Best posts made by Logain

@Brueson said in Cities feel too much like grid paper:

(...)No changes needed to the coding(...)

You mean other than having to check and ensure that there's always a viable path from any entrance to every exit (a non trivial task). And other than having to reevaluate and communicate building privileges, since you need to know who is allowed to place something at that position (or destroy/use...). And other than having to reevaluate space per city, since you can 'mess up' or 'optimize' more with such a solution.

There's more, but I guess you can see that this is not a trivial click of a button implementation as you might be thinking.

@Brueson said in Cities feel too much like grid paper:

(...)Same assets placement(...)

Not at all, you have to consider individual privileges. Who can place/destroy what where? You haven't talked about that.

@Brueson said in Cities feel too much like grid paper:

(...)one extra algorithm to check if building would end up with no valid paths to the front doors(...)

The situation is not as easy as you think it is. Have you ever worked with a navmesh? And we aren't talking 'front door' here. People are going to do their very best to abuse such functionality. They would block other players by building around them (or their spawn position). They would cut off players from reaching certain points through building in circles around key areas. All of these nasty edge cases have to be considered and PREVENTED. As the saying goes... the devil's in the detail.

@Brueson said in Cities feel too much like grid paper:

(...)I'm confused why players expect the world from developers, but also defend them with weak tech excuses(...)

Three reasons.
First, I don't expect the world from them.
Second, I know the technical perspective of a programmer and the financial restrictions.
Third, I know they are already struggling to implement the core game as promised in a reasonable time-frame. I'm in good hope that they can manage and finish developing this game with the funding they have, but I am aware that feature creep has killed more software projects than I could count.

In other words, would I think it's a great feature to have? Certainly!
Would I want them to take the month or three required to implement it? No, I'd rather have them try and finish the core features of the game.

@spoletta said in Limited uses for recipes:

But then we tie the crafting to a massive grinding, which is probably against the intentions of the game.

Call me stupid there, but could you explain how repeatedly gathering resource X (required to craft item Y) is grind, but repeatedly collecting recipe A (required to craft item Y) isn't grind?
If anything, fully unlocking something after a specified amount would be less grind than constantly needing to repeat forever, or wouldn't it?

My favorite so far is a combination of some of the suggestions mentioned.

• Exploration is rewarded through progression with crafting by PoI based resources
• Crafting is rewarded and limited progression ensured through progression by crafting
• A talent tree/enchantment recipe like gating of higher specialized (tier) items
• City technology is required to 'scribble recipes', promoting travel and cities

You can 'reuse' existing functionality and no new system is required from a programming perspective.

In order to answer, I'd say one first has to ask for the design pillars the developers had previously announced for Fractured and if they are still intended. Then one would have to check if the proposed solution is in line with the intention.

As far as I recall in the first few statements by Prometheus, the basic gist was 'getting competitive within less than a dozen hours of playtime', 'avoiding grind, preferring and promoting exploration'.
Am I recalling this wrong and/or is this no longer the case?

@WolfOfRavens said in 5+ hours to respawn a resource node?!:

How is anyone supposed to do anything when they can't even get these basic resources!

If you explore the land, you can usually find more than just one spawn-point per resource and trade is a viable alternative as well.
Exploration is/was supposed to be a key selling point for Fractured.

@GamerSeuss said in No steam key??:

(...)Steam charges devs to give out Steam Keys(...)

Could you provide a link to this claim/information? As far as I am aware, this feature is free of charge.
The very opposite is true in my humble opinion/experience, by providing some of your customers early dev keys, you can ensure a solid and flawless launch on Steam (leading to positive Steam reviews and hence more purchases upon launching early access).

I'm not a fan of the percentage for durability loss, because that negates the difference in durability for some types of armor (cloth has less durability than plate, but a percentage loss would treat both equal), the difference in durability for quality (white/green/blue/purple/yellow) and it does punish solo players more than group players (who already have the easiest time).
In general, I'd prefer a less grind and more spread out approach (with equipment between primitive and tier 2), since one of the early advertisements for Fractured was 'no grind' (though that got removed from the webpage).

@GamerSeuss said in Feedback on the new durability:

(...)That is more of a voluntary grind (...)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)

Which, if you read my posting at all, is exactly my point.
The Kickstarter page advertises 'solitary hero' as viable play-style literally in the second paragraph. I get it, you play during peak times, you have people to play with, you can rush through the content easy and never have to encounter any difficulty at all, because, quite frankly, if you die in a group, you were simply stupid.
I don't have that luxury, there's only ever a handful of active players online during my playtime, who barely ever get into group activities. I've had exactly 3 'organized group hunts' since EA started, the rest was all solo play with the occasional rare random grouping.
For me, there is extreme grind, getting all the materials, finding a crafter that's going to be willing and has the time to be online when I am every once in a week, begging and then hitting the ground due to rubberbanding with high ping, back to where I started.
But yeah, I'm glad you're enjoying yourself.

@spoletta said in Can we get an answer on this?:

(...)as far as I understood they are meant to offer both. There will be high end PvE targets on there.

If they are like Legendary creatures work on Syndesia right now (high PvP enforced end game PvE), that's a moot point for the audience that wants to play on Arboreus. Yes, they contain PvE, but it is gated by PvP and that somewhat defeats the whole idea behind Arboreus, doesn't it?

@spoletta said in Feedback on the new durability:

We know that Prometheus at least is playing, even if obviously he keeps his char hidden(...)

The question is, does he play with admin features or without and what content does he consume?

@GamerSeuss said in Feedback on the new durability:

(...)but has a finite 10 deaths or 20 k/o's lifespan.

And that's the point of the grind.
You collect 120 iron ore, 240 silver ore and 360 tin ore (24 full carts), 6 will stones (that's a couple of hours farming at least), several hours of farming reagents for 10ish tier 2 enchants for 20 knockouts as a 'tank'. And that's tier 2, with tier 3 supposedly coming in and requiring a lot more. If that's not 'grind' to you, I'm sorry, I don't want to see your definition of the term.

@spoletta said in Can we get an answer on this?:

(...) For sure the next continent is from Tartaros (...)

Just as an add on, there was a good 'roadmap news' (that I couldn't find anymore, but here's the picture that was posted back then) @Xulu .
Sadly, at launch, the game will have only 1 continent for Arboreus, 1 for Tarteros, and 2 for Syndesia, which is a huge problem for the PvE community, since the content they have available can be consumed in less than two days (many on Arboreus have already quit the game now two weeks after the test). Unfortunately, @Prometheus sees no problem there, as could be seen by his response in the last AMA and won't consider suggestions that would help mitigate the issue by providing more content to the PvE community with very little work by the developers.

@GamerSeuss said in Communication is Key for Supporters:

(...)They have made it clear they intend for us to drive the development of the game, so little or no pretesting is being done. We're it(...)

And that's a misunderstanding. People barely read any such announcement/statement and simply approach the 'game' with their expectations (from experience with similar phrased products). If their expectation isn't meet, best case, they simply leave (you can see the massive decline in player numbers on Steam charts), worst case, they leave a negative review and leave. Like it or not, DS has to generate revenue, they can blame the customer, but that won't get them sales.

As you mentioned, there is an easy (somewhat industry standard) solution to this problem, that has been suggested time and again, a closed test server prephase with selected testers that are aware of what participating in a test means, willing to and skilled enough to report problems.
If you're not applying this method and instead have an unaware, high expecting public face-tank such issues, you have to live both with the comments and consequences.

@Junkie said in Crafting, and "long term goals" of community/devs:

(...)when t3 recipes are on the horizon(...)

Not just T3, but alchemy and asteroids are going to change (or at least should change) balance. I've said it before, but I'm continue saying it, don't focus on balancing now, focus on implementing functionality/features/content. DS has a tight schedule and already needs to postpone important, game changing features, like taming, past launch (which isn't good). Worry about balancing in the last two month before release, when you (hopefully) have a feature stop and the focus is solely on testing (I know it won't happen, but that's what should happen).

@Xulu said in Where are the developers??:

(...)take five minutes once a YEAR to update those that backed you on Kickstarter(...)

I can completely understand you. I've been patiently waiting and supporting the game well over six years, backed on Kickstarter and am still waiting for a response to my message to support for over 5 month now.