Unpopular opinion: Boundless is meant for groups of players not solo

As the title suggests. The mechanics of boundless, how it’s designed, is best experienced as a group. It’s not friendly towards solo players, it doesn’t exclude them, but it favors a community over a single individual in all it’s systems.

This is true with building large structures, cities, towns, stores. It’s made so that you’re better off segmenting parts to different people, it reduces the need for one player to plot everything, each person can help with upkeep, and new ideas help diversity in your builds and make for some interesting places to visit in game.

It’s true with crafting. Crafting takes time, and lots of materials. Sure you can do it by yourself, but if there are 3, 4, 5 or more of you, the grind is so much reduced that even craft times aren’t so impactful since there is a group, you have more space for machines, and can have more people playing other things with while you wait for crafting items.

It’s true with travel. Traveling around the known worlds is expensive, so much so that it’s nearly impossible for a single player to keep portal connections to everywhere, but for a group it’s far more manageable. We wouldn’t have our current networks without support from the community, exos are a tad pricey to warp to, but if a group use that warp, that cost can be shared.

The game doesn’t play as well as a solo game, it just doesn’t. I think that is part of it being an MMO sandbox, i play other mmo sandboxes and it’s true with them too.

So all this to say, i think the best thing to help get new players into, and keep new players, is to push the community side and working together to build/craft/explore alongside new and maybe old friends.

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Agreed totally. MMOs in general are simply made to revolve around teamwork. You can absolutely play Boundless 100% solo, but it’s so much better (and honestly easier) with others and around others.

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Unfortunately, I read part of your post @Fiffer13 as an argument against dramatically reducing or removing craft times and, quite frankly, that just doesn’t add up. Yes, I agree with you that the game is meant for groups of players. However, crafting times is not an area where there should be artificial wall placed to force players into group play. Craft times are arbitrary and do little else besides hurt the game and its playerbase.

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Craft times are a common element of sandbox mmos. Eve online (and echoes the phone game i play) has them too. It doesn’t hurt that group of players or games, i don’t see how it does here either.

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I have to agree also.

I started playing around 6-7 months ago. Happily to play on my own. I’m kind of an anti social person, I get anxiety round other people I don’t know. I took the plunge and I started to get into hunts. The game opened up so much, more than I realised. See the connections and communties that are around each planet. Literally blown away at how inclusive, helpful and generally just how nice people were. I’ve played a lot of games but not experienced this sort of thing in this scale on a game before.

My partner & friends slowly jumped in the game too without me having to ask or suggest. The game is definitely way better with others. Makes it a lot of fun. I do on occasion do my own thing but for the most part it’s definitely a game designed round playing with others.

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The only way this holds any water is if you’re talking about near zero craft times. A’la Satisfactory where craft times are measured in seconds or tens of seconds. Craft times measured in hours are, quite frankly, unacceptable.

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As a solo player and always been a solo player I do not want to work in a team for a specific reason, that reason is I cannot count on others, if im solo I know what I have and cannot get dissapointed, I seen many “teamwork” or teams play boundless and most of them are not here anymore because a “link” got removed. I don’t want to build something up being afraid that at some point I need to take full charge or see it fall apart… so for me staying solo is a must for my mental health and motivation.
I do a lot for the community to help out, but working in a team is not for me, it doesn’t mean noone can join me.

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Boundless is 100% designed to be played with other people, this is obvious from skill pages alone. Hence why they’re changing them to be more solo friendly.

I think a lot of people would love to play in a group but can’t find other likeminded players (with such a small player base, this harder to do).

Even tho I play solo 99% of the time, I would not touch Boundless with a stick if the MMO aspect were to be removed.

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Any multiplayer game is nearly always more fun with friends. You get to experience things as a group. If I told you I built this awesome tall building and on my last block I fell off and screamed all the way down… it’s not too exciting, but when I was on Discord and screaming with 3 other people listening and they were watching me fall to my death … they laughed hysterically. That’s just one example. The first hunt you go on with 15+ people is pretty cool and doing Gleamball hunts is pretty fun too.

@HOST you sort of play in a group by streaming. You share your building and experiences with a group of people online the only difference for you is, as you said, you don’t have to count on others.

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I did say unpopular lol. Eve has craft times measured in days, and that is for things that other players can destroy in pvp (which we don’t have in boundless thankfully). I thought satisfactory was more of a non mmo sandbox?

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Part of what I love about Boundless is that it feels much more alive because of other people - and the community does make the game, and totally agreed this isn’t meant to solo, rather for people to have roles - but you really don’t have to interact much with others. Good for introverts like me, at least “playing introverts” like me I should say. I have made so many friendships here, love you all so much and have had loonnngg online chat sessions with some of you… but when I’m in game, I admit to often wanting to be a total loner. :sweat_smile: But I can do that while still filling community roles - buying and selling, running my rental hub, ect. :slight_smile: Even hunts, can just quietly follow the zerg.

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This is why successful groups in other sandbox mmos build in redundantcy into their groups, even the leader can be replaced so the community continues without them. It’s always sad to see groups leave because of this though.

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Satisfactory, while online and hostable, is definitely not an MMO but I think we’re hand-waving a bit about the term “MMO”.

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Fair enough lets use what boundless defines it as then: global, persistent, sandbox, without a hard player count limit (yes individual planets have caps but not the game). Mmo does imply a more regularly high number of players.

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I will say I enjoy playing with others, especially while using voice chat programs like Discord.

I can’t count the number of times I have ran into someone and waved then said a sentence that required something longer than a yes or no and realize right away they are on PS because their response time is crazy long.

It is one of the reasons I enjoy it so much more on a PC.

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Yeah, I’d love to play it on switch or something like that, but without a keyboard for typing messages it would be a pain.

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unpopular opinion?

it’s a fact! lol
it has been designed like that, and devs have never made it a secret; it must be like that to ensure existence of player economy

the only thing that devs could (or had to) do for those preferring single-player style, was to make all things kinda possible for a single player (a single player can do a meteor, mine or explore or even run several portals or build a large city), just making it painfully time-consuming so that looking for help is still a thing (that help can be in form of actual co-op or buying stuff)

and didn’t they succeed? they turned me from a single-player hermit to a semi-coop player that talks on discord and even makes some videos (amateurish though they may be)

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I agree, i say it’s unpopular because we have some advocates for different mechanic changes that would reduce some of the need for the community/guilds/economy in the game.

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Boundless might be meant for groups of players, but it has virtually no group content. Meteor hunts are the only real group content I can think of. There is no benefit to anything else being done in a group. Mining? Solo vs Group, no group benefit. Gathering? Solo vs Group, no group benefit. Building? Solo vs Group, sort of a group benefit in prestige, so maybe group, but a solo player isn’t exactly hindered from building.

I think it is accurate to say that Boundless was meant to have an economy, and no one was supposed to be making everything themselves. An economy isn’t exactly group content though. Its playerbase wide content.

There is no one activity that has enough content to provide a satisfying game loop. Are people supposed to do nothing but mine? Gather? Hunt? Doing only one activity would get boring quick, and everyone wants to build in a building game. I don’t think locking people into doing only one thing is going to provide for satisfying game play.

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Mining the group benifit is getting more resources faster, same with gathering. These help the group get more blocks to build with, ingredients to forge with, and more foods to buff with (to name a few).

The game does need more group content, I agree, it’s why titans, and t8 worlds are things I’m not so patiently waiting for. But I’d argue that most everything already in the game is easier, and quicker with a group over solo.