@SirNikola Isometric top-down MMO with seperate worlds and races for PvE, PvP and mixex playstyle preferences with some ability to travel and intermingle in between, player-driven economy, and a horizontal progression system.
Pretty sure we're full loot on death, right guys?
@evolgrinz said in Infinite progression or hit the wall progression?:
Just wondering if there is some sort of bonus for collecting all the skills other than being a completionist.
Like, once you have you have a build or few builds you like, is there something that pulls you into wanting to still gather the other skills, even if you will probably never use them?Warframe has somewhat horizontal progression, but even when you get a warframe and weapons you love you can still collected the others and level them up to increase your Mastery Rank.
I can see a value to something like that for the sake of appealing to the kind of players that this would appeal to.
However, I want the primary draw of Fractured to be actually playing fractured. The idea of Mastery Rank makes sense for Warframe, which is basically a giant hamster-wheel/skinner-box hybrid for people who are into that kind of thing.
But I think that the idea of fractured is that the gameplay itself should be the point. If the gameplay isn't engaging, then layering on some kind of 'mastery rank' over the top won't save anything in my view.
Using a.2.2.1b on Windows 10.
I have a house at -1539W -933 N. It is a Rustic 2x2 Patio.
Just killed a Treant on my own property.
Tried to loot, and getting the "You have no right to loot this" message.
It was working for wolves. Will see if I can reproduce with another Treant when this one respawns.
Also, keep in mind that the Foundation isn't supposed to be a competitive thing. It will be really difficult for an account that has just joined to catch up to an account that's been here for ages.
The point of the foundation is to have a bit of fun, reward the long-running early supporters with some goodies, and to incentivize engagement and word-of-mouth marketing.
If you stress out about it competitively it'll probably be a net loss for you in terms of fun vs effort.
@SicariusAnatar said in Questions on demons and angles:
why would a demon take the path of light in the first place?
Because you want to play on Arboreus, but you also really like the Hellfire demon stat table. 
I like the 15 minute timeout in unsafe locations on disconnect.
I don't like the 15 minute timeout in unsafe locations on logout. My problem is that it feels too punishing on players that aren't exploiting and have limited time for their gameplay loops.
I think that a good compromise might be to allow players to create a safe logout zone in the open world by creating a campfire and clearing out any aggressive mobs and enemy players in a large radius.
I think that getting players to manually set up camp is a more immersive and balanced method than the super-gamey channeled-logistics-spell route when it comes to enforcing players to not log out in the middle of combat.
I think that if players can create a safe logout zone with planning and consumable resources, then the 15 minute penalty on logging out in unsafe spaces becomes reasonable.
EDIT: Additionally, this could open up a balancing mechanic: If a character is logged off at a campfire, the campfire should show that fact in the game world. Not necessarily showing who or how many, but just that someone is logged out at that location.
This would give nearby players who scout the campfire a head's up that someone might pop into existence at that location at any time, so they've got the ability to identify the risk and alter their gameplay accordingly.
@Recoil From what I've seen with that starter poison spell, I think it does damage based on the total remaining health of the NPC. So the more health the NPC has, the more damage it does. Haven't fully tested it, but I've noticed it doing a lot more work against bigger enemies.
Also, for the thread in general, there's spells like the FIre Totem which are kind of a DoT effect in that it can cast Firebolt over and over again. Just unlocked all the Goblin Fire Shaman spells and I've now got to a point where Fire Totem and Fireball give me the missing DPS I needed to burst down a woodland wisp solo. Very happy. 
Missed the stream because of work, but I've caught up now.
@Prometheus, thanks for answering. Particularly liked the answer about how non-stargate travel between worlds being randomized within a target region. Sounds good. 
So poison is procentual, right?
I think it's proportional to total remaining endurance, but haven't actually done the math to prove it.
I've noticed that mini-boss enemies - the kind I can solo, so just things like Goblin Warchief type enemies - when they fail their resist check to that poison spell, it does damage in the high 100-200 range per tick. But if I use it on a wolf, it does damage in the 50-100 range per tick.
Additionally, if I land a poison spell on a Goblin Warchief at the beginning of a fight while they have high endurance remaining, it seems to do more damage per tick than if I land one at the end of a fight when they have low endurance remaining.
I've interpreted that to mean that the damage per tick is proportional to the total amount of remaining endurance. Note that this isn't the same as being a percentage: I'm not sure what the math is or how the damage per tick actually scales against remaining endurance. Not sure what kind of curve it is.
Additionally, the poison spell comes in different strengths based on your intelligence, and I haven't tested it with characters of different intelligence levels to see how the different poison strengths behave or anything like that. I'm the kind of nerd that would try giving each strength of poison a progressively steeper curve if I were implementing it, but not sure if that would balance properly from an actual game designer's perspective.
But please keep in mind that I haven't done the math to prove any of this, so it's very possible that I'm mistaking some other mechanic like poison resistance, or that I'm even just imagining it and there's no real relationship there at all. Take this with a grain of salt.
Experiment with it a little and see what you find.
@gothix said in Why is the Kickstarter (almost) failing.:
The real reasons:
- Small studio that people don't know about yet, and don't have experience with (uncertainty factor).
- Publisher is still unknown (there are lots of bad publishers out there so people are being careful).
- Not too much concrete game play has been presented yet (Mostly only theoretical info, artwork, and the basic game play. People need to see more developed game play to get a feel if they will like the game or not.).
Fixes:
- More promotion of the studio and developers themself (not only game promotion), it will help if people get to know the devs as well (the people behind the game) and not only the game.
- Announcing a publisher (that players have good past experience with) would help immensely.
- More development time invested into the game so more can be shown (time is needed here, there is no quick fix for this one).
Gothix sums up my thoughts way more concisely than if I'd tried to say it in my own words.
Only two things to add:
Dynamite's marketing is honest, straightforward, achievable promises, practical timelines, good ideas, and grounded ambition. I love that. But marketing is all about pushing the "Back this Game" buttons on the amygdala of the audience, and truth is just one of the tools for pressing those buttons, and nowhere near the most important. The best Kickstarter marketing strategy I've seen for games is to make it look like a nostalgically beloved genre is on the verge of collapse, but This New Game is going to save it - and you dear viewer can be part of that revolution! I think that Dynamite has made the mistake of thinking that a good game idea made by competent people will sell itself. It would be nice if that was true - but it isn't.
Even so, I was (and still am) really surprised at the lack of response from the community. Given how active the community is here, I had assumed that this would translate through to much higher level of interest in the Kickstarter. I'm still not really sure why more people from the community aren't coming through. The whole "I don't have a credit card" thing may be part of it, sure. But it feels like even with everything else suggested here that this isn't enough of an explanation for the shortfall.
Also, the idea is that while demons will get an edge in the ease of travelling between worlds, particularly during eclipses, travelling for the other races is meant to be something that requires planning and investment.
My expectation is that travelling between worlds will be expensive enough to act as a significant money and resource sink, but that's just an educated guess on my part.
This just makes me want to play a tank mage. I didn't want that before, but I'm tempted to try it now.
@Tuoni said in Concerns related to the attributes:
Perhaps the human-readable part can be camouflaged behind skins, but if we have option to inspect then it does not really matter.
Still reckon there's a big difference between seeing it at a glance and having to click open an inspection menu then move it out of the way of combat then read it all while fighting and trying not to die.
Not sure if an inspection option is planned, but if implemented, would be interesting if the level of information revealed was linked to the perception attribute.
The Lich is actually tempting me away from my plan to play as a demon.
I really enjoyed the necromancer in Diablo II, and if Liches get bonuses to necromancy and magic abilities as discussed in the Q&A (subject to game balance, of course) then that might pull me across to Syndesia.
Currently happy with my plan for a tanky hellfire demon and switching to Angel in my endgame. But I'll be watching the Lich closely as it gets balanced out to see how it comes together.
@Phial said in VIP - Details?:
@Razvan said in VIP - Details?:
VIP membership is a monthly subscription planned to be priced around $10/month. It provides the following perks:
Discounts on Store items
Unique cosmetic rewards for accumulated VIP time
Other vanity rewards we might think of in the future
Additional study slots
Increased Knowledge Point gainsWouldn't "increased knowledge point gains" be considered a pay 2 win since you'll have an advantage on the points you can attribute faster than others?
The short version is: VIP does give an advantage in power level. But it's short lived and not massive. It'll give the VIP an edge, but not neccesarily an overwhelming advantage.
I wanted to give a little more detail on top of what other people have discussed.
Suppose four players: Alice, Bob, Charlotte, and Daniel. All three have the same race and attributes. For simiplicity, lets assume they have the same gear, and they are all pursuing the same "standard loadout" build of skills and talents that their characters will use in the game.
Alice has done enough in-world exploration to unlock many skills. She has earned just enough knowledge points to learn a full loadout of skills and talents that she wants for her "standard" character loadout, but no more. Let's assume this happens at 10,000 KP for the sake of the example. Alice has also unlocked more skills though exploration than she's got the knowledge points to learn.
Bob hasn't played the game as much as Alice. He's only explored enough to unlock a sub-set of the skills Alice has learned. He also only has 5,000 KP to learn the skills he has unlocked. He hasn't gotten to the point yet that he can complete a full loadout of abilities.
Charlotte has played the game just as much as Alice, but is also a VIP. Charlotte has unlocked all the same skills as Alice through exploration, but because of her VIP she has earned (again, just inventing the numbers) 15,000 KP. Charlotte can learn more skills and talents than Alice. However: Charlotte cannot equip more skills than Alice at any one time, because Charlotte and Alice have the same number of memory points, so they have the same ceiling for the number of skills and talents that can be memorized at any one time.
Daniel has played the game just as much as Bob has, but is also a VIP. Daniel has explored enough to unlock only a sub-set of the skills that Alice and Charlotte have unlocked. He has more KP that Bob at 7,500, and he can learn a few more skills and talents than Bob can. But still not enough to complete an entire character loadout.
In that scenario, the power levels regarding the "standard loadout" are:
Charlotte's only advantage over Alice is that Charlotte can, during rest, choose to memorize a "non-standard loadout" of skills and talents that may be more situationally useful. For example, the "standard loadout" may not have a fire resist spell - but when doing PvE against enemies that deal fire damage, it may be useful for Charlotte to run away, rest, then equip a different loadout that trades off a combat closer skill from the standard loadout for a fire resistance skill instead.
So it's not exactly true that VIP doesn't give a power advantage, because Charlotte does enjoy the power that comes from greater flexibility in her choices. But it doesn't give Charlotte a higher power ceiling than Alice - they each cap out at the same power level. So if the "standard build" is an optimal PvP build, Charlotte has no advantage over Alice in a PvP setting, but she may have an advantage in that she can optimize for a wider range of PvE settings.
It should be noted that Daniel (VIP) does have a raw power advantage over Bob (non-VIP) though. But that advantage will be short-lived. Once Daniel and Bob have each done the same amount of exploration as Alice, and once they have earned the same amount of base KP as Alice, then Daniel and Bob will be indistinguishable from Charlotte and Alice.
So if you got through that Huge Wall Of Text then congratulations! The takeaway here is that, yes, the VIP system does give an advantage, both in terms of flexibility and in terms of raw power comparisons. The flexibility advantage is real. A VIP will have access to more options than a non-VIP for the same investment of time and player skill, which will let them optimize loadouts for a wider range of scenarios. However, the raw power advantage is only in play for as long as it takes for a non-VIP player to complete their first loadout. Once that's done, the non-VIP is equivalent to a VIP with the same race, attributes, gear, and skill/talent loadouts.
Now: Even with all that in place? It needs to be acknowledged that VIPs may still get access to increased power level in the same loadout due to their greater flexibility. Skills will be upgradeable twice (so three levels of skill) through exploration. So if a VIP has an easier time exploring due to their flexibility, that could give them an easier time unlocking higher levels of the skills in the "standard loadout" being compared. That would translate to an increase in power level. But it's a very nonlinear form of power advantage, it only lasts as long as it takes for the non-VIP to unlock up to the same levels, and it still requires the exact same investment in terms of the actual exploration requirements themselves from all players. Again, that is an advantage, but not an overwhelming one.
Also: Remember everyone that for every beastman race added, there will also need to be a corresponding abomination subtype added too. So go easy on the devs!
@dulu said in So there will be a skin cash shop (part 2):
This immediately causes gameplay concerns.
If this is truly going to be a PvP focused game, part of that means gear and abilities need to be recognizable.
If you can't tell what the heck is going on, you don't have a good PvP game.
League of Legends can have this - because it doesn't have items that impact how a character looks. The "costume" of the character, per se, is completely cosmetic. While in a game like World of Warcraft, Albion Online, etc.. you can discern what a player's power level is by looking at them. This is imperative, if you're going to make a decision to engage, or disengage. Who to target first, etc.
Having skins in an MMO like this lowers the skill bar.
This has been a concern of mine as well, although I think it's a neccesary evil.
@Kralith, the problem with skins is that they run the risk of masking meaningful information.
For example, if you have a skin that makes it impossible for me to tell if your character is wearing no armor, light armor, medium armor, or heavy armor? That skin has removed information about your character's equipment that a skilled player could have had access to at a glance to infer something about your build.
If the skin makes your dual daggers look like a two handed longsword, then that's potentially really confusing. But also if the skin makes it look like your weapons have a fire effect but they actually have an ice effect, then that's confusing too.
If the skin is so elaborate that I can't even tell what race your character is, then that's even worse.
A lot of this depends on implementation, of course. I'm taking it on faith that DS won't implement any skins that are too game-breaking in terms of the information they cover up. I'm encouraged that a lot of the example skins we've seen so far have light, medium and heavy variants.
But even if they do get a little bit game breaking in terms of covering up information, I think I'm okay with that: Hyper-competitive players will just adjust to the meta of having mask-able equipment through skins. So as much as I'd prefer the game not to have this in it and to keep the visual aspect of weapons and armor as a hard and meaningful link to those items themselves, I think that this is the lesser of all evils when compared to other revenue models.
Just going to throw in my weight with the others, in that I just don't see this being a massive problem.
I think that any engine upgrades - if DS do in fact do any - will come down to something other than the need to be on the newest, shiniest graphics.
For example, if SpatialOS grandfathered out an whatever version of Unity Fractured winds up being built on? That would be a huge deal... And depending on expectations set between DS and SpatialOS, that alone might be enough of a justification for regular engine upgrades to make sure they gap between the current version and the latest SpatialOS supported version never gets too large.
Because it turns out you can accrue Technical Debt even if you don't touch anything! In the event that the market moves forwards multiple versions you can lose access to formerly viable upgrade pathways, and then when all of a sudden you have to upgrade you're stuck on a smelly waterway without a propulsion device. What fun! (my company has going through dealing with that very problem for the last 18 months and we're still not done...)
So there may still be really good reasons for DS to keep Fractured up to date on current or semi-current builds of Unity. I just don't think that being on the latest version on release simply for the sake of being on the latest version on release is a powerful enough issue that it's worth the time and effort to solve.
If the engine is a year or two out of date on release, I'm not personally going to be too fussed. If anything that might even be a plus given not every system may be able to run the bleeding-edge version or it might still be a bit buggy. But a version that's a few years old should have had time to propagate around the marketplace and should have had most of the most obvious bugs and issues killed off by then.
@gothix said in Power gap between r1 and r3 spells is too big (POLL):
Reducing CD and scaling up damage is just inappropriate for horizontally marketed game (even if scaling would be low).
This would be horizontal "ranking up" (an example):
Axii's Sun Strike:
(all ranks 120 mana cost, all ranks 15 sec CD, all ranks 520 damage)R1 ignores targets fire resistance
R2 adds a slow effect to targets
R3 never misses the targets - (hit chance based, not players aiming miss)(Higher rank does not include benefits of previous ranks, each rank effect only works for that particular rank.)
And then player chooses which rank to slot on his skill bar depending on what he needs for particular situation.
Player could slot R1 of Sun Strike for fire resistant mobs, or R2 for melee mobs, or R3 for evasive ghostly mobs. Depending on what ranks are available in his spell book of course (what ranks he already learned).
I know I'm a bit late to the party - but I really like the examples because they're adding something different to the spell at every level rather than just taking existing numbers and making them bigger.
I'm not sure about the sequence though. R1 seems a little bit OP to me. But as a general example, yeah, I think that's a really good way to think about it. Not even from a horizontal vs. vertical game design perspective, but more from an interesting vs. boring game design perspective.