This was always my concern. I mean in my eyes … think that making the game have a single player mode would help out the MMO, but in my eyes if the game hasn’t sold that well with the MMO I can’t imagine it will sell much better just by adding local universes.
I used to be the opposite when it came to sandbox games as I always wanted my own personal server and really Boundless was one of the few games to actually change that for me. The main benefit for me with other games was there was a lot of PVP and griefing in other games that were just annoying or uncontrollable, but with my own server say in 7 Days to Die I could just invite my friends and because we didn’t do PVP only PVE we didn’t have to worry about someone randomly shooting us and taking stuff.
As a fan of playing MMOs I look at Boundless losing so much on a local server unless it has 50 or so people. You would have a lack of planets, a lack of economy, a lack of exploration and numerous other things you would lose or lack in the translation. Of course without trying it out totally I suppose this is all just speculation.
They should have focused on the MMO, that is the unique thing about Boundless. I personally think its a waste of time pushing the Local Universes (I also don’t like sovereign planets either). Boundless isn’t unique because its a survival game. Nor is it unique because its a building game. Its unique because its a Survival Building MMO, they had/have something really special but neglected the MMO aspect in my opinion
You are not wrong but as a miner who would LOVE to go after lucent gems but between ALL of the real life events going on.
Wedding Planning
Fiancee’s work schedule and her not being able to drive
Timezone difference in when Lucents go live vs when I can play
Fiancee’s family’s needy attention schedule
My own family to get around to…
I can’t play for 20+ hours anymore and by the time I can get around to playing at 8:30 eastern and after…The lucent planets released 8-10 hours prior are swiss cheese and not worth it for me to fight over the leftovers
The MMO aspect for going for the best has been a challenge for me. So me focusing on gathering Metals/Ores/Coal/gems is at the point where its no longer fun. Shops are not buying as much material and I have to run around 2+ hours to different shops just to make some coin. Going local for me is going to suite me just fine.
I totally understand. Having a full-time job, married and 2 kids along with a side job doing websites has made my game time a challenge Working from home has helped with that some but I do find myself AFK a bit more than I’d like.
I know it is too late, but I would have been more than happy to mine lucents for you and would have done that for free knowing how it was hard for you. I don’t go for the lucents as much anymore mainly because they aren’t very useful for me other than for decorative blocks.
I hate to lose more people from the MMO, but I’d be happy to visit locals from time to time … just dont feel like I can split much time between a local and the main universe. We shall see…
I was interested in Boundless because it reminded me of the other open world voxel games that I loved to play (Cv, PK, MC, Tr, etc). I initially didn’t care much about the MMO part and tried to avoid it. In most games, even MMORPGs, I generally played solo. However, I almost instantly fell in love with the whole Boundless/Oort thing and the MMO aspect. It actually ruined the other games for me. It made them all seem like they were missing something that only Boundless had.
With that said, James has mentioned privately hosted planets for quite some time. For at least 2 years before the official release. Some OG players/backers have been waiting for this feature. Boundless has also rec’d a lot of flack on Steam for not offering the ability for players to host private/local worlds. A lot of people said they won’t buy Boundless without it. Private/local worlds also appeal to parents of younger children, for numerous reasons.
If you look at other games, some private server iterations have flourished and become quite popular. Roblox has/had a popular mining game/server & that was the only reason I played it. Hypixel was nothing but a popular custom/private MC server and look at it now. MC isn’t an MMO, but some of the private servers are. Players did that. It could happen here too.
For these reasons, I don’t see any problem with BL fulfilling their initial vision by adding the ability for players to host worlds on private servers. James has always wanted players to be able to play in as many ways as they want to. This is part of that. The sandbox.
In response to this @majorvex I totally agree with you. I am not saying I don’t want the local universes I’m just very torn and mostly in the same boat as you. Having played many games solo at times like WoW my 2nd playthrough and running various servers for nearly every sandbox/survival games that I played it makes me concerned as the Boundless is the first game I can say I don’t really care to run my own server unless … that offers me the ability to connect it to a bigger universe or the ability to create our own MMO as a community.
Adding private servers will allow Boundless to flourish, but in what way will remain to be seen. From this post alone I can see a few people already leaning towards their own server. That is not a big negative in my eyes as it allows more choices and could bring a wider audience, but with that the main MMO universe will suffer.
I honestly hope that the MMO and the main universe remain popular, but the main argument I am always given is that the more people playing single player means more carryover into the main MMO and I feel that may not be the case. As I mentioned I don’t see the game sales picking up that much with just the addition of local universes … I say that because many new people will not have had the pleasure we have all had in knowing how the MMO really is having been in it this long.
I think that is why I was apprehensive in trying to try Boundless (even though it was gifted) as the first thing I looked for before playing it was if I could run it locally… as that is all I have ever done in many games like this. I am glad that was there as I probably would have never tried it or even looked at the forums.
I remain torn, but hopeful the game deserves a lot more than what it has gotten so far as does this community.
I really tried to get a local universe portal just like we have the creative portal… but I fear we might only be stuck with a menu system. Maybe if others push for it we can have a more integrated game feel to locals instead of loosing emersion to press a menu button. Plus I feel it really helps show who has what …
If it can’t be done via portals, maybe it could be done via their website or in-game menu UI? Maybe you can favorite private planets, select one from the UI, and travel to them in the way you can travel home.
I assume the world abilities/rules/economies on private servers will be vastly different from those on Known Worlds. I think most players are used to this concept though. If you go to a different server, you have a different character, abilities, items, home, rules, etc.
I’m sure the devs have already considered how these worlds will or won’t connect to what we have now. I’m curious what they’ve decided.
@Redlotus I don’t know if players that have private servers will join the main MMO. It might help, it might not. If someone isn’t playing because they don’t want to be part of the current MMO, there’s no way to force them to like it or participate in it. I do think those players might be more apt to stream/post about their fun shenanigans, massive builds, etc on their servers. That might help spread awareness of the game. Maybe not, I dunno.
The thing with these popular private servers on games like Minecraft and Roblox is that they that games were firmly situated before these things flourished. I’m not saying tassels like local universes and private worlds don’t have a place in Boundless, just that they were WAY down on the priority list in many peoples eyes.
They may have rec’d a lot of flack about the inability to play privately, but I’m sure they’ve received flack for a lot of things, like all games have. Such as the trailer including a bunch of things that aren’t in the game. Being able to play solo like minecraft or cv, isn’t gonna bring in new people, unless Boundless offers something those games do not, or people get fed up with them (which I can’t see happening), so focusing on the MMO will be that niche people will want to explore, not just ‘another building/survival game’.
Not interested in locals myself but more options the better.
Also, if they become a popular, they could be a great breeding ground for new ideas and mechanics that could make their way to our mmo 'verse.
That was my optimistic take but my more pessimistic thought is that this might be the path for them to start shrinking the mmo side (not that I think this was the initial intention for creating locals ofc) with the current change of focus.
It was decided via UI. Unfortunately, my access to calls went south as the BG3 stuff happened so I never could dive more into the technicals around the other option. Plus obviously their ability to develop went very far south. :). Mostly the concern with the “local portal” option (at least at the start) was around managing dead connections for offline worlds and how to track that. Also they would have had to create a new portal size like they did for Creative so they could easily link things as well as a character copy like happens in Creative. I just think the lack of development resources probably killed the idea since I couldn’t provide enough true “value in the emersion” aspect of my argument. Much of the local environment still uses MMO infrastructure and DBs.
As disappointed as I am I can understand and respect the dev time and just pray that maybe one day it happens since I believe it would be the best way to help keep MMO relevant like the links to creatives were. I’m pretty sure creatives weren’t going to be linked to the portal networks originally until we pushed or I had the conversation that they must be…
It’s just going to be me on the server. I just like to work towards things so I’m not making creative worlds. But I also don’t want to endlessly have to chase meteors for the rest of my days
Don’t mistake my concern as a negative for local universes I hope that they do allow us to make our own version of the MMO where I could link my universe to the server @ardele created or one that someone else created. I would hope things like that would be possible … and if you could daisy-chain 5-10 servers via a central server (if I recall that was the plan) I find that to be the more impressive feat than just allowing people to play locally.
I look forward to it, but I do worry that when and if they do come out that we may not see any tweaks or changes to local universes for quite some time. I’ll stay hopeful though
For me, as mentioned in another post, it’s the ability to jump in/out when I am able to without having to worry about beacon timers and the like.
I’m also looking forward to being able to change a lot of the arbitrarily long crafting times, so that I can continue to play without needing to log off while waiting for materials to build with.
Most of the people in my guild haven’t played for quite some time (some for near on a year), so the local universes may actually get us back into playing again. If that happens, I know a few of us will likely try combining whatever resources we can muster to create our own universe where we can play together again.
Yeah, but I wonder how custom you can take it? When they were first talking about the sovereign release and small worlds being in it, I was hoping for a really small world being available, such as a 10-12 region one.
