D
Hi, Darknesse here.
Im an avid player of this genre, and spent around 20-30 hours playing the latest test and thought id give my impressions, if anyone cares. This is probably going to be a big post, and i may not reply to people, but this game has a lot of promise, and id like to see its potential fulfilled.
Survival -
The survival elements in this game are great. Food feels balanced and stamina feels good. Spending on potions might be a little too easy. Losing max hp is somewhat where i feel fractured loses out a little here. Its a great mechanic, but dying a few times is extremely punishing, and snowballs hard which can absolutely destroy your gear. In most games, this would be a gold fix, but here, we dont have repairs, so your hard earned gear is just gone. This to me, feels far too punishing. Its a great start, but when you start getting loads of deaths due to no longer having the health to continue killing enemies, now you're likely going to take 10 deaths getting home, because you cannot gain that health back anywhere in the field (AFAIK).
Combat -
The combat in this game is really rough and needs a lot of polish. Weapons like dagger need to be extremely close to hit, and allies then can very easily miss click on those allies, failing ability casts. Other abilities feel quite clunky some of the time, and a lot of styles feel rather one sided. But all of that should come after making the combat just feel better in general. Albion online feels great, for an example. Abilities are easy to use, easy to understand, and you can very easily set the game to project indicators to show you what will be hit. Also, targetting. Theres currently no way in Fractured to see enemy strength before you fight them. The indicators on the map dont really tell you anything, but either way fail to really distinguish strong from weak before combat starts. This is quite important. Targetting might help this (likely a lot), but isnt the only solution.
UI and crafting -
Not a lot to say here, things are quite good already. Crafting mastery needs a much more clear and obvious place, rather than hidden in knowledge. It also doesnt have enough in it. Rarity should also have some bonus outside of durability for tools, which currently dont have any bonus (as they dont use durability) for rarity. Set bonuses are a very bad way to distinguish gear sets, and id implore the devs to remove them completely (give those bonuses elsewhere maybe), and have gear mostly different in statistics, to allow more build choice. Right now there is almost only 1 choice per build, due to those set bonuses. Abilities locking themselves behind armour encumbrance is enough, and a great way of limiting playstyles to light/medium armour. Crafting mostly feels like a grind to max (which felt easy), and then not much more. Take some inspiration from WoW's recent crafting addition and allow people to gain 'talents' or some perks towards crafting over a long grind. Also on that, moving materials is an absolute chore. Building feels extremely satisfying, but i feel like a wheelbarrow should be much easier, and much less clunky to use. A lot of the game does feel extremely clunky.
Forging taking 16 hours for a single set of armour is far too long. In my first day, i felt progression locked due to not being able to use even decent gear. Id much rather the ores take longer to obtain or something, or take time and a skill check 'as in, a slight minigame' to forge, rather than an arbitrary time sink. Progression gating is fine, but this way felt.. just bad really.
Different bars/wood/leathers giving different stats is fantastic though. More of that please. Although the way it has been done is kind of bad, reasoned similar to gear sets. Its a pretty obvious choice what you're picking, and further locking builds into archtypes that are better locked behind talent trees and the like.
Im likely super critical here, but the game has great potential. I enjoyed a lot of my time here (otherwise i wouldnt have played for so long), and fixing the few problems it has would be amazing. But if i were to choose FO or Albion online right now, i would settle for albion, even if i much prefer the building/crafting of fractured. Theres just too much annoyance (without considering no OCE servers).
