What are we owed?

I heard mentioned:

  • hundreds of players on same planet
  • pets
  • cross-breed animals
  • etc

Regards,

The Hunter has been teased for YEARS.
Its animations have been showcased as (at least) mostly done in late 2016!

The 5 things you’ve mentioned equate to 5% in your book? I mean, the light rendering itself changes entirely the look of the game. And the Titan feature is supposed to be a huge part of end-game activity, it’s at least bigger than meteor hunting as a feature… that alone is like 10% of the game on itself AT LEAST (IMHO).

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From the 2016 “Gameplay Trailer”
Ground Basher
Hunter

From the 2015 “Trailer”
Titan concept / moving blocks

From the Ort Online, too much to list
DISCLAIMER - The dream of Ort Online is not a fair comparison to anything that was promised in an official trailer.

  • 0:10 - Birds
  • 0:26 - Dogs
  • 0:40 - "HUGE numbers of different worlds… vicious and varied creatures…
  • 1:40 - “after you’ve settled on your world you’ll be able to start digging for oort stones” (implies quick and easy access to portal fuel!)
  • 2:25 - six different races to choose from; armor
  • 2:40 - weird crossbred creatures, food or pets
  • 2:45 - variety of hostile mobs
  • 2:58 - temples filled with rare loot
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I personally don’t blame Wonderstruck for things they promised back in 2014 that they haven’t done or decided to never do. Stuff like pets. The artstyle has also drastically changed since then. Though I’m not sure I prefer the current style over the artworks shown in the 2014 trailer…

But I definitely blame them for things they keep saying will happen, like Titans, alternate races, clothing, etc.

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For me personally, I don’t understand why things that were previously in the game were removed, and why they cant simply be added back. The old armour and creatures looked like they were basically completed.

Moreso on topic, all I would like is an explanation on if Wonderstruck plan to continue development on Boundless after Baulders Gate 3, because as it stands it isn’t looking promising.

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Ah, I have a sick child on my lap and had the audio off, so I missed that stuff.

I mean, yeah, based only on that trailer and the expectations I get from it, that’s the number I settled on. From my perspective, it looks like it’s missing a couple mobs and this abstract boss level thing that looks cool but clearly isn’t done. I don’t think there is anything wrong with you saying that’s 10%-20, though - that’s still fair. I am always skeptical of trailers and set my expectations low.

For some context, I remember being sold on this game when these trailers came out. I then went to look up the game, discovered it was an early access thing, looked at videos of what the game actually was at that time, and decided not to buy in until it was more done. I’m not a normal consumer, though, so buying based on the trailer alone isn’t something I dare to judge anyone for.

You mean this broken page they should update and/or just take down unless they are ready to release a real roadmap or add some more serious disclaimers?
Boundless Features Page

This, please. While I’m less worried about it generally, the status and functional plan of how things will move forward with the new company structures (whatever happened) is something I’d really like to know.

NMS is a pretty fair comparison here. Both appeared to get rushed out under pressure from Sony. Both have brilliant teams behind them, just not with the initial workforce to fill the vision. There was ONE difference - the hype.

Yeah, Hello Games went through heck because of it, BUT would the game have floundered if they hadn’t gotten enough of us in the door early on to keep going with the development? Similar situation with the fanbase there, just their overall numbers were larger at the outset. They experienced a pretty huge drop before starting to crank out the updates, a lot of us thought they’d given up. Heh, as much as I love the game, I STILL always laugh a little when I see this-

It has come so far since then though.

Which leads me to…

Totally agreed, this is my worry too, but there are two potentially positive reasons.

One is, several people here have said Sean Murray and James are friends. Maybe Sean convinced him to go the “put your head down, go to work, stop talking to them outside of the essentials and let them say whatever” route.

Other is, if they’re selling the game to another team - potentially very positive if it is a group with deep pockets that sees the potential of serious investment to fill all the original goals. Could go the other way though, just depends who gets it. But it would make sense not to talk about anything regarding the future outside of getting out the current update and technical fixes if so… anything past that wouldn’t be them, in that scenario.

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Alright, now I want James to start replying to threads with just single cryptic emoji.

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:joy:

If he were to go reply to some thread with ¯_(ツ)_/¯ now, I’d just die. :rofl:

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Truth is, in those trailers, you see the Ground Basher… bashing the ground… and you see the Hunter walking…
That wasn’t a proof that anything worked.

Though the Titan with all the moving parts, that’s something else. But maybe at that time, it was just an illusion, like it wasn’t actually made of moving blocks, but instead made of big chunks of meshes made to look like clumps of moving blocks.

As for the armors, I’ve never seen any in-game looks. I’ve only ever seen concept arts.
The old character models had belts, and I think they removed it because the new models are maybe more modulable.

I mean, the official website of the game still has outdated screenshots of the old player-models…

To me, that’s a TERRIBLE way to act as a developper.
I get there’s a level of toxicity in EVERY playerbase. There will always be.
But if negativity makes you shut down every form of communication, you got a biiiig problem.

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I’d like to see a company as large as Sony get hit with a massive class action lawsuit involving all of the games they misrepresent in trailers, but on the other hand I know their high paid lawyer teams would just pass the buck down to the smaller game developers in the end.

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Yeah, I just linked to my version because it also has the stuff you can’t see because the javascript is broken :upside_down_face:

Ah, right. Basically, they need some specialized people, like a community manager. Not sure if that job encompasses the updates to website stuff, or if they’d also need a web-designer…

But they definitely need a presence on Youtube and Twitch, and they need to resume their presence on Twitter too. Plus, someone other than James should reply to questions on the forum. James has too many roles. He had to be the one who made the ownership transfer of my build, and that felt bad.

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To be clear, it wasn’t “the titan”. Titans were billed as end-game, replayable content well beyond meteor hunting (which wasn’t even a thing in EA as far as I remember). Titans were what a lot of us were waiting on for this MMO - something truly “end game” that gave us replayability beyond just gathering and building for no real purpose other than casual enjoyment.

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The mobs were in the “gameplay trailer”. Everything else featured in that video accurately depicted how it was in game. The basher does not move or target the player. It is stationary with attack animations. It is hard to tell if the hunter is path finding towards the player or it is moving forward in a straight line with a walking animation. So all we know is IF it was game footage, it might just be models and partial animation sets without AI / pathfinding.

The “trailer” featuring the moving structure could have been purely rendered/cinematic - it doesn’t claim to be gameplay. Rotating one 3D model around another is fairly basic.

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Since we’re in the topic we’re in, I think I’ll be frank about my opinion on this…

They probably can’t afford that. Imagine them taking an entire developer off the team to get a dedicated social media person. A team that the most optimistic estimates put at like 5 people.

Then, we’re talking about selling more of Boundless, a game where we have a 117 post conversion about how it’s not done. A game where I’m pretty sure there is a high early- and mid-game bounce rate because of poor NPE and poor mid-game progression balancing. (I’m looking at you, centraforge)

They need that PR person if they want to sell more copies and keep the community sated, but is that more valuable than maintaining what little velocity there is in development of the exact things being discussed in this thread?

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I never really got what Titans were.

Randomly generated flying chunks of moving blocks with special creatures on it? And like exo-worlds, we’d race to grapple on them to harvest them until nothing was left?

Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what I was saying. :stuck_out_tongue:

I agree that they likely can’t afford a community manager or a web-designer, etc. Though with their partnership with Sony, can’t they get it?

Still, they need some semblance of communication if they wanna keep their players, which are, unless I got it all wrong, still a source of income. Gotta get dem cubits money.

They should find a way to cut 249 in two and at least release the melee weapons and skill page stuff, and release the local universe right after.

Either way, we’re where we are currently because SOMETHING isn’t working at all.

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In this case, it wouldn’t be a permanent thing - just until current stuff in works is out. Like Sean now, he communicates a lot more, the emoji tweets and all have really become a running joke based on what happened before, the fanbase and Sean mess with each other pretty equally now.

And I wasn’t a fan of that initial silence on his/HG’s part, actually, when it happened - it was only after that when he explained the reasoning. During it, many of us thought they’d checked out. In retrospect though, I see the reasoning behind it. Nothing they said would have carried weight then. So rather, they focused on the work.

That is why, if the case here, I see it as a possible positive - not that no communication is a positive, but if they’re working their tails off and have big plans in the works still, and decided to focus on the work part. I mean, if I were them, I’d not want to talk to me. :rofl:

The difference though, if this is the case, is because of the much smaller size of the base here, we’re at a seriously critical point, it is getting now hard for me to get what I need to keep playing. :frowning: So if this IS their strategy I’d say, please throw us a bone at least and just let us know that is the deal.

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There have been multiple of us that offered to be a Community Manager for FREE, myself and @Tagris included but not limited.

Ok send us a emoji here @james like a :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: to show us he still hears us

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