Planning for 2017 - Contribute your ideas!

After playing the game for a couple of hours I have to say I realy like the concept and artstyle of the game! Reading this post, I came up with a few features I think should be added to the game.

  1. Totally rework a broken MAJOR current feature:
    In its current state, the only way to get coins is by traiding and leveling up skills. If players want to warp a lot, I believe a better system has to be made to earn coins (currency) in the game.

  2. Tweak a broken MINOR current feature:
    I love that we can warp to different planets! It is a key feature for me to start playing Boundless:). In game, I traveled a long way from my base to ‘‘set up’’ a second base, hoping I could warp in between. Perhaps the system is already in place, or being worked on, but I cannot warp on the same planet and would love to have this feature before 1.0.

  3. Essential MAJOR feature before 1.0:
    Please implement a fully functional skill tree. Perhaps in combination with a deeper combat system? As other users would state they want faster miningspeeds, perhaps earned skillpoints can be used in order to speed this process? Or after a set skill level, drop 2 resources from a single blok? Due to the large need for coal:)

  4. Add a MINOR feature in next update:
    It is my understanding that the only way to make friends is to find each other in game. Due to the planet sizes, it would be easier to make this feature easier for players. Perhaps a search feature?

Thank you for an amazing game! I am eager to see where this is going:)

4 Likes

1. Totally rework a broken MAJOR current feature:
The network warnings and rubber banding / lagging is pretty consistent. At first I thought it was my local wifi network, but even hooked up directly as the only connection to my modem at 80mbps down, 15mbps up and 9ping, it will warn as being 24,000ms and just go nuts for some reason pretty consistently. Other games such as Rust and No Mans Sky run fine with no lag. Not sure what the issue is, I’m sure it will be resolved before too long.

2. Tweak a broken MINOR current feature:
Visibility in caves, even with higher end torches, the light doesn’t extend far enough, going over a 1 or 2 block ledge results in complete disorientation.

3. Essential MAJOR feature before 1.0:
Rare Material Items (Hammers, etc ) should have longer durability life than iron, stone, etc. Because of the amount of time and other resources that go into them they should last longer. While they require less hits per block, It seems that the total number of hits to deplete the durability is the same.

4. Add a MINOR feature in next update:
Add a friend by username instead of having to find them on planet and be close enough to add them.

3 Likes

That would be nice too

I do not believe in providing problems, without solutions. I truly hope this gets read!

1. Totally rework a broken MAJOR current feature:
Adding new ways to gain coins, as it stands it’s only through leveling and anything other than miner takes extremely long. Now perhaps mining needs to be slowed, personally, because it doesn’t take long to get your mining to max level. I know coins is an undeveloped feature, but it’s major as it plays a part in exploring the game… which, in the games current state, is very important.

Some ideas for Coins:
a. Adding ancient ruins (boxes) (rename?) which can be found on the surface of planets, randomly, which contain coins and random ores. And subterranean resource caches which also contain coins and perhaps random ores.

b. Increase the amount of coins you get from other professions, ie; more than 100 coins from lower level crafting.

c. Introduce a machine that turns gold and/or gems into coins.

2. Tweak a broken MINOR current feature:
A minor adjustment to the coin costs of warping. As noted by others, I believe I may have a viable and balanced solution;

Planets within sight should have a reduced cost (ie; 250 coins), while planets farther away should cost more (ie; 500 coins). The planets in sight (on the same server), as noted all over the wikipedia/boundless crafting dot com or via the sky in-game, should have the reduced costs.

3. Essential MAJOR feature before 1.0:
Professions. Sure, they’re labeled and you level them up but for no reason other than coins. There truly isn’t a reason to level them up, or do anything in the game aside from making tools to harvest materials to make tools.

Sure you can spend hours, and a few dozen tools to harvest stone and build yourself a nice looking house. But putting in a few dozen hours to build a house … and that’s it. That’s all there is. There is no progression in the game, and getting to the point to mine end-game(?) gems/resources isn’t difficult to say the least.

I truly believe expanding and working on professions will add a great deal of content to the game, let alone what those professions will introduce. People above this reply have posted ideas much the same, like farming. Adding in features to professions like your mining level could give you a chance to “double hit” blocks, or crafting decreasing the time to craft/resource cost.

There is a lot of down-time in this game, sure; when you’ve spent an evening gathering resources and building yourself a cool shelter you feel very accomplished but when you’ve run out of things to build, there isn’t anything to do.

4. Add a MINOR feature in next update:
Anything but grappling hooks. Seriously.

1 Like

1. Totally rework a broken MAJOR current feature:

Hitbox should definitely be better than it is now, when you use the slingshot, it doesn’t really feel like you hit the mob properly, the same works for when the monster attack you, it just doesn’t make sense when the monster hit the air and then i actually hits you. i know it’s an and online game, but you should try to make this function a little better. It will definitely make the game more fun.

2. Tweak a broken MINOR current feature:

Okay, this might sound weird or stupid, but there is one little thing that annoyed me the most.
I was totally finished mining a big tree and the leaves still stood there in the air like it was levitating.
i know it would be too easy if all the leaves dropped once the tree was chopped, but please, it really doesn’t work when it stays up like that.This levitating leaves should be fixed asap as it will really break how you play the game.
If a player wants the leaves, then mine the leaves before mining the wood.

3. Essential MAJOR feature before 1.0:

I don’t really know that to write here, as the game already looks pretty good for 1.0, when i played, i missed a way to learn how to craft things, and to know what i needed to craft certain items.
Of course there should be hidden recipes, but the most basic should teach to the player when playing, i like how the small side quests came out, maybe those could teach you what to craft for certain items.
I also feel like there should be a basic version of armors in-game, so you would be able to defend yourself again high damage monsters.

4. Add a MINOR feature in next update:

The friends system should definitely be finished for version 1.0, it is way more fun when you can play this game with friends, more so if it is easier to find them, so that should be in order.

The skill system hasn’t been added yet, just a first pass at leveling up and experience and whatnot. Check out the link in the first sentence to see what cool stuff is ahead.

I agree with this a lot and it’s one of my main fears for this game. I love progression but if progression is just mindlessly mining to get skill points that don’t really serve any purpose it’s going to be a bummer. Creature combat and difficulty needs to be worked on and a wide difficult gap between newb and end-game planets needs to exist.

4 Likes

After playing for only 8 hrs and being new to the game, I believe that starter worlds need to teach more things. I learned a lot by watching you tube videos but when I went to play it was different.

Needs improvement on Beginners Worlds:

  1. How to actually jump and swim.
  2. How to use blocks to get out of caves. Also how to noticed cave openings in the sides of mountains.
  3. How to read the navigational bar at the top of your screen.
  4. How to communicate with other players.
  5. How to hunt the predators with out having a sling bow.
  6. How to heal yourself after taking damage.

I haven’t gotten very far in the game, but these where what stumped me at the beginning.

5 Likes

Letz set a nukelear bomb in the major point
Kabooooooooooooooooooooom

This sort of feedback is actually what we are looking for. Lots of people tend to stop playing when they hit these kind of walls in a game. :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Do you guys have plans to fix this then right now? I’m thinking of the really long-lived successful MMOs, like WoW. What keeps people playing? Different raiding experiences, strategies in boss fights, new classes of hero (completely differing abilities, etc.). New races are kind of fun, but not without unique racial abilities, looks, backstories and homelands. Gear. The loot! When there’s actually purposes to exploring ruins, etc.! Questing chains that build and are puzzling, and are hard. The achievement system (with rewards. Without rewards, achievements are useless).

The way things are moving, I believe you guys have said that we’re not goign to be able to get awesome gear in game to make ourselves look different. I’m okay with that if it’s true, but I think it’d be a mistake to not make things that at least make our buildings very unique.

Grind. Most people hate the word grind because of the bad connotations with it. But I’ve seen people grind like crazy in search of unique items, etc. If they happen often enough, rare drops will remove the heavy tedium of grind.

So in thinking about your question I find myself circling back to what essential features are needed for Boundless 1.0.

I know some of this has been covered in differing detail but I’ll throw my spin on them. I know you wanted these in some Major/Minor layouts but I’ll let you be the judge of what you think is major vs minor as I’m not a game developer.

So what do I feel is needed before the game goes 1.0:

  • More robust character progression and specialization
  • Improved economic tools for the player driven economy
  • More reason to travel and build community together
  • Activities that make you want to come back

Lets start with character progression and specialization:
Currently there is a skill tracker for the following:

  • Attacker
  • Builder
  • Crafter
  • Miner
  • Trader

This is a great start but the only reward in these is a “Skill Point” which seems to just increment the counter, coin & 1 or 10 plot spaces. I think this needs to be fleshed out a fair amount more. I would suggest something along the lines of point placement into a skill tree for each skill type. This can drive two game aspects, the first is the specialization of a persons character towards the way they want to play and the other is to create crafters that provide specific items and consumers that require specific items. This promotes dependency on one another which is a corner stone to player driven econ. After all if you can make it all yourself and the only benefit is convenience why do you need to buy from another player? Here are some examples of what can be done:

Attacker:
Skill points earned can be used to purchase skill upgrades in a few categories.

  • Plot spaces (as is currently a given in game)
  • Weapon upgrades allowing the use of Tier 1 - Tier 3 weapon upgrades such as, Damage Crystals, Multi arrow magazine (up to 3 can fire without reload time),
  • HP upgrade
  • Ability to get more drops of specific types based on where points are spent, in some cases only once a type is unlocked can you get this drop type. IE hides, blood, horns (Used to craft spy glass(2x Glass + Horn) for explorers), glands (used to craft bleach/dye) etc…

Builder
Skill points earned can be used to purchase skill upgrades in a few categories.

  • Plot spaces (as is currently a given in game)
  • Ability to identify block type and base source block
  • Increase to block placement distance
  • Ability to repair placed workbenches (currently everyone can do this)

Crafter
Skill points earned can be used to purchase skill upgrades in a few categories.

  • Plot spaces (as is currently a given in game)
  • Specialization to make tool & weapon addons such as, tool reinforcements that reduce ware, multi block attachments that allow you to break 2 or 3 blocks vertical or horizontal dependent on the attachment type, impact/sharpness addon that has a chance to do twice as much damage while breaking blocks with a tool.
  • Specialization in repair of tools or weapons
  • Specialization in workbench use allowing the reduction of processing time on bulk and mass processing
  • Ability to reduce the items needed for single unit production by a %. IE 4 tiers where each tier adds 5% reduction rounded up to nearest item when applied.

Miner
Skill points earned can be used to purchase skill upgrades in a few categories.

  • Plot spaces (as is currently a given in game)
  • Ability to use tool attachments to speed up breaking blocks or break multi blocks (see above), can have attachments that make an axe a better weapon or better at clearing leaves
  • Ability to craft makeshift tool from just stone (with reduced durability or effectiveness)

Trader/Explorer
I feel trader skill needs to be combine with Explorer as well. Exploring and finding each new area on a planet should help progress this skill. In addition identifying new creatures and what they drop should also progress this. Creation of warps and portals should progress this.
Skill points earned can be used to purchase skill upgrades in a few categories.

  • Plot spaces (as is currently a given in game)
  • Ability to apply gleam-goo (Tallow + Gleam Dust(Gleam stone + Extractor) + Cloth) to grapple allowing for it to act as a light source for up to 100-200 uses based on grade of gleam-goo. Gleam-goo would be a specialized crafting item unlocked by progression in crafting skill and spending points in “Light Sources” see examples of ideas about “Light Sources” below.
  • Ability to create waypoint markers from locations (limited use)
  • Ability to turn on location marker as waypoint in compass
  • Ability to make warp destinations(Warp selector + location marker) which can be applied to warp stones by others. (this give them something unique they can sell)
  • Ability to reduce the items needed for bulk & mass production by a % on top of the existing bulk/mass process reduction. IE 5 tiers where each tier adds 2% reduction rounded up to nearest item when applied.

All of the above examples are just ideas that need to be fleshed out a bit. In some cases you would want to have multiple tiers for abilities unlocking with progressive amount of skill points. In each specialization area you would want to cap the amount of points that can be spent on skill/ability other than plots. Perhaps only 75% of the tree can be acquired in each area and the remainder can only be spent on plot points. This promotes limited specialization where each player make a choice as to what they want out of a given skill.

Improved economic tools for the player driven economy
For the most part the economy is lacking right now due to the way coin is introduced to the game. I do like the idea of quests as a way to inject this aside from skilling up but this is only part of the issue. for a player economy to work well there needs to be demand generated not just from convenience of aquring items but also from limited access due to specialization. Above I address this with crafting specialization but this needs to be expanded on. For example there could be a skill path in Trader/Explorer that allows them to advertise shops or communities. allowing them to craft maps that can be used a limited number of times(100 or 200 views) that show waypoints that a player can then click on to add to the compass when they are on that world.

More reason to travel and build community together
Having resources from different planets that have an impact on crafted items used in a home helps promote travel as does the addition of a explorer aspect in character development. larger variety of props would help give more diversity to building and having specialization in crafting and use helps promote people sticking, building and living together.

Round out the game world with more variety of props
We need more props that can be placed in a home or city such as:

  • Comfort items, Chairs, Beds, Tables. These items should be functional. Chairs & Beds should provide some limited health regeneration based on the material type (rare = more effect), Tables should work like book cases where you have slots and the items show up on the table in one of 4 or 8 locations based on table size. Can be same modular function as book case but just horizontal.
  • Light sources, We should have far more lighting options such as modular based placable lighting like wall sconces, standing torches, street lamps, chandlers & horizontal/vertical chains that can be used to make them look extended from a location.
  • Block types, We need ladders (can be a different texture on a wall that allows climbing), window pain, colored glass (windows & blocks), consider adding bleach & dye so we can bleach the color out of one block and dye it another color.
  • Decorations for cities, arrows or readable signs etc…

Activities that make you want to come back
Things that create a desire to come play, such as events. this can serve two functions. The first to get people to play together which promotes travel and desire to come back at the same time which makes a community feel bigger… More people on at the same times and not just off doing their own thing. Events such as infestation quests where people need to visit a planet and help clear out a mob type that has over spawned and where everyone gets credit for the work everyone does when in the same region. Other events could be resource related like an increase in rare resources for a short time, or rare drops from some monsters more common.

Overall thoughts
All in all I feel the game is fun and heading in the right direction and looks great, but does still lack a lot in playable content to be a 1.0 game. If you want the game to have a rich player economy as one of the corner stones to its enjoyment then there needs to be better player specialization, more content to explore and reason to do it. Otherwise there is not much driving a player economy.

Thanks for a fun game and allowing us to help shape its future!

3 Likes

For your first point just look up wearables or this thread you can see there are quite a number of ways to make yourself look different. Skill progression will help you play different. For your second point, planets have different colored resources and people have different aesthetics so it’s pretty naturally going to be the case that people’s builds look different. For instance I’m on whatever the ring world is for US West and everyone near me has vastly different but incredibly amazing builds.

Thanks for resolving that first point @Clexarews.

To my second point I’m not talking about blocks for buildings that you can craft, etc. I’ve already shared in another thread my thoughts about unique things for building:

I like your idea about rewards from feats! it would be cool to have random drop of animal heads you could mount on a wall too :slight_smile: If you checkout my post above I think there are some aspects that could play in to the building/crafting specialization that would go well with your thoughts on this. Such as unlocking things you can craft after you have reached a high enough builder/crafter level and unlocked those decor as well.

2 Likes

You know that is a good Idea a beginner planet sepperated from other planets

That sounds more like trove

Hats, we need hats, purely cosmetic. It would help to be different than the other players with cool and useless hats.

2 Likes
  1. Respawn at home option and better respawn option for when you die from a mob attack. respawning right where you die is not good, you just get killed again by the same mob! LOL

  2. Caves - they do need work. Maybe not so many drops and more surface access. Less lava death traps would be nice too LOL

  3. better/easier crafting! it is so complicated and resource heavy right now! Simple things like storage and glass and basic tools i think should be easier in the start of the game. I won’t say the name of the other game that makes beginning a game much smoother…we all know what game it is.

  4. improve the friend system, i agree with that. Make things easier for newbies starting out, let people spawn all together in a starting area?

2 Likes

Played the game quite allot now since i got it.
But it always still feel lonely and somehow unfinished and believe me i know it’s alpha and all, but here is just some ideas.

First, Friend system should be prioritized as this is very important for me right now, i got many friends looking to play this and they always ask, is it easy to find each other?
I say yes, it’s not that hard, but you can’t add me as friend…
If you guys don’t make the finished system, at least fix something that lets us see where the other person is and a way to add them so you know when they are online.

The second thing is, crafting recipes.
There should be way more recipes in the game, and the other recipes should be balanced a little bit more.

The last thing might be very very difficult to code, but, the water should be more alive, it should feel a little more like water, in the way that you guys can generate falls, the falls would make the game looks ridiculously beautiful.
I guess to make falls, you would need some sort of physics in the game? so yeah, as i mention on my last post, the leaves on the trees don’t fall EVEN after the whole trunk has been cut, this causes irritating moments in the game, as it is in the way, and i have to use my tools the take them away, early game this is frustrating. If i want the leaves i would mine them first, before i mine the trunk.

Please guys, if there is anything i have written that is wrong, and is ALREADY fixed or in-game by the time of this post, tell me. i really just want to help make this game better for everyone.:grin:

Psst: i love the mini quests that come up when you complete others! these are excellent and make the game fun at this stage, make more please!!

1 Like

I forgot the mention…We really need more character customization!! :slight_smile:

2 Likes