Best posts made by GamerSeuss

@boogis said in Idea. Holy trinity:

@Stacy555 63 yo kid who started playing rpgs from 2005. tank/heal/dd is newer version of what im saying.

Actually, Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer were terms used in Ultima Online, and EverQuest, arguably the first MMORPGs out there, and they had already started in use in TTRPGs before it went digital...This coming from a TTRPGer since 1978.

Your Classic Trinity was actually Magic-User, Fighting Man, and Thief (OD&D, 1974 white/beige booklet edition)

It has evolved over the years, but it got boiled down to Tank (Damage Sponge), Damage Dealer, and Support (Healer/Enchanter, Buffer, Skill-jockey)

It actually changed to a 4 part system really, not in direct link to the Rock-Paper-Scissors analogy, in fact, as they quickly differentiated between the Healer-Support person and the Skill-Jockey Support person. That goes to when they added in the Cleric to D&D. The 4 ultimate CORE classes thus were Fighter, Cleric, Wizard/Mage/Magic-User, and Thief/Rogue and all other classes were built around the roles those played. It finally really got highlighted in an actual D&D edition in 4th edition, and players were up in arms because they believed that D&D was devolving into an MMO clone, forgetting that MMOs came from D&D in the first place, and all they were using were different terms than SOME might have been used to. In 4th Edition, it was the Defender (Tank), Striker (DPS), Controller (Blaster, Mage, Area Attacker), and Leader (Healer, Support, Strategist)

So no matter how old someone is in the game, don't go throwing your age around and degrading others for being newer than you. Stacy555 had a valid argument, and your dismissal was not exactly good form.

As to the Rock-Paper-Scissors mechanical theme, no thank you, I like every character to try to be dynamic, by how a person plays that character, and if someone wants to start an Arcanist, and then unlock a bunch of Melee skills to switch-hit at times, good on them! That's why this game is built around the Pre-Set system for Skills/Spells and Talents

Actually, Prometheus and Co are going over and above the call of duty to keep us informed of things. They are of course forced to back-burner some things when immediate bugs must be addressed, like for instance the Server crash on the 2nd day of the Alpha.

I would much rather have them working hard on the game and the various elements, than taking time out to give us ETAs when they are unsure after dealing with bugs, how the cascading affect of the patching will affect the new expected features.

Feel good, in most games, any new features like that would be held until the next alpha altogether, but the gang is trying to hot patch some stuff in that they have primed to launch, and so far, they look like they are going to go full steam ahead forward with those plans.

As @spoletta said, there are actually far more small groups/solo players than Guild players who play MMOs so the major faulty reasoning that the "Multiplayer" in the name means the games are set for big groups is actually detrimental from most Developers' standpoint.

Developers shouldn't specifically cater to either group to the exclusion of the other, however, they need to make a balanced approach that allows both groups to benefit from their particular playstyle, as well as paying certain disadvantages for said playstyle.

My own suggestion for the City Resources to balance things out is as follows:

1. A City's Coffers gets a share of the 2000 gold used to buy Resident parcels in an area....not saying they get the whole nut, but some of it needs to go their way, 10-20% so 200-400 would be good.
2. All Resource Processing facilities in town are open to use by anyone, however, all of these resource processing centers include a small fee for usage. The fee would vary from processing plant to processing plant, but again, this makes it so if your enemies want to use your resource development systems, they have to pay into your upkeep to do so.
3. As with part 2, Make visitors pay for use of the Inn, the Stables, maybe even pay a small tithe to enter the city beyond a certain tech point. Once there's a wall and guards, many medieval cities charged a Tax or Tithe at the gate when you entered a city unless you could prove you were on Royal Business.
4. Citizens of a city, those with their actual citizenship set to that city and who are in open support of the city, internal or external plot not withstanding, either waive the fee at the resource places, or get the fee reduced. (ie: In-Town Citizens get the use for free, Resident Citizens living out of the town walls pay 1/2 the normal fee to use the processing centers)

These are only minor changes that can be made to the city, specifically affecting resource conversion, but these would allow for both the Solo/Small group players to thrive in the game, AND the Big Guild/City-centric groups to profit from these hangers on to help defer their own upkeep costs. Want to use a city's resources, you should help the city pay to maintain them afterall.

EDIT: and obviously, you allow the Governor to set the pricing on resources, tithes, taxes, etc... but have an upper cap they can't set it above to make sure they aren't trying to make their city totally exclusive by overcharging and then just giving use to their Citizens for Free

Dropping Citizenship should be an official act requiring you to go to the town hall of the City your dropping. This makes it official and serves notice that you are no longer bound to a city. Just being able to toggle it on or off in the wild makes no sense. It also doesn't fit with the story aspect of the game.

I've been playing MMOs for years. I played Ultima Online, Beta-Tested EverQuest, and I'm back to playing Old School RuneScape now, just to name a few.

You play MMOs to have a huge open, ever changing world. Some of us, myself included, prefer to 99% of the time, tackle that world and its various tasks solo. I want to see other players playing, interact with them, trade, and yes, even group on occasion, but I feel the best MMOs out there make sure that the entire content of the game can be enjoyed whether you enjoy playing as a group or a solo player. This is one reason I was not a huge fan of WoW. Besides being quest driven, it also had several specific quests/raids that necessitated a minimum number of players go in to take on the baddy. This could be ignored, if taking on said Baddy wasn't part of an almost mandatory quest chain to get past a certain point in your character development, but in WoW, that wasn't the case.

Now, EverQuest did it pretty good when they brought in the Dungeon Instances, were you could do a short term looking for group raid of a specific dungeon, but the dungeons themselves were extras, and not required in order to progress your character along.

A great MMO needs to remember there are both Solo'ists and Raiders out there, and cater to them both. If someone just wants to sit and craft all day long, they should be able to do just that. If they want to take on the monsters of the world, on their own schedule, without having to group to do it, that is also viable.

@Roccandil said in Death Penalty of losing all gear and inventory: WORST IDEA EVER!!!:

Exactly: that's a design principle, not an artifact of Alpha, and I disagree with their approach.

The developers have been clear from the very beginning about their design philosophies. Although they are calling for player feedback on ideas on how to improve the game, they have also said they will NOT BE compromising their design principals to do so. They want to make a game unlike other games, and one of the ways that they will do that, and one of the things they need to be sure of, given how they brought their backers into the fold, is by NEVER compromising their design principles.

Suggest new avenues of exploration, new ways to do things, new approaches to gameplay, BUT in this case, design principles stated from the very beginning are effectively sacred cows, AND THEY SHOULD BE! These are the things that drew most of the backers to this game in the first place. These are the things most of the backers actually fear that the developers will cave to and compromise their vision on.

I'm all for improving this game, I love the whole idea behind it, but I want the end result to still be the game I wanted to back in the first place. Its great that you have ideas that are different than others, but realize where there is room for compromise, and where your changing the game intrinsicly.

@grofire said in shitty game:

if that true why no developer say it?

Well, for one, as a serious Developer, i wouldn't even bother checking a forum that was entitled "Shitty Game" when there are so many threads to keep track of as there is. Shitty Game just pretty much says "I'm not even going to give this game a chance to grow, I'm not offering any constructive criticism, so go ahead and ignore me for more engaging patrons"

@David353 said in Pet Companions:

This creature is cosmetic only and doesn't engage in battle."

As the words state, Pets are purely cosmetic. One of the founding principles of Fractured is you cannot 'Pay to Win' and that means perks do not get a mechanical advantage of any kind, at least those perks you can get from higher backing levels and such.

Sorry about the cold water bath, but that's the name of the game here

@Ostaff Yes, because most of those games encouraged the Large Group mentality, even if the player base didn't always want it. They ended up joining Guilds out of necessity, and that's really not the reason I would want to join a guild in the first place. Most Solo-centric players join a game, and explore as much of the solo content as they can solo, while feeling out some of the people around them so that they can make short term alliances that may eventually lead to joining a more open minded guild. I mean, we all know that End Game content, certain bosses for instance, usually require more than just one person to take them down. Alliances of the moment, repeated a few times, sometimes leads to guild formation and all is good then, but the Solo player shouldn't feel like the majority of the game is forcing them in that direction, because the fact of the matter is, there are a whole bunch of people out there who play these games mostly to kill time by themselves or in small groups of circumstance...others who play to join up with friends and family for a few hours on a rotating basis, maybe Bob plays with his sister Jenny on Mondays, has a couple co-workers who might ask him to hit a Raid on the weekend, and the rest of the week, he mostly works on his own things, mainly being Skilling and Exploring. These are the players the game wants to target and encourage to keep coming back. It's just like Micro-Transactions vs Pay to play, sure, pay to play gets a bigger chunk of money guaranteed each month, and a big group comes together and all puts a bigger chunk of money/time/etc... in the game compared to the little groups and solos, however, just like how hitting players with a free game, but micro-transactions to get little things like boosts and stuff, often end up making the money made from the game skyrocket, so having a ton of Solo/Small group players coming back day in and day out will profit the game overall more than the big groups., or at least has the potential to do so...when you figure you might have 10 guilds playing, each with say an average of 100 players, that's 1000 players invested in the game...but for each of those sets of 10 guilds, you may have 5,000+ solo/small group players...sure, they may not even ever do the boss raids and end game content, but the Devs care about players logged in more than if they are consuming every inch of content, AND those solo'ists often will find all kinds of little things in the lower level parts of the game that the big boys ignore in their rapid rise to power.

@Vialli

I'm a PvE player, and even I know this theory is erroneous, and here's why:

They need to get the actual mix of PvP on Syndesia balanced, and thus, a major thrust of the Alpha Testing is on that very principal. You don't ever run an Alpha test purely to make the game appear fun for a group of players...that is never the goal. Too many people are treating the Alpha as just some early access to the game, and considering it by that standard because they have no idea what it means to Alpha test a game in the first place.

In the Alpha Stage, that's when you make the hard choices for the majority of the playerbase. This is when you try and discard ideas that will either make or break the game, and as such, you cannot coddle your playerbase in the process. If people are leaving the Alpha test, that only goes to show they aren't Alpha Testers. The truth of the matter is, testers are not going to be the ones who want to be coddled, they are the ones who are going to want to exactly what you just mentioned, travel 20-60 mins across the continent to a Hot Spot, Battle in said Hot Spot for an hour or so, then Attempt to bring back their loot safely through PvP infested waters as it were. They are going to want to see how creative they can get to avoid the PvPers, they are going to want to test the limitations of their builds in defending themselves, or getting themselves to the Quick Teleportation Harbors and thus to safety.

Testing is done through adversity. When the game fully launches, we already know there will be the Beast World where no PvP is possible, and thus the purely PvE who don't even want the possibility of PKing will stick to that world, just as the Pure PvP players will go to the Demon world where it will be a giant King of the Hill battle constantly with every other player group in the area.

Then we have Syndesia. For Syndesia to be the best it can possibly be. To be that ultimate middle ground where both PvE and PvP players can play together, not exactly in harmony, but with a mix of Risk and safety, they have to make the hard choices right now and test test test and re-test until they get the rules for Syndesia balanced correctly.

Alpha testing, surprisingly enough, is also NOT the period when player recruitment and retention is a focal point. You in fact don't want to worry about that much at all in the Alpha stage, because you don't want your players falling in love with a Testing phase that's just going to change when the game goes into Beta and into final release, you want them to be involved with the decision making processes along the way. That is the appeal of being an Alpha tester.

If we want this game to be the best possible game it can be, we have to let the game go through its growing pains, and not worry about fluffy clouds and rainbows, per se. They will sprinkle the tests with non PvP content, of course, so there are things the PvEers can fight to try to do unharrassed, and so they can also get these elements right, but now that the PvP testing has started in earnest, just flat opting out of PvP will only be an option if that ends up being one of the paths they consider making available in the final game, after testing all other permutations. Right now, that option is set aside for the Beast World.

Since we're only getting to Alpha test Humans at the moment, it would be a bit silly to jump ahead to those features that balance out the humans to the other races. I think the company is smart in holding off on addressing any kind of direct spotlight on such features until testing starts on other races in the game, so that we can then contrast those other races with the humans and the tech that is supposed to put them on an even footing.

Yes, we've been waiting since 2017 for more info, but there has been steady improvement, and steady testing once that started, with actually far far less down-time than most games of this type usually have. They seem to be making progress, albeit a little slower on some things than some people might have originally expected. The thing is, they really do need to get the CORE of the game nailed down, which they are already starting to do with Combat, House-building, and Skills already started, Town Building and Talent Trees next, so give it time.

I know we're all chomping at the bit to get as much out of this game as possible, there was a big promise to this game, over many others out there, and we who kickstarted the game really want to see that fruit of our dreams spring from the bowers of the Dev's imagination. Just let the fruit ripen properly before you ask to bite into it, will ya?

@Chapex Actually, the communication with the developers in this game is one of the best I've seen, having been an Alpha and Beta Tester since back in the 1990s. People don't realize how much effort goes into such game development, and how much time a developer has to take out of that to communicate with the population at large. They are doing a top notch job at keeping us informed, far better than 99% of the projects out there.

Time between tests, and test durations are also well above average on the positive side. Many games, after a major test, would take literally months before another test starts, this last gap was just barely over a Month, and part of that was a major Server issue delay for an extra week, and part of things has been related to COVID-19 slowing lots of things down.

Time until ultimate release of the game is also not actually terrible either. It is nice to see a relatively new MMO company take the time it really deserves to do a game right. When you consider, Blizzard, one of the biggest developers out there, took over 10 years to produce Diablo III despite major demands to see it much sooner. Going from Kickstarter in 2017 to a possible game release before 2022 is actually great! I want the devs to take the time it takes to get things right, and this game is trying to be as revolutionary as possible, with a true isometric sandbox feel.

@grofire

I'll definitely agree with you that PvE players outnumber PvP players by an order of magnitude, just PvP players tend to be more vocal about what they want in their games, drowning out the PvE players in most venues.

Also, yes, PvE vs PvP is a core struggle and very important to be addressed. The thing is, Fractured is addressing it, by giving 3 worlds, the all PvP world, the all PvE world, and the 1 combined world. Now, the crust of the matter comes into play, however, is if some of the major content of the game would require going to a world not of your basic playstyle's liking. Like will it require going to the Demon World or Syndesia to max out your Knowledge Point Totals?

How they handle that will be important. If you can get enough KP only on your homeworld in order to max out Talents, and also get the majority of skill unlocks, then it should work fine. If the skills unlocked only on specific worlds are also those mainly devoted to that world's playstyle, then that would also be okay, but if there are skills on each world that every player will consider valuable, then your going to be pressuring the PvE players to go to the PvP and Syndesia worlds just to round out their skill unlocks. Time will tell.

Testing is focused on Syndesia because Syndesia is the blended world where all things are supposed to be possible. Once you lock down the mechanics on Syndesia, then adapting those parts only used on Tartarus and the Beast World will be quicker and easier. Yes, testing that happened just on the Beast World would appeal to PvE players, as they wouldn't have to deal with the PvP aspect at all, however, it wouldn't be the most efficient use of the developers time overall, unless they switched formats and tried for a more staggered Game Launch, releasing the PvE world first as a fully playable world, and then releasing Tartarus and Syndesia as they are completed as the first 2 planned expansions, but that is a major shift from what we've been expecting, so I doubt they would go there, especially now that Syndesia has been the focal point for so long as the tested world.

Honestly, depends on your preferences, but really, it's too early to say as a wide angled answer. Some of us have been backing this game since it first went to Kickstarter a few years ago, so for us, the Risk/Reward is worth the gamble, but that's not everyone's cup of tea. if your having doubts, you certainly can't judge purely from the Alpha, as being an Alpha, a lot of things that make this game special haven't been implemented yet.

In actuality, not knowing how they were going to work, it was only logical that most Governors wanted to try and grab coastal cities as opposed to the more in-land centrally located areas. Why, you might ask, it's simple:

1. Coastal Cities are easy to locate so initial gathering of citizens is simpler.
2. Coastal Cities are the only cities likely to have access to and control of a Port
3. Centrally located areas, like the Heartwood also happen to be more heavily populated by dangerous Mobs making it troublesome to get those cities built up to the point to where they can become productive. This is especially true in the Heartwood region, where whisps wonder around with their posse of Treants and Sproutlings. The whisps being all but immune to physical attacks, and the heavy hitting treants taking on your melee fighters while the whisps stun lock them is a brutal combination. Sure, you might want a challenge, but that's usually after you get your city infrastructure built up, but you don't want whisps wandering through town while your doing initial construction.

The point of this Alpha was to test cities and resource nodes, so they obviously wanted to spread out the resources and make them rather plentiful. In future Alphas, they may put other resources into play, so a wider variety will be around, and thus resources can kind of follow natural biome-centric standards. (Farming resources near open grasslands, Mines near mountains, not producing mountains just to produce mines, etc...)

@drfate786 You are confusing Betas with Alphas.

When a game gets to its Beta phase of testing is when you generally see most of the coding done and they are just looking to clean up the code and add some new variety features. Alpha is usually almost entirely done internally, rarely is it open to the public at all, and it is exactly what Fractured is doing right now, in the midst of coding snippets of the game, they send those snippets out to be tested.

As to when to announce, the ONLY time a definite date should be mandated is 1. within 2 weeks of that date, so peoplecan prepare to participate, and 2. When announcing the actual game launch. EVERY other date should be left nebulous to allow the developers to adjust on the fly without disappointing too many expectations.

The fact that they have made the Alpha testing phase open to backers is nice, but that doesn't change what an Alpha test is, nor the expectations of an Alpha testing phase. The only other testing they are getting is the internal testing, or Pre-Alpha before they release it to us to get a wider view of their work.

I have been testing MMOs since the very first MMO hit the market, Ultima Online, and this is pretty much how its supposed to go. Your expectations are unreasonable and you need to actually readjust your thinking to the phase of testing that we're in. Don't treat this as a Beta-Test just because it is not being done internally, and don't confuse a testing phase announcement with a release announcement...even release announcements can be subject to change, but all testing phase announcements are fluid and dynamic in nature, by the nature of the beast.

There are several reasons not to keep an ongoing Alpha server running 24/7...

As was stated above, test phase burnout is a big factor. Once the most recent content has been thoroughly kicked around and dusted off, many, I wouldn't say a massive majority, but many get tired of doing the same thing over and over in a limited game environment like an alpha server.

Also, after each Alpha test, they take the server down and analyze the data from the test, which is hard to do if your leaving the servers running constantly. Significant changes could be in the works, and they want the freedom to incorporate the new testing data without an ongoing stream of late data throwing off the numbers.
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Running a separate Alpha test server that runs 24/7, except when the active test server is going is of course an option, however, it is a quite costly one, and further, you would get those playing on the 24/7 server who started to think of it as a full game release, and get attached to their characters, and you would have even more of an uproar when character resets happen to the game. Also, you eliminate the freedom the Devs have to run open stress test weekends like they have done in the past. If you try to run them in tandem with another 24/7 server, you won't get the stress test you want, as a large portion of the players would just log into the 24/7 server, and if you take down the 24/7 server not only for ever month long test, but also for every 3-5 day stress test, you start to inspire the devs not to even bother with the 3-5 day tests because of all the complaints about the 24/7 server going up and down all the time. Finally, in the 24/7 server, people would not want their character reset as much, as the reasons for the reset wouldn't feel as justified to them. The Test servers are the ones that need reset all the time, the 24/7 server should just be left to grow...this is majorly negative in that the newer content doesn't get incorporated into the 24/7 server as much at the end of tests that way, and thus the snap shot of the now 2 games are not the same. Think of the changes, minor and major, that have come about between test phases so far for examples of why a total reset and breather is needed in between.

Overall, the 24/7 server would end up being more of a detriment to player retention, and game advancement that it would be an asset. You would end up losing players left and right, and the actual progress on the game would slow down to a crawl.

@Thordin They still intend for certain material refinemime to ent processes to take a bit of real time to accomplish, so expect smelting to stay at around 4 hrs or so.

As to exchange rates, this game is a 100% player driven economy, so the game won't be publishing exchange rates at all. We, the player community will determine the value of our goods by what we buy and sell them at on a case by case basis.

I agree with @spoletta and @OlivePit on this.

There has been complaints about the time sink involved in some crafting, but when you consider that's the "investment" side of crafting, you come to realize it will keep the market viable in the long run.

As to gathering, remember also that in Alpha, the availability, or Saturation of some resources is probably set to a different level than it will be at full release and there are a lot more resources and recipes planned that haven't been implemented yet. Couple this with world specific resources and a higher stable population and the real value for crafted goods goes up considerably.

No shared bank means goods must be transported safely from one market area to another as well, so entire groups will probably be dedicated to just moving resources from one area safely to another, at varied risk levels.

Everyone can gather we r/craft/tame is meant to be a feature of Fractured, and putting that behind a class/build/archetype wall would defeat the feature element of it.