Feedback on the new durability


  • Moderator

    Short recap of the current durability situation for those who joined us only after Early Access.

    During the first beta, we had big issues with the durability system, with crafting mastery levels that gave huge amounts of extra durability to items and no durability loss on knockdown/Death. This led to a quick saturation of the market and death of the economy. Ranged characters in particular had eternal equipments.

    To address this, the devs have correctly applied 2 changes in this new Beta:

    • Halved the bonuses to durability granted by mastery levels.
    • 5% durability loss on knockdown, and another 5% if you get executed.

    With these 2 changes, the equipment has now again a limited life, and what matters the most, pvp finally causes an effective durability loss, while previously it was a pve only thing.

    As many have experienced in these first days of Beta, the life of an equipment can now be as short as a 2 days if you really go at it. Also, the coming raids will be impressive durability grinders.

    In my personal opinion this is a fine situation, it is an improvement over the previous system, and adds to the depth of the game. It doesn't come without issues though, and the elephant in the room are clearly the poor t1 warrior equipments.
    It was already a VERY harsh experience for warrior, discovering that to get a metal armor he had to take days of work between mining and smelting. The fact that he is now likely to lose that armor in 2-3 days has been the cause of some rage quitting from the game.

    In fact, I believe that for this system to work, there must be some rebalancing of materials needed for the crafts, and in particular for the craft of t1 metal equipment.

    I would propose the following:

    • Chain armor 5 ingots (2 -1 - 1 -1 )
    • Plate armor 5 ingots (2 -1 - 1 -1 )
      They are t1 equipments that don't even require a recipe, they can't require the concerted effort of a city to be made!
    • Leather/Hide armor 50 hides. No changes.
    • Common clothes 50 fibers. No changes.
      The crafting effort for these t1 armors is the correct one given their low durability.
    • Scholar/Assassin 125 fibers. (50-25-25-25)
    • Rogue/Warlock/Ranger/Hunter 125 hides. (50-25-25-25)
      The T2 cloth and leather armors have always had a frankly risible cost in base materials. Since we are talking about rebalancing crafting efforts, I believe that they should be addressed too.
    • BattleMage/Cleric 15 ingots. No changes.
    • Slayer/Knight 20 ingots. No changes.
      The crafting effor for these t2 metal armors is already considerably high.

    As for the weapons:

    • Metal weapons. No changes.
    • Wooden light shield 3 planks
    • Wooden medium shield 5 planks
    • Quarterstaff 5 planks
    • Shortbow 5 planks
    • Longbow 5 planks
    • Club 5 planks
    • All trees (except the ones which reward only hardwood), yield only one plank of the specific wood of that tree and the rest of the planks are hardwood.
    • Remove hardwood plank as a material (hardwood logs are still usable as building materials)

    The difference in difficulty between making a weapon in metal and one in wood is light and day. While metal weapons have lower durability and should be easier to make, the difference is just too much. These changes would make it still easier to craft wooden weapons, but would give at least a little bit of dignity to the wooden materials.


  • Moderator

    From user "Vyrgil" on Discord (he cannot access the forum):

    A nice change, instead of changing the resource cost of equipment, could be to improve the amount of ingots acquired from forges. Both leather, fabric and wood are always in the proportion of 1 raw resource for 1 refined resource, but ore is the only one that works in reverse, requiring 5 raw resources for 1 refined resource in addition to the extra resource that would be coal .

    The time invested for the return of ingots is very disproportionate in relation to the other resources, my suggestion would be to also put in the ratio of 1 raw resource to 1 refined resource and increase the duration time in the forge from 4 hours to 20 hours or put that every 5 ores generates 2 ingots and increases the duration from 4 hours to 8 hours.

    Making these changes would not have the need to change the amount of resources used on equipment and would help for tier 2 equipment


  • TF#11 - PROCONSUL

    or needing 1 iron 2 silver and 3 tin to make mithril, Yes, you get 5 mithril for the trouble, but the amount of resources available and the time it takes to smelt all three is just silly when if i want a bow made, i go chop down 1 yew tree, fill the wagon, process it, and i got 60 yew planks. (1 log gives two planks)

    That's enough wood to make FIFTEEN short bows. The only other thing i need is rope, made from fiber at a 1:1 ration. So getting 60 rope takes like 10 mins.

    All other crafts combined can be done together in significantly less time than it takes to mine, smelter, and make 1 ingot.


  • TF#1 - WHISPERER

    Also, it's been ages, but it makes literally ZERO sense that mages get to craft staffs and mage clothes INSTANTLY while heavy armor and medium armors requires incredibly long processing times.

    Light armors NEED processing times too, as well as Wood ( staves, bows, shields that use wood )

    P.S I'm a mage using light armor and staff.



  • Personally, with all the PKing in groups, I would love to see the dmg to armor from executes changed some, that 10% is a rough hit if u go out solo/duo alot and get ganked...

    I know last beta the durability was too high, but i think right now it could still use a little tweaking.


  • TF#11 - PROCONSUL

    i would also like to see a small but noticeable increase in the base stats of the piece in Question. I.E, for a shortbow, an increase in min/max damage, on armor an increase its fortitude stats. For a gold level piece of gear to have the stats as white trash (sans dura) just doesn't make sense


  • Content Creator

    Equipment abilities that are increased, if any, are done via the skills used, and/or the enchantments put on them. I think Mastery mainly just affecting Durability helps keep with the whole theme of a flatter power progression in the game, and the horizontal goals.

    They did say they plan to reinstate the +1/+2/+3 when you enchant weapons, which should grant a little bit more to certain things as well. We'll just have to see how that gets interpretted.


  • TF#8 - GENERAL AMBASSADOR

    Cloth armor is processed easily and quickly because it gives practically no protection or bonusses when compared to metal or even leather armors.

    I would like it if cloth armor took more processing and also got better protections and bonusses to make it competitive, as is it is just rice paper that you put enchantments on. and unlike last alpha where cloth could take 3 enchants we are still stuck with only 2 like everyone else.


  • TF#12 - PEOPLE'S HERALD

    I'm not a fan of the percentage for durability loss, because that negates the difference in durability for some types of armor (cloth has less durability than plate, but a percentage loss would treat both equal), the difference in durability for quality (white/green/blue/purple/yellow) and it does punish solo players more than group players (who already have the easiest time).
    In general, I'd prefer a less grind and more spread out approach (with equipment between primitive and tier 2), since one of the early advertisements for Fractured was 'no grind' (though that got removed from the webpage).


  • Content Creator

    @Logain To be fair, 'no grind' by your interpretation of it, is not really possible in a Sandbox MMORPG.

    Rather, Fractured is low grind for advancement. (Every mob has only 100% Knowledge available, and generally gives at least 2% per kill unless you do it with more than 3 people, then you might get only 1%, so at most, with a group of over 3, 100 kills per mob, and with a group of 3 or less/solo, no more than 50 kills, with some mobs granting as much as 10% per kill, like the Tutorial mobs)

    Where any kind of 'grind' comes in, is when you voluntarily want to go back and grind for specific materials. You're not grinding for that +X Suit of Awesomeness that you might grind for in EverQuest or WoW, instead, your out there hoping to get that Battlemage Recipe set, and the Forcestones and Gianthearts to craft it.

    That is more of a voluntary grind. You're not required to do that grind to max out the mobs. You can theoretically tackle anything in the game with a group, even in t1, unenchanted gear. You grind only to make it easier, and allow you to do it in smaller more focused groups. (even solo, in many cases)


  • TF#12 - PEOPLE'S HERALD

    @GamerSeuss to be extra fair, if "no grind" isn't possible, then horizontal progression is extremely not possible....

    your such an hypocrite, from one position, you defend the horizontal progression advertisement and say that they should not change it since it was advertise as such a game, on the second position, you say even though the game was advertise as "no grind" its not possible, and we just need to let it go.

    dude your the worst... fanboy that would like to see the game stay on 1000 players as long as it will be exactly as he like it.


  • Content Creator

    @grofire I argue partly the interpretation of "grind"

    To me, and as I see the advertised goal of Fractured, grind is interpreted as an excessive need to kill in order to advance the game.

    Fractured doesn't include what I'd call an excessive need to advance the story/game.

    2nd, I also understand and admit that totally horizontal games don't exist either. Again, Fractured tries to flatten power creep, and keep advancement more about variety over straight power.

    Both of these goals, as I've stated are doable and reasonable. Will they satisfy everyone? NO!, because that's also impossible, but can they meet reasonable expectations as to their design goals as stated in the Kickstarter? Yes. I think so.


  • TF#1 - WHISPERER

    Takes 10 years to farm all the mats especially to do t2 enchants and armor dies in a few deaths 😄 fun times -.- Tried to farm 1 mats to do t2 enchant after 270 mobs i got 3 items out the 25 to enchant all my gear and thats 1 fifth of the mats for the enchant 😛 still needed the other 4 pieces to get the other types lol soo yeah not doing that grind anymore seemed like a 1% drop rate on higher level enchant mats -.- (T3 enchants will probaly be quicker with bosses atleast ur garanteed to get 1 enchanting mat) 😛

    Also when demon come out that planet definelty need to have high drops for armor crafting components in it such as crystal magic and so on or your gonna have a horde of naked demons 😛


  • TF#11 - PROCONSUL

    There's no degrees to "grind" there either is, or there isn't. To even advertise "no grind" was both foolish and ill advised. There are however different levels of grind.

    Every game has grind of some sort. Can't get away from it. The difference here is it takes 10 seconds to "mine" a flax plant. 10 minutes to gather enough to make a set of common cloths. Roughly the same for Hide, depending on the monsters you find.

    Leather doesn't have much of a grind, because you get the mats by killing stuff. The delay here is it take 15 hours to tan the hides. I don't know anything at all about tanning, but is that even close to realistic? I really only know that it stunk. BAD

    The highest level of grind is of course Metal. Even if you put your plot right on top of a node (which shouldn't be allowed) and just build smelters and such (which also shouldn't be allowed without a house of some sort) you still have to travel to the node, build a wagon (or drive a wagon to it which is even worse) Mine the ore, drive a slow arsed wagon back to your plot, build some smelters at 24 stone per, which is ANOTHER level of grind for this craft.

    Oh but wait, there more. Now you have to go gather a fuel source. Same thing as above for coal, or build charcoal pits which take 15 hours to cook (jebus as I'm writing this im getting more ticked off about how unbalanced this all is). Then you have to smelt the ignots at 4 hours a batch. Now, a wagon will fill 6 smelters. So in four hours YOU HAVE TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN.

    Now...is this in anyway, shape or form REMOTELY comparable to the other crafts?

    And for all that effort all you get is a LITTLE more durability? EFFING FOR REAL? Not even a miniscule stat boost???

    C'mon


  • TF#12 - PEOPLE'S HERALD

    @GamerSeuss it seem unreasonable to interpret it like you do... in order to get anything in game you need to invest multiple days, and the worst part it all get reckt in a day or 2.... so why would i invest anything behind the lowest tier items ? or in enchanting ? if things get destroy in a day then getting them should take an hour max. and that is still probably too much.
    the reason its like this, is that you have too few items, since there is no progression... then they have to make you do the same items over and over.


  • Content Creator

    @DarthJafo To answer your one question, traditional leather curing is generally a 30 day soak in a curing solution of high saline.

    Rough curring can be done quicker, and there are ways to speed up the process some, but again, we're talking medieval, traditional curing.

    As an example of how easy it 'can' be to 'grind' out metal, last night, between my sister and I, we pulled 7 carts plus 10 pieces of copper in in less than 2 hrs, then went and got a cartload of coal each. With Advanced Smelters, you can process 10 pieces of copper into 2 ingots for 2 coal, or 4 charcoal in 4 hrs. Available to us were 6 Advanced Smelters during this process, so 12 ingots in 6 hrs of work were easily doable for 2 people working in concert, and that is combined with other gathering while we were out.



  • The only feedback that I have with the new durability "costs" are that I like that K/O and death adds a durability loss, but I think that the durability loss should be a percent of the base/poor durability rather than whatever the max durability is which scales up to double with legendary/gold items.

    i.e It makes no sense that a legendary/gold item loses twice the durability points of a poor quality item. If the durability loss was changed to be a % of the base value then you'd be getting a consistent durability points loss for all qualities of gear.


  • Moderator

    I actually like that the % is the same for all items. It makes the poor and gold items more similar to each other.

    If it wasn't for this % loss, gold items would have double the durability of poor ones, which is too much of a difference. Instead, gold items tend to live more since they suffer a lot less from day to day usage degradation, but have the same durability loss on death. This in my opinion is the right amount of difference between the two qualities.


  • TF#12 - PEOPLE'S HERALD

    @GamerSeuss said in Feedback on the new durability:

    (...)That is more of a voluntary grind (...)You can theoretically tackle anything in the game with a group, even in t1, unenchanted gear. You grind only to make it easier, and allow you to do it in smaller more focused groups. (even solo, in many cases)

    Which, if you read my posting at all, is exactly my point.
    The Kickstarter page advertises 'solitary hero' as viable play-style literally in the second paragraph. I get it, you play during peak times, you have people to play with, you can rush through the content easy and never have to encounter any difficulty at all, because, quite frankly, if you die in a group, you were simply stupid.
    I don't have that luxury, there's only ever a handful of active players online during my playtime, who barely ever get into group activities. I've had exactly 3 'organized group hunts' since EA started, the rest was all solo play with the occasional rare random grouping.
    For me, there is extreme grind, getting all the materials, finding a crafter that's going to be willing and has the time to be online when I am every once in a week, begging and then hitting the ground due to rubberbanding with high ping, back to where I started.
    But yeah, I'm glad you're enjoying yourself.


  • TF#1 - WHISPERER

    the enchanting mats to crafts said items are the biggest issue tbh when there going for 5-10k per piece and u need 5 per craft atleast thats the issue especialy if u want to see red players use equipment atm they run round with no risk cause there naked 😄 so if they kill you thet get reward if you kill them you get nothing where if armor was a little easier to craft then they might be more inclined to have some gear on so u get some reward for the kill on them.

    getting killed might be a little harsh atm though i died twice earlier and lost 150 or so durability 😄 death shouldnt be a % based either because whats the point of crafting orange gear if it still gonna only last the same amount of deaths as the white stuff due to getting chunked for more on death


Log in to reply
 

Copyright © 2023 Dynamight Studios Srl | Fractured