Testing 249: A Few Tutorial / Progression Observations & Suggestions

Suggestions
1

I know the tutorial and much of the progression hasn’t changed in this release, but it’s been a long time since I started a new character and actually tried playing the game as a new player, so here’s some of my thoughts on the process (in chronological order of erm… thinking them!).

  • One objective asks you to “Place Grass Seed”, but this isn’t fulfilled when you place the grass seed on top of pre-existing grass. I think the objective either needs to be more specific that it needs to be placed on soil that has no grass, or it needs to account for it being placed on existing grass.

  • There is no introduction to one of the great features of Boundless - Smart Stacks. I’m still seeing new players wondering where their items have disappeared to. I think it would be worth explaining about smart stacks (if it is explained, I missed it… in which case, it needs to be better explained!). Edit (after writing point 4 below): I only just had a brief tooltip pop up telling me about smart stacks. It might be better to flesh it out as part of the tutorial, or at least notify players earlier on.

  • The jump between the Tier 2 Farmer Objective (Cultivation Culture) and the Tier 3 Farmer Objectives is immense. Tier 1 and 2 Farmer objectives can both easily be achieved on a Tier 1 planet, whereas the Tier 3 ones require you to get to an exo world for Goo and Primordial resin (or at least find a shop selling those items). It might be worthwhile having a few more objectives in Tier 2 Farming, maybe introducing other crops on marginally higher tier worlds, before you get to the Goo/Resin ones.

  • Consider allowing creatures to be pushed by the player when the creature is in an idle/passive state, instead of bouncing off their large hitbox. It’s quite frustrating to be trapped in a hole with a bleating wildstock blocking your route back up to the surface.

…

I’ll continue running through some more tomorrow…

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2

Does the tutorial teach you about/how to use the knowledge tab and/or the buy/sell tabs in it? If not, I think that’s an important addition to this list.

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Does the tutorial teach you about/how to use the knowledge tab and/or the buy/sell tabs in it? If not, I think that’s an important addition to this list.

I played for literally hundreds of hours without knowing about this feature.

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I recall there was something about the knowledge tab as a popup tooltip on the left side of your screen at some point. But we all know most people don’t read those after the first few.

I do agree it’s very important to add in the tutorial itself as it has a LOT of functions people always ask about.

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5

Actually, now that i think about that, the tooltip itself was pretty useless as well.

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I remember seeing the tooltip, opening the knowledge tab to check it out, and then almost immediately closed it thinking ‘oh, just a place to check all these annoying popups, i don’t need this’. I only figured out it’s actual function and greatness much later on.

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In my previous base I had a wildstock pit that basically kills you if you jump in without grappling because the hitboxes keeps bouncing you around dealing momentum damage repeatedly.:sweat_smile:

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That sound fun if you already have the death penalty.