Feedback on the new durability

Veeshan

@DarthJafo said in Feedback on the new durability:

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

Metal actually pretty easy tbh and u can do it while watching netflix on another monitor

Leather and cloth you have to spend a large portion of the map just running around to the mobs to kill since there usualy quite spaced appart and some like mammoths are quite a pain to kill also fighting said mobs can leave you vunerable to pvp since your skill will be on CD or HP/mana not full so thats the trade off there.
I will say maybe cloth should have a processing time and wood a drying time (Since you tend to dry wood before crafting anything with it) to bring in line with leather/metal
addition of automatic looms (Which is needed to craft all fabric appart from flax) and has 16 hr timer for a stack of 5 and can do 8 at once like tanning tubs
And drying racks for wood that works the same way

Navy

There is a bug actually with durabillity (for PVP side)

I'm actually 4/4 on my scholar and it's better to craft a green instead of gold one. Because when you are knocked down it's take a certain % on your max durability but if you are an "experienced" crafter (4/4) you overcap the max durability. So blue, magenta, gold is actually useless x)

Veeshan

@Navy it will last very slightly longer since you have more dura for the chip dmg from combat but they last the same amount of time if you do nothing but die which is dumb

grofire

@Logain that true, the game is just not solo friendly, and me, same as you are not at peak times, im playing solo, when server probably have less then 100 player.
and as solo player this game is ridicules hard grind, and all center cities.

i think the should be durability loss only on death and KO, and should be no loss just from playing.

spoletta

@Veeshan said in Feedback on the new durability:

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

This means that the red penalties are working.

If the pks are running around with inferior equipment compared to other players, then the design of imposing an handicap on them has been achieved.

Veeshan

@spoletta said in Feedback on the new durability:

@Veeshan said in Feedback on the new durability:

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

This means that the red penalties are working.

If the pks are running around with inferior equipment compared to other players, then the design of imposing an handicap on them has been achieved.

And what happens with demons? naked demons everywhere tbh even neutral your amor just evaporates in pvp fights at times

spoletta

We have no idea which rules demons will have.

cemeteryum

Here's my 2 cents (I'll try to keep it paragraphed since it will be a long post)
I guess I should start with a bit of a background in order to put my opinion in context.

I joined Fractured last year in summer so i played autumn 2021 alpha and beta since it launched back in march(?). I am used to play theme park MMOs, the first and actually sandbox rpg i played was Albion online back in 2019. I am a PvE player (not good at PvP since i panic easily and start mashing buttons) and even in PvE i'm not very good if it comes down to action RPG style games where you have to constantly dodge things. I prefer to relax when playing games so my approach is usually to face tank things while dealing damage and popping healing potions. These being said, one of my favorite way to play sandbox games is gathering/crafting (I joined Albion because of their fishing mechanic).

Now coming back to Fractured, I enjoyed alpha 2021 a lot, even if it was rather short. So my surprise was pretty big when they announced a new crafting system. And I wasn't much of a fan. Again, I have no idea what the original vision of the game was, I'm just speaking from my own observations(short experience). Also, during the beta I wasn't able to do much crafting since I was busy with guild/town management. But that changed a bit now so let's get on with it:

First, a couple of things that i would like to note, and again these are my conclusions (more or less exemplified further down below:
1) the devs are not playing their own game (lack of testing before release that lead to bugs that take weeks to be fixed afterwards)
1.a) some features of the game make no sense
2) there's only two options with them: either dialed all the way to 100 (which usually consists in a bug) and then nerfed into the effin ground (chests nerf i think is the best example)
3) the crafting system (and at this point the whole release timeline of the game) feels heavily rushed/not planned out properly

Point #1 I think it is pretty clear (the best recent example are the bridges on terra). I'm doing almost daily runs from western to eastern town (to sell stuff). So in my estimation it would take approx 30 minutes to go around and test all bridges (since they are kind of an important feature of an island based continent).
Point #2 I'm not even going to rant about as it will be exemplified later on
And point #3:

Quick background. Previously i played mage and rogue (alpha '21) in beta i played mage and archer (no longer needing to craft arrows, yay) but now i'm playing archer and tank (i always play 2 characters as, more often than not, i need to be in 2 places at the same time). So crafting wise, I've dealt with mage a bit and now i'm full on leather and metal. Also game wise i play with 3 friends (have been since the Albion days) and they are from NA (us and Canada) so i have lots of downtime when they are asleep (i'm from EU). So I do lots of crafting (and another reason why the chest nerf bugged me since that was my favorite solo activity before early access). Now let's get to my EA experience, opinions and let's wrap it up.

Material wise I think the system is ok. I'm fine with mages having early/easy access to gear while leather takes slightly longer. As for the metal grind, I think it's also fine and I actually enjoy the wagon system, going around and gathering stuff (this is one of the things i like most about the game). Access to smelters is ok since it's one of the early tech so it depends on the city (our city took a bit long to be established because of the relatively low community and first few days bugs even if we had a founder package, compared to another city close by that did not have said package but had the numbers). One problem I might add is that the cost of metal components/plates is relatively high compared to their (no longer) availability from drops. (and like with lockpicks, which have been changed, it doesn't make sense to make ONE lockpick/component/plate from ONE ingot - see point 1/1.a) It took me about a week of smelting to get to my usual layout of 6 adv smelters. Again, I don't necessarily want a 1/5 ratio for the components but at least a 1/2. This again leads me to the points I made above.

Now, the last part, rant (as if this whole thing wasn't one) getting to the subject of the thread, and wrapping up.
As mentioned, I'm doing leather and plate. With plate I'm at a decent level so now I'm focusing on leather to make money. And it's just hitting me (after one of my friends told me that there is a 5% durability loss when downed):

What is the point of better quality items? They no longer give a gradual increase in enchanting sockets/stats. And a gradual increase in durability (i'm looking at leather helmet: 250,315,375,500 is pointless if the 5% is being applied out of an actual HUNDRED instead of the ACTUAL DURABILITY. (again, i'm seeing some items with above 100% durability and i don't understand if that's from the material or maxed crafting, but i don't think it matters that much).
And after all the grind (I'm taking my time to get to 4/4 leather/hide before I get into recipes) comes the even bigger grind of recipe/material drop rate. I will not go on much about it since we all know how it goes and some have already mentioned it. All i want to ask is:
- Have any (like literally any, doesn't need to be Jacopo, literally ANY) of the devs played the game and tried several aspects of the crafting systems? (smelters, recipes, actually crafting a set)
- if your reply to the above question is "The devs don't need to play their own game" then i guess you don't have any idea about QA/marketing/customer orientation
- if the reply to the first question is "This is supposed to be a community grind where a whole guild works in order to feed 3-4 people" then you don't understand human psychology (both individual and collective). And if this is the basis of/direction where the game is heading, i think it has a big chance of getting to a point where big guilds establish a monopoly over the market (this is already being noticed in prices) and the game will become a (less popular) version of Albion online.

If you've made it this far I guess congratulations (and a thank you) are in order, and again, this is my personal opinion based on my way of experiencing the game. So take it with a grain of salt. And as much as I would like for this to be constructive criticism I do feel that it would fall on deaf ears, as I am not sure what the devs' vision of the game is anymore.

grofire

@cemeteryum read all, your right, this game, in is current state is same, less popular, and little worse then AO.

GamerSeuss

@cemeteryum

I can say that people have seen Prometheus in game, at least during previous iterations, actually playing, not just hovering around, but not as much since Beta started. In addition, right after the EA launched, there was another Dev seen around playing who would spam chat with a do not disturb kind of post to allow them to play the game. So, that means there is some playing by the Devs. Arcahem and Kilpu also play the game some during the Live Streams, but of course these are shorter sessions.

A point that the Devs have said in the past isn't that the Devs don't need to play their own game, however, but that the point of this game is to be as much Community/Player driven as possible, so WE are the testing, and they really aren't pre-testing the game before they send it to us. Do I believe this is totally a good thing, NO. Some pre-testing would be good, just to help prevent the bigger glaring cascading bugs like during the opening weekend of EA right after the wipe. That being the case, it still must be remembered that this is a very small development team currently on a much tighter release schedule than some games, based on how much they still have to do, and how many bugs are still out there, so they do not have a whole lot of time to come in and play the game, or pre-test much. (An idea that some of us have floated around would be for them to set up a pre-test environment before launching new content and patches, and to invite some of the players who have consistently played since alpha, and have actually given informative well detailed bug/exploit reports exclusive access to this testing environment (as part of their perks for being Alpha testers, and as a reward for their active contribution to identifying/fixing bugs/exploits) prior to launching any new content patches (other than obviously hotfixes) into the game. Obviously, this won't stop all cascading bug issues as the test environment would have a smaller population, and that was surely a big part of the issues during EA's release, when the game had to handle more simultaneous log-ins than ever before.

Anyway, it was a good well thought out post, and I hope I answered at least one of your queries within it, however incomplete my answer might be as just another player who's been here since the beginning.

spoletta

We know that Prometheus at least is playing, even if obviously he keeps his char hidden.

Also, I may be wrong but I think that one ingot makes 5 lockpicks.

Yalah

@spoletta said in Feedback on the new durability:

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.

I would agree if increased quality did anything beyond improving the durability, but it doesn't. In the current system you are actually punished more for getting k/o or dying while wearing Exceptional gear than wearing Poor.

For example: (purely making up numbers) Lets say that for every hour of gameplay you take 30 points of durability loss from being hit or using your items. This number is the same no matter the quality of gear.

If you are wearing Poor quality gear (say 300 base durability), every time you get knocked out causes you 15 durability loss. In other words, being knocked down gives you a 30 minute "durability penalty."

If you are wearing Exceptional quality gear (300 base, 600 max durability), every time you get knocked out causes you 30 durability loss. In other words, being knocked down gives you a 60 minute "durability penalty."

If you want to argue that quality is giving too much of a bonus to durability that is fine and can be addressed by lowering the durability bonus from quality to something less than 25% per level. You can even argue that people should be taking more durability loss from being hit or using items. However, the current % loss on K/O and death is illogical, backwards, and literally more punishing for using better items.

Edit: I'm not suggesting that higher quality items are not better than lower quality items. I'm stating the fact that being K/O or dying is a bigger punishment for people wearing higher quality items.

GamerSeuss

The point is to make being K/o'd and/or killed.

This makes equipment in general last longer, the better it's quality, but has a finite 10 deaths or 20 k/o's lifespan.

Logain

@spoletta said in Feedback on the new durability:

We know that Prometheus at least is playing, even if obviously he keeps his char hidden(...)

The question is, does he play with admin features or without and what content does he consume?

@GamerSeuss said in Feedback on the new durability:

(...)but has a finite 10 deaths or 20 k/o's lifespan.

And that's the point of the grind.
You collect 120 iron ore, 240 silver ore and 360 tin ore (24 full carts), 6 will stones (that's a couple of hours farming at least), several hours of farming reagents for 10ish tier 2 enchants for 20 knockouts as a 'tank'. And that's tier 2, with tier 3 supposedly coming in and requiring a lot more. If that's not 'grind' to you, I'm sorry, I don't want to see your definition of the term.

GamerSeuss

@Logain It's not grind because it is voluntary, not required. You can do most of the game without t2 equipment and t2 enchants, and you can do some t2 enchants without really hard to get resources.

You can grind, especially if you want to heavy PvP, or enter Seige combat a lot (which is mainly organized PvP), but your not required to. It just makes it easier, which is really the motivation for Grinding in a more voluntary grind game.

spoletta

@Yalah said in Feedback on the new durability:

@spoletta said in Feedback on the new durability:
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.
I would agree if increased quality did anything beyond improving the durability, but it doesn't. In the current system you are actually punished more for getting k/o or dying while wearing Exceptional gear than wearing Poor.

For example: (purely making up numbers) Lets say that for every hour of gameplay you take 30 points of durability loss from being hit or using your items. This number is the same no matter the quality of gear.

If you are wearing Poor quality gear (say 300 base durability), every time you get knocked out causes you 15 durability loss. In other words, being knocked down gives you a 30 minute "durability penalty."

If you are wearing Exceptional quality gear (300 base, 600 max durability), every time you get knocked out causes you 30 durability loss. In other words, being knocked down gives you a 60 minute "durability penalty."

If you want to argue that quality is giving too much of a bonus to durability that is fine and can be addressed by lowering the durability bonus from quality to something less than 25% per level. You can even argue that people should be taking more durability loss from being hit or using items. However, the current % loss on K/O and death is illogical, backwards, and literally more punishing for using better items.

Edit: I'm not suggesting that higher quality items are not better than lower quality items. I'm stating the fact that being K/O or dying is a bigger punishment for people wearing higher quality items.

If durability bonuses were reduced to 10/20/30/40 I would be fine with K/O inflicting fixed durability damage (around 25).

If we also want to express our ideal changes, I would then change the durability loss from the current system which is a chance on every hit you receive, to being a chance for every 10 damage (after mitigation) suffered.
Same for weapons, they should degrade based on the damage they inflict.

This way slow and fast weapons would degrade at around the same rate, and getting hit by powerful and slow attacks would be the same as being hit by fast and weak attacks.

But I understand that this would require dev time, and is not honestly worth it.

GorethMolier

I don't post much, but I feel this is a need. Regarding the durability, I have no issue with the knowckdown/execution increase. I think that is a needed addition, but the rate of durability loss when out in the world PvE is excessive. The grind for some armor (Tier 2 and metal armors come to mind) is just to high to have such durability loss. There is not much point to add Tier 2 enchants to armor and weapons if they will be gone in a day.

True, the Beta where the items lasted forever was too much, but EA has swung the pendulum in the opposite direction. If you worry about PvP running around in Tier 2 all the time, then increase the equipment drop and start at 0 karma. But I feel you are penalizing your PvE players with a cheap fix for PvP.