Questions and observation on the lack of depth for people who like crafting to define their character
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@Phylosophys I think if any "bound" items exist:
- they should be extremely rare
- they should vanish on death or remain hidden at the site of the corpse as opposed to being lootable
- they should have substantial drawbacks to retain Fractured's focus on stat balancing rather than stat raising
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for me i think the idea of if you dont wanna lose it stay on arboreous is the best 1
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One factor I would have to know about before taking crafting seriously is how the repair/durability system works.
Is it going to repair to the max durability or will it drop the durability each time it is repaired?
Will the effectiveness be lessened as durability drops?
These two questions are important to me. I've played games where both those were yes and it was never worth crafting good gear because in a matter hours you could be making a replacement piece of gear. In fact in Life is Feudal, they went so nuts on the extremes that we literally had to keep building the entire building that you forged in almost daily. You would literally get one use out of an item to drop its durability and its stats. After 20-30 uses with repairs you had to junk the item for scrap and begin again. We literally had to carry about 10 tools on us to get any work done while crafting. They eventually changed this because of the outcry but for a few weeks the game was almost unbearable for the testers.
If durability drops stats and repairing is constant I see no reason to make epic gear. It has already been said that upon death your gear suffers damage as well. I'm wondering if this even includes stuff you are carrying. I've seen that in games as well which I also do not like. So living in pve lands can even be challenging with gear durability.
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If there was a such thing as epic gear (and I'm totally against that idea), but just for the arguments sake... then this gear would not be something that you use every day... but rather something that you keep locked in your storage and only put on when you venture to specially important assignments, and when you end the assignment, you repair it and store it back for safe keeping.
That being said, I'm totally against an idea of "epic gear".
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What's an important assignment? I think that usually means walking around the town bank showing everyone how rich you are lol.
If there is crafting and the gear has special mats (both of which we know does exist) how can you not think there is going to be epic gear? Are we now saying all equipment is the same as well? That each piece has the same stats just in different categories?
I'm just still not sold on the whole "all players are equal" idea. If we have advancement what exactly are we advancing toward? Apparently not toward "advancement" because that would mean toward an improvement which means better.
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Players aren't equal, in fact every single player will be vastly different. But the major point is, players will not be different vertically (in power) but horizontally (in utility).
Gear wise, gear will be different by stats (not total number of stats, at least not hugely different by that, just different in stat allocation), and in enchants.
So you will not be able to say one gear piece is vastly superior to another one, you will just be able to say it's "different than another gear piece" and more efficient in different kind of scenarios.
Thus, no "epic" gear. Just specialized gear.
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I know that's what is being said. I'm still not just sure how advancing a character is going to be improvement. If I'm not showing improvement in my build I'm not going to be motivated to do anything to advance my character.
Back to topic on crafting. If I advance my knowledge in crafting and use "better" materials to craft my gear, is my gear not going to be better than basic gear? If it is still going to be "equal" to base gear then why advance my crafting skill if it doesn't actually improve the quality of my crafted stuff? You yourself has talked about that special gear you only bring out for special assignments. What makes it so special if it doesn't do anything more than base gear? You have implied in those words that not all gear will be equal which contradicts the above statement that all will be equal just with different "stuff".
I'm not trying to put you down or argue. I'm just showing that I think alot of us hear the words "equal" and horizontal leveling but I think alot of us think in terms of vertical. I'm going to have a hard time playing the game with no vertical growth. I like rpgs because I get to see my character grow over time, not stagnate. If I can do anything more or better than my original character then theoretically my character is better than my base character. The knowledge system doesn't drop off skills as you add them from learning in the tree. That means there is vertical growth. So hence my confusion.
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If all crafted weapons and armors will be equally powered and just different then we have a pretty underwhelming crafting system in use. Those who like to craft are not interested of making the same shit stuff with different flavor, there needs to be serious progression and goals to achieve. Power gap between gear should exist even the gap between different tiers would be small. I have high hopes of the advanced crafting system but at the same time I am concerned what that actually means in practice.
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@Farlander there is vertical growth but not to the point that you are un-killable like a lvl 60 vs a lvl 30 in WoW you have a talent tree just released some more info on it recently so when you gain knowledge you will be able to spend it on now skills but also on talent points ( https://fracturedmmo.com/roadmap-to-alpha-2-test-3/ ) thats the link to the new post
they will give you vertical progression compared to people who haven't played the game for as long such as getting attributes over 20 as a human is a confirmed 1 but i think you will also get passive buffs to certain types of skills ect such as "Warriors Dance" when you score a critical hit gain 3% evasion for 20 seconds stacking upto 5 times or "Frostbite if you keep an enemy frozen solid for 3 seconds or more consecutively apply a 2% of life damage a second for 10 seconds effect just off the top of my head
i imagine things like this maybe flat increases to stats such as accuracy or evasion and ones that need to be activated like those above idk but in the usual scale of mmos that is quite small as opposed to 10k extra hp and 2k damage crit advantage ect
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@Farlander said in Questions and observation on the lack of depth for people who like crafting to define their character:
With the game being full loot and losing all your gear upon death, I don't see alot of people investing time into making top end loot for themselves. With the current system for travelling most people will be dying far away from their bodies. I would expect your body to have a small timer to return to it to gather your loot. Even if you do get back to it all the gear is damaged. How much damage I haven't seen. I also haven't seen much on repairing. With all that in consideration I see alot of people dressing like the early days of UO, basic gear that you can throw away. I'm sure there will be those that want the high end stuff and those will be the guys getting chased by the pks lol.
Even Fracuted has a full loot rules we are going to see how people runs in open world from the best gear to worst and anything possible between. At the beginning players will of course run more with the basic gear which is easily replaceable but after time passes better and better gear will become easier and easier to replace. For individual players this will take more time and they are more careful what they wear in the open world, however, guilds will have at some point so much gear in storage that they can use what gear they want to. If they loose their stuff they simply go get new ones and are good to go. I can see how the biggest guilds are easily running with the best gear in the open world and I promise that those people are the most dreaded PKs and chasers and not vice versa.
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It's designed to stop gold farmers from selling equipment. Which will happen in Fractured!
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Yeah, I'm interested to see how it plays out. Vertical growth is great, but I have yet to see a valid system in an MMO that put it to use in a way that retained players.
eventually people will have all the skills and all the morphs. players and streamers will host guides to get every rare item in the game, and players will be able to hop in and go from A-Z in 1/100th of the time it took us when the game first opens.
I can understand the desire to keep players on relatively equal footing, but at some point it's going to hit a threshold, and without alternatives players will get bored. Horizontal growth is boring at times and can be repetitive, but it's also a cheap way to provide player growth. Vertical progress takes allot more dev time to keep it interesting.
I'm really looking forward to it, but from experience I have my Concerns. When it comes to crafting, I would like to see it have some depth. Perhaps crafting is the way to get the specific bonuses you want, like crafting a cloak that gives fire protection vs. frost protection. or only advanced crafters can swap mods on a piece of gear. so you may get that almost perfect set of mail leggings, but they have the wrong resist, or you were hoping for crit damage and you got mana instead.
But at that point, you have to define what a master crafter is. do they have to have a certain level of expertise to do this? or will I literally be able to start a new character and run over to the dungeon that has the "craft critical damage" skill in it and grab it in 15m? if that's the case then it really boils down to who writes what guides, and crafting will be flat and dead.
And if it becomes a time based thing, then anyone who starts on day one will have a significant advantage over someone who starts 3 months later, and guilds that get big in the first week will always dominate over guilds that start later, unless there's some kind of equalizing element. Time itself is a horizontal progression, just one out of our control.
I think the base problem with vertical progression is it's harder to have a determination of what "progress" means, and how rarity or difficulty fit into this scheme. I see this being less of an issue on the PvP world as it will be on the PvE world.
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@temjiu i can see where you are coming from but the player-driven elements brought in with a survival style to the gameplay have you ever played ark survival evolved ?
its going to be more sandbox oriented feeling more like living in a world than climbing through it
i can see your point on arboreous (pve world) but the human world and demon world will have those player-driven elements that keep you on games like ark survival evolved and multiplayer sandboxes in general with the combat of a moba and the scale of an mmo i love the idea personally but i have played all of the types of games this blends together without the benefits of merging the gameplay i.e sandboxes are usually 150 pop max, mmos usually have autotargeted combat, mobas usually have no lasting progression but cool combat putting it together i think this game will be epic personally
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@Jetah The only reason to "stop gold farmers" is if they're disrupting the game. Gold farmers can't disrupt the game outside of Arboreus because if they do they'll be targeted by PKs, and Arboreus will undoubtedly take it into account in its design.
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Just gonna hop back to the soulbound gear idea for a sec. It is overused and is often a fallback for many MMOs and games in general, but Fractured is all about doing things differently, so why can't they implement a unique soulbound gear system?
To start, only expert, master, etc. crafters can make soulbound gear. It'll force people to decide between having all the combat, utility, etc. focused talents they want and losing some to become a better crafter. Maybe make crafting skills like this, cooking, alchemy, etc. have a separate talent tree?
There's still the max talent points, but once you put a talent point into this crafting talent tree, it's stuck there. You can use Resting to change these Crafting Talent points from Blacksmithing to Cooking or Alchemy, for example, but not to a school of magic or fighting. So you can't pull points from being a master blacksmith to become an elite assassin well versed in alteration, divination, and illusion. You'll lose some combat variety, but with the right roll and skills, you should still be able to hold your own. Considering you'll be a crafter anyway, you'll probably have a lot of people wanting to keep you alive. Everyone can make some basic items like now, but to get elite and master items that are only slightly (and possibly objectively) better you'll need a crafter. Some crafter-locked stuff too
Back to the soulbound stuff, they could put more emphasis on the "soul" aspect. The crafter's client must be at a high enough standing with their god, and the final part of the crafting process must be a blessing or something in front of that god's altar.
It could also be a standard feature that soulbound gear caps the wearer's Life bar when worn. You've given some of that Life to your god in exchange for this gear security, but maybe also a slightly more significant boost in stats to offset the Life lost.
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@Rafiqi I am a little bit confused where we actually need soulbound gear? To help with what problem?
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@Rafiqi said in Questions and observation on the lack of depth for people who like crafting to define their character:
Just gonna hop back to the soulbound gear idea for a sec. It is overused and is often a fallback for many MMOs and games in general, but Fractured is all about doing things differently, so why can't they implement a unique soulbound gear system?
There's no such thing! Either you have soulbound gear or you don't.
To start, only expert, master, etc. crafters can make soulbound gear.
This is a standard non-solution that many MMOs use to pretend to limit broken parts of the game, and it's borrowed time; players only need to become expert [job]s once and then [gated content] is in the economy forever.
It'll force people to decide between having all the combat, utility, etc. focused talents they want and losing some to become a better crafter. Maybe make crafting skills like this, cooking, alchemy, etc. have a separate talent tree?
Are you implying that a master crafter can only soulbound gear to themselves?
If that's the case, either every single player will go crafter because the soulbound gear is better in meta than getting the combat skills, or every single player won't because it isn't.
Back to the soulbound stuff, they could put more emphasis on the "soul" aspect. The crafter's client must be at a high enough standing with their god, and the final part of the crafting process must be a blessing or something in front of that god's altar.
This idea could work if the soulbound item (or any other blessing granted by the god) is temporary. As in "a few hours" temporary.
In the case of a blessed weapon, characters should further be limited to only have one blessed weapon at a time. If they want to make another one it must replace the one they have.
It could also be a standard feature that soulbound gear caps the wearer's Life bar when worn. You've given some of that Life to your god in exchange for this gear security, but maybe also a slightly more significant boost in stats to offset the Life lost.
I say have items that do this, but are not merely soulbound - they cannot be taken off. This would then be a classical cursed item rather than a soulbound one per se.
Removing the curse should transform the item to a mundane state, removing all benefits alongside its curse. After removing a cursed item, the player's max life remains penalized for at least a few hours and they cannot put on another cursed item until the debuff wears off.
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@FibS
i see more complaints when the gold farmers can block content that wont allow players into. iirc players are physical and we can't move through them nor push them aside. so the gold farm can station 1-10 outside to block it while their 100+ accounts are inside farming. then they'll sell that to the very people that can't get into the area.
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@Jetah Again, on Syndesia or Tartarus, PKers will solve this issue easily.
Arboreus will be designed (and redesigned) under the knowledge that even legitimate players will take up spots and opportunities that can't be contested by PKing.
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@Tuoni There isn't an exact problem, more so people simply desiring soulbound gear. It's a game after all; no desire for anything and Fractured would have little monetary backing. Soulbound gear or anything like it is a reasonable desire considering we've all likely played countless games that involve soulbound gear and it's something many are used to and enjoy. It's a wanted, but not needed, addition for some based on what I've read. Personally I'm fine with or without it cause I still plan on playing this game regardless, but I'm just contributing ideas as they come
