Posts made by GamerSeuss

Okay, as far as Camera Angles go, I agree, they could be improved, however, as this is an Alpha, they simply may not have implemented camera panning as of yet in the design, that's all. That's my assumption anyway. There's no additional keybindings as of yet, which leads me to believe they are still working on a lot of the extra key functionality.

As far as Campfires go, I think they system they have works wonderfully. I've played characters with the absolute minimum strength you can start with as a Mage, and still I manage to carry 20 Stones and 20 Branches almost everywhere. yes, it limits what I can pick up, but part of the problem is more picking up too many useless items. Once you've picked up a few pieces of wolf meat and enough claws for maybe 2 or 3 necklaces, you really don't need to keep grabbing them. Same with plenty of the other items in the game. I have a huge storehouse of Reagents stockpiled in my house, like 7 chests dedicated to just Reagents, actually. This is in addition to outfit chests, food chests, and miscellany chests. My house right now looks more like a wharehouse. The point is, most of the plants your grabbing are very light, and stackable, you don't need to carry a ton of stuff with you usually, and in most areas, you can rely on getting the sticks and the stones on the way to an area.

Another thing I do, when going into an area I may end up doing a lot of hunting at, I'll throw down a campfire blueprint, and load it with maybe half the stones and branches it needs, so I have an easy quick camp in the general area I can finish as needed. Right now, blueprints don't expire, and I'd prefer if things like campfire blueprints that have been added to, didn't expire, or expired after a really long time based on what's been added to them. This is the same as a Hunter/Camper setting up a blind or roost in their favorite hunting spots, that is already stocked with necessities for their big hunting trip, so they only have to bring some stuff to keep the stockpile going.

No, there isn't a transcript for the recent Q&A. Like I said, the video information is supplemental and done so they don't have to interrupt the actual work they are doing on the game in order to type out constant written updates. WHEN they have something important to spread to the community, it goes up as a News Article, gets sent out as an Email, and gets posted in forums and discord threads.

Case in point, we may not have transcribes of the recent Q&A (and any regular member who watched the video is more than welcome to step in and provide such a transcript if they feel their time is best spent doing so) but we do get a detailed report every time they do a bug patch, with its own thread in the forums. That is a written update, more, it is the kind of written update that we, the Alpha Testers/Backers need at this stage of the game.

A lot of other games in this modern era have practically done away with written updates almost altogether in favor of Video updates and interactive chats/forums. You want to talk about a different climate of the community from Daggarfall and EverQuest, the current Paradigm is to update people via video updates, to interact with your backers and testers in forum threads, and via discord channels, with only truly major concerns maybe making it to written form (and often, those are compilations done by another member of the individual testing community/backers, not done by the developers)

They are a small team of developers, their time is better spent on the game, then on writing up constantly for our edification. As a Kickstarter Project, backed in that way, as long as they are in-line with their roadmaps, and when not in line and on schedule, they update said roadmaps, they are fulfilling the necessary communication requirements in writing for us. All the Video and Chat/Forum updates (now the Paradigm) are actually bonus update material. Yes, there may not have been a new Developer's Journal in the last 2 years, that only means that from the Developers' standpoint, there haven't been major developmental decisions in regards to the target of the game made as of yet. Right after the Alpha test ends, just like with all the previous tests, they will do a Survey, AND THEN they will give us a Written update, including the results from the surveys they received.

I think these developers are doing a splendid job, especially for not having a 'community manager' for awhile. (Thanks Spectre for stepping up in that regard) and I am quite thankful for the Q&A sessions that give me not only more information, but if I manage to tune in during this live Q&A, gives me direct influence on what topics are to be covered.

You also need to think....during an Alpha Testing phase, the Developers don't want to overly influence your feedback on the testing too much, so they have to be careful what they release at this time, so as not to bias the results they need from the actual testing being done.

But we're getting them, more of them than most games who actually have some momentum in development. What they are ALSO doing is providing Q&A streams as supplements to those written updates. This game developer is crazy on the ball when it comes to keeping us informed really. I've been Beta-Testing since EverQuest and DaggerFall came out, way back when, and honestly, this is the best communication/progress ratio I've ever seen, especially given the scope of this project.

@Tuoni For the most part, server load is cheaper and more stable out of the US. Also tends to be more hot-swappable server RAID farms available, which is vital for a Testing phase.

@Razvan as was said, even small summaries take time. Time away from things like developing the game, and responding on the forums to direct questions. The Q&A sessions on Stream are just a supplement to the Roadmaps and Developers' Notes we get periodically, but every time they stop to write one of those, it takes away from their valuable time being dedicated to making the overall game better. At least they take the time to do a Q&A stream to touch bases, AND Prometheus is also seen posting in the forums daily it seems, not to mention discord.

Give the devs a break, their communication on this project is way better than 99% of the projects out there, while still making mad progress towards a very unique game.

I believe if your a member of a Faction (PvP toggled ON) you can have your corpse looted by others. Also, remember, items have some durability, and if the final hit on your character also killed the last of the durability of an item, that item would be gone.

You can also set your corpse to be lootable by party members and you may have multiple corpses out there some of which are relatively bare on items as they died trying to get back to the 1st.

I have a strong feeling new Archetypes are on the design boards, just not implemented yet. Mayhaps a Bard, an Artificer, a Crafter, etc... might be in our future. The Bard has always been my favorite archetype really, even when it was deucedly hard to pull off, like in 1st Edition AD&D

@David353 said in ideas What y can do to improve the game:

1- The talent tree should be bigger.
I feel that the talent tree is too small. Any player likes to have a unique character and this is only feasible with a very large talent tree (such as what happens in Path of Exile. An almost infinite tree that makes each character unique and with infinite possibilities. That's why the game has a lot of fame)
2- needs healing ability (to be able to resurrect allies) and summon (to be able to summon allies).
when we die we have to walk a lot and end up wasting a lot of time, besides that it is difficult to find friends.
it becomes tiring
3- indication of where the party members are on the map
4- give to get up near the area where you died or in the nearest city or at home
5- there could be a transport (it could be a train) with stops to shorten the journey time from one side of the map to the other. players could take gank (this train could be built by city owners across the map)
Note: if there is no city in the middle of the map, you cannot build the line in that area.
6- Should appears a skull on the map to know where we died
7- players should be able to destroy some craft materials created by other players except those inside someone's yard.
this will avoid material car walls, bonfires or other blueprints on the map.

1. This is only an Alpha test, there has been no indication that this is the final form of the Talent Tree. It may get expanded or diversified later, as more elements of the game are finalized that might utilize it.

2. They've said healing type spells were coming, again, this is an Alpha and not all the skills/abilities have been implemented yet. I'm unsure if they mentioned any kind of resurrection spells/abilities, but as in MMOs, I always feel they cheapen death, I actively hope they don't include them, or make them very hard to use and costly to 'equip' as a skill.

3. They've already said they plan to implement this. In fact, at one point, I thought it was on the list of what was implemented in this test, but it appears not to have made the cut, this time, but worry not, this is coming.

4. An option to respawn near your corpse when you die isn't needed in this game because you can fall unconscious several times before you die, and regenerating your stamina to prevent death is relatively easy to come by. Just carry stones and sticks with you to make fires, and when you see your red bar getting to about half, make a campfire.

If you do manage to die in the game, there are two options, 1. Respawn at your House, and 2. Respawn at the last City you visited (slept at their Tavern) so if you always make sure to sleep at the taverns near where you plan to hunt, you have that option already.

1. The talk about fast transport has been batted around quite a bit. They in general want to severely limit fast transport options in the game. We're already going to have mounts and some portal-type transport, and there is talk about docks for seafaring being thrown in. Except on the Human world, any kind of Train/Rail system just wouldn't fit the asthetics of the game. The humans are the only ones supposed to have any real Tech level at all.

2. Although this isn't in and of itself a bad idea, it's purely a convenience ask and by no means necessary to game play. You have plenty of time before hitting the respawn button to jot down your map coordinates for where you died. If you don't, that's on you

3. Being able to clean up some blueprints is already being discussed in a couple other threads. A blueprint that has never been added too should probably expire after 24hrs, but some blueprints can be partially filled and stay longer in my opinion. Campfires especially. It is strategic to go into an area and set up a few partial campfires just needing 2-3 stones/sticks to finish and leave them there for emergencies when you come back through...quite similar to old waystations in medieval times and hunting blinds/lodges where a small supply cache is often left for those who might need it, and a space is already cleared and firewood set aside for a camp.

Because Magic Missile always hits with a series of like 5-6 missiles, the manual targeting for it I think is an important limiting factor. In D&D, the game where Magic Missile traditionally comes from, it is also an always hit spell, BUT it is also always limited by the fact you can't target an inanimate object or specific part of the body with it. Granted, most versions of Magic Missile in D&D can hit different targets, but that would be too hard to implement in the style of this specific spell in an isometric free-form game. Mayhaps in a turn-based game like Final Fantasy series.

Overall, I really love the Magic Missile, and it is typically my go-to spell for most fights.

As to the Skills, and needing a fire in order to move the skills around, that is a heck of a lot easier than in other games where you can't respec at all, or you need to pay or do some other task in order to earn a respec. This game lets you create 5 different presets of skills, AND 5 different presets of Talent configurations, not to mention the ability at any time to delete and recreate a preset based on known skills, and total talent points. If all you have to do to switch up is take a quick snooze, count yourself lucky. It kind of simulates the old Vancian magic system used in older versions of D&D, but allows you to respect your combat maneuvers too.

@kellewic as I understood it, most of the Gateways were for traveling between planets and the Asteroids, not within a world itself.

As to Docks and Water travel, I can see some of that, as long as they severely limit the scheduling of said shipping lanes, and don't just make it like another kind of teleport hub or gateway. Not only that, but oceanic travel can take a little bit too, it doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be) nigh on instantaneous and itself could be fraught with danger.

If you want to pay for a separate account just to have a disposable scout alt to sneak ahead and take that risk, using up not only another account, but possibly another PC, more power too you. It doesn't really give you a huge advantage at all. Shoot, spells and pets in other games do the same things, and its balanced out by the convenience of the solution, not very!

The game is not set to go f2p, it is set to go pay once for your account, then free to play from then on, with monthly premium VIP access. If, sometime in the future, the game actively goes true f2p, by then, there will have been so many people figuring out exploits and loopholes that it won't matter if you're running a throw-away alt or 6

The Devs have pretty much stated that they have no intention of implenting Fast Travel. The closest they are going to have is mounts, paved road buffs, and ways to travel between worlds and to asteroids.

The way I see it, you have a few things to consider:

1. The type of player who would create Alts just to scout ahead or act as bait to draw out ambushes is going to create alts no matter what the rest of the game mechanics are like. Throw away characters are just that, throw-aways. Anytime you don't want to risk your mains, your going to use the throwaway method to circumvent that risk, regardless.
2. If the game makes it where every player can technically learn every skill, but it puts a geographical and a time-sensitive restraint on learning too many skills at once, alts aren't going to really circumvent most of these limitations. Sure, an alt might overcome the geographic aspect of a limitation by having that alt based around the crafting tables/material spawn locations needed for a given craft, BUT with having to physically transport goods across not 1 continent, but optimaly, 3 worlds, the alt doesn't really overcome the geographic restraint at all.
3. With time sensitivity restraints, things like the tanning tubs needing 16 hrs to 'mature' and finalize a segment of a crafting, players are still limited in learning everything, while still being allowed to do so, and no amount of Alts can overccome these types of restraints in the first place. What it comes down to is amount of time you can invest in this game, period!

@Razvan said in Is Alt-Spamming even a bad thing?:

Then maybe you should reread the thread?

I created the thread, so I'm familiar with it's premise.
I don't see it making the travel any safer at all. I see it making it so you might use some throw away alts to take the journey, but if captured/killed in a PVP area, the stock is still lost, and thus the profits are still gone.

As to multiple PCs logged in at the same time (or multiple windows on a PC with different toons) this is still stopped or at least slowed down if you have to pay for every active account that you run, and only 1 character from a given account can be logged in at any given time.

The problem I see with people's complaints about Alt spam is the fact that without fast travel, and shared banks, the advantage of alts for money making purposes goes way down. You still have to physically transport any materials or products in order to make it worthwhile, whether your using 1 account or 10. The same is true of time costs, you still have to spend whatever time it takes, and finally, if the game cuts back on the ability to use Macros to play, even better.

I see a lot of comments in regards to how certain mechanics implementations will cause people to spam alt characters(toons, whatever) in the game.

My question is: What's really bad about that?

Some players actively enjoy running several different characters through a game. Making character builds in fact is a major mini-game to a lot of player types. Also, depending on how the game is run once it releases, alt-spamming could be a major coup for Dynamight as a company, because I figure most accounts will only allow so many 'toons' and you would need to pay for additional slots to play. Even in the Free-to-play'esk version of the game, as opposed to VIP monthly premium play, players would more than likely still need to purchase a base account for each set of alts, and so they would be debating whether it was more cost-effective to buy more slots on their main accounts, or open up new accounts, and of course there would be a finite number of slots an account could handle before new accounts would be needed anyway.

These are GOOD things for Dynamight Studios, because it means additional revenue from the game, without a Pay-to-win element being involved. Additional 'toons' that specialize in different things, from hunting/gathering, to crafting, to even being the diplomatic bridge between allied guilds is a natural occurrence in MMOs and should if anything be encouraged, not looked at as a downside.

Besides all this, every character in Fractured gets 5 presets for skills, AND 5 presets for Talents, and in the case of Talents, they get their 60 talent point threshold to respend as they see fit on each preset, where with skills, once you unlock a skill, those knowledge points are spent, and you can't then unlearn a skill in a preset to learn a different one in another preset. This of course also assumes there's no 're-spec' option added in later. This already makes for a world of character role customizations in the building process, not to mention any of these presets can be deleted and rebuilt without cost as well, thus allowing for an infinite possible set of character builds on every character. The main limit is total knowledge points acquired and acquirable in game, and how you spend them on skills as opposed to talents.

1. From a developer's standpoint, Alt spam is a good thing. Especially if they charge for alternate character slots or charge for each account, especially as there's not monthly fee except as VIPs.
2. The above considerations will cut down on alt-spamming. If it costs real world money to alt spam, and there is no other real pay-to-win advantages they can get out of doing so, than the only ones doing it are going to be those who really really want to play with all the various craft variations on dedicated accounts.
3. As I said previously, if you make all crafts available to all characters, but include a few limiters, like time constraints, than alt-spamming won't really be as much of an option to progress towards their goals, will it? time sinks will exist whether you are on your main or your alt accounts, same is true for material needs, city based finishing proceedures, etc... The only real difference will be talents you might spend on and recipes. There looks to however, be plenty knowledge points available mid-game, so recipes should be fine on just one account, depending on how many crafts your splitting them up between, and how much time you have to practice said crafts, as to talents, you get 5 different talent presets, AND at any time, you can delete and respec a Talent preset, so really, you have an infinite possibility to use that to make multi-craft characters. Especially since much of crafting should be done near a fire where it's easy to activate different pre-sets between crafting attempts.

All in all, their implementation of their design principles seems to be spot on, and I'm totally behind how they are going about things. Sure, a small tweak here and there might improve things from a few individuals' points of view, but then again, those some tweaks could ruin it from another segment of the player base, who's to say. I thus think, the least we end up trying to change or influence the implementation of their basic design principles, and the more we rely on the Dev's particular interpretation of how those principles need to be enacted, UNLESS they call for general comments specific to them, the better we will ultimately be as a community. I joined this game back in 2017 as a Kickstarter, mainly because I fully wanted to embrace their design principles, and as such, I trust in these developers, who would set such design principles, to have a fairly good idea of how they intend to implement them, and further, I see their current implementation doing EXACTLY what they intend. You however, see it going the other way... time will tell which of us is right, and how the developers go on feedback in this regard.

@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.

It will take a combination of things to incentivize crafting without incentivizing making several alts.
1st. Limit the number of Alts on an account. If players have to shell out real world money for that 3rd+ character slot, they aren't paying to win, but they are going to make it a judgement call as to the value of that 3rd+ toon. I mean, once you own the game, you could make multiple free to play accounts, with your crafter alts on those other accounts, but this would depend on how you manage the free to play logistics. I know the game is buy once, then play forever, if you have to buy each account, again, it becomes do you buy another account, or just buy additional slots.

2nd, Limit geographic availability of materials. Because materials are going to have to be physically transported from area to area, not just deposited in a bank somewhere, then withdrawn somewhere else. This will make it so your crafter will either have to make certain major caravan runs to get rarer (to their area) materials, or will have to pay someone else for doing the same.

3rd. Time constraints. If some part of the crafting process has a longer than a few ticks time 'cost' it will also limit how often people try to specialize in multiple crafts and such, because we only have so much time to invest, period. Some can play 12 hrs a day, 7 days a week, others are lucky to fit 2 hrs a day, 2 to 5 days a week into their schedule, and some may be able to do like 8 hrs, 2 days a week, Saturday and Sunday, which also happens to be usually the busiest time on most game servers by time zone. Another time constraint besides crafting steps, is material refresh rates for non-mob related materials. How long does it take for that dandelion to grow back? and that mandrake root? how about that iron node?

4th. Linking some crafting steps to only in-city finalization. This would allow cities to tax this final step, and would incentivize the solo'ist player to sometimes come into town for more than just simple trading. That regular trip to town might also be to finalize 6 or 7 projects they've been working on at the 'polishing' centers for that craft.

5th. The durability system will encourage constantly recreating some of the same things over and over again, as their older projects get used and worn out, and old customers need to come back and re-purchase that armor set they liked so much from a revered crafter. Crafters thus would have to balance their time between redoing some of the same old recipes they've been doing over and over again, and attempting new recipes, or even trying out experimental 'create a recipe' segments in later game crafting.

6th. Certain recipes need to be purchased/unlocked using knowledge points, and certain steps in the crafting process may be augmented or even unlocked using the Talent tree system.

the above steps would technically allow all characters to attempt any craft, and refine any craft, but only to the amount of time and effort they wish to spread out between those crafts they do. Do you gather your own materials, or pay other players for them to save time. Do you make all parts of a project, even if different parts take different craftings to complete, or do you pay someone to supply certain pre-fab parts, so you can focus on the craft you really like. Theoretic example: Say Tanning requires certain alchemical concoctions in order to complete advanced tanning. A player then has to decide, do they train up Alchemy to make the chemical themselves, or just buy the chemical ready-made from an alchemy specialist.

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

Your gear wears out and breaks even if you don't die. Gear/enchants aren't worth it to me right now.

It being an Alpha Test, its not really going to be super worth it right now. That's just to be expected. You can only enchant to tier 2 at best right now anyway. The point of having it in the test right now is more to test out if the gear and enchantments work, and there have been bugs found in that regard, which just goes to validate that very inclusion. Also, some of the Alpha Players are putting things through their paces to the point that even the little bit of protection and bump that gear does allow makes a real difference in their playing experience, even if it wears out on them and needs must be replaced. One of my favorite things to do is sit and enchant suits of armor for Me and my guild.We still strive to have the best possible armor on our characters, and at least 1 good back-up suit in the bank or a storage trunk in one of our houses. Gathering Reagents thus becomes an even more vital sub-game during the alpha.

Ultimately you have to look at an Alpha as an Alpha Test, not a fully fleshed out game, and don't expect things to be WORTH IT at all. Expect to test things, sometimes tediously test and retest things with very minimal game, just to make sure the mechanics of said things run smoothly and no bugs are found. Sure, give your opinion on what you want the final product to look like, the Devs have encouraged that from the start, BUT they have also set forth certain basic design credos that you shouldn't expect them to abandon just because a small number of potential players, despite having read the intentions from the very beginning, believe these credos are not their cup of tea. Fast travel is NOT a big priority on this game's horizon, in fact, they want to make it so you have to physically take the trip around the various locations in order to develop the real merchant economy system they intend. This means that dying to transport too and fro is not exactly something they will be encouraging. Granted, dying leaves your stuff behind, thus such travel would not affect the merchant aspect of the game over-much, but also, Dying and losing your corpse is a standard Trope of MMOs as well. They have also stated that they intended from the very beginning that your gear should degrade and need to be replaced constantly, to encourage the merchant-effect again, and to keep characters from maxing out skills and talents and then finding their optimum gear build and then resting on their laurels. THEY WANT IT TO BREAK DOWN!