Best posts made by Tuoni

@Mindark said in Concerns related to the attributes:

One more question for the crowd. If you are in favor of respecs, do you feel that these should include race changes? I find that most the arguments being made in favor of respecs would suggest that race changes should also be included. I would definitely be opposed to that.

I guess it would be a smart option as well with some limitations of course. I would actually follow WoW model and make it a cash shop feature. It offers developers a good income opportunity and players a nice chance to change planets and guilds. This is propably a feature what players will start to hope for after the game has been up some time.

One option is to left caravan activity just for players. At least guilds can easily arrange caravan with high carrying capacity mounts/carts and guards.

However somekind of transport/contract/insurance system would also be interesting where players could do caravan activities behalf others for money.

@Mindark said in Concerns related to the attributes:

At the moment the reason looks like to be a character identity which is quite small roleplaying feature tbh.

Identity is a lot more important, I think, than you realize it is. Maybe not to you, though. But you shouldn't dismiss it as a concern from the community because you don't personally care for it.

Character identity and generally the RPG part of MMORPGs are also important for me, however, perhaps I value different things, and I am not thinking only myself, I am trying to take account wider audience as well.

I want to go more deeply this character indentity part because it looks like general thoughts regarding to indentity are quite shallow, like attributes would determine the whole thing. Okay, I will next make a list from what parts a character identity can consists:

• Attributes
• Gender
• Name
• Race
• Appearance
• Playstyle
• Behaviour
• Character progression
• Activities
• Alignment

There can be of course more but these came up on my mind at the moment. I wanted to highlight few points which are the core parts of RP in MMORPGs. Character progression is where these games lean to and without that the game won't even exists, at least in form of RPG.

If we think of Fractured, the body of a character is the ability- and talent trees and other aspects are build around that and working more like as a limbs. Also activities are a very important part to determine a character's indentity, you may be a farmer, crafter (any kind), trader, gatherer, explorer or any kind of mix that mentioned before. Furthermore, you may be a dungeon crawler or monster hunter (what it comes to PvE content), or you participate a different PvP activities from sieges, to ganking or random ZvZ. I can even decide to play as a criminal or a player who tries to bounty hunt those to get profit.

So the character indenty consists from a compilation of different parts, some people may value one point when another value something else. One may value nothing, one may value everything and the rest of us any possible compination between these two extremes.

Now if we examine closely from what a character identity can consists it is easy to argue that attribute points are quite small part of the whole identity. Attributes are numbers behind the character and effecting passively to my actions. If I am e.g. a master crafter of swords and a bounty hunter who tries to catch criminals, I bet those determines my characters identity much more rather than attribute points in the background.

A lot of games have used or uses Unity engine, so it can not be that bad. Even if some companies struggles with the Unity engine, that does not automatically mean it is Unity's fault.. I have played a lot of Albion Online and I do not remember a single negative feedback related of Unity engine or had any bad experience of myself.. So I do not personally mind DS using Unity at all.

List of Unity games

@Manaia said in Concerns related to the attributes:

My question to you:
Can you go deeper into how you'd like to see it? Go into more details of the "Your supporting details" section that I mentioned. How often is too often? Any other mechanics involved, or just a simple interface "restat" button?

When I started this thread I had no idea what is planned regarding to possibility to change attribute points. I am pleased to hear that most likely we all get one reroll and after that the reroll option can be purchased from the cash shop. I would say that is the minimum what we should get. However, this discussion popped up some good points why we should have this reroll option more often. If game mechanic changes or balancing fixes affects to the builds in way that people would want/need to reroll, then it would be reasonable to have a chance to reroll attributes for free. This became an issue in Albion like I mentioned before but the developers made a fix and at the moment those rerolls can be done almost from fly. I am not sure if Fractured needs that easy system but I think devs should monitor this during beta test phases. I am not sure if the option to get reroll only from cash shop is the best idea and I would prefer more a free reroll with a cooldown system (perhaps once / month) and on top of that the cash shop reroll option.

I think this kind of package would tackle the character creation mistakes, game mechanic/balance changes and would leave some options for situations when players get bored and just want to try something else out.

@Pwnstar said in to the developers:

@Tuoni Yeah, I'm not sure what he's going on about. Blame the company, not the engine. Unity is fine for purpose.

I have no experience of Legends of Aria or Citadel Studios behind that game, but still I would not blame the engine itself, rather those developers who are using it.

@Mindark said in Concerns related to the attributes:

@Tuoni said in Concerns related to the attributes:

If I am e.g. a master crafter of swords and a bounty hunter who tries to catch criminals, I bet those determines my characters identity much more rather than attribute points in the background.

Thanks for the thought out reply. I like the detailed explanation behind your rationale. I think we share similar viewpoints here. I wanted to quote this small section of it to follow up on, not to discard or dismiss the rest of your post, which I largely agree with.

My big thing about identity goes as follows, hopefully I present it well enough. If your (collective, not you you) mastercrafter of swords and bounty hunter is your character's identity, would you not distribute attributes in a way that aligns and ties in with that character? That is an assumption I would make and I would assume others make. I am likely wrong in my assumptions, and I'm sure there is some sort of bias there. Given that assumption (and if I'm wrong with that assumption, none of the rest of this matters), severely changing your attributes will, likely, severely change who your character is.

About crafting skills, I am not sure if attributes have any impact to professions, I presume not, and if those do, I really hope it is a very minor effect. I can be a bounty hunter and still play a whatever role, class or build, however, most likely it would be either melee or ranged DPS because we are talking about ganking. This can easily be a group activity as well so I would not drop tank/healer options totally out either. So I would say that I would not distribute attribute points in mind that I am going to craft swords and do bounty hunting.

Ignoring attributes, what I don't want to see is mastercrafter of swords and bounty hunter by day, BATTLEMAGE BY NIGHT! What I would rather see is mastercrafter of swords and bounty hunter by day, hold my beer, I wanna try something by night! To expand on this, let's add attributes to this scenario. Our attributes would be "locked" (remember, I've conceded that attribute respecs can exist with a cost/cooldown associated to it) to our mastercrafter of the swords and bounty hunter character, but it doesn't stop him from using any other ability that he wants to. Him and his battlemage roommate can go around casting magic missile into the darkness. Builds are still available to him, but Gandalf's magic will still be a little stronger than Boba Fett's.

I kind of answered to this one post earlier where I told what kind of system would be the best possible guess atm and imo, so you can check it from there. ^^

I want to comment to that highlighted part. I guess this can be the case if both have a very balanced attribute distribution but if we are talking about min/maxers the power gap will be huge and the Boba Fett will more tickle the enemies rather than doing any serious damage.

"..we have explained how we want to revolutionize the concept of “race” in the MMO genre and use it to cater to the needs of peaceful/cooperative and aggressive/competitive players alike"

Even Fractured would be solo friendly, it will also aim for PvE group content. That is where this cooperative part refers.

@Manaia That META you mentioned also made me wonder that a need for rerolling or respeccing will most likely be regional as well. I bet demons will want or need that more often than beastmen for example, based purely on competitive mindset and environment.

I would not been worried about builds what people will use even the meta will form. That is true that some people will follow blindly what is in meta but not all of us, especially those who does not play at competitive level. I believe we are still going to see a lot of different build compinations because some people really plays how they like or what suits best for their playstyle. In addition meta builds are usually for the PvP end-game and in most cases PvE content, OWPvP, solo/group activities has very different builds in use. So regardless of attribute change possibilities I am very hopeful that we will see more than enough build variations.

@Gothix said in Opinion on Monsters after the alpha:

I would expect Arboreus cities to depend heavily on politics, and have political mechanics that can impact everything a lot more heavily than Syndesia and Tartaros.

True, and maybe on top of that, upkeeping city needs a little bit more effort (fixing infrastructure) or maybe even needs to be defended from NPC conquerors..

@Manaia said in Concerns related to the attributes:

• WoW Classic I was in a highly competitive guild on the Dragonmaw US server, we had Ragnaros first kill. At least one priest was required to have divine spirit, one paladin required blessing of kings, no shadow priests allowed (they had to respec holy to raid), and so on. Other competitive guilds were the same; some even requiring their priests to be dwarves for Fear Ward.

Classic and especially Vanilla is a totally unique case. Without those extreme mix/maxings guilds would not have a chance to clear raids. That was absolutly crazy.

• When the QoL of faction changes came out, a lot of competitive Alliance Guilds rerolled to Horde because their racials were better. This through off the faction balance even more than it was. It severely crippled Dragonmaw Alliance's side to maintain competitive raiders. All this for a QoL change for faction changes.

But in other hand some servers got balanced as well because of the faction change. In addition, this feature has offered so much relief to players especially when they have changed guilds. Without this option many people (inclueding me) would stop playing for long time ago. This is also a very good income for developers.

Wouldn't the most hardcore and competitive players know how the stats work and interact and would be the ones who LEAST need the hand holding of attribute rerolls? I can't remember if it was you or someone else who said that if players make the mistake and not understand the stats then they should be able to reroll them otherwise might quit the game in frustration.

The meta will still exist, and it will exist in variants of str/dex/int based builds. There shouldn't be a need to reroll attributes for this. And the competitive scene will be better imo without this because the people with more insight and understanding to the game will have the better character builds.

What it comes to character creation mistakes yes but I guess you forgot the game mechanics and balance changes which can and will lead to build changes. Meta is hardly ever balanced between strength, dexterity and intelligence, and easily builds based on one attribute can be op when compared to others. It would not be extraordinary that almost every damage dealers are first mages and after a patch melee dps' get buffed and everyone wants to run those. Very hard to predict what will happen but one is certain, everything can happen.

@Specter said in Opinion on Monsters after the alpha:

Fractured will certainly have group content for PvE players. We already know there will be world bosses and Arboreus will have the most PvE events to make up for the lack of PvP.

That sounds great.

@Razvan said in Concerns related to the attributes:

What competitive scene do you guys believe Fractured will have?

This is a good question.

I expect sieges to be the competitive PvP content. I presume it pages Albion online's territory wars but has more participants than 5v5. Perhaps 20v20 would be closer what we can see in Fractured, however, I would actually like to see different size battles depending of the stage of the city which is under the siege. That would make sense and give different size guilds to a chance to achieve proper size objects.

I am not sure how much there will be competion in PvE, but perhaps those mazes and asteroids could have some potential to work as PvE "end-game" content. I hope we are going to see open world dungeons, world bosses and maybe some kind of raids so people have some nice things to do also with PvE content.

I guess there will be some kind of meta for different aspects but most likely the most important meta will be related to competitive PvP (sieges). Other activities (PvE, OWPvP) are most likely much more unforgiving (what it comes to builds), and actually that can be a good thing because it would be nice to have a lot of variations there.

@Pwnstar said in Bees?:

Bees? What bees?

I was thinking the same.. Perhaps:

@Manaia said in Concerns related to the attributes:

@Tuoni said in Concerns related to the attributes:

@Gothix If gear is human readable or we can inspect other players, then you cannot keep anything as a secret. Furthermore, the streaming and video culture what we have in games nowadays also takes care of that everything can be analyzed afterwards. So someone needs to fight once against the team #1 and all the builds are revealed.

This, exactly! If character/gear inspection is available, all it takes is time to see what skills the opponents are using.

Albion is here a perfect example because territory wars there will be somewhat similar what sieges will be in Fractured. People are watching streams when teams are fighting each other or they watch those afterwards from youtube. I have watched my guilds matches from stream and several top matches from youtube. Some of the matches comes even with commentary like Kostan and Lewpac has done, it gives more eSport feeling. So it is vain to expect something to be in secret, and I do not personally even want that.

I am not sure about this and how this would suit in Fractured.. Discounts from NPC vensors and grinding reputation are kind of against the concept like already mentioned.. However, maybe decreased taxes could work, and if the reputation system can be implemented somehow reasoanable and less painful way than WoW ( exalted, exalted, exalted.. ). Anyway, town rep could increase with trading activities, construct and repairing buildings, catching thiefs and murderers for example.

@KairosVal said in Concerns related to the attributes:

@Tuoni said in Concerns related to the attributes:

@Gothix If gear is human readable or we can inspect other players, then you cannot keep anything as a secret. Furthermore, the streaming and video culture what we have in games nowadays also takes care of that everything can be analyzed afterwards. So someone needs to fight once against the team #1 and all the builds are revealed.

Armor skins are a thing in the Foundation, and will probably exist as cosmetic purchase items in the store.

I prefer human-readable armor, weapons and magical assets, but there's a tradeoff here between human-readability and a revenue stream to keep the servers running. Cashflow matters if we want the game to persist. It is what it is.

Perhaps the human-readable part can be camouflaged behind skins, but if we have option to inspect then it does not really matter. Yeah I agree that those streams and videos are important for the game and something which just cannot be avoided. And who even cares if meta builds are revealed? At least I do not, I rather watch those battles, and perhaps just for fun.

I doubt that players can run towns by themselfs. It can easily be behind timewall what it comes for building and maintenance even there won't be other restrictions. Moreover, you can not progress from hamlet state for town without having several players settled on same town area.

"When a town area has been cleared of the creatures infesting it, any player can place the foundations of a house in one of the few dedicated lots of land in the area. Once at least one house has been fully built, a hamlet – and a citizen! – are born. A hamlet has no rulers and no rules. As we’ve just said, anyone who can settle on a planet can add his own house to a hamlet on that planet. No specialized structured can be built in it – only residential buildings. If all the citizens of a hamlet leave the settlement or let their homes decay, the area becomes a haunted place once again. If, on the opposite, a hamlet grows large enough, any citizen can present himself as a candidate for the role of Governor. Once the elections take place and a winner emerges, the hamlet can finally transition to a full-fledged town."

However, the key point is this: "hamlet grows large enough"

How much is large enough..?

What if the archeology would been bound to exploring? There can be various ancient objects like statues, ruins, vases or any kind of old items and places where peole can travel or accidently wander. These can be part of the environment but also at random locations like resource nodes.

Archeologist can then examine these items or places and they can found decorations, rare ingredients for crafting, treasures chests, or even pieces of artifact items. Loot will vary from very basic stuff to uncommon and even to extreme rare items or parts there of. These were just few examples but this kind of archeology would encourage people to explore in the open world, it would be alternative way to make money, find interesting rare drops and maybe even collect more information of lore.

So I would kind of move @VyrVandalous base idea more to open world and encourage people to explore.

@Hashmalash True. Albion for example has very attractive economy system from gold seller point of view, and if DS keeps their vision with Fractured gold, they will have much better starting point and less problems for sure.