Please create a new post in General or Off-topic for discussions. This is for turn-offs and grievances only.
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A bit turned off from playing my main character lately, since I started playing co-operatively with my partner.
And likewise I don’t feel like playing if he’s not on, since then I feel I might be getting too much done on my own. I also don’t actually really want to level up an alt very much beyond a certain point, as I’d rather just get the experience on my main, who already has the bulk of my plot count.
I have 1544.6 hours in this game so it should be obvious I don’t hate it. However, there are things that are starting to turn me off of playing more and more. And up front I have been playing computer games for 40 years. I have been reading the magazines, message boards, forums, etc for just as long. So I am not a complete newb or idiot on the subject of computer games.
First and worst is world design. Never have I heard anybody say they want sadistic world design in a game yet that seems to be the goal in Boundless. Just three worlds as an example are Delta Cancret, Cephonex and Lambliss. DC has way too many areas that are just extremely tall cliffs, a few meters of land and then a steep drop off again. Why? Cephonex has large pits of lava. That should be easy to avoid by try going on a Brown Town hunt. It turns out they aren’t so easy to steer away from. Again, nobody has ever asked for that. And Lambliss - where there are huge seas of lava stopping you from getting from Point A to Point B. If your lucky you can find portals to get between two blocks of land but generally it is hard to find them even if they exist. And even on T1 planets there are holes that drop you down to a point that low level characters end up dying. It’s not a great first impression to be looking for a place to set up your first base and end up dead (or extremely low health) in a deep dark cave.
Second, in games communications are subpar. I finally found out I can edit a text file to keep the last few messages up on my screen for a while. That is not an optimal solution. Players should not have to edit text files themselves. I downloaded the beta and it overwrote my modded file so I have to redo it. That’s annoying. And, well, not showing the chat consistently without a mod is just poor design. Another point - I am in two different guilds. Neither of them use guild chat because they tell you it can take hours for the messages to go through. That should be considered a problem. When you have to rely on third party apps to communicate there is a flaw in the game design. You can’t even access notifications without opening up a specific chat channel then going to Say or Shout and scrolling through to find the Notification. How is this acceptable? In 2021 voice chat should actually be part of the game, though I understand this might be a limitation based on being cross-platform.
Third is interface design. What do all of the little icons for status affects and the like mean? There is no glossary or tooltip for them. I get the little skull is death penalty but the others aren’t necessarily so self-explanatory. I have been frustrated with this and went searching the internet to no avail for someplace that lists the meaning of all of these. Heck, there is nothing that explains the little colored numbers showing the chat messages you can read so that is meaningless until you find somebody who can explain it.
Fourth, another thing I have never heard anybody ask for in this type of game is “grapples”. This relates back to the first point in a way. You wouldn’t need grapples without the horrible world design and you couldn’t do the awful world design without grapples. They go hand in hand. Grapples are great if you have good hand-eye coordination and are young. I am at a point in life where I have to stop and aim carefully to get over a ridge. Often when the cliff is too high I have to just say forget it and skip meeting up with the hunt on top, finding the region on top or whatever else. Limiting parts of the game to only those who can use this tool well is not a way to increase the player base which should be a goal of the devs.
Finally, communications from the devs is just awful. People can make all sorts of excuses for it but at the end of the day if you don’t tell people things like “No - single-player universes is not a way to shut down the main MMO” you are going to just let the speculation spin out of control. If you don’t say “The implementation of chat has problems and we are looking at ways to fix them” it looks like you just don’t care about the problems. If you can’t be bothered to do the slightest bit of marketing, even if it is just a PR blurb sent out to the MMO sites about seasonal events or updating the game website to include sovereign planets it looks like you just don’t care. Are the devs looking at fixing problems or are they just throwing out one idea after another to see what sticks (sovereign planets, melee weapons, solo universes, etc.)? I am all for updates and new things but it is my understanding that there are long time issues that haven’t been addressed. The need to talk about those as well.
So - those are the things I can think of right now turning me off playing Boundless. Time to go in and build some more. smile
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This for the main part. Chat is very often hard to read, and there’s no option to keep the chatbox up to fix that. Non-instant chat, so it can take HOURS to reply to somebody asking for help in the questions and help channel. Newbies don’t know that. Ask a question about the game that you can’t figure out in the game after playing for an hour or two, no replies for half an hour. Couple that with the numerous false steam reviews saying the game is dead, they think the same and uninstalls. Not a good thing for this game.
Not enough content. The two main contents in this game is 1. building and 2. interacting with the community. Be somebody like me that doesn’t like building and that’s 70% of the content gone. Really could use new mob types (cough cough hunter cough ground basher cough cough Titans cough) to make hunts more interesting.
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I love building and hunt because I have to in order to support my builds. I am so over games being about killing things after 40 years of playing. I want fighter players to get the things they enjoy but I want to avoid it and be able to build without having to fight. It would be nice if there was a better way of connecting up the multiple play styles. A better symbiosis between hunters and builders where everybody does what they enjoy besides some kind of ad hoc builder for hire thing. There are a lot of really cool ideas that could fix some of these things but I don’t know if they could or would be implemented.
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I do find the market and footfall being kind of a way to implement that, builders selling things or getting coins from footfall by people ‘admiring’ their builds, then going to players that sell materials to build more.
But then this is economy, and there always will be people not happy with it xD
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smile Just saying that there could be a better way of balancing play styles so I don’t have to hunt and you don’t have build. (I couldn’t survive on footfall or the meager amount of stuff I sell.)
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I haven’t been playing Boundless long but I do totally agree about the chat issue. I have played a LOT of mmos and even Ever quest way back on ps2 had a better chat system. More recently I have played a few with voice chat in the actual game (and yes some were cross platform so it is possible), which really helps at times. Even a permanent chat box would be nice though, but there would also need to be a setting to make the text larger for it to really do me much good lol…
I don’t mind hunting too much and gathering for me is fun except for one thing… Tools don’t last all that long. I totally get the not being able to repair because the economy aspect but it is hard to save up coins to buy higher tier tools because I have to replace the lower (titanium atm) so often. I love building, has not been easy though as getting the stuff I want to use takes either higher tier tools or a lot more coin than I have.
I really like the game and plan to be here for a long time but chat issues and always trying to buy a new tool every day (at least) is a bit of a turn off for me.
On the happier side I love the community, everyone has honestly been so helpful with all my newbie questions and no one has made me feel dumb for asking 
which I have encountered in so many other games.
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omg dont get me started the chat in this game needs to be fixed.
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It’s been a while since I relaunched boundless to play it. and I must admit being disappointed with the experience offered by the game today.
-the often radical change in gameplay.
like for example the system of reclaim. set up to satisfy unhappy people, did that bring more players into the game in the end???
-the lack of novelty useful to old players.
-the time spent developing the sovereign worlds instead of improving the agriculture, design and terraforming of each world.
-the absence of evolution in the gameplay has been around for a long time now. since all this time the meteorite falls have not changed, nothing new or really exciting … ( the events are no longer expected, because in the end they only offer the creation of a few decorative items, without changing the gameplay)
-How many cities have been created, developed and then collapsed only because there was nothing other than meteorite hunting ?! today you have enabled the creative mode but it should not be a feature in itself, just a natural gameplay associated with this kind of game.
-The most worrying seems to be the lack of ideas to develop the game. What are we going to do with the shields and melee weapons? use them in meteor hunts, which players only do because it’s the only way to get portal fuel and not because it’s exciting and fun to do after over a thousand hours .(after a few hours it must be recognized that chasing meteorites is as boring as mining in straight lines with forged hammers. [yes I still regret the disappearance of mining with bombs]
from an awesome and exhilarating game you have made it a game of growing boredom.
only the ingenuity of certain players has brought great adventure to this game.
despite everything I like boundless, more for the people who play it and the meetings I have been able to make there than for the game itself.
have fun in life^^
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I appreciate that this is a work around, and not a fix ( #itil ) however this has basically save my bacon more often than not:
Appreciate the suggestion, but i’ve looked at that mod before and it wasn’t what I wanted. My problem is with all the colors of chat and the blocks at the background, it’s hard to read chat quite often. I want to have the actual chatbox (the whole chat UI when you’re typing in something) to stay open at all times, so I can have the chatbox background a set color making chat easier to read. Will prob help your issue as well, since it’ll just keep the last few messages stuck there.
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This is the kind of thing that I talk about when I speak (generally, about all games) about having zero multi-monitor support.
I know that a lot of PC gamers have a shitty old monitor somewhere, and quite often (in any type of game that I can think of) a second screen for a mini-map, chat (incl. audio/video), inventory … whatever … would be amazing.
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I happen to love grapples and it’s what keeps me playing. I just turned 43 and I don’t have any problems using them. May I recommend a forged diamond or emerald grapple with maxed longevity and your skill maxed? It makes a heap of difference.
They’re the main point I make to new players about this game over minecraft…
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I’m having trouble getting back into boundless for multiple reasons. I really like playing, but there are just things missing in my opinion and that makes it a little daunting or depressing.
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Farming right now is daunting for me. I enjoy it, but I really dont want to spend all my free time sowing and reaping crops, but I also want a fully stocked paint shop because it’s fun to see all the colors. I wish there was some type of helper you could craft and fuel that would automate the cutting of crops, sowing, and fertilizing them. That way I could do more managing stock of seeds, fueling workers, and managing my shop with its stock.
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I wish fertilizer mattered, it’s just so time consuming when it doesnt even last the crops whole life. It stops if it fails to grow to next level.
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I wish there was a way to populate my plots with creatures and npcs to give them life, whether they just patrol like guards, or do activities like farm/fill machines/or populate rooms so they are not just empty rooms. It would be nice if you could equip these npcs with gear to look like soldiers or scientists or farmers or anything. Just life in general, areas just feel so vacuous and empty.
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I wish there was way more life to the universe. Meaning astronomical bodies. Binary stars, pulsars, black holes, or actual solar systems. Something to liven up space and the night sky. Make planets rotate around a star, they can still appear in the sky but some sort of order would be facinating.
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There is no real action in the game. We have meteor hunts but they are basically the same for all planets. They just get harder based on tier and element. Which is okay, but after years of playing I’m just looking for ways to make combat interesting and fun again. Whether that’s new species, other hostile sentient species, out of control robots, or something cooler that I cant think of. It would be nice to have real combat strategies for scenarios where people come together to overcome. Not just meteors that are basically unchanged from when the game launched.
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More resources/products. There are only so many resources and products in the game with meshes. It would be nice to have more variety. A lot of shops are similar. A lot of shops sell the same stuff. And there are malls the size of planets that cant maintain stock due to one reason the other. It just makes things feel less populated. Not that I’m faulting anyone, just it kinda feels empty when I do get on and I rarely see anyone and shops are sold out.
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It would be nice to be able to have pets and breed them for different qualities. Whether based on stats, or whether resistances, or just for zoos/ranching. They could be for looks, they could be for builds, they could be for fighting, or riding.
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There is not much reason to go to peoples’ builds because there isn’t really anything to interact with except shop stands and request baskets. There isn’t any moveable parts or interesting lore people have been able to make due to the lack of moving blocks or automation. Hidden doors, traps, books, paper, items that are interactable, light switches. You cant make intriguing stories on your plots without the right mechanics to do so. And that only happens if the devs put the time into it.
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The slowing down of updates. I haven’t played in a while, but since I’ve been gone, nothing has really changed. No new gameplay items or processes to peak interest. It just feels like boundless isn’t getting love anymore. It might be, but I’m just not seeing it. I know they worked on planets which was huge, and they are working on private servers now. But the game itself, the core of it, hasn’t been updated for a while.
This is just me talking guys, I’m not upset. Just wish I could get back into boundless. Having trouble with the points above.
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I agree with all of your points, and I would absolutely love NPC-based automation. I’m not burnt out on Boundless yet, but I can see it on the horizon. Your suggestions and feeback are where I will be soon (though I’m going to slow down play soon because I need some action that hunts doesn’t provide)
Have you been to my build: The Wizard's Tower Ruins? I used signs to build a little bit of a narrative. It was… not easy, and having to use signs to build a narrative like that is both very difficult and immersion breaking for the user. I want to build experiences, not just static structures.
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So, about this one:
See, that’s just one person … and if you didn’t interact with this wonderful community, you might never have found it.
@Ovis has been making interactive stuff for a while, now … and I’m building some things that do the same based on some of his ideas, and some of my own. I’m sure we’re not alone!
If you build it … well … they might not come because they’re disillusioned … but still … you’ll have built it.
Not saying this to argue with you, I’m sure you’re good … but if you ever wanna come back in, shoot me a DM on here and we can go find some stuff to do. 
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I have not yet, but I will take a look for it the next time I jump onto boundless. I had so many ideas for my planetarium and observatories, but without movable parts and parchment or paper that people can read and interact with, it makes setting up a planetary museum hard to lay out with signs. I’d like to put facts and info about planets but it takes so much room. That was my original ideas anyways.
Yeah ovis is awesome with his creations, and when I did play more intensively I did play with people on hunts and community events like gleambow. I was meaning more in the day to day passing or chating with strangers on boundless just because it’s fun. A lot of physical areas feel empty. The community itself is great and I have spent time with people for sure. I think I was just trying to explain the overall feel of the environment for planets, not so much individual events.
I didn’t mean that people didn’t have cool and interesting builds. Just that there is a missing element without those game mechanics.
I’m sure I’ll get back into it eventually.
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I wasn’t going to respond to this, but you guys have hit real close to home on some of my feelings…I started playing Minecraft with my kids when they were very young. They are adults now, and I in turn am old, lol. Boundless hit very nostalgic feelings, while also hitting entirely new notes. I appreciate that it has many things MC does not, but agree that things like npc’s and “redstone” type circuitry (which have been around in MC for over a decade) would improve the experience by leaps and bounds 
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I used to play Minecraft tekkit on a private server with my tf2 clan. Hm that was… 2011? It was a good year.