Best posts made by Chapex

My congratulations to @Specter on his contributions to the forum as moderator and on his new position taking on the role of community manager!

COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
There have been a few discussions regarding community management (or lack thereof) on our Discord in the last few weeks. Since the start of the year, we’ve tried to release blog updates regularly – that’d be 12 so far, quite an improvement over the 14 we released in the whole of 2019

Aside from that though, we are aware that our presence on the forums and on Discord hasn’t been great. Our previous community manager Znirf has left the studio in January, and we haven’t been able to find a replacement yet, both because of covid-19 and because we’re trying to focus all our resources on game development.

While it’s likely going to take a bit before we have a new community manager, our beloved moderator Specter is going to step up in community management duties. He is already planning new community activities, so stay tuned!

Link: https://fracturedmmo.com/city-claiming-has-launched/

I present to you my refuge. Built with little time (2 days) since I entered this Alpha late and it was difficult for me to get the necessary gold quickly, however I am more than satisfied with the result obtained.

Initially I put this topic on the contest forum but later I realized that I already had an access key which I obtained by purchasing a founder pack so I deleted it and brought it here simply to share.

I hope you like it!

Foundations

Floor

Columns, walls and doors

Outside

Furniture and workstations

Deserved rest

I really enjoyed the whole process, from resource gathering, transportation, and creation.

To think that this is an Alpha state, is promising all it has to offer in the future.

Cheers!

I plan to be an Erwydra who, after building her house , will live very quietly in the forests of Arboreus , gathering resources , crafting and venturing into Magic .

At the moment with no plans to conquer the world or fill my coffers

My participation in the Fractured foundation is recent, therefore, to evaluate its evolution and current state, I had to resort to the available information.

If there is any discrepancy, do not hesitate to let me know in order to have a real current panorama of the state of the foundation system and the game.

Taking into account the information that I was able to collect, I construct the following graph that tries to reflect the evolution of the foundation system from the start of the kickstarter campaign to the present day.

For this, I rely on the information on the kickstarter page, the official announcements of Dynamight on this website (News) and the data reflected in the Fractured Store.

The Kickstarter campaign began on 06/25/2018 with an announcement by Dynamight on 06/26/2018 reflecting an initial collection of 30% of the total target set (€ 100,000).

At the end of the campaign on the Kickstarter page a collection of € 111662 is reported by 1050 patrons while in a Dynamight announcement on 07/26/2018 a collection of € 130,000 is reported. Perhaps this discrepancy has to do with some type of private investment outside the Kickstarter system since at one time the participation of investors was mentioned.

At the time of my arrival to the project, the Kickstarter campaign was already finished and in its place I found the Fractured Store which reported a total of € 385,999 as of 06/01/2020 and which slowly shows growth in the interval of 2 consecutive days of about € 400 approximately.

I do not know if the Fractured Store contemplates the amount raised in the initial campaign or if it is a total raised independently.

Taking these values ​​into account, the time elapsed since the start of the project (which requires constant financing) and what is missing ahead (based on the Alpha state of the game and the improvements it shows it needs) would be good to have information on the part of the developers that transmits security regarding the future investment capacity to achieve the proposed goals.

On the other hand, the lack of press and Marketing in the media regarding the game is notorious. In this regard it is understandable since AAA companies generally tend to invest approximately the same amount of money invested throughout development in massive advertising campaigns, which is something unthinkable for a project of this nature.

In this regard, I think that most of the task falls on the community.

I sincerely hope that the funds raised by Dynamight will enable them to keep this project alive and can launch it as soon as possible.

The further the date is in order to see the project materialized, the less likely it is to retain the interest of the people who are approaching and that combined with a great lack of publicity and press can be fatal.

Cheers!

Update 06/06/2020: https://forum.fracturedmmo.com/topic/11109/foundation-and-future/7

Hello Nekrage!

Your effort to bring this project to the gaming community is very helpful.

I have been playing video games for many years and for a long time I was looking for something new and that really caught my attention.

In the search I found one of your videos and I found out about Fractured.

I started looking for information and I really liked what I found, that's why I decided to buy a founder pack (by the way, I use the promotional code associated with your video ) and I hope to see the evolution of the game in the near future to decide if I upgrade it.

I understand that many are concerned that developers spend time on advertising, marketing, and interaction on social media or the web, but there is a balance between development and advertising.

There's no use in a well-polished and finished game that nobody knows about and which no longer has the funds to support itself.

At the moment the only source of quick income is the community and to attract them and decide to invest, it is necessary to show them insistently all the potential that Fractured has and that this potential is an imminent and palpable reality.

The other option is for Dynamight to attract private investors that provide them with a good flow of money, but that also depends on the perception and the Hype that the project creates in the community, which translates into the ability of these investors to recover their investment and earnings in a short period.

@Tuoni

For this reason, as the mechanics of repeating the same thing over and over again is inevitable at a certain point, what you have to focus on is the "perception" that these mechanics cause in the different types of players.

It is at this moment that diversity comes into play.

When a target is specifically behind a single type of repetitive mechanics it is impossible to avoid that many feel that it is simply more Grind, pure and hard or smoothed and sweetened but Grind in the end.

On the contrary, if said objective can be achieved through different paths, it is very likely that each player chooses the one that best suits their needs and in this way their perception of what they are doing is more gratifying.

I think that the problem of Grind is not the fact of having to perform the same action repeatedly, but the feeling that this generates in each one.

If that feeling is negative, boring or frustrating but necessary to achieve a goal, the player is subjected to something that generates rejection and that must be done repeatedly.

If that feeling is positive, fun or rewarding and it is also the direct path to what one seeks to achieve, the player will not only not get tired of doing it but will be grateful.

No matter how much effort they put into remodeling a mechanic to achieve a goal, the key is how diverse are the paths that allow achieving that goal.

News Link here https://fracturedmmo.com/city-claiming-has-launched/

¨ALPHA 2 – TEST 3
We’ve mentioned this in the previous post, now it’s official: the start of Alpha 2 – Test 3 has been moved to July due to a few quirks that are making the implementation of player cities and the talent tree more complex than expected.

Some of the issues are performance-related, both in the client and the server:

The client is hit by framerate drops due to the rendering of constructions and calculations of pathfinding in cities;
The server is using way too much bandwidth, which becomes particularly problematic when a lot of players are close to each other.
We have already figured out a solution to all of the issues above – the bandwidth fix actually relies on a “new” feature of SpatialOS we never used. The implementation will take a few days, however.

We hope you’re not too upset by the delay – we could have released the fixes during the test, but we want your experience to be as smooth as possible from the start We’ll let you know the exact starting date as soon as possible.¨

@Specter

...not an official community manager...

Let me see...

• Active Moderator (The lost forum titles Savior).
• More admin rights.
• Maintain the Discord.
• Maintain the forum.
• Maintain the website.

I tell you, (not official...🤫...) you deserve it

@Razvan Amazing, looks perfect!

@Ostaff the dangers out there are real

@Gothix I was lucky to find a plot away from curious NPCs, not too much but enough to relax outside and rest under the stars!

@BlueGoblin

In a 3D game with the ability to have first-person view and camera rotation, the presence of internal walls in a building tend to be much more relevant.

In an isometric view game this becomes a little more relative.

It is not that it is not possible, but the inability to position ourselves in the character's view and rotate the camera make it necessary for the internal buildings and any obstacle between us and our character to have the ability to become invisible during the movement.

This effect is seen a lot in games of this style and with the same display restrictions, the issue is how efficient it can be in a MMORPG compared to a single player.

I am not an expert in game engine programming or optimizing them for a massive and online environment, but it makes me think that perhaps it does not result in an addition that helps the performance of server in general.

On the other hand, the game in the last alpha test offered a certain variety of blueprints for creating houses, some of which allowed creating internal divisions with an access door.

This added to the fact that when it is in an alpha state, there is the possibility that the house creation system receives numerous improvements and future updates which may even include the possibility of having more than one floor in the building, internal divisions, etc.

A crucial part of the success of any project is maintaining the interest of investors and potential clients day by day.

Keep the flame of curiosity, expectation, evolution, and speculation ALIVE.

Some examples:

Fractured Twitter account: last activity on 05/30/2020.

Fractured YouTube account: last activity on 04/12/2019.

Website (News): Last activity on 05/30/2020.

There's no need to supply content that takes a long time to produce, create, and edit, which can be counterproductive for a small team.

With today's technologies, small audiovisual content or textual lines can make a big difference when it comes to staying connected to the audience.

Did they put a new workstation in the offices?

Is there a development meeting?

Were new conceptual arts created?

Has any specific progress been made?

What is a work day like at Dynamight?

A couple of lines or a 5 minute video on a regular basis can make a big difference.

Show yourself and give content to those who support the project to show it.

Cheers!

@Ostaff

Legate!

My fault i was missing one more

@Ostaff

Exact!

The "Grind", from my perspective, is closely associated with the perception of each player about how entertaining or fun a certain activity can be with a certain degree of repetition.

That is why I believe that within the philosophy of avoiding this type of "bad perception" they should increase the sources through which one can obtain something specific.

For example, if instead of having to face a certain type of creature to obtain an ability, one could choose between:

• Face players in PVP.

When an enemy is defeated in battle, an ability is obtained (randomly) that it already possesses, and that is not found in our character.

• Chain of missions.

Helping the NPCs that are victims of a certain type of enemy in a game zone gives us the possibility to obtain during the stages of the missions the abilities that this enemy grants.

• Crafting.

Providing resources to an NPC in charge of Protecting / Confronting a certain type of enemy gives us the possibility of obtaining during the supply stages the abilities that this enemy grants.

And other types of ways.

In this way the "access" to a certain objective is not limited to a specific type of activity.

Everyone can choose the best way to achieve the same. In this way, the "perception" of what to do for a certain thing is much more flexible.

@Donner The aspects of a video game that always caught my attention are the setting, the story, the PVE missions and crafting.

In this sense, I always found myself at a certain point with great barriers that took me from one game to another in search of that comfort that is so difficult to find.

Very basic or epic but repetitive settings, simple, non-existent or memorable stories but destroyed during the evolution of the game, meaningless missions, and very basic, non-existent or highly interesting crafting but it becomes obsolete in a short time.

I hope that Fractured can be the conjunction of all those factors and stands out in each one of them.

From this perspective, it would be very good to have a much more interesting and relevant crafting system than those that exist in current games.

That is complete, remains relevant over time and can become a profitable way to play for those who decide to dedicate themselves fully. When I say profitable I am not just referring to the economic factor within the game, I am referring to something broader and that implies the progression of our character globally.

Without a doubt, anything that enriches the crafting system of a game I think is something worthwhile.

As everyone, or the vast majority know, Dynamight posed a game determined to put aside the grind system.

But what is Grind?

According to my definition, it is any process oriented to perform a certain action, or group of actions repetitively in order to acquire access to "something" that means the progress of our character, the increase of his faculties, his power or access to new options in the game.

With this in mind, it is very difficult to think that an MMORPG game can be totally free of this type of mechanics.

For example, to get a house the player needs a certain amount of gold (500 coins during the last alpha test). Acquiring these coins is nothing more nor less than a form of "Grind". Kill over and over and over again the same type of NPC in order to get the gold to "access" a new option in the game, "Housing".

In this aspect and trying to stay true to the concept of "Nothing of Grind" I think that a solution would be that access to the lot to build the house has to be obtained through a totally different system, such as:

• Solve a random generation puzzle.
• Clear the area of ​​random enemies to claim it.
• PVP duel between 2 players who want to claim the same place.
• A challenge of questions about lore.
• A chain of unique missions.

And many other shapes that do not represent something repetitive and monotonous, or at least, not so obvious.

Returning to the specific topic of gold and grind during the alpha test, yes, in the end the game will have the ability to offer different ways to get these coins (rewards, sale of objects to NPCs, market, trade, etc.), the point is that the ¨currencies¨ in any game that has them fulfill a certain function designed and oriented to regulate most of the activities, from encouraging their accumulation to promoting their spending, thus making a forced cycle where the most obvious result is nothing more or nothing less than the "Grind" of said precious asset.

This opens the question that if in a game like Dynamight proposed it is convenient to have this type of system to regulate the economy and access to other functions.

We will see how it turns out...

@Zori Choice paradox, choice overload, etc. Many studies on psychology refer to the different reactions when facing a large number of options.

In this sense, numerous psychological manipulation techniques were established to be applied among other things during the development of video games in order to generate a controlled environment in search of the expected results.

Limiting the number of options available when making decisions is one of them, but this does not mean reducing them to a single option.

On the contrary, this type of practice leads to a state similar or even worse than the previous one, the frustration of not being able to choose and this effect is intensified when the only option available is also unpleasant or not very gratifying.

A controlled amount of options that allow a certain degree of freedom without reaching the point of being overwhelming turns out to be the best option when generating a greater degree of satisfaction.

• Lore and the concept that race and alignment had a huge impact on the game.
• A World that interacts and responds to players actions.
• D&D aspect in many things.
• Solo mode for PVE and crafts that do not force me to the PVP or Guild system.
• Support a small team of dedicated devs to make real the most interesting project on the market at the moment.

P.D.: Sorry if my writing is wrong, my language is Spanish.

Here we go: