Yes, it was a little. I should probably go to bed.
The thing is, you do (we all do, in fact). I don’t know you as a person or in game particularly much, but I do see your post on the forums and can see that you have some distinct preferences when it comes to discussion about upcoming or potential features. That is you voicing your opinion on what it should be (which is great, people should feel free to say what they think).
But seriously, don’t get any OK in my TX. Already lived in Wichita Falls, I’m good.
They can’t even figure out how to drive on the damn interstates!
I accidentally lived above the Temple/Belton line too once…never again. lol
The left lane is for nascar driving only. Everyone going 90mph or less, move to the right. 
Unless you are on the toll road, then there is only one lane going either direction while the other side is under construction…for 12 years…
But back on topic(ish)! I don’t really worry about the boundless population since the game hasn’t been advertised. I doubt @james and @lucadeltodecso are sitting in a dark room all day giggling to themselves about how they have us all fooled into thinking they have a plan just daring the other to pull the plug to the servers. Once the game is ready, I’m sure we will see ads and new people.
I also think that its not bad to try things and then take them back. Shove stuff into the game, see if it works. If it doesn’t…pull it back out if it is way out of expectation. Seeing WS being so active with their game is awesome even when they throw a foul ball. I see a lot of fear on this forum about ideas and directions. As long as I can still work on my build when I log in on the next patch, keep bringing the ideas!
Thats why I left… well the main reason anyway… there are a lot of them… but like you I absolutely care and love this game, I just hope one day the devs stop tailoring the game to the top hardcore gamers or minmaxers or whatever you wanna call them. They are pushing away more people (casuals like me) than they are keeping. Thats why theres no metrics for the casual majority, because they all left!
Every planet supports at most 90 people concurrently.
If Boundless would have 10000 concurrent player that would equal 111 completely full planets or over 200 planets filled with 45 player each.
Networks like Ultima would become completely useless because Eresho would permanently be full. You would have to create complicated mesh network portal systems and hope to finally find a path to get to the planet you want. These mesh networks would require a lot more portals per planet or portals per player because every additional planet would have to be connected with multiple paths.
Everything in the game points towards that our devs want us to have less portals then we are comfortable with. Whatever the reason is, it’s unlikely that they would be happy with the amount of portals it would require to interconnect hundreds of permanent planets.
And even if it would be possible, just imagine the work it would require to fuel 500 portals…
Unless they can support thousands of players on a single planet they have no chance to grow the game with the current design because it would immediately crumble under the load. The current design just doesn’t scale.
My guess is that they are either working on optimizing the game to the point where planets can support thousands of player per planet, or they are working on a completely new way to travel / how portals work. And only then are they going to try to get more people in.
That they are reworking portals would also explain why there wasn’t a single world about the Oort crisis, not even a “this is what we want, we want more portals to shut down”.
This is not needed (yet). This would be like spending $60k on a 9-seat burban now just in case you have 9 kids in the future, instead of driving a honda coupe then scaling up if/as needed. We have 50 planets and everything above a T4 usually has 1 or zero players on it unless they are hunting.
What game has thousands of players on one server at the same time? Even the largest ones with thousands-100Ks of players start saying “server full” once it hits 150-500 players.
not necessarily targeting you with this superman just covering a point i find that gets brought up alot when comparing BL to other games
i think the key there is also the fact that everyone tends to get hung up on the fact of “oh boundless looks alot better then x game” but tbh looks don’t mean anything BL could have Destiny 2 level graphics but still have the current player count. look at undertale that game is bottom tier compared to other games that released at the time yet it exploded cuz of how the game was made
cuz of how well done the world and story was players did not care
My thoughts also…sometimes the best looking game is not as great…
Advertising… i get the impression theyre just not quite ready to open it up to the masses yet. If you google ‘voxel mmo’ there is one vid for oort online from 2014. That has to be deliberate. I dont know its even possible to get that bad SEO unless youre strategically trying to avoid it.
On the grind thing, i think the way the game is setup visually with mass crafts etc hinders it a little too. People seem to completely skip over the fact you can make just 1 hammer etc. and only focus on mass crafts. The subliminal percepction that creates makes people only want to take the long route. I know this probably adds to the grind in the long run, but I wonder if making teirs of machines might help. Like a ‘beginner’ workbench that you can only single craft. So new players dont see the mass crafts options straight away and feel like theyre missing out if they dont gather 300 gems before they make a tool. Gathering 16 gems to make a tool is much much nicer, until you compare it with the mass craft option next to it.
Afterthought… another teir of “rough” gem tools could work really well. Using the MC example, you can break into diamond tier when you find just 4 gems and craft your first pick with just a stick in minutes. Some sort of low durability gem tools you can use rough gems to craft and dont need to compact/refine would take a heap of grind out of the “gem wall” stage of the game.
I’d like npcs. I think that would help a lot. Just like in other games mentioned (MC or NMS) you have someone that you can trade with or sell to. It was weeks before I found a shop when I started playing. Or an npc that helps at the beginning. Simple quest lines. I didn’t realize I had “feats?” Or whatever they are when first started to help earn coin and xp. I just built and tried to figure out everything kinda on my own. A little more direction from the creepy guy in the sanctum would go along way. Take this put it in that and point it.
Minecraft, from my understanding had alot of external help from content creators like the Yogscast, to put it on the map.
Personally I feel its the lack of a good NPE,
the fact the game is trying to both be a creative sandbox and an MMO, has given the game a little bit of an identity crisis at this time, that creates unfun elements to most.
also just about everybody who I brought in to play boundless, has complained about lack of content. Never mind the end game stuff that is missing, i am talking about simple general stuff, like the fact we only have a handful of NPC mobs, all of which can be very punishing to new players who do not understand that melee combat in this game = death.
Group content i feel is lacking, we only have meteors which is the same thing over and over again with very little variants other then how annoying the terrain is.
So because of that and more, I feel boundless is a game that takes a special taste to be able to handle, long term. New players are not being retained because of that. I feel.
Yea he doesn’t really know how to do much…
Yea that’s about it 
Sounds like my ex-gf. We didn’t communicate well, needless to say.
Purely my personal opinion here, but…
The reason I think the game population is so low is because of the cost. I’m sure there’s plenty of younger people who would love to play, but haven’t because of the price tag - just look how many people tried it on the free weekend, 5* the population we have now. Now, just imagine how many more would play if it was free forever?
As to if this is the best course of action, I can not say, but one things for sure, it would definitely improve the game’s population.
A good compromise to start with might be to reduce the games price permanently to be cheaper (but not free) and see where that leads
I’ve long advocated a 19.99 price, one that I think is fair on both ends.
For the record, I would also pay for skins/clothes and I’m sure many others would too. Micro transactions only suck when they’re jammed in your face. Keep all deals and whatnot confined to the exchange itself for interested customers and anyone not interested won’t be annoyed.