Why is Boundless population so small?

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Hi. I refrained myself from asking this question for a long long time now but I still care about this game and I would like to know.

Why is Boundless population so low?

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It seems it’s not getting any better. I observed pop change over time and I just can’t understand this.
Minecraft was best selling game in August 2019. Even more popular than fortnite. 91 milion monthly players. It’s not like voxel sandbox games are not popular anymore.

Imo boundless has everything to be a perfect voxel game. Great art, great mechanics, incredible variety of blocks, materials, colors, tools, upgrades, enchantments. Also constant stream of updates, dedicated devs and playerbase etc…

In the meanwhile Hytale which is minecraft 2.0, prob much worse has tons of attention because of Hypixel mc servers and general media attention.

Is it all about youtubers streaming it or what? Coz if it is, then maybe boundless is too grindy and not very entertaining? What can we do as players in this situation? Continue, don’t ask questions and act like nothing is wrong? like it’s natural and we will be fine? :thinking:

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I’m not going to lie…I highly dislike threads like this

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Boundless for whatever reason does not advertise…perhaps it is something they will do at a certain point in development

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no problem, eh, can just ignore it and read threads that do interest you.

@Karokendo
For me, I’m pretty darn sure the devs are fully aware of the situation but have a long term game plan, as it were.
What that is only time or @james will tell :stuck_out_tongue:

Would love to see more peeps in game and wish it was more widely known about, which is why I try to post pics to the sub reddit

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Thanks for not lying. Neither me, but if it’s not okay and falls under some game discrediting policy I’m happy for it to be removed. In the meanwhile every single player is aware of this situation. Actively playing or not so it’s not like I’m saying something very controversial.

@catfud I believe that’s still the plan :wink:

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Probably a lot of stuff they want to improve on or revamp before the hard advertising push. Once people try a game and lose interest, many don’t come back. Better to wait until the game is more solid, we just dont know how long that will take.

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cuz of how ealy the game came out of EA the servers where not ready for a full advertising launch if they went the normal route it would have been this all over again

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oh it fine. I’m interested even though I hate the topic. lol

I actually bought the game at the same time as two of my friends…we all played together for awhile but they are no longer playing. I asked one of them why he quit and posted about his answers 2 or 3 months back in another thread like this one.

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Just like Krasniy, I think the devs have a plan to advertise the game in the future when maybe its rough edges are more polished (i mean look at their last few updates slowly tackling everyday boundless issues like plot fighting, market scanner, etc). I am 110% sure the devs want this game to succeed so lets all play it and chill. I am sure we all got enough to worry about irl :laughing:.

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your good and have every right to ask the question.

Don’t mind me…I admit, I am a bit of a fanboy. :grinning:

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I got a long list why the game isnt appealing or taking off.
1.Communication issues (msg systems awful)
2. Connectivity issues
3. learning curve (I like this but a lot of folks do not)
4.Territorial issues that explode into massive fights and folks throw in the towel (policing issues in game)
5. unless you have gleam club if real unforeseen life takes you out of the game for a bit if you come back
you’ll most likely have to start over. (folks dont usually want to do that)
6. Game population has a hierarchy you either have to stay out of the way or find a way to coalesce. (ppl dont tend to like game politics. Since theyre there to relax build and enjoy)
7. Price is pretty high for a game that plays like a beta and the aforementioned problems
8. Building blocks are ok but big beautiful builds with no real furniture or adornments are just big beautiful EMPTY builds. (yes I know you can chisel things that resemble furniture but Im talking about real cratfable furniture items)

Disclaimer This is my personal honest opinion I love the game I play it everyday Im not being malicious because of course I would love to see more folks play but lets not all pretend its all butterflies and Unicorns there are real issues.

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good list. #6 something i had not considered, but is so true.

I know people who have some stories, but everyone is afraid to bring them up.

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when i started playing boundless less and was picking minecraft up more i noticed with minecraft it perfected the art of appearing faster when i was mining in MC i did not get alot of diamonds but i felt like i was making more progress and it made the grind more bearable the other thing do that leads into the next part

this i feel is due to the timegateing in MC it only takes as long as farming the mats you need to setup for a build stream(unless you need to cook things like glass) and if you cant wait on that you got creative mode to run off of. boundless i have heard form streamers that with all the pre-stream prep they need to do they just dont got the time to plan hours or even days ahead to make sure they got all the mats ready they need for a 4-5HR stream and watching someone just sit and click a button to brake the same kind of rocks over and over is just plan boring so it force’s the streamer more to be “more on” and having to force create content (talking with the stream, mindlessly saying things etc) and thats more extering to do when you can just load up a different game that helps take the pressure off with laxed building or action.

this part is purely my opinion

we are in the age of influencer’s the average person cares less what cnet or pc gamer has to say about a given thing and more about what there favorite streamer/personality has to say its a monkey see monkey do thing.

the thing is back when we had sponsored streams and even now form a watching standpoint there is just nothing there has a streamer i have the option of

A. building (needing what i sayed before about the %$#@ ton of planning)

or

B. hunting (fine for awhile but the lack of mob verity cause’s this to become stale faster then a streamer would like creating the pressure stated in A)

if we want numbers to go up i think we need to put building updates on the backburner for a bit and start working more on mobs and exploration give streamers more to talk about and more chances for them to go WOW!.

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Well I am certain the Devs are looking at this and trying to find ways to solve that perception and the number concern you outlined. I just think we might have to wait for the next few updates to see if their ideas solve the problem.

Personally I think this is one of the key points. The game comes off very engineer and component oriented with the recipes and how you achieve things. The MMO vs Solo game play strife is also a problem in my eyes.

I’ve seen a ton of threads, ideas, and concerns repeated over and over from the community at large on ways to try to make the game more appealing. We’ve had our influx of people from release and the issues that they left were mostly communicated and shared. I don’t think much has been done to solve those points enough. Maybe once they are fixed or a new set of systems are in place to remove the “not ideal” things we have now the game will increase in popularity.

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I think a little less grindy (not much, but reasonable ratios, example of ichor 72 for mass craft, but you only get 20 shards-this would take months of hunting to get a stack of 900.)

Also, more depth to each role and actually build out roles, so you can build a roleplay structure. Adventurers, gatherers, farmers, hunters, builders, shop owners, forgers, (and hoping for robots made by tinkerer of sorts), also would be nice to have a carpenter class for furniture. All have the ability to be so much deeper with so many more components. Complexity is good when you have depth.

But right now we have lots of complex stuff at a surface level with not much to delve into.

Hunters can hunt, but only have bows, with fists only as good as gold. So really one solid type of weapon. And only a handful of mobs to attack or strategize against.

Farmers and gatherers compete currently. Farmers should have crops different to gathering, so both roles have a purpose.

Adventurers would be a cool role, but would require random loot chest spawns or something with a new type of loot like - robotic components that can be made into little robot helpers by robotic/tinkerer class.

This game has good graphics and is definitely developing everyday. The dev team is awesome.

But I think they need to start looking at the depth of each role and say “okay, how do we create progression or a dichotomy for each role?”.

It’s hard to have a mock society without different roles, without differences everyone’s a clone.

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I suspect this is the case, they’re waiting to get to critical mass with features before starting ads, they seem to be fine financially to do this or why else would they continue the way things currently are. They’re not pushing out microtransactions, but actual content. They’re actively developing the engine too, doesn’t seem like they regard the game as being in trouble.

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i think the player count is kicking them in the butt tho this is like the 5 or 6th sale they have done since launch almost makes you wonder they they don’t just permanently lower the price by 30%

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I can, to some degree, agree with all points but this is the first time i am hearing about #6. What hierarchy? I mean aside from guild leader/member hierarchy, what else exists? Id be interested to know morre about that even if in a pm. Thanks!

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I think when people see this game, they expect a minecraft clone. I think when people play this game, they experience a significant amount of progression.

People who want progression don’t consider this game, because they see minecraft.

People who don’t want progression play the game and quit, because it requires a lot of work.

I’m not sure how to fix this, but I feel like the advertisement of the game is targeting the wrong people. It should instead focus on targeting the people who will stay instead of specifically targeting the people who won’t stay.

Most people I know who like the minecraft scene play HEAVILY MODDED servers. This game simply does not have everything that modded servers provide. Arguably it never will because a lot of mods are basically just cheats for mechanics people don’t like. It’s impossible to implement this in a base game.

I think the game needs to progress for what it is. Keep adding features/content. farming was good but we need a reason to continue coming back to the game other than to fuel portals. Right now the only core economic demand appears to be portals. Everything else seems to stem from that. Creativity has never and will never be an economic motivator. This has been demonstrated in endeless sandbox “games”. We need more “game” stuff to motivate the community.

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I also think the price tag is too high, if it’s meant to compete with other voxel games which are about half the price. I know there’s the mmo part that’s a running cost for them so it’s a bit of a dilemma, but then again they do have some mtx and gc to offset it a bit. No way to know for sure what’s going on behind the scenes and talked around the round table :smiley:

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