multiple of the bigger and more economical collaboration focused servers consider this easy-mode and detrimental for the economy that also works off manual labour contracts, including official server White Tiger.)
I think with the progression based compromise and the ability to use a mod for...
Read more