Crafting times are tied to experience in this game. And thus to cubits.
I mean, I’m not against people looking for rebalance but, it seems like sometimes people who are really frustrated with one part of the chain forget that changing it has ripples.
This speaks to a whole range of activities in game, earning less experience the more you do them.
Also there are economic solutions to this situation that maybe aren’t fashionable to suggest here but also exist.
I’m just trying to point out that this is not just a minor QoL tweak it’s about how the game is built to balance an entire profession that mainly just looks like a giant timegate to people that aren’t interested in that but feel a great need to do every aspect of every thing.
Crafting feats with their associated coin and experience bonuses are behind this same “time gate” and that’s a major source of income and advancement.
So i mean even though it’s not necessarily what you’re after, you have to be aware that a lot of players and of course the devs see this also is a request for faster access to those cubits and that has to stay part of the equation.
With rock we got the stone crafting xp is halved and the time was not.
Also cubits and experience though, and without changing recipes?
Not necessarily a question for @SolFall personally you have just posted some quotable points.
Absolutely even silly little flash games and phone apps. When upgrading your base one level takes 30 days it’s not hard to see how cash shop time savings are seen as p2w.
I don’t know I don’t have a lot to add right now on “What people want” but, IMO this is a major aspect of game balance.
I disagree. The fact that you started a machine and did not have to actively manage the crafting means you did not add value in the crafting process. You absolutely DID add value by getting the materials in sufficient quantity to make the marble and this took time or coin or both.
I think this works when items are first added but after a time then you get enough players supplying and there is no unfilled demand. In my case I am not sure how reduced crafting hurts the economy. If I want to buy something it exists so how does making the supply contract so that I may not be able to find it do anything but encourage me to make it myself instead?
Then it sounds like they are not useless. They have a value.
The reason I was asking my questions was because I was trying to find out if a new recipe could just allow you to put everything in and get a shop stand and not require the multiple steps. We could just have plinths for the reasons we use them and not as a chain of steps.
Perfect! Thank you. I do think the chaining sucks and needs to either be removed or we need the new content of machine automation to be added. I feel automation would be the nicer way because it brings more things to the game but I can also see how it can be an issue for servers and a variety of things.
If item came out as you craft them (like what happens when you cook ore, etc) would that help some? Or is that really not helpful at all? I think it is a nice QOL no matter what but ultimately doesn’t solve some of the base issues on things being a bit too long and no automation options.
I just realized something… Isnt there a farmable material that speeds up crafting times? Or is it only for cooking in furnaces? Kindling or something, havent farmed inorganics too much. And i accidentally placed a piece of lava on top of my combustion farm and burned it all away…
I have idea how to answer that man.
But I think the fact that there are certain items out there with not enough crafting material sinks isn’t helping with any sort of over supply of those items. Rock is one of them. I think it will be hard to create worthwhile crafting material sinks for that single item that is also worth the time to craft because it’s useful and continues to be a sink for that particular material. Kind of why I think rock could be used in the crafting of ammunition for a weapon that requires ammunition but I’d like that to be something you equip to your character like you would armor so it doesn’t take up inventory space.
If the goal though by @james and the dev team is to, at some point, have so many craftable items with a variety of different crafting times to help bolster the economy by making it so that certain players focus on a category of items over trying to run a generalized shop, then I can understand the need for the crafting times. I am actually hoping that there is some sort of plan in the production pipeline that can deliver us a large amount of craftable items. Something like 50 new items and that’s the content patch. That would be awesome.
Actually I think people just use them as “deco” because they have left overs from making shop stands. So I’d still wager they are useless
I think what is actually happening is players build huge workshops and have multiple machines and still make whatever they want and do not specialize. Since there is no restriction on workshops or machines and with alts and skill sets you can do it all, even shop owners are not forced to specialize. So if it is not going to happen without a fundamental change then is it worth it?
You added value by adding the time taken. The old adage “time is money” is not based on choosing word at random from a dictionary. Witness some of the comments in this very thread in which people state they would gladly exchange something else of value (cubits, real specie) for less time in crafting.
It’s the time it takes to craft things that makes them all the more valuable. Crafting time is a major cost.
If the cost of production of all items is reduced to near zero you’re going to see the economy crash like nothing you’ve witnessed before. It won’t be much of a multi-player game, more like the kind of parallel play games that toddlers indulge in.
Depends. There’s only so many hours in the day. Even those that can play 10+ hours a day only have so much they can do in that time frame. Even if they could do everything and keep a shop filled up, it won’t really matter from a time to effort ratio if the player base isn’t there to support it. That’s a different issue though.
To me, I do believe that if the game has a significant increase in the amount of tools, weapons, blocks, foods, brews, fuels and all kinds of other stuff, then we’re going to see people focus their attention on things that they really want to. Just because someone can do everything on a single account doesn’t mean there will be a significant amount of people at that moment in time that will.
But it’s 100% theoretical.
Ultimately I would agree that if you expand the number of available items enough then even if the crafting times were reduced, players would probably be more willing to buy even the lower and mid-tier items versus what we have now as it seems to be mainly forged tools or special orders.
I want to add a disclaimer before my post:
My wife and I have a moderately sized factory on a dense 5x5 piece of property. Every machine is well powered and we have at least 2 or 3 max crafters between us and at last count, 2.2 million coin. We have no need to spend coin and can make anything we need.
Time doesn’t have value in a game where crafting slots are unlimited. You cannot add value to a final or intermediate good when the process is unrestricted and unlimited.
To demonstrate this point, we are assuming that time is both limited (in that it is both linear and finite) and unlimited (in that you can run an infinite amount of machines in parallel).
Given that, where is value added? Because I collected resources from my storage, clicked mass craft, and watched Avengers End Game? Because I spent skillpoints in a few skills then reset them afterwards? No. Perhaps you add value by simply waiting for time to pass? Everyone does that every second. That does not make the time valuable. Interaction creates value.
Crafting feels like a timegate because it is. There isn’t any way around it. The discussion needs to be framed as “Since crafting is a timegate, how do we fix it?”
Part of how crafting needs to be fixed is addressing the macro-economic effects of the demand-side of the economy. There is far too much supply and not nearly enough demand. There isn’t enough ways to find suppliers either.
and i think that in part has to do with coins right now there are more sinks then there are gains unless you early alt spam. so when people look at the costs of say coils they just determine that its easier to just build it your self rather than farm random mats for a shop to make the coin to then buy the item
i know in early access you could make the coin to buy a few set of gem tools in just under 2 hours now 2 hours may buy 1 forged tool if you are lucky.
and the reason for that is we are getting bigger and badder things that drive up the costs but no coin to supplement that gain
in IRL terms the current cost of living is $10/HR and we are barely making $5
Like my state of Louisiana. Average income is 15k a year, cost of living is something close to 25k a year. We aint making it…
While I would disagree that crafting time is only a time gate and (as others have said) is only there for the reason to slow us down, I do agree that we need stop arguing on the validity of it and instead shift the discussion to this:
If you have crafting and instant delivery is not an option, what would the crafting time and delivery solution be? How should that model look? What is the game play around it, etc?
The more people can provide ideas on how they want the revised crafting game mechanic to be the more chance for us to have it happen. It is through that conversation that change can come – not arguing on why crafting time existed previously.
See my previous post.
quod erat demonstrandum.
For those who don’t follow, ‘$’ is the metric unit for measuring value.
Not sure how accurate this is now, and I’m still looking for a post from James from about a year ago, but here we go.
Edit: As a personal opinion, I’d be perfectly fine with a 50% reduction in crafting times for the higher level items. It gets kind of crazy having to repair my machines twice and wait three days to finish a queue of 30 mass crafts of some items.
They certainly are not adamant on having to have long lengthy craft times. I think they just need more context. Your post certainly shared views and the thread allowed others to provide their input.
I do like something like this because it creates some automation type feel and the ability to “build” a more realistic type system that feels more like powered devices and stuff. It also takes the idea of advanced coils and moves it up one more level in progression feeling. Additionally, it is in line with why many of these systems exist as Ollie (who was the lead game designer) saw the game going toward as Peyago was able to provide above.
As with any system they can change over time as the game holistically matures. So maybe it is time to evaluate how those original designs are now being used and what, if anything, does need to change.
So, maybe a new “spark link” that allows one to connect machines allowing transferance of mats between applicable machines to speed up the crafting processes. IE put rock into crafting table, select the final product you desire, like brick, it crafts it to stone, then transfers to mixer and so long as the mixer has enough mud, ash, and compact clay, it makes brick mixture, and then possibly transfers to a furnace to be cooked.