Boundless has the Most Players in a Year

Little Wins are Still Wins in my book.

Boundless had its peak player base increase on the PC to the highest it’s been in a year. I know it’s not a huge increase nor is the base ever that large, but I’ll take it as a win.

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It is the right direction! :star: Seems to be a fair number of newcomers based on what I’ve seen and game chat. Guessing from the sales.

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Also, I do wish that Boundless at times just went free to play. Sovs and Gleam Club could still make James some money and going to free to play with some advertising might go along ways to increase the player base.

The current increase I will say probably came from back to back sales on Steam and Humble Bundle. Just my guess. Hopefully there has been an increase on the PS also.

It makes me wonder with the sale being so cheap how going free would affect things.

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Probably wouldn’t help much since the game is so hard to get into due to poor tutorials and steep difficulty curve around gem & forge tier tools if you don’t have community knowledge of how to make money and buy AoE tools.

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It’s good to see any increase. And Sony have just announced their subscription plans for their plus revamp. Would be nice if Boundless was among those 400 games in the tier two sub.

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Yep, made an OT thread for those who don’t check there, with some more thoughts on this - Sony's new subscription service going live in June - details here :slight_smile:

For the reasons @Rydralain mentions partly, I think the sub service is a better route than F2P. With Sony’s service, for example, you HAVE to think those execs there are focused on sub numbers. The big thing Boundless has there to me is that it looks REALLY good at a short glance, which is what most potential buyers will do with browsing through the offerings. It is a free MMO that looks like a more beautiful Minecraft. It can help sell subs. Yep, we’ll lose a lot of those players… but the ones we lose won’t likely cause them to unsubscribe, plus, the ones who DO love it put in tons of hours. Execs in gaming love to see “stickiness” as they call it. Boundless fills a couple niches there.

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I said this elsewhere … but…

Problem there is that sub service only benefits PS players and not a wider audience such as the PC players. I mean at this point for Boundless the game on sale is between $3-$5 and really going F2P isn’t much different.

I mention F2P mainly because we see a minor player increase during every sale… maybe just drop it to FREE for a limited time or something and advertise the hell out of it. The main problem I see is there is that SE would make no money on that at all since they mostly make money from the sales on Steam.

Lastly the other problem I see is a sub service could in the end kill Boundless. I say this because if it doesn’t sell well they could remove the game at any point and you have zero ownership of said game. The players would then lose their builds and all the time they put into the game in the first place. Talk about bad publicity.

Being realistic here, if I were Sony I would look at the sales of Boundless and view it as an utter failure. There are more profitable and popular games that would be a better fit than Boundless and its very small population. Even at its peak it would be a hard sell.

Going F2P when you can get the game for around $2-$3 already and combining that with a little advertising feels like it would go a bit further than a sub service that can drop the game at any time. Not to mention that you never physically own the game with a sub service…

I totally agree… this is the huge gamble if this route was taken. It is possible it wouldn’t be given enough time, or I could be wrong and it might not work out like I think. I believe in Boundless and I really believe that if nothing else, it could do the trick of being an attractive offering to potential subscribers, which alone could be more than enough reason for them to keep it. I wish so much I could be given a chance to argue for a deal in front of Sony execs. It might not work long-term, but I’d love to have the chance to try to convince them - were I in Turbulenz’s shoes here - to give it a shot, and the reasons having it on there would benefit their service and sell subs.

If they don’t go with a sub, with or without F2P, or really even if they do get on a sub service, I’ve been a vocal advocate of increasing monetization, which I know some don’t like… but, I’m looking at “Having Boundless” vs. “Not Having Boundless” here. And there are so many things that could be implemented without - IMO - going too far into P2W territory. Yeah, some may well get upset enough to leave, but if whales can save the game, isn’t it better not to have it under those terms than lose it? F2P or cheap game with just GC and sovereigns, I just don’t know if that would get the revenue to where it needs to be alone.

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I think BL would make a great F2P game with some mtx/subscription for extras. I think modders would also take more interest and help add fan content.

PC sales and GC goes to S.E. They are using those funds to keep the servers/planets up (so I doubt they’d agree to forgo all compensation and do F2P). They said there’s not enough going on with the game to warrant any advertising. I’ve noticed other games they’ve signed in the past few years not getting much/any promotion either (with players/fans saying similar things that BL players have been). If S.E.'s analytic projection data determines a game isn’t going to be the next FF or DQB, it seems to be pushed aside and forgotten about. This seems to be S.E.'s general modus operandi. Just an observation.

At least with PS sales & planet rentals, the team is keeping things patched and humming along, while working their day jobs. Would love to see that big update :riftsword: :alloyshield: :alloymace: :blinkkatar: :blinkshield: :gemshield: :gemsword: :metalshield: :metalaxe: :riftshield: :stonemace: :stoneshield: :umbrisweapon: :woodshield: :woodsword: My future single-mega-skill-page is waiting.

Just noticed this “glass weapon”? :glassweapon: :eyes:

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As I told @bucfanpaka I am not against anything that helps and quite the contrary. In the end all of this depends on @james and what his plans are.cl

I enjoy the game and still play every day I only hope it sticks around.

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Totally agreed! If it keeps the game around, and ideally can find a way to get it to thrive, I’m all about it! :+1: This is a really good discussion too IMO, we’re bringing up a lot of good things needing to be considered for various strategies, if taken.

If Boundless could get either a F2P period with advertising or onto Sony’s sub or anything where it gets exposure, I’ll be all over trying to promote it as best I can. My style can be a little over-the-top, yes, but I’ve absolutely seen where fan posts on social media can really generate interest, and that is something that might have been more lacking on initial release. I’ve seen a LOT of tweets by folks here including me of screenshots from Boundless that generate interest, admiration, many comments to the effect of - “That looks cool! What is that?” If we CAN get a chance to do something with some sort of push, we can make a difference if we get good comments onto major outlets’ posts, and also boost each other’s stuff as well to help get it attention. If that happens too, hopefully the devs would start communicating and updating again, I have to imagine they would if there were to be something like that, that would really hurt if not.

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The problem is not the damn price… The new player experience is still fckd up… Crafting times especially… I mean… Hello 8hrs For some damn coils. We as vets cannot tell the difference but what ive observed and asked from streamers etc Who tried the game their response was 9/10 times… “learning curve aint so bad but craft times are just Super huge” i would say 50% Who test the game stops as they dont know what to do and other 50% cause they hit the coil wall

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Hell, if I hadn’t found hunts to make coin to buy coils and AoE tools, I would have quit just trying get get the gems.

yeah the problem is that it is not meaned to craft tools or coils yourself in the beginning but to buy them by selling stuff.

However this is not communicated well and therefore harder.
Thats why it is so necessary to communicate this and show new players options like BUTT and the Forum.

Edith: for example you can make a good amount of coin by just hauling stuff around for your first aoe tool. For sap as an example (because i am invested in that) you can make like 2 coins per sap you haul atm.
If you level your Charakter through the region xp Farms to 20, you have enough points for the 1 hit skillpage and could farm your own sap, which gives like 9k sap per t3 dura axe.

Or you could do that with gleam. or shimmering orbs. or Inky leaves. etc

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Yeap. This was the way vets did it… And that was before 3x3 mega bews and stuff heh. I think we were fully aware how painful it is so we were kinda prepared.

#BoundlessRevival2022
I think the game is just bad at explaining things and people today have short attention spans.
You are not meant to make 25 advanced coils on your first craft. You are meant to make a few basic coils to unlock stuff bit by bit.
And you are not meant to jump on to a T5 the second day you play, you are meant to level up and learn the game before that.
If the game would explain things better a new player would level for a while get some basic forged titanium gear and then get the first BASIC coils.
The rest is endgame.
Imo the casual player wants everything the easy way and Boundless is grindy.

But nowadays it is easy enough, just tell the newbies to buy the adv coils right away lol.

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Wait, are there normal Coils?

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But you only know this if you have either read through the forum or played many hours already…

Well actually, i just watched a few vids of jivita and turrican and came to the conclusion after i have seen the exp gleam farm video and butt

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Great!

12 cars