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
Crafting times do not bother me much. Yes Mass take time but it should be as you are making exactly that a Mass, not just a couple. I prefer to mass craft as there is a cost benefit. But if I need a bunch but can get started on something with a few I make those few then run my Mass crafts. What I would really like to see is the queue limit increased.
Same. It is part of the game for a reason and those have been mentioned.
Again: Go Creative for instant blocks is a solution for those who have issues with the crafting timers.
No need to change the crafting timers, lots of games have it. When you plan it correctly crafting timers are not even an issue at all.
There literally is no “planning it”. No matter how you slice it, you are out a game day of waiting on crafts for many crafts. Whether I “plan” for that or not, it’s still a day lost.
“So go do something else while you wait…”
But that’s not what I want to do nor how I want to play the game right now. I want to progress my build and the only way to do that is with blocks. So, I guess by going and doing something else, that must mean go play another game - in which case I’d ask whether forcing someone to go play another game is a viable marketing strategy.
I do understand it well. At the moment i focus day in and out for 2 weeks ish on the same project. Nope im not yet bored actually very motivated. If something would cause me to stop now i wouldnt want to do something else. I want to stay in my focus and flow and not be hindered in it or else i might lose my motivation, flow and focus. And i hate picking up things after a while. Im more the type to start over new instead of picking up old games, memories in games or projects. So i totally can sympathize with you @Dhusk.
This basically sums it up for me so thank you. When I want to play Boundless, I really want to play Boundless - not be hamstrung by crafting times and having to sit out days while I wait for stuff to materialize.
And, yes, creative worlds are a thing. However, creative worlds lack the real-universe implications of sovereigns and home worlds with things such as valid prestige, actual inventories, and coin.
