Posts made by FibS

@holyhong said in Will there be Community Servers or only Official Servers?:

@FibS I think LoA devs cannot be sued for intellectual property issues if third parties (=community devs) are infringing copyright.

Perhaps not yet - but the EU has just passed a law that makes web sites liable specifically for the copyright-relevant activities of their users regardless of the site's Terms of Service, which will encourage other nations to follow suit if they haven't already, and it's only a small step from that to punishing the provider of a tool for the copyright activities of people who use said tool, also regardless of their Terms of Service.

And as long as community is not doing it on a commercial/economic basis it looks like fair-dealing in terms of copyright law to me.

Moving from EU law to US law as I don't know how the EU handles fair use...

... it doesn't make a lick of difference whether or not a copyright infringement is commercial; that is not one of the criteria for fair use, and even if it was, fair use does not exist until you are already in the courtroom because it's a legal defense; it won't stop you from being sued.

It's like how if you injure someone in self-defense, that won't stop an officer from arresting you if he finds cause to do so. Claiming self-defense at that time will in fact only prove to him that you injured the person and thus justify your arrest. Claiming self-defense will only help you after you're dragged into the courtroom and are now defending against the assault / battery charge.

Look at so much Steam-Workshop content, for instance. Paradox Universe's "Stellaris", as an example, got a fan-created Warhammer 40k and Star Trek setting and either side is facing copyright issues.

They will soon enough! Steam will be strong-armed into removing the items from its listing.

Besides, who knows, in case such copyright problems arise, maybe community (will) sort it with copyright owners officially; huge fanbases are often willing to donate/pay/pledge for their beloved projects (as we do for Fractured right now )

If the community is able to license work, then that's an entirely different story.

Unfortunately most of the time this is not feasible, depending on the company you're trying to work with, the quality and content focus of your product compared to the original brand's image, and the diplomatic ability of your team.

In my case, the reason I prefer to play solo is because 1. exploring the game world only makes sense as a solo enterprise and 2. randos make the game less enjoyable, not more. Not every person plays the game at the same pace or for the same reasons, but group instances (especially in the endgame) disproportionately skew the player pool towards metagamers who kick you if you take 1 second too long because you actually want to hear an NPC dialogue or examine a neat architecture or are adjusting your skills or equipping a new dungeon set item or whatever.

I'm playing a game, not taking a math class, so I won't be constantly speedrun stratting every instant and you'll just have to deal with it.

This dissonance is less likely to happen if you've established connections with someone (guildmates etc.) before grouping up or over the course of several group instances with the same party members. I'm perfectly fine doing party instances with curated party members instead of the random queue.

I don't think there is anyone in the world who insists on 100% solo play only in an MMO - that's what Diablo clones are for. They won't have a good time in Fractured where such a fantasy is impossible.

@evolgrinz said in Hyping this new MMO :

@fibs I will have to disagree.
Hype might get you a pile of players at launch, but if people are disappointed, it will lead to bad reviews --

I'm sorry, are you aware that this is 2018? Nobody cares about reviews in 2018. Everyone already knows IGN's 10/10s are paid for and that most amateur reviews are from legions of 12yo kids who rate the game what they want it to be and not what it is.

That's why all the Jeff the Killer shovelware has 5 stars on the app store.

-- and many people would see the bad reviews and will not try it out even long after the game launch. Just as an example, look at No Man's Sky and that whole fiasco at launch.

You must be joking.

Are you denying that No Man's Sky was absolutely terrible? Hype didn't kill that game; not delivering on a single promise made, and actually devolving from the first reveal trailer, killed that game. It would still have bad reviews and no players without the hype because it is an innately bad game that nobody wants to play.

Similarly, Mighty No. 9 wasn't a failure because it was hyped too much, it was a failure because it delivered absolutely nothing it factually promised and ate up a massive budget to put out a bargain bin shovelware.

Correlation ("these games were heavily hyped and also failed") does not equal causation ("these games failed because they were heavily hyped"). You just don't know about games that failed terribly if they weren't hyped enough for you to have heard about them.

So if there is no hype, then a bigger chance people will not get disappointed and people will leave good reviews, leading to more people wanting to play to see the praise of other players.

No, actually, that's simply not how it works, as every single last commercial game in history proves.

Most games that are extremely hyped and do not turn out to be scams like No Man's Sky and M#9 retain excellent reviews because kids with unrealistic expectations are only a minority of the player base, and because hype / fandom also causes a competent game to seem better than it really is thus improving its reviews. Good examples of this include Skyrim and Warframe.

A game that is not hyped has no player base to give reviews to begin with and is doomed to fail simply because it did not market itself. "Hype" is just a colloquial term for good marketing, from the perspective of the consumer.

well it won't be playable earlier than christmas so you'll get to unwrap the surprise then

@jetah said in [Haven't pledged? Want to upgrade, but not sure yet? Tell us why!]

the post sounds like the person just wants to spend sub 10$ and they'll 'play' it for a few hours and be done with it

which gives the game $10 and we lose nothing since we weren't gonna have that player anyway

or they'll demand a refund because 'it wasn't what they thought it was'

as long as not every single last one does this the game makes a net profit

DS needs testers who want to test the game knowing it'll have bugs and can write down how to duplicate a problem.

@jetah said in [Haven't pledged? Want to upgrade, but not sure yet? Tell us why!]

I'm glad it's out of your budget.

Why do people do this? It doesn't help the game at all either to try to silence criticism or to try to push potential players away.

@holyhong said in Will there be Community Servers or only Official Servers?:

@jetah and @FibS

Legends of Aria obviously does as a sandbox MMORPG

That's not quite correct.

You're not simply making a community server for Legends of Aria; you're making an entirely separate game, which may be as similar to or different from Legends of Aria as you like, within the limitations of the extensive modding support (most notably Lua scripting).

It's the same basic concept as an open-source game. That's completely different from an MMO that merely lets users host servers for the same game, which is basically unheard of.

And I think it's a pretty stupid idea that will segment their player base (resulting in dead individual servers), confuse everyone on the product identity of the game due to 12yos thinking they know better and/or mixing it with Death Note and ponies, and bring legal trouble to their door with the coming changes to copyright infringement and culpability in context of the Internet, but I hope it goes well for them. >_>

@evolgrinz said in Hyping this new MMO :

Hype is bad for a game. It will raise the expectations too high, what usually results in disappointment when a game comes out.

Disappointment is better than nobody even showing up to play. Hype it up I say!

Like I said in a previous poll topic, here's my refined version of @Flamerunner's race poll! It'll end Sunday July 15 at noon.

A few notes for your consideration:

• "Factions" are not strictly based on race or planet directly, but more on alignment. While each race begins with a certain alignment, it can be changed with some effort - both determining, and being determined by, the character's playstyle. Each of the three planets is particularly favorable to one alignment: Arboreus for Good, Syndesia for Neutral, Tartaros for Evil.
• While Beastmen are "born Good", a Beastman can become Evil and mutate into an Abomination. Like Demons, Abominations are largely confined to Tartaros with only limited time on Syndesia and near-complete exile from Arboreus.
• While Demons are "born Evil", a Demon can become Good and mutate into an Angel. Angels are presumably barred from Tartaros like Beastmen, but whether they are welcome on Arboreus like Beastmen are is uncertain. I expect it to be very, very difficult to become an Angel due to the limited good karma options available to Tartaros residents.
• So far as we know, Humans do not mutate in response to alignment and will always be tethered to Syndesia; e.g. good Humans are not identical to Beastmen and can't live on Arboreus, and evil Humans are not identical to Demons and can't live on Tartaros.
• I do not know if Abominations and Angels can re-mutate back into Beastmen and Demons respectively.

That's it I think! Have fun! ^v^

PVE, unless the PVP is actually good, in which case I might try to git gud at it.

Usually it isn't so I don't bother.

I don't see how having a character on every planet is going to give you an advantage. Who's going to use the info you got on x planet? The character who is on x planet, i.e. the same one you got the info with.

Planets are not just vacation spots you jump between when you like. They are largely exclusive game modes, and while possible, it takes a lot of effort to switch your planet.

@target said in Isn't better flag account's characters x World Choices??:

Though, I do think there is a potential problem with having multiple characters in situations where a guild controls a large amount of territory. Travel in Fractured takes time since teleportation is very limited. The weakness of holding a large amount of territory is that it takes more time to mount a defense against an attack because your guild might be more spread out. Having more characters means guilds can place alts in vulnerable territory that they can just relog onto instead of having to travel.

An easy solution to this is to make it so that your character does not disappear from the game world when you log out, unless you do so within a major city / inn room / other pre-selected "safe" location.

Sure would be nice if more mmos were based on actual skill and not merely on spamming lucky hits until your stun proc'd so you could do your memorized 0 to kill skill order!

Blade & Soul is the only MMO I've ever played where I liked PVP in it. The arena PVP felt just like a fighting game. Sure it had some of the boring traits of other fighting games like "once this combo starts you literally cannot escape it so its basically one long waste of time move" but until one of those starts it actually feels responsive and not just like watching ants put buckets on their heads and slam into each other.

@mazikar said in Haven't pledged? Want to upgrade, but not sure yet? Tell us why!:

@Logain and @FibS so look.... I have backed over 50 games on kickstarter. I have gotten to know more than one developer in this manner. Being on the front page is pretty much everything if you are under 80%. That is being on the front page under the search for games - video games - popular. Why? Because if you aren't on the front page there is a good reason. How do you stay on the front page? Activity on your kickstarter. Not just from a developer doing updates it needs our clicks, people talking and leaving messages, likes, and shares on social media. Why do you think so many of them have stretch goals that involve sharing on social media? For one it gets the word out and second it keeps them on the front page. I am here to tell you a game on the second page that hasn't met its goal... will not.

We all need to do our part, visit the kickstarter a couple times a day, make a post on a update or the main chat, like and share updates. Do this and it will stay on the front page... keep at it and it will be the top spot.

If all you're saying is that front page is a symptom of a successful Kickstarter rather than a cause, well, to be frank, no shit? What kind of a redundant thing is that to say??

It would not be possible for players to run their own Fractured servers, because of the way the servers work.

Also, yes, sandbox games usually package server software for players to run their own servers. This is true of all limited sandbox games ranging from Two Worlds to ARK: Survival Evolved, but a "real MMO" never has this feature.

@logain said in Haven't pledged? Want to upgrade, but not sure yet? Tell us why!:

@mazikar said in Haven't pledged? Want to upgrade, but not sure yet? Tell us why!:

(...)it is sliding down... and if it dips off the front page... well...

Has being on the page really got people unfamiliar with the game before to pledge, or are all the pledges done by people who have been part of the community already? Because if there's no new blood coming from outside, being on the front page wouldn't really matter that much.

I highly doubt the success of a Kickstarter campaign has much to do with its front paging; I don't think most people have so much money to burn that they just sign on Kickstarter and donate to whatever is on the front page lol

Most viewers on a given Kickstarter campaign are specifically sent there after other vectors lead interested people to the game's own page or directly to Kickstarter

@nightcoder said in Haven't pledged? Want to upgrade, but not sure yet? Tell us why!:

Hi! I'm considering pledging for early immortal (for alpha 1 and dev forum access). Right now my three major concerns are business oriented so I'll understand if you prefer not to answer.

1. The low Kickstarter goal - While it is logical to begin with a relatively low amount to increase the odds of the KS succeeding, €116K is at best 10% of what's needed for an ambitious project like this. I'm sure there's a plan on how to get the remaining funds but I'd presume that if it were solid there wouldn't be a need for a KS anyway. I am pretty sure that the game will reach alpha but there's a long way from that to release so I do hesitate a little bit to spend €300 if I'm not at least somehow confident that it will eventually go out of beta.

According to the team, the Kickstarter is not necessary at all! They've already secured other sources of funding from publishers and other partners.

That said, the Kickstarter will still help the game finish earlier and implement quality of life (better graphics / SFX) sooner. It's essentially a Kickstarter not for the game as a whole, but to hire certain already-hand-selected talents for specific aspects of the game.

1. Maintenance - By its very nature an MMORPG needs to be maintained even after release and that also costs money - at the very least you need to pay to keep the servers up and running and eventually you also need to continue development (e.g. more areas, quests etc) so people continue playing. B2P is great for the players, after all everyone prefers to pay once, but that also means that there's no continuous stream of funds. The VIP membership is probably meant to cover that but I'm not sure that enough people will pay monthly for cosmetics, which may force a switch to other income models such as a paid subscription, expansion packs (i.e. only a subset of the world / quests is available to free players) or the dreaded P2W. It would help if we knew what is considered the least evil in this case. Basically I want to know that I'll be able to play the game for a long time.

"More content" is not the only solution to retain a player base. Before its horrific destruction, Star Wars Galaxies was massively popular simply because it was not a linear grind, but rather an immersive social world similar to Second Life. (It was destroyed solely and utterly by completely gutting this aspect of the game.)

Fractured is clearly aiming to replicate this True World feel, which will keep it a relevant game indefinitely so long as it can still technically run.

As said earlier, Path of Exile has neither an entry purchase nor a subscription and has been wildly successful.

1. The use of the third part Spatial OS - I'm trying to read a little bit about it on Improbable's website but I haven't been able to figure out whether developers can run their own servers or whether they're forced to use Improbable's cloud servers, or in other words - How will the game be affected if they run out of business.

They are Improbable servers and the game staff pay by bandwidth, by number of ingame entities per hour, etc.

"Running one's own server" would eliminate the entire advantage of SpatialOS, which is the use of non-static cloud computing to run arbitrarily large virtual worlds. This is essentially a more advanced version of Second Life's server architecture.

@chrightt said in Firendly fire?:

No amount of group coordination will solve the zerg situation. If one side just zergs the other with single target spells

and hit each other because most of them are skillshots and/or have splash damage

another problem with friendly fire is that it makes AoE heal way OP (because of the sheer amount of value) unless you make it weak

I don't see how this has any effect on heals? They won't be any more or less powerful at all; they'll just be even more desirable because more damage is being taken, a completely moot point given every MMO party requires a healer anyway.

Since screens only accommodate so much space and it is not exactly player friendly to cast spells exactly the way you want them to, friendly fire is generally not a very bright idea.

I think maybe you should wait for the game to be playable before making wild presumptions about how much stuff is on the screen and how easy the interface is.

Perhaps playing a game in VR like the anime SAO would be a better idea for friendly fire due to the fact that your mind can control exactly how you want spells to work.

What the hell is this Wonderland tangent lmfao

If you ever actually tried designing a game you will see friendly fire brings much more limitations than benefits (there is a reason why you don't see a lot of friendly fire in mmorpgs (at least in ARPG form).

Yes, the reason is that it requires you to actually think and make a good game or at least a different once. Most MMORPGs are not designed to actually make games, they are designed to get as much money from foolish players as quickly and cheaply as possible. 90% of them are just World of Warcraft reskins and asset flips. They're not real games to begin with and they certainly won't be rebuilding the industry with novel new ideas like global friendly fire.

You must understand that sometimes things don't exist for a reason, not because people never tried them.

It's more that somebody half-heartedly tried it once, intentionally made it shitty, and then everybody got scared of putting any thought or effort into refining the concept and treated it like the plague for the rest of their lives so they could keep buying the same games over and over and spending fortunes on pretend clothes.

I distinctly recall hearing that you begin with 2 character slots.

@nightcoder said in Stats / Characters retained from Beta / Alpha:

And one other thing - even after a wipe there's still some advantage to testers since you know how the map looks, what's available where and what certain events are.

Unless the world seed is changed explicitly to remove (most of) these advantages, of course! Fractured has 100% procedurally generated content and I believe it would be capable of doing this.

The remaining advantages on static knowledge will be relatively meager - a new player will likely catch up on what mats do what or "wats eclilpse" within a few days.

@zidroc said in Poll to assess the percent of players per race:

@Xanowrath @EvolGrinZ I've seen a few demons that want to go Angel. I wonder how difficult this will be? I really hope it's the hardest thing in the game, so that way when people see an Angel its just "wow holy crap look at that"

I'm expecting Abominations to be moderately rare because most players going Evil will just pick Demon or maybe Human, while Angels will be incredibly rare because of the extreme difficulty in earning good karma while largely limited to Tartaros.