How I Really Feel!

General
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From another thread @tarranth has asked me:

So, since my video card is kaput I have some time to tell you how I really feel. While I assume that meant my feelings on James, I’ll expand it a bit to include Boundless. Many of you could probably care less to even read this, but for those who do thanks ahead of time.

I preface all this with I love Boundless, the Boundless community and all this is an opinion.

As far as James goes, I appreciate his dream and ambition to create a game and see it come to fruition. I have come to realize that it takes a lot more than just saying, “I’m going to make a video game”. It also takes the knowledge, the dedication, the long nights of research and the coming together of like-minded individuals to take an idea and make it a reality.

Having ran a number of various sized development teams I have come to realize that communicating with your clients is vital component of development. Creating a roadmap, posting the progress of that roadmap and at times changing the roadmap to incorporate some ideas/suggestions from your clients is a win-win especially if it fits within the scope of the project. Communicating the progress of that roadmap on some sort of basis (weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly) is pretty vital so that your clients are aware you are working to improve, expand and progress.

When it comes to James, I can’t defend him in any sort of manner except from my perspective of a project manager of teams in the past and having to communicate with my team and my shareholders and had I done what has happened with Boundless, I’m sure I would have been replaced with another project manager. All that said, a client’s perception of development is pretty crucial and I feel like over the past couple of years my perception of Boundless was… it was dead.

How I feel about Boundless is a tough one…

I enjoy Boundless and when a new game comes out, I put Boundless on the back burner and play that new game, but oddly I still come back to Boundless. I know exactly why too and it’s for a couple of reasons some good and a few bad.

Some of the good reasons I come back to it are:

  • It’s relaxing and not at all stressful and as a man with a family it allows me to AFK quickly if I need to (except during hunts)

  • I find mining relaxing

  • I just enjoy making a build and seeing that final result and it be something I’m proud of…usually.

  • The community is great, we may be small, but we make up for that in many ways. We may not all see eye-to-eye, but that’s typical in multi-player games.

Some of the bad:

  • I think Boundless feeds on that gambling addiction, like a lot of games do, but luckily most of it in Boundless doesn’t cost anything. Follow me here… I come back to Boundless a lot because I haven’t collected all the colors in large amounts and that is the case because I really can’t, not easily anyways. It’s no different than playing Pokemon Go (Gotta Collect Em All!) or many other games that attract you to them for the sake of collecting things. Call it addiction, FOMO, or whatever term fits. The color scarcity is that (Gotta Collect Em All) in Boundless for me. Be it making things (buildings, oortys, birthday cakes, candles, etc.) I need all the colors … ok ok, I don’t NEED them so much as just WANT them.

  • Identity confusion seems to be a thing. Is it an MMO, a creative sandbox, a survival game, an MMORPG? All of them, some of them? I personally don’t need this defined, but reading suggestions for the game you will see a good mix of ideas that come from all of these genres. If you change crafting times in a creative sandbox it’s fine, but when you throw in an economy from an MMO those timers matter.

  • Then there are sovereigns… which are in essence a loot box of sorts. I spend an amount of money to rent a planet in hopes I get a good planet. I have spent a large amount of money on sovereigns, and while I don’t mind supporting the game, they are as RNG as forging is (and I won’t even go into forging) but sovereigns are the loot boxes of Boundless in their own little way.

Anyways, I could go on and on, but in the end the game is a dream of some guy I barely know and while I may not like how he handled the development, the communication or his exit, but I do enjoy his creation.

I hope Monumental can understand what the game means to the few of us left, not take advantage and monetize those addicting things in Boundless, and carry on the dream Jame had and at the same time build upon it.

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Partly in response, but also my feelings on this subject.

Those seem to come from the same base place for you. I don’t really struggle with fomo, or gambling like mechanics, so i really don’t see or feel that way about them. I think i understand what you mean though, and perspective is personal.

The defense I can give James, is he wanted to make his vision. They made that vision (mostly), he didn’t sign-up to be a community manager, or be PR, it just comes with being indie and not having the funds to pay someone else to be.

I agree we shouldn’t have been kept in the dark, but when a game is given “mothball” status “officially” they can completely die for all but a dozen or two people who don’t care, and then the community that was built is so small that it would be like starting over…

I think if he had told us, less of us would have kept playing, been silent with sharing with friends, lots of new people have come since development started and idk if any of them would have if there was a banner or pinned message saying “development was on official Pause” or whatever.

I honestly wouldn’t even mind if James came back to work on the game. I don’t think he was a great communicator at times, but with the ownership being someone else now, maybe he wouldn’t need to be.

I’m still hoping we hear soon that the transition is complete, that jobs are being posted and filled, a team is getting familiar with the code, and 6-10months away from true active development again… But I’m enjoying the game again, and when i tire of the other games im bingeing at the moment, I’ll be in full force in boundless again. I have lots of plans, and desires in the game, and I’d like to be ready before the NPE is improved and the game gets some real advertising.

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I agree with the sovereign stuff.

As you said those are like big lootboxes.
Wich For me was the Last thing i wanted To happen.
It took every bit of collecting and rarity of materials.

I dont rly like that they added them… Sure i know why, but For me the real boundless experience has always been At permanent planets… I hardly ever have visited sovereigns.

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I agree on some points. But one thing I can say about sovereigns that is a good thing.
Meteor Hunting!
Hunting on the main worlds is a bit hit and miss. While your group is hunting, other people that randomly show up can throw the numbers off.
With Sovereigns, you can control the hunts. And people who frequently break the hunt rules can be temporarily or permanently banned from participating.

Also, at heart, this is a building game. You really want to limit what materials people can get?
Not every goes to the higher tier worlds. Not everyone hunts. You want to punish them for those choices?

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I keep playing and come and go for the same good reasons you put in your good list :slightly_smiling_face: It’s relaxing, I like building.

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I enjoy having sovereign planets. Being able to change colours for building purposes and being able to let people come and gather resources is good fun. Also, being able to see who visits your planets is interesting. I’d love to be able to monitor beacon visitors on the home worlds, too. Would be nice to know who your regular customers are in shops, etc.

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I play because there are so very few games where I can just potter around and build at my own pace, make as I want to, and even five years down there are still things to learn

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i like sov planets - but to explore them

im not going to but them, why? 2 reasons

  1. i cant afford them
    2,. they are just lootboxes - you dont know for what colors you are paying - you getting mostly perma world colors, already unlocked colors, chance for rare locked colors now is like 0,000001 %? last new sov color was few months ago and it was… what? GRASS what makes ONE, ONE Boundless player hsppy for life :wink:
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Sovereigns do have their uses.

  1. You rent a private world to build on and you could do it all alone or with some friends and not have anyone else bother you.

  2. You can pick whatever colors you want for everything, granted depending on your biomes you may not get every block, flower, rock, etc.

  3. You can pick the size, type, tier, the biomes (although limited).

  4. I don’t think Sovereigns are a bad thing they are pretty cool and a lot more interesting than the homeworlds…usually.

Color scarcity though, I’m still jaded on … in a creative building game not having access to all the colors just feels off.

One day though…

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im not saying they donnt, i love exploring and farming colors at sovs, i just want the chance to farm all 255 colors for every single block and flower :smiley:

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THIS! I would have never come back if not for SOVs Certainly there are some good folks in the community but they are few. I found everyone to be nice as long as you werent a threat to their Viceroyship then the claws come out. Most of the ppl that left were pretty much driven out by folks that had the attitude they were gonna burn it all down so they could Lord over the ashes well gratz! I told them long ago that attitude would kill the game population and here we are. They still poke their heads in from time to time to sift through the ashes.
If I had one wish though it would be for them to turn beacon time outs back on . I really miss looting burned out beacons and saving nice builds. That was my favorite pass time.

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Aaah the good memories of going around looking for expired beacons. Gives one more reasons to continuously explore on foot. Iirc, I recall a dev (James maybe?) mentioning some sort of ruins exploration was considered/on the table. Can’t remember any exact details though.

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I believe it was some kinda like random treasure chests I think he intimated. Its been so long idk.

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Exactly. And some of those same ppl have the nerve to post on here about how sad they are that all the players left.

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For me, the sovereign worlds were a welcome addition, but only for my kids. They’re still kids, and don’t necessarily have a notion of what’s good and what’s not in the game. They stay in their own corners and don’t bother anyone.

That’s for the good side, the bad side …well:

Resources too easy to obtain and a completely saturated market.

I still enjoying the game and my family too :blush:

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Smooth operatoorrr. I still lurk, but Yes what you said.
Havent played the game for a year.
And the reason is just what you said.

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Yeah but I remember when resources were also controlled by certain ppl.So I would rather have saturation than scarcity, I remember being so frustrated on McRib when I would try to find any hot spot (diamonds) only to find them all plotted. You take the good with the bad I guess.

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You were always one of the good ones Buugi

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I remember that time very well, but unfortunately the sovereign worlds still haven’t solved that problem

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Kinda hard to replace someone as project manager of a project that not only they are no longer a part of, but they sold for a HUGE profit.

I know that a lot of people want to keep shitting on James. However, he hasn’t been on the Boundless team for almost a year (10 months).

You can all talk all the ■■■■ you want about him, dude doesn’t care because he isn’t in the picture. Him and Wonderstruck sold Boundless to Monumentla for a hella profit then were bought by CIG where he currently works making 3 times the amount that he was making before.

You say he didn’t communicate well with the customer (us). Really now? He hasn’t made a post or comment since 2022 and still among the highest in comments and posts made of anyone else in the forums.

Boundless ran into the same issue that Star Citizen is running into (scope creep). Only real differences are that at the same time that the studio was working on Boundless they were working on other games, and one of those games bought them out so working on Boundless was essentially terminated. And the other big difference is money. CIG had enough money to tell Turbulent (parent of Wonderstruck) that they could dump all their projects and be absorbed by them.

Who everyone should be “angry” at now are the developers from Monumental who have done almost NOTHING since the bought the game earlier this year. All they have really done is keep the lights on. James and Wonderstrucks vision of Boundless died the moment the game was sold. The real sad part is that we have yet to hear what Monumentals vision is, because it clearly is not the same.