Yea, they are way cheaper to make but only give 100 power instead of 300 per coil. Also dont forget 24 coils is max for a machine normal or adv. Which means that with normal coils you wont unlock all recipes even with full coils.
I agree the new player experience is a little lacking. I have tested the new player experience 5 times now. Once with my 11 year old son who figured everything out just fine and 4 other times with some friends.
Crafting times and crafting ingredients are how Boundless handle their inflation in the economy. Coils taking 8 hours while a bit excessive isn’t really something that bothered me nor my 11 year old or really any of my friends. Actually none of the crafting times bothered them it was just being randomly thrown into the wilderness and not knowing the universe was much larger and how to access that universe. My son hit said coil wall first he said I’ll just go buy a coil. Yup just one coil… because you don’t need all 12 coils to craft.
If you really dig into game economies there are a few ways to handle them money sinks, time sinks etc. You have to have some ways to control inflation. Coins in Boundless have quite a bit of value and they have done a pretty good job with keeping that value. If everyone had 10 millions coins and 12 coils on every machine in the first week then the game economy has failed. On top of this if everyone is instantly pumping out millions of gem blocks, coils, filigree, and every other block those blocks would have almost no value in the economy. Look at earthyams, wood, or rock they are all easy to get and lots of them and their value is almost nothing.
I am also one of the more newer “vets” which I hate to call myself a vet out of respect for all the others that have played much longer than I have, but I went through the new player experience and I almost quit too mostly because of the feeling of being so alone in the beginning, but none of the crafting times upset me. I don’t like them being 8 hours but I understand them many of the items and machines are meant to be end game. If raids in WoW took 15 mins everyone would have all the end game gear and lose interest, but they made it a challenge so people didn’t get to end game and just quit.
Needless to say, I still feel making the cost of the initial game free (even just a limited time) would bring in some new blood and not all of those people will stick around, but when people see free they tend to get excited about the word “free”. Gleam Club and Sovs are still a thing and can be paid for etc.
Progression is a thing, if a new player came in and was able to craft everything on day one with no crafting timers I don’t know if the the game as we know it now wouldn’t even exist.
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But the question is…Can the game retain more than 7% of those players?
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Without a rework of the NPE, probably not. Even then, because of the MMO elements it might always be somewhat niche… trick is, getting the game in front of enough people so that niche/small % retention is enough to keep it viable.
Redlotus and I have the exact same goal/desire in keeping Boundless going, we’re just crunching numbers and seeing strategy differently. The cornerstone of my siding on trying to get on Sony’s sub service is, the bad retention won’t be much if any an issue if Boundless can show that it attracts interest and therefore sells subscriptions, and also perhaps to a lesser extent it’s ability to show stickiness among those who do stay (CEO seems to have a liking for live service games that keep players on it for very long times - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2022-03-28-playstations-jim-ryan-our-games-could-suffer-if-we-put-them-straight-into-ps-plus ). Those could well be enough to have Sony consider keeping it on the service and supporting it as long as it does those things. If F2P could do the trick, then great, but I just don’t see where it could generate enough revenue to make it worth it even if we kept a couple thousand new players unless they really upped monetization options here. Cutting a deal to be on the sub, the benefit to Sony would be having something that looks really nice if browsing, that fills a couple niches players will like to see - a sub free MMO and something that looks like Minecraft. Sony’s benefit will come from having a bunch of unique offerings like this that will inspire people to subscribe - and they’re going to need them to offset not having day 1 stuff like Game Pass.
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I agree with @bucfanpaka as we have spoken in private about a lot of this.
Can the game retain 7%? I think it could. 7% seems pretty low as I would venture to guess the percentage of retention is quite a bit higher.
I am not against anything that helps the game in any way. I just think focusing solely on Sony and it’s subscription service is a misstep. There needs to be a wider focus and leaving the PC crowd out in the cold (other than an increase in players from PS) is missing the point.
The point is to increase the population as much as possible across ALL platforms. The game is a niche game yes… but it’s as much of a niche as Minecraft is. On top of this Minecraft and its new player experience is just the same as Boundless. It’s one of the reasons I have been so confused as to why people haven’t tried Boundless… or even heard of it.
Anyways back to my point, always try and attract the widest audience you can. Getting the game on a sub service is good, but only a start. I worry though that in the end the sub service could just drop the game if it doesn’t perform at the level they want it to. Then they would drop it and leave those players out in the cold.
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On this, to be fair, I’d say Boundless is more niche due to the far greater accessibility of Minecraft. In Minecraft, depending on the seed you can sometimes go from start to having diamonds in minutes. Recipes are FAR less complex and isn’t too hard to figure out most things needed to have a complete experience.
Also, in most cases it is really hard to try to knock something out of an entrenched niche - this holds as well in business as in biology, as those who copy formulas can find to their dismay. Popularity seems to just snowball for the top dogs even when someone creates something that does the same thing a lot better. From a $$$ perspective better to look to new pastures entirely when looking for “the next big thing” (which personally for gaming I think will be AI related, an area where there is a lot of room for both improvement and engaging implementation, so as an investor I watch for companies looking to innovate on this front). Anyways, so while I don’t think Boundless or anything could topple MC, what is doable I think is slicing off a little bit of their pie, enough to keep going.
Boundless needs to play to it’s strengths. Here are two I see - it looks really beautiful and has a great community. (Also the addictiveness of the gameplay loop once into it, but that isn’t going to help on the promotion front here as much as these other two) I think the sub model would play to both of those. The ones on the fence about buying - who Sony will be aggressively courting - they’ll mostly be looking through the offerings, clicking on things that look neat and giving them a browse, probably not more than a minute or so. Sony will be able to see those stats, and Boundless CAN shine there, and prove it’s value to them. That is on the beauty part. On the community part, that’s where we come in, if it gets on the sub, keeping active on social media promoting it.
IF it worked, then could use the revenue from the deal with Sony to backtrack and work on expanding the PC side a bit. So it would be a start, in that sense, not the end of the line. Ideally keep improving it and adding, making it one of those live service games the CEO likes so much that newcomers will keep playing for years after this.
… Not to rain on the parade here though, I admit all the signs I’m seeing are indicative of none of this happening. 
I guess part of the reason I’m pressing it so much I’ll admit is on the off chance the devs may stop in to read our stuff, that maybe they can be convinced to come back, not give up on this. That this really could be turned around still. Once again: it is already a great game, and ready to go now - and far better than stuff that’s been hanging around on Game Pass for a long time!
Hey guys me and a couple of friends just stsrted the game we really are having a blast , hope devs still have some plan for the future 
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Welcome to Boundless to you and your friends!
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Welcome to the fun if you need anything just ask.
There is no economy in Minecraft (for the most part) and most people don’t think about how crafting times, items costs and supply and demand drive economies in games. In essence the recipes are pretty straight forward in Boundless you even have recipes shown for all of it. They are a little more complex for a reason. The forge is a different story.
Minecraft is not an MMO in my eyes there is no reason to have to interact with anyone else. That doesn’t mean people don’t though. For arguments sakes, it’s Massive, it’s Multiplayer and it’s Online so one could argue that it’s an MMO.
As far as the sub service as I stated I’m all for it as it will increase the player base. I do however feel the PC crowd was way overlooked and undermarketed.
Funny side note: I don’t want more PS players that I type 2 sentences to that only reply with a “yup”. +1 to keyboards. This is a joke 
Edit: I have done a lot of extensive research on game economies and there are many reasons I never realized that Boundless (most likely) did the things they did with crafting and the economy overall. There is a lot that goes into trying to balance an economy. You inject currency into an economy, but in games you have to define ways to remove that currency at points in order to fight hyperinflation. If you don’t then the “value of the currency” is next to nothing. Items are the same way. Hyperinflation is always a battle in MMOs and the way developers handle that is different across the board.
Want Red gleam? You can pay 3k-5k coins for it usually. It’s simple supply and demand. How do you get that 5k? You earn coins from chests given as you level… you use the chrysominter (which hasn’t always been a thing), or you sell items to request baskets or sell them to others in shop stands. If you could make 1 million blocks of every end game block their value would drop and become worthless. Then the value of coins would drop and so on…
One thing Boundless is … is a creative game. It is not however a game meant to be played in “Creative Mode” where everything is available at the click of a button. Even though I do wish it was at times.
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Just to add I think the “crowd” as a whole was overlooked and undermarketed.
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It’s a shame that they didn’t let the PC players mod some stuff. Textures for instance. There’s some games on PS4 that allow modded content too, which is usually created on pc and available to download on PS4. Would be good to get new wood and stone textures.
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The entire premise of this thread almost made my head explode.
Did you look all the way back? You do realize that current numbers are hovering at or below Early Access numbers… Right?..
Much of the state of Boundless and it’s more questionable design decisions might be due to Wonderstruck running out of money for the project.
Just look at the sorry state of the ingame chat “system”, one of the most integral parts of any mmo. It is less marketing mistakes and more the design mistakes and some rushed fixes on top that kept the game from performing better after release imo.
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The title pretty much sums it up the current player base has the most players it has had in a year. I didn’t say the most it ever had. Sure it well below early access and those numbers were also horribly low… but it’s an uptick due to a few Boundless sales in a row.
So yea I have studied the numbers going as far back as Steam stats will let me. I have talked to many veteran players that have been here since the beginning too.
I will agree there were some poor design decisions I cant speak on them being rushed or not though. I dislike the chat system and it has been one of the things I question. I do think the chat system at times is kind of nice if you have a troll though … no one will see their message and comment on it for a long time. I witnessed this first hand. That lag and time difference from the time you post until the time others see it at times has its benefits.
I have wondered too if some of the problem was they ran out of funding, and just can’t justify/afford putting much into this beyond maintenance any longer.
It is part of the reason (sorry Redlotus, gonna harp on this again 
) why I think a deal with Sony would be advantageous. It could provide them with a significant influx of revenue NOW. I just don’t see any other path providing the money to justify continuing development… even if we bought in 20k new players with a free play push and kept a quarter, how much revenue would their potential purchases actually provide? Not to mention that would increase the server costs.
The fact that the sales shifted things the right direction is a good sign for sure… but we need a true Second Wind, and yeah, I see Boundless absolutely in a Borderlands “Fight For Your Life!” last stand now. That’s why I think the risk is worth it. A deal like this wouldn’t depend on the players coming in generating revenue… the revenue will come from Sony and be based on, can Boundless help them sell subscriptions? And the answer to that, with some revamped marketing especially showing off player stuff and all, is a HUGE yes, I’m convinced of that.
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It’s pretty funny that we all care more than the devs
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funny or sad? or both xD
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reason I’m staying out of this really i can write a whole book of the goods and the bads, but its not going to solve it, all i can do as many of you is play the game hoping, and as mentioned many times the game itself is not the problem, but it does not solve the other problems that is connected to the game…
i gave up on defending, i just play and that’s all
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There’s no metric for this. Some of them were pretty invested, and obviously loved the game quite a bit. They’ve lost their livelihood (well had to move on ofc) and etc… over this.
Just because they’re out trying to move on with their lives does absolutely not mean that they don’t care. The fact that they’re not coming on the forum crying to the player base about how honestly upset they may or may not be that the IP failed to capture what it needed, or whatever - well come on that’s just a bit of actual grown-up professionalism.
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