Quick update, all. Still two and a half more days before I can play the game. Have fun!
EDIT: /s
I’m not trying to solve this issue, just saying that I agree it’s a big hinderance to some, along with a few observations. I do think there are some issues that take priority over this one, but this topic is about crafting.
The reason I’m not trying to solve it is I think the current leveling system would prevent any time changes from producing a good outcome for the entire community.
If crafting times were eased up a bit, it would also apply to players that could change the economy with one round of mass crafting. That would effect NPs & casual players by lowering the value of their items on the market, even further. This scenario inevitably happens in most game economies, at some point.
I know they have their philosophy about it & reasons, which is cool. I’m pretty sure James mentioned tinkering with the machines a few times though. I have no idea what changes they were considering.
1 Like
To be clear, I do not consider crafting timers to be the biggest issue with the game - just one of many issues and one I’m particularly passionate about (obviously).
The NPE and a lack of meaningful endgame content (a lot of which was promised/discussed/etc are far bigger problems that need solved.
EDIT: BRB - somebody just bought out my entire shop stands of diamonds and rubies!
1 Like
I’m not arguing against this, but just an observation.
Removing timers will dramatically reduce the demand for gems and moderately reduce the demand for a handful of metals, since it would reduce the number of machine setups and fully coiled machines required by all players.
Basically, one set of machines would be enough for almost everything. If you do a lot of bulk manufacturing of a variety of goods or colored goods, it might be beneficial to have one machine for each color?
Then, as people reduce their machine count, they will supply the market with their downsized machines and coils, so new players would likely be able to easily get them for very very cheap (assuming they can find a portal network/mall and figure out how to use the shop finder.
Anyway, so then the reduction in gem demand would reduce the cost of gems, reducing the cost of gem-based tools.
Another interesting effect would be that nearly every manufactured good would effectively have the cost of the sum of the materials used to craft it, since there would be basically no friction for “I don’t feel like crafting this”. Actually, if you consider the XP gained from crafting, most manufactured goods would be impossible to sell at-cost since you can just buy the materials for the same value and get XP. The only exception might be colored goods, but even then, someone could undercut a colored concrete shop by opening a colored sand shop since the two items are just a handful of clicks different from each other.
That would flatten the market quite a bit. It’s possible that this would increase demand of machines since non-crafters would suddenly start crafting more, so maybe gem market would balance from that? Hard to say, since that would depend on how many players don’t craft their own stuff in the current system.
Another interesting thing about this would be to see what would happen to forged items. With no timers, the main “I don’t want to do that” for most players will be forging. Does this change the demand of forged goods? Would people who like crafting shift over to forging despite it being an RNG nightmare? I don’t have an opinion on that. Who knows.
Again, not criticizing the idea or baiting for responses to attack, just… thinking through the full effects of a change like this.
It would certainly cause a major disruption to the entire market, but it wouldn’t be the first time we had a major disruption, so the question is if the new market and new gameplay would be better overall or not.
LOL I was trying to ignore this thread, tbh there’s 50+ posts I never read. But it got funny.
Yeah I legit feel like you’ve started … well more than half of the threads on this topic. But honestly every time, they fill up with people supporting the idea.
Justifying or explaining the mechanic and it’s various assumed purposes, or the reasons that other studios might use it is a certain kind of fun, but if they really don’t feel it’s a crucial time gate (as directly stated by James) then it would obviously be a very popular change.
Just do it.
1 Like
I might come back to any of those points after I re-process. Plenty of valid points. Still my guess is it’s all a moot point. Timers, if removed in one update, will be restored to confusion and outcry in the next update, possibly a rush patch.
Not for any of those reasons 
The first youtube video of someone cracking out a thousand levels in under 5 minutes, imagine the screams.
EDIT:
1 Like
I imagine you’d have to adjust crafting XP a bit to account but, honestly, levels are really easy to come by through other means. I get a level every 15 minutes or so mining.
btw - if ever anyone wanted to actually talk through some of these things I’m always happy to hop in a Boundless Discord voice channel and civilly discuss.
1 Like
R.I.P. crafting as a “profession”, really. I feel.
But if it really adds to engagement and retention that’s fine, they have to clarify that an MMO isn’t necessarily an RPG all the time.
Maybe the people who like voxel building don’t like to “be crafters” as much. Nothing morally wrong with that. I would think both personally ( as a developer who may have some attachment) and as a business decision, it’s worth a shot. At least when looked at as “versus failing out of the market”.
There is a lot more to this, to be done right, than just setting all of the timers to zero. Without a team I imagine it’s super low priority. But on a list of things to try, I’ve been fully convinced that this would be worth exploring.
1 Like
Facts /10chars
I’m confused about why you can’t civilly discuss on the discussion forums that you posted a discussion thread about them on.
You always know where to find me 
Lol I love that you took the time to explain making a pizza to a chef…. I do appreciate the time though hehehe.
A game should be something you can pickup when you have time IRL to play- I’m similar to @CaptAmerica1611 sometimes logging in to build something is not possible due to crafting times- eg I wanna make filagree - I have no issue for the process but the times are the joke.
Blockquote @Rydralain
While your suggestion is true it’s also not.
If the player take the time to build up spark, materials and has the setup - the factory is already in place which means the wholesaler does not exist as such.
If you are only relying on the pizza lol to be made you only require the labour to put together the product and wait for the final process to be completed. Majority of the time spent in getting the product to this stage is where the time should be spent.
This is exactly how crafting in Boundless works.
Pizza :
- Mix dough ingredients
- Wait for proofing
- Shape dough, add topings
- Wait for baking
Iron Bar:
- Insert coal into compactor
- Wait for coal to compress
- Take compact coal and iron ore to furnace
- Wait for baking
Right, so if your Boundless factory has a flow and good ratio of machines for what you’re working on, you won’t have “I’m waiting 3 days for coal”, just like the RL wholesale manufacturer likely has a specific product they are already making and you can just order it JIT.
I think in boundless you need to consider the time to acquire the raw ingredients as well in your equation, where as IRL the massive population and industrialized global agriculture economy makes that much less of a consideration.
In Boundless, you have the option of acquiring everything yourself as opposed to buying it on the market. Real life functionally doesn’t have that option for modern goods or mass manufactured goods. That doesn’t change that the process in both worlds is raw material -> wait -> Refined material -> wait -> manufactured good, regardless of if you own the whole vertical process for your goods.
I love these debates haha, and honestly love reading them and hearing everyone’s opinions.
I guess at the end of they day however you or anyone perceives how a process works based on your personal experience is each to their own right lol. For myself after spending over 2 decades working in production, cheffing and sales servicing once of the largest product ranges in australia I’m pretty confident in how things work in the real world.
I personally just don’t see why a game would have been designed to bottleneck players. I mean the word boundless to me means boundless opportunity’s…. Not boundless waiting for ■■■■ to finish so you can build later lol.
I get very little time to play and when I log on now it spend 80% of my time filling machines, waiting for crafts to finish to then log off to then only have to repeat the process multiple times. 1 week passes and yay I get to actually place a block- by then the interest is lost and the project is abandoned.
While you say increase the factory output is a great idea lol - my factory contains 64x of each machine fully coiled and over 200 furnaces- is that not big enough hahaha. Why do I still find myself waiting days for things to craft after filling all of them to the brim when I do bulk crafting for projects then?
1 Like
There is nothing boundless about this game.
James nerfed bomb mining into the ground for some reason.
James also nerfed the shape beacons can be by adding a ruddy compactness metric to all builds which is literally a boundary for beacon shapes that do not wish to conform to a square like shape.
1 Like
Lol soo true