I think 249 includes some good NPE stuff. Having melee weapons right out of the gate smooths out the early game combat progression quite a bit, and adding melee, defense, and bombing options to combat expands the breadth of players that will see the combat and say “there is a place for me here”.
The skill sheet rework also makes early mid game and forward go a little smoother since you get a lot more skill points to work with if you invest in multiple skill sheets. This probably actually starts being beneficial for savvy players around the time free skill sheet resets go away.
The paint changes are also a retention QoL change, despite not really being directly an NPE change, since it reduces color scarcity even more than sovs do. Though, the increased yield might also lower paint prices to the point that mid-game players might be able to start affording them, but that’s super hard to predict with all the changes and types of players.
One could even justify single player as a boon for NPE and retention, since it brings an option for less social players to learn the game privately before trying to interact with other people. But that one is a bit of a stretch when we’re looking at a focus on Boundless as an online persistent world.
Personally, what really makes a good NPE for me is voice-acting.
I don’t like having tons of pop-ups everywhere, but a voiced tutorial that is tuned correctly, that works better. I don’t wanna spend time reading in a video-game!
If there is no voice-acting, then it needs pictures. World of Warcraft (which is free up to level 20 by the way wink wink nudge nudge) has an awesome early-game tutorial experience to teach you the basics. It fails at some advanced things like using the chat, but in general, it’s pretty good. Even has an NPC with voice-lines teaching you about the basic skills of your class.
I don’t think people are excited because they think there will be updates soon (maybe apart from a few who don’t read announcements in full ).
Excitement is there cause there is a plan for Boundless. Situation changed from rudderless sailing to having a captain and Boundless will eventually assume direction.
Yeah but I don’t think we need any more threads like “my suggestions for what I think Monumental should do first”. Monty already said NPE will likely be top-priority, and he’s right.
HOWEVER, a thread collecting ideas to improve the NPE, that is a good plan.
Yeah, it’s actually a good way of teaching players. I like Valheim’s bird appearing whenever a player finds new items, learns new skills or enters new biomes and meets new creatures.
[SUGGESTION] Our sanctum Elder could work like that - a warp would open and he would walk through, greet a player and interacting with him would open a tutorial window with information on relevant topic.
I actually agree with that lol.
We know what they are going to work on first. And they will surely decide what’s next after that when they learn enough about the game, in-game systems and how they interact with one another etc.
Oh my god, that damn Hugin! I feel like he always appeared too late to say things. Most of the time, I was like “DUH, stupid bird, I already figured it out!”
Plus, it’s special, Hugin spawns on decorative things, which are basically designed for him to spawn on. Valheim is a game where your ability to change the world around you is much more limited than Boundless’.
The Sanctum Elder opening warps to you could go… let’s say… hilariously bad.
Like if he opens a warp under water because you’re somewhere where he has no place to spawn in.
I’m sure you’ve had situations where a warp didn’t quite send you where you thought because the game couldn’t find the right place to open it.
Imagine you do something and you hear the faint voice of the Elder going “well done, Oortling!” from the roof of the building.
HOWEVER, something I think could work is if the first thing you do in the game as you grab you first Totem and warp augment, is also getting an Oortstone orb. That orb doesn’t go in your inventory, but is the representation of your link to the Elder.
The ‘help’ section of the game where you find an historic of tutorial information could be reworked to have an imagery of the orb in the UI with the Elder’s head.
And everytime the Elder appears to you, it’s like as his head in the orb, in a window.
I admit I’m not following this thread any longer because people come with thousands suggestions and demands and wishes … I just don’t care about… sorry. But of course I don’t mean it shall be the very first thing. Just one of the first things. I don’t want to see anything new for now. It’s just nice if existing things would get improved and that’s what I understand as part of the new player experience. And just one of them things is forging. There’s more important that should be worked on like a good tutorial. The existing guidance from the beginning was something I did and dropped very quick because the first objectives you get are things you can not always instantly achieve. So I was back then just doing my thing and tried figure things out myself or got them told by other players over time. So obviously that’s something that has more priority to adapt.
I get that. We are used to it that there has been lots of German translations throughout games and also advertisement has been often in German back in the days. These days it gets less and less. We Germans are a little spoiled with translations actually as well as a few other countries. Before you disagree on that part, just imagine to live in the Netherlands where no translation exists for pretty much 99% of games and most movies. They get forced to watch it in English and that’s why most Dutch people speak so much better English than any German just for the fact that we don’t have to. There’s of course lots of Germans in Boundless. But also lots of Dutch people. And we for sure would attract lots other countries if the game offered more languages.
It’s just nice if existing things would get improved and that’s what I understand as part of the new player experience. And just one of them things is forging.
I do not even remotely think of forging as part of the new player experience, I can’t really have much input on whether it should be worked on or not because I only heard bad things during my time playing and so I just never desired to touch it. I quit with 807 hours in the game, not near as many as some here, but also definitely not new player hours either. Imo forging is a whole other beast outside of the npe as you can get very far without ever touching it.
It’s indirect. How long have you gone through the game without aoe tools?
It’s not the new player that forges. It’s the old player and the new player buys the stuff. If nobody is forging then the new player is also getting bored mining single shot. Lattice chisels etc…
The slubs have returned. Coming back from a long hiatus. One of the major factors that made us shut down was the cost to maintain portals. It’s absolutely insane for any real hubs to maintain and thus we have tons of dead portals. Make it easier for us to connect these worlds and we’ll build amazing things.
While I don’t like a lot of the way you have painted the Devs and your constant complaints and belief the game was dead and all this other stuff like demanding a “apology” and stuff – my comment was more directed to those people that literally tried to destroy the game and did things to make people quit because they wanted the game to fail - bad reviews, telling new players to leave, etc.
So maybe I should have been more clear in my statements about who I really feel did everything to ruin the game once it started having problems - and you I don’t feel fall into that bucket. We might disagree a lot on approach and content of how we make our points, but I know you care about the game and in the end want the best for it. Plus good and inspirational builders like you we need even if sometimes we argue like family at each other.
I am not defending James. I don’t like or agree with a lot of his decisions. But I’m also know I don’t know the full story and likely never will so I approach it in a more fair way. It is completely unfair and ridiculous to think you know everything that happens in his head and what he was doing or not doing. No one has the full story and people that seem to think he “had no plan” or blah blah blah is just crazy. Who knows what he did or did not do and honestly does it matter - no.
You are incorrect on this and you will continue to be blind to the reality of the situation. He wasn’t inept in communication - he just chose not too. Those are two different things. You just don’t like his choice to not communicate as do many others. They don’t understand why even though it isn’t too hard to understand.
At the end of the day no matter what people say he did or did not do - he did keep the game from shutting down for 2 years and has now sold it to someone in hopes it continues. He could have at any point turned the servers off, gone insolvent or whatever. I’m not sure what legal hold he had on keeping it alive but people need to just chill on this and move on.
The game survived no matter how many people we had trying to kill it or saying it was dead. Now we just wait a few years and see if it finally dies or not. In any event, I just hope people can just move past the horrible bad situations we endured with this game and see if it can be turned around or not. There is no guarantee it will and it would just be nice to have a game people enjoy without always attacking everything because they aren’t happy with how things are.
Look, if James had been more opened about the difficulties he was having, I would’ve been more accepting. But the Monumental announcement was the first time he openly acknowledged that the game had been in maintenance-mode… in 2 years. Before that, officially, things were just… “slow”.
Is if “fair” for James? Knowing all the facts, I would guess not, indeed. But is it fair for us who had this long wait without content and radio silence?
Like you say, he chose not to communicate. So I choose not to give a single @£#% about his potential reasons.
To me, what matters is the end-result. If, at the end of the day, your work disappoints your clients, do you think they will all care for whatever “happens in your head”? My own clients IRL don’t give a flying @£#% about my reasons if my work isn’t as good as it can be, they simply go to someone else, and I can’t go radio-silent on them.
Because this is the video-game industry shouldn’t always mean it’s different. If you think it should, that is your prerogative.
At the end of the day, Boundless keeps on going, but I won’t mind if James isn’t on the team anymore.
Which is like the absolute bare minimum. I know enough about System and Network Administration that I could most likely keep the game from shutting down.
I would say more, but I am not really in the mood to test rather or not MajorVex will react poorly to what I have to say today.
I think that a lot of the game still going has to go to Square Enix being as patient as they were. Don’t forget, they were paying for the servers up until recently.
That was the deal which they could have not taken… I’m sure the Devs weren’t thrilled with their lack of advertisement or unwillingness to fix things later on that made the game look even worse from a management side. There are always two sides to the story and people need to remember in this drama there is no “good guy.” Each side had their own issues and created problems.
Nice ideas , but IT must be possible to have several i call IT Events to Happen at the Same time then IT would be very intressting.
AS IT comes to the loot and the actial Difference between T3 and T6 its that you get Same amount of oort and Just more and and all moob Drops on T6 .
Would be nice to get more oort on T6 Runs AS benefit so raise the actual drop of oort on T6 planets.
This would Help the Community to get them more attractive and more stuff for Forgeing Like Hopper cores would be on the market because Like IT IS now the Mats are getting more and more rare…you See IT in B.U.T.T. prices getting Higher and Higher for Forge stuff.
I won’t go on T6 hunts because the planets are insane. I am not very dexterous and have a hard time grappling on parts of a T3 or T4 planet. On a T6 I usually end up dead at the bottom of a cliff, cave or ravine with nobody around. Make the planets a bit more hospitable to people and my wife and I will come. smile Also, agreed, the loot just wasn’t that much more appealing to make it worth it.
).
Our sanctum Elder could work like that - a warp would open and he would walk through, greet a player and interacting with him would open a tutorial window with information on relevant topic.
sorry. But of course I don’t mean it shall be the very first thing. Just one of the first things. I don’t want to see anything new for now. It’s just nice if existing things would get improved and that’s what I understand as part of the new player experience. And just one of them things is forging. There’s more important that should be worked on like a good tutorial. The existing guidance from the beginning was something I did and dropped very quick because the first objectives you get are things you can not always instantly achieve. So I was back then just doing my thing and tried figure things out myself or got them told by other players over time. So obviously that’s something that has more priority to adapt.