Since guildupdate the aqua crew slowly coming back the systems they added really let me finally do group builds at ease and people are more involved in the town building now once you gather a small crew the “work” gets a lot better Def a nice upgrade can’t speak for solo players though
3 Likes
Personally:
i bought an early access or founder package when the game was called something totally different… i dont remember what eactly but i played it back then, and everything was janky and it barely ran, i lost interest quickly with a mental note to check it out again later.
Like 2 years later or something i started playing again, this was on the worlds that existed before the current generations of worlds, before a massive wipe. I cant remember the names of those old worlds either but i played much much more back then, i remember building a wooden box out on a glacier and chopping lots of trees down and trying to progress up the tech tree. this might have been somewhere around january 2018 or something i cant remember. At that time it felt super grindy and i felt very lost out on my own building this base. I like being a sort of frontier person and being mostly self sufficient but i found that took a lot of skills to do and it seemed like the game was designed around not being able to do everything. During this ‘playthrough’ i eventually found my way to a portal hub and figured out how to get to it from my shack. i memorized a long running path through several biomes and around a lake to a store and then through a portal to a portal sekers hub. I remember this being a massive discovery for me and the game became hugely easier at this point. i explored many worlds and saw that they were mostly disappointing and samey feeling. i had my first experiences shopping and it took hours to find baskets that would accept my loot for a price that wasnt literal scam artistry. i also foolishly sold things for far less than they were worth on many occasions, a pitfall for new players that still exists today. I had a long romp on this playthrough and eventually i just got bored of levelling up and made a mental note to come back some other time and play again.
I am still on my third playthrough, i have reached maximum level, and there was a false start some months ago where i played the game for about a week and then just couldnt go on anymore after that. I promise i will get into actual specific reasons at some point. I came back sometime in january this year or maybe a bit sooner, and ive improved my rig quite a lot and the game runs a lot better now, and since then ive had a few pitfalls but im pretty sure im going to be playing on and off for months to come at this point.
The game has a really glacially slow start. ive had only one friend join me in boundless and he had all the same problems. Its suuuuuuuper slow when you are a new player. You do the tutorial and that helps and theres a lot of useful things you learn through accident and experimentation, but the biggest problem i had that made me quit twice was just how lame the earlyg ame is, when youre level 5 and you have a stupid crappy spec and it takes you literally like 4 hits to break the most basic of blocks. That feels SUPER BAD. like, when you build that first box base that everyone ends up building, it feels soo sooooo bad when you make a mistake and place a block somewhere you didnt mean to and you have to whack it like 6 times to break it and then palce another, and the placement is sooooo slow and its just so boring, like you could just hold the mouse button down and watch somethign on your off monitor while each block breaks, and even building a tiny shack is a massive effort. Its even worse when harvesting trees or rocks, where you feel this need to cut the entire tree down and its like 2-3 hits per log and it just sucks so badly trying to cut the whoel tree down and you just abandon it halfway through and go to the next tree. There was a big moment where i finally got enough flowers picked to afford my first 3x3 aoe gem hammer. This single thing made the game SO MUCH BETTER, but it caused its own problems, which i will get to. Finally i could excavate large spaces with little difficulty, and instead of building a box base as usual, i switched gears drastically and dug into a cliff face, where i still live to this day. Dont regret that decision at all. But this hammer enabled me to build faster, it made the most boring part of the game just a thousand times better, and i could focus more on building what i wanted to build and trading and gathering and exploring without being bogged down by this super long block destruction time. First problem though, is that its expensive as hell and i had to run around low level planets gathering plants for like a whole day, and then spend another 4h or so trying to find shops that werent at scam artist level buy prices. and then i had to just sort of figure out which hammers were the ones i wanted, which i eventually figured out, i didnt even know how to look at the stats of the items when i started this. Second problem with 3x3 tools, is that they make the endgame feel sort of trivial. Im at max level and i have a stack of gem hammers and half of them are aoe and half not, i have a bunch of other similar tools as well. Ive never really cared much for mining other than getting build materials, but it seems so trivial to get 3 or 4 inventories full of materials and then just dump them into the processing mill and reap like 2 levels of xp from it. once i realized this was the best way to level it only took a bit of patience and maybe 12h of work (spattered inbetween the gameplay i actually wanted to do) to levle up to max by just crafting rock into stone and then refined stone. and now the only reason i havent got the next skill page filled is just pure laze.
my friend has finally (i think) gotten over the hump of early game and he is finally getting to the creative chisely base building and exploration part, we grabbed a really cool mountain on trior and we are building it up slowly.
So, The next reason on the list is color cancer. I have been trying to convince a different rl friend to play boundless and the number one thing he cant deal with is that there are so few worlds that arent just SUPERBRIGHT CRAZY COLORS. I like color in my games but i feel that some of the low level worlds, and all of the 4+ level worlds take color toooooo far. I dont think i need to explain more about that, I sppose its fine to have some worlds have crazy colors but when its all worlds level 4+ it feels like you just dont intend for people to live there ever. I would love to establish some small frontier colonies on like Galan or something but i feel like no matter what i build it will look crappy and oversaturated with yellow.
i have seen maybe 60% of the playable planet surfaces in the game and im pretty confident that i like the world generation as a whole, it seems that low level planets were meant to be normal sort of earthlike places and the high level ones are meant to be alien and bizarre, from floating layerd mountains to spike mountains to lava filled underground arches that resemble the mines of moria, theres a lot of bizarre terrain on the high level worlds and a lot of ‘normal’ terrain on the low level ones. I especialy enjoy the cliffs in Trung and the extremely square tiered mountains that crop up occasionally, and i love the tower trees in a lot of different planets and the low tier biomes are mostly charming and enjoyable. Im not sure i have criticism for those decisions other than the color choices. Maybe add a client side toggle to disable the extreme atmospheric light colors on planets. I suspect galan and shedu and etc would look much more palatable if they were just bathed in white or whiteish light.
Anyways, there are a few more little things that bug me a lot and im going to rapidfire them here.
The game seems to have a super low population. Im not sure that boundless could even handle a large population and im sure the game woudl be very crowded and potentially ugly if there were 2 or 3x as many people crammed into the same space. This was a huge downside for my friend that i couldnt convince to play.
It sort of falls into common sense, but its just so much easier to find request baskets that are scam artist level prices than ones that have a fair price, and ive fallen into this trap many times, having spent 2 or 3 hours running around shops trying to find one and either not finding a good one or forgetting where that one good basket i found was and settling for less, or finding one that is sorta good and weighing the odds of whether ill find a better one before i get tired of looking or just selling immeidately, and then later on while selling other things finding a basket taht is 2x the price and facepalming super hard. I dont know what could even be done about this? its just such a hassle to sell anything and people take advantage of that to shortchange you. makes it super hard for new players in particular, who probably wont know any better.
in my explorations i frequently find what i call ‘typical noob bases’ where someone started the game and followed the tutorial and theres exactly: 1 campfire, 1 beacon, 1 crafting table, 1 furnace (usually without a base) and a half built wall or two and maybe some shelves. thats how far the player got before they just up and left. I cant emphasize this enough, the early game is atrocious, it should not take a player 20 minutes to dig out the area where their floor will be, and another 30 minutes to harvest and place enough stone or wood to make basic walls. This needs to be improved. it literally makes me sad when i see these. “Another one didnt make it”
im super bad at being concise so TLDR:
Make the super early game way less slow. Its far far too slow. Maybe tweak the early game block damage stats so newer players can harvest and build quicker.
Do something about the visually acidic level of color in the game, especially on high level planets. Maybe add an option that lets you toggle off colored atmospheric light, rendering it as white instead.
Get more players into the game. Maybe some youtube ads or idk… im not a marketer.
its super easy to be scammed out of your goods when you are a new player. request baskets are atrocious to find and remember, prices are hard to remember, new players wont know any better and will likely get ripped off making them unable to dig themselves out of the early game hole. maybe make an automatic way to store pricing information and location when viewing the tooltip on a basket, so you can view a list later on and return to this basket to see if you can sell to it.
scrutinize that super early game and pay attention to when players quit, i keep finding noob bases everywhere, they got about an hour in and quit. Figure out what they were interacting with before they quit and take a hard look at it.
even my tldr got super long at the end.
7 Likes
I first want to say that I love Boundless. I love the way that it puts us all in one universe. I love seeing the awesome huge builds and what creative minds can produce.
I’m still here because I like to build and I love the automagic-ness of being in a community where people can see my efforts and I can see others’ efforts. But if the community dwindles, then I’m left with just another builder game, so it’ll come down to a matter of impetus to stay or leave.
For the game as it is now…
- The early game is way too slow. It feels bad. Coming from basically any other sandbox, it actually is shocking.
- The late game is way too fast. Top-tier centraforging trivializes the gathering of stuff to the point where we’re on some weird seesaw trying to make items valuable by bumping costs of everything, while still not making it too difficult for those not at that explosive forging tier yet.
- The adventure/rpg aspect of the game feels underdeveloped at the moment, and in any case all gathering/reward flows (including combat) ultimately feed back into building. I understand that was intended, but it leaves me wondering.
Speaking on a way broader level…
I like the concept of blending voxel world with mmorpg. I’m captivated by the idea of exploring new worlds, dungeons, seeing new monsters, growing my character’s potential, etc.-- where block-building is the background that shapes the universe that the adventure exists in. But Boundless is a game with the premise that “block-building IS the progression”. Boundless is a builder-focused game that attempts to rpg-ify the gathering-building process.
…I don’t know for sure, but browsing through this thread, I can’t help but feel that complaints revolve around the compromise inherent in this concept. Voxel sandboxes generally have a shallow progression and are open-ended. But RPGs are all about progression and are structured with an endgame. So I see those two playstyles here struggling to co-exist:
-
builder style: wants things like new blocks and farming. wants it to be relatively easy to access. doesn’t want to feel creatively burdened by high costs (in time or effort) for every little thing. these are the folks saying everything is too complicated and grindy.
-
mmorpg style: wants things like more content to explore, better combat/mobs (titans & dungeons), better character progression. wants their efforts to feel rewarding in the player economy. don’t want things to be “too easy” (because that destroys economy). these are the folks saying there’s not enough content.
A player can be one or the other or even a mix of both as I am, wishing for building to be simpler but for the adventure/rpg to be expanded and given more weight.
Will Boundless go on to implement things like dungeons, bosses, and other structured RPG elements?
If so, then I think it’s fine to make building (and gathering related to building) cheap and easy. And once (if?) we get more stuff on the “combat/exploration/mmorpg” end, I also think it’s fine to make progression in that regard have more weight in terms of costs, difficulty, and therefore game economy value. I think it would even be fine to rebalance existing combat-related stuff into a more steeply structured progression curve with it’s own endgame.
Even if not, I’m fine with the game as-is. Within the existing framework I do think that opening up the world to player prefabs and “toys” like collectibles, hidden recipes for props, and so on would add a lot of richness to the adventure aspect. Whatever path Boundless takes, I’ll be excited to walk it!
3 Likes
I will have to agree with the above two posts regarding the early game. Unless you manage to get up enough coin and locate the shops and malls in the worlds that other players have built up, the early game grind just drags on and on. Yeah players can quickly go from wooden tools to stone tools early on, … same for stone to copper. … that progression feels good. … But with the scarcity of iron on lower planets, using these lower tools on higher planets where block health is significantly higher, it feels like it takes forever to dig through blocks. … Especially trying to dig through blocks on a Tier 6 planet with unforged iron tools. … God that’s slow. I understand the need to prolong progression (What, with craft times escalating into several HOURS) to get folk to go out and do other tasks while their machine does the crafting, … multitasking isn’t all that bad, but with the hundreds if not thousands of resources needed to perform a craft, … its sad. Sure one can work around this by visiting shops and purchasing and/or trading with other players, and I’m grateful for how friendly and helpful the community is. … I’m 3 weeks in and have yet to make my own titanium tools that weren’t dumped on me and/or purchased from a shop.
That said, I’ve definitely been enjoying the game. … My only gripe I have with it is the energy system and how your player moans and grunts whenever trying to perform actions when energy is depleted. If only there was a way to skill up and/or tech up to the point where performing certain actions didn’t cause any energy drain so there isn’t a constant stop and go, stop and go, stop and go whenever performing actions.
5 Likes
Good posts 
I can’t shake the feeling that Boundless would not be that bad if it had thousands of players. It seems to me that game is currently balanced to work nicely with economy where there is a lot more players. With current player base it just doesn’t work. Maybe I’m wrong and there’s definitely a lot of space for improvement, I just feel that game balance went too quick, to the point where it is now, for everyone except hardcore players to feel good progression. Maybe that’s just about the group I was playing with, but we agreed that game is too grindy for us. We don’t want another job, game should be fun.
I know devs mean well, but I couldn’t hold a straight face when it was announced that game got better balance with latest update, so you’ll need 30 seconds instead 40 for something to craft, though you’ll still need hours to gather materials, yep, greeeeat improvement in balance. I’d expect that kind of balance in thriving economy where something is getting devalued or overpriced because such small tweaks. In this stage I’d expect more aggressive rethinking of balance.
2 Likes
Well i made this comment on steam and was suggested i comment here … >.>
so i Was enjoying this game again until…
We had to start joining the GC to join a max cap guild!!! (and if we want tto multy guild) - Now before anyone jumps at me, let me expllain peacably…
Ok, so the reason i feel this is wrong, is as follows
- it encourages the dev’s to include more pay to play mechanics whent hey said they would not do this! (personal opinion)
- its not fair on the younger players (not every parent will agree to having to pay to join a guild)
- no other game that i have ever played charges you to join a guild!
- it is just… WRONG! - especially since the member cap was lowered from 900 > 100 [This means that most guilds will be over cap already] -
i said most guilds (the smaller ones will be fine and new ones as well).
What you should have done is, charge the GUILDS to increase their cap (if you are going with this mentality) - it should not be down to the members/people wishing to join to pay to join a guild!!!
{pay to multy guild - although still a &*^&%$$ move - is somewhat more understandable}
my peace is said… and i am not happy end of
The guild membership limit was always 100 characters. It has not been reduced.
(There was a bug that allow characters to join a faction without correctly checking the main membership limit.)
Only 1% of guilds have over 100 members.
All characters can join 10 guilds. There is no other restriction.
5 Likes
ok someone in game said the previous limit was 900
but fair enough to your response and i appreciate it @james , but i still think paying to join a guild is not exactly a good preactice but thats just my personal opinion which i am entitled to
(guess i should not ebelive everythinge veryone says 
)
This isn’t in the game.
IF a guild member HAPPENS to have Gleam Club, their membership doesn’t count towards the cap, ALLOWING you to have MORE guild members.
4 Likes
He is referring to the 100 max for nonGC members. Anyone over that will have to have GC.
It has gone a little in the direction of money over fun. I dont mind GC, but not everyone can get it. There is quite a few young people playing this game.
Its almost a punishment of a game bug that allowed 900. (We wasnt aware that was a bug)
I used the Google translator, sorry …
I have thousands of hours accumulated in survival games like Minecraft, Ark, Conan Exiles, 7 days to day, etc.
I’ve been playing Boundless for about 3 weeks and I’ll leave soon and explain why.
- The progression of the character is very slow and feels unsatisfactory. From level 20 it is too much to level up.
- You need several characters to be able to get everything that the game offers you and this brings us to point 1.
- The recipes are excessively complicated, up to 6 or more processes that take hours to get to manufacture some items.
- The most valuable minerals are excessively scarce, hours and hours to get them.
- Too much tedious work in general, you sit down to have fun 1 or 2 hours and you spend working on tasks that are not fun.
I’ll be waiting for new updates because with certain changes the game would be great and I think it will come some day. Balancing in games is complicated.
3 Likes
Yeah - you’re absolutely entitled to your opinion. And I hope you will correct any incorrect statements on the Steam forums.
There are a many business models to support a game:
- Premium games: pay upfront.
- F2P games: pay incrementally.
- Subscription games: (pay upfront), pay a subscription.
Boundless is a subscription free MMO. There are significant costs for running the live universe. It would be irresponsible for us to not implement a payment model that doesn’t cover these costs. We can’t run an online service under a pay upfront only model. So Boundless is currently:
- Boundless - pay upfront, (pay incrementally).
I know there are many players in the gaming community who dislike any IAP - but we must have something to cover the running costs. It’s worth adding that the IAP in Boundless are only designed to cover the running costs. They’re balanced to be very gentle, hence why players earn 9000 cubits levelling up to level 50, and then constantly beyond this.
When I think about IAP personally I always come to the conclusion that I just want to get value for my money. Do I feel like I’m getting something worthwhile for my payment, or do I just feel squeezed. If I feel squeezed I just think screw-it and look elsewhere. But if I feel like I’m getting good value and I want the service to continue then I’m happy to support it.
With Boundless we implemented an optional subscription as Gleam Club - you can think of it as a Patreon style support of the game. We always look for opportunities to add benefits so that more players consider if worthwhile.
If players can’t bring themselves to support the game via IAP then I simply don’t know a business model that works in the longer term. Premium-only isn’t viable long term, subscription-only isn’t viable IMO, premium+IAP is considered greedy, so this basically leaves F2P.
21 Likes
I don’t know where this number has come from. But no guild has ever had 900 members.
(Potentially it’s 100 for the main guild + 8 x 100 for the factions = 900. But still this number was never the limit.)
But anyway - we need to be able to correct mistakes in the game.
3 Likes
This is what i was referring to. I wasnt aware that was even a bug, But how it was intended.
Until we seen a new post/update about having to have GC for over a 100 members.
I have GC, so it doesnt effect me. But, for the ones that cant afford it, it seems like a huge let down. Especially since a lot were there for the buffs since they cant afford them in smaller guilds.
1 Like
But the mistake made the game better 
At least give us a reason for the cap so we can try to understand why it is like it is.
1 Like
I can help explain ways to make this faster for yourself if you would like me to. Just msg me on here.
Once you get a lvl 40-50 miner. They come in pretty large quantities.
this ^ up till i just read the above posts i was thinking the guild cap got nerfed in favor of upping GC sales so i could see someone telling you the cap used to be 900
1 Like
Pretty much everyone in the conversations about this, was not aware this was bugged, and have all had the same conclusion about favoring GC sales.
Forging has been my #1 irritation in this game:
Thread describing problem #1: Boon removal bug?
and to a lesser extent, concern #2: Boon Removal guard
I like the fact that it’s not guaranteed to get you a max item every time, I’m not crying RNG fail, etc. But I would like in the case of #1 the item work properly as stated and in #2 maybe some stats on how gums work.
Oh, and for heaven’s sake remove the Boon Affect Adjacent: Random (level 5 AOE). It’s 100% horrible.
I also want to echo that the prestige system is frustrating. I don’t like that guilds compete on the world prestige list, I don’t like that I see two identical names in the list, either.
Wishlist item: I’d like some way to prioritize away from gaudy blocks with a lot of refinement steps as opposed to actual cool builds.
5 Likes
it IS in the game if you have to join GC ** WHICH IS paying** to join a guild at max cap + multy guild… get a clue dude?
and once again forum go do one!