I like this idea. It would nice to be able to gift someone gleam club membership. I’d also like to be able to gift someone cubit boxes.
Would be a great boost for new players.
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Whoa, I’m a bit late on this one, only reading the notes now. So many changes coming. Swords and shields of course will be awesome, really liking what I’m reading about the mechanics of how they’ll work.
The skill changes I can see being contentious but I do personally think it’s long overdue, I have been asking for this ( or moaning ) since beta. I had hated having to use alts or skill pages since the start, always found it to be an unnecessary hindrance, then after a long time I warmed to them but it wasn’t until I had enough of them leveled up that I liked them which is probably the biggest problem, I stuck around long enough to level them up… too many don’t stick around that long though so hopefully one character does it all will be good for player retention, even with the longer grind (which also makes sense to me)
I get people’s concerns with regards it being harder to earn cubits and plots, they are very valid. Really think this is the time to consider other long wanted updates like NPC’s that give quests to earn cubits or other ways of earning cubits other than leveling, or another way to get plots other than cubits. While I get that they probably don’t want us having thousands upon thousands of plots and needlessly locking up land I do also understand the need for players to earn enough to build big, after all in a voxel world BIGGER will always be better.
This update looks to me like it’ll be very positive for the game and player retention even if there are some kinks to be ironed out.
I did notice weapon racks were left out of the realease notes, Im sure this was just an accidental oversight though 
Edit: having watched a video posted above I really hope the sword animation is changed to a swing, booping enemies on the nose with a sword looks so silly
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I don’t know if anyone said it already or not to you. But they don’t destroy blocks when in a beaconed area. That was already tested.
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Guess, I have to add some comments from my point of view to the migration of XP and skill points (ignoring for the moment plots etc):
I have now played around 4 years and have accumulated 31mio XP which gave me 656 skill points and 5 full skill pages for the various tasks in the game. At several times, the splitting into specific skill pages have granted me a fast death (with penalties…) when I left my base with wrong page active and sometimes I just had to search for the proper page to activate portals or do mass productions…You see it was mostly a nuisance for my way to play the game. But with that release upcoming, I will be migrated to a new skill system, which uses those 31mio XP to push me down to some level 114 with some skill points to assign to one single skill page!? An attempt in the testing environment did not show the promised ability to assign the same skill points to multiple pages (obviously they are then redundant, but do I get a refund???). Nevertheless I will resume the game with 31Mio XP and have to gather another 140-150mio XP to get my full skills…Is this OK for me? Hmmm, 31mio took me 4 years - with some breaks for real life tasks) so I look forward to another 15-18 years to grind to that goal of level 190??? Will Boundless life until that time - around 2036 - or what do you all believe about expected lifetime of the game? Beyond that I do not know what will keep me motivated for so many years and in my age (I am now 72 and retired, perhaps I will not last so long to see this happening).
Different topic: I now have a sov + creative planets and the option to have additional local planets leaves me more confused than letting me wanting those things. The only really promising part would be to allow a full own control over planet biomes/resources/structure as well as player settings but this is currently not really visible and/or stable + planned + confirmed.
I have the testing versions active and have played several hours and feel that the version is quite good (very stable and all known functions work fine). Just as I know it from the devs work! But overall, I do not know if I will like this new version or if it will be another “game wipe” which leaves me at ground zero —> restart from scratch or consider quitting.
OK, I will be optimistic and wait what really will arive in the future.
I think you’re misunderstanding some things here…
It should be possible to assign the same skill points to multiple pages, and if it isn’t, then that’s a bug (there’s a post about it too on this forum). Also, keep in mind that this update will increase the skill points cap, so at some point you won’t even need to switch skill pages anymore. Yes, your level and your total skill point went down, but keep in mind that the new value is not only 5x as effective (because there’s 5 skill pages), but you can also allocate them all in a single page without needing to worry about the cap anymore.
Keep in mind that this is a separate thing entirely. sov + creative planets are on their server, this local planets is in a different universe (where you host your own), mainly intended for people that are playing single player or privately, this won’t be part of the MMO.
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Played on two PVE servers and it was an awesome experience (normal and isle of siptah). On the other hand, couldn’t last on Rust official servers due to sheer toxicity xD.
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@funAlways: thank you for your comments.
- Yes I did see those other threads and I just have done another test with a completly new char. I can level up with it and assign all skill points to the primary skill page. But adding another page does NOT allow to assign those skill points again. I am quite sure that I will not grind to 2… times 359 skill points - and yes, I know that 1 page is perhaps (?) enough for all my play styles.
- Yes, I own a sov planet and a mostly unused creative planet also. My comments about those are targteted to show my confusion: are the local planets finally replacing sovs … or will they grant more own customiziation that I can not do with sovs? And finally: Do local universes NEED a internet active link to some Boundless owned server and will stop when they decide to “call it a day”? Besides that: What differentiates local planets from Sovs when I link them to the MMO planets… I believe that they will have to follow exactly the same rules…
Local ‘universes’ will not be able to be connected to the main (MMO) game, and sovereigns will continue to be connected if the owner wishes.
This will allow local universes to be manipulated, modded and controlled (eventually) by the ‘owner’ of that universe in ways that cannot be allowed in the main game.
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Already answered on the support thread. The plan is to allow players to use earned skill points across all pages equally. So you earn say 10 skill points, and you can use all 10 of those points across all unlocked skill pages you have. This is not currently working on testing yet, but should be available in an upcoming update to the test universe.
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Local planets/universes are not replacing sovereign or creative worlds in any way. They are completely separate to the main MMO universe that we currently play in. Local universes will eventually allow for modding and changes to the core game that are not available in the live universe.
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This one is a concern, though. It sounds like the servers will be phoning home, even when client and server are on the same machine. I’m hoping our feedback can help ensure that an offline server mode will be available. Phone home drm is something people often object to, and not just in case the Auth servers go down.
@Rydralain: Thank you for the clarification.
Btw did you see any precise info if the link from local server to the discovery server (from Boundless MMO) is fixed to IPV4 or can we expect IPV6 - which I believe is now standard in Germany for IP providers, when they migrated all internet access customers a few years ago to IPV6 (and voice over IP phones). I really had a fight to keep an additional IPV4 address for my phone app development work.
It’s my understanding that the ipv6 standard includes support for ipv4 over ipv6. I think the ipv4 addresses are all reserved in the ipv6 space from the start.
Being fully offline was something which was possible before with the previous iteration of local sandbox.
As far as I can it may still be possible now (although admittedly I can’t properly test it and it may be a mistake to still have it included).
The issue is that doing this allows you to bypass any checks from Steam or from Boundless itself about whether you actually own the game, enabling anyone who can get their hands on a pirated copy to just play on someone’s hosted server somewhere, or just locally.
Sure, that’s what “phone home DRM” means, but none of the major competitors in the sandbox survival market (as far as I know) do that. Minecraft, Terraria, Starbound, Ark, Conan Exiles, etc… All allow fully offline play.
Pretty sure you need to be logged in to play Minecraft locally as well (at least on the Java edition, you do)
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That’s new. Did they remove the offline mode options during the Microsoft transition? I believe the option would be in the launcher, not the client.
That is the launcher - looks like there is no option for offline only.
You only have to sign in the first time.
Once you have signed into your Mojang account, as long as you don’t log out again, you can access the game even when offline.
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Another problem with that “claiming all the vertical plots” is that it would stop regeneration. Imagine someone building at the planet core and all the plots above are claimed. That means no meteors would drop there (on t3 worlds and above), all the rock, soil, gravel, wood, and foliage would be claimed as well. That means no one could harvest it unless you gave them permission.
And that’s pretty much gatekeeping resources.
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Here’s a question that I’m sure is on a lot a people’s minds. With the level progression and skill cap, your level will go down. That’s a given.
But what happens to the plots that you’ve already unlocked? Would the number be adjusted according to the new level progression?
And then what happens to those people who bought cubits to get plots?