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.
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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.
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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 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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… 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 ^^)
Personally I enjoy the process of optimising my time by crafting one set of things while gathering resources for the next, I see that as a fun part of progressing through the game.
As some of you have pointed out the economy is at the heart of this, with decisions being made over whether to crafting something yourself or buy it being interesting at all levels. I would say that applies to basic tools as well as more advanced things.
There are a couple of upcoming mechanics which will feed into this: Firstly progression will add skills that reduce crafting time. Secondly there are Engines, which are add-ons to machines which increase the power of the machine. Some recipes will need a certain amount of power to be able to be crafted, but also using a machine with high power will make recipes craft faster. The idea behind these mechanics is to allow the specialised crafter to have advantages in time (and therefore fuel) over someone who has specialised in other areas, so they can produce more items quicker and cheaper, and make money selling them.
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There are actually several layers of problems with the current time delay system. First, I generally use copper hammers, however, the added advantage of upgrading to iron is sometimes ok, iron is less plentiful, but the crafting takes approximately the same time. In the case of gold or silver hammers, the wait time and resource cost are considerably more expensive. Currently it takes me an average of one stack of copper hammers to find a gold vein. If I also collect copper and coal while I am at it, then this is at least somewhat synergistic. However, a gold hammer only lasts marginally longer than an iron hammer, but takes considerably longer to fabricate and has a significantly higher material cost. This additional cost is compunded with silver, since it requires not just silver and iron, but also a multi stage crafting process.The long crafting times and the expanded materials list actually make gold hammer considerably less valuable than iron, because the additional effort significantly outweighs any gains.
Making the durability reflect at least a major portion of the added difficulty, resource gathering, infrastructure needs, and crafting time would go a long way toward making the post iron equipment viable. Just like adding middle stages in real production does not add a 1 to 1 cost increase, the value of these multi-stage, multi-resource crafted items should not have such a linear durability/usefulness curve.
A gold hammer, however, does allow you to mine gems, and a silver hammer allows you to mine hard coal. There are more gains there, not just speed of mining and durability.
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As was responded, you are forgetting to account for the fact that Iron cannot mine hard coal or gems. Which increases the value of silver and gold hammers. But also I don’t see why complain. A gold hammer lasts me a solid 3-4 days of mining. Why? Because I don’t mine with it unless I find gems. Once you have a plentiful supply of iron you upgrade to iron wares since copper is obsolete to you. You continue to use that iron forever until you run across something that needs silver or gold, you then take our the silver or gold, use it, then put it away and take out your iron again.
The point of silver and gold items lasting as long as they do is because they are not meant to become total replacements to iron or copper tools. They are meant to be used wisely, you spend 30 min making a stack of iron so you can mine for days with it, while you spend 30 min making 1 gold hammer so you can mine the same amount of time, but wisely. Lets put it another way, you are a painter. And you have your “everyday” paint and your “good” paint. Now your good paint costs say $100 to get, while your everyday paint is $1. To be recognized, like many painters want, you decide to make a portfolio by making nice paintings to present, but not sell. Intelligently, you would use your everyday paint to make the exhibition paintings, and when you get a commission you use your good paint. It would be foolish to waste your good paint for a portfolio piece, because then you have none left when a commission comes around. The same principle applies to the tools as they are designed now (and as I hope they continue to be designed). Gold and silver tools are not meant to be used abundantly, they are meant to be used wisely, like the good paint.
The only “exclusion” from all this is obviously the titanium tools. Which are obviously the best (at the moment) in both durability and functionality, which is probably why the material is so rare to attain.
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Currently gold tools have identical durability and functionality to titanium. Future balance changes will change that however.
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I know, but I also know that in the final product titanium is suppose to be better. Just trying to make Yamateh understand that gold and silver tools take longer to make because they are special tools, not common ones. And not because of the material cost, but because of function. In other games silver and gold tools have less durability than other tools, but are incredibly important to have and expensive. We should consider ourselves lucky that they at least last longer than other tools(even if by a little) and actually bring more advantages than just being able to break higher tier blocks.
When you enter a mine most of what you see used are iron and steel tools. But when it comes to specialized digging (like say diamonds) more specific tools are used that last significantly less than the standard iron or steel tool, but unlike those tools they do less damage to what you are mining. Another analogy to use is drilling tips in production. Steel or titanium tips are used for almost everything, but once in a while you need to use diamond tips because the wear that will happen to the steel or titanium tip is massive. And in an effort to maximize the steel or titanium tip, you use the diamond tip for that work. Diamond tips don’t really last that long either, but they are incredibly useful at drilling certain materials, and they will last just as long drilling those specific materials as the steel or titanium do drilling their specific materials (not really, there are margins and really complex equations that actually go into it, but the life expectancy for a steel drill is roughly the same as a diamond drill, obviously so long as they drill their respective materials)