Posts made by GamerSeuss

Re: Dungeons

The main Dungeon/Event type content the Devs have talked about (other than the Legendaries that are already being tested) is the Asteroids.

They specifically don't want to be just like all the other MMORPGs out there, so I'm not thinking they will do any real instants content other than the planned Asteroid delves. Those, as far as we know, are intended to be massive short term multiplanet events where portals will open on all 3 worlds for a limited time, and probably feature some unique mobs.

@spoletta @TheShawn

As spoletta said, it is better if you buy a lower package first, then upgrade if you like it. This is especially true as VIP and other Package perks don't kick in until full game launch. The main perk you want right now is the ability to join in the Alpha test. Anything else is gravy and you want to try the game out before you pay for the upgraded plan. You may decide Fractured is not for you at all, and then what? your stuck having paid for VIP for life that you never even use.

The main ??? that most of us I think have about VIP overall is the one not addressed, which is the Extra Study Slots. How exactly is that going to work overall is I think the biggest advantage VIP will bring overall. Does that give you a 9th and 10th preset, perhaps? Or does it give you a 6th or even more Pre-set on Abilities and Talent Tree selection?

If you don't know, as you have never played, each character you have gets 5 pre-sets in the game, so you can quickly swap between builds at an Inn or your Home resting at the fireplace. These Pre-Sets use the same pool of Knowledge Points, you just pick different active options in both categories. This is one of the chief strengths of Fractured, the ability to hot-swap your character roles before joining in a Raid with others. Got too many tanks and not enough DPS, swap your build around and become a DPS fiend with talents and skills focused on doing damage and ranged style attacks. Things like that are possible in Fractured, but not as easy in other MMORPGs out there.

@Mirgannel12 As far as I can recall, Moorcock didn't have the concept of Neutrality in his books, but it has been awhile.

The thing is, with D&D, which started the 2 axis Alignment system, since you could exist focused on any one of the extremes, without regard for the other axis, they needed a centerpoint to link the 2 axis together. A 0,0 coordinate if you will, thus was born Neutrality.

All games that came after have pretty much utilized some version of the D&D alignment system (or none at all).

In D&D, Neutrality represents those things in life that are not inherently leaning towards one of the extremes of an axis. Knowledge is Neutral, how you use it, and how you attain it can be Good, Evil, Lawful, or Chaotic, but the Knowledge itself is Neutral. Nature is Neutral, Balance is Neutral. Some might think that Balance is Lawful, however, Balance is also between Law and Chaos.

It's like a blade. It is a useful tool, and inherently neither good nor evil. Use it to build a shelter for the poor, it is Good, use it to murder someone, it's Evil. Use it with technique, like a Duelist, it is Lawful, and use it as a Brawler, it is Chaotic.

This is not to mention the fact that Good and Evil are considered based on the Morality of the individual. Different Moralities see these things differently. Law and Chaos, on the other hand, is based around Application. Is it Structured or Free-form. Is it Art or Science? Does a Lawful person always follow the Laws of the land, even if they disagree with them, and see the established government bodies as corrupt? Does a Chaotic person always ignore the laws of the land, and seek to supercede them, purely because they are laws?

Ultimately, everyone generally falls somewhere on the Spectrum between the 2 Axis. Not only that, but generally speaking, their point on the spectrum is generally not stagnant.

@BitterLoD Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the time in jail, myself, but the community already had a major conniption about it before.

As to the whole "How about restricting it to just Lost Tales" for the KP loss...but what if the PKer in question hasn't done any Lost Tales yet. They still can only get 1 of each Lost Tale (unless as you mentioned, they had to redo 1) but they would need to lose KP from one of the other sources they got their current KP from. I guess you could make it so Lost Tales had no limit, but the Devs already said they don't want to do that at all. They specifically don't want to build the KP system as just an alternative to Exp, so I don't see them doing another Exp based penalty and painting it over KP.

@BitterLoD Exactly. I've been a Solo player 99.9% of the time since the late 90s when MMOs came out, and if anything, that's the main draw that keeps getting handicapped by MMOs as new expansions and games came out.

I was a member of a Guild in EverQuest with one of my characters. They were fun folks, and from all over the globe...shoot, we even met up in Florida for a Camp-out and picnic experience one weekend with people coming from as far away as Germany. That being said, that is more like the exception to my experience, not the be all, end all of it.

@BitterLoD Because of how Knowledge Points work, I don't see a KP loss as a viable option.

Each creature only provides a finite number of KP. Once at 100%, they are done. Each discovery is worth only a 1 time KP award, then done, and each Lost Tale is worth a 1 time KP award then done. So, unlike Experience, a KP loss would be permanent, or some kind of arbitrary roll back of beasts or something would have to occur.

As to the time in jail, as has been stated, taking people out of the game for long periods of time is not going to go over well. As I'm not a PvP player, I'm okay with the system, but almost all the other PvPers were up in arms when it was suggested.

@Mirgannel12 As far as visitation to other planets go, since the visitation time window is soooo short, I don't really see any visitors participating in the steps it would take to summon, and defeat the Legends of another planet (if, as you so rightly asked, the other planets will even have Legends)

@spoletta actually, they specifically said ONLY neutral characters.

@Mirgannel12 as to previous remarks...Knowledge itself is inherently neutral. How you might need to acquire that knowledge and the use of that knowledge couled be typified as Good or Evil, but the actual knowledge itself is grey.

Example: Knowing how to kill something is neither good nor evil. Utilizing that knowledge may be evil, depending on the circumstances, or it could be good, but knowing how is neither. Same thing with Raising the Dead. Knowing how is not inherently evil. In most cultures and situations, however, using that knowledge is almost always considered moralistically Evil. That being said, there are situations where judicious use of the knowledge could be interpreted as Good or at least Neutral and Justified. For instance, if the last person to see a child alive was his/her kidnapper, and he is known for locking them away until they starve to death, if the only way you have to find the child is to question a corpse, you might need to raise that corpse sufficient for it to either tell you the child's location, or lead you there.

Another note:

With the 3 Planets, each one pretty much represents one of the 3 Alignments on the Axis, Tartarus is Evil, Syndesia is Neutral, and Arborea is Good. This being the case, you might have to be of the alignment of your planet to summon Legends there, who knows.

As to the other Alignment Axis, not all games want to borrow from the synergy of Alignments that Dungeons & Dragons started when they took the classic Good vs Evil and combined them with Michael Moorcock's Law vs Chaos. The 9 Alignments might be iconic right now, but that doesn't mean that they, as game developers, want to have people define their characters so exactly. Most people aren't purely any one alignment anyway, which is why even Dungeons & Dragons started to simplify and de-emphasize alignments in later editions.

@Mirgannel12 The Neutral Alignment requirement for summoning Legends and Collecting Lost tales is to discourage Evil Aligned players. Obviously, once the implement the Demon World, things will probably be different there, but on Syndesia, they want to make sure that you have a Neutral party member with you when you go after a legend. As for getting awarded Lost Tales, I believe part of this is so that an Evil Band can't come in, kill-steal a Legend and reap the full reward for it.

Good players can't summon a Legend either. You must be Neutral to do so, so the game is encouraging people to ride the middle line if they want to attain all the knowledge they can, because the pursuit of knowledge is itself a neutral act.

@Alexian Just because I don't interpret what you say directly how you mean it doesn't mean I don't read it.

For any kind of charter system to work, they would need to limit the number of charters a city would have available. That's just a fact of the matter. Otherwise, every city would try to sign up everyone they could. Now, granted, in your interpretation, it is the Guild/Group that is limited on how many they can accept, and that would create some competition for charters, with the Cities trying to sign the biggest and most prolific guilds out there before anyone else fills up their quota. Again, ,Solo'ists would become an afterthought. They would get the few remaining places, maybe, but would have a hard time to compete.That is if they can even get a response in from the city Governors so focused on landing the big guilds.

The big thing is, this system still would incentivize Guilds. Big Guilds become so much more attractive for Cities to sign charters with. Solo'ists become afterthoughts. Sure, they can sign as many solo'ists as they want, but it really won't help them compete in that kind of market.

@Alexian said in Markets and Merchant Guilds - A Reimagining of the Current System:

And such players could be eligible for a city charter as well.

Mayhaps eligible for one, but hardly likely to be offered one. It was talked about limiting the number of charters that a town can have. With that being the case (and it pretty much would have to be for the system to work) any town would be insane to offer charters to solo'ists over groups. Groups give them several merchants to partner with for only 1 charter slot, as opposed to a 1 for 1 exchange with a solo'ist. This, thus, incentivizes Guilds/Groups over Solo'ists again, over and above the natural advantages they already have.

Additional perks/systems that favor Guilds are not needed. What would work better is to come up with a couple perks that would favor the Solo'ist. I, however, can already hear the outcry if the Merchant Charters were only made available to Solo'ists, and not to Guilds.

[Edit]I always read every word of a post before commenting on it. You never know if there might be a kernel of worth in even the worst posts, or a phrase that invalidates some good idea, so you have to take them in, in their entirety.

@Alexian But Solo'ists should NOT be at a comparative disadvantage. The only disadvantages they should get are those that naturally come from grouping over solo'ing. Solo'ists can't take on the larger mobs, Guilds/Groups can. Solo'ists have no-one watching their backs, Guilds/Groups do. You do not need, and really shouldn't add any extra advantages for Guilds/Groups that widen that already reasonable gap. Merchants, if anything, is a niche that I think should be mostly filled with Solo'ists. It won't be, but that's the fact of the matter. Solo'ists could come together to form caravans for long treks and safety in numbers, and hire guards, but each merchant should for the most part be a free agent, going where the whims of trade take them.

Also, one thing the Devs said they definitely don't want to do, is allow players to bypass the exploration aspect of the game. Even if you want to primarily be a merchant or a city builder, they want you to have to go out and explore, killing some mobs, and gathering some resources, if for nothing else but to fill up your knowledge points. This means they aren't going to want to put in a system that generally allows a player to bypass exploration, especially when they are already having a hard time coming up with End-Game content to keep everyone interested.

I am definitely with @spoletta in that I think we should see how the current system works before we try to fix it. I'm not a huge fan of the Global Wallet, and I'm not 100% on searching other markets (although I would chalk that up to hanging at a marketplace and listening to the merchants gossip about where they've been kinda information from a RP standpoint)

As to the concept of "if you don't want to participate in community stuff, go play a non-MMO/singleplayer game...that's not the point at all. There's a reason solo'ists want to play in MMOs, and it is not just to complain about Guildies. MMOs were always meant for both types of players. Players want the real world possibility of running into a friend in game. They want the chance, on rare occasions to go on a big raid, or group up, but don't want to be locked into having to do it. There is a difference. CHOICE. I've been playing MMOs since they came out too, and MUDs, MUCKs, MUSHes, and MOOs before that. The games have Multiplayer in their title because of the possibility, not the mandate that you should play in groups and join guilds. Guilds are an option. Some want it, some don't, but the Devs have said they want to try to level the playing field between Solos and Guilders all along.

@LordGorgeous No, this would incentivize Guild play, and deincentivize solo play...there are already a ton of advantages to guilding up, and the Devs have said they want to make the game equally encouraging to solo'ists, yet even if you allowed a guild of one to join a commercial charter, what town is going to allow a solo guild to join their charter if they have limited charter space? The solo'ist gets annexed out again.

To keep the game interesting for both big groups and solo'ists, they need to make sure there aren't too many exclusivity perks on either side of the fence.

@Bardikens Although your suggestion is interesting, it goes against the concepts the Devs have stated for the game.

They want a player driven economy, where individuals need to spend the time going from place to place to get their goods. The one allowance is the fact that merchant minded players can physically buy goods in one city, physically transport them to another city, then fulfill orders/list goods in the new city, and thus create trade routes.

In no other way do they want to have a linked marketplace. Shoot, the Global Wallet might even end up going away once they put the current mode into practice, or the ability to search other markets might go away. Finally, the Global Wallet might get changed somehow to restrict it to only Merchant transaction funds being deposited by the Marketplace, but Deposits go into the bank's Gold fund, not the Global Wallet, and the Gold Fund remains local, so you can't as someone said in another thread, 'Search for something on the Marketplace, get the price and quantity, deposit enough gold to cover that exactly, run to the new city, and then purchase" thus keeping the Gold itself safe during the travel aspect of commerce.

They DO NOT want to turn all the merchanting over to merchant guilds and guild charters, they want individual players to do the work whenever possible. The marketplace is more for selling off your excess locally, and encouraging trade, not for making it easy to get those things that are rare in one area, because someone else joins up with a Merchant Guild to deal in them.

@HolyAvengerOne There are good reasons. You've already been given them.

Yes, Accessability is something you can sacrifice much for, BUT you don't sacrifice the game itself for that. This is considered by the Devs to be an essential part of the game they have envisioned. Thus, this is something they don't change. They have already said they will probably add an auto-run feature for long treks, but they have also said that this movement system is intrinsic to the gameplay for Fractured and thus it stays, and other options in that regard aren't being considered.

@Mudz In the video, Prometheus did mention Martial Arts being linked to Dex

@spoletta thanks for that. Good someone who used a bow answered

@LordGorgeous since there is no 'Lock On' system, I would assume so, although granted I have not utilized the bow much in my own testing so far.

It would be a good idea to go over such potential powers descriptions when you get in the game for the next test as a Bowman to find out. I don't even know if they have an AutoAttack option from the bow...rather I think there are some auto-add effect skills, but again, I didn't really use any real bow abilities myself.

New Archetypes/Backgrounds = Great! I can't wait until something like a Minstrel/Bard is added, but love the 4 core builds right now!

New Attribute rebalancing: Excellent! This should make it much more distinct in how you allocate your attribute points, and allow people to vary their dump stats based on the build they want. Previously, there wasn't much that could be a dump stat for anyone, as all Attributes needed some love, but now, you can sacrifice in one area without it majorly affecting the whole viability of the character.

Marketplace: Loving it! The look is great, ,the tabs moved to the side plays along with game consistency as other windows tend to use side tabs more in Fractured than top tabs. Some even using both. Love the ability to view, but not buy/sell/order from other Cities just to see what the market is like. An entrepreneur trader could use this information to plan out a traderoute, of course realizing that it would make certain optimized routes more likely to have highwaymen/women waiting to ambush them.

Mailbox system: I like how it is restricted to System messages. Much better than having to rely on the Global Chat to see all the system messages, and this way you don't miss them if your not online when they happen, and the game doesn't have to spam them constantly, or hit you with a bunch of updates when you log in. Would still love to see a crafting noticeboard so city dwellers can keep track of who's projects are in the works in the crafting stations, and whether they are good with others taking the resulting materials or not.

Overall, I love this update and can't wait to see how it plays out. I'm really looking forward to the new changes to the Talent Tree considering the Attribute changes, and Background Options. I think Background specific starter quests is a great way to walk people through getting started by the game-play build they prefer, and really can't wait to sink my teeth into the new Alpha!