Best posts made by Polaris

Hi folks, KS beta backer taking advantage of the opportunity to alpha test Fractured. I didn’t study up before jumping in so this feedback comes from fresh eyes.

The View
• The forced perspective produces a very limited view, more limited than usual. Being unable to rotate, the character is always in danger of literally bumping into mobs or being forced to run after them when they run offscreen. This is a major irritant for me, so I’m not able to be very objective about it. Recommendation: Allow rotation, further zoom or a tracking/proximity marker.
• The crafting HUD is pretty comprehensive for a game that will go deep. But for a new player, some things can be highlighted early: the vertical side tabs that show up depending on the crafting table could use a little bling or they can be easily overlooked in the information overwhelm for a new player. In addition, the icons at lower right and around/on the map could use some color and tooltips to explain their use.

The Tutorial
• In general, a tutorial teaches a player how to play the game: what the controls are, what icons mean and where to find things. The current tutorial works about 50% of the time.
• First, players need to understand that they really need to complete the tutorial in order to progress and learn. This is not apparent when you spawn, so needs to be highlighted. In addition, it should be emphasized that multi-part quests should be completed in order or you’ll have to go back and redo to get credit for doing them.
• Second, the green markings on the map are not useful if you don’t know what they are for (I originally thought they marked the town). Explaining that the green markers show tutorial quest locations or adding tooltips to them would be very helpful.
• Third, while I appreciate that having to figure things out on your own produces a certain kind of satisfaction, I mostly feel like I shouldn’t have to do that in a tutorial. So, how to equip a weapon, how to ensure your class can use the equipped weapon, how to obtain a spell/skill, how to learn and use a spell or skill you obtained, how to memorize a preset – these are all things that should be explained early on so players can intuit deeper things later.
• Players need to know that there are no levels but there are Knowledge Points that are spent to learn skills. I saw a lot of players asking about that today. There is more but it is a lot more granular. Overall, the tutorial needs more time spent on teaching players how Fractured does things.

The Map/Travel
• It appears that the terrain in Fractured uses single horizontal planes, and unless access from one plane to another is provided, the character cannot move up or down despite the terrain looking like it can accommodate that movement. This is problematic in terms of player time, energy and frustration in trying to get from point A to point B.
• Since the tutorial sends the player to three locations at some distance from the spawn town, the inability to navigate the overland terrain is a big deal, confusing and irritating. The signs on the roads are not interactive, and if travel on the road is a requirement, that should be made clear in the tutorial and/or on the road signs.

Mob density
• The first location early players are likely to find higher mob density is with the black widow hatchlings, young wolves or bears. Particularly with the spider hatchlings, the respawn rate or agro meter may need to be adjusted because there is less room to move around. In addition, dead mobs do not appear differently than live mobs until mouseover so despawning the dead might be useful.
• The tutorial sends the player to Goblin Hills in addition to two other locations. Goblin Hills is the closest to the spawn town per the map, so a reasonable place for the new player to go. After unsuccessfully navigating the overland terrain, the player finds that the two ends of the road leading into Goblin Hills dump the player into goblin camps populated with 3-5 humanoid mobs plus 3-4 wolf pets waiting for them at the gate. Since there is no warning of 1) mobs with ranged abilities just off the screen or 2) a warning that this content is not recommended for the solo player, this might be the place where players have their first death. Recommendation: Make Goblin Hills group content and optional in the tutorial. Or tune down the difficulty so it can be soloed.

Bugs
• Chat: I encountered a bug or glitch with being unable to post in chat. While I had no issues reading what other players posted, the only way I could sometimes post was to click on the lock, select a chat channel, click on the lock again (to unlock it) and press enter. However this workaround was unreliable and only worked about 30% of the time.
• Unable to cast spells: I learned four spells and could not cast any of them. They also could not be added to the toolbar. The only spell I was able to cast was what came from the weapon (mage staff right click). This might be a failure on my part to understand or intuit how it is supposed to work. The tutorial could have helped but did not.
• Memorized presets could not be moved from the top of the 3rd row of hotbar. This requires keeping all three hotbars expanded and unused, which is a waste of HUD real estate.

I was very frustrated by the time I logged off. I’ll go back in and put another 5-6 hours into alpha testing. If I find workarounds, resolutions or player errors, I’ll update this post.

Hello everyone!

I hope to find you all in good health and I'm looking forward to progress on this project. /wave

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I was worried my post was too long so I'll keep this short.

@Tuoni I rolled a mage but I did acquire Bash very early on killing some bears I agro'd. However, I did not learn the skill since I can't use a shield. It would be very helpful for new players to understand there are two parts to using a new skill: obtaining it from a mob and then learning it via knowledge points.

@Kralith Re spells, I had the original four spells being a mage, then acquired Magic Missiles, learned it via knowledge points and memorized it in a preset as required by the tutorial. But I couldn't use any of them. The presets were added to the upper left bar of the toolbar and I was not able to drag them down to the keybinds. I was never able to actually use any of the spells I know and have. I'll post a screenshot when I get back in game if the problem persists.

Fractured Noob Feedback - 4/13/20 Session

I went back into the game this afternoon to continue where I’d left off from yesterday. In terms of the issues I posted in the OP, I did get some things resolved and found other issues as well.

Chat
• The reason I had so much trouble with it yesterday seems related to hardware/software interaction. I usually use the <Enter> key at the far right of my keyboard, on the numpad. This button is not recognized in Fractured, so does nothing to open up the chat feature, nor does it post what you type.
• The way to use the chat feature is to click <Enter> from the keyboard above the right Shift button, type your post and then use the same key to send it.
• Issue: Being able to select which channel you want your post to show up in is still challenging at times.

Spells
• Spells remain a bit glitchy but I was able to at least get the spells I have onto the toolbar and use them. I made several unsuccessful attempts at workarounds before deleting all the memorized presets I had and starting over. I was eventually able to finally get all 5 skills onto the toolbar and use them.
• Issue 1: A player can only have 5 presets but it is not clear why only 5. Neither is it clear why we would put 5 skills in a preset since they do not share a skill queue or some other feature.
• Issue 2: Memorizing a preset with only 1 skill will overwrite existing presets on the toolbar.
• Issue 3: Memorizing a preset with 2 skills will only show 1 skill on the toolbar.
• Issue 4: Memorizing a preset with 4 skills will show all 4 skills on the toolbar.
• The issue here is inconsistency and confusion for the new player.

Missing from Tutorial
• Players are sent off to the farther reaches of the map but without all the necessary tools. For example, resting at a campfire is how a character regains Life, yet there is no mention of this requirement in the tutorial, nor any mention of how to make a campfire, nor of death.
• Furthermore, there is no mention of crafting options outside of workbenches. So it is only by seeing a mention in chat or stumbling across it that a player discovers they can craft anywhere in the world and have no need of workbenches (at least in the early game) simply by clicking on an icon at lower right.
• In addition, there is no mention of Blueprints, which is how campfires and houses get built, plus much more. Since housing apparently unlocks only after a player has completed the exploration of Goblin Hills, the Heartwood and the Vale, that may be when Blueprints are mentioned in the tutorial. Recommendation: Move crafting and blueprints further up the chain so players know how to recover life while out on the landscape.
• As with Blueprints, Tools may be something that is specifically taught alongside Housing. But within 5 minutes of spawning in the game, a player is able to find a resource node that they cannot harvest. Recommendation: Add more description to the craftable Handaxe and Hammer that describes the resources they can harvest and their specific purpose. Note: the mouseover icon for gathering a stone node is a pickaxe, not a hammer.

Death
• Issue 1: When mobs have downed the player, 30 seconds is the wait time for respawn. The mobs will often wander offscreen but then return to the character’s body within 30 seconds, just in time to kill it again. This might happen 4, 5 or 6 times before the player is able to get up and run away to gather life.
• Issue 2: Or, if life and endurance reach zero from being killed so many times in a row, the player will respawn back in town or at their home (that might be half the map away).
• Issue 3: Some mobs do not bother to wander off and just stand on top of the character waiting for it to wake up. In this circumstance, all you can do is die over and over and over until your life and endurance reach zero so you can respawn elsewhere.
• I get it that right now there is no death penalty so all that’s lost is player time. But when it already takes a long time to trek across the map in a game session and then there is just no way to avoid death over and over, it is like adding insult to injury. This seems designed for trolls to use in a pvp system, camping bodies for as long as it takes to get them far enough away to no longer be a threat. If you add a death penalty to the current situation, players may play until their first series of deaths and ragequit.
• Recommendation (PvE): a 3 to 5 second window of invisibility or invulnerability so a player can move out of range. Alternatively, adjust the mob’s route and attention radius so they move out of range and do not return for 40 seconds.

I've encountered being death camped by mobs 4x now in Goblin Hills and the Heartwood, and it's quite frustrating - enough for me to log out and cool off. I imagine I'll log back in tomorrow and try to make my way to the Vale.