This is for anyone who is concerned about the landscapes of rental planets. For some, it is equal to, or more of a priority than color choice.
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Here is an āAridā world for exampleā¦(it seems this might not be part of the initial rollout)
Iāll definitely be concerned if we canāt even give input on the types of biomes weād like to see. Iām specifically looking for something with some water, mountains, and forests. So if I end up with just an ice/sand/mud ball planet Iām going to be displeasedā¦or if I end up with a lava filled death trap I have to deal with.
I know I personally could probably afford to just reroll by buying a new planet and letting any I donāt like lapse until I eventually hit one I like. But I fully get that not everyone can do that, especially in the current pandemic-stricken world.
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And not sure how I missed this commentā¦ 
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Yea Iād argue terrain is far more important than colors. As pointed out in one of the other threads, Iād be BIG mad if they did me dirty enough to give me a Beckon II. Picking the layout at least somewhat is the most important thing in a rental world in my opinion.
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We need a support group for everyone that started out on Beckon lol. It was mine tooā¦took forever for me to climb out the the dang water ravines 
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Yes, this is quite important. Color is just as important as being able to manipulate the percentage of water/lava/ice/land mass as well as what prefabs the planet populates with (for me to consider spending money on it anyways).
It was mentioned in a different thread, perhaps a āsovereign world packageā where the base price gives you a basic rental, where you have no options and get what it gives you so you can have your own planet to build on and then assorted tiers going upwards from that base allowing you more and more options to manipulate/choose from/etc.
This isnāt much different imo, from throwing money at the problem of āfinding just the right planetā (be it colors, formation, biomes, etc) and people cycling through the rentals until they get what they like.
From what I gather from something someone said earlier, original investors were given a perk of being able to design their own planet? Perhaps this would fall in line with that where the first (however many) were free to them, and then anything else would need to be purchased like the rest of the player base?
Seems like it would solve a lot of things. Maybe not. I donāt know enough to really pinpoint potential problems with an idea like that.
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Iād be willing to pay an extra set-up fee for more customization options 
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I started on beckon. Spent an hour in a ravine shouting for help on my first day, until someone came by and saved me by giving me my first grapple
This was before free warp home
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One of my friends spawned on Maryx I thinkā¦I went there asap lolā¦then I discovered Finata.
Yes considering the budget Iād have for this I wouldnāt be expecting or even really hoping for extensive customization.
I suppose if youāre budgeted for a single rental you could cycle monthly (or whatever) until you get a planet that feels like home but then that could take a year or more.
I would be likely to take advantage of a setup fee to bypass that. Then select from the prefab biomes and maybe a percentage, with a percentage for random.
Without a price list itās hard to form a solid opinion. But Iām assuming that a basic, random rolled, sovereign planet will run something like the cost of gleam club. Paying an extra $5 to $10 to have some direct input into the world style would be quite worth it.
I sort of wonder if everyone wouldnāt have serp style gleamballs of their favorite color, but I doubt it. There are some people it just isnāt that important to and who would rather have scattered blocks of gleam lighting up areas of the landscape, or whatever.
All other things considered, for me to maintain a sovereign world it needs to be someplace Iām happy to hang out and chill, good landscapes outside my windows, etc ā¦
I might then splurge occasionally for a farming world, if I have a major plan or some specific reason. But for ongoing maintenance āspecialā colors are not top priority.
I would rather have an eye-pleasing palette and put a gleam color on that accents my general world palette than something that I think I want to farm a ton of for a single build and then be stuck with it. And I want the world to be generic/natural looking in a certain sense, then when Iām inspired to build Iāll be building in different styles on different areas of the world.
I do understand that some people will expand extensively on a single concept and want a world/palette themed to support it. There are definitely people coming at this with a lot of different goals and perspectives.
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I would expect at least 2 options available for us to set before a requested sovereign world is thrown in jaws of the procedural world-making. I am not a moaner but if I got a world with lava thrown at me, or one with little forest areas, I would be disappointed (given itās something we are about to pay for). These 2 options are:
- Lava/water choice for surface seas.
- Climate type (dry/wet and cool/warm maybe?: deciding about proportions between desert and steppe vs. ice/tundra vs. jungle/forest).
Ideally the 2nd option is most extensive and gives some choice like biomes and prefabs (if at least we could pick 1 biome and 1 prefab we really want on our world, so we are sure itās going to be there, while the rest of them is added randomly).
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If you get Beckon II trade it to me 
I like Beckon terrain but would like it to be higher level planet with different kind of forest.
If they have to manually delete every planet you no longer want (james mentioned no automatic destruction), that workload must be added to the setup fee.
And if they save dead planets for a few month that cost too must be included.
I would expect a new planet to be in the range of a $50 fee and monthly cost also way above gleam club. For regular planets they put something like 6 on one Amazon server. What does renting such a server cost? Probably more than $30 per month (6 x $5). And they must make money too, not only Amazon.
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I think those figures are a bit high. You can get an MC server for $4.99-15/mo
Maybe they are using the on-demand instances service from AWS? I think it will be $5-25/mo.
- but then again, it might be $100/moā¦we havenāt been given #s yet
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IME, renting a server to host a game (all those games out there, ARK, Rust, etc list goes on) rental fees were associated to player caps. so $15 for 10 players, $25 for 20 etcā¦ scalable in some manner like that.
So as you say, amazon gets their cut first, and then this company needs to factor in their cost. What are the server caps to be for the rented servers? Will players get the ability to scale up/down that number or is it going to be preset to normal server populations?
I agree, itās going to have a fair higher monthly cost than gleam club, and it will likely be out of the price range many are thinking.
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Having the ability to influence terrain features, biome layout, water percentage, e.t.c is a must in my opinion.
Iāll just say this, if I pay for a world and I get stuck with a random gen world that comes out as beckon 2.0 Iād be super pissed.
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Boundless requires quite a bit more strength from a server than minecraft would, doesnāt it? I never rented a minecraft server before, only other games and the only 5$ a month servers for those games had a player cap of 5-10 players. Did that $5 cost in minecraft include ddos protection and extra memory for mods?
Maybe if someone knows the info they could estimate a potential cost or this one? Iāve never looked in to what AWS costs.
I think thatās included in what they pay Amazon. The rental planets would just be added instances that weād āshareā some of the cost for by paying a monthly fee.
I could be wrong, but I think creative/private worlds might be more along the lines of old-school servers/costs when they come out. Especially if itās up to the user to pick the server/host.
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yeahhhh IDK.
Plenty of games have offered private servers in the $5 - $10 range. No comparisons though as I know nothing of the load/requirements to specifically compare another game with boundless.
I do know if a random generated exo size world costs $20/month thereās no way Iāll be running one.
$5 planet - Iāll probably run one. Even if it can only have a few guests at a time, it could be small too, half the size of a regular world.
$10 planet - I might spin one up now and then but wonāt maintain or build anything permanent on one unless my situation changed a bit.
Who knows what I might splurge on now and then but I donāt think Iāll be going back to 100+ hours a week any time soon.
So anyways in that kind of price range itās understandable if theyāre small, low capacity, and if color palette is customizable it seems like a nice touch on their part. Paying a one time fee for access to additional customization seems reasonable, if thereās no capacity change.
OFC if you want more regions or more concurrent players then a change to the monthly fee makes perfect sense.
So anyways Iām happy to share my thoughts on the process but yeah, it honestly seems like a lot of people are expecting to pay more for a private world than the monthly fee for many standalone services or subscriptions. And if that happens it wonāt matter to me what comes with it 
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