What turns you off playing Boundless?

Bump portal is only intended to move it a few feet. This mechanic is really for when underground/ underwater so the portal will be bumped to solid ground in stead of being possibly in lava or underwater.

Better option is to use the portal on the right to a safe location. Costs a bit of coin but better than a death cascade.

There are many, many responses here so sorry if this has already been mentioned.

I’ve been playing for around 90 hours now and my main issue is the seemingly overly difficult recipes and how some things don’t seem to link together neatly. It’s either that or I’m not understanding correctly.

Take power coils for an example.

I have unlocked the ability to build power coils (yay). And have finally built enough to compact coal. I’ve had one power coil for ages and notice it has a bit of wear on it. I don’t have the skill required to build gem spanner’s yet and have been getting the “wrong spanner” message using the iron one trying to repair it. I have built a gold one thinking that would work but nope, “wrong spanner”. Looking at http://boundlesscrafting.com I think I need a ruby spanner. This however requires 1500 power, or 15 coils, for the workbench which I haven’t started on yet (gems are a complete pain to get). Unless I am misunderstanding it appears I should have created the power coils in a particular order (starting with workbench) but I wasn’t to know this. So now I can’t repair the compactor (unless I buy a spanner).

Also speaking of coils. When I first got the ability to create compact coal I discovered I needed 1000 power to do it. I unlocked the required skill to make coils and saw they needed gems and set about making the compactor ones. Many hours later I built one and was incredibly disappointed to find it only gave 100 power (no tool tip that I can see). The very first recipe I got for the compactor required 1000 power so assumed the first coil would give at least 500.

To cut a long story short I suppose I feel the current version of the game with the recipe and skill requirements is constantly pulling the rug out from under me. I don’t mind hard work to make things but I wish I knew what was required of me before I started. Instead I keep thinking I’ve achieved only to find out I am still a fair ways off and it’s very demoralising.

Naturally I understand this is alpha but wanted to put that out there.

Cx

8 Likes

-There is no creative mode or some sort of editor where I can go to see all the decorative and placing blocks in boundless. Therefore I cannot really build things very efficiently which sometimes demotivates one to plan mega builds with the idea in mind to look awesome in advanced.-

-In the beginning of the game there is an advertisement that the sanctuary will teleport you to a safe place when you die which is near the spot you were currently in. I was frustrated seeing my first meteor in curiosity, after traveling as a new player to see and experience the worlds available. I kept dying over and over again because of hostile enemies instantly targeting me and the portal in sanctuary did not necessarily spit me out at a given ‘safe’ location due to there being hostile enemies around which would immediately agro and kill the new player me again.-

-losing durability when you die is understandable but a new player is most likely to die because they cannot see very well in caves, it was frustrating that the poorest player in the game was being penalized so hard for trying to play the game. The stack of hammers brought along, would also all take durability damage which was frustrating as well. When I was a new player I often told myself ‘why bother bring more than one tool, I am going to die and lose all of them.’ Or I found myself reaching into my inventory and spitting the tools out on the ground when an enemy randomly attacks me because the durability was low and the extra hp gained upon death might be enough for me to escape.-

-Food at the lowest tier requires skill points which is unfair to players at the lowest of levels, why should it take skill points to cook meat and berries by themselves?-

-Food with high tier buffs are too expensive and it is upsetting they do not all give the ‘well fed’ buff as well. You make the high tier buffs last 30 minutes but after ten minutes pass I have no energy to do anything which forces me to not only bring my high tier food that took me half a day to mass craft farm for, but also cooked meat in order to raise my energy or expensive brews that restore energy.-

-Sapphire bombs have knock back, and damage players because of fall damage so the heal is only sometimes relevant. this is frustrating in hunts and if someone is constantly healing you it’s almost impossible to move around and hunt. It is frustrating and silly.-

4 Likes

“My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

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I’ve been playing for some time and I feel the same way now. While I do enjoy the variety the additional items bring, I am just way too frustrated with how difficult it is to craft basic weapons and tools at this point, let alone gem weapons and tools. Considering how rare and difficult it is to mine most gems the cost to make them should have gone DOWN not UP! Esp since they won’t even be the end game weapons! I like the idea of power coils being a limiter than allows you to steadily progress into higher recipes, but once reached those recipes should not be such a total pain to gather for even when you have the needed gems! Seriously!? Adding ANOTHER rare item you need even more of and need weapons that are hard to make to begin with to gather! That is just totally asinine! Frankly, the current recipe set up has made the game nearly unplayable as a hunter and way more frustrating as crafter!

6 Likes

Here are some idea’s of mine i think will add some extra flavour to the game without taking out what makes it cool in the first place.
I really enjoy this game more than every other minecraft type of sandbox, the crafting is (Was in r180) just hard enough to not be able to spam blocks everywhere and build what you want, with a world full of unused builds as a result.
I love the shop system, that allows you to create something someone else wants to use.
Here are the ideas i came up with:
1 Jobsystem, instead of randomly putting points everywhere in your skilltree a Job would be preferable (Like a tailor, weaponsmith, toolsmith, brewer, cook). (you should be able to shoose 2/3 jobs)
This way you will have a skillsystem for general skills, and one for jobskills, so everyone can create and build cool things, but specialized stuff needs a job-specialization.
Oh and a small tekst under the character name with the jobname, so we can ask someone for help.
2. Advanced trade stand, to be able to fullfill requests from players, ea, someone wants compacted coal, we can arrange a deal and start collecting materials, then put the compacted coal in the Advanced Trade Stand and state that “Playername” can take the coal out, if he trades this for 100 gols and 80 soft coal.
Also have an Advanced Request Stand, where someone can request sertain items, and the owner can sullfill this for the player who issued the order, put it in and set a price, then the player gets a notification (with a linked item, or a system message) that he can collect his request (or that it is cancelled by either party).
3. All locks and claims should be able to give custom permissions to a “playername” if it is their friend or not and if he/she is online or not, and friendrequests should be sendable to everyone everywhere also if he/she is online or not.
4.Ingame mailsystem, a mailbox, to craft so you can send mail to other people, the mail will take time to arrive depending on distance and planet.
in addition a maildepot, a central postal service between worlds (mail-portal) Fueled by Oort ofcourse.
(It would work like the realworld legacy telephonesystem, where your post will be send to a depot, then to the nearest depot of your destination, then to the next mailbox)
Maaybe even the option to send items via the mailsystem.
5. we dont have a mixer for show :wink: make it able to mix colored gleam into moar colors :smiley:
6. Clothing, so we can walk around in cool stuff.
7. i find myself to be hopping between my 3 characters, because of their skills and claims, it would be nice if other people could see that i am playing an alt character (by selecting a maincharacter, wich will be added as a suffix to the name of the other two characters)

I hope these tips (if not already on the roadmap, i don’t know everything :slight_smile:) provide some inspiration.
These are just my ideas of what would help this great game become even better, they would need refinement obviously.
(i probably just stating what someone else already did some time ago :slight_smile: sorry for that, the forum is big and i did not read it all)

2 Likes

As for the alts having an account name suffix, isnt that what surnames are for? Would be cool

1 Like
  1. The chat restriction to 100 m is ok but there should be an option for entering a party with someone so you can talk across big distances
  2. Ratio for building mats is a bit weird. Tends to make you grind a lot. ie: 1 rock - 2 stones and then 8 stones for 1 decorative. That makes 4 rocks for 1 decorative. Which is not really ok.
    2.1. Make decorative building mats available sooner and please please fix the ratio
  3. Some resource rarity is also weird. ~3 hours of searching 30+ tech fragments and 1 component only.
    3.1 Making components so rare you can’t have access to basic/mid grade building recipes. Makes you grind and search for hours.
  4. The coin system is ok. But to pay 100c to warp to your own portal seems off. Paying to warp to someone else or another world is ok. New players aside from the achievements they get, there is no other way to earn them. Or make a kind of teleportation to your beacon. Or a different portal that leads only to your beacon.
  5. The crafting system is also a bit wierd. Cooking a cherry requires a skill point. It shouldn’t. Advanced recipes yes. Absolutly. But cooking a bloody cherry?
  6. Xp progression vs skill tree is hard. I understand that it should be as it is an mmo, but in order to advance to higher tiers you need to grind your ass off.
  7. Grinding. It’s somewhat balanced until around level 15 -20. After that, as point 6, it becomes a second job to advance in skill tree in order to advance etc.
  8. When i first entered the world at looked at the world, the skill system and item options i thouth: “holy bloody donut on a pogo stick, this is awsome”. After 10 or so hours of running around building a starer base, i am completly stuck. My ideas of builds and what i am being offered at my level isn’t enough. Why restrict building in a building mmo game? I found it really hard to understand this. You want people to come and build? Offer some variations from early/mid levels. Leveling to the point that you can use different mats and decorations isn’t hard and keeps you going but that’s not a really good selling point. “Hey, you want to make a specific build? Well you need to invest a lot of time unlocking the things you need, then grind the materials. Oh wait, you need certain machines to do that. You will need to unlock those too. Etc”

There are more to add and i will make a follow up post later today. I am not an old player. I think i have around 20 or so hours but this is the perspective of someone new who just got starting. The game is absolutly superb and has an insane potential, and yes , i understand it is early access and pre alpha, and hope i can help with this point of view.

7 Likes

A year ago I stopped playing out of lacking content. There were no skills to level up and I didn’t feel like I had an incentive to try and get past iron gear because all that was left to do was build a shop in a big city, get gem gear, and then try and build something else. Many things have been added and changed since then and I’ve been enjoying the game again but I keep getting to the point in my playing sessions where I go “What’s the point?” It’s grindy to level up and with the amount of skills I find that a bit odd. Paired with the fact that I don’t want to mine for an hour non stop to level up once to be able to level up maybe 1 or 2 skills, which also deters me from getting better gem gear and exploring other planets and progressing. There are too many skills I need to be able to do what I want in the game. If I choose HP and damage to be able to survive in other planets, I won’t be able to craft the right gear I need to be successful in said planets. I know this is probably just me being whiney, but I’m playing this game to kind of relax. If I wanted a challenging survival game I wouldn’t be here.

6 Likes

Dying to monsters way to strong for me to fight. I had an idea I wasn’t ready for meteore monsters but I wasn’t sure so my first death after hours and hours of play was a little off putting. I sucked it up but I feel like others may not. Also I have run into a few bugs that I have reported the bugs made me %100 not want to play. I’m sure they will be fixed. ( I still play)

You have the grind threshold set too high. The current balance is too far into second job territory for a casual audience. Spending some time to maintain is expected, but currently it is difficult to actually make progress. You spend too much time making food weapons and tools you consume, then gathering materials to craft replacements. Currently I spend a significant amount of time just maintaining what I already have, let along actually making progress in the game. At this level your going to lose the majority of players, dial it back some.

If this seems outlandish to you, message me. I have an idea of how to prove it by documenting the amount of time spent gathering, and crafting what I need to just to play during a week to illustrate the imbalance. If it is already on the radar just disregard.

5 Likes

So, I’ve been doing some thinking and tinkering. I’ve overcome the issue gathering hunter resources: I simply joined the large hunting parties. Now I’ve plenty of creature based resources. I feel that for casual and solo style players the threshold is set too high and takes too much time to manage for the basic metal gear.
I’ve heard that some changes might be coming in regards to recipes skill locks (buying recipes with skill points). Something that I feel might make for a nice addition to that is, if we are going to allow all recipes to all players, creating a crafting mastery system similar to tool mastery, allowing for discounts to the cost of materials, spark, power, and time based on that to a certain threshold (just like tool mastery). I feel that the max discount for those should allow crafting costs to be a bit under the current crafting costs for most items. This gives crafting focused players and shop owners an edge and allows them to remain relevant while not blocking access to solo/survival style players.
I still strongly feel that certain item drops should be rebalanced; most gems, fiberous leaves, all the orbs except the vital orbs, and a few other items seem very difficult to gather in enough quantities to be viable.

2 Likes

Someone tell me why it was a good idea to make creatures spawn in caves. Sell this idea to me. With our limited skill points, the players who mine don’t have points in vitality (if they’re playing efficiently). I’m being forced to skill reset and choose death penalty over item durability because of the shoehorned, “let’s make Elite Spitters spawn in caves” idea. The only purpose is to make sure miners/gatherers don’t go /too/ long without dying.

4 Likes

I can sell you on it. But, it would require me to explain the environment in which the creatures were born. I also would have to explain the game play mechanic involved in their perpetuation.

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I enjoy your mind. :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like

I feel that the current death penalty is set too high for all players and this is why.

  1. when you die you suffer 25% dmg to ALL tool on you, not just the ones you are holding, and it doesn’t discriminate between the different grades of weapons.
  2. Its fairly easy to die as a new player. In fact, I think this game overall is very easy to die, unlike other MMOs. But, its not a problem until you consider #3.
  3. It is not easy to replace your copper/iron/silver/gold/gem tools that broke after dying, because of how difficult it is to acquire a stack of sack cloth to make more of those tools, even as an “old bird” of the game. New players do not have access to a diamond axe to go hacking away at leaves all day long to get enough sack cloth to make the necessary iron tools.
  4. Run you say? Well, as a new player, you can’t run fast enough to outrun the mobs on your tail.
  5. The current skill system is not very kind to all dedicated crafters/gatherers. If a toon has been “spec’ed” for either crafting or gathering, your defense and offense are ultimately going to somewhat bad. And, when you get attacked by the mobs, if your HPs is not high enough, the only other option is to die in a few hits. This happens both out in the open, and in caves.

Altogether, the compounded effect is that the death penalty becomes exceedingly harsh. It was OK prepatch because tools were relatively easy to replace; it stings to have to replace them, but it is easily replaceable. Currently, its like an uphill battle to try and replace even an Iron tool if you do not have max pts into Death Penalty Redux. It does not sting anymore, it has become a royal pain. This becomes really really bad for any new players.

7 Likes

At the moment I’m trying to find topaz to make power coils so I can make leather so I can make spanners so I can repair my other power coils. They aren’t one of the easiest gems to find even with the atlas and when you do find any they tend to be in small veins that only yeald one per block. After spending ages and only finding about 24 I decided that I’d had enough and would go and blow the majority of my coin to buy some … After searching all over the place and looking in as many shops as I could find I discovered that no one had any for sale … so …too much of a grind to find and can’t be purchased … I might as well just go back to the iron age and live in a mud shack :roll_eyes:

I made a post about my hang ups Hitting a game play road block?

What turns me off playing boundless is :

  • no water , lava blocks
  • no repair for broken weapon/tools
  • red gleams are imposibile to farm and other colors don’t exist only in some shops for the price of 9500-25000 c (1 ref gleam)
  • chiseled shapes on blocks is great , but sucks to use all tools to make something great ,it was better if you use max 1-2 tools no all of them…
    other problems i don’t have in game , rest is perfect and i hope in the future updates to have water,lava blocks , repair tools and more gleams that will spawn in random locations :smiley:
2 Likes

I’m assuming you are talking about on tier 2 or 3 planet? I am on Berlyn (tier 1) I invested skill points and upgraded my vitality 3 times and was well off. It wasn’t until I ran into a meteor when I died the first time after many many hours. I’m sure the game is designed the way it is on purpose. You just have to invest skill points appropriately. I would say start off on a tier 1 planet get to a decent level set up on a tier 2 get stronger than move in to a tier 3. What fun would it be if there wasn’t a challenge. I agree the game does need done balance and that balance will be found. Just don’t rush every decision, there is always a way of doing things that doesn’t result in death in this game.