@gothix I have no problem with mail - as long as it's understood that the person hupping the parcel is a player. Now, it would probably be handy to have some "sealed envelopes" for the purpose of not encouraging greed, signatures, and/or having some 3rd party operate as an escrow, but in the end, having a mailperson move your goods to a buyer, rather than having a merchant player randomly arrive with goods you may want, seems like a reasonable service to purchase.
@squidbit skips obvious joke about "only man tacos"
@jetah Oh, assuredly. Diablo had terrible mob ai. I rather hope Fractured does it better - but you asked why anyone would blind-fire like that - and that's one reason.
Actually, I just hit another one today - playing Path of Exile. I was fighting an ai based on a character model - main attack was to fire 3 bolts of chaos in my general direction. Problem 1 - my character is woefully weak to chaos for various reasons. If I got tagged, I had about 1 second to hit a full health recovery flask, or I died. Problem 2 - the ai could see beyond the edge of the screen, and I couldn't - which meant that I'd be attacked (and probably killed) well before I could target them. So, I reverted to a spray and pray sort of attack. I knew I got it approximately right, because my ranged attack has a secondary effect (life leech), and the game is polite enough to tell me when it engages. So, I'd get lucky, peg the jerk, and then run because I'd get a face full of chaos otherwise. Battle took forever, it was pretty terrible, but any other method was a sure death for me.
Which is, more or less, my earlier answer - if you can be targeted from beyond the range of your screen, better hope you have some other sign of the incoming attack, or that you can survive that first sneak attack XD Since I had neither, I had to revert to an idiot tactic, and exploit the limits of the ai, to make it through.
@ekadzati You might enjoy Wakfu, then - most areas have various resources, and an ideal level for these resources - "Wakfu" is the in-universe term for "energy in balance" - maintaining Wakfu gives a character certain benefits, while driving nature out of balance and "going to the dark-side" has a similar enhancement in the other direction - so, if maintaining a particular coast's balance improves your water defense, breaking it might enhance your fire offense, and so on (not an actual example from the game, but it's an easy to grasp example). Besides the obvious - over-harvest plants mean no more plants, for example - it could also caused monster mobs to spawn less often, and to act more aggressively, because they are starving. Place too many trees could have an opposite effect - too many mobs, and mobs that ran away, or refused to fight
@jetah well, depends. In Diablo, my wizard was a bit squishy, as they tend to be, so, I'd throw chain lightning down a corridor - if it hit something, it would auto-chain to hit everything nearby - most things roasted, and what didn't die would aggro my way, into my more destructive spells down a narrow space were they couldn't effectively dodge.
It was a "wasteful" strategy - cost a lot of mana for no guaranteed effect - but it helped me avoid the one situation that was lethal - getting swarmed. As long as I could game how enemies would come, I could win, effectively, and if I had to spam 10 bolts to get 1 success, that was fine in the end.
now, in Fractured, with friendly fire engaged, that strategy still works - you just risk frying your allies, too. Depending on build, it might even be a good strategy - lightning-proof your tank, let them aggro, and then chuck chain-lighting from off-screen to hit them. Magic auto-targets all enemies, as long as you hit something, and the tank is fine due to immunity - so smite the tank, and let the chains smite everything else, while being outside of sight range, and thus being "safer."
has the advantage of looking really cool XD
@00 said in Pre-alpha invites!:
@genobee This post is like a siege camp outside the fort of Alpha.
And we have no few volunteers for the trebuchet!
catapults another "lucky" besieger
hits the wall
still working on the range, though...
@chrightt Depending on how "ranged" ranged combat is, being able to hear a chant or a bow string twang may be critical. won't matter if a skill is limited to "on screen" - but if someone can fire from longer range, the sound will be your only hint for that first attack.
@gothix I am...almost certain one of those isn't my alts fault. Probably. Though that version of me seems awfully shifty >.>
@specter I did say it might be testing XD Thanks for confirming!
Charisma is also tied to "luck" - how strongly, and what that means, we don't know. In some games, "Luck" adds something to every roll, either slightly or notably. I want to say that it's been confirmed that being lucky is beneficial, but it isn't clear about the degree. (for example, a 20 charisma might produce a 5% improvement to all rolls, or it might give an effective +1 to all other stats for rolls. Conversely, it might only be a 1% improvement - we just don't know)
Charisma is the main stat for Musicianship (Bard'ing it up in the hiz-ouse! XD), and we think, from the description, that it is a mass buffer/command and control sort of school.
Charisma has some effect on minions - either numbers or quality - but that isn't well defined, especially in schools where charisma isn't the main stat.
Charisma also effects NPC conversations - it gives you more ways to respond, according to early News. How that translates, we don't know, but it may translate into more and better loot from npcs
Conversely, We also know that all stats have a Malus for being too low - and I don't know about you, but a Malus that makes you unlucky, or weakens all your rewards, might be a pretty serious bummer, as well. (no, we don't know Charisma's Malus is, but it is reasonable to assume they are all equally bad - and intelligence's significantly slows how quickly you can train your skills by limiting your memory slots if it's under 10. a comparable equivalent is to seriously slow the rate you acquire wealth, or limiting the way people interact with you - things like minions only stay half the time, or NPC merchants refuse to do business with you, or npc guards attacking you on sight occassionally)
@genobee welp, I don't know who it is, but there's been a post in the pre-alpha forum, and a reply, from the look of it. Either we have a player, or the devs are talking to make sure it works XD
@grofire Also, to save them from being pestered. In a vacuum, any source is likely to get a flooded in-box of questions that they can't answer.
@dragomok Hadn't thought of that, but, it could work, now that you have... Hm
@ekadzati Okay, first of all, you are entirely correct about me not fully reading the last link - mainly because I missed it entirely. What I get for doing this after work and half asleep. I'll respond more cogently in a bit, once I finish up the latest posted articles from you - but I felt the need, for the sake of honestly, to admit my mistake.
@jairone said in Weave Fracture cataclysm, Elysium lore into exploration:
@therippyone
Because, well, we all know if they put in a voting system it will get abused by somebody. People cheat constantly together in systems like that to try to get higher ranks, recognition, around the rules, or whatnot.
Very, very true XD as I said, you'd need a community lead (or several) running some level of oversight to make it work in reality - what a Chronicle system does is off-load some of the strain on the dev team to keep track of everything in order to craft relevant updates and content, by having the player base say "this is what is big, this is what mattered" - instead of monitoring every action of 10,000 players, you are monitoring the summaries of a 1,000 - a much more manageable system, by comparison (though still not necessarily feasible).
@ekadzati naw, it was a fun opinion. Now, there is a reason the "abyss" between PvP and PvE exists, quite secondary to a lack of social contract - there is "will" - but more on that in a second.
When in a strictly pvp setting, such as Overwatch, Call of Duty, or Team Fortress2, there is an understood contract, that everyone there wants to attack, and accepts the risk of being attacked. This leads to a fairly harmonious environment, because everyone has similar expectations, trash talk and general toxicity aside XD.
There are 2 groups in the PvE-only camp - the ones who do not desire the risk of harm, and those who do not desire to harm others. Or, more bluntly, those who do not have the will to accept a risk of loss, and those who lack the will to inflict loss on others, or have a will that opposes the injury of others. As the seriousness of potential harm rises, both groups more forcefully retreat from such conflicts, or more aggressively petition for it's removal. While your point on authenticity of the experience is valid, and, more to the point, critical to the development of the genre as a whole, this does not negate the fear either group feels, nor does it invalidate those emotions that serve as it's basis. Your improved capacity to acknowledge and mitigate the circumstance through knowledge is an excellent one - but it's a logical construct, not an emotional one, and thus has only a limited effect on someone's gut reaction to the idea of "at any time, anywhere, your life can be taken" - never mind that it's a digital life, and that it isn't actually accurate - most people can't handle that that is equally true in real life, either, so asking them to accept it as part of a past time, when they didn't explicitly sign-up for that risk, isn't easy.
More to the point, the logical case is suppositional, and demonstratively not entirely true. Yes, implementing intelligent systems to properly express risks is valuable - if it works. It should work, there's no reason why it can't, but it isn't in existence yet, and any human can tell you, we can botch almost anything XD so, while this ideal system is potentially possible, no one can put much faith into that possibility until it's actually realized. Secondly, the natural assumption is that people who want to avoid violence will leave an area that is filled with it, or otherwise make useful changes based on the evidence provided.
but we still have people building houses on flood plains, even after they've been flood out to the point of total loss, repeatedly. Maybe it's an issue of resources - can't move - or pride/stubborness - won't move - or even sentimentality; but people make such illogical decisions all the time, and repeat them even when it's been demonstrated that this wasn't the best solution available.
This also ignores certain meta-aspects. For example, if "everyone" knows that location A is a crime-ridden mess, and Location B is safe, everyone will move to location B - not just the non-criminals, but the criminals, too - after all, can't be a thief if there's no one to steal from. Static formations don't respond to fluid dynamics, and the devs in particular can't resolve an issue that organically arises from player actions, except by doing something extreme...like creating Arboreus, in this case - a place that is fundamentally made to make such actions Very Difficult, but rather forcibly makes that abyss of yours reality, instead of just conceptual. And a fair number of people are quite happy to live on that divide, because that it their will. If you are after a social contract, Arboreus is the equivalent of a grumpy old man saying "we don't want your kind around here, git off our property" while waving a shotgun. Yes, there is an implicit contract, but it's not really what you'd call a "sociable one" XD which I find even funnier, because this divorce is made in the name of being more friendly XD just one of those little ironies XD
(full disclosure, I'm going to be on Arboreus, at least initially XD. don't intend to stay there, but it's going to be home base)
A number of your articles commented on the subject of the difference, and breadth, of potential PvP scenarios, which thankfully we should see at least occasionally in Fractured, and the lack of upward growth answers a lot of the issues mentioned, so, over all, I think Fractured will advance PvP in MMOs by a good margin, but until they have successfully implemented everything, and shown the anti-PvP groups that there is more to it than a random ganker hiding in the bushes, taking joy in their suffering, there won't be a lot of faith in that development. (doesn't mean they shouldn't try - just that the devs ought to expect a lot of ambivalence, uncertainty, and hostility - new things are scary)
@kellewic Never fight Kobolds in their nests. The enemy level may be 1, but the trap level is 100 XD
I had an idea, back on a legendary equipment discussion, that the equipment becomes legendary because of what players have done with it, not what it's made of - you held off an Eclipse raid for 3 hours, and so your shield becomes the Legendary "Guard of Hestron" with a bit of lore on the shield that more or less proclaims the awesomeness of Calburn, Who Held at Demon Broke Pass, and some lore related to the event, suitably written. (main point was that Legendaries didn't degrade, so the lore they represented became permanent)
So, a later "historian" could go find all of Calburn's gear, and put together a story of how this hero lived, based on the legends left on his stuff. Of course, Legendary gear is sought out because it's unbreakable - handy for the 10 hour asteroid raid your guild is doing XD - and rare because you have to do something that impresses the Devs, which, yes, means a certain amount of moderation involved that I don't know if they have the time for, even post-launch, but, it is a thought.
The other idea I'd propose, vis lore, is something I'm stealing from "Yasei no last boss ga arawareta" - in it, players write "Chronicles" - sort of after-action reports on what happened in game, which then are incorporated into the lore. So - you write a Chronicle about the fall of an Empire, and some weeks later, the NPCs will start talking about how "the Empire has fallen, and what does this mean?" There are some basic requirements for writing, and if you write an outright lie, you get banned from writing further ones, and obviously the Devs have to have someone curate and distill a chronicle to implement it in game - cause while I love you all, I wouldn't trust any of you to write a game update directly XD - but as an idea, I really liked it. Figure on everyone starting out as a possible Historian, and then restrict it down to a manageable number by launch - like, a guild has 1 official Historian, rather than everyone in the guild writing, so you don't get 52 accounts of that one time Brezden tripped and fell into the beer barrel XD And maybe anyone can post a Chronicle, but they only get favored as an official one if enough people approve of it, or something, before going to the community manager for uptake?
