Boundless: The Empty Shop Simulator

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Hi everyone,

Let me start today with a little story, it’s short, this afternoon, I wanted to go and buy a glow stick, a wayfarer totem glow stick type of thing :), and I tried first, to check like “big” shops, nothing, tried then BUTT, awesome tool, very good to check prices, and started to go from lowest to higher prices, went to TNT megahub, jumped on the planet portal, selected the shop from Knowledge window, and guess what, 1-2k meters away, let’s not run so tried some of the portals near by, 3k,5k, 2.1k, not good, next entry in BUTT, and so on, until I got to an entry from DK mall, managed eventually to reach the shop, and guess what… it was a normal stick. At that point I was way too frustrated… (why are people building so many shops, and empty ones, cuz they are not stocking them, a hole lot of them were made out of ash, guess expired and someone else snatched them) I checked few other places, ended up with nothing because I could not reach the place (later found out on forum that I’m not the only one) so went back home, will need to forge them miself, but this entire “adventure” wasted 2h of my afternoon.

Look, for someone like me that restarted playing the game, and is not already in the big groups of players that are already established, it’s extremely hard to find something you want at a decent price, and especially to actually get the the place and buy it.

This post might not go anywhere because I’m trying to fight with the human nature here, everyone wants money and control, regardless of the game’s intent, but here’s my attempt…

Right now, according to steamdb there are around 100 people playing daily, in MMO standards, you would say it’s a… not so alive game, but that’s not my point. Given the small community, some of you are known more than others and can form a centralized team of effort towards a more centralized place.
And what I’m referring to is… wouldn’t it be for the best interest of us all to just centralize the hole universe in one spot? like we/you choose a zone and everyone gets his shop there in 1 or 4 plot(s), choose few things that he could sell and you keep stock of those, if it expires, leave it expired and not plotted, if everyone agrees and concentrates in one spot, we can all win something bigger than all of us, a sense of community, especially that feeling of playing with others, because you would see a hole lot more people around. And in regards to greefing… honestly… is it even a concern now? There are just a few people that actually play the game, you can organically move the shop to the left or right and funnel out the shops that are just there. This is not a perfect idea by any means, but I think it’s the best one with the tools we have.
Right now everyone is building a shop, especially on a private planet that you can never find it because it has nothing in it’s name to point to something (shops as well) and you end up with a bzillion shops, but when you need something, pray that you need the thing that is in the shop in from of you, otherwise… good luck.

And I guess this is a message more towards the guys and girls that lead big guilds and have “Mall” builds, extremely big, and mostly empty. Please unite, not for me, for all of us!

There are a lot of “portal networks” and the portal networks are linked between each other, each portal network has same thing… links to other planets, and shops, the planets are with levels (All T5,6… and so on) and shops are scattered around the portal hub there is no structure in any of the portal hubs, if you have links to shops… god knows what the shop is about because it’s either empty or just has some request baskets with stuff in them (all of them are huge btw! :)) )

Boundless should be a friendship building game, a come and see my ridiculous build game, not a “come and check my new hub/shop/mall” game.

With respect,
OortCity

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Unfortunately it’s probably mostly about the low player count. Wish you could have been here in Boundless’ prime.

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played a lot from before release and few months after that, than a lot of things happened and stopped.

And given that we are few now, it would be even better to be more compact. More enjoyable I’d say.

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if there were bluperints, people would just move their now pointless empty shops to a location that makes more sense or even their entire bases and flock together… reclaim somewhat solved the moving of items, but I doubt many ppl want to abandon their big fancy builds to start over. I know I won’t move from Antar, even if I’m the only one left on the planet, but if I could blueprint, I’d put some faux wheels on my tower and tour the universe :confused:

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I don’t even know where to start with commenting on this.

I can relate to the loot stick as I did the same exact thing, but I knew I would have to start around the 5000c+ range as no one even sells forged ones under 5k usually. I also went to numerous shops and numerous malls… and you know… I never found one so I forged about 25 of them myself.

I am sure there are some out there but I just bought a few chisels that had glow and auto loot to use in the meantime until the forge completed.

In regards to the population, I keep an eye on the stats for the game constantly, call it a hobby I suppose. Currently (Steam only, PS not included) we have had an increase in players 2 months straight. Granted that not a whole lot, but that’s the first time it has happened since August 2020. Is it a huge increase in players? Nope… but its just under 100 players fewer than in August of 2020 so take that as you will. I also feel the number of PS players currently far outnumber the PC players… but I could be wrong. The only basis I have for that is simply chatting with players and noticing who actually types out a full sentence, versus a simple yup. I am pretty sure PS players can see other PS players though.

Sadly, Boundless in Feb 2019 had 1150 players on Steam and that was the peak of players… I personally discount February 2019 in any of my statistics as the only other months that came close to that were Sept 2018 (832 peak players) and Oct 2018 (682 peak players). More striking is the fact that Feb 2019 had 1150 peak a 35.83% increase over the month before and the next month it dropped from 1150 peak players to 354. Also in Feb 2019, the Twitch viewer count spiked to a crazy level. I attribute that to one popular streamer probably streaming the game (just my guess).

With all that said, in regards to PC players … it’s not horribly far off from where it has ever been. I believe the max player count for a homeworld is 80? (someone correct me) If it is you aren’t going to get everyone on one planet and with everyone building a lot on sovereigns you won’t see them leave those which would include myself.

As for the malls, let’s all reclaim them … see where that leads us. I have plans to move my concrete shop to my Sov shortly.

EDIT: February 2019 had a huge spike due to a free weekend on Steam.

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Did some quick math … and the average amount of peak PC players Boundless has had since release if you remove February 2019 is 133.

This data includes all data going back to 2014. If I exclude everything prior to release that average is 225.

I suppsoe when you look at it like that overall the current peak player count of 143 isn’t too shabby for PC. Wish I knew the PS stats.

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Blueprint idea is good but let’s be real, nothing will be added in the game either for a long time or maybe never. I know I’m asking of too much, even for the game itself, limit on planets is either 80 as @Redlotus sai s or 100, I’ve been during the “peak of the game” and there were 2-3 planets that you could not get on, so indeed that was a problem as well, but still, we as a community need to find a way to not have so many shops, maybe encourage new people to just build something on their own, everyone is building those, everywhere, it’s ridiculous.

Indeed, the game never had big numbers and honestly, the servers would not be able to even coop with more players. I donno, will just go back to gathering stuff for my build I guess.

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