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Personally I don’t see how a new block is really end-game players content just because it is behind a higher cost. It would be new content for them even if it was simple to make. Since I’m mostly against the prestige stuff I lean towards a whole block revamp. I do believe there should be progression in blocks that do make sense and don’t mind harder ones. I’m not sure concrete should have been at the top, though. Since many just prestige spam, I am ok with it being hard to make.
Unless we take the time to really map our all the blocks into the structure we want and the recipe we want, I don’t foresee the Devs changing anything. They don’t have the time to revamp it themselves and the benefit on their side is low. I believe the community could help, but probably too many people would argue about it or make the recipes too simple. It is hard to balance those that just want to build with those that want high prestige or some other structure of block progression.
Oh, of course it is. I’d say it’s a near impossible task. And yet the chose to undertake that task anyway.
There should be expensive, high level blocks for sure. I thought marble was 
perfect cost before. Because it’s marble. It’s extremely expensive in real life, and it’s the nicest looking block in the game.
As far as construction materials go, precast architectural concrete (the industry I work in on the business end) is on the relatively high-end side but not at all because of the ‘ingredients’. All the cost is in forming materials, steel and insulation inside the panels, and most of all- labor. Cast-in-place concrete is super cheap and can be found literally everywhere.
I won’t spam this thread anymore with this same sentiment but I strongly feel that there needs to be a better ratio of low level blocks to high level and concrete should be a staple for all builds. Recipe and prestige value should be similar to that of bricks.
And as far as real concrete goes, cement is the most expensive ingredient and it is indeed a chemical process (not a natural substance). Kindling shreds don’t make much sense in the concrete recipe but a cement ingredient that contains kindling shreds would be very realistic and would still require the same level of ingredient, just less of it and more of another low level one like blood.
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Happy bday!
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Yes, this I understand and in a way it’s different from a lot of my MMO experiences, where building hasn’t really been a thing. Decorating, customizing, but not really building.
Now we’ve got spray tints, but still the only progression in decor or customizable items is basically doors. With this update, we will get a much broader range of storage options, and as functional AND decorative items some progression there really makes sense.
Cue the complaining that progression should be flattened. That all should have flat/matching capacity for vastly different materials costs… Luckily that hasn’t been a giant theme in the thread.
So, for now blocks are what people have to show their investment in time and/or skill progression, and for that reason (together with prestige ofc) it’s a major point of focus.
Yes,.agreed with the first part. I don’t mind a bit of realism (not necessarily reality) it makes things simpler to take in and intuit. And in fact different systems for this make sense.
There are a couple of ways to make, for instance, decorative concrete blocks/surfaces. The main ones involve either molding, or stamping. Since these blocks show raised features, making them in a single step, instead of a “regular” concrete block, is the thing to do. It’s realistic. Changing the recipe for more decorative blocks to something that’s more suited to retain surface features is very sensible as well.
If you want to build with wood, you cut down a tree. You cut it into timber. Then, in these modern times we refine that timber into something standardized. If you want it decorated you may carve it or use pieces to make patterns, then you add surface treatment to bring out the color and/or add shine etcetera, and we have that.
The metal blocks already require basic metal processing steps as well, with variance coming at the final stage, after you’ve smelted the ore and processed it into a a refined, workable form.
If you want stone, there’s a similar progression, and so it should go with marble, IMO. Carved marble is not “made differently”. You get your marble, then you carve or decorate it.
The various forms of gravel, mosaic etc … fall into a slightly grayer area.
And some of these things are driven by mechanics completely unnecessary in the real world. I was surprised to see that making rocks into gravel consumes additional ingredients. Then it came to me that gravel, in fact, mints for more than rock or stone.
As you note it’s hard to balance in such a way as to make all parties happy. I might have preferred simply consuming enough rock per block to balance out the value difference. However including an additional ingredient is also pretty reasonable, and trades complaints of “it takes too much rock” for complaints of “why does it take additional ingredients”.
There’s nothing to be done there, it’s a basic artistic decision, as to what further supports the feel the devs want the game to have. The vocal player base complains more about “grinding” than “complexity” overall (IMO - I’m not gathering statistics) even though some of those complaining about complexity complain louder, and/or with more detail.
See this is part of my confusion, where is this coming from? I feel like this is just complaining out of habit.
It wasn’t in the first place, it was producible completely with wood and stone tools and without leaving level 1. Still that caused complaint, and the devs responded.
It’s actually even simpler now, you can just get a couple of seeds and grow what you need. No need to even hunt or forage. IDK perhaps kindling shred is “gluey” in texture 
As regards prestige i haven’t seen prestige values given anywhere. And it’s a fact that in the ‘new’ prestige system variety is FAR more important than any single block type.
I personally think there are other decisions here that would have been worth more focus than what the concrete has gotten. But as a very desirable block it seems to have taken the focus. In real life a lot of people take concrete for granted and don’t realize the level of science and engineering required for all of the things we do with this “simple material”.
Anyways I’m also for variety, and for progression. The type of system in the game allows for multiple modes of expression and some of the things people do with stone, natural materials, and time are far more impressive than 2 tons of marble and a truckload of gleam.
The current system does a much better job of promoting this than the original did. The problem, IMO, isn’t the difference between the two, but in the overlap.
The ones that “just want to build” but only want to build with the most refined/visually impressive blocks. Or the ones that “just want to work with simple materials” but want maximum available functionality from crafted items.
In order to provide a range of experience, there are always going to be a few that will be dissatisfied.
Overall this is a bit of a shakeup to things and as I posted earlier, it changes the game enough to take some players (myself included) out of their comfort zone, and it’s the sort of change which, once it’s revealed, kind of puts a stop to a lot of in game activity while everyone waits.
And this, of course, means extra time for everyone who cares to focus on the minutia, LOL.
In the meantime the furor over the block recipes has, i think, caused the more technical aspects of the update to really fly under the radar.
The repair change, so many people are happy for that there’s been almost no comment about how it works.
There’s no indicator of overall system health and it’s still possible in several ways for various components (the machine and the individual coils) to be at different levels of repair so IMO it’s a bit wonky that you have to just watch the log for message color since the spanner message will still say it’s repairing even when it’s not.
Glancing at the machine will still show a full condition indicator after the first hit with a high end spanner, so if a mob or player got in your coils (for instance) the only way to be sure they’re fully repaired is still to inspect each coil visually, or keep repairing until the log message changes.
There are a few questions regarding the spanner AoE boon but I’m just having a chuckle about it, as it serves to point out what I have posted before, that this was never a “broken boon” it’s just a placeholder to pad out the forging RNG. Considering the pains the devs have taken to protect the simplicity of chisel forging, there’s no reason for a spanner to have ‘special’ boons at all.
I haven’t followed the thread closely I’m not sure if anyone has explicitly posted that the spanner AoE boon is still present on test.
As for the lighting, I haven’t seen any comments at all, outside of “I’m waiting for this”. OFC I haven’t been willing to try and reproduce my live environment on test and I don’t know if anyone else with complaints has either. I’ve been very explicit with my complaints in this area, including sending additional info to the devs so, this is just a matter of crossing my fingers and hoping they’re addressed by the change.
From what I have seen that’s mainly what others are doing with regard to this change, as well.
So right now it’s just a waiting game. And stockpiling… 
To me it seems needlessly restrictive. Now, of course you shouldn’t be able to get a cheap 40 slot box by just making it out of wood, but just make the recipes use an extra item that determines the slots? That item gets more expensive when you make the higher slot versions. Hell, if you want to add additional costs on top of that for the privilege of a big wood chest, I’m still in.
I don’t know, it just seems like it forces people into gleam chests, outside of decorative purposes. You can still have some progression without doing it this way, I think.
Sorry for bringing up the thing you were glad hadn’t been brought up much. I’m also waiting and stockpiling.
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This was mentioned earlier as well and it seems like a great way to separate functionality from material progression.
At this point I don’t think we’re likely to see it. Once these items are released and crafted all over the game, such things tend to become “Set in stone” so to speak.
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This would make the crafting recipes more complicated, and technically it’s something we don’t current support. All the recipes are currently fixed and they don’t support variable inputs. So this would add 5 materials x 3 styles x 4 sizes = 60 recipes to the knowledge.
There is another solution which is more player friendly:
- Players craft the storage as-is with variable capacity.
- Players can then craft an “capacity enlarger” which when used on the storage increases it’s capacity.
This has the advantage of allowing players to gradually increase capacity without needing to replace the storage.
IF this was done as a Forged trait we could include it in the next update - because that system only requires a little meta-data to add new features. But if we wanted a unique tool then it would need to be concepted, modeled, added, and the bespoke code implemented.
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Just an idea. What If the chests could be visually transformed to a lower tier. Like craft a 40 slot gleam chest and hit it with transformation chisel to turn it into a 40 slot wooden chest?
Oh wow, what an idea.
As tempting as this timeline is, I’m wholly against it if it requires RNG effect on the furniture upgrade.
IMO this is the way to go, just based on quickly taking in what you posted. The item itself is a single use consumable (presumably) so I would personally much rather see a “furniture augment” or something similar than any RNG effect.
As such things go this seems (presumptuous, sorry) simple to implement as the visual design of the item itself is unimportant - it could look like a warp/revive augment and nobody would really care, and if adjusting the item is so simple for the forge, it seems like the basic ability to change the item properties already exists. Even if adding the item itself is not as quick as adding the ability to forge furniture.
If the forge itself can be configured to simply forge a single property onto an item type progressively and without RNG (such that increasing storage further requires progressively more ingredients in a controllable/measured fashion) that would be awesome as well.
Either way, I’m super happy to hear that some sort of decoupling here might be on the table.
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If you are using an augment type item to determine storage size, rather than making it a forged item, make it a compacted item like the rest of the augments.
I already have dollar, ehh, coin signs in my eyes! More forged gear!
Joking aside, I really do not mind that at all to be honest, it’s probably going to be something that can be easily forged and thus also cheaply sold as well…
But I do know some out there do not like yet another forged tool…
Possibly make it into an augment that can be cast from a totem? That way it isn’t RNG and doesn’t require a new tool, just a different color of augment.
Edit, nevermind! I missed that during your initial post with furniture augment lol
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Ehmm, warp/revive augment already look the same, what about adding a red one or something that when put into a totem can change ONE closed storage’s size to be one bigger???
They don’t even need to be easy to make.
Of course, a red one with a number in them, 16, 24, 32,40, 48 is also possible and that they are more difficult to craft the higher the number of slots it will turn a closed storage into…
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Yeah an augment that adds a few slots, and you can apply more up to the max, seems simple. I have no idea if that’s in line with what James has in mind. (Or TBH how simple it really is to implement).
Also i was thinking of something you applied to/placed in the furniture item itself. Casting it from a totem would be interesting I wonder if that would be simpler to implement.
A series of increasingly expensive or difficult to craft augment type items makes perfect sense as well.
Also when he mentioned the forge I immediately thought of forging the furniture itself which is not appealing to me at all.
@AeneaGames mentioned that the forge could also produce an upgrading tool that could then be used on the furniture. This would simplify things for most ‘consumer’ types but would still lead to variable upgrade costs subject to RNG I would think.
All interesting options, with pros and cons. It definitely is already inspiring a wide range of implementation ideas a couple of which I wouldn’t have thought of.
It seems though that almost everyone is a fan of this sort of decoupling.
Yeah, just remove the AoE boon on spanners and change it into Capacity Enlarging boon… Won’t add any additional rng either and solves two problems in one fell swoop!
I suspect it would also need to consume much of the item’s durability, making it perhaps even single use. Or requiring a new, very expensive forging gum.
The cost of forging ingredients and achieving say, a single level 3 boon is nothing compared to the difference in cost between a basic and ornate container style, so it depends on how much of that value the devs place on the functionality of the item vs. its cosmetics.
I use copper axes for resource farming on lvl 1 planets still, and strait up silver on the level 3s, since they one shot with my skills and have high base swing speed.
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If you’re willing to consider a compromise like that, then I think there might be an even simpler one.
On recipe per size, per material (So, I guess it’s 20 recipes instead of the current 15). Then just use a tool with a block-type changing boon (so something that already exists) to cycle through the skins on the storage blocks for that material.