Posts made by GamerSeuss

@Farlander Actually, in a game like Fractured, restricting by race makes the most sense.

Racially restricting guilds basically has the affect of restricting initial alignment, and world, by just adding 1 limiter. As Alignment, and even world can change, but race generally doesn't (not counting sub-type changes, which is what we'll call Demons and Abominations currently) by restricting Race, they get the most bang for their buck and don't have to input a bunch of separate limiters. They also don't have to worry about what happens to a person's Guild membership if something changes with the character. Alignment should be an every shifting possibility, and although world hopping isn't meant to be easy, it is going to happen, and if these were Guild membership restrictions, the question comes up as to whether the character would have to abandon their guild, be put on an Inactive status, or whatever when these changes happen.

@PeachMcD In addition to what @Trug said, the other problem with in-game VoIP chat is the server load. Same as when you play Board and RPG games on Roll20.net. Yes, the service has its own VoIP system, but because the same servers are trying to handle the game, and VoIP, everything slows down, and the VoIP gets really choppy for people. This is of course made worse on Roll20.net by the fact that it provides not only voice built in, but Cam as well. Nice to have, but actually better to use a separate system for your voice and/or cam chat.

I know years ago, when I used to play Diablo II with people all over the country, cell-phones had just started to put Free long distance and conference calling, and we used to create a Cellphone chain on speakerphone for voice, played Diablo II together, and for typed chat, we used our shared IRC channels (we were all IRC DJs for an internet IRC Radio Station)

When Team-Speak came along, I know a lot of the more serious guilds used it, especially to coordinate Raids.

Nowadays, if I am playing with more than just my Sister and GF as a group, we'll probably use Facebook Voice, so as to avoid Discord. If it's my Sister and GF, Sister is in Cali and I'm in Missouri, but I'll call her on the Cell and put her on Speaker, and Me and GF will be side by side on our laptops.

@Ostaff said in Are guilds world specific.:

Yes, I do. It is the way the game is currently implemented. Create a new account, go to "Create Guild" and you will see that the race is set to your hero profile's selected race.

Add to this, if you want to invite another player to your guild, it will only allow you to do so if the race matches.

Guilds are Alignment and Race locked, that would make them Planet Specific, as each Core Race has an Associated Planet.

Devs have said that WASD/Keyboard movement is not planned, but I am unsure about gamepads. They do say that the mouse click movement system is essential for the game style they are going for.

As to release, I think current release is looking like 2022, last I heard, or very late 2021 right now. The game has actually been in Development longer than 2 years, so it will probably be close to the 6 yr average when done.

Oh, and yes, for the Alpha testing phase, so far, only the Humans and 1 Human continent have been utilized. I personally expect this trend to make it all the way to just before beta, with the introduction of the other races coming out during the last 1 to 2 Alpha Tests, as mechanically, they will be pretty similar, and Alpha is more for Mechanics, and Beta will give you more QoL and Cosmetic/Diversity options.

@Logain It would definitely be considered a QoL/Cosmetic option, so shouldn't even be implemented until Late Beta at the earliest I'd say. I find any game where you might have more than 3 or 4 players on screen at any one time, the bubbles are way distracting and more a nuisance than a help.

and, believe it or not, some of us really hate Discord...don't mind chat, can be ignored when I'm not using it, but hate discord

For far too many people, CHAT fulfills the Socialization aspect of the game, and it is a main reason they play an MMORPG in the first place as opposed to a Solo game. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone plays MMOs for the Guild structure, raiding and shared dungeon experiences, sometimes they want to play solo, but have conversations in various chat channels with other players of the same game, on the same server.

This being the case, I seriously doubt that any MMO would gut themselves by removing global chat.

Most obvious reason is Resource Management. In this case, Coding resources. the more complex the AI, the more server coding resources it takes to run said AI snippet, the more processing power the overall game requires, and the less available resources there are for other parts of the game (or the higher PC requirements and Network load the game will require, or both)

As general Wildlife is considered more incidental AI in the game, they are generally treated just like rank and file town NPCs that aren't used as quest nodes. They are given a limited area of influence and range of actions they can utilize.

More important NPCs, and this includes more important Hostile Mobs will hopefully have a more in-depth AI system with a a more robust area of influence and/or set of actions they can utilize. This is important as these are the NPCs in the game that the entire story revolves around. A major quest giver in a game obviously need to have more optional reactions in order to hand out the major quest chains players might pursue through them. The more quests they manage or are a node of, the deeper their coding. Same is true when you get to Boss-type monsters, larger, harder to kill monster challenges will often be only limited by the size of their lair as to how far they can pursue you, and their responses will determine all the various attack sequences they may utilize, and a more robust Boss makes for a more engaging game, overall.

As to my source for this information, I have both been a game designer in the past, and taught game design theory and I utilize my own experiences, and those of my students and contemporaries.

@Trug You can look at a Coding issue as a bug, but often times its more of a shortcut used during earlier testing phases of a game for expediency sake. It's intentional and allowed for by the developers in order to make the feature associated with it available for testing sooner without overuse of resources. Each of these types of shortcuts can literally shave months off of wait time to test a new feature in the Alpha stage of the game.

A Bug is, on the other hand, an unintentional piece of code or code interaction, often causing a feature to not work at all, or to conflict with other features in the game. Bugs can sometimes develop because of coding shortcuts, but then that's why we try to get in as many features for testing at the same time as possible, so we can see how the interactions between features might cause coding errors (bugs) and then determine how to address them...and yes, sometimes it's a simple matter of not using a shortcut that will indeed fix a bug or series of bugs, while other times you have to develop a work around for one or more features in order to eliminate the bad coding reactions in game.

1. For obvious reasons, the AI is rather limited in resources for things like wildlife, so it is easier to code them with a set routine, and slight variance than to have a much wider range of dispersal.

2. The Aggro threat range of the Predatory animals I believe is set where it is on purpose to make it so that characters have a reasonable chance to escape these 'natural hazards' without getting their corpse locked until death all the time. The code is also probably linked to their area of influence as referenced in the AI coding discussed in point 1

This would be a coding issue more than a 'Bug'

The Stockpile, although allowing 2 or more different types of things to stockpile, probably uses a single 'Flag' in the database to indicate that one or both sides is full. Once that flag is tripped, no more of anything can be accepted. It is part lazy coding, and part expedient coding during an Alphatesting. Certainly something I'm sure they plan to fix when the game goes into Beta at least.

They said in an earlier post that Tier 3 and 4 enchantments have not as yet been implemented.

@Farlander Yes, but in a game type mentality, often, part of the challenge of the game is how you set yourself up in the first place, and then waiting to Respec for a special event, upgrade, or cost equivalent thing to happen to allow such.

New Building introduced in a patch might allow a short window where Town Respec'ing is free with only certain buildings being locked in.

Major upheaval in the game universe might mean towns can do a free overhaul of their layout, and of course, each time a town upgrades itself, new land plots are added to the available plots and those can be used to place the newer type buildings.

Yes, you have the ability to place Blueprints and remove them, because planning is a part of the strategy of the game, but once you start to build on a town plot, that plot may be locked in until an event, or cost associated thing happens to change that. (buying respec tickets in the game store for in-game achievement currency, for instance)

1. The developers want to encourage exploration, and thus, they are not inclined to make deposits of resources too predicable beyond nodes at this time.
2. During Alpha testing, there is a general lack of overall varied biomes to choose from, so some of the biome diversity that we should see in the finished game is crammed together under the same types of biomes while we're testing mechanics and not biome situations.
3. They are still fine tuning the mini-map, which is, afterall, a QoL enhancement, and thus, not something you generally expect much development on during Alpha/Beta testing. Again, the focus, currently, is on mechanics and where they need to smooth things out or make changes to those, NOT on making the game easier to play or customizable.
4. Since there is no limit to the number of blue prints a player can put down, a map could not only quickly become cluttered by these map points, but also, the amount of resources needed to track and plot said map points would double, as now, not only would the game keep track of the blueprints, but also,the minimap rendering software would have to take into account each blueprint, it's owner, and it's detection range for mapping.

Don't quote me on this, but I believe this inability is intentional. They game developers, I believe, wish to encourage the city Governors to plan out how they utilize what plots they are given, without the ability to go back later and just rearrange them. This is especially because although there are Agricultural Nodes out there connected to some towns, any town can also dedicate some of their plots within town to growing foodstuff, and they don't want cities to just dedicate a bunch of unoccupied plots to farms, build up a surplus of such commodities, then slowly pare down those plots as new citizens and new types of buildings come into being needed to grow and prosper.

Again, this is just supposition on my part, but it makes sense.

@David353 said in Pet Companions:

This creature is cosmetic only and doesn't engage in battle."

As the words state, Pets are purely cosmetic. One of the founding principles of Fractured is you cannot 'Pay to Win' and that means perks do not get a mechanical advantage of any kind, at least those perks you can get from higher backing levels and such.

Sorry about the cold water bath, but that's the name of the game here

@Mirgannel12 Yes, your definitely not familiar with MMORPGs

There will of course be underlying storylines within the game of Fractured, but of course these will not truly be reflected within either the Alpha or the Beta testing phases of the game. As the mechanics are nailed down, tested, reworked, tested again, rejected, replaced, confirmed, augmented, and so on, the underlying storyline will be modified and adapted to fit more seemlessly with the final product.

As to what to do once you reach the "Max Level' or "finish your city" and what-have-you...Many players of MMORPGs are more than happy to keep on playing and upkeeping their cities, maintaining their characters, just to stay on top. They will also experiment with new builds, try out building a city in newer areas, or with a different focus for the city itself, just enjoy playing with their friends going on master size raids over and over. I know Fractured is not as much about grinding as other MMORPGs, but once you reach the 'end game' stage, what you are essentially doing is grinding through things over and over to improve your strategy, and just spend time with your guildies and other friends as you play the game.

That is not to say that the game doesn't grow and adapt, because MMOs do exactly that. As more and more of the population of the game reaches the current 'End-game' criteria of Fractured, the Developers will more than likely bring out new content, expand limits, produce new raids, different enchanting reagents, and thus newer gear options, in essence, the game grows with the player base so as to keep it fresh and relevant to those who play the game diligently.

Unique to MMORPGs, however, is the fact that in fact, the player-base actually does drive some of the internal story line as it progresses and adapts. New content will come out and reference things like a Great series of City on City siege wars that the players initiated in the game. As certain raid bosses are retired and replaced with new ones, you will start to find bits and pieces of lore within the game referencing some of the more epic tales of those raid bosses defeats, and even some of their successes when they may have driven the player groups back time and again before finally being overcome.
tor
What I'm trying to say is, the Story in an MMORPG is dynamic and every growing and evolving, based on the demand of it's player base. Judge not the story by the Alpha and Beta testing phases, but wait to see how the story unfolds when the game releases.

I play and stream Old School RuneScape. I still have a ton of fun with that game, and it has a huge following in some parts of the world. My main audience is Australia and New Zealand.

@David353

E: Craft Branch of Talent Tree; they said this may be coming in the future
F: Randomized Enchantment Rarity; this doesn't really fit the design philosophy of Fractured. The best you can hope for is that several similar enchantments have similar requirements in reagents, and the game randomizes which you get when you qualify for more than one.
I: Instanced Dungeons and Rare Loot: They already said there will be special event Asteroids that will be coming later, once the game goes live, and these will be the limited access events/dungeons/raids people are wanting. That being said,they are also dedicated to a 100% Player Created/Driven Economy, so rare raid drops won't happen...the best you might hope for is super rare reagents.