See, it’s comments like this that make me wild for personal servers. I’m so ready to tear in to the .ini files and play with things.
I never understood these posts o_O
WoW has been out for 15 years, still has millions of players and is adding expansions…but every month or so the same forum post pops up on the forum… “Game dying, X is the reason!”…for 15 years o_O slowest death ever.
WoW won’t last forever. Boundless won’t last forever…you and I won’t last forever 
Enjoy the ride, the game and offer suggestions without the hyperbole. The devs listen…even when we aren’t dramatic
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I can speak about the new player experience because I and my kids arrived on the free weekend and we stayed and bought the game. The game has some really fun things to do, which is why we bought it. Last night we were grapple swinging off the extremely high diving board we built.
The starting tutorial is great, with the arrows, and all of us who could read were able to complete it. The problems came after that when we needed glue and had no clue how to get it until we discovered the knowledge menu. About this time we became a dependent on the forum, wiki, and YouTube to get information on how to keep progressing. Many new players will get stuck here.
Right now we’re struggling to find iron and don’t feel ready to go out into t3 worlds yet. We not even sure about the best way to embark on that journey.
I know the devs are about to fix the furnace with a recipe tab which will help new players a ton. Also it’s true that the early npcs bite a bit hard and the early crafting times are a hassle because at this point no one is multitasking therefore we generally just stared at the crafting machine until it finished. My kids gripe about that the most. However, the main issue as we see it is the game feels empty until you get to capitals and portal hubs.
If ILegend hadn’t appeared at our base and introduced us to Legendville via a warp portal then we might have not stayed around. We hiked to Storm Garden early on to find a huge city with absolute no one in it, old vacant shops, and mostly shut down portals and it was discouraging.
The devs also seem to be attacking this by adding an easier way to get to a capital. After seeing legendville we worked hard to get a portal up for easy access. 100c for every warp conduit was steep for us. We use the portal all the time to go places to buy and sell.
I believe a more direct answer would be to use ideas from elsewhere and add a free play tier to add activity to the game.
The free play option should tax all their transactions at 50% and add 5c fee to all their transactions, not allow trading by any method, slower xp gain after level 20, less cubits per level to limit plotting, limit beacon fuel to 2 weeks, no footfall, and no receiving coin from guilds. These should all be the cost of not buying the game. These restrictions are not just to encourage free players to buy the game but also to stop abuse of these accounts. This should allow them to spend enough time in the game to decide if they want to invest.
The current $30 discounted price is a much better price point. I think the deluxe option and gleam club are still missing value needed to secure their purchase from most players and more needs to be done to them to make them worth purchasing.
I apologize for any errors. I typed this out on an iPhone.
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in this case the steam charts where all that was needed cuz the free to play weekend was only for PC even that shows 1K people tryed out the game and less then 100 of those people stayed thats a really shockingly low number.
same most of the negative reviews that we got during the free weekend showed that the one NPE patch was not where near enough
i dont know about red dead cuz i dont know a PS4 but my highest time on a Non MMO is payday 2 at 763HR’s thats only 200HRs behind my boundless time and if i was to knock out the mineing while watching a movie or doing someting to keep my self form turning the game off time it would be neck and neck with boundless.
the thing is yea you cant log as much time in a non standbox game but alot of the time you get way more bang for your buck i still remeber the ending to bioshock 1 and my playing of it 6 years after i beat it cant realy say the same for boundless my memory of that is just one big cave blur
not really if it was worth the price tag then we will be averaging around haif of our 1.1K peak but we are not the people who tryed out the game decided the value was not worth the price
yea but to be fair the death posts on the forums only started after warth of the lich king came out and that was 3 expansions in
we are still in vanilla WoW and getting them
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If you tell me which file type I might be looking for I’d be willing to find, zip & upload them somewhere for you.
Thanks for your feedback and it’s good to hear that you’ve been playing the game as a family group.
The aim of the Knowledge and Objectives is to make sure that the game can be played fully without resorting to a wiki. (Yeah - you’re all allow to laugh at this point.)
The Objectives are supposed to guide you through “everything the game has to offer”. Likewise the Knowledge is supposed to guide you through “everything that can be crafted”.
One issue that I would like to resolve is that the Objectives and Knowledge gradually unlock their contents based on what you’ve already done. The idea is to not overwhelm new players and put bread crumbs down in front of them. The problem is that if you decide yourself that you want to create a portal and this Objective is still hidden from you - then you’re left going to external resources for the information.
My solution here is to give players a toggle filter on both the Objectives and Knowledge of: “Show Learned / Discovered / Unlocked” and “Show all”. This would allow players to expose everything once they’re ready and find the items they’re looking for.
We’re going to add this as part of the new filters and icon view layouts shown here:
I’d like to balance the Lvl 1 Wildstock to only require 3 / 4 whacks with the totem - as it’s very common for a new player to simply give things a whack to see what happens.
Additionally, I think they should only charge once. The big surprise is that they charge, you dodge it, you turn around to whack them - and you get a wildstock in the face.
The next update does contain a smoothing of these timers.
I think it’s interesting to think about this - but the advantage of the free weekend was that players experience the game without any additional restrictions or handicaps. It’s possible that there is a sub-account path - but then players would be experiencing a different version. Ideally (I think) you want players to explore the game without being second class citizens.
Thanks for the comments.
We only learned about the possibility of a free weekend a few weeks before it happened. We did the best we could with the time we had.
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If anybody played ark there were always people who said the devs are destroying the game and stuff isn’t being released fast enough but they still loved the game and as soon as someone adds more content they are all like wow I love this game again. A lot of doom and gloom talk but this game will thrive it’s just going to take a bit more time.
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The knowledge tab is rough it’s like your reading a dictionary instead of playing the game. I suggest having another option for players would to create books for each section of the game. Think Minecraft mods for example like tinkers construct gave books that helped players, botania, thaumcraft, and many others they work. Would definitely be a nice alternative then scrolling through the knowledge tab. Not saying get rid of knowledge tab just saying would be nice to add the books as well plus people want books that they can wright in and sell.
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@james
I know my posts are long, but please read it.
We need something that the early players can use to get coins. I know many see it as a dead horse being beaten, but some type of quests. They need to mine to get rocks for building, cutting trees for wood for building. Then they have left overs and don’t know what to do with them. Quests in the sanctum that they bring so many of wood or stone and drop it off into a chest and get coins for it.
Many don’t know how to use the portals to go to shops to sell them, and one coin may be cheap for some, but for new players it would help to buy some early tools or weapons to help them. More seams of iron and coal on Tier 1 and 2 so new players can make tools.
I want to see new players stay, say how great the game is. I can ignore the problems because this game has features I love, crafting, exploring, gathering. But many want something to do and aren’t content with Tier 1 and 2 planets and many can’t survive them.
Goats (wildstock) doing a whole lot less harm. I died my first day because I tapped one with a totem to get it to move, went flying in the air, landed, was hit before I know what had happened and died.
Objective to tell them HOW to make food at the very start. Along with build a campfire tell them to hit the foliage (should be leaves) and get berries they can cook in furnace. Show images, image of a nox and sword so they Know which plants will give them food.
Love this game, want it to be seen for what it has and can have.
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We’re new and coins were not initially much of a problem because we were always getting the loot boxes from feats as we played. Now that our alts are starting to get into the 20s the coins are becoming more of an issue. Some games solve this by requiring late game craftable items to require all tiers of crafting materials. For instance, to make a diamond hammer you would have to make a stone hammer first, the upgrade it to copper, to silver, to titanium, then to diamond. Assuming crafting times were shortened to compensate, this would help demand increase for all levels of the player base and as the player base as a whole nears the end game then low level crafting materials become lucrative supplying a lot of coins to new players.
We thought we could sell our leftover rocks, but since so many players after getting excess rock from late game mining the rock market in this game has crashed and basically the only choice it to build with it, give it away, or throw it away. Decorative wood is not much better.
This is precisely why the coffers need to go. Been saying it for 6 months. Everyone refers to them as loot boxes. It’s terrible PR.
There’s always a demand for fibrous leafs and sap I think.
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We almost didn’t buy in after the free weekend because we were barely able to play long enough to make a decision. If the weekend you all pick doesn’t match well with our schedule, many will only be able to barely participate. A free week might be better if you stick to that strategy. Free weekends can the population by some of us choosing to stay. I still like them as well, along with promotional weekends like double xp weekends or double cubits/plots weekends. I still think you should look deeper at a free level of account. I see being a second class citizen as better than someone who can’t play at all or isn’t willing to risk the money due to negative reviews. You just have to figure out how to appropriately limit the accounts to make it worth it to play free, but also worth it to pay.
We did use both the knowledge and objectives. They are a huge step up. I think the objectives should link to knowledge such as when it told us to make one of the higher end beacon fuels were we clueless about where to the get the recipe for a while. The objectives were mainly useful when they aligned with our goals. I think you all are addressing the major pressure points for new players well. The only thing not covered here is possibly raising the amount of iron on T2 worlds.
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Yeah, unfortunately games have been teaching players that treasure chest means microtransactions. Ten years ago wrapping digital rewards to crate wouldn’t have been problem.
If game would have used generic boring quest list with claim reward button most likely complains of mtx would have been much lower than those are now.
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The feedback on the steam reviews are pretty consistent that the coffers are viewed as “loot boxes”.
The issues facing boundless, in my opinion, are:
- Perceptions
- New Player Experience
- Economy
- End Game Experience
- Development Time Available
Perceptions:
There are misperceptions on the steam reviews about the presence and frequency of micro transactions that needs to be addressed. There is also a persistent misperception that there are lootboxes in a game with literally no lootboxes. I normally believe that such things should not be engaged but the issue remains that these are inaccurate enough that you would need to “correct the record”.
New Player Experience
There is already a thread on this with many suggestions, but a simple one might be to give new players a “starter kit” that includes some stone tools, a beacon, beacon fuel, etc. multiple people complained they lost everything because of fuel, or they hated fueling and had no idea it cost literally nothing. They never made it far enough to see it. Key features like grapples and portal networks aren’t emphasized - each planet should have a suggested “beam in” point. In short: only the most hardy and dedicated people are staying, and we are losing mass appeal on a game built for mass appeal. Fix the issues then send an email blast to those that are registered saying you are giving them 15 days of gleam club to welcome them back.
Economy
I have posted over and over on this, but we need economic stimulus. We need a coin faucet from the sanctum guardian (in the form of quests). These could be a) harvest x goods, b) friend y people c) hunt z creatures d) forge w goods. That is just the tip of the iceberg but it also allows for newbies to get coin to bypass progression via the ingame economy.
End Game Experience
It needs to be more than “gather this to craft that”. Titans. 30 blocks tall, they push, blow and stomp players away and drop goodies. This encourages grapples which is widely regarded as “fun”. Add armor and clothes for more endgame crafting. Dungeons for endgame exploration (dungeons can spawn unforgeable items perhaps, or legendary items that have a powerful primary effect). Give everyone something to do.
Development Time Available
This is where the rubber meets the road as they say. It doesn’t matter how many good ideas we suggest if there isn’t the necessary dev bandwidth to make it happen. This isn’t brought up often but we should be talking about it.
I’m at the point where I want to know if the game is going to see the fixes necessary to keep it alive. Does Q4/Q1 look good enough to justify additional hiring? Can we expect growth or stagnation? Can the current staff manage the dev calendar?
My wife and I will continue to play, but we want to feel confident that our time is well spent - that the game will improve and become more vibrant than ever.
The above are tough questions that I don’t expect wonderstruck to answer, but it would help assuage concerns.
This should replace coffers asap.
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I guess I fail to realize why the level up coffers are considered loot boxes when loot boxes are paid for with $ and random goods are in them. Leveling up rewards the same stuff every time.
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Because the coffers LOOK like loot boxes, so people make steam reviews saying “loot boxes” and then people see those reviews, upvote them, and refuse to buy the game, then tell all their friends a 40$ indie game has loot boxes, and those people then refuse to buy the game.
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I only called them loot boxes because everyone else seems to. These a better than loot boxes technically because they are not transactions. I agree with others that the game should just automatically bonus you instead of hiding the bonus in the menu somewhere. I wouldn’t mind a little icon pop up that I click on to get the bonus.
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Yeah I wasn’t calling you out on that or anything. But this is my point. There are now enough reviews for the game calling them loot boxes that no amount of explanation on the forums is going to convince new users loot boxes don’t exist in this game.
This is costing them sales.
There is no chance the inclusion of “Coffers” did anything but alienate new customers.
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Agreed. This drives the point home. I picked up the term after seeing it everywhere.
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