In this thread, I’m collating a few recent comments I have read from veterans and new players alike into one convenient thread for discussion and suggestions on the broad topic of grind, but specifically pertaining to the forced “rarity” of many aspects of Boundless from colors to crafting materials and farmables.
1) Forced color rarity
I understand why this decision was made- I perfectly well remember the excitement and prestige that came about from the rarity of red gleam in Beta Boundless. But, I also remember that it was largely acceptable to use as a building material inpart due to a counterfeiting bug that allowed one to convert common cream gleam into the rare red gleam, so long as you had a block of red to replicate to begin with. Much of the community wanted to continue chasing that high of perceived prestige by supporting future color rarity in 1.0, and the devs politely obliged. Now though, that rarity is an impediment to creativity, and our only way to get around it is with costly investment of time with a complex system of color morphing with materials that rapidly deplete in order to color just a few blocks of common materials. This loop is simply not fun. While the game needs prestigious materials, it does not need to restrict half of the color spectrum behind a massive grind wall for the sake of artificial prestige. Be it red gleam, cream gleam, or black gleam, it should be the material itself that is prestigious, not the color - especially when it comes to popular building materials and their recipes!
2) Lack of actual rarity
As for those things that Boundless actually considers rare, exotic animal drops and lucent gems, its difficult to really consider these things truly rare. There is certainly a relatively high bar to be crossed to gain access to these materials, but once you’re on a proper exo-world and assuming you arrive early, one can pull several stacks of lucent gems in just a few hours. I’ve seen examples of entire portal hubs guilded in blink and rift and umbris while its citizens run about with full sets of lucent crafted gear. This gear is costly, but not rare in the traditional sense.
3) Poor return on time investment. Low yields, high effort farming.
This is another topic that I totally understand why it is done the way it is. I even advocated for this model to some degree. In order to prevent farming yields from becoming super-saturated, yields on crops have been set deliberately low. This in my mind is still sound logic, and makes sense to me for the most part, HOWEVER - negative and zero net returns suck. Seed and crop yields need a rebalance, particularly regarding higher tier crops. I get the intended game play loop- gather wild materials, bring them home to farm, replant, and farm again until eventually you exhaust the returns on your original crop, then its time to go back and farm more wild seed, or buy it at market. Worse still is goo, which simple can’t be made sustainable, and have to start over from square 1 every time you exhausted your supply of a specific color. The problem is, this game loop is not fun, and not worth the time and effort invested. Even the market value for these items is poor, and few players are willing to put in the effort for minimal return. Please, eliminate these poor returns! Goo farming especially should have dramatically increased returns, as its our only solution currently to overcome the forced color rarity of many common materials.
but apparently that’s a rare talent. Basically, a change occurs, the effects gradually roll out in waves, then our lives change without us even realizing. Our efforts simply shift to the new point of balance in our ambitions.