What I "DO NOT" want to see in this game
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Recently, I have been watching alpha tests and introduction trailers of Albion Online. They have so much in common with Fractured in those early stages. However, Albion changed drastically over time and I did not quite like those changes. Here are a couple of things I do not want to see in Fractured(or change in Fractured)
- Albion has no players cities, only cities with rich people buying all the spots. I do not want to see that happen in Fractured.
- Gathering is very unpopular in Albion as far as I see. Game forces you to hardcore PvP and rewards those who does. Consequently people do not prefer gathering. Instead, they do newly introduced dungeons and hellgates to obtain money and gear.
- Related to previous matter, in a sandbox game, I would love to see gathering&crafting be the backbone of everything and they should be the primary focus.
- Being a sandbox game should not indicate complete freedom. Currently in Albion, they are trying to reduce the power of huge alliances and guilds by applying certain debuffs and so on. Instead, there should be limits for number of players in a guild/alliance for proper control.
Those are my ideas and I would love to see what the community thinks about them.
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On your first point I do believe player cities are going to be tested next test. I was a little confused by the statement but I think you are saying an individual just buys all the plots and basically owns the city. I don't think that is possible here because you can have only one plot per planet.
On gathering, spawn does not drop gear. I'm not even sure they drop gold. I think at this point they only drop resources. I'm not even sure it has been discussed how coins are put into the economy.
As far as your freedom goes, I'm guessing you are free to go anywhere as long as you can live lol. I'm not sure how that applies to guilds though. I'm pretty sure the guild size idea has been debated at great length thus far. I guess it depends upon the perks of being in a specific guild beyond just who you want to hang with in the game.
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@Farlander i believe that in one of the QnAs Prometheus said that gold coins will be intorduced by getting them as loot from monsters as well as players being able to craft them from gold from gold resource hotspots.
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- Albion has no players cities, only cities with rich people buying all the spots. I do not want to see that happen in Fractured.
I assume that by this you mean how in Albion all town plots are owned by a handful of people. To my understanding, we can only own one plot per planet per account in Fractured, which should reduce the monopoly.
- Gathering is very unpopular in Albion as far as I see. Game forces you to hardcore PvP and rewards those who does. Consequently people do not prefer gathering. Instead, they do newly introduced dungeons and hellgates to obtain money and gear.
- Related to previous matter, in a sandbox game, I would love to see gathering&crafting be the backbone of everything and they should be the primary focus.
I haven't played Albion in a year, so my information might be outdated, but gathering is unpopular? Top guilds always recruited gatherers who'd donate % and didn't have to come to zvz. Besides, Albion cannot function without gathering: every item in the game is crafted* and when people die there's a 30% chance for each item to trash (be destroyed forever). If nobody gathers, eventually the number of items in game drops and the mats price skyrocket.
*even the items you get as loot from pve are crafted by people and sold to the black market
- Being a sandbox game should not indicate complete freedom.
I agree here.
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@Clinion Albion dev team did wrong decisions during development but they have done a lot of fixes after launch which is something to give them credit. Those NPC cities with player owned plots is kind of nice feature but at the same time very small portion of playerbase will ever own one. I had one plot in Beta 1 but only because then there was less competition especially after few weeks of testing. Anyhow, In Fractured cities are player owned so the situation is somewhat different but perhaps that will exclude players even more...
I am not sure about the bad situation of gathering in Albion because without people doing that there would not be any crafted items on the market either. I craft different stuff in daily basis with resources and materials I gather but also from what I buy from the marketplaces. Items sells mainly really good which makes the trading interesting and rewarding. I agree that if you meant individual players or small guilds, it is hard to survive in black zones, that is one of the reasons I have focused to play in Royal continent, as a solo player.
Resource wise I think Fractured concept is basically much more better than albion's. In Fractured different planets offers different resources so the best ones are not just behind hardcore PvP environment, however, you can expect that happen in planet Tartaros.
I agree that gathering and crafting should be the backbone but at the moment I am a little bit concerned how that part will be eventually implemented in Fracuted. Imo, gathering is atm in better position than crafting.
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From this post and others in the forum, it sounds to me as though Albion is the mmorpg that our forum-dwellers consider to be closest in concept to Fractured. Close enough that players are looking to that game to reflect on possible problems to be avoided w/Fractured.
I don't have any experience w/sandbox mmo games, so I surfed the wiki a bit - it looked like one big difference is the 3 planets/3 gameplays idea. The other is that Albion is 'freemium' rather than B2P
How much difference will those two things make btw the two games? Will it be enough to avoid the potential pitfalls? Asking those w experience bc I'm a total n00b where sandbox mmorpg is concerned.
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@PeachMcD If isolating and only Considering Syndesia the comparison becomes pretty trivial as Syn is basically the Royal continent on Albion from what we can gather right now, so it's not that much of a stretch that Fractured might fall for the same things Albion did/did not.
I think just considering the other alike games and learning from their experience is just something one has to do in order to decrease the probability of failure. And Albion offers quite a volume of said experience
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@PeachMcD There is a lot of same elements in these games even both have their uniques as well. Both are sandbox MMORPGs with full loot rules and player-driven economy, and both have MOBA -styled combat with Isometric view, therefore, the starting point is the same. In addition, developers here have mentioned Albion as one of their paragons.
Moreover, like @humerus mentioned Albion is divided into two different continents, Roayl and Outland. Royal island can be easily compared to Syndesia because both have restricted PvP system. Outland (a.k.a. Black Zones) can be compared to Tartaros, a PvP continent without any PK restrictions. In Albion these two continents are not equal and Roayl is kind of below Outlands when offering less valueable resources, less risk and less content in general. In Fractured we will have PvE planet as well and system where all three planets are equal but different, and this is what a lot of people are looking for, also many players who comes from Albion.
I do not personally know any better game where to compare Fractured, there is of course others as well, but perhaps Albion is the closest one. And yes Albion is a F2P game but it was first B2P, during development and about year and 9 months after the launch (if I remember right). I followed Albions development very closely and I was very active tester as well. Therefore, I have seen what features did not work, what did and how I personally felt of those. This can easily be a burden too because other games can create you an image how the things should be done, and sometimes you become blind to other point of views because of that. I hope I can be as objective as possible, at least most of the times. You mentioned that you do not have experience from sandbox MMOs but I guess that can be a good thing too because then some ideas and point of views can come out of the box and that way bring something new and fresh to the table.
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Royals in Albion are not completely useless. First, they offer new players a gradual start (huge IP cap with no pvp -> big IP cap with flagged pvp but no looting -> IP cap with full loot flagged pvp -> no IP cap, unrestricted full loot pvp). Then, it's the only place from which you can get t2/t3 resources to craft higher tier mats. Royals have a much better enchant rate for t4 and t5 nodes and it's the only place where you can farm faction points. A more obscure thing would be inis mon (yellow zone), the only place that drops the bone marrow (to craft rageclaw).
The interesting thing is how the differences between zones in Albion are just loot values, IP cap and pvp rules. If you want to play Albion just for pve and gathering, you can play in the blue/yellow zone where you have all the pve content without pvp. You get low tier loot, but thanks to do IP cap and repair prices, it doesn't matter because you get exactly the kind of stuff you'd use and you never lose them. These being said, I never met anyone who decided to "live" in these zones.
In a way, if we want to compare Fractured to Albion, I'd say it's more like: Arboreus = blue + yellow + HCE; Syndesia = red zone; Tartaros = black zone. My main confusion is that Fractured devs say all those zones would drop top gear (as long as it is top gear stat-wise, it doesn't matter what it's crafted from). Imagine if SBI decided to introduce in blue/yellow zones enchanted t3 resources up to 3.8 (so, 3.5 = t8 and 3.8 = 8.3). This is exactly how I see the game balance in Fractured.
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@Clinion i can understand your concerns about things you don't want in a game.
But don't do the mistake to compare games development with each other, because the studios are different with different ideas.
Even if a game looks very similar, it can be so different.I am sure, Dynamight will do mistakes, as every other developement studio do in their life, and i am also very sure, they will do design decisions that maybe look at first sight somehow confusing to us.
Per example that they droped the Guild vs. Free Town developement and we will get just one kind of town.
At first mention i was like "Ohhh nooo, why?", but then they explained their decision and i was chilled again, because there are litterally no changes, you still can do a Guildtown and a Free town aswell.
But big Kudos to Dynamight, because they explained their decisions to us. I saw many other studios who did not.Let's look to your concerns (some was already explained above):
- Albion has no players cities, only cities with rich people buying all the spots. I do not want to see that happen in Fractured.
Fractured player cities will not be a "Single Project", that means, yeah, you will be probably able to take as a single player a town spot, but you will not be able to develope this to a big town (or maybe you will be able if you play 24/7, but i doubt it).
As mentioned before, you are just able to have a single personal plot, so you will not be able to "live" in 2 different towns.
And also if you are a Governor of a town, you will maybe lose this status. That means, a town will not be your "own" forever, because there is a planned Election System for Governors.- Gathering is very unpopular in Albion as far as I see. Game forces you to hardcore PvP and rewards those who does. Consequently people do not prefer gathering. Instead, they do newly introduced dungeons and hellgates to obtain money and gear.
This was mention above too, there will be no gear drop at Creatures.
That means for you, Gathering will be one of the main doing in this game, beside mining and creature drops of course.
You will need very much different materials for Crafting and Enchanting.
In Alpha2.2 we already have 2 Chests full of gathered materials and monster drops for Enchanting.- Related to previous matter, in a sandbox game, I would love to see gathering&crafting be the backbone of everything and they should be the primary focus.
It is for sure, because all you need to wear you have to craft by yourself or for trading with others.
Equip has a durability, so there will be always a need for.
Also it is planned, that you will not have this One-And-Only-BIS-Armor, but many different equip for different situations: Gathering Equipment with Luck-Enchant, Winter Equipment for icy biomes ... and so on.- Being a sandbox game should not indicate complete freedom. Currently in Albion, they are trying to reduce the power of huge alliances and guilds by applying certain debuffs and so on. Instead, there should be limits for number of players in a guild/alliance for proper control.
As i know, there are no planned guild limit.
But there will be limits on sieges. The exact value wasn't set, if i remember right.
Prometheus explained in the last Q&A, that at sieges will be limited slots on each side for participating in the Siege.
There will be a timeframe where you can register yourself to the Siege and just this people will be at the fight.
Registering on a Siege-Side/Defender-Side will be not limited to a guild or citizen of the sieged town.
That means, people will be able to help towns who are per example just trading/gathering/crafting towns, without being directly related to the town.A part of this we will be able to test in the next Alpha Test in June.
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I dislike any kind of restriction in sandbox games other than RMT bans. Monopolies exist because a group of players put a tremendous effort in achieving them. Why punish dedication to the game?
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@Razvan said in What I "DO NOT" want to see in this game:
Royals in Albion are not completely useless. First, they offer new players a gradual start (huge IP cap with no pvp -> big IP cap with flagged pvp but no looting -> IP cap with full loot flagged pvp -> no IP cap, unrestricted full loot pvp).
The faction wars have enliven nicely the yellow zone PvP activity.
Then, it's the only place from which you can get t2/t3 resources to craft higher tier mats. Royals have a much better enchant rate for t4 and t5 nodes and it's the only place where you can farm faction points. A more obscure thing would be inis mon (yellow zone), the only place that drops the bone marrow (to craft rageclaw).
In Albion the need of lower tier resources is build wisely and that way even the cheapest and lowest resources will be always viable and needed.
The interesting thing is how the differences between zones in Albion are just loot values, IP cap and pvp rules. If you want to play Albion just for pve and gathering, you can play in the blue/yellow zone where you have all the pve content without pvp. You get low tier loot, but thanks to do IP cap and repair prices, it doesn't matter because you get exactly the kind of stuff you'd use and you never lose them. These being said, I never met anyone who decided to "live" in these zones.
Problem from PvE players point of view is that Albion does not actually offer much blue/yellow zone PvE content on top of those few dungeons. So the end-game content for them is very narrow unless you are willing to step to the red zones. Therefore, from PvE players point of view Arboreus will be huge when compared to Albion's system. I knew some people and few smaller guilds who played only or mostly in safe zones but I am not sure if they decided at some point take the step for the red/black zones. I think it is a natural continuum after your financial situation is established and losing lower tier gear is easily replaceble.
In a way, if we want to compare Fractured to Albion, I'd say it's more like: Arboreus = blue + yellow + HCE; Syndesia = red zone; Tartaros = black zone.
Yes this is how I see it as well, however, in Albion those zones are unequal, laddered by tiers, but in Fractured those will be equal which is very interesting.
My main confusion is that Fractured devs say all those zones would drop top gear (as long as it is top gear stat-wise, it doesn't matter what it's crafted from). Imagine if SBI decided to introduce in blue/yellow zones enchanted t3 resources up to 3.8 (so, 3.5 = t8 and 3.8 = 8.3). This is exactly how I see the game balance in Fractured.
I have understood as well that all planets can produce same tier gear but the different resources offers different flavors on them. I am personally concerned of the crafting and enchanting system planned for Fractured and it looks like the enchanting will have kind of big role when compared to gear itself. I am not sure what will be the tier distribution in Fractured but what I have understood there will be at least 2 tiers of gear and 3 tiers of enchanting. Also we do not have knowledge how many tiers there will be total and how much IP gear or enchanting tiers will provide.
Lets presume we will have 3 different gear and 3 different enchanting tiers in use. In addition, if one gear tier is equal to one enchanting tier then it would be easy to create easily understandable tier system also for Fractured. Therefore, there would be 6 tier system in use starting from level 1 gear with no enchants (1.0) and ending to level 3 gear with 3 enchants (3.3).
T1 = 1.0
T2 = 1.1 or 2.0
T3 = 1.2 or 2.1 or 3.0
T4 = 1.3 or 2.2 or 3.1
T5 = 2.3 or 3.2
T6 = 3.3
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@humerus Well I didn't know spawns would drop gold. That's great news. I know there were several discussions where it was pointed out that if spawn only dropped resources for crafting then hunting would be boring. I didn't know that this decision had been changed. Awesome!
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@Farlander Only humanoids will drop gold, and that way the system will also make sense.
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@Kralith I think @Clinion knows how the gathering and city systems works.
He does not want to see how the rich people, top guilds and big alliances will own most of the cities in Fractured, like they own most of the city plots (crafting/refining stations inside cities) and territories in Albion. With current knowledge we have of Fractured city system (with the sieges), and if on top of that there will be no serious limits for guild and alliance sizes, his fears will most likely come true. This is unavoidable unless there will be very limited guild and alliance rules or heavy debuffs for owning several cities at the same time. This is the reason why Albion had to take season system in use and reset the territory ownerships after a certain period. Without that the game world would be dominated by the top guillds and alliances, and that would most likely also kill the game.
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@Tuoni well true, the bigger guilds always can be a problem for smaller ones.
My small guild definetivly will have it harder than the big guilds we already have. Also can buig guilds hold more townplaces of course.
But i think that a big guild will have also limits by maintaining them, if they spread too much, since they usually have just a core of active people and many on/off people who are not really hard related to the big guild. With the system just to be able to have one personal spot, it will be hard to decide who of them will manage each town. Once you struggle at one town to hold the Management in your hand, you probably need to send someone else to care for. Not sure if bigger guilds can stand this entirely.
Well i can be wrong and it will be easy to hold all these towns, but i doubt it, since not just towns prestige need to get maintained, but also the Ressource Spots all around. So i am not sure, if it payed out even for a big guild to hold "all" available townspots.
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@Kralith To be fair i don't think that even a mega alliance will be able to hold each and every city on a planet at the same time, not even speaking of a single guild. Even if we're expecting an insane influx of new player closer to the release time it will be hard to account for the everything and just by nature of these games and communities that tend to form around the bigger ones, we'll have at least two grander opposing parties. The only thing I'm worried about is each continent becoming basically an alliance vs alliance warzone with no space whatsoever for the occasional small standalone guild. This primarily concerns Syndesia and Tartaros as the housing situation on Arboreus is considerably different of course ':\
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@Clinion said in What I "DO NOT" want to see in this game:
Recently, I have been watching alpha tests and introduction trailers of Albion Online. They have so much in common with Fractured in those early stages. However, Albion changed drastically over time and I did not quite like those changes. Here are a couple of things I do not want to see in Fractured(or change in Fractured)
This game is very unfortunate to have been constantly plagued with Albion comparisons since the Kickstarter.
Unless they completely change the entire fundamental concept of the game, the two will not be comparable. The Three Planets system is incompatible with Albion's progress line.
- Albion has no players cities, only cities with rich people buying all the spots. I do not want to see that happen in Fractured.
I don't know what financial gate will hold players from spots in the final game, but the vast majority of player city gating is chores - wandering around the local area transferring lumber and quarried stone to your building site. As long as you can make an axe, a hammer, and a cart, you can build a house.
- Gathering is very unpopular in Albion as far as I see. Game forces you to hardcore PvP and rewards those who does. Consequently people do not prefer gathering. Instead, they do newly introduced dungeons and hellgates to obtain money and gear.
For the uninitiated: Albion Online explicitly separates all of its crafting materials, equipment, etc. into Tiers. Higher-Tier resources are found in higher-Tier zones. From low to high Tier, Zones run down a spectrum from "no PVP" to "completely lawless PVP", requiring a competent guild to realistically gather high-end materials.
The Three Planets system mentioned earlier in this post renders this irrelevant. None of the planets is more "endgame" than any other:
- You can get "endgame" gear on Arboreus, which has no PVP.
- You can get "endgame" gear on Syndesia, which has lawful PVP.
- You can get "endgame" gear on Tartaros, which has lawless PVP.
You're free to play any one, any two, or all three planets as you like. None of them is required to excel at any other.
- Related to previous matter, in a sandbox game, I would love to see gathering&crafting be the backbone of everything and they should be the primary focus.
This is the primary determinant of math muscles in Fractured.
(math muscles = you have better numbers and are more likely to win)
While experience-we-don't-call-that is present, the power of your gear is not dependent on your innate attributes except in terms of your ability to get the crafting materials, and is probably considerably more influential to your math muscle.
However, Fractured is implementing fishing, animal husbandry, etc. only as stretch goals. They are unlikely to become major parts of the crafting system. As such, the chief flaw of the game, as currently planned and known to me, is that its most important aspect (crafting) is also its least detailed.
Fortunately, math muscle itself is not that important compared to on-field skill, or at least won't be once the combat system is stabilized and the skills and talents are field-tested and finetuned.
- Being a sandbox game should not indicate complete freedom. Currently in Albion, they are trying to reduce the power of huge alliances and guilds by applying certain debuffs and so on. Instead, there should be limits for number of players in a guild/alliance for proper control.
I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say.
Many MMOs suffer from slippery slope tyranny - one or two guilds come out on top and stay that way because the poor game balance makes it trivial for them to choke upstarts before they become rivals, thanks chiefly to geographically bottlenecked resources.
I don't know how Fractured will address this, but the fact that there are three separate planets each with their own "endgame resources" should help, especially if "veins" can run out and new ones end up spawning in totally different places on the planet.
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Sounds like you didn't read a single thing about the game before making this post.
Seriously go to the News section and read everything!
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@Kralith The thing with top guilds is that they play hardcore and it is not just about punch of core people, rather, typically the whole guild is active and everyone ready to do their part. Usually it goes like @humerus described and there will be world wide domination by few large alliances, and this will happen unless there is serious restrictions. It is very hard to defend a city against players who simply are more talented in PvP combat and who have much more time to invest to the game in general. It does not matter if one character can govern one city at the time, there is also alts in use and also enough officers to handle that part. Arboreus is another thing and much more safe because the ownership is not resolved by sieges. However, I bet we are going to see some political strategies there as well. Actually I expect to see beastmen alt guilds for Demon guilds, just to get easy access to Arboreus and its resources.
