Currently, with MAX Dexterity, MAX bonus attribute & a Mega Fast Brew, it took me just over 15 minutes to place 730 earthyam bulbs. Nevermind the time it took to till the soil, too.
The base action speed for placing seeds should be at least double or treble of what it currently is, because anyone with a sane mind will feel like this part of farming alone is an insane chore. 
Dexterity doesnāt affect the tiller speed or water placement speed. Making a big farm is a pain when you can creep faster then the tiller can till 
Scratch that I had the wrong skillpage active. Nevertheless the tools are a bit slow.
edit: Ok a megafast makes it more bearable, you can probably forge them too to be fast enough.
Its All about that Bass ,Bout that Bassā¦No treble! I couldnt resist.
So aoe, speed, durability for new tillers is what Iām hearing?..
Goood to know (rapidly scratches that down on paper).
Yes, but bare in mind that tillers have 0 flexibility and the AoE effect is currently broken, though the devs are aware of it being broken, so hopefully soon enough it wonāt be. 
The 0 flexibility made it hard for me to go over AoE boon level 2 on tillers anyway though.
So you want to place 730 bulbs in 5 minutes? 2.5 a second? I assume that they see it as the time it takes to actually plant the item but who knowsā¦
Just curious how long does it take to place 730 grass seeds in normal dirt with that spec? Or flowers?
I suggest you test the placement seed for grass seeds yourself or find someone else that can at the moment, as Iām currently too tired to be conducting that sort of test just at the moment.
From memory I think grass seed placement is somewhat faster, but not a lot? Donāt know about the current decorative flowers specifically but plants like desert swords etc are fairly quick to place, though you rarely need to place a lot of them at onceā¦
As for the first question, I donāt have a specific time-frame Iād like to plant a specific number of bulbs/seeds in.
730 crops doesnāt sound like a lot, and in the big picture of mass craft economics, could probably be considered quite a small number.
Alhough, I had planned several farm spaces at my base, which I donāt see myself feeling motivated to fill, if each of the areas takes around 20 minutes to fill, just in seed placements. (And if you consider I might be planting short duration crops, thatās a lot of times replanting, assuming I even get as many seeds as I need to begin with) In any case, I suggest you try it for yourself in testing and decide for yourself whether itās fun or not.
As someone that frequently has to place grass seeds to change an area I would love itās action time upped!
Yeah I wasnāt trying to create work for you. sorry if it came off that way.
I might do some tests but ultimately I am probably the type of person that will support the devs current design based on how I view things in the game and the balance we have.
For me that 730 would give two mass craft of persisting pies which seems pretty fair for the 15 min of plantingā¦ but honestly all this is so subjective time wise that we canāt really focus on it that way.
No worries, I would like to test plenty of things but time, motivation and energy are issues.
I do agree that time-wise this is quite easily a subjective topic.
Thinking about it a little more, I think my personal issue with this sort of time taken with placing seeds is the same as the issue I have with other activities in Boundless, which Iāve mentioned in the āwhat turns you offā thread in the past, I believe.
That issue is the fact that while you are placing those seeds, you are doing absolutely nothing else. You canāt deviate from the blocks, you canāt look away, you canāt chat, you canāt alt-tab, you canāt attack somethingā¦ You just have to be 100% in that task. By which I mean that if I interrupt that task, to do one of those other things, the task will still take the amount of time it was going to take, and I feel like I āwasteā time for interrupting the task, if that makes sense.
Now, this is fine for a few minutes at a time, sure, but when you need to do this for longer periods of time, it becomes somewhatā¦ mind-numbing, for lack of better words. This can, of course, apply to any task, so once again we do come full circle to subjective perception of a time-related matter.
Ultimately, in my own case, I simply do not want to have too many chore-like tasks to do in games.
I was hoping farming would offer a choice in whether to block farm/surface gather or plant and harvest but it ends up with the worst of both worlds as it currently stands XD.
I think these types of statements are more helpful to the developers than specifics on trying to get them to adjust the systems they have in placeā¦ because it speaks to game play and other things they can improveā¦
Like I could see a machine that plants for usā¦ then that time might not be an issue. I think ātimeā is probably linked to so many of the complaints we have about the game and fear that it we will lose out in more time or out in some way.
I always believe a give and take is bestā¦ like longer to do one thing but faster in anotherā¦ or more costly here but a benefit somewhere elseā¦ e.g. Less yams to make a pie or pies that last longer for the same yams.
The hardest thing we as a community needs to face is that we have perspective and a 20/20 outlook of how the game āusedā to work. We need to balance that with how the game is played now as a new player and how it should turn intoā¦ it certainly is hard for all parties involved - community and developers - to do this.
Iām not too worried about the flexibility of itā¦ hehehehe
I think we all know that yes! 
Seriously tho, planting grass is also a tedious endeavour and this is about the same speed. The speed of planting grass seeds is something I wished was made faster for a while now and itās a shame that this uses the same speed (felt like the same speed anyway) so I do hope it will be upped a bit before release.
Donāt think this has anything to do with balance, at least I donāt think it does, it seems to be using the same (parts of) code as planting grass seeds which is just slow as heck.
Sure, but if you try to sell said Persisting pies then itās certainly not enough, believe me. And crafting persisting pies in the current system already takes up many, many hours from scratch (12 I think it is), now it will be way more, yayā¦
This is not adjusting the systems, this is just a balancing thing, just a number somewhereā¦
Lolā¦ yes many have that perception of me and I do seem to carry their banner a lot. I do this because I believe in supporting personal responsibility and the decisions of others especially when they have domain over that area.
Of course that doesnāt mean I would put that system in place if I was a dev! Many of the things I debate about and support from a devs side I probably would not have put into place if I was the one designing the game. And I do challenge where I can and when I see an opportunity for change in a conducive manner.
Yes I donāt know either if it is slow because they want to simulate āplantingā or it is just is slow because it was never increased. They mysteries of the boundless universeā¦ how can 2+2=5?!?
Not trying to cause work but it would be nice to see the current way tracked and time required shown and then when the patch comes in with their release balance we compare the time required in an optimized farm. I think data like that would be helpful because then they could go in and adjust if it is off in their eyes. We might have to wait until everything is in place and they deliver the final design and balance. The good news is that the balance can change.
You can change systems but it will be a harder sell and discussion because it goes deeper into the design. At least that was what I was talking about. As for the seed/yield/pie discussion, then yeah it is basically just a number even though I think the method (all steps/amount of time) of the whole mechanic of making the pie on current production versus testing is of concern. So that might be the system that would need to be iterated in the future.
My previous experience of MMOs and ARPGs would tell me that balance changes āafter-the-factā seem to be generally perceived as coming ātoo lateā to the table, or simply end up taking much longer to come into play than they perhaps could have done, because by the time the systems are implemented, development is usually already moving away from that system, onto the next.
This process usually seems to leave behind the idea of making tweaks to that system, since it is then āfinishedā-ish; even on the balance, which can be hard to predict ā unless the balance of that system really does affect a core part of gameplay.
And from the developer point of view, it can of course be a dangerous thing to do to get the balance too far in a buffed direction, to then have to nerf it, and have players be upset because there is a perceived nerf even if the situation is still better than the original one.
But in my mind, that does highlight the importance of making balance changes while we are in Testing and not leaving it ātoo lateā for a release candidate version or for a post-release version; an āafter-the-factā version, if you will.
That said, I understand why you are asking us, as fellow players, to find the data to contribute to making the systems better, or balanced in a fair way ā but these are indeed somewhat large time-scales for a gameplay system with, in fairness, quite a bit of depth to it. A single player has to dedicate a lot of their own personal time to be able to gather any significant data on this.
Players like me and @AeneaGames do have plenty of time on our hands, but collecting data isnāt necessarily always something fun, and we are, I would expect, a minority. If it feels like such a large endeavour to us (well, it does to me), what must it feel like for players with a fraction of the time we have available?
I am not disputing the potential usefulness of the data, however. I think my line of thought comes from the fact that I, personally, find it hard to believe that the developers canāt already track and access all the relevant data, based on the actions of players in-game every day.
I donāt know the full extent of their data but I would doubt that it actually can show the full process from gathering to completion of an item. Ultimately it is in their responsibility to look at the data and balance. The only reason I suggest other people to do it is because they can actually then put it into a better game play feel context that the developers donāt really have since they do not play the game as much as any of us. If we want to influence we have to give good information but yeah I never expect people to create another job for themselves. 
Iām not a fan either of trying to change a system after the fact because it is exactly like you say - itās basically done and we move onto the next. A lot of systems, though, are entwined which gives a good opportunity to redo them. I donāt expect much adjustment past the design as release but always feel it is smart to evaluate from time to time to ensure what you have in place is correct for where you are now in the overall game.
Case in point - many people think the drops we are getting before farming and how that system was build was end state. It likely could have been a place holder gathering solution and not the end state the developers wanted and now that farming is out it actually is more in-line to what the game was supposed to be. People just had the wrong notion that what we have been doing for the past few years was the āend state.ā Of course Iām not sure if this is true of these two systems.
Another good example was how Cuttles and other mobs used to drop gems and various items. Once meteors came in, those resources were pulled from mobs and moved over to meteors. Many people were not happy but the original system likely wasnāt the end state one either. Now we are more in the end state design.
I donāt like after-the-fact type fixing and adjusting eitherā¦ but considering the challenges of trying to include us all in the front end of development we need to find the best other place that we can helpā¦ that is if they really want our help.
They shouldāve communicated this to us more clearly. In most games, test servers are also used to test balance, weāve also previously tested balance on the test servers and havenāt got flak for it. Only after we started making noise about it did the devs respond that itās placeholder. The communication couldāve been better imo.
edit: I just realised weāre talking about different things, shouldnāt post so early in the morningā¦