When I started recently I was very lucky to have a seasoned player find me and take me under their wing. They explained all the intricate systems and basics and helped me get started. They also helped me find Discord.
If I hadn’t there is no way I would be playing today. That is a huge issue. When I go exploring T1 planets I find lots of beacons where clearly they have up in the first hour and haven’t been back and probably won’t.
I’m not sure what the solution is as I found the objectives pretty good at guiding me but there is so much more to this game. The one idea I had was providing new players a portal to the capital for a period of time so they can both explore as well as other players can find new players to help.
there could be a T0 tutorial planet with a prebuilt town with examples of all the cool stuff. when I first spawned it was on the most boring piece of land and my first impression was a bit tainted… (I later mapped the entire planet, it’s gorgeous, I still call it my home, I found the spawn place again and I can confirm it is the worst place on the planet )
First of all Welcome to boundless! I’m glad you had help at the beginning although some what expecting as the community is always helping everyone out. Those houses you mentioned are only protected as long as a player has beaconed the land or has an active subscription enabled without either everything is lost.
In terms of players having access to the capital city all you need to do is follow the orange dot on your compass and your find your way to endless portals and the capital cities with every shop under the sun!
I know that now but I surely didn’t know that when I started. What I found was basically huge area empty of players except for some seemingly abandoned structures.
When the person helped me get to the capital I was blown away beyond anything I could have imagined.
Additionally the idea of a huge long run and then a run back is discouraging. At least it was for me.
Indeed I can understand that, Maybe something can be implemented using the sanctuary portal. Although you did just touch on not knowing what the icons where on the minimap. Maybe the icons should be explained to new players when entering the world!
I actually think they do at some point. When I made my crafter alt I remember learning about at least some of them but completely missed it on my first character
New-ish player here also, I too missed the compass explanation on my first character.
There is a huge lack of information for new players.
The minimap or plot map is not explained anywhere. Purple transparent squares are reserved and white and yellow ones can be reserved, few red lines means that the square doesn’t have enough neighbors and won’t produce a reservation zone and lots of red dots means that the square is considered a road and wont make you footfall or connect settlements. Is this all correct? I don’t know as it is not explained anywhere.
The objectives are not good for giving information or explaining the game mechanics, if you don’t actively go check the new objectives you can “accidentally” complete one without ever seeing the text and there is no in-game way to see the objective text again, other than making a new character.
The recipes and resources list in knowledge tab is quite handy but it is missing information, for example how long different types of fuel last or it lists different types of storage furniture, but it doesn’t tell you how many items they can hold. 4 for storage, 16 for trunk and 40 for ornate chest. Do others hold different amount? I don’t know because the game doesn’t tell it and those three are the only ones that I have tried.
This might come too late for you but capitals might not be too fun for new players to settle to as they sometimes are just huge concrete deserts with no raw materials and low level characters are so slow that even if you get a place near the portal you’ll quickly get fed up to walking to the nearest wild trees or open ground and back.
Reminder for high-level players as you build your huge roads to split the low level planets: new players who don’t have grapples can’t get up from water when the road is one block higher than the water’s surface.
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