Yes exactly … there are tiers of almost everything else, why not machines?
I’d even hunt for materials, which I do very little of (hunting) alone, if there were higher tiers of machines. Very good point
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they do have advanced crafting stations in plans, but somehow I don’t think the working bench gets any love there
If I had the cash I would always buy things because I agree with you that it takes a long time to gather the materials. That being said, I don’t have that kind of cash so I gather it myself.
I would love to have the ability to repair my tools. Having to use materials to do so. That way if you have a really great forged tool then you could keep it. Forged tools could go for higher amounts on the front end. Also you could repair your tools yourself for the materials and a set amount of coin or you could take it back to the original forger and have it repaired at a lessor cost.
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Some of the times on crafting I will say is a bit much and if you’re starting out you can hit a wall pretty quickly if your workstations are backlogged with stuff. But there’s so much to do in the game. I’ve never found an issue with it. I either craft more workstations or I wait. I put stuff on to craft and I go off and do something else. Hunting, building, mining, gathering. I’m always planning ahead so always something to do. I always put my longest crafting or bulk crafting when I come off or when I go to bed. Great XP the next day 
There are so many different ways to play the game. It’s just managing it.
Forging on the other hand is really daunting. It took me a while to get into it and I’m still fairly new to it but there’s lots of guides and tutorials to get you started.
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That’s an interesting idea, say to repair a plain tool it costs materials, and if it’s forged it costs coin too. It would be another coin sink, would let players skip re-forging the same tool over and over, but if they lacked coin they still could.
Giving a reason to return to a good forger is interesting as well, they could even have a return basket for nearly broken tools that would cost less for them to repair and relist.
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another forging boon? 
such tool would have less combined properties (AOE and DMG only or AOE and SPEED only), but one would be able to repair it
side note to growing list of boons: looks like allowing 4 boons could be on the agenda at some stage lol
in general I would consider repairing as acceptable if there was a limit to it (max durability lowered each time item is repaired), so in the end it would only make sense to repair an item a few times before moving on to a new item
The only thing I craft are shards and spark. All other items I rely on the economy. I mean everything. I dont even make food. It really all depends on how an individual enjoys to play their game at the end of the day. But if you dont want to wait on crafting times (some of them are quite ridiculous, but manageable?) go stuff some items into baskets for some coin and buy said items. I’m sure anyone would be excited to see coin pop up in their shops. It takes a lot of time to get the materials for some of these advanced items and most likely even more time to process it to something you are looking to utilize
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Stuffing coffers with coin is a luxury that wealthy advanced players can afford far easier than new players with just a little bit of tutorial money. This is literally the Boundless version of “let them eat cake” and completely misses the purpose of this thread, that crafting times are bad for new player experience, and bad for player retention in the long run.
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I personally believe the answer isn’t remove/keep timers, but iterating on the design. Crafting, as it stands, is not finished and needs more to complete the idea that it was designed for.
The James post outlines that the goal was around efficiency and queue management. If they want to keep that process, they simply need to keep working on it to improve the experience by adding things that fit that design principle like:
- Review timer amounts per item to keep them in line with this design philosophy
- Add Automation to the game for multi-step crafting to allow players to bypass this process if they want - Small adjustment to spark to maintain automation once setup, making manual more efficient slightly and automatic more convenient.
- Allow for some instant crafting, tie it to another system that would allow for procs to store up and if you want to use them you can to instant craft something
If crafting is going to be made instant - then crafting should be more meaningful and personal. Higher rates of variation in what you craft and a more interactive crafting system where you put the item together. A cool looking UI where you form the item and get it instantly as a part of the little game while you craft it.
At the end of the day, timers or no timers, the point should be that crafting makes sense and people can engage with it many different ways and have fun. If the timers feel void, empty and not adding to the experience…they may just need to be fleshed out to fulfill their intended design.
I don’t mind the timers, I agree that there are better systems that could be put into place to make the timers more relevant and impactful.
Just my 2c
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me neither
but some of them could be cut down to more friendly values
and when they are at it, bring timber in line with stone and give xp for it
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There’s many good points that been brought up. Thanks every one!
Here my opinions on some of them :
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Reducing crafting time to 0 ?
I think this would arm a bit the immersion of the game. Cooking, metallurgy, etc still need sometime to be done.
Reducing time to 0 would building of factories useless which i think is an interesting point of the game. Some balance between 1 to 10 machine would be great and not ending up with 100s. Which may help people to spend their time at improving their building games instead of making shoe boxes.
Where would i like to see a great reduction in crafting time is the end result of a tool. After you crafted all the part, it should take less time to “build” it so you can keep progressing.
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Would reduced crafting time impact the economy ?
Like some stated, i think it would not have a big impact on the economy. You still have to gather item’s parts that consume a fair amount of your time.
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Buying the item instead of crafting it
I think this is a part of the game that should be pushed midgame when you have decent skills/tools which help doing some kind of money.
As a new players, you don’t have the tools to make good amount of money to buy said tool to keep progressing. At lower lever tool pass quick as well.
With the money you get from the “challenges” is pretty much pocket changes and you need it to travel around the worlds (Still in the mind of a new players that have no clue about HUBs).
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Reparing tools and Forge
This is another problems and out of the context here, but it would be nice to repair forged tools reusing the centraforge, Place the tool inside, add the main material(i.e diamonds for a diamond hammer) and the respective gums for the effect on the tools to “recharge” it. All this at a cost of less durability over each time you repair it so you have to reforge some eventually.
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Time management
All cool when you are higher levels and have many things to do, Not so much at lvl 20 with limited skills.
Managing skills at lower level is something too, game kind of force you to make secondary character. This would be another topic thought!
In conclusion
I think an overall reduced crafting time is needed at every level of the game especially for the things that is in the progressions i.e tools.
At lower level for my part, i want to progress and not be stopped because i have to wait hours to make a tools that i have already waited hours to make/gather the ingredients.
Usually when i want to play a game, i want to play the game. I don’t want to have to leave play somethin else until my tools are done. I think many players would share that sentiment.
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That another point, I guess these timer are here to reduce xp gain. i’d rather have less xp for crafting but more for gathering,building.
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First, a wild @Tagris appears!
Second, agreed on all points, @Gorillastomp. Seems reasonable.
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James vehemently denies this.
Purely a stylistic decision, he insists, made by a former employee/designer.
I know it’s 100% logical and pretty much anyone you ask about a similar game, the mechanics and game theory behind it, they’re going to tell you it’s a time gate to character progression. Here though it’s nothing to do with that.
I’d try and make a sarcasm tag but that’s literally what he said. His answer to me on this is already quoted in this thread.
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there was an idea during EA that won over other concepts, that each action should be rewarded with xp
thats why I never understood why timber was made instant and no-xp at some point; and why planting grass and transform-chiseling doesn’t give that 1xp
it’s all matter of scaling and balancing anyway; u want to keep crafting xp gains in check, simply give less xp
also - the teaching food could be capped at 50% bonus instead of 100, if needed
damn, a lot of different things I don’t agree with in game come to mind here in a chaotic fashion; don’t mind me haha 
This is the same former employee that said complexity was fun. Which why it takes 29 steps, if I remember correctly to make a pie if you make each sub-ingredient.
A decent number of game players already have a job, so they probably are not attracted to a game that due to the time it takes to accomplish things can feel like a second job.
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I also remember devs mentioning that the idea to create sinkholes through new complex recipes followed players storage statistics that they had from servers. There simply was a need to find purpose for some resources.
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Is that not why ash was added to recipes? Because we had loads in storage and they wanted to make it useful? I think the complexity hurts more than it helps. There are plenty of ways to make resources useful without creating unnecessary complexity.
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Some way to speed the machines up or a special concoction to insta-craft things once in awhile would be nice.
There are also some things that are fairly simple to craft that seem to take longer than they should. The 1st craft of an item (ie: refining gleam, making glass, making tools, etc), shouldn’t take very long at all. This would be the majority of what a NP could craft. It makes sense that the 2nd craft (that requires more skills and materials) might take longer. And so on.
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While we’re at it, we need far better portal fuel than we have! I want to be able to craft some portal fuel that fuels a 2x2 portal for like 15 weeks or something lol.
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