Originally posted by Vazkulator:

i think you guys might be overlooking a lot of the complex details behind limitations, theyre still early access and need an active playerbase feel the freshness of the game and try to keep them away from hitting the wall too quickly.

a lot of companies do this in great excess with excessively repetitive systems that provide absolutely zero immersion, depth or even involving lore in a way that feels captivating.

im not saying that this game doesnt have those excessively tedious menial tasks but without limitation on the portal then youll hit the wall really really quickly, you have the option to build a larger boat and filling it up to 100% before making it back to base.

in general, its just like hobo says.. youll remove the little "replayability" and purpose behind boats completely if you have absolutely no limits on portals.

That all sounds good in theory but it doesn't work that way in practice. I mean, yeah, the grind is the game to some extent. It gives you an excuse to spend many hours in a beautiful environment. But a player can also "hit the wall" when they get fed up with doing things they find to be tedious. They could always just go play something else.

There is a balance to be maintained, and that point of balance is not the same for everyone. The solution to that is to allow the player to customize their experience. The devs are not against modding either, they just have more important things to concentrate on than adding difficulty settings. Mods increase replayability because the player can decide how they want to play.

At 500 hours in, I've started many runs, some of them with self imposed permadeath rules, because I was in the mood for that kind of challenge. Customization is not always with the intent of making things easier. At the same time, I look up the map seed because I think that spending real life days sailing around and looking for things is not an enjoyable use of my time. If I was forced into doing the extra stuff that I don't enjoy I would be less likely to start a new run, and more likely to abandon it before it was finished.

Edit: Not 500, 700 hrs. Wow. Kinda proves the replayability point, doesn't it?