Posts made by spoletta

Consider that the armors used by tanks (metal and hide) have higher durability, so between regular damage and KD they should degrade at the same rate.

Thanks for the post, I would propose the following simple fixes.

At the start of a siege, the attackers must be near the attacker's tent and the defenders in front of their war chest.
Those that are not there when the siege start are not registered as attackers and defenders and so cannot participate.

On the gear. The gear advantage isn't huge, but you need to know what you are figthing. Trying to take down someone in plate with physical damage will not result in any effect.

After playing for 10 days and getting a feeling of the decay rate of item and of the general impact that these new changes had on the players, I would like to offer the following feedback.

First of all, a summary of the current situation:

• The game right now has an itemization based on 3 levels for armors (primitive, non primitive, set) and 2 levels for weapons (primitive and non primitive).

• We have 3 levels of enchantments. Respectively called tier 1, 2 and 3.

• Durability is set as follows: all primitive items have 200 durability. Non primitive bows, wooden shields, wooden weapons and mage weapons have 300, metal weapons and metal shields have 400, Non primitive armors have 200 durability on cloth, 250 on leather, 300 on hide, 350 on metal. Set armors have 50 more durability over the non primitive version.

• Masteries in crafting go from 0 to 4. Each mastery increases the durability of the items crafted by 50%.

• Good and neutral players drop no gear on death. Red players drop almost always all the gear

Now let's see how easy or hard it is to achieve that (note: this post will not talk about the recipes which are already discussed in many other places, I will assume that the recipes are available):

• Crafting any primitive item is trivial

• Crafting a non primitive hide or cloth armor is easy with common materials, but requires some effort if you want to get some rare material.

• The same is true for leather armors, with the caveat that you have to tan the leather first, which adds a bit more effort to the total.

• Crafting a non primitive metal armor takes a lot of time and resources

• Crafting non primitive wooden weapons or shields is trivial, even when using rare woods.

• Crafting non primitive metal weapons takes some effort but is easy enough.

• Crafting set armors is like crafting a non set version but with the addition of some PvE drop which can be extremely hard in some cases, like the 5 dragon souls of an hunter set.

• Enchanting at t1 level is much harder than in the previous tests due to a "nerf" of the properties of the reagents, but still reasonably doable for anyone (and as a personal note: quite fun)

• Enchanting at t2 level requires some very specific reagent combinations which usually are not common. Doable but not something you do on throw away items.

• Enchanting at t3 is mostly a guild level effort

Now let's see how much this stuff will last:

• A weapon used regularly (archer or warrior) loses around 40 durability per day.

• A weapon used by a caster class will mostly not lose durability

• An armor used by a ranged class will mostly not lose durability

• An armor used by a melee class will lose around 10 per day.

• Gear drop rules have some impact on this, but mostly negligible. Items which require effort only change hands, don't get destroyed.

Finally, before going into the discussion of this, let's see which was the reaction of players to this system:

• Having a sort of gear progression which requires a certain amount of effort has been very well received by mostly all players.

• The non gear drop for good and neutral was very badly received by red players.

• The increased durability of items was well received by many players, but there is an underlying fear of how the economy will shape out.

With all that said, these are my thoughts on it, what I like and what I don't like:

My first reaction to this system was very negative. No gear drops and progress through gear definitely did not felt like this they aligned with how I expected this game to be. By playing and talking with other players though, I cannot ignore the fact that some of those changes were very well received. In particular the new gear system. Players like to have to work toward obtaining a certain gear and not having to replace it every other day due to it breaking, and honestly Arboreus would not really work without mechanics like this. Additionally, I feel that this amount of progress is mild enough that you can definitely perceive it, but it doesn't turn the game into a gear check or a world of "have" and "have not". You can still run in mostly primitive gear and achieve about the same stuff, just harder. As such, I'm willing to accept this as a part of Fractured. It doesn't 100% align with what I had in mind but it's not a deal breaker, and since the majority likes it, I could be fine with it too. It can be a fine compromise.

Talking about the gear drops though, this isn't really working well. Having items which require this level of effort to obtain automatically prevents any form of full gear drop in the game. While this may fine on a world like Arboreus, this warps some underlying mechanics and interaction on which Syndesia is based. Syndesia is a PvX world. PvP is half of it, and reds are part of this PvP system. They are meant to be a niche, to have disadvantages, and that the good guys should not be bothered too much by them. But this system has now gone too far in that direction. Playing a red in this system is impossibly punishing. What should the red penalties achieve? Those penalties ideally should prevent the creation of any large red figthing group, due to imposing them severe logistic restrictions, which makes them act more as solo robbers of carts and lone predators of PvE hotspots.
The current level of such restrictions do indeed manage that, but they manage to be so punishing that even solo actions are carried out only through petty tricks or borderline exploits which allows reds to act safely, because the level of risk is simply unbearable otherwise. Also, stuff like this should NEVER exist https://forum.fracturedmmo.com/topic/15019/player-spawn-locations-during-pvp-combat-is-a-big-issue . Player throwing themselves at the enemy knowing that they risk nothing is bad, no matter how you look at it. There must be some form of penalty at all times.
At the same time though, it is having very positive impacts too. Trades have picked up, acquiring an item is a safer investment. Players form groups to go around and look for rare resources. This is nice, and I would like this to continue, so scrapping this new system altogether would be a step in the wrong direction. Despite my initial reaction I believe that this system is proving to have better potential than the old one, so I would like to tune and find the right compromises on this one, rather than going back to the previous one.

Talking about durability instead, I honestly smell a disaster incoming. The economy will collapse. I would like everyone to understand that this game economy can work only if every week the amount of resources destroyed through durability is exactly equal to the amount of resources gathered. With the current durability this will simply not happen, and one of the the curprit of this are the masteries.

Like with the item progression, I do not like having a craft progression through grind and repetition, but I do understand that many like it, so I will accept that part too. In their current incarnation though, masteries are a terrible element of the game. While in this system gear progression players in different levels of gear can coexist, fight with and against each other with the same rules and varying degrees of advantage/disadvantage, this does not happen with masteries. A player with 4/4 in an item and one with 1/4 simply cannot coexist in the same economy.
This is a difficult concept to grasp, but durability is a very important stat. Many frown upon masteries because they "only increase durability, but no stats", but durability in a system where you can't repair and can't be looted is a HUGE element of value.
Even if enchantments were not in the game, a sword made with someone in 0/4 would be worth only 1/3 of one one built by someone in 4/4, because the latter has 3 times the durability. It will give me the advantages of that item for 3 times longer, so it is worth 3 times as much. Simple as that. These 2 items are made from the same materials, and simply cannot co exist. There is no competition on town position or price which can bridge that gap of value.
This is made even worse by the cost of enchants. Since higher level enchants have an high cost associated, the value of an item with higher durability is further incremented by being a better recipe for higher enchants. Enchants put on a higher durability item offer a bigger return of investment for the same resources. In the end the item from a 4/4 is impossibly more valuable than a 0/4. This means that you are either 4/4 or you don't craft, because the price of raw materials will be based on a 4/4 craft. This will 100% require a change.

The second critical flaw of this system is that as highlighted previously, some items simply do not degrade. The armor and jewels of any ranged character is almost eternal. The weapons of mages too. This is not good. Items have to get destroyed for all the economic system of Fractured to work.

In summary, the issues I currently perceive with the game are:

• Too heavy penalties for Red
• Not enough penalties for good and neutral
• Excessive progression of item value granted by masteries
• Items not breaking often enough to have a good economy
• Wood items are too easy to make

Based on that, I would propose the following changes:

Should we bring back gear drop for good players?
I'm mostly convinced that the answer is NO.
Not having them drop gear has had too many good impacts on the game. That should stay, and we should look elsewhere for a solution.

So, how we give them penalties for dying? How we rebalance a bit the huge disadvantage of red toward good players?
I would say that we should look back to the last time the system worked. For that we look at the last alpha, were we had goods drop 2, neutral drop 4, red drop all. This was also with an average value of the items which was drastically lower. So I guess that we can start just by rescaling this.

The items have an higher value, so to inflict the same value of penalty you need less gear to drop. I like zero drops on good players, so let's move from there. Good zero, neutral one, reds 1-2 depending on Karma. Reds should drop 1 when under -2000 (killing is -2500, so this red only stole a cart or similar levels of crime), 2 when under this value (they killed someone). Dropping all items is too much of a penalty. Losing only 2 I feel is bearable.
Why not zero on neutral? Hmm, I'm in doubt between zero and one. Because neutral players are the core of the PvP of Syndesia and they must feel confident in engaging in as much as activity as they want. After all any possible target is willingly participating. But at the same time it feels wrong... I feel like one would be better.

So, how would this solve the fact that blue are actually unaffected by any penalty for dying and can charge head first into a fight while risking only bandages? I would tie this with our current issue with durability, and simply apply this:

Every time you get purple health, you suffer an amount of durability damage on all your items equal to the 2/3 of the percentage of health lost. When you get executed, it counts as suffering all the remaining red health as purple health. What this translates to, is a 10 durability damage on your items when you get knocked down, and a total of 66 when you get killed, no matter how many times you were knocked down before that. You can get knocked once and lose 10 then be executed for the remaining 55, or get knocked 6 times for 6 and then be executed for 6.
In the end a full life lost is always 66.
This is a good deterrent to throwing away your life, and introduces a decent degrade on items, which affects even those which normally wouldn't suffer damage.
This though would not introduce a "reward" for reds killing them. And I think that it is fine. On Syndesia reds should go after good players to rob them of their loot and their carts, not to take their equipment. It would be too severe of an impact.

With this system, blue will most of the times go around with their best or close to best equipment, which is what most of them want. Reds will be able to run around in non primitive gear with t1 and t2 enchants, because it is reasonably possible to replace them if you lose only one or two. Neutral players too will mostly fight in non primitive t2 enchanted and bring out the sets only for the best occasions. This is a decently fair fight. You can fight against good equip using t1/t2 non primitive gear, and imposes that gear disadvantage on reds which is what is expected for Syndesia.

This should in my opinion solve the issue of reds, blue and item degradation.

Next issue, masteries. The +50% per level has to go. I would prefer an increase of stats to it, and many players would consider it more natural. So I propose that the 4 mastery levels become: first level +5% durability, second level +5% damage/armor, third level +5% durability, fourth level +5% damage/armor. This is more natural and gives someone at 4/4 a significant advantage of 10% in stats and 10% in durability over someone in 0/4. This is a big advantage but not big enough to completely put anyone else out of business.

Last issue, wood items. Currently with one yew tree you can make something like 10 yew bows. Definitely too easy. Wooden items will never have a value like this. They would have to require something like 10 times the current logs to give them a worth. Personally the best solution would be to give wooden item creation a bit more depth, introducing the kilns, long time curing like leather and so on. This though would require a major effort from the devs, which right now look very busy with that roadmap. So I would say that for now the easiest solution is that high quality trees only drop 1 log of their specific material, and all the other logs that they produce are simply light wood and hard wood. After all only some specific parts of a tree are good for crafting.

With that said, this was my wall of text and I would like everyone to drop in and contribute to finding the right compromise.

All towns have this issue.

I see advanced smelters only in rank 10+ cities, so maybe that it is incorrectly listed there while it is actually a ran 10 tech.

This will happen only if recipes are use limited items, or the market saturates and everyone will be able to craft.

One good suggestion I read today is to make them into skills. "Use bandage" and "Use remedy". This way they go into the bar.

Getting KP rarely feels like a grind, because you change area constantly.

The problem is just a few monsters like the goblins shamans which really give too little KP for their rarity.

I agree. Recipes are not a good solution.

Both of the proposed solutions seem fine to me, but indeed the second one would be good if the recipes drop only in specific areas, to increase the reliance between the different parts of the world.

Maybe that the hunter set for example drops only from the frost elementals on Aerhen, so that these types of sets come from that region.

High atop an hill, three figures were hastily recapping their nefarious plan. The moon was clearly visible in the sky, casting a pale light and long shadows all over their improvised camp.

“That’s it everyone, the time has almost come. Stick to the plan and tomorrow at this hour we will be filthy rich.” Her low barking voice easily identified her as one of the Udoadra, wolf like people rarely seen on Syndesia. They were famed to be strong, noble and natural leaders.
This particular Udoadra went under the name of Rala and she did show the typical traits of her people… minus the noble part.
Indeed she would be more easily described as a scoundrel, always looking around for the next fool who could be easily detached from his belongings.

One week ago she had been approached by an old acquaintance of her, a bald man of an impossible to define age. He bore on his face the marks of a life spent over the sea, and the labyrinth of scars on his face told of more than enough swords.
Everyone referred to him as the “Ol’ man” to the point that many had started mistaking Olman for his real name, Rala included.

Rala knew that he had his own ways to catch the last news before the others, and that he always made sure to profit on his leads. Plenty of coins had found their way into Rala’s pocket thanks to this man, so when she approached her with this new lead, she knew that he could be thrusted, even if the information itself had been hard to believe.
"
Settlers had come to Myr
"
Those were his words..
Myr, a continent brimming with gold, silver and untapped resources, was the dream of a few and the nightmare of many.
Goblins, ogres and bandits roamed the fertile lands while the deserts were plagued by hordes of undead and by foul spider like creatures puked by the gods during a bad hangover. Any previous attempt of conquering those lands had been met with a quick and gory demise.

Yet, this group was trying to settle in there, and according to the Ol’man they already managed to establish the first cities. Too busy facing the unlimited dangers of that place, they were still unaware that their kin could be their worst enemy. In other words, the perfect target. Even more interesting was the fact that they had been organizing themselves around “banks”. Big chests left in the middle of the city, without any kind of lock or protection, where the settlers had been observed putting any kind of item. Including gold. A lot of gold.

Now, after having sailed to Myr from their island, they had been observing their target for a whole day from atop their hill. The newly founded city of Promolonia, and its “bank” were right there in plain sight.

With the help of a lit candle, Ol’ man opened his notes and started recounting the results of their observations with his high pitched and nasal voice.
“According to what we saw from here, the contents of that chest amount to:

• 1150 Animal pelts
• 85 Ingots of still undefined material
• Around 300 hundred stones. Small ones.
• 41 horses…”
  Ol’ man paused for a second, still disturbed by the sight of all those horses being taken in and out of that chest. Then he resumed his reading.
  “…
• Undefined amounts of plant samples and anatomical parts of goblins. Probably tongues.
• At least 20.000 gold coins
• And... “More than my fingers” wood planks. Thank you Trixie for your useful contribution.
  “
  That last sarcastic comment was directed at the third member of this unlikely group. If Rala was a rare sight on Syndesia, the creature knows as Trixie was exceedingly unique.
  Trixie was a Demon. An Hellfire Demon, known to be strong as a mountain and dumb as a rock.
  His real name was Trikel’raxat’kartala and even among his peers he had never been a particularly bright one.
  Rala had met him during her travels, and in an impressive feat even for the extremely social Udoadra, she had managed to befriend him. She had full thrust in her skills, and knew that a cunning plan was the best plan.
  She also knew though that violence made for an excellent plan B, so she hauled around this huge mass of muscles and ferocity wherever she went.
  She was also the one to call him Trixie, lamenting the fact that his name was impossible to pronounce and that someone should really institute a character limit for names. Convincing this huge demon that Trixie was an apt name for a terrifying warrior, had also been a surprisingly fun activity.

Truth to be told, the demon had been close to realizing that he had been tricked and that he should be very very angry at this weirdly chatty dog. Luckily for the 2 other members of the group, such realization had to give way to an intense craving for honey pastries while traversing through his fourth (out of five) synapse. Since no such pastries had ever been in sight, said realization had been stuck in a neural traffic jam ever since that day, and an untimely rampage from the demon had been so far avoided.

“Thank you for the detailed report” Rala cut short her two companions before they could start arguing, and then continued “The plan is easy. Shortly before the dawn there is a small activity of settlers leading their carts in and out of the city, most of them are stopping in front of the bank. We will disguise between them with our own cart, using the darkness to avoid being recognized. We approach the bank, grab everything that is easy the grab, gold coins first and then we disappear in the night before the dawn. Take only what looks like it could be worth its weight.”

A few minutes later, following the plan they had put together all three of them were slowly walking toward the city of Promolonia.

There were a few figures moving in the night. Each of them was busy with his own matters and hardly interested in meddling in the affair of others. Even less so when one of those “others” was hauling a cart which would have normally required a good horse.
“Are you sure that it was a good idea to leave the cart to him? I fear that we may be a little too conspicuous like this.” Ol’man voiced his concern, looking at the demon barely covered with the biggest cape they could find, effortlessly dragging the cart.
“We need the cart, and we don’t have an horse. This is the best option we have, as long as you don’t want to try hauling it yourself.” Was the quick answer from a very annoyed Rala.

With the help of a bit of luck and a of striking sense of dread in all those who met Trixie on the road, the trio finally entered the streets of their target. The bank was there in plain sight, without a single guard taking watch.
“Ok, quick now, grab whatever we can!” Rala issued the order with a whisper in the night.
The three of them jumped on that lone ornated chest sitting under a solid stone roof, almost in contrast with the poor state of the rest of the buildings in the city.

They all started rummaging through that chest, taking out all the gold coins they found and anything that looked expensive. No matter how much they took, there was always more. It seemed impossible for such a chest to hold all that stuff.
“Oh, these two could be useful!” Rala took out from the chest two very surprised horses and attached them to the cart.
“Wow, look at these gems in here, they are so… flawless! These must be worth a lot! Hey Trixie, would you stop eating everything you find and give us an hand?” Ol’man looked in the direction of the demon.

Trixie was standing there, immobile. He was staring into the void in front of him, apparently lost in thought. There was something ominous in the air around him.

“… not warrior name.” these words finally came out of his mouth.

They were softly spoken as if he was speaking with himself, and yet they sounded like fiery boiling rage.

“Eh?” Ol’man couldn’t hear well those words, but his instincts had just put him on full alert.

“TRIXIE NOT WARRIOR NAME! ME KILLS BAD DOG!” Trixie stared daggers at Rala.
“… seriously? After all these years you notice it NOW? When we are this close to getting awfully rich? Have you ever heard of bad timing you bird brained muscle head?” Rala looked more surprised by the surreal situation they were in, more than worried for their imminent fate.
Ol’man sidestepped closer to Rala, while keeping his eyes on the demon, which looked ready to jump on them at any moment.. “Please, tell me that we have a plan B ready.”
“Oh yes, we got a plan B! It is right there! Looking at us and trying to decide if he can eat both of us right now, or if he prefers to keep a bit of me as a late breakfast!”
“Excellent. So what exactly do we do now?” Ol’man kept staring the demon which was slowly advancing toward them.
“We run. NOW!”

---

Many hours later, in the afternoon following that hectic night, a bored guard was inventorying the results of the night assault.
A man clad in a dirty chain armor moved toward him. “So, did you found everything in the end?”
“Ah yes Sheriff, we got almost anything.”
“Almost? What is missing?”
“Oh sir you see, this is very weird, we found almost everything except for a few belongings of Jeremy, the cook. He swears that he had put there a stock of raw bear meat and a few trays of his baked products.”
“Baked products? What kind of baked products?”
“Honey pastries, sir.”

It worked decently because you didn't haul around a lot of arrows. 200-400 at a time.

Then you kept with you the arrowheads, so that when you needed to craft more you took some branches from a tree and crafted them. This way you had a lot less weight problems.

The problem was with having to find a lot of small stones. 5 stones 200 arrows.

Yep, and in fact many are asking to prevent using consumables from the inventory.

I disagree, equip loot should come back in some form.

Yeah sorry, I should definitely put something in my sign to identify it...

In any case if you follow that link given by Skykal, you will find your answer for German and French.

The Italian language translation instead was revealed later in an interview with the leav dev for an Italian blog.

Liches are neutral aligned.

Reds on Syndesia are at a disadvantage. That's by design.

We can discuss exactly on the correct amount of disadvantage, but don't expect a fair fight.
For example, the previous system had a partial drop for blue, a bit more drop for neutral and full drop for Red, and most were fine with it.

Italian, German, French

It is indicated as poor, but the durability increases correctly (which we suspect being the only difference between item qualities).

This game can be quite hard, especially if you don't know the basics.

Your best bet is to find a friend, in 2 you can face a lot more challenges, but if that isn't an option, start from wolves and goblins.

You are probably doing something wrong in lockpicking.

With dex 15 I need the dropped lockpicks only for master chests. Everything else is easily opened with wooden lockpicks.

Obviously you need the talents.

You can't really "grind" in this game, since mobs will stop giving you KP once you are done studying them.

Anyway, best places to start are goblins. Taken one by one they are manageable.