I think it is a skill to come up with builds an such but those are the things you can just look up on the internet. What you can not look up is mechanical skill so I might also be biased towards this.
But in one thing I agree, I’ve never seen a good skillbased first person game either.
Mechanical skill (Twitch skill): Is things like aiming, reacting quickly. in Boundless it would be something like hitting headshots or reacting quickly to a situation that will avoid getting you kill
Strategic skill: Is the skill of planning, it can be for example how to split up a team to take down a boss or even taking down a normal pretty hard mob. It is also something like making a build or a playstyle that suits you and your purpose.
Adaptability (Often ignored in games): Is the skill of being able to adapt, for example in hearthstone it is the ability to play what you have on your hand effectively, in Boundless it would be something like a boss smashing a random pattern of instant kill blocks into the ground where you have to change your fighting style accordingly everytime you fight it. (Sorry @ben now i want this alot in boundless xD)
Most first person games with combat are shooters, which just rely on Mechanic skill. I dont think boundless will stand as strong here since there is a fine line between making a good FPS combat game and then making minecraft combat. There are some things which seems to be limited, for example massive combos or attacks which moves your character around a lot since you would quickly lose sight of where you were. Not saying it is is impossible, just saying it is unlikely we would ever get something like monster hunter or Black desert combat.
It seems we wont have auto aim but instead have free aim, which is why i am afraid that it will just turn into minecraft. even with different weapons if all we can do to deal damage is just shoot with a gun then it will quickly get stale, if we had some different guns with two types of fire and then a few hotbar skills. Then it will quickly start to become a lot more interesting. and Ben already said we have skill lines. Not sure yet if that means passives or active abilities. time will tell.
Does the coop run via someone’s machine?
Everyone - have you been playing in 1st or 3rd person? Most of the YouTube LPs all seemed to be in 3rd person.
I play in 3rd because first person feels awkward with the locked combat, @KuroKuma plays in first person.
Coop simply works with one guy entering one of his universes and then setting it so people on the persons steam friendlist can join. So even if i make a world and kuma and i play together on it for 10 hours, it is still MY world, it is still only ME who has it open.
And what happens if you exit the game whilst friends are connected? I assume they get booted off?
Yeah pretty much, they get booted off the world. The game also works with many multiple small islands. Players have to be on same island, if i want to move kuro automatically goes with me. I think its made so only one world is ever loaded at a time.
As Zouls said I play mostly in first person but the combat controls are really not meant for first person. If I fight I switch to third person unless I can just aim and kill the enemys from far away.
If the fight drags on I need to see the terrain behind me so I can evaluate where to dodge or run next to evade attacks from the enemy.
@Zouls Thanks for the definition of the different skills. That should help a lot of people^^
I think Boundless will be big in Adaptability just because it’s a sandbox and more or less good in strategy because it’s an MMO and you’ll eventually need some strategy to coordinate multiple people.
I’m still not sure about the mechanical part. It could be great in third person because we already know of some examples where the combat is good in third person but I’m really not sure about the first person combat. I guess we’ll have to see what the devs come up with.
The only thing I “demand” is that I can jump or walk up 1 block while fighting xD Which apparently works in Portal Knights but I somehow managed to not make it work and thus noticed how badly I need it^^
You cant jump in combat, but you can walk up 1 block. I would much rather have a dodge in combat than a jump
I mean since the jump height in Boundless is the standard 1m/1block I’d rather have the ability to jump while fighting than dodging.
But for now it doesn’t look like “fighting mode” will restrict what we can do compared to “not fighting mode” so jumping is enabled anyway^^ and dodging is the next thing on my wish list^^
Yup after playing a bit more of Portal Knights: The Griiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-
Combat is slow, enemies that aren’t ranged are bound to die effortlessly. Melee characters can’t hit anything that is flying so good luck being a warrior. The lock on mechanic tends to activate without my consent a lot.
Progression is unstable, higher tier stuff requires sooooo many more resources than the previous tier, I end up portaling to the next tier areas faster than I obtain what I need and much of the stuff I may have been aiming for becomes forgotten. The resources are scarce considering the requirements (80 titanium ore to smelt one titanium bar-> 4-5 titanium for most things requiring the resource–unlikely that there is more than 100 of a resource per island.)
The art style is nice though.
Bosses are fun.
I’m sure resources and combat will improve though.
Yeah pretty much, i like the fact that it is based on an RPG loop where you make gear, figure out what you need for next gear, go on in the game until you get it. and then repeat.
However late game the amount of materials you need are absolutely ludicrous. It is a bit hard though for me to figure out when to upgrade, because there are no level requirement of gear it gives a sort of innate feeling that “i should be able to get this right now” which isn’t the point of it.
I haven’t played it yet, but it looks lovely. Lots of shared ideas but it seems like we’re both executing on them in quite different ways. Great to see the voxel genre expanding, people who play and enjoy those games will always want more 
They are vastly different though Ben. There are very little to no similarities between eachother. other than the abstract concept of portals and then the fact that it is a voxel game. I do think it is a pretty neat game though because it is MADE as an RPG and follows the classic RPG loop. sadly it is somewhat hard to follow up on it due to the design of the game. forexample minerals doesnt or only respawns very very slowly so you never have quite enough. that would not happen in Boundless due to the size of the worlds you could always just go somewhere else.
I would love to see you guys to do a lets-play of it though xD
‘Skillbased’ is a pretty vague word to describe and discuss a combat system/game because everything from street fighter to Dark Souls can be considered skillbased.
I think what you are referring to when you talk about Minecraft or Skyrim is ‘button masher’.
That said there are several factors that turn a game into a button masher or prevent it from being one.
ESO features a hotbar but can be played as a button masher since spamming 1-2 active skills while having 3-4 buffs active is sufficient for DPS and tanking, even in the more difficult dungeons.
Dark Souls or Mount & Blade only feature basic attack moves and blocking but require precise timings and movement which prevents button mashing.
TL;dr
A hotbar doesn´t necessarily mean that a game is more “skillbased” than one without and vice versa.
Why did this escape Off-topic?
As a quick update for everyone that doesn’t play Minecraft. They completely redid the combat system. Button mashing will now get you killed pretty quickly because you do practically no damage.
They did it with a short “soft” cooldown. Which means you can attack before the cooldown is over but you’ll do less damage the faster you hit again.
Also you have now the ability to dualwield which takes some strategic skill to decide when to block with the shield and when to attack.
Might be an option for Boundless but I still feel there more possible than that.
@Vastar It might be in General now because it evolved into a Boundless relevant topic^^
MC combat is still boring af though… (IMO)
Yea but that might be because you just one kind of each weapon type an that’s it^^ I don’t see that problem in Boundless.
Or you know. spamming the dodge button excessively. Which is what bothers me. DS is a bit of a meh game to me but i know there are hardcore fans who will just scream “ITS JUST CAUSE ITS TOO HARD FOR YOU!” but it is indeed better than button mashing which it sometimes goes back to. Its a bit of a shame games where you only use one ability or one attack and that is enough to win, they work for some games but in my eyes not for MMORPG’s. ESO atleast allowed you to make different builds and have different playstyles, while skyrim is just stab stab stab (i know you disagree). Combo’s can be a quite interesting way to add variety to how you fight if the combo’s do different things. Dodging systems like Wildstar and ESO can also make fights a lot more engaging. But it is always a hard balance, especially for first person games, which again, i have never seen a very good system. The most enjoyable combat i think i had in a first person game that wasnt a shooter would be Lichdom Battlemage. But that is again because of the amount of choice that you have in how you want to fight.
No but it adds more choice, if you decide to play a char with 4 buffs then you are the one choosing it. I never once played it like that. The choice is what differs something from a button mashing static game to a game of choice. again as you said that doesnt necessarily mean BETTER. i quite enjoy Dynasty warriors and that is insanely hack and slash, i enjoy devil may cry which is also hack and slash, the biggest difference is they have combos so it feels like you have a choice. I found the combat of Skyrim to be quite boring in the sense that it is realistic. it is what it should be, no doubt. But it more often than not just felt off to me, felt like it didnt really matter which melee weapon i used because it was more or less the same fight. as mage it bothered me you constantly had to switch between spells rather than having a hotbar with them. But there were some pretty cool ones which gave you a choice so that i appreciated.
TL;DR
Games like MC and Skyrim can get away with mediocre combat systems since they are games open and encouraging modding to change it. Boundless will have to make the system right from the start.
Because i wanted to take a further discussion on the idea of skill in general.
Anyone here remember cubeworld? I kinda liked the way combat was going in that game, and if there was a variety of different abilities for each weapon I feel like it would be pretty good.
Cubeworld had a bit of… Meh, combat. The game was ludicrously hard though unless you played ninja, where it became a faceroll. Combat was mostly just running in circles and spamming attacks once in a while. It wasnt bad at all but it wasnt particularly good either in my opinion.