My idea would be a concept right from Minecraft, and is so simple and basic, I’m shocked they don’t use it.
Namely you need the Previous material, to even break and get the next. So in Minecraft, you need Wood to get stone. Then stone to get Iron, then Iron to get Diamond. You can’t go from Wood or stone to Diamond. Even if you hit it enough to break the block, it doesn’t drop the resource, cause you need Iron.
And since this game focuses not only on Resources, but restricting them to planets, then it should be the same with progression. So say no resources on T1 worlds, only stone and wood for tools. Need to make Wooden tools, to collect rocks and turn them into stone to make stone tools.
Then with Stone Tools, you can go to T2, and break the soil there with stone shovels and the rocks there with Stone Hammers. And T2 worlds would only have copper. But the biggest change is that you NEED Stone tools to even damage and break the stuff on T2 worlds. So the ground, Soil, Peat, Clay, Mud and so on. They won’t be broken or damaged by Wooden Shovel, only Stone Shovel. Same with Trees needing Stone Axe, and Rocks needing Stone Hammers.
With copper tools, you can go into T3. And like before, you need Copper tools to break the soil, cut the trees, and break the rocks. Here there is another notiable change. There is no Copper, or silver, or other reasons. ONLY Iron shows up.
Then with Iron, go on to T4 to get Silver, and on and on.
Actual progression, than you need the right tools to even collect the blocks. Not that it’s slower or harder, but down right impossible.
If Iron is a low T3 material hammer, then it needs to STAY a low T3 hammer, and not something that can be brought up to T5 or T6.
This is one of the biggest pitfalls of progression in the game. The fact that there is no progression. People jump from lowest tier, to the highest, because they can. But some people don’t, sticking just to iron, again because they can.
It’s also why prices are so wildly placed, because yes Iron is more common, but you can also use iron the whole game. It just takes longer. And say a Diamond Hammer would do better and easier, it isn’t actually NEEDED to do anything.
This sense of no progression is in everything. Just look Decoration blocks. The only sense of progression is needing a lot of stone/wood for the Refined version, then refine to Decoration needs a very ineffician number of refine, and spark, to craft.
From 1 gap to the next was a large number of the previous gap’s resource, 288, but for the second one, you need a part of the old gap 36 I think, and a new resource mechanic, Spark. Now you also need Wax, something you don’t get from cutting trees or mining rocks. Progression is now messed up.
It’s the same with tools. Taking Minecraft for example again, making tools is the exact same, no matter the tier, just the material is changed. You need stone for stone tools, iron for iron tools, diamon for diamond tools. Nothing else changed. It kept it simple. You go mining, and made progress by mining.
But in Boundless, they mess up right from the start. You get Wood and leaves and can make stick, leaves and wood to make wooden tools. Then you mine for stone, you get wood for Sticks and Leaves, and stone for stone tools. Now you mine for copper. Go back for some Wood for sticks, pick up some leaves. Got your copper… But you can’t make Copper tools anymore. Cause now you need 3 new resources. So instead of 3, like the two before it, you suddenly need twice that, SIX materials to make ONE tool. Whats more, these new materials aren’t tied to mining the ground for resources, or chopping trees for sticks and leaves.
Progression here jumps all over the place, and it’s basic low tier crafting. That isn’t even including the higher tier stuff.
Progression in this game is such a grind, because none of it is tied together. Everything need a unique resources, specific to very few recipes. The game would be better, if it cut out most of these useless resources all together.
But it doesn’t, and instead doubles down, making recipies even more complicated, instead of simple, and changing old instead of progressing to new tiers or adding entire new systems.
Going back to Minecraft. Minecraft has a LOT of items, way more than Boundless does currently. And yes, it only had 5 basic resources. Stone. Wood. Iron, Gold, and Diamond. And yet it can create so many items, using just those 5 resources.
Boundless has like 30 basic resources I think. Including Bone, Inky Leaf, Fiberish Leaf, Wood, Stone, Copper, Iron, Diamonds, Emeralds, Topaz, Silver, and so on. Boundless has made itself too complicated. Where you need resources from different things, from minerals, to rocks, to trees, to plants, to soil. Just to make basic stuff. Then instead of using those ‘Basic Stuff’ to craft advance stuff, you just need more of the Resources.
You don’t need an Stone Hammer to get the resources to make a Copper hammer. You don’t need a Copper hammer to get the resources to make a Iron Hammer.
Going back to Refine and Decoration blocks. You don’t need Iron to get materials to make Refind blocks, and don’t need Gem hammer to make Decoration blocks. And yet Refine and Decoration blocks, are compared, tiered, and made more complicated like they work the same way as the tools.
Where the First two didn’t need anything new. Stone/wood and Refine. Compared to Wood and Stone tools. Then like tools, the next Tier jumps, needing Spark and Wax, like tools need Glue and Sackcloth.
I said it before, and I said it again, progression is very messed up, and all over the place. This is what makes it very grindy. It isn’t very fluid. You can’t just mine to upgrade mining stuff. You have to venture out to searching for plants for the right leaf, cutting many trees for sap, and killing mobs for bones. And that’s just the Copper and Iron tools. It gets more complicated farther one.
People’s main excuse is ‘It’s an MMO, one player shouldn’t be able to make tools, they should be forced to have 2 people, one to mine and one to pick flowers and kill mobs’. And to them, I call them stupid. Because even if it’s an MMO, every single MMO ever released, and ever will be released in the future, are always 100% solo friendly. There is not a single MMO, except this one, that forces you to make friends, have friends, and cooperate with other players just to progress even a tiny bit in the game.
