I had some additional side conversation with @Rydralain on this topic last night, and related things.
TBH it’s not significant enough that I want to spend my whole evening on the topic again 
but still talking some points through brings some thoughts to the fore. Plus it’s boundless …
Here’s a caveat:
I literally came to boundless to be a crafter. I was looking to “replace” another game after a recent
(then) round of updates I was ready for something new. I had very few criteria and the top two were:
- Persistent, shared worlds. If I drop something I want someone to be able to see it and grab it.
- A non-trivial crafting system with room for merchant type players.
Honestly the third was pretty much “playable on a potato”, and I wanted something pretty new.
Well I didn’t realize at the time that “just released” for boundless didn’t exactly mean “new” 
Anyways I found Boundless and blah blah blah, but mostly this game calls to my RPG roots and in reality it has attracted, in large part, a very different kind of player from what I’ve been used to. It adds a different weight, and some different perspective, to certain things.
I’ve come to realize that it’s not crucial, or really even important overall, for a game to have something like a “crafter” just because it’s an MMO. Especially when it’s an MMO that is pointedly “NOT an RPG”.
Time to point out that any major change to a nearly decade-old game is going to cost some players. I’m not here to preach my preferred playstyle (obviously at all) and I’m not here to point at any playstyle as “the best”. This particular, honestly pretty mild, side issue in light of the current state of things, leads me think about what’s good for the game.
I honestly think that removing the crafting profession, and it’s RPG trappings from the game could be a huge boost. To retention, to playability, and to a lot less friction between the “traditional MMORPG” crowd and the sort of person who would tackle a game like this to be “a builder”.
I did spend time wondering why certain (really a lot) of people would come into a game like this, and then seem to do nothing but cry about how hard it was, and how many obstacles there were. Let’s face it, for an MMORPG boundless is pretty trivial. But there it is again, it’s not that. It’s an open world voxel builder right?
The majority of people here haven’t seen this game as a competitor to EVE or WOW or you know, Neverwinter Nights (UO anyone, any body from The Realm here?). It’s always being held up against minecraft, and a host of other games that really have an entirely different direction. And it seems that when compared to those sort of games, it’s a bit of a burden to actually play.
At the end of the day, the game is super frustrating to a lot of people because of the number of doors they have tried to hold open, IMO. If there is anyone still trying to make a commercial success of this, they need to close a few of those doors. And the notion of the “crafter” as a profession, being the direct core of the economy, might be one of them.
In terms of a middle road, maybe they just remove all timers and experience from crafting blocks.
End of the day, the blocks a builder needs are different all the time, and they want them now. Just addressing this thing would remove a lot of the actual complaints I’ve seen over the years. And once people got into the groove, it would likely only increase the economy around raw materials and the supporting crafts needed to produce the blocks.
The only hard part would be gathering your “colored bits” - other wise there’s plenty of glue, sand, orbs, whatever around to buy and once you get your colors you push them through the machine and bam here’s your blocks. @Ratchel’s your uncle and all that.
It’s a hard core (hardcore grinder yah yah yah) obstacle to the feature that is in fact still supposed to be the major draw of the game. Those of us who always played such games just take it in stride I guess, and the building is a new part. At least, that’s how it’s been for me. But if I saw this game on steam and bought it to come build some cool stuff, I can see how trying to play would be a real gobsmacker.
Even if you’re willing to lay out some cash for plots immediately. Or a sovereign.
And having so many routes available, it also creates conundrums for people.
I was strongly against linking creative and live for this reason. But honestly, this is social/personal pressure that this game doesn’t need, and obviously can’t endure. And to be fair for that sort of player, it isn’t even the timers stopping them from getting into the game because they are not ever getting near high level crafting timers anyways. Most of them that I have ever met have quit within a very short time frame after realizing what it would take to “build their vision”.
Creative being available doesn’t solve this. It actually hurts it because plenty of players (y so serious) see that as a shortcut or the easy way out and so in a community that’s grinding through the MMORPG side of things creative building isn’t really respected.
Like yeah yeah I appreciate your art for a minute but I’m over here working for what I have. And even if you didn’t really care, or you’re not here to flex in that way anyways, that still hurts. So some people build less. A few people grind it out for show. But honestly, at the end of the billing period, most of them do the same thing. They leave.
This entire source of friction is in fact easily removed 
It could be done wholesale, after a lot of thinking about this - an undue amount, really - it could be done wholesale and it might be one of the best things that ever happened to boundless. At least, in terms of being able to retain new players, and grow.
It could certainly be toned down, there are layers and specific points that would lead to easy compromise. As mentioned just addressing blocks might resolve much of the frustration. But honestly that leads (reasonably) to “what about meshes” and then “not fair to ‘gear crafters’” or whatever would come up around here…
I think I’ve heard a lot of people get teary eyed over how much more they like this building system than minecraft. The engine’s rendering obstacles (and settings really) are a notable obstacle but really what do you think is keeping all of those “builders” away from a beautiful, open world, voxel building game?
EDIT: OH JFC DO NOT SAY “COMMUNICATIONS” IT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION /s
Sometimes I wonder if that is not people’s goals.