Is Boundless A Universe? Should it be?

General
22

Possibly something that could be put to the community, similar to the sanctum design contests?

Some way to increase the size of the sanctum would be needed, (although an internal tool with that functionality likely already exists?) and I guess the actions which you can perform in the sanctum would need to be expanded, for example I don’t think you could create or interact with a storage block in sanctum :thinking:

But sounds like a great idea, I think there was some earlier exploration on this by Wonderstruck, so there could be some notes on that floating around :man_shrugging:

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23

At this point the private world engine is, as I understand it, basically ready for a first deployment. A small pre-generated world that exists to support the first couple hours of NPE could definitely answer a lot of needs/questions I think.

Not only as regards making a more consistent and managed NPE but with regards to players who want to try and start the game with a private universe, requiring a couple of hours of generation time immediately after purchase for those not willing to start in the public space.

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24

Yeah good point, the local worlds are completely functional on testing certainly, I guess the only check there would be to make sure a small local world wouldn’t reduce your in-game performance too much

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Why not simply have a small tutorial scenario residing on the pc/console. It could even be selected while in the Sanctum area. It doesn’t need the full live game resources, just enough to help a new player become accustomed to the interface and basic controls.

I think alot of us have some of our greatest memories from starting and learning the game…. Until the friendly local in-game whale shows up and gifts you with all the luxurious items of end game and blows you mind on what’s available :joy:

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26

I think I’m lucky, the guy I met gave me the last few durability of an iron 3x3 and some low-end grapples. It was enough to entice me but not enough to blow my learning curve apart. This is something else definitely addressed in a private NPE/tutorial phase.

It took me a couple of months to push any of my characters to level 50. There is nothing like that first time. But also I was expecting (after maybe an hour of research) a bunch of worlds, a bit of work getting around, and just one or two sort of “new fangled” and player run networks.

I knew it wasn’t going to be anything like the preview vids as the engine had changed. Still there was @Jiivita and a couple of others, solid intros and deep tutorials. A lot of relevant info on the forum because it was all recent, and not a lot else.

With the media that are out there now, it could be quite a show stopper to get spawned onto a newly generated world that isn’t even linked onto a network yet for your NPE. Clearly, after many hours of discussion here, over several years, not everybody wants to start from scratch.

Especially if “sandbox” is the first word in the description, and all they’ve seen is videos of massive builds and end-game players.

EDIT: To add that’s an example of a rough sort of problem. You can’t control it, but you ahve to deal with it.

There will ALWAYS be someone who sees one particular aspect of the game as “primary” and presents it as such. So whether or not it’s even called something like “sandbox” is not always something the game developers or publishers can control.

Such points can be addressed though and then, expectations can be managed. At the end of the day, the answer to every single question can’t be “maybe”.

Not pressing for any particular point, at the moment - of course. I’m just noting that as an ongoing issue, man that has led to a metric ton of frustration, for sure.

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27

my dream to have in bound is a micro chisel to make furniture and decor our selfs to sell using a chisel that cut out tiny blocks just implement that and we will make the decor for you so you can focus on the diaper issue :grin:

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28

Hey I’m just responding over here again because I did not mean to derail the announcement post with this discussion.

It’s exactly this. The current universe, and thus the current 50 planets, would be at full capacity at roughly 4250 concurrent players. That means literally no player could even access a single portal leading to a public world.

So regardless of the numbers that could theoretically be supported on sovereigns, etc… we don’t currently have any in-game or social infrastructure to support this, and especially as pop-up growth.

Yes we can have sovereign only, or even partly sovereign portal networks that create and bridge the networks connecting things now but, none of that exists, and it’s not exactly simple to create in a rush.

Lots of people would be working on it, I’m sure. But also a lot of people would just be stuck. Unable to leave their planet (or probably do much) until some people at least just log off.

And some of those people won’t probably be logging back in :man_shrugging:

As also discussed here, there are some issues with the current systems in place (whether or not they’re on autopilot) that can make it a real mixed bag how someone’s early gameplay goes, just based on when they log in to a rapidly growing universe.

A player that spawns into a planet that auto-generated today is basically spawning into 2018 boundless without even portal seekers around yet.

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Ah, I understand. That was basically my point as well, but you have said it better.

Despite the challenges, mind you, I’m excited to see if the new devs will be able to meet them and help the game grow.

As far as this goes, though, it sounds awesome. The beginning of the game post-wipe was the most fun, for sure.

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30

Nightstar, come back to Blockscape if you want a single player/private experience. We miss you. Seriously.

As for Boundless, I feel that the MMO aspect is one of the better things about it. You can interact with other players and build together a civilization. There’s simply no other MMO like that, not on the same level of detail. It would be painful to lose that aspect and I think @monty1 and the new team should actually double down on it by increasing world sizes, making netcode better and so on, not withdraw from it.

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31

I really don’t, though.

This is me actually, 110%. I’m here for the MMO. I’ve also come to recognize, though, that there is a lot of interest in both private and shared/hosted spaces. And also that in order for the public universe to be persistent over any long term, there needs to be a sufficient system in place for monetization.

Clearly nobody (currently around) likes the idea that someone will just “finish” boundless and then move on to another game. So money will always be a problem. And while everyone wants a large persistent universe that is as public and “equal” as possible, that alone is a big financial burden.

Boundless is designed around a showcase sort of design. It’s elegant. It’s beautiful. It’s tiny. And just because it includes ways to expand, that doesn’t mean that sudden expansion will go well.

One thing is for sure spawning sovereigns has been pretty heavily tested! There’s no doubt that the existing systems can handle pretty large amounts of growth by replication. So part of the question posed by the title reflects the notion that focusing some efforts on cohesion, and more importantly infrastructure, might be an important direction.

Portal networks, for instance. Absolutely unnecessary, after all. Not even a consideration in the game design, so there’s zero expectation that a new player will have access to one, right? Did you say … what …

Economy? Nope. You can make some shop stuff after you’re a medium good crafter and have the ingredients, though :smile: (ofc by then you’ve found a shop, at least in the current game)

So while it may remove basic economic opportunity from a few players (not many are populating the worlds with noob gear stands) maybe there should honestly be some place on a public world where a new player can get a copper grapple, maybe see an iron hammer.

That way they don’t have to decide between hunting the universe for shops, or just solo grinding it to “mining at tier 3 and processing precious ores” before they can make a chrysominter. Or just cross their fingers and hope they spawn ~650 meters from a mega build with a massive hub and loaded mall.

This is super random. And these things have been real, if minor, problems for people. With ofc similar and related issues going back before the introduction of the coin machine. Since the game provides you with a pretty simple way to get around, and an easy way to make all the coins you need to do so, any level of engagement with another player pretty much remains purely optional right now.

Technically, everything is available. Any economy at all is purely illusional, it really depends on the enthusiasm of a few different players at any given time. And of course the disparity in the availability of play time. The only real metric of in-game value :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

I definitely believe that adding a certain level of infrastructure to support the notion, and the experience of a “universe” would be a direction well worth supporting. And in most ways it takes very little from any of the other potential avenues for growth. Other than the massive RPG vs. Creative Sandbox issue.

If it comes down to a choice, I definitely root for expanding on the RPG angle. And expanding the servers and resources available to create a more immersive and engaging universe. Fully catering to that direction for growth though is probably a lot more difficult, vs. focusing on the creative/sandbox side of things.

At least in terms of financial growth. I mean it seems like it would be a lot easier, on the current platform, to just go ahead and cater to more of a F2P happy demographic and immediately get rolling on blocks, cosmetics, and etc… on into mounts and whatnot as you get a live development team going.

Private universes, if they’re not linked into live in some way it will always be (IMO) a side issue. If, as @Dhusk describe, they had them hosted/approved at amazon and I could take my main avatar there, I would visit. Whether or not I would build/play there is more of a social issue than a matter of the game mechanics.

This is silly but as a persistent and editable space Boundless has core principles of metaverse (the cyberbpunk concept not the facebook product) that are inescapably attractive to a lot of people. Personally I think it’s a shame to just fundamentally ignore that in favor of endlessly pushing people onto third party tools…

32

To be a truly MMO sandbox game, we need to figure out a way to remove max player or increase it by a lot per worlds. Maybe have limit for how many players can build on a world but not visit.

At launch it was frustrating that we can’t navigate properly because a key world needed to be passed by to get to another world.

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33

I think this could be very helpful for the NPE, or maybe small pocket worlds (support a very small number of players / groups of friends)

But - I think - an even larger hurdle of the NPE is when players transition from learning survival mechanics to learning about the community. E.g. when they are connected to the universe.

I feel like there should be more ceremony around “graduating” to join the community. For example: what if one (or multiple) areas are designated as hubs - with areas dedicated to welcoming and orienting new players - and part of the NPE is sending players to those places

34

What I would suggest is if a known world don’t have an active beacon for, let’s say, 3 months, it would be shutdown. Also, instead of generating new world if one is full, the game should first look for a world that is active and low population. Only if all worlds are “full”, the generation should kick in.

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Yeah, this always used to annoy me way back when there was mostly just a single major hub.

Since the first iterations I’ve seen of Feather Falls I’ve had similar concerns about not being able to actually be on my home beacon’s world, should that particular build ever become a more popular attraction, which would probably happen if the game’s population grew and no other such builds were made on other T6 worlds. I don’t think Kol Huroo has ever capped at 80 at any given time that I was also on, but the concern has existed in my mind, at least.

@monty1 Any thoughts on what an ideal scenario could be in case a player is unable to access their home beacon’s world, on account of their world being full?

Also regarding the main topic, although I did always have interest in the local worlds, I have a particular attachment to some of the MMO universe worlds (like Kol Huroo), and would find it difficult to not play the MMO universe even if other convienent options were available and easy. Although it’s not the key thing for me, official support is something that often motivates me more to play something.

Edit: Also, I’m sure that at the time of the 249 testing, other people had mentioned at the time similar ideas about a tutorial-capable/functional-world sanctum.

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I’ve looked on and off today, I thought James had recently (last year or two) clarified the state of the system for generating public worlds. It really isn’t too important for the future, though.

To extend that Rabbit hole, I’ll leave this here:

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37

I think the current system needs to be reviewed if people are being kept off their planets due to the population being full, that is a pretty big bummer. I think that was a huge turn off in the beginning.

I am not a vet like some of you old timers and I have not read the entire thread here, but if people were not able to access their planets in the beginning, that would be a huge no and probably a major cause why so many players left in the beginning. I am not sure who the large streamer was at launch day, but whoever it was had a ton of viewers (could have been several streamers but was 11k viewers) and apparently that person/people never came back.

I’d say tapping into some survival streamers and some Minecraft streamers would and could bring a larger audience, but the world population issue is a pretty major one as people will want to play with the friends.

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There are many threads about this in the forum from players and has been talked about extensively. An area for people to play that gets them more up to speed, etc before moving to the shared Universe… anyway it might be helpful to do some skimming in the suggestions thread. We’ve had a lot of good ideas from the players and those that were able to directly engage Devs directly and many took time to expand out the ideas decently.

I’m pretty sure I have a thread about this because I talked many times with James on a call about this as we discussed some of the key challenges and solving that move process.

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39

Having a tutorial “pocket world” seems to be inevitable and natural choice if we want to solve not just NPE issues but overcrowding and beacon-littering of the persistent worlds. (Not saying the latter can ever really be solved, but usual trouble with unwanted neighbourhood, inactive beacons fuelled for months etc. can at least be mitigated to a degree by not having all the beginners’ beacons around).

There will always be players that don’t get sucked into the game and play barely beyond basic tutorial. In the current state they do take space in public worlds and leave a lot of smaller or bigger beacons that stay there for weeks or even months after.
With a separate tutorial space to use, all those who don’t go beyond tutorial stage don’t affect the players who advance into the public universe.

From the NPE perspective, a tutorial space prevents confusion and distractions (I met so many players who started exploring before finishing tutorial, got curious about portals they found and travelled to higher tier worlds and then had trouble coming back or surviving). Early help from friendly players they meet is great, but also make them skip some steps in early progression that can give them a better understanding of the game.

Finishing a tutorial world would be a good moment to learn how to warp to another world and reclaim a beacon (so new players can take initially gathered and crafted materials and tools to the public universe).

Thinking about it now, there might be a need for 2-stage tutorial with 2 separate pocket worlds. First for basic tutorial until learning to warp to another world (which would be the second stage pocket world and the only visible in the sky at that stage). Players would learn to reclaim their beacon and use warp augment to pick a location on the second stage tutorial world.
Second tutorial world would introduce to portals - players would learn to create a portal within the same world (and maybe then to make a portal connection between the second and the first pocket world and move between them to learn that side of game).

Finishing second stage of tutorial could unlock public universe then. But I’m thinking, instead of randomly assigned starting world, players could see all available starting worlds from a region they chose to play. They would then apply the warping augment to pick whichever they want.

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40

If a Tier 7 - Tier 8 planet spawns as a permanent planet I would Reclaim Cookie Kingdom on Tier 6 planet instantly Muhahahaha (O.O)

Prob off subject but yea boop!

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41

Not full but a threshold should be met like a percentage of planets plotted because as we we have seen when planets start getting over populated it brings out the worse in some people.