Game Breakers V3

The basic gist of these posts is to understand core mechanics of this game and how they could impact a potential player. My previous posts touch on several progressive issues that could build into “Game Breaking” issues if left unchecked. It allows for the exploration of those little things that could eventually snowball into something out of control, leading to people to quit, or just give up, on something that could be a great experience. All things in this post are meant to be constructive critiques and do not contain any spite or ill will. Now that this disclaimer is out of the way, I’ll begin.

Our crafting system is kind of busted. Now, if something is made from the same constituent ingredients, it stands to reason that the resultant can be re-purposed or salvaged in some way. So we have glue, or in Boundless, we have four different kinds of glue. The standard horse bone and sap kind makes sense, I guess. I mean, the simplest concept of animal glues follows the basic recipe in the game, but then we get to the more advanced glues. The bonding agent. Now, here’s where I get lost in the idea, if my bonding agent includes glue, that’s cool. It refines it into bonding agent, and bam, a stronger adhesive. But, then we have enriched bonding agent. We say “to hell with that previous bonding agent, it’s not sticky enough! Bring me more glue!” and then create the same basic solution but with shimmering orbs. Why don’t we refine out the previously tack-tastic bonding agent and add to the chemical compound? Instead we use the same ingredients that were already proven to be ineffective in holding our tools together and upright and try the same thing, same process, but we add salt to the mix. It doesn’t make much sense in my opinion. Now, in other games, crafting levels up in tiers. For example, you have starter mats, dropping off lower level enemies, that go into a set bracket of crafts until your skill surpasses it. Once that occurs, it makes those materials somewhat irrelevant, and you work on the next step of progression. But in this game, we have a unique issue where everything is a starter material. Almost everything, anyway. Because for some reason we have to regress ourselves to acquire higher tier items, at a loss. We will get into that in a second. But, for now, we’re going to talk about how a starter mat is somehow being used at every tier of the recipe. The previous example of how our bonding agent doesn’t carry over is one thing, but adding to that, we somehow take sackcloth and render it into cotton cloth? That just doesn’t make much sense at all. Cotton comes an entirely different part of the plant than a leaf. And I understand the leaps for simplicity’s sake, but then why do we have this drastic departure in our downtrodden bonding agent?

Now, starting mats, the way that materials are tiered you start at a staple planet, then move to a level 2 than 3… etc. Well, topaz drops only on Epsilo. That’s a T2 planet. It spawns in the same amount and rarity of other T3 planets, but with one key exception: the drops are severely nerfed. Copper, Iron, Coal, and more critically, Topaz are dropped at a noticablely minimized rate. So, we are mining at a lower quantity, trying to get our gems to power our machine, which is endgame content, on a lower tiered planet with a huge offset towards the net gain of materials. So, now, as an endgame player, we have to set our sights lower to achieve the higher level of goal. This ties into my previous comment about how going back to farm lower level trees is almost out of the question because of the inclusion of bark drops. In one way I am forced to go forward, then in the second scenario I am pulled backwards. If I am going to always progress towards something, than I feel like I shouldn’t have to limit myself to certain planets. I think that a potential solution to this problem is maybe making all block health pools uniform, and setting drops based on level, or luck. This makes it so every planet is relevant, and can provide a equal and uniform yield.

That’s all for now!

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Good point on the tier2 gems, maybe specific t3 droprates on just that item despite t2 status is in order.

I’d also like to see the bonding agent as an ingredient in higher tiers, that way you don’t get stuck (:smile: ) with excess when you move on to tier3.

Must say I’m not too fussed about how logical the cotton issue is, but cloth to cotton instead of leaves to cotton is a good example of using t1 in t2 recipes. Nice points

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Just to build off of something that @Chivlet @slyduda and myself were talking about, it doesn’t make sense to look at a seam of any resource and have it predetermined how much will fall based upon A) a planets rating, coupled with B) your luck. Coal is coal. Topaz is topaz. Ore is ore. Resource drops really only should be affected by either a luck rating, or, preferably, some kind of selected skill rating. As an example, you designate your character as a resource gatherer, which limits their ability to choose skills outside of their career path (crafting, rage, focus, healing, etc., could only be minimally chosen, if at all), but gives them increased skills to harvest items the further they progress down a character-type, ability tree.

By doing something like this, which allows for increased resource drops, it would make every planet, at all times, relevant to a player. It would allow players to more comfortably choose any planet to make their main build on, because resources would be equivalent (except for rare items that only grow in one planet’s biome-type). Additionally, it takes what the game is already moving towards (hunter, gatherer and crafting roles) and makes them particularly relevant. A gatherer should be able to gain expertise in resource mining and do a better job of extracting a resource out of a seam than a novice. A hunter should be better at breaking down a defeated enemy and harvesting resources from it. A crafter should get better yields on recipes than a non-crafter, etc.

Our proposal is to make more of a skill-based model for character progression with at least the three roles we already have as an option. Those would be “hunter,” “crafter” and “resource gatherer.” Each role would have the full-complement of abilities to choose from (Currently: Core skills, attributes, abilities and endurance), but they would have unique skills to choose from (i.e., breaking apart durability from death penalty. Hunter’s can only get death penalty, while gatherers can only get durability buffs). All characters should be able to basically defend themselves, but Hunters could have new skills that allow them to used advanced weapon types, faster rates of fire, dual wield weapons, rage, focus etc. With the way the worlds are, you would still need to be able to have a resource gatherer that can defend himself/herself on some basic level.

I have more to say on this, but this post is already long enough :smile:

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The more you do the deed the better you become. Progressive Leveling Tree

Yeah, that would be great. Like Morrowind or Skyrim, but it allows you to do each thing and makes you have access to a “Jack-of-all-Trades” build, which they said they want to steer away from. I think a class system would be a better solution, with actual level progression and interesting skills for the classes. So, like, master miner (something @BrianPWilson already mentioned.) would allow you to get the most possible yield per block, or the ability to extract a block that requires delicacy, like ice or glass. Knowing where to strike is just as important as knowing how hard. So it would make sense to give skills out that make roles interesting and not just cookie cutters.

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