I’ve been playing boundless for awhile and just hit level 50, and I’ve been very interested in the Feat system, and I would like to give my feedback. Overall I love it; achievements are fantastic, the XP and Coin rewards are very helpful, and stat tracking in these sort of games is absolutely essential to a certain type of player.
That said, the stat tracking aspect of this caps out once the final feat has been accomplished; the number stays at the final number needed to complete the feat. My first suggestion is to remove this cap for the fifth feat and have the number keep going so you can see your lifetime stats for that feat. That way if you’re interested you can see Worlds Discovered: 127/100 to see that you’ve gone to a certain number of exo planets or something instead of just 100/100, or Total Coin Spent 19 million/ 10 million instead of capping.
Secondly the numbers for some of these feats are very unbalanced. Most of the feats are great: they incentivize certain tasks and reward continued play, but some feats seem to be out of pace with that. Seeing these unattainable feats either discourages players enough for the notion of ever completing them, or for the players that actually try to do it, incentivize processes that have apparently been discouraged. This includes botting, macroing, or any form of AFK progression, which I have only heard is discouraged:
Other feats seem to have had their goal numbers just copied and pasted for the whole category, which is just lazy. It looks like whoever was setting this up just put it in and didn’t give a second look to if they made sense, or even try to get the feats or consider how long it would take. This is highlighted in my only previous forum post Unable to leave sanctum. Too many beacons? which is the entire reason I am writing this post. The short of that post is that I crashed the entire Minorengle server when attempting one of the feats, which is a huge oversight and shows that not only did none of the devs even attempt to see if the feat was scaled correctly, but that no other player before me has even attempted this!
Below I will give my feedback on feats that I think are problematic, focusing on the fifth level of each.
This info was obtained from Feat - Boundless Wiki which I created lol. Hopefully the community will find this info useful since it took a little while to type in, but I had to make it available somewhere so that I could complain about it.
Core Feats
Talented Citizen - Skill Points spent: 1,000
This feat requires putting a skill point in a skill a thousand times, which is an absolute breeze before level 20 when you can freely reset your skills. After 20 though you’re in for a rough time… since the only way to put in a skill point is by levelling up or buying cleanse points or skill page resets which costs cubits. If you levelled up to 300 you would have 500 skill points, which would fill the 5 skill pages available, which would only put you HALFWAY to finishing this feat. You would have to buy five skill page resets (spending 4,000 cubits), or use 500 cleanse points (spending 15,000 cubits) to finish this challenge off. The only reason I have a problem with this is that it’s so easy before 20, but after 20 it feels like “haha gatcha now you should buy the premium currency.” Five skill page resets aren’t bad but that’s only after you’ve hit level 300… I think all levels of this feat should be cut in half, so that at least 500 skill points spent can be done by hitting level 300 which is still more than outrageous for something that can be done in a few minutes before level 20.
Builder Feats
Landowner - Plots placed: 5,000
At level 50 I have almost 200 land plots, and over the course of this game I can see me getting up to 1,000 plots after playing for maybe a year or two, so for me to get that challenge at that point I would have to take all 1,000 to a new build four times. That is never going to happen for any normal player even veterans, but you could just plot and unplot a single plot 5,000 times, which incentivizes using a macro program. The stamina mechanic is a fantastic anti-botting measure, but plotting and unplotting doesn’t take stamina, so one could AFK for one night and get this challenge. 5,000 is outrageous and should at least be cut in half, if not brought down to 1,000 so people could actually get this by normally making builds over the course of a long-term player.
Wooden Shack - Wooden Blocks placed: 1,000,000
Solid as a Rock - Rock-type Blocks placed: 1,000,000
Going Green - Soil Blocks placed: 1,000,000
Here we get into the builder feats that have been copied and pasted from the first feat in the Builder category, which rewards you for placing any type of block, which is great. Placing a million blocks will eventually be done if you play long enough and like building, but having the exact same values for placing specific block types? Rock type blocks makes sense because it is the primary building material because of the prestige system and craftability of decorative stone, but who is ever going to place a million soil blocks for any reason?? Peaty soil is a fuel source, so that leaves Silty Soil, Clay Soil, and if they are included Mud and Ash. Silty soil can be turned into glass, which I hear is heavily used in crafting, and Clay soil is also used in recipes, and I’m not sure who would want to build anything out of mud or ash, which means this feat will never be completed organically. The wood one might be attainable if you’re going crazy with a wood build, but the values on these need to be lowered at least so they aren’t the same as the Place Any Blocks one.
Home Insurance - Days of Beacon Fuel added: 100,000
Here we go, the reason for this post. This absolutely absurd challenge of fueling a beacon for TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY FOUR YEARS looked completely ridiculous to a level 21 me, but seeing the nice XP and coin reward I was desperate for a few more skill points since I just left the point where I could freely reset yet barely had enough skill points to go to any planet with harsh atmosphere, so I decided to check it out. I quickly saw that to do this within my lifetime I would need to keep fuel in 20 beacons over the course of 14 years, so the only people that would ever get this are ones specifically grinding it out, which encourages botting and macroing as I addressed at the start of this post. I saw that you could fuel a beacon and then “delete” it, which essentially removes the fuel, netting you 14 days of fuel towards the challenge each time. This was great because it meant I only needed to use 7,143 basic beacon fuel to complete the challenge, which I was able to buy for 1c each so I would come out ahead by 557 coins plus the XP. Well the problem came after about 1500 fuel used, because as you can read in the post each time you fuel a beacon it gets added to your Places list, and apparently having this many places crashed the entire server on the planet I was doing it on. After the devs contacted me and said they would fix this so players wouldn’t be able to crash their game at will, I was able to remove all 1500 places and continue. This took a long time but I was able to finish this feat, and I do believe I am the first player to ever do so or else the devs would have encountered this problem before.
Combat Feats
Road Warrior - Roadrunner Defeated: 50,000
Having the roadrunner feat be the same numbers as all the other enemies is pretty ridiculous, obviously just a copy and paste without any thought to the difficulty of the challenge.
Crafter Feats
Working with Your Hands - Recipes Handcrafted: 1,000,000
What. The. Hell. A MILLION??? The only time you handcraft things is when you start the game. Aside from that it’s only viable when you need to make something essential on the fly, and no totems don’t count for this challenge. Anyone attempting this challenge will lose so much money crafting any recipe that could be made using volumetric crafting on any other crafting station. This blows my mind that someone thought you should handcraft almost the same amount as the feat 5 for all other forms of crafting combined.
Explorer Feats
Master Creeper - Distance crept: 1,000,000
This doesn’t make sense to me. The only use I’ve found for creeping is not falling off edges, and maybe creeping up on a roadrunner? Setting this value at a million is just a honeypot for abuse. The forum posts regarding grinding this feat were all met with negative reactions, but how else would anyone get this feat without grinding for it, and when grinding why wouldn’t you create a setup in this sandbox game to fit your needs? This whole situation baffles me.
Mer-Creature - Distance swam in water: 10,000,000
Setting this value to the same as the Distance Sprinted makes no sense. Proportion it to the amount of time you spend on land vs in water.
Gatherer Feats
The values of these gatherer feats are all copied and pasted to the same values for all tiers, regardless of the type of material.
Expert Lumberjack - Tree Trunks gathered: 500,000
Expert Arborist - Foliage gathered 500,000
Is anyone ever going to get 500k foliage?
Expert Florist - Flowers gathered: 500,000
Or for that matter 500k flowers? Maybe I’m just not experienced enough to realize why this value should be so high.
A Weathered Axe - Axes Destroyed: 1,000
A Worn Shovel - Shovels Destroyed: 1,000
I like the idea of these, giving you a little bonus for something that happens naturally. But a thousand of each tool type is a little excessive. Most players have the +30% durability perk on any page that is meant for using tools, and that combined with the tool buff that gives durability a single tool can last you for weeks. That means to really get Tier 5 on these feats you have to alter your normal playstyle. Weather that means using low level tools, or getting the buffs that give power over durability, it’s not really worth it and would take forever. I tested some wood tools to see if there was a cheap way to power through this and even wood tools take forever. These values should be cut in half at least.
Miner Feats
Resource Catalogue - Unique Items mined: 500
Are there even this many unique items that are mineable??? I’m not sure if different tints of each mineable block count. Edit: Different colors count towards this, so it is feasable.
Blunt as a Hammer - Hammers destroyed: 1,000
Same as Axe and Shovel above.
Trader Feats
I haven’t delved much into trading since I don’t have a good spot and don’t have the crafting unlocked to set up the infrastructure, but just looking at the feats I have to say the rewards are MINISCULE! Tier 5 rewards for losing Ten Million to tax and only rewarding you 100 XP and 7,700 coin??? Why not more XP? Are they worried that since trading can be manipulated by players people are going to willingly spend 10 million to get an XP reward?
Paying into the System - Total Tax paid: 10,000,000
10 million is the same value of coin you have to spend to get the spending 5 feat, except with tax you don’t get anything in return.
Work for Hire - Coin earned from Objectives: 10,000,000
Uhhhh are there objectives eventually that are repeatable or give a ■■■■ ton of coin? I haven’t been ignoring objectives and have actually been using them as a guide to help understand the game, and I haven’t even earned 10k from objectives… This seems like another one that wasn’t even looked at before being set to this value.
Welcome Mat - Coin collected from Beacon Footfall: 10,000,000
Alright last one. I don’t have a good location but just looking into how footfall works this is absolutely way too much to ever receive. Footfall is even designed not to be a primary source of income, just a little boost and incentive to make a cool build, but setting the value at 10 million is counter to that idea. Using the results from this post Explaining Footfall post Release 211 - #116 by Arkhainn
in which a player tracked the footfall coin for 20 people visiting his 11k prestige beacon, he gained 1,680 for 20 people. If a player with a good beacon in a populated where at least 20 people per day visit gets about 2k coins a day it would take 14 years to get to ten million. Now, I’ve seen footfall slides which is a really cool player created and cooperative idea, but since the feat grinding attempts for other feats have been removed, I don’t see why this is allowed. So even if you can get up to 10k a day (probably impossible with the diminishing returns) using footfall slides or some other super populated area, it would still take almost three years to reach this goal. This is obviously out of reach for 99.99% of players and needs to be lowered to be obtainable within a reasonable time period for dedicated players.
Thank you for reading my opinions, and I hope this will help give some direction to any changes that can be made. I am on the boundless discord as Chadworthy#2640, feel free to reach out to me if there is a feat that you think is impossible and should be added, or if I have listed a feat that is easily obtainable that I just don’t have the experience to recognize.