Alright, indeed, I was not aware of that. From my perspective, it was plotted in a way where I simply couldn’t grab grass/soil and such.
Still, I doubt the same can be said of the 3 other worlds I’ve mentioned. Or you’re all mad-lads.
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Sounds like a few builds might not let the sun in. Vampires in the game???
As for my take I do support the idea of a tutorial planet(s) so that can be addressed.
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Some of us thrive at night 
The idea of a ‘tutorial’ world as mentioned by a couple of you seems a very good idea. Although just to be the ‘devils advocate’, in many other games you have to run into a city to collect your npc quests then run miles out of town to get to the area where you can complete a quest so in that respect the plotted towns are a bit similar one could argue.
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Well, if you wanna go there, the difference is that you’re talking of games with NPCs and quests, which is not what happens in Boundless. And even then, in these games, you have easy-to-use fast-travels and mounts. You’ll say “but we have portals” and such, but most portals are named in a cryptic way (such as ‘just’ the name of the owner or the name of the city on the other side of the portal) which DO NOT help most people to know where they lead and if they’ll help you get close to where you want to go (which in my experience is generally “far away from a city”), so you’ll actually go faster by foot than to load each portal one by one to pass your head through and see where the heck they go.
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A big problem is that portals require upkeep. If small portals would be free we wouldn’t have to reserve such huge amounts of land as extensions could just be connected through portals.
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I’m definitely aware of that, to the point where I wrote this : CRAZY IDEA : free portal token
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It was just a quick and ‘dirty’ comparison as I believe one of your comments originally was about not being able to complete tutorial quests. But yes Id agree with the portals etc and that there is a fundamental difference between those games and Boundless. The plotting though is a permitted game mechanic so that brings us to the obvious which is the Devs lack of foresight in making the tutorial easy to complete.
I will this time reference a game of the same type as this in which that games devs added a tutorial ‘world’ for this such purpose and that game is Trove… another voxel based block game. This tutorial world didnt originally exist in the games earlier days and was added as a need for it was realised.
One other thing as Shadykatt mentioned is the existence of trolls who hit a lot of the big towns hard in the earlier days of the game, and because of this a lot of the big town owners had to ‘protect’ themselves as best as they could, especially seeing as there is no form of overall control of the land the town covers from the towns owners point of view. No way to boot out a troll squatting on areas they plotted to stop you from finishing that next stage of your build etc. I know of 1 occasion where James actually said we should just play with one of the many trolls and just get along… not an ideal outcome, although to his credit he did come and remove many other trolls as they appeared on the scene!
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If I remember right this idea was brought up on a call with James when I was trying to influence them to allow mineable Oort. It contained no plots and was just a starting area and then people jumped over. I forget the other details and honestly we focused more on the challenges of Oort.
In regards to the thread… Much of this is and will always be a reaction to people that decide to build right beside you and the issue that some people will build something and only half finish it in a way that you don’t prefer and it causes you to be un-inspired in that area. Also in the phase of meteor platforms, gleam towers, and trolls it became a defense mechanism.
Of course don’t forget many of us thought the game would grow and we had a lot of building aspirations that maybe didn’t come true.
Either way I don’t see it as a big issue since there are many planets that people can start on. Beckon barely has plots. I haven’t investigated closely all the new planets and I can, though, understand frustration if some of these planets are just fully plotted for no reason… hence why I suggested that maybe people try to clear out dead plots they have in old towns and stuff that are never going to come back. That at least would help clear out space…
Hell it could be someone intentionally trying to hurt and stop the game from surviving – and we know there are a few that don’t want it to be a success any longer because of how some things played out. But, I would highly doubt that and would expect them to do other things like bad reviews, etc. Most people that said the “quit with pissed off attitudes” have actually quit and not come back to the forums or game or check in.
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I have been keeping tracking of first tranquil planets of new players spawn since 2019 ( while considering all the posibilities for my massive build that-hurts-a-lot-to-planet’s-unclaim-land ), I realize that the game has a hidden algorithm that re-direct new players traffic into which ever planets that has fewer beacons and lower population at the time the new character is created (sometime the game recommend another region if the closest region is too crowded).
That being said, as for EUR region we have some T1 starter planets, and Arie have never been the chosen tranquil starter planet since 2019 - but it was either Dazzak or the others instead ( sometime it was Dazzak in the morning and the others in the evening of the same day LOL - yeah, I gathered the data twice a day, daily )
I also tested new player spawn position if they shoot the first spawn point inside a plotted land, but the game spawns them outside the beacon at the end ( 2 plots away from the buffer zone of the beacon ). So new players have some chances to get away from the plotted land at the start.
And I ONCE encountered a newbie who was stuck in a random hole plotted by me inside my beacon, he had no way to get out of the hole until I arrived just intime to unplot it. Feel very bad indeed. So I moved all the ground plotted land upper into the air since.
Im still supporting this statement “Plot more than you need”, since there are still trolls lurking in the game, you dont want to messup your precious art works.
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Since when did player activity have any impact on player retention
What would we do about it anyway? Censor them?
People who have those plots, earned or purchased them and have every right to plot huge areas. They are most likely people who are still playing. Complaining about having to run for a bit to get out of there plotted area is really not much of an issue. Also there maybe things build underground as well.
Side note:
If you wanna get to a planet for resources I’d suggest using the gtg hub. As all there planet portals take you somewhere not around anything so you don’t have to run for miles to get resources.
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Well Glob is experienced in the game but his Position and comments are pretty much from the new player perspective. Think of how someone coming into the game views all this unplottable land and having to spend time finding an empty space to complete an objective and such. Player retention has been an issue for a while. 
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I understand that but people are playing the game within the rules as the Devs intended and indeed encouraged us to do. Land is on a first come first served basis and if the land you or me might someday build on isnt plotted now by you or me, then when we come to build we usually find someone else has already plotted it.
It seems the only real way to help new players complete their tutorial quests is with Devs making the changes needed to make this possible. I could see how this would be easily achieveable. When a new character is created and enters Sanctum, you see the tutorial world in the sky, not any of the normal live universe worlds, you then use the totem and augment to get to a landing point on that world. You are then ‘locked’ into that world until you complete the quests, at which point you can goto Sanctum and see one of the live universe worlds in the sky for you to port to in order to begin your journey in this game.
The game would only apply this step to new players with their 1st character. If it detects you are a player with existing characters already in the live universe it would bypass this 1st step and you would immediately see one of the live worlds in the sky from sanctum.
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agreed and we can always move onto another world to finish the objective. Its just would a new player understand that? Thats all. But I see both sides of the issue. Builds to attract players and get them to see activity and potentially get players into the guild to getting footfall…
With regard to them understanding elements of the game, this can be explained to them as they complete the tutorial… and the reason they will begin on a tutorial world can be explained in the beginning moments in the Sanctum, or at least thats how Id expect it to be
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Hey you do you. Just because I don’t like the type of buildings does not mean you should not build them. I really don’t care what people build…does not mean I can’t say I find them ugly and an eyesore to me.
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well, the pitchforks are really out today I guess.
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I’ll take responsability for that, it’s my bad. But I really was frustrated finding the same insane situation of having to run miles to get a few natural ressources on the 4 consecutive worlds I decided to visit.
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Could always go and read some news from around the world…always helps me put things in perspective…it’s like a cold, depressing shower for the brain.
That and going outside and looking up at the immense starry universe. Less depressing but much more humbling.
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This is another balancing act that may be impossible for sandbox mmo’s to perfect.
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