I haven’t been active in this community for years and I’m sure this is far from an original thought and there’s probably countless of posts complaining about the same thing but still wanted to make a post about it. Call it venting if you want. I just think this game has so much potential and I feel like I’m just watching it go to waste. Its fundamentally a really good game with great mechanics but it falls short due to mainly one thing which is the lack of players. Sure, more content would also be great but a lot of what made this game good back in the days was the fact that there was a decent amount of players. But even back then I remember wishing there were more players. I really really hope the developers will bring their full attention to this game again at some point but I’m not sure if that will ever happen. Have the developers actually spoken about this somewhere? Also i’m interested in getting back into this game again and I’m looking for a community to join, like maybe a town if those are still a thing so hit me up
It’s bedtime for me but let me say your welcome to BUILD THE FUTURE
I think ideas overtook the actual “what we can do with This engine”.
That simple.
Ideas were awesome, but getting it To this game lacked Pretty Hard.
Agree with OP it is wasted potential. The franchise was handled poorly after release, design choices and the lack of any kind of proper administration in game made it fail imo.
It still puzzles me to this day that they never even considered hiring administrators/volunteers for the in game chat and conflict solving tasks.
The design mistakes stem mostly from the idea of combining the core of a grindy/power creepy mmo with a block building game (bad choice).
Also ignoring the importance of the social aspect and never integrating a proper interaction system/chat was it’s downfall.
All that is left at this point is to hope for some buyer that sees the untapped potential and buys the property before the game is outdated and fades into oblivion for good. I doubt that the original owner will ever invest more into this franchise considering it’s poor performance on the market.
I mean the game didnt even get proper marketing.
Boundless United will soon be back on track, I think, which is aiming to be a good starting point for new players.
The leader of said place had to take some leave of the game so there was a little lull, but it should be back on track in short order.
Most likely they didn’t have money for it, after SquareEnix bought the IP, we had a person that was hired as community manager I think, very sweet girl. But after a while everything stopped and the game went in maintenance mode.
As for @Cirlex’s concerns, given that the game is not closed, they still see it as something, with the private planets there is a stream of income and maybe at some point they will come back and at least optimize the current game features, chisel them out. As for new players, it was a game problem from the start, a planet can’t hold a lot of people (~100 max) at a time, so if you start heavy marketing, you get a lot of new people in, especially Minecraft players that are pretty young, and when you get in game, make a base than few days later, find out that you can’t go on that planet because it’s full… can spin up some pretty bad publicity and would hurt the game more than it helps.
and when the limit is reached, a new homeworld will be launched into orbit, this means more costs, costs that is at this point unavailable, reason don’t spend money that you do not have
SquareEnix didn’t buy the IP and doesn’t own/control it. They are paying to keep the servers/planets up & they control Steam. Leahlemoncakes still checks in.
Yes, the marketing shortly after launch seemed to be lacking. I think they should have at least done more with social media (dev streams, giveaways, etc) - it could have greatly helped spread the word and garner interest.
What this game needs is a no man’s sky kinda comeback but thats probably too much to hope for
Sadly the game can’t handle a lot of players and even then as I stated previously the game is pretty close on the average players it’s always had.
It fits a sort of niche… while that niche could be much larger the game and the way it’s designed may not be able to handle a HUGE influx of players.
I’m confident that the game can handle unlimited numbers, but over a certain limit the community dynamic has to move from centralized to decentralized. Think the current TNT hub vs the way Portal Seekers did it. Same thing with the current “wtf do we need 5 malls for” problem vs the old “3 malls is good, but it’s weird people want to open more” we had at med-low population.
Not that there is any real reason to think about any of that.
I should start playing the lottery so maybe I could get enough money to take over and fix this.
Boundless never got enough people through the door. I don’t believe the problem is with player retention as people have suggested regularly. Plenty of online games have lost more players than Boundless could ever dream of getting in the first place. The initial abysmally low player count on release set the course.
Some of us were chased away and really never came back.
How do you get more people through the door when 98% of people who buy the game don’t stay long enough to invite their friends?
Gellis is quite populair now a days it seems, 11 people on there right now! 
If we as a player base keep promoting the game and keep having fun that will certainly help. Steam the game, have fun playing it. Invite others.
But don’t create posts a bout the game being dead, just silently leave as that has the least impact on the game and other (new) players.
#justmy2cents
laat de nederlanders maar overblijven 
I find the problem to be a gap in early to med game play, most people go bench, workbench, extractor, refinery. And get stuck. If they create a forge it won’t be useful, but all that happens in the first 15 days. After that there isn’t really anything to drive to, before the portal seekers network linked the planets, now the portals are scattered, try to get from your base to a gathering point, and get back without a death and spending 1000c, this is the lvl 20+ struggle, to go to the high lvl areas you need just the right skill point distribution, and it is easy to use your skill points wrong. At the start the lore sounds great, but it isn’t in the game at all, there is no story progression to work to, so the mid to late game for what a player wants to do gets vague and fuzzy.
I think the difference is that No Man’s Sky sold millions on launch day meaning they had plenty of funds to fix it. Boundless didn’t sell on that scale so without significant funding and the will of Wonderstruck to improve the game, it’s just not going to happen anytime soon, if at all.
there is tigs, gtg and tnt which basically connect everywhere