I am a game loyalist until the day it ends. But Boundless needs an Overhaul!

General
102

I wouldn’t have an issue with this as long as they keep a lot of the basic food crafting, the way it is. Let the smoothies & forged cocktails be for the folks with upper skill range - give them something to do :wink:

For example, I’ve come across a lot of noob bases lately. Their farms are very Minecraft style. Which I find nothing wrong with - it’s something familiar to them & they are happy as can be with it. I think it’s fine to have upper level harder-to-craft items, as long as there are plenty of simple, basic things that lower level players & noobs can happily make. :+1:

3 Likes
103

how about instead of a light skill, some craft-able head gear with lights.

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104

I certainly don’t enjoy forging enough to like this idea unless it was an “additional” option or something put on top of the existing food buffs, etc. As long as we could make things the old way I am fine with expanded forging…

105

RNG that involves the loss of materials should be stripped out and replaced with something else that isn’t a casino mechanic.

[Campfire]s need to have their function removed or redesigned. [Beacon Control]s serve the purpose, [Campfire]s only add an unneeded step in my book and can result in losses for new players who fail to understand something in full or becomes interrupted for whatever reason. The [Beacon Control] should just be moved into the slot that the [campfire] is currently at and be handcrafted from simple materials.

Or if this is to much to ask, then [Campfire]s should be allowed to accept fuel and can act as a Permanent Beacon with no configurable ACL. If the player needs an ACL then they can build a [Beacon Control].

I am really tired of hearing stories about how new players quit due to some kind of confusion with Fuel and Beacons.

Lastly, Cooking meat/foodstuffs should also be able to be done on a [campfire], This is much more logical then throwing it into a furnace which is not going to be obvious to a new player.

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106

I think campfires are great if they would cook food or allow us to have a temp beacon area but they should certainly not be part of the tutorial or anything in creating true builds. That part should definitely just go away and let them be unique in their own way… I enjoy them for the look and would like a furnace type feel to cook some stuff on them.

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107

So now you use campfires to cook some things and furnaces for others? So you will need to add a campfire or multiple to every workshop? If you need or want cooked starberries for example. As much as I like how they can be used to create smoke in builds I would rather see them gone then become something that is needed in a workshop.

108

It would be an extra option, You could use either, I feel campfires should at the very least be able to cook basic food.

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109

Then since they require no fuel do they become a better source for those items? Or do they now maybe burn out after cooking say 10 items?

110

Since we can’t have free things in the game, it will need to be able to accept things like Sticks, Wood and coal as a Non-Beacon fuel to be able to cook with it.

This would create problems if it was the sole thing protecting the build.

111

I was thinking if you use them as a furnace substitute then they are not used as a temporary beacon anymore as it might creat a weird user interface. I do agree that the current campfire beacon mechanic seems to creating some unnecessary confusion for some new players. I would remove the campfire’s beacon function and have players move right to the real beacon.

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112

Then they would more or less act like how a Furnace acts like now, only it is limited to cooking food only, and maybe only basic foods.

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113

If this reply was to me, then why would you assume that I was trying to move functionality from one tool to another tool? Are we not sophisticated enough that we can’t cook meat in a furnace and on a campfire? Why would it need to be one or the other.

I just said it would be nice to be able to cook something over a campfire in a temporary method. There should be nothing wrong with doing that.

The link to a beacon needs to be removed. The asset of a campfire needs to stay and if they want to improve it then allow us to cook some stuff in there as an option to having to do it in other places.

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114

That works for me and let’s players still use it for decorative purposes just like they do with the furnace components.

115

If I was assuming you meant that I would not have asked a question but just restated your comment. Since I was not sure what you and @Trundamere might mean I asked.

116

I can agree with that. And that the beacon should be required to be made before a campfire.

Had a new player build a base behind mine. He couldn’t see it because of the trees are so thick there, said he didn’t know that he was that close to others. He had a campfire and was making a crafting table, said he was making tools. I didn’t think to tell him to make a beacon, as I had been ready to get off.

Next day, go back to check on him and his base has regened, campfire is gone and only his crafting table is left but one row of wood around what had been his walls. He had mentioned he was getting off to take his son to the fair, so I’m guessing he didn’t make a beacon and didn’t realize that when the campfire ran out the base would just regen.

Been in the game, but not at my base, so have no idea if he showed up or not, if he quit and just let it go, but said he was enjoying the game so far.

It is confusing to new players, it needs to be changed.

On the campfire as a fire, I think it would be good to be made after a beacon is placed and before you make a furnace to cook food. You start out and don’t know a thing about what to eat. If you have a campfire and it shows putting the yams and berries in it to cook, maybe some of the plain meat, regular type it would help them. They can put in foliage, or a couple sticks for fuel, that would help new players as they start out. They can destroy if after they build a furnace or keep it for looks; it could only cook simple food.

edited to correct spelling

117

I spent a lot of time today helping someone that had deleted BL then just re-installed it. He said he wanted to play it with his son, but found everything too complicated.

He couldn’t understand the whole beacon/plot system. He had trouble locating his menus.Had trouble understanding how to get/make a place. Couldn’t understand why he couldn’t do anything (I had to explain the he had to go into his menu, in the exchange, buy plots, make fuel, place a beacon…yada yada…). Even after I help a lot of these people, they give up and say it’s too complicated. This one said everything was overwhelming.

I keep running into noobs that don’t get past the campfire/plot/beacon thing. It’s like lemmings falling off a cliff and only one or two here and there make it across to the other side.

This game has a large learning curve…which is awesome once you get into it, but you have to get to that point where you get hooked. If people can’t just spawn, start placing blocks, digging up dirt, etc…then it needs to be explained and/or they need a safe/simple place to learn.

This is why I think noobs could use an incubator: Central Spawn Location for Everyone & Community Event Center

6 Likes
118

hot take here

but this game really is the building version of eve online sure it’s simple on the surface but look at how many spreadsheet style guides for even the most basic things like best planet and elevation to mine/gather something and forgeing and farming almost require there own college course to master

3 Likes
119

Until they give players the skill to take over other peoples builds via PvP and force, which will cause 95% of the player base to quit faster then a traffic light can change from yellow to red, I really can’t agree with comparing it to EVE online.

The spreadsheets here are honestly very simple, they are just a flat database to store and show information in a easy to read format,

Many users of various games I am playing have started storing basic data in Spreadsheets now days

Spreadsheets in EVE online on the other hand often have alot of functions that i don’t even understand how to use, where a user can type something into the spreadsheet and get a result out of it. The spreadsheet may or may not even go out and look at the API nodes of EVE and other websites to assist with getting the correct data.

But forging is a bit on the complex side and further made complex by the RNG nature giving inconsistent results.

1 Like
120

I said a year ago that the campfire system was a bad idea and overly complicated. It needs to go. Honestly, I would just make beacons free. Have them take up a permanent spot in your inventory and be done with it.

The menus, as you said, also need to be pruned. Far too many things are hidden under hard to find tabs. It’s a maze.

3 Likes
121

The Knowledge needs a search. Things that you would think would be together aren’t.

Butter, want to make butter, okay, that is a food item. Look in where you can see all the foods at. No butter, what, how am I supposed to make butter then? It’s food, it’s in the recipe to make butter to use to make starberry pie, why can’t I find it? Where is it at?

Because it isn’t in the food, I put down in a notebook all the recipes that I make what is used, what machines, all the info I need because half the time I can’t find the info I need in the Knowledge because there is NO Search option. We need that. New players desperately need that.

What to help the new players as @majorvex told about? Make a tutorial cartoonish video that they can watch at the beginning. A silly waste time game I play called 4 Elements, it has a nice little cartoonish story that lets you know what is going on. Why can’t one be made that shows a new player what to do, the cartoon character uses the totem to pick a spot on the planet, lands, take the totem and hits the tree to get wood, some rocks for stone hits the branches to get foliage collects whatever is needed to make a beacon.

Or it can show the steps to getting to the planets and show clicking on J (and what would be the console version) for journal and it would have pictures of what to do for the first few steps.

Food needs to be given, they still don’t understand that when they hit the leaves that the berries that fall are for them to eat, or that the sword plant has yams that they can eat raw. Write out, don’t use arrows, on what to do. Watched a video of a guy playing and he didn’t know what the arrows were for and was wondering how am I supposed to build a crafting table.

I will use myself as a perfect example, you all can laugh at me. I bought Farm Together. Can’t play it, why? It says to plow or till or whatever needs to be done to the soil to be able to plant. But I can’t figure out how to do it. So, haven’t tried to play it again, going I’ll just play Boundless. My son told me what to do in BL, I would have figure it out, but it would have taken me longer, it was confusing to me.

A beacon in the inventory, 20 pieces of cooked yams so they can have something to eat and not starve to death while they try to figure out what to do. Watched another video, guy couldn’t figure out what to eat, he found a dead critter in the water and ate the raw meat. Died. They don’t know what to do.

They complain on Steam, on Facebook, to their friends, on whatever they chat on and tell of how the game is too hard to play, there is no help to get you started.

And make a new Trailer that isn’t seen as bait and switch, because some see it that way. It doesn’t matter if you don’t, it matters if the buying customer does and tells others it is.

This game has so much potential.

1 Like