Best posts made by GamerSeuss

a new roadmap is forthcoming, according to Prometheus, once they finish getting the siege mechanic up and running.

As to player population at the start of an alpha, it varies to some degree from alpha to alpha, partly determined by what the primary test focus is for that particular alpha test phase, and partly by how disappointed people were in the last test phase, as some are prone to skip a test or two when disappointed.

All in all, though, I will say when an Alpha starts, they overload the server with login requests pretty much every time the first couple days, so, that speaks to a pretty vibrant test population base.

Okay, didn't read the last 4 or 5 posts, but here's my take on things:

1. The new 'time gates' for crafting: Times to do things have been extended because we are now going into a longer running test, and they want a real affect to be felt. In a test that only runs for a couple weeks to a month, you obviously couldn't have these kinds of time sinks, but with the plan not to wipe/reset the servers through this beta as much as possible, it makes a LOT of sense to increase time sinks.

2. No incentive/really anti-incentivized to go Red: This is on PURPOSE. As has been said, they have not brought in the other planets as of yet, however, Syndesia, although allowing PvP, is supposed to heavily discourage it. PvP on Syndesia is meant to be an overwhelming challenge for the PvPer out there. Regular PvP, encouraged PvP, is going to wait for the Demon World. The cards are supposed to be drastically stacked against going Red, and the incentive to hunt Reds is supposed to be as high as it can get.

3. Mage advantage on time sinks: This I agree with. They do need to make the mage (light) armor options, at least the better, more advanced ones, as rich and dynamic as they are doing with Medium+ armor. Yes, it makes sense, a character who doesn't go around wearing a whole lot of padding wouldn't have to go around doing a whole lot to get it, but when said padding is giving them some massive defensive spikes, based on their kind of hunting/playing, comparable to some Medium+ armor, then they should have to go through some time sinks to get it as well. Of course, I use Massive loosely here, because although equipment is nice, it in no way massively affects the game. It is nice, and does make things easier, but so does bringing around a few friends, or having the right skill/talent load-out for the mob your after.

4. Cities and Residences: They are still balancing this. Personally, I have no problem with them maintaining a Citizen/Resident requirement for leveling up the cities, but I also understand why they would scrap it right now and see how it goes before possibly implementing a new version. Also, as @spoletta said, once they do get the crafting balanced out, they will be better able to determine how best to proceed, but crafting DOES need to get addressed and rebalanced some.

5. Recipes: Monsters dropping recipes is something I'm a little on the fence about. In general, it goes against the basic tenets of Fractured for something like a Bear or a Wolf to drop a recipe, as it doesn't make sense. Humanoids, on the other hand, could drop recipes and schematics and other such things and it could make some sense, but like was said previously, it doesn't have its own 'expiration' system. You get the recipe once, install it to your character/town/crafting station/whatever the method is, it never really goes away, so eventually they are a useless drop. Recipes should be based around Crafting Level Mastery and Tech Level of Crafting Stations, not on drops, in my opinion.

Overall, I'm finding the new game play fun, and think that several of the changes have been beneficial, especially for going into a 24/7 outlook on the game. If I had one minor pet peeve, it is that needing 5 of a reagent to enchant can be a bit excessive when we're talking about the highly rare reagents, like Rabbits Feet, Foxtails, Dragon Souls, and such...but who knows, that may balance out. At least we don't have to sink as much gold and any gems into most of the crafting. More crafting levels, and that stepping up recipes however would be better I think.

@catraccoon Progress in the game is NOT to get everything you want...if anyone ever gets everything they want, they end up with no challenge and nothing to strive for. The goal is to get as good as you CAN get, and learning to adapt to what you can't change. If your getting a build that is only 5 to 10 points shy of your image of 'perfect' then I think they are catching the exact right balance within the game. This is especially true, as with what Stormbug said about Presets and being able to swap out with a quick nap. Every PC can have 5 presets for Talents and 5 presets for Skills, together, that makes for a lot of possible permutations of your build, 25 potential build choices in fact, and that's not counting deleting out older presets and refining them.

@ReverendOne said in Horse Population:

@GamerSeuss said in Horse Population:

Please, people, it's like day 1 of Horse implementation. They started out with Server Request Overload, so let them do some balancing before complaining too much!

Complaining? I suggested the devs increase the horse population during alpha. Or do you honestly believe the devs want us to spend whatever time we have available just running around looking for something instead of actually testing game features?

Part of the thing about the Horses is they are a marked difference from walking/running around the board...thus, they need to be rare enough that everyone and their brother doesn't have one on day one. Testers, especially newer testers who haven't been through the grind of multiple Alphas, need to learn to appreciate how much goes into walking the map before they start using Horses, Wagons, and Shipyards to speed things up. It is all part of the test. If Horses were the only thing new we were testing, or even the primary new thing, then maybe they would start everyone with a beginner mount, but they are just one part of the test, and they are also testing the availability balancing, and the catching of horses, as opposed to just buying or getting one when you start...so the test has more impact on overall game play.

I haven't found a horse yet either, and I really want one, BUT I have seen enough players with horses to know they are out there to be found, and they haven't been forgotten.

Ports in this game are NOT meant to be centers of trade, per se.

They put ports in as a way to travel from one side of a continent to another, in case say your Guild is getting ready to do a raid and you happen to be on the wrong side of the map at the time the raid is going. Of course, Legends haven't really spawned as of yet, so Raids are a future thing at best.

Ports are NOT allowing Carts or Wagons, so to answer your fears, no worries, you don't have to come up with thousands to move your cart/wagon via ports, as you can't do it at all.

The game is meant to not have fast travel in the general sense of it. The only time a port would be usable to carry goods above your character and what he/she is wearing/has in their backpack is when new continents are implemented. I believe then, they will have only very specific routes that can allow that kind of stuff to be transported.

As you say, PCs don't carry gold around with them if they can help it, so what you're going to want to do, if using ports is something you think your going to do with any frequency, is to specifically store some gold in the Banks of the Port towns your most likely to use, that you can draw upon in those times of emergency when you gotta use the ports to get to a guild raid, or help a friend on a corpse retrieval, or something of that nature. It's the same kind of forethought that will have a lot of PCs keeping a spare set of workable gear set up in commonly used town banks in case they die and need to do a corpse run from those locations.

Also, food for thought: Right now, there really isn't any Gold-Sinks in the game. Towns have upkeep, and private individuals not in towns can buy exactly 1 house, and after that, there's nothing for an individual to really spend Gold on at the moment, so stockpiling gold for Port fees is at least something productive you can do with the nearly useless commodity. Later, when Gold gains a real sense of value, things may be different, but right now, dropping 200-300 on a Cross-continental trip is actually a steal.

I agree with most of this as well. Unlike spoletta, I'm even on board as to making harbors and other forms of continental fast travel a no-go. Harbors in my opinion should really only be for moving from one continent to another, and that's it. As each planet will have 3 continents, there does need to be a good in-game method of transcontinental travel, but coastal travel shouldn't be included, unless they actually have to take the voyage on a schedule, and the ship can be attacked by Sea Trolls and Kraken and things like that. Make it risky in its own regard or leave it out.

City size definitely needs to be bigger, potentially, but I feel that some of it should be 'roped off' in game until a city makes sufficient rank to expand that far.

As far as Food Scarcity goes, I think it is important to remember that Crop Rotation is part of the agricultural aspect of the game. If you plant a batch of let's say Wheat at 150% potential yield, every time that patch gets below 50% irrigation, that percentage should go down, AND once harvested, that plot should barely be able to sustain Wheat until a rotation crop has been planted there. Each crop type should have 1-2 crops that it rotates with, and even something like Clover, that doesn't give you anything, could be used to reinvigorate the soil.

I wholeheartedly agree with regards to Marketplaces and Global Wallets. Marketplaces should be a starter building, and Global Wallets should at most encompass a Nation and it's allies' banking system, not the whole continent/world/galaxy

I know I've been a rather vocal advocate for the game keeping in several of their more tedious, click intensive routines in game, but even I think that the Packaging Center is a bit much at 5 clicks to move a single bag from the station to the Cart/Wagon.

How about for City Storage facilities, the Packaging Station, the Food Warehouse, City Hall, and the Market, they are interconnected, so you can automatically move items from the Packaging Station en masse to the Warehouse, or to Town Hall, or to the Market?

Same could then be done for the Stone, Wood, Coal, and Ore storage facilities, they would automatically load into their given Crafting Stations in town, thus refined 'planks' need not become a light commodity.

Now, packaging stations outside of a city would still require moving goods manually into town, however, make it so you click on the 'Flat Bed/Stack' side of the packaging center and it opens up the Storage, and it stays open, and you can then drag and drop the bags into your cart or wagon until full.

Systems that work together, make sense, and add some convenience, without taking away the other time sinks that are also a part of the game in other areas. Still no Loot All buttons, No Transfer All into your inventory, but maybe a button that auto-sorts into stacks would be nice too.

@PeachMcD Yes, the Tip Jar idea was one I put forth in another thread, and I still agree with its concept. If you do something like set your house near a danger zone and set your hearth and such to usable by others, keep a chest with some basics in it for those in wayward need, etc... a TipJar is a fine way to show gratitutde to the keeper of said homestead for the roadside hospitality.

@dracokalen Actually, even just cosmetically, weather adds a richness to the gaming experience. When you add in actual affects for the weather, you make the game itself 1000x more dynamic and enriching an experience, they just have to get the balance worked out right.

As usual, I'll start with a basic mage and work towards a Bard or Summoner when possible

@LonelyCookie Not really, the devs said from the very beginning there are certain design philosophies they won't budge on, and Mouse-click movement I believe was one of those.

1. Prometheus has asked that we don't always degenerate our conversations into Carebears vs Ganker.
2. There are very few actual CareBear players out there.

I would define a Carebear as someone who doesn't want any risk or consequences. Don't like losing their corpses, don't like PKers, don't like having to give up anything for anything else.

Many people called CareBears, or almost as bad, 'Casual' players are just as hardcore as any PKer out there, spending hours and days and months of their time playing games towards their style of play. Their style of play just may not include PKing. PKing doesn't make you a HardCore player, it just makes you one type of player. Same goes for Guildies vs Solo'ists. Many Solo players are even more hardcore than guildies, because they have to rely on themselves alone to get everything done. BUT they are also free to log in and log out whenever their schedule allows, join open raids or not as they see fit, and really get into the Roleplay aspect of the game.

Actually, I would call the Developers response times amazingly fast and accurate. Test just ended in May (and actually overflowed into June slightly) and already they predicted the next test in June, and then told us it quite possibly could be pushed into July over 3 weeks ago. That's not a lot of down time at all really. It is more like unreasonable expectations were out there, when people thought Alpha 2-Test 3 would start the 1st or 2nd week in June, after just finishing Test-2??? they have to have some time to work on implementation.

If all had gone to plan, we'd have had less than 1 full month of downtime, most games would not even have given an update yet in that amount of time, so they are pretty Johnny on the Spot when it comes to keeping backers/testers informed. The devs are always on the forums, even while working hard to get the game up and running. 1 update a month is actually a lot more than I would expect from a game in Alpha still. When I Beta-tested EverQuest back in the day, we would go sometimes 2 to 3 months without getting an update on things, and between stages of testing could be as much as 6 months to a year as they implemented new code.

@d3Sync I believe I already stated my opinion, but if not, then here it goes:

I agree with the Developers keeping loot drops on creatures to things you would find/scavenge from/on their corpses. I also agree with the unlocks of skills and talents the way they are right now and don't want to see it changed to books that can be traded around. Right now, the game encourages exploration in order to unlock everything, and that is like the #1 goal of the Developers, getting people to explore, and if you make it so people can just buy the skill books from others instead of going out there and unlocking them for themselves, you take away from the most core of design philosophies to which I first signed onto the game to enjoy.

@grofire I answer as a long time Alpha/Beta tester, and a Game Developer, not one of THE developers of Fractured.

I actually teach Game Design as a Merit Badge Counsellor and what I'm talking about are still considered a big part of the industry. Are they outdated, or tried and true? Different people will respond differently, however, Alphatesting is NOT where you gather a huge player base. Alphatesting is where you can start to spark interest, but those Alphatesting have to realize you are testing, not looking at QoL changes and a fully functioning game meant to be fun and to consume hours of your time. It is a good reason that the Alpha phases are generally only about a Month long. By the end of a Month, generally, its time to go and start implementing changes to be tested, and everything changing over and over again and only getting to sample the game in small morsels is why Alphatesting is not everyone's cup of tea.

As it so happens, the person I want to get a key for is my Girlfriend. We met online 4 years ago next month and one of the things we share is a love of all things RPGs and gaming. Recently, she's been coming in during my streaming of OSRS while waiting for Fractured and she's also heard me wax rather poetic about Fractured itself. She's always participated in tabletop roleplaying, but not as of yet joined in on an MMORPG and I think Fractured would be a great way to let her cut her teeth on an MMO.o

We met first online, and found we had a mutual interest in karaoke. She enjoyed watching and hanging out, but is too nervous to sing, while I am the world's biggest ham. Anyway, we met up as I was hosting a karaoke meetup for the site we were on, and instantly we hit it off. I came to find she was also into board and card games, but had never had a chance to play Dungeons & Dragons as of yet, although we had a rousing good time playing Cards Against Humanity. I introduced her to D&D, and she's been addicted ever since. She is also almost as obsessive as I am about Board and Card games, and she's FAR more competitive. Now I just want to expand her gaming knowledge even further with an Isometric MMORPG for her maiden voyage. The added benefit is that my Sister from another mother also has Alpha access to the game (she watched me stream during the last open test, and had to join me, and after the test was over, she actually went to Legendary before I upgraded.)

Anyway, there are probably better stories out there of gaming buddies, but thought I'd throw my hat in the ring.

@Farlander I've played D&D for 43 years (as of like 2 weeks from now, started March 3rd, 1971, I know the exact day because it was my 7th Birthday) and yes, your right, the treasure of a creature is often based around what is found in their lair or on their kills, however, as later editions came out, with more and more concern for trying to be more realistic (but not completely, of course) the books started to separately list what could be found on a creature with what could be found in the same creature's lairs.

Most of the creatures we encounter in Fractured are 'out in the wild' and thus count more as Random Encounters, even if they are in known encounter zones for those kinds of creatures. 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. Otherwise, the name of the game, from the Devs' original concepts which many of us oldest investors decided to jump on board, was and still is the more realistic loot drop system, encouragement to explore being a #1 priority, and a Player driven economy.

Very exciting news, Prometheus, thanks!

I can't wait to roll up my sleeves and get down and dirty with the crafting/enchanting tables. This is particularly one of my favorite aspects of the game already, and it will be nice to see how this new system change comes together. It is especially nice to see more Magic Channeling weapons than just staves out there. Now I'm seeing Blade Dancers and Spell Swords populating the landscape, combinging magic channeling blades with great spell combinations.

As to late September as the release, You guys have said that before, so I don't know why people are acting so shocked about this. Yes, you're going to be competing with some other releases and Alphas/Betas, but that's true any time during the year. There is always some new MMORPG, Console Franchise, or something coming out, or it's Back to School, or Holiday Season, or whatever. I'm hoping to be moving into a new house in early October (current lease is up on November 1st) so I might be too busy moving to play this alpha much, but that's okay, I can destress after a day of moving watching others live play videos if I can't jump in myself for a few hours.

This is also making a good gold sink for the game. More uses for gold give more value to gold. Now you actually have to decide if you're better off using it to enchant your gear, to buy/maintain your residence, or to stock up at the marketplace...or pay your BAIL to get out of Jail if your a PvPer getting caught by Bounty Hunters.

Can't wait until the next update launches. Would love to know if you've also decided to keep with the plan to introduce Beastmen or if that has been solidly pushed off to a later Alpha.

Cheers.

There should definitely be the ability to have multiple characters. Some of the people interested in the game enjoy exploring different avenues of play, and want to try out the other races, or other build options. Even with the primarily FREE respec ability of the Pre-Sets, I know that I currently have multiple characters in each Alpha I've done, so I could play a good mage, a good fighter, and even an Archer build. Getting to play multiple iterations of the characters is a perk that many people play these kinds of games for.

I do like the idea of binding your citizenship to the Account instead of the Character, based on Race, so you could be a citizen of 1 town per Race. In the Alpha test, your Citizenship is actually linked to your account currently, so you can't join multiple cities...also, if they were to put some kind of waiting period between quitting one town and joining another, that should cut back on all the hot swapping that might go on.

All founder's pack perks, except for Alpha/Beta access, are only good once the game itself launches. As the game is currently in Alpha Testing, you have to wait for a scheduled Alpha test to run to use the game at all, or join in on a stress test.

Alpha tests run approximately 1 in every 3 month period (1 per quarter/season) with the next one scheduled for Late February, possibly early March. Stress tests, when they happen, are usually run 1-2 weeks after the end of an Alpha test phase and run 3-5 days and require no founder's pack to join, used to either test a very small niche change, or more likely to see how the servers hold up to a huge potential player base with no limit to who can join in.

Also, at the end of EVERY test phase, all characters and houses and cities and such are scrubbed and reset to the beginning. Just warning you so you are not surprised by this when you get to join in.

This means, in essence, your pack perk isn't useless, it's just not available for redemption yet. The game is not set to release until 2022 earliest, and possibly 2023 or later, depending on the results of testing. You have invested in a game in its development stage, not a complete and ready to play game, which the website makes clear in several dozen places, Just the fact that a founder's pack mentions alpha server access would indicate that the game is still in alpha testing. Once you start seeing the Beta tests running, the founder packs won't bother to say Alpha access, and that line will switch to Beta Access I'm guessing, as Alpha will be over with by then.

@Kralith My guildmates are:

My Sister, Stormbug
My GF, SophiaStarr

Stormbug typically plays Warrior types, and especially enjoys mining and building up houses/the city
SophiaStarr typically plays Arcanists types, and especially enjoys farming and crafting and will probably dedicate herself to keeping up our crop fertility cycle
I play both types of characters, but prefer casters over warriors, enjoy resource gathering and Enchanting, and Love building houses/building up the City buildings.