Posts made by Alexian

As I've mentioned in the past when this topic has come up, while I support granular and customizable permissions/ranks for city management, I also don't want chests and stations to be too easy to lock folks out of.

If you're a city who intends to open your doors to solo players, small groups, and client guilds beyond the "patron guild" as we in Meridian intend to, there should be risk associated with that decision that isn't completely neutralized by your ability to protect chests and such behind 7 different layers of permissable ranks.

Public, trusted citizen, or private seem acceptable.

@Harleyyelrah said in [Suggestion] Make cities unable to be self sufficient:

If the point of the game is to have interdependent cities, then these proposals may work. Perhaps that may be useful for inter-city interaction on Arboreus.

Personally, I've always interpreted Fractured's intent as systematically-enforcing cities/regions and guilds to have relationships with one another for commerce, diplomacy, and politics. Otherwise every region/city would have access to the same variety and volume of resources. The fact that resources are disparate in composition and quantity was, to me, clearly intended to deter regions/cities and guilds from trying to be literally self-sufficient. These features seem to drive regions/cities and guilds to interact with other regions/cities and guilds to meet all their needs.

However, I don't think that inter-city cooperation is exactly the intent for Syndesia or Tartaros, especially when city sieges are a main feature. I can say that the PvP groups started this alpha test with the intent to build up their own cities, seeing each other as "enemies" and therefore trying to be as self sufficient as possible is part of the game.

I think Syndesia, in particular, is meant to be a nexus of city cooperation and competition. They're not mutually exclusive on Syndesia, much like the real world. States both rely on other states to meet specific needs for commerce and resources while also seeking to conquer or dominate other states for various reasons. It makes sense that PvP groups would want to be as self-reliant as possible and, if given that option, I think all cities/regions will aggressively pursue that path of least resistance because that's just how people are.

However, if Fractured systematically ensures that no city can meet all of its internal needs as an isolationist state, it will force them to interact with others via commerce or conquest and that's a good thing IMO.

Forcing inter-city reliance would likely just lead to huge guilds absorbing smaller guilds and claiming multiple cities for themselves rather than any cooperation.

Only if Fractured fails to make city management extremely complex and time consuming. If cities run on auto pilot like in Albion Online, then it will definitely incentivize guilds to roll over as much territory as possible. Hopefully, city management will be so challenging and intricate that it will deter most groups from trying to directly conquer the world.

@Specter Any guess as to ETA?

@GamerSeuss To clarify again, I support Fractured being buy to play or having a monthly sub. You'll never be able to completely eliminate folks from creating multiple accounts, but you can make it costly and inconvenient.

Anything to reduce the number of alts would be great.

@GamerSeuss To clarify, I mean that either there should be no alts or that the alts should be reduced to 1 per planet. A lot of people would be upset because they want the power to create alts, but I think the benefit of alts is vastly outweighed by the detriment they pose.

Interesting thread. Personally, I'm still committed to Syndesia and it's where Meridian intends to set up shop.

I'm not too discouraged by what's gone on in Discord and in global chat. You've gotta budget for some manner of obnoxious toxicity since it's become so inherent to gamer culture; I generally tune it out and the surplus can and should be dealt with by @Specter and the moderators.

Spitballing what I'd like to see on Syndesia as I sip my Bang:

• Complex city management. Unlike many other sandbox MMOs that promise territory control, managing a city should be demanding and effortful. You should be able to lose cities/regions to external threats or internal decay and no city should be able to run on autopilot. This would discourage a lot of guilds from trying to gobble up towns with impunity if managing the territory requires not only substantial material resources but hands-on administration as well. Too many games are about conquering; Fractured should concern itself at least as much with governing.

• Friendly fire and collision mechanics. Personally, too often battles and wars are absolute bedlam; simply a matter of the bigger group spamming AOEs with impunity against the smaller group until they win or, by some miracle, lose. I think it would be more interesting and demand more strategy if collision mechanics and friendly fire were considerations for any fighting force. Terrain would matter more, zergs would have to be warier of bottlenecks, smaller groups would have to take care not to be surrounded, and every party would have to be much more thoughtful about what abilities they use and when, lest they thin their own ranks.

• Scattered inns/taverns/small towns/homesteads. While regions and their capital cities should be the player powerhouses, Syndesia should be pockmarked with various isolated land parcels. Places that could be claimed by solo players or small groups and transformed into inns, taverns, homesteads, or even small towns. Going to a hearth at a tavern could let you respec or heal from poisons/diseases and perhaps toggle respawn points. Homesteads could afford more to solo players or small groups than the more common single home, but also not nearly as much as a city. These land parcels would have to be claimed or purchased and built and maintained like any other building. Taxes could feed into the nearest city.

• No fast travel. Ditch the harbors and any other means of fast travel. It undermines logistics considerations and the challenge of long-distance travel. Gamers always seek the path of least resistance and, so far, harbors have not proven to be prohibitively or reasonably expensive. Even supposing it remains a "one way ticket" so to speak, it's a tremendous advantage: people can skip to one side of the continent to the nearest harbor of their resource or siege target or whatever, build the siege weapons and wagons from local resources, and then only have to concern themselves with the march back. It also eliminates the need for...

• Niche professions like traveling merchants or merchant guilds. Fractured has more potential than to simply devolve into an unimaginative Albion clone. Design a system that incentivizes people to adopt niche roles. Gently discourage all but committed administrators and rulers from taking cities upon themselves by creating rewarding roles for solo players, small groups, and other guilds. If distance matters and disparate resources are not easily secured by any single group, traveling merchants might take it on themselves to fill the void with a lucrative outcome.

• No alts or allow one character per planet. This is more of a general game design I'd like to see; but the content lost by players having the opportunity to casually create alts can't be easily calculated; the ripple effect is enormous. Again, gamers are often prone to min-maxing and other forms of the path of least resistance. Moreover, they tend to be quite anti-social or selectively social. Why barter with a skilled crafter in another town or in another guild or in the same town or same guild when you don't know them... when you can just create an alt to serve as your own personal crafter instead?

• A viable path for a life of crime... if you can manage the risk. Unlike some, I'd like a Syndesia that has to deal with a criminal element. Highwaymen, bandits, raiders, all manner of scum and villainy from so-inclined solo players, small groups, and guilds. I think this is an intriguing form of content for both victim and perpetrator. The sole threat to cities and individuals should not be from other cities and empires. But Syndesia is not Tartaros and the distinction should be that criminals assume a very real risk by adopting that lifestyle. I support a robust bounty system that is prohibitively expensive to Syndesia's criminals... should they get caught. I don't support a system that auto-zaps criminals into jail upon committing crimes; I don't support an invisible wall that prevents criminals from ganking their prey. I think players should have to think twice before venturing out into the wilds, alone, to harvest resources for an hour. But I also think the perpetrators should think twice before engaging in their deviant behavior. If they get caught, the consequences should be quite punitive and should keep the criminal element viable but meaningfully constrained so that it doesn't become a plague that kills Syndesia's population or drives them off.

@PeachMcD I tagged both of them in Discord when this post was made.

@Rife I support "criminals" being bounty hunters/hitmen/whatever; contracts should not be an inherently noble function. I should be able to play as a scheming politician who hires a notorious PKer to gank a merchant caravan or some such; there should be a market for such things.

@Rife All I can say is that every vaguely-sandbox MMO I've ever played, from Mortal Online to Albion Online, has always had more active griefers and gankers than Good Samaritans actively hunting those griefers and gankers down on behalf of the griefed and ganked. (Otherwise griefing and ganking wouldn't be nearly as lamented in the sandbox MMO community...)

Do you have a list of games where your proposed system has been implemented and worked?

Alexian, Governor of Zenith, unable to add the missing corner of the palisade of Zenith.

@GamerSeuss said in Let's talk business! (And the lack of it):

I'm all for making Harbors only bridges to the other Continents.

That would be eminently more preferable.

If you do use them for fast travel around the existing continent, it should be passenger only, no wagons/carts/heavy items, only what's worn and in your backpack goes with you.

I think that's more or less how it is now. But for the reasons I and others have identified in this thread, any form of intracontinental fast travel is a bad idea. It is the path of least resistance for players and will rob the game of meaningful commerce and logistics.

@Rife said in Bounty Hunting & Jails - Official Feedback Thread:

Let's first talk about why the criminal system is too punishing. I think it's obvious that people who have 0 karma or a really low amount of negative karma shouldn't be punished too harshly, the minimum gold shouldn't be 2k, it should definitely be lower since some people have negative karma just from knocking down players without even executing them.

Completely agreed here. When merely flagging up triggers a bounty, the system is too punitive, too quickly.

But while that's a definite point to fix, it's not the main crux of the issue. The issue is that we're locking people out of the game. We should never lock people out of the game for playing a certain playstyle. You only lock people out of the game when they exploit/cheat. This is basically lumping the ganking/criminal playstyle as the same as cheaters/exploiters, which is a huge no no.

There are distinctions to be made between gankers/griefers and cheaters/exploiters, but the former can kill a game as surely as the latter can. Many sandbox MMOs have been killed by widespread griefing and ganking.

Wanting to constrain that playstyle through mechanical means and systemic deterrences doesn't require you to vilify "criminals"; it just requires recognition that, if left to their own devices unchecked, they will drive away players if history is any indication.

Like I mentioned in previous posts, just make them farm the gold if they cant pay, this way, they can still enjoy other content while essentially being locked out of all forms of PvP content until they pay their bail. Mind you, they can already do this with the current system, we're just now making it so that they have the option to do PvE content for gold if they don't have enough to pay their current bail, instead of just locking them out so that they'd play on their alts, or quit playing the game, till the bail time is over. This way we can also easily balance how strict the system is based on the bounty price. Obviously, when inflation happens and people start to hold more gold, the bounty system's prices should be adjusted accordingly.

I'm open to this, as I support the most minimally-stringent method to constrain widespread ganking and griefing on Syndesia. If the bail is prohibitively expensive and the effort involved is enough to keep the "criminal" population a relative minority, then I'm happy to ditch player jail-time.

But as I said previously, I don't think this will work because I don't believe it will be prohibitively difficult to raise the bail personally, call for bail payment from allies/friends/guildmates, or logging into an alt to wait out the time.

Not to mention that your proposal allows the ganker/griefer in question to actively play the game; what makes you think that making the character farm the gold will be so unpleasant as to deter future misconduct?

So that solves the "too punishing" side of things. Now let's discuss why it's not "punishing enough". I think here @LonelyCookie raised a point, whereby the system only happens when a criminal is caught after the deed. There is nothing being done for the victim. This is why good-aligned players want a stricter system, because they feel like the only way they are protected is if the criminal system has an insane punishment system. This shouldn't actually be the case.

The problem right now relies on the bounty hunter system. We call it a bounty hunter system, but people who sign up for bounty hunters are actually called sheriffs. Sheriffs are not the same as bounty hunters. One is basically hunting criminals for personal gain, while the other is actually there to protect those who need protection. What good aligned players need is a protection system. So we don't need bounty hunters, we really just need sheriffs.

Basically what we need is a new tab on Socials that allow players to find Sheriffs to protect them when they are farming. Basically a tab that lists active Sheriffs who are online, and players can message Sheriffs asking for protection in return for a percentage of the loot they make for example.

This is a win-win situation for all. Players now get protection. Sheriffs and Criminals both get to PvP and have things more exciting.

Tl;DR : Criminal system is both too punishing and not giving enough protection. Solutions :

• Abolish jail time, make criminals farm for bail if they cant bail/dont have friends to bail them while being locked out of all pvp content
• Protection system that allows players to easily get in touch with Sheriffs to protect them while farming in return for some compensation if they so choose.

Respectfully, I don't agree with this at all.

Your proposal here is essentially that people who don't want to be griefed or ganked or killed should simply spam help requests in game chat and rely on Good Samaritans to keep the "criminal" element in check.

I'm not aware of a single meaningful example where this sort've system has ever worked. In my personal experience, the Good Samaritan to Criminal ratio is always heavily lopsided in favor of criminals because people generally are (1) self-interested and (2) more inclined to engage in escapist "bad behavior" in a video game as opposed to committing time, effort, and energy to working as some sort've pre-emptive bodyguard/mall cop.

"Pre-emptive" security for people should come in the form of allies/friends/guild mates. Bounty hunters should exist for goal-oriented, financially-motivated player-killers after the fact.

Again, solid feedback all around. Cities are the crown jewel of Fractured, so it's imperative we get this right.

Cities are much too small. This was my fear before the Alpha began. I appreciate the sentiment behind transforming the cities into regional capitals, but whether or not that aspect is preserved, the city's walled maximum area needs to be greatly expanded. It was reduced from 256x256m2 to 160x160m2. That's... a significant reduction.

To me, current cities too closely resemble Albion Online cities in that they're just glorified crafting stations that the local residents use when necessary and then immediately dip. In previous tests, cities were intended to be crafting hubs, processing hubs, trading hubs, political hubs, and even residential and social hubs. But now, cities feel entirely too cramped and too useless.

I also think player houses carry entirely too much utility; as others have noted, players can just cram a smelter into every empty square inch on their property; it's preposterous that mere player houses can rival or exceed the crafting utility of cities, which is impractical and unrealistic.

Additionally, Governors are too disempowered when it comes to residents outside the city. The notion that rival guilds/enemy guilds/hostiles can just set up shop right outside the city in the residential plots and that city's Governor is helpless to do anything about it is absurd. Even the proffered compromise, that Governors can have those residents killed in between their houses and the city, is insufficient. Theoretically, zerg guilds could leverage their vast numbers to camp around a potential siegeable target and that Governor would be extremely hard-pressed to do anything meaningful about it.

QOL improvements I support include a city wide chat, city-wide noticeboard for "permanent" announcements, and a city registrar that lists city residents to the Governor.

Solid feedback all around.

Locking the marketplace behind several tech tree layers was a bad idea; it should be among the first accessible buildings for cities for both practical and "realistic" reasons.

Additionally, untethering resource nodes from cities/regions means that players and rival cities/guilds can harvest those resources directly, forgoing the need to interact with others. As much as I like and want unprotected resources, it has emphasized broad gamer anti-social tendencies; why trade or engage with others on a wide scale when you can take some extra time to do it yourself?

In hindsight, I think it was a bit naïve for any of us to assume that mere distance alone would compel players/groups/guilds/cities to trade with one another.

Then, of course, you throw harbors into the mix and it further deters trade. @Bardikens testified that the harbor prices are not prohibitively expensive; at 89% personal capacity, it cost him about 500g. That's... a hilariously insignificant amount of gold. You could zap yourself across the continent, march to the nearest resource node you want, build the carts there, harvest the node, and march back across the continent.

Points of emphasis for me, as of now:

• Put the marketplace at the lowest branch of the tech tree
• Ditch harbors; seriously, no need for fast travel
• We may need to revisit locking resources to cities so it prevents rival cities from harvesting them directly, forgoing trade
• Emphasize/incentivize niche roles like roaming merchants/merchant caravans/merchant guilds to travel between cities

I know I already tossed in my $0.02, but I scrounged around for 2 more.

Much of this is rehashed from my conversations with @MrFlako, @Nekrage, and @Rife, but I'd like feedback from others as well.

As a preface, I've been a staunch advocate for Fractured to implement "hardcore" gameplay mechanics like unit collision and total friendly fire (for alliances, guilds, and yes, even parties) for years. I completely oppose notions like linked gold funds aka the Global Wallet, universal markets aka the Linked Marketplace, and fast travel in any form, including Harbors. I have no interest in many QoL "improvements" like auto-stack, mass select, and most auto-functions.

In sum, I personally want Fractured to be a complex, thoughtful, inconvenient game where effort, logistics, and manpower must carefully considered and allocated, where no action is taken for granted.

In a perfect world, I'd love the notion of an "Anything Goes" game system where players could do whatever they wanted but where player-created and run social systems would create a largely orderly game where excess crime is severely curtailed by player actions as opposed to mechanical systems like prisons, etc.

...But I've never seen that happen.

As I've repeatedly mentioned on these forums and in Discord, it's important to remember that Fractured is a video game. So whereas real life would technically qualify as "full loot PvP," where no invisible wall or magical shield is protecting my neighbor from me breaking open the door, robbing them or worse, general goodwill and the threat of consequences keeps me and the vast majority of others from doing that. Most people in most places are able to operate throughout their lives unmolested by crime or danger. Criminals represent a tiny, infinitesimal fraction of the global population and are only disproportionately active in very few areas at very few times.

^ This doesn't and probably can't exist in a video game, where criminals respawn after character death or can simply log into an alt character. The organic consequences that constrain criminals/griefers/gankers in real life don't exist in a video game. And if those constraints don't and can't organically exist, then they'll need to be mechanically imposed in order to keep Fractured's population content and reasonably high.

So short of things like single character accounts (which I also support) or permadeath (which I don't), we have to get creative to artificially constrain "criminal" behavior on Syndesia so that it doesn't run rampant as it probably will on Tartaros without also making it non-existent as it probably will be on Arboreus.

I support the notion of prisons because I like it conceptually. It makes sense to me. Since you can't permanently kill the player character or keep them from logging into another character, it seems to me that the best way to deter rampant crime is to remove playtime from the offending player if they're caught.

Some, like @MrFlako, @Nekrage, and @Rife suggest that this would cause players to quit the game. Perhaps they're right; but we also know that there's a correlation between unhemmed griefing and dead sandbox MMOs, so just letting criminals do whatever they want without prohibitive consequences is the wrong answer as well.

@Rife suggests just keeping it reduced to a fine/farming for the bail money. I support this if and only if it proves to work as a deterrent: if the bail is prohibitively expensive and keeps the griefing/ganking/"criminal" activity to a relative minimum and puts a healthy level of fear in aspiring criminals on Syndesia, then I'm fine with dispensing from real-time time-outs.

However, I genuinely don't believe the fines will work as an effective deterrent once the game launches. Players will presumably have the 20 Young hours to farm as much gold as possible or link up with powerful, wealthy zerg guilds. Once trading and markets come online, revenue streams and inflation increase and suddenly folks have plenty of ways to get the money needed to bail themselves out or bail out their friends.

But I'm willing to be convinced.

Other things I'd like to reiterate:

• I completely oppose criminals qualifying for a bounty simply by flagging for PvP on Syndesia. This is far too punitive; players should actually have to commit crimes to merit a bounty; simply indicating that you might commit a crime isn't sufficient.
• The bounty mechanic should be as much a challenge for the hunter as it is the hunted. Targets should not blip on every sheriff's radar automatically. Crimes should be local and so should bounties. Victims of those crimes should have to go to the nearest city and submit a bounty form: offender's name and coordinates of the crime. Bounty hunters should have to go to prisons and manually select the contract.
• Sheriffs should not be immediately visible to anyone, nor should criminals... mostly. Sheriffs should never be visible to John Q public. Criminals should be able to unflag until they reach extraordinary high levels of karma. Investigation and effort need to be put into this system.

Following up on this.

@Prometheus said in Bounty Hunting & Jails - Official Feedback Thread:

• Syndesia is a lawful planet. The criminal system exists to make player killing against new players, new characters that are just gaining knowledge, and so on extremely inconvenient, while keeping high-level hostile behavior possible, but risky. If you want a place with no consequences, Tartaros will be the planet for you!

This is a great premise that justifies a robust bounty/prison system. Crime should be a viable playstyle on Syndesia, but extremely risky for the criminal in question.

Since Fractured is a video game and criminals can either respawn after character death or the player can hop into an alt character, the game will have to incorporate creative mechanics to deter widespread crime.

Taking a player's playtime from them as a punishment for those crimes seems to be the only effective deterrence a game can possibly come up with, so I personally support prohibitively expensive real-time sentences.

Some potential issues I see include:

• Criminals bailing themselves out of prison. Some of the zerg guilds are evil and likely have the resources to fund criminals so that they can casually bail themselves out of jail if they're caught. To help combat this, perhaps the prisoner should be further inconvenienced by having to call for an ally, guild mate, or friend to bail them out in person.

• The existence of alts seems to undermine the playtime penalty. Many players use alts and it seems quite likely that an imprisoned criminal who can't bail themselves out or get someone else to do so will simply jump onto an alt and continue to play unmolested. Perhaps the penalty should span the entire account?

• A player currently doesn't actually have to commit a crime to merit a potential bounty. Per @Harleyyelrah, simply flagging up for PvP means that you earn a bounty. This is far too extreme and criminalizes potential action as opposed to real action. A character should actually have to engage in criminal behavior to earn the consequences.

Alexian, Governor of Zenith. We're a rank 6 city with palisades unlocked, yet this is the error I get:

We're unable to complete our shrine because we can't physically drop the stones on the incomplete blue torches.

Unable to mine two stone nodes at the following coordinates: