Is Boundless A Universe? Should it be?

General
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.

35

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.

36

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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38

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.

42

“Main worlds” might never become considered “Abandoned” by an automated system because people tend to build portal hubs and links to all of the main worlds, which means there will always be a few “active” builds on a main world.

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43

Having central hubs where players start and can pick up quests, gear and items from npc would be a big help. Players can choose to start on a random world more difficult or in the hub/ npc town or whatever, where it runs through a quick tutorial of the How to parts of the game. Plus it would be nice to know that there is a hub/ town in said location or on whatever planet that you can rely on and meet other players. Instead of being
On an episode of alone. Player to player engagement is also very important.

I recall the plan was to have player towns of the highest rank be the spawn points for new players but that system is flawed for many reasons.
Difficult city layout
Bad locations
Ghost town
No npcs to help facilitate new player needs
Could just be someone’s hole in the ground filled with high prestige item.
To big or to small

Planets that need to be removed is something that is not new to gamers of online games no different than servers being removed on other games either pack up or lose it all. Because in 30 days your planet will get swallowed up by a red giant or black hole or whatever.

Blue print system could be taxing on a games hardware but if doable at least we could copy sections of our builds or all of it and it could rebuild it for us ideal or we could do it block by block still better than nothing. Especially if we have to leave our planet behind.

Having more than one way to traverse between planets like no man sky would be nice “wish list for space crafts” build them find them barter for them either way would be nice.

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44

And, regarding comments about the scale and elasticity of the persistent universe…

A central hub that is designed to handle traffic and to direct it in some manageable way would mitigate congestion problems on “de facto” hub worlds, allowing for the universe to grow (and, possibly, contract) without constant growing pains.

45

Two things I want to say.

  1. A blueprint system would be great. That way players can just pick up and move when they need to. But care has to be taken. One game that I’ve played (Planet Nomads) introduced a blueprint system. I fiddled with it and figured out how it could be abused (essentially generating free structures and breaking them down for materials).

  2. I agree that the NPE needs work. I like your idea of turning the Sanctum into a pocket world. But something else that I think would help. You can already choose which region your new character can start in. I think it would be nice if there was a sub menu of planets to choose from at that point. If you choose easy, then a choice of one of the tier 1 worlds from that region (instead of it being random).

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46

When I became a more experienced player, I would greet new players and give them two items. A diamond grapple and a smart stack of gleambow totems. Nothing overpowered, but enough to make the initial experience easier.

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47

That’s great, our community has always been so welcoming and inviting to new players. I was part of the original Black Light on Phem. We use to help lots of new players quite generously, but at that time the game was very active and busy. Most players stayed and settled with us, so in essence they learned the game playing daily along side us. Perhaps that’s why we grew so large so fast… those were very fun times. Certainly felt like an MMO back then. It may have been too much… perhaps there are players still here on the forums that could comment on that… but I will certainly do it again when i get settled, i feel a new excitement for the game again.

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48

A blueprint system (most likely) doesn’t help with resources. Not everyone builds for beauty, there are people who try to build useful/functional stuff.

Moving a regen farm isn’t going to work, unless the blueprint system also copies the terrain.

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49

Boundless is a universe in the sense that it has multiple planets with travel between them, although I’d argue that it’s more like a small galaxy with undefined solar systems. But aside from some superficial differences that ultimately come down to palette swaps and the requirement for different atmospheric protections, those planets barely differentiate from each other. This has been further highlighted by the proliferation of sovereign worlds. My main complaint is the lack of diversity in flora and fauna.

Every planet has the exact same set of creatures, with them only differing in strength and hostility. Similarly, the plants you encounter only differ in drop rarity, but still remain the same base product.

For the planets to feel like a real living, breathing universe with diverse ecosystems, I’d like to see this repetitiveness addressed and some variety added. The only planets which should feel close to carbon copies are the starter worlds, as certain base resources are necessary to the new player experience.

I’d love to visit a new planet and not know what creatures I’ll find, or what rare drops I’ll discover by exploring. I’d like to see unique weather patterns, biomes and gravity. In short, I’d like the planets to feel more procedural, rather than being built from a very small pool of repetitive elements.

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I have been both in the past and have started this process again. Current hope is to put a store with new player friendly gear on every east coast lvl1 or 2 planet, if that proves maintainable, I’ll expand to USW then, AUS, then EU (EU is last because they actually already have several of these that I’ve seen).

100% on board with this.

This was my understanding as well, although I seem to remember someone suggesting it was something of a switch that could be flipped off to make it so it wasn’t automatic.

This idea (in essence) has been floated here on the forums before as well. Personally i think this could be done on a single player generated world with extra hand holding, then interacting in the santum to journey to the MMO worlds… Could also give a bundle of items for finishing the tutorial on said planet for use in the MMO, like a copper grapple, an iron hammer, and some other starter things they would have made in that experience. Everything breaks anyway so item bloat of early gear isn’t a big concern.

Personally i really like that we only have the elder as the sole NPC in boundless, I’d rather everything in universe be built by players, but don’t get me wrong i see the appeal. Right now objectives are the only “quests” in boundless (“feats” are more like achievements), and they vary greatly in how interesting that they are (like most mmos so i guess that’s par?)

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