Thoughts on the impact of a creative ecosystem

It’s still ok to disagree. It’s a multi-faceted issue and to be honest I have found that not many people who want to discuss this agree on every single point. For the most part I’m enjoying the discussion.

I will clarify that by “disturbance to survival” I explicitly mean with issues like the portaling problem (which plays both ways) and some others which are being dealt with one by one. Like the guild buffs, and whatever else may come up.

There’s also the addition to ‘sky-clutter’. While I agree that’s going to be some sort of issue for low tier sovereign worlds with or without creative, It would lessen the impact on the survival worlds and potentially eliminate it from creative entirely if another method of accessing creative worlds is in place.

And to be fair I’d like it if accessible sovereign worlds were also available in the players’ world lists as well. Even if there are limits such as only those attached to the current sanctum planet.

But there has to be another system that includes a sanctum warp and some default spawn point or even just random coordinates. Otherwise we have the oft-mentioned hypothetical you-tuber who has rented a creative planet in their initial purchase having to learn enough about survival to find a warp augment and the planet their creative world is orbiting before they can get there.

So if this system will already exist, why not use it to allow players to warp to creative planets from anywhere? If the creative universe is not interlinked at a planetary level with the survival universe, some things can more easily be relaxed to simplify this.

Back to what I mean by the portal problem playing both ways - if some players DO want aggro mobs, high level mobs because they look great, specific biomes, or whatever, it seems that with the integration as originally announced, visitors and other friends who want to be 100% creative players are still going to have to traverse dangerous survival worlds.

Best case, if there are enough creative worlds of varying tiers, and a lot of people are willing to tolerate atmosphere damage in their creative builds and skill sheets, a fully creative network could develop in parallel. But that is, in my opinion, unlikely. And if it does happen it’s likely to be unstable in terms of permanence. Fully a matter of opinion and conjecture, of course.

But again if there’s separation the blinksec rules can be relaxed or modified. Depending on how deeply it’s hard coded into the system these planets could be very close, but it seems likely that they could at least push them within a range where you could skill to max blinksecs and portal from a T1 to a T6.

This is only socially/economically viable if a solution is selected that eliminates creative worlds being used to bypass travel costs or restrictions in survival. And the easiest solution, with limited information, appears to be a distinct separation between the two environments.

Minimizing economic (and to some extent social) disturbance to survival is not just a matter of NIMBY in this case. It appears to be the largest non-technical issue affecting the release. And since portals are acknowledged to have a hard financial cost to the developers in terms of computing costs just saying “f@k it make portals free for everyone” doesn’t appear to be a reasonable solution.

Letting the creative planet renters who are actually paying cash for the resources foot the compute cost bill for free portals to anywhere has already low-key caused some exclamations of the usual P2W type complaints and how fair that is to people that have struggled through survival mode and now focus their game play around these aspects of the game.

So I honestly feel that concerns from both sides of the issue are most easily solved in bulk with a clear back end and front end separation of the different ecosystems. Given what’s known or assumed about the technical requirements, combined with a ton of player speculation :rofl:

Perhaps a sanctum variation like @DKPuncherello’s Dream Realm would help with some feelings of being un-acknowledged by presenting creative more as a “featured game mode” rather than feeling like a hidden or set-aside part of the game?

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Personally I can’t see a majority of people having a problem with creative being intertwined in our existing universe.
No problem in someone taking an easier route to building of course and if I visit someone’s creative world, I will take that into consideration, right after I’ve had an involutory snobbish reaction and shouted out “easymode!” right into their face.
Us hardcore survivalists builders will take pride of the blood and toil it will take to make our magnificent constructions, some years later…

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Linking my reply to that here so I don’t just end up posting the same message twice.

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[SNIP]
… I actually typed a quote a lot here to counter points you’ve made, but on reading it back I realised that I was just repeating my self and not bringing anything else new to the table. So I cut it out. I’m not ignoring the rest of your post, I just have nothing else to add.
[/SNIP]

I’d view it as a very distant second to having portals for seamless travel between the two, but it’s a better compromise than many other suggestions I’ve seen. However, I feel like you’re still not really getting why people want creative interwoven into the game as an intrinsic part.

It’s not to do with feelings of acknowledgement, or being included. For the most part, people had assumed creative would be entirely separate. The notion that it could be part of a single universe is a stroke of genius and a massive opportunity to keep the community as one big whole instead of splitting them into arbitrary subsections.

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This is a fair statement. Others have stated it’s definitely to do with wanting to feel like they’re “not in a bubble” and still having others able to visit. I would place both under headings of acknowledgement and/or feeling included.

If this isn’t the core motivation I’m definitely missing it. I can also see a convenience motive for those that want to be active in both realms though, as well.

I ran a MC server once that had a separate survival and creative worlds. With separate inventories it didn’t affect the survival server at all. Being able to use the same character to go to creative is awesome and I hope it stays that way.

I also hope they figure out portals, I still think all non-creative portals should just exit to the same place you entered. It literally eliminates the ability to make hubs. Perhaps make special creative only portal blocks, that don’t need fuel, with an option for it to be an exit portal or creative>creative portal where you can then put in a destination.

Some sort of way to have normal portals to creative would be ideal.

It still has to be balanced somehow though. No clue how.

I suppose there could be portals to creative. They could even be free. The key part is that no matter where you go in creative, when you leave creative, you HAVE to get deposited back where you left survival, or creative breaks survival hubs. Basically the same premise as dream realm just with portals instead of beds.

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oooor we ALSO GET BEDS!

@diannetea

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Sadly @lucadeltodecso has given an explanation of why this is not currently feasible. If they were to put a hard requirement in for the shape of all creative ↔ survival portals it would help to overcome this.

Right now the sanctum seems like the best bet for always returning to your last visited spot when transitioning between the two systems.

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I can only speak for myself, but I am extremely happy for the decision to blend the worlds. Knowing how i have played games in the past, the moment we owned our own server, we never tried to reconnect to the outside player base.

The ability to go back and forth, will keep the community connected. It will give artists the opportunity to work without the grind, that many would never even play the game and grind in the first place, as well as let everyone see and test the limits of boundless.

Yes some will leave the official universe, but there are many who enjoy the show of progress and work, and the economy, so there are many who may play with the creative worlds, but still focus on what is earned and displayed officially. As well as hopefully when drawing new players in with creative, they will slowly work in the official universe to make their mark as well.

Economy/wealth and personal/guild status, matters to many people, and they will show that by working in official vs creative, and i know many who do not care at all about creative, as well as some that will pack up and go the first chance they get.

I myself look forward to see how the universe grows, and hopefully grows the player base as well.

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It really is an elegant solution… Remember how we were also having a massive debate about bonus plots for sovereign worlds? That entire issue fell off of the radar with just a single forum update.

Both sides got what they wanted, without really conceding anything to the other camp.

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Not that I’m doubting you but I’ve asked this recently and didn’t get an answer (buried in some thread so am not surprised it was missed) then, but you remember them saying something like that? Because the way I look at portals I can’t imagine why, probably because it’s implemented differently than I think it is, but still.

Could you link me to where they said it’s costing them?

0123456789

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I don’t think I will, but say that besides getting a Sovereign World I will also get a Creative one. I most certainly would love to have a portal from Nova Golda to both of them and not have the Creative one hidden away in some fashion.

I do get your concerns tho that if a new player goes thru that portal and sees things they can never understand how to accomplish it it might turn them off, but that is already happening now!

As a new player they walk slow, build slow, gather slow, craft slow, etc. They have no idea how fast it can go once you’ve played 100’s of hours so I’ve had plenty of new players wonder how I build everything by myself or how others have done it.

Creative might make this worse, it also might not, no crystal ball so can’t be sure.

All things that people suggest for Creative Worlds to look different are all fine but if a new player does not understand why a portal has a different colour they will not think “oh, it’s creative”. Especially since the entire GUI has a completely different colour already to show everyone that it IS creative already! If that is not enough then anything else won’t really help either.

I would not be a fan of having it be too separate. Why not? I don’t want it to be hidden, I want people to see what I’ve done with a Creative World if I ever take one.

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So, for me, whenever I start playing a game on creative it ruins the game for me. It happened on MineCraft, Ark, NMS (though I’m getting back into that) and Conan Exiles. Playing God in a game makes it hard to get back into not being God. But that’s just me. I don’t wanna ruin Boundless for myself, so I’ll be staying away from creative :blush:

Though, I am super looking forward to other people’s creative builds!!

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Ahh, yeah, thank you, I do remember that one, I remember then asking about the size of a portal and it’s costs and didn’t get a definitive answer on that part.

So yes, it takes up more server time of each different server if a player runs thru 5 portals instead of just 1. So having tons of free portals can be a bad thing.

Problem with this statement is that having a portal itself is not computationally costly, it’s the use of it, hehe.

Since it’s costly for the server that the portals go to and if that portal goes to a Creative Server the costs should already be 100% for the renter of the Creative world.


I think the best solution to all this portal business is just allowing portals from Sovereign/Survival worlds to Creative ones but they need to be fueled from Survival/Sovereign side. Trying to leave thru another portal on another creative world to a survival type planet should either be blocked or make you end up at the initial entry point.

On Creative worlds portals to and from other Creative world destinations can be free. This will not cost a Survival player anything, the servers running those creative planets are dealing with the compute costs which is what the players paid for already.

Having to add anything to show it’s a Creative besides putting it in the middle of the screen in a huge font will not help much since the whole UI has a diff colour already. If that’s not enuff, then besides actually telling people in a way that is hard to miss won’t really help either…

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The concept of creative and survival is now a completely understood concept among players.

Having creative planets won’t detract from survival planets even with easy transitions. I played on my MC servers where you could /creative and warp to the creative world and play with friends. Cool builds were there…but they were creative. Never saw anyone compare them.

The entire new inventory and hud changes make it pretty obvious you on a creative world.

People rarely compare apples to oranges. Survival builds and creative builds are unlikely to be compared…after all you can just go to a creative world with your friends and build your own creative build.

On the other hand, having creative worlds connected will make it great to have fun and interesting builds shared in an expanding universe of many possibilities.

Lets keep Boundless moving in a Boundless direction :wink: and not unnecessary red tape to a system designed to remove the red tape.

“Tired of the crafting and endless toil of boundless? NP go to a creative world…just open up your sub menu, leave the game, select the universe…relog…type in a new password, log into your new world with a separate character and then HAVE FUN!”

Lol no thanks :wink: a portal is fine.

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Totally understand. For me, even if playing on an easy or easiest mode, as long as I’m still having to earn it somewhat and it isn’t God mode, gives me a lot of satisfaction. In NMS, all I really do these days is fly around, explore and screenshot. You’d think I’d really want to be on creative for that, but it just takes something away, having it all freely handed to me. I COULD see a bit enjoying testing how things might look in creative, but a ton of the fun and rewarding feeling of Boundless is earning my way (though I have gotten some nice gifts from other players, haven’t earned everything I have I admit!).

But just like you, really looking forward to seeing what others create in creative! :slight_smile: And taking screenshots of it all. :wink:

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This is why I feel DK’s solution is the best one. Players can craft a bed in the tutorial so even early on, players find out they can enter creative whenever they want by just finding a bed or using their own bed. Not only that, but it makes perfect sense logically in the universe why you suddenly have god powers when on certain worlds. I could see plenty of players tired after a day of grinding in survival, coming home to see their bed at their house and deciding to use the bed to actually relax in the dream realm for awhile and explore creative worlds that people have created.

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