News

Hi everyone!

It’s been over a couple weeks since we’ve sent out our feedback survey for the February Open Playtest, and the time has come to update you on how the data we gathered from it is affecting the Fractured Store and Alpha 2 – Test 2.

…oh, and we got this Covid-19 thing going on here in the North of Italy, don’t we? Before you ask*:

• Yes, we’re quarantined-but-not-really-quarantined. Don’t ask us what that means: we still have to figure it out ourselves.
• Yes, we’re all healthy. Well… as healthy as devs of an indie studio making an MMO can be, I mean.
• No, the situation is not impacting the development of Fractured. Alpha 2 – Test 2 is coming a little later than expected, but that’s only because we’re adding a lot of unplanned content to it!

So, without further ado, let’s get to the news!

*maybe you never actually wanted to ask, but we replied anyway 😉

Store Expansion

New Founder Packs

The Fractured Store has been under maintenance for a few days and just came back online. As some of you had guessed already, that’s because new Founder Packs were being added to it!

Deciding the pricing and content of the new packs has been a tough decision for us. On one hand, there’s been a steady request for old Kickstarter packs to make it back to the store since we removed them. This demand was also confirmed by our recent survey. On the other hand, we have a lot of backers who pledged for Fractured when the game was barely a prototype, and we didn’t want to devaluate the risk they took.

In the end, we decided to follow the same path we walked when we released the Adept, Master & Legends packs: create equivalents of the old Kickstarter offers price-wise, but with fewer rewards. The results are the Champion and Eternal Founder Packs!

These two new tasty options are equivalents of the old Knight and Immortal pledges – as you could have guessed by their name. They come with plenty of Dynamight Gold and VIP time – including the much-requested lifetime VIP, but without most of the other perks. Specifically, they’re missing the following elements:

• Champion vs Knight: less VIP time (1 year vs 2), fewer character slots (2 vs 6), no “reserve guild name”, no Knight horse and armor skins, no baby dragon, no statue.
• Eternal vs Immortal: all that’s missing from previous packs (since rewards are cumulative), no lifetime NPC carpenter.

All current Founder Packs will be available for the whole Alpha development cycle, and likely be phased out some time during Beta. You can upgrade from the old Kickstarter packs to the current ones, provided your pledge was less expensive (that means at Patron tier or lower).

We sincerely hope we managed to strike a good balance between the wishes and feelings of different segments of the community here!

Gifting

Another frequently requested feature (not included in the survey) was gifting – and here it comes!

You can now buy Founder Packs and Dynamight Gold and have them assigned to other Fractured accounts instead of yours. When purchasing, you’ll be asked to verify the username of the recipient, which is also going to determine whether the latter can actually receive the gift and its price (in the case of Founder Packs).

The Foundation

Since we’ve expanded our “paid options” in the store, we felt it’d be nice to extend the “free” tiers of The Foundation in the same update.

That’s why we’ve added 50 new levels of progression to The Foundation, including more Dynamight Gold, chests with skin rewards, and titles. Plus, we’ve committed to bringing all the missing reward tiers to life during the course of Alpha. They’re currently planned until level 400, so we got a way to go!

Alpha 2 – Test 2

The new testing phase was meant to start in early March, but we’ve decided to postpone it a little due to the feedback we’ve received during and after the open playtest. Specifically, the following issues concerned us the most:

• It was hard for new players to figure out what to do in the game aside from claiming a plot of land and building in it.
• Land claiming was a must, since it was the only way to store items and craft, but finding free parcels could get difficult, and not everyone likes building.

To improve the situation, we’ve decided to completely overhaul our early game experience with a whole new starting area that includes a local bank for storage and crafting stations, plus a series of tutorial quests to educate new players on the Knowledge System and other game mechanics.

All this added content is the reason of the short delay we’re having, so the 3rd week of March is the new target period for the launch. We’re going to confirm the exact date next week, so stay tuned!

That’s it for today. We can’t wait to let you into Alpha 2 – Test 2!

DISCUSS