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@james hear is how I feel repairing should be done.

Stone Age: wood and stone tools can not be repaired.

Industrial Age: copper, iron, gold, silver, titanium, step 1: place 1/3 metal used and your broken “metal” tool in the furnace the ore will be used up in the furnace and the tool will become red hot. Step 2: Take the tool out of the furnace and place your hot tool on an anvil were you will strike it with a blacksmiths hammer.
Step 3: Each strike of the hammer is an rng roll successfull hits fix 25% dura failed hits have a chance of putting a defect on your tool/weapon or reduce its durability by 25% after 4 hits the process will finish.
Tools can not be placed in the furnace unless they are broken. Success on the anvil will be based off of how many of that type of ore tools you repaired.
Example:
Fixed 100 iron tools success rate improves for iron tools
Fixed 100 titanium tools success rate improves for titanium
Ect. ect…
forged tools will require a binding catalyst poured on it before placing it in the furnace. If no catalyst is used then it will be destroyed in the furnace.
The catalyst will protect the tool while it’s being repaired. But a side affect will cause the forged too to be bound to the next person who uses it.
This method could be used for gem tools aswell or could use method below.

Tech age: gem tools will be repaired in a laser cutter requiring different levels of power to repair along with 1/3 raw gems to craft the rest is the same method as above 4 tries with laser cutter each missed hit can cause defect or 25% dura loss.
Forge gem tools will require the catalyst poured on them before you repair.

So much for too complicated. lol

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its Really not complicated
Stone Age refers to stone and wood
Industrial Age clearly refers to ores
And tech is clearly gems

Read the new Steam reviews this is the source of some of the comments regarding new players. That is what I did.

Does not make them invalid given the slow decline in the players actively playing since launch.

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Lots of great ideas and suggestions in here so far. I’m gonna throw in my penny’s worth as well, whether it be new or agreeing with what someone previously said.

Quite a few very true comments about kid retention and needs, but I’ll add that the same is true for adults. Many adults have long hours at jobs they often don’t like. It can be physically or mentally exhausting and at the end of the day you just want that adrenalin high when you accomplish something. I don’t wanna spend three hours just prepping for more prep work to start the process of making the ingredients for the the tools to get the items needed for more prepping and prep work for the actual thing I really wanted to do and–argh, I’m just gonna go play puzzle puppers.
I will say I don’t mind grind. I’ve got loads of certain items, but nothing to do with it. Because it is just 1% of a complex formula of ingredients. The complexity of crafting really gets me. Dozens of microsteps, all requiring so. Many. Ingredients. (I’m still grumbling to myself about adding glowing lamella to gleam lanterns)
Kids can’t remember all those steps and items. Heck, as an adult I can’t remember all of that. Even with the knowledge tab. Frankly, it’s intimidating.
Again, I don’t mind grind, but if I saw results faster and with less steps/needed resources/complexity I’d def be on more.

Crafting times are also kinda really up there. I don’t think they should be removed though. I agree that less items = less time. Mass crafts should have a higher timer.
As much as I don’t like this idea (but crafter specialists might like it): how about a more drastic skill for reducing times. I was pretty sure there already was one, but maybe a higher tier version? Or just a stat skill that single points can be put into? With very noticeable results! Certainly not like the luck skill that I’m wondering why I even bother with.

I would def like my tools to last longer, or be repairable. Part of why I never even bothered to try gem tools. Too much for too little. That goes for both crafting or buying.

I don’t know if anyone has considered this, but how about tools be crafted with simple/less ingredients (on all tiers, even gem), but have no enhancements. Either bump up their durability or unbreakable.
Now here’s the other half: crafters make their money by making the augments that a player can put on that tool. It’s the augment that wears down, and when it does, players just place a new augment on. Not sure on limit to how many can be placed on.
But it can also help to try out new augments. Instead of having a single tool to help give breathing underwater, a player can just pop on that augment when they need it. Or if they don’t like one, no big deal. Just wait for it to wear off and try another.

Just an idea there. shrug

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Ideally, no crafting time. Just means no down time on having to wait for stuff to be completed. Means people can enjoy building more or going out to hunt or mine or explore or cut trees down, etc. Lets them cut out all that dead time for them to go do something they find fun.

Crafting, at least for me, is boring. It always has been for me in every game I’ve played that has it, but I do it anyways cause I need stuff to do the stuff I want to do. It’s a means to an end. So if it has the time cut down to as little as possible then that’s a good thing. If that means times are cut in half, cool. If that means no crafting times, awesome. I just think they need to be reduced but ideally I think there shouldn’t even be one to begin with.

To me a resource is any item in the game. A tool is a resource. A block of Gleam is a resource. If we’re talking strictly about things that the game clearly defines as a resource cause of world regen, then fine.

I think having a constant steady stream of iron, copper, fossils, titanium, gems, coal, ancient techs, specials, etc. is a good thing. Of course, some would be more abundant than others cause some stuff is just more common than others, like Iron vs. Gems. I get that. But if someone progressing from the Iron/Silver/Gold tool position to Titanium and Gems is struggling to scrap up the stuff to make the progression further up the game, they should do so a lot more smoothly.

I don’t think just doubling the number of resource seams is the answer. I think having the constant stream of stuff coming to the player is going to be better. This again is going to cause very well forged tools to really shine here and then I think if there’s a question of balance it would then need to be looked at but I think your hands are tied with the Centraforge if you changed how resource nodes spawn during world regen. You’ll see people reporting 4000+ gems per hour up from the current 1800+. I don’t have a suggestion towards how to balance that but if I come up with any sort of idea on how to approach that, I’ll definitely send it your way.

Because I’ve been pretty critical of you and the team along with the direction this game is taking in this thread. I don’t know if you’ve read anything in that thread but it’s a good read if you’re open to learning and trying to understand why some of us just simply don’t play much anymore or at all.

I think that thread is also a great example of the passion some of us have and even why we’re so critical with our constructive negative feedback. Sometimes when someone basically is saying your work isn’t good enough there tends to be a little push back from that kind of feedback.

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Except that both of them feature prominently in your game journey and particularly are a limiting feature during a time-limited event to access the game for free.

I don’t share your cynicism. I can stomach long craft times because I can log off knowing I can play again tomorrow. It’s waaaay down my list of priorities as a player with time under my belt. It’s much higher when I think about first impressions of the game for others.

butt jeff there was a steam review that gave them the bird :rofl:
our small report team told me :smiley:

Too complicated and complex. Teenagers, and this game as has been stated seems to want to get kids to play will not want that. And to be honest, I don’t want more complex, complicated tool making. I think it is too complex now in some areas.

We need early tools to take at the most five minutes, the cheaper type, wood, stone just a couple minutes, maybe just one. Iron, no more than five minutes.
Repairs, I can’t remember what is needed to make a iron hammer, but put the damaged tool in the workbench with the needed items, damaged iron tool with some iron bars and five minutes later get a repaired tool that has 20% less usage, but will last a bit longer for the player. If a iron hammer need five iron, it should need two iron to repair it. It can be repaired only once, then it is no longer usable. Sometimes new players are low on ores, they may have two bars but not five, so that lets them have that hammer to mine for more iron ore.

All crafting times should be lowered, but by a percentage, such as single by half, bulk by 20% and mass by 25%., or maybe 30%. Not everyone has a long time to play and putting in the items I need to mass craft, such as the stands was something that I had to plan for when I was going to go to bed and let them be crafted, or go and mine.
When in a rush, it is really frustrating to have to wait.

@james
I think we need less crafting time on lower level tools. Higher level could be cut down also, but not as much.
As someone suggested, more seams of needed ores and gems would be of help. To go and mine for two hours and find just five diamonds, some coal and iron was not a fun event and made my son and me frustrated. And being disabled and homebound I have all the time in the world to play.
Same with the rare items, such as the shimmering orbs. There are too many recipes that need them and they are hard to find and on dangerous planets. Experienced players would argue but I’m not experienced and I need them for the foods I want to cook and my son needs them for crafting. And he is a experienced player.
I should not have to buy a expensive shovel/hammer, fast speed drinks, and regen bombs to find shimmering orbs or other crafting items. I should be able to go and explore a planet, see what is there, how it looks and get enough of what I am looking for to make it worthwhile. If I have to buy those items, I might as well buy the berries, yams, shimmering orbs and such. I don’t want that, I want the fun of getting them myself, out on the planets.
New players will quit if they have to spend one hour to get 10 iron ores on a level 2 or even 3 planet. We need the seams to have more.
I stop after a couple hours whether I find what I need or not. Increasing the amount lets me get what I need so I can make the items I need to do what I need to make what I sell.

Kids don’t have the time, patience or drive to spend the time waiting for items to craft, many can’t put something in the machines and wait, or don’t want to put them in and then go and do something else, they will have homework, chores, get your shower, brush your teeth and get to bed from parents,

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There is a big problem with generalizations.

I have three kids. The eldest wouldn’t play Boundless (“that hammer game”) no matter what, unless it developed an extensive system of choosing outfits, you could squeeze out babies, and maybe work out at the gym or read books for 20 minutes to improve some stats. And maybe pee on the floor.

My younger daughter is a completionist: she will grind for hours if that’s what it takes as long as she experiences everything (also, she does this in games). She likes Boundless, although she did get frustrated an hour or so in because it was taking so long to complete her first atlas (“the world is sooo big!!!”). Long crafting times don’t matter to her because she can work on something else in the mean time.

My son will patiently watch a game play itself for hours (especially grand strategy like EU4). He doesn’t like Boundless because it’s too participatory. His favourite game is Cookie Clicker. He doesn’t mind waiting for crafting at all, that’s one of the parts he likes because he doesn’t have to do anything while it happens.

I also run a Scout Cub pack. I have some kids there who can’t stand still or stop talking long enough for us to start our opening ceremoinies, and other who will sit for an hour practicing a knot until they can get it right every time.

What I’m trying to say is: don’t assume all kids are like your small sample. They’re exactly like adults: some love the grind, some hate the grind, and some wouldn’t play the game no matter what. It’s pretty dang patronizing to assume all kids are a homogenous population of mindless impatient pinballs who can’t wait for the second marshmallow.

Go ahead and tweak crafting times if you must. I never found early-game crafting times to be a problem and late game crafting time is just another resource I need to supply. I’m strongly against eliminating them: supply the resources with which you craft is a very important part of the game. By all means tweak resource drops, that’s a part that frustrates me (bigger ore veins, not bigger drops or faster tools or more frequent veins, would be better since on reflection the time I like mining/gathering the most is when I find a bigger cluster of diamond/mushrooms rather than find small ones more frequently).

tl;dr the devs should be wary of too small a sample size in opinion surveys

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OK I know this is off topic so I apologize in advance but sounds like The Sims to me

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This is a big one for me!!
The luck skill seems to be making less of a difference than in early access. A better increase in drops would be amazing.
An even better change would be a reduction in material cost for most recipes. Taking a look at some mass crafts, some things require more than a full smart stack of a single item.
That is crazy talk.

For an unforged tool, for sure. Sometimes forged tools can go way faster so thats a factor, but I definitely agree. I spend way more time making stuff than using stuff… especially with gems. Theres literally no point in mining for them, i really only cherry pick topaz and sapphire.
Drop chance increase would be nice but every single planet that has dropped now has a way lower percent of resources than when it spawned.
So more resourse spawning would be nice, but more on the surface and less embedded deep in the rock.

Ohh yes. This right here.
As far as gems go, the durability needs to go way up or the seams need to be bigger and/or more frequent and closer to the cave surface.

I miss spending hours cave diving on Vulpto to pick up resources. That was way more fun than the strip mining we are currently limited to.

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Well, I don’t enjoy mining and when I bust a rock I can see lava below me. Nope, don’t want that.
I’d rather they have on the lower level planets, level 3, that they have the ores closer to the surface or at least larger seams(I want to think of them as veins, that is what we call them here in my home area, veins of coal, iron ore) so we get enough to give us something.
In the area of gold, silver, the veins (seams) should be bigger, and they could start closer to the surface. I’m not saying start at level 10, but if they are to be say start at 15 then have them at 13. Get more than five or four pieces of gold, silver or of gems. Even with a atlas I am digging forever to find the gold, sliver or gems.
Anymore, I just buy them. And I don’t like doing that ! I want to mine them on my own, Thank you very much!

The new guys don’t seem to know how to deal with generosity, lol. It’s like they expect it to be a trick, or something.

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Yeah me too and then where to find what kind of soil.

I offered a new player earlier a lot in my city… i got in return “there must be a catch” and then left and plotted somewhere in the hills next to the city… kindness without a catch I promise lol :slight_smile:

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I just want to say a big thank you to the community for making this Free Weekend such a positive advertisement for Boundless and the people who live here. It’s been wonderful to watch so many people get behind welcoming new players, who were just testing the water, and freely give of time, resources and advice.

You’re all brill.

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It was a lot of fun - should do it more often - if the business model allows!

… but not too often - frankly I’m exhausted :wink:

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