Best posts made by GamerSeuss

@LordRellik said in Concern regarding lack of communication and transparency:

because half the stuff released for this alpha is still not working as intended.

This here is more than likely the logical reason why they aren't getting on with the newer stuff like Legends that have been promised. Until they get the features they thought were going to go smoothly, going smoothly, it only makes sense for them to defer to focusing on that.

As to the 'great at communication' and 'over and above the call of duty' that I stated, in most games, and I've been beta testing games since before MMOs were a thing, but the first MMO I beta-tested was EverQuest, back in the 90s, anyway, in most games, when your in the development stage, the Devs might update the testers of when to expect the Testing Servers to be available, and when a Hot-Patch might be expected, and other than that, it generally could take them anywhere from 2 weeks, to 3+ months to come up with updates for their tester community. Outside of when an active test is going on, the Devs are very very active in the Forums and Discord speaking to us about our wishes, concerns, ideas, etc... They are very responsive. During a test, their energies are going elsewhere, and I know (because it has been posted by Spectre) that not even Spectre gets to talk directly to Prometheus as much when the Alpha is going on.

Prometheus took extra time, this alpha in fact, to produce 4 update videos prior to the alpha's launch, and as far as I remember, having watched all 4, only 1 of them even had anyone else with him to bounce questions and comments off of, unlike previous videos. This was because their schedule was such that he and Oxfurd couldn't coordinate their schedules like they usually do. If you watched previous video updates, Oxfurd, one of our Content Creators/Streamers, has been there to host these updates.

It is more important that they fix what's wrong in the Alpha currently, than even taking 10 minutes to post something like an ETA on those future features, because as any programmer can tell you (shoot, any kind of creator) a 10 minute post actually can take several hours out of your work day to actually put together when your reporting things to people in an official capacity, expressly because you don't want to make further promises or imply things are going to happen until you have made good on previous promises.

I don't just blindly sing the praises of the Developers, I've been following this game since it first came to Kickstarter, and I got my lowly Adept Founder's Pack. I've gradually upgraded my backing since then, even though I am a retired, disabled person with very limited income, because I believe in the vision that these Developers have for this game. and I respect the actual real effort they are putting into doing the game right...not letting anything get in their way, some things may slow them down (Corona Virus/Covid-19) but nothing is gonna stop them!

@Elias13 They are still right in the middle of balancing that out right now. In fact, that is one of the most hotly debated parts of the game so far.

@Stacy555 The major exploration aspect of the game is yet to be realized...it is an alpha afterall. They are working on systems and mechanics right now, not exploration. Even then, there are elements of the Sandbox Exploration theme of the game, and YES, a lot of that is what you call Mapping. Different featured Biomes will come later, especially when the other planets are added into the mix. Then we might even get some exotic biomes to explore.

Right now, you can gather different reagents for enchanting, be they plants or animal parts, as well as getting knowledge points for each new item you discover, as well as getting knowledge points for discovering new areas of the map you haven't visited yet. These are all explorational aspects of the game. The diversity of it all will come later when they flesh out the fully playable game for launch, but I wouldn't even conceive of the expectation before mid-late beta that the true magnificents of exploration will be realized.

Just getting to the bridges in the back end of the Vale of Shadows region, and the view there is in my opinion, one of the most stunning examples of what we'll have in store for us when they do get to fleshing things out.

I don't know that they plan any real quest system.

The only 'quests' we've seen so far are the beginner quests basically meant to get people fast tracked through how the basics work, followed by a quick explore quest with 3 locations on the map to go to. No rewards or anything for them, so merely guides.

@Stacy555 The thing is, the answer to most of your queries is in fact "it's still just an Alpha"

Many Alphas, in fact, are barely playable or not playable at all, but just mechanical testing phases. At least in Fractured's case, they made playable Alphas with a fun factor for several of us, from day 1.

Expanded artwork: can wait til Beta
Complex Biomes and Expanded Exploration Areas: can wait til Late Beta
Refined skill usage to add diversity to the game and equipment available: Requires getting all the other mechanics right, so not only can wait until beta, requires it.
Expanded Resource management and City Structure: That's what we've been working on right now, the ground work that will lock down those mechanics so that the next step will be expanding on this and fleshing it out...probably late Alpha into Beta

It's not that your questions are being ignored or swept under the rug, it really is the fact that much of what your asking about has no place whatsoever in the Alpha stage of game testing, and in fact, would detract from the goals Alpha-testing has of making sure the underlying mechanical aspects work together as seemlessly as possible. The true Fun stuff comes much later in a game's genesis.

Is there always going to be some kind of Grind-factor? Probably, no matter how different your MMO concepts are, some small amount of a game without an End-Point is going to be a bit grindy. Hopefully the focal points in the game as it develops will make the grindiness less a major concern and more something you do without really thinking of it as grinding.

@PeachMcD Indeed, they can definitely use more tutorial quests...but the good thing about tutorial quests is they provide their own reward, ie: knowledge of how to progress in the game.

Needed tutorials include:
Catching Horses
Buying/Claiming land parcels
Changing Material Grades in crafting
Enchanting
Respec'ing Stats
Use of the Talent Grid
Forming Parties and Guilds

@Gropes Thank you, Gropes!

As to the Guild concerns as to enemies using their resources against them, the GAME (not a Governor or Guild) could apply a Flag to a character that has attacked a City Citizen, making them Capture on Sight by NPC guards, and allowing Citizens/Bounty Hunters to PvP them until a 10 day timer runs out, or they have spent 1/2 that in-game time in Jail in that city.

This would not allow Governors and Guilds to make their cities exclusive, BUT it would address enemies exploiting the open city rules unrestricted.

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

It's a safe zone (even though your own plot of land is a safe zone too)

This is a major misconception people keep missing. Cities are a City-wide safe zone for everyone. No PvP or Monsters in cities, except during a Siege. While your personal plot is safe to YOU only, and the personal plots around you are not safe zones for you, but rather for their owners...so getting from your personal plot to and from the city or the wilderness can be a dangerous area to traverse. Your plot is an island of safety within an area fraught with danger.

Cities and City ownership allows a Governing group, say a guild, to grow and advance an area of the game, larger than a personal plot. Cities can hold multiple processing type services, are the only areas that can have farms, can be seiged and taken over, and should also be a source of both income, and advancing the Tech tree of an area. Only cities can level up in order to unlock higher level services that aren't available in the start of the game.

Personal plots allow an individual or small group to own a much smaller area of control within the game. Some services can be built within that plot, however, space is limited so not all services can be included. A personal plot is an island further out from the city that is safe for the owners, where they can rest up, re-equip, and re-spec before going out to attack the wilderness, or conversely, come back into town to avail themselves of additional services. Personal plots within a city's area of influence can also benefit from the tech tree of that city, but they do nothing in order to advance that tech tree on their own.

I personall maintain my previous statement that a Tax/Tithe should be applie to cities that the city governors collect from non-citizens in order to enter the city or utilize their services, with a cap to how high this charge can be so it doesn't become prohibitive. I also think that a small portion of the sell price of the personal plots within their territory shoud filter back to the city owners. These funds can help the city advance, and also prevent leeches from abusing a city, especially those of a group's enemies. Finally, my additional idea that puts a 'Flag' on a character for attacking/killing a member of the city's group marking them as PvP'able within the town, or arrestable by the NPC guards that can only go away over time or with spending half that normal time in jail, same as the Bounty Hunting/Alignment rules mentioned before.

These keeps cities relevant and 'safer' from their enemies using their services, keeps personal plots relevant and dependant on the cities they are attached to...yes, the personal plots lose nothing in a seige, however, the newly conquered city can lose some of it's facilities, and lower their tech tree ranking, adversely affecting the personal plots around them.

@d3Sync You also have to realize that they are trying to balance the wants and needs of quite a few different types of players.

Harbors were initially brought in because there was an outcry that there wasn't ANY fast travel in the game, and where, like you, I agree that the whole game could go without fast travel whatsoever and I'd be happy, there are just those others who want to see more and more convenient fast travel options.

Enter the Harbors...

Now, they only work near costal towns (and see many other posts where people are also trying to get portals in the more inland areas for more fast travel options) and can have a large associated gold cost applied to them. With you and I, and those like us that barely want fast travel at all, we see this as a great compromise, if its quite limited, but again, the other factions out there are saying its not enough fast travel, and too hard to utilize, so the Developers have to weigh out what are they willing to compromise, themselves on, and what will please the most of their player base at the same time.

I never used the Harbors, in fact, I was never even tempted...might have been if I'd died with a corpse left far far from home, I guess, but I was always careful to rest at every Tavern I passed by, so I was closer to my corpse than my home base most of the time...and the city I was attached to was in fact a port town with a full harbor...just didn't use it.

Always remember, though, what is ideal for one group is sub-par for another, and a game-breaker for even more.

@Logain I was not saying the press releases/kickstarter was making the claims with the %'s, I was simply stating that the original plan of the game was equal support for all 3 playstyles, PvP, PvE, and Composite, and from that I extrapolated the obvious breakdown to a degree. I'm sorry if that seemed to indicate otherwise. You took the first part of my post and took it to mean they decided/advertised the entire content of my post directly and I don't want to misrepresent the Devs in any way.

@Razvan THIS!!!

The Devs have said that the Residential Area outside of a city is not under a city's governance. The city gets a small 'tax' from those plots when they are bought, but that's it. It is purposefully set up so that if you take a Residential Spot, you are completely safe from Sieges and their outcomes, as if to say you are opting out of the Siege subgame.
Although the concerns of the new Guild taking a city may be valid in that they need enough spaces for their guild to call home, such comes at a cost. The new guild must decide how much in-city land to devote to guild residential housing and how much to more utilitarian buildings. That's the breaks, as it were, as the outer area is not owned by the city, merely taxed as a little bonus, that means the Governors have absolutely no say in who gets to squat there. Again, I point out that this is by intent of the Devs. There are far fewer wilderness plots available unattached to cities, and those should get snatched up rather quickly. Next, the plots around the Cities will all get acquired, then, refugee status or not, someone evicted from their home (a place supposedly immune to the aftermath of sieges) may never even have a plot out there available to start over in. This is why they choose to build outside of town instead of inside of town. They may even choose to build close to the city only because its the only plots left available for them to purchase when they go to build...regardless, they have opted out of Siege aftermath consequences, and should be allowed to enjoy their autonomy.

Games are Risk/Reward systems, so nobody who is really into gaming wants a system that is too easy to get by (Except maybe someone who really is a Carebear player, and I hesitate to use that term because not every PvE person is one) There does need to be consequences for actions.

The current Bounty system is a step in the right direction, but in the Alpha, it doesn't fully reflect this because in the Alpha, Gold has next to no real tangible value...Sure, you can use it to upgrade your town, and pay your plot upkeep, but that's it, other than Bail, so that's why they need to set the bar high for bail money, to make it impactful.
Time, on the other hand is a premium asset, especially during a limited Alpha run. With only approximately 30 days to pay the Alpha, losing 24 to 48 hrs of playtime can be harsh on a hardcore player, and even a casual who has limited play availability will feel the pain.

As I said in the Bounty thread, they can bring about a 1st Strike system for people with 0 to -100 Karma, that only sticks bail at like 600gp, and time in Jail at 6 hrs but that's a 1 time leeway, and once you pass the -100 threshold, you don't get it ever again.

The idea of partial looting has some promise, but mayhaps instead of picking either Gear or Inventory +/- Cart/Wagon, how about they get the Cart/Wagon Inventory, and then get a display of what the character has and the looter can pick X items, be they equipment or inventory, with multiple looters being limited to just 1 Item each. This, plus all the gold on hand would be fair.

I agree, we don't want Syndesia to become Demon-world-Lite by any means, we want it to cater to those who like to PvP sometimes, and PvE sometimes, or like to PvE in a more PvP risky world.

Fractured is a brilliant idea for a game that caters to all different MMORPG playstyles on a single server in a single game.

The game has been intentionally separated into 3 Races/planets with each supposed to represent the 3 major playstyles out there:

Tartarus, the Demon Planet is for those who believe the whole world is a PvP zone. For those who want to live on the constant edge of wondering if a Mob will get you, or a fellow player.

Arboreus, the Beastmen Planet, is a PvE wonderland where there is no real PvP in sight. The only real worry an Arborean might concern themselves with, other than the monster mobs themselves, is a Raid from one of the other Planets.

and then there's Syndesia, the Human planet. Syndesia is meant to be the middle ground between the two extremes of playstyles. PvX we'll call it. Sometimes you want to participate in PvP action, sometimes you want to focus in on your skilling, gathering, or just taking down mobs. This middle ground needs to hold an equal appeal for all types of players, as this will also obviously be the meeting place where all playstyles collide.

The question becomes: As the state of the game stands right now (realizing we're still in Alpha and much can change) would anyone out there really want to join in and make their home in Syndesia, or would the current level of Toxicity make it more appealing to just swing to your more extreme leaning and either play it safe on Arboreas, or Go hell bent in Tartarus?

What would you like to see changed to make Syndesia more appealing as a middleground. The planet is obviously the best place to bring about the kind of play that will allow these two divergent playstyles to interact on the same world. How can we make it better, for YOU?

PvP camping of the Legendary spawn points is not exactly to be encouraged anyway. Yes, it will happen, but any little things the game can do to discourage it from being a regular accepted thing is a plus in my book.

@Jigganaut Blocking young status players from participating in Legendary raids defeats one of the cornerstone tenets of Fractured.

Fractured bills itself as a Vertical, not a Horizontal Growth Isometric Sandbox game. As such, one of the primary selling points from the very beginning is that a new player, from Day 1, right after logging in, could meet up with his/her guild/party/friends, and immediately participate in a meaningful manner, with little more than a gear upgrade gifted by his friends.

You block the new status player from doing this, and you defeat a main reason so many bought into the game in the first place. Legendaries are already limited by needing to summon them to their Altar now, usually requiring Flawless Gemstones, so they still need someone who's been around to collect the materials for that, or the gold to buy it off of a Marketplace.

I guess there isn't much new to discuss, kinda waiting for the new Roadmap and such now

@LordGorgeous

Like I said, the Devs already nixed repair mechanics completely as not fitting their vision of the game and how the player based economy would work/thrive. They aren't worried about gold sinks, they have plenty of options for that, they just haven't really implemented it yet, but they want equipment to have a finite lifespan. Best you can do is extend its life with durability enchantments.

They don't want to be like all other open world MMOs, they want to be different. Frankly, one of the worst models they could follow in my opinion is Albion Online in this regard.

@Jetah That's just it, they don't want players to want to fight 'as bad' on Syndesia, but they do want them to have the option, and have to accept some limitations for doing so. They want PvP to be an option on Syndesia overall, but not a popular or majorly sought after option...and the community at large has been by and large behind that as there are generally more PvE players than PvP players in most games, and the PvP players can tend to be the most disruptive.

They would prefer PvP players try to stick to Tartarus as much as possible, but allow for PvP on Syndesia because it is meant to be the middle ground between the 3 worlds, allowing for a mixed playstyle.

They have also said they want to reward Bounty Hunters for providing a service by keeping the 'bad' players under wraps as much as possible. They count as Blue, which is the midpoint, so they do lose some in combat, but not as much as a Red does, because red is the dreaded voluntary 'bad-aligned' PvP player maliciously attacking the often unassuming PvE characters.

Their other option, as they've said, is to restrict PvP type play on Syndesia to strictly Guild Wars type situations where you can only initiate PvP against a member of a declared Guild enemy guild member or ally, and then often for a set period of time before such large encompassing conflicts are resolved and set back to neutral grounds.

I second this.

That being said, upon launch, they could add an instanced tutorial for players to familiarize themselves specifically with controls, since some of them are not intuitive, like seeing the house claim icon show up...it is so easy to miss, and knowing to click on some of the building materials to switch them out for other materials. If you gave people the option to enter a tutorial instance...where nothing you got from that tutorial could translate over to the actual game, some might appreciate it, while others, like you and me, enjoy the whole going around and figuring it out routine.