I’ve noticed a lot of hostility on these forums lately and wanted to give my thoughts as someone who still plays the game occasionally. If you think this might be a trigger for you, or you can’t be bothered to read a wall of text, I’d suggest ignoring this thread and doing something that makes you happy instead. I’m not here to generate more hostility.
I’ve been playing Boundless for a long time now. I’ve clocked around 1500 hours so far, and this is by far the most played game in a Steam library that numbers as many titles as I have hours in Boundless. I was obsessed with the game for a long time and it got me through some really rough patches in my life. Personal circumstances forced me to limit my playtime recently, but my enjoyment had been waning in recent months anyway due to having seen and done most of what the game currently offers. I still love the game and always will though.
I have so many fond memories of Boundless over the years. I still remember being the newbie who was proud of the little hut I’d built on a starter planet and being confused about how I was supposed to build a portal to visit another world. I had no idea portal hubs, malls or cities were even a thing, and the joy and amazment I felt the first time I discovered these things is still fresh in my mind. To find a city bustling with players, most of whom stopped to give me a friendly wave on my way past, was at once both amazing and humbling to me given what little I’d achieved at that point.
I made both friends and frenemies over the years, and eventually introduced my wife to the game. I would spend hours exploring settlements on far flung worlds and wandering around shops in giant malls looking for the best prices. Eventually I built my own mall, although I had limited success.
As the game changed over time, certain updates introduced things that both enriched the experience for me and took away some of the things that I felt were part of the magic. I still played constantly though and tried to see the positives in the changes when I could.
I joined the forums quite late into my time with the game, having been more visible in the Discord servers up until that point. I rarely posted here though, as there was always a certain element that seemed hostile toward whatever people posted, whether those posts were positive or negative. I can still feel the sting of being told the game didn’t need another mall or portal hub after proudly uploading screenshots of the result of months of work.
Recently however I’ve seen this toxicity reaching new heights with the advent of “leaving posts” and an increase in posts critical of the way development is progressing on the game. This hostility comes from both sides though, those who are dissatisfied with the current state of things and those who continue to play and enjoy the game.
I think it’s difficult for relatively new players to understand the significance of some of these posts, as if you’ve only recently started playing you’re still very much in the fun and exiting part of the experience. You probably don’t know who most of the people posting leaving posts are and why you should care that they’re going. You’re probably angry that they’re criticising a game that you love so much and feel that you need to jump to its defence. But many of these players are the very people who made the game what it is today and in some cases their leaving signals a big shift in the direction of the shared universe.
There are also those who have become disillusioned with the game who feel they need to “warn” others away from investing their time and money. Those people feel cheated or let down by the developers and are actually lashing out because they love the game. They want it to go back to the way it was in its heyday and are going about it in the wrong way.
Something called cognitive bias plays a huge part in all these interactions. When you’ve invested significant time or money in something, and you like that thing, you’re naturally inclined to only see the positives and dismiss the negatives as ill-informed. Similarly, if you’ve been burned by something you’ve invested in you have a tendency to focus on the negatives. Just look at reviews on Steam, Amazon, Yelp or any other similar website for good examples of this. The other thing to note is that cognitive bias isn’t a constant, it changes over time. You may love a product and sing its praises one day, but over time you may shift to the other side and only see problems.
I think we could all do with taking a step back occasionally and try to see things objectively. If there’s a post you strongly disagree with, first consider why the opinion you dislike was formed in the first place. Try to accept both negative and positive opinions, regardless of whether they correlate with your own. Above all, be nice to each other. We’re only here because we have a shared interest and it’s natural for some people to have a differing view.
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because sometimes there are things that suck but you can’t do anything about them and you gotta mourn it and move on.