Please Remake the Forging System

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So I was messing around on the test server today with the Centraforge since I don’t have the ability to use it on the live servers.

Spawned in some mats and hammers, etc., and started forging up some stuff.

Basically I wanted to see exactly how RNG the entire system is and I’ve got to say that it’s a horrid system.

I would much rather have a forging system where you know exactly what you’re getting for the materials that you’re going to use. If there’s going to be RNG involved I think a less painful way of doing it should be explored.

Instead of having to use a tray to place forging materials in, why can’t we have the entire system reworked to allow us the ability to craft specific items from the Centraforge that you then apply to an item? Kind of like how Path of Exile lets you craft items. This way if someone wants to apply their 200 forging materials of the same kind to get an item with a specific buff, then so be it. It sure would be a lot faster process and feel a lot more rewarding instead of spending 1 hour forging a single tool or weapon to find out it’s garbage.

I think it would clean up the forging process a lot. In fact, I don’t even like the idea of there being negative effects when you’re crafting something. It literately makes no sense. When you spend hours getting all the materials each week to then craft up a handful of hammers to then forge stuff on them, it’s extremely demotivating.

This isn’t a new player or seasoned veteran problem. This is an inherit problem with forging in general as a crafting activity. It’s horrible. RNG is already bad enough with creature drops and I see very little place in it with crafting.

In addition to that, I think dumbing down the forging effects would help out too if the whole process was more simple for every player. It would encourage players to craft their own forged items and that in turn would give them incentive to attend community hunts that some of the guilds host (such as Portal Seekers). This would lend towards higher player activity too.

I think I would play a lot more if I could forge up some decent gem hammers. I think if I could just craft items that I could click and drag over a tool or weapon to apply its effect, it would give a range of that effect, such as 20-60% damage increase, instead of having to wait a couple seconds for some stupid gears to spin to then tell me my hammer is instantly garbage.

There’s so much more left to be desired with the Centraforge. I wish it would get a complete design overhaul and to something way less RNG and incredibly more fun. I shouldn’t have to feel like I am at work again trying to make something just so I can play the game.

Boundless is about having fun. Not being frustrated.

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I do agree, but in the time that I’ve played Boundless I’ve often felt frustrated for one thing or another, and annoyingly, it’s usually not from a single thing but a collection of issues…

True, but so you know, as a workaround, once you see the first -50 vigour or whatever for example, you can exit the centraforge screen and immediately re-open it and it’ll skip the entire animation process. If you’re on pc you can mod it to be faster too, though I haven’t bothered, as I just Esc and E continuously while forging. Not ideal, but used to it now…

Forging is complicated (but not too complex, actually) and while the game does have a decent amount of information within the forge screen itself (if you mouse over things, dunno how you see it on PS4), it does take a little bit of trial and error, and the testing environment did help me to understand the trial and error side of it too.

I don’t and honestly can’t be bothered to forge 3x3 1-shot t6s hammers except by luck (which does happen rarely), but what the game doesn’t really tell you, is that having maxed out power is basically essential to forging good/decent items, such as 1-shot single block t6 gem hammers and the like; they are stupidly easy to make if you know what you are doing.

And I only use boon compound 1 and sometimes 3, and draining (i think) 1 and 2 or so. Then gums and more recently I also use some fate paste. To be honest, the results stop being completely unpredictable when you’ve done things a few times and have memorised what each gum can roll as boons, too.

Using these most basic compounds you can have decent forged quirk-free and defect-free tools without too much effort; I find collecting the materials to be far more annoying than actually doing the tool forging.

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Workarounds for animations is not acceptable. There shouldn’t be any animations at all.

You’re right, forging isn’t complicated. The RNG about it is what makes it frustrating. You could have the best rotation with your forge materials and still get garbage tool or weapon again and again. It’s RNG.

I’ve been an early access backer since day one. Crafting with any of the other machines gives me exactly what I spent time gathering materials to craft. Centraforge doesn’t. It’s a garbage system cause it has heavy RNG.

I did forge hammers on the test server with 7200 power. That’s max power. Didn’t help at all.

If I want to craft something, I should have a predictable result each time without having to think beyond having the crafting materials on hand. If the crafting system is going to add elements that turns an item into something into complete garbage for the effort and cost of materials than it’s a pretty poorly designed system.

It’s bad enough you have to spend hours every week to get the materials in order to craft the forging materials to then forge an item that you also spent time to get. This is even with going on community hunts to get those creature drops. I don’t have the ability to do that since I am a solo player.

I want the system to be normalized like the other crafting machines. There’s really no point for it not to be.

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I only mentioned power since you didn’t mention what the setup or forge ingredients that you used were exactly. :slight_smile:

I agree that the system is too heavy on RNG, considering that it can have negative effects on a tool. I don’t particularly like wasting time and materials either. But I never make tools with quirks or defects. Maybe one quirk by misfortune. I do 20-25 rounds at most on a tool.

Getting quirks or defects on tools is completely avoidable if you don’t use the draining/corrupt whatever compounds and stick to the boon-only compounds. I can make a video tomorrow of how I forge if that’s any help; I’m a really basic forger and I’m happy with what I get.

Sure, I don’t make 3x3 1-shot hammers except by luck as I said, but so I just buy those. I could live without them too, but they are quite convenient. I could be making 3x3 3-4shot t6 hammers, and that would probably be good enough if the 1-shot hammers weren’t around.

To be honest, I did prefer the system that existed before the centraforge, of just crafting gem hammers that had the specific AoE patterns. It meant that anyone could have an AoE tool eventually and reliably as long as they kept getting materials to make the tool.

I’m generally a solo player too and have gathered all my forging materials by myself; the only ones I ever bought were setting resins before I even knew what they were for.

The game does have too much grind in some areas in my opinion too; I have a fair bit of time to play, sure, but it’s the number one reason I don’t recommend the game to friends; nobody else I know would have the time (or patience) for the grind.

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I have to disagree . The forging system isn’t that hard, I can forge mostly anything as I want it to be just need the right forge materials and technique and you can definitely invent your own deck that works for specific item. I can craft 5 hammer per forge with T8dmg and 3x3 aoe without any defect in 10 minutes might be even less and have exactly the same tools every time.

I’ve played MMO with a lot more rng such as Archeage just to name one that item are extremely hard even impossible to “enchants” and you need to gather materials for months before even trying while in boundless you can make perfect forge with around 25k investment.

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I come from Neverwinter so forgive me if I laugh at the comparison to horrible RNG. :blush:

I actually like the forging system and I thin the fact that there can be some negative effects makes it better. It forces you to get creative with combinations of mats… the more I do it, the better I get.

If things turned out awesome and perfect every time, it would take the value out. That’s just me. :blush:

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I believe there’s a UI mod you can use to remove the animations as well.

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I just exit the forge and get back in. Honestly, I don’t even mind the animations… I like watching the roll. :wink:

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I like watching the animations, although it would be nice if they were skippable for people who don’t.

Boundless is the first enchanting system I have used like this so i don’t have anything to compare it too. I do actually enjoy the system more now that I have done experiments and watch others do the “higher teir methods”, before though I was completely confused by it.

It is exciting when you stack the odds in your favor and make what your after. Things like solvents go a long way to making sure you get the right buffs with minimal fuss. Although sometimes you just get an impossible string of bad luck which is frustrating, but I’ve never had it happen more than once a day.

Overall I am happy with the system as is, it would be nice to have more options, and for gums to be slightly more effective (some of that bad luck I ran into was having 4 buffs of two different gums and getting a different buff family than those two twice in a row).

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Sorry, I actually like this system. I’ve already found two systems, one clean, one slightly messy, that yield good results regularly. When making AOE hammers, I don’t go for extra durability, as it takes extra turns to apply the gums for it. Instead, I just start with special gum(4) and float on protection and invigoration pastes until I get AOE level 4 and magnetic collector (doesn’t matter which level). Then I clear using a single round of vigour cat 2. Then it’s effect gum(4) and boon transmute if I don’t get damage+ right away. Almost every point hencforth will go into be damage and I get T6 most the time. If it’s not a t6 hammer, well, then, how about some strength brew, now it is t6.

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I will never understand how people can like RNG systems like this in MMOs. I’ve been holding back on this opinion of forging in Boundless for a while.

I don’t have a ton of time during the day to grind out forging recipes. I also don’t want to hear about buying from other shops either. I know that’s a viable option. What I want is something that is viable for me if I don’t want to spend my coin. Spending a ton of time hunting down crafting materials isn’t viable.

It’s fine if you like it. Doesn’t mean it can’t be a lot better and with a lot less RNG. It’s irrelevant if you’re doing perfectly fine with the system now. It doesn’t exactly lend well to those who don’t have a group of players to play with on a regular basis or can attend community hunts multiple times a week. I have neither. So do a lot of other folks that play this game and those who have pretty much taken extended breaks from it or straight up quit playing.

Saying you’re doing fine with something in a video game doesn’t reflect at all about the rest of the player population.

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RNG is what makes it. It would just be crafting without it.

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I think that would be an improvement.

Although there are a lot of other ways to add effects to items instead what basically is an RNG enchanting system.

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I have gone on like three hunts. I am mostly solo. The market was critical for me in leveling up faster once I finally found the portal networks. My point is that you can try to reproduce the hard work that went into the shops and portal networks by yourself, but complaining about it when it’s right there for your benefit is kinda, well, boorish and juvenile. Work on your own efficiency factor and use what there is to use. You will have nice things in due time. I did it, it’s how you get on top of the game.

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Some people are insane (Asian market), and other people like systems that they themselves know how to do, but is hard enough or annoying enough to make it such that, other players will have a hard time using the system, making them feel more special or giving them something to profit from. Others just have way to much time.

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Rng system makes the game meaningful just like pain and triumph make rl feel worth it. Success doesn’t taste as good without the failures.

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There are other ways to make things hard with out the use of RNG/luck. add a skill based puzzle to the system for example.

RNG is not meaningful, You pull the lever and wait for the game to tell you if you won or not.

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This is something I don’t have a lot. I guess that’s why I think the forging system is garbage. I spent the better part of an afternoon doing forging tests and got garbage results on every hammer but 1. It was 20-30 tests.

I used a lot of different combinations of forging materials and made sure to use things over others. Yeah I got better as I went but still I just want to thrown the 3 to 5 materials in the machine and have it produce an item that I can apply to a tool like augments do to totems, bombs, and slingbows, except have it stay with the item like the effects normally do.

The more fun and satisfying something is the better. It’s what helps retain players.

This is a video game. It’s not a second job. If I have to decide whether or not I am going to spend 3 hours playing Boundless to do something or spend it playing something else, then I am going to pick the game that I get the most enjoyment out of. Right now that isn’t Boundless. It isn’t a complaint like you want to so elaborately claim that I am doing while also calling me juvenile in the same sentence.

If you think RNG is meaningful, then you sure love grinding. I don’t. I want my time spent in the game to mean something personally to me. That if I go out and mine for 3 or 4 hours on my day off that I will feel like I got closer to something. I’ve never once done that ever when I’ve went out and done community hunts or soloed meteors.

I don’t like slot machine features. A lot of gamers in general don’t.

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I have alot of time and I also think the forging system is bad. I have found a way to make it work for me but I do not like it since it involves using a bug to remove an element of RNG out. Otherwise I would not even bother trying if it was not for that. And that is a sign of a bad system when it makes your players want to use bugs or cheese to bypass something.

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I think you’re missing the point that people are actually trying to help you. They are sharing their forging methods and providing alternative ways of obtaining the results that you want. You’re just chaulking it up to RNG and saying its stupid. There’s ways around the RNG issue, and it is a skill to learn. An actual skill I mean, not like a “I point a point in this and now I know how to do it” skill. Keep playing with it and I think you’ll realize that it’s not as bad as you thought it was. That’s how it went with me anyway.

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