This post may use ideas from an earlier suggestion of mine https://forum.playboundless.com/t/ways-to-give-melee-viability-in-combat/34080 so putting this here for any needed clarification for that. (also mildly shameless plug since it seems to have not been noticed in the least)
As things stand in boundless we have a veritable all you can eat buffet of skills that characters can grab, and a fairly hefty 100 skill points with which to build our skill sheets. now for the most part i can understand why the skills are the way they are, and the cost they are (i don’t agree with many but i do understand the reasoning given for most) But the skills that still flummox me, absolutely boggle my mind are the health skills and armor skills.
First we shall tackle health skills, when you have a character who takes no health stat upgrades, and no health skills upgrades you have an hp of 600. then if you have a character who maxes their hp stat (including the attribute bonus) you have a character with 4,000 hit points ( that is almost a 7x increase) then if they go further and grab the health epic they get a whopping 12,000 hit point total (a 20x increase from base health). now this seems fine, an increase in health in accord with investment. BUT lets discuss from a balance perspective. to have a critter do 50% hp damage to a non hp buffed player (that means make the critter two hit kill the player) you make them do 300 damage. to make them do 50% to the max stat but no epic takes 2,000 damage, which at this stage is already almost four times the maximum hit points of the starting character. attempting to balance that damage across that gap (a 12 skill point gap, the equivalent of 6 levels, or 3 if you are past 50) is essentially impossible, in order to make an enemy a threat to the higher hp player, they must do enough damage that the lower hp player is pointless, and essentially one shot uselessly.
NOW i know the first argument here “well the player that invested in hp should be better at this, and able to take more hits” and in essence i agree, BUT this is a multiplayer game, meant to be an MMO with at least some RPG style mechanics involved. so by putting this wall between the two levels of HP that is just insurmountable without the direct investment of those skill points we place a very large barrier between two players and working together on an activity. there are some stop gap measures that take care of a portion of this issue, by enabling reset of skill pages till 20 at no cost those low end players can swap to whatever they wish and build themselves for the task at hand. BUT may i suggest instead, lowering the overall amount of hit points earned by the investment in the skills and epic, AS WELL AS lowering the amounts of damage that critters do to players as they advance in their difficulty to match the new HP scale.
EXAMPLE. if a level one world critter hits for 50 damage, and two players NOOB1 with 600 hp, and SKILLPAGE5 with the new max of 1800 hp fight it. it takes the more advanced player 3x the amount of hits to die than the newer player takes. and on a level 6 world, where the critters are much tougher, they do in the range of 100-150 damage, the new player can live for between 4 and 6 hits, still much less than the advanced players 12-18 hits but MORE THAN ONE. this enables the two players to keep playing together while facing challenges and one player wont feel absolutely pointless without re-speccing their build.
I gloss over the world protections needed for them both to be on level 6 planets together, AND I’m glossing over the damage reduction given by armor skills. Now why am i doing this and admitting such? Because of the second part of this discussion.
ARMOR. actual armor, gear placed upon your character designed to increase either their defensive capabilities, OR their stealth capabilities. Instead of 16 points of armor skills (Leaving the falling armor alone since if you deal with knock back as i suggest in the first melee post then this armor becomes exploration useful more than combat useful) i suggest replacing the armor skills with two skills, Heavy Armor and Light armor. that increases the usefulness of pieces from those categories: more energy restored, better stealth and small amounts more defense for light armor and higher defense, status resistances, and possibly health regen (or maybe a boost to healing received) for heavy armor.
This also could be used to replace the world resistance skills with items one can craft that help sustain someone through these worlds. (its a little strange that we have a skill we developed to breath lightning atmosphere, or filter fire from our lungs, instead of some sort of filter or mask or oxygen tank, or maybe some strange captured squirrel whose fur naturally filter toxins! I dont know, but items make more sense in my opinion for these things!). I admit freely that there would be drawbacks to the items for world resistances approach, since durability is sort of the backbone mechanic in this game (it makes us burn through items and that keeps the need for more items high, it makes sense and works as we have it now). How would durability affect worn items? Easily. every item YOU ARE CURRENTLY WEARING takes 1 durability loss every time you take any amount of damage. so you can still run diaper through the woods without a care about slapping your face against trees and your knees against the rocks! BUT if you want those nice bonuses you spend a bit more time trying to find a good grapple point down from the mountain instead of face planting a few times etc.
This would give another outlet for ingredients (though i would suggest looking at lowering the cost of other recipes in order to keep the flow similar to what we currently have, it seems to balance fairly well) AND give us more variety for our avatars as well as cool possible combinations using forge stuff etc.
Now i’m fairly sure it would be a bit of a pain to attempt to make armor that covers every part of our adorable blocky oortlings, So i say DON’T TRY TO. instead aim for more simplistic and sort of tribal armor styles. Things like shin wraps, or ankle guards instead of boots or shoes. heavy reinforced belts instead of bulky breastplates, or even small chest coverings that hang from the shoulders. arm bands, and bracers. headbands and even things like jewelry can make good examples of more primitive armorings or with forging mixed in you could get earrings of shielding, or a necklace of water breathing etc. AND we wouldn’t hide any of the awesome body paints you guys have made!
This whole thing has a sort of fringe benefit to it, since if we can trim the armor skills down, and the resistance skills down, we could have somewhere between 20 and 31 more skill points to place into certain builds. making more versatile characters, As well as being ready for some more skills to be added. Since farming added 8 skill points worth the skills im now working on the assumption that more skills will come in the future. and thinning the skill pool will make more sense in this case than expanding the skill point cap per page would at some point in the future.
If these changes are taken into consideration along side my earlier ideas, Shields and arc/aoe short range melee weapons, you could begin to see not only a wide variety of character looks but also a wide variety of combat play styles. making more of them viable would help to increase the enjoyment in combat especially with the hopeful addition of Titans, and the potential addition of some more Critters or ancient horrors.
As before these are all just my opinions, and there may be fantastic reasons this stuff wouldn’t work, i just want to make sure i say something in case any part helps going forward. I still greatly enjoy playing boundless, and will keep playing even without changes 
You guys all stay Wonderful, and Boundless 
Edited for some obvious spelling oops 