Steel making is pain in the ass.

[Karede]

all timers that end in failure are bad

That's all there is to it really. Steel, silk, animals taking permanent quality damage from starving

[vatas]

You could take a not from Fireplace's book and have two bars. To make steel fastest, use current system and refuel every 8-12 hours to not let first bar fall off.

However, second bar lasts up to 24 hours after the crucible has been fueled to maximum, and as long as this bar lasts, the steel will progress slower or very least, will not be reset.

[VDZ]

all timers that end in failure are bad

This, essentially (for timers spanning more than a play session). I doubt the devs had any malicious intent in designing these mechanics, but in predatory free-to-play games these elements are used to keep players engaged when they're not having fun:

Cropping your Losses in Farmville

Many social games effectively employ Core Drive 8: Loss and Avoidance to motivate players towards taking the Desired Actions. In the now familiar example of Farmville, if we look at the early part of their onboarding stage, we can see that avoidance design was already integrated into the system, inducing users to “log in” multiple times each day.

The first few minutes of Farmville seems very positive as the player spends time creating their avatar and starts working on their farm with an initial pool of free Farm Cash. However, Farmville soon demands that each player maintain their crops and livestock through routine farming chores – mostly in the form of coming back and clicking on the crops and livestock to harvest their products.

If you don’t return to reap your harvest within a given number of hours, as determined by the crops’ profiles (you can choose which crop to plant, which plays into Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback), you will lose your invested hard work and be shown demoralizing images of crops withering and dying. This mildly depressing incident upsets the user, compelling them to log back in frequently to keep their crops alive. The player becomes proactively involved in avoiding this negative outcome.

When players lose their crops, it not only costs them Farm Cash to replace but also their time, as they have to replant and maintain new crops again. Each time you see the discouraging images of dead crops, you are hit with the triple whammy of having lost your time, effort, and resources.

Many years ago I was astonished at how effective this design could be, as my technology abhorrent mother suddenly became obsessed with playing Farmville. Back then, my mother was the type of person who thinks that technology is a source of evil that is polluting society and crippling authentic relationships; she still barely checks her email.

But in 2009, due to her close friend’s enthusiastic recommendation – a nice example of Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness, my mother signed up on Facebook and started to play Farmville. The beginning of the Onboarding phase was smooth and fun, as she used the game to relax her mind and connect with her friends.

However, after a few months of playing, my mother would sometimes wake up at 5:00am in the morning simply to harvest her crops and prevent them from withering. It became so bad that when my mother needed to travel out of town, she would call up my cousin and ask if he could log into her Facebook account and help manage her farm. She needed to make sure her crops didn’t die. (Though she also used to ask me, being a son that was lacking in “孝” as discussed in Chapter 5, I eventually deferred the responsibility so I could focus on my “other” important work).

At the time, this blew my mind. I initially thought the reason for most people to play games was because they had too many responsibilities in the real world and needed to immerse themselves into a fantasy world to escape those responsibilities. However, here you have a brand new set of virtual responsibilities that add on even more stress and anxiety to daily life. It didn’t make any sense.

Of course, today I understand the nature and power of Black Hat Motivation. For a period of time, Farmville was able to successfully increase its Daily Active Users Metrics and lower short-term turnover with this type of Loss & Avoidance design. That is, until users hit a “Black Hat Rebound,” where they eventually burn out and find the courage to pursue freedom outside of Farmville.

(source)

[noindyfikator]

I've just woke up on Saturday at 7 am to refuel steel crucible, it's sick. I don't want to be forced to login every 12h. I want to enjoy the game when I want.
Please change timer or the way you make steel. I would rather spend time playing, doing other things (even more difficult) to get steel but not FORCED to log in every 12h..

[Mysia]

but i mean fuck its not supposed to be easy even if the difficulty is artificial bullshit there needs to be something

you're not forced to do anything. steel is not a requirement to play the game

[DonVelD]

but i mean fuck its not supposed to be easy even if the difficulty is artificial bullshit there needs to be something

you're not forced to do anything. steel is not a requirement to play the game

haha hard ≠ awful yet people like you enjoy the latter
saying "well there needs to be at least something" is pretty shitty because it encourages lazy solutions

[WowGain]

but i mean fuck its not supposed to be easy even if the difficulty is artificial bullshit there needs to be something

you're not forced to do anything. steel is not a requirement to play the game

shut up retard

[Mysia]

but i mean fuck its not supposed to be easy even if the difficulty is artificial bullshit there needs to be something

you're not forced to do anything. steel is not a requirement to play the game

shut up retard

i just had the rather unpleasant experience of reading through your post history. it seems... you have never posted anything of substance. These forums are kind of trash and I will definitely put you in the category of absolute shitposters who aren't even funny. I'm sure circle jerking with your little buddies brings you a lot of pleasure, but if you could keep it to whatever furry discord you frequent that would be preferable to these forums.. thx

[Mysia]

but i mean fuck its not supposed to be easy even if the difficulty is artificial bullshit there needs to be something

you're not forced to do anything. steel is not a requirement to play the game

haha hard ≠ awful yet people like you enjoy the latter
saying "well there needs to be at least something" is pretty shitty because it encourages lazy solutions

the game is supposed to be hardcore, and yet its so easy literally grandmas play it. its not hard to use the control system, i think steel need tso be difficult some how. having something locked behind having you to log on every 12 hrs for a 2-3 day period is not absurd at all especially when you could trade for it. it also creates artificial value. I'm not saying it shouldn't be changed but just removing the timer is bad in my opinion

[SnuggleSnail]

I really don't have a horse in this race. I'm going to automate it either way, and my opinion should therefore be ignored, but...

How is Rclicking a stick onto a crucible difficulty/challenge/adversity/whatever? Either you've people that will be home at the right times making it trivial even if a bit tedious, or you don't and it's literally impossible. I'm a giant no-lifer but even I don't like scheduling my day around making minor gains in a video game.