well i dont think its the specific system they like i think its just the option of building automated systems. I can see how someone can argue that we have machines and coils but that system is REALLY tedious not fun once you put it together its there and repairing it is a huge pain tbh.
1 Like
about the not getting new players, Idk why they dont promote the game more? I show this game to a LOT of people all of which have never heard of it before. There is no promotion at all and there needs to be.
1 Like
The way this game is still going through changes as drastic as the plot system currently, this is probably why they aren’t promoting aggressively yet.
I’ll be glad when we get to a point where the game does have the chance to be marketed appropriately and aggressively. I mean they have Square Enix in their corner. If they thought it was a good time to promote they definitely have those resources to do a full scale blitz.
2 Likes
Well said, there is no incentive to promote at the moment the game is in an open beta state which is currently the go to on the market though no game company would call it that.
1 Like
Personally, I think the reason behind this is they are not keeping players now so why would they then? If they have exposed the game to 20,000 plus players and they are not retaining them, then will just advertising change this? Maybe they want more confidence they can increase their retention before doing the advertising. I understand where you are coming from in very few people knowing the game even exists. However, I also know that none of the people I did get to play have stuck with the game for various reasons. If The players I had shown the game and gotten to play were still playing or at least some of them, then I woud agree lack of expose is the issue.
The game needs so much new content to make it worth having a marketing budget for that it probably will be a while before it gets advertised heavily.
On top of that the issues with balance around the game need to be resolved.
Basically, I’d cut out a lot of the unnecessary complexity in the game. Remove all forms of RNG crafting in place of stuff that’s a lot more streamlined with consistency across the board. Graphically I wouldn’t change much. Slingbows would look like a firearm. Totems would look like a scanner of some kind that uses an energy beam to damage blocks and mobs. Bombs would be turned into an ammunition with a new weapon introduced that shoots them. Firearms would use ammunition. There would be a multitude of craftable vehicles of various kinds that cover land and air. There would be three times as many mobs to fight and hunt while there be 10 or 20 times as many items to gather, craft, and use in the game.
Personally I’d do away with the promise of rental worlds (even though I’d want them) and look for alternative and more meaningful ways to monetize the game. I’d also cut the price of the game in half to incentivize initial game purchases to bring new players in organically. I’d increase the guild size cap to 1000 members and make it so that it’s account bound guild membership.
I’d put a CM team in place that covers: YouTube, Reddit, Steam, and these forums.
There’s an awful lot I would change. One thing is for certain is that I’d make sure the team is focused on delivering large enough content updates that give players enough to chew on for a while. The game is riddled with issues despite it still be fun from time to time to play. But I think getting it on track with a clear vision and identity would help.
You hit on a very good point here. I do think many times conversations go sideways because of things like this. From what I have seen (from comments I’ve seen and heard), we all seem to be a bit more worried than the Devs about the player base. I do think they want to build a better retention as well as ways to attract people but maybe aren’t as worried about it as a show stopper for change than many of us.
This is important to understand. I know that at times they do feel like they are in between a rock and a hard place. That whatever decision they made it made someone else mad or want to quit. It is not a fun place to be in and I think the more we all can have empathy with the situation the more that we can provide good information back to them to help get them out of the predicament.
Would automation as we normally see it in games solve this in general or do you like the idea of the robot/npc doing the busy work for you?
Could the low focus on marketing be because they are more focused on fixing the issues they know they have with retention and growth? From how I look at things - it would make sense to make sure you close most of the holes in the ship before you pile more people on it.
3 Likes
Maybe the sinking ship needed more deckhands? @Aanika brought me here and I don’t plan on giving up on this fantastic game.
2 Likes
Yes, that was the point of my thread here.
I’m wondering what could be added, so when advertising begins, more players stick around.
I still feel turning the campfire into a way to cook food, and making the beacon a free item like totems is the first step in that process.
1 Like
I know there’s been and increase of new players because there’s a lot more people on kada. Seeing new players pop up in my hub every few days. There’s been a bunch of new beacons around my place also. It’s been actually fun going to see them and charting, and giving them a little help . How many will stay and why still remains to seem.
One of the things I do think the game needs is a better tutorial. I believe that’s why the free weekend didn’t go as well as It could. Although I do find game easy the first days can be confusing, an example is for those who come from Minecraft. A different contrôler map can be frustrating to some. It frustrated me in the beginning because I was so used to the Mc layout.
2 Likes
well Boundless is the type of game that falls into the same catagory as minecraft where a lot of people play it for a period of time they build there base etc once they have all the machines and things they get bored so they go play something else but most people at some point come back.
I guess I could be wrong here but I was pretty in to minecraft and everyone i knew who was similarly into it was the same would play for 3-6 months then play other things and return later. I used to do this with minecraft and now i do it with boundless.
I think this cycle may not be so apparent to others because of the low population.
As for the statement about trading off game development for promotion it just doesnt work that way. if they wanted to promote the game they would and they would hire specific people to do it. it isnt like you can either have a dev working on content OR promotion they are 2 different jobs
BTW dont mistake Square Enix Collective for Square Enix. Im not 100% sure of the exact details but Square Enix finds indie projects they think are going to be lucrative and they back said projects im sure with funding I am not sure how involved they are in decisions or game development but it is 2 very different things.
I agree they could do both. I think they may want more development done before they advertise. They may think more features or some changes will help retention of the players they might get when they advertise.
1 Like
I agree. Investing $$$ into advertisement while the game is receiving huge fundamental game-changing updates (like it’s in Beta) wouldn’t help the numbers and would just be money down the drain. They’re getting in a slow trickle of new players and I think that’s for the best right now.
4 Likes
It’s my firm belief that a large advertising campaign at this time (with existing materials) would be highly counter-productive.
Here’s an interesting number:
-
40% of people who loaded the game never left the sanctum
-
Nearly 70% never made it to assigning a single skill point
Now, This is something to consider. However especially given a free weekend promotion, we can dismiss a certain number of these people as idly curious or those who just wanted a peek.
Rough humbers I’m not using calc for percentages of percentages at the moment but there seems to be a common perception that the game is losing players at “mid game” Personally looking at the follow on numbers I try to see them as a percentage of the 61% of people who actually tried.
-
Less than half of those who left the sanctum ever broke a single tool.
-
Less than one third of those who left the sanctum made it to level 10.
-
Just over one tenth of players who left the sanctum made it to level 20.
Again, just my opinion but new player acquisition is not where the focus needs to be right now. With fall off numbers like that there needs to be a heavy look at retention and the new player experience before advertising and reaching out to additional people who are unlikely to come back to the game after a frustrating or dull initial experience.
Personally I think there needs to be a solid look at available in game information (or in some cases just how it’s presented) for a newer player. There needs to be a proper map. There needs to be a way for a player just starting on a level 1 planet to see that there ARE active shops in the universe and get a feel for an existing economy.
There needs to be an explicit tutorial around using the knowledge base and the tips/info system and there’s no call for that information to be hidden or revealed like little nuggets of bait only as a player progresses along a certain path in the game.
Get a color wheel or something in there PRONTO. Removing the bad light from the character creation area was a huge step but the process is still tedious and distracting. Trying to compare and select between two colors? By the time you’ve clicked through the 80 colors in between you’ve lost the sense of what you’re trying to compare.
Getting a basic map should not require two machines and when i started (yes this is fixed now) there wasn’t even a recipe for glass in any machine. Then once you have that map it doesn’t indicate settlement information or really anything useful. Even if you want to have a warp augment in it and see the info you could see from the sanctum you need a third machine and more resources and crafting.
Those of us that are still here, still active - the 1.7% of players that have made it to level 50 - are often worried about mid game experiences and clearly many people feel like getting more eyes on will result in a larger population in general, but with numbers like this more eyes on just means generally more negative sentiment, comments and reviews about the game, and more people that are unlikely to take a second chance down the road.
Address some basic items here, get people the tools they need to move forward from nothing. Stop shedding 83% of players who are willing to try the game before they’ve ever achieved level ten or made it off of their starting world.
THEN talk about advertising.
The players that make it to mid or upper level and then get bored (or frustrated) are a follow on problem, and a very small percentage of those who have tried the game.
11 Likes
Based on this, it sounds like Boundless could use some RNG-levels and RNG-missions, much in the same way we have exo-worlds.
I dont know. I feel the game is past the EA phase. To me it feels polished and I am a very harsh judge about this. Do I think the game should not change and evolve? no. MMorpgs need change to thrive and keep players interest. However I play a lot of games and see a lot of indie games fail because the development team does not put enough into keeping a solid player base.
Personally I think Boundless is just scraping by. its close but I dont feel like it is failing over all to keep the social aspect of the game working. Would I like to see more players? yes. Do I think Boundless is capable of creating enough hype to really take off? Defanitly. So that begs the question why isnt it?
There is a huge hole int he market right now for a game to do what Minecraft did but updated and better? Boundless does that on a Vanilla Minecraft level and the only reason people who loved minecraft but are bored of it are not coming to bouindless is because they dont know about it, I know this because i tell those people about it all the time and there response is always the same. “What is Boundless? Ive never heard of it”
1 Like
Its taking into account all the players that played the game before the achievements were activated.
2 Likes
Besides listening to the community and adding new content on a semi-regular basis, I am not sure what can be done. I think most every game loses players over time. Perhaps the focus should be marketing to make sure new players are finding the game:
example (low ridiculous, fake numbers for the sake of illustration)
-
(Game X) loses 4 people per month that are unlikely to return
-
50% of new players that buy (Game X) are still playing after 30 days.
-
You would need to sell 10 new copies per month to replace the 4 players who quit and still see growth.
I believe a lot of what you said is absolutely correct however I think part of this is because people dont have enough insentive to want to get past that first phase
-
yes the sanctum starter area is NOT easy to navigate its a pain i just created my 8th character the other day and what was i thinking as i went through it? “ugh what a pain” its so confusing for a new player. it shouldnt be that difficult. i think there should be a starter planet where everything is easy and there is a NPC city with portals etc to aclimate people to the system.
-
we need major streamers to build hype for the game. streamers are HUGE for promoting games these days. I for one would be there every day supporting anyone who would like to step up and do this.
1 Like