whaaaat none taken lol
theres a moment when an area has full status and when people leave the same amount is ready to replace them
like aqua shopping
thats why i started districts and second market
Best to dig out only the longest grass i have found, then you get much better drops…
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I think this rings true with my impression of the game as it’s developed. For me there’s been a definite shift from Boundless being a game that is solo friendly to one that has become solo tolerant, which I find a little sad. On the flip side, it’s worth noting that this feeling doesn’t mean that anything has changed in Boundless or it’s intent. As more features have been implemented, there are obviously going to have been more things introduced that are designed for both groups and solo players, and you notice more things that are group-focused when there are more things to notice.
I think what would make me play more would (I know, this viewpoint is getting old from me and doesn’t need further discussion, we’ve done that to death already) would be me being able to get what I wanted out of the game playing a single character, and not splitting time over three alts to get essentially the same results. I feel that when suggesting that something is negative, it’s always worth providing solutions. As such, more acceptable solutions that fall in line with Boundless seems to want to be might be to:
- Limit skills enough that you can’t cover all the possible masteries with a pre-planned roster of alts. If you want to force people to be reliant on others or to make it so they can’t do it all, actually enforce it. what we have now isn’t great.
- Make some skills lock out other skills. Be able to make advanced (and above) tools OR weapons. Advanced food OR brews. It’ll let you do the basics of everything, but make people pick specialties and be more unique. If people don’t end up unique, that’s an issue with balance, not availability.
- I know this is a step almost full circle in development ethos, but make it so that you can only advance skills in actions you’re actually doing. The idea that I can become a master at [insert time consuming / less rewarding activity] by spending time doing [insert efficient activity] devalues any effort put into more time consuming/less fun activities (I don’t mention specifics because I know different people like different things).
What would make me build more would be if building felt more like play, and less like work. For me, the reason that it feels like work is that for all the time I spend doing what I want to do in the game, I spend just as much time faffing around making sure I can carry on doing it. I want to build something: I must either buy or collect materials.
Collection (under the assumption my character is able to both build and gather sufficiently): I need materials - This will take time, along with Tools and brew/food. Tools and Energy maintenance will also take materials which in turn need gathering.
Buying: Anything I spend here I am unlikely to see again. Maybe I’ll get some footfall if I were to jam it onto the side capitol, but that’s not really where I want to be building. Given that, it’s money that I will have had to spend separate periods of time grinding for.
Suggestions that could make building feel more rewarding/less like work:
- Structures with purpose - Localised buffs to health regen or negative status effect removal, atmosphere protection, walk/run speed, jump height (cool for obstacle courses), food halls for hunger restoration, Bedrooms/Inns for bonus XP, Specialist crafting halls for reduced craft time. Warding against wandering hostiles. The list really could go on and on.
- Chisels not having durability. There are plenty of other resource sinks in the game, and advanced chisel usages are locked behind skills anyway. That, and half the time you spend chiselling, you’re doing it ‘to see’ if it looks better, worse, or about the same.
- [insert more] - I’ve just realised the time and have work early tomorrow.
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I understand what you’re saying about limiting and locking out skills to make players specialise so that they are forced to only have unique abilities but for me I guess that will be the point that I actually stop playing.
My main alt is mostly used for exploring and mining which means it needs a skill set geared around hammers, grapples, tool durability, light glow, inventory space etc for the mining part and slingbow, health regeneration, no death penalty, grapples still etc for the exploration part but also to be able to defend itself when attacked while mining … now if I’m forced to choose one or the other then there’s little point in choosing the miner because without the other half of skills it will just die all the time when getting to and from mining exploration sites as well as mods that now spawn in the caves … Some might say that this then presents an opportunity for co op play where you need a hunter to accompany you on your mining expedition to protect you … so now I have to go and find someone anytime I want to go mining … that will definitely be the time I say goodbye …
I used to play Destiny but because huge parts of the game were locked away behind group raids that only wanted high level players in their groups you soon realise how repetitive and boring it becomes when you can’t break through that barrier.
The biggest aspect of this game that I enjoy is that I can do everything to some degree by myself so I don’t have to rely on others … if that’s taken away then it becomes just like all the other games.
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Oh, I entirely agree with you at all in terms of ‘do-it-all’ vs ‘be limited to encourage co-operation’. My point was that one of the reasons I don’t play more is because of the way skill distribution & characters work. Time for a barely relevant food based analogy.
To me, the current implementation feels like someone said “We hear that some of you like tuna sandwiches, and some of you like jam sandwiches. We want to satisfy as many people as possible, so have this tuna & jam sandwich compromise”. Obviously I can’t rule out the idea that some people may actually prefer the monstrosity that is a sweet and savoury fish sandwich, but equally can’t help but feel that most of the people who’d rather have a tuna sandwich would still be happier with a jam sandwich than the mashup.
I’d prefer do it all on one character. But I’ve been told numerous times that it’s terrible and would ruin the game. The only reason that ever stood up to the slightest logical scrutiny was combat balance, and you ‘could’ just limit skills spent across combat trees at any one time to solve it. Beyond that, every single reason suggested as to why it’s bad is also something that the current system fails to prevent or protect against, it just makes it more of a faffy logistics puzzle. That being the case and having (begrudgingly) accepted this, my suggestion are my way of saying “Fine, I get it, you don’t want me to have a tuna sandwich. I’d enjoy playing more if my sandwich was just jam than this though”.
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We have a update coming that allows players to do exactly this. We’ll also retain Alts for players who genuinely want to play as an alternative character.
I ultimately concluded that once we supported alts that allow players to access all skills across different characters, then there is little different to accessing all skills from a single character.
We’re also planning a review and reworking of the skill system itself. This includes the process of enabling skills (which is a real pain when re-skilling a character, hard to plan, every step is permanent) and the skill trees themselves.
(Why aren’t we doing this already!! Well we’re rebalancing the crafting trees, preparing the initial release of the forge, working on the animation and prediction system, reworking the block and world palette system, adding an optional profanity filter and other stuff.)
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More plots would make me build more 
having more materials and time to play 
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Wait what?!?!? That’s going to be a real thing?
This does drastically change my feelings towards the game. This is the kind of thing there should be multiple likes for.
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Reworked Skill System, Multiple Skill Specs on one char, Crafting balancing, Forge, Animations, Improved Prediction, reworked Block and World Palettes?!!!
Edit:
wow i must have reread that post 100 times looking for what i over looked O.o… apparently i have a filter for profanity filters O.o
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A-hem!!! You miss the item I was personally working on…
… I’m hurt.
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frantically rereads to see what he missed
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I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with you there.
adding extreme complexity to once simple-to-craft items doesn’t add any enjoyment to the game for me at all.
I play games because I am creative. I like to build and create things, but also help others.
Ideally for me I would build my awesome looking and functional base first and then have a few portals connecting to things, then I would focus on the community and helping others.
but now all of a sudden everything I was doing came to a screeching halt and now all my time is spent gathering materials to make food so that I don’t have to wait 8 seconds every time I hit the same amount of blocks. yes I know theres skills for that but even with skills i still have to stop and wait every now and then whereas before I never had to wait.
waiting.
that’s another thing I can’t stand in games is unnecessary time-sucks. adding timers as penalties. my game time is precious. sometimes I don’t get a lot and sometimes I’m not so efficient when i’m at the computer (eating, chatting etc) so i’m already taking longer than I should be and anything that takes more of my game time just pushes my goals further away from me.
I know it’s a bad comparison and I try to avoid mentioning it but it’s the last game I played a lot of so it’s still valid…
but in Minecraft, my main goal was creating things/machines that saved me time. I made efficient spawners and farms that I could turn off when I wanted or shut of automatically before bogging down the server.
I was about to start the helping others phase, almost got my base to a point that was functional and didn’t look too unfinished, but not my priorities have completely changed. I have to just make sure I can survive now…
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James, you keep making my day. Stahp it. (don’t actually, please.) 
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He’s making your WORLD. 
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Sony is very strict!
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Ah of course I forgot it’s going out on PS4 too eventually.
If a solo player (probably you) can help others while at the same time comfortably doing your stuffs (building, mining, etc.) without it feeling “grindy”, then you might not have any players to help with because the game becomes too easy and everybody doesn’t need external help. 
As far as I see, all this time consuming grindy parts can be alleviated by just buying things from shops. We have a lot of banked coins but we tend to just hoard it for some reason (or probably only true for me). This, for me, is what the devs should put their attention to with regards to addressing this issue. Currently, it’s not so intuitive to just go to shops for the things you need and when you do want to shop, it’s quite hard. Hard to go to city with shops, hard to find shops on a city, hard to find items on a shop. I know this should be on the shopowners’ and mayors’ responsibility to make them accessible but I believe we need something more on this system.
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Anytime I’ve gone looking to buy stuff from shops the vast majority of time things are so ridiculously overpriced, especially when you look at what they want to buy them for in their request baskets that I just walk away … the last shopping spree I had was before the update and I spent half my coin ,100,000, on oort shards and some compact coal. A lot of the things on offer are easily available anyway and the things that are harder to get are just too expensive.
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This.
If I spent all the money I’ve accumulated from lv.1 all the way to lv.50 - about 250 hours of playing time - it could be gone in 30 minutes at someone’s shop. You can’t alleviate the grind by buying things in shops, because you need to grind in order to get enough money to buy anything in the first place; getting freebies from achievements isn’t enough, and footfall may be hit-or-miss depending on where you choose to live.
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When I looked to buy some tech components and coils I found some in shops but they were very expensive. But as soon as I posted about looking for a seller I got two offers at half of the prices I found in shops.
So yeah it’s good to use forums for any good deals. Be it buying for coins or exchanging goods.
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