General feedback + a lot of ideas of almost 2 years testing Fractured

[TheBodo]

Hi everyone around:

I have pledged Fractured on KickStarter and have now been playing the alpha tests since approx. Dec 2019. When I played the game for the first time, I really was impressed by it. But in the last month and years this has changed. I really would love Fractured to be a game that would motivate me for years and this post will be my attempt to make it the great game that I would love.

What is following now is a big feedback that I collected and noted down several weeks! Yes it is long. But I thought a lot about it and I am sure that it is a valuable feedback and collection of ideas. Please feel free to ask me about it, because I doubt that my text is able to entirely explain the system and the logic that is behind it. But of course I give it a try:

#1 General Feedback on Alpha Tests

The way the Alpha test currently work are not beneficial. Not for you as the developers and not for us as players or testers. I have listed some reasons and hints for you how to stop that.

1. We do not know what to test! 
Information on how things should work are rare and often only mentioned during a video. We need proper documentation how things should work to test them. Maybe also add a test log so that we can find out if a bug occurred or if not. This does not help us and also not you. You need more precise bug reports.
2. Your test subject and design is wrong!
We need to grind and build up the city before actually testing the things you want to be tested. Additionally you had bugs that destroyed half the game. Example: Field fertility -> No trade, to easy rank up, Boom.
3. There is no test schedule!
The interest in the tests drops tremendously after about a week, but you schedule „new content“ several weeks after the start. Either find a way to make the game interesting for a longer time span or schedule the new content to be released just before interest drops
4. Do the basics!
We are testing high level features. A lot. But the game still lacks fundamental features such as a proper chat, a proper access right management, configurable roles and permission in guilds. A proper map (with personal markers and stuff) a working mini map (zoom, etc.). You really should address this first. It will make testing easier and the game mechanics etc. don’t suffer for these reasons!
5. You miss a lot of bugs!
Every time I start the game I recognize a lot of bugs. Too many to track them all. A log that glitches into the ground, a floating tree, a misplaced bridge, mobs that are stuck in the air and don’t attack. You should make them easily trackable. Add an ingame bug reporting function to the game that let the player enter a short description and send it along with some logs, game data and a screenshot to the devs.

#2 The game design

Fractured was advertised as a whole new kind of game, but until now, you failed. You have to make a decision and you have to decide soon. 
You have to decide what you want Fractured to be: Do you want it to be that new and different game? Or do you want it to be the same boring kind of game that already exists a thousand times? The latter might look more beneficial. But those games lose their attraction quickly. The really good games either brought a great story, brought a new mechanic or founded a genre. See Half-Life, see GTA, see WoW, see Portal or the Total War games.

In case you decided to be the latter, you can stop reading here. I will probably not be playing your game in the future, but I wish you all the best and good luck.

In case you decided to bring on a new and different game: Congratulations, you have my support. And you will now get a ton of ideas of which I believe will help you to make Fractured the unique gaming experience a lot of us, including me, are looking for. A short piece of information up front: You might notice after you read my whole writing that his is something like a perpetual mobile. A system that can fuel itself and therefor may be fun for a looong time.

#2.1 Wrong Focus

To start directly into the right direction, we first have to determine why the game is currently heading down the path towards a standard „boring“ game. It is: Fighting!

This probably sound scary and surprising, just because the whole game is focussed on fighting. It really is. All the things you do, harvesting, mining, building, crafting, ranking up your city, is just needed to build better gear and to make fighting easier. And it goes even beyond. What can I use knowledge for? Higher stats and new abilities. What do I need them for? Fighting!

But what is the reason to fight? There is none. And this is why Fractured will fail going down its current path. When the players have achieved the highest gear, when they killed all the mobs and bosses, then the game is over. And if you are lucky you end up like WoW, which attracts players again every 2 year by bringing a new Add-on. If you are not, you will end up like almost all other MMORPGs. You will be forgotten after some time.

So, now we know that we need other focuses. Of course we will not remove fighting from the game, it still will be essential. But it will only be one of many ways to have fun in Fractured. I will now dedicate a whole chapter to everything that has to change. Please keep it mind: My ideas may not be perfect, but I bet that picking just one will not work. You need a few.

#2.2 Crafting

Long story short: Can I be the best archer, wizard and sword fighter all in one character? No I cannot. That is good. Why can I craft the best light / medium / heavy armor, the best sword, the best bow and the best mage staff then? Yes, but I should not be able. And if you know say it depends on the tech tree of the city, forget about it, I will get to that later. One character should never be able to craft everything.

So we just found out that we do have a full talent tree plus tons of abilities just for fighters. But nothing similar for crafters. If you really want to support crafting as play type. You have to implement it. Here are my recommendations:

1. Get rid of the tech tree (at least the way it currently is). 
Mining, Farming, Smithing, Tailoring, Woodworking, Alchemy, Architecture, Enchanting. Make it a skill tree! Just like the one you have for fighting. But: Make skill trees (at least for crafting) not that easily switchable, I also would like to skill trees for fighting not easily switchable as well, but that is another topic.

2. Get rid of the tiers. 
Honestly, what are they good for (absolutely nothing, say it again y’all). Either the best gear is overpowered and no one uses weaker gear or the best gear is not worth the effort. In the end tiers end up in programmers and designer creating things nobody wants to use.
Replace it with special weapons: Silver and Moon Steel against undeads, Gold and Sun Steel agains unholy creatures, and so on.

3. Standard weapons + crafting abilities.
A basic knife, a basic sword and the average armor is something a lot of blacksmiths can do. But very durable gear or very light gear? Maybe even very prestigious gear (I will come back to prestigious gear later). There could be abilities to need fewer materials, lower smelting temperatures or less fuel and to craft specialized weapons.

4. A gear designer
Every fighter can pick a weapon, a set of abilities and armor. Thereby various play style of fighting styles are created. Why not making something like this for crafters. Let them build their own blueprints for armors or weapons, which result in special specs for the gear. This way you may even not have to bring new content live over and over again.

To bring it to an end: Crafting should be something you have to specialize in. Just like you have to specialize for a fighting style. It will be yours to decide if you should be able to do both, fighting and crafting, or just one of them.

#2.3 Trading

I bet you know it yourself: Trading is and always was dead in Fractured. This has several reasons.

The first and simplest reason is that trading is not needed, except for crops for the city upkeep. This looks as if it is easy to fix. Simply make more resources exclusive and therefor targets for trades. And I will encourage you to do so. But not by restricting access, but by making traveling, especially with a wagon, a lot more dangerous. You should also implement my crafting ideas, which will make gear more exclusive as well.

But besides this easy measure you will have to go a little deeper into the benefits of trading. Why does someone trade? There are four reasons:

1. Someone does trade for (buy) something that he or she cannot craft or mine itself
2. Someone does trade for (buy) something if it is a lot easier than crafting or mining it
3. Someone does trade (sell) something if he or she has too much of it
4. Someone does trade (sell) something that he or she can craft in order to get something that he cannot craft

As you may notice, in Fractured none of the 4 reasons will happen.

• Every player can craft everything. (1. + 4.)
• Trading is not easier at all (2.)
You have to go for long ways, your wanted Item can be sold while you are on the way, you need to farm or craft the coins to buy it and it is always more expensive than crafting it yourself (why should someone sell it for less), and your wanted item is probably a lot rare than the resources to craft it
• You never have to much.. You need several wagons full of coal and ore to craft a full set of armor. Why should you sell it? (3.)

For this 4 reasons I have some ideas which will not only solve the problem but also make the game for fun:

1. Implement my crafting ideas. This will make gear harder to obtain and therefor trades more likely
2. Make mining and gathering of resources harder. But not by placing fewer resource nodes, but by a more aggressive environment (see my ideas in the sections NPCs, Cities, Political System)
3. Make trading easier (for example by reserving and item for a fee, or NPCs, see NPC section)
4. Implement travelling NPC merchants who buy at one marketplace and sell at another
5. Make the upkeep costs for the cities more variable, including weapons, armors, etc. (See section Cities)

In case you believe that this will not help, you should consider replacing the trading system in total.
You could install market rights for some cities and they take fees for executed trades (see my Political System section)

#2.4 NPCs

This section will be a relatively short one. We need NPCs, a lot. And we need real NPCs, not just mobs. We need merchants, we need bandits, we need farmers / miners and guards. The NPCs will make this whole game work. Let me explain:

1. Merchants

   This is simple, they will make trades. For their „own profit“. They buy at one market place, literally travel to another market place and sell it there. They never interact with players directly, only through markets. And of course they only buy or sell if they earn money. 
By implementing this, selling and buying will be easier and therefor more likely. They will also be good targets for bandits, both NPC and PC.
NPC merchants should retreat more and more if there are PC merchants. They are just an element to make trading work.
2. Bandits and other enemy humanoids

   They will make the environment more dangerous. In my opinion it should me almost impossible to travel offside of the main roads alone, even on the main roads it should be not that easy. This will stop players from doing everything on their own and cooperation is a lot more likely what will make the game interesting
3. Guards

   They will be the opposite of bandits and therefor make the environment safe. But they need to be supported by the cities (see Cities section for details)
4. Farmers / Miners / Builders etc.

   It might be the case that there are players who want to do mining or farming. But there might also be cities in which no player wants to do it. Here is the solution for it.

Shortly summed up: Almost everything that can be done by player can also be done by NPCs. This will help everyone to play as he or she likes and it will also make the world live from the beginning of the game on.

Note: Those NPCs should never be that cheap that you can run a whole city with them. They should just support to make the game less grindy if you reached a certain level of wealth and to keep the game from being stuck, as it feels so often during the tests.

Additionally there should be „high“ NPCs which have positions that will never be reached by players, such as deities or arch kings. See the section political system / religion.

#2.5 Cities

What are cities right now? Mainly Crafting Station Hubs. This has to change. Cities have to be central game elements.
Here are my ideas how to achieve this:

Renew city ranks and reform the city upkeep
The current implementation of city ranks is linear, boring and mostly annoying. Why is this the case? Yet again it has several reasons:

• You simply rank up a city by playing a lot. If you have one or two hands full of active players you rank up quickly. Therefor it is something you just do but not really enjoy.
• You have to grind a lot for ranking up a city. This is boring and annoying.
• Upkeep is very linear, it is just based on the rank of your city, nothing to think about, nothing to plan. Once again boring and possibly annoying.
• The tech tree is crappy since it makes you to almost not craft anything until you have ranked up.

To make cities have the impact on the game they should have we must rethink a lot. Let us start at the tech tree.

Currently a lot of buildings are locked behind the the tech tree, which is based on city ranks. I would recommend to avoid this for almost all buildings. So when you start a city it should be a minor settlement, which you have to build up, but you should have available almost all buildings. The only (currently available) buildings I would lock behind a tech tree are the marketplace and the prison. So yes, every city should be capable of building palisades and everything else right from the start.

So but what about the ranks now? They should still exist, but it should be fewer. Maybe something like settlement, village, town, city, metropolis. But what are these ranks now for? The improve the buildings you have. Let us have a look at the Palisades. They might rank up as follows:

• Rank 1 „Settlement“: Simple wood palisades with closable doors. They can protect you but not much more
• Rank 2 „Village“: Wooden palisades / wooden walls with guard walks around them. The protect you and you can defend from them.
• Rank 3 „Town“: Stone fundaments with wooden walls, with more protected guard walks. Better protection for the city and the defenders on them.
• Rank 4 „City“: Stone walls with defending weapon slits. Better protection for the city and the defenders on and in / behind them. Maybe defending weapons can be placed in places where the walls are thinner.
• Rank 5 „Metropolis“: Stone walls with platforms for defensive weapons. Even more protection and no weaknesses for defensive weapons.

Something like this should be applied to all buildings, if you want ideas, tell me, I am just not going to put them all down here now, would be too much.
But you see, city ranks are not just bringing tech points anymore your city really becomes more and more what the rank calls it. It is advantageous to strive even for the highest level but also ranking up a little makes your city immediately feeling better.

Now it’s getting even better. From the rank „town“ on you are such an important city that you are granted market rights. Therefor you can now build a market place. From the rank „city“ on you have advanced territorial rights and can therefor imprison the evil guys, the prison is unlocked. Technically it should be fine to build the buildings earlier, but you cannot use them.

Additionally every city should be able to „book“ some NPC services. This is not really booking but more like organizing: The city is organizing for example:

• NPC guards to protect the city or the roads, mines or fields around the city
• NPC farmers to automate the farming (the plan what to plant has still to be set by players, only if environment is safe)
• NPC miners to automate the mining (crafting still has to be done by players, only if environment is safe)
• NPC builder to automate build buildings (materials have still to be collected)
• … (more can be created of course, harbors, traders, I dunno…)

Of course you attract more NPCs if you have a higher rank. In the beginning you can probably only effort one of these NPC services. And you have to provide tools, weapons, armor etc. to your NPCs. The areas which should be guarded have to be set by the players. Secured city grants prestige, secured roads attract merchants (PC and NPC, cause they won’t be robbed), secured fields, mines makes farmers / miners possible and the more secure the more farmers / miners are available. Other NPC services.. we will see.

Note: Of course players can secure an area as well. If bandits are killed a lot in certain areas (not bandit camps!) they should retreat to a minimum (like 1 bandit a day). If this remaining bandit is not killed anymore, after three days the number is doubled. After three days again, and again. Up to a maximum. By implementing this mechanics NPC and PC guards could exists. But PCs always should be the ones who secure an area in the first place.

As you can imagine the ranks are not easy to achieve. So what should the system behind it be? Let me tell you:

• The ranks have population requirements again. Only if you attract a lot of players, you can become a big city.
• The ranks may additionally have economical, religious or political requirements such as marketplace revenue. For the religious / political requirements please have a look at the section „Political / Religious system“
• The ranks have costs in form of coins, wood, stone and ingots. The actual costs depend on the buildings you have already in your city. They are needed to upgrade the buildings. This leaves space for strategies / tactics of how to achieve high population with few buildings etc.
• The upkeep costs are determined similar, they are based on the number of buildings in the city including the player’s houses. But there is another thing which is added: NPC Service costs.
• In order to attract new players, the cities can provide resources or even fully build houses for new citizens. If a player leaves a city, his house stays there. The city can decide if it will be offered to new players or destroyed.

This has several big advantages. The players do not have to pay for their own upkeep anymore. So also if some players are on vacation or drop out, the other players are not punished by loosing a rank. But having too many inactive players is still a problem. And it leaves room for a lot of strategies of how to attract players and to manage city life.

#2.6 The Environment

As I mentioned before, the environment should be hostile. This can be achieved by several factors:

• Beasts and animals, which will leave the area when settlements and or NPCs / PCs get closer
• Bandits which will maraud around in the uncivilized territories. They rob PCs and NPCs (merchants and so on)
• Giant beasts and epical creatures that guard special places of interest or rare materials (dragon hort, e. g.)
• World bosses (fun, heroic players, etc.)

This will make the city system work. NPC or PC Guards will make the territories safer, which will enable trading, mining, etc. Of course both NPC and PC trading, mining, etc. Safety is the most important thing in the game. Actually it should be anyway, it is still a survival game! Therefor safe homes and places are important, there are some mechanics that will make this work:

• Logging out should only be possible close to a campfire or within a city
• Players who log out in the wilderness very likely be robbed the longer they stay logged out, if you leave your wagon in a (non-evil) city this should not happen, but of course still can (evil players, PvP, Dunno about PvE)
• Players who log out being not in a tavern / hostel will still lose their saturation and energy, of course at a reduced rate based on the location

This safety mechanics will make cities very important and beneficial. It will still be possible to play just as a citizen and not care about much of it, but if you want to engage in this politics and strategies you can. Let us now look on what the political system may be.

#2.7 The Political / Religious system

I have written a lot of how the game should be. We are not dealing with the topic why or what the game should be. It should encourage players to play. Playing is of course collecting materials and exploring the world. It also is fighting, both PvE and PvP (based on the server of course).

You might expect a very complex system now. I have to disappoint you. It will be simple. Ok, I am a little dishonest. It will be hard to implement, and hard to balance. But the mechanics is easily explained:

• There will be great political and religion leaders such as a high king and deities / gods.
• Political leader(s) (may only be one)
  • have demands (coins, food, materials) from
    • Regular taxes for cities
    • Festivities (marriages, birthdays, funerals)
    • Events such as food shortage in the capital
  • declare wars (in case some cities do no pay or have a wrong religion or move over to another king, if there are multiple)
  • favor / disfavor religions (higher taxes for „wrong religions“)
  • Might be hard to balance that not one city is hit hard all the time
    • I expect high kings to die from time to time and the new king has other interests, therefor demands or favored religion can change
• Deities / Gods demand
  • shrines / temples to be devoted to them and
  • sacrifices to be made (animals, wars against mobs,
  • therefor they grant buffs such as
    • higher guard moral
    • higher fertility
    • higher mine outcome
    • higher attraction for some NPC groups
  • or send debuffs in form of plagues (similar to buffs, but negativ) if sacrifices are not made

Basically that’s it, but why do we need this? This is simple: It causes conflicts between cites and unknown demands. This will make wars, raids, trading etc. necessary and forces the cities to rethink their current politics to meet the requirements or suffer the downsides.

2.8 PvE, little PvP, full PvP

How to support now the different play styles:

• PvE: NPC led cities and bandits (not all cities can be taken by PC, PC bandits can only attack NPC cities / merchants)
• Little PvP: PC led cities and NPC bandits
• Full PvP: PC led cities and PC bandits (NPC cities and bandits will still be there but everything can be taken over)

Little PvP may be the same as Full PvP BUT with hard limits on bandits camps and cities taken over by PCs).

#2.9 Cities vs. Guilds / Nations

Actually I have no "release ready" idea on that topic right now. The features is not really implemented yet or at least not tested. We will have to see what has to happen here.

#3 Further ideas

• Bandit camps can be taken over by players
• Pirates and Pirate camps on islands, ships on the sea
• And so one (feel free to contact me)

I know it has been a lot, but I am eager to hear any thoughts on my ideas

[spoletta]

Thank you for your detailed feedback. I disagree with many of your points, but since you took quite the effort in providing them, I will give my opinion on them one by one.

#1 General Feedback on Alpha Tests

The way the Alpha test currently work are not beneficial. Not for you as the developers and not for us as players or testers. I have listed some reasons and hints for you how to stop that.

1. We do not know what to test! 
Information on how things should work are rare and often only mentioned during a video. We need proper documentation how things should work to test them. Maybe also add a test log so that we can find out if a bug occurred or if not. This does not help us and also not you. You need more precise bug reports.
   Testers going into the test are really lacking in info.

I agree. A short debrief on where we should focus our testing, would be appreciated.

1. Your test subject and design is wrong!
We need to grind and build up the city before actually testing the things you want to be tested. Additionally you had bugs that destroyed half the game. Example: Field fertility -> No trade, to easy rank up, Boom.

This is a common complaint. There are a few things that really need a fully developed landscape to show if they are correctly working or not (trading and sieges for example), and we finally get to those only at the end of the test. Some tests aimed at specific issues with prebuilt cities would be nice.

1. There is no test schedule!
The interest in the tests drops tremendously after about a week, but you schedule „new content“ several weeks after the start. Either find a way to make the game interesting for a longer time span or schedule the new content to be released just before interest drops

I don't see this as an issue. Last test was interesting from day one to the end. The fact that the testing was reduced to 3 weeks helped with that.

1. Do the basics!
We are testing high level features. A lot. But the game still lacks fundamental features such as a proper chat, a proper access right management, configurable roles and permission in guilds. A proper map (with personal markers and stuff) a working mini map (zoom, etc.). You really should address this first. It will make testing easier and the game mechanics etc. don’t suffer for these reasons!
   I think that the devs are focusing on potentially stopping features. Implementing chats and minimaps is just a matter of doing it, they don't expect big issues in that area. Alpha tests are being used for those innovative systems which may or may not work. Problem here is that those alpha tests are also doubling as marketing, and a few potential new testers are being scared away by the lack of a few of those basic features.

1. You miss a lot of bugs!
Every time I start the game I recognize a lot of bugs. Too many to track them all. A log that glitches into the ground, a floating tree, a misplaced bridge, mobs that are stuck in the air and don’t attack. You should make them easily trackable. Add an ingame bug reporting function to the game that let the player enter a short description and send it along with some logs, game data and a screenshot to the devs.

I think that the forum works quite well for that. Alt-Tab from the game. Report the issue on the forum and back to playing. Less than 20 secs.

#2 The game design

Fractured was advertised as a whole new kind of game, but until now, you failed. You have to make a decision and you have to decide soon. 
You have to decide what you want Fractured to be: Do you want it to be that new and different game? Or do you want it to be the same boring kind of game that already exists a thousand times? The latter might look more beneficial. But those games lose their attraction quickly. The really good games either brought a great story, brought a new mechanic or founded a genre. See Half-Life, see GTA, see WoW, see Portal or the Total War games.

#2.1 Wrong Focus

To start directly into the right direction, we first have to determine why the game is currently heading down the path towards a standard „boring“ game. It is: Fighting!

This probably sound scary and surprising, just because the whole game is focussed on fighting. It really is. All the things you do, harvesting, mining, building, crafting, ranking up your city, is just needed to build better gear and to make fighting easier. And it goes even beyond. What can I use knowledge for? Higher stats and new abilities. What do I need them for? Fighting!

But what is the reason to fight? There is none. And this is why Fractured will fail going down its current path. When the players have achieved the highest gear, when they killed all the mobs and bosses, then the game is over. And if you are lucky you end up like WoW, which attracts players again every 2 year by bringing a new Add-on. If you are not, you will end up like almost all other MMORPGs. You will be forgotten after some time.

Here is where our opinions start to diverge. I think that Fractured right now is quite the innovative game already. Yes, there is a lot of focus on fighting .
That reflects the fact that 99% of the players, in the end, want to fight. Be it a pvp, or a commercial fight or a city influence fight, you come to a sandbox because it is a game shaped by the players. This means conflict, in all its forms. Be it with swords of with commercial offers, players want to fight.
Offer them a good fighting ground, and the game will last in time.

#2.2 Crafting

Long story short: Can I be the best archer, wizard and sword fighter all in one character? No I cannot. That is good. Why can I craft the best light / medium / heavy armor, the best sword, the best bow and the best mage staff then? Yes, but I should not be able. And if you know say it depends on the tech tree of the city, forget about it, I will get to that later. One character should never be able to craft everything.

As you know, crafting is not tied to players, and IMO that is a good thing. In a game where the economy is based on scarcity of resources, no repairs and long processing times, having someone being better/faster/cheaper at crafting would break the economy. You already can't craft everything and have to specialize. Your specialization is your choice of the city. A city can't craft everything.
I could agree with giving players the possibility of specializing in one craft type and becoming better at it with time, but with only cosmetic advantages to their crafts. Any kind of mechanical advantage in crafting is a bane of this economic system,.

So we just found out that we do have a full talent tree plus tons of abilities just for fighters. But nothing similar for crafters. If you really want to support crafting as play type. You have to implement it. Here are my recommendations:

1. Get rid of the tech tree (at least the way it currently is). 
Mining, Farming, Smithing, Tailoring, Woodworking, Alchemy, Architecture, Enchanting. Make it a skill tree! Just like the one you have for fighting. But: Make skill trees (at least for crafting) not that easily switchable, I also would like to skill trees for fighting not easily switchable as well, but that is another topic.

I like the current tech tree, and would love to see it expanded with many more options.

1. Get rid of the tiers. 
Honestly, what are they good for (absolutely nothing, say it again y’all). Either the best gear is overpowered and no one uses weaker gear or the best gear is not worth the effort. In the end tiers end up in programmers and designer creating things nobody wants to use.
Replace it with special weapons: Silver and Moon Steel against undeads, Gold and Sun Steel agains unholy creatures, and so on.

If you have played the last alpha, you know that tiers are mostly a thing of the past. All materials have a use. When they don't is because they are significantly easier to obtain, and their niche is being cheap. In a game where there is no repair, that is a good niche to have.

1. Standard weapons + crafting abilities.
A basic knife, a basic sword and the average armor is something a lot of blacksmiths can do. But very durable gear or very light gear? Maybe even very prestigious gear (I will come back to prestigious gear later). There could be abilities to need fewer materials, lower smelting temperatures or less fuel and to craft specialized weapons.

As I answered previously, I'm fine with cosmetic bonuses, but I'm wholly against mechanical advantages in crafting. If someone can win in trading with me because he has a mechanical advantage over me, then the game is a bad fighting ground. I want to win over a trading opponent because I'm better than him at trading, not because my swords are better than his by definition.

#2.3 Trading

I bet you know it yourself: Trading is and always was dead in Fractured. This has several reasons.

Trading failed in one test a few months ago. Calling it dead seems a bit harsh. It surely needs attention and a few changes, but it's not that far from working.

The first and simplest reason is that trading is not needed, except for crops for the city upkeep. This looks as if it is easy to fix. Simply make more resources exclusive and therefor targets for trades. And I will encourage you to do so. But not by restricting access, but by making traveling, especially with a wagon, a lot more dangerous. You should also implement my crafting ideas, which will make gear more exclusive as well.

Ok, here we actually agree. Harder access to distant resources is something needed in my opinion. Fetching resources outside your region should be possible but hard.

But besides this easy measure you will have to go a little deeper into the benefits of trading. Why does someone trade? There are four reasons:

1. Someone does trade for (buy) something that he or she cannot craft or mine itself
2. Someone does trade for (buy) something if it is a lot easier than crafting or mining it
3. Someone does trade (sell) something if he or she has too much of it
4. Someone does trade (sell) something that he or she can craft in order to get something that he cannot craft

As you may notice, in Fractured none of the 4 reasons will happen.

• Every player can craft everything. (1. + 4.)

This is false. You craft only the stuff from your city has researched, and only if you have access to the required resources.

• Trading is not easier at all (2.)
You have to go for long ways, your wanted Item can be sold while you are on the way, you need to farm or craft the coins to buy it and it is always more expensive than crafting it yourself (why should someone sell it for less), and your wanted item is probably a lot rare than the resources to craft it

If I want a bloodiron chainmail, then I need to find the iron, the copper, the coal, smelt it and craft it. Takes a lot of time and if I just want to farm monsters and buy stuff, I will buy the armor. Even if I want to craft it, someone who has easier access to those resources, will craft it and then put it in my city market, because he knows that my area has an hard time procuring those items.

• You never have to much.. You need several wagons full of coal and ore to craft a full set of armor. Why should you sell it? (3.)

If you are close to resource, you will have enough to sell. My city was close to coal, and we sold a lot of it in the last test.

You could install market rights for some cities and they take fees for executed trades (see my Political System section)

I liked the fact that 2 alpha ago the city took a cut from all the trades happening in the marketplace. It really made it so that it was in the city's best interest to be a succesful trading hub. I think that it should be brought back. 2-3% nothing more.

#2.4 NPCs

This section will be a relatively short one. We need NPCs, a lot. And we need real NPCs, not just mobs. We need merchants, we need bandits, we need farmers / miners and guards. The NPCs will make this whole game work. Let me explain:

1. Merchants

   This is simple, they will make trades. For their „own profit“. They buy at one market place, literally travel to another market place and sell it there. They never interact with players directly, only through markets. And of course they only buy or sell if they earn money. 
By implementing this, selling and buying will be easier and therefor more likely. They will also be good targets for bandits, both NPC and PC.
NPC merchants should retreat more and more if there are PC merchants. They are just an element to make trading work.
2. Bandits and other enemy humanoids

   They will make the environment more dangerous. In my opinion it should me almost impossible to travel offside of the main roads alone, even on the main roads it should be not that easy. This will stop players from doing everything on their own and cooperation is a lot more likely what will make the game interesting
3. Guards

   They will be the opposite of bandits and therefor make the environment safe. But they need to be supported by the cities (see Cities section for details)
4. Farmers / Miners / Builders etc.

   It might be the case that there are players who want to do mining or farming. But there might also be cities in which no player wants to do it. Here is the solution for it.

Shortly summed up: Almost everything that can be done by player can also be done by NPCs. This will help everyone to play as he or she likes and it will also make the world live from the beginning of the game on.

Note: Those NPCs should never be that cheap that you can run a whole city with them. They should just support to make the game less grindy if you reached a certain level of wealth and to keep the game from being stuck, as it feels so often during the tests.

Additionally there should be „high“ NPCs which have positions that will never be reached by players, such as deities or arch kings. See the section political system / religion.

This is the system that star citiziens is trying to implement. It is indeed very cool, but honestly I don't think that the correct execution of something like that is within the possibilities of a game that doesn't have multiple million dollars of funding. I think that the game can be perfectly fine without them.

#2.5 Cities

What are cities right now? Mainly Crafting Station Hubs. This has to change. Cities have to be central game elements.
Here are my ideas how to achieve this:

Renew city ranks and reform the city upkeep
The current implementation of city ranks is linear, boring and mostly annoying. Why is this the case? Yet again it has several reasons:

• You simply rank up a city by playing a lot. If you have one or two hands full of active players you rank up quickly. Therefor it is something you just do but not really enjoy.
• You have to grind a lot for ranking up a city. This is boring and annoying.
• Upkeep is very linear, it is just based on the rank of your city, nothing to think about, nothing to plan. Once again boring and possibly annoying.
• The tech tree is crappy since it makes you to almost not craft anything until you have ranked up.

To make cities have the impact on the game they should have we must rethink a lot. Let us start at the tech tree.

Currently a lot of buildings are locked behind the the tech tree, which is based on city ranks. I would recommend to avoid this for almost all buildings. So when you start a city it should be a minor settlement, which you have to build up, but you should have available almost all buildings. The only (currently available) buildings I would lock behind a tech tree are the marketplace and the prison. So yes, every city should be capable of building palisades and everything else right from the start.

So but what about the ranks now? They should still exist, but it should be fewer. Maybe something like settlement, village, town, city, metropolis. But what are these ranks now for? The improve the buildings you have. Let us have a look at the Palisades. They might rank up as follows:

• Rank 1 „Settlement“: Simple wood palisades with closable doors. They can protect you but not much more
• Rank 2 „Village“: Wooden palisades / wooden walls with guard walks around them. The protect you and you can defend from them.
• Rank 3 „Town“: Stone fundaments with wooden walls, with more protected guard walks. Better protection for the city and the defenders on them.
• Rank 4 „City“: Stone walls with defending weapon slits. Better protection for the city and the defenders on and in / behind them. Maybe defending weapons can be placed in places where the walls are thinner.
• Rank 5 „Metropolis“: Stone walls with platforms for defensive weapons. Even more protection and no weaknesses for defensive weapons.

Something like this should be applied to all buildings, if you want ideas, tell me, I am just not going to put them all down here now, would be too much.
But you see, city ranks are not just bringing tech points anymore your city really becomes more and more what the rank calls it. It is advantageous to strive even for the highest level but also ranking up a little makes your city immediately feeling better.

Now it’s getting even better. From the rank „town“ on you are such an important city that you are granted market rights. Therefor you can now build a market place. From the rank „city“ on you have advanced territorial rights and can therefor imprison the evil guys, the prison is unlocked. Technically it should be fine to build the buildings earlier, but you cannot use them.

Additionally every city should be able to „book“ some NPC services. This is not really booking but more like organizing: The city is organizing for example:

• NPC guards to protect the city or the roads, mines or fields around the city
• NPC farmers to automate the farming (the plan what to plant has still to be set by players, only if environment is safe)
• NPC miners to automate the mining (crafting still has to be done by players, only if environment is safe)
• NPC builder to automate build buildings (materials have still to be collected)
• … (more can be created of course, harbors, traders, I dunno…)

Of course you attract more NPCs if you have a higher rank. In the beginning you can probably only effort one of these NPC services. And you have to provide tools, weapons, armor etc. to your NPCs. The areas which should be guarded have to be set by the players. Secured city grants prestige, secured roads attract merchants (PC and NPC, cause they won’t be robbed), secured fields, mines makes farmers / miners possible and the more secure the more farmers / miners are available. Other NPC services.. we will see.

Note: Of course players can secure an area as well. If bandits are killed a lot in certain areas (not bandit camps!) they should retreat to a minimum (like 1 bandit a day). If this remaining bandit is not killed anymore, after three days the number is doubled. After three days again, and again. Up to a maximum. By implementing this mechanics NPC and PC guards could exists. But PCs always should be the ones who secure an area in the first place.

As you can imagine the ranks are not easy to achieve. So what should the system behind it be? Let me tell you:

• The ranks have population requirements again. Only if you attract a lot of players, you can become a big city.
• The ranks may additionally have economical, religious or political requirements such as marketplace revenue. For the religious / political requirements please have a look at the section „Political / Religious system“
• The ranks have costs in form of coins, wood, stone and ingots. The actual costs depend on the buildings you have already in your city. They are needed to upgrade the buildings. This leaves space for strategies / tactics of how to achieve high population with few buildings etc.
• The upkeep costs are determined similar, they are based on the number of buildings in the city including the player’s houses. But there is another thing which is added: NPC Service costs.
• In order to attract new players, the cities can provide resources or even fully build houses for new citizens. If a player leaves a city, his house stays there. The city can decide if it will be offered to new players or destroyed.

This has several big advantages. The players do not have to pay for their own upkeep anymore. So also if some players are on vacation or drop out, the other players are not punished by loosing a rank. But having too many inactive players is still a problem. And it leaves room for a lot of strategies of how to attract players and to manage city life.

The game already has only 3 ranks for cities. Hamlet, town, village. An hamlet has all the basic services (bank, shrine, inn, workshop). A town adds a few crafting specializations to that, a village has a few more crafts and some global level techs.
Yes, technically we have 15 ranks, but since the upkeep is based on those former 3 ranks, the ranks before 4, 9 and 15 are just "Under construction" tiers. In the end all cities will end up at 4, 9 or 15
The point where I REALLY REALLY disagree with you, is in reintroducing the population requirements. Those were awful. They snowball. A bigger city has more to offer to players, so it becomes even bigger.
Snowball effects are the number one enemy in designing a sandbox. You want everything based on diminishing returns. The more ahead you are compared to competition, the easier it is for them to catch up to you. You can never bring the game into a state where someone can achieve a "Total Win", or the game ends. Removing the population requirement, made it possible for small cities to grow and become just as attractive to residents (which in the end are still needed) as the already fully developed cities. It keeps the "fight" open to new contestants.

#2.6 The Environment

As I mentioned before, the environment should be hostile. This can be achieved by several factors:

• Beasts and animals, which will leave the area when settlements and or NPCs / PCs get closer

The environment has become a lot more hostile in the last test, but I do agree that some additional random danger could be nice.

• Bandits which will maraud around in the uncivilized territories. They rob PCs and NPCs (merchants and so on)

Bandit patrols ambushing travelers could be nice.

• Giant beasts and epical creatures that guard special places of interest or rare materials (dragon hort, e. g.)

This we already have.

• World bosses (fun, heroic players, etc.)

This we already have.

This will make the city system work. NPC or PC Guards will make the territories safer, which will enable trading, mining, etc. Of course both NPC and PC trading, mining, etc. Safety is the most important thing in the game. Actually it should be anyway, it is still a survival game! Therefor safe homes and places are important, there are some mechanics that will make this work:

• Logging out should only be possible close to a campfire or within a city
• Players who log out in the wilderness very likely be robbed the longer they stay logged out, if you leave your wagon in a (non-evil) city this should not happen, but of course still can (evil players, PvP, Dunno about PvE)
• Players who log out being not in a tavern / hostel will still lose their saturation and energy, of course at a reduced rate based on the location

This safety mechanics will make cities very important and beneficial. It will still be possible to play just as a citizen and not care about much of it, but if you want to engage in this politics and strategies you can. Let us now look on what the political system may be.

This could be too harsh. Remember that the game must still be fun, and many players are very casual. Logging out outside an inn already requires 30 seconds. I think that it is enough of a penalty.

[GamerSeuss]

Not going to go over everything. Post was rather long, and @spoletta already covered much of what I planned to say.

The main criticism I have is that you include in the feedback that you want Fractured to be 'not just another MMO' out there like everyone else, but then the main things you wail against are those elements the Developers have implemented to set their game apart.

Fractured doesn't need NPCs, or very very few. There's been talk about maybe town guards, a town message person, and maybe a minder for crafting/refining stations where you can monitor use of those stations a little more actively. Of course, the Cryer and the Minders can easily be replaced by mailboxes and noticeboards as well. The only other NPCs the game needs, it already has, NPC mobs that you fight in the wild. Bandits, Goblins, Trolls, etc...

Another thing that sets Fractured apart already is their Player Driven Economy. A whole lot of your suggestions work against this idea. NPC crafters? NPC merchants? no way. They want the game to be about everyone driving the market by what they decide to craft, and limit it more by availability than NPC competition.

Crafting specialization: This is another thing Fractured is not meant to be about. They want the PCs to be able to do anything in the game, usually at most only requiring a few changes to their current settings or location. Everyone can craft every level of gear if they have the resources and the access to the crafting/refining stations to do it. The same holds true with combat styles...sure, your Ability Scores will have an affect on your overall Aptitude, however, if your party needs a Tank, and you usually play a Bowman, with a few changes to skills and talent presets, you can step into that role, so any group of friends can conceivably build a working party.

These are just some of the main things that set Fractured apart. This is a big deal and why so many of us are excited about the game.

Another note: The game is also set around the belief that anyone can play their own playstyle fairly freely with limited drawbacks. A solo'ist style character can avoid cities almost completely except to rest at an inn, use the Marketplace, and maybe use a Refinery/Crafting station they didn't build on their own plot. Having access to city resources is nice, but should not be mandated or so strongly encouraged that players think they have to to get anywhere in the game. Some are co-op style players, some are not, most are a mix between the two.

[TheBodo]

@spoletta said in General feedback + a lot of ideas of almost 2 years testing Fractured:

Thank you for your detailed feedback. I disagree with many of your points, but since you took quite the effort in providing them, I will give my opinion on them one by one.

I don't see this as an issue. Last test was interesting from day one to the end. The fact that the testing was reduced to 3 weeks helped with that.

Actually I do not understand how you can say this. I would be very interested in where you played during the last test. I was in Zenith and the tests were dead after about one week every single time. I was still online but even the chat was dead. Might of course be a timezone problem or an (ingame) area problem.

I think that the devs are focusing on potentially stopping features. Implementing chats and minimaps is just a matter of doing it, they don't expect big issues in that area. Alpha tests are being used for those innovative systems which may or may not work. Problem here is that those alpha tests are also doubling as marketing, and a few potential new testers are being scared away by the lack of a few of those basic features.

We are in year 3 of alpha testing. The fundamantal mechanics of the game are not in place. Testers are scared away by inconveniences and everyone who plays two test has the problem that nothing really changed. Because you only see the changes after you invested hours of time into building up a city. This is a huge problem! In the current feedback survey they ask if Fractured is ready for early access. And OMG it is not.

I think that the forum works quite well for that. Alt-Tab from the game. Report the issue on the forum and back to playing. Less than 20 secs.

Not really from my perspective. I hit the filesize limit for uploads with simple screenshots, several times. I have to copy the coordinates manually, etc. And I have to describe what was wrong.. dev logs on my computer which I only share in case of a bug can be more powerful.
And what about the issue management on the dev side? Tagging, Grouping, Status etc.? I am a developer and it is really needed to ensure high quality software development.

Here is where our opinions start to diverge. I think that Fractured right now is quite the innovative game already. Yes, there is a lot of focus on fighting .
That reflects the fact that 99% of the players, in the end, want to fight. Be it a pvp, or a commercial fight or a city influence fight, you come to a sandbox because it is a game shaped by the players. This means conflict, in all its forms. Be it with swords of with commercial offers, players want to fight.
Offer them a good fighting ground, and the game will last in time.

As you know, crafting is not tied to players, and IMO that is a good thing. In a game where the economy is based on scarcity of resources, no repairs and long processing times, having someone being better/faster/cheaper at crafting would break the economy. You already can't craft everything and have to specialize. Your specialization is your choice of the city. A city can't craft everything.
I could agree with giving players the possibility of specializing in one craft type and becoming better at it with time, but with only cosmetic advantages to their crafts. Any kind of mechanical advantage in crafting is a bane of this economic system,.

I like the current tech tree, and would love to see it expanded with many more options.

If you have played the last alpha, you know that tiers are mostly a thing of the past. All materials have a use. When they don't is because they are significantly easier to obtain, and their niche is being cheap. In a game where there is no repair, that is a good niche to have.

As I answered previously, I'm fine with cosmetic bonuses, but I'm wholly against mechanical advantages in crafting. If someone can win in trading with me because he has a mechanical advantage over me, then the game is a bad fighting ground. I want to win over a trading opponent because I'm better than him at trading, not because my swords are better than his by definition.

I think we really have a different idea of the game here. Any maybe this is something the devs have to decide which path they want to go down. Figthing is good for a lot of things. It is the easiest point where daily players and casual player can meet. It is easily understandable. But it is also common.

There is no reason to play Fractured over any other MoBa or MMORPG if you want to fight. And additionally I believe Fractured to be really bad in fighting. It is buggy, impossible to aim (in woods and groups), and hard to do alone. I would recommend Fractured to be something else than all the other games out there. To implement a system which catches the players who are tired of "just fighting".

Fractured should not abandon fighting, but is should move away from figthing being the thing everyone is just wanting to do. Fighting should be one way to have fun in fractured, but sandboxing should be the other. In crafting, in politics, etc. But please let not fighting be the ultimate goal. It will be a boring game for me then (and I know a lot others who agree).

Trading failed in one test a few months ago. Calling it dead seems a bit harsh. It surely needs attention and a few changes, but it's not that far from working.

Can you provide a reason why it is "not far from working"? For us it was always easier to just go somewhere and grab the resources than finding a trading partner. Not in the test of course where the resource nodes where tied to a city area.

This is false. You craft only the stuff from your city has researched, and only if you have access to the required resources.

Nope, you just move to the next city and then you can craft it. Only thing where it is a little hard is the armor part, cause metals are heavy but not "heavy materials" and you need some more. So you have to transport them in your inventory rather than a wagon.
But it is totally doable to craft weapons and all the other armor in a different place, not to talk about jewelery and enchantments / imbuing.

I liked the fact that 2 alpha ago the city took a cut from all the trades happening in the marketplace. It really made it so that it was in the city's best interest to be a succesful trading hub. I think that it should be brought back. 2-3% nothing more.

Agreed, but I would also like to have not that many shattered markets everywhere. I doubt that a player really is willing to drive around 20 places around the contitent. There should be some markets in bigger cities and that's it. Or we use the NPC merchants.

This is the system that star citiziens is trying to implement. It is indeed very cool, but honestly I don't think that the correct execution of something like that is within the possibilities of a game that doesn't have multiple million dollars of funding. I think that the game can be perfectly fine without them.

I doubt the money part here. It is technically very simple to implement when do implement the NPCs as (agents. I am of course not shure about server load and stuff.

Regarding the game without NPCs: How? From my perspective most players currently lose interest after about a week. Where does the long time motivation come from in your eyes?

The point where I REALLY REALLY disagree with you, is in reintroducing the population requirements. Those were awful. They snowball. A bigger city has more to offer to players, so it becomes even bigger.
Snowball effects are the number one enemy in designing a sandbox. You want everything based on diminishing returns. The more ahead you are compared to competition, the easier it is for them to catch up to you. You can never bring the game into a state where someone can achieve a "Total Win", or the game ends. Removing the population requirement, made it possible for small cities to grow and become just as attractive to residents (which in the end are still needed) as the already fully developed cities. It keeps the "fight" open to new contestants.

I see your point, and I agree. Snowball effects are bad. But I cannot imagine a mighty metropolis with 10 citizens. Maybe we can find counter measures here that make a big city hard to run so that big cities are more for hardcore players, and smallers ones more for casual players. If you or anyone else has a better idea than yes/no I would love to hear it.

• Giant beasts and epical creatures that guard special places of interest or rare materials (dragon hort, e. g.)

This we already have.

• World bosses (fun, heroic players, etc.)

This we already have.

True, but let me add some detail: Beasts yes, epic creatures not really. World bosses have to be summoned. I really would love places where you can hardly go (at least not alone) because an epic creature or world boss is there.

This could be too harsh. Remember that the game must still be fun, and many players are very casual. Logging out outside an inn already requires 30 seconds. I think that it is enough of a penalty.

I disagree, based on the "downtime" which exists after you have been "knock uncouscious", 30 seconds are not enough to finally "kill" a player. But killing a player is needed to rob someone. So logging out does save you from being killed and robbed. I don't necessarily want the first thing to be happening, but the latter one should be possible.

[spoletta]

When I say "Fight", I mean politics, I mean trades. Don't consider it limited to bashing heads.

In the last test I played in Koala Lumpur and we actually had a good activity until the last day. Sure, it wasn't the rush of the first 2 days, but that's to be expected.
If you were in Zenith, I can understand why you say that you had no need to trade. You had a nice food production and were close to copper, silver and coal mines. It was a great position resource wise.

For us, we were swamped in coal and really wanted something to smelt with it. At the same time the area of Criminal Den was rich in iron and poor in coal. Trades in that case were very possible. We had a few bugs with marketplaces which prevented most of it unfortunately.

In any case the amount of players in that test was too low to properly assess the trading mechanics. Resources for 1000 players laying around and around 50 players to make use of them. Obviously just grabbing them is easy.

About crafting. Sure, crafting somewhere else is possible, but then you are paying taxes and just buying them from a citizien of that city is probably more convenient. It's a tradeoff. Higher taxes will scare others from using your facilities, which means lower gains for the city, but will protect the products of your citiziens/residents. Politics and strategies.

Games like UO played perfectly without NPCs. For a more recent game like this, look at Legends of Aria. It had no NPCs at all except basic vendors, and yet it was played for years. If it hadn't been for the atrocious design decisions of the devs, it would still be played.
You don't need NPCs in a sandbox. You just need to create an environment which fosters interactions between players. That's all it takes for a game to last.

For beasts, as I understand it, you want more skeletal dragons. To which I agree, they are cool.

[BECKFAST]

@TheBodo The fact that you have taken so much effort really shows your devotion to this game, and a desire to see it better... I'm surprised that people would even go ahead and outright shut your ideas down as if they know what the game ought to be, as that level of thinking shows a cult-like "my views are right and cannot be wrong" type of approach.

You have a lot of good points in your post, and I hope the devs keep track of both the blessings and criticisms of their game.

[spoletta]

@BECKFAST honestly I'm seeing nothing of the sort. He expressed a very detailed feedback and wishlist. A quite radical wishlist. Obviously he can't expect the reaction to be "Oh yeah you are totally right, we should really change all this !". People have different views on those matters.
We are expressing different views on those points, no one is being shut down. I actually see a quite constructive discussion going on.

[OlivePit]

@BECKFAST
Bodo is a deliberate, careful, and considerate person.
He did multiple draft checks with the guild before posting to make sure it would not be adversarial. He is worthy of the benefit of the doubt most get without a second thought.
We may disagree on points, but they are still good points.

[PeachMcD]

KUDOS @TheBodo for such a detailed, thoughtful post!

Although I'm unable to play anymore ftb, so I have 'no dog in this race', I still have hopes to play SOMEDAY so I'm happy to see such a great conversation. The devs are lucky to have this kind of community to hear from as they build the game and it necessarily evolves.

So far, the devs have been open to constructive feedback about the game that doesn't pull it from their original creative vision for the game. I'm hopeful that they'll read this thread carefully and consider which of these suggestions might make their vision a more successful one.

[maze]

I had a good read threw everything and I agree with some parts and disagree with others.
The game is different from the other multiplayer/MMO's; but while it is different it should also take key notes from others.

A lot of this post is dealing with current mechanics without considering the future mechanics that will be added- the rest of the post is a wishlist.

I would say it would be nice if the Devs did some refinement and cleanup of the current game- UI and Bugs; but to be fair they clean up Bugs as best as they can, there is so many that is reported and hard to find.

The game is nowhere near early release. if the game released today, I would likely quit by the end of the week.

[Jimbolini]

Thank you for the detailed post. There are many excellent points.

[Zori]

@TheBodo said in General feedback + a lot of ideas of almost 2 years testing Fractured:

#2.5 Cities
What are cities right now? Mainly Crafting Stations

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who finally noticed this. I've brought it up so many times in the past about how cities are being utilised and how personal housing feels more like a "very inconvenient storage".

At the same time, I find it extremely disappointing that this is still the exact same issue that's plaguing the game.

I also whole heartedly agree with this statement

#2.1 WRONG FOCUS
To start directly into the right direction, we first have to determine why the game is currently heading down the path towards a standard „boring“ game. It is: Fighting! This probably sound scary and surprising, just because the whole game is focussed on fighting. It really is. All the things you do, harvesting, mining, building, crafting, ranking up your city, is just needed to build better gear and to make fighting easier. And it goes even beyond. What can I use knowledge for? Higher stats and new abilities. What do I need them for? Fighting!

Exact same issue as before, i predict that no matter what 'continent/planet' you're on, the main objective is to 'grind' for no reason and just to duke it out. Even if you're in Arboreous i strongly feel that it'll be the same thing, in the end you'll have grazers with no reason to dump out their resources.

Essentially what the game feels like right now is "heres an environment, grind and duke it out." Sure it's still the Alpha but if your key foundation and principles for the game is already setting it up for a loss and a predictable direction, then I am a bit concerned about the longevity of the game.

[spoletta]

Ok, it could be me that has a limited vision on the matter, but...

Apart from fighting pve challenges, engaging in pvp, having trade battles, building nations, forming diplomatic relations... in short as you said "duking it out", what else do you expect from an MMO?

[grofire]

@spoletta well i do not know what they talking about, but the game in this state is just a copy of Albion online, huge grind fest, around PVP.
the stupid moto "risk vs reward", that every stupid MMO gone with, since UO, and every game failed with this.

[spoletta]

I don't feel like there's much of a grind right now (except for bringing up cities).
After one or 2 days of casual playing you can join your friends in high level pve areas and pull your weight.

In the previous test when talents did matter a lot, that wasn't true, but in the last test they nailed that "horizontal" thing much better.

[maze]

99% of MMO's is about grinding and you'll be at an odds end trying to find one that is not.
So ignoring that fact the grind is always a must in MMO's, the question is what do we grind and what for.

What are end goals for a player and a community?
Right now fighting is the main focus of the game, building your character up.
But there is only a few challenges to really over come- dungeons will be added later, a problem to be solved.
Simply a compentiveness to complete these First can be added with server first achievements and speed clear boards.

The town Problem of it being a crafting bench is indeed a problem; and the gameplay around crafting needs to be expanded appon into it's own gameplay. Normally crafters like to grind and I would like to use an example of mabinogi. Inorder to be a crafter in mabinogi you need to go into dungeons and areas mainly made for crafters to seek out enchantments and metals. I think in the future a system like mabinogis would work in fractured.
As for the town bench problem; from playing many other games with towns this generally never changes. Towns will always feel like a workbench and storage.

[grofire]

@spoletta as a solo it took very long time finish the knowledge, this is one issue, the second one being, that the grind for knowledge is boring.
as @maze said, the grind worth only if there is a good reason to do it for example, if every monster you found was needed only 1 kill to know, there was no boring grind. and you could still grind monsters for their materiel, and get cool items in the end.

[spoletta]

The point is that you don't need the knowledge.

I didn't grind it full in the last alpha. Not even half of it.

I went only where there were skills I wanted. More knowledge only gives you more talents, and you are perfectly fine without those.

[GamerSeuss]

as @spoletta said, firstly you don't need to grind each monster to full, but also, the monsters don't feel grindy because you never have to kill more than 100 of any given mob, as you always get a minimum of 1% knowledge from a kill. I wouldn't call that grinding at all for knowledge Grinding brings to mind 1000s of kills per mob in a constant bloodbath.

MMOs are competitive exploration adventure games. That means combat is going to be a meaningful part of it. In D&D, they separate adventures into the 3 pillars, Combat, Interaction, and Exploration. Even then, they make Combat 1/3 of the game overall, and then Interaction is made in such a way that at least part of that is also combative in nature, even if your fighting with skills and words instead of weapons and spells, and finally, exploration...a huge part of exploration is wading through combat situations, so when it is all said and done, no matter how diversified you want a game to be, Combat is probably going to be about half the game at least still.

[grofire]

@GamerSeuss well since your a fanboy that just say aman to what ever, im sure you think the shape of the game is perfect...
and of course, since the game now is 100% fighting, you say it must be a huge part of MMO.
fighting can be part of the game, but in this state, its a copy of AO and its just bad game, as AO.