I watched the trailers for the game and saw all wild creatures being docile, not attacking. I read about how you could choose to be a builder or crafter or hunter or explorer and do the thing you want to do in the game. But as I’m beginning I seem to be forced to do all of these things. I’m really not interested in having to fight/kill mobs. I’m not interested in having to worry that I’m going to be killed the moment I run into any wild animal.
I understand why defense and attack are important aspects of the game for resource gathering, but I would suggest a way for people less interested in hunting/fighting, who may be more interested in economy and trading, to quickly find their way to places where those types of gaming interactions are obvious.
The wildstock are currently bugged - they will become much less aggressive with the next patch. Skills have only been introduced 1 major patch back: it is still very new and being iterated on rapidly.
This is a very important post for me. And we definitely do need to pay more attention to the non-classic playing styles.
We need to make sure that if a player choose not to engage in combat (or any part of the game) then there is a valid and successful path available for them. Are there enough skills for a player to develop a non-fighter character? Do we have enough stealth and threat-reduction skills so that they can avoid triggering combat?
The ambition of the game is to allow a broad spectrum of playing styles - as you point out. But the execution might not currently achieve this.
@Serendipity37 I would be really interested to get your feedback on developing a character with the current skills for non-combat, and how successful it is. Because your feedback will be relatively unique. Also if there are any obvious gaps please let us know. Thanks!
I personally am a bit more of the classic or even “dark souls” like gamer, though my partner @GenocideAngel is very muchly (and very ironically) a pacifist gamer, preferring a relaxing mining and gathering play style. The threat reductions and stealth skills seem like (though, she’s not had the chance to test them yet) a step in the right direction. If this was paired with other threat warding and avoiding tactics, it may be just perfect for her. Granted, we both agree that this shouldn’t go overboard- dangerous worlds with the best resources should still pose a challenge to even the most passive players. Perhaps other ways to actively avoid combat should be considered? Such as ways to ward off hostile monsters in an area, or even frighten/intimidate attacking creatures? Hard CC like rooting abilities to forcibly disengage from combat would be a solid option as well.
Tl;Dr, I’d like to see active countermeasures to combat like placed wards, “fear” abilities, or root/snare traps to repel or disengage from combat.
I like a lot of these ideas. In voxel type games I am definitely a hard pacifist. I would much prefer to go around without having to worry about dying due to enemies. I just want to build! (and I have to gather and craft to do so…) I’ve mostly gotten around this by getting max health and max regen, so that I can ignore enemies. (Just yesterday I was running around Munteen with about 8 cuttletrunks following after me, I generally have to kill the wildstock and sometimes the spitters too, but unless I really feel like they are getting annoying I let the cuttletrunks live.)
The idea of a warded area is really interesting. If not just for putting down in beacons, then maybe in areas where you are gathering. Of course, it might just be a single use item that you can buy off crafters or craft your own. But that doesn’t account for if you want to explore, which more a fear radius might be helpful.
But I think overall part of the problem with these ideas is that they aren’t available at start up. So what could be implemented for brand spanking new players to be able to protect themselves?
For starters, the home worlds (beginner planets) are largely passive to begin with. Mid-range talents would be unlocked around the time players find themselves exploring mid-ranged planets, ideally.
I like what @james and @Havok40k both said here. I propose some things that may help people take a non-traditional approach.
Can we get some items that are rare, or at least difficult to produce, that will enable people to reduce threat beyond skill trees, etc.? That way, they could venture into dangerous places without having to engage. Think, invisibility cloak-ish.
We could have items like special torches that would ward off, entrance, or blind mobs so they could not attack.
I would love to be a hunter and attacker who took people on expeditions. I’d love it if I could be hired to kill things and watch people’s backs as they sought after rare minerals/resources. I’d also love to be able to pave the way for them on dangerous planets. I think this works with the goals of spawn rates, etc. If I could clear an area out for a couple of minutes at a time and allow pacifists to gather things, I’d think it would be great. This would also encourage cooperative, but not necessarily long, gameplay.
PS. For number 3 this reminds me of running lowbies through dungeons on WoW. Except, if done right in Boundless, it would be way more practical and actually take some real skill rather than just being based on how long one has played.
Would 3 be available through a contract type arrangement? I believe that was once supposed to be part of the game but I haven’t seen any implementation beyond the feats for it.
Based on my memory of leveling from near-zero in the last few weeks (since right around the release of 169, iirc), here are a handful of suggestions:
make the role of Objectives clearer. Right now it’s not obvious that they’re meant to be optional – and because they provide so much XP relative to other low-level activities, they’re only sort of optional.
make Objectives more parallelized …if that’s even a word? but what I mean is, right now you often only have one, maybe two possible Objectives at a time, in a given section, available to track. Which forces you to complete them in some order, and doesn’t give you much of a choice in doing…something else, because you can’t even see what’ll get unlocked next. Maybe a chart more akin to the Feats?
offer more options for the very first skills. Right now you get to lvl2 and you get 5 skill points and the game says “go choose a skill!” but…there’s only one tree open, and it’s a linear track, so you’re forced into getting Compass (I think it is?). This feels kind of, I dunno, icky to start with, like you’re trying to trick or manipulate us – which I don’t think is the case! but it’s an odd design. If there are skills you want everybody to have, just give them to all players at lvl0. Or, and better, give us many more actual choices for base skills, in parallel trees! So that the pacifist can choose Creep first, the explorer can have a Jump or Compass, the hunter can have Scanner to know what he’s about to whack…
And here are a bunch of more random ideas for noncombatant playstyles:
some sort of anti-fighting Tool – an Un-Weapon, that can be crafted almost immediately with wood or stone and upgraded/mastered along with the other Tool types, and gets the user out of combat for X seconds, at Y range, etc. A… Calming Flute? Scarecrow-Launcher? Shadow Cloak? Bonus: sends immediate message to players that noncombatant is a genuine and supported playstyle!
[craftable] decoys you can drop to draw creature aggro
[gatherable/plantable] stuff like catnip, only for a particular kind of creature. Spitnip! Cuttlenip! that makes them loopy!
[buildable/findable] tricks of terrain etc that change likelihood of different creatures spawning or being able to attack – so if you trust your ability to dodge cuttles but not evil wildstock, you could figure out that the wildstock on world Z can’t swim and then build moats or do your gathering on archipelagos?
I guess that’s going to be up to the developers, but I suppose it’d be kind of cool if we had a contract. Maybe they could make it so that the player who wanted taken on an expedition pays X amount of money (or goods) and if they die during Y amount of time, X is refunded 100%.
A lot of the ideas listed here so far are excellent ways to help non-conflict oriented players find ways to contribute. Games where both combat and non-combat players are equally rewarded are rare, and for good reason-that’s a difficult balance to strike on top of adding a lot of complexity to the game’s underlying code.
I second the following suggestions made by others in this thread:
Stealth/warding/invisibility skills and items
Items that create temporary warded/protected areas while a player is resource gathering
In-game mechanics that encourage forming a Fighter/Gatherer team
Disengage mechanics for if a fight starts that you don’t want a part of
Make something available at start up
Expanding on some of these ideas, as well as some of my own thoughts…
Early! Early! Early! - I cannot stress this enough. Whatever function you plan to focus on when giving non-conflict players options, have it be accessible as early as possible. Being forced to participate in fights when that’s the last thing you find fun kills the rest of the experience and makes players dis-inclined to continue.
Early class-specific skills - I take it this game is not going the route of selecting a ‘class’ when creating a character. But there should at least be a very early way for someone interested in, say, just crafting to be given a fast track to more storage/craft recipes/high-defense but very low attack stats, maybe a lower penalty for dying. In the same vein, someone who wants to be a hunter can be offered an opposite version of this package like less storage, only basic recipes, but higher attack and defense, more xp for defeating mobs.
Hired NPCs - Perhaps someone who doesn’t want to be a fighter/hunter can hire an NPC to assist them when they go to more hazardous areas, the cost might even be a percentage of whatever is collected, which means even if the trip is a bust, the player wasted only time and not money as well.
Route to rare items - There should obviously be a balance of risk/reward. The most common mechanic I see for this is if you want the rare items, you have to venture into dangerous territory to get it. But for a non-conflict style player this isn’t ideal. There should be other forms of risk a player is willing to engage in to get rare items. Find other high-risk ways that require strategy and planning for non-combat players to achieve rewards.
Early Path to Economy - I love the micro-economy of games. But when I started I had no idea where to go to find other players or a place where I could find a market or working economy. Let alone figure out how to participate in it. Perhaps make this more clear at the beginning for players who want to start around cities compared to players who want to start in a survival style setting.
As I get a little further along in the game, I’ll post some more notes about my experience as a non-conflict player. Though I hope the bug with aggressive mobs gets fixed fast, I can hardly stand that one.
A hundred times seconded! This could open the door for so many ways to play beyond the usual hack-n-slash.
I tried to come up with a few examples/suggestions, and ended up purloining a bunch of ideas from the game A Tale In The Desert, which is an entirely non-combat MMO made up of many highly complex minigame kind of things, and which I loved to death save that it’s…kind of ugly looking, and has been largely abandoned by its creator. Anyway, here are a few of its concepts, some more complex than others, adapted for a Boundless-style game:
Crossbreeding plants, with functional underlying genetics [like flowers/grapes/flax in atitd] – A fixed number of flower color combos exist in the wild. Each flower has a (hidden) genotype encoding, for instance, stem color, blossom color, glowy color, and overall size. A player can cross-pollinate two flowers to produce a seed (but this is a suitably long process involving multiple fertilizations, and destroys both parents) whose genotype is a mix from both parents following suitable probabilities.
Resources whose spawns are dependent on multiple time-dependent environmental factors [like mushrooms in atitd] – Certain colors of gleam, maybe, only appear along icy coastlines on moon-worlds during a solar eclipse. Or become visible when more than N players are nearby.
Resources hidden by players in remote locations transmute into different varieties/colors the longer they remain unfound [cicadas in atitd] – Player buries a cache of Copper Bars with some Ancient Techy Bits in an unbeaconed place. If nobody digs it up in 1/2/3 weeks (or whatever), the bars turns to Iron/Silver/Gold. Or similarly [raeli tiles in atitd], player builds a brick-coloring-oven in some region, and starter-colored stone put in that oven progresses through a series of different region-specific colors depending on how long it is left to bake
Multiplayer Coordinated Tasks – Experimental Alchemy Techy fragments can be analyzed to give part of a formula for converting/changing some material. N different players form an alchemy research group and decode lots of fragments to get the entire formula. Formula requires them to participate in some sort of coordinated ritual within some time frame – i.e. they activate the distillery and then within 30 minutes have to build 5 different gleam-shrines out of specific materials on 5 specific worlds
Treasure Maps Stealing this from Elder Scrolls Online – techy fragments hide “maps” that are actually drawings of landscape viewed from a particular location
…and so on ad infinitum! I realize some of these are probably wayyy too involved to implement at this stage, but I’m hoping they might spark ideas.
