Boundless was okay yesterday but today it's not?

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Dude no I am not joking this is so far their plan, they litterally want to make it so that you cannot solo that very well…cause they want Proffesions such as one person is a miner another is a lumberjack…or if u do go solo ur just mediocre at EVERYTHING…they are legit punishing solo players cause they want people to use the shop and have a player run economy so to do this they make it EXTREMELY difficult to gather for solo players and such…

Trust me dude i used a level exploit and only got up to level 42 and that still took me 120 hours on this game WITH an exploit now imagine how bad leveling is by doing it legit?? just today someone finally got level 50…and that was the first ever person to hit it

Crafting is also a pain because unless u have A LOT of workbenches even with Mass Crafting it can take atleast 1-2 hours depending on what ur crafting such as refined metamorphic stone…

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The devs are trying wayyy to hard to make this MMORPG when for a game like this it just won’t work…u can have skills and such but by punishing solo players you are losing A LOT of potential audience…because people will still hang out but not everyone can be on at the same time and wait that long, This isn’t WOW or GW2 this is an Open World Sandbox game with MMO features

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Take Elder Scrolls Online as an MMORPG example. In this game you can travel to any part of the world from the get-go and things scale accordingly to the player. The player can specialise in certain skills but, for fairly small cost of gold, can respec completely. One player can do any role - healer, tank, dps - regardless of their character choice. Yes some are more effective than others, but any player can try any role and find the one they want to, then create a more specialised character should they choose to. Most content is soloable, though there are group-only dungeons and world bosses which require groups.
Does everyone walk around on their own? No, most people join a guild straight away because they are playing an MMO and being in a group is part of that, but they aren’t forced to. Playing solo is plenty rewarding, but there are other rewards for group players. Each player type is happy and the game is still going strong.
Guild Wars 2 is another example. Less able to change character role, but each character is self-supportive so that the majority of content can be done solo, with high-reward group content giving an incentive to team up.
I think the trick is incentives - you want as many people as possible playing, and complimenting on social media, your game to keep it well populated, this means making a solo experience and a group experience rewarding in different ways. Yes a solo player shouldn’t be able to do group content, but they shouldn’t need to do that content to play the solo aspect. Likewise being in a group doing solo content should be a total cake-walk, so easy it isn’t worth bothering with, unless you’re in desperate need of a type of resource or are effectively hanging out with your group mates.
The problem I find with group content, is it is time-investment heavy. I simply don’t have the time available for major investment, nor can I guarantee unbroken playtime, I’m often called away mid-session - the type of thing that is impossible for major group content. If you don’t want players like me who like to solo most times and group at others when it fits my busy time schedule, fine (it’s a shame as from my review, I really enjoy the world), but you need to make that very clear in your store-page write up, and you need to remove the term “sand-box” as you are dictating how you want people to play.

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THANK YOU! this is what i’ve been saying the entire time!

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You need to read up more - definitely not the first person …

I’ve not played ESO for a while so can’t comment on the example in any depth, although I understand that both ESO and GW2 are NPC driven with fixed story line quests etc. Boundless is not - so it’s marginally different in that respect.

I feel I need to point out that you’re mostly doing what you’re commenting on from the start in Boundless as well. You’re trying roles from the start… exploring, mining, building etc. You’re also able to solo most content. The issue is, I think, the time it takes to solo that content (correct me if I’m wrong there). It’s a difficult balance to make the game a challenge for groups whilst at the same time, keeping the solo player in the loop and not stopping them from enjoying the game. I’d imagine the game will go through quite a few balance passes to find that knife-edge sweet spot.

You’re forgetting that these are alpha worlds and not release worlds … no one said that the release worlds would be configured that way. Personally, I’m of the mind that all starter worlds should be linked and then branch out from there (that way people that select the wrong world from the start can more easily correct their mistake).

I’m also not saying that ring planets shouldn’t be solo-able - I built solo on Munteen and I am a solo player for the most part. I’m saying that it needs to be hard for a solo player. When it comes to groups working together to farm harder worlds, you need to remember that EVERYONE in that group get’s to harvest the corpse of a creature. You don’t HAVE to be in that group - you could just be loosely working with other players in the same area and all harvesting the drops (I’ve followed in the wake of someone else’s killing spree in the past and harvested the corpses without even seeing the other player).

Sarcasm never goes well in a debate of ideas - if anything it just stands to devalue your own opinion as it’s just seen as pot-stirring. I’d kindly suggest you refrain from doing it so we can thrash out ideas and opinions in a civil manner.

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Since you mentioned Guild Wars 2: I really like how they’ve implemented open-world group content, where you can drop into an event at any time, fight alongside people while playing however you like, never have to compete for loot, and if you have to leave mid-meta nobody ever minds. I think a big part of why it works is that there’s (almost?) never a downside to cooperating with another player (I.e. no node wars or tagging drama), often a benefit (xp for ressing), and doesn’t require the stress of instances or raids.

I lost the requisite 3 years of my life to WoW and convinced myself I was a solo player, but gw2 has me happily commanding dragon’s stand meta runs so… idk. I think there’s a way to make grouping seem natural, and I think you’re right that it’s about incentives – and eliminating the things that make people dislike groups to start with.

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I just feel that the desire to make it so unrewarding to solo so people group isn’t necessary. People will group, that’s why they play MMOs. Not everyone will, and that’s fine, why stop someone who wants to while away a few hours mining peacefully from playing? I think you’ll get a player driven economy, societies, portal communities etc if the mechanics are there to make it possible and are effective even if you can solo it.
Case in point, we’re already doing that and supporting each other and the content was previously soloable. I bumped into @SWProzee1 early on and he took me on a tour of the worlds, showed me some gleam, helped me mine it all because he could. I’ve done the same to another new player when I bumped into them.

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I’m really not suggesting that at all … all I am saying that it needs to be at a sufficiently difficult level so that when you do team up with other players it is still a challenge and not just boring mind-numbingly easy farming, because 3-4 people will take down creatures far too quickly.

Yep, we are, and I’ve done exactly the same as well … and there’s no reason for that to change… just now it’ll be “here’s where you can find gleam - go ahead and mine some and I’ll protect you from creatures while you do”.

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Your information is pretty inaccurate. At least two people hit 50 weeks ago, probably more.

I myself am right on the doorstep about to be 49.

I’m not assuming they did, however a lot of people that don’t have a good grasp of what’s going on like to try to push the game in crazy unfun directions. I’m refuting THAT.

Which is not what we have right now. Not even close. It’s impossible right now, because you don’t get remotely enough resources out of it to make it worthwhile. You’d need to be getting a bare minimum of 10x as much per drop as you already do to bring this even remotely into the realm of possibility, and that’s even without having to deal with mobs like hoppers that will now gib you.

In addition, it (Vulpto/Nasharil/Munteen VII/Alturnik) should be HARD for a new player around the level 20-35 range, NOT for an experienced, high level player in the 40-50 range. It should be relatively easy for those guys.

It should be not only possible for a level 40-50 player with significant spec into combat to hunt and kill the creatures on a T5 world, it should be profitable for a heavy enough investment in skill points and player experience.

Yes, but some people ARE, so watch out!

On that note, what SHOULD be hard for a group of experienced, high level players, is Titans. You’d expect to get mercilessly stomped over and over again if you go into something like that solo.

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The big difference though is that Boundless doesn’t have NPCs. Right from the start this has been seen as a great challenge for the developers to effectively implement.

Due to this as well, we sort of can’t have those “some part of the game is just an option” like a soloist being able to build, mine and fight without sacrificing some skill points (be a generalist) because these contents are made by the players themselves and not artificially controlled and added by the game. Making them an option means negatively affecting the demand of a certain profession and I bet you won’t like it either if no one asks for your service.

Edit:
To further explain my point. Our main source of income is by providing services and coins from leveling up is just a secondary. If we limit the demands of the profession, we wouldn’t be having a healthy economy and you wouldn’t be able to do much without coins.

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And that’s where raid-style monsters come into it. Or ultra-rare ores that are required to take out group-only mega bosses.
If you want to do group content, every part of that content should be achieved via grouping - group mining because the ore is in such a dangerous environment, or needs several miners working on it at once. The shaft comes from the top of some tree that only grows in this hazardous environment. The fuel has to be dragon-bone or something. Every part is enforced grouping.
But if I’m not interested in beating the mega-raid boss, I shouldn’t be consigned to living on the starter world - in its current form, I am. Today is the first day I’ve spent more time on the forums rather than playing the game because, it’s too hard, it’s just past the right-side of fun.
I know it’s a balancing act, and I know its early access and that’s why I’m giving feedback. At the moment, pre-gem gear the game is no longer fun for me. I think some of you might have forgotten what it’s like to not have all the skill points and best gear.

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I could not possibly disagree more.

People should absolutely be able to be generalists. However, that should handicap them from reaching the absolute best and shiniest toys that a specialist can acquire and use. This works even with an economy. People can make reasonable slingbows and crafting materials and build fairly well, but if they want specific building materials or that uber Blink Bomb set, gotta buy from a crafting specialist who bought from a mining or hunting specialist!

Core parts of the game like keeping a portal open… definitely shouldn’t be as (totally impossibly) hard as they are about to be when we all start running out of shards in about a week.

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Whoops! It seems I wasn’t able to properly articulate my thoughts. What I meant was they can be a generalist but by sacrificing some skill points (I saw a previous post that they wanted to be good at everything). But for a dedicated player on a profession, they should feel the need for others’ services.

We basically just want to prevent abundance of resources without demand.

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I should also add that NO ONE WANTS to be 100% a manufacturer. They’d make an alt for it, level it, respec it as necessary, and throw it in a ditch for 95% of their time that doesn’t involve starting manufacturing jobs. If they could be a manufacturer AND builder with reasonable survival skills to successfully run away from mobs though? That’s reasonable and people would actually play that character for long periods of time.

Similarly, you should probably be able to be a very good hunter AND gatherer OR miner at the same time. If you’re out exploring, killing creatures and picking plants or mining rocks makes sense, but don’t expect to be able to run back home and build nice buildings or manufacture titan-based items. Again, people can play this character for a reasonable period of time without feeling bored or pigeonholed, but still be reliant upon the economy.

Honestly, you can see it. There are going to be two main types of roles in an economy like this. Acquisitor (Hunter/Miner/Gatherer) and Transmuter (Manufacturer/Builder/Alchemist). Ideally both would be needed for raids! (Say what? Yes, but it’s possible! Especially if you can make it so that you need to process the resources acquired therein in order to continue! This would have Transmuters building temp-bases and aid or rez stations and Hunter-Gatherers defending them while using the bases to spearhead further into the Titan.)

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Level really has nothing to do with it - it’s an arbitrary number. It’s really down to how you spend your skill points.

There is apparently an issue with the drops - it’s currently not was intended (at least that is what I have been told). I agree, that higher tier worlds need to have better rewards. I believe that the difficulty is around the right level though. The reward is not quite there yet.

Those people were not commenting or quoting my post though … so I can’t reply to those other people.

Yes, I agree - titans should ONLY be for groups to combat IMO. Definitely in no way solo-able. Unlike high level worlds which are solo-able … but with more effort.

You mean like Rift & Blink ores? Agreed.

I think we’ve been arguing from opposite ends of the spectrum here. I’m talking about difficulty on high-tier worlds, not starting ones. I agree with you there that the starting worlds are a little too difficult currently. I believe this may be down to the fact that they still have tier 2 creatures on there (and the fact that they are too OP now) - there should be majority Tier 1 with the rare occasional tier 2 IMO. Starter worlds should be safe havens, with minimal things that can kill you unless you provoke too many of them at once.

I quite like the sound of that - that would be a cool raid mechanic (sounds a little along the lines of overwatch et al).

Sorry that post got much longer than I expected!

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Blockquote I think we’ve been arguing from opposite ends of the spectrum here. I’m talking about difficulty on high-tier worlds, not starting ones. I agree with you there that the starting worlds are a little too difficult currently. I believe this may be down to the fact that they still have tier 2 creatures on there (and the fact that they are too OP now) - there should be majority Tier 1 with the rare occasional tier 2 IMO. Starter worlds should be safe havens, with minimal things that can kill you unless you provoke too many of them at once.

So are you saying that unless I group, or until I have the best gear I should only stay on a starter world, because that’s what it sounds like? Currently, it takes so long to level up (get skill points, whatever) that new players will feel no progression. They won’t hang around to make it to the next planet. Could you imagine playing WoW and staying in the first zone for weeks of playing? The starter worlds are not varied enough to justify forcing people to stay on them.
I don’t expect to be kicking-ass by myself on a ring world within hours, but equally I don’t expect to have to spend 40+ hours on the first world and still be unable to survive on the next level world because I dared to try my hand at crafting instead of knowing I really wanted to be a monster hunter before I installed the game!

Maybe it’s an issue with there only being three tiers of worlds at the moment, early access and all that.
Maybe something like this:

Starter worlds - exactly that, for starters, learn the ropes and move on. Nothing to see here but copper and mobs who are neutral by default.

Tier 1 worlds - Copper and iron needed to hunt/gather. No skill investment needed to combat/mine efficiently, but you’ll feel better as you begin to invest. Silver available. Oortstones start to drop here from aggressive monsters which are introduced on this level world.

Tier 2 worlds - Silver and gold needed to hunt/gather. Skill points need to start being invested wisely. Decide which career path is for you, but be able to do a bit of everything. Titanium available.

Tier 3 worlds - Titanium and gems needed to hunt/gather. Skill points investment essential. You can survive some combat without investment, but there are enemies you need to run away from unless you’re combat-ready. Gems available. A challenge if you’re on your own, but you’ll get by - more profitable with a group but not essential.

Tier 4 worlds - Raid planets, the whole thing is basically a dungeon. Establish a foothold - set up defenses, mine in groups, take on the big-bads and reap the awesome loots. Like @AzureHelios describes above.

Tier 5 worlds - Basically one giant boss - you’d better have done some raids if you wish to survive here!

Tier 3, 4 and 5 worlds could have environmental hazards introduced. In tier 3 worlds these could be localised, in 4 and 5 they’re more abundant, meaning resistance investment or some sort of high-end alchemist is in your group supplying you with potions (so miners don’t have to waste skill points in a combat tree for example).

So groups aim for tier 4 and 5 worlds - solo/generalists don’t go there.

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I was going to reply to some single posts, but there are so many that I’ll just reply generally.

I would just like to reiterate a key aspect of the game here:

Boundless is intended to be played, and enjoyed, by solo players. That has always and will always be the intention.

Boundless is a multiplayer game, and we are working hard to implement features that make it fun to play in an online world. Part of that is encouraging people to play together, and we have to balance that against solo players.

As @Feign has nicely described, we need to find the right spread of content which is accessible to single players and groups of varying levels, and incentivise players to engage with the content that they want to engage with. It’s all about balance, which is difficult, time consuming and takes many iterations to get right.

We’re working on it.

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This is not true. To my knowledge there is nothing in the game that you can’t solo.

But there are efficiencies in playing with others. 2 players can kill a creature twice as quickly, and they both get drops. So this is a 4x multiplier (irrelevant of current or future balance.)

Not true. We’ve said many times that Boundless can be played by solo players.

What isn’t solo’able at the moment?

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Whilst it’s on my mind, we could do with someway to prevent mob spawning. Torches seem pretty handy for this - basic torches prevent Level 1 mobs spawning, cloth torches Level 2, Lanterns Level 3, Gem torches Level 4, Somethingawesome torches Level 5 - that way using the planets above, you need high-end resources for that planet to make your base safe - this helps with the raid/boss planets at tier 4 and 5. I only raise it as the new creature spawning mechanism means there will always be mobs spawning in player villages/towns which really should be a safe spot, otherwise non-combat ready characters will not really be appropriate for higher tier planet communities.
Maybe the torches only prevent spawning if in a plot, that way you can’t litter the mine with torches to stop any problems there?

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i think @Feign should answer this question really since my answers are never good and i’d rather not make a dev angry xD