I like to see that in crafting group ( basic, advanced etc) Keep the ingredients at same level, or lower.
Not get a recipe for your tier with one or more ingredients that is a higher tier.
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As someone who’s really concerned on the status of crafting system- especially with the Boundless’ ingame economy. In sense of - ya’know, stuffs.
I rather that I support the Specialization stuff. The more… branched off jobs- instead of making it so people can become the Jack of Trades, and thus encourage lonewolfing, and not as dependence on other players ultimately not having to play with people- and play their own pace at their own desire. I can understands- I can comprehend their understanding. I can sympathize with the players that can’t afford to play Boundless most of their time in which because they have school, work, and or life in the way in the format that they cannot be exactly active. But this is the issue with Boundless- The Economy itself - is in shambles. It’s at the point where any more of leeway, and making rewards higher, and risks lower- it’ll be difficult on new players to get started off - financially wise.
Right now, the economy of the game is slowly shifting into - And what I mean shifting into- This is exactly where we are at.
We’re currently at the Monopolistic Competition level, but it won’t be long before we starts to descend into Perfect Competition Status. To you, that may sound attractive as it said Perfect Competition - But trust me, as a Seller. it is not attractive at all.
As it stands, the only way for a Seller to sell, and buyer to buy- is to drive the economy’s price down evenmoreso. Making it such a hazard for the players’ economy currently. If the players were given more liberty to craft more stuff at less costs of their skillpoints, and their increased accessibility to more stuff. Then it slowly, and it slowly stales out the economy eventually.
One of the reason why I would rather support specialized crafting, is to encourage economy, and addition, encourage closer tighter communities found when player explores world. Instead of bunch of scattered houses, and messy places across the planet when they’re trying to find a place to establish, and or settle.
But it’s up to the majority. They can continue to make decisions in which it damage the economy, in exchange for more “fun” - Or they could at least try to make game challenging for them, and interactive with other people rather than just being a Do-It-All.
That’s just my takes on the situation. Give, or take.
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Well, I cant really agree with choices which help the economy and make the game not fun… though I’m hoping you didn’t really mean it that way.
And challenging does not have to equal grind or limitation. And it’s important to note that not everyone shares everyone else’s idea of what is comfortably challenging, and what is frustratingly challenging.
As long as alts are allowed (and I think they should be, for various reasons – RP, family members, etc), people will use them to cover all the skills they want to or have interest in. You can call them classes, call them specializations, it wont matter. I’ve seen it happen in every MMO that has crafting that I have ever played.
The true balancing factor here about people being able to do everything (which they WILL, either through skill sets, alts, or additional accounts) that people seem to keep forgetting, … is TIME.
If a person has a character or characters that can do everything, they cant actually be doing all those things at once. If they go mining, they aren’t gathering wood, or hunting for animal drops. If they’re busy building they’re not doing any of those in that time. The balance here cant be some kind of forced limitation, because people will (and always have/do) find a way around that. The limitation is simply already there. Balancing activities vs. time available/invested.
This is one of the reasons Sly and partners are doing so well with the shop. They’re spreading out the tasks/workload and getting more done in the same time. A single player, whether they have the skills on their character to do those things, will never be able to do them all at once, or even come close to keeping up.
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But the game is advertised as a MMO- and in a fashion that this game is taking decisions, routes, and routines in which MMOs doesn’t exactly shine too much. Eventually, that shine will diminish, and people will wonders why this game is a MMO outside of hunting.
We need to give people more reasons to be grouped, more jobs to cover, so that new players could be easily integrated into the communities filling the weaknesses, and roles that themselves can be apart of- rather than being isolated just simply because they didn’t go the route other people wanted them to do.
I just rather wants us to focus on more of MMO aspect - rather than trying to make this game a Single-player. Sure the group of players will get stuff done more than single player with alts- but what’s the point of MMOs if players can do a lot of stuff themselves alone? In my own opinion, That’s not fun - That’s just playing the game in the way you could be making friends, and having fun in the game with people that you befriended.
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I find this interesting. It keeps coming up. A lot of people read MMO and though, you can’t do everything. I saw MMO and though oh all the worlds are connected.
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To me, MMO is friendship- teamwork. Ultimate fun in group-play rather than trying to do everything Solo. Someone real to interact, and have a good chat rather than just stare at the monitor trying to smelt stacks of copper. ;p
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That is a really good way of putting it.
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I think I’m missing what you’re saying here. To me, this happens to every MMO over time, if they don’t keep adding new features/paths/systems to keep it interesting to the playerbase.
If you’re talking about adding more options and paths of advancement/achievement to the game, whether its something like farming, fishing, etc, or more forms of adventure and exploration rewards and such… then I’m all for that. When I say I’m against grind, I am also actually completely for depth, breadth, and complexity of game systems (though not confusing ofc).
Not everyone plays MMOs to group or be in a guild. (Theres some great psychology articles online discussing the various reasons and ways that different people play MMOs, its worth some Google time 
). For a lot of people, its just knowing there are other real people there, it makes it feel more ‘alive’. For others, its a small group of friends or family. And sometimes people (myself included) just have one of those days (or weeks) where I just have too much to deal with when it comes to people IRL, and I would rather go off in the game and do something myself.
The bottom line is that adding more options and support for grouping (guild/clan systems, city management, etc) is great, I agree totally with all that. Forcing it, however, I can’t agree with. Boundless has (from what I’ve seen) attracted a lot of gamers that are far more towards the casual playstyle than the hardcore, min-maxer, or powergamer crowds. Right now thats a bit of a problem because I think we’re losing a lot of them due to certain complexities (which could be smoothed and explained better), and the difficulty(grind) at certain stages (which could also be smoothed and made more informative), and I think we will continue to see this kind of player churn until we smooth some things out a bit.
Not everyone shares that opinion though. I am not saying you are wrong to see it that way or want to enjoy it that way. But nobody is stopping you from grouping or guilding/clanning-up, either. You can play however you like, right now, and hopefully with improved guild/city systems as well. But, why take away the option for someone else to play the way they enjoy something just because it isn’t the way you enjoy it?
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Link the one your referencing. I want to read it.
One of the things that I currently see is that it’s far too easy for a new player to start the game and bypass much of the progression it takes to get up and running with things like tool making… You can earn enough coin doing the tutorials to go and buy a set of iron tools and then use those tools to level up enough to unlock the skills to make them yourself… essentially bypassing stone and copper tiers.
That being said, I would like to see more granularity for unlocking crafting recipes and doing away with the skill point requirement altogether, and instead use gated progression based on the number of an item that the player has actually crafted. This is essentially like learning an actual trade and would allow for graded qualities of those items as the player gets better at crafting them.
So instead of unlocking a whole group of craftable items like “Common Tool Recipes” and being able to instantly craft the highest tier tool in the group, you would be able to unlock each tool type individually, but only in their progressive order.
For example, by crafting 100 Iron Hammers, you could progress from being an Untrained Iron Hammer Crafter (lowest quality iron hammer) to a Trainee Iron Hammer Crafter. Any iron hammers crafted at this new level could have slightly increased durability and slight damage increase over the previous tier. Getting to the level of Iron Hammer Trainee would also allow you to start crafting Silver Hammers at the Untrained level. Those that reach the Master / Artisan level would be able to create the strongest level of of those tool types.
This unlock process could also be applied to the blocks too, but without the graded quality of blocks… you just gain the ability to do more fanciful things with those blocks, for example, crafting enough Igneous Stone would unlock refining, then decorative 1, decorative 2, bricks etc.
This for me would be my ultimate wish for crafting - you could actually have things like crafting guilds, where a clan might funnel all their resources through a group of crafters so they could level up and make the best quality items for the clan.
More casual and solo players could then still have access to all of the building materials, tools etc that the game has to offer (with some effort still required on their part), allowing them to progress on their own. The only difference being is that, whilst still functional, their tools/weapons would be of a lesser quality to a master crafters versions.
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… I wasn’t referencing a specific article. I was saying there were a lot of studies and papers on the topic, that I have read over the years. There’s no need to react like that.
Plus, … Google.
Here, I’ll help you with a few:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_intro.html
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_motivations.html
http://wow.richardcolby.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/yee-psychology-mmorpg.pdf
…and zillions more. Google is your friend. If you want to learn more, ask it. 
I’d actually love to see a Bartle-type survey on the forums, to get a sense of what type of players are attracted to Boundless, and what views those types have on these various topics or discussion. Might be a good way to start understanding and appreciating the differences of opinions so we can work towards goals that are fun for everyone.
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hehehe we prefer calling it a business of sorts
EDIT: grammar sux
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I’m sorry, that was not meant as **** you I don’t believe you. You genuinely peaked my curiosity about the possibility of evidence based research on MMO’s. I had never even though about that before. I asked because there is a ton of garbage on Google so I wanted to know we were reading the same thing.
This guys training and methods are legitimate, and WOW! This is awesome. I love evidence and analytics.
This warrants its own post. These finding are incredible, insightful, and fun to read. Not only did I learn more about where I fit into the puzzle but a lot more about the people that I playing with.
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I’m sorry that it seemed like it came off that way to me, when you didnt mean it that way. So, we’re both ok 
For reference, if anyone is interested, my Bartle Quotient (ask Google) was EASK with E-75%, A-46%, S-24%, and K-6%. (Explorer, Achiever, Socializer, Killer)
Bartle was doing online gaming psychology/research… back in the 90’s, or even earlier? Nick Yee was late-ish 90’s?
EDIT: At least ‘85, for Bartle, maybe earlier. Back in the days of MUDs, according to what I could find.
(Yes, I actually played MUDs. On BBS’. On dial-up modems. And we had to walk uphill, in the snow, both ways!)
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“Crafting outside the Skill system … with skills being bought”? Does this mean being bought with Coin? There’s an answer to the money-sink-(instead of hoarding it) problem!
This might enrage the Solo Player like myself as we don’t have a guild to pool cash and buy quickly the jucier perks (like Bulk and Mass crafting) but then again I’m also the Patient Player who will eventually unlock whatever-damn-wall the game throws at me! 
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Replying and taking this to a new thread. Were going to have some real fun with this…
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I agree with the progression idea. I have been thinking of the crafting guild and other guild ideas for awhile. I’m waiting to see how they decide to do skills and specialization. If they eliminate specialization making a single character able to do anything they feel like then it eliminates what I have been thinking of as the specialization halls within a guild. If everyone can do everything then there is no economy and there are no masters of anything. Spend the time, you have the skills and have no need for other Oortians. I was planning on upgrading, but, as soon as they said something about making it possible to do everything with a single character I decided to wait until I see what actually happens. Right now the one character idea has me thinking there’s better places to spend more gaming time and money on as they have better skills and it’s impossible to be a master of everything. In real life people don’t do everything themselves, they depend on craftsmen, companies that specialize, shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc. The closer to real life in that regard a game is, the better it is to me and the more certain I am the “master craftsman” has the actual knowledge and abilities to do as I wish to hire them for. The more a game becomes one person is a so called master of everything the more certain I am I can do it better myself rather than depend on what someone else really has the abilities and experience to accomplish what I want.
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Alright. I’m finally home and ready to spill so many words in the name of justice and crafting freedom. This issue has been broached so many times before. It has been done in so many ways. But, one of the myriad posts says the same basic thing. We are not happy with the crafting.
This ties into the skill and character progression, preventing a feeling of accomplishment in the game, and a staying power that would normally be made available in a massively multiplayer game. Currently, there is no actual reason to keep playing if you have already built everything, and there’s no reason to keep building everything if you are trying to progress. The absolute worst part of this situation is that if you want to sandbox the bantha poodoo out of this game, doing things like building monoliths to our collective sins, you can’t do that without crafting skills. It’s a catch 22 at it’s finest, creating a need to do things you don’t want to do to do things you want to do. Like work. So, where it would normally capture the attention of the most dedicated player, there is little incentive to actually keep that level of dedication in the long run. There isn’t a multiple day long endeavor, or collection quest, or anything that would normally give reason for continued activity.
Now, I know that you are all asking, “Why in the hell is this related to crafting skills?” and I’ll tell you : Because crafting skills are 100% tied to character development in an MMO. If there was an opportunity for us to advance along the lines of limited creation, such as armorsmith, tailor, etc, then there would be a reason for progressive character development. As for the roleplay aspect of it all, the skills we DO have are what I like to call “base skills”. All of them. If they are required to accomplish feat that are made available to your character, regardless of the build, then all the skills are needed, or rerolls should be unlocked, permanently.
I have been outspoken on this issue since I bought this game, advocating a revamp of the basic mechanics for a while now. I think that specialization would be preferred, in the long run, but it’s not the path that the developers seemed to have in mind. So, the only other option to this would be something along the lines of a job system, allowing each character to freely switch between classes on the fly. But, then again, if you do allow that, what’s the point of alts?
Alts are a basic requirement for continued longevity and team play. Locking one character to a role, I.E. Tank or healer makes it a need for a more dedicated player to create more than one character, or become a master of their own fate and harness their potential to the fullest. As it stands, alts simply don’t cut it. This is BECAUSE of the crafting system, forcing you to have a character that can create all the items at the cost of EVERY other skill available. This enfeebled townsperson behaves as a bookmark, just getting online and remaining active until the resources are used up,to be religated to the waiting room until something else needs to be crafted. So my crafter character has no intrinsic development, or opportunities for advancement unless I have a constant stream of supplies.
So this brings up another aspect of how the crafting system is nerfing character experience. If I create a crafter, just for that reason, I need supplies that they can’t get themselves. This either requires me to create an alt, who will naturally develop at a faster rate than my crafter, due to the feat system, or to get someone else to gather for me. But hiring or befriending a gatherer is something that depreciates my crafter character further. Marginalizing profits due to sharing of resources and crafted goods. It’s just another trap. There can’t be any other way for us to actually accomidate this style of play, realistically. Being beholden to someone is the fastest way to get me disinterested in a game. I want my own actions to hold their own merits, not be based on the collective actions of a community.
Games like Helldivers, which is amazing, has a system in place where there is a community contribution towards a war effort. That makes individual actions less impact in the long run, since you could feasibly join at the end of a war effort and contribute the base minimum, reaping the maximum reward. Or, conversely, you could join too early, and then be forced to carry the weight of an entire community, pushing against the grain towards an imaginary goal post that is constantly on the move. So, why does this example go into crafting? Again, because you can’t just do anything. You can’t just wake up and craft hammers, or whatever, because gathering, buying, trading, and other issues stand in the way, based on the willingness of the community that actively determines the value of your actions.
I have so many ideas on how to fix this problem, but the best one is to abandon this loosey goosey method of gameplay and simplify and streamline the skills. Give basic advancement tiers, based on level. Give stats based on level. Create classes with unique and interesting skills. Create interesting crafts and recipes that would make me want to craft them, just to try them, rather than going for the “best tool” and forgoing the rest. I would love to hear what you all have to say about this.
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I think some skills should be further added to the default recipes pool, but in exchange maybe have some really difficult recipes hidden in some form of challenge the player has to overcome (Level 1,2,3…etc Meteorites or Titans).
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I would like to get further clarification on the difference between:
Spending skill points to unlock recipes is a good way to enable specialization in crafting.
&
The basic recipes should be unlocked by everyone, but more advanced recipes should be bought with skill points.
I think many of us voting for the former also agree that the basic recipes should be available to newer players in order to not make the first few hours of the game daunting.
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