In-game crafting timers serve several purposes, and their implementation can vary depending on the game’s design and mechanics. Here are some common reasons why crafting timers are introduced in games:
Resource Management: Crafting timers are often used as a means of resource management within the game. By introducing timers, game developers encourage players to make strategic decisions about what items to craft and when. This adds an element of planning and prioritization to the gameplay.
Monetization: In free-to-play games, crafting timers can be a part of the monetization strategy. Players may be given the option to skip or reduce crafting timers by spending premium in-game currency or real money. This creates a revenue stream for the developers while allowing non-paying players to progress through the game at a slower pace.
Player Engagement: Crafting timers can be used to extend the playtime of a game. By introducing waiting periods, players are encouraged to return to the game after a set amount of time to collect or complete their crafted items. This can help maintain player engagement over a longer period.
Balancing Economy: Timers can be implemented to balance the in-game economy. If items could be crafted instantly, it might lead to an oversupply of certain resources or goods, disrupting the game’s balance. Timers help regulate the flow of items and maintain a more stable in-game economy.
Realism and Immersion: Some game developers implement crafting timers to add a sense of realism and immersion to the game world. In the real world, crafting and manufacturing processes take time, and timers simulate this aspect in the virtual environment.
Preventing Exploits: Crafting timers can also be used to prevent players from exploiting the game mechanics. Without timers, players might be able to rapidly craft and accumulate items, gaining an unfair advantage or disrupting the game’s progression.
It’s important to note that the presence and design of crafting timers can vary widely among different games, and not all games choose to incorporate them. Some players enjoy the added challenge and strategy that timers bring, while others may find them frustrating. Game developers often need to strike a balance that enhances the overall gaming experience for their target audience.
Resource Management: This is a non sequitur. It’s basically saying that “if you don’t manage your resources then you won’t be able to have resources to manage”. Shouldn’t resource management be about the storage and organization of your resources and not some arbitrary “sorry you can’t play the game but we’ve enforced a strict 24h wait period before you can”.
Monetization: Cool, so monetize it like I said. Tie crafting timer reduction into Gleam Club or have it be a paid add-on in addition to Gleam Club that blanket reduces or eliminates crafting timers. I’d pay money for that but the problem is all the people that would cry P2W then.
Player Engagement: This is such a bad argument because it doesn’t extend playtime of the game - it, quite literally, makes you NOT play the game because you don’t have anything to do.
Balancing Economy: I already addressed this above
Realism and Immersion: Yes because what I come to the Oortian universe for as I sling voxels and chisel them into different geometries is immersion and realism.
Preventing Exploits: This is fine during leveling but once max level, there should be some means to get rid of or dramatically reduce crafting timers.
its not weird to me really, we are aware of the crafting timers, and its not like the timers have dissapeared after you return or change overtime. with a big project and also like mine, its a few days of waiting,
I thought it was for balancing reasons too, but nope:
Anything that isn’t me playing (and enjoying) the game is just bad game design in my book.
edit: To clarify: If I want to build, I want to build and not schedule my time around ludicrous crafting times and “do something else” (actual quote from one of the tips, if I recall correctly) while waiting. But that’s just me
I remember seeing a game dev (not sure who it was now) talking about game design and saying that they felt that if a system in a game wasn’t fun then it wasn’t a good system.
You’d be shocked but there are actually a few people in Boundless who post on this forum who will look you dead in the face (virtually) and tell you that crafting times are fun. I’m not joking.
Sure they are, if youre a masochist when it comes to yourself and a sadist towards others. You would get pure enjoyment over the people crying out loud that they need to wait so long.
Im sure those people work with timber. No crafting time there! Muhahahaha
While I only do very humble projects (20x20 base for example) and I do enjoy the planning it takes to maintain a shop inventory of various materials at different production stages (to mitigate the timers thing), it seems not everyone does which is fine.
I can see how timers do influence our choices. If I am in a hurry to catch a hunt or go mine, I will just buy the items and go. Heck I even bought all the marbles I needed for my base because I was too lazy to make them. What I mean to say is: timers do contribute to having an economy. The question becomes whether they’re well-balanced or not.
Yes, yes… where are you going with this?
What do you think if big brain moment we had two recipes, the regular one with a balanced timer and the instant one for those in a hurry?
This instant recipe could be more sparks-intensive as in to “speed up” the process or be recipe-specific materials intensive (to avoid putting too much stress on only sparks) or even it could use a mix of resources (sparks plus some magical oorts [without being tooooo expensive as to negate the benefit])? From the top of my head, maybe like 1 rough oort for every 1 hour worth of crafts? So your 15 mins X 30 crafts could use something like 7 ish rough oorts? Idk.
This keeps the “economy” and planning ahead benefit of timers but gives people in a hurry a choice I think.
100% agreed on the 6th point, if I had instant crafting even as a solo builder, my builds would get explosively huge very quickly, I have started a new strategy of pre plan my build in advance and start crafting the next builds materials while building the current one which allows a streamline at one point before my large beacon expired, I had 400 refineries setup on my personal planet non coiled so I always had machines free granted… the 400 were non coiled and my coiled machines were used only for stuff that needed them or things i needed in small amounts
The crafting timers are a huge time gate in Boundless - wholly necessary in the current system.
There’s a completely obvious reason for this and james flatly 100% denied it when I brought it up.
So ridiculous lol. Ever since his comment about how it was due to a designer’s ‘planning fetish’ and nothing to do with the fact that we would be swimming in cubits I’ve advocated for the removal of the timers.
TBH I don’t think game design was really part of his skillset
To an extent crafting timers might make some people go buy stuff instead of wait for it to cook. I have done that once or twice when I didn’t feel like waiting 3 days to get something crafted. On the other hand, the crafting timers cause me to basically never sell anything I might ever use ever. I just go ahead and craft it into the stuff that takes forever and then sit on it because I don’t want to wait for it to cook later. I’ve got tons of compact coal of all 3 varieties hoarded. I’ve got huge stashes of forging bases, metal alloys, refined rock, refined gems and cooking ingredients. If I could go get stuff when I needed it and use it in a reasonable time period, I would sell a lot of the stuff I collect when I don’t need it. Instead I have massive stockpiles stored in a massive storage that no one gets to use, and I am pretty sure other people do the same. I don’t know if the crafting timers really contribute or hinder the economy.
If people were incentivized to buy stuff, and the stuff is available in the market, in theory you can:
1 Farm the mats
2 Throw them in crafting machines,
3 Buy the finished products else where
4 use for whatever you wanted
5 sell the crafted products when they finished
all you lost is 7.5% to 10% tax in exchange for “instant craft”
Aye and that’s the literal sentence right after he says “It has nothing to do with Cubits”.
People talk about tha 'conomy every time this comes up but anyone who can look back at something as small as making stones out of rocks can immediately imagine what sort of ‘nerfing’ would be needed if the timers were removed from the equation.
Not just something as simple/cheap as rock to stone but all of them? Extracting essence? Extracting Oort? Complex blocks and meshes instantly? I recognize the economic impact but the most pressing obstacle here, IMO of course, is that it’s going to require a rebalance of the game in such a way that makes ‘crafter’ no longer really viable as ‘a profession’.
The chrysominter coins are one thing, the double hit to the existing economy with the need for coils mostly vanishing and other trickle down (blocks for workshops, etc…) is another. Still I would bet that by now we would have players able to plot a small planet. At least. To balance this out all crafting XP would have to be fractionalized. At a minimum pies not working with furnaces or machines.
There’s hundreds or probably thousands of posts on this but at the end of the day, I think this sort of thing is entirely at the discretion of the dev team and how they feel it affect their ability to monetize their players. There’s not really a question of why such things exist. And regardless of how they got here, there’s obvious reasons for them to be here.
Still even if they’re currently integral that doesn’t make them necessary to the game in any way. And especially if you’re looking to make interactions more transactional in nature (whether discussing game coins, premiums, or character advancement) supporting a comfortable role-playing profession into a game that was always declining the “RPG” moniker anyways.
Also did you guys see even china is making blatant gacha type mechanics illegal now
