Testing 199.1: Hot Fix

I hope they do watch. Come on Creepy McCreepinstein watch this. Well never mind, guess i wont upload the videos :frowning: They weren’t gifs or jpeg of course…
Oi Devs feel free to tag along anytime I’m on tier 5-6 worlds. You’re just not allowed to watch me build mazes :stuck_out_tongue:

No you cannot compare individual efforts against group efforts. It is not an appropriate comparison.

The pool of resources we all have is pretty infinite. There are over 42 planets and they all regen in days. We have limited colors, block types, and other specifics but those are part of the game design.

Not all blocks are the same and some are expected to be later on compared to others. Those not willing to follow this logic are just wanting their cake and being able to eat it too. This is no different than those demanding that end game diamond should be delivered easily upon a platter by the hundreds with a few minutes of time and iron bombs. This mindset creates it’s own problems.

I do not take away any of the responsibility in the game designers of defining much of the box we are in, but plenty of people have supported it. And, more importantly taken advantage of it and put huge efforts into finding the easy way to game the system.

You are making assumptions on why I spent $5,000 dollars and trying to link it to your argument to prove your point. I had my reasons why I spent the money and they have nothing to do with the conversation I am trying to have about comparing a “group based build” with an “individual build.”

But, just to clarify, anyone can build what you see as an individual - the capability to do so is completely there it just comes down to their expectation on “the time it will take.” Some people need to reset their time expectations… it has caused a lot of the problems we have in the game on a player experience and game design model.

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I’m done here. If I’m wrong, I’m just gonna go be wrong somewhere else.

But your persistence in defending the status quo will eventually burn this whole thing to the ground.

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Also the post says
Today’s Hotfix aims to resolve some of the immediate issues players have been experiencing since Release 199 was put to the Live Universe. Thank you to those of you who have reported bugs and given us feedback so far.
So, no, nothing about bomb mining, just bug fixes.

Honestly this is no different than being called a white knight by another member. Nothing I said was persisting the status quo. It was helping to reset expectations and clarify things.

I never said that building was going to be easy and I never said that maybe it is a bit too hard. I have more than a few times clearly expressed how this is not really a building game and been moving away from it more and more…

So trying to throw me in with people you are mad at is not fair to me at all or any other person that is trying to help people navigate the challenges of this game.

Anyone that has seen me post knows how much I hold the developers accountable - when I feel it is appropriate and not others. I’ve told James and Ollie to their face what I disagree with. But, I do it in a constructive way trying to help them understand my side while I understand their side and see if we can find a middle point somewhere – not the callous way some people have.

As I said before we need constructive feedback that includes solutions, not just constant telling the devs they are wrong.

Example: We should have used Waxy Leaves mostly and a few Earthyams to create wax. Etc… instead of just saying the recipes suck.

People need to remove themselves from the mindset of : “either you are with us or you are against us.” THAT is the problem here more-so than bad game development.

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I think we should probably examine where people are coming from and basing their expectations on.

Most premium non-mmo rpgs have a roughly 50-100 hour gameplay progression.
Many of the competing sandbox voxel games have a grind difficulty of less than half of what Boundless is, but encourage hundreds to thousands of hours of gameplay where creative gumption is the limiting factor.
MMORPGs tend to be balanced to encourage hundreds to thousands of hours of grind-based gameplay where current endgame power is the gameplay limit.

A lot of the conflict in expectations and what “Feels Right” is that Boundless is in a place where it is trying to please these three very different crowds at the same time, and that is an admittedly difficult task that I don’t have an answer for. The only thing I can say is that if a player was already “compromising” their expectation when buying in, and then the scales tip further away from their entry point, it could feel pretty bad- which is likely the cause of outcry with each step toward the slow MMORPG speed.

I realize I am stating the obvious but video games only demand as much attention from customers as it is enjoyable or addicting. I’m not sure that it’s necessarily reasonable to expect people to change their understanding of fun for the sake of loyalty to a game- which is what seems to be what is suggested here when you say that [players] should accept that Boundless is shifting away from being a building game.

Really the only “solution” I can think of is to stop changing balance one way or another. We are at release, I guess, so the balance needs to solidified and presented such that players can, upfront, decide whether it’s their type of game or not.
What’s bad is to let someone decide things are acceptable and buy in, and then start slowly creeping one way or another.

edit: to clarify, I agree with you that the game can’t be everything at once and that customers need to accept what the game’s balance vision is when deciding to buy in, at at best can try to voice their opinions to help adjust it in development/early access phase. However I am also saying that because it has changed since people started buying in, and is continuing to change even after the supposed “final release state”, we can’t really fault folks for being unhappy with that. :woman_shrugging:

Since it seems we’re still making changes, though, I’m absolutely happy to continue throwing in balance suggestions because apparently the devs are still gonna make them. :woman_shrugging::woman_shrugging::woman_shrugging:

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Went bomb mining, cuz apparently im stupid and cant read… anyway after using up the last two bags of bombs i had i left with 78 sapphire and 9 topaz over the course of the last hour and a half or so. one of the bags was diamond forged for with 3.2m aoe and the other was unforged titanium. Titanium costed four bombs per throw and diamond two, with my skills set. There’s no way of knowing how many gems and other resources were lost in this experiment. RIP Unknown Resources you are missed :pensive:

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Yeah, that’s the part that makes it feel bad :frowning: Just knowing that you blew up some resources feels …inefficient—regardless of how quickly gems are gathered in reality

This is exactly what I’ve been saying for a while. There’s no need to rush things, no finish line to cross, no ‘game over, you win, roll credits’ screen to be seen. Having everything instantly would simply make the purchase price last for less hours of entertainment.

I think the main issue is the differing views on what’s entertaining. I do enjoy slowly chipping away at a wall of rocks, I find the ‘tink tink’ gameplay very relaxing, particularly when the music score kicks in to help the relaxing mood along, but I still find it perfectly understandable that other people might prefer spending all of their gaming time building (or fighting monsters, or exploring new planets, or gathering plants, or crafting, or working on a business plan for their shops, and so on…) and that’s where the MMO side kicks in.

One can always team up, either in the spirit of cooperation or in the spirit of a free market, with those that do things that they don’t like, so that each play style supports the other and everyone can just focus on doing what they enjoy. No one is ever locked into playing the Hermit class. :slight_smile: And, in my humble opinion, that is how amazingly beautiful megaprojects of an epic scale become achievable in a reasonable time frame.

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Amen to that. I constantly see/saw the same thing in ARK as well. I call it ‘going full Freddy Mercury’ (I want it all! And I want it now!).

It’s something that a lot of us have felt, I’m sure. Due to limited time, spouses, work, etc.

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I’m gonna steal that :sunglasses:

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I agree with this sentiment in general, but there is a tipping point beyond which getting ‘more hours of entertainment’ rapidly devolves into ‘getting more hours of grind’. Obviously there will be a wide spread of people who feel that point will be in different place.

While some of the regular distain displayed for the now frequent changes are sometimes knee-jerk reactions from people who haven’t actually played to the changes enough to understand the actual impact, there are plenty of changes that make things take longer (especially at lower levels) without really feeding back into the enjoyment of the game. If nothing else, this is a sign that the game is moving in a direction that portion of the community doesn’t like. I feel that that opinion is just as valid as the ‘It’s ok, just change your expectations and they will be met’ argument.

Personally, I have all but stopped building for now. Getting the resources I want to build with in the quantities that I’d want and being able to work within the current chiselling and building system doesn’t leave me feeling adequately rewarded for the effort I put in, so I just don’t do it. The game isn’t measurably bad because of this, but building was the feature I was most wanted out of the game, and if that no longer appeals then some of the frustration that people feel is entirely valid.

As an aside and not specifically a response to you: I might have stopped building, but I haven’t stopped playing. Exploring Atlases is something that I find enjoyable and while the in-game rewards are ‘sparse’ at best for doing so, I do feel happy that my time investment to leads to the right level of satisfaction.

I usually view it as more of a 'Veruca Salt, but that’s also a good one.

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Of course, there’s no denying that making it excessively grindy would alienate a great portion of the players, and that any change, even not excessive, in this direction will displease those that want to spend most, or all, of their time building.

However, this was in reply specifically to a thread within the topic concerning the desire to be able to do no activity other than building, solo.

The key here is the ‘solo’ part, because the only way to satisfy a player that wants to single-handedly do nothing other than build, and moreover to build extremely quickly at that, and thus refuses to participate in the economy, would be to allow instant infinite access to every block, tool and material.

And to please this subset of players would be to completely alienate, to the point of in effect expelling them from the game, the players that enjoy the economy and the need to gather / mine / craft / hunt / explore. So, it is an extremely unreasonable expectation to have, and in my opinion, while it’s as valid a desire as any other, it doesn’t tend to lead to any productive suggestions towards improving the game for everyone else.

Edit: Actually, I just thought of a way… a switch in the debug menu for the testing servers to turn on creative mode, flight and a palette of infinite blocks to build with. As long as it can have no effect on the live servers I suppose it wouldn’t detract from the game.

So I guess those players could petition for that.

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If you want to just build, you might have to push the developers to release the rented servers. As long as you do not care about interacting with the rest of the Public Universe, you should be able to change the rules to meet your expectations. If that is infinite blocks then do it, if you want to have each recipe generate 10 times as much of the end product, then do it. Otherwise I feel there is a lot of material gathering and crafting in order to either buy what you need to build or to make it yourself. There is no way around it given the current state of the game.

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I don’t see most people askin’ for creative mode, I see people askin’ for less grind. A lot’a people get bored without a little grind, but 200+ hours and still not bein’ able to reach a comfortable end-game is too much for a lot’a people.

Let’s not confuse the two.

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Yeah I was speakin’ generally.

“A lot” is very subjective, but as a practical example, I spent the last hour or so running around a desert hitting plants with an iron axe (two actually, the first one broke).
So, for about 150c and an hour of my time, I came out with enough materials to buy about 3 advanced coils if I were to sell them all (assuming 15k / coil).

Granted, I do have enough levels to have maxed luck, running speed and the gathering epic (as well as various ‘don’t die as often’ skills), so for early-to-mid level players it might be half of my yield. Still, if that one hour were to be put towards buying, say, bricks… 45k buys A LOT of bricks at 10-15c each.

Edit: And that’s only counting the beans and yams. But of course, if one absolutely hates running around and hitting plants with an axe, that doesn’t help at all and the one hour will feel like a lifetime.

For the casuals like me that I talk with when I run around, this is the exact thing that gets mentioned. Grind is fine when applied in a targeted manner. Grind for the sake of grind or to make sure advancement doesn’t occur at a higher than set rate is what will kill off that casual population.

If that’s the games intention, then that’s fine. But Boundless will just be one of those games with a diehard vet base complaining about the lack of players.

If you’re like me and been playing games since ultimanonline in 97, then you’ve seen this playout over many many games over the last 2 decades. It’s not like these are players just making things up. There are proven statistics to game longevity and player populations.

Personally I’m waiting for the renter servers before I really commit to the game. The same way I did ark. I quit playing ark until they supported unofficial servers, at which point I opened my own and ran a player community for over a year with tweaked rates that encouraged players to build things but increased Dino stats that meant gathering those things was harder and more rewarding.

Boundless won’t be Boundless, truly, until we get those rented servers online. I think we will see who is right and weongnon this progression argument very quickly at that point.

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I honestly dont see why you would want this game to only build, the further you get from something the worse it looks and the closer you get the less you see. Minecraft is so much more diverse in texture packs colors and just overall viewing pleasure, but ican understand that game is a used towel at this point. I played it so much id be fine never playing it again, but this game is basically modded minecraft and im loving it because its got its own flavor

It seems to have this goin’ on already to be honest… Every time someone complains here, instead of people workin’ together to try’n figure out ways to improve the game for everybody, someonebody shows up’to say, “Game is fine, your idea would RUIN it!”

Edit

And it’s that mentality that kills games. Select die-hard group of people shoot down many quality of life changes proposed on the forums, as playerbase dissolves into nothin’, then they blame the developers for the game tanking. It’s what happens in countless games.

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