Originally posted by PakaNoHida:

Originally posted by Shiverperplexed:

I'm only explaining the most likely reasoning for it.
I should also mention however I never use them because they are used up when they serve their purpose. Also I would probably use them more if pine trees dropped more core wood. Like most things in this game, the recipe requirements and upgrade requirements are not balanced for single player play and the game needs rebalancing here as it already does in terms of number of monsters that spawn and overall difficulty of spawning mobs in relation to total player count.

I disagree here, the game has felt pretty well balanced from Meadows to the Plains.

When you think about it, the space you need for a base and all that goes into it does not change much as the number of people is increased. The only thing that really goes up is the amount of people collecting resources. As a result it doesn't take as long to build a shared base.
If you feel the game is well balanced in the amount of resources you derive from activities, it means you have a higher threshold for grinding than most people as this is a very common and easily remedied criticism of this game.
Edit: The same applies to armor, while collecting resources for the grindy set, you are going to encounter the enemies that make up the archer set, two great sets of armor and you can only wear one at a time. This means two people can collect for one set but one person can only collect the resources for the main armor at half the rate.