This was talked with them by me many times on some calls and it wasn’t shot down. I said it was about immersion that it was important. They opted for the menu system to start and am not sure if there was some other technical concern on why they didn’t use a portal.
There are other issues with player hosted worlds because they can be hacked and tweaks compared to purchased ones. So it is a bit more as to why things aren’t fully there.
i would believe that except they have already proven that you can pass between a creative world and survival while maintaining separate inventories between the main survival world and the creative player ones.
Creative worlds, Sovereigns and Known worlds are all hosted on Boundless/AWS servers. Player-hosted worlds wouldn’t be.
For shame … as I stated many times these “player-hosted” worlds would totally ruin what Boundless is to me and I still firmly believe it would damage the main universe a bit. Here’s to hoping I’m wrong.
I’d almost agree with you…if I knew what Boundless was or what its identity is.
I basically just tell people it’s a prettier version of Minecraft with a sprinkle of some MMO stuff
Agreed. I’ve always said that Boundless has an identity crisis. I’d also change your statement to:
“it’s a prettier version of Minecraft with a sprinkle of some MMORPG stuff”
Which is always confusing really, but MMO simply means there are multiple people playing online with you.
Boundless players are pretty divided by just reading the forums. Some people want more creative aspects (no crafting timers, etc.) and some want more PVE-related MMORPG aspects (Titans, hunter, etc.). It’s a hard battle really as the devs leaned more into the creative building game.
And I thought I was the only person who felt this way over the years. Thanks for letting me know I’m not crazy or imagining things
My response was me explaining what James said and was concerned with at the time we talked about how private worlds and universes would integrate into the “public” universe. Many of those conversations especially the ones around creative being integrated into the existing Universe lead to what we have now with an in-game portal and other options.
So yes it could be applied but that requires an additional clone then of the account and management DB and other infrastructure to support the integration. I pushed hard for a token and same portal design to keep all Universes connected “in game” as much as possible but clearly they weren’t prepared to go that way right now. I guess we just see where the new owners go with things.
I’m fine with most crafting times honestly. But stuff like 2 hours to make make a 50 pack of signs, or crafting times for some of the more advanced stuff. Maybe at least cut those in half and it will seem a bit better.
That’s the point. You do that in an effort to appease a certain crowd and the crowd that is fine with the timers and don’t want them changed suffers. I personally agree that halving the timers would be nice.
Most of the MMOs I have played did not have crafting timers, either. You put the stuff in the crafting machine and it pops out an item. The timers are more of a strategy game thing than an MMO thing.
Its a balance thing. Some MMOs have time sinks, some have gathering sinks, etc.
WoW (when I played) you would literally have to wait a day for runecloth to craft and you were limited to one per day. WoW and Guild Wars 2 crafting would also require you to tirelessly grind items over and over to level up.
The fastest way to level up a crafting profession in GW2 is to just discover one of every recipe that is hidden. It really doesn’t take very long, and doesn’t require much grind. Stuff also crafts instantly, unless you want to consider the half second gui animation a timer. Even that speeds itself up the more of the item you craft. I have several thousand hours in that game.
It isn’t just the creative players who find the timers annoying. I find them annoying as an MMO player. I know there are some MMOs out there that have timers, but I haven’t ever played one of those. I don’t really consider it a balance mechanic. It is a time gating mechanic. Time gates are annoying. There are cases where limited application of time gates makes sense. This game has both gathering sinks and time sinks. I don’t think it needs both, and the one that seems more superflous is the time sink since it is not a very effective time sink, anyways. Just buy 50 machines worth of power coils, and the time gate is shrunk down to the time of a single mass craft for 50 mass crafts. It really only ends up wasting space for the machines. It is a plot sink, not a time sink.
Time gates are used to mitigate lack of content, not to balance a game.
We go back and forth on this I think the timers are fine. I won’t mind if they are halved or removed because in the end if they are removed all items instantly becomes a lot cheaper and I whom doesn’t craft much due to laziness can then buy the items for a lot less coin… yay!
Time gates are not in Boundless to mitigate the lack of content as they intended to have lot more content at the time they were implemented.
We do argue about this a lot. I disagree that it would make much of a difference to the economy, but I cannot prove it unless they actually remove them so it isn’t really worth arguing about. I think most current players already make most of their own stuff because they want the XP. Perhaps that will change if the game goes FTP and gets a bunch of new players coming in.
I don’t know how this turned into another timers thread 
Time gates have several purposes. In this case it is very much a balance issue because it’s gating the flow of cubits.
It’s time for XP cost, and in this way it’s not really relevant to strictly economic balancing conversation. Or those who say that “I’ve already gathered the materials” because you’re getting XP for that, too.
Remove timers, remove XP, problem solved. OFC then you have a new problem that there’s no crafting profession left.
Of course, if it’s not an RPG, that’s not a problem. If it is an RPG, that’s a core sort of mechanic/activity people will be missing.
As it stands, they’re definitely a time gate. Not a content block (that’s just a side effect) like a gacha game. It’s just that right now they are balanced in, and to be removed they need to be balanced out.
This is what happens when people tell everyone to shutup in the actual timer threads. 
It doesn’t stop the argument, it just spreads it all over the forums.
I actually think the XP on the crafting is currently way to high anyways. It dwarfs the rest of the game for XP gain, and warps the motivations for having an economy. An economy is supposed to be about commerce, not XP gain.
But why would lowering or removing the timers get rid of crafting professions? People would still need coin, tools, blocks and whatnot. The most profitable shops right now seem to be the ones that focus on making particular blocks and/or forged tools, or sell ingredients to make the higher tier materials. Even if the timers were removed entirely, I am still not going to want to make bricks or concrete. I would buy them just like I do now because I don’t want to go find and gather all the materials to make them, chisel change colors, etc. The brick, concrete and marble makers would still be getting my coins either way. I just wouldn’t have to stack machines willy nilly all over my base to make the stuff I am already making. People who don’t like forging will still buy forged goods. People who don’t want to gather will still buy ingredients.
The timers only gate out newer players. The game is…rather short on those at the moment. Most people are capable of acquiring as many machines as they choose to. If everyone that wants to craft already can craft if they choose to despite the timers, aren’t we already seeing the same economy we would see if the timers were removed?
If a bunch of new players suddenly come in in the future, that would obviously change things. As of now though, I don’t see that the timers do much of anything for the economy.
The game definitely has some confusing design that makes it hard to figure out what it’s goals are. I think that happens a lot in crowd funded games when the developers take player feedback into consideration when making feature decisions. The original design gets stuff tacked onto it willy nilly until everyone is confused. What was the original hook for this game supposed to be? I thought it was supposed to be a voxel MMO. The original videos and art showed off plans for multiple races, advanced combat, in depth skill systems, etc. Most of the MMO stuff seems to have been what got cut during development.