I hear people use those terms all the time. 99% of the time it’s IRL & not online though. Usually when conversing about commercial services, b2b things, etc. Definitely used when speaking about agriculture here.
Southern USA here
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I’m in California in a semi-agricultural area and not once throughout high school or college did anyone ever use that word.
The point is, people keep using qualifiers, about commercial services or agriculture, neither of which is “regular” conversation.
Yep. I may not be American, but I’m close enough. I also live in an agricultural area and I hear professionals in that workplace use ‘yield’.
Delmer: Cecil how’s it goin eh?
Cecil: Not too bad eh not too bad. Heard ye took yer corn last week?
Delmer: Yep. Yep. Had to get a couple o the lads from up the line to help bring it in before the rain came.
Cecil: What kinda yield d’ye get?
Delmer: takes off cap and scratches head Ohhh, I got 5 an acre in the back forty and 7 up front.
Cecil: Hang it that’s pretty good eh. I heard ol’ Pete took sick last week…
You get the idea. It’s a farming term used by farmers when they farm. It seems like an appropriate word to use in this context.
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We aren’t farmers though. We’re gamers.
If the objective is to simplify the game’s terminiology for new players, saying,
“Increases Seed Yield, but decreases crop yield”
That means you have to teach the player a new word. It’s far easier to just say,
“Increases Seed Drop rate, decreases yam drop rate.”
Same thing with changing the name of the game from “Oort Online” to “Boundless”. How many people know what an Oort Cloud is and even appreciate that knowledge lol.
Yield is used in normal United States English all the time but I’m from the midwest where farming is prevalent. In particular, the term for how much usable crops come from a field is in fact yield.
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I can see where you’re coming from. But people should be able to use context clues to figure out what yield means in this case. But common sense isn’t present in everyone lol (not referring to you in this case)
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We are also generally not any profession in which our games depict yet the industry specific terminology is used very regularly in games.
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Live in Ohio on the border of KY and WV, and yield is a common phrase in many areas, Get into a heated discussion and one gives in, you will hear “I yield”. Used in farming all the time, It is a common phrase in the three states in my home area.
It is used in many ways and we just know what is meant in how it is used.
My son, who is disabled is a gamer and he says it is common in many games.
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Think of it this way, Boundless is helping people get smarter!
If someone doesn’t know what a word means, they look it up and now they know a new word.
Win-win, I think 
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I dunno, how many drops does a glowcap fungus yield?? Sounds right to use yield in Boundless.
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Gaming has taught me a lot over the years actually lol. Non gamers would never believe it
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Lmfao 
… in Google you pretty much get 2 definitions of “yield” … one to give way etc and the other referring to farming … hmmm 
I wonder which one is relevant?
Yep, my son was constantly getting one of the dictionaries (we have three and a thesaurus) in the house and they are all constantly in use. My son keeps one in his room since he was a kid because games would use words he didn’t know.
Said he learned a lot about a wide variety of stuff from gaming.
I go if they can’t figure it out from the sentence, well, they need to learn to use a dictionary. Sent my grandkids one each for Christmas, can’t believe my daughter didn’t have one. Shame on her. Told her that too.
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Learned words as a kid playing the old graphic adventures… I remember learning about velocity when I got thrown into a pit to my death… 
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Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it…
dang it…
but Cuttletrunk, starberries, & oort fuel are considered regular conversation? Everyone instantly knew what these things were?
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I wonder what the new patch notes add??
Can we have straw farmers hats craftable from grass please?
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A use for decorative wicker…
Argh, no!
Then we might have to start making it…
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I’d guess another lighting tweak to make it even better 
It’s far more common to hear,
“How many orbs does glowcap drop?”
“How many shards does the boss drop?”
“How many materials do you get for beating that boss?”
It’s really not about common sense, it’s about exposure to a word. The trend I’m seeing here is people who are familiar with farming vernacular or specific commercial business enterprise understand what the word means, and they’re also Boundless veterans.
There’s a great number of people out there who have rarely heard the word “yield”, and it can be confusing.
I feel like this is again an example of peoples’ geographic, occupational, and game-experience bias showing. New players have a substantially different experience than the dedicated who currently remain.
Clearly I understand what the word means, but if I walked down to my local high school and asked them what they “yielded” from the Starbucks they just visited, they’d look at me like I’m nuts. Same as if I used it in a gaming context.
Cuttletrunk is the name of an enemy, and as such, the name has no relevance.
starberries
oortfuel
Furthermore, the difficulty isn’t in learning new words particular to a game, it’s in how you explain the words to the player.
For example, pretend the following description is given in the game,
“Starberries: an Oortian fare contumacious to lava.”
From this, you can see the word “berries” can basically guess it’s a form of food. Then you see the word “fare” and have absolutely no idea what it means, and then “Contumacious” and become even more confused, but you know it has to do with lava.
The problem isn’t learning new nouns, it’s learning new adjectives and verbs that directly pertain to the way an item interacts with the game. Farming is a complex system and should use descriptors simple to parse.