Hey,
Been playing a while, and lurking a fair bit on the forums, so aware some of the bits i will mention have been mentioned before, but figured with early access its good to get the views of a multitude of players to see how people find the game. Sorry if i ramble a bit, and as i say, much of it has probably been said before.
Being a fan of both MMO and creative games, and always looking for games which encouraged community involvement over simply trying to become the best (whatever that means) at some aspect of the game, the game appealed since i saw it being crowdfunded. When i saw the game had been released on steam, and looked at the current build it seemed good enough to start playing, and dragged along a couple of friends i often play online with.
Having played Mine-craft together before, we enjoyed setting up our own servers, one of my friends used to love making huge builds, my dad would make pretty intricate buildings dotted around, and me and my brother would tend to play around with the command blocks and see what we would end up with (Spinning buildings, a cow waterfall, and lots of little bits to intigrate with the others buildings), but perhaps due to the processing needed to allow all of this, we ended up having issues with the servers, even when hosted by third party’s, and ended up moving on to other games. Having this freedom to be able to use command blocks to add a whole other dimension to the building made this great fun, but i guess may have also ruined it for us. I wonder if there will be any plans to allow for this kind of control to your builds (even with simple things like gleam lanterns that switch between different colours (if you added a timing option to this the possibilities could get interesting (scrolling billboards, illusion of movement etc))) , (even if only available through self hosted servers) will be a part of boundless? Though im obviously aware by making the game MMO there will be even more processing issues to think about.
One of the great appeals of boundless was the ability to chisel, and having joined just as the new chisels came out was great. One thing i find a bit confusing is not being able to combine chisels (maybe this would result in too many different shapes to render?) and i am currently spending what feels like a decade to get enough titanium to be able to mass crast a load of square chisels for an idea i wanted to build. Though at the same time i managed to get enough, and i guess its good for it to be a challenge.
As far as the game mechanics go, there are only a few things, that again have probably all already been mentioned, when you reach lvl 50 with my first char, i feel it would only be fair if you were able to redo all of your attribute points (only one time) so you can specialise that char based on your experience through levelling them up. This seems important to me, as i found it was a lifesaver being able to do so with the recent two updates, as each time i have learnt a little more about the game and how i wish to play.
As with most games, my first character ends up being a bit of a jack of all trades, as i want to get a feel for all the game has to offer. While it would be nice for this to be a viable option for a char build, i realise having enough flexibility to allow this can mean if people do specialise it could become a bit to OP. With my first at lvl 47, while i have been able to explore all the game has to offer, the char is defiantly pretty clunky for mining, building and fighting, as well as missing tax reduction not to mention the other skills yet to be released. Because if this i have started another char build, aiming towards collecting (mining digging etc) as this seems to take me a fair bit of time. This has not been to much of a headache, as knowing the game the first few levels and tutorials have been simple. Not being able to reset my first char build, will mean if i ever want a char to specialise in each aspect of the game, i will have to delete and restart my first char, which i would rather not do. In my view, though it shouldn’t be too easy to do, each player should have the ability to be able to cover each aspect of specialisation from one account.
Being on steam i am used to getting notifications if my friends start playing the game, they don’t seem to come in boundless, and would be useful.
Will be interested to see how guilds or groups of some sort will be integrated, and kind of hoping quests will be able to be player made (such as crafting a lock and a key and making some sort of dungeon or base with challenges leading to the lock leading to some shared treasure chamber, and the ability to add our own folk law to the quest). Though this is just me being hopeful, as would maybe be tricky to integrate, but would add a whole other aspect to an already amazing game (one thing i also enjoy about RPG is being able to be sucked into the world, if this is player made, even better…).
It took me a long long time to start finding any gems to mine (as well as strangely Teck components) , and this was only after finding the posts about amounts and what planets to look on. While this exact information should maybe not be shared for the final build, it would be nice to have some indication of where to be looking, i suppose eventually this information could just be shared through the community. But as a new player i spent allot of time on only a couple of planets, not knowing i would have more luck with different resources on other planets.
Swimming - I have just started my first underwater build (will eventually be a small village under a lake, hidden, walls of all the buildings made of water…) in doing this i have become more and more frustrated with the slow speed of trying to swim downwards, even using crouch this is a painful experience)
Plots - there have been a number of occasions where it would have been extremely useful to give my Friends permission to plot above or below one of my builds. Prehaps even if this was only done by me personally (such as connecting a beacon plotter tool to my Friends beacon to allow me to be able to extend there plot above or below mine).
Colour - The more colour (and texture) variation the better, while there is a fair bit in game, the more variety the more freedom we all have with our builds.
To anyone involved in making or funding the initial launch of this game thank you, its great so far. And sorry asbout the rambling.
Cheers,
Sam.