What system am I ignoring? Sorry but I don’t understand what you are talking about. I was explaining my point about solo people basically being expected to play MMO stuff and interact with people in response to what MajorVex was asking.
Which source is that? There are feats and objectives. I admit I might be missing something… Other players would not count as a solo based game. If I am expected to get coin and not be MMO then footfall or stuff from other people should be excluded.
When a person talks about a solo based design the expectation is shops from a NPC. If I am expected to use shops from players then I am moving into a MMO design.
i don’t know how this slid under the radar. There was something of an announcement and there have been a few conversations on the topic in the last several months.
For me personally, I think what bugs me is that there’s a set of activities that a solo-prone player might be expected to enjoy in this game:
building alone
not being in a giant settlement
exploring
And then there’s the set of activities that reliably earn coin:
building things that attract lots of people
attaching yourself to a giant city
using human interaction & psychology to run a successful shop
Given that the very name of this game has connotations of exploring a large sparsely populated area, it feels kinda like a bait & switch to get here and discover that all the things you like best are disfavored.
Edit: so one thing I would really love is, for instance, the idea of letting the explorer receive “footfall”
Edit 2: I don’t actually have a problem with selling to request baskets. I do it all the time and am super glad they exist. But I’ve never set one up myself, or a shopstand, and I don’t plan to – the reason for that being, the shops & baskets I do frequent are the ones that spend a lot of time and effort restocking and advertising and designing their places around human marketing principles, and doing that myself sounds like a nightmare I’m glad they do it so I don’t have to. Just wish I could get a bit more use out of doing the things I like.
When you reply to a person like this you can come off as a jerk and being rude especially when it is text and the person was acknowledging that they had forgotten something. You might have been trying to make a joke but there was no happy face or anything that would communicate that you were trying to lighten the move.
So a person that is trying to sound humble by acknowledging that they forgot something, usually will not be happy to be slapped in the face with the context and connotation of your message and style of response.
I felt made fun of so I responded in defense versus feeling supported in my lapse of mind. Instead of doing what you did, usually the way of common courtesy is to just give the person the name of what they forgot or put together some message that clearly communicates you are trying to lighten the mood instead of something that could be taken wrong.
That system does not easily provide coin. Sure you can grind or mindlessly throw stuff in it to get the coin you need but that is not a decently designed solo game. That is a simple fix looking to give coin.
A real system is NPC based, money from mobs or dungeons and a whole host of other content. Or just removing the requirement to have coin for warps. Do that and you solve the whole darn thing and let the solo player just play the game.
There is no reason to force a solo player to rely on a person. Give the solo player what they need and allow them options and features that make them WANT to interact in a MMO game. Have a game that has more aspects and dimensions to it. It hurts nothing to do that when clearly they are attracting both types of people.
(I have edited my message due to the flag. For those that thought this was offensive, you might want to consider next time one key phrase I used - “sounding like”. My statement is very clearly contextualized as an opinion and perception on how I thought the person was sounding. This is much different than many people do here in the forum when they call people stupid or the views they are trying to communicate. Instead of seeing me as condescending, maybe just think how you might feel if you said you didn’t remember something and the person basically made a statement back that makes you look like more of a fool.)
dunno, I think it could use a couple more bright glowy things. A bit hard to see without my glasses on. Maybe some louder zapping noises, or those cuttle HONK HONK HONKs?
Just wanted to add my 2 cents worth here by bringing some things to the front.
An MMO survives by being able to bring in more new players (ie. the Newbie Hose). No “Newbie Hose” is the equivalent to the death of any MMO. Therefore, it is in the best interest for any MMO to make it easy, accessible, and fun from the get go; to hook a new player in for the long haul. Boundless is not quite there yet in this aspect.
Player retention in the long run is more or less a myth. It is a fact that once any player spends enough time in a game, he/she will eventually leave. The question then is how long can the game keep the interests of a player to keep him/her around longer. That is the reason many MMOs promote the social aspects of the game such as, housing, guilds, group content, etc. Again, in this aspect Boundless has some but is not yet making good use of them. Maybe, possibly, the devs are still trying to get more functionality in to build on that.
Why am I being questioned here? I said I didn’t remember it. So the response is to just say what I missed. It comes off rude to do big picture and some comment about missing something. It slipped my mind so be gracious and just answer it.
The reason is because it seems like there are some blinders in place and a few people are being intentionally obtuse to further some specific side point and it really takes away from the ability to have any productive conversation. I’m not inclined to treat that behavior as something that should be protected.
You state that there is no way for a player to get coins without feats, objectives, or interacting with another player. This is massively, patently, false - and a point that was addressed by the developers months ago.
Assuming that the word coil is a typo for coin, this paragraph is self conflicting.
If it’s not a typo, no coils in the game are “easily provided”, I’m not sure how relevant that is.
EVERY activity in the game provides a source of coin. Period. Lack of variety/content is an issue but when they add new activities or gameplay-related content, it will provide coin too.
If you’re unhappy with the chrysominter, addressing the balance of the system is what needs to be done. Ignoring, excluding, or labeling it as “not real” so that you can continue banging a familiar drum is again, not constructive.
Look I don’t have any personal problem with you, I should hope you know that by now. But it really derails things when people keep dragging inaccurate, or just out of date, information into the conversation and using it to try and drive home irrelevant points.
There have been hundreds or thousands of man-hours (minimally) invested into exploring this system, and it’s balance. There have been tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of words on the topic here at the forum. There are still several examples regarding how you can get more coin from the chrysominter than you’re likely to get from a (player) shop for many of the raw materials in game.
Discounting the whole thing because you would rather see a coin pop up directly when you hit a plant is really silly. Coming from an obviously intelligent, and presumably well intentioned direction repeatedly, this frustrates me a lot more than anything that certain other people could ever type here.
In light of all that, subtlety does not seem to have been effective. I get frustrated beating my way around the same bush again and again trying to move a conversation along, especially when that particular bush was chopped down a very long time ago.
As I said before, the presence of a system to address a concern doesn’t mean that concern is enjoyable or desirable.
I don’t want my game experience to be balanced around the whims of other players, hard to find request baskets, inconsistent supply of tools I might need, variable prices, etc.
Yes, the developers have tried very hard to promote the MMO aspect of this game. They need to decide whether or not to fully commit, or back down. I’d say there’s enough evidence to at least question the worth in some of the systems being designed and how difficult they are. I’m of the opinion any more development time spent on forcing the MMO aspect is only liable to hurt them down the road, but that’s my opinion, and only based on the data I have available (sales, achievements, reviews, etc.)
re: what is the difference between NPC economy and player economy? It’s a good question, one that does have answers that may be worth addressing.
imo,
If Boundless wants players to pick a role and then trade, then it needs to do a better job of setting that expectation early on, because early-game objectives currently suggest the same kind of structure as other sandbox survival games: punch trees yourself, mine rocks yourself, craft stuff yourself, build a house yourself.
But also, unlike RPGs with balanced NPC shops, Boundless’ economy is structured to be end-heavy to the extreme (high-end gem tools, cheap coils, centraforged tools enabling certain resources to FLOOD the market) with little-to-no gating in terms of level or price-vs-earnings ratio. As a result, engaging with the player economy frequently results in “Getting Carried”, rather than trading at-level, which may or may not be what players want.
Avoiding this is a matter of setting self-imposed restrictions, and at that point refusing to engage in trade at all seems not unreasonable perhaps?
Next, it is difficult to know what an item is worth, even though there obviously is a “proper” price at which items move. A player unfamiliar with an item’s price must first know where to look, then spend ages actually doing the looking. You find a shop offering Shadow Orbs for 45c a piece. Then another for 120c. Then another for 26c. Then another for 400c. Then one BUYING for 15c. It’s a situation that creates distrust for any given price offered in player shops.
You and Evergreen have brought up the achievement stats, and the trends are interesting for sure. There’s obviously something causing friction in the pre-lv20 game and with shops in general, even if to you or me it doesn’t ~seem valid~.
–
also to this thread in general, I agree that Boundless needs to find its identity and push that hard.
I hate to say it but right now Boundless’ first-look experience still hasn’t really evolved beyond “multiplayer minecraft with microtransactions and LOOTBOXES (not actually lootboxes)”. If the mmorpg, big shared universe concept was meant to be the game’s unique draw, then push it hard and early. if else, then show that. Right now there’s the fancy warp/portal intro, then maybe if the player lands near a big city they get a sneak-peek of excitement, and then…hours of sluggish tedium as you putter around in the same-ass voxel game you’ve seen before, but this time it’s slower and has LOOTBOXES (not actually lootboxes) and microtransactions.
Boundless has a lot of cool, exciting things going for it. The first two hours should be the hook, and yet…??
this happened last year. the situation hasn’t changed. dunno what to say, really.
This is a nice summation catching an overall arc of topics over the last few days. And then bringing it back to the 1-20 game hardly changing at all in the last year.
This isn’t a genre, or a playstyle. It’s a characteristic of a platform.
I’ll try not to let my current mood spill over into sarcasm on this point. Attempting to conflate this term with a genre or a playstyle is, at best, confusing. It leads to things like posts comparing a primarily linear MMORPG that has some multiplayer content to keep players engaged between DLC with a persistent, open world sandbox.
You are correct. It does, however, negate another poster’s comment that “there is no system in place”.
Thanks also, for your clear and direct response here. With regards to the whims of other players, I do hear you but also see that as fundamental to the multiplayer experience that some people are seeking more, and some are seeking less. A list of specific points, IMO, furthers the conversation a lot more than the sweeping hyperbole there seems to be so much of.
The way I see it, and in the current game, things like tool supply nd variable prices have a fixed, baseline cost, which is paid in time and described readily as “do it yourself”. Anything cheaper, easier, or faster than that is a bonus. I don’t place any particular moral value on “doing it yourself” and have found that in many cases “hunting for shopstands” is a more productive use of my time than “hunting for materials”.
Opinions will of course vary here and in this area I can easily just “agree to disagree”. We can both provide our viewpoints and the developers can use that information (or hell, ignore it) in their decision on how to try and move the game forward.
You could just say, “Sorry I was trying to joke around and I guess it came off rude”. Then I could say, “Sorry for snapping a bit more than maybe was needed.” … But by not taking any ownership of what you said helps nothing get solved between each of us.
Well if you think that is me then please just call me out instead of trying to do whatever you were trying to do with that picture and joke around the news release. It is easier to have the direct conversation instead of games.
For the record, though, I don’t play games like that and pretend to forget stuff. Why would I? I just state my opinions, try to have constructive conversations that either allows me to influence people to my views or provides data back to me that allows me to change my views. I like to drive consensus but this forum really isn’t conducive for that a lot of times.
The machine actually did slip my mind. You said PVE and personally I don’t see that as an E. Environment for me is the world in the game, creatures, etc.
Yes it was a type of coil when I meant coin. I am not conflicting myself. It is not the best put together paragraph in grammar and words but basically conveys enough info if someone took time to try to understand the points I have been making.
The chryso gives coin simply but it does not easily provide enough coin in enough amounts to handle all the needs of a solo player (in the way I play) unless you grind. It is a simple fix that James put in to help give coin to lessen the issues we have with coin. It is not a sustainable model in my view and shouldn’t be put into a solo game. It might work for some Solo players but others that go all over the Universe it doesn’t in my view.
Killing a mob in this game does not provide coin. You have to choose to not use the dropped resource to put it in a machine to get coin. Those are different things. We have no proof that those new activities will provide coin. We should not add that to a discussion because so far the trend of the game has been to not add coin taps except for this 1 machine while they increased the coin needs across the game with the Exo release.
It might in your model of the game for a solo player, but for the way I look at solo game play (which I have already explained) it is not real system and provides lacking game play compared to dungeons, npc, etc.
I have no idea, honestly, how I have provided any inaccurate or out of date information. I stated my views and opinion on how I felt MMO/Solo should be played and replied to some questions or comments. I didn’t come in with data or numbers or anything. Nothing I said didn’t exist or is made up.
One I never said hit a plant and I was only discounting the chryso need in a Solo mode. It seems you are mixing my view of solo into your view of MMO. It is confusing why this is happening.
In a solo game you should not need to interact with any players. The Devs can give us coins however they want (or removed it from the solo game) but if they keep it then they can have an interesting way (NPC, dungeons, etc) or a kind of boring and simple way in my opinion - the chryso. That was the only point I have been making.
Honestly, I do not understand what you mean by this. Can you please clarify?
Well I am sorry you feel that way but I don’t understand what bush you were beating around in my conversation.
Everything I have said has been in good faith and my views of MMO vs Solo in a general nature. I just read through everything I said and I really think you are taking other people’s points or view and missing them into mine or something else not related to me is happening. If someone reads what I said it shouldn’t be too confusing on my views…
I understand, but it seems like a fair number of people are buying the game not for the MMO experience, but for the Minecraft one.
If you run a donut shop, and people keep walking in asking for coffee, you might start expanding the coffee section and reducing the donut section.
I understand. My point was, your argument that systems were in place to address this doesn’t factor in whether or not the systems are desirable. If a system is implemented to cater to a specific group, it needs to actually do that. If it doesn’t, then the system has failed.
For instance, a great deal of work has been done in many patches over the last year to balance the Forge and engage new players with it, but achievements show that the vast majority of players never forge anything, and those that do forge, never forge anything good.
All the systems and changes they made to entice players into the Forge could have been spent on something people actually asked for, which was an alternative to the Forge. One such example players here gave was expanding Augments, so we could craft AOE Augments and avoid all the RNG and complexity from the Forge.
Most of the systems they’ve added to bridge the gap between MMO and Non-MMO players haven’t been designed to simplify the experience for non-MMO players, they’ve been designed to force them into playing the game like an MMO.
As such, I don’t use these systems.
In this case, I already feel like they doubled-down on the MMO aspect, and given where the game is currently at, I’m not sure it has been a success.
Yes, I will. I take you for an intelligent fellow, generally. You’re clearly educated or at least well read in something, your vocabulary is advanced and your grammar is easily collegiate level. You also clearly have some level of analytical ability, more than you “average bear” and yet every time you engage in a conversation on a serious topic it gets bogged down to the point of stopping in a flood of irrelevant and often personal points and this frustrates me.
It frustrates me more than it does when certain other people post similar drivel because frankly, I’ve already discounted their opinions in general. I’m not calling anyone out by name here for my own safety thank you but there are, certainly, people here whose posts (i feel) are easily discounted based on a consistent display of posting without thinking, or to drive a disruptive agenda.
I don’t believe that’s your point. But it seems to be the end result for just about anyone that attempts to engage with you on any serious topic.
I’m not kidding or trying to exaggerate, I’ve typed and deleted 10 - 15 thousand words from this little box in the last half an hour (Edit: I just looked at the clock, more like hour and a half sorry), trying to figure out how to separate the bits of your post that I feel are on point and worth addressing form the morass of minor semantic debate and personal criticism here.
I give up.
I wonder how many times this will have to happen to you before you take a step back, and consider the fact that maybe some of it is in fact related to you.
Now I’m going to go re-read some of the posts that people have made attempting to raise or discuss on topic points while I’ve been attempting to address this and see if I’d rather get back on topic, or just exit this thread completely.
Thank you for explaining that. OHHH!!! Well you and I have a very good relationship overall in my view since we have talked a lot in PM. I really didn’t get you were getting frustrated by me being general in nature and I certainly do apologize.
If you want specifics, you will need to talk to me in PM honestly for a while. I’m too tired of being called condescending or people thinking I am telling them what to do for me to really try to have a point by point specific discussion in the forum right now. Well at least I try to not do that right now and might fail from time to time.
My points were “personal” because I really was just trying to state a general view and keep it high level or simple because I didn’t want to get into specifics which can end up in a debate or a you are wrong/I am right type sounding conversation. I am the type that really wants clarity on points and in this forum to many people that has come off wrong.
BUT, if you really do need specifics I can certainly do that… I just need to know or if I am being daft (like I was in this case) then just told that is what you need.
Oh I do believe some of it was… I just couldn’t tell anymore what was and what wasn’t because some things just didn’t seem like I was saying that. So I was like HUH!!! . I was worried I was sending the wrong information in my comments so I wanted to clarify it but didn’t know where to really start.
Back on topic because maybe this will help at least with some of what you and I have talked about… maybe it clarifies points.:
I don’t think the Devs will have success keeping true MMO and true SOLO play in the same game. They might pull it off but all evidence that I see right now over past few years doesn’t feel enough considering the conflict we see right now between the two genres.
I think if we can get a few key parts in (like NPC, dungeon, quests) then they can make solo/mmo work together by creating a boundary where needed and interaction where it makes sense for me.
I think coin should be removed for warp conduits and we be able to make fuel to allow us to warp how we want
I think more needs to be put in place to inspire and encourage people to play together - games, fundamental tools of interaction, etc. Things that make all people (solo included) want to team up in MMO.
I do feel it is smart to target both audiences but they have to really support each game play the right way.
I am trying to use some of the comments in the reviews to think of some things that might help.
“Lost my stuff” – I think the campfires need to be removed and players need to go right to the beacons. There is no purpose in this extra step but it seems to create a lot of unnecessary confusion. The developers can repurpose the campfires to be something else in the game since they have proven useful in builds. I would no longer fuel beacons. If a player logs in once every 12 weeks (or whatever the longest current beacon fuel is) then all their beacons reset for another 12 weeks. All beacons would reset at the same time no matter when they are placed. If a player fails to log on after 12 weeks all their beacons except their home beacon will expire and regen. Their home beacon will not regen until it has been 2 years since they logged into the game. This would allow players that face long term issues such as military deployment to hopefully save most of their important items. If a beacon is aligned to a guild then as long as a guild member logs in the beacon will renew for 12 weeks. OK so what about Gleam Club then. Well what you get from Gleam Club is maybe more cosmetics and all your builds are protected for as long as you have Gleam Club versus only the Home beacon after 12 weeks.
“Loot Boxes” – as has been stated over and over I would replace the award system with something that did not look like a loot box. Lots of good suggestion already out there.
“To grindy” – I would continue to let the developers look at ways they think parts of the game where they may want to simplify and reduce the fat. But in addition, I would give players an option to play creatively or in the current live universe. A lot of games offer options for multi-player and solo player. Space Engineers, Satisfactory and Ark to name only a few. Offer a solo player version that also allows for creative play. If the creative version offers access to the f9 menu then players can create most items. It would give new players a place to safely try out and learn the mechanics of the game. It would give players that do not want to have to grind for materials a way to play without that part of the game. They could grind as much or as little as they want. I do think it would be nice if the creative side could allow for multi-player also, but that might have to wait for private and rented planets.
Things I think that I have not read in reviews
Get private and rented planets introduced. If players want to try different play styles why not let them? Boundless is an MMO Sandbox, let us play in the sand with as many or few restrictions as we want. If players want to play in a PvP style let them create a private planet where they can do that. If players want to create a planet that is covered by a single city, then let them create a private planet and do that. Give the players options. To prevent abuse players can bring nothing from the private planets that they did not bring onto the private planet. Let players bring rented planets into the live universe so they can add biomes and create guild planets or whatever they may want as long as they follow the rules of the rest of the live universe.
Change the skill tree. If Boundless is a Sandbox MMO and not an RPG then why are we trying to force players into roles? Create a single skill tree where a player with enough levels can have every skill if they work hard enough. This would make skill sets and alts unnecessary. So I would credit back the cubits (plus maybe a small bonus for the inconvenience) and give the main character credit for all the xp earned across all alts or the skill points for all skill sets so they can reallocate them into the new single skill tree.
I’m glad they do it so I don’t have to. Just wish I could get a bit more use out of doing the things I like.
