I made this comment on another post, but I felt it warranted a post, itself. I want to hear your thoughts on this, Boundless community.
I think I’ve realized there is a larger overlap between people who play Minecraft/casual games and Boundless compared to people who play MMOs and Boundless. I also feel that the majority of Boundless players who complain about the grind don’t realize that this is a voxel-based MMO.
Minecraft is an incredibly easy, non-grindy game where you can automate the acquisition of most resources in the game with a decent bit of effort. Playing efficiently, it doesn’t take much time at all to beat the Ender Dragon (“end-game” boss), craft yourself a full set of Diamond armour, tools, and a sword, and enchant it all to basically never lose these tools. After that, you can use those tools to do anything you want in the game pretty dang quickly.
Boundless seems to be more of an MMO than a casual game, and in MMOs… you grind, grind, grind. MMOs generally have skill trees that lock you out of features in the game until you’ve put enough time and experience into the game to unlock them. Progression is more rewarding in MMOs, but it takes longer. You can’t just start it up and complete the game if you’re skilled and know what you’re doing like in Minecraft.
I don’t know if we just need to grow more of the target audience of MMO players, or if there should be a happy medium found between MMOGRINDFEST and happy-casual land. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I personally am leaning toward hoping to see a happy medium. Everyone shouldn’t be able to just complete and acquire everything right away (the skill tree and leveling is great for this), but there should be more of a balance than we currently have. I know the developers are working hard on this, and I’m excited to see how things are balanced!
I like that boundless have the grind, and in my mind the harder the gring / game is the more of an accomplishment feeling I have + you have someting to look forward to or do they next day even if it isnt much you do, that is what I like otherwise a game gest boring fast just like minecraft where everything is done in hours.
I did delete all my alts not long ago and started fresh. Im lvl 31+ on 2 alt atm and only use iron/copper tools atm no problems I want to use better tools but I dont see the need for them atm exept wepons
Your framing and observations are right on. Let’s expand.
-What is an MMO.
A massive multiplayer online game. So we have singleplayer, multi-player, and finally an MMO. Which typically consisted of a large multi server environment. You say it is a grind-fest which is true of most of the historically MMO’s but why? The reason was the business model which in the beginning revolved around subscriptions because to keep players paying. But it is possible for a game to be an MMO without being a grind? Subs aren’t currently slated for this game. So you don’t have to have it there for the business to be successful. So the real question is;
-How much grinding is fundamentally good for the game play experience?
On the one hand we have games Star Wars Galaxies that to become a Jedi took a chuck of your life, before they shut the servers down. At least Eve has a legit reason to maintain a balanced warfare simulation. But does grinding make the game play experience fundamentally better in a block building game? Consider Sea of Thieves, you don’t grind to get the boat, they give it to you. The game is in how you use it and what you do with it. A grind is doing a boring task in game over and over for some reward. Does spending all time at night gathering enough mats to make a quickly perishing item seem like a good player experience to you? Or do you think that perhaps the time would be more enjoyably spent using the mats and output items to do something, that is memorable? I think you have to ask a deeper philosophical question.
-Why are you playing this game and what do you want from it
I’m not 16 anymore, I have a successful career, a wife, kids to play with. I have achieved real world success I’m not looking for self actualization from the game. I am just coming here to play around for a few hours before I return to the real world grind of maintaining my real life empire. For me grinding coal in a mine, or walking an hour to find leaves because a variable in a config file is set to x does not make constructing the item in question more rewarding. It means I have to waste more of my real life to get the item that is just a means to an end. To build, or fight or do anything. The real sign that the balance is ****ed is you need to participate in the economy to effectively play the game. For god sakes people are employing each other for a block building game. The participation in the economy should be because your lazy not because to takes a days to get all the items you need to make X. I have 2-3 hours in a day I can dedicate to a game. I would rather spend them doing fun aspect of the game. If looking for fibrous leaf were hot ■■■■ there wouldn’t be a short fall in supply, but there is because it sucks and is a waste of good time that could be spend hunting, building, exploring, but I can’t do those things now because I’m spending most of my time in game gathering stupid basic resources, or running the shop to get money to bypass the grind so I can actually get to doing something fun in game like playing…
This post nearly perfectly sums up my life situation and feelings about the game since the skill system was implemented.
On one hand I understand that it is an MMO, but like you said as a block based game the grind and leveling seems weird and out of place. Building is naturally going to be a huge part of any block based game and to restrict that aspect and lock it behind progression feels bad IMO. I used to LOVE logging in every day and getting a little bit done and feel like I was actually accomplishing something and that my time was being respected. There was still a grind, but it felt rewarding. Now you’re essentially being punished for not running 3 characters. To me that just isn’t great design.
I still have high hopes for the game and the devs and I hope some of this gets sorted, but I’m afraid if it stays on the current path I just won’t have the time to make playing the game worthwhile for me and that bums me out.
It has been mentioned recently in the forums about this What would make you build/play more to not force people to use alts to get access to a broad range of skills
I have always seen this game as the advertised MMO. I am the one crazy person that actually thinks there is not ENOUGH of a grind. My case for this is that I started 4 months ago and I already have all power coils and mass craft all things. I have several large builds and accumulate plenty of footfall. I don’t want for anything. I have not even hit 1k hours. . . This, ladies and gentlemen, is NOT grindy. My pedigree is: over 10 years of Final Fantasy XI, before that, 8 years of the realm and then most recently 3 years of FFXIV. So maybe I am immune to a “grind” by now, but trust me when I say, this game isn’t grindy by MMO standards. I have read countless posts complaining and I have kept my mouth shut. I have a busy life now as a father/husband myself so my playtime is not NEAR what it was on FFXI, but I have still managed to achieve enough and stay content in Boundless. shrug I don’t know, I could go just build in a ton of other voxel games, but I choose this because gathering supports the build, I like that grind.
If I’m not mistaken, you also started before the increased resource cost (fibrous) for basic tools, and were here when gems were dropping like mad (both from mobs and meteors), and didn’t have to worry about the upgraded workstations with power coils, and gem tools/weapons having higher costs involved, and…
You are right, but I also did not go on hunts because I objected to the easy gem farming. I have mined for every raw material I have. So I disagree with your assessment.
Also, I did not start advanced crafting until after the patch. My climb was the hard way. Just like new players have it now.
Nobody is forced to use alts. There are choices of how to play. If you have limited time then play one character that does whatever you love the most. If you want to be reasonable at everything you can spread out into a generalist that is decent at everything, but, an expert at nothing and buy whatever items you want that you lack the skill to make. You can also level one character to max level in one specialty and then a second to max level and then if you like a third to max level. Only play one at a time and experience everything. The choice is up to the person given their situation. If you have more time, or don’t mind taking a long time to get to max level then do three at once leveling together (my favorite method) and then you experience everything and enjoy the game far longer.
If everything is possible with one character being able to do everything, there are many repurcussions. One is that it forces anyone who doesn’t want to always be far behind everyone else to only have one character and forget about alts. Another is that it pretty much guarantees the failure of anyone who wants to be a merchant as there is no need to ever buy anything since it can all be done easily with one character. The economy is gone and you might as well stick in NPC merchants so people can just buy whatever they don’t want to grind for. I would recommend eliminating alts all together if everything became possible for a single character. Then you can have a game like Shroud of the Avatar that only has one character per player (which makes for boredom and less time spent in the game).
As for me? I enjoy it as is and wouldn’t mind more specialties than there are available character slots to force everyone to purchase some things. As is, I have met players that only gather resources and sell what they gather to merchants as they have no interest in building or manufacturing. Some specialize in hunting. Some specialize in building. It’s what they love doing and they purchase from players whatever they need. There’s no problem as is other than perhaps like most games you can get to max level too fast if you choose. Even with just one character, my preference is always in games to take at least six months to make max level and preferably to me would be over a year. If can do it in a few weeks, I tend to get bored and look for another game soon after reaching max level. Max level is horribly boring in almost all games after a few days there. More grind is fine. Less grind I might just stick to Shroud of the Avatar or Space Citizen more along with Baseball and an assortment of games. Right now I spend most of my time in Boundless. Simplify it getting rid of grind, or make it too fast to max level and destroy the economy then I’m done with the game as the challenge is all gone.
I agree with you @Creegle completely. The game isn’t hard by any means. As it is, with a little strategy you can easily do whatever you want to do and it doesn’t take forever. If it isn’t dumbed down to satisfy the people who always want to do anything and everything within a couple weeks then I plan on upgrading. If it gets dumbed down then I go to things that take longer and invest my money there. You aren’t “the one crazy person” as there are many of us. It’s just that the ones who want anything (including a game) to be a different kind of thing than what it is at the moment always talk the most. Those that are the most content stay the quietest.
“I am the one crazy person that actually thinks there is not ENOUGH of a grind. My case for this is that I started 4 months ago and I already have all power coils and mass craft all things. I have several large builds and accumulate plenty of footfall. I don’t want for anything.”
I agree with OP. When I saw it’s going to be an MMO I instantly knew there was going to be a grind. I don’t actually mind the grind in this game at all even if it’s forcing me to use my alts for build diversity. Yes, I have a wife and kid and I don’t have that much time to play video games as before, but I understand that it’s the nature of MMO to have some sort of grind. I’m not going to force the game to change it to suit my lifestyle. I’m willing to spend a couple of hours here and there and level up on my own pace.
Very well put @Karko. I agree with your point of “who said MMO’s have to be grindy” (loosely quoted). I think however that at the same time we must consider “who said the economy must be optional” as another angle on this.
[i’ve deleted my post as it was not adding anything that wasn’t already said here or somewherelse by other people ^^]
In the end a lot of people think that the possibility to have 3 characters is a bad thing, as it destroy the economy and the meaning of having to choose a skill path.
I don’t mind if it is easy to get started and craft tools/items that are good enough to have fun. But it wouldn’t be fun if you could get everything without an effort. So I definetly believe it should be a struggle to craft the upper tiers of items.
I don’t really know how hard it is for a new player to get going at the moment. But one problem I had when I started playing was that I had difficulties figuring some stuff out, without using other sources than the game. For example it helped a lot to read on the forums. If I would start from scratch now I would have a big advantage because I already know a lot of crucial information.
If it can be of any help…
I came back to play +/- 3 weeks ago and everything was new to me… my experience has been quietly satisfyng: not easy to figure out but cheking the ingame infos and connecting the various piece of informations ingame + external wikia/craftwikia + discord (once again: the community) everything went fine.
I would say that during the
1st week I runned to the manifacturing of the various work stations with stone tools/slbows
2nd week I just passed from stone to iron tools/slbows and understood the relation between skills and characters page
3th week managed to pass the house to a settlement stage, stopped using iron and went to copper tools/titanium(or iron) slbows and at the same time stopped wasting tools while adventuring (the totem is fair enough for surface gathering); built the shop section with 6 shop stand
now i have to figure out what to sell and it’s price, while lokking forward to reach the next tier of base tools i want to use; leveling isn’t a problem as whatever you do gives you exp but surely must program what to raise with skill points. Till now i have “deeply” visited only 2 worlds, the home one (therka) and septafron and a lot of content (other worlds, power coils, materials, augmentations, etc. etc.)
@ElfMarine@Creegle
I’m with you guys!
Grind is really state of mind. If you are crazy about getting your first gem by Friday and coils by Monday than you make it feel grindy for yourself. If you dont set deadlines you just play and get there in a process.
The one advantage Boundless has here is its not PvP game. So no one will pillage your village if you don’t build walls and craft best armor by Sunday. You can really set your pace without fear you’ll be outsmarted outplayed and eliminated. Just enjoy DOING rather than ACHIEVING. Achievement is best served as a side to the main course of doing.
There should be more grind in Boundless than there is now. People should not be able to get a character to level 50 in 2 weeks. (granted, I played for more than 8 hours a day but that still only totals to 110 hours to get level 50).
If the game were to strive to using multiple characters for different purpose (as it kind of is now), then the grind should be kept the same or only increased slightly.
If not, there should be more grind involved with more reward at the later stages for the more dedicated players.
Feats should be the main objective for new players to achieve and should be the luring point for new players, as it kind of did for me.
A few months ago, I was dissuaded from playing the game because of the lack of knowledge I had of getting to high levels, and that was before I was exposed to portals and player shops. Since then, I have come back and am able to do almost anything with the amount of resources and coin that I have collected because of the player shops.
Yes, I agree. If you just keep doing things you generally end up gaining XP and resources. Then keep doing that for a long time and you will have a lot of stuff.
A number of years ago I tried to play some online survival java game, it was in 3D. That was hard imho. It took maybe an hour to chop down my first tree, I had to scavenge for food on the ground while trying to chop the tree because I got hungry instantly. And when you had built something it had to be repaired all the time. Like every wall piece and fence part would decay totally in about a week. And other players could steal your stuff. XD I gave up.
Compared to that I find Boundless to be very relaxing and much less a chore.
/Edit I just remembered what the game was called, Wyrm online. =)
otherwise a game gest boring fast just like minecraft where everything is done in hours.