*Actually* Public Creative Worlds

Suggestions
21

A hypothetical question to say the least and one you most likely would never know the answer to fully as most people are biased as you say with what they have had exposure to. I for one would always pick survival. I would still pick it to this day given what I know now of the game and of the creative and survival landscapes.

I can only speak for myself, but if the creative world choice as a new player was offered in the sanctum and it is the creative worlds that we have now, I personally feel people would prefer the survival worlds just knowing what I know of the MANY games similar to Boundless, but I cannot say that without a doubt as everyone has preferences and differences in what they want out of a game.

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22

Hey fair enough, all matters of opinion and speculation right now. I was not experienced in any sort of “voxel building” game ever, before Boundless.

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23

Just a brief lot of experience I had varies, but Minecraft, Creativerse, Lego Worlds, Empyrion, Minetest, Space Engineers, 7 Days to Die, Avorian, Trove, Tersaology, Planet Explorers, Vintage Story, Rising World, etc. etc. just to name a few.

It’s kind of a niche genre overall, but some great games nonetheless.

Taking those in comparison to your OP, not all of these offer a full creative world type experience.

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24

From what I understand that’s a list that, end of the day, includes some very different games.

I wonder if we’re getting to the point where “voxel building” is really more of a feature than a genre.

It’s hard for me to do this but, I’ve got work in three hours. I see two people responding and I’m very interested but, I’m going to try and catch a nap. I will definitely be back to this. I just don’t want to be so active then vanish while someone is mid-response.

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25

Indeed, but without going too off-topic most of them offer sandbox open world environments with building. While a few like 7 Days to DIe is a zombie survival game, it does allow for block-based base building and the ability to terraform and dig in the ground etc. with mining and an economy. Some have no economy while most are a bit different the base games are very similar. I would include No Man’s Sky somewhat other than I find it hard to consider it an MMO at all.

The base or “core” game loops are very similar in many of these though.

Gather > Build > Survive - there are some other game loops that spin off from this but the majority have a very similar core game loop.

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26

Do I think the journey would be the same? No. :laughing: Not even close.

Personally, I do not play on the creative servers because I want to play a game and I don’t feel like creative mode is much of a game. It is more of an artistic playground. For people who are highly talented artists, who can create super amazing art and get the challenge from the creation of the art itself, I can see why those have appeal. Maybe for them playing within the “rules” of the building is it’s own game. I am not one of these highly talented artists. :joy: So I have to get my challenges elsewhere.

Do I look down on people who choose to play on creative worlds and think their builds are somehow lesser? No! Well… mostly no. If you build giant square gleam towers in creative and drag me to come see them I might have less than impressed thoughts. But people who build amazing stuff put in the work of building that amazing stuff whether they farmed all the blocks up or not.

I look at it this way. Humans tend not to value stuff that didn’t take any work to achieve. The work can come from more than one vector, though. The creation of art is work. The farming of blocks is work. If you are not a talented artist, then playing in survival and farming up the blocks is the “work” that makes things like my mediocre builds impressive. If you are an awesome artist, then the art itself is the work. A survival gleam tower of rare gleam colors can therefore be almost as impressive as a creative masterpiece.

The thing about color rarity is that people have different taste in colors, and some colors are more rare than others simply by virtue of some colors being WAY more represented in the color palette to begin with. There are way more blues and greens than browns and reds. Someone who mostly builds with blue is therefore going to be less annoyed at being locked out of a couple colors than someone who builds with a color like brown. Locking 2 of 10 shades is way more annoying than locking 2 of 40 shades. So the color rarity thing does not affect everyone equally. I do think there needs to be rare stuff. I just think color rarity is a poor selection for the rarity focus. I think it is better to use things that everyone is going to need than things that only some people need, because humans are humans and envy and resentment are a thing. I don’t know that all the colors actually need to be unlocked though, I just think improvements to the goo/pigment/paint system need to be made.

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27

Pretty much sums up my opinions on the color rarity.

28

I have played No Man sky and buildt in Creative mode there, its not frownd opon by others but celebrated. It mostly i beleve that its been there for a while, is accepted as help to build what u want to take as Influence to build in The normal game.

I thinks Its in The Culture of the game, eye of the beholder and the person Building. What and why they are Building.

Im Building for myself so i dont care about People using or abusing Creative mode to build what ever monstrosity (i see u Finata, Black blanket carpet half of the world) they want.

If the community wants to keep such a bias about time spend or how much they sweat acomplishing The same feat, so be it i relly dont care. Its issues that they have not me. Then do not share youre build to People that dont feel youre enjoyment, go to People that lift u up and fill youre exitment.
I think that the community is so small that there is just a few to ask for aproval, if they are negative then just move forward to youtube or other places of outlet.

I feel good farming The stuff i need to build, i would never set foot in Creative in boundless because i want to feel The grind so i get fullfilment to watch my house in all its grind, gatekeeping, money sucking, hourwaisting crafting Glory! Its self satisfying :star_struck: i dont care that noone sees it, its Mine, my pressius!

Its like watching a streamer reacting to an other streamer, its zero work but i dont relly mind Creative mode in boundless. But The implementation of the mode is horrendus :joy: they should learn from their cusin No Man Sky. Creative mode, its own mode.

I think as The game is so heavy on timer its become a “well i can do that to! But… Wait 40h when its done in The machine” And when its done u feel as if u accualy did more but an other got all The fame an fortune in creative :joy:
Its unfair in the mind of the righteus. Its a personal feeling.

Creatvie should not be frownd apon in my mind, its to improve youre build faster. Because The same time for all that concrete to be done u could have buildt a city and figure out how to build youre Project. Less wait, more build. Because there is also The feel of reaching that Project, if it takes to long People will abandon it.

I dont think that new People would even know what Creative is and use it for their benefits, because The intruduction on Creative to The Newcommers is non existence. They Will stumble upon it 6 months later when they find their first portal and wonder why all their UI is diffrent.

Well i just think its a personal feeling why u are Building or playing boundless.

Endnote, Survival game first, Building game second for me personal. If not then i can just play Creative No Man Sky to only build, or Ark

If u dont have The Survival aspect then there is no consecuenses in the game to make it exiting (there is nothing more exiting to get hammered by a low lv lifestock and get flinged into lava) . Mobs and everything becomes obsolite and u are not affraid of anything. That would kill The game for me :sweat_smile:

I would rather have a singel player Creative world for content creators or to try stuff out, not have it in The same Universe :hugs:

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29

I disagree with making creative worlds the default state. The survival-themed early game serves to build a sense of worth to the builds players make. Needing multiple smart stacks of blocks to build and having to craft them makes the final build all the more worthwhile. Though perhaps the real reason I am against it is that the owners of the game need to make money from plots if they are going to take up development again.

Also, the new player experience is conflating the issue. It needs some TLC for sure but I don’t think it will be solved by switching to a creative world default. Then when players look to interact with others in an MMO setting they’ll find that everything is much harder to gain than they’ve grown used to.

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30

All right, all right. A surprisingly brief, but interesting thread.

Clearly there are a couple of people around who don’t feel the same after so long, or just don’t want to rehash some old points. A quick skim of my posts and some catchup with the others tells me that I made most of my points, and it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of interest among the (Active forum) community in this sort of thing at all any more.

Classic story I guess. People were raving in this direction, long before the tools were ready. But by the time the pieces are in place … :man_shrugging:

All Gone.

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31

To be fair haven’t read most of the posts.

My 2 cents…
Creative perm world should be a thing. But ill probably never make use of it… not even to test build a structure because “copying” that structure would end up in frustration (likely) for me…
For the same reason I don’t use programs that help you build structures and calculate the mats.

Again im not against creative in any way also for some creative perm worlds. But ill likely never go there as i got nothing to gain there.

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32

Just to reopen this discussion but I am going to go the opposite way with creative worlds and say instead of making them an option when you first start the game, they should be locked until you go through the tutorial and complete a set number of basic feats within the survival “classic” side of Boundless. This way it restricts the number of people who can be in creative worlds to only those that really want to do them and sort of forces them to learn how to do things and get a better understanding for the game first. I guess this is kind of backwards as you don’t need to know how to do everything to use the items in creative vs survival but I feel like it would give everyone who went to a creative a good all around feel for the game as a whole as it was meant to be played before they delved into the creative tract.
That’s assuming also that the whole tutorial process gets a bit of an overhaul from what it currently is aside from changes others have mentioned to make things more user friendly such as forging.

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33

It’s an interesting take.

Earlier on there was a lot of discussion regarding the idea that some people would come here for mainly creative purposes, and be turned away by the difficulty of getting started. It was given as a primary reason for the delay of the last release that a new player wouldn’t have time to download or create a private (self-hosted) world in the time that steam allows for a refund.

In all this time I’ve only ever noticed a single post from a player that bought the game and was waiting for their sovereign to really get started. The game looks and feels like an MMORPG I can’t imagine that many would insist on creating a world before they explored any of the existing game at all. However there were people insisting that it was a critical issue :man_shrugging:

We’ll never know, I suppose, if these issues would have changed the course the game wound up taking. It does seem clear that the melee system would have probably caused a resurgence, though it might have been temporary.

As regards the people wanting creative worlds to be part of the core game - I’m not sure if they were gone by the time the creative worlds were released or it was just a sort of theoretical demographic that never materialized. At least based on the public discussion, it seems to have remained a way to practice or test things for most players.

I do believe that allowing players to go creative right off the bat would capture some players, who would then know the reasons for their choice, if they decided to embark on the survival path. However with a better introduction, that path might not seem so daunting in the first place.

In some cases more options are better, and in others it muddies the waters. Here we’ve always ended up with people arguing, sometimes very passionately, for all sides of every issue. Sometimes the same person :smirk: I’m glad my livelihood doesn’t depend on finding the right answer.

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