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.
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 
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.
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.
But per hour? What Kind of set up does that Need?
Well with the old pies 3-4 levels was per hour since the pie lasted that long. But with crafting even with the rock xp nerf with proper setup you can still use that as an effective way to level. Tho I don’t know the exact way to set it up as I don’t do that. I generally toss my rock lol.
So we are Talking a proper Setup for burst xp, after Hours of mining stuff to get it into crafting/refing and then reaping the rewards with pies running?
I use t6 hammer with aoe, mega fast brew and teaching pie. Then litterally mine every ore you see on t6 worlds. That should net you at least 1 level per bew (15 min, with right skills). Sometimes I can get 5 or even closer to 6 levels per hr on certain worlds and mining tecniques.
Then if you craft all that ore and masscraft the rock, you will see more levels, probably averaging a total of 5-8 levels per hour.
In all fairness, most of my downtime is moving the rock from t6 world to base. That sucks so much.
While i can see that working to some extend, i dont think it is the norm or is it? Rarely have i 15 min of straight mining unless i stay above Lava Level. I shall give this a whirl one day.
Thank you for the insight.
Well let me know next time you go and i come with you for the rock alone 
And sorry OP, for off Topic derail.
Meh, we all have our different ways. I spent 110 t6 aoe ~3700 durability within a month (not playing as much as I had hoped) but some days I did 8 hrs straight. Just a break for a drink and some food now and then, then eat while playing. Works for me, maybe not for everyone else…
Haha, I can show you what I do but I’ma keep my rock to myself, rock is still ok xp / hr, sadly nowhere near as good as pre nerf. Xp pies is kinda meh too since you gotta keep track of it all the time, each pie runs out just quite fast now.
All I see is players with more time to play and does that make them better players? Is a cube that is made of marble better than a chiseled build made of wood? I think different players look at the materials used in builds very differently. You may see it as an accomplishment for someone to have used a lot of marble. I personally think that all materials like marble or wicker show is that a player has a lot of time to play the game. Probably more than I do. If a player can play 5 hours a day and another can play 5 hours a week, do they keep playing knowing that it will take them 7 times as long to get enough materials to build something similar or just find another game?
If you decide for yourself, with the proper info gathering beforehand, to Play a game you should know what you put yourself into.
When i started my pyramid i estimated the time to About 2 years. But then i knew what i wanted to build beforehand.
Games of this genre, much like Survival games, Need time. A Person which decided to Play such a game should know that by Research or experience and knows how much time he/she/it can spend.
There are enough instant gratification games out there for the other People.
I think if you tell players that a decent build will take two years you will remove a lot of potential players from ever playing the game. There is a difference between instant gratification (creative mod) and having to take years for a build. I built in EA and yes it took time, I would spend a month on a build. But if the game is moving towards years instead of months then it is becoming a very different game.
For me grind is doing things constantly for XP, coin, resources, gear etc.
Most games have some sort of grind mechanic, especially RPG’s, the grind in boundless is very tame compared to other games i’ve played.
When it comes to timegates which a lot of games use, its the game basically telling the player to go and do something else while your waiting, with times that are 1hr+ those tasks are best started just before you decide to log off for the day.
Just be grateful that Boundless doesn’t have extreme crafting times like Warframe’s 3 day timewall for a single frame (not including 24hrs for part crafting + 6 days if the frame and parts have to be researched first)