My Old Boundless Review

First off this game is a MMO and a Sandbox, but as of this update they are working on a offline and player hosted universe.

Second off this game has its own forums and the steam forums are useless, so if you want information about the game outside of a review you need to go to the games site itself and ask there: https://forum.playboundless.com or discord here https://discord.gg/3ZfVneS

(The reason is I do not log into steam, let alone the steam forums, outside of my house, most people do not even know the steam forums exist.)


I like Sandboxes and i like MMO's, Ive played Ever Quest, Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Minecraft, Trove, Ark and a bunch of others iv'e had to host on dedicated servers.

I really how this game has 50 permanent planets, but the whole portal system makes the world feel connected. You can see a planet in the sky, shoot a beam at it and warp over to the planet where that beam landed. It has these temp planets called Exo worlds that come with rare materials and colors not normally found in the game. Materials/Colors are gated by what planet they spawn on and how you can find them so if you want a specific color of something you need to explore to find it. Some planets are even owned by players and they are allowed to change the color on anything that spawns on the planet. Anyone can spawn a new planet via the games online store.

You can build portals that don't close either. I can pop a base down in a city where i live and then setup a farm on another planet, but with a portal in my base i can walk over to my farm cause the portal makes it right there. I went to a shop 5 planets away last night that was maybe 100 steps from my house.

Every planet is a server, so if a server crashes it doesn't take the whole system down. Every planet in the game is regional too, so if you have fast internet you can visit planets in different parts of the world with minimum connection issues.

Recently the developers added what are called Sovereign worlds, which are planets rented and controlled by players.

The skill system caps out at 100 skill points which you hit when you reach level 50. After that you can add another skill page and then dump skill points from levels over 50 into those pages for up to 5 pages.

You could in theory be able to do everything, so long as you actually play the game and leveled up. But, once you hit 50 its going to be some work.. but not that much..

Skills are locked in once you hit level 20, however you are giving points to reset individual skills or the entire page on level up.

(Similar to EverQuest Landmark) You are able to claim a 8x8x8 cube of land in which you can prevent world regen / take ownership. Playing the game and following the tutorial you are given 2 plots of land with in the first couple of minutes. Continuing to play the game you should receive enough premium currency on level up to purchase 120 plots of land by the time you hit level 50.


Premium Currency / Micro Transactions / You Earn These on Level Up

You can buy:
>More plots of land.
>More skill pages (up to 5 per character)
>More character slots (up to 10 per account).
>Skill point resets
>Skill page resets
>Appearance change tokens for your character
>Color change tokens for your character / accessories
>Head Accessories (some of these are limited to purchase during events)
>Body Paint

HOWEVER: Premium currency is awarded at level up and every level up even after you hit max level. At max level you see 50+ and still awarded skill points / currency .

The only reason you are going to spend money is if you want something right now with out leveling..

or after you already were given a bunch of chances to get it for free.

or you are wanting to build something big which again.. this is a mmo you have the share the world with others which means if you are taking away a lot of something that means less for other people... its not really rocket science complaining about it is just being greedy..

Player Owned Planets?
>Yes in this game you can rent planets that are connected to the main universe. The planet owner is able to set the permissions for who can Visit, Build or Harvest Resources from the planet. This can be a friend or a guild on any of these settings. The planet owner can also ban individuals from visiting their planet. There is even a creative mode...

Creative mode?
>Some planets can be set to creative mode, which will allow players to visit and play with any block in the game. The players inventory doesn't cross over to creative mode or back to survival mode allowing you to test anything you could possibly think of.

Optional monthly Subscription ( 1 month /  3 months / 6 months )

So some people are surprised to see a "free monthly" game have a optional sub.
This provides:
>Unlimited changing of Color on character
>Unlimited changing of Color on accessories
>The ability to use color coding in chat and on signs
>Automatic refueling of ownership of plots..

Plots of land require fuel to maintain ownership.
So that last feature of the monthly subscription touches on, is the last issue people have with this game. If you claim ownership of a plot of land, you have to fuel the beacon to maintain ownership. This requires 10 pieces of leaf to create a fuel bundle to refill your beacon for 4 weeks at the most basic level. There are larger fuel bundles that allow you to refuel the beacons for longer.


Player counts....
How many Minecraft, Ark, Rust and 7dtd have you played on with more then 10 people?
How many have you wanted less than 10 people playing on?
Exactly, those game servers act up when too many people play, Steam Charts puts the average player count at 100, meaning there is at least 300 active "Steam" players..

I Recently pulled the character data from the game api and i was able to figure out there is at least 7000 characters that play this game with active plots which puts the active player count between 700-7000 (since anyone can have up to 10 characters)

"Steam"?
Boundless is cross platform with PS4.
Don't have a good system / Have a kid you might want to play this with? Go buy it over on the PlayStation store and play with the exact same community.

Does that mean i can transfer my char....
No you can not, if you later decide you want to move to the playstation(or back) you can buy the game a 2nd time and give that character/account permissions to all your plots.


The mine craft mod comparison....
In my game time i feel the following mods give me the same feeling as boundless.
* IC1
* Chisel
* Blockcraftery
* Grappling Hook Mod
* Stargate Network
* Better Portals
* Vending block
* Extra Alchemy
+- other mods.


Is this minecraft 2?
No, its not, probably better since you don't have server owners.

Wait my stuff goes away?
Yes and No...

At bare minimum you only need to spend 5 minutes to refill a beacon every 4 weeks to keep your build otherwise the beacon runs out of fuel. If this happens then your plots are reclaimed and anything you put down goes into a special reclaim beacon tab. All you need to do is drop down a new beacon and you can "reclaim" all your stuff into that beacon. While you might lose the build you will never lose your stuff to make that build. You can also use this as a easy way to move to a new plant with out having to break and pack blocks 1 by 1.

tldr;
This is a Voxel building game, the world is made out of blocks, you break the block with a tool, place the block or craft the block into something else. It has portals which work how you would think and they are fulled by space dust you get out of meteors, which spawn mobs that try to kill you when you needs that space crack.

Ages: 7+ so dont be a jerk

Cross platform with PS4 players.