Fall Alpha Spotlight – Equipment Progression
-
Hello everyone!
Here comes the first update on the upcoming Fall Alpha 2021! As usual, this type of video series is meant to cover more in detail all that was announced in the previous roadmap.
Let us know what you think of these huge changes!
Enjoy Fractured!
-
Very positive changes overall, end of September is a big no for the test though. I would like to play but D2R and New World releases are much more appealing than any beta.
-
New info!!
Thanks for the update.
-
@margenov said in Fall Alpha Spotlight – Equipment Progression:
(...) end of September is a big no for the test (...) D2R and New World releases (...)
I wholeheartedly agree, participation has been a problem already and with that competition, I am worried we might not really see enough people to test the city siege system with these new items and the new attribute system, maybe not even the new PvP rules. At least not on a scale that would deliver useful information for the weeks around Fractured's launch and it's population by that time.
-
Awesome news
-
Very exciting news, Prometheus, thanks!
I can't wait to roll up my sleeves and get down and dirty with the crafting/enchanting tables. This is particularly one of my favorite aspects of the game already, and it will be nice to see how this new system change comes together. It is especially nice to see more Magic Channeling weapons than just staves out there. Now I'm seeing Blade Dancers and Spell Swords populating the landscape, combinging magic channeling blades with great spell combinations.
As to late September as the release, You guys have said that before, so I don't know why people are acting so shocked about this. Yes, you're going to be competing with some other releases and Alphas/Betas, but that's true any time during the year. There is always some new MMORPG, Console Franchise, or something coming out, or it's Back to School, or Holiday Season, or whatever. I'm hoping to be moving into a new house in early October (current lease is up on November 1st) so I might be too busy moving to play this alpha much, but that's okay, I can destress after a day of moving watching others live play videos if I can't jump in myself for a few hours.
This is also making a good gold sink for the game. More uses for gold give more value to gold. Now you actually have to decide if you're better off using it to enchant your gear, to buy/maintain your residence, or to stock up at the marketplace...or pay your BAIL to get out of Jail if your a PvPer getting caught by Bounty Hunters.
Can't wait until the next update launches. Would love to know if you've also decided to keep with the plan to introduce Beastmen or if that has been solidly pushed off to a later Alpha.
Cheers.
-
@GamerSeuss said in Fall Alpha Spotlight – Equipment Progression:
(...)I don't know why people are acting so shocked about this. Yes, you're going to be competing with some other releases and Alphas/Betas, but that's true any time during the year(...)
It's not 'acting shocked', but rather hoping for reconsidering the timeline.
Yes, releases and limited tests happen throughout the year, but there are few MMORPG releases and that's the direct competitor. The majority of Fractured players is unlikely to enjoy FPS, racing games and what have you, a certain amount certainly is, but not the majority. But the amount of overlap with potential New World players is large, since it's the same genre and, let's face it, it is the biggest MMORPG release of 2021.
The last test was nearly empty towards the introduction of siege mechanics. I couldn't find a single group that would siege/defend and these sieges/PvP should be a core consideration for the new item balancing, so you want to have several sieges near the end of the test when people have top tier items, in order to gather real, reliable data for launch, when that is going to be the case (or, if it ain't you have different problems).
Not shocked at all, but trying to act in a way that I hope and consider to be in the best interest of the game.
-
If the test is at the end of October a lot more people will likely play it, including me. End of September test will have next to no one playing.
-
@Logain the last 2-3 weeks of a month+ long test always tend to die down, no matter when during the year your testing. This is because most of the hardcore testers get everything they want to test done in the first 1-2 weeks. This is 100% normal. It actually helps validate those people who have called for more frequent, smaller focused testing.
The general consensus that I've heard in our forums when asked, on the other hand, has Fractured players not overly enthusiastic about the release of New World, at all. Not to mention their release and testing has been pushed back a few times, so I don't personally see much competition from New World breaking Fractured as a whole. Most of the Fractured potential players are not going to buy into New World when they have already invested in Fractured and aren't overly enthused about it in the first place....but hey, I may be wrong.
End of October is going to start running into Holidays when family will be demanding more of peoples' time than anything, keeping them from being able to necessarily be testing Fractured. If anything, The Holiday season is when other family members will be buying people New World, just considering it a game present for gamers (Parents and Siblings sometimes only know we're 'Gamers' and don't know what our preferences are) so that's when New World will start to drag players away, if at all. Really hardcore multi-game players will try to play everything they can, and will see the Alpha of Fractured to be a short enough access window to throw their focus on it, with the rest of their time doing Guild Grinds in New World to get their Guild that early jump to ultimate power on a new game.
Only time will tell. Regardless, these kinds of misgivings should have been brought up back when they announced that the next Alpha would probably be pushed to the end of September, not now, when it's almost here.
-
Great info but please be mindful of your face blocking info you are talking about in the video, couldn't really see the some of the info as blocked by your face.
-
@axan22 he blocked part of the inventory, but that was unimportant to what he was showing, as he dragged what was the focus into the field so you could see it. All you would have seen was multiples of the same thing or a selection of things like was right above it. You really didn't lose any information so I think he was watching out
-
@GamerSeuss - I'm well chuffed about spell channeling too! I'm hoping it's not just melee weapons that get to have spells attached.
The game is getting more complex w each build, which is a learning curve for all of us and part of my fun so THANK YOU for So Much new stuff to play with, @Prometheus. I will get it very wrong, I have no doubt. And learn lots for next time!
re: quibbles re timing: many of us have been around long enough to recognize that adding 3-4 weeks to any announced time frame is S.O.P. Which brings us to mid-October for the Actual launch of the alpha. Does that meet w y'all's approval?
-
thx for the update
-
@PeachMcD Someone's thinking Arcane Archer type dreams
I love games with the right balance of complexity to playability, and so far, Fractured is doing well in that regard. Me, I'm one of the ones still contemplating Bard Builds, and what's a Bard without a good Rapiar at his side, hmmmmmm
-
Will there be a different cost to enchant weapons compared to the cost of enchanting armor pieces? Because the gains from enchanting a weapon are really high, since it increases the base damage of it. An enchant to a single armor piece would instead give you only a small armor advantage. You would have to enchant all 4 pieces of armor to obtain similar results to a single weapon enchant.
-
@spoletta that depends on how you rate the value of enchantments relative to each other. Yes, weapon enchants could increase the base damage of a weapon, but by how much compared to how much the Armor increases? We don't even know the numbers for the new system yet. If you look at their numbers almost equivalently, then enchanting Armor is actually more cost effective because you can stack so many pieces of armor together on your character, combining the effects of the enchantments. Stackability and versatility have a bit of an affect on the value overall, as does the final numbers, and the strategy your building for.
-
We actually already know the numbers. Each increment is worth 25% of weapon damage and 25% of armor value. Armor value though does not work linearly.
Let's assume that you have a light leather armor. On it's own, this set gives you 180 slashing, 72 pierce, 108 crush armor. Assuming a strenght of 10 to avoid external factors, this equals to a protection of :
34% slashing (receive 66%)
17 % pierce (receive 83%)
23.5% crush (receive 76.5%)If you were to increase those values by 25%, you would get the following reductions:
39% slashing (receive 61%) -- > Damage reduced by 7.6%
20.4% pierce (receive 79.6%) -- > Damage reduced by 4%
27.8% crush (receive 72.2%) -- > Damage reduced by 5.6%Now, these numbers while abysmal compared to a strainght increase in damage of 25%, get actually better with heavier armors. In a plate, you would get the following result for the slashing armor (the higher value):
Base armor value 900.
Damage reduction 72%
Damage taken 28%
Damage taken after first enchant 24%
Improvement 14.3%With later enchants, talents and with a bit of starting strenght you can reach a little better numbers. But this is assuming that you are enchanting the chest, the helmet, the boots and the gloves. 4 enchants to obtain defensive results similar to one enchant on the weapon. Also, half of these bonuses come from the chest piece alone.
That's why I'm asking if different pieces have different costs to enchant, since the benefits are wildly different.Also, after doing this analysis I got 2 more issues:
-
The offensive and defensive bonuses are too different. Fights between higher equipped opponents will have a lower TTK.
-
Mages seem excluded from all this. While it is true that native bonuses are also empowered by the enchant, the spell damage bonus of a mage weapon is (currently) only a small part of his total damage. Also, resistances to elementals are not changed, except for the ones already on the equipment (material). Wouldn't all this make mages almost enchant agnostic?
-
-
very interesting changes
-
@spoletta
I am thinking that mages will want to enchant their items a lot if just to get more sockets with which to add modifiers to their spells, like reduced cast time, increased spell effect, increased mana regen, or elemental resistances to counter player and mob spells.The last alpha the mage spell / item rebalancing was not finished as many mobs who relied on spells became jokes (black widows for example) . I expect more spell balancing to happen as the game progresses.
Good changes to the multi use stations, increasing the resource cost of 'imbuing', and giving people more to do with coins.
I am concerned about enchanting being only coin based and not including other material costs.
I bet you could do something similar like the socketing station where you take the item you want to enchant, add a duplicate item base (like a second unenchanted/socketed weapon of same type and material) and then pay a coin cost to combine the two to produce a 'upgraded' version of the first.
If you allowed people to use damaged versions of items in this process then you could also create a sink or market for used items. But I can understand if they do not want to encourage this as they already wont let you put used items in the market.
I am a little concerned about being able to spend 15k and get an item that is 2x as good with 3x as many sockets which could easily make the item 4x as good as the base. But testing will tell.
I noticed that the rapier gives armor penetration as well as spell channeling while the staves just give spell channeling... As such why would anyone use a stave instead of a rapier? If the argument is that 'they get to use int for weapon damage and spell damage' then I would counter that the rogues will be getting to use Dex for weapon and spell damage on top of their additional bonus of getting armor penetration... So I would like to see staves get -something- in addition to spell channeling since it is not unique to staves.Good stuff, looking forward to testing, sad that I wont be able to test much due to the alpha timing.
-
Time will tell, but I'm a bit afraid of allowing a possible +100% on a weapon damage. Maybe it could be scaled back to 15% per level to a total of 60%. Guess that we will require testing to get a real feeling.
