Fast Progression & Pests
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I've been looking for a game like Fractured.
I appreciate the emphasis on horizontal progression.
I appreciate most of what I see in the upcoming feature set.Please take the following question with a grain of salt as I'm still reading through the material on this site and may have missed important information.
My understanding is the following is true
1: Players can be competitive (PvP) very quickly.
2: Unlawful PvP (murder) is discouraged via karma or reputation loss, stat loss, or reaching a rouge state.I think #1 is absolutely essential in a full loot open world PvP game and that slots nicely with the horizontal progression. I don't know why the need for this isn't evident to all developers, but I'm glad the Fractured team gets it.
So the question is this: Couldn't a group of griefers simply build a gank squad in under an hour, wreck all weekend long, transfer loot to clean characters, delete, rinse and repeat thereby circumventing the entire justice system?
I don't see how "quickly get to PvP competitive" and "justice system that is painful" work well together. I can see how someone might think that would work - because most players are invested in their characters so a delete would be painful - however, a griefer just wants to cause pain and if a delete avoids 40hrs. of rebuilding a character with 2hrs. of building a PvP ready character from scratch they'll pick the latter every time.
Anyways, this may have been handled in the design already.
Please link to any thread that may have already answered this concern.
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1: yes, more so if working in groups.
2: Karma system affects how much loot you drop on death, if you are a criminal or a sheriff, time spent in prison (or size of bail) if a sheriff kills you (a criminal), no stat loss, no rogue state. Some towns may be pvp friendly allowing criminals to use the the towns crafting stations, while the default is that you cant. However if you are a citizen or resident of the town, at which point your karma is irrelevant for that purpose.The justice system punishes criminals by them getting locked into prison for up to 48 real world hours or having to pay 10k? -I am not sure- to be released. Note that when you are released you only have the equipment that did not drop on death (and if you are criminal, all of it does), and you are released inside the town that built the prison (hostile territory). Oh and you can only pay the bail yourself if you have that much in the global wallet, which can only be added to via a bank or market when someone buys what you put up for sale. Otherwise your friend has to travel to the town and bail you out in person.
Simple attrition will destroy the marauding gank squad, limit them to regions with criminal towns, or make the act unprofitable without significant investment in gear/skills/talents.
The amount of loot a character can carry is very limited, thus requiring the building and use of town banks or private homes and chests. You are limited to one house plot per account. This means having to transport your loot to a drop point safely. If it becomes known the plot is used as a bolt hole for criminals you can bet it will get the attention of the sheriffs. This means having to transport your loot to a drop point safely while under pressure.
Town banks are only accessible by criminal players if the town is criminal friendly... presumably rare...Or you are a citizen of the town. Town leaders are probably going to be picky on who to allow citizenship, especially as it is not necessary.The starting skills are not anything to sneeze at but are certainly not competitive. It would take a weekend to get the skills for a modest build and there could still be weaknesses. Not to mention that equipment is a major component of any human build.
The horizontal progression is not quick. Unless you have some outside feeder source, it takes well over 40 hours to get the equipment necessary to be effective. Not to mention that skills and talents can easily take longer and are not transferable between characters on the same account. Groups help, but there are also AOE powers (only really obtainable through moderate work) and a person in a -good- build can take on 3 with shitty '2 hr builds'.
Due to equipment decay, no repair, and a constant flow of goods, the griefer groups will not be able to make any lasting damage to the players they victimize and bring lots of attention to them from the sheriffs.
The fact that there is very limited fast travel (from port to port) which is also expensive also greatly reduces the affect and range of griefers. Even at its worst two alphas ago, the cry of 'reds at XXXXX' would see anyone feeling vulnerable in that area log off and on to an alt elsewhere, while all near by sheriffs converged like hunting dogs for the kill, chase, or to patrol incase the reds came back. The griefing was also heavily localized to 1/4 of the island area. I myself lost three sets of gear to griefers, but it barely set me back at all since I had the economic weight of a week of materials generated by my guild and town, and I know that two of those times the griefers were hunted down by eager sheriffs. Being grieffed was more of a -sigh- event than a rage quit one. In the last two weeks of that test griefing was practically unheard of as was the case of practically the whole of the last alpha. -to my knowledge-
While there are many ways a grifer could use alts to avoid the pain of prison, it would still be a massive amount of time spent -not- progressing. In the world of the red queens race (better equipment synergy, skill sets, talent synergy, group cohesion), you would just loose in the end.
It is totally possible that an organized group of thieves would create a criminal city and make raids on near by points of interest while hoping to make it back with the loot before being caught. The counter is to just play somewhere else. Each island is big, travel is slow, and most of a characters assets are in very safe places. If the raider group want to move to where an established group is in order to prey on them, they are fighting an uphill battle the whole way.
It has been stated that a maurading group of players -could- raid a town and seize assets from the towns coffers if victorious. However this takes 3 days notification, a timed event, and if you do not have access to catapults then practically impossible vs a town with wood palisades.
Hopefully this helps some.
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OlivePit,
I'm not seeing anything too difficult to get around.
A clean scout roams through a profitable area (mine, dungeon, spawn) on the northern tip of the island and notices one or two players there. He calls in the six bandits who've spent very little time on their characters and they sweep the two players up (1), loot them, and transfer all the loot to the clean player who deposits it in the bank. The murderers log out on the spot - and won't log back in again there until the clean scout has cleared the area.
Everyone logs out, logs in on the southern of the island with a different group of bandits and a clean scout. They do this to avoid posse players and so forth.- because even with no fast travel the best way to avoid the law is to log out. So now the hue and cry goes up on the south side of the island but by the time people start moving that way they've transferred loot and logged out again.
What would stop a group of bandits from having 6 bandit characters each, all logged out at hotspots, that don't log back in until a clean scout has ensured the area is clear of lawmen?
I've seen behavior like this in other games.
People are going to be doing this if it is possible.NOTES
1: This isn't hard to do. The clean scout doesn't call in the bandits until he notices that the victims have pulled too many mobs and are struggling.
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All good points !
I have no idea if your scenario is likely and will be interested to see what the next test brings.
All I know is that what you are proposing did not happen much -to my knowledge- or have a significant effect on the game.
At the very least it may encourage people to go out in groups more -with sentries of their own-, which would only increase the sociability and draw of the game -in my opinion-The 'pulling too many mobs' situation does not really happen except in specific mob heavy regions.
While this group is spending their time split up between many characters others will be focusing on their one character and slowly gaining more ground in the skills/talents/equipment arena.
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@Wargfoot
The time needed to log out from a char, log in on another one and reach a certain spot of a hunting area without being slaughtered by mobs in there, is significant.
You can't log out in the middle of a mob area, you will get killed before logging out. Reds in particular iirc correctly have a longer than usual log out time.You also can't clear your purple bar, since reds can't use inns from other towns, so you will have to travel back all the way to your town.
I'm not saying that your scenario is impossible, and devs are monitoring closely this aspect and these type of exploits, but it is far more difficult logistically than what you can do in other games.
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Thanks for the information.
I've found the griefer crowd adept at finding ways to circumvent bounty hunters, karma systems, and so forth. I think in the testing we may want to focus on "How can I break these systems?" - with a mind to report them to the developers - because come launch there will be a portion of the player base entering the game with that mindset, unfortunately.
That and freakin' duplication bugs.... gah.
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Open world PvP really isn't my thing, either gank or be ganked - either route just doesn't appeal to me. One thing I have learnt in these games is that folks love to grief and troll other players, especially newer or weaker players. Account based karma/justice might help perhaps, so folks can't grief on one char, and then delete it and start over with a new toon, and rinse/repeat, but honestly folks will find ways around those somehow. In this other game there was this one guy who was trolling folks, and taunting them to report him - he streams it too, and his viewers thinks it's funny and reward him with subs and donations. Whenever he does get banned he just buy a new account and keep doing the same thing. It's frustrating.
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Fortunately there is the PvE beastmen world !
Supposedly there will be resource imbalances between the three worlds which will necessitate or at least heavily reward interplanetary trading.
Playing a beastmen gives you the PvE, the city building, nation diplomacy, niche resources, crafting, and trading without any of the PvP or ganking to worry about.
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Don't mind getting ganked from time to time.
It only begins to bother me when the long list of deterrents is simply a list of punishments that are easily avoided.
I intend to play a wildfolk but you can bet I'll be gathering my own resources on other planets.
