Really? I was thinking that I’m not in on the ground floor at all. Take a portal to another planet and you arrive in some city, and all the territory around it is beaconed for miles and miles. It would have been interesting to have been in the game when that was just starting.
Think of Diablo 2 Unique Ethereal items instead though, because that was what it felt like to some extent. 
Now that there are forged items, it’d feel like that for sure without a different balance to it – I wouldn’t want to lose 25% durability on my 8 forged bombs, 15 forged hammers and 7 forged chisels, and whatever else I’m carrying, just because I slipped and died while building, that could be dozens of thousands of coin worth of damage right there… Slip and die four times and I’ve lost some high-end gear for no good reason. That’s the kind of stuff in games I find really frustrating.
Durability penalties are fine if there are ways to offset them somehow and if they are fair but like you say there are no NPCs and no way to repair items, so a XP penalty which can very easily be offset by a consumable food item, really doesn’t seem like it’s that severe, in comparison. An experience food item is worth only a few hundrend coins, for comparison, and really helps a lot with offsetting the XP penalty.
Though I would say the XP penalty does contribute to make the game feel sluggish to progress through at low and mid level.
Just in case you’d like to read past discussions on the topic of the death penalty, and you haven’t seen these yet: 
yea myself i would prefer a durability hit over XP atlest with the durability it can be offset by only bringing the gear that you need and if you know you are going to do something with a high chance of death then you bring lower value gear…with the XP debuff on atlest 2 of my chars its on there 24/7 to the point where i give up ever trying to hit level 50
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As one of those new ones that have not yet reached level 50, based on my experience I will say the points that I think make the game overly complicated, which is not the same as complex.
First the experience, it depends too much on the chests of the tutorial / missions many of them are impossible for me to make up for not having the tools or skills to access high worlds and survive. The forge to improve the tools needs coils, the diamond coils that are out of my possibilities. The first great barrier. What if I buy them?
The problem is that money, or its scarce for new ones. Among the purchase of precious metals, some other resource I have not yet found on my own and I have had to buy them, apprentice cakes and bright orbs, which you could only pick up quickly at a farm with reg bombs. also impossible. How much does a coil cost? It’s getting complicated.
All this also relates to two other problems that the game presents. To learn to do it well, sustainably, you need to learn it by trial and error and fail to master it or look at out-of-game guides. From the distribution of crops, or prestige or footsteps (the most lucrative method apparently). All this is here in the forum, but not in the game. All this becomes complicated. People want complex, fun games that pose a challenge or for competing or cooperating for an end. This game does not have a story or an end in itself anything, only the promise of a world without limits. However, there are many limits and walls of complexity and tediosity that extract you from the fantastic immersion that the game offers you, and it makes me finish here by writing and reading in the forum instead of enjoying the game of which I have played a great 231 h . Thank you for that, developers!
Then there is the whole system of land, beacons and plots. That makes it possible for a new player to reach an occupied island with a player who will not leave room to grow too much, so he or she leaves with a trodo and replanns his strategy to participate in the economy that moves this game, the footsteps. Many obstacles that cloud this fantastic game.
I think that with few changes this would greatly improve, removing the initial complexity:
Separate initial tutorial of the basic mechanics and the different components of the game of the missions of chests of the system of missions. As it is, it is confusing in the newspaper. I would add in the diary a tutorial tab, another for missions, and another with a wiki with all those more complex tutorials and guides, we love the complexity, not the complicated tedious, this wiki that is official and verified by the team, please.
Add the loot of everything a bit in both exp and coins. This can be done in many ways, the more the better if we want to have a healthy and functioning economy. For example, hunting missions 50, 100 mob in T2. Encouraging the collection so that you have backgrounds and can to sell, for example. That stone has another, and so on, especially so that newbies can climb up to exp and reach level 50 that opens the whole game and participate in the economy more.
Lower the exp reduction by death to 5, 10, 15% progressively in itself depending on the number of deaths of that day, with a story behind the style: when a part of your soul dies you lose forever, as a result you have a penalty 15 minutes where your exp. 5% was reduced, on the second death of the day 10%, the numbers could change according to the criteria of the developers.At least this could be so until reaching level 50, with the achievement of Master that is maintained because the soul of a teacher is bigger and his injuries have a greater penalty that you can alleviate with epic skills.
Create a new line of tools and intermediate steel machines (if it is with coal, please increase in T1 its availability that I can not compact without coils so I have access to peat comp. Resulting tedious obtaining energy sparks), in this steel line would be a forge for beginners without coils or changing the coils for another intermediate element also of transition that contain steel that give power to do things like the forge of the beginner as for compact fuels and products to use at that time with all elements that the game has for you to learn to forge more basic things.
All this would increase the products in the markets and the access of many more to the economy and advance to the high levels, besides reducing a little the complexity of the whole current game.
All this would increase the products in the markets and the access of many more to the economy and advance to the high levels, in addition to reducing a little the complexity of all the current game for the new ones, which would improve the retention.
The land system, in case you have to remove it, notify by mail to the mail one week at least so that everyone has the same opportunity to save parcels. And when the new system is redeployed, let them know with time equally.
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I could mention one thing that led to me giving up after I started playing in March. It was clear that to proceed in crafting I needed a lot of materials not to be found on T1 worlds. But if I ventured onto higher worlds, I just got insta-killed. So no way to progress. I had assumed that the game was designed around having one character to do everything, but you don’t get enough skill points. Once I learned that you need to run an alt, then things started to click. So my 1st character reskilled to survive higher worlds, and a new one stays at home and does all the crafting.
This way, the game is much more enjoyable. But there must be many players who never learn this and just give up permanently.
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You do not need an alt, I never made an alt just leveld up my chara. The games grindfactor was too high, its way better now then it was on release. Though there is still a tendency towards too grindy which kinda makes sense on an mmo? dunno dont care ^^
edit: what you need are skillpages
OK, so what are skillpages? These are things you don’t discover in-game.
You can have multiple skillsets like the one you have now, you can buy them in the shop for cubits. Each page gives you another full set of skills you can level. Up to 100 skill points can be set per page, this is kinda late game though since you need a full skill set before it makes sense to get a new page.
For example I divide my pages into a crafter, warrior, builder/miner and farmer atm.
When I started and was pre 50 I simply made an all round char a bit of all and left the more indepth min maxing skills for later.
Skill pages aren’t really relevant until you’re at least level 40-50, but they make more sense to use after level 50+ anyway. 
The reason I say that is because if you are level 50, you’ll only be able to fill your main page or partially fill it and partially fill another one. To me this was somewhat counter-intuitive, I figured skill points would be freed up when you switched skill pages, but no, once they are invested into a page, they can’t be used in another.
I did play with mostly just one character up to 50, though up until level 30 or so I probably used an alt for some crafting, though not a lot. I don’t use alts at all now, except to have a shop really far from where my home base is. 
To be honest this is the kind of game where I don’t like switching to alts very much, especially since there’s no special safe place that you can make where you can bypass the 10 second return to sanctum (I understand why) – it just feels annoying for me.
And I did have an extra skill page before level 50, but I didn’t use it at that point, and ended up just filling out the main page anyway and only started using the extra pages once I was around 60 or 70. (I’m 465 now, by the way)
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Sandstone would be good, just compacted sand. And then decorative variations of it… Plus I feel we should be able to turn ice or glacier into a refined building block of some sort maybe?
I know jess posted the new glass we should be getting which looks amazing too!
Other than that, more wearables! Clothing would be good. Being distinctive and original on an MMO is perhaps not the most important part of gameplay but it’s definitely appealing. So the more items we have, the more variation in characters
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And this is part of the problem in that the solutions are not explained anywhere. You can buy a skill set/page at the same place where you buy an alt. You use in game cubits for the purchase. Then when you look at your character on the screen where you get to your skills you will have a number 1 and a number 2 at the top of the page for each skill set (up to 5). You can allocate your skill points to either skill set but each skill point earned can only be used on one skill set. So if you have 10 skill points you can put all 10 on skill set 1 or 5 on skill set 1 and 5 on skill set 2. As was said before it becomes more useful to use skill sets after level 40 or 50. Since you can continue to level past 50 you can use the points earned on another skill set. I know players that have all 5 skill sets completely filled out.
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In addition to my previous preferences, I think I’d consider changing ‘how’ Boundless is advertised.
I recently saw Islanders on steam, and the primary video does a perfect job of telling me whether I might like the game, instead of trying to sell me the game. It tells you what the game is, but more importantly what it is not.
Given how wide-ranging the game is attempting to be, perhaps it would be worth trying to define more precisely what Boundless is and is not. It would be good to know, for example, that boundless is not quite the creative, casual game that one might expect from the label ‘Sandbox’ based on other titles and past experience. Or perhaps that it only has a shallow implementation (at current) of any given feature that might have been implied by giving it specific labels (‘MMO’, etc etc).
It wouldn’t increase sales at all, but it would help people know if the game was going to be right for them. As such, it should drastically increase retention of players who do choose to try.
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s will Solve all
Without friends feeding me AoE tools early on, I doubt I would have continued playing this game. I did a decent amount of mining with unforged iron hammers - enough to get all of my machines built and a mass craft of regular workbench coils. They are painfully slow. Forging of lower tier gear needs looked at. Making a decent iron hammer is pointless as the ingredients are better spent on titanium or gem tools. Forcing new players to gather vast amounts of low tier items to trade for higher tier items is not a fun game mechanic. There is no mid game content to my knowledge. It’s mass gathering of junk to trade for a decent tool, or making decent tools.
Making the game possible to solo should be a priority. I think I’m gonna buy a 2nd copy of the game and make an Ironman style Let’s Play just to show how egregiously tedious the game is. No trading, no use of other players portals. From fresh account to 1 maxed out machine of each type (24 advanced power coils).
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I just have to say that I fundamentally disagree with this. No attack or anything, this is a pure matter of opinion.
I would rather see a shop finder. I would rather see better maps. I would rather see streamlined and more intuitive interfaces for the information that’s available in game. I would rather see “tools” like these that help players move forward.
IMO, players who refuse to participate in the community or economy SHOULD have it harder and making it so that every player can casually solo their way to endgame will further cannibalise the multiplayer aspects of the game.
If someone is looking for “Iron Man” style then why would they complain that it’s hard?
I mean, I’ll sell you an unforged axe that will get you there for 1000 coins right now without ever leaving level 1/2 planets. You could do it for less.
How much easier do they have to make it overall due to players that refuse to acknowledge that they’re operating in a shared space?
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You both have fair points. IMO the main reason people ask for a better solo experience is because being involved in the economy is taxing, cumbersome, and needs it’s own 15 minute video guide and even then it’s not great because just finding the shops. It’s a huge deterrent to people who just get the game. Either people struggle and finally figure out after hours and hours; they are gifted aoe tools by friendly community members; or they quit,
If the issues you layout were addressed I think we’d see the ‘solo’ request(s) side of the game die down considerably.
Another coin tap that isnt reliant on building or throwing away trash materials would aid in a more fleshed out economic experience as well.
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I 100% agree with this, it should be harder. But to what extent? I feel like a lot of new players are hitting the progression wall and quitting before they even engage with the community. How far into the game should you be before you are backed into the multiplayer aspect of the game? Personally I was starting to hate the progression rate of the game prior to hitting level 14(last set of skills unlock) but then started to enjoy it again after around level 30 with AoE tools.
I just made another email/steam account and plan on starting my journey this afternoon. I would appreciate any low level forge recipes you have to make the game a bit less tedious. I will likely be using iron tools for a long time. Ideally the ingredients would be collectable on a single T2 starter planet - but I will work around my limitations.
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A couple of random thoughts from a builder’s perspective here:
I think what would really benefit newer players is to have a wide range of building options out of easy materials to acquire. Perhaps have more wood/stone types and arrangements. Even have blocks that require both. Then have all of these blocks not require crazy materials like the super enriched bonding agent. Perhaps make these even easier than bricks.
This way newer builders have tons of options to build with before thinks like bricks and marble.
Also, I think having the basic colours, such as white, black, red, blue, green, etc, readily available instead of drip-fed to us through exo planets would go a long way. There are obviously some of these colours already in the game (like black rock), but it’s always baffled me why the other basic colours aren’t around. I know a lot of people who like to build in these basic colours and they can’t, because either the block is expensive due to exo-worlds or it just doesn’t exist yet.
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I wasn’t familiar with voxel/building games though I came with plenty of MMO experience. I would say for me I was learning about building and getting to understand chiseling etc… for some time so I hit a similar gap just a little smaller. Say, getting frustrated in my mid twenties and after grinding through coil acquisition while things like spicy beans were 5c and coils were 7k - 9k I started exploring AoE economics into my early thirties.
Having taken time to explore the planets and investigate the economy, by the time my gatherer alts and my crafter were pushing level 40, I was making coin faster than I (not a prolific builder) could spend it.
It was a huge turnaround for me when I decided to adjust my attitude and address “learning the economy” as a task/job and stopped seeing “getting coin” as an obstacle to my other activities.
The week or so spent doing that was an interesting time, full of exploration, meeting people, and learning things that really turned the game around for me, and also prepared me to deal with the changes that were happening as the player base collectively advanced to a higher average level and economic forces started moving towards what we have today.
As for early forging recipes or whatnot, sorry I don’t personally have that. I chose a different path. I know you’ll be able to get plenty of advice on that, but as with so many it’s my opinion that forging on anything less than titanium is pretty silly with the current setup.
Good luck with the iron man adventure, though. It’s definitely not what I was looking for, but I know a few people have done it - it’s hard but possible.
Sounds like they’re adding private worlds, so that’ll more or less deal some damage to the remaining multiplayer functions.
At some point we have to ask if the MMO part of this is even feasible.