Posts made by GamerSeuss

@Jetah said in New Alpha Price & Founder Pack Sale:

@GamerSeuss said in New Alpha Price & Founder Pack Sale:

@Jetah said in New Alpha Price & Founder Pack Sale:

@GamerSeuss you want numbers when the systems are in place. never before. i promise you most of the new people getting in will just get a refund when they realize it isn't a playable 'early access' they're use to by other developers.

i've seen post during alpha and beta asking if progression will stay into release. that's how stupid some people are. but to some benefit of the doubt, there are a few alpha's that carry progression into beta and very few that pass beta progression into release.

DS doesn't need players. they need testers. they need people after the systems are in place to test the netcode and server hardware. although i have seen qty ramp up in other games.

Not at all, like I said, I used to advise companies on this for a living. Also, point of fact, there will probably be little to no refunds offered for these founders packs, as this is 'Investing in a New Game' and thus, you are assuming an actual risk that the game doesn't get off the ground, so these new 'investors' are not entitled to a refund, so that won't be happening.

you clearly don't understand how american credit cards works. people can get refunds after a year+ of service. I've read post on reddit where small businesses have lost so much after a 'client' decided to get a refund for a year of service.

Yes, they need testers, but they also need volume players who haven't already gone through some of the testing phases. They want fresh eyes on their product, finding more errors and bugs in how it's being done. They want to stress test their servers to see what kind of load the servers can handle at a consistent level of performance, NOW, before they attempt to go into beta, and then Live. The extra money is nice to have, it adds to what they can themselves invest in to improve the game, but it is not 'needed' by them at the moment. As they have said before, they are already well above the amount backed that they ever anticipated reaching. With this being a very small operation, their overhead is also kept down. As they amp up for live launch, then they will probably make another serious push for more money, and then, you'll see heavily discounted upgraded packages, as well as new packages on sale at a discounted price, in order to bring in that last push money most companies need right before they go live. Things like Ad Campaigns, Final Server Licensing, and End Stage Editing/Graphics layout costs hit at the end!

but they dont need new eyes for every patch. people will join, play the game, realize it isn't 'early access' and tell their friends/guild that the game sucks. the better ones will look at the game in a later state. I'm still waiting for Camelot Unchained, Crowfall and Star Citizen.

I've worked in the Credit Card field, and you are forgetting something. This is Crowdfunding...ie Investing or Speculating. What that means is, your risking backing a project that may not go to fruition, and thus, just like getting an advance on your Credit Card at a casino, or using your credit to buy stocks on the exchange, your Credit Card company will not give you a refund for money spent in this fashion. Yes, when I worked in CCs, we gave refunds for people who had purchased a service, sometimes a year or more into said service, if they make enough of a fuss about it, usually it coming down to arguments like "we didn't know our charge would autorenew" or "we couldn't find a way to cancel" type arguments. However, again, this is not 'How American Credit Cards work." Using your Credit Card does give you a little bit of buyer's protection from fraudulent activity, and this has been stretched by consumers to include backing out of perfectly legitimate contracts that were fulfilled by the company making the offer, BUT, and this is especially true when dealing with services based out of other countries, contracted over the internet, the Credit Card companies also have clauses in their own ToS that protect the company in the event that a consumer enters into an agreement, such as a crowdfunded project, or investment plan that doesn't pan out. You can't get money back from a company that no longer exists, for instance, so CC companies have it in their terms that when you enter into certain arrangements, that you do so 'at your own risk'

As has been said, there are a lot of MMORPGs in the works that have been taking a whole lot longer than Fractured, although maybe not toting the playable Alpha stages as early, and so yes, Fractured is in many ways, way ahead of the game in that department, but there are also many MMORPGs that were proposed, funded, worked on for a year or so, then abandoned for one reason or another, and those backers didn't have anyone to get a refund from even if they had tried.

Fractured is actually doing quite well, overall. When you think, big companies like Blizzard took over 10 years to come out with Diablo III (and that's building on a game that already existed, just bringing out a new permutation), the few short years that Fractured has been in the build phase is quite impressive when you see what you already have to show for it.

By the time we enter into Beta Testing phase, all 3 worlds should have gone live.

Beta-testing will be when they do the final testing of bugs and tweaks before going to the full live launch, so during Beta-testing is when the best guess as to the actual Go-Live Date will begin to develop.

Right now, we're still in Alpha testing, with just the continent of Myr to play around in. It is not sure if they will slowly phase the other continents in or the other worlds in at the end stages of Alpha or not.

My advice is to wait and see!

I'm not saying the devs won't ever need money, that would be ludicris in the extreme!

I am saying that they specifically posted how much they had made recently and stated it was far and above what they had expected to make. That they were well ahead of any of their reasonable expectations...this means they have comfortable breathing room, and thus they can focus on trying to put out the game people backed in the first place, and not try to bend over backwards to change the game for those who came afterwards in order to drum up additional capital.

We know, once the game goes live, there will be cost-creep in the whole structure of the game, it is inevitable in today's game market. What people don't need to do, however, is push for adjusting packages and throwing out even more sales, when the devs have stated right now they are in a comfortable place, and can relax on that front, still (as people can clearly see, offering a sale incentive) but instead, focus on working full tilt on the game itself.

yes, Skins ARE a big motivator for SOME of the MMO community. Your premise implied it was more close to ALL, or at least the PRIMARY or the BIGGEST motivator, and it's not. It is an extra that can be added to a game cosmetically, thus not paying to win, which is a major RED FLAG for a lot of us. We want to avoid as much as possible getting a pay to win system going, even knowing eventually there will be some paid for elements that will actually have more than a cosmetic affect on the game, it always happens.

I think the OPs main premise is that Skins are a great motivator, as one of the top things all players want, without too much cost to a developer to award...

Sadly, I find the OP's statement false. I know a ton of players who don't care one wit about skins. like anything else out there, Skins are a nitch perk, and thus will only appeal to nitch audience members, and, it so happens, most of the nitch market that would spend extra on skins are also the kind who would already have spent on the highest end packs possible. Its almost a prestige thing, you want the best nitch items, skins, cosmetics, forum titles, etc... so adding new skins to what's already there will hardly add to the overall appeal to the regular backer.

As it stands now, the game itself is already more funded than they expected. Yes, they are still selling founder packs, yes, they are even putting on sales, they are a business, and every extra cent helps, but selling the highest end founder packs are not really a major priority anymore for them, I would guess. When you set out tiered backing systems as a kickstarter type crowdfunded project, you set out a few almost nothing very low tier sets, for those who can barely afford to invest but would like to join the kickstarter campaign to say they did something as a backer, you also set out a couple of Really High end backing tiers, usually with very limited total amounts of packages available. These you try to give every possible bell and whistle you can add, some of which might even be really out there, but you also set these tier prices up to really high out there levels...but then you don't really worry about those pledge tiers anymore. It's the tiers in the middle that are the bread and butter of a crowdfunded project. You don't want to add more incentive the absolute top tiers anymore, those were set as impulse buys in the first place, and rarely expected to be bought much after the fact. Your true operating capital is coming from all the tiers in the middle, the ones hopefully set out with reasonable rewards/perks and a doable price point for most backers to meet as a one time thing.

Fractured is kind of different in that they give the ability to upgrade your package after the kickstart is overwith, and they have made some higher tiers that really do matter, and aren't just about impulse buying, but the absolute top tier ones are still expected to keep their value because of their rarity. They aren't going to reincentivize them too much more now. Now they want to sell the mid-level packs, and then hope those get gradually upgraded to the mid-high level packs, while the lofty ultimate packs stay lofty as a golden goal few achieve.

@Kralith said in Item dropped from mobs:

Did you guys missed, that some Mobs already drop usually crafted things, like the poison or healing stuff from goblins.
I think there will be drops from human like creatures, if they usually wear them.
So dropping their Bows and Staffs would also make sense, als long they will be kind of damaged, means, they are not that good to fight with anymore, but you can use them in crafts.

I'm okay with these kinds of drops, but not dropping magic items or things the creature wouldn't be using is silly. A Troll goes at me with a huge Maul, then the Maul drops, I'm cool with that! Goblins dropping Goblin Armor suits and primative weapons and poisons is fine as well.

Again, me personally, I like the player made economy of items. I don't want mobs to have items dropped, even if they are donated items to the gods. Items donated should be taken out of circulation, that seems to be what a donation system is for, that and the degradation of items systems.

Mobs should drop materials only, with certain really rare materials coming from rarer mobs. I'm okay with things like Skeletons and Zombies and Goblins and other humanoid monsters dropping coinage, and of course, if Dragons were ever added, a Dragon Horde is classically one filled with Gold Coins, but other than that, maybe raw gemstones and other shinies could be put out there as materials for making more exotic magical item creations. Tired of that Wolf-Tooth Necklace and want to really travel in style, get yourself an Enchanted Ruby Pendant for the neck/ornament slot instead. Smelt the gold, craft the pendant with the gold and ruby found in the wild, then off to the enchanting table to add enhancements to your new magic necklace (complete with durability so it eventually wears out/burns out and needs replacing/upgrading)

One of the MAJOR appeals that Fractured has for many of us is the whole Player driven item economy system. This and the Isometric advancement system are I think the key features that drew a lot of the earliest backers to the game in the first place, and let's face it...you need to keep your original stable of backers happy and not go changing the game drastically out from under them. They shelled out the original capital to get the ball rolling, seeing the potential in the designers' original vision of the game.

Now, Instanced Dungeons/Meteors/whatever can have some of their own rules/exceptions, that's fine. I think we can all agree that as they are short term availability instanced content anyway, they are a good place to test out other ideas and break the rules just a little bit without breaking the system.

@Razvan said in Coinage and Monster Gold Loot:

The more visited towns will generate a lot of money from crafting facilities anyway, so I don't think they should also have a marketplace fee that goes to the treasury as well since it will create too big of an economy boost compared to less visited towns.

Your thinking backwards though. You want to encourage towns to become commercial hubs and increase visitor traffic. Thus you want to reward such hubs with additional tax revenue and then these hubs reward their visitors with better tax rates when they reach certain volumes. If a town is small and out of the way, it might tax all items sold at say 2% (just throwing out numbers, not sure what rates will be) in order to make enough from their market to make it worth it, while the big metropolis with tons of visitors can get away with a .5% tax, because they have 10 times the traffic. 1/4 the tax, but 10 times the traffic equates to 2.5 x the profit, spread out amongst more people/individual sales

Trouble is, part of what they are after is realism. It makes no sense for a Wolf to drop a full made wolftooth necklace, for instance. Part of why everything is crafted by players is to get away from the more hokey MUD themed type thing where anything could have any kind of drop. That's not to say they may never have 'intelligent' mobs drop some crafted items, eventually, but I, for one, like the fact that we get to drive the item economy, and I don't want to see creatures dropping rare drops that people end up spawn camping so nobody else can get these items. That was the major issue many of us had with games like WoW and even EverQuest

@Hawkshield
when it goes live, you'll have a link to download the client, and then just log in with your user name and password for the website to access the alphatest

@Talzus said in Currency:

@GamerSeuss said in Currency:

@TrueCrimsonFTW said in Currency:

@Volkolam But it being posted in the shop would be nice.

The reason it doesn't get posted in the shops is because, like google, the actual currency conversion is always dynamically changing, and they don't want a potential player opening up a shop window, leaving it open for 3 days, then deciding to purchase, and getting upset because the currency rate has changed on them again. This is why the final currency conversion is done at checkout only. Until checkout, the rates are only theoretical, afterall. You can't lock in a rate by simply keeping a purchase window open.

I disagree with this: - well parts to it. As a customer, the customer journey should be as simple and as painless as possible. if you have committed to a purchase and then, as the journey progresses, the price starts to creep up, it is very disheartening and ends in no sale.

Appreciating the technical difficulties in this, it is not completely unfeasible. I have similar issues when I am purchasing stuff from USA; TAX, Conversion fees - Simply allow them to buy with their native currency and remove the block?

It is then the merchant that converts rather than the customer.

It may not even be a block...it depends on who they use as their Merchant Account to handle their Overseas Transactions. Its simply not as simple as you think it is. The currency conversion and fees are always changing, that is the nature of eCommerce today. You have a short window to get something at a certain fixed price before said price is adjusted for currency issues. That's it. Don't like it, you can always use PayPal and convert part of your PayPal bank into Euros and keep it in Euros just for Overseas purchases. The conversion will then be fixed at the time you convert your bank. PayPal is not the only system out there that allows you to have a separate funding source by currency, and speculators use market shifts to make and lose money all the time.

@TrueCrimsonFTW said in Currency:

@Volkolam But it being posted in the shop would be nice.

The reason it doesn't get posted in the shops is because, like google, the actual currency conversion is always dynamically changing, and they don't want a potential player opening up a shop window, leaving it open for 3 days, then deciding to purchase, and getting upset because the currency rate has changed on them again. This is why the final currency conversion is done at checkout only. Until checkout, the rates are only theoretical, afterall. You can't lock in a rate by simply keeping a purchase window open.

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

I do think it should be level based thought. That way new people don't lose stuff right off the start but after a certain level you should suffer!

That won't work in an Isometric game that doesn't use Levels though.

@Gothix said in Coinage and Monster Gold Loot:

I'm kinda hoping that AH doesn't take the cut of the sales.

It makes sense that it does, but unfortunately that always leads to people avoiding AH and trying to sell stuff manually, which leads to insane amount of WTS spam in any populated area.

AH not taking cut would greatly reduce this spam.

Sadly, this dynamic wouldn't work out too well. The AH taking a cut is one way that a game Money-sinks. It gets rid of a portion of the currency by absorbing it in fees.

Thus, AH fees should be mandatory, and based on sale price as a percentage or base+% rate.

As to WTS Spam, if they make a specific chat channel for WTS posts, and filter them out of the main chat altogether, that covers the WTS spam. There could also be Broker NPCs, where you post what you want, and then you communicate through a broker to buy/sell stuff direct player to player, avoiding the auction house but incuring a brokerage fee, but then chat filters could be used to prevent WTS posts spamming in regular channels making players use the AH, the Brokers, or talking in private message to organize such deals

Also, although not a poll, it was one of the questions in the last survey, and those results are being tracked!

They have at least right now, only got plans for the races as presented in the Roadmap, Beastmen, Humans, and Demons/Angels

Maybe expansions might add new planets, with new races, but that's in the far future, as they have not given us even a hint to that kind of outcome yet.

I could swear when they first announced it would be October, they said mid-October, so probably 2nd or 3rd week

Death in a game, in and of itself is not a motivator.

In games with limited lives, or Experience penalties, or time limits, then death itself is a demotivator.

In games like Fractured, where there is no Experience, and no Limited Lives, and no Time Limits, Death needs to be about corpse runs and/or loss of gear. You need to pay an actual penalty, as otherwise, unlike real life, in game, you Respawn, and can keep going. What exactly does failure in an individual battle mean? Without a death-consequence, it means NOTHING. Death-consequences is what keeps cautious players from risking battles underprepared. It motivates people to go out and take on the lesser mobs to build their character up, getting better gear before they tackle that bigger battle. Otherwise, everyone is going to just press their luck and hope to get lucky, over and over, with no penalty, why not? Then the game has no consequences and it becomes boring.

I'm not a PVP player, so this isn't coming from a standpoint of the PvP mentality, but I am a hard core, die hard, long term gamer, and infinite games with no downside to death just become games I put back on the shelf and never play again.

@Jetah said in New Alpha Price & Founder Pack Sale:

@GamerSeuss you want numbers when the systems are in place. never before. i promise you most of the new people getting in will just get a refund when they realize it isn't a playable 'early access' they're use to by other developers.

i've seen post during alpha and beta asking if progression will stay into release. that's how stupid some people are. but to some benefit of the doubt, there are a few alpha's that carry progression into beta and very few that pass beta progression into release.

DS doesn't need players. they need testers. they need people after the systems are in place to test the netcode and server hardware. although i have seen qty ramp up in other games.

Not at all, like I said, I used to advise companies on this for a living. Also, point of fact, there will probably be little to no refunds offered for these founders packs, as this is 'Investing in a New Game' and thus, you are assuming an actual risk that the game doesn't get off the ground, so these new 'investors' are not entitled to a refund, so that won't be happening.

Yes, they need testers, but they also need volume players who haven't already gone through some of the testing phases. They want fresh eyes on their product, finding more errors and bugs in how it's being done. They want to stress test their servers to see what kind of load the servers can handle at a consistent level of performance, NOW, before they attempt to go into beta, and then Live. The extra money is nice to have, it adds to what they can themselves invest in to improve the game, but it is not 'needed' by them at the moment. As they have said before, they are already well above the amount backed that they ever anticipated reaching. With this being a very small operation, their overhead is also kept down. As they amp up for live launch, then they will probably make another serious push for more money, and then, you'll see heavily discounted upgraded packages, as well as new packages on sale at a discounted price, in order to bring in that last push money most companies need right before they go live. Things like Ad Campaigns, Final Server Licensing, and End Stage Editing/Graphics layout costs hit at the end!

If you show patience, there will be a few more sales in the future, some of which will indeed be geared towards those of us who've been here since the beginning, but there is, by no means, any mandate to provide us discounts. You get in early, you get some perks, but you risk price drops, and sales...that's just how you play the game of economics.

@FibS said in Finally!! Mounts, Fast Travel and Map Markers!!!:

@ErinOwOErin As one of the earliest MMORPGs - indeed it is credited with coining the term - Ultima Online was a very unbalanced game, at least as it continued to add more and more content and change more and more existing gameplay concepts to attempt to stay relevant in the evolving genre.

In real life (who cares about that am I right), not every fighter who rode was actually trained to fight on horseback, nor was this necessarily intuitive or better when they were - the zweihander and other specialized weapons were designed specifically to confront riders.

In many MMOs, you're not even allowed to fight mounted - your mount vanishes when you enter combat and must be summoned again afterward. (In Elder Scrolls Online, your mount's stamina acts as its HP, and you're dismounted and Stunned if it expires from an attack. IIRC you can get a perk that makes your mount not use any stamina ever to last longer in combat.)

But in the MMOs where you can fight mounted, it is almost always a complete improvement with no downsides to do so. You move faster, you sometimes hit harder, and you almost always get an HP boost. This means that absolutely nobody "competitive" will ever not be on a mount, and therefore, everyone will have these giant gaudy show-off mounts the way some games let you get massive stupid-looking angel wings and auras and rainbow-colored armor.

The only time I played Ultima Online for more than a few minutes, I was ambushed by over a dozen high-end PKers all riding huge, six-legged "swamp dragons", who cornered me the the same as if it was a dozen dudes on foot piling up on me to punch my ribs.

Mounted combat can easily make an MMO look completely ridiculous and generally introduces a huge power gap, both of which can turn away basically all players other than min-maxers.

THIS!

Having played since the days of Ultima Online (and MUDS, MUSHes, MOOs, etc... before that) I can attest to this. Mounts for travel and to look cool are fine, mounts for combat just never seems to work in a balanced form...as was stated, there is an entire sub-school of medieval weaponry solely dedicated to attacking mounted opponents and putting them at a disadvantage, considering they often have several major advantages over non-mounted infantry types. (Attacking from 'high ground', Momentum of the mount added to charging attacks, Vital areas being up and out of reach, ability to wear heavier armor as the mount is the weight-barer, etc...)

pole-arms, hook-bladed weapons, etc... almost all exist primarily to counter mounted foes. This is not to mention those warriors trained to go for the mount and in such a way that the rider gets thrown or pinned by the disabled beast.

@Jetah said in New Alpha Price & Founder Pack Sale:

but normally you'd offer a discount and free access so that those that want to continue testing.. er playing, can do so. i'm sure they need new players but usually offering a testing phase is bad. especially when majority of mechanics and 2/3 of the races aren't in. personally i would have done a backer only discount to encourage those without alpha/beta to upgrade. at least those people know the state of the build. new players may think the game is bad because of the stage it's in. then they'll refund the tier they took.

Actually, no, you have that completely wrong...it is never advisable to do that...because you want to now start testing with people who haven't bought into the game at all yet. They want numbers that are not biased by previous stress tests. Lower end backers probably made a point to play in every open Stress-test weekend that came before, but this time they want solid numbers of people who haven't jumped on said bandwagon, and they are trying to appease existing backers by not giving away everything for free.

They are still clearly labeling everything as an Alpha Test...if people don't know what it means to be an Alpha Test, then they are going to react wrongly anyway, whether they were backers or not...look above a few posts where someone reacted to other people's comments about this being a cash grab, and thinking the game will never actualize.

In previous notes, they have stated that they have raised well over what they ever even conceptualized raising. They are doing good money-wise. Sure, they can always use more, what company couldn't? They also can use additional funds to improve things by possibly hiring additional workers to work on things their rather small company is currently having to put off during alpha. That's a win-win. The fact of the matter is, training wheels and everything, the state of the game right now is quite playable...is it expansive and will it keep people occupied for more than a month or so...No, definitely not, but the current state isn't meant to be at that point yet, but they have already shown proof of several concepts, as well as a very very VERY healthy respect for our feedback as backers and regular forum-goers. There is ALWAYS a chance that a game that was crowd-funded (or any game, for that matter) might end up dying on the vine, as it were, but this game is very much looking like its thriving, with a nice player-base of backers constantly chomping at the bit for every scrap of additional information we can get. a Limited color palette and small encounter area aside, they are making this game very very playable from the get-go, and only making improvements as they move on.

The studio is doing everything right, in my professional and personal opinion when it comes to this game, and as far as that goes, I wouldn't change a thing!!!