Posts made by KairosVal

@target said in Server Size:

I'm skeptical over SpatialOS being used as an excuse to not have regional servers. As far as I know, SpatialOS just allows games to take advantage of computationally heavy server-side systems. I don't see how it allows a game to bypass latency caused by distance.

I think that's kind of missing the point of SpatialOS.

You are right about the regional-server thing. But an "excuse to not have regional servers" isn't the point. The point is to have a single shard with the largest possible population.

The traditional problem with that is server load. The entire point of SpatialOS is that it uses cloud-based systems to automatically scale the available resources up and down at the worker process level rather than at the level of entire servers. That means that a single persistent game world can be shared by a massive number of users without having to pay for a massive server that can handle peak usage only to have all of that utilization capability go to waste during off-peak usage.

This sounds like a brilliant solution for a indie-sized development team to deliver an enterprise-level backend with reasonable timeframes. Which has the benefit of minimizing the number of servers which in turn maximizes the population per server. More people = more massive = better MMO experience.

It sounds like really amazing and entirely plausible tech given what the virtualization industry is already capable of, so I'll be really interested to see how SpatialOS performs with the initial server load on release and how that plays out over time as the playerbase falls off then stabilizes.

I'm not a game developer, but I'm a developer that works in EDI, and enterprise-level scaling like this is a major thing for us too. I doubt SpatialOS would have an EDI application, but I'm still professionally interested in how this launch goes. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the business update meetings at Dynalight where they review server performance over time, because, well... I'm just that big nerd.

Only possible fly in the ointment is lag time. I'm hoping that the game pace isn't so frantic that slight lag is detrimental enough to require additional servers. Time will tell.

Note that it's arguable that Angels and Abominations may function as their own sub-species (or sub-sub-species) variants, so those are worth taking into consideration too when tallying things up.

Single shard baby!

But for the record, they're building on a platform called SpatialOS. It's a fully scalable system where worker processes can be added and removed on the fly in the cloud. So while Fractured is a single shard in the sense that everyone shares the same game world (worlds?), it doesn't map perfectly on the traditional notion of a "single server".

You can find a lot of neat information here.

It's 10 minutes in and they've already got almost $20k (local currency) pledged off of 40 of us. We're nuts.

So it's 4:00 am and I've got my damn early-bird pledge. Good start to the day.

2 mins to go!

@jetah said in Payment Model info and post release strategy:

depends if they allow a dagger to be changed into a 2h sword. If it's same weapon type then it won't matter as the gear is insignificant to power.

The example I have in mind is a mage that uses ice magic reskinning their mage robes to look like massive fire-covered full plate with a over-designed glowing orange halo and flame-based particle effects as they move, that kind of thing.

I get it because that looks cool and everything. But it's confusing, and has the consequence that you can't infer anything about a character from their appearance.

Good game design should use the appearance of a character to communicate something meaningful about that character in gameplay terms. The sword that does fire damage can have a fire particle effect, the mace that does electrical damage can have an electrical effect, if they're in full plate they're probably a tanky warrior, if they're in light armor they're probably an agile DPS, if they're in robes and cloth they're probably a mage, that kind of thing. Cosmetics can spoil the ability to communicate that information quickly and cleanly.

Like where Kralith said about looking up the hero's data in PoE? I get that that's a thing, but it shouldn't be neccesary. But the amount of over-designed cosmetic items in PoE makes that a requirement. If you have to look up raw data on a character sheet to get a basic feel for what kind of equipment a character is currently using, to me that feels like an art design failure.

In games with loot progression it also makes the visual progression of the design of gear meaningless too, but given Fractured's horizontal progression model that's probably less of a concern here.

But like I said: This is a minor quibble, and the lesser of all evils. So I'm not throwing my toys out of the cot about it or anything like that.

It'd be nice if there was a way to preserve the informational content of well designed art assets while still allowing for cosmetic customization. But I think that the conflict there is very real and those servers aren't going to pay for themselves.

@kralith said in Payment Model info and post release strategy:

As for PoE it is obvisious, that this kind of payment method works very well. I mean, look at this game, there is absolutely no need to look nice, but people want to have the biggest Wings and the super cool skilleffects. People pay for such things, even it gives absolutly no extra power.

My only beef with the cosmetics shop thing is that weapon and armor reskins remove the visual cues that could have been used to communicate information about what another player has equipped.

This is very much a minor quibble and I think that a cosmetic cash shop is the lesser of evils when it comes to monetization strategies, so I'm not all bent out of shape over it or anything like that.

It's just one of those things where I wish there was an easy way to do both.

::puts alert into phone::

I'm damn well getting the early-bird pack I've got my eye on.

@target said in Payment Model info and post release strategy:

I'm against any payment model that includes the ability to open your wallet for in game wealth. Fractured already has a box price, a cash shop, and a vip subscription. If it needs to further supplement its business model, a non-p2w option is a cosmetic version of Warframe's prime access or Path of Exile's supporter packs.

One thing that this can be a good idea for is that it can help to anchor an in-game currency to a real-world currency, and that can be

in the box for combating mudflation.

::reads dubious intro post dubiously::

Yes. Yes of course. Give us the demons free stuff and we they will totally not use those things to kill you and turn good instead.

I heartily endorse this plan. ^_^

@kingexodus said in Demons will rule this game!:

Not if we turned them all into Angels, with gifts and food.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the Camelot Unchained dedicated crafter class plays out.

I'm going with Hellfire demon, just because it feels cooler and I like the idea of being the only race that can max out for21 strength. Feels suitably epic and thematically on-point for a DPS/off-tank type demon.

But I suspect that stealthy burst-damage shadow demons will be the most reliably annoying in a PvP context.

Easy: Just add blink, mana-burn, magic shield and dispel as abilities to the various schools and let the game theorists sort out how best to optimize those three in an otherwise combat-focused class.

Currently I like to play:
EVE Online

PC Master race / console / tabletop?
PC

Why do you play this game right now?
For me, EVE is the background game I play when there's nothing else around taking my attention. So the simple answer is: Nothing else is grabbing me right now.

That said, the reason EVE is my fallback game is that the player-driven economy and the ever-present risk of shiploss is engaging enough to make activities feel meaningful. Even for someone like me who plays EVE wrong - I'm a filthy casual carebear HiSec miner, which is popularly regarded as being the worst way to play EVE. But I'm a werido that actually likes it. Go figure.

I think that delaying until after E3 is the right move from a hype perspective.

The plan seems to be that VIP players will get greater flexibility between respecs but no greater power within a direct PvP context. Non-VIP players can get access to everything that VIP players will have access to. That access will be slower but not punitively slower.

I'm comfortable with that, and I trust the devs to implement the VIP system and the Knowledge system in such a way as to achieve that outcome.

I'm comfortable with this as a VIP system, but I understand why other people might not be.

To me, it hinges on the extent to which Fractured truly implements the promise of horizontal progression, with very slight vertical progression that requires in-game activity to achieve.

To my reading and to my understanding of the progression system, this sounds as if once a non-VIP player fills up their first set of ability slots, that player and a VIP player will have equivalent power as they will have had the same amount of in-game time to fulfill the requirements of the knowledge system for vertical progression. The advantage that VIP will have is better flexibility as they will have had time to acquire a greater range of skills.

So the only difference in power level should be while the non-VIP is catching up to the VIP in a given set of ability slots.

That's obviously all in principle, of course. In practice it might not turn out that way. But I'm willing to wait and see - the devs so far really seem to know their shit, so I'm inclined to trust them to get this one right.