yes this! im not saying the game needs to be 100% soloable or 100% group only. just that we need to be open to the other side and be willing to see a middle ground here have a balance between solo play and rewarding co-op play (IE guilds, dungeons etc)
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This is where I disagree. Realisticly it is not soloable for most players. Not everyone has 10 hours a day to play games. It would take years to get to full power coils and forged gear solo.
My gripes specifically are with the inability to do all tasks on one character, the lack of mid tier tools, and the lack of support for builders.
You need multiple gathering characters to get the plants, ores, gems, and materials required to progress. Then you need multiple characters to craft the different gear, machines, and consumables. You need a forger as well as a hunter. I don’t think it’s possible without 3 characters - and you would need at least 5 to do it efficiently.
Multiple skill pages are useless to a solo player, as you need to get past level 50 before they are viable.
Leveling one character to 50 without trading or making other characters is a monumental task. Hundreds of hours with unforged metal tools. With trading it can be done in a few hours using teaching pies and AoE hammers. The discrepancy in time is far too high to make it a viable option.
Even if you don’t care about the progression of the game and just want to build, you can’t. Your plots are tied to your level and given out at a ridiculously slow pace early game. Building grants little to no XP - you cannot just be a builder in a game that’s 50% about building. There are no building materials available in bulk - you need to progress to get any blocks to build with. I understand you cannot give everyone infinite clay, sand, rocks, or any other currently available blocks as they are crafting ingredients. But why can’t there be basic building blocks that are used for nothing else, one hit with a totem on any planet, offer no prestige, and are limited to a single texture? Also give all new players ~50 plots so they can start building right away - or as a reward from completing the tutorial. Everyone that gets into the game should be able to build a basic house within a few days of play time.
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I do not recall at this time.
I mean it is a combination of the fact the NPE is quite lacking which means there are many things that are left unexplained to the player, and the fact that not everybody who plays the game enjoys or is able to figure things out on their own in regards to experimenting with things or making logical connections of where to look next. While out of game information is quite helpful in learning things more quickly it is not what I was referring to at the time.
I do not think the game is fine, There are more then a few problems with it, but rather or it is „solo friendly“ is not one of those problems in my book.
I do not recall at this time.
Is it a bad thing on a personal level? no, Is it a bad thing in the context of an online game that wants to try to have an Econ of any kind? You better believe it is, and you can take that to the bank.
People can do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t harm other people, I really do not care, however ones wants to have an easy time doesn’t mean the game needs to bend for that player.
People can do whatever they want on a private server, as it is then self contained and Isolated from the „MMO“ part of the game, that is as long as you are referring to the type of private server that is not connected to the main universe.
I am pretty sure this is not even remotely the case. and If I recall the details correctly, there was a live stream somewhere proving that it would not even take 10 hours to start to get coils going, let alone years.
That is correct, You don’t mine, or dig up blocks then you don’t get building materials to build with. As a solo player you have to be willing to do more then just what you want to do.
I have no objections to this.
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With trading - yes, you can get to powered machines in under 10 hours. Without trading it is not possible. Warp augments require metals and extracted essence. Just to get off of the first planet will take you an hour or so. Let alone leveling to have the requirements for surviving on a T6 planet, and making a hammer good enough to damage rocks there. I would love to see a proof of concept getting powered machines - but it cannot be done.
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I didnt read all of this thread as of yet. However, if I’ve been summoned it must have to do with powering machines within a certain time frame…
I’ll insert a link here https://forum.playboundless.com/t/100-hours-challenge-19-hours-complete-todays-stream-begins-in-20-minutes-ill-be-focusing-emeralds-today/29518
I’m going to state how flawed an example it is for a player with knowledge being able to accomplish tasks in a set time frame vs a new player attempting to accomplish those same things. That should be obvious to everyone that the knowhow an experienced player has in this game greatly affects their ability to progress, especially in a timely manner.
Power coils can easily be achieved by those that know how to get them within a few days of regular play with a brand new toon np. I did it on my new toons easily myself. But I will state that the portal hub was used in this case and in my own experience, this is fine in my honest opinion. But it does not meet a strict definition of solo only, so that should be stated.
The lack of knowledge based stuff in game is a serious hamper in boundless for new or even returning players. And is possibly the most important thing to fix, I would also say that reducing the overall complexity of certain things, recipes etc, would also go a long way to making the progression seem smoother.
The game is very soloable, but I don’t consider it solo friendly, and here is why. I can easily solo this game. I have 20 hours a week of spare time I can put into doing stuff in boundless. That is enough time to solo in the game. If you don’t have that much time… You run into the biggest complaint I have in boundless, the time required to accomplish a single task. It takes me on average 2 hours of playtime to get a certain task completed. Simple things like making bricks or other building blocks? 2 hours to gather the resources required for the amounts I need on average. Making some gem or alloy tools? Two hours of traveling and mining required to get enough for my needs. Want to try some farming? Two hours to get enough seeds to start the first crop etc. Now this is my experience and my own internal time scale, but if I spend less than this amount of time I leave feeling like I wasted my time and nothing got done. This feels to me like boundless requires a large time investment for a solo player.
With friends you can get enough items very quickly, can each do a part of the task and poof 30mins later you have all the gathering done. It’s mostly this that makes me say it’s not solo friendly because of the time commitment needed to solo on average. And that isn’t counting the time needed to gain the knowledge required to make the most of your time in boundless.
BUT I also want to say that I think it may be for the best that this is how it is. If the intention is for the game to be a social game then the social part of it needs to be encouraged, and possibly favorites over the solo part. And I say this as a primarily solo player. If the game gets too easy to solo then groups would absolutely destroy the progress curve more than they already do.
It’s a tougher process to balance all this out 
but it would be amazing if the devs could find a nice middle ground for sure.
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I have had this thought and have mentioned it a number of times as well.
I also, considered “re-doing” the challenge without portal networks, for a true solo experience. Knowledge is a major factor in speedrunning. Which is kind of what i was going for in those vids.
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Yeah, that was kind of my point. It’s often worth re-asking these kinds of questions to see if now, given the passages of time and the changes that brings, a new different answer might be the result.
Absolutely. Within the context of allowing players to change game rules, it should definitely be separate from the main universe. Although I do also think they should be working towards creating the connected rented worlds too while they’re doing it.
Effort should ≈ Result
Both statements are mostly referring to the type of player who expects
Effort < Result
or
Effort << Result
Therefore I can not quantify values at this time as it would be based on the amount of effort the player puts in.
So the classic „I do not recall at this time“ was given.
Somebody who puts in only 2 hours of good effort into the game can not expect to be at mid or end game after that is done, That is unrealistic.
What game is at mid/end game after two hours?
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NORTH is the best direction in the game!!
I miss Semtex. 
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My experience starting about 7 months ago was significantly more different than those that came before, and after.
When I started, I had no idea what to expect or what to do. It came up on my list on steam and I figured it was worth a gamble. I wasn’t convinced initially that it was worth it, the game was clunky and nothing made sense. The lootbox reward mechanism was cheesy and i couldn’t find desert swords.
I had to join the portal seekers discord and they graciously answered my questions while I figured things out. I setup on merika initially, but resources and levels were hard to come by. Bomb mining had already been nerfed and gems were selling for astronomical prices. Advanced coils were selling for 12-20k each.
The grind was real and brutal. I stuck with it, but if I had felt I had another good gaming option, I would have left. It was a game of last resort. My wife started playing and that made my desire to stay and help greater. We collaborated on projects and efforts. Now, we have no resource we cannot afford or have in storage. We don’t need anyone else.
Boundless, for us, is a series of chores that slows down fun. Crafting is fun, but tiresome, slow, and meaningless. Forged goods are cool, but tedious to create and temporary. Building is fun, but you have to work, hard, to have the blocks you want to build. The list goes on.
You ask about the mmo vs. single player. I honestly think it’s barely single player, let alone “massively” anything. A community of people can carry the water better, but it’s still wildly frustrating to forge. It’s still disengaging to smash your 50,000th desert sword for an essential material. It’s just a chore. The game has so much potential, but like a Minecraft mod that takes itself too seriously, the desire for “balance” has ensured that fun is not a priority. It’s like they made a visual version of excel, except it doesn’t automatically save.
Yes, a single player can have chunks of fun, if they don’t mind tolerating the periods of not-fun to get there. Multiple players make this better. It’s not easier, just more tolerable. The single player experience improves dramatically when you bypass everything that is considered “progress”. The end is where the game begins.
It’s brutal.
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I get enough oort for my needs from scavenging abandoned meteorites while gathering other things… Plus from the odd roadrunner.
I don’t play with many people. My friends list could fit on one hand. I do my thing. I build my shop (and commonly hide in my locked basement when people are in it and sort my stuff), I have a character devoted to crafting what I need. I buy what I don’t want to/can’t make. Sure, it’s not easy. But it’s really not that hard.
I don’t see any problems with solo play at this time, honestly.
What about all the other people who do? Who have left countless negative solo reviews about the grind?
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i will admit i have not played boundless in close to 5+ months now so i don’t know the current state of the grind but there are way to many steam reviews, steam forum and official forum posts about it to just say oh its just trolls being trolls.
That was a really good post.
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I think you should add one more option.
They don’t have time to engage the game content.
Before i didn’t have job in real life, so i can basically live in Boundless to grind / build / sell / run the city.
Sadly now i can’t . Even I want, i don’t have time for those thing.
Only thing i can do is choose the content i enjoy which is building and new farming system. Don’t have time to join hunts/ mines …etc.
- Now my goal is, work harder in real life, so i can buy some plots in game / month XD
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I am not sure if I should touch this one because my response to this will be extremely brutal, and it was left out on purpose, not an oversight.
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I am not one of those who left a negative review on steam. But, I am one of those who felt the significant increase in grind when compared to Alpha. A few alpha players I have talked to agree that Boundless Alpha was way more fun than post launch. In alpha, we could harvest any block with about 1-5 hits, depending on the type of tool you used. Post launch, mine anything with a stone hammer that is on a T3 planet or higher… 8 hits. I was mining stone/soil/gravel/ice on any planet at alpha with stone hammer for less hits. I build a lot so, this was my experience. I am not even talking about hunting yet; actually I like the hunting in post launch. But, because I build more often, I find that looking for blocks with a suitable color palette and mining them after was a real chore.
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