I'm Fairly Certain What Has Happened

General
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Having followed this game from early on in early access as a founder and watched all the ebbs and flows associated with it, I’m now fairly certain what happened with Boundless… and Crowfall, and their own actual video games.

Before I begin, I would like to sincerely thank @jon-eric for his efforts in keeping the game running and at least engaging with the community to some extent. You are truly a diamond in the rough, sir.

Monumental likely had aspirations of being a true game company and/or publisher and, as Monty has said in the past, were buying up games that “had good bones” so they could invest in them and re-release with marketing and updates behind them. I also remember Monty saying a long time ago that Monumental had “very deep pockets” in terms of investment dollars.

You put all this together, and what we’ve seen of all of their actual video games (not the simplistic and braindead casino/click/puzzle browser games they now have under Kongregate and Games Circus), and it’s clear: pressure from investors to show profitability caught up to them before they could realize their dream of becoming a full-fledged game studio/publisher and so they’ve decided the most profitable path forward is to focus solely on casino/click/puzzle browser games because they cost next to nothing to make and maintain but yet turn a profit for them.

Crowfall, Boundless, Mythguard, and the other 1-2 actual video games they acquired are all completely shelved, with no plans to do anything with them other than keep the lights on for Boundless at least as it’s likely dirt cheap to do so.

If you want to support a studio that only puts out games like this trash:

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Then by all means keep doing so but, if like me, you want to reward actual game studios with your $$$, I highly recommend shelving Boundless just as they did themselves and picking up any number of games from the vast array of survivalcrafts that now exist:

Aloft
Astroneer
Dune: Awakening (they have refocused the game on PvE)
Empyrion: Galactic Survival
Enshrouded
Fallout 76
Grounded 1 and 2
Icarus
Minecraft (with mods you prefer)
No Man’s Sky
Palia
Pax Dei
Rising World
Runescape: Dragonwilds
Soulmask
Subnautica 1 and 2
The Last Caretaker
The Planet Crafter
Valheim (1.0 now out)
Windrose

All of the above are survivalcrafts to varying degrees that scratch some or all of the “itch” that Boundless does. And if you’re willing to expand things a bit, there are many others that are also similar but with other main aspects brought in such as Satisfactory, Star Rupture, Foundry, V Rising, Palworld, and the Ark games. I have played every single one of the above games except for Aloft, Astroneer, and Windrose so, if you have any questions about any of them, ask away.

Anyway, call me jaded. Tell me to mind my own business or ask me “if you don’t like the game, why are you here”. I don’t care. This has been a public service announcement.

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Out of all the games you listed, not a single one is a live service MMO in a persistent universe which has always been the main draw of the game for me.

I’ve stopped speculating what has happened as no one has any idea and I’ve just moved on.

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Awesome, got a list of games to try :slight_smile: . Thank you!
ps. Already tried / played / playing some of them

Kind regards,

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I tried a number of them and though I liked some of them enough, none of them got close to Boundless for me :man_shrugging:
To each their own - dropping Boundless is not an option for me. It works just fine and is one of only 2 games I’ve played for years consistently (and continue to do so).

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Why drop a game I enjoy, if it’s functional and still running? I play other games already. I don’t need a list of games to try out. Why don’t YOU go and play whatever games YOU want and stop posting the same negative drivel/speculation on here. I honestly think some of the people that try to convince us how bad the game is are more obsessed with the game than the most devoted of us are.

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My issues…

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Not sure I understand. Many of them actually are. Pax Dei, Dune: Awakening, Palia are all persistent universes, live service, and MMO or MMO-lite, among others.

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You could be correct in regards to what happened between Monumental buying and now. Without them actually saying though, it is all just guessing. I just accept they are currently keeping the lights on and one day, it will be no more. I play because very few games allow you to focus on building and crafting without having to fight, or requiring parkour type jumping to progress, but you can buy from others who are not limited* the way I happen to be. Minecraft feels very lonely when you go back to it after Boundless, I can’t just go for a run around and marvel at the work of others when it’s my own world, and having lost earlier versions of my builds in Minecraft updates it’s hard to want to invest time there again.

That is why I still play Boundless. I love the game, have been here since a couple of days after release and I’ve got well over 7,000 hours in the game, and there is still more I want to do.

*Disabled owing in part to exiting a car via the windscreen many years ago, muscular spasms makes it hard to reliably aim correctly, not an issue if it takes me two or three hits to hit a desert sword or place a block on a placid world. Rules out any game that needs me to fight to progress or jump from platform to platform to complete a stage when I can’t even use the grapple in Boundless very well. :slight_smile:

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even though they haven’t updated in years. i find the game enjoyable and what we should be doing as a community is try and populate the game. cause once this game dies there is no other game like this and to see one come around like this will be forever. we should stop relaying on the devs to improve the game when the ppl here can easy advertise to all social platforms to get the ppl we need. Its Called Networking my friends XD

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I’ve played all of these and none have given me the same open world feel as Boundless did. Pax Dei may have been the closest to me as far as persistency.

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It sounds like you are reading the complaints others have instead of forming your own opinion on some of these:

Aloft: I never found the game buggy, were there some in the beginning yup, most have been fixed. Never had an issue with saves.

Astroneer: Great game, but you said bland graphics and gameplay always trumps graphics.

Empyrion: Dumped a ton of hours in this over its lifetime and early on it was pretty buggy, but that was some of its charm, many of those are fixed, AI is still a tad rough.

Icarus: Again, you said graphics arent great unless you have a good PC, but I found the graphics far superior to any other game on this list. The other things on your list for this game seem to be a bit nitpicky

Minecraft: The granddaddy of them all, the gameplay again outweighs the graphics and with mods its probably the most robust of all the games listed. I never enjoyed the graphics, but after playing many hours of it, it’s not about the graphics.

No Man’s Sky: Great game, period.

Palia: While too Cozyt for me, I enjoyed what I did play of it.

Pax Dei: Awesome graphics and you basing your opinion on launch issues doesnt make it a bad game. I did find it overall best if you just like to build, the rest of the game was just ok.

Rising World: One of the best building systems with the Planks and Beams mod.

The Planet Crafter: The building system was pretty modular and overall it just felt pretty empty, but the world changing as you play was cool.

Valheim: Another great game.

I think any of these game can be a lot of fun, but judging them by just their graphics is a pretty large injustice as many have some great systems in place and depending on what sort of experience you like one of these would probably be a great game for someone. Also basing it on the reviews (I do this too) I think is an injustice as most of these games are pretty great.

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Aloft was buggy when I played it. As to the save issues, I was going by what I had heard from other people playing the game (not reviews).
Astroneer is an okay game. But if you think the gameplay is a shining moment, you’re easily pleased. There’s no challenge. It’s grindy and repetitive.
Empyrion, it has bugs and holes you could drive a truck through. I had to start the game over again several times because of these bugs.
Icarus, you found the game exciting because you’ve spent an absurd amount of money on your PC to maximize your experience. Not everyone can afford that. And you didn’t even address my logic issues, which make no sense at all.
Minecraft? What gameplay do you speak of? I’ve tried hundreds of seeds, explored and seen a lot of it. It’s pretty basic. If you have to mod the game to make it enjoyable, it’s fundamentally flawed from the beginning.
No Man’s Sky: A rocky start that almost killed the game, that was eventually fixed. Played it and loved it…for the first couple of hours. Then discovering that you can’t even build a basic shelter until you go to your next planet. And then drones that attack you on sight and will kill you. The basic shelter you can build at that point is quite honestly, fugly. Travel ever onward for more junk. :sleepy_face:
Palia: devs introduced premium storage and convenience items, Lunar Paths (Battle Pass), and extremely expensive cosmetics, some of which make the WoW cosmetics look cheap.
Pax Dei: Graphics wise, I can only go by what I’ve seen when youtubers play it, as the game would not load past a black screen for me. Tried dozens of methods, troubleshooting, etc. all without any kind of solution. Reading reviews, endless loading screens or crashes on loading screens is a COMMON issue.
Rising World: Blah. :sleepy_face: Looks like any other open world survival craft game. There are dozens just like it.
The Planet Crafter: I find this game pretty amazing for being created by a two person dev team.
Valheim: It might be a good game, NOW. But back when I played it 2 years ago, it had a horrible control scheme, combat was lackluster, and you no personal light sources. If you got stuck somewhere away from base in the dark, you were screwed.

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Of all of those games that you listed not a single one has the same style or “charm” as Boundless. I like some of them, I love Valheim, but they are different than Boundless in their style and aesthetic. I chose Boundless over Minecraft because Minecraft is just cubes upon cubes. Boundless has a look to it that I like. I will continue to play Boundless until it shuts down, and then I will hope that someone else turns it back on like someone did with Gloria Victis. Some of these non-selling games are also tax right offs for some companies… so, there is that.

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Yea well you know me as we talk on Discord every so often, but I think many games including Boundless get a bad rap for a number of sometimes silly reasons, silly but not unwarranted.

A games graphics can be pretty horrible yet be a great game. Minecraft, Boundless, Hytale and some others fall into this category.

A games first launch can be terrible, but the game in the end can be great too. Aloft, Boundless, No Man’s Sky and Empyrion come to mind for me having played them all from the start and all of them turned out fairly good.

A games system requirements doesn’t make a game bad, it just makes it bad for those that can’t play it. Pax Dei and Icarus for here.

I’ve seen people say a game is bad due to control settings or the lack of the ability to change those.

There are a ton of reviews for some really great games out there that are negative just due to one or two things and those one or two things dont make the game bad.

It easy to focus on the negatives, but most on the list above have more positive points than negative by far.

Your one of positive is for Planet Crafter which I thought was also pretty good. But it does get grindyz repetitive, there no combat, inventory management was bad, the loot tables were questionable, the exploration felt pretty repetitive, and quite a bit of clipping into the world at times were some of the issues I recall. Even with those it’s a decent game.

While I don’t always agree with @Dhusk most of the games he mentions are good, but I would disagree they offer what Boundless does.

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I really enjoyed this game for awhile but then it felt very repetitive. I mean, all games are repetitive, but this one not in a good way imo. Plenty disagree and still love it after playing along time, but that is my experience

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I have over 200+ hours in icarus. At first I didn’t care for the game but once I understood it…it’s fun. Repetitive though. If an area is crowded, getting resources isn’t fun lol. Yes you do need a modern machine to run it but from a revenue standpoint. dev’s have released weekly updates. Big plus for me!

Runescape dragonwilds being a test for Runescape 4?!?!? Love the game and hope this is the future for the series.

Overall the list is great. I am not a mobile, gatcha, p2w fan so I just stick to the PC games. Maybe one day I will get an AI program to design my perfect game of Open world Voxel mixed with the RPG class system of skyrim. Boundless has run its course for me. No need for me to dig and dig and collect anymore. Its like a shop, no customers or visitors, why stay open?

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Nothing beats Boundless combat and weapon variety

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No Man’s Sky & Icarus are two of my favorite games.
NMS for the aesthetic & exploration. Icarus for the survival & crafting mechanics. NMS can be played like an MMO because you can see random players (especially in the Anomaly), you can visit other players’ builds, you can trade items, etc. Icarus gets an update every week & NMS does big updates once or twice a year.

OSRS is also one of my favs, but a huge time sink.
Curious about RS4. Hated RS3.
Dragonwilds is good, but it’s kinda the same as Valheim and New World imo.

Abiotic Factor, Palworld, Planet Crafter & Terraria have lots of fun things to do.

Trove was probably the closest game to Boundless overall, but it was sold years ago and screwed up beyond repair. You can create your own worlds/clubs, other players can visit your builds/clubs, you can sell things to others via the market UI like the G.E. in OSRS. The visuals are more akin to Cubeworld and not beautiful like Boundless🖼️ (aside from our characters lol).

The landscape is changing fast for game/software companies. Costs have got to be astronomical at this point. Creating/updating games is a huge financial risk with no ROI guarantee. And now they have to consider ai with every move they make.

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We view this game as a hidden gem but is it?

The game did have a 24 hour peak of about 1300 players once. Since many don’t have time to play everyday I would think that would mean there were 3,000, 5,000? maybe more? playing regularly basis whatever month that was. And that does not even count PS4/PS5 players

Well, they are all gone.

Now in a world of 6 billion people there are maybe 50 players

I like the game as is but maybe we all belong in rubber rooms in some psych ward. Plenty tried the game and 99.9% said “no thanks”.

Sure some wanted updates and left. Others weee too impatient to learn the grind. But a lot simply didn’t like the game that we all love. And I bet that number is higher than we think

I don’t want it, but I think it needs a major overhaul.

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