Actually I did not miss your point. My point is what you and some other players see as challenging other players see as needless grind. Players are not going to all agree on what is a challenge and what is not. However, my bottom line point is that maybe it is time to listen to the players that do not find the grind to be a challenge and look at making changes.
No what I am saying is that with a game that has sold more than 20,000 copies on steam, it seems there is an issue with what it takes to keep players playing. And just maybe that issue is that the game is too time consuming for the typical player that does not have several hours every day to play. Constant complaints about the game being grindy could be part of the problem. I have never read any reviews that complained the game was not grindy enough. Source of Steam sales SteamSpy https://steamspy.com/app/324510. I have no idea how many copies have been sold on PS4.
Here is where the numbers come from Boundless - Steam Charts Yes that is only Steam. Boundless crafting has full players counts with the exception of Exo planets. If you take the Steam counts and the total counts from Boundless Crafting then you will find that the number of Ps4 players does not exceed the number of Steam players and in my various comparisons never crossed 66% of the Steam players. As far as that being very limited statistics? I disagree with that statement. You can look at the numbers since before launch and see the average player counts and the peak player counts. If this is an MMO and supposed to be full of players then with less than 4 players a planet on average is it meeting the goal? One of the constant new player complaints is the universe seems empty.
Your logic seems to be that even though what they are doing does not work if the goal is to grow the player base, they should not change it because some players will possibly leave. My point is maybe they should make radical changes if they would make the game more popular even if that does mean that some current players will leave. The game has tried the grinding and that does not appear to be working in increasing players over time. So we can stick with listening to the part of the player base that likes the grind, and continue to not have the game grow and hope there are enough players to keep paying for development and running the servers. Meanwhile the ones that find the grind to be too much will continue to leave or spend less time and possibly money on the game. Especially with the introduction of the beacon reclaim, it is now possible to not loose everything if you do not want to pay for gleam club.
What would happen if they change the level of grind in the game, I agree is our opinion and there is no evidence to support it. The fact that the player base has not grown but merely had intermittent peaks based on events or sales on the game since launch is not an opinion and there is plenty of data to support that.
There has hardly EVER been any sales or promos on PS4. There has been tremendous sales constantly on PS4 for the last 2 months. From Big studios Right down to little indie studios. Hundreds of game titles. Lots of square ennix related titles.
And not once Have I seen anything regarding a Boundless deal or mention. They really missed an opportunity to get some players to at least introduced to the title. With all the people working from home Iâm sure there was a lot of potential exposure missed.
I hope this was calculated measure, but from a player standpoint it really looks like a missed opportunity for growth.
Thank you very much for focusing on my main point- player retention and population growth.
@Sujimichi88 those arguments are a bit nitpicky on our points. If you love grinding you can still keep grinding just as much and youâll have more to sell.
I really doubt this would lose anyone. Who is really going to say âI wish I didnât get as much super enriched bonding agent from mass craft!â?
Most updates have affected prices and if you want to talk about âsillyâ comments itâs all the people threatening to quit the game. I wanted to scream after the farming update when people said the increased surface mats destroyed their business. Iâd guess 0 of them quit.
To the point of not everyone in game having a voice on the forum- that issue works against your point. Most of us on the forum are veteran players and have partly caused things to get more Grundy as @DKPuncherello put it. Specific example is colored glass. When it was in testing people said the recipe was too cheap. Guess who plays testing? People who play the game the most. Weâre basing recipes off of the opinions of people who have too much stuff and want to get rid of it. That isnât good for everyone. Iâve put more time gathering mats for the glass in my tower than Iâve put into entire games that I liked.
This is all about increasing and keeping population. Not one veteran. And sorry but Iâm going to go ahead and guarantee that increased output wouldnât cause a single player to quit.
Also, if it helps, consider a different number between 50 and 100. 50 is just as arbitrary as 100. Could be anything.
This is a classic case of âBe careful what you wish forâ. Everybody wants things to be easier in the immediate sense, itâs just human nature. The trade-off is that if you donât invest as much effort into obtaining something you donât value it as much. For example, going through a complex gathering and build process to make stacks of building materials is much, much different than going on the test server and giving yourself those same stacks. They just donât have the same meaning and the resulting builds made with them mean less as well.
I completely understand wanting to reduce the grind but I donât think youâre fully taking into account all the different things that keep people playing this game for thousands of hours. Reducing the difficulty level might bring more people in for the short term but it will cripple the game in the long term.
Me because we are a comunity and I like being able to accomplish grindy things that others doesnât or buy the things that even if they are not grindy I find boring.
Iâm not speaking for myself. I didnât quit the game. I want more population and I think this is the avenue to accomplish that.
Itâll still take just as many base mats to do the mass craft. I wonât be producing any more bonding agent than I have ever have. Iâll just only go gathering for mats once a year rather than once every six months. Yea- I produce that little.
My only real complaint in this is the low population. Thatâs nobodyâs fault but things can be done to remedy the issue.
I think that having a âlow populationâ is better right now. We donât need all 50 planets to turn into biitula. Hopefully with all the systems that have been implement we can manage conflict between players more efficiently.
And as suji said before, your ideas of why the game lacks of players only works for players that think like you. If things got easier I myself would quit the game and I know some others would do the same. The only reason Iâve been playing non stop for almost a year is that the game is not as easy as Minecraft and that we have an economy.
I disagree. What I value is the time spent building and the creativity in how materials are used and not the fact that a one player spent 200 hours grinding for the materials to build and the second player bought them using coin from footfall. Just because a build uses a hard to get or hard to produce material does not automatically mean the player using it made more effort or that the build is a better or more admired build.
It is I interesting that Minecraft seems to be able to keep more players playing despite the fact that boundless has chiseling (And I think is a prettier game overall) and the economy you value so much. So is this just the wrong time for a game that requires as much effort as boundless does? Do players that like building games not like to spend more time gathering materials than building? If the grind and the economy are such a draw, why do you think the boundless has not done better?
Minecraft has way more years out. It wasnât a great success at first it lacked content for a long time but it had mods and thatâs what I think helped to keep it alive and grow as much as it did without official updates that were interesting you coul just find a mod that increased the number of biomes or added new mobs.
Regarding the never ending battle between making things easier or harder I remember playing Minecraft for the first time with my brother in survival, there was not much to do besides doing basic building and surviving the night but working your way to diamonds and other minerals was fun.
Some people didnât want to bother with the survival aspect or having creepers blow their homes, so creative was the perfect solution for them and that did not kill the survival mode both modes have huge communities but here people seem to think that it has to be either one or the other
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So I think that once we have private worlds with an user friendly creative mode enabled and a better mod management the game will certainly blow up because that way everyone will be able to play as they want, maybe we will even see creative universes or moded universes who knows?
Currently without a multiplayer creative mode it is one or the other. How long until a multiplayer creative or modded mode is even going to be available? Maybe what they need to do is announce a survival mode for all the players that want grind and rare items. Make the game as grindy they want without inflicting it on the remainder of the player base.
But one of the main reasons people seem to want more players is just to feel like the game is doing great I doubt that people actually want to see a bunch of new players plotting around them from one day to the other
I agree and you are assuming he players that do not like the grind are a small minority. But letâs say for discussion that the majority of current players like the grind. Thatâs great if they are enough to pay for the developers and running the servers. And who is to say that by lowering the grind, even if the game does loose some current players that it would not gain more. As you stated, Minecraft became more popular with mods and creative mode. Would the same happen for boundless?
I think it is very likely that a multiplayer creative/modded mode will reduce players in the current universe. If that results in more players overall then that is good for the game. If the majority of players end up in universes other than the current live, then maybe that is good information for the developers.
Well I probably was not clear enough.
I know we canât be sure of which side has the majority but my point is that itâs not a good idea to remove from the current game what some people like just because others doesnât like it.
If devs can add that itâs missing for others without hurting a lot those who like how the game works right now that would be better.
Yeah exactly that as I said it seems like the major concern on the amount of players is always the sustainability of the game, so al long as there are players on any of the universes it should be good for the entire game.
I want more people because I like seeing bustling life. I spent most of my time in Minecraft building one sprawling city and would spawn npcâs in all the houses. A big city just isnât as cool and interesting to me if nobodyâs in it.
