@Stretchious you have historical data on there too?
It would be nice to see Sept 2018 when the Steam charts show 825 avg or so players, then how each month nearly 1/2 of the population dropped going forward and then leveled off at about 200ish for several months.
That is what saddened me most about the game … it never had more than 825 average Steam players…
Reading an interesting thread on the general topic in the industry… whole thing worth a read but can be summed up by this one part -
https://twitter.com/Enichan/status/1438543168547475464
It is the tragedy for me as well with this game - Phil in the other thread was saying Boundless would always be niche, but ANY niche can be very sizeable given how many people around the world play games. The problem is, is that in recent years the market has become incredibly saturated and it is taking, as mentioned above, some serious PR work, hype, and frankly IMO some luck in hitting a home run. You can get wonderful games with genius teams like this one working on them, and without that head of steam coming out of the gate, doing everything else right can still not make it a success. 
I compare what happened with Boundless to NMS since I think it is fair… the hype made all the difference. I just still can’t figure out if Sean Murray is really a marketing genius or it was inadvertent, but without that initial hype, building that early loyal base, well, to me, Boundless is still the better game, much as I love NMS. I could be totally wrong, but I think their fates could easily have been reversed.
Boundless does have an issue with the NPE as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, but even if that were perfect, they just didn’t get the exposure it needed, the press, social media and all needed to be handled professionally from a much earlier point before release.
I haven’t posted anything here because I saw little point, but meh I’m bored.
The question is what does it really matter if there are 200 players not 100, or even 50. Ultimately unless the number is significantly increased and new people are attracted the game isn’t viable. The trend is obviously going downward and the future isn’t great if the trend isn’t reversed. 100 players or 200 becoming 80/160 is the same thing. If it had 100k players then dropped to 10% of it after launching devs tend to move on
I left due to lack of variety in PvE content, lack of buyers for my gems(Having to run around to sell of 3k+ gems to multiple shops/planets/etc was getting way too time consuming), and Dev’s pretty much taking 2+ months to answer questions regarding missing rewards advertised over 5 years ago.
Do I get the itch/urge to come back…YES mainly because creativerse/vintage story and others just don’t fit my needs for a sandbox game. Just holding onto a slime hope that this game makes a turnaround.
NMS was literally hated for quite some time … their release was atrocious or at least what was released vs promised. There were MANY people that swore the game off completely.
I’d have to do some reading but when you have Sony involved I imagine that PR and just the overall marketing might have been better and much larger and just judging by the sales I imagine that is the case.
There was a bit of hype, there were news articles, videos, streams, dev streams, dev updates, etc…2015 to 2018 ish. It all seemed to stop after 2018, at some point.
https://www.technobuffalo.com/sony-and-square-enix-reveal-their-pax-east-2017-line-ups
I’m in the same boat as Dukkha…new job has me working weird hours, and not having as much time to play in a sitting. I try to catch what hunts I can, when I can, buts its usually GTG hosting when I’m free to play
Maybe the people ran away after they realised they had to grind so long to get coins to buy oort to then fuel there portals.Its a game killer.Im only just hanging in there purely because I love boundless you know building and meeting kind people.But now I have my own portals I spend most of my time grinding to get coins to fuel those pesky portals.The thing I don’t like is that.I really do wish the devs either make it so you only have to fuel once when you build a portal or they could just make portals free.Its unfair that if you aren’t playing boundless say for a week you could end up loosing your portal to someone else.So I have to try and keep them fuelled even if I’m not playing which is crazy.I unfortunately added a load of portals on my city COSMICVIBRATIONS in lamblis because I found some beautiful pretty amazing creations I just couldn’t resist to have a portal too.im greedy and got so many portals now purely because I got attached to those beautiful locations and it’s easy access with a portal.so it’s kind of my fault having so many portals but I just can’t part with any.lol.Im a solo player so it’s tricky fuelling every week.Marcel my best friend on boundless has gifted me oort to fuel my portal to his place but I always feel bad him even helping me.The rest I do myself and sometimes Marcel will give me things like free tools and peat to sell but I alot of time refuse to take it from him because really I should be doing it all myself.I don’t think I will properly leave boundless but I must say after grinding 400k a week to fuel my portals I feel cranky and loose my oomph to even go and build or you know be around my friends.I have an illness that can make feel drained so doing the portals can really suck the life out of me.Beautiful game but it’s tireing to be consistent .Apart from that dilemma I love boundless and the people are kind to me and extremely helpful,I’m just bit stubborn and not good at excepting a helping hand.If the devs read this please can you make getting money quicker easier or just make portals cheap or free.This is my only wish that I’m wishing right now.Have a happy cosmic time on boundless and enjoy your time.Ive left boundless for 3 weeks and I’m back because it seems to be my destiny.i guess I should finish my Palace in lamblis.hey I started building my Palace bridge which is a good start.
bye for now from cosmiccori a Starbeing of love and light.
I am sure I don’t have as many portals as most people. But I do go on hunts to accommodate for some of the Oort. I don’t feel hunts are a grind at all. I make money a few ways and none of those feel like a grind at all. If it is a grind for some to run 200 portals… then maybe cut if back to 100 portals … if its a grind for 20 then maybe cut if back to 10. I technically have found I really only use 2 portals that I own constantly the rest I can do without. I do have about 20 portals though and none of those require any thing I would consider a grind.
I make enough coin in my concrete shop to accommodate for the cost and quite a bit extra, hunts are just a bonus. I suppose someone might consider running a concrete shop a grind though. I actually enjoy it. On top of that I put in a bit of coin into DK Mall a bit… but nothing outrageous that would cause me to do more than I do now.
Sorry about your illness @cosmiccori if you ever need anything just ask 
Although they caught a ton of flack (interestingly, not RIGHT at release or when the game leaked out a bit before - the floodgates on that seemed to be opened by a single Reddit post a little bit after comparing they thought were supposed to be in the game to what was), by building so much hype beforehand, they were able to get in a critical mass of fans who loved it as it was, and all those initial sales let them put their heads down and go to work on the updates making it the success it now is. There are still people who won’t forgive them even now, but they got some of their money regardless.
Sean IMO managed to do what not even the best PR firm could have done though - made himself a cult figure. First the hype then the mystery… even now, he plays the fanbase fiddle like a virtuoso. He caught them a ton of hell, but also got them a lot of press. Back before NMS’s release, I learned about it right away, 2013 IIRC, but even if I hadn’t, it had all sorts of press and exposure to where I would have learned about it repeatedly if I hadn’t right then. Boundless did do a few things and events as majorvex mentioned, but it got nowhere even close to the exposure that I can see - I only learned about it when seeing it by chance in the PS store, and this is with me browsing gaming stuff online, various social media sites, a LOT. But this is the norm too, it is hard to get that kind of exposure as an indie, I see it with a lot of games in the works that I follow… so many incredible ideas, so much talent and heart, but just not many people who seem to be aware of them. Boundless could and should have gotten a lot more hype and attention - so many cool, innovative features, all the worlds, portals, game economy, seeing builds from other planets. I’ve said before, but the general reaction I tended to get when I’d share screenshots on Twitter was, “This looks really cool! What is this?”
I think one of the things that made NMS sell so well on launch is that Sean talked very well about his game. He was charming, intelligent and enthusiastic. His only problem was that he probably got carried away talking about what he wanted to have in NMS at launch and what was actually available at launch and people read too much that was clearly ambiguous as being a promise.
And like Paka had pointed out, those big sales allowed Sean and his team to continue adding content without worrying about putting food on the table.
I think if Boundless had had a naturally talkative personality to talk enthusiastically about Boundless to the gaming press Boundless would have been a better selling game at launch.
When a developer really believes in their game AND can talk enthusiastically about it at length to anyone who will listen it’s priceless, free PR.
In the end, Boundless has not been able to retain players. Advertising alone is not going to fix a game that is perceived by most players to have flaws. There seems to be a common thread that the NPE is poorly handled in the game which seems to be reflected in statistics related to achievements. Marketing is not ever going to help with this, only changes to the program. I also believe that in the end, the game is just too time consuming and grindy for the average player that does not spend 5+ hours a day playing a single game. If players do not feel a sense of accomplishment during the time they have to play then they move on to a game where they can. I do not have any other games where I spend literally hours mining and end up with nothing but piles of rocks, or set my workshop up to craft and then log out for a day to allow the crafting to complete. I have never understood how the long crafting times were good for the game. I also never understood how the RNG can be anything other than frustrating for a casual player.
We all know that indie games can succeed and can do so without a lot of advertising or PR. Games such and Space Engineers (with over 5,000 concurrent steam players) and Don’t Starve (with 1,800 concurrent steam players even with the launch of Don’t Starve Together which has over 15,000 concurrent steam players). I do not think advertising and PR alone would have made a difference as long as the developers continued to follow the complexity is fun mantra espoused by one of the developers during the games first year. The developers seemed to listen to this and the players that felt that the longer it took to do something the better and the more ingredients and steps to craft something the better. In the end I think all that did was discourage the casual player and the cash flow they could have brought to the game.
Very good points there, and I find myself going back and forth on a lot of it I admit. No question the NPE and complexity are serious issues, but would it have gotten many more in the door even had these things been optimized so that retention was much higher (so better reviews/word of mouth spread)? Edit: Based on the returns Phil mentioned them needing per month in the other thread, it sounds like even had we kept 100% of the free weekend players it might not have been enough. Of course, monetization is another issue too here.
Conversely, if enough hype had been built, if a lot more copies were sold initially, it might have enabled them to do more and get it turned around… and it perhaps could have still found enough of the niche of those of us who are addicted regardless to sustain itself. Absolutely a game like this I feel should have a lower barrier to entry and it took me working with a newcomer directly to see just how many issues there are… but some do love complexity, with enough attention it might have managed a better base?
In the end it probably needed both. 
Sounds like, due to that lack of early attention, the early access players were skewed then to the more intense/less casual sorts, where if the early base was larger and had more casual types, it might have been more vocal in stressing the issues on the complexity.
To be honest, I think there were plenty of players that were concerned about the complexity and time commitment the game was requiring from EA players, but with a developer (who left a few years ago) liking the complexity and a group of players saying that players wanted things “handed to them versus working for them”, it seems this was ignored and I feel like now we are dealing with the consequences of that. Also some items like the forge were introduced right when the game went live so one item that certainly introduced complexity was not even a part of the game in EA (or at least not until the very end).
We will probably never know if the cash flow route taken was ever going to pay for the game. If after the free weekend when we had 800+ concurrent players from steam and that meant 4000 actual players and half bought gleam club then the game would have a cash flow of 10,000 USD per month. That would have at least paid for running the game and maybe that number would have meant more word of mouth spreading good things about the game. Maybe they should have used a subscription model and made the initial purchase price less. Maybe if we had 1000 players willing to pay $5 per month for a subscription the game would be covering its costs.
I do wonder how difficult/time consuming it would be to change some things about the game. If they reduced the crafting times across the board, if they increased the drop rates from mining, gathering and farming, and if they increased the number of items produced when crafting would this encourage more playing? If they reduced the number of ingredients (not just the quantity of any ingredient but a reduction in the number of types of ingredients) needed for recipes would that also encourage more play? If players could do more in less time could we keep people playing longer and maybe as a side effect encourage more gleam club and cubit purchases?
At this point even if it upsets some players, I think some consideration needs to be given to changes that might broaden the appeal of the game.
I do think this is a big part of it too. There are many popular games that were fully created and promoted by just one person or a couple. They showed so much passion for getting their game out there to share with others (now look at them): Project Gorgon, Ooblets, Minecraft, Stardew Valley…
Warframe is another popular game that struggled to get going and made some missteps:
“The studio had found it important to release new content regularly to keep a stream of income from the game. They were also faced with the problem that to understand all of Warframe’s systems required some commitment by the player, and players that felt it was too much would wash out after a few hours. This led to them investing more into the player community to keep them up to speed while helping players understand what the game’s systems offered. This included starting a weekly video games development “Devstream” on YouTube hosted by community manager Rebecca Ford. Starting a fan convention called TennoCon, and working with Twitch as a partner to promote certain streamers and offer Warframe rewards within the game.”
I believe Eric Barone almost scrapped Stardew Valley because he wasn’t sure if it was good enough, too. It’s sold about 15 million copies!
I guess there’s such a fine line between success and failure. There isn’t much middle ground in the games industry, now.
is irrelevant, but the tardigrade is the most interesting animal in the known universe 
The harvest times on farming and not releasing the original promised content (namely Titans) was ultimately what had driven me and a few others away from the game.
What has kept me away for the last 8 months is the recent developments really don’t peak my interests for current game play.
With hindsight, this is probably the only way to make it profitable. With the way it’s currently funded, people’s initial investment in buying the game can only last for a certain length of time, but the server upkeep costs continue indefinitely and they are forced to rely on quick turn-around churn just to break even. Gleam club just doesn’t cut it, it seems.
This is compounded by the fact that the universe will expand to accommodate extra players, but then can’t shrink again. They got a lot of planets spawned around launch when it had good coverage and that all needed upkeep, but the only directions it could go from there are the player-base shrinks due to attrition (but have to cover disproportionately increasing costs), or it grows due to success (at which point the universe grows more and the costs remain proportionate).
Tbh, both Turbulenz and us EA people should have seen this coming way before it even launched, or at least discussed/highlighed it more, given how niche the appeal for this game is.
Niche… what niche does Boundless appeal to?
I see this mentioned a lot and I do agree it does fit a niche. I mean doesn’t every game appeal to a certain niche and can’t that niche really be of any size? I mean I view Boundless appealing to anyone who loves Minecraft/Modded Minecraft, Creativerse, No Man’s Sky, ARK or really any sandbox building game. I still feel they could drop the whole MMO tag as I don’t think that is really what draws in the crowd.
I still think they should drop this off the Steam page though.
