Love the game and have been very impressed with the dev team. I apologize for taking that comment the wrong way! Great to hear that there will be plenty of options.
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At first I had a reactionary feeling of uneasiness at reading some of the update notes. Made a few snap judgments, then before I put my foot fully in my mouth I swapped over to testing to try it out.
Decided as usual to start a new character and see how the new player experience was affected by the changes. At first what seemed like doom and gloom turned out to be a fun engaging mechanic of a bit of trial and experimenting with layouts to find what worked.
In about 7-8 hours of casual gameplay I was able to get all needed items to craft the hand tiller and have an optimized farm going producing more food then Iād need for solo play. My test was focused solely on feasibly producing food from a new character perspective.
Some of the mechanic was hard to comprehend without using the debug view and going just off the text prompts provide in game the balance felt bearable.
Mechanically it seemed over engineered (one of the other devs explained in another post why it is how it is) but once i understood it, it wasnāt hard to set things up. Balance wise it doesnāt feel far from an acceptable value in my opinion. Maybe a slightly higher seed return but all in all even though my first reaction was āscrew thisā I adapted quickly and it didnāt impede my progress. I hadnāt even used the initial yams I collected while getting the seeds so never got low on food.
Edit:
Forgot to mention the main mechanic point I found confusing and odd was requiring a forged tool to get placeable water. Seems like placeable water should be an earlier game item than before forge stage.
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Iām sure this is done to try and get people into using the Forge early, so they see its benefits, but I worry if itāll have the opposite effect.
In Minecraft, itās just pure RNG for their forge, but with Boundless itās extremely complicated and can leave the player basically throwing their hands up in frustration because they cannot understand it, and so instead of being able to patiently RNG their way to a forged tool they want, they canāt get it at all.
Maybe a simpler Forge and an Advanced Forge could help.
In minecraft you can control exactly what you get. Venerable boon on a totem is not to bad as the collection boon is the only one possible from venerable gum on these tools. Additionally, the collection boon is a single level boon. I would prolly go 4 venerable gums, pure boon till i get the collection boon, the 4 trait reduction and pump till full with more pure boon. It is a simple forge.
The enchanting forge gives you 3 random choices. You have to spend XP on one to refresh the next, or RNG find a trader.
That is how it use to be, you have to use lapis now and you can see exactly what it will give you. You either relig or do a level chant on a trash item to reset ut till it is what you want till it is the chant you want. Additionally, enchanting books lets apply enchants in a controlled manner so I prefer that over directly enchanting items. Also spending 1 level for a reset enchant is basically nothing.
Im no way trying to step on anyones toes or so ,but it feels like you are trying to please everyone here abd that makes it hard for you.
I feel like if enough people spam the same thing over and over again(usually cry about some nerf) that side usually wins even if it wouldnt be the better choice.
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Yeah, I agree. Iām generally ok with things becoming harder.
Either way @james, you guys are doing a great job and I love the direction. Sorry youāre getting blasted.
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I didnāt see the forge changes or bomb mining changes get reverted. People were VERY vocal about those updates. From what I saw this is going to be a compromise. (Takes this with the friendliest voice possible!)
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The community outcry for bomb mining was huge and things didnāt changeā¦ trueā¦ but then we had the XP stone/xp buff exploit and people cried and then things adjusted a bitā¦ now big complaints and more devs plans roll backā¦ What is next that gets reverted after hundreds of hours of coding because someone didnāt like it ā¦ this sets a trend that ācompromiseā happens if you are loud enough. That isnāt good in any level especially when it is via a method that is via a forum direction where not all voices are heard.
Iām not sure there should be compromises unless people can prove what it is needed and personally I didnāt really see any good arguments on why it needed to roll back compared to fight the developer views on why it was put in place the first time.
I just think we are starting a very bad trend hereā¦ putting the interests of 1 group in place over the overall game interests.
edit: I do think we need better community survey BEFORE development not after.
If the three types of farming are going to stay I would just say to have it as different yields from each. Like I would say regen farming gives the least then surface in the middle and actual farming gives the most rewards.
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Watamote person is right. But letās be honest, regen farming makes absolutely no sense. What other game lets you just stand in one spot and farm an infinite amount of a material?
Apparently it is minutes not months of work that are being changed.
I find your position that devs taking player feedback isnāt good very troubling. Devs listened to players about stone xp, not just about the final balance, but about the underlying issues. This resulted in a solution that is, I think, much superior to the one that was initially put on the test servers. I have not heard anyone complain about where ended up on stone. Where is the example of the devs doing something bad for the game to appease the forums? I think it has only been positive.
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I donāt stand in one spot, I move around alot. Also make the forge tools for me to Regen farm as well bombs, brews and pies. Used my plots and my brick to make the farms, these are as well were we have our shops to provide these products. A lot of the community use the farms. Itās not like only 3 people use these farms. Remove a long used and familiar part of a game, how is that a good thing? How is crippling a part of the economy a good thing? Removing it entirely from the gameā¦not a good thing. For example when they removed bomb miningā¦what if they would have removed AOE mining also? Would have been a bad thing? The devs are willing to compromise and that to me shows they care about the community of this game.
Also everyoneā¦remember to smile and play nice!
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Ehmm, this seems highly exaggerated.
They spend many hours of coding to add farming. Removing the drops from regen farming isnāt a change that costs many hours of coding (probably just setting a variable to 0 actually). Changing higher tier plant drops to also include the produce is a simple numbers thing as well where the code is already in place since they already do it for regular starberries and earthyams.
I do think itās actually awesome they listen to us. Making regen farms completely obsolete, no matter if you think itās weird or not (many things in any game are weird if you try to compare to the real world we live in) that they were in there in the first place, is not something that I think is the best way to go. More ways to achieve certain things is, in my eyes, always better and if they balance it in such a way that farming clearly is the best way to get the mats then Iām all for it.
So I really disagree that youāre trying to get people to āshut the heck upā since that is how it comes across and I also do not agree that you think they need to throw many hours of code away to do this, since they do notā¦
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Iām not certain that continuing to discuss this specific tangent about the devs is particularly useful at this time anymore.
We know what we, as individuals, think. And we have been given official responces that are of some insight into what the devs think, but we should try to keep ourselves from reading too deeply or too far between the lines, as it were.
That topic is, in fact, completely off-topic for this thread, after all. 
Also this:
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Yay I got quoted lol 
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No. The original design decision and design was to remove regen farming and surface resource drops in lieu of a farming mechanic. Going back on that decision it what I am talking about because you spent a lot of time designing stuff to replace that mechanic. Now you are having to go in and adjust things backward and then make balance changes and nerf regen farming to bring it in line and balance across 3 systems.
If you are going to allow the community to define design decisions then their input should be provided in front of the design discussion ā it is called requirements gathering. Failure to do so is either scope creep or bad project and program management which usually leads to more problems in the future.
This is not my position and not what I communicated. Iāve been very clear on my views and that is evident. Iām not sure where you picked up that misperceptionā¦
Many people donāt share on the forum because of some of the toxic nature and the severe brow-beating that can happen. I think it becomes pretty evident when you talk to people privately on a subject but they wonāt mention it on the forums because they understand it wouldnāt be heard on either side of a discussion.
I think there are plenty of examples but irrelevant in the points I was making and ultimately subjective in nature.
Then why do we have large expanses of mud that drop resources? Because that was the original intended designā¦ not throwing a bomb to regen the same area over and over.
I wasnāt aware that regen farming was the only thing in how the economy worked. I just canāt understand how we ever had shop stands and sold stuff before regen farming existed and that people made coin.
There would have been some people that would have been ok with itā¦ because they remember that the game could still be played and enjoyed way before AOE mining and the forge existed.
It is stuff like this on why the trend to adjust game play from subjective āworryā and unfounded reasons from a super vocal community is a dangerous trendā¦ Either way I get some people just donāt agree so no reason to run around in circlesā¦
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Burn down the forums. Let the devs build the game they envision without interference.
This controversy does not make for a better game.
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