Best posts made by OlivePit

There is something like this in D&D online and it seems to separate players with the power creep making a bigger difference between starting players and 'end game' players making the environment not all that welcoming to new players.
The idea of having a relatively even playing field and low power distance is one of the main premises -and for me selling points- of Fractured.
Because of the low power distance here I can gift a friend equipment and they can start working on their skills and talents without a discouraging gap knowing that a max talent player is only going to have 2 more stat points in any given stat (10%-20% difference) and only up to twice as many secondary skill points (fortitude, willpower, etc) allowing them to easily quantify their progress and differences allowing them to look forward to grinding for a known bright future instead of feeling they -have to- grind in order to even participate in the game content.

We had the massive mage spell rebalancing because they had too little reliance on equipment, meaning the devs want there to be reliance on equipment (expendable resource) more than talents (renewable resource). As such It would seem that the devs want the tallent tree to be the flavor of a character (determined by talent tree end abilities and the neat things between trees) but equipment and enchanting to be the meat.

Could you be more specific as to the area of the game play that you feel needs more 'fine tuning' that is not possible with talents + enchants + material bonusses?

This is one case where I think that an instanced starting area separate from the rest of the game world would, and only accessible from char creation, be useful.

There the devs could give you access to wheat, cotton, crafting stations, imbuing, allow players to claim a house plot for 30min and build a basic crafting station, tame a horse, build a campfire, experience being knocked down, and death (with traps). You could have mob spawn areas with signs that show different elements or weapon types to cue the fact that you need to switch it up to fight this mob. Have those beginning mobs rank up really fast so that a player can see what a filled bestiary page looks like.

Then when they are done they click on the harbor and choose the connecting harbor they want to arrive at on the continent of their choice which would make it much easier for new players to join their friends and at the same time disperse the population to reduce initial competition. If needed you could even have the characters die, loose all their loot, and wake up naked on the beach after a 'ship wreck' which would then give them the thrill of working up from scratch with no gifted stuff from the tutorial.

This would mean that the cotton and wheat you find in the world would no longer have to be permanently blocked and players could go out and harvest it if they really wanted to.

You could still have the player friendly 'starter towns' for basic crafting, banking, and market.. but after the first few weeks of game play they are mostly ignored in favor of player towns, so why really?. I would be in favor of having no 'starter towns' at all, requiring everything to be player built outside of the instanced 'beginning island'. But I know I am in the minority there.

A cool down timer for switching alignments would also help.

Or have the dropped recipes reduce the cost of crafting the item for X uses.
-like removing the top tier drop component requirement-
Thus for a short while you get a discount on making the item.

At the moment even if you have the recipe you still are looking at 30+ hrs of farming to get the rare mats needed, as such currently the recipe is of a lesser burden (and just random) compared to the main burden of getting the mats for the item.

@Triop
THANK YOU FOR SAYING SO !!!
If I had pointed it out ppl would just write it off as Olive being crop obsessed again.

this is what information looks like on the vice governor side:

at the very least the splash page of each town should show the plot prices, taxes, and a smaller version of the tech tree... or at the minimum list the techs, like 'basic tailoring, wizardry 1, advanced smelting, alloy making, metal weapons 1, plate armor 1, chain armor 1, siege weapons, bows 1, architecture.

there are plenty of towns that exist which are only populated by people of a certain time zone. this is unfortunate and I believe that it is partially due to the lack of information available at the town splash page. were the town to have these minimal bits of information available to all players (and not just vice governors) then i believe it would increase the player interactions and experiences in a very positive way.

Linen is used for rope, cloth, bandages, and wagons. It is plentiful on Myr but relatively scarce on Aerhen. If you ever get 50 at once outside of the starting area you are probably going to use it for the other purposes (bandages probably), not clothing. Otherwise it is fine.

Cotton is only farmable, thus gated by cities and crop rotations. Once we get vegetables and leafy greens I fully expect to never see a cotton field again. This is mainly due to its uselessness and pathetic stats. Other than the volcano on Aerhen there is no place where you would need the heat insulation, and even there you are probably running fire protection to avoid the stacks. Considering the dificulty to get it, uselessness of the product, and very limited uses it has, it is no wonder that most just throw it away as they harvest it. It only had a niche value when it gave +1 perception per armor piece... but those days are long gone and probably for the best.

Spider silk is the every mans go to. It is balanced for cold and heat, it has better armor and no encumbrance. This is your default material which everything else compares against.

Primal Weave improves energy damage and resistance to same. This is great for the... 2... mage damage spells that do that, or the ...2... charisma spells that use it, or the ...6?... utility spells which do some energy damage as a side bennefit to the main point of debuffing the targets. If you somehow make an AA build that is viable it may be nice for that mage favorite -mage staff-. It is still very niche and overshadowed by alternatives like:

Mammoth wool. This is one of the top 3 materials. It gives HP. It gives HP. It gives HP. there is also the nice synergy of increasing cold insulation and reducing heat which is opposite of scholars armor and results in a nice neutral, but higher net, insulation level for both. The shock and crush resist is also nice vs some mobs and some specific pvp builds.

Ghastly spider silk is an odd ball... if you -really- want one material for the widest range of enviroments i guess you could use this... but it has nothing much to reccomend it otherwise (unless Arborious uses lots more acid damage as we saw in the video, but even then you are likely to just use acid protection spell instead to avoid stacks). It is also a powerful enchanting reagent and probably better used there.

Rabbit wool cloth is a joke. Luck does very little now with most things resisted by fortitude not willpower and even then it being a scalar thing instead of a save-to-ignore thing. It is the consolation prize for killing a rabbit and getting no feet.

winterspine weave is a top 3 contender due to the pvp aspects with its damage reflection, cold resistance, and armor. The encumbrance is a slight downer, but is still a viable option.

TLDR:
Start with spider silk, graduate to mammoth wool, dabble in winterspine weave. Ignore the rest as useless. Cotton needs more uses, luck needs to be meaningful, and need more reason to use armor insulation instead of flat protection abilities when entering hostile enviroments. (see rant about how stack decay should be tied to elemental resistance instead of a seperate thing, which would then make armor material resistances and insulation more relevant)

All cloth armor materials are still pathetic in variety and utility when compared with the options available for leather and metals.
Yes this is for a good reason- namely the leathers and metals take more time and investment to obtain.
In alpha this was balanced -some- by giving cloth armors 3 enchantment slots instead of 2 -AND- assassins' armor was made from leather but still a light armor. So back then the light armor user had a better selection of options.
I would like to see cloth armor options increase in cost (time, resources, etc...) but also increase in effect or variety so that people have meaningful choices. Right now it certainly feels like we do not; winterspine or mammoth, flip a coin then choose mammoth for the hp.

I am in favor of the high effort solution.
The orb system is perfect model to adapt recipe system to.
It gives long term meaning to recipies, gives niche crafters a place to shine, reduces item spam from grinding for rank, makes entry easy enough that players cant complain much.
Have recipes drop more often in chests and this could work fine.

And the Fleshing beams are down by the river or behind some of the buildings and look like this:

And when crafting an item, realize that there are multiple resource options, not just the one shown by default;

This same pattern works if you want to use different hide/wood/cloth materials for an item.

Nice introduction but do you have a website or discord with more information about organizational structure, guild/player activity time windows, and such not? I am entering into this winter/spring alpha and am shopping for a guild !

One of the requirements of ranking up a city is obtaining and maintaining a high number of players as citizens. As such if a new guild comes on to the game scene there should be plenty of cities willing to work with them if just so the city can rank up for a while. One deal that could be struck with an existing city is to join them, aid them in conquering a neighbor and receive that city as reward. Now the primary city got to rank up for a while and enjoy some tech bonusses and has an allied city nearby and so can worry less about -that- border.
I expect that a number of smaller guilds will work together in some political system in order to cooperatively govern a city and will actively seek other organized groups to incorporate in order to raise their city rank.
Even if there is one big guild in the city they would do well to cultivate a positive relationship with all other smaller guilds that are part of it as they could easily leave the city if irritated causing it to rank down thus weakening the city.
Lots of discord politics I am sure. - which is a good thing-

@spoletta have you tested that or just hoping to test that?

@PeachMcD @GamerSeuss
You are both correct that having experience in playing the game allows you to have greater knowledge of what you need or can do without. As I said, I have not played the game and as such have a similar perspective as that of any other player who is curious about the game and only has videos and posts for reference.
I believe that it is totally possible to find a great build that fits within 16 memory points, however that requires experience and trial and error. There very well may be fun combos that really make the game for a player but they would never think of or try due to the restrictions of the current memory system, especially since many abilities take time to discover and learn before they can be accounted for.

A new player who has never tried balancing between all the options to create an optimized hot key bar for their desired game play style does not have that experience. Many of the videos I watched by players noted that lack of experience and felt unfairly penalized by having a low int which could not be altered except by 2 via expensive talent progression.

You both have good points and I appreciate your additions to this discussion. Hopefully some developers have thought of these possible issues as well.

https://fracturedmmo.com/feature-spotlight-2-universe-planets-travels/
"The prime way to travel to other planets, Stargates require a great deal of group effort to be summoned and don’t last for long. After crossing one, the time you’re allowed to stay on the new planet is limited and varies according to your race, your alignment and your destination. Demons are a notable exception to this rule, having been gifted by Babilis the ability to travel to other worlds more easily to bring terror to the other much hated races. However, the penalties they’ll be subject to are no smaller than those suffered by the other races… and sometimes, actually worse."

"eclipses, recurring events that have a huge impact on the lives of Demons and Humans. " -not beast men!

https://fracturedmmo.com/feature-spotlight-6-pvp-alignment-crime/
"f you flag yourself as Good, you are not allowed to perform hostile actions against any other Good or Neutral player. There are several ways this restriction is applied – some common cases being:

You can’t use basic attacks and targeted spells against Good or Neutral players.
Your AOE abilities cause no damage or negative side effects to Good or Neutral players.
You can’t loot the corpse of a dead Good or Neutral player.
Giving the killing blow to a knocked-out Good or Neutral player is not possible.
You can’t take possession of bounty that doesn’t belong to you.
On the contrary, all the hostile actions listed above are permitted against Evil players – and even encouraged by Karma gains!

Since all Beastmen have a default Good alignment that can’t be changed on Arboreus, it is literally impossible for them to hurt each other. This also lessens the need for them to form a Party, making grouping easier.

As a Good player, you’re sure to inspire confidence to everyone you meet."

"Arboreus is designed to be the ideal home of PvE lovers. It features large areas accessible only by Beastmen and characters with Good alignment, and a great degree of protection from hostile PvP in the rest of the world. How great is such protection? Let’s go through that together.

First and foremost, travelling to Arboreus is no small feat for a Human or Demon character. It requires good planning and is generally expected to be a group effort. Moreover, and more importantly, things get exponentially more difficult for players of Neutral and Evil alignment, who not only have to work harder to gain access to the planet, but also find it harder to stay.

Indeed, only Humans with Good alignment are allowed to walk the lands of Arboreus for a considerable amount of time – 20/40 real-world hours, thus being able to explore a good portion of the world at once, collecting resources and acquiring knowledge.

If you’re a Human with Neutral alignment, you can also stay for a while – around 5/10 hours, penalized only by a slight stat debuff. However, if you get flagged as Aggressive, you are immediately treated as Evil, suffering all the penalties explained below.

If your character has an Evil alignment and you manage to enter Arboreus, well, now you’re in trouble! The planet itself, pervaded by the primal energy of Elysium, immediately starts fighting to repel you. You become heavily debuffed, and normally pacific creatures turn aggressive against you, seeking you out to rip you apart. Even worse, you are only allowed to stay on Arboreus for half an hour at once, and you are quickly drained of all vital energies if you step into a Good-only area.

TL;DR

If you play as a Beastman on Arboreus, you’ll often wander zones completely devoid of hostile PvP – particularly as a new player, and you’re unlikely to be the victim of an aggression from other races in the rest of the world as well. If you’re Evil and looking to travel to Arboreus to go on a killing spree, you won’t succeed – you’d rather have a clear PvE / gathering objective in mind and complete it as fast as you can!"

Thank you to the devs and simple news system which made looking up these quotes so easy and quick for me to do.
Read more of the news posts to get a better idea of what they are aiming for instead of making assumptions.

2: yes you can farm materials if not a citizen, just lower concentration and spawn rate of nodes.

democratic voting. gotta keep the residents/citizens happy to keep leadership.

@grofire yes that is a good resource but very wide and deep, I was being more specific to concerns raised but thanks for reminding everyone of it !

it is based on your dex and computer latency.
The higher your dex the faster you move.
The higher your ping or lower your fps, the more 'skippy' your movement is and the slower you move.

I bet that if the next alpha were pve with focus on trade, ability ballances, and crafting, that there would be a higher player population than there is in our current pvp alpha.

I was just reminded that fist mages were a thing and I can see that being cool if they got wraps or what not.