Posts made by d3Sync

@PeachMcD said in Spell Tomes/Books?:

@GamerSeuss said in Spell Tomes/Books?:

. Lair creatures would be the Legends and Bosses, and possibly chests or other types of lootables within certain specific home base settings. For instance, a Bear might spawn, and after you killed it, a search of the area might eventually lead you to a bear's cave, and in the cave is a pile of refuse and junk that when searched might contain more extensive 'treasures' than what you would find on the creatures themselves in the wild.

This is, again, if the Devs want to go through the details of putting lairs that are searchable sprinkled in the wild...or chests that periodically refill and become researchable in Tribal centers and old ruins.

Now THIS is an idea I love. Might be best as a later addition but makes total sense.

Added benefit of giving folks a reason to keep dealing with lower-level mobs after the 100% knowledge is gained - if killing a bear, a goblin, a skel, or a fox spawned a nearby lair to seek out and raid for stuff the creature had collected from unwary travelers....

Hard to find a down side from here. Thanks GamerSeuss!

Yeah, it's a good way to do things. I suggested chests and caves in the past. I'd certainly rather have things drop that make sense. So a corpse of a fallen hero, or a chest hidden away in a cave would be reasonable.

@GamerSeuss said in Spell Tomes/Books?:

@WaterMerchant Also, to add to what you said (which I totally agree with, by the by)

Gold in this game is one of the easiest assets to acquire. Find a humanoid mob and just focus-grind that area if you want, and you can easily earn 1000s of gold in a day. Goblins can be tough in some places for early characters, but once a character has been around the block a couple times, tactics vs Goblins aren't that hard to come up with solo, and as a small to medium group, they become a cakewalk...then we look at places like the Veil of Shadows with the Zombies and Skeletons everywhere, you can probably grind out an 8 hr session there once you get even half-way decent equipment, or a couple buddies to go with you, and easily clear close to 10k gold.

This is true. But the conversation wasn't about how much gold you could grind in a day. Gold is a mere representation of what something is worth in cost and labor. In a player run economy, that cost is decided by what the player can sell something for. So it's not really relevant, as the cost for a spell could be 50k. It could be 100k.

Next, the Market places are going to probably be on a gold standard, even if Bartering is the norm, valuations will be done in gold, and someone will want to just buy stuff over trading as its simple and fast, so a dedicated merchant or small merchant's guild could amass quite a sum of gold for buying all the base skills/spells in the game early on, and they might even hand such items out for free to their newly joined members as a signing bonus, or to encourage those members to be the more militant arm of their guilds.

This is true. I already made a point of this and I think it's actually a net positive. It helps to give guilds the upper hand in recruitment and they can even offer certain rare spells as higher ranks in the guild, as a promotion. Since, in my idea, you'd have to specialize into Inscription, upgrade the spell fully, and have all the resources to make it.. It will be pretty guild or large group exclusive. But every now and then, these spells will make their way into the market at exorbitant costs, giving options to the peons. Despite them being quite expensive options.

Buying and selling skills just seems like a bad choice all around. I see no pros really to it, and all cons, even the perceived pros by some people end up being detrimental to the gameplay as it stands. You don't have to grind a monster to unlock it, generally no more than 100 kills of a creature is all it will take to get all they have to teach you, and often it's less than that right now. I want to explore, and encourage exploring.

It worked just fine in Ultima Online. Inscriptioners made mage tomes. They made spell scrolls to put in your mage tomes. They were a market item for a gold cost. It actually didn't affect peoples willingness to travel around. Dynamite can make the creation of those scrolls much more difficult than UO if they'd like. That would be my suggestion. And they have stated that UO is a major influence. So it's not out of the realm of possibility.

I think it depends on your definition of grind. Killing something 100 times to reveal a hidden spell is absolutely a grind. And I think most people will still find their own spells out in the wild, with a small number supplementing it with a purchase of a spell. I find it difficult to imagine that you can't perceive a single positive from this. That thinking is so one sided, it tells me that you don't want to see a positive, even if it's there. Especially since I have explained that purchasing a spell doesn't give you upgrades to it. It also wouldn't give you any knowledge of the creature, so you wouldn't know it's weaknesses. You'd still have to explore and kill that creature. You either didn't read what I said, or you're ignoring it.

Finally, to answer a comment from before as well, Fractured is not actually billed as a Primary PvP game with a lot of PvE elements added in (or however he put it, not looking back right now) but rather, it was and has been billed as a game that tries to equally (that's EQUALLY) support all 3 major playstyles out there, PvP, PvE, and those who like elements of both.

@WaterMerchant said in Spell Tomes/Books?:

@d3Sync
You're once again making assumptions. How can you possibly disagree when you don't even know what the different levels between spells will be. Incase you're confused here is a quote from Prometheus.
Hold on - what we meant in the Spotlight is that each ability should be as unique as possible within Fractured - for instance, there shouldn't be a "fireball" and a "major fireball" that is just better than the lesser version. Of course many abilities will resemble those you can find in other RPGs or MOBAs - buffs, debuffs, shields, beams, rays, projectiles, summons, mobility, status effects - they're some of the elements we're working with, and they're all well-tested concepts. It's the Knowledge System (character creation / progression / re-building) and the interactions with the environment that make Fractured different in this case - other than the fact that there's no real sandbox MMO with ARPG combat out there yet :slight_smile:

I also can't see why you think removing the need to go to other planets doesn't affect exploration. "You're insinuating that there won't be a reason to explore if we give players the option to purchase a base spell." You shouldn't be looking at it like a base spell. The level 1 form might be better than the level 3 form as I said before. For example a level 1 might be a high damage single target while the level 3 could be a lower damage but AoE ability to make an example.

"Paper? Ink? A deep cost in crafting perks? Enchanting resources? Of course this initial cost will be reached at some point."

Yes the issue of price can be changed if the crafting materials aren't easy to acquire, but there is also no crafting professions in the game. Correct me if I'm wrong but i'm pretty sure any one can craft anything as long as they have the recipe and materials. There isn't going to be a crafter or enchanter skill tree that provides anything other than titles.

When it comes down to it, I don't think having skills as a commodity will be healthy for the game. And making it out to be that adding short cuts to progression lowers the barrier for entry into this game when RPG's are all about progression is kinda silly to me. If it came down to vote I would keep the current system rather than what you're suggesting.

Projection much?

I never once assumed what the upgrades will be to the spells. I took what was said directly from Prometheus as an example of what could be, but not what will be.

You tell me not to assume things (which I'm not), and then assume things yourself.

I also never once said that removing the need to travel to other worlds was in my inscription idea. Not once. There is no where in this entire thread where I stated that. In fact, I have acknowledged that world travel probably will fit into upgrades, as has been said by Prometheus multiple times with this :

"If this were to be a 'post-launch' game mechanic, like a DLC, then most players would have gotten most of their abilities to begin with. Perhaps they just can't get to Tartaros or Arboreus in order to get that one spell."

So this is again, you making assumptions. And this is proof that you are mischaracterizing my argument by making things up.

"There isn't going to be a crafter or enchanter skill tree that provides anything other than titles."

Why not? I've heard Prometheus talk about a crafting perk tree. Either his plans changed or you weren't aware that he said it. This is alpha. Things will change. We just had a major city overhaul, but they can't add a profession in the future? Yeah, I'm not buying it.

If you want to argue the idea. I'm all for that. But please do not misrepresent my argument. Do not tell lies about what I did and didn't say. I would not do that to you, so have enough respect to not do that to me.

@WaterMerchant said in Spell Tomes/Books?:

@d3Sync

The thing that you're missing though is that the base spells aren't necessarily worse or better than a level 3 spell. The devs are making it so each of them are situational and might be more valuable at level 1 than at level 3 according to your build. Secondly money is available anywhere, the argument "That player would actually have to have gathered enough gold to make a purchase" doesn't justify removing the exploration factor since you remove any achievement you would have by just buying. Instead of having a unique system where the only way to get stronger is to explore new worlds and fight new enemies, you're suggesting that people should be able to acquire almost everything they can want, just by acquiring enough gold. You're also assuming the price will be high, the only difficult part is acquiring the skill itself. The price will be coming from the cost of materials not the person's knowledge of the skill as they'll just be able to keep printing the tome until they run out of paper, which I highly doubt will be expensive.

I disagree with you. Base spells won't be better, otherwise there won't be a reason to upgrade them. Even if they were situational, players will want those spells. I watched a Q&A about upgraded spells, and that they may involve cooldown reductions. If that's the case, then that is a major advantage and it will be sought after. What are we actually losing when looking at the repercussions of this system? The grind of killing a mob 1000 times? In order to learn the damage types, resistances, etc, you'll have to do that anyways. So we're losing what? The actual visual representation of seeing a creature and lessening the initial grind to reveal a hidden spell. I thought people didn't like grinds.

You're insinuating that there won't be a reason to explore if we give players the option to purchase a base spell. That doesn't make sense, and I've addressed that already because upgraded spells have tasks required of them. There are plenty of reasons to explore. Legends, cities, resource nodes, trading caravans, combat POI's, mounts, gathering enchanting resources. And in the future, dungeons, caves, portal gates, naval travel, inter-world and outer-world travel, and probably much more.

Why couldn't it be expensive?

Paper? Ink? A deep cost in crafting perks? Enchanting resources? Of course this initial cost will be reached at some point. Spell scrolls could be printed with reckless abandon.

What if it required a special item that could only be obtained by difficult tasks? Low chance drop?

Now you have a high initial cost and a high maintenance cost to providing these scrolls.

Now the price goes up further, potentially making it even harder for small groups or solo players to buy them. But still possible. I'm looking at ways to break down the gates to end game and make this game more accessible long term. And also not ruining the experience for everyone who supported the game.

@WaterMerchant said in Spell Tomes/Books?:

@d3Sync
First this would fall into the category of scope creep. Adding new professions and features when the game isn't even out yet isn't going to be "all positives". Second the con is what you literally just said, "Removing the exploration factor of finding the spell yourself". You might disagree but not everyone wants the need to explore to be removed because 1 high level character already explored everything and is now selling skill books.

I never once implied that if it were to be implemented, that it needed to be done now.

I do recognize that something like this would affect exploration to a degree. But again, this would only offer you the ability to unlock the base spell. All upgrade requirements and monster secrets would still need to be unlocked to make it the most viable. The impact would be minimal.

I do think that the option of buying a spell may be beneficial to a lot of people. Also keep in mind that buying a spell has a monetary cost attached to it. That player would actually have to have gathered enough gold to make a purchase. And in addition, the spell would have to be available to be purchased. Since cost is player defined, I think it's likely that it will be hard for any solo player or even small group of players to purchase all of the spells in the game. Imagine the gold cost in doing something like that. It's not feasible. Especially if we're looking at hundreds of spells down the road. This would be a supplement to game play. Not a primary means of game play.

If this were to be a 'post-launch' game mechanic, like a DLC, then most players would have gotten most of their abilities to begin with. Perhaps they just can't get to Tartaros or Arboreus in order to get that one spell.

Every mechanic has a 'con'. It's just determining how impactful that 'con' would be, and if the list of 'pros' would overshadow it. In this case, I think it could.

@Zephyron said in Upgrade Eternal Pack:

@GamerSeuss

Fair enough. You're entitled to your opinion. Adding new features and then handing them out retroactively in no way devalues or "emotionally slaps" people who already paid for the pack though. No offense, but that's kind of silly. I highly doubt any eternal pack owners will be on here complaining over getting some extra goodies if that were to happen. All good either way though, I'm fine with the champ pack.

Especially considering that they just recently changed the value of the lower packs in order to give some of them access to the alpha tests. So Dynamite has already set a precedent of changing the values of pack rewards.

I think it's bad practice to lower values. But making them better on the other hand. There is nothing wrong with that.

I think it could work.

Should it or shouldn't it be implemented? Not for me to say. But if you want to theory-craft...

All abilities would be trade-able. How? Inscription profession, maybe enchanting secondary?

If you've unlocked the ability, fully upgraded it, and gone far enough into the crafting perk tree, you can make spell scrolls.

Upon consuming such a scroll, your beastiary is updated with only the hidden spell. You can unlock it with the appropriate amount of KP. All upgrades to said spell must be accomplished by you, as it will only give you the base version. Thus, it will still require you to travel and discover the secrets of the creature involved.

That setup fixes the issue with removing the exploration factor of finding the spell yourself. You may not have to find it naturally, but upgrading the spell and learning the creatures secrets would force you to make the trip at a later time. It will give the option to people who aren't part of large groups to experience the base spells. I suspect that a lot of large guilds wouldn't be interested in giving their knowledge out, so the people who are willing to make money on their knowledge may be quite rare. Driving the cost of the spell scrolls up. And even more so if that spell is a boss mob spell. It will be an interesting addition to the player market.

I was under the impression that Dynamite markets this game as a PvP game, with PvE elements. That they want horizontal progression and they want to reduce the power gap as much as possible. It seems that this would ideally fit that mold. New profession. New items. More complex market. Bridge the power gap. Solo's get options. Guilds retain the power. It may also add to guild ranks, with guilds having more access to this profession, they could tie guild ranks to equipping their members with not only equipment, but knowledge as well.

What are the cons?

I'll settle for a dev update..

@GamerSeuss said in Spell Tomes/Books?:

@d3Sync said in Spell Tomes/Books?:

Also, Dynamite seems to be breaking that rule with knowledge point books and tomes already. As PeachMcD pointed out.

Except they are not breaking the rule...These kinds of drops are being found only on Legends, and as I said above, it makes more sense of a Boss/Legend type creature to drop that kind of loot.

I appreciate your opinion.

Do you know if this topic has been discussed in this past, and do you have an opinion on it?

@GamerSeuss said in Spell Tomes/Books?:

It goes back to the philosophy of only having creatures drop items that make sense for that creature. Bears and Wolves and Giant Spiders would not be carrying around spell books unless they were of the Boss/Legend variety where a treasure trove might be expected.

Right..

Which is why I addressed this issue specifically in my original post with an alternative solution...

Also, Dynamite seems to be breaking that rule with knowledge point books and tomes already. As PeachMcD pointed out.

@Jignutz said in What exactly is the purpose and principle of cities and personal lands?:

@d3Sync I seem to remember in a very recent video the devs saying cities would have unique crafting buildings in them, and could set tax rates for their use. It sounds like the devs could easily move the slider for how common sieges will be by adjusting the profitability of owning a city.

They may move the slider. But I'm not convinced that gold is going to be enough to start a war. It may be secondary reward for winning, but not really relevant in what causes tension between regions.

@PeachMcD said in Spell Tomes/Books?:

@d3Sync - I think that's pretty much what the Legend drops are, innit? Parts of Lore books that give kp when opened?

Yes. I wasn't talking about only just the legends.

Old discussion I know.

I agree with the OP though. Looks like the ground textures looked more like dirt. It created a stark contrast between the ground and the grass and plants. Which in my opinion, created a sense of layered texture to the world that it now lacks. Now grassy areas are washed out and the ground texture looks very similar to the grass and plants in the area. The world lacks contrasting environments. It actually tires me out and traveling through these areas becomes quite boring.

Hoping that the developers continue to add variation to all of their textures and potentially upgrade them in the future when performance allows.

Has there been any talk about the idea of adapting the ability system into a physical item?

For instance, instead of just adding an entry to your beastiary and unlocking it through knowledge points, what about abilities being dropped by mobs in tome or book form?

Unlocking the book or tome would require the same amount of knowledge points. This would update your beastiary.

As a byproduct of this change, you'd be introducing these items to the economy, allowing all players to unlock an ability if they are willing to pay the cost. However, the cost of upgrading that ability wouldn't change, so while solo and small group players could get the ability, even if they couldn't complete the content (boss mob), they may still not be able to upgrade the ability due to difficulty or lack of support.

Maybe a book being dropped by a bear doesn't make sense. But perhaps a new system could be introduced where players could create such tomes/books and sell them.

Inscription?

@GamerSeuss said in First Impressions on the new City System:

Remember, too, that Harbors will more than likely be the main way to get from one continent on a world to another, with no land bridges joining them together.

In the case of intercontinental/interworld travel, I would allow a small amount of goods to travel with someone, with a hefty fee involved on top of the fee already charged for your own safe passage however. Of course, this would make sense even in game terms because intercontinental ships are larger and have more cargo space than coastal ships that just sail around near landfall.

Which should put immense value on harbors. Which means any city with a harbor will be stupid for not maintaining it. I'm hoping that's ultimately the plan, and my concerns aren't warranted.

Though I wouldn't be shocked if there were other means of inter-world travelling.

@Xzait said in First Impressions on the new City System:

@d3Sync said in First Impressions on the new City System:

@Xzait said in First Impressions on the new City System:

I reckon having the harbours detached from cities is a very smart move. I never used them last major test, because 3/4 of them were dead and the 1/4 that remained (for the first half of the test at least) were far too expensive, with the cities that controlled them maxing out the tax rate, except for maybe 1 city. Yes, the rates for harbours were reduced later... but having them detached from cities means that player greed won't have an effect on them, reguardless of where you go. It will be fair for everyone. I probably still won't use them, as I am not a gold gathering sort of player for the most part... but at least now, I will have the option to do so if I want, wherever I might want to go.

@d3Sync commented "Harbors being able to be used on day one makes little sense to me as a benefit, as no one will have the resources to move people around on day one."

you are definately wrong in assuming this. Some members in my guild had over 2k gold by the end of the first day of the last major test. It is more than enough to pay for a harbour fee. Just because you don't farm gold like it matters... doesn't mean other players won't. I am sure some players will farm some monsters after they leave the starting town and use a harbour if the town they will settle is far away from either starting town. They could spawn at west starting town and farm goblins for a bit, gathering some useful materials as they do, to take to their town and put in the safe when it is built.

I guess I'm just against using a bad mechanic, just because I can. I know that's just my opinion, but I never really liked fast travel all that much in games. The more fast travel you have, the less likely people will meet each other traveling in the wild.

I would have to disaggree with this statement. When there are more than just a handful of players playing Fractured (because it is Alpha), I can see groups of people meeting at the harbours themselves, because they are useful. Someone might wait at a harbour to see if anyone appears and might want to go on a raid with them. Someone might have a friend on the opposite side of the island, and can wait for them there, instead of having to wait potentially 2-4h (or more) longer, waiting for their friend to walk all the way over.

I'd caution you to not misquote or mischaracterize my argument.

I never said I didn't want harbors in the game, nor that I find no value in harbors. In fact, I think harbors should be more valuable.

To borrow your scenario of more people playing and less cities populating the continent, harbors should be more plentiful. And with other means of travel discussed here, like in-land portals.. I feel that would be more than enough fast travel for everyone involved. If you've read the greater discussion, you'd notice that I've hedged on my opinion of harbors not being city-bound for testing purposes.

@Xzait said in First Impressions on the new City System:

I reckon having the harbours detached from cities is a very smart move. I never used them last major test, because 3/4 of them were dead and the 1/4 that remained (for the first half of the test at least) were far too expensive, with the cities that controlled them maxing out the tax rate, except for maybe 1 city. Yes, the rates for harbours were reduced later... but having them detached from cities means that player greed won't have an effect on them, reguardless of where you go. It will be fair for everyone. I probably still won't use them, as I am not a gold gathering sort of player for the most part... but at least now, I will have the option to do so if I want, wherever I might want to go.

@d3Sync commented "Harbors being able to be used on day one makes little sense to me as a benefit, as no one will have the resources to move people around on day one."

you are definately wrong in assuming this. Some members in my guild had over 2k gold by the end of the first day of the last major test. It is more than enough to pay for a harbour fee. Just because you don't farm gold like it matters... doesn't mean other players won't. I am sure some players will farm some monsters after they leave the starting town and use a harbour if the town they will settle is far away from either starting town. They could spawn at west starting town and farm goblins for a bit, gathering some useful materials as they do, to take to their town and put in the safe when it is built.

I guess I'm just against using a bad mechanic, just because I can. I know that's just my opinion, but I never really liked fast travel all that much in games. The more fast travel you have, the less likely people will meet each other traveling in the wild. Which really hurts a great sandbox staple, emergent game play. And to be honest, it also ruins all the good hard work that the world designers put into the project. However, for the sake of getting people around the map in order to test, I could understand the change. But not as a permanent change. If a harbor fee is too expensive, too bad. That's how I look at it. If a city doesn't want to make any money from people using their harbor, then that is their loss.

I just hope that they recognize that they shouldn't commit to these changes, as the ghost towns had more to do with the game being in alpha, and less to do with it being hard to run a city. And again, if it was just for testing, then I'd agree, it's smart. I just wish I could get confirmation.

@dallonz88 said in What exactly is the purpose and principle of cities and personal lands?:

@GamerSeuss said in What exactly is the purpose and principle of cities and personal lands?:

I think that being able to loot the banks when you take a town should be part of the spoils of war.

That would work only in games where there is periodically a full reset for anybody, but if you play an MMO and after a year of loot you loose everything, the first thing you think about is to rage-quit the game...
That would mean there won't be guild competition, just a big one owning the game.

Getting a city should net you, the victor, some tangible rewards.

You won the siege, the town, town resources, and you'll slow down competitors. That's ENOUGH!
At last, you probably deserve an additionally full-generated prize.

Rember that MMO doesn't expect any "winner", just competition... and too much of it become toxic!

I think we're all just pissing in the wind here.

We don't really know much about the siege system, and I have little doubt that it will change dramatically after testing it.

I think most sieges will happen early in the games lifespan. Initially for territory. But remember that reputation is important, especially when everyone is playing on one server. So, if there is a massive guild that is continuously going to war with other cities, that will create some tension in the community. Guilds will band together. There will be an inherent balance for the most part.

I'd say, it won't matter how much is in a city bank if residents can transfer it to their house before a siege to prevent it from being lost.

I really do believe that sieges won't be that common. Outside of territory expanse, I believe they will only be done with intent on wiping a guild or city from the map in all out war.

Why not? Well, because city resource nodes are now harvestable by non-residents. PvP will be done around those nodes, and sieges won't be necessary. Unless Dynamite decides to change that back to city-only again. Things tend to change often though, so that's why I opened with my original statement.

We're all just pissing in the wind.

@Zori said in How click intensive is Fractured?:

@d3Sync bye bye good/neutral alignment.

Easy solution, area loot for yourself only. I'm sure that's not difficult to code.

@Ostaff said in First Impressions on the new City System:

@d3Sync said in First Impressions on the new City System:

harbor, and solo players can also use the harbor to safely avoid the thick of things in the middle of the continents without having to run wide around the parameter of the map to get anywhere. All Harbors are thus o

I think having harbors pre-made for the alphas is totally fine. In fact, I would like to have a lot of things already pre-made for alphas as they are only for a short amount of time and having to re-do the same things over and over that are time laborious kinda keeps us from actually testing the new features of the alpha.

Now, upon release, then I would agree with you and harbours should be put back into the city infrastructure, as during that time we won't have "ghost" towns like we do in the alphas. If we do, then it basically means the game died and the developers have a lot bigger problem on their hands than harbours not being used.

Fair point.

I wasn't considering that it was potentially a change meant specifically for alpha testing.