That’s what makes games fun for a lot of people in RPGs and MMO’s, a steady unlock of new things, and right now Boundless lacks that.
I agree and it’s what I based my post on. I felt like the early game introduced ya to a bunch of new cool stuff but then I hit a wall after Iron tools and got frustrated.
I learned that I enjoy strip mining ONLY if the hammer breaks a rock in 1-2 hits, if it takes 3 hits to break rock, I get bored immediately!
Otherwise I want more caves, but as I learned, caves aren’t regeneratin’ ores as much, so now cave mining is screwed up too 
Bring bomb mining back, everything solve.
The balance was fine, just u don’t want to use it lol.
Now you are asking more changes for easier grind 
I am rich enough, i don’t need devs to buff any source.
I can buy w.e i want.
That people wanted to use stone age tech suffer which is fun to me now 
I’d rather explore a cave and get fewer resources but have a fun time doin’ it than strip mine.
And havin’ a predictable tool progression would be good too, because I’d feel like, “Oh I can tech up soon! Yayyy” or “Should I try a Swift tool next?” or maybe I want to kill some monsters a little so I go for a Crit Hammer on a higher tier world?
Games are all about disguising the grind with different types of game mechanics.
You keep followin’ me around on the forums and makin’ passive aggressive comments. Stop.
Haha uh oh, I got quoted in that and not him, lol.
But yeah, if anything, this would lengthen the grind, not shorten it 
i dont see any mention of easier grind,just more fair,lets face it bomb mining was far more effective then intended and many got insanely rich far too fast which kills off economy before the games even been out officially a month.
I like your idea.
It’s close to other building games like Starbound (very linear) but add more options to keep things interesting.
This is really sad T4 are beautifull. But Instead everyone lag on the same planets.
There are planets that nobody can survive on permanently, even with max atmosphere resistances, unless they have buffs from certain foods. The creatures there also do ridiculous amounts of damage, even to players with max defensive skills. If you want a hardcore planet that new people cannot just jump to, those planets are it.
That’s end-game stuff, and does nothin’ to deal with the mid-game progression that’s busted atm.
I am sorry, but I do not understand why people feel that players need to be forced to play each tier of a planet linearly in a sand box game. If a player lacks sufficient skill points, but still wants to hammer away at the armored blocks in a mine on a tier 5 planet inefficiently, then why spoil their fun? In my opinion, mid-game progression is just leveling to 50 to get a complete skill build.
Because a lot of people are unhappy with progression being broken.
Whether or not it’s a sandbox is irrelevant. There’s a problem with mid-game progression.
Edit It’s an MMO-Sandbox, not a sandbox. If it were a sandbox, there wouldn’t be a skill tree anything like there is now.
They only do this because they feel that’s what the game expects them to do, and silver and gold tools are almost useless anyways at that point for’em.
Yeah, but still, why force them to go through planet tiers? Slow down progression? Sure, but forcing them to play on a track is not sandbox-ey. Let them decide for themselves where they want to go and progress. Slowing down progression can be done in other ways (like more complicated crafting recipes and rarer materials, as we just saw in a patch).
I am a casual player and I have barely been playing the game for a week. I tried jumping to Serpensarindi two nights ago, but decided to abandon my post there when I noticed that resource blocks in mines were taking 12 hits to destroy with my Iron Hammer. I completely skipped T2 and T3 planets. I am now happily squatted on Till and that is my choice to make until I feel ready for other planets and I am still not at the endgame.
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.
That’s not true at all. FFXI originally required a lot of grouping, same as EQ1/2, Lineage, many of the first MMO’s were designed to be played as Guilds from a very early stage. Back when game’s cost less’to make, these games didn’t need a huge team to support them, so they flourished, but as development costs increased, the game’s became easier to attract casuals.
Even in WoW, your character can’t specialize in every profession, he has’to choose a primary and secondary, or make alts.
It was like this originally, but they changed it because they felt it was too unintuitive.
Everything else you said I more or less agree with.
Thank you for the detailed and honest, thorough post. <3
agreed,FF14:arr you were able to make everything on one character and that economy worked just fine as not everyone was willing to put in that much effort to achieve endgame crafting (took ALOT of time and effort),you were rewarded for that effort that so many players weren’t willing to pour into it to reach that point,i pretty much was full time crafting except to help guildy’s with dungeons and raids and felt i was rewarded for my efforts.
This guy right here knows what’s up.
To guide the progression like Terraria or something just doesn’t fit. You can buy any item if you save the coin. That throws a wrench in any planned progression. Keep it sandbox, let people determine their own limits and push them when they are ready.
Unfortunately, the hand-holding of other MMOs (and the lack of realization from a lot of players that Boundless is one) has neutered a lot of folks and they just don’t understand what a sandbox is supposed to be.
You build a castle with diamonds, I will fight wild monsters in the mud, that lady is going to dig to the bottom with copper, and that guy is going to set up a shop to sell us stuff so we can continue to do it all. Sandbox.
It’ll all come down to the playerbase, and I think there’s a lot more people who want meaningful, non-grindy hamster wheel progression than a true sandbox here. Clearly, the devs can’t cater to both, or there wouldn’t be post after post here, discord, and the forums complainin’ about progression and the grind.
I don’t want to start a huge argument but I will offer an opinion for whatever it’s worth: I think the devs and several posts on this string have fallen into the same sort of trap right now: deciding how players should play this game. There’s a very significant difference between deciding how you think a game should be played vs deciding how others should play it. The devs seem to want us to play with their stuff their way, and some of the suggestions above are echoing that idea. People should be able to enjoy the game however they want. That doesn’t mean they get to grief anyone they come across, but it does mean that if they see a trick or technique that isn’t a cheat or an exploit, and calling bomb mining either of those is questionable at best, let players play. The devs nerfed bomb mining because it was a technique they hadn’t expected or planned for, but bomb mining doesn’t hurt anyone. It made a lot of folks “rich” in the game very quickly, but to be fair, they figured out how to do it, they worked together or worked like maniacs to get there first, and they “won” that race. So what? Doesn’t affect my game play. Doesn’t hurt the economy; quite the reverse. I can actually buy gems if I can earn enough coin. I won’t be able to do that if people can’t mine enough of them quickly enough to make them want to sell them at a reasonable price. It’s the same with progression. I jumped to Biitula as soon as I could and made that my home. I jumped to Serpensarindi as soon as I could too, but it took time to get the skills to go to the other T4 worlds. There’s already progression in the world, the scarcity of iron on the starter worlds is a prime perfectly acceptable example, but I want to choose how and when I go somewhere, not be locked into someone else’s idea of how I should get there.
