Miner… I am mostly a solo player and in my experience it IS Solo Friendly… Just because you do not think it is makes zero difference to me… and if I can do it then most anyone can, Unless you are saying something negative about the other players or something… Hey maybe you are calling them Obtuse! Not very nice of you though if that is the case.
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Do you not see the hypocrisy in this?
@anon42939288 says in a lot of peoples’ experience the game is not solo friendly.
You post to say he’s wrong.
Then you revise your statement to say “in my experience” he is wrong.
But from the very beginning of this thread, we were talking about @anon42939288 ‘s and others’ experience. You posted to say he was wrong, then when I denied your feelings, you said that what I did was wrong because I denied your personal opinion/feelings, but the first thing you did WAS deny HIS feelings.
What’s even more disingenuous is that you have a massive plot boost that 99.999% of the other people who have tried this game won’t ever get, so to compare your solo experience with theirs is inherently flawed.
This is extremely common on the forums. It’s so common, @anon42939288 even mentioned it in the first section of his post,
The frustrating part of this, is that the vast majority of Steam reviews list grind as one of the main reasons they quit.
Odds are, many of them played solo, because as we know, if you play in a group, or ask for help on the forums, someone usually just hands you a 3x3 hammer and you bypass much of the grind.
Miner, I posted MY experience… which is MY opinion… I was adding to the conversation…
You on the other hand are only interested in apparently stirring up “Drama”… I suggest you pick another person to “play with”
Why not say, “The grind doesn’t bother me, but it clearly bothers you, what changes would you make?”
The forums are an echo chamber of people saying, “Welp, it doesn’t bother me, sorry.” All that does is push people away. There’s almost never anyone willing to make concessions to grow the game.
Every game MMO I’ve played has felt immensely grindy to me for solo play in comparison to actually playing with others. It may just be the games I’ve played, but in my experience MMOs are balanced for the multiplayer experience, not for solo players. You may be able to level up on your own, but the end-game content is usually meant to be either cooperative or competitive. And unless you’ve been playing for a very long time, it will always take you longer to progress solo than embracing the multiplayer aspect of the massively multiplayer genre.
That being said, there currently isn’t a single player game that offers exactly what Boundless does. You could go play Minecraft, but let’s be honest, Boundless is just more aesthetically pleasing. So I get being frustrated if you genuinely just want a solo player game like Boundless and your only option is an MMO.
I’m pretty happy with how Boundless is currently balanced, but it were to change then I think this would absolutely be the right way to do it. I think the skill choices would feel more meaningful, there would be a reason to make more characters even after you’ve maxed five skill pages, and solo players would be able to just pick their focus and stick to it.
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Why does it matter to you what other people say? If I share my opinion THATS IT… I do not see the reason you feel the need to “interpret” what people say, suggest ReWrites, or assume you know what people are thinking.
Seriously know your boundaries…
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I can definitely agree with this.
And doing multiplayer content doesn’t mean it’s good content anyway.
Already said on the Oortstone thread that I hate hunts.
I think they’re ok when you do them with friends (≠ contacts) while using Discord to talk and laugh.
I find them terrible when you’re with people you don’t know, without any voice discussion.
I remember some very fun hunts before the platform craze with the guild P.U.R.E, where we were always having a jolly good time with one of their leader (forgot his name), joking around on Discord about always going West because it was the best direction. < sigh > Good times. I don’t even know why they disbanded. Maybe moved to a different game?
Anyway, if their leader wasn’t so chill and fun on Discord, it would’ve been plain terrible.
It’s like comparing LFR raiding (easy mode) to Normal raiding in WoW. The main difference is that you will likely do the Normal (and above difficulties) with friends or guild mates with vocal support. The LFR crowd will be random people that you will likely never see again, that you won’t even care for. They could be AI driven for all you know. Some actually are using bots, so it’s pretty true.
Having people feel pity for you doesn’t sound like a good answer to the grind.
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I think one important difference is that boundless is listed as a mmo sandbox. As a sandbox game players should be able to do what they want. As an mmo there are other players in the universe that you can interact with or not. Boundless is not advertised as an rpg so it has no predefined roles nor should it force players to have a role.
As to player alone or with others. I think it can be hard for the solo player to pick up certain aspects of the game. Maybe this should be better handled by the tutorials or knowledge base. If you play with others you can learn from them versus figuring it out on your own. Pick the challenge that fits your personal play style. I think that is one of the nice things about boundless, there are a lot of different ways to play the game so that each player can play the way they want. What I do not like are suggestions that would force players to adapt to a particular style of play. I think the more options the better.
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I prefer to be Acute, Around 60°, Because Lead II
I consider it to be solo friendly, there is little to nothing that I have encountered that makes it feel solo unfriendly for anyone willing to be flexible.
I am pretty sure the debates and what have you that happen on the forums have little to do with rather or not the game is popular, and much more to do with the NPE, the steam reviews containing false information, the fact the game still feels incomplete at this time, The current price of the game, and the lack of a very strong external motivator, like how the YoggsCast helped put minecraft on the map.
Group play is often going to have an upper hand over a solo player, that is simply to be expected in my book.
I believe someone did a live stream at some point more or less proving that the grind isn’t all that bad, Byre the wizard or someone of that name.
I bought a brand new player to the game quite recently, and as far as I can tell with that one, the problem is not so much the grind but the fact I had to tell him how stuff worked and such because the NPE is lacking and not good enough to really get someone going with out sinking if they can not, will not, or do not find it fun to figure things out.
The other three players that I brought to the game about 7 months ago they quit due to lack of content, They also needed a little extra help of me telling them what some things did to get them going to the right places.
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Open World Sandbox Survival RPG all tell me it might be great for both; I like to home near folks but explore out there a lot until my skill goes up and awkwardness w/game control goes down then co-op action is less frustruating and expeditions & such I couldn’t do alone get exciting. Per my like 3 MMO experiences…
I run into ppl with pre-packaged sounding I hear the game’s dead not really many ppl around (granted it was a rare moment I don’t see a half dozen from my house, maybe everybody’s weekend they were working for started or something?). Or do people just talk like this normally now? It happens all over the place and should be deadpan satire but it isn’t.
Too early… How have you decided when this point is? If there were enough people who disagreed with your assessment, does that make their opinion hold greater relevance than yours?
What do you mean by that? Checking out videos, the forum and out-of-game information? Should that truly be a requirement to enjoy the game?
Maybe that’s how you interpret some of these complaints, but how can you be so sure that that’s not just coloured by your apparent view that the game is fine, and so anyone asking for something to be easier reflects negatively upon them?
Unrealistic as defined by whom?
Is that a bad thing, or just a different way of playing? Surely the way another player would like to spend their leisure time is neither more nor less ‘right’ than yours? Perhaps instead of treating it as a negative, we should be looking at what that means for the way that different people want to enjoy Boundless?
I’m not suggesting that Boundless should become creative mode, but it does again raise the point that maybe we just have to two very different player-bases for which there is no acceptable middle-ground, and that this is just another reason to work towards private servers?
Isn’t your post exactly what the OP is frustrated by? People saying that because they are happy with the way things are that other people must be wrong, but are only able to justify it with their opinions (in the OP’s case, the opinion about what being an MMO should entail)?
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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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