This is just categorically incorrect because you ignore the places I have completely held the developers responsible. They are the product owners and created the product. You just are enjoying the customer victim card that many here are playing.
This is a pretty bold statement when you know nothing about me personally. It is pretty rude too and almost ironic coming from a person with HR in their username. I don’t know how you call what we were doing as a debate because you just prefer to attack instead of understand and counter points with relevant and poignant information.
Product lifecycle - ideation and customer identification, development, marketing and customer awareness, sales transactions, product maturation, product retirement (if relevant). It is pretty easy to tell about what areas I am talking about.
The point is we are not talking about product development and you should see that. We are talking about the product that exists and whether it meets needs or not. Development comes AFTER you decide that. People are still discussing whether needs are being met.
You don’t blame the cow rancher that sells steak to a restaurant because some Vegan person decided to eat meat. That is what so many of you are doing here. Whether the cow rancher should raise cows and sell steak is mutually exclusive on whether or not the Vegan should stop eating something they are against. The Vegan doesn’t eat steak and demand the rancher change to no meat. The rancher can chose whether they want to change their product to meet the needs of non steak eaters or not. But they have the right to chose. If they don’t and lose market share that is their decision.
No one anywhere in the forum has said the opposite of this. You are just stating a redundant and obvious point we all agree on. Every person that says that “losing stuff” isn’t the worst problem in the game are clearly stating that they want changes. They just don’t value the same set of changes that you do. Instead of just attacking them, calling them names, and refusing to respect them or their view you should try to understand their perspective. Maybe you could affect the change you want much faster…
Well the poll seems to favor keeping the game the same, but it also is a little biased as it is composed of active players, some/many with Gleam Club. I’d be curious what the poll would be if the much larger pool of ex-players had participated. I personally think Gleam Club is a curse to the game, it does give an advantage at a cost. It’s a paid service to counteract a bad game mechanic. It’s the only thing in the cash shop I despise.
I was not 100% sure about the “it’s like paying protection money to crooks” notion somewhere above, but the way you phrased it makes waaaaaay more sense to me, since I do agree that the current beacon system is inherently flawed.
Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if those who hate to see abandonned builds litter the view would say you’re wrong, too.
On that note, though, I should mention that my own build was ‘abandonned’, lifeless, for maybe two-three months (after all my friends left the game, actually), so I went to play Satisfactory, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Astroneer and such, before I felt like going back to Boundless again (right now, I’m on a WoW / Boundless weekly loop).
Point is, I do wonder if, in that time, my lifeless build triggered anyone of the players with the mindset mentioned above.
But you can’t deny that Boundless is one of the only game (or TBH, the only game I can think of) where you should have to note on a calendar “come back to maintain your stuff or you’ll loose it!”.
It’d be pretty cool to see huge ruins lying around if a big beacon goes out, but overall I think beacons and gleam club are fine.
While I personally do have gleam club, I did not buy it just to fuel my beacons. I bought it to support the game. Fueling beacons was never a problem for me. You make a block out of beans and leaves and stick it in the beacon. It’s a simple process. There’s no great looming enemy waiting to surprise you by removing your whole build. I was given notice in blinking red letters any time I had a beacon even close to expiring. If you have some fuel stashed away, you can simply log on, drop a fuel in a beacon, and log off. That’s less commitment than most phone games require.
And while I’m on the unpopular opinion train, losing builds in a voxel game happens. This universe is an etch-a-sketch, not an art gallery.
perhaps a better tutorial and guide on the beacon system would be better, also a message system where the server sends an email to the player reminding them that their beacon is about to expire.
The problem is, you have to be married to the game or subscribe to the fix. This is a paid game, not a subscription or f2p mmo, erasing your land and structures is necessary to make space when these areas become abandoned, but taking all the content is a problem keeping players from returning. I think most here agree that keeping, gaining, and bringing back players is of upmost importance, but the inventory loss and the subscription fix smells foul to many potential new players and those that leave.
What other voxel mmo’s take your stuff? Just curious.
Probably not, but I do think that any attempt to provide more warning so it does not happen in the first place is good. It might not help in all instances, but might prevent some also.
It is not so much that other building games take your stuff, but that your stuff can frequently be lost when updating or changing/editing servers. This is mostly minecraft experience I’m speaking from here. The point is that the game isn’t unclear about the regen mechanic and I don’t think it’s uncommon to have to rebuild in a game like this.
i would hardly call the beacon system a bad game mechanic, mildly inconvenient yes but it’s a server resource management mechanic afterall if there was no beacon system or developer intervention to delete builds from players that have left the game, every planet would be littered with builds dating back to the 1.0 launch.
I have to confess, I knew about the regen from day one, but I thought there would never be a span of time where I wouldn’t/couldn’t log in and refuel, I was wrong. This experience enlightened me, and the Gleam Club is there just to prop up a punishing mechanic and make some coin.
I definitely consider materials gathering to be part of “rebuilding”. It’s not like I’d go around gathering up bricks if I wasn’t going to build something with them.
You replied twice, no fair lol! I’ll try to keep up, but be aware that my possible stupidity increases with multithreading. I think gleam club existing for convenience is fine because I don’t see the effort without gleam club being too great to play the game.
But most players that leave and don’t log in, return only to see 100’s of hours lost, it’s too much to expect a returning player to re-gather/craft just so they can rebuild somewhere else. Trust me, they are not going to do it.
Yeah, and I bet they have a not-so-good reputation to go along with it.
Look at Electronic Arts, Activision, Bethesda, Epic. The things they’re currently doing, the economic-models they use. They’re in the big leagues, the AAA things. Doesn’t mean they’re not getting incinerated online for it.
I view a full build loss as a test of resolve. Of course I’d love to see people pick up and start over. I feel like that would prove they belong in boundless and won’t be beaten down by the regenerating universe. However, if the loss is too much and people have to leave, I feel like there are better game experiences out there for them. I want people to have fun and not struggle against tough mechanics, but I also like the tough mechanics and don’t want to see the game world lose that bit of harshness.
Ideally, a player that has been away too long should logon and be greeted with a dialog to the tune of “You have been gone for a while, sadly your land was lost and nature eroded your buildings away. The good news is all your material was saved. Now you can venture out and seek new land and begin constructing. Have fun.” Or you can return and be greeted with nothing and look forward to 100’s of hours of freaking digging.