Tutorial objectives have huge wall of text. Some graphical comic or even some harry potter styled interactive news paper might have done better job to get familiar to game 
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I had this experience with someone I bought the game for too. Of everything, if I could do only one thing before an ad push hypothetically, as much as I’d want new content or something like blueprints, the NPE HAS to be addressed. Read too many things, see the huge drop off in achievement/trophy % for early ones, but it was working directly with someone through their first few hours that hammered it home the most. This person is VERY talented in another building game. But here, hit a number of things that would have caused a quit if I weren’t there to help. Eventually left anyways.
More than anything else I think this is why the base is so low, people who can get past it can become like many of us and put countless hours… but the initial learning curve weeds out far too many. My theory personally is the very obvious extreme intelligence of the devs worked against them here in designing some stuff. This isn’t the type of game where you want such a steep barrier to entry. Ideally, you get lots of people in and doing all the basic stuff easily, then have more complicated stuff later on once people are many hours in (though I’d argue forging is still too much). Also, the information all needs to be easily accessible in game. Simplify a bunch of the recipes. Increase speed of progress/weaken blocks even more on T1 and 2s.
The update might help here some though. People who start on the private side before joining the MMO might be able to adjust better, have a better initial experience, and be more likely to stick around.
Another note, I’m really getting to the point here where my preferred way of playing is becoming unsustainable due to player loss here, too few people buying, and Oort prices up. I love the game still so much but might have to make some tough choices soon, though I at the least will stick more time on my Alcyon rentals. Unless it is the case that they’re under some sort of contractual obligation to keep the game going but truly would rather it die off and see it as a burden at this point so are doing the bare minimum (this is my big fear, and makes me really sad), or of course as mentioned before can’t speak about more than essential fixes for some sort of contractual reason, I’ve got to say again if they’re listening: please, we really need something here before we lose more of us. 
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It is one of the biggest draws because it is the only option. Excellent single-player or lan play can’t be a draw to the game because it doesn’t exist, so you can’t make a comparison since there is nothing to compare.
Absolutely. I would have done an NPE improvement before local servers even, since local servers won’t have the advantage of experienced players helping out. The bounce percentage will be higher and earlier without this. Sword & shield helps, but that tutorial needs some help - probably a tutorial world with hands-on lessons would be best.
That could even also be the “waiting for world gen” distraction, and I think I suggested something along those lines before as well.
This is absolutely true. Most players, especially in the F2P, optional-sub era of MMOs and games-as-service everything, most players play for a while, maybe touch a little bit of endgame, and then move on until something else cool comes up in that game. That’s why every GaaS game has oscillating player counts. Up after updates, low before updates.
Path of Exile is a fantastic example of this. They have regular releases of fairly dramatic additions to the game. You can click on “all time” there and see it go back for years.
PoE is definitely an exaggerated example because of the way people tend to play it intensely and then burn through all of the content quickly again, but it illustrates the idea of typical GaaS oscillations.
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I wasn’t trying to make a comparison as much as just stating that the current players have stated they most likely won’t play without the MMO universe. That is purely speculative and if I could play with a friend or two I’d still play it, but considering there would be no economy, no massive player interaction and no huge builds that I could walk through, no large hunts, no large hubs, no malls, it just defeats one of the things I and apparently others love about the MMO universe. Now if we can connect all the servers together and replicate our own version of the MMO great, but it could still detract from making the main universe as big as possible. Single player might be fun, local servers could be fun… but if I am playing with 5 people when it could be 100’s give me the latter. Of course, that’s an opinion.
I had to go do a little research here, but I need to clarify I would not be happy playing Boundless forever as a live-service game without any more updates. I also wouldn’t be happy playing Boundless forever with the updates. Much like @Rydralain states here, I would play the game as long as I was having fun and then probably come back from time to time and then it would just fall off into the darkness. I also didn’t consider how much Boundless is or could be considered a GaaS. I even find it slightly difficult to classify it as one as I really find it a complete game in sandbox terms other than I am playing on a Boundless server and buying planets on that server.
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Something that I’ve noticed, since taking part in the excellent permadeath community - you should join it to feel a sense of purpose again! - is how grindy the early stages really are. If you came to Boundless purely because of the building potential, I can really understand why you would quit early on. Everything is so slow. Building a very basic base is a chore, and there’s so much of the nice blocks, etc which are high level. They need to throw some pretty new blocks into those early stages to help win over anyone that came because they wanted to build and make breaking soil, sand and gravel a one hit affair on any tool!
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They should start a new Kickstarter campaign to sell the game to us forum users.
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Said it many times, if they sold us cosmetic stuff (new blocks, clothes, weapon appearances, etc), I’d be dumb enough to buy.
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I was about to jokingly suggest you tweet something super controversial and tag them, but then I got to thinking about guerrilla marketing like they did with the Mooninites for the Aqua Teen movie, starting thinking we should make life sized sitting oortians and put them in public, now I’ve gotten to the bottom of something huge: James is responsible for all the recent UFO sightings. He’s currently in the midst of the greatest mass guerrilla marketing scheme in history. That solves 2 mysteries 
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Does that mean 249 is getting spaceships now?
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Easy. Best graphics in any voxel game, in fact only voxel game with even remotely good graphics. Only mmo where you own unique property.
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I’m confident that modded servers will produce record numbers of concurrent players. And even though we would have to exit the mmo to go to one, there could still be some kind of connection between the two. Like if someone has a dungeonesque server they could build something that represents it in live and have all the info inside. Conversely, if someone has a really popular server but they still play in live a lot, some buddies who have only played on local servers might go to live and join their guild.
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I’m still hoping there is eventually a system for getting inter-universal portals. Just drop people into the character creation screen.
I don’t know how mods that require client-side changes (if that’s even a thing) will do with stuff like that, though.
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We have a running joke on Brown hunts whenever we hear a roadrunner make a sound, it’s James doing the sounds… live…
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That is absolutely hilarious. I’m jealous I didn’t think of it. Memeworthy stuff there.
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James should totally do a Big Brother (the book, not the awful TV nonsense) and broadcast a live message every day. The two minutes hate, where we all gather to shout at a video of the bugs and technical hitches delaying 249.
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Slightly off topic, but regarding the modding discussion:
I’ve always been under the impression that the ultimate goal of modding was to allow players to create mods that the devs could pick and choose to add into the main game officially - new furniture, new blocks, new creatres, new items ect…
I’m still somewhat hopeful this is the case, but its not looking promising right now.
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If they come out and say they will consider mods for core implementation, that would significantly increase my motivation to make mods once it becomes an option.
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The real issue is not how long it takes to make the updates, but what the developers will do as the game continues to drop from the current 50 users.
This game for them is their job, and for us our hobby, as soon as there is no compelling reason to continue maintaining servers, licenses and other expenses in a game that is not profitable, they will end up closing or they will modify the game for offline use.
Eh, there are so many equally plausible outcomes in the case that the game isn’t profitable to develop. I don’t think there is any reason to assume any one of them will be the one they pick.
Yeah but then, there’s the issue of PSN. Prrrrretty sure Sony wouldn’t allow its players to go on modded worlds, because Sony has weird rules like that, I hear.
You’d have to have mods only on local universes that PSN users can’t visit, AND THEN, the devs would officially implement the best ones, to get a win-win situation. But there would be a lot of frustration for PSN players being locked out of some worlds.