3D Printing vs Crafting decoratives

Do you think decorative items should require more than just pixels? Is the 3D Printing of so many decorative items a placeholder for more crafting recipes as development continues?

I just feel like it'd give you more to do with your materials after you've progressed beyond the equipment tier if a many of those decorative items required a little iron or copper or anything else. Currently, it feels like you should just skip mining most ores after you've finished its tier, and wonder if that's the team's intent. I know there's the refinery, but that feels dumping materials into a garbage can.

Thoughts?

 

I feel like 3D printing is a little bit silly at the moment. I found one storage locker, the kind that you can stack on top of each other, and I scanned it and now 2/3 of my ship is covered in storage lockers. Basically, with the refinery, I can convert ore into a number of decorative, furniture, storage, or a bunch of other kinds of items that aren't craftable.

However, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I feel like these items that you can scan and print should be "rare" and that if you want to have 50 storage lockers in your ship, you should have to find them all, or make do with what you have. Contrarily, the creative side of me likes the ability to find a nice decoration once, say "that would look nice here!" and be able to get another one fairly easily. In addition, finding another version of the same item may be tedious and expensive, as you may have to travel to new systems many times just to find the structure you're looking for.

 

The 3D printer is awesome and I totally love how it works, but there's also plenty of crafting recipes to find. Think most special biomes have a set, and a lot of those biomes you won't even see without a lot of exploration. I imagine there will be plenty more later. Think people who are hardcore about decoration will find what they need between the two.

I'd rather not see current 3D printer items forced to crafting just for the sake of more material sinks. heh Generally think sinks for the sake of being sinks are pointless. There's a full set of items for most of the ore types, and I kinda hope that's how it stays. Each ore gets its own full set of craftables, but 3D printer items keep working as is. Filling your 3D printer database is one of the better rewards for extensive exploration in this game.

 

What Bob said, a little. I don't really agree with the whole 3D printing shenanigans. At least when it comes to the survival part of the game. I'd much rather us being given a scanner that allows us to scan objects and develop a blue print for it so that we can craft it than simply copy and paste objects to make it easy.

IF HAVEN'T NOTICED A PATTERN BY NOW, ANYTHING EASY MAKES ME RAGE INSIDE!

 

What can i say. Technology too strong these days. We can easily print 3D decorations out with just the use of pixels. Why? It would take took long to think of what material would be required to craft each piece of decorative material that can be found and make it all balanced in term of amount of materials required and the sorts.

 

Fixed that for ya.

I see your point though. It would probably be pretty tedious to make a recipe for just about every object in the game. But hey, if they were ever to actually put in the extra effort I think it would be an awesome idea to at least have that feature for the harder difficulty setting.

 

Maybe useful items like chests should have to crafted.
But for purely decorative? Keep it to using pixels.


Or you can have the 3D Printer be unlocked later on in the game and leave the mechanics untouched.

 

No, I like the current system. Being able to print decorations is nice for creative types, and because all of the possible decorations crafts would clog the crafting menu.

 

Yea, I don't blame them for it though. In fact I think this was a pretty smart idea considering there is still so much more that needs to be done. Plenty of balancing, new content, etc before moving on to the 'extras' (the wants, not the needs). Priorities priorities.

 

Seconding. I wouldn't even bother with any decorations if I had to find materials for every last thing I want to make. Since all I have to do is hunt monsters for a while (and higher tiers make pixel farming easy), it's much easier to be creative.

The 3D printing system encourages creativity, and even incentivizes exploration, because the only way to find things to scan for the 3D printer is by exploring.

 

https://twitter.com/Tiyuri

I thought this was pretty relevant for this thread.

 

/facepalm...

I think the one thing that all of us have agreed upon so far is that we DON'T need 3D printing for craftable objects...and now, THIS...

 

I was fine with it only duping decorative items but now craftable objects? Wow.

 

Well, I can't be the only one that's tired of using neolithic torches when I have a spaceship capable of FTL travel, or having a campfire be the only way of cooking my acquired alien meats. I think it would be nice to have some futuristic torches and campfires.

 

The pixels costs for decorative objects are stupid high.
It shouldn't cost me 3 arms and 4 legs to print something that is literally only useful for looks. There is no productive benefit to spending my pixels for something that only looks nice. It won't put me ahead, in fact, it'll set my budget back. So it really should not cost such a ridiculous amount of pixels, and it really hurts people that just want to build pretty things.

 

I agree with you there, but I think these items should be introduced in a similar manner to drills, in that they should be unlocked at a certain stage in the game, and they should be crafted, not printed. This portable printer for things like torches and fires seems too much like a cop-out, like the devs are too lazy to come up with actual crafting recipes for them.

 

I feel 3D Printing is too expensive.

I mean when you consider that:
1. You aren't printing anything that isn't cosmetic, with the exception of spawners and storage containers.
2. You need pixels for crafting things that actually affect combat.
3. You have to pay just to scan items to begin with.

It really seems not worth the pixels.

Yes, but it should be fairly early on. If the only time sci-fi items appear is near the end of the game, it kills off immersion.

 

Absolutely everything in this game should be able to be scanned into the 3D Printer. It's the future. There's no reason to not be able to pop out whatever if I have the pixels required and I've scanned the item previously.

 

I'm curious how you would balance that with searching out resources and digging for ores? Would you get rid of that part altogether? Or would it be the sort of thing where you build something once, scan it, then never worry about the resources again?

 

If they did that, what would happen to the balance of the game? For many players, pixels are no object as they can just get them as they please (myself included to some extent). If we allowed things like stim packs, shurikens, and the like -- that is to say, consumables that are somewhat rare but extremely useful -- the game would become too easy for many, as they could just get as many pixels as they need and turn them into however many items they need.

And don't just say "we'll make them cost more pixels" -- that's missing the point. To some players, pixels mean nothing because they have more than they will ever need, and can get more whenever they want. At the very worst, if I wanted more of an item, all I would have to do is grind pixels for a few hours, and voila. I have what I need!

This is a game, after all. While it may be the future, and I don't disagree that we could have the ability to print anything we want, balance is still important -- it's why most guns in FPS games don't kill you instantly like they may in real life. It needs to be fun first, realistic second.