I’ve been very reserved about item balance due to the continuous environmental changes disturbing equilibrium constantly. Some patterns are very obvious to me as of late and I would like to bring these to your (@olliepurkiss) attention for consideration in rebalancing. I have organized in priority effect:
1) In regards to fuel balance
What is becoming abundantly clear is that fuel (spark/smelting) is overly expensive. I’m hoping that you can revisit this a lot with the upcoming recipes patch. One or more of the following:
Add new fuel sources (how about solar panels or similar structural fuel sources to encourage building?)
Increase the viability of existing fuel sources (wood / peat)
Reduce the amount of recipes requiring spark/smelting
Reduce the amount of spark/smelting per recipe (spark is a very large component)
Provide players more motivation to mine. Coal is currently the only serious fuel source and it seems that most people don’t like the current mining meta nearly as much as the hunting/building metas (which yield no fuel).
2) In regards to tool balance
The curve from copper/iron tools to silver/gold is too steep. A more gradual ascent in materials and crafting requirements would be well received. The mass crafting benefit for silver/gold is too large.
Gold tools are also way too niche presently and serves no real purpose.
Diamond tools are way too useful when compared to other gem tools. Diamond hammers, shovels and slingbows are best in slot.
EDIT: Another minor mention is that higher level tools generate way too little wear.
3) In regards to existing cosmetic item balance
These items are too scarce for the current value contributed to player builds (as witnessed in supply/demand dynamics). They all sell well if sold below net farming parity. Either increase their ease to be farmed or their value in player builds or they will barely see use compared to other item:
Blue/yellow/red gleam
Decorative bricks
Trunks/timber
4) In regards to plots and XP
Giving plots based on experience distributed them to players that farm/hunt (who get the most XP) and less so to players that build (which get the least XP). They would be much better distributed if rewarded for building (i.e. based only on building XP at much lower XP rates) and/or if they become trade-able.
5) In regards to gem mining and ancient tech components
Mining both of these is currently non-viable from a time-efficiency point of view. Can we get larger drop multipliers (as in 2-10x the current) on them and see what the effect on the economy is?
In the case of all gems except diamond and ruby 1000% extra drop multipliers should make them a little more attractive to miners.
6) In regards to activity balance
Mining and hunting seem to be relatively on par with the latest patches. Building in really lagging behind in terms of rewards - I think this is demoralizing a lot of players. Mining and hunting are economically lucrative - shouldn’t building maybe be a better source of XP or a source of some other exclusive rewards that are tradeable?
PS I’m really looking forward to the recipes update. Love what you’re doing with the game so far.
true took me ages to get to level 50 only got it recently and ive been around long time but being just a builder and “sort off a mayor” did slow down my leveling alot
This is a really helpful post from @OmniUno, which I’ve moved into its own thread. We are currently looking at many areas of balance, and any feedback or thoughts of this type are gratefully received.
Please reply to this thread on either the points made, or with your own points about balance.
I struggle with the idea that builders in boundless really have small roles. I think that we earn a name for our selfs simply by building cool stuff, but in no way dose a community rely on the builders to provide any thing. If I earned more plots than the hunter/gatherer then they may have to rely on me to build their cities to sell their stuff. I agree that builders should have builder oriented rewards like greater plot gains.
Rather than have a multiplier, why not have some mechanics that would help the ease of finding certain materials for a miner? For example some kind of passive ability that will signal to the character if there is a seam of ores or coal within a specific proximity determined by how much the player has put into a skill. This could either be a visual cue through waypoints or even ui elements overlapping blocks that are in the way or if that is too much of a giveaway maybe in some form of sound cue instead. In regards to implementation of this “ability” it is dependant on if active abilities with cooldowns are something that is already being planned by the devs.
A 1000% multiplier sounds a like a must must must have for all players and would easily be something that every player tries to get on their first character. Even a 100% extra chance to get another resource seems like a must have skill for me even if I’m trying to makes completely unrelated build. I originally thought that LUCK was going to apply to mining, but I was so wrong! A new skill similar to LUCK that applies to mining would be an easy solution for a multiplier.
I’m not sure if this fits in this thread or another, but I’m finding skill balance to be a bit odd:
The skills do a good job of making us weigh options (aside from the magnitude of their effect often being unclear from the description). Also, the scarcity of cleanse points furthers that, which feels right.
However, with the switching cost between characters being so low (characters have very little tied to them: only their inventory), alts are effectively a quick respeccing mechanism. Downsides:
It heavily favors players with lots of free time (need 3+ chars to do all the things!)
Characters lose their Identity (since you’re constantly switching), and players will have a hard time tracking who is who
Floods the market with coin (coin from objectives seem to slow down as you level, minus the big breakpoints)
That said, I don’t have any good alternatives either ><
This is the right place for this kind of feedback – thank you.
Proposed solutions are useful, but don’t worry if you don’t have any – just understanding areas of the game that aren’t feeling right means we know where to put our time to make the game better.
Not a skill. The drops suck - simply 1000% more for anybody who bothers to look.
For comparison, currently:
Amethysts per hour when mining: about 2
Amethysts per hour when hunting: 20+
Mining needs a serious buff for all gems but ruby and topaz. Since it isnt possible to reseed currently and there’s already a multiple drop system the most evident temporary solution is 10x more.
I agree that gems from mining appear to be far too rare. If I want gems, I don’t even seriously consider mining, I go hunting. Gems are a nice bonus find when I am mining for coals.
I 1000% agree on the jump from Iron tools to Silver/Gold to be silly. My primary hammer is Iron, and will likely remain iron unless I start hunting so much that I don’t worry about my gem supply. I use a gold hammer for things I can’t get with Iron. I no longer use Silver, since silver seems to be oddly rarer than gold.
Along the same lines, Bulk/Mass crafting are probably the best use of skillpoints in the game. Even if I could only mass-craft on the compressor, it would be a really good skill to get more mileage out of all my fuels. Being able to mass-craft on all machines is the only way making gold/silver tools is ever viable. Even with mass cradfting, if I used a gold hammer as my primary hammer, I don’t think I would get enough gold in 1 hammer’s life to make a second hammer.
I see what you are saying! My bad for misunderstanding in the first place. That would definitely solve the issue short term.
What if the issue resides in the hunting drops though? It’s kind of wacky to get so many gems from mobs don’t you think? While it incentivizes people hunt in the first place it takes away from the value in mining. I think the issue is that mobs should have a different reward pool with gems dropping much less often. Meteor drop crate things are definitely fine but I think expanding the item pool on the mobs with some new rare enemy drops would be a smart move, but would definitely take some more time to balance of course.
The reason I propose this is because of my greater vision of what the game was going to be. A game in which you choose a path and that path gave you a unique reward. Ultimately that reward would be just as useful as the reward a different player on a different path would get but the applications could be very different. This would encourage comradery/forming alliances and would increase the need to trade. Having one shared reward pool is kinda meh in my opinion.
Since gem tools are the top tier of tools for all professions it makes to have them drop from the top tier for every profession too.
When gems only came from mining the game they barely saw any use. The drops from mobs at the moment has not really made gem tools available enough at the moment - you should be able to maintain using only gem tools with max skills IMO - and there should be enough spare to actually build a bit with it to - albeit scarcely.
I think gem drops from mobs are just fine at the moment - if mining gem drops are boosted a bit we should finally see some more supply so that we can build a bit with them too!
I’m not sure I buy that: having gems be more prevalent during mining would encourage more trading. Assuming that meteors/mobs drop some items that are equally sought after for other roles
Totally agree that the current drop rate from meteors feels about right (in terms of gems/hour), though
Usability can be generated by applying certain rewards and multipliers to an item. If an item is not seeing much use it is because the amount of time and effort that it takes does not match the reward. You are a person that sees the former of that equation as something that should be changed and I am someone who sees the latter as the issue (or maybe you are both I don’t mean to sound oppressive). With things like red gleam, an item that has little added value and difference from any of the other gleam lighting, increasing supply and or drop rate from a seam would make sense if it is the intention of the developers to have every gleam light equally abundant.
On the Ops side of business, you learn that if you want more people to use your product, you have to cater it to their needs. That is partially why I am in favor of increasing the usefulness of the tools in the first place rather than making them cheaper or easier to make. Flashier colors, textures, sounds that would truly make these bows unique would give them more user-generated value rather than intrinsic value.
Maybe thinking about it like this is better (Who knows maybe this is how they do it; I’m new :P). Let’s say that one specific type of slingbow is “the meta” because it trumps every other bow because of one key aspect that it has that users appreciate in a slingbow. We can say this is the gem slingbow B. Gem B would be of high value for Hunters. Maybe Gem A is the best for Hammers. Gem A would be of high value for Miners. Now each bow/tool has different stats that is already in game. Reward pool can be changed in this situation because now hunters would get this very valuable gem for hunting rather than an assortment of gems, some that matter and some that don’t.
My point here is to show how it is possible to shift the worth by increasing usefulness rather than changing ease of gathering resources. You take away all of the other gems that drop from this mob and hey look at that people still get the gem they need and craft the bow they want. If they want to craft another bow that may be of value to them then go to that miner who has all of gem a and buy some. This still proves your point though that a balance needs to be made between getting the best gem hammer and getting the best slingbow and, ultimately, how useful they are. While increasing the drop rates did definitely put a gem tool in almost-everyone-that-I-come-across’s hands I am saying that decreasing current drop rates and increasing usefulness or shear prestige in acquiring a gem tool can also make time+effort = reward.
The outcome is up to the devs of course. Some people like the former solution I like the latter. When it comes to the 1.0 release, I don’t think that we should see people who have been playing the game for only a week have gem weapons easily. There should be a unique “sense of pride and accomplishment” (thanks EA) for being able to have these weapons in your hands in the first place. As we speak I am crafting some gem weapons and I’ve played for a little less than 2 weeks.
There’s another tier of weapons coming that will create that sense of pride and accomplishment (from tier 4 and 5 worlds - dark matter and rift stone).
Also keep in mind gem tool utility. It is worth 2000 durability @ less than 1 shot per ore. Making its mats rarer simply means that nobody practically uses it because it is not efficient to gather with - that was the case before mobs dropped gems.
Right that makes sense, and I was trying to say that tweaking this value could also give a similar outcome, BUT
The issue for me was accepting the abundance of gem drops from the highest level monsters in the game, hearing that there are higher tiers in plan is important. End game will be these Titans that they’ve marketing. If gem tools are meant to be pretty abundant and the next tier will be more scarce with scaling than I will be okay with that, because it means that those aren’t just tools you carry around for normal use. If the abundance and effort is the same then gem tools will have little value end game. I guess the way I’m thinking is, you go into end game dungeons ready to use your high tier weapons that you would not dare waste outside of this dungeon (or maybe you would, up to you). In my mind gem tools do not fit this category at all which is where that disconnect was. I am thinking too far ahead and I need to remember that this is still not in Beta :P.
I guess the curve to Iron tools could stay as it is but copper tools should be achievable a lot earlier. In general, the “faster” variation of tools such as copper and silver are so underpowered compared to their “heavy” counterparts. Making them much more easily available could balance this OR increase they durability if we wanted them to be on par with heavy tools.
I mostly just skip these fast tools since no matter how fast they hit, they also have decreased damage that yields significantly lesser results economically. It gets worst for fast gem tools as they tend to have same price with other variations. (either caused by resource distribution problem or shopowner’s pricing)
I had no idea that was what tallow is, but let us burrn it
Super exciting! Really happy to hear that there is still going to be more (hopefully much more) to do before Titans.