No offense to any of the great builders at all, but no I wouldn’t. I don’t really do it now even when they are all in the same universe. The only way I’ve really looked at a whole lot of builds are by chance. I happen to go looking for a shop stand and run across a great build or even a person… and then that person gives me a tour. Or, I just happen to see someone on a planet and I run see who it is and come across some interesting builds.
It would be like Kal-El built on a creative sovereign, I don’t know that I’d visit it, but who knows, never say never.
EDIT: I do see many of them in screenshots though… I’ve visited @georgegroeg because of his shops stands and hunts and maybe the occasion candy cane sale.
Ha. I do appreciate the kind words as always. And I’ll definitely be staying in the normal universe. Also I do enjoy giving people tours and checking out other peoples builds probably some of my favourite things to do when I’m not busy with building in game.
If there was modding in the local universe I could be persuaded to create something there depending on if you could connect to the normal universe. I could see full on dungeon crawler type games being made and other platformer and quests being created too. There’s pros and cons on anything added.
But where we are now with boundless. Any sign of life is a move in the right direction.
I’m not sure I follow the draw of the local universes. If the servers go down would these be like sovereigns with all the same rules as the greater universe? Or would people be able to do whatever they want like a creative world? And would items and inventory carry over if so?
As they were on the test server I believe. They would basically have the same rules as the normal universe(with some exceptions). Only your not connected to the internet to access the universe you custom build. It would be run on your pc. From there I think other people could be invited to play with you. But it’s in no way connected to the current universe.
You could make a whole universe of your own planets if you had the space/power computer.
You don’t pay for planets you create because they are hosted by you on your computer.
Planets could have regions that were like higher tier planet. For example. You are in a tier one region. And you enter the next region beside it and you start dying because it’s tier 6 and you don’t have the proper protection for that region.
I don’t know if this is exactly how it works. But kind of, if my memory is correct.
If I’m incorrect on any of that I’m sorry. It was so long ago that I’m not 100% sure about the details.
I also don’t have a great computer so I never tried it and I just play on the PlayStation.
Also, your local universe needs internet access to run which, unfortunately, also means that if the authentication server at monumental goes down, so do all the local universes.
At least, as implemented on the test branch when Wonderstruck was still in charge.
If someone wants to play Boundless and avoid the MMO/public aspects, they can rent a Creative planet. They’ll have access to all building materials, can block/allow other players, and it’s somewhat tied to the main MMO. If they don’t want a Creative planet, they can build a private universe out of Sovereign planets and control access.
It doesn’t make sense to me for someone to be able to get the game for free (possibly), have access to the main MMO, have a bunch of free planets, access portals fueled by regular players, & enjoy the benefits that are funded by everyone that pays rental fees or Gleam Club fees. Just throw the MMO & the rental planets away at that point. Why pay when you can have a universe for free? Curious where Monumental would get funds to keep afloat in that scenario.
How many active/accessible Creative planets there? 12. That’s 4% of all active/accessible rentals. How often does anyone visit them or post screenshots from them? They’re the closest thing currently, to what is being described: create your own private universe, no restrictions on building, can invite others if you want to, etc.
I guess it will be helpful to see their new pricing structure & roadmap. I hope Monumental will focus on the path that Monty spoke of - NPE, lower price, & bringing in more players to the MMO.
That was my situation. My old computer was a potato. My new one can run local, though I’m limited to 3 planets.
You need at least a quad core processor, as local universe fully uses 2 cores.
Edit: Apparently my tongue-in-cheek manner isn’t hitting very well according to my DMs here and on discord, so let me do a TL:DR version of what I originally was going to post.
We need more people, but there are different groups that play MMOs and solo games.
Opening it up to unconnected servers with mods and LUA scripting will expand the possibilities that come with the game, and generate a lot more potential media content.
Families need a safe place to play with their kiddos, for both them and so we don’t feel bad when our kids make crazy things next to people’s builds.
Finally, we need to be open to change or the game is going to disappear.
Yup, it’s basically just single player boundless with a few changes, like having tiered regions so that everything works on one planet (but you may well have a whole universe though). There was a streamer not too long ago that tried the MMO first, but just wasn’t interested and thus played / streamed the local universe stuff on the beta patch. I don’t think local universes will draw away people who actually enjoy the MMO aspect of the game. One could argue that the resources invested into it would’ve been better invested into making the MMO experience better, but as far as I understand it, the only thing that was missing from it, was a delivery system for pre-generated worlds, because they took quite some time / computing power to generate. In general I’m in favour of more options and would also welcome a fail save for when the servers will turn off (hopefully in the very very distant future).
Really like the idea of local universes, but only if the game itself has enough content/depth.
That is not the case in the current state, so IMO fix that first and then introduce local/selfhosted universes.
I really like the dialogue going on in the thread. I suppose it really is up to Monumental and what they want to do.
If monetization is the goal and using that to fund further development of the game, I am not sure how local universes could be monetized especially if those local universes can be modded or adjusted.
If the local universes are run on servers owned by Monumental then that could be possible as they could control what can be changed.
It will be interesting.
EDIT: I do agree with many others in the thread and wish they would focus on making the base game better and then make the move to create local universes.
If someone just wants to solo, access all items, and/or only give access to their family/kids, that’s available via Creative worlds currently.
If they make it so that players can share mods, skins, & upload worlds like some other games do, I think it would be better than spending dev resources to create an offline or local only version. I know some don’t agree. We’ll have to agree to disagree.
If you can mod the game you can make your own cosmetics. That is if we can access local files. So making money selling them might not be an option for local servers.
I feel like making an offline option would be the death of the online universe since an already limited population is not likely to be augmented, and more likely to be reduced, with such a move. Cosmetics and a steam workshop integration are possibilities but far from the priority of building up the population by attracting and, most importantly, retaining new players. I understand the appeal of being able to continue playing boundless if the official servers go down permanently but in that event the fun of the game would be drastically reduced for me anyways.
Local Universe are great if you want the game to live on. It might not be good for the Live mmo universe but it opens door for modding the game like what happen with Minecraft. There are really interesting/complex modpacks that came over the years.
If i can recall Local Universe is not only for solo, other players/friends will be able to connect(if you want so). So basically you create your own horde of planets with your own rules.
From what I could tell from the documentation available, modding capabilities weren’t really intended to be full modding, just some moderately limited scripting.
Stuff like “if x entity is near y entity, change/create entity z”.
Plus, the local servers were still checking the authentication server for both ownership of the game and gleamclub sub status. I don’t think they said it was checking for individual cosmetics, but not 100% on that.
It is entirely plausible that local universes could be monetized with GC subs, but the ethics of that is questionable imo.
Also, I suspect that the authentication server could be spoofed with a host name entry to just bypass that entirely.
