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.