Boudless RoadMap and other development vision

Hello, dear @James, @Yota and @OlliePurkiss. I have a serious ask to you.

What we could wait for Boundless?
Please, create a roadmap for us at a year or two.

Below I explain why I find it important.


It’s important to enkindle an interest
Perhaps, it’s relate to interest and sales. At the videogames market we haven’t critical necessity as we have such necessity in food and water. Only the interest is determine anything here. And interest to developing game is not an interest to the game itself but to happy image of future of the game which make gamers joyful and motivated.

Let’s look to games which are really shooted at kickstarter while was developed nought.

Star Citizen – Cris presented a huge amount of plans for years ahead and this created a might reaction in games industry. This plans let him to collect tens of millions dollars for developing. A fact what he created HUGE, AWESOME and DETAILED road map for his project was the reason for his success. People literally seems theyself as a part inside this world. They went on wait for the game and aspire to be involved in new wonderful world day by day.


It would be good to increase sales and profits
It is clear that the games in this post have a slightly different model of monetization. They were launched mainly through crowdfunding and this became famous.

Here is an interest. High-budget projects are launched much easier. They just work on the models “We’ll do everything to the end, and then you’ll see everything”, but they do not show either a roadmap for development or their plans and so on. Only a small trailer, which roughly indicates what will be in the game.

But this is not your option. You don’t have tens and hundreds of millions dollars to develop indoors without news. It will be much more effective if you will go on a whole model of crowdfunding. In the model, people sell a non-existent product only by picture in players heads and imagination they own. There is nothing, but they are already selling an image of better future. This business strategy are called “vision”. And sellers making it exactly by the DESCRIPTION OF WHAT WILL BE with the road map included.

Yes, no matter how to do it actually. You could tell in the video tell about developing process as it was did for the Shroud Avatar, or you could draw some pictures with dates and little descriptions of coming features or you could simply describe it as a text. It is important that these data are publicly available and that everyone wants to PLAY FOREVER. Not only now in what is already there, but waiting every day for something new, which is already planned and scheduled on the map.

The most important thing for me is understanding that when you increase sales you will have more money, and I will have more content, mechanics, news occasions and pleasures from the game.


It’s important to collect feedback in advance
By creating a roadmap you will get powerful feedback on each element that you are going to include.

Players will see what is written in the map and they will have thoughts on this plans, will have feelings, desires and resistance. As a result, they will discuss about in chats, forums, blogs and you will get detailed feedback on everything what you are doing

For example, the developers of Life Is Feudal made not only a roadmap with all the milestones of the development, but also added a mechanism for collecting the wishes of the players. And systematically implement these chips and directions. http://lifeisfeudal.com/Discussions/categories/uncategorized


Publish a visual development process
Do you already know that people get 70% of the information from the visual presentation?

Here you publish in the devlog information on the weekly monthly progress and updates – this is right and very welcome, but how to understand at what stage is now this update? How to understand what is behind it, what is before it, and what will happen ten updates after?

So when here will be a timeline with milestones – this will be a visual orientation for what moves and how, and most importantly a direction where it moves to.


Finally: Give us a game development map!
I asked dozens of Boundless players about whether they know what will happen next? Nobody … NOBODY can’t answer this question. They usually make an acidic and upset face, and everyone said: “perhaps” or “I think so”.
Nope. Nothing sure. It’s empty. No plans from the developers. Is it right?

For example, I want to have technologies. I want it to be so difficult as in Minecraft mods like Advanced Machines, Applied Energistics, Big Reactors, BuildCraft, Botania, ComputerCraft, EnderIO, Factorization, Forestry, Galacticraft, GenDustry, Nuclear Control, IndustrialCraft, Mekanism and so on.

Every step in the game must give me a sense of something real and lasting. The feeling of unity of all complex systems in a whole world. I want to plan myself what to do next and how to progress a character. I want a sandbox. I want to feel freedom and to have great mechanisms and ingame mechanics.


Tell me what do you want to do?
What are your dreams which you want to introduce into the game one day?

What motivate you in the creation of this world, the desire for what kind of mechanics?

Please tell us about yourself, your thoughts and your aspirations. What will be released next?

What will happen in a month, six months, a year?

What will happen 3 years later?

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A road-map would be great, no need for dates but feature road-map would be awesome indeed

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Wow, does are some good points, and yes DEVS!!! we need some sorta road-map to create anticipation, something to keep us checking the forums every day to see if something new is added.

Personally, I do not need a roadmap, but posting teasing posters one month before each update would be great

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I agree with gulvan I don’t see the need for a road map as such but a teaser picture once a month would be awesome

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Don’t we get pictures and reports here?

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Well, now it’s right time to say: I’m absolutely agreed with PrivetVam. So, we have seen changes of release deadline twice at last three years: from 2015 to 2016 and from 2016 to 2017.
2017 will expire less than a month later. I will eat my hat if you guys will release Boundless until Christmas goes. Lot of core features just aren’t started yet.
Now I feel myself as the hedgehog in the fog: nothing are clear, nothing are legible.

You all gentlemen and ladies :tophat: are great team of professionals. You work so hard, so perfectly, very neat and efficient. But very, very, very slooow.
I shall grow old before :boundless: will be released.

Many people ask me: I want to buy Boundless, does it have PvP mode?.. does it have farming?.. does it have NPCs?.. Will these features added in the game? When these will be added? Can I only build now?
What could I answer? No. Not. Nope. It will. Some time. I hope. I’m so sorry.
This situation is unbearable. If we will not have some kind of understanding what where and when you planning to do I should stop local supporting of this project. I’m so sorry.

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Pretty sure he meant “guys” :sweat_smile:

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Chiming in.

I’ve recently changed from “checking forums 2-3 times a day” to “2-3 times a week” with this next update taking too long to keep me interested.

It’s not bothering me that much though as I’ve been productive on other stuffs and as long as we got a good final game, it will be worth it. However, like others said, it could probably be made the EA experience better (for those people looking at the game now rather than later).

With that said, I’m really looking forward to the release of the game and 2018 Q2 seems to even be an optimistic estimate with how the game currently is.

Best of luck to the dev team! :smile:

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Yes I agree you Devs are amazing, but very slow at getting out updates.

Maybe we could see mini updates with smaller additions, features and changes, that are done more often then the main updates.

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I set up email notifications and not visit the forum for weeks.

Perhaps Star Citizen, which was in development before Boundless started, will be in development when Boundless is finished, and will probably still be in development after I retire a decade from now, isn’t the best example to use when making your point here.

Chris Roberts let his mouth write checks his backside can’t fund. Anyone can sit down and write a road map and make up any old thing. (Road maps are easy. Software is difficult.) People are too willing to leap in without thinking (n.b. Bitcoin/Ethereum) because something seems new, cool, or satisfies some desire they have. Yes, he got funded with literal tons of money, and the latest release is…well, alpha. Kind of alpha. Not really anywhere near what was promised alpha. He isn’t the first person to do so in this business. (Derek Smart comes to mind. John Carmack comes to mind. You might be able to think of others.) Star Citizen has been in development since 2011. Six years later Chris Roberts has a kinda-sorta alpha out there.

Yeah—no. Let’s not. It doesn’t seem a consumer-effective business model, but it pays a great whopping salary.

If I had to choose between the team taking a week off to write up some sort of mission statement, road map, and extended development plan, or continuing to develop the game–I’d choose to have them develop the game.

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While I don’t really think a roadmap is needed, I would say some type of upcoming patch notes would be great. All that would be needed is posting a weekly here’s what’s coming in the next patch. Then come release of say 183 or whichever patch, the patch notes are already provided. Then, you really aren’t taking any additional time than what should be already done as part of basic project management.
It’s a small task that goes a long way to show things are still progressing and have not become stagnant or abandoned. It was mentioned that they post the “Week in works” or something like that thread, but it is kind of all over the place and seems more like generalized ideas vs what’s actually planned for the next patch.

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To be honest game is starting to be a bit boring to me, but that happens with anything. My view is that game should be polished just a bit and pushed as 1.0 Beside that create good backlog of stuff, and roadmap of stuff that’s coming (no dates, just priority list) and a list of stuff that will and won’t be implemented at some point.
I’d rather have devs take even more than a week and consolidate plans and make them public, as it is now I’m not seeing release date anytime soon, I’d expect late 2018 or something like that, and I might be terribly off, but that just show how vague everything about release is.
Devs have their own right to do as they please, having some experience in development I’d rather go with roadmap and lists I have mentioned than having stuff going in circles on forums with new members constantly asking same questions on and on. To me it looks like it’s making a bad image of what is very solid team and project to anyone who haven’t spent months on forum. Potentially it’s putting away new players due to lack of clarity.

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I don’t feel a need for a full road map, but would love to see clear indication of what important features get introduced next and what’s the expected time frame for each next update (or 2-3 of them). Even if info is not very detailed.
Sth like:
183 (testing): bombs. 1-2 weeks
184 (live): bombs. +2-3 weeks
185 (live/possibly testing first): rage/focus. +1-2 weeks

Predicted time would change after an update is released, so if 183 comes in then the info would be:
184 (live): bombs. 2-3 weeks
185 (live/possibly testing first): rage/focus. +1-2 weeks

Number of updates listed could vary from 1 to a few, depending on how sure devs are what can go next and within what amount of time.

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I will try to give more guidance in the weekly updates about the features we’re currently working towards. I appreciate this isn’t the roadmap you’re asking for, but it is the most accurate prediction of the future we’re able to give.

Creating a game is a process of iteration and discovery. We have a vision and idea about what we want to achieve. (See playboundless.com.) But it’s impossible to predict the exact path you’ll take.

If we were to publish a roadmap, it would have to be accepted and understood that it would change dramatically during development. Every day we rebalance and reprioritise development. Every day new emergent items appear and need to be squeezed into a plan already bulging at the edges. Every day we cull, then revive, then cull again, features that no longer make sense or we can’t make fit. It’s a constant negotiation and triage about where we spend our time. (Then revive it again, realising that it’s essential!)

You might be interested to know that all of the following features were emergent, ie. we didn’t plan to do them at the start of development. And I hope you’ll agree, that these features make up a majority of what Boundless is today:

  • World Regeneration
  • Resource Redistribution
  • World Prefabs
  • Wrapping Worlds
  • Discoverable Named Regions
  • Planets in the Sky
  • Universe Structure
  • Sloped Voxels and Chisels
  • Modular Voxel Beacons
  • Dual Wielding
  • Objectives

I’m very happy to share (and receive input on) Boundless’ direction. I know everyone wants to know what is coming for Boundless - almost as much as we do!

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