Started playing a bit with a friend I shared a key with and here are some thoughts he had. I logged them as we played since he’s new and new player input is always really nice for devs. I hate when people tag devs for nothing but I’m going to tag @luke-turbulenz just because I think my friend had some interesting ideas and feedback.
Formatted into kudos, bugs, and critical feedback.
Kudos:
-Weather effects are AMAZING. We got caught in a rain/fog storm and couldn’t see anything and my buddy ended up dying. But had the time of his life doing so.
-It’s really nice that things float in the water and you don’t have to dive for them.
-Machine animations are really cool and easy to see.
-Seeing recipe and duration on the workbench is really cool.
-Startup time on the game is nice, not a log of lag or time to log in.
-The worlds, environment, and ambiance are AMAZING. (I was directed to use all caps here). Big kudos from him for that stuff.
Bugs:
-Sometimes our mice cursors would reappear instead of the game cursor. We’d basically lose focus on the game. This tended to happen more with right click than left click.
-Bulk batch pop-ups are cut off somewhat.
-It’s possible to grapple other players to you, which he liked trolling me with but I wasn’t a fan of >.<
-Trading in enclosed spaces leads to really scary clipping
-Our trade request never faded. Constantly stayed on the left hand side.
Feedback:
-Water makes no noise when you spash into it and this would be cool to have.
-As others have mentioned, new grapple controls are uncomfortable and slow to respond.
-Stuck in trading menu with too many items, really unclear how to get rid of excess
-“Without any sort of progression this isn’t going to hold my attention that well. Just feels grindy. The building system is nice but once that’s done I’d feel satisfied and would be done”
-(Expanding on the point above a few minutes later) "We just spent half an hour digging a pit. I’d like to have something I can be driven to build.
-Seeing inside the shelves is nice, but some sort of progression for this would be nice. (His idea was expanding the slots to a 3x3 or something)
-Just placing items to get builder exp is a bit boring and you can just place and destroy torches. He thinks adding a modifier to exp based on how quickly you place blocks (i.e. people who have their plans in their heads and go quickly) get more exp would be a nice reward.
-Trying to right click a smartstack and drawing out the second-ninth slots to a radial binding automatically selects the first item in the smartstack. It’d be nice if this worked with the other 8 spots.
-He liked playing in third person (the freak) but didn’t like how interacting with machines always made him go back to first person.
-The game feels really slow to him. He’s a pretty big mc player so that’s a big reason but as he brought up, you can’t help but compare to similar type games.
-Items that use the last bit of their durability should make some sort of sound cue so you know.
-Top to bottom inventory > storage inventory display is clunky. He didn’t like having to scroll back and forth to drag items to and fro. I explained it was to see the character but he made the point that seeing his guy looking all over didn’t help him store stuff any better. I explained it’s an immersion point and he retaliated by saying his guy should be looking at the shelf, not all around.
-Some sort of indication of what all is locked would be nice. Yeah the logic is explained here but for people who want to be safe it’d be a good thing to have (especially since placing a lock says “locked items” even if the blocks should already be locked.
We’ll likely play again with the next major update and might be able to convince another friend to use his key finally and play with us so I’ll have a bit more next time I hope.
Alright, so doing this again with both the buddy from above and a new new player. We didn’t play for too long since it was pretty late at night but they agreed to play with me a bit so I could gather their feedback on the game. This was done with the testing version (163 I think?).
Kudos:
-Both loved the music. They said it was one of the most remarkable features in the game.
-They think the progression system is really cool. They’re worried about it being 4x exp right now and feel like at least to level 10 should be sped up upon release because, in the words of one of them: “I don’t wanna play DLC world where I have to pay to jump, pay to heal, pay to walk, etc. Give me the basics fast.” (I told them that contracts and tasks or w/e would also provide exp but since there’s not much known about those I wasn’t very convincing.)
-The light cube and totem aesthetic are spot-on.
-The item splitting mechanic is funky but really cool.
Bugs:
-UI when making a friend request should say “now friends” the first time you accept instead of “already friends”. The wording of “already friends” made us think it was bugged out and we couldn’t be friends.
-As I’m sure is already known, several objectives are bugged. Things like cook, smelt, trade, get exp, etc.
-Can’t make a beacon control using workbench? I feel like the workbench should be able to make anything the crafting table can but meh.
-Warping to a friend caused me to crash with error 4001 (I think that was the number anyway). The crash caused me to not complete the warp to a friend objective.
Feedback:
-“I’m a little lost on what to do. There’s not much driving me to fight/build. The leveling system is good in and of itself but there’s not a lot I’m really driven to try to get.” (This came from the friend of ours who builds the most. I explained to him that building is supposed to feel like it’s own class and that unlocking decorative items would give him the right to sell his services to individuals/groups. He was intrigued by this so I think he’ll come around after he shifts his mindset and learns that advanced building isn’t one of the core parts of the game).
-“I’m sure this is on purpose but the mining speed is really slow. What makes mc mining bearable is how fast it is. Again I’m sure it’ll get better later on but it’s really brutal to start”.
-“Noise indicators for leveling up, getting hit, completing objectives would be really nice so you’re not constantly having to focus on different parts of the UI”
-“Dropping or deleting items would be useful, I don’t want these wood tools clogging up my inventory now that I have stone”
-“Does dexterity only activate when I have stamina? That’s really not cool. I can get having the full effect with enough stamina but without stamina I should at least have half of the boost. Otherwise spending points on dexterity or similar attributes is worthless without also spending points on max stam and stam regen.”
I remember reading that leveling up to max should only take two or three branches of objectives, meaning you can go for any two professions and still be able to get all the skill points you need.
Also, you can drop items. Just drag them out of your inventory screen and drop them
Yeah, what’s more is that to make gem/diamond tools you don’t use 2-3 of them like in mc but you need to make compact ones, so that’s more like 20-30 per tool. I’m really annoyed by current level of grind, if I mine 1000 blocks in an area that I know there are diamonds and other stuff and get 10ish of those than it’s a bit low in my opinion, especially since you spent ~40-60 to mine that amount of blocks. I played mc a few years, I think I haven’t mined in mc all together as in boundless in past few weeks
I talk this much about mc vs boundless because there will be a lot of players coming from mc background and this has a potential to bounce a lot of people from boundless. I made my peace with grind after few months and after immersing into community to explore other aspects of game. But most people won’t give it a few months to shine.
Hope there will be a big rebalance until 1.0 comes out
This wasn’t working for us on the testing server. I’ll give it another go today but it was frustrating us to no end yesterday.
I don’t think there is a “max” planned for levels now. I thought they talked about that a bit ago but it’s too early in the morning to go sifting through threads
just wanna add to the part of stuff being slow (i understand the grind etc and all that feels like unnecessary) but do keep in mind, this will be a voxel based MMO, not a server / singleplayer like Minecraft. this is evolution at its finest (imo) and i love the way they are going right now.
Yep and I totally dig that. I’ve been on these forums for multiple years now. As mentioned, I just wanted to collect feedback from some friends of mine as they’ve never really played boundless before (with the exception of the guy the first post was about…he had obviously played during that session) and I wanted to make sure to write their thoughts down since new player feedback is invaluable. The rest of us have been tainted by dev logs and our own experiences so we can’t really ever know again what a new player is thinking as they play. The thoughts new folks have are based solely upon what is intuitive and what isn’t and how things generally feel and are they being given enough instructions, etc.
Absolutely. He basically wasn’t a fan of unlocking things that he thought should be “base game”. I explained that it’s meant to feel more like a tutorial but he countered by saying that basic abilities like sprint, etc. should be unlocked in the sanctum and if that area needs to be expanded upon so be it. In other words he felt that using skill points was forcing him to “purchase” things he felt he should be able to do immediately.
He also was worried about running out of objectives before reaching a spot where he could more or less be self-sufficient. I told him that it’s meant to be a more social game and that grouping up with a guild and diversifying skill builds was encouraged but he thought that lowering the experience needed to reach at least the first few levels of the equipment crafting tier would help people get into the game more quickly without it feeling like a such a task to reach the basic levels of the game. Right now the leveling experience is very smooth but that’s obviously due to the 4x exp thing going on in the test server. Players who don’t immediately get into guilds are going to have to invest in certain parts of machine/equipment/tool crafting in order to progress at all so making it easier to at least hit the basics would at the very least prevent newer solo players from being discouraged.
Hopefully that’s a bit more thorough, but I’m happy to shoot him a text to get it in his own words too if that’d help.
Of course we also saw that the currently broken weekly experience bonus objective said that exp can be earned by completing objectives, feats, and contracts. Without knowing what the latter two are, thoughts on exp balancing are incomplete at best.
Another new player here. I started this weekend and just completed 8 hours of gamming yesterday.
In this topic I going to follow the same patern as @Clexarews Kudos, Bugs and Feedback.
Kudos
Beautiful graphics and running smooth - The game is just stunning! By the “Shadder side” of things, I’m really impress how it runs well! My pc shuts down when playing games due to over heating, in Boundless this problemn never happend.
Did I say it’s beautiful? It’s like Minecraft with the best of shadders.
Ambiance is stunning! The weather and the music really got me.
Diferent stone types give diferent stone tool colors - Loved this touch
Bugs
Disclaimer: Bugs here probably happen due to my awful internet connection + playing in Brazil in the US server.
The first time I tried to expand placed my plots it was counting wrong. I had 7 plots and the game was telling me I had 8. To fix I remove every plot and place it again.
My beacon was gone! Once I tried moving my beacon to another place and the item simply vanish - I’ve searched in my hole plot. Hopeless about I started to remove all my stuff to not lose it by the terrain regeneration, doing it made the beacon item reaper in the ground (Maybe it was stuck between blocks? Maybe it needed a block update near?)
Itens beeing supper large when picking from inventory. Once everytime I select a item in the inventory to move to another spot the game rendered it giant in the screen (covering the entire screen). I fixed by closing and relunching the game.
Feedback
Sorry but there’s no way not comparing features with other games, especially Minecraft.
I felt tools kinda useless (keep in mind I just reached cooper tier). I mean, the stone axe takes the same amount of time to break a wood block than a stone shovel. Ok it reduces the break time by one hit or so… But it seems too much efort to make a tool than to break things with the Totem
Totem, why? Lemme break simple blocks with my hand, every game of the genre does that. I feel it takes a inventory slot for nothing.
Beacon is too expansive! When I lost my beacon, as described in the bugs section, run into the forums looking for how I get a new one. So I found out I needed materials that I didn’t even know how to get. As a beacon is a essential block of the game, I think it should be easier to get.
Inventory management… I found awkward how items group. The first time i tought I lost the items, latter I discover that is needed to click to revel blocks in a group slot (like diferent types of wood in the same slot). I suggest something like Android does with group slot for apps to overcome this.
Inventory management 2… When itens are grouped, if you click and drag the non first block to your hand it fix the first item to the hand, not the one you selected. (I’m doing something wrong here?) It’s needed to separete the grouped itens in the inventory and than place in the hand.
Inventory management 3… Lemme drag itens from machines directly to my hand (select a empty inventory slot or whaever), It’s needed to click in the machine, drag the item to the inventory than open your inventory and place it in your hand.
Looks like a lot of negative feedback, but I’m liking it very much. I’m getting the feeling of exploration and discovery like playing Minecraft back in 2010.
I second this. I have not yet purchased creep or guild skills in basic because it does not feel like I should have to invest skill points into these abilities. Especially when I can skip them and go right into better attributes early on.
I would rather obtain the points needed for unlocking these core skills before I leave the sanctuary, and allow non-core skills to only be purchased after maxing out the core tree. In this way, it does not feel like I’m purchasing core abilities with xp, but rather learning them linearly in the tutorial.
Second this. Anything ‘critical’ to the user’s experience should be available at the start. Sprint, etc are core mechanics that shouldn’t be hidden behind a progression wall (Creep doesn’t really matter to me personally, but I feel like sprint is a universal thing that everyone is used to having). In the current state of online games, I feel like sprint is as much of a core mechanic as jumping or WASD - and both of the latter are immediately available.
Agree with an earlier point that it’s a persistent universe and that a certain level of grinding is acceptable - but IMO you could liken this situation to the SIM games: You want realism, but at some point it becomes less game and more work (less fun). Boundless obviously isn’t a realism sim but I think a similar point should be made - grinding is fine, but at some point it becomes less of a game and more work/job. At the least, if such a huge grind is going to stay, then tools should have a much more distinct difference from one another in speed, use case, etc.
I think unlocking sprint/creep/whatever for usage in a tutorial is fine and even spending skill points on them is fine, but I think all of this should be confined to the sanctum. Once I leave the sanctum for the first time I want to feel like the game is really starting and I have the basics.
Core skills - basic craft, sprint etc. - they all happen during first steps of tutorial and you acquire them very fast. First few levels are reached so easy that you don’t spend much time doing it.
The way I look at it is a player gets a chance to get familiar with the idea of objectives and progression and learns a few basic things about game mechanics and what you get is not “real” skills but something you are supposed to have right away and the only reason you don’t is so you can make some “fake” and not so important progress - something you can spend your first skill points just to be able to learn how leveling and learning skills work. Thanks to that you get basics of progression covered before you get to “real” skills and making important choices on how to progress your character.
At the same time, being outside Sanctum, you also learn a few things about the environment and how to interact with the world.
@Chonps welcome and good feedback right there, some of those things are already solved in test version. I haven’t experienced any of those bugs, I don’t think they are due to bad connection though they might be. Hope those don’t bug you too much.
Yeah, for anyone who got their feet wet in minecraft it’s impossible to not compare, even devs put it on the website as one of the games that inspired Boundless
Tools does have purpose in upcoming update, hammer needs twice or more hits to break wood, same for axe and stone etc
I like the idea of totem, you’re right about many games giving you hand breaking, but you can get rid of totem as soon as you get your first tools.
Beacon recipe is more balanced in upcoming update, can’t remember the recipe on top of my head, but it’s something you can craft from very basic mats (think wood, leaves, stones).
As for thinking you lost some items just to find them stacked, I bet everyone here had that experience
Other inventory managment feedback seems good to me Seems more like cosmetics to me or call it preference or good stuff to have but not the most important though it would make our lives easier
Totem is way cooler than hand shoveling (). It goes well with the entire game lore too and I think a lot of new players joining now don’t spend much time looking into the lore and getting the style of this game and worlds here (hopefully they will get there with time and like it too).
On the practical side though, totem is there for safety measures. It’s unbreakable and if you get stuck somewhere (after mining out all your tools and such, maybe when you die far away from home and lose all important equipment), you can still perform basic actions - break your way through a few blocks, fight with it etc. It’s a good idea to have it on you at all times just in case.
Seems more like cosmetics to me or call it preference or good stuff to have but not the most important though it would make our lives easier 
). It goes well with the entire game lore too and I think a lot of new players joining now don’t spend much time looking into the lore and getting the style of this game and worlds here (hopefully they will get there with time and like it too).