Alts currently beat skillpages in early game efficiency. Your XP scales by your level, so if you start building a new skillpage before hitting lvl 50, your main skillpage now has less points in it, making it less effective in gaining skillpoints while still increasing the XP required for the next level.
I’m not really a game designer, so is there some way to make them more balanced?
I mean realistically this game is supposed to be played with others in mind. So really we aren’t supposed to be able to do it all. Alts are a way around it(as are skill pages but with more restrictions) but people asked for them(begged/pleaded/made their case etc) to get them and now this is what we are left with.
Though with that said it would be nice if when going to a different skill page it started at level 1 and went to 50(tho what takes more XP 1-50 or 50-75). That would make it more in line with different classes/jobs/etc in other games. Which if not actually paying attention or doing your research it’s easy to think boundless works just like those.
Tldr; in short I agree it would be nice to see some balance changes.
And in addition the 15 minute cool down is against skill pages too. I would love to gain levels on one character (for me the speed at level 50 is good), but at least within home beacon the cool down should not be there.
Good news! In your home beacon the cool down IS not there!
I just wish that any beacon of my main and alts in the same settlement as my home beacon would all count as the same thing for this. Many a time I just need to run back and forth to a certain spot before I can switch skillpage…
Please no! Otherwise I would have to create beacons all over the place to switch between a skill set for fast travel and back…
The problem is not with skill sets, alts and switching. The problem is that the current talents have huge problems because they mix different things.
There is no reason why crafting requires 3 skill pages nor is there a reason why crafting talents exclude hunting talents and vice versa. That’s the problem. We can have everything, but it’s balanced by annoyingness. That’s not required. You don’t hunt more efficiently if your hunter would be able to bake bricks… why do these talents come from the same pool?
Perhaps you misunderstood me. I meant that not just the home beacon of my current character has no limits for switching but that within any beacon of the same settlement owned by me and my alts would count the same as being my home beacon.
I have many different beacons even on my main char in the same settlement but have to run back to my workshop to switch skill pages since there is my home beacon even tho I was in a beacon of that char in the same darn settlement as the home beacon…
That would make sense. Free in your home settlement.
Maybe its a side effect of all that brick baking that make it impossible to hunt effectively.
I completely agree with this though. Just allow us to be able to do what we want. The economy will be fine because people pay for the things they don’t want to do once they can afford it.
Yay, thanks for pointing that out. Actually, after writing my post, I thought - did I really test it ? 
The point is I have 3 alts and just one “Beacon” using as workshop for crafting where I want to switch skills. I can’t set this one beacon as home for all alts and that’s likely the issue I misinterpreted. So at the end of the day “I wish I could set any beacon with full access rights as my Home and have no cool down” 
It’s the reason my workshop is on two beacons, my main and my crafter the two characters I switch skill pages on a lot…
Still annoys the heck out of me tho when one of them is a few plots in the other’s beacon and the game tells me I can’t and then move a few spaces and boom, I suddenly can. It’s weird…
I remember that once your skills were kind of based on how much of that activity you had been doing. I wonder why was this abandoned?
This topic comes up every few weeks since it’s arguably the most underdeveloped area of Boundless and creates the most quality-of-life issues for seasoned platers.
I tried to collect as many Character Progression suggestions from the forum as I could find and summarised them in:
Character Progression Suggestions
My hope is that soon character progression will get some attention.
Some nice ideas there 
On the actual balance, I think a quick bandaid would be to discount the skillpage reset token. After you hit lvl 20, if you want to switch professions you have 3 options. New Skillpage, new alt, respec skillpage. Why is (arguably) the worst option the most expensive?
As far as I can tell, it’s about quality of life, and switching skill sets wastes less off your time than returning to the sanctum and starting from wherever your alt left off.
For the least pain, the highest cost 
I have 5 skill pages and now live off skill cleanse points, especially after the faming update. I have to hobble one skill set to sow and harvest, then change it back so I can still do the single task that skill set was setup for.
That annoyance, plus running back into my home beacon every time I want to do something different simply to change again, takes a fair chunk of my game play time. The limitations around character progression are the thing that come up again and again in every hour of play more than anything else.
Edit: That said, I recently wanted to reorder my skill pages. Since you can’t name them, you have to remember the purpose of each one, so I thought I’d reorder them to make it easier to remember… Until I realised it was going to cost 3200 cubits to achieve. I don’t know why I essentially have to go up 6 levels to “afford” the ability to reorganise skill pages, but there you have it
When you start out (until you hit 50)
Make an all around skill page. Once you hit 50+ 25 times (75) you can change things up. Use an alt as second skill page. To make things easier.
Did this my self. And it helped out a lot.
At the start its a pain the slowness of actions like collecting, removing and placing of materials. But if you focus on one character it gets easier to do.
Also your alt should be a full crafter (less points needed) and your main at the start an all around. Make sure main can survive on t5 or t6 (believe atmos protection 3 or 4 not quite sure). And fill in points where you need them.
This is how i did it and you don’t have to. Just a suggestion.
But this is the problem, until you hit lvl 50 with that all-rounder it’s painfully slow. You’re more effective if you specialize. You can do the same thing (mining for example) to get to lvl 50+ much faster than if you want to do everything. This makes alts more viable sub 50, so if you don’t want to shoot yourself in the leg, you get alts. I’m fine with how I’m set up atm but I feel like I was forced in to this by the design balance. So somebody who’d prefer staying on one character while doing multiple things efficiently from the beginning might not feel the same.
Like I said its how i did it and others don’t have to do the same.
Play now mostly with my main as i have 5 different builds on it now but my alts (2) are just for crafting and shop.
But it’s a fact if you spend more time on leveling one character, you gain the points faster.
So if you use multiple alts for multiple different things. You still hit the same problem of not gaining enough points fast enough to make your specialization build.
Till 50+ I occasionally went to t4 or t5
But mostly kept building and chiseling.
Tearing down my base and moving it helped out to but had a full lvl 50 character (yes it was slow) that could do a lot of the basics in the end. And could start specializing in different builds.
My alts still have just one page and just made lvl 50. Main is now over lvl 300.
Again this is how i did it @ the beginning.
But i also think if you are a casual player (not like me).
Build a slow all around main to invest time in. And a crafty alt for all of your crafting.
But thats my point of view
