POLL: Crafting time
ComicalSkate
Canada, ON Join Date: 2015-05-28 Member: 204993Members
So, as most of you already know, the devs have recently added varying amounts of time required to craft items in the fabricator. So far, from what I have read, it looks like the community is slightly torn for this one. People are either all for it, or completely against it. I personally am all for it, and have been waiting for this feature for a while. This new mechanic adds brand new gameplay that I really think is good. Of course the times that we have right now are still being worked on to see what works best, but I want to know the communities opinion on this topic. Explain why you are for it or against it, and don't say you just don't like to wait lol, please explain why you are against it with a more valid reason then that.
Comments
The difficult in getting the end-tier ships should not be rarity of bulk materials or time crafting it, it should be discovering the blueprints.
While I myself belong to end of really like em, I can understand that 90 second on some of basic tools may be too long for some, hence I still propose to alter smaller necessity level tools craft time to half of current.(set: Scanner , Builder, Welder , Cutter, Flash Light)
IMO there should be a second kind of fabricator for items that take a while to craft
I'm not worried at all about having a fabricator tied up for a measly minute or so. There are more than enough resources to build two if I absolutely need that cooked peeper while something else is going on in the background.
The cycle of play seems to be: explore a previously unknown or inaccessible area, discover and collect new resources and fragments, and then augment your capabilities. All while managing food/water/health and farming up commonly used materials. Adding a fixed delay of a few minutes is irritating if I'm really excited to take my new propulsion cannon and go see what it can do. If the argument is that instant build times are unrealistic, then I would argue that it's unrealistic that the entire process could only be initiated once every component was gathered. Returning to the prop. cannon, why couldn't I chuck a couple titanium into the fab and have it start working on the bulk of the object while I hunt around for some ever-elusive silver. Finally, the food/water penalty imposed by the long crafting time is completely negated by having a bench. It doesn't matter if you start that long craft before you filter some water because you can just sit your butt down on a two titanium bench and wait it out if there is any risk of starvation/dehydration. The only choice remaining is whether to tab out for a few minutes or get up and do something IRL. It strikes me as a bad idea for a game that benefits so much from immersion in its gorgeous and engaging environment to build in a mechanic that can so easily push a person out of the game. I already spent an hour scrounging for fragments, poking around for resources and running from reapers to get the item, don't make me sit and wait for the length of a song while a machine puts it together.
If longer crafting times must be in the game for certain items, I would argue for no more than 30 seconds and that time should be filled with a voice recording talking about the usage/history/characteristics of the item.
This is a perfectly valid reason, so long as there is no superior reason to do it. It's a more valid reason than "realism", which is supposedly the complaint that got it added to begin with.
IMHO, material should be harvested as a bulky ore and then need to be processed in a dedicated room until it outputs ingots. This way we'd have an incentive to build bases in all biomes (i.e. to have our different kinds of resource processing take place closer to the resources). It would also give us more bases to be attacked by animals/weather.
It's actually the shorter crafting time in the intermediary items (the 7 second times) that I really hate, since we'll be making them so often. It just feels like artificial playtime bloating (not to mention annoying), which is basically the worst thing a game can do in my opinion.
Medium crafting times (20 seconds - 3 minutes) for equipment are going to push me out of the game for that time, and break immersion like MushroomHermit indicated. I'd just be alt+tabbing out of the game and waiting for the timer. If I am waiting for a stasis rifle, or oxygen tank, or anything else that increases my survivability, I'm going to wait for it. Not risk another trip without it.
And long crafting times of more than 3 minutes are absurd for most things in the game.
I could be ok with starting a cyclops and going exploring without it, and coming back to find it done, or a scanner room. But a multipurpose room or something else that I'm planning to build on but doesn't actually provide any benefit on its own is just annoying to wait for. The same principal applies to computer chips, copper wire, and other stepping stone ingredients.
I am understanding that people want realism, but this is already a crafting system that deconstructs ingredients at a microscopic level, enough to get the trace minerals out of the table coral, and 3D prints the items we're making. It really doesn't take much additional suspension of disbelief to say that it does it at the speed it has always done it (especially with the real-time to game-time ratio applied).
This is a video game, not a simulator, gameplay should not be sacrificed for realism.
There is not a single reason to have this feature.
Realism =/= Fun. Why is this even an argument. It would also be realistic for the player to manually fix the Seamoth after every expedition, taking a good 3-4 hours to do so.
I don't need the game to force me into going to do something. If im crafting a Seaglide, i don't have to gather resources for 3 minutes, i clearly already did that. If i needed or wanted to, i would go gather them, not go make a Seaglide.
It does not add difficulty. What is difficult about starting to craft a Seaglide, leaving the game open, and making a sandwich?
There is not time management, or 'important' decisions. Nothing will stop you from doing something 1 or 30 minutes from now.
Most importantly: It does not add fun.
Seven accounts that were created since August 14 have posted in this thread. Three accounts in favor of long crafting, four accounts against it. Not a significant bias.
Don't forget to account for all those accounts made over a year ago who've been pretty much completely silent until now.
I wouldn't expect bias from new accounts, but I'm not sure about that factor.
I'm extremely surprised how many people are in the "yes" camp. Coming from that other thread I really felt like a minority. Guess not.
I even got my very own fanboy, who went through all my posts to put a disagree on every single one of them. So much effort, just to be petty.
Well, except it really isn't three seconds or whatever. Time is already way abstracted in this game. A day cycle goes by extremely quickly, yet oxygen still uses real time seconds. Also, it's a super crazy 3D microscopic printer. Realism in regards to time is already thrown out the window in this game unless you start making night and day take many real hours instead of the time it takes now.
I don't want to sit around waiting for stuff to craft or make even more trips back and forth over this. What benefit to game-play does it bring? It makes it so you have to get more food/water per stuff you get done (because waiting around is going to make you need food and water), and I don't think the game needs to up the get sustenance rate to survive really, which is all this would do besides make me not play the actual game while it takes more time to do things. It doesn't make you have to make any new decisions about things other than spending time before you continue the game period.
Also, what about when you are working on a big crafting project and you have to process tons of materials? That already takes a significantly notable amount of time, even just doubling the time from current would make that ridiculous.
As to new accounts jumping in, well, I've been playing for awhile and heard about this poll, and it seemed important for me to weigh in with my voice on the matter. This has the potential to make playing the game close to unbearable for me, and probably a notable number of others. Tread carefully on changing the crafting times.