What turns you off playing Boundless?

• Maybe the website or trailer lied to you & Maybe the grind ground you down :
The trailer led me to believe that Boundless was a building game.
You may argue that it is, but I don’t think so.
I just came from Creativerse where you’re free to build whatever you like. There’s a huge library of blocks to use. Some are locked in the shop, but that’s fine since the game is free to play. Each player has his own world so you can opt-out of playing with others and decide when you want your world to become public, if ever. As admin of your own world, you can decide if creatures are hostile or not.
Actually, the thing that made me stop playing CV is that it’s less optimized than a garbage can on fire and you find yourself waiting for 1 minute in a loading screen, when the game actually manages to load the world properly, and then depending on how many players the world has, you may have to deal with lag issues.

Now what’s the point I’m trying to make here, you may ask?
Well, in Boundless, I build 15% of the time. The rest is farming for components, killing mobs, dying, shopping (or rather searching for request baskets that actually have budget to buy my stuff), getting in endless crafting-chains and doing maintenance for all the things that breaks or needs refuelling (tools, machines, beacons, sparks).
Most of the friends who made me buy the game already left because of how high-maintenance the game is.
And I must agree with them. The idea that I couldn’t leave my computer for a few weeks without running the risk of loosing EVERYTHING I did is terrifying.

Building is awesome. And we’re getting more and more objects to decorate our homes, like the poles and beams. But as soon as you run out of blocks, you’re like “ok so this color of block can be found on a T6 world, so to be efficient, I’ll need a new diamond hammer and some persisting pies and-” then you go down the rabbit hole of finding things to make things that you need to make other things which are required to make some different things…


(made this for me and my friends, as some kind of post-it reminder)
This leads you to spend all your time crafting instead of having fun. For some reason, crafting some things takes AGES. I’m not sure how waiting 6 hours to get 50 compacted hard coal is supposed to be fun. { shrugs }
If that wasn’t enough, there’s way too many rules as to how you’re building things. Machines need to be 4 blocks. But why? Why not just 1 machine block = 1 machine? So you need to make a workshop big enough to house 4 blocks per machine. But then, you need to connect them all to the spark generator. And then you start needing power, which has some very specific rules as to how you place them, and the more you need power, the more you’ll end-up doing exactly the same ‘optimized’ setup as everyone else. And I won’t even get into the notion of wanting more of the same machines to increase productivity.
Bottom-line, that sort of things tends to kill creativity.

The other part of the trailer which misled me was that it looked like the community was thriving in cities that were beautifully designed, like magnificient architectures. But the truth is that these magnificient architectures are not the most relevant places of the game at all. The most important cities of the game are led by guilds like PURE or the Portal Seekers, and they’re just huge stacks of refined stones as far as the eye can see, with no cohesive design (try to tell me that the Ultima Guild city makes any sense), when it’s not many hubs that all have the same design (I’m looking at you Portal Seeker hubs of Gyosha Ophin, Gloviathosa, Immdari, Grovidas Te, Boori and Xa Frant) instead of each having original and inventive designs. Though TBH, I think the more recents hubs are indeed more originals.
But above that, Prestige creates an unhealthy competition where players will tend to game the system by making towers of refined gleam filled by machined alloys and refined stones. I honestly think that the entire Prestige system should be removed because it doesn’t help the game at all. I tried to place an ancient corruption block in my build and discovered that adding it made me loose some prestige. Grrrreat idea.
People should build for the art of building, not to reach some viceroy title or capital rank.

• Maybe it was too easy or too hard or both :
Like I said, to me, Boundless isn’t a building game (and maybe it never was supposed to be considered as such), it’s an MMO where you’re supposed to play with others to form raids and run meteorite runs with big guilds (which reminds me the joooooy of Looking For Raid in WoW) where you WILL die unless you have the correct build. Creatures are way too smart, shot you down with way too much accuracy and are way too tenacious to be credible. Some could pursue you to the other side of the world.
Then there’s the death penalty, which is just sadistic, plain and simple.

Now I get that some players are here for that. But for the players who’s here to build stuff, well, you can’t really opt-out of having to farm creatures if you have any hopes of making something more meaningful that a dirt hut. As soon as you start to think about opening portals, you realize that you’ll need to run 1 meteorite hunt per week to be able to maintain a 2x2 portal to a hub, which is mandatory to attract other players to make footfall in order to buy more things in other shops, etc etc.
Basically, Boundless is a glorified rabbit-hole.

• Maybe something else was more appealing :
If it appears during beta that Hytale keeps its promises, yeah, I’m totally leaving Boundless (well, aside from maybe maintaining my favorite beacon from time to time).
Hytale promises dungeons, modding tools (to model your own items and make scripts), quests, lots of armor and weapons will fun effects, really varied biomes which are not just color-variations of the blocks I’ve already seen elsewhere in different build-setups. The only downside would be pixel-art-style graphisms.

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Heh, just got here to write about that. It is a bit harsh, but what triggers me the most is stupid stupid way that it teleports you from the place you died. OMG what a frustration if you are on any world that has extreme terrain. I literally need minutes to find the place I was working/hunting on. What a bloody waste of time. And I don’t get the point at all, you have another portal in sanctum to teleport wherever you want, and also it’s a thrill to run out of tough situation, if you died by poking creatures too much. I don’t need this hand holding at all. Especially when I die from a stupid fall damage in my own base, what the bloody hell is that about??? Why would you teleport me out of the base, to the foot of the mountain so I have to ascend 100-150 block? It’s enough that I died, in my own base, from fall damage.

I pretty much agree with @Goblinounours’ post. I have embraced the grind lately, got some pretty block, leveled up two additional chars and whatnot, but I think the game is only viable for builders if you have a full fledged economy as it’s envisioned by balance designer. With this much players, nope, it just doesn’t work. There’s not much for builders. Obtaining higher tier blocks would be only viable if much more players were around and everyone was doing what they like the most.
Boundless started to become huge time sink compared to the time I actually enjoy the game. I’ve spent 33 hours in the game past two weeks and I don’t have much to show for it. I don’t want to settle for low tier blocks and I’m quite out of patience.
I really love block gathering/mining type of games, and it helps me relax beside doing the builds, but as many have said before I don’t need additional job beside the job I do IRL.
I’ll rethink my dedication to Boundless. I hope we will see someday thriving economy that will enable builders a bit more, until then I don’t know how much I’ll invest time in the game.
I’ve been playing around 2 years, it’s been fun, lately it’s been grindy. I’d really love to see game that is more suitable to the player count, and that would evolve to what it is now when there is enough of each player type for everything to work smoothly.
Cheers :heart:

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Don’t get me started on that. A few days ago, while killing mobs on the surface, I died and the Sanctum warp sent me in a very small cave which happened to be sealed (no big tunnel to get out), and with an elite hopper a few meters away from me, and I had no hammer or light in my tool-wheel, so I was grossly unprepared for that encounter… Let’s just say it did not go well.
Sometimes, the warp opened on the edge of a cliff so that when I got through the warp, I instantly fell and died.
Then, there’s that time when it opened 2 blocks away from a river of lava.

When stuff like that happens and I’m with friends on Discord, we have this running joke of somewhat singing “in my safe space!” from South Park.
And we end-up doing that waaaay more often than I’d like.

I get why the warp doesn’t open rrrright where I died because you can die in lava, and that would be awkward, but yeah, trying to spawn you elsewhere ends-up being way more frustrating that the alternative, especially when you’re like “OH COME ON, I could’ve had this!”.
I’m not sure, but I think it’s in Diablo 3 where, when you die, you get a pop-up which lets you choose if you wanna get back to life right where you died or if you wanna be brought back to the level entrance. That should be how Boundless operates too.

And you know what? This deserves a suggestion!

EDIT : and here it is :

1 Like

Sadly, but I think its time for me to quit this game again.
Maybe I will return in the future.

Reason:
I really want to be active again. But every time i login, i don’t know what to do, and after 5 min, i turn off.

Some suggestion i want to write here:
After the guild patch, I think dev did a good job on settlement’s identity. At least we won’t see people complain about they lost their settlement’s name. But after 6 month’s gaming experience in this game, i do have a few suggestion.

  1. Economic Problem.
    One of the annoying thing in this game is hunting for the items you want on each shop.
    If we can have a shop beacon setup and has a UI to show up each shop’s detail (including the name / item list) it will be very helpful. Also the deflation of current market need to be stop. A lot of things are losing their values and turning into garbage soon.

  2. Playing this game really make me like a job.
    A lot of contents in this game requires players to active daily to achieve, for example fuel large portal , extremely long crafting time, materials gathering …etc. People play the game for fun, but when it too close to real life, it make me feel its a job instead of having fun. I feel devs want players to active daily, but this kind of force really make me feel very annoying. I think devs should think what kind of changes will bring fun to players, and what kind of changes will make players feel extremely annoying. When players feel some contends are annoying they will avoid for those contents. For me, after the bomb mining change, i only mine 2-3 times / month, and after the forge change multi times, i stop forge as well. Those were the fun contents i enjoyed but not anymore. To recently, building is the contents i can somehow enjoy. This why i feel bored and stop playing.

  3. "Grinding"
    Don’t make me wrong, personally i am heavy grinder in other games, but for me i only grind the things i feel it worth to spend my time. In this game a lot of grinding i feel kind of pointless. For example gems mining, when you spend so much time to grind just for exchange the same tools, it really pointless. I think devs need to create some goal for end game plaeyrs. Those can be some gears / outfit to craft in game to make players feel his work is rewarded. ( Well, its MMORPG, so it needs competition. Otherwise it just a sand box game)

  4. New players leave the game in 1 -2 month.
    In this part, i am not talking about some players leave the game after 1 - 2 days. Personally i was hosting a large city, before we had around average 30- 40 active members daily. Base on my observation, 80% of new players they quit around 2 weeks - 3 weeks. And most of them stop at the first power coils crafting. I think this is the thing devs need to think about it, i believe they have more specific data than my observation.

  5. Promotion
    A lot of players complain about this game is hard to learn. I think one of reason is because the Boundless website currently lack of information. The video trailer in youtube and steam are even worse. Those contents / characters model not even adding to the game yet. To be honest, those videos trailers are frauds. New players won’t find out those contents you guys mention in your trailers.

  6. Skill Tree
    This game has skill points systems setup. It looks like a system for players to create unique character, but its not. As my experience, most players have at least 3-6 characters in this game, and majority of people have same build setup for each character. (Hunter/ crafter /forger/ gem miner …etc) They are all the similar build to achieve same thing. A good skill system i may enjoy is i can create some build out of meta to make my characters unique.

  7. Trolls
    One of the fact we can’t deny is a lot of people who have some social issue in this game. To be honest, this is the only game i experience that much torlls. I think its because this game has too much interaction between players and players. In this case i think devs need more harsh COC setup to prevent those trolls, and really need to ban those troalls with no mercy. Base my experience, we had 6 trolls attacked our city since Sept.
    It really make me understand the shadow side of the Internet :sweat:

Those are my last suggestion for devs. I know i did suggest a lot in the forum. I still remembers James said i ■■■■ them a lot in forum. :joy: But, the reason i done this is because most of us we did see a lot of potential in this game. However the direction of each patches just make me kind of disappointed. I still remember the day when game just release we had so much players active in the game. We had a bright future and expectation to see this game become famous as Minecraft in gaming market or even more popular than that. During that time, i didn’t even have time to check the forum, i was too busy to play the game.
At the end, i still hope this game can achieve this level in future, i will check the update sometimes later, maybe i will be active again :slight_smile: Good lucks :smile:

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I find this one to be hard to understand. Of all the online games I have played. Boundless is by far the most tame community I have ever seen.

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Well, that’s your experience, not mine.
I do agree we have a lot of nice players in community, but also we have more drama and trolls compare to other game. Having both situation in one game is possible.

For other MMORPG people fight after dungeon or some pvp contents, you can always choose to block that guy or maybe you won’t see that guy forever.

In boundless its different case, you have really high possibility to experience a troll visit you day by day until that troll decide to leave you alone. Or you need to give up all the thing you have and move to other place.

This why i said this game has more interaction compare to other game. Because you have home and you live there, and troll knows you live there too, and they know its hard for you to give up everything to move as well.

So my point is if devs already setup rules and this things still happen that often, it means either the rule is not strong enough or no one is taking actions to punish those trolls. Because base on my experience, none of them care about the coc, and some of them even tell me they have been acting like this for couple months, and they are still fine.

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████ █████’█ ████ █████ ██ ████ █████. ████ █████ ███ ███ ███████ ███ ██████ ██ ███████ ███ ██ █████ ██████ ███ ██████ ████ ████████████ ████ █████ ██████ ████ ███ ███████ ███/██ ██████ ███████████.

███ ██ ████ █████ ████. █████ █████ ██ ██ ███ ███ █████ ██████ ████ ██████ ████ ████ █████, ████ █████ ████ ██ ███ ███ ████████ ██ ████ ████ ██████████ █████ ████. ███ ██████ █████ ███ ███ █████ ████. ███ ██████ ██ █████████ ████ ██ ████ ████ ██ ███ ████.

The devs will punish for what they see as breaking the rules. It seems a lot of people disagree with the rules that the devs made. but they made them like that for a reason. This is a game where you might have neighbors, Maybe they are nice, Maybe they build a trash pile. but that is how the devs designed the game. And I don’t see them changing that any time soon

While it is unfortunate you are having a bad experience in this game from other players. I am pretty sure it can be a lot worse in most other online games. and I am curious to which game you are referring to that haves an even more tame community then boundless.


Edit
Some statements Redacted. Said too much.

1 Like

Well, sometimes you need to experience first before you make a statement on other people’s experience.
I can list all the things i have experienced from the trolls in this game lol
And you can compare to the example you mentioned on top.
Obviously i was not talking about building some trash pie, that is not even count as a troll.

  1. Stand in front of you when you are building, so every time you will click to him can’t place any block or destroy blocks.
  2. Build some ■■■■ near your house and black mail you, and remove before devs find out and repeat couple times.
  3. Some people just acting crazy somehow and bomb half of your city (The beacon owner gave that dude permission around sept, but recently that guy just back and bomb everything inside that beacon.
  4. Before the guild system release, built a giant tower tried to take out warden from your city and change to other shitty name.
  5. follow you and your members and knock down the ground by tools to make some noise for hours.
  6. drop tons of totems when you are building, so every time you can’t take back the drop blcoks but only for the totem he drop.
  7. Trying to find out any empty spot you have in the city and build some ■■■■ that you can clearly feel that is a troll building.

All the things i mentioned they did to us for at least 3weeks to 1 month (per troll).
I was the one to deal all these shits, so if you never experienced these things don’t pretend my understanding of “trolls”. The thing you mentioned not even count as trolling. I also experienced some newbie trolls, they want to troll others but don’t know how to.

For example they want to regen your city by regen bomb :rofl:
or try to build some ■■■■ on the top of your home, but they found out that they can’t place beacon above your house.
A lot of example like that.

Guess what most of them still in the game, only a few get ban by devs.
This is the most ridiculous thing i feel in this discussion.

At least i don’t experience all these ■■■■ in other game.
In other game, if people did this to me i will just tell them go ■■■■ urself because i have nothing to lose lol.

I am not saying that devs didn’t hep us, and actually devs really help us 2 times and try to solve the issue.
Which i really appreciate that until i saw those trolls still in game and damage other group lol.

There was a troll tell me when he finally got ban, he said he trolls 4 more group after us.
Finally he got ban. yeah… 4 more groups. Guess how many people left the game because of 1 player trolling ?

Also to be honest, due to the amounts of trolls i met, i really should built a ranking of trolls in our city board lol .
At least you can rank Top 1 - 6 :thinking:

The thing I mentioned is refering to what I have seen most other people complain about as trolling.
In your case, that would be the 1st 6 words of bullet #2
Bullets #4 and #7

Most everything else in that list on the other hand I don’t consider that as “trolling” because that is just flat out harassment at that point and deserves an harsher wording then “trolling” so when you mention you encountered “Trolls” I was not expecting people blackmailing you and the like to be apart of that situation

I would think this would be punished after awhile. and you should follow up by emailing the devs and ask them what is going on with that if they are still persisting.

where you finding all these trolls?
since release i never really had experiences like that
except for non playing eternal fuelers

3 Likes

i’ve yet to encounter any trolls or bots for that matter, boundless is the only mmo game i’ve played that has no bots present either bot chars or in the chat.

I havent experienced the trolls to the amount as wade has, but i have experienced them as well.
Had a nice size build on Gyosha, and 2 random people within 24 hours plot down 1 plot on 2 sides and build a house out of sand and dirt.

I use the word “trolling” because those people think its fun and what they did were just a joke.

Well, you are lucky man lol.

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No one should be allowed to continually harass a player or impede another player’s gameplay. Insta-ban IMO.

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This is possible, either alts of someone that dont like me or crab people. Only explanations that make sense.

i had a panic moment thought trolls where winning cuase single plot portals dont work anymore was thinking it linked to the infinity slide cheat
but 1by2 horizontally does work so we can still do cool stuff with it no worrys :slight_smile:
thats what would turn me off on boundless if i miss out on fun cause off cheat ers

I don’t know if they blacklist IP addresses or what. If they blacklist M.A.C./hardware addresses, it would be harder for turds to mess with people. Not impossible, but more difficult for most people.

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They also need to assign a name to represent entire characters in one account.
Otherwise, the troll can still switch to alt and join to your guild. lol