It is a tricky one to explain, why I enjoy it so much… it is like an altered state of consciousness almost when I do this, is the best way to put it. Like a trance in a way. I’ve done it ever since childhood with Tetris, figured out really quick back then that I could throw CDs in the stereo system and go into this mindless state where I felt so much better. I’m prone to bouts of depression and anxiety, and when I go into this state, that all melts away, even more than when I’m lost in a good game that requires active thought and concentration. Possibly part of why I’m so addicted to Boundless, since it lets me alternate between doing that and things involving more active thought with both being equally rewarding.
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MMO players generally will refer to this as “AFK mining” or “AFK leveling” etc (this is not the same as botting). It’s quite common for people to multi-task when they are doing certain activities in an a game. If BL adds more levels & activities, you will probably hear about more people doing this.
When I work, I usually have the following tabs/apps open: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Google, Spotify, Notepad, Task Manager, Youtube, Premiere, & sometimes a couple of other things.
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Oh but it is engaging enough. With regards to passive play. I consider this a sustained engagement. This passive gaming trend goes way back and although passive, is still a valid form of entertainment in a culture full of multitaskers. Our brains are more conditioned to be stimulated by various medias streaming in at once. I think you will see this trend even moreso when VR is the standard.
I don’t think many consider this passive form of gaming a grind in a negative connotation. It is leisurely and relaxing but still yeilds long term results, much like fishing or crafting on many MMO titles. In fact, I would argue that this is a necessary dynamic that modern MMOs should imbed into their games.
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I always listen to something while playing Boundless, WoW, or some sandbox games, personally.
Like, depending on my mood, I’ll listen to electro-swing when I’m feeling energetic, or relaxing music from video-games (like some themes from Witcher 3, like the one from Ard Skellig), or some sad musics when I’m feeling nostalgic. Or sometimes I just need some background chatter, so I’ll put Game Grumps compilations. As I write, I’m listening to one of those. 
What i’m saying is that I don’t see it as a way to make the grind more beareable, but to complement my mood.
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I personally love listening to music while playing Boundless.
It has nothing to do with not being engaged and more to due with it providing a focal point for me for when I am doing some tasks.
I’ll listen to all kinds of metal while mining and if I’m building I tend to go for more electronic music.
It relaxes me and let’s me just float away into the ether so to speak and get things done.
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We should have a thread where we share the musics we listen to depending on mood/activities on Boundless. 
< waits 5 minutes >
Ok, ok, I’ll do it.
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Wow… I greatly appreciate all the answers and people being willing to honestly share where they are. I think this area of grind is something we have to work on for sure in a way to lessen it… or at least be given back some of the developer perspective on why they think it is critical to Boundless.
Some of what was said is basically the same but how the point was approached and the selection of words I think really will be helpful in rounding things out. I’m really happy to see the responses…
If anyone else hasn’t shared their views of “grind” or specifically “boundless grind” then please do…
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I’ve played almost every major (and even some very minor) mmos. Grind is nothing new to me.
I have spent upwards of $1300 in Black Desert Online trying to avoid grind with “convenience” items. (You literally don’t get auto loot without a pet).
So as someone who fancies themselves as both able to deal with grind and knows it when they see it, this is what I see in boundless:
- Fueling portals is time-consuming. There should be a mechanism to connect a “network” of portals to a fuel source and command block. Maybe through an “interface” block. The guy behind Minecraft’s Applied Energistics mod had a bunch of great ideas about block interconnections and their configurations.
- Fueling beacons is time-consuming. Same problem as above.
- Forging anything makes me want to take a melon baller to my eyeballs. It’s not the RNG. I’d rather just slap the materials in the system, push a button, and have it spit out a tool and I push either “deconstruct”, “set”, or “keep”.
- Moving plots and beacons between players is the worst. My wife and I did that last night and it was the worst. The worst. It would be super if we could just have a tab that says “TRANSFER OWENERSHIP TO WHICH PERSON WITH FULL PERMISSIONS”. You click and it’s done.
- searching for items from any shop stand is impossible. It’s a galatic flea market and no one has anything you want. I proposed this in another thread, but we need a block that searches, once it finds you can warp directly to the item it found for a moderate resource cost.
I have other ideas but those are general improvement. These are the worst grind elements as someone who is on their 4th or 5th skill page. I do recall the trudge from 20-40 was especially brutal until I started doing group hunts.
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Uh… I don’t think this means what you think it means. AFK very specifically means AWAY FROM KEYBOARD. This is absolutely botting. If someone says they are AFK Mining or AFK Leveling, that means they aren’t actually sitting down at the computer at the time they are doing it. Some games have built in scripting that allow for this to be done legitimately, but in other games this absolutely means botting.
- Agreed
- Agreed
- I rather enjoy forging, I just wish there was a little bit more control involved and less RNG. But perhaps a mechanic that would allow you to “Save” a forge so you can replicate an identical forge again later could be interesting. Then the goal would be to capture a perfect forge and save it, so forging would still be exciting, but you could get rid of the grindy parts by allowing players to replicate past successes (save should consume all materials so there is a cost to saving, but allows for unlimited reproduction of that process later). We could even take this a step further and have it calculate out the exact material costs so forgers could compare recipes and better determine the true cost of crafting and best approaches to crafting without having to be excel warriors.
- Agreed, there really should be a beacon transfer option.
- Agreed, but to simplify things, it would be great if it just used the normal in-game tracking feature and simply placed a waypoint on the nearest desired loot you searched for. That should give you what you want and make development significantly easier since all of the mechanics already exist in the game.
I know what it means “literally”. However, it’s a term that everyone uses in the big MMOs to refer to a mind-numbing task that they are going to do for hours while they watch YT or do something else…with all windows open simultaneously.
Botting is completely different & will get you an insta-ban in most games. <-- usually a script of some sort to speed up a process or to run while you aren’t there (literally AFK).
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I typically feel something is grindy when I feel obligated to do something, rather than motivated.
In Boundless, that was maintaining a shop (keeping plinths stocked with coin, restocking common items, etc). It was self inflicted, but grindy nonetheless.
In WoW, it was having to farm a bunch of consumables before each raid.
Etc.
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Actually I know people who I’ll flip back n forth from tv and boundless and just be holding the trigger and control stick or equivalent on pc. Essentially I’d say they are afk
that is called multi tasking 
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No grind - no gain.
I feel like grinds are necessary to any game to make the overall experience enjoyable. The feel of achievement is so much greater when you created something you know you worked hard for and not many others would do it.
For me, the biggest grind is and will be gathering plots, hands down. Everything else can be bought or gathered easily. Plots, however, take quite a lot of effort and time to farm (I say that cause you get like 5-7 levels an hour of efficient gameplay and the amount of plots I need is absurd 
).
Anyone feel like selling me some wayfarer key or something to get more plots? 
I can’t agree that marble has an equivalent “accompaniment”. It’s not hard to make or hard to get the ingredients. It’s just straight time gate.
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Maybe, but I atleast look at builds with marble way different than I look at builds with just brick. I know theres has been a considerable amount of time or money gone into the build, which makes the build even cooler.
Disclaimer: not saying brick builds are ugly, I use brick all the time and I don’t think I’ve ever used marble, just refined gravel.
Then let me ask a noobquestion.
How do you make 5-7 Levels per hour, if i may ask?
With crafting and mining together I would imagine. Of course if you opt for teaching pie over persisting pie you can get easy levels mining. I know before the pie change I could get like 3-4 levels per pie but now it’ll take more pies.
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But per hour? What Kind of set up does that Need?