Why is there a timer on literally everything?

[TheDaringCaptain]

Spend time whacking down a tree. Spend time refining it. Spend time crafting a car seat with one hundred blocks even though it only takes a couple dozen to literally create the entire body for the car you'll drive it with. Spend time getting resources to run around an empty map. Every little aggravation adds up. It's just grinding for the sake of it. Why not just have creative mode with enemies? Why is survival just creative but more time to do anything and with ugly mobile game mechanics attached to it?

Subnautica came out years ago and was a hundred times better in early access than this. Can't help but feel like this was just an attempt to bump up sales now that creative mode is basically tapped out.

[Fetchbunny]

You could always play creative if you don't want to spend time earning things.

[Pyronymer]

Timers and other mechanics like that this game is rife with are a cheap and easy way to waste player time instead of having actual content. It's basically how to fake more game than you have.

As you can see some players are still and will always be easily duped. I envy them the ability to gain a sense of achievement and engagement by looking at a number count down.

On the other hand as you can also see the wider gaming public is getting pretty tired of it.

[Winblows]

if you played more then 2 seconds you would know you can automate the refining and if you plan your crafting you can do things while waiting

[Qwazzy]

It's part of the process of engineering a problem's solution. Factorio for example has a ton of waiting, but clever designs can increase efficiency and make a factory run like a well oiled machine.

Some people enjoy figuring those types of solutions out. Especially when you build it with your own two hands.

Getting everything fast and easy would defeat the purpose of the game.

[Pyronymer]

There you go. People that think that numbers counting down is game play.

And somehow one that thinks it's appropriate to call the many hours of grind required to even set up any refining automation on those few things that you can as "2 seconds". Refining automation I have seen others separately complaining is also itself too annoyingly slow. The same as 2 seconds. To that guy.

I guess if your sense time is that messed up of course you like staring at countdowns all day. Grind doesn't exist to your senses displaced as they are from normal time frames and your entire life span will feel like it fits in a slow Tuesday.

In the mean time players like me see this sort of gratuitous count down grind and what they did to the craftbot upgrading basic queue feature (it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ outrage) as blatant disrespect of the player base by the developers. They don't respect our time, our convenience or our intelligence if they think this sort of thing is good enough to pass for game design.

[Azirahael]

Sigh.

When you build vehicles with drills or saw blades, and a collector, this problem goes away.
Which is part of the gameplay loop.
Advancements make the grind go away.

[zghaun]

Originally posted by Azirahael:

Sigh.

When you build vehicles with drills or saw blades, and a collector, this problem goes away.
Which is part of the gameplay loop.
Advancements make the grind go away.

You mean the Illusion of Advancement, everything does need to have timers

[Azirahael]

Originally posted by zghaun:

Originally posted by Azirahael:

Sigh.

When you build vehicles with drills or saw blades, and a collector, this problem goes away.
Which is part of the gameplay loop.
Advancements make the grind go away.

You mean the Illusion of Advancement, everything does need to have timers

It's a game. Everything is an illusion.
This is the same.

Advancement removes these issues.

Watering by hand is a massive pain.
Automation fixes that.

Cutting down trees with a hammer is a pain.
Drills fix that.

In a game, that IS advancement.

[HOAI]

Every advancement in every video game is pointless by some of these rules I'm hearing from people. Might as well go learn a life skill if video games are a waste of time.

It's a game called Scrap Mechanic and it revolves around engineering concepts. Automation is a huge factor of the game and honestly I hated the timers at first but it really adds a level of satisfaction when you do get to automating everything and reducing timers by upgrading your tools. It's what happens in real Engineering, it's all about making things eventually and exponentially more efficient over time.

It's a delicate balance because there would be no point in automating anything whatsoever if the timers didn't exist. I think the game just needs a tutorial and the beginning is pretty brutal for someone new, but this is literally the first iteration of Survival and it's far from done still.

[Iraneth The Goat]

What would make you happy? You push one button and get everything you need? Thats called creative.

The whole point of survival is to figure out how to skip the grind.

[Breizhpanda]

Taking time making things is part of the game. The point is make players develop tools and vehicles to help them making all faster.

[Breizhpanda]

Originally posted by Iraneth:

What would make you happy? You push one button and get everything you need? Thats called creative.

The whole point of survival is to figure out how to skip the grind.

-> this

[M.Red]

Originally posted by Iraneth:

What would make you happy? You push one button and get everything you need? Thats called creative.

The whole point of survival is to figure out how to skip the grind.

i agree here - its called survival because you have to do stuff to keep going. this usually takes time to get you from the most basic things to high tech and is a basic survival gameplay feature

[Person14557]

Originally posted by phonelobster:

Timers and other mechanics like that this game is rife with are a cheap and easy way to waste player time instead of having actual content. It's basically how to fake more game than you have.

As you can see some players are still and will always be easily duped. I envy them the ability to gain a sense of achievement and engagement by looking at a number count down.

On the other hand as you can also see the wider gaming public is getting pretty tired of it.

Ok so if you could instantly refine any wood, scrap or stone what would be the point of progressing to craft the refine bot? A big part of survival games is progressing to be able to collect basic materials faster to progress. Of course it takes longer to get resources at first but the things you craft are also cheaper so there is less grind.

[Iraneth The Goat]

Ive gotten to the point where i have hundreds of wood and metal of all the basic tier 1 and tier 2 stuffs