You said it a lot more eloquently than I did in my response. I am not saying to do a marketing effort to gain 50k players, I am saying make SOME effort to get the game in front of those people that like these types of games. I sadly never heard of Boundless or what it was until 6 months ago… and I wish I had. I know there are many others out there like me.
The NPE definitely needs to be addressed. I for one was very frustrated at one point and when I asked for help and didn’t get any response in chat it was a real turnoff. Little did I know there was a horrendous lag in the chat. I will say that several other games have similar NPE though. I remember MC having something similar with little more than an advancements screen, granted it is a bit more basic as far as a learning curve goes.
Key giveaways would be ok but who knows I always felt for every person you touch they at least have one friend that might be interested too so the game could gain people in smaller numbers…anything more than what has been done in the past though sure would be nice.
So. After a long break I finally had a week in game, but I did it with a difference. I created a new character to see the game from the perspective of what we all want to see - new players. I also specifically avoided arie as I know it inside out and how busy it was etc. I also avoided the obvious eresho and finata that had seen huge decline since I first played.
The new (to me anyway) tutorial is good and it was much easier to figure stuff out, but my goodness the worlds are utterly baron, compared to what I found last time I helped my son create a character 12mth ago. There aren’t people running around or little builds like I remember and honestly this is the most worrying thing. No or few new people who in turn feel the game is empty is a bad bad omen.
A sale, promotion or drive is needed if the game is going to push on. I don’t think it will kill the game now as the players left are the diehards but it certainly won’t grow.
I see many new people actually, just not all in one place. It would be nice to get the perspective of someone who just started. I know my experience 7 months ago was pretty dim. I did see a few builds but very seldom did I see another player. I had joined with a friend of mine and we have played many games together on our own servers and even some games that had almost no players… but we both got lucky when we ran into @Soju-VB and he created a portal to his Black and Blue farms which also connected to TNT and various other places and I don’t know how many people were ever on Angel I but it sure felt pretty barren ever since I have been there.
The tutorial is probably well enough for anyone that is used to the genre, but I do know my 11 yr old had a few questions but overall he figured it all out … I did guide him in an effort to fast track him some. He also had a friend join recently and he picked it up pretty quick …so who knows… NPE could be better…
I think we need a proof of scaling for this game, before going into any advertising!
I would like to see a demo where it can hold 1000-5000 concurrent players.
At 5000 players and 80 slots per world, you need 62 planets, at 50k players you need 620 planets. Can the game handle this without lag, connection issues etc?
At 50k players you need a support team, answering tickets etc. You may need online admins etc.
Later edit: this game also needs a monthly subscription. You cannot have 50k players paying only once and keeping the servers alive with a one time payment only…
I feel like we are in a position of not knowing how exactly Boundless will turn out. Although, some people do have a solid projection of what Boundless will likely happen for whatever that may be.
The servers are still running as usual. Boundless is in a current state of “stagnant.” content/updates.
Many things were promised from the demo presentation and some other previous post updates that were mentioned.
It is very lackluster on other aspects of the game. At the same time, there are other things you can do here and there in Boundless. However, there comes to a point where the player base become disinterested (in game content wise)
The devs may have temporarily failed to deliver those promises as presented since the beginning until they decide to change all that once they step in the future to make a massive update (if that were to happen)
It becomes a “now what” situation.
Some players have left
Some players have came back
and some are new players into Boundless
Boundless still has lots of potential.
The dev team of Boundless are currently working on another project for whatever reason that may be, but are still maintaining the core part of running the servers.
I am not saying it should remain that way, its just that is what it is currently happening right now.
You can sum this up with one word…boredom. Just like any game that you put a lot of hours into. Let me give a few examples, I tried to play Minecraft, Creativerse and 7 Days to Die over the past few weeks so that I wouldn’t get burnt out too fast with Boundless. As soon as I started playing them it soon became apparent that the games (even though they have had tons of updates) were still the games I remember them to be. They are all great games, but after doing all I could in them MANY time over in the past I found it hard to have my heart in the game and just stopped playing after 30 minutes in.
I REALLY tried to get into them…but the point is even with all the updates they had in the games they were still the same games I played before. Technically all of these games are sandboxes and you really have to add your own content and while I wanted to play them Boundless is just more appealing to me. Boundless isn’t lackluster any more than any other great sandbox game out there… people just get bored. Sandbox games are VERY reliant on us as players to come up with our own ideas to make the game fun, it’s a benefit of sandboxes and also a curse at times.
Minecraft is the same way, you can progress, you can kill the ender dragon… but the game doesn’t end there unless you let it. Sure you can only build so much or explore so much … but in the end it’s us as gamers that determine where the end of a sandbox game is and the cool thing is that end is not the same for all of us, and for some there is no end.
It’s all about goals, I have goals in Boundless, from trying to revive DK Mall, to rebuilding my color storage and making it a community color storage, a larger base, building a new concrete factory so that I can keep up with demand, to building a second base on Trior with @Shadykatt34 (I promised!)… to creating a goo farm, to creating a larger kindling farm to also keep up with demand, to build a guild base, to maybe even creating a hub or a new mall one day…
Now I may get bored before I complete all those goals, but they keep me busy and interested in the game right now and something I think about when I am not playing the game. I also know not everyone can be like this and aren’t, some don’t want to build so their boredom may creep up on them sooner than myself… but to each their own.
Point is, the game isn’t lackluster, and if you feel it is, move on to something else… an update or three aren’t going to make you any less bored…
Great post. Sitting here thinking on the things that do give Boundless an edge for me over some of the other games you mentioned on the addictiveness front - now, I do jump around on games a lot which probably helps, but I don’t really find myself getting bored with Boundless. Mix of factors here I think-
Variation of things to do, chillout mining or roadrunner hunting, to working on building. Economy plays in a lot here. Keeping things going, participating, sets more firm goals in some ways, like earning Oort for portals. And those chillout activities I mentioned give me a zen like zone that I get in puzzle games like Tetris, for some reason I don’t get that with the collection activities as much in other games, like I’ll dig endless tunnels in Minecraft, and I am playing that more lately with an eye to building some, but it isn’t the same.
Being an MMO helps, being able to do things to contribute to the community can be a big hook, definitely is for me. And being able to do things that many people might be able to see in the game.
Goals are very important… and some of the best memories in the game are the times I’ve gotten together with others (often by chance) and had laughs. Combining the two, I’ve tried to think of community-created events, maybe host something myself in the future, that would: have a low barrier to entry (little skill) but require some grinding, and get people together for some pure silliness. Stuff like, with X plot limit and Y time on this area of Z, build (Eyesore Prestige Tower, Ugly Base, Shrine to the Devs in Hopes of a Color Changing Exo, ect.).
the game is great but it just hasn’t worked. That happens
Think if you could time-travel and go back to 2016 and tell devs that in the last half of 2021 they would have a under 300 people on the servers at any given time that they would continue development? I really doubt it.
How much money are devs supposed to throw in this blackhole?
I don’t see all these new people either. In fact I spent the last week traveling between most every planet and never saw one with more than 11 people on it. And most had 0-2. It is concerning.
