I’m not advocating for or against anything; but as far as I know:
- wipe is a “no”.
- more devs/content/marketing is a “no” until post BG3 at best.
So if there are different ideas, those would be better to focus on.
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Yeah, as has been said before, we cannot solve the game’s problems. We can only continue to show interest in hope of signalling everyone involved that the game is worth saving…
Personally, I choose to believe that the fact this non profitable game is still up and running, is a sign of dedication to a dream and not a sad attempt at milking the last bit of money from the remaining player base.
I mean, how do you even go about deciding which world gets deleted, then. o___o
A LOT of players would be shafted one way or another.
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The issue is finding a fair way to lower the cost to run the universe. Since SE is not making any money on the game and is in fact loosing money every month covering the cost to run the game then at some point they could say enough is enough and quit paying to run the game. Since SE only gets money to run the servers from Steam players, this limits the source of funding to run the game even more. So there are two options. The first is lower the cost to run the universe and the second is to find more money to pay for the game.
As far as lowering the costs, you can move the universe to cheaper servers, lower the number of players allowed on a planet simultaneously and/or reduce the number of planets. All of this does require developer effort and there may or may not be resources to do any of these.
The second option is to find additional income sources. Per Phil the cost to run the game is in the low thousands, if there are 500 steam players then they would need a way to generate maybe $6 per player monthly to add an additional $3000 USD of funding. Hopefully the amount needed is less, but there is an assumption about the number of steam players active and willing to spend more money every month. Also any money generated through steam does mean steam gets a cut. I have seen posts that discuss Exo rentals and Gleam Club Plus as possible ways to increase cash flow. This seems to generate a lot of comments on making Boundless P2W but on the opposite side the game can be more P2W (if you can even define how you win Boundless) or possibly not exist at all. Which is worse?
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The question then becomes, which would be more helpful for the game, overall:
-
More rental planets & playstation sales that go to WS (development?).
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More Gleamclub & Steam sales that go to SE (to help them “re-coup” their investment, which I’m guessing was around $1-2m). They want around $3k/mo to sustain the current servers, $75,000/mo + in steam sales before they’ll put anymore time/$ into Boundless. If it can’t hit $3k/mo, how would it reach $75k/mo?
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That is an awesome breakdown of the issue. No complaints there. However, if we need dev interaction or work to go with those ideas, it’s best to assume none of them are going to happen. My point is that if we’re looking for something we as players can do to help, we can only do what we have the power to do without the help of the devs. We’ve already been told we’re not getting more dev hours; and we’ve already been told the universe (in part or whole) is staying.
As far as I can think, we are capable of:
- building something significant
- doing player-driven advertising/streaming, which we do some of already
- modding/hosting private universes
Any other ideas for action we can take that doesn’t call on the busy devs?
edit: best I’ve seen so far is that $100 special sovereigns idea, but that could also take dev time
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Unless something truly remarkable happens, I do not see SE recouping their investment. But it seems (or it might be my personal wishful thinking) that if the game at least paid for its running costs then they would let it continue.
edit: I am hoping that if the game can last long enough, that the individuals still working on Boundless might have the chance to finish some of the planned development and maybe put the game in a position to not be dependent on the MMO universe for its survival.
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Phil did seem to say that they would if so -
That is why I’ve been basically desperate throwing out ideas and trying to put them under the devs’ noses, like in that poll thread I made. If we have a low player base (he said costs scale with number of players) but enough of those buying premium stuff, I really think we can keep it going at least.
I wasn’t going to post in this thread again, but… I’m losing hope on that, bigtime. 
I also just hope they are able to get the update out so that those who want to play privately or on private servers can.
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So there are 50 planets in the universe. If the cost to run the universe is $3000 USD then the cost per planet is about $60 per month. We do know from Sovereigns that the cost is a combination of size and how many players can be on the planet simultaneously so the $60 per month could be in the ballpark.
Could they find players willing to sponsor a specific planet? It is not a small amount of money but are there enough players with the means and willingness to do this? As a perk, could the player be given Gleam Club and maybe some cubits every month?
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Part of me also thinks “well then shut down the game once and for all and move on to something else, but THIS TIME, make sure to run it better, with a way to implement player-made content, actual marketing, maybe more micro-transactions”.
It’s the same as the other thread. The players are NOT going to fix the game for Wonderstruck, not unless Wonderstruck shows actual signs of life first. This also means players are not going to find a solution for the devs.
Now if SE maintains Boundless until Baldur’s Gate 3 goes out, maybe something can happen? But until then, I’m pretty sure it’s a waste of time.
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WOOOOOO KAS WALL-O-TEXT
I wouldn’t go as far as a restart wipe BUT like I’ve said before simply switch a few of the Homeworlds to sovereigns that the Community would be able to fuel would be the middle ground on that. Since it’s a cost that SE now doesn’t have to worry about WS can either split the income with SE or re invest it in boundless. The cost of the world only gets picked up IF no one fuels it. If switching 10 worlds. would cut costs significantly, so that’s the number you shoot for.
You see I don’t think they need to wait until a relaunch to include micro transactions. I totally see a NMS situation happening here. Or while I don’t agree 100% with it, but how Bungie does with Destiny ensure funding for development by content gating DLC. @bucfanpaka correct me if I’m wrong, but CV has optional cosmetics or quick build bundles that you shell out for which could be a viable option here as well.
Before I get a mob on my tail, P2W is not really applicable to boundless. In this case it’s more of pay to save time. I’d gladly pay for the byproduct of stuff, kindling, goo, orbs etc if it means (A) I get to build more (B) it saves me time harvesting (C.) I don’t have to replant my farm, boy did that one grow farther than my attention span😭
I still strongly believe that if the community is armed with the tools/documentation/asset guidelines, we would be able to create the assets for the devs to tweak and implement. Our love for the game would 10,000% ITS OVER 9000!!! motivate the artist of the player base to chip in. Also, who wouldn’t want their work published into a game they play, super cool😎 if you ask me. How unique would that be that the co-creators of the updates is your player base?
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Again, the ball in his Wonderstruck’s hands, not ours.
They’re smart enough to know without us telling them what could save the game (micro-transactions, marketing, etc), I’m sure of it. At the very least, they’ve heard us suggest stuff about it for years, now.
Discussing how ‘we could help’ or what they should do is utterly pointless.
They already have a plan in motion, and we might no fully know what it is, yet.
Could be to ride on Square Enix’s back for as long as they can and then kill the game.
But my most hopeful guess is that it involves working for Larian on Baldur’s Gate 3 to make money so they can expand and revitalize their team. I doubt the money made with Sovereign worlds is enough to fund the future of Boundless, in comparison.
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The point is, this doesn’t seem likely to satisfy SE. The amount of $ they need to recoup and the monthly quota they expect is insurmountable. Whatever is planned or going to happen, will happen, without our input. Good or bad. It is what it is.
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I suggested before that if it was done, to have a vote on which planets go and which ones stay. For the Devs to mark it “Important, please vote” or something like that.
To have player input on the decision.
Personally, I’m not in favor of a wipe. I was just saying that if the number of planets were trimmed down by about half, the cost of running the game would be cheaper and SE would be able to see money repaid on their investment.
And if it’s a choice between cutting them in half vs. total shutdown, I’ll take the trimming any day.
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Wait wait, it is 3000 eur to maintain 50 public planets?
That’s like 60 eur / planet / month?
That must mean that this game is a memory hog! I guess that having everything pre-generated has its costs… Minecraft generates everything at run-time (but still needs RAM). However a server with 300 players can be hosted for way less than 60 a month!
Is is perhaps feasible to buy a 64 core Ryzen server and host it in James’ basement?
Regards,
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i think he was using a fake number to prove a point, pretty sure it cost more than 3k a month for 50 planets of 80 players.
This means that a 1 USD / month subscription is needed… with current player numbers, 5 or 10 USD.
Regards,
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yeah this is kinda vague thought what is considered low thousands ? Price could be between 1k to 999k and still be in the thousands.
For them it could be 10k or 100k being considered low thousands.
True. He did specify “mid to high 5 figures” for desired steam quota sales (= $50k-$100k/mo), so “low thousands” and “wouldn’t take much to reach that to sustain the current worlds” implies something less than $5k/mo. It’s still a bit ambiguous though 
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