Crafting considerations
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First, the game is amazing. As an online gamer since UO Baja 1997 (Counterstrike, Shadowbane, Warcraft III, Darkfall, Albion, Legends of Aria, Huntshowdown, Crowfall currently), this game is amazing and has a lot more potential. I am not a forum-warrior, always enjoy a good debate with the forum-academics lol. Anyway, Alpha's and Beta are established for testing and at times, developers like to get player feedback.
Here is mine. I think game mechanics are greater than anything that a game can provide in a players experience. That said.
Time seems to be a sink in this game. Traveling to other cities, mob spawns, waiting for smelting, leather, gathering etc.. I really like that actually. All players seem to have equal opportunity to resources. Location forces trading. That is all a tremendous, positive aspect for the game economy.
However, I don't think Fractured offers introvert gamers or small groups much in the crafting arena - thus creating a deficit for these small groups to acquire weapons and armor on an equal footing. Simply because I don't want to locate in a major city or become a citizen to it? Rural property owners, small rogue groups are disproportionately restricted from crafting. I have yet to see a reasonably explanation as to why other than the arbitrary "the developers intended it this way". Curious as to what is the mindset or mechanics of this and why?
Here is a possible solution: Depending on the size of the lot, only allow a player to build according to the size of the plot.
Small plot = 1 smelter allowed
Medium plot = 1 advanced smelter allowed
Large plot = 2 advanced smelters allowed
and so on...That way, time limits an individual's ability to mass produce, but it still gives small groups of players the ability to craft comparable armor and weapons against larger guilds. I want to compete in small group pvp, live on the outskirts of a city without having to be established in a city area.
Example: There are three (3) people I have recruited to play this game currently. They are close friends. I am getting a 4th involved today. I may try to make this an official guild game in time (which will bring 20 to 50 more players) as I am testing it. My current small group of friends cannot compete against larger guilds in creating equal tier weapons and equipment. We would have to join a city, and craft inside the city. It just doesn't make sense, frankly a barrier that may scare us away.
Unleash individualism.
FLea
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Trust me, as a community, we totally get this concern. As a matter of fact, this has been debated on and off for not just months, but ever since the crafting got introduced fully into the Alpha testing.
Here's what has come before, so you understand. It was of course originally introduced before cities, so a personal plot could have any crafting area that could be built. This was just to test the individual crafting tables mechanics.
Then, when Cities were introduced, personal plots became highly limited in what they could build on them, as they wanted a reason for the city system. These cities could basically be locked by the Guilds/Governors that owned them so that non-citizens couldn't use any of the facilities.
This majorly upset the solo/small group set of players (which actually makes up the majority of players on MMOs, just not as vocal usually). The Devs came together and next made it so more could be done in personal plots, AND proposed that cities could not restrict use of city-wide crafting stations, so even the solo'ist could take advantage of their services, but everyone does so at risk of others taking their refined goods if they aren't there to monitor the completion.
Anyway, there has been some back and forth, and right now, the Devs have it so cities can restrict things to citizens, those outside of cities can build some refining and some crafting stations, but they private plots cannot access the higher tier materials in crafting as they are locked behind Tech Tree advancement of cities. This is an ongoing process. The City Owners have argued (not all of them, mind you) that final crafting should be locked to cities to encourage people to come into cities, but have also lobbied to be able to lock their crafting to their guild/citizens which as you note, would leave solo'ists/small groups without the ability to get upgraded gear without buying it in the market, when and if it becomes available.
Personally, my own suggestion was similar to yours. Based on the size of your personal plot, I think you should be able to make 1 final refining craft station, and there should be a way to pay to upgrade your personal tech to allow that 1 station to craft higher end materials. In addition, based on size, you could have 1, 2, or 4 refining stations in your plot, which can refine any materials they are able to refine, with Advanced Refining stations maybe taking up 2 'slots'
Either way, this is a long, drawn out, and oft revisited debate/argument in this game. The solo'ists/small groups and PvE delegation have pretty much pulled for more on personal plots, the Guild/Large Group/PvP crowd have argued that as Multiplayer is in MMO, that there needs to be incentive to make people interact with each other, and so some things need to be restricted to cities, BUT also some want to be able to lock said crafting stations to only citizens, so we'll see where it goes. The game's stated goal is to cater to both camps as equally as possible.
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GamerSeuss, that is a fantastic post! I really appreciate the history. I think you are on point, I like your idea better. It could also be an opportunity to provide a gold sink. Well said, thank you.
FLea
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Perhaps the benefit of a city is production. If time is the commodity in this game, the developers could reduce the time of smelting/hide/resources in the city limits. This alleviates the advantage of players attaining certain weapons/armor.
Thanks again.
FLea
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I love the idea of a personal plot owner being able to specialize, and small groups being able to synergize.
That guy who lives by the mine might even be a guildie who just wants to keep an eye out for randos snaking ore and pump out some ingots to trade for other stuff. He might help out the guild mining parties and fill up wagons to be taken back to town for trade, while crafting his own metalwork.
That crew of four might station themselves in a cluster near a hot spot for various nefarious to service-oriented purposes, and help travelers replace busted gear.
Thanks for dropping by, @FLeaLoD
well said
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@PeachMcD
Great feedback!
I do agree with flea that houses need some consideration for crafting. There are so many ways to simply separate cities vs house crafting.
Such as a tax or fee for crafting from a house, limiting the amount of smelting pits, but to make it so they can barely craft anything is totally ridiculous.
Having to run one set of materials to town to craft a set of armor does nothing other than irritate the player base imo.
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Getting the balance right on this will take several iterations, & no doubt each one will elicit a collective wail from whichever faction is impacted in a way that creates novel hardship for them.
What's great about this game & community is that the P2W whales aren't automatically the voices devs cater to first - we're pretty much ALL invested here, and the level of constructive discourse is WAY higher than I've ever seen in a game forum. That's going to help the devs find the best balance, in the long run, even if it takes several tries.
Thanks to @GamerSeuss @FLeaLoD @BitterLoD in this thread and to everyone who keeps posting constructive ideas, bug data reports, adjunct tools, and helpful critique (I'm looking at you, @Kralith @OlivePit @Nekrage @Harleyyelrah @maze...
) And of course, to @Specter who is sine qua non around here 
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This aged well.
As a casual gamer, with a few friends playing I was NOT excited about the current housing/plot model. Where Governors owning and maintaining a tech tree that controls what an individual puts on their plot of land and what they can/can't craft. It is why I spoke up about it early on in this thread and another. The game forces a player to rely on other players that you don't know to run a city because you don't have the time or manpower to do it yourself.
You rely on the Governor and his cronies through the tech-tree and upkeep to maintain the city. You could spend hours - building a house, forges, benches, loading up chests, bringing loot and resources back to the house only to have the city owner and guild running it abandon it completely. Like what has happened in a few cities already. It escalates people that game casually, within these areas to quit the game because they are stuck on a tech-tree-less plot buried in chests full of loot.
Build in another area you say? No thanks.
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@FLeaLoD LOL i just talked about this in the game discord, and i was slam by all people there, that this too much solo player game... good to see im not imagining.
i hate the current state of the game, it feel so bad, it feel like the game force you to play in cities with no regard to solo play at all.
i feel that city mechanic broke this game, it was much better before, and i hope the dev will be brave enough to go back and make solo play and players the main option, and city as a bonus for group play.
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The previous city system has been removed because it was excessively punishing to solo players. If you were not part of a guild, you had no access to crafting. Period.
This game tries to make everyone happy, and allow a whole different range of play styles. One of those is wanting to play solo. This is why that city system was scrapped in favor of this one which allows all players to access the full crafting content, without requiring anyone's consent or approval.
Obviously you can't access ALL crafting, since this would make solo players superior to group players which are limited to what they develop inside their city.
This is the best compromise you can have. Both solo and group players have access to the same exact crafting capabilities and are subject to the same limitations. Sure, if your area gets abandoned you will feel the effects, but again, this is the same for everyone in the area. This isn't the game being mean to solo players. All players are in the same boat, solo or not. Actually, you got it better. Losing a city means losing a lot more work than just an house and a few smelters. When a city goes down it is a big impact for the area, but solo players are by far the ones less affected by it. 4k gold later and a few carts of stone, and they now have their chill home somewhere else, while that group will take weeks to recover what has been lost.
Even if that happens, you are not out of luck, since recipes are personal and not city based. Your city has gone down and you lost all techs? Well, you can still craft a lot of stuff in the starting areas while looking for a different spot (again, like everyone involved, not only solo players).
The current city system is any is perceived as being excessively skewed toward solo players. Guilds have to do all the work while a resident only has to leisurely select his city of choice and grab the fruits of that guild's work. Also, this is a sandbox, a game based on player's interactions. You may decide to play solo and not interact with anyone, but if someone's choice and actions have an influence on your game, that's not bad design. That's the literal definition of sandbox.
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@spoletta first its not true that city can't ban non citizen from crafting, many cities in terra done that, and i needed to run a different city in order to make do.
second, the city tech is the worst idea, since you give the 20% player base, that like to play in groups, the power over the 80% solo players, to decide what tech and when they will get it.
it should be the other way around, give the 80% the ability to control their on fate, and add somthing else for the 20%, so the 20% will not gatekeep the other 80%.
basically removing the tech from cities at a whole and add somthing else for the group people.
and add a lot more tech, not only t2 and t3(if they will add it) add multiple tiers.
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Do you realize that this is an horizontal progression game where technically equipment shouldn't matter? Asking for more tiers after t2 going of goes against the original idea of Fractured.
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@spoletta so many promises already been broken.... i do not think this game can survive on horizontal progression only, it should add (back, since it was originally with) vertical progression.
in the start all skills had 3 different level of the spells. and it was vertical progression from level 1 to 2, and to 3...
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It was never like that.
Skills had Alternatives, not levels. They were horizontal.
And nothing changed there, those alternative skills are still planned.
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@spoletta that not true, they had 3 different level in the concept, and was changed only after a player talked about this.... i will add you the image
https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/70/69348/abilities_menu.jpg
as you can see skills had 3 different levels, it was before you joined... and they used it in the kickstart, so basically it what we paid for....
https://fracturedonline.com/development-roadmap-from-alpha-to-release/
and they talked about it in spotlight: https://fracturedonline.com/feature-spotlight-3-knowledge-system/**There’s More Than One Level!
In the paragraphs above, we’ve covered the process that turns an Unknown ability to Discovered, Ready To Learn, and finally usable. Abilities, however, are not only meant to be learnt once, since they feature up to 3 levels of power! Completing only 2 tasks of a Discovered ability allows you to study an ability to level 1. After that, you need to have at least 4 tasks completed to study it to level 2 and 6 tasks completed to study it to level 3.Different learning tasks of the same ability are usually balanced so that completing a couple can be usually done in your home planet, while completing all 6 almost always requires you to travel to other planets. Studying higher levels also needs more complex blank tomes crafted with exotic resources and sophisticated tools – so we expect them to be a common item in player commerce.
Similarly to what we said about talents, you don’t have to worry about ability leveling creating a too wide power gap between new players and veterans. Sure, leveling up an ability increases its power – be it a stronger effect, increased duration, reduced cooldown, and more. However, they’re always minor differences, mostly interesting on a competitive level. Level 1-2 abilities are more than enough to create effective builds for casual PvE and PvP.**
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Indeed I was not aware of the first version, but as you can see, even in a case where the dev thought it was a minor difference, for the sake of keeping it horizontal the devs changed it.
The devs are quite attached to their vision of the game, and are keeping to the initial design. They are not breaking promises.
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@spoletta how can you say they "are keeping to the initial design" if many people that was in the time that they gave the initial design, tell you its not how they said it will be ???
the game never meant to be full Horizontal, there should have no grind, it should had extremely solo friendly game, all was in the initial design, but now non of them in, broken promises.
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@spoletta Grofire is correct.
I would add that UO (developers inspiration) created a solo style game. Doing so invites group, guild and faction fighting/conquering play-styles. The opposite is not true with a group build type games. Build a guild game (Shadowbane & Crowfall come to mind) , there is no place for solo or small group type players.
I really enjoy the game, it has potential but the reliance on a person running a city/tech tree has proven to be onerous for this casual gamer.
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May I ask you what would be in your opinion a better system, which doesn't feel unfair to group players?
Right now the system is already VERY unfair to them. If I were to rate the system from 0 = totally group oriented to 10 = Lol why do guilds exist? then we are currently at 7.
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@spoletta why you say it 7? prove your point...
i will say it more like 2, and to prove my point, i will say that:- there is no advanced tech for solo
- solo advancement in skills are super slow compered to group
- solo advancement in gold and loot is super slow compered to group
- many game mechanics are gated like: farming, war (siege), and so on.
so to answer your question i would change all the 4 points above.
and some more laws like the purple HP, to get a better solo experience, and had somthing for the city players extra.
let me give you example:
i played many years in dragonraja Korean MMO, there the 2 nations could declare war one on the other, and fight on the map, but couldn't effect others, but solo players could sign to any side they want, and join the war.
most of the prize would have gone to the group since they declared the war, and some gone to the solo, this way solo players joined who ever had the less players, and the fight was better balance and still had many solo and group play.
