This game has the startings of a AAA title however there are certainly a few things that I believe would certainly bring more players in. Im going to sort of do this in a pro vs. con format but the cons are more like suggestions.
Pros:
Unlike a lot of Voxel games this one has a much more defined art style differentiating it from the rest. Instead of typical Human avatars, the players use a very unique one.
The skill system is a very nice touch to an otherwise overmade genre. This system is definately a huge boon to the game and really makes a player consider the importance of hunting over gathering or building/crafting.
The world generation is gorgeous though Lakes being so deep you can see the lava beds near the mantle is a bit odd. Personally I think the core of the planet should be a goal for high tech gatherers.
The portal system is ingenious, seamless transitions really keep you going and give the impression of living in a fully dynamic/connected universe. Personally I think it would be really cool if there were random events allowing players to hop onto an asteroid or comet for rare materials and/or hunts.
Cons:
The animations in the game so far are nice if a bit lacking. Though I have not gotten to looking at the emotes I think dynamic foot placement based on the elevation and angle of that foot would be pleasing though not required.
What little farming I’ve seen so far is a bit disappointing. If ever you want to improve on it I would take a page out of Pam’s Harvestcraft. Lots of raw ingrediants, lots of food. I want to be able to water the crops and attempt to change the quality of the crops based on soil grade and health of the crop.
Whereas I do like how basically everything is only 1x1x1 I do feel like some things should be larger. The spark generator seems like it would have been larger given what it does. Also the lack of animations on a working forge and a few of the other items is a bit of a let down.
Ive got several years on me running voxel game servers and playing many of the titles on steam (both the good ones and the ones that need to be removed because the devs didnt care. I have high hopes for this title and would love to see it flourish. $35 is a bit high for what a lot of people would perceive to be another Minecraft clone but once more in-depth features get implemented that truly diversify Boundless from the rest of the crowd. I could see this being the next great voxel game of this generation.
Keep in mind there is a ton more to discover ^^The devs have a road map, if you want to make a trello and suggest things everything up there is really neat!
I’d check these out so you can see what is ahead and perhaps contribute to whats to come!!
In the past the devs have told us that they view farming as an increadibly important feature and they want to invest considerable dev time into it. At this point the game has been in development for a long time though, so they will likely release the game at a 1.0 state without farming, then add it in after launch as free DLC expansion. That should let them focus on farming content without pushing back the release date further.
Thats good. Concidering how the skill system works. Farming would help some people justify being stuck to a single path of progression.
Another thing that I find a bit bothersome is the lack of diverse wildlife. I haven’t been off world yet but theres only 3 different creatures that ive seen on the first world. One of the claims on the Steam store front is that there are various creatures that require their own strategy to defeat. This would imply to a lot of folks that the devs might be taking a page out of Monster Hunter. Or even that the amount of creatures significantly outnumbers what is currently in the game now.
Personally on the note of the creatures I’d love to see creatures both large and small that could help the player in a passive way. For instance, a large elephant sized creature that is a herbivore and it’s poop could be collected as a high grade fertilizer for either crops or bombs so that they have a use for more than one group of players. Or perhaps a creature you can legitimately milk instead of having to kill for milk glands.
Not only will this help to make the game a bit more immersive (I know it’s a buzzword but in this case, applicable) but it would also help with bolstering the in-game economy.
Also I just went through the roadmap and I have one thing to say about what they have in there on purchasing private worlds. Allow players who buy them to make them public, set the max player count and if theyre public then youd see them orbiting a planet of the owners choice as a moon. Easily accessed and looks cool.
We have cateloged 4 unique familes of organisms in the Known Lands besides our own, each with a multitude of genus and species varients. These are commonly known as the Spitter, the Hopper, the Cuttletrunk and the Wildstock. Thers are 6 known “tiers” or genus with the 6th being the various “Elemental” species. The Oort tell us of an additional 4 yet uncateloged families still to be discovered. These are the Hunter, the Stone Thrower, the Ground Basher, the Wyrm, and the Hunter. They also speak of the artificial races known as the Protector, the Drone, and the fabled Titan. No documented evidence has been found of any of these forms of life as of yet, but if the Oort speak of them then they must be out there somewhere! Perhaps we will find them out there somewhere as we continue to explore the Boundless Creation!
As soon as you go to moon worlds and then ring worlds you will see spitters having many different attacks (including throwing bombs of various types), cuttletrunks (floating, having wide range of attacks - shooting a few types of projectiles, dropping bombs, using laser beam and even telekinetic field that can lift you up and throw you down causing falling damage etc.). Hoppers are suicidal bombers then. All of them can have elemental variants causing not just physical damage but also negative effects like burn or poison.
More creatures already planned and we all wait for them with great anticipation and excitement.
(Or is it just me projecting? ;p)
That does make sense. I do want to see more variety on the first planet though. I think a lot of what turns off some new players is how barren the world can feel without much wildlife wandering about. I wouldn’t mind knowing if migration and more advanced AI pathing is in the works. the sort of thing where you could follow a group of creatures for a while, stop at a watering hole for a while then move on and it not feel like a programmed route.
On a side note to the above suggestion with AI pathing, make them eat grass blocks slowely to simulate some form of circle of life. I wouldnt mind catching spitters attacking the wildstock as natural predators either.
FYI, creature spawns are based on presence of players. They will spawn in a radius around a player. There are no static creatures that wander around forest, desert, or mountainous area, like most MMOs would have (for example WOW, or EQ, or EQ2, or UO, or Rift). The creatures that spawned based on you being around will despawn a while after you leave the area.
Starter planets were meant for newer players to feel like its a safe place to learn the game and build in; with exception to the occasional annoying spitter, if you are higher level more annoying spitters.
Whereas I do understand and acknowledge that may be the case for keeping beginners from feeling overwhelmed it also doesn’t give them a ton to go off of after first joining the game. I chose to play the game through to see what was in store but most people aren’t like you or I. They want something they can take at face value or something that leaves a good impression within the first 2hrs.
I don’t mean to speak for the majority I’m mostly going off of common consumer psychology. People with large amounts of patience like most of if not the entire community here find great enjoyment in the game as it unfolds and we explore. I have no doubt in my mind that the dev’s already know what I’m talking about.
As for what you said regarding AI pathfinding and spawns. I’m actually quite aware that the spawn rate is based off of presence. Virtually all voxel based games operate off of the same mechanic to help mitigate much of the processing power required to render the world in real time. However I am not in any way comparing boundless to a traditional MMO because it doesn’t at all function in any way shape or form like a traditional MMO. If we were to compare it to one I’d say it comes closest to what Everquest Next WAS going to be though the voxel system was far more advanced.
Spawning a creature of flock of creatures and having them use a roaming AI with advanced pathfinding makes sense and isn’t necessarily difficult to pull off, we see it quite often in titles like Planet Explorers, No Man’s Sky and even in Minecraft.
Having them graze and perform simple animations like drinking water would pretty much just require a little RNG and animation requirement checking. (Is Next To Water? If yes > wild_drink) Though the programming isn’t necessarily as cut and dry as depicted I think that serves as a close example for the condition for an action.
I’m not arguing that its necessary only that small things like this look exceptional for the studio and small details make a world feel alive.
I’m hoping I’m wording this ok. I don’t want to sound like an attack or aggressive argument because that is far from the message I’m trying to convey.
I would like to see some passive animals (no mob hunting), like some birds and bugs fly around, a squirrel sit in a tree or some little animals run past in front of you when walking in the wild, just to get some life in.
In the old days there was big birds flying around in the mountain, and i often stop up and just watching them.
As a former Wurm Online player Wurm Unlimited killed the game! As most of us predicted that it would…
Stick with your Primary servers the game is too niche to be spreading the playerbase out into private servers!
The world is already empty as it is…
It depends on how they handle it. One thing you have to remember is these servers are not free but neither is keeping this game up and running either. The devs have to handle overhead costs before they turn a profit so implementing things like private servers make sense. Once wearables start coming around I wouldnt be suprised if we start seeing some cosmetic MTX talk buzzing about and personally I’m all for it. I would be more than happy to help support this game with said MTX to keep the servers up and running.
I would gladly pay a monthly sub to keep the servers running, then have the playerbase split up on private servers that won’t be reliable and will end up run bye kiddies… Minecraft ring a bell…
Describes a majority of MC servers, but there will certainly be some run better than others. About 5 years ago I helped run an MC server that had garnered over 200,000 unique logins in a 2 year span. So you will always have some people who know how to do it better than others. The only difference being that this is not MC. Though I am curious how the private worlds would work, considering if it is private servers then how easy would it be to DDOS them. Unfortunately that is the one thing that can shut popular servers down in a short time as long as the owner doesnt know what to do or the attack is too intense.
Rented private servers that adhere to the main universe rule set (i.e. Not modded) will be connected to the public universe. They’ll be on the same server infrastructure as everything else, so reliability shouldn’t be an issue.
I think you might be misrepresenting the playerbase with regards to the “run by kiddies” remark too. The players that I know of that have expressed a wish to rent their own server are, for the majority, responsible adults. I’m one of them.
I can’t speak for others, but the reason for me wanting to rent a private world is for the extra control it provides, so I can fully realise a themed build without some random player slapping a giant non-themed box or brutalist monument in the middle of it.
The only piece I was interested in was the PS4 release and since it has been over a year now since I asked about it and got no response as to a timeline I’m just accepting the fact that we will probably never see it on the PS4 and so moving on to other games. Unlike a PC a console has a finite amount of time where it’s viable for games, you don’t have years to develop a game when a system is already midlife by the time this game ever came out to a console the PS4 will probably be long retired. If you’re going to develop for a console you need to have a defined goal of when you’re going to release your game and it needs to be within a reasonable amount of time for the console otherwise don’t bother.
I mean a good example of a pc title in EA hitting consoles is Ark. it had been in dev for over a year before they started console dev. Dont lose faith but id imagine a console port wouldnt be till around mid to late beta.