I think a lot of people drop the game in this phase. Had a new player today ask where iron is. They had been digging for a while to not find any on T1 planet. Also what is centraforging (loot sticks), where to go to trade (knowledge tab buying/selling kinda hidden, I don’t expect to find it there), how to get to new planets, where the players are. It’s an unpleasant truth, but people kinda expect to find the basic metals early on because of Minecraft. Also recipes being hidden behind skillpoints and knowledge tab filtering by “Able to craft” by default (also realized you can change filter several days in) made me confused as to where do I go if i play solo, consulted the boundlesscrafting website during that period.
There is an objective ala “Go to a rugged world and mine iron!” but it’s kinda easy to miss if you are bombarded by ~ 20 objectives even if they are categorized. After a couple of tiers of objectives I kind of ignored and thought I will find this mystical “Rugged Metal World” by progressing other things. Didn’t think to research other peoples portals or to just make a warp augment and zoop up there using coins.
The fact we need hubs where we redirect new players to kinda speaks volumes.
Also a shout out to @Jiivita for his vids. Was a bit hard to find the videos I needed but at least they were there and got me started! Kinda brought me back to early Minecraft days where I would look at vids to get guidance.
I say let 'em see how great the game is right away
the early game is a bit rough if the player doesn’t have friends to show them awesome things.
and I don’t mean hard, I mean boring and underwhelming. the tutorial does explain everything if one pays attention, lets the player know what’s what, but not everyone is that patient. many come from minecraft, where they are used to certain things. the initial action and walk speed in Boundless can be infuriating for example, it would help to know right away that that can change drastically.
a tutorial village would be a solution. instead of a random place ( that can be, as it was in my case, the most boring area on the planet (I later mapped 50/50, it was in fact the most boring place))
instead of text objective there could be example builds and scripted events. just like the totem and augment in the sanctum.
if you watch any Ep.1 of any let’s play on youtube, the unifying factor is confusion instead of awe
Like @Apt said the tutorial explains them wel if payed enough attention. But in most cases impatients wins. That said i also think there are tutorial steps missing and that it needs a more “hands on” tutorial.
Think a good suggestion would be like a kind of quest steps. A ! Above the beacon/campfire that someone has to interact with to get the next quest/tutorial step.
It would also allow us to create quests (?) at a quest bord of sorts. To help along new (and old) players along the way. And adds a new activity to boundless in the process.
I think it’s justified to be impatient. When I picked this game up I wasn’t exactly ready to start reading a novel’s worth of text from an objective list. Game poses as a bright pastel voxel game. I don’t expect a mini-tycoon and dizzying portal hubs. I expected lighthearted building game (something akin to Starbound). Discovery is fun but not if you feel like game is bad because you don’t get to the fun discovery part. You start out as a handicapped Steve who can’t craft nor move and stay that way till (if you ‘discover’ this) a grapple. Even something as simple as spitters feel really unfair because they seem to strafe as soon as you lock on. I really don’t understand why the start has to feel like a hardmode Minecraft start. Is there anyone out there that enjoyed the beginning that felt it went at 50% of the pace you expect?
I was incredibly lucky to have found people that gave me directions. But that didn’t happen the first day. Or second day. It happened on third day when I was about to give up and decided to join a hunt.
So, I thought the tutorial was clunky and verbose, but it was very good at introducing the game and a bunch of different mechanics. But I like to read everything, and was only bothered by it a little.
My wife and I started at the same time. She doesn’t like the text quests and missed a lot of the popup tips that are absolutely critical to understanding the tutorial - she was busy looking at other things when it popped up, so she missed it entirely.
After spending a couple minutes catching her up on the information she missed, she loves the game, but the game itself didn’t teach her in the way she learns.
Similarly, moving forward in the game, I use Google as an extension of my gaming, so I knew to try to find PS hubs, which lead us to the malls and general exploration, plus info on where to find resources, knowledge of the knowledge tab, these forums, etc… Reading & Googling are absolutely critical to getting the most out of this game, and that is definitely a deterrent for most people, but I think it would be expensive to develop a better tutorial.
I’m not sure how to find new players and direct them to player made tutorials, either. Most brand new players are likely just wandering on semi-random worlds all alone.
Yeah, having a rollercoaster experience for a tutorial is on the other side of the spectrum of bad tutorials. I think parts of it area really well done, that’s why title says expand and not rework. There is a “Find a settlement” I think as one of the first objectives in the game. But I glossed over it because I though “First thing I do is start up a shelter and mine”. Just some gripes:
We get to use the warp augment at the very beginning. But by the time you have gotten to the part where you make metal and essence, I totally forgot it’s significance. I didn’t connect the dots that “Hey, you can do the same thing now that you did at the very start”. When I finally got essence and metal, it was day two. I was wondering around aimlessly the first day with atlas (which the game explains really well!).
Cost of warping. Is 100c a lot? I am getting coins levelling up but how do I get more? Seems I am forced to set up a basket of my own but the world feels like a ghost town so who is going to buy anyway? What would I even price things at? Honestly just make it free on home planet till level 20.
Knowledge tab. The whole knowledge tab is super significant in this game. My initial reaction was “Oh this is one of those index things for looking up recipes and stuff”. That’s it. I did not explore beyond that and maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention but if there was info it was in the objectives. There needs to be a hands-on segment for it. Atlas has one and you can do without that. You can’t do without Knowledge tab. Like “find a shop to buy items”, “search for an item”, “pick a shop”. Same for maybe selling or vice-versa. One for iron. “To craft an iron tool check if we can find iron on this planet”, “make a warp augment”, “warp to iron planet”, “mine iron”.
EDIT: Just to add to this. It would have been easier for me currently if there had been no tutorial at all. Just plonked down on a random chunk of unclaimed land. I would have known to go seek that info out from other resources. Feels a bit disconnected that some stuff is well explained but the super important can’t play without feature is not.
I think it’s not abundantly clear that there are 50 planets that you can travel to and some have different resources. I’ve seen newer players complaining that they didn’t find a certain resource, they didn’t see the busy areas, etc and they quit. A couple of them I talked to had no idea they could switch planets, that there were other planets, some planets are different, and so on.
And yes, I’ve also seen them say that they’ve been digging for awhile and never found certain metals/gems. The planets are so huge, it seems like your game is on one large infinite world/map - like MC. Maybe they should add some visuals to the marketing that show multiple planets and say “how many planets have you traveled to today”?
I genuinely had no idea there are 50 planets. Like I didn’t assume this was a planet-travelling game just from the warp tutorial alone. I also didn’t go out of my way to find any promo stuff this game had in the past. I got it off humble bundle and it looked very colorful so I gave it a try.
This would be excellent! Perhaps a possible use for the Sanctum Elder too? Like how some games give tips/facts in loading screens, perhaps the elder could drop a bit of info (in Oortian, with a caption in appropriate language) when you pass through -
“Did you know there are 50 planets you can travel to?”
“Purple icons on your compass are portals, yellow is the world capital.”
“Having trouble finding iron? Put a piece in your atlas, dig in the area lit up… you may have to go deeper if not seeing any!”
Ect., tons of little things like this that could be useful.
I will say I much enjoyed the early game. Starting out, there’s a lot on the horizon to look forward to. You start out so slow and weak so you feel every level gained. Even low level enemies are tough, so I would lure them into a pit by my small base for easy pickings.
Something Glitch did for new players was to have a guide system. Experienced players could sign up to be guides, and new players got guide sticks that could summon an available guide if they want help understanding something.
I think the stick started a private chat with the guide and that the guide got a free TP to the new player if they needed it. I believe the sticks were unlimited use up until a certain level, but I can’t recall.
Just gonna respond to this point and say 100c is very very cheap. The best ways to make money if you don’t want to set up your own shop is to do request baskets for other people. When I started this game I spent so much time just gathering and reselling spicy beans to people. You can get like 50c per spicy beans from some people and you can collect a few hundred in an hour easy. I’ll never forget the joy when I made my first 100k but now I make 100k a week probably pretty easy. Getting money in this game becomes far easier the further into it you go so 100c is totally okay. Later, to get to exos world’s, it often costs up to 3400c to warp to them.
But that’s hindsight. I didn’t know beans cost that much. I didn’t know where to sell them. I saw BUTT mentioned in an obscure forum post, that’s how I discovered that. Took a random kind person to point me to the knowledge tab containing prices. It was like the game finally made sense. Like here it is. You don’t have to wander aimlessly anymore.
We wander around mopping up new players and helping them with the gaps. I know it’s not ideal but its the way it is. This is why it’s important not to underestimate the community aspect of this game.
Also re: Sanctum Elder, I don’t like the way he bops around and i don’t know whether a smile would make him creepier or not…
