I wanted to know if there was a purpose to the long crafting times? It’s especially aggravating when trying to craft basic materials such as Stone in the early game, when you are in desperate need of fast and plentiful resources. I understand using them to make crafting a little more realistic, but to make the crafting time upwards of 5 minutes to craft a large number of stone blocks seems to simply pad out gameplay to make you waste time. Especially when you are new to the game and you don’t have a lot of resources to work with. So you want to be able to harvest basic materials in bulk to actually start enjoying the game, rather than just trying to build yourself a stone shack that took you 30 minutes to craft the stone and only ten minutes to build. I could imagine that when you’re dealing with higher level resources and crafting more intricate items it could take minutes. I just find it hard to see the merit when dealing with basic supplies, even in bulk. It’d be especially frustrating when the game fully launches. Say you find a mountain that’s rich in a rare resource, but your hammer is low on durability. By the time you get home, craft another, and get back, someone could have already mined it all. Or at least made a serious dent in the present amount, leaving you with much less than originally thought. I have seen crafting systems such as in Starbound that have a shorter crafting times, and while they take longer than other crafting games, it still remains more than bearable. If someone would like to enlighten me as to how the time gate enhances the game, then please do. After all, most mechanics should be there to enhance gameplay and make the game easier to get into.
The general consensus from most players seems to be that crafting times are a bit too high at the moment. Everything is still due to be balanced once all the features are in place so they will likely be adjusted.
As for the scenario you gave where you find a rare resource but your hammer has low durability, you should always have new tools crafting while you are out mining/exploring. That way when you get back you’ll have a new batch of tools ready for you and you can just queue up another batch and leave again. The other nice thing about crafting timers is that they run even when you are offline. Going to be logging off for the night or even just to go get lunch? Queue up a bunch of tools and materials and they’ll all be done when you get back.
The main game play enhancement I see from crafting timers is that it adds a cost to crafting that can’t be bypassed. This means that tools and rare blocks that you craft will have a greater value than the total sum of their parts. If you could craft things instantly then a gold hammer would only be as valuable as the materials used to make it. However, since it takes a significant amount of time to craft a gold hammer you can charge more because you are saving the buying player time. This means a player could buy raw resources off of other players who specialize in mining and then craft those resources into tools/blocks and turn a profit. In short, it adds depth to the economy aspect of the game.
Very well worded. My thoughts exactly, however I do still believe the timers need balancing for some crafted materials 
You have some valid points there, and I do hope they change the crafting times to be considerably shorter. However, I’m still not entirely satisfied. While one could have a tool always crafting when they are out and about, there may be a time in which you need tools fast, and you are low on cash. In which case the crafting time would be much less opportune, and is more of a barrier that would keep you from enjoying the game to the fullest. Many people are prone to menial tasks having slipped their minds. In fact it happens to most people, including myself, on a daily basis. So to argue that every time you leave to mine, that you are expected to consistently remember to have every tool you will need crafting while you are gone is a lot to ask. Considering the penalty for not having said tools crafting is a lengthy wait time. Which is counter intuitive to having a good time, in most cases.
While it is fortuitous to have things remain crafting while you are away from the computer, that isn’t gameplay. It’s interesting that one would program something into a game where it is, in some cases, better to leave and come back than it is to make crafting faster. Effectively encouraging people to break immersion. I do understand that it is useful while you have to leave the computer for lunch or work, but it would be easier overall to eliminate the wait time. That way one could craft before they leave, then craft after they come back as well.
Let’s say you are waiting to do something. To go cave diving or go into a particularly hostile area. You have your supplies, your weapons, your ammo, but you are missing a rare component to make some special armor you want. Finding that reagent may already be hard, but then you have to wait a while for the components just to craft. Which would mean you are just killing time since you already gathered many of your supplies. Gods forbid it’s a material that needs to go through multiple stages of crafting. Then you need to wait for it to craft into one thing, then another, and so on. Eventually you have burned more time waiting than you have in doing what you wanted.
When you see most people enter a game they want to do something specific. Explore, PVP, PVE, construction, socialize, ect. In a game where nearly everything requires crafting, much of the specific thing you might want to do is barred by a time gate. Let me clarify though: Crafting times with high end reagents to make more high end items are fine, to a point. That makes more sense. As you described with the item being more than the sum of their parts. Though one still wouldn’t want a monstrously long crafting time for a single sword. Especially if there’s no repair mechanic. In which case you run into a problem where the supply cannot meet with demand in a market of reasonable scale. As highly sought after items could sell in seconds, but take hours to craft enough to replenish your wares. True, you could try to buy the reagents pre processed, but the time for crafting would still make the system sticky, as you are only one person competing with many others.
Crafting times on more intricate and expensive items are understandable, within reason. Extensive crafting times on basic materials such as stone and stone tools are a waste of time. Since most players crafting basic items like that need a considerable amount of time to mass the resources to create multiple crafting benches for a number of items. Then consolidate those resources, as very few things can be made with raw materials. Thus it becomes an unreasonable time sink in the early game, when the game should grab you rather than force you to wait. Currently to make 50 stone blocks it takes around 12 minutes. If you want to make a house of more refined stone, that time is unavoidable and agonizing. As one would need to spend the time to gather resources, then process them for several minutes, then build, and do it all over again. Without factoring in the resources and time needed to make the tools to gather more resources.
What could be another option is making crafting have levels and the higher ones level in crafting an item, the better quality and the faster it goes. Thus if someone is making swords out of high end material and they have been doing it for a long time, they would be faster and their swords might be more durable. Or have some other effect that could be applied. In that way the skill of the smith makes things greater than the sum of their parts, rather than the time. Same thing goes for any other crafting profession using higher grade materials. Basic things are quick and easy for the beginner, while more experienced players could make more powerful items due to having specialized. Where the smith makes masterful swords and armor, the adventurer who crafts items slower needs to craft an item once or twice to go out into the world for money or loot. Making the game more balanced, and also eliminating massive wait times for those who make their game experience around crafting.
I would love more feedback on this, and to hear other people’s opinions on the subject.
i see crafting times as a balance to something, like level caps etc. not only by making things realistic since there wouldn’t be point doing so. what comes to the current crafting times i had no issues with it, i got all done without thinking that the crafting time is too long. if the crafting times would be significantly longer even with the basic tools it would be different story.
I think a lot of the contention about crafting times, comes from players that are used to the crafting system in Minecraft, where you basically have no waiting times whatsoever, everything is instant (with the exception of cooking things) … which is also the reason there is no economy in Minecraft. Everything can be created, by everyone, instantly.
As Boundless has an economy, you need to make crafted things valuable… and that means every item that is above the basic mined resource. If you make even basic materials like stone easy to create, they lose their value and the market for these items fizzles down to almost nothing.
I think this just comes down to play style - having the added layer of crafting times forces players to be proactive instead of reactive. I now rarely leave my house without having at least 2-3 full stacks of hammers and a full stack of every other tool as well … and more are always in production or waiting to be used…
As for early game mechanics and tool crafting, there was another post that summed up best practices for this (sorry can’t find the link to the post at the moment), where you create one Stone Hammer first, then a batch of 3, then a batch of 10 … so basically you have tools to work with while others are being created.
It’s also not hard to get a collection of Crafting Tables up together as well, being only 5 Timber to create a single Table, it’s just using basic easily obtainable resources … and is incidentally crafted instantly. Split out your material needs across several Crafting Tables and the wait is reduced.
Personally, I don’t mind the crafting times all the much, there’s always plenty of other things to do if you have planned correctly.
They might be actually doing something like that. But sadly you won’t have to craft things to get better at crafting. You can just put skillpoints in any skill you want.
So if you mine a lot (and thus gain a lot of skillpoints that way) but don’t mind the speed of mining, you could just put the gained skillpoints into crafting and start to craft good things too without ever bothering with the slow crafting.
Isn’t that also a problem with your proposed uncapped skill system as well?
Wouldn’t a fix for that be to have gates on xp gained from a profession at certain levels? Ex, after lvl 10 in mining, you have to put a talent point into mining to get more xp from mining, and visa versa, to continue putting points into crafting, you have to gain (x) xp from crafting first.
Should I make a new skill discussion for you guys? Cause this feels a bit of the topic.
My proposed system would only let you invest points in the skill from which you got them. So mining points for the mining skill etc.
The only remaining question would be: Would you even need points then? If you get a point for a level up and you’d have only one place to put this skill point into. Namely the thing you unlocked with that level up. Why not make just unlockables with levels?
You could also make a system where you’d have to level up multiple times to get the required amount of points to put in a skill. That way, although the end result with unlockables would be the same, for the duration of leveling you wouldn’t be bound to one order of unlocking your skills.
The common thing is: You can only use the mining skillpoints for the mining skill line and nothing else. I still think global skillpoints would be a bad idea.
for a system where mining gets mining points to place them to mining profession would only work if there were multiple mining skill/passive paths to choose from, something similar to Skyrim skill tree. it works but a system where you can freely add skill points what ever profession you like makes skill system much much more vast, something similar to Path of exiles skill tree which would suite for a game what names is boundless.
Totally agree with you, something like in Skyrim would be ideal.
Global skillpoints, but you also need expertise in the corresponding profession to actually assign them.
But to get back on topic:
I think exactly that would make the game interesting as it would make player-collaboration and giant workshops actually viable/necessary, as opposed to other games , like Minecraft, where a single workbench can serve an entire clan and player-interaction is something done out of occasion, not necessity.
(Generally, I’d also say that Boundless should be a game where having your ideal tool/weapon should be something extraordinary, not the standard)
I think that’s the devs way of keeping you busy with your restricted building space for as long as possible.
Like I already wrote in another thread:
PS:
You won’t need to worry about that though, as armor will be stat-less and cosmetic only 
Then an armband or whatever they end up going for, when people write armor try assuming they talk about the object the devs want to tie the stats to instead of the cosmetic item that will actually look like armor.
Yeah I’m aware that, in this context, ‘armor’ was vicarious for ‘any stat-bearing item’. (Thus the emoji)
I just wanted to point out the fact that armors won’t have stats.
I think that maybe instant crafting for certain items can be made available. Lets say that tool crafting has a total of 20 tiers. I don’t think it would be too much to ask for say if you are able to craft tier 15, that tier 1 and 2 would be instant. If you can forge mythril, putting a rock on a stick should be cake.
That being said, the time gate for crafting I think is crucial to trying to make an economy. Other games (minecraft) that try to have economies is generally due to item restrictions being placed. Where some items can only be purchased from the server moderators, but ultimately anyone can do anything. Boundless does not function that way. If you want to make the tier 20 mythril hammer, you need to have spent your days/weeks/months crafting tools to be able to make said mythril hammer. Not be a fresh player, and just craft it.
As for there being no repair and your supply and demand comment. Repair is actually something that I think they have started to consider, given some of the points that have been brought up. Given the possibility of extra rare items and such. As for supply and demand, that’s how economies work. When the supply cannot meet the demand, that makes prices go up. If highly sought after items sell quickly, they become more expensive. Making the craftsman get more reward for 1) the time he put into making it, and 2) the time he put into getting the level needed to craft that item. It also allows them to get money needed to be able to buy more materials to make more of that items. Since the lack of supply of the tool could be due to the high cost of the materials. So ultimately low supply, high demand, could lead to a balance when the cost of the item easily outweighs the cost of the materials. Allowing the craftsman to throw say 10 at a time instead of having to do 1 at a time.
The ability to pop out any material, be it rare or not, instantaneously (like has already been stated) makes that items worthless. Sure you can still sell it, but there is no real accomplishment in it other than you got some coins that now you can either hoard or spend on something else. While if you spend 3 hours making it, you get coins and are all “YAY 3 hours paid off, now I can buy those really rare materials that I can’t get because of x, y, and z reasons.” Instant crafting would also make the fact there will be a crafting trait tree pointless. It sounds great and fun, but really how many MMOs (because this IS an MMO) have instant crafting? That I can think of (excluding minecraft, which is not an MMO but people say it is) none do.
Well wood tools are instant craft, and stone tools are so ridiculously easy to make you should have a couple stacks in storage at all times.
Having a crafting time for a highgrade piece of gear is fine. However, as described above, a day or month of crafting time to make a single axe would be ludicrous. Let’s say it does require rare ingredients to make. Ones that are exceedingly hard to find. So you have put your skillpoints into crafting an item as well as mining, and now you are waiting for it to craft. You could go out and gather other basics materials to craft, but once getting the basics is out of the way you are twiddling your thumbs, at best. One could argue that you can always go out and get more basic materials. However, those basic materials always need to process. So there will inevitably be time where you are doing nothing. I feel as though this is a moot point though as there is ALWAYS something to do in a game. When you just want your new piece of gear however, sitting behind a clock is not conducive to enjoying the game. Instead one wants to reap the rewards of the time you already sunk into making the item by gathering rare ingredients.
I hear a lot of people saying the economy cannot be stable with an instant crafting system. Their concerns are valid, but this it not true. Let’s look at a game that has a near instant crafting system and the most thriving economy of almost any game on the market. One whom the American Government looks at to gauge the economic impacts of certain decisions on large groups of people. I am talking about World of Warcraft. For those who are not familiar. The crafting system is largely based on item rarity and leveling up your skills in crafting. Now, in Boundless the crafting system already has perk trees and a leveling system. The perks giving it a leg up on WoW already. The difference is that it also couples item rarity with an arbitrary time gate. In Boundless, the world is vast and people will already be tearing it up for specific resources. This competition for resources alone could drive the economy. In games such as WoW you have people crafting expensive items like potions, augments such as enchantments, and armors or weapons to put on a large scale market. Gathering the resources takes time, exploring, and fighting. Things that everyone comes to the game for. In these adventures, you may pick up a reagent that you know is good for a profession. So you put it up on the market, since you came here to adventure rather than craft. Whereas adventurers have to rely on craftsman for the best gear, making this a co-dependant system which would drive the economy on its own. This allows for a greater amount of competition as well as a more vibrant economy, with resources coming from all over. While still balancing for rarity.
While the crafting system in WoW is nearly instantaneous, the economy still thrives. Albeit with a bit of inflation every expansion, but that doesn’t need to happen in a game like this. In fact, I would state that a game such as Boundless would thrive MORE off of item rarity than WoW did. Here the world is vast, and we don’t have mounts to get around. Though we have portals, those take us from point A to B instantly, glossing over many or all of the resources between the two points. We have a myriad of biomes and, hopefully, creatures to kill at launch. Depths of the earth to turn, and caves to explore. Bosses to slay and artifacts to uncover. There is a breadth of ways to come across resources, but those that are truly hard to come by will have extra value in your crafting. The time it takes to find the resources alone makes an item more than the sum of its parts. That does not even take into consideration whether things respawn in Boundless like they do in WoW. In the latter game, you could hang out in an area and farm resources because they will respawn infinitely, given time. In Boundless, provided there is no item respawn, you will have to venture farther and farther from your beacon to find rare resources. Coupled with a time sink crafting mechanic, it’s almost not worth crafting the item with the monstrous amount of time that is almost imprudently added on.
Some people here have argued that simple tools should be easy to craft. I agree wholeheartedly. As one user pointed out “putting a rock on a stick should be cake.” Which would be magnificent in practice. People who have just begun the game are not going to have money to buy stone tools. So said tools are also virtually worthless in the economy because the only market who would use such basic tools are too poor to buy them. Thus, making them easier to craft would not be so bad. Now, once you get up to higher levels things COULD have a time sink, but a more efficient and, frankly, rewarding method would be resource rarity. Which is already going to become a huge issue as the game progresses. As more and more people flood the game, land and resources will be more scarce. Though there are many worlds, it still stands that you will have to travel farther and farther to get resources. Once rarity becomes the defining factor of difficulty when trying to craft an item, the time sink will be little more than an annoyance.
Just so you know, ressources will respawn. Not at the exact same location but around the same area.
Assuming you dig a big hole. The regeneration will fill that hole up in a few days to a week or two with all the ressources it had in it distributed differently.
A BIT? The gold value have more than halved since i played (which is some time ago but that is still a lot)
Also wows economy is kept in check by NPC traders if those arren’t available the economy becomes much more dependend of a working economic system.
… and on the WoW-Stuff again: Did not even Blizzard added timegates in the last expansion before the new one now? … I remember to have mats which were crafted only in the garnison and which were made over time. so you had a time gate even their (becuase they knew what would have happened without it ^^)