Please, No Time-Based Crafting

[D.A.R.K.]

Having to do nothing while waiting a crafting to finish is stupid and a waste of player's time. Don't do this, let the craft be instantaneous the way it is now, it's better.

Here's my review:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/765611989530367465/recommended/768200

[Sia Salem]

I like the time-based crafting. I know people are complaining about it, but chill people. If any of you have played Grounded, you'd know that it too has time-based crafting, such as the grinders, furnaces, etc. Just set the crafting items and go about your business. Why complain?

Something I would like to see add, and it's likely been requested by others, is to add the feature of being able to move items that have been built, including chests w/ inventory, w/out having to tear them down and rebuild them. Would just be more convenient.

One other thing to change would be to remove the armor from our inventory bags since we are wearing it. Why should it be in our bags, taking up much needed space, if we are already wearing it??? Our weapons and tools are not that way.

[D.A.R.K.]

Originally posted by Quinox:

I can't imagine anyone advocating for the timers actually played the update, The timers are more nuisance than, "survival," duration. If there is a timer that makes going off to do something else actually worthwhile while it runs, I haven't seen it. The whole point seemed to be to watch an animation of the station doing something while you do nothing; because the real wait is the total time waiting for each process to complete so you can start up the next one.

Not to mention the fact repairs are free, all buildings can be demolished instantly for a full refund, and it's only player choice to not set up a hut with a bed, workshop, and win fights through sheer respawn attrition. There's very little need to preserve your character's life beyond being able to take a few swings before dying, outside of a boss fight. The whole survival aspect was almost completely elective from the start, and there's no point in enforcing these particular new extra house rules after release.

Unless I'm supposed to be spending my time running between stations and optimizing how I stagger these processes. Which seems ironic considering I can now craft with materials from the chest, am i supposed to now build a floor full of material chests and then several workstations below to engage multi-threaded production? It's a baffling change to my mind, i wasn't looking for the Factorio experience.

This is a workaround, which isn't good. If the players need to work around a feature this means the feature isn't good. Yeah, to deal with this timer we need to turn the game into Factorio or Satisfactory, you are right.

Honestly, the update isn't 100% bad, there are good things. For example, the animation is neat, but stepping too close to the Stone Cutter while animating the particles will make your PC rethink your decisions. Being able to use items from storage containers is also great, something we should already expect since it's a common feature in survival games.

There are some bugs that I don't know if it's new or old, for example, we can place two things in the same spot, overlaying them. If you want, you can make a double wall by placing two walls in the same spot, probably you can go more but I didn't test it, and this work with foundations as well.

I don't like how many resources we use to fuel crafting stations based on how many items we are preparing, maybe this is something the developers should rethink, or make each resource give more fuel or items to use less, I don't know, it seems off based on any other survival game.

[D.A.R.K.]

Originally posted by Sia Salem:

I like the time-based crafting. I know people are complaining about it, but chill people. If any of you have played Grounded, you'd know that it too has time-based crafting, such as the grinders, furnaces, etc. Just set the crafting items and go about your business. Why complain?

Something I would like to see add, and it's likely been requested by others, is to add the feature of being able to move items that have been built, including chests w/ inventory, w/out having to tear them down and rebuild them. Would just be more convenient.

One other thing to change would be to remove the armor from our inventory bags since we are wearing it. Why should it be in our bags, taking up much needed space, if we are already wearing it??? Our weapons and tools are not that way.

I'm gonna ask you the same question I ask to everybody, and interesting enough NO ONE answered me: Do you have any issues with an option to remove the time from crafting, similar with weather damage to structures?

[Nerevar]

aslong as its ENABLED by default i dont care about there beeing any kinds of settings to turn off whatever people cannot handle. cheats also exist and idk they do aslong as they arent used in multiplayer sessions. but the default shouldnt be OFF if the game wants to label itself SURVIVAL game in the future. otherwise i ask this tag to be removed from the games discription and storepage.

dont be like sons of the failure where you cannot DIE at all to survival mechanics. you can only die from enemy dmg there. so that game isnt a survival game by default.

[D.A.R.K.]

One thing that bothers me is that I feel the developers didn't really go deep into this new system, like, looking into other games to see how they do the system so they can implement their own. There are missing features for this system that make it less problematic, what I see now is a "return to base simulator" in which you place something to craft, after finishing you go back to your base to place another thing, and then you repeat that over and over again.

A feature that helps with this situation is queues. Instead of placing items to craft one by one you can place multiples and let the crafting station do the job. This works great when crafting resources because you can turn all primary resources into next-tier ones without even paying attention to it, when you return to base you are ready to craft your gear with them.

Another thing is being able to pause the crafting in the middle or collect part of what you already crafted while waiting for the other part to craft. This is the example that I gave in my review. I want to craft that wooden chest (I don't remember the name), the second chest we unlock. It requires 3 Refined Wood, so I started to craft 30 of them... I can't collect 15 to start building the chests, I need to wait for all 30 to finish to use the resource.

Just another example, pausing the crafting station. Sometimes you start to craft something but you notice that you need a few of the resources you are using, you could pause to retrieve parts of it and then keep going with the rest, no big deal with that.

Do you know what I mean? I feel the addition of this update was crude, it lacks details to make the system bearable. Right now you need to check the clock and come back to base to make another thing so you don't waste time, or turn the game into Satisfactory.

[D.A.R.K.]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

aslong as its ENABLED by default i dont care about there beeing any kinds of settings to turn off whatever people cannot handle. cheats also exist and idk they do aslong as they arent used in multiplayer sessions. but the default shouldnt be OFF if the game wants to label itself SURVIVAL game in the future. otherwise i ask this tag to be removed from the games discription and storepage.

dont be like sons of the failure where you cannot DIE at all to survival mechanics. you can only die from enemy dmg there. so that game isnt a survival game by default.

Sure, no problem, but when opening the server you see a line saying something like "turn off crafting timer" with a mark to check, exactly like weather damage. This is what I'm asking for, an option to remove the crafting timer for those who don't want to waste their time.

By the way, your definition of "survival game" is completely wrong. If you think a game needs crafting time to be defined as survivor is wrong, this isn't what a survival game is, I could give you a lot of examples but I don't see a point for that.

Another thing is your point of view on Sons of the Forest. There are survival games in which you die if you don't eat/drink, and other games in which you die if you don't eat/drink. Take Minecraft, for example, if you don't eat and stay still you won't die because you won't lose hunter, and even if you lose hunter you won't die of starvation, you'll get pretty low health, but not killable, and Minecraft is one of the fathers of Survival genre.

But it's ok, you can have your wrong opinion, and it doesn't matter, the idea here is to allow players to play the way they want instead of forcing them to play the way the developers want. They introduced something interesting to the game, some players liked it, and some players didn't, the best option is to give the option to remove it, that way everybody will be happy.

There's no shame in that, there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to play ultra hardcore 50% of the time scavenging food, 40% crafting food, or if you want to play more casual, freely... Why not have both?

[Cobra Kai]

Totally agree with D.A.R.K, most people don't have hours to just sit and craft stuff and go grind fuel resources - just plain stupid, game was bought 2 days ago, and now forced to play a different type of game - A GAME I DISLIKE NOW because I bought it and like the game play otherwise I would have returned the game within an hour.

The next thing is people have different opinions on what makes a survival game this game was already great as is, no need to add anything to make it more harder, if you want to play hardcore with these new options - then LISTEN UP DEVS give those players the option and give us more casual players an option who don't have time to spend crafting and grinding fuel resources to turn that off and btw fuel consumption is extremely high compared to other games is just stupid in my opinion.

[Quinox]

Fundamentally there's an issue with a significant game design change post launch with no option to turn it off, or roll the update back. It should be clear this isn't a fully embraced change, anything this significant should've come with an option to either revert the update or flip it off in options.


That aside this assumption that there's such a specific definition of survival games, or that crafting timers alone are a necessary feature for all of them, is rather pointless. That's a subjective opinion, which can be shared, but isn't an objective fact necessary for the label to apply. If it was, then this game quite obviously wouldn't have had it.


I don't particularly care if the game has an option for them, but it wasn't sold thus far with that feature or the clear intent to enforce it later on. Given the implementation, crafting timers simply encourage the use of multiple stations to get around the new issue adding tedium in play. There's no player challenge involved in dealing with this.

It's deeply ironic given crafting from chest inventory, something clearly seen as a highly desired feature by survival game players, lessened the crafting tedium in the same update.
Fuel is also just extra busy work at this stage, it's not about player progress or challenge that I can see. One step forward, two steps back. The only thing actually challenging my progress this update has been the NPCs not crafting armors, and in some cases not giving the blueprints either.

[Mr. Flibble]

Hey let's just have the best of both world eh?
For those that don't want time based. give option in world to turn it off.
Like how we can turn off weather damage.

ANd for people like me, keep time based.

I like the idea of having my base building my ammo for me, while I am out gathering more mats to make more ammo.
Because standing there and clicking mouse 100s of times or making a damn macro to do it sucks ass.

Let me queue up ♥♥♥♥ and go on about my business. :)

[D.A.R.K.]

I found out a new thing... Now only one player can access the crafting station at the same time, before the update all players were able to access the crafting stations at the same time. Nice chance, make us wait for the other player to use the crafting station to waste even more time. Good, good.

[Quinox]

To be fair the ability to batch craft was added this update, so there isn't any standing around clicking for each unit produced regardless of the existence of craft timers. Just wait times for starting each process, or rather, offloading total work time and separate orders between multiple stations. Having to wait any significant time for crafting is ultimately laziness in not making the effort to increase production line capacity.

[D.A.R.K.]

I wonder how many micro changes they made to make the game slower.
Yepe... Already started to build multiple of the same crafting station.

[D.A.R.K.]

REALLY? WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥.
To craft the Grappling Hook you need 10 Fiber Sting and 10 Chitin. I started to craft one but then I decided to make Silk Thread so I asked to cancel... When you cancel the crafting you can choose which material you'll get back, but only 1. Literally I just threw away 10 Fiber Stings and 9 Chitin.

[D.A.R.K.]

Please, someone try that out just to make sure it didn't bug out... But canceling a crafting doesn't give back 100% of the materials used, this is incredibly stupid and I see no reason to implement something like that. This update broke the game completely... DON'T miss click what you want to craft, and DON'T start crafting something you don't want or you'll lose all the resources, but 1 unity of one of the resources.

[D.A.R.K.]

YEAH, THIS IS RIGHT, LOOK...

To craft the Wooden Sword you need 4 Fiber and 8 Wood:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3230794282

If you ask to cancel, the game gives you the option to recover 1 Fiber or 1 Wood:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3230794254

WHY? WHAT'S THE PURPOSE, I REALLY WANT A DEVELOPER TELLING ME PURPOSE OF THIS. The reason is to make us waste resources so we waste more time gathering more? I can't see other reason.