Casual Gamers vs. Boundless vs. MMO Players

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.

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Thank you! I somehow missed that post from @james :slight_smile:

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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I moved my comment here

Those who think “not bad” may not have thought how difficult your growth rode is, because when everyone return zero, nobody can pull you.

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’m patiently waiting to see where we end up :slight_smile:

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[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.

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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.

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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.)

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@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.

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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.

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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. =)

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I think that mid lvl consumables food/tools should be easy to farm, I think refined blocks, dec blocks could be compressed with 10 times more blocks, in 5 hours I can build enough refined blocks for a large building, which I think should have taken longer.

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some crafting times need balancing for sure - there are those that feel too fast while others are unnecessary long (even doing some cooking take you longer than crafting stones and refining it then)

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I read this when I woke up this morning and though that is good question. Why do I have the impression solo play was a viable option in the vision of the game. So I started digging. The best answer I can give is not very good after thinking about it a while. The orginal pitch video narrated by @ben is what gave me the impression. :50-:57. But upon close inspection I realized that was in context to the Titan content not the entire game. So I guess you got me there.

P.S. Ben if you are reading this. Your posting and comedy are missed.

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Post what you might like the times to be and why, might happen if the Devs agree

For me this game isn’t or has a “beat it” anything. It’s more of a casual, “I can forever come here and build cool things and just keep acquiring materials and keep building till my hearts content.” When it is content, or my brain needs a break, I can do that. But it I will always want to come back and make a new house or statue.

Right now it does feel like the dev’s are wanting it to be up in the ranks of Everquest fornicating on a Voxel platform. Which is way cool. The downside is that it stops being a casual crafter. The newer updates are more along the lines of “forces us to have to” grind heavy, and regularly comeback just to keep what we have. Nothing wrong with implementing forced renewable gameplay. The cost however, unlike most mmo’s and voxel world games is, if you don’t, you suffer the loss of everything you ever made. And some people don’t like a game slapping on grinder handcuffs, and telling them you are now forced to keep playing it.

The positive side for the players, is it ingeniously filters out people that make builds that use up the game world, and never come back.

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For crafting times, I tend to save up a bunch of things to mass craft at the same time in different machines. When my crafting alt comes on then I load up all the machines and start them and set my timer on my watch. Then I go out gathering, mining and hunting to get experience or do some building. When my watch buzzes then I go back and put everything on the shelves and go on to the next alt. I just craft pretty much once every few weeks. I haven’t ever made a shop yet (living in the desert it’s rather pointless), so, I don’t need a ton of stuff made. Mostly it’s just iron tools and some tasty steaks while building up some advanced supplies so I have them whenever I get around to mining gems.

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Because of how I play, my priorities, objectives, and preferences I have felt adequately rewarded for my efforts. I am primarily a builder, a builder who has no interest in gem blocks. Which is good for me because I would probably lose my noodle trying to hunt down gems, but they are supposed to be a special and rare resource, so if they were easy to find it would be less special. I require a ton of building materials but the effort put into gathering blocks and crafting them is logical and satisfying.

I use iron for most tools, I buy the occasional Ruby slingbows for defense when harvesting blocks. I buy chisels… Lots of chisels, I should probably start crafting them.

I have no interest in food beyond carrying cooked meat or berries to fight off hunger, so I haven’t had to deal with the frustrations of food production. Looking through the recipes and how each one has 4 quality tiers and then raw and cooked versions of each seems like it would eat away at a person’s sanity.

In conclusion the portions of the game I play I enjoy and do not feel the effort is wasted. If I were a hunter I probably would not feel the same.

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