@spoletta I proposed making them a reagent as well, which gives them an alternate use, AND/OR making them a building block for Tier 3 Recipes, either requiring so many t2 recipes to craft a tier 3 recipe, or making them part of t3 recipes themselves, like how t2 might require a Will Stone, Tier 3 might require other reagents, AND a t2 Recipe. Finally, you can make them something required to be sacrificed at a legendary altar that isn't a guaranteed drop after the battle.
@Logain It's not grind because it is voluntary, not required. You can do most of the game without t2 equipment and t2 enchants, and you can do some t2 enchants without really hard to get resources.
You can grind, especially if you want to heavy PvP, or enter Seige combat a lot (which is mainly organized PvP), but your not required to. It just makes it easier, which is really the motivation for Grinding in a more voluntary grind game.
The point is to make being K/o'd and/or killed.
This makes equipment in general last longer, the better it's quality, but has a finite 10 deaths or 20 k/o's lifespan.
@Veeshan if you mean imbibing Gemstones in the Starter towns, that's well known by long time testers, as that was the default in an older test phase that was scrapped. Not sure if the benches for it were kept on purpose, or if they will be going away.
The best way is to either put a lower tier version of the one you want first, then use a higher one to "upgrade" ot, or find a recipe with only 1 result
I can say that people have seen Prometheus in game, at least during previous iterations, actually playing, not just hovering around, but not as much since Beta started. In addition, right after the EA launched, there was another Dev seen around playing who would spam chat with a do not disturb kind of post to allow them to play the game. So, that means there is some playing by the Devs. Arcahem and Kilpu also play the game some during the Live Streams, but of course these are shorter sessions.
A point that the Devs have said in the past isn't that the Devs don't need to play their own game, however, but that the point of this game is to be as much Community/Player driven as possible, so WE are the testing, and they really aren't pre-testing the game before they send it to us. Do I believe this is totally a good thing, NO. Some pre-testing would be good, just to help prevent the bigger glaring cascading bugs like during the opening weekend of EA right after the wipe. That being the case, it still must be remembered that this is a very small development team currently on a much tighter release schedule than some games, based on how much they still have to do, and how many bugs are still out there, so they do not have a whole lot of time to come in and play the game, or pre-test much. (An idea that some of us have floated around would be for them to set up a pre-test environment before launching new content and patches, and to invite some of the players who have consistently played since alpha, and have actually given informative well detailed bug/exploit reports exclusive access to this testing environment (as part of their perks for being Alpha testers, and as a reward for their active contribution to identifying/fixing bugs/exploits) prior to launching any new content patches (other than obviously hotfixes) into the game. Obviously, this won't stop all cascading bug issues as the test environment would have a smaller population, and that was surely a big part of the issues during EA's release, when the game had to handle more simultaneous log-ins than ever before.
Anyway, it was a good well thought out post, and I hope I answered at least one of your queries within it, however incomplete my answer might be as just another player who's been here since the beginning.
See my recent post on the enchanting system.
Also, it is possible that some reagent attributes may be used on either Rings, or in Alchemy. We don't know.
there has been talk about possibly making Recipes limited use, only because right now, at a certain point in the game, Recipes lose any value, which is not good for such a rare drop, so they are trying to keep them relevent, but I do agree that limited use doesn't make sense for them. Alternate uses would probably be better.
@DraxOakstaff Just to clarify, you mean Recipes, Blueprints are for Crafting Buildings and Wagons and stuff.
My favorite part of Fractured is the Enchanting System.
That being said, the system does need an overhaul and some rebalancing (which I'm sure is in the works) but I thought a suggestion thread about what some of the Players think might be good things to include in that overhaul might be.
My Thoughts and Observations:
I was recently told there are 5 categories or levels of reagents, Very Common, Reasonably Common, Rare, Legendary (5th one wasn't detailed) and that VC have 4 total aspect points, RC have 6, Rare have 10, and Legendary have 15 (again, 5th wasn't mentioned to me)
Given this, we find reagents like Mandrake and Angel's Trumpet count as Rare reagents, with a total of 10 points. At the same time, Elemental Essences have only a total of 6 points, getting only 3 in their actual Element. This seems counter-intuitive to me, so it is definitely one I would possibly work on.
Any Reagent that is A. Not a Mob Drop, and also B. Doesn't only show up in 'Dangerous' areas should probably not be classified as Rare. In addition, Mandrake at least, is one of the single most useful Reagents in the game, showing up in a lot of recipes, as it has 5 Mind and also has Energy, 2 of the most common Aspects.
Elemental Essences, on the other hand, should probably have one of the highest scores in their given element, even if they only had 1's in everything else (although at least a 5, I'd think, so maybe 2 and 3 in the others to get to 10 and keep with the current pattern, or maybe 4, 1, 1 if they stay as a Reasonably Common)
The other major observation, and I know its a beta and not everything is balanced or implemented yet, but there are entire aspects that aren't being used in enchants at all. This makes said reagents that have them seem completely superfluous in the game, I figure they will probably be part of either Alchemy or Rings, but right now, they mean nothing in the game.
Suggestions:
Rebalance and reclassify reagents, taking into account Commonality based on how dangerous it is to farm them, and how readily available they are in the world. Personally, I would also spread some of them out more, and make them more biome specific, so that they breed more regional trade, but the maps aren't exactly huge for that. I know some are going to be planet locked, of course.
Second suggestion is to give more weight to the Classification of the Aspects. Right now, the Reagents list "Universal" and "Primal" and "Manipulation" next to the aspects, clearly classifying them, but we don't really know what else about them. Some have 3 different classifications, some have 3 Universal aspects, and it would be nice to be able to figure out how that relates eventually (not asking to give it to us, but hoping there is a reason)
Final suggestion for now from me is to try to make at least a couple enchant recipes for each current Aspect on the Reagents we have, or possibly reclassify some aspects as "Alchemical" aspects so we know they are going to be more involved with that system.
Just my 2 cp worth. Of course I welcome other discussions.
Note also: I'm fine with not having recipes for enchants in the Wiki and things like that, I like the whole "build your own recipe" feel of enchanting, where you give us the ingredients and their aspects, and we find out how to make it work.
@Xulu Prometheus(Jacopo, the lead Developer/CEO of DS) has stated that Wildfolk suffer no males on Syndesia, and can freely travel/dwell there.
They just won't be able to get the resource that allows them to take their primal form without going back to Arborea. At least at this time. Anything right now is Beta conditions and it's unknown until testing is done how the final game will be.
@Veeshan Actually, didn't they say farms in Terra were like those in Aehren? Don't they take up town spaces?
@DarthJafo To answer your one question, traditional leather curing is generally a 30 day soak in a curing solution of high saline.
Rough curring can be done quicker, and there are ways to speed up the process some, but again, we're talking medieval, traditional curing.
As an example of how easy it 'can' be to 'grind' out metal, last night, between my sister and I, we pulled 7 carts plus 10 pieces of copper in in less than 2 hrs, then went and got a cartload of coal each. With Advanced Smelters, you can process 10 pieces of copper into 2 ingots for 2 coal, or 4 charcoal in 4 hrs. Available to us were 6 Advanced Smelters during this process, so 12 ingots in 6 hrs of work were easily doable for 2 people working in concert, and that is combined with other gathering while we were out.
@DarthJafo since the maps of Aehren and Terra are procedurally drawn, it can be more difficult to remove a terrain feature than otherwise.
@grofire I argue partly the interpretation of "grind"
To me, and as I see the advertised goal of Fractured, grind is interpreted as an excessive need to kill in order to advance the game.
Fractured doesn't include what I'd call an excessive need to advance the story/game.
2nd, I also understand and admit that totally horizontal games don't exist either. Again, Fractured tries to flatten power creep, and keep advancement more about variety over straight power.
Both of these goals, as I've stated are doable and reasonable. Will they satisfy everyone? NO!, because that's also impossible, but can they meet reasonable expectations as to their design goals as stated in the Kickstarter? Yes. I think so.
@Logain To be fair, 'no grind' by your interpretation of it, is not really possible in a Sandbox MMORPG.
Rather, Fractured is low grind for advancement. (Every mob has only 100% Knowledge available, and generally gives at least 2% per kill unless you do it with more than 3 people, then you might get only 1%, so at most, with a group of over 3, 100 kills per mob, and with a group of 3 or less/solo, no more than 50 kills, with some mobs granting as much as 10% per kill, like the Tutorial mobs)
Where any kind of 'grind' comes in, is when you voluntarily want to go back and grind for specific materials. You're not grinding for that +X Suit of Awesomeness that you might grind for in EverQuest or WoW, instead, your out there hoping to get that Battlemage Recipe set, and the Forcestones and Gianthearts to craft it.
That is more of a voluntary grind. You're not required to do that grind to max out the mobs. You can theoretically tackle anything in the game with a group, even in t1, unenchanted gear. You grind only to make it easier, and allow you to do it in smaller more focused groups. (even solo, in many cases)
Equipment abilities that are increased, if any, are done via the skills used, and/or the enchantments put on them. I think Mastery mainly just affecting Durability helps keep with the whole theme of a flatter power progression in the game, and the horizontal goals.
They did say they plan to reinstate the +1/+2/+3 when you enchant weapons, which should grant a little bit more to certain things as well. We'll just have to see how that gets interpretted.
There is a few problems with this however.
Any thing you give to enhance archers will be available to enhance magic archers as well, as you can freely mix and max skills in this game and it wouldn't make sense to lock archery skills just to longbows, as short bows can realistically do most things a longbowman can do (and would be better at things like stealth/evasion as shortbows are less cumbersome)
Better poison would affect other poison users, and poison was broken before, so they had to tone it down. They may have gone too far, and need to rebalance a little, but it wouldn't just affect archery.
As to the items needed for your t2 armor, Dragon Souls are much more common on Arborea, where they have more varieties of dragons, so Dragon Souls are going to become more common. Seer Stones come from Giants, specifically, Jotun drop them, and Jotun can be fairly easily beaten, especially by archers kiting in t1 equipment. That means that's not too difficult. Archers absolutely rule against Ogres, which drop the main ingredient for good Melee armor like Battlemage.
Movement abilities are going to be a massive tick for many builds, as well.
For the most part, Archers are okay, and magic archers actually practically slaughter in several situations. Choosing to use a longbow does lock you out of several options, but that's the tradeoff for using a longbow.
It will become available to open. The crystals will finally be available. The gate still may not open right away.
They almost never give an exact day/time for a patch, unless it's like the Wipe. The patch will arrive when it gets here.
Races can mingle, they already answered, and with no additional malus added, that means free to live on each others' worlds, be citizens, etc. Currently though you're limited to 1 per accoint.
@Junkie The inability to revoke plot ownership in town is also on Syndesia, not just Arborea.
Also, from a role-play/story standpoint, it would make more sense that the more naturalistic Wildfolk would work around the environment more, and thus possibly have less overall space given their particular architectural styles.
Right now, the only 'benefit' that humans have really is their Tech, which one would assume is mainly interpreted as their more efficient house styles, and the current ability for them to make necklaces. Wildfolk, on the other hand, have the ability to take on their Primal Form, as well as controlling the main travel resource.