CRAZY IDEA : Crafting time & solutions

Suggestions
1

Why are there crafting time?

I’ve seen people mention that crafting time are here because we’re playing an MMO.
But is that it, really?
I think not.

“Please come back soon!”

My first example would be to take another typical MMO game such as World of Warcraft, which has had a “mission table” feature for the last 6 years. In itself, that gameplay is nothing more than a Facebook game where you send troops on missions, and get rewards for assigning the right troops to these missions. Once a mission is started, there’s a timer before the mission is completed.

Now that make sense. WoW has a subscription where the devs wants you to keep playing as often as possible, so they make sure you have a reason to log back the next day, ie : getting your reward and sending the next mission (the mission table thing being only one example that game has).

“Pay to have it end quicker!”

I mentioned Facebook games, as I’ve seen cr@ppy mini-games where you can “build a farm” or whatever, and each building takes hours if not days to be finished. But these games have no subscription. However, they often propose you to buy things to instantly end building timers, to speed things up!

Point being?

Well, my point is that it’s a mistake to say Boundless has long crafting time because it’s an MMO. WoW has “timers” on some features not because it’s an MMO, but because it has a subscription!

Boundless doesn’t have a subscription per say (unless you count the Gleam Club), and the only way to cut these crafting time is by having power coils.
As someone who has max power on all his machines, I still find myself having to wait HOURS for some mass crafts.
To me it pretty much makes no sense to have some crafts that still take several hours to finish when you’re at max power. In other building games ( < cough > such as CV < cough >), crafting takes about 10 minutes at worst. What is the benefit of having long crafting time?

Imagine yourself thinking “Hey, I have an idea for something I’d like to build!”
But you realize you don’t have all the blocks you need, so you start to craft, and you quickly end-up with hours of twiddling your thumbs.

Solution 1 - Spray to speed things up!

Taking a bit of inspiration from these Facebook games, what if there was SOMETHING we could craft with high-end materials, like a “Chrono-accelero-spray” (©opyright by GobLabs). Imagine a spray item using the same model as the High-octane cultivator but with some nice shader effects to reflect the high-end components required to make it. You use that spray on a machine which is crafting something, to end the crafting instantly, or to reduce it greatly.
SprayIdea

Solution 2 - Reduce the crafting times!

Why not simply reduce all crafting times accross the board? If it takes 1h, make it 30 minutes. If it takes 5 hours, make it 2h30. THEN you add the power coils, and these get to around 1h15, which is MUCH MORE acceptable.

Solution 3 - New Epic skill!

Why not add a new Epic skill that we can get to reduce the craft times?
Simple and efficient.

Solution 4 - Machine modules!

Here’s an idea that was initially given by @Krollbar and which I modified a bit after being inspired by a comment written by @fidach

:point_up: As this Machine Module suggestion was added later, it’s not featured in the poll options. If you want to vote for it, you can vote for “Something else” and comment about it. :wink:

What do you think?

  • • Spray to speed things up!
  • • Reduce all crafting times by 50%!
  • • Reduce all crafting times to 10 minutes max!
  • • Remove all crafting times, all crafts are instant, mwa-ha-ha!
  • • Add a new Epic skill!
  • • Change nothing! It’s perfect as it is now!
  • • Something else… (leave a comment below!)
  • • Ftaghn! :space_invader:
0 voters
3 Likes
2

No more skills. Not at least till it gets a good rebuild. But that’s a separate topic. I don’t think all crafting times need to be reduced by 50% some are okay as they are. But yes a lot could use some adjustment. So I’d say more of a up to 50% reduced times.

Tho I’d gladly use cubits for insta craft. I’d probably actually play more if that was a possibility. I often find myself spending time looking for something because I don’t want to craft it and just waste my time because I don’t agree with the prices so I don’t buy anything. I then log out because I’m disappointed and watch tv.

3

Maybe make machines more involved? You could do nothing and keep current crafting times if you don’t want to participate, or you could perform advanced maintenance to reduce crafting times.

Dirty Machines - all machines in their current “today” state are dirty. Clean them for 25% reduced crafting time!

Oiled Machines - varying qualities of oil could be applied to machines to buff them with 10-30% reduced crafting time!

Overclocked Machines - I don’t know what the machine version of this is, but perhaps you could overwork them to reduce crafting time by 10% but increase dirtiness and wear by 25%

Power Surge - Increased spark consumption, reduced crafting times, increased wear… maybe this is the same as the one above. Causes machines to visibly move faster and make noise.

Cool Efficiency - Increased crafting times, reduced wear and spark cost. Machines move visibly slower.

Stuff like this so your work shop is more customized.

9 Likes
4

@FireAngelDth
You’re right, I messed up by writting “reduce all crafting by 50%”. Should’ve written “Greatly reduce all crafting times above 1h”

As for spending cubits on instant-craft-tokens, I’d be ok with that myself, but last time I suggested using cubits to buy things like block recipes, it didn’t go so well.

@Krollbar
Some of these sound quite nice, but maybe not all at once. It would be overwhelming, I’m afraid.
The biggest problem is that it would feel like yet ANOTHER maintenance thing if you have to check too often “is this machine still oiled up?”

3 Likes
5

Yeah, not all of them. Maybe one or two. I would run Cool Efficiency on all of my machines.

1 Like
6

More machines, machine modules etc would be nice!
We need to level up our machines and buildings after characters are done :slight_smile:

7

It would be realy cool if we could customize our workshops :smile:

1 Like
8

Lucent coils?

Multipurpose, can be used on any machine in addition to current coils.

Greatly reduces spark/wear/ crafting times.

2 Likes
9

I like these ideas, would allow a max speed workshop and a max efficiency workshop!

2 Likes
10

I also want the option to Autorun my machines. Not making anything, just moving. Maybe for a spark cost?

11

I see people complaining about craft times often enough, but nobody tends explores ‘why’ they aren’t good, beyond that they don’t like. Personally, I think it’s because you can’t do a thing about it other than wait. As such, an alternative suggestion:

I know they made repairs less of a pain now (with linked coils getting repairs), but the doesn’t make repairs any less pointless in general. How about removing machine repair entirely, and using the spanner as a tool for pro-active crafting (leaving crafting as-is for people who just want it as a fire and forget system).

Every tick, there is a % chance that your machine will get a ‘boostable’ buff (and accompanying graphical effect) that means you can use your spanner to boost it in some way. Spanners of different materials can have different effects (refund some sparks, speed up the current job, %chance for extra output, %chance to refund some input, extend furnace fuel etc etc).

As a bonus, you could then shift the bulk of XP gain from away from just ‘completing a recipe’, and instead reward actively participating in crafting. This should result in less people double-dipping XP gain by queueing crafting machines and then grinding another source of XP while it works.

tldr: If crafting was more fun or engaging, people wouldn’t mind the baseline times as much.

1 Like
12

Increase the time effect with coils. I’m not in game but I think after 12 coils there’s minimal effect on crafting times. I would think it would be opposite. This would encourage players to have more coils. This would even help the economy to move more coils.

13

Again with the crafting times even though it a nice post and understand the problem but the fact is (even if and when i have to wait) i would not change anything.

Like i do now i have multiple projects going and like i do most of the time ill go to the next project if i have to wait.
There is always something else i can do instead of waiting till something is done crafting.

When there is a craft that has multiple steps like machined iron (just a example) from ore to finished product. Ill switch character briefly to load from;

  • oven to compactor.
  • compactor to refinery.
  • refinery to workbench.

This takes me all about 2 min max. In the meantime i spent hours on other things with just switching now and that to move stuff around.

Know its easy to say and i also know there can be problems with that way of doing things.

But i can also say materiaal and prioritizing is key. Materials that take longer to craft tent to be the last thing i need for a build. So i start the crafts last when all the rest is basically done or when i go to bed (at least 6 hours I won’t need my machines).

Casual players (probably biting my head of by now😉) can when they need brick for example;

  • go get the clay and start compacting,
    get the rock and make them stones,
    collect mud and ash by the time you are back you can start crafting bricks.
    Do it all over get some more clay to compact.

This works to with other crafts at least most of them.

Further i can only say think about all the materials you need for your build.
Collect/gather those and go get some more as you never have enough.

14

Careful guys. The last time this got messy.

Boundless has crafting times to time-gate cubits.

Yeah but we call these coils and you only have to do it once.

Anyways, the last time a bunch of people pushed for this, it got boiled down to reducing the time and experience on a critical point for builders, who were willing to give up some plots to get blocks faster. Yeah stone crafting.

Hardly anybody remembers that because then the teaching food exploit hit the table and BAM in the end we got reduced experience and no reduction in crafting times at all.

:confused:

2 Likes
15

There is no Problem whit the crafting time.
Place more Maschine and all is ok.
Befor you Go offline you Start the Maschines and when you come back the stuff is reday.

Also i see no Problem

5 Likes
16

You’re purposefully missing the entire point of the spray idea.
Power coils offer a passive crafting time reduction.
The spray idea would be an active effect where the player goes “oh I need this craft to be done right now so I can get back to building as soon as possible!”.
A little < psht > on a machine and there, one craft instantly finished, and a little loss of durability of the spray item.
It’s like, you say we already have coils, but they do something different, so that doesn’t count.

I think the fact that power coils are separated by colors is that they all do different things.
Might I suggest a merge of your idea and @Krollbar 's idea?

Instead of Lucent coils, what if we had “Machine modules”, blocks that we can attach to machines. A machine is 4 blocks by default, but you could add up to 3 Machine modules to it, meaning you could also make a machine physically longer, up to a total of 7 blocks, giving you more freedom when attaching power coils to it.
Then, you could have different Machine modules, all giving a different effect on a machine (I toyed around with the values a bit) :
• Oiled machine module : Crafting time reduced by 5% (that effect would be added or multiplied by the power coils). Inferior effect, somewhat cheap to make, the machine module for the players who can’t afford expensive things.
• Overclocked machine module : Crafting time reduced by 30%, but wear increased by 30%.
• Power surge machine module : Crafting time reduced by 30%, but spark consumption increased by 30%.
• Cooling machine module : Increase crafting times by 30%, wear and spark consumption both reduced by 15%.
And my little own additions :
• Automation machine module : Increase crafting times by 15% but adds 10 more queue space to a machine, allowing a machine to craft more things at once.
• Reinforced machine module : Increase the maximum wear of a machine by 5%.

Then it would all be about finding the right balance, but the point would be to have a way to add more passive effects to a machine, like the power coils, to customize them further.
You could have a machine that crafts things up to 90% faster, but also wears off 90% faster, or consumes 90% more sparks, and the same machine nearby which does the opposite, for the crafts that are supposed to be done while you’re sleeping and speed doesn’t matter.

That, I would love!
I’d be curious to know what devs like @james , @lucadeltodecso or @jesshyland would think of something like that, because that sounds super good to me. :o

2 Likes
17

:arrow_upper_right: This. :arrow_upper_left: And to be honest it really isn’t so bad. I do feel like the plots I have earned have indeed been earned, even if I know I could just buy more, if I had spare money to do so.

My personal opinion but compared to, for example Warframe, the time-gates on Boundless are really not so bad.

And for reference, in Warframe a lot of things have 8h to 24h or longer craft times, and require a massive grind to even begin crafting in many cases. The thing is, in Warframe you can just pay real money to speed those times up to instant or just outright buy many of the same items.

Now let me add, I have been victim to exactly this many times, I’m sure we all have. Sometimes, it is indeed a huge detriment to my enjoyment of building.

So my "Something else… (leave a comment below!)" as an option, would be:

I’d like to OPTIONALLY be able forfeit XP in the same proportion as being able to skip up to x% of something’s crafting time.

For example, say I want to make a mass craft of shop stands. Even with coils that takes some hours, so in the crafting interface, before the item begins crafting, I’d like to be able to press something there that says “Complete x% of the crafting time and forfeit x% XP of the craft”.

If I really want these shop stands, I’ll gladly give up all the XP, or nearly all of it, because I don’t craft shop stands that often.

Re-reading my own post, perhaps my solution on craft time would make sense to apply only to finished products/blocks, rather than any component materials such as bonding agents, metal bars or essence. :thinking:

Now, the biggest issue I can think with this is an economy related one.

“Oh but with the long crafting times you might be motivated to just buy the shop stands. Even if you sacrifice the XP with this instant crafting you’ll bypass the economy.” – someone might say.

Maybe I would be motivated to buy something if there’s a long crafting time; but then again, maybe not. If I’m crafting a building block, I’m likely going to want it in a pretty specific colour. Finding that item for sale, in the tint I want, may take just as long, if not longer, than actually gathering everything and crafting it, depending on what the item in question is.

How many times have you found the tint you want for something, without previously knowing a shop or player that has it? It’s very rare that I have, and the new shop-finding bit in the knowledge is great… But it doesn’t tell you what tints are available at shops, so for builders who are picky about tint like I can be, the shop scanner only serves good purpose if the builder will just craft his own tints.

Posting on the forum is an adequate solution most of the time, but again, is not necessarily any faster than just gathering materials or buying the materials from known material shops and then crafting those stands myself…

18

The same can be said of power coils. You made them yourself or bought them with coins. They’ve been earned.
Every bit of progression has indeed to be earned.
I may have suggested it in the OP, but I’m personally not fond of reducing crafting times all across the board. I’d rather have more passive or active options to reduce crafting time, as long as they’re not too tedious (like having to use a new forged spanner to hit a machine to give it a temporary bonus).

Personally, I think I could totally spare the XP, so yeah, I like that too, as AN OPTION. But to be fair, I think we shouldn’t stop to only this option.

With the Machine modules ideas or the spray idea, I’d say the economy would adapt quickly. People would start crafting and selling machine modules and sprays just like they sell power coils.

1 Like
19

Yes, really.

One of the most valuable things in the game is time. Time to mine, time to hunt, time to gather, and time to craft. The price of all trade goods on the open market is a function of time to create the good (cost) and the desire-based demand for that good. In short, crafting time is one of the prime fundamentals of the in-game economy.

The in-game economy is only due to the game being an MMO. If you took away crafting times, it would no longer be an MMO, just a solo game that people parallel-play on the same servers. So, yes, definitely, crafting time is here because we’re playing an MMO (and vice-versa).

If you really want to play a solo building game without trade, you can just play MagicaVoxel. If you want to play an MMO game with building, the price is crafting time.

20

I won’t deny that crafting time may play a role in the economy, but I’m pretty sure the most important factor is the rarity of components and the difficulty/tediousness to acquire them.
The actual crafting time is already made shorter by power coils, and I highly doubt that prices are highly influenced by crafting times.

When I go buy glue, I don’t think “Ugh, glue takes so long to craft!”.
No. I think “Ugh, I’m out of bones and sap and I really don’t feel like cutting through 10 trees and going on a hunt for that!”.

Crafting time is merely an annoyance that we can already cut down.
I know some solo building games which still have crafting times that can go in the ranges of dozens of minutes. I also know MMOs with trading but pretty much not crafting time (WoW comes to mind, where crafting time never goes further than 10 seconds, and it nonetheless has an healthy economy).

NOW, please, let’s calm down on the things like “if you don’t like that, go play some solo game”, because that doesn’t help anything… :neutral_face:

1 Like