What the game needs is more, “Moving forward, let’s do it this way,” thinking than “Hmm… let’s nerf this, add more pointless ingredients to that, more grind to this, and less power to that one thing in particular nobody is complaining about.”
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Thanks for saying it in a nice way. There was another poster that said my same thoughts in a nice way too. I’m a very blunt and straight to the point kind of person and often get mistaken for being a jerk. So I tend to avoid commenting on threads like these
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You caught me on a good day lol 
I get very passionate about my video games - they were my babysitters growing up 30 years ago.
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I’m in my 30s and they are still my babysitter lol keeps my from spending money on stupid stuff(ie drinks at the bar)
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If anyone remembered the reaction people had with Pure Boon Compound and how a lot of folks echoed the opinion that recipes don’t need to have stuff added to them just to give stuff a use. It decreased the amount of fun you have. Although that and this aren’t very closely related in subject matter, the opinion is still the same.
Whether or not refined gem blocks need rocks or not is pretty irrelevant. What I think really should be asked is what other really cool recipes can we come up from scratch to introduce new uses for existing crafting materials. There for always making sure there is some sort of demand for them in the economy and by players in general.
Adding rocks to refined gem recipes actually does absolutely nothing for this game in adding more elements of fun. You’re just using materials you already get from mining and adding them to a recipe for no reason.
Why not have it used with iron and copper to start creating different metal items. How about that being something that is commonly used in construction: steel. I know Copper isn’t used in real life to create steel but this is a video game. We could add other metal resources too, along with gems, to add in a lot of other recipes.
Aside from this post kind of being in multiple places in thought, the point I am trying to make is: suggest more recipes to make more items with and don’t suggest to make existing recipes harder for no reason.
Just some thoughts. 
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There are some good ideas in here and I don’t think OP’s idea deserves to be dismissed based on it being a nerf. Of course it would be ideal to find alternative solutions to not alienate players, but when it comes to long term health of the game, it’s worth considering simple nerfs over inaction and delays due to complexity of alternatives.
I don’t think “eating stone pies” as I like to call it feels right. As soon as I started doing it, I felt kind of guilty, like I found a loophole. A way around actually playing the game to level up. As others point out, it’s not particularly fun to do either. Which I don’t think is a good reason for it being considered “fine”. If something is easy but boring and can be easily automated, it’s a good indicator that it’s not fun, possibly broken and might need changes (also hello, Regeneration Bombs, but let’s not get off-topic). But if it’s also efficient, of course people will do it regardless.
Did I want to exploit the fact that rock crafting in massive quantities gives a lot of EXP and logging off with an active Teaching Pie buff will not deplete it while offline? No. Did I want to level an alt quickly so I could finally get into forging? Yes. Did I want to develop carpal tunnel or make myself uncomfortable by pressing the same button hundreds of times? No. So, AutoHotkey it was. And I’m not too happy about that. Maybe Shift-clicking the craft button should just automatically fill the queue as far as it can, assuming we really are okay with this whole thing?
Anyway, that’s not even what I came here to post about, because I was thinking of a different approach, one that addresses another issue I’ve had with the game:
Mining is the aspect of the game I probably enjoy the least and I’m certain I’m not the only one, but it’s also one of the most important ones for progression. The reason for this is that it is also very repetitive, not excruciatingly so, but definitely has a much more mind-numbing quality to it than the other aspects of the game.
So, what if we had… more caves? Actual spelunking and exploration instead of mindlessly eating through rocks? At least for those of us that prefer doing that as an alternative. When I first went to Houchus I to look for Sapphires and realized that there are these really long caves and a lot of surface to find resources on, was probably when I enjoyed getting gems the most since I started playing the game. Of course they were plentiful too which helps, but it was a really nice change from the standard AoE mining.
It’s just an idea, but I feel like with more caves to explore and thus the option to sacrifice excess rocks for less forged tool durability wasted, there also wouldn’t be this much temptation to gobble up those stone pies.
Yep that might work! Thanks for offering, appreciated.
It definitely felt like there were more/more productive caves in the old EA worlds and I agree it’s fun to spelunk. I used to do a mix of tunnelling and spelunking and enjoyed it more.
Before I had access to AoE tools I always spelunked for my resources. I would dig in hopes of hitting that massive cave system and then explore every inch of it. I was completely against AoE tools at that time. Grapples were used. It was very fun.
When i got to t5 and t6 planets I realized the caverns aren’t as readily available, at least not in the gem and alloy hotspots I’ve been digging. So I started to see the necessity of AoE in that environment.
Whether you’re using a natural cave or a man made cave, the outcome is the same. You can scan many blocks at once to find resources. I view that as a necessity for player satisfaction. But in the AoE case you also pull in thousands of rock as a side effect. The only thing stopping players from taking that rock home is backpack space and we can assume the rock that makes it back to civilization is getting turned into xp by someone.
I would have to look at xp progression in depth, same as I did for AoE, to determine if the devs have already accounted for this extra xp. If so, it’s possible we are playing the game correctly and not exploiting, and conveniences like “click mass craft 30x” change from symptoms to QoL improvements in my book.
I remain bearish because even if the rock were justified by a sharp uptick in xp needed, what was the plan for non-miners to climb that curve? And why can the same rock so easily be applied to early level xp on alts?
I am also worried that guilds will create a third issue since the same rock pie technique will now net both xp and guild endeavor. The devs are trying to limit endeavor to primary guild, but it’s an easy constraint to get around with rock+pie. I have already mentioned in that thread that they should cap endeavor that can be banked until they’ve had time to observe. That’s a forward facing nerf.
If I had another backward facing nerf to share, and I do because it’s the morning and this is when I get myself into the most trouble, it would be to bring up the idea of reworking teaching food to be based on a set amount of xp rather than a time limit. Like a teaching pie is good for 10000 bonus xp on your next 10000 earned (e.g.) which closes the scaling on the exploit if you log out with rocks in the tables. It also turns teaching pies into a more direct salve for death penalty. And should be good for crafter’s because they can sell more pies.
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Acctually it does the opposite. If teaching pies grant less xp they are less useful for clearing death penalty. The manner, time or fixed amount, in which they grant xp has no interaction with clearing death penalty.
What you’re proposing is a blanket nerf to teaching pies except for low xp earners who can’t earn your new x withing the current 30 minute timer. But that’s not the group buying pie.
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Honestly I like the pie being for a set amount of xp personally. I’ll give a few reasons. When you consume a pie currently you are locked in for a set amount of time. 30 minutes base. That means you are technically wasting any time that you aren’t doing maximum xp gain per second while having the buff. The second bit is that it doesn’t actively do anything about death penalty. You can have both up at the same time but the death penalty will still be there if you don’t Do enough xp gaining while the pie (any xp food really) is active. So the punishment feels persistent while the buff/reward feels fleeting. Third is because once you find an xp heavy activity you can begin gaming the system. Learning the exact combos to make maximum xp per second from each pie and grow far more rapidly using this buildup.
I would like to see xp food be double xp across the board, but for a set amount of xp.
2000, 10000, 50000, 100000. Something along those scales. So you can get some xp food and just food your death debuff away. It still takes the xp from you but you can counter it by being prepared etc. And this closes any insane amounts of bonus xp earned by gaming. But still means you can get bonus xp equal to half a level at 50+ which is alot. On top of that It would be interesting to see the buff stack to a top limit. About to do alot of xp gaining? Eat 2 or 3 pies to gain a big backlog. This enables you to still rapidly xp up but at a greater cost so lowers the amount of times you can do this etc. But those are just ideas… And I’m on cold medicine so not sure how sensible I am atm 
Loving the discussion and idea though. Interesting stuff.
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I mean the manner of explaining the pies is now equivalent to death penalty. One is a negative fixed amount tied to your xp earn rate and the other is a positive.
Please give ppl the benefit of the doubt, text is a difficult medium to communicate intention. And I will do the same for you.
Edit: for politeness
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Please don’t add to the grind. We need to attract more players, and this only increases the grind. I help noobs get gems and show them how to level processing the rock, then using it to build to gain xp that way as well. Using that rock to process gems adds to the grind. I’m onboard for new types of gem blocks from using rock… but stop nerfing!!
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Currently pies do that without your nerf. Death penalty removes. pies add. Your proposal doesn’t change that. You spun it as an upside. I’m pointing out that there is no upside except in one extreme edge case.
Edit after reading your original post:
You asked for feed back. Feedback that disagrees with you is not a personal attack.
You’re thinking of it only mathematically. There is an advantage to having only one game mechanic.
Death penalty halves your xp for 10,000 xp.
Teaching pies give you double xp for 30 minutes.
vs
Death penalty halves your xp for 10,000 xp.
Teaching pies double your xp for 10,000 xp.
This system is simpler for players to understand because they can see the mirror behavior between the two concepts. Even if they work mathematically the same it is often an upside to have concepts simplified like this. The idea here is reducing cognitive load on the player.
You don’t have to agree with that, but at least then you’re actually addressing the point I made and not making one up about my ego.
I just don’t want any more nerfs. The game can’t handle more war vs. the players.
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That being said, if exp pies were like a 100,000xp gas tank, similar to a reverse Death Penalty I would not consider that to be a nerf. It would make pies more useful.
But only if it didn’t “waste” a food buff slot.
Buffs that don’t directly make your character more powerful should stack regardless of where they came from.
Nobody is gonna see me mining and say, “No fair! He hits rocks so much harder with that exp buff!”
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You’re mechanic doesn’t simplify things for players. It has the opposite effect. It complicates things in more than one way.
Currently all foods work the same. They offer an effect over a time period. You are proposing increasing congnitive load on players by taking a system with uniform behavior and changing it so some items work one way and some work the other way.
You want to unite two disparate mechanics while muddying identical mechanics.
Also your proposed mechanics increases cognative load because it’s confusing. Does the food effect end after I’ve generated x/2 xp because it’s been doubled to x or after I’ve earned x xp and doubled it to 2x xp. It’s much more cognative load to explain that in a tool tip than to explain 30 minutes.
If you want to nerf xp gain then simply tell us why you feel players earn xp too fast. A much simpler solution is to just reduce xp across the board by a factor. That would be the way to do it with the least cognative load to players.
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Good point! We could probably get into the weeds over this a little more because I don’t think it’s a difficult concept to convey in a tooltip, but I agree the devs would have to be okay with making food that doesn’t work on a timer which is not ideal unless they’ve already been sitting on ideas that will head in that direction anyway. The tooltip change itself would be something like:
XP gain is increased by 100% until you earn a bonus of 10,000 XP
vs what we have now:
XP gain is increased by 100% for 30 minutes
I don’t really care how fast players earn XP, I do care that cubits are awarded during every level up and in Boundless you can level up by going afk with the most common material in the game. One player posted an image of them queuing up enough rocks to earn over $40 in cubits and they are currently buying a million rocks to do it again. I am worried about uncapped cubit gain like this for two reasons.
- If there’s a way to circumvent real money spending players will do it. It doesn’t even matter how painful the technique is, and this one isn’t any more painful than an idle game. So I’m worried about the game’s financial success as this technique spreads. Especially if the devs were expecting to make money from cubits. Right now they are putting outfits in the store presumably to make money but really these things could just say “Craft for 100,000 rocks”. Would you rather pay $12 or go grab 100k rocks by accident when mining gems? Or buy them from players at a few rocks per coin?
- One of the things you can buy with the cubits is another character which undermines the skill point system.
One thing to remember in making the game more complicated. It is aimed at ages from 7 up. You need to have a game that does not require complex spreadsheets in order to progress. Not saying that most seven year olds could not out play me in most games, but i think more complex can limit the attractiveness of a game to various audiences.
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