Why is this a problem? Why does the artificial time gate have any bearing on XP? You spend time collecting the materials, an active task, which makes sense. To look at this the other way: why is watching paint dry rewarded with XP?
I think you should kill the craft times, kill the XP and put the XP balance back into the gathering reward. Chopping wood for XP is a joke. Other gathering activities, similar but not as bad.
Being in a guild does not mean you do not solo.
not to mention if xp is a issue here why is the crafting table exploit being allowed to be widely used?. that is about 30 levels worth of XP with only 20 min of work put in
Starting with your first humble campfire, will you live a nomadic life in the wild, or found a new settlement with your allies from which to grow your empire?
Boundless is a universe populated by real citizens. How you act defines who you are. Go it alone, or find friends and work together to make something amazing.
Quotes from the website. So the statements reflect that the game can be played solo and while it might take longer should not be made impossible or so bad that players decide not to play at all.
I know we all see the benefit of the reduced crafting times but there is a point here about XP.
XP is tied to time. In a gathering situation I can gather X materials in X amount of time and balance the exp based on the high end and low end.
Crafting XP is likely thought of in the same way. X item takes X time to craft so the XP bonus should be higher since it is clogging up your machine for use.
Removing XP completely from crafting would impact merchants who only get XP from crafting (some do, I know others gather their own supplies). If you want to be a merchant you can buy low, sell high and craft items using items you bought cheaply. Going store to store takes time…but there is no XP for doing what they are doing except the crafting experience.
I also understand that there is a difference between setting up a queue of 30 and then logging off and getting the xp 8 hours latter vs just hitting a macro and auto crafting 30000000 of it now. True you gathered those materials…but even with the workbench process (which btw is not even the best exp to exploit) you need to setup the workbenches and go manually one to the next to get it all setup. Doing so is a lengthy process and I have let my rock build up because I don’t want to do it (even with a macro) because it is a process.
I think a safe (and good) compromise would be:
Make single crafts - either NO EXP or very LOW EXP but instant
Bulk Crafts / Mass Crafts just have their times looked at to see if they could be lowered a little bit but keep their XP
That would give us crafting access now…and keep exp in the game for those who are crafters.
(just my 2 cents)
A lot of what it says on the website is not in the game, some is and some has been recently added. To me the devs vision is not fully realize and you might be able to do such big cities and stuff solo but not in the current game. As EA players I think we can agree on that.
I haven’t kept up with the timers thread but I have to agree some timers are a bit ridiculous. The time stuff takes to set for the forge for example. Definitely some stuff should be looked into like timber masscrafts, no XP for that but rocks you get tons. What’s the reasoning behind it? Some more balancing is always welcome in my opinion.
I am very surprised by this. My own experience has been that even if I ran all non-cheese crafting through one character, the XP gain is absymal. If I’d not switched my characters’ professions several times throughout their journeys, my crafter would be still unable to take all the crafting skills they need.
So I used the stonetabling method~ here and there when I had an abundance of rock for builds around and it sped a few levels by. I am just amazed someone would have a character that was only a crafter, which only gains XP from crafting. Seems masochistic. 
Regardless, I get your point. I think there is something about getting XP from a task that is just UI-clicks though… it doesn’t sit well. I’d rather the crafting time were reduced for new players incoming, and if the XP needs to go then it should be redistributed around other systems. Perhaps a small XP per sale for crafters? Not thought it through, but there should be other ways to do it.
I really don’t see what the problem is though. Unless crafting times only decreased when logged in, I can completely bypass this supposed time:xp mechanism and most people seem to do exactly that. Given that… I don’t see why instant crafting times with XP attached are an issue.
~ It is not an exploit.
Yes this one in particular confused me. I’ve no idea why 1 gem hammer takes an hour and 9 gem hammers also take an hour.
So we’re talking specifically about stone crafting here, I’m guessing. It’s around 4 mins for a mass craft, right?
And as far as I’m aware, this is the only mass xp earner in the game, so just keep this one as is and lower the rest.
I agree it is not an exploit. I also know that if all crafting (including mass) was set to instant and kept EXP, then I would jump 40+ levels in one day.
As it is, with just a few machines you can get ~1 million exp a day just buying cheap items and crafting them. I would hate to see that exp go away to make it all quicker.
Again I argue for no EXP on an instant single craft, and full EXP and time on Bulk / Mass Crafts
Haha sorry that wasn’t aimed at you. I just see it around the forums, people casually dropping that word when it’s legit crafting in the game, known by devs and has been around forever. It irks me so I mentioned it when I smiled using “method” up there.
Change the times, and we can talk. IMO, no craft should be over 30…and that should be extreme cases.
Your average mass craft should be 10-15 minutes.
Yea was thinking instant, 30, 1hour for the base across the board
Then the coils could bring that down drastically to 15 min and 30
I think it should be more like it currently is for stone, just make the first value “0”. Make it 0-7-(10-15) for most crafts. 0-10-30 for the most extreme cases.
Anything more than 30 minutes is too much.
I think it is good that game has crafting times, it works right now good limiter for us because we are able to gather much more faster than in early access time. In some resources time probably shows also in price.
Many crafting processes can be speed up by having multiple items and/or using coils. Might not help much new players so maybe some lower level crafting recipes could be set half input, output and time.
There could be some sort of blitz/active crafting (hand crafting on machine) . It could for example work parallel with machine that is working on something else but it should have some penalties like material costs, no xp and/or some sort of macro check mini game.
If we rebalance the crafting XP and crafting timers does everyone promise not to scream NERF at us for months afterwards?
@James. They 100% will. They will come out of the woodwork and the reviews will show up on steam.
I believe the only relevant question is: is this worth it to improve the new player experience?
It most certainly is. Assuming XP is mapped directly to time spent on a crafting job, rebalancing so that the mass crafts are faster and the single crafts are instant, thus reducing xp from crafting, wouldn’t be a negative.
To note: “balance” was a dirty word in Minecraft. You would have egotistical mod makers complaining about “balance” and “making them game too easy” all the time. Balance for the sake of difficulty and frustration is not necessary. Making iron to ingots to plates to scales to a plate to a breastplate is not fun - and many games think “realistic” is balance. Realistic and balance are not the same thing, as I’m sure you are aware. Instead, balance should be a challenge to overcome, then once overcome it stops being a challenge. Otherwise it’s a persistent inconvenience.
I don’t see any reason to change the crafting xp @james. People wouldn’t be able to do anything they can’t do right now when they go to bed.
IMO, the crafting xp represents the time required to gather resources, not the time it takes to let a machine wirrrr away.
In summary, just change the times, not the xp.
Can the XP lost be redistributed somehow? If not, expect screams.
Also, you are asking a LOT of MMO players. 