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Why is it so hard to discuss hypothetical ideas without spiraling into people throwing mud at each other?
Whatâs so bad with asking the question: Would Boundless be a better game after a wipe?
Maybe yes? Maybe no? Maybe itâs an obvious hard yes? Maybe itâs an obvious hard no? How do we know without asking the question? If the answer is so obvious - explain why.
But we must be able to ask questions without people getting twisted out of shape. Without exploring ideas I donât see how we can make any significant progress.
Every day I think about what changes to Boundless will help it grow. Help it be a better game. Help it be the best game it can possibly be. Exploring ideas from every direction is really helpful. Should we reboot the forge - yes, no? Should we reboot the skill system - yes, no? Should we reboot the crafting system - yes, no? Should we reboot the tutorial - yes, no? Should we reboot combat - yes, no? Should we add NPCs - yes, no? Should we remove settlements and footfall - yes, no? Should we reduce or increase the spawn rate of exoworlds - yes, no? Should we reboot blah - yes, no? Etc. Etc.
Everything starts with a thought experiment.
Let us discuss the idea - and leave our baggage at the door.
Weâre not planning to wipe the universe.
But Iâm open to any idea where there is evidence and an argument for doing something.
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The beacon system should circumvent the need to perform a wipe - ever. I think the issues are a result of an unbalanced decay system.
Get rid of the benefit in gleam club to keep everything plotted indefinitely. This is preventing natural decay of unused plots by inactive players. The duration of the advanced fuels will need updated, or compact beacon fuels could be added to bridge the gap during long breaks. Drastically increase the decay duration of land that was plotted, taking months for builds to fully revert to natural land. Give it a two week period that others cannot claim or Regen the area, but let anyone break blocks and access the storage containers. This gives people to ability to scavenge while allowing returning players to replot without losing complete progress/territory.
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Gleam club is the reason I play the game. Without gleam club I would have limited myself to a single beacon and would be done with the game for a long time. I love the fact that, for a rather small fee, I can preserve everything I have for years. If I donât feel like playing for half a year, I also wonât like to login every few something to refuel a few hundred beacons⌠Gleam club has me covered.
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I stop being polite as soon as others do.
I did not call anyone dumb or say they had no empathy nor use Russian disinformation memes.
I also do not tolerate people who dismiss the complaints of those who have left the game or are unable to enjoy it right now.
The goal is to make a game everyone can enjoy. Not just those who remain.
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and this should be a discussion we have, is this a healthy model for Boundless? Itâs at odds with everything about this game that revolves around decay of buildings/land and function loss of tools. Every aspect of Boundless promotes the usage of something and the loss of something else. Except for Gleam Club⌠it preserves everything which is nice and convenient sure, but it seems at odds with the nature of the game itself.
But if we discuss getting rid of gleam club, how much more pressure does that put on people to play? People that like to build lots of things with beacons everywhere would have to work much more to manage and maintain beacon fuels. An error on their part would mean the loss of something for them and potentially the gain of a lot for someone who came across it.
My personal opinion is Gleam Club enables laziness on the part of beacon owners because an account with many plots can be placed everywhere, be it amongst alts or mains, and they dont have to do the due diligence of maintaining those builds because just buying a lot of gleam club time takes out that effort/work that maybe should be there.
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Unless the updated fuels go for a year or more you pretty much shut down my ability to play. Everytime I get deployed I would lose everything. Gleam club is my way to bypass this.
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My two cents â absolutely not. Iâd be incredibly infuriated if all the hard work, memories, and progress our guild has worked up in the last five months was wiped.
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Fair enough
It would be empty and I do think the long term affect on players is that they will invest less time and effort in the game as anything they do is subject to a future wipe. If it is done once even for a good reason it can be done again for what might seem to be a good reason. I am not sure there is a way to preserve enough of the effort players have made in the game if it is truly a wipe like we had moving from EA to release. Personally I am not sure what it would take for me to be ok with a wipe and be willing to return to the game. Partially because even if I was happy with what was done for current players, if other players in my guild were not happy with it then one big reason I still play would be missing.
I would say yes. I think if there is an effort to look at simplifying system then this is the most complicated system in the game. If it requires external guides to use then it is to complicated in my opinion.
Yes if this is a Sandbox MMO then why are their skills that cannot be held in the same skill set and why canât a single skill set eventually allow a player to do whatever they choose. No one says you have to do everything but instead of forcing players to switch skill sets or use alts, just recreate the skill system and let them do what they want in the first place. After all this is not pushed as an RPG where you are a crafter or a bard or sorcerer. It is a sandbox so let us play in the sand the way we want.
I think under the right circumstances NPGâs could be interesting. Could they offer tasks to complete for coin? Could they act as agents for locating items for sale? Could they be used as dungeon masters if we get dungeons?
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Will there be a Copy and paste of our cityâs
We do not need a WIPE - never.
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Honestly, I think the debate has been fairly tamed. I donât even know which messages were flagged. Was it @FireAngelDth 's politic meme?
Someone asked once again the same question.
There was a resounding âOH HECK NO!â.
So, personally, I quickly moved on to âok, so what would make a forced wipe acceptable, then?â
And several of us came to the following conclusion âif the devs add a blueprint feature and make the forced wipe required for a huuuuge update, then, yes, maybeâ.
Honestly, no, Gleam Club isnât a good thing.
But since itâs here, Iâm using it, and if Wonderstruck removes it, I want to be reimbursed for all the remaining time.
Would they do that? Ha ha, I donât think so.
But Iâve already said that I find it scummy from the devs to say âyeah, Boundless isnât an MMO with a subscriptionâ when itâs actually a game with features which will make you want to buy into something that is almost like a subscription.
I believe that Boundless would get a huuuge breath of fresh air if it goes Free To Play and starts putting out more cosmetic stuff on the store (like outfits, body-paints, etc).
Agree on both accounts.
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I dont think we need a wipe. I think the remedy is a stronger player economy/trade base that supports coin flow. Meaning reasons for trade. In order to do this we need a deeper spider web of skills and things to do in the game, so there is too much for anyone person to do in an efficient manner. The only way for the ingame economy to support the player base we need more things to do so people can specialize and find niche markets.
Right now there is no specializations in actuality. All stores are generally the same. And a lot of stores are also empty, which is frustrating because you search 10 portals and only 2 have loaded shop stands.
We need to decrease the âemptinessâ in the game if we want the community to grow and new worlds to spawn.
For example to deepen specialties:
Animal based jobs:
Tanners-skin animals and convert into leather, skin drops and road runner feathers, higher skill increases number of drops and quality, which = stronger forging items
Hunters-harvest meat and blood, higher skill = higher quality meat = buff from food made with it
Trophy hunter- hunt for the thrill only, gathers trophies specifically
Organ harvester-- hunt for sacs and eyes
This can be applied to all facets of the game, but without that diversity there is no real supply and demand, other than time induced. Which limits what the economy could be.
Also, another facet is we need more to do. Farming is an example and amazing.
But other ideas that could be made:
Herding/breeding new species
Astronomy: enough player collaborate scanning the sky with a new special tool, and after so much data collected a new permanent world is spawned.
Aquaculturist: farming and harvesting of underwater crops which would also need water breathing potions or skill to under take.
Fisherman: introduce underwater creatures that you can fish for or harvest on sea bed.
We can have so many things introduced into this game. And we need more in order to correctly balance what is in the game.
The reason why balance and tweaks dont work right now is because there is no real economy, which this is supposed to be an mmo we are supposed to interact, but without specializations that will never be.
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I am truly opposed to a wipe, as i just see it putting players back a few (or a lot) of steps. I have a bigger build/more coin or what not due to time i spend every day & time spent in the past.
Wiping will just mean i have to do it again, but eventually i would exceed those who play less, but be lower than those who dont. Bit like rl and capitilism.
HoweverâŚARK implemented a solution to this very dilema- with issues & at the end of EA. They had legacy servers and new player only servers. Some form of this could work perhaps. It would need some major tweaks to avoid segregation and dead worlds, but maybe just maybe an idea
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Iâd definitely be a fan of a second âuniverseâ setup that is known that wipes could happen and etc as itâs more a proving process and as such will adapt and change and like you say a legacy world keeping everything current intact for those who donât ever want to experience an extreme change. Make sure there is a clear distinction on what each universe it set up for and allow newer players to decide to play on legacy servers or newer âflexâ servers that might have a bit more change as designs get long term testing and can be reworked/removed because people are playing that universe with that understanding.
Not sure how much that would cost as far as infrastructure goes though. My biggest complaint with Boundless is the exoâs are too rare, and overall content is too limited for those who do not build. Farming was a fantastic addition and exoâs are getting a bit better with the the spawns but I think there could be more spawns going on at any one time. Those are really my only two gripes. Anything else doesnât really impact me personally in game so ultimately I donât care what happens in those areas.
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If there was a wipe I would definitely quit for good. I like this game a lot but I donât like it enough to tolerate the disrespect that I think that it would show to itâs players that have put time and effort into their builds. That was sort of done with the lighting changes to some players, including a friend of mine. Iâm hoping that future adjustments will bring him and others in a similar situation back. Builds are not just a place to get footfall. They are digital homes, bases, communities, resource spots, etc. I donât believe Gleam Club is an unreasonable price to support a game that I like. Yeah I have issues with the new lighting system but like the game enough to adapt my gameplay for it. A wipe of the game would drive me away permanently. Next week I will have a second video game to obsess on. I will still play Boundless enough to feed my portals and keep my shop stocked up. Iâll continue building my settlement. I have no desire to start over.
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One might look at how Path of Exile does things. They have a perpetual Standard league with no wipes for those who like that. Every 3 months they have a voluntary expansion with new content (itâs in some ways a test of the new content) and everyone who wants starts fresh and at the end of the three months the characters and loot and new content (if it worked and people liked it) get merged into Standard league. Clearly a building game would have challenges with a merge (plots, builds, etc) and these would have to be accounted for.
Other thoughts include opening up more planets and having some kind of âhardcoreâ mode where characters have one life and their beacons die with them (new server of course). A wipe seems in my opinion to be not ideal for reasons covered by others already. Going to multiple game modes/servers as mentioned in my first paragraph may only be workable if the player base has a certain critical mass so that all games modes can be sustained at the same time. Adding more game modes might increase active players if it attracts those who wonât play as things are now.
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NoMansSky did this as well. Bases were uploaded to a backup. After a major update you could just find a new location you liked and was large enough to hold you base and restore the build. It was a great feature.
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