First impression and opinions

[Meziljin]

Hi all,

i will update during the test my impressions, hope to help staff.

Pathfinding

Cluncky, woody, if u catch a tree under mouse point the risk of life increase greatly. this part need a great re-work, even the fact we cannot use WASD that a lot of player wish to use could be part of problem, maybe you should consider to move the skill on numbers (1,2,3,4,5,6 and go on) and leave lecters free (most shortcut aready use them like craft menu, map and so on).

Archery

Arrow crafting is nice and work fine (using bones instead stones help a lot while hunting)
But even if i appreciate the realism about the arrow blocked by items on fire line, most of the time arrows disappears for strange bushes, small plants, and more if i am just a little bit higher in position of target (im on a really little hill, while target under). It could be a nice idea to give more damage instead from higher position and lower from under, even pvp should improve.

Mining

Since different nodes are fine, during mining the bos with mineral pop up always on the mineral rocks, and often are hard to localize because of the same colour, maybe popping out under player or directly in hands allow a smoother performance.

Carts

Beautiful idea, works fine but noticed a problem about overpopulation of carts, people are licterally flooding towns with carts not stealable nor breakable. Even the fact no owner nae appear bring to an owning problem, which is mine? When a village is erected, the lack of immediate "bank" brought players to use carts as portable bank, this must be avoided.

Enlightment

Since the map is really huge and well defined (not the best but there is no lack of vegetation or animals, the lights are eyes burning, shadows are really small while seems all world is buning under a sahara sun. this part should be refined for sure.

Knowledge

Since discover new items in fauna and flora is nice and allow to explore and move around the world, the skill and spell learning will be surely coded on sites, so in future we will have tutorials to catch all spell u want in the exact way, breaking the casual approach to the game maybe, dunno i have some doubt about this part

Crafting-Farming

What can i say, PERFECT, you just got all your best experience from your previous game, improving menu and texture. Thank You!

Claiming town

This part seems an improvement of your "linked realms system" (ndr Jacopo), but maybe a grid on map (or minimap) should help understand better the exact extension of domains

Minimap

This need a great refinement, its really chaotic, hard to realize what is a river, a stone path, a road. It work but its not really easy to understand what are u looking on

World spawns

Since there are different biomes, i notice some monster spawn in place really strange, for example i found spiders in deserts with spidernet everywhere...in desert. Since exists a lot of spiders in deserts, they are not net producers, they use fast attacks in direct way. Even the zombies in deserts are quite strange, ok scheletons but zombie...

Loading time

I got some issue with SpatialIOS even in previos alpha, now seems to work better, maybe just a lack of optimization, nothing scary actually

Conclusions

Good job, game is coming out really fine, it's already enjoyable, i would suggest a permanent alpha, with server opened timeless, this should attract more backers, giving you more funds and more feedback, think about this, game deserve attention its actually too ambitious

---UPDATE---

Animations

There is an issue about the preloading action on mouse pointer (if i order to chop a tree or dig a stone, during animation mouse clicked is absolutely unresponsive about the context; if i pass over another stone or tree, the mouse pointer icon does not change into the proper image, invalidating any pre-ordered action). To be more clear, if im doing any kind of action i cannot "pre-order" anithing until animation end, that is frustrating because really often we click on wagon or another stone during gathering, but have to wait the animation end, hope they fix it asap, it's frustrating
Another TERRIBLE thing is that if i'm carrying a wagon with horse, my mouse pointer is totally unresponsive about mineral deposit, i have to release wagon (i can remain on horse) and check if there is something gathereable, the retake wagon.

Private houses

I really appreciated the progressive and immersive building system, i loved raising my house step by step, but actually i see no great reason to do it, seems just aesthetic, no personal vendors, no personal smithy or forge or foundry (it could help to not overload cities of building), the only thing i can do is charcoal, a personal hearth and some storage, which is good but if im citizen i already have all of this in town, why i should go private? i'm missing the sense.

Citizen rights

Here is the most hilarious part: as citizen i have access to all about my city, even steal resources from storages, weapon, armours, anything i want. For the most guilds take possession of the cities and the spare citizen not joined their guild are substantially parasite of their work or, on the other side, victims of their bully approach sometime. (for example, if a player not guilded raise a private home, the city owner can turn his life in a doom...)

City appeal

As we all can see, players spreaded aroung the world, focusing on the most attractive location, evaluating position, resources, neightbours, pve spots etc
Some city is totally in ruin, even docks cities because they have nothing attractive and no reason to apply there, because they have low resources or totally away from trade routes, this need surely a tweak in future

Trade routes

It's the first time roads have such a fundamental role on commerce, because playing out of roads is really painful, hard and mostly so dangerous that people avoid. This is incredible nice but could be really nice as future implementation to LEVEL UP the roads, improving them so wagons and horses go still faster, improving commerce and movement, like real world, or even allow cities to build new roads to connect them.

Wagons

I know i already wrote about this, but i wish to add something could help its role. First of all, too many carts, it could be an idea to have a wagon as personal summoneable item like the horse (why horse yes and wagon/cart no?), of course a wagon/cart with at least 1 item inside will not be dismissable, avoiding abusing. Another option is to change the wagon speed if full or empty, in the first case it is slow, in the second it should slow less about 0 impact, to avoid each trade will remain a "no-return voyage", because travelling back to home with an empty wagon really not worth, better abandon or destroy and go back alone, then rebuild it

Trees

While the dismantling animation of the chopped tree is amazing, often some chunk of wood fall into an ungathearable position, frustrating...

Rest system

The idea is good but i think badly implemented, not only as concept but even graphically.
The rest into a tavern is fine, but that corpse laying on floor is terrible. Let some table and chairs on tavern, each chair is a slot to rest, so we could have a tavern full of people chatting on tables even with beer and playing cards lol. The rest should not go instantly, just really faster. Outside taverns we should have the option to rest sitting on floor even without camps, but it raise really slowly, meantime hungry should increase (so a good malus to rest outside taverns and camps). Camps will work as hearth but slower. I think it should be better that the actual way because often finding stones is a real quest and the risk to die for excessive stress is real...

[Kralith]

Very good written, keep going @Meziljin
I want to react to some of your impressions and opinions, better than writing same in an own conclusion.

Pathfinding

Cluncky, woody, if u catch a tree under mouse point the risk of life increase greatly. this part need a great re-work, even the fact we cannot use WASD that a lot of player wish to use could be part of problem, maybe you should consider to move the skill on numbers (1,2,3,4,5,6 and go on) and leave lecters free (most shortcut aready use them like craft menu, map and so on).

Yeah, the pathfinding still needs some polishing, but they work on it ongoing.
Some things like the trees or bigs structues are a bit tricky, since you can't click "behind" them.
Such things was mentioned several times in the past and i am sure, they think about how to fix that.
But i can say, compared to previous tests, the pathfinding already got a huge improvement, so we can hope that it will be better and better with time.

As for the WASD:
I know, many people wish to use these keys, but that won't gonna happen, since they decided to make an click-to-move isometric game. I believe it feels a bit unfamiliar, but after a short time, you get used to it.
I also was sceptical at the beginning and wished that there would be a keybord moving, but meanwhile i think for Fractured is mouse movement the better choice, since the mouse position playes an very important role in your actions.

Archery

Arrow crafting is nice and work fine (using bones instead stones help a lot while hunting)
But even if i appreciate the realism about the arrow blocked by items on fire line, most of the time arrows disappears for strange bushes, small plants, and more if i am just a little bit higher in position of target (im on a really little hill, while target under). It could be a nice idea to give more damage instead from higher position and lower from under, even pvp should improve.

Carts

Beautiful idea, works fine but noticed a problem about overpopulation of carts, people are licterally flooding towns with carts not stealable nor breakable. Even the fact no owner nae appear bring to an owning problem, which is mine? When a village is erected, the lack of immediate "bank" brought players to use carts as portable bank, this must be avoided.

Yes, absolutely agree.
It should be at least possible to be able to move foreign carts out of your own property/city.
Beside that i would also like to see who is owning the cart and giving other people access to my cart.

Enlightment

Since the map is really huge and well defined (not the best but there is no lack of vegetation or animals, the lights are eyes burning, shadows are really small while seems all world is buning under a sahara sun. this part should be refined for sure.

Revel in memory: Pre-Alpha Nights! Dark like the coffee i use to drink in the morning.
But you are right, the Day/Night cycle could be way more atmospheric.

Knowledge

Since discover new items in fauna and flora is nice and allow to explore and move around the world, the skill and spell learning will be surely coded on sites, so in future we will have tutorials to catch all spell u want in the exact way, breaking the casual approach to the game maybe, dunno i have some doubt about this part

What you see at the moment is the first level of skills you can obtain.
They always said, first Level will be easy to get.
I see your doubts and you are right, it will be well known at the release date of the game, where to get which skill.
They said, they want to make it challenging to level your skills.
I am curious about this for sure, once it will get implemented.

Minimap

This need a great refinement, its really chaotic, hard to realize what is a river, a stone path, a road. It work but its not really easy to understand what are u looking on

I see the only problem for now in showing the variable stuff, like roads in towns, that not even is showed up in the map.
For explaining the Map, maybe a map legend would be nice somewhere in a corner.

World spawns

Since there are different biomes, i notice some monster spawn in place really strange, for example i found spiders in deserts with spidernet everywhere...in desert. Since exists a lot of spiders in deserts, they are not net producers, they use fast attacks in direct way. Even the zombies in deserts are quite strange, ok scheletons but zombie...

I noticed yesterday some very fast respawn for Zombies and Skeletons too.
They spawn even that fast, that you not even killed the previous one and the next one appears.
But even when it is annoying, i almost like that skeletons and zombies having this behaviour.

[Meziljin]

updated .....

[Meziljin]

After a week of experience and impressions, i feel to leave here some suggestions to improve gameplay and fix some problem:

ROAD SYSTEM

Since game seems really slow, roads allow to move a bit faster and lower our stress during infinite travels
But i think roads could works even differently and better with some improve. All roads in world are divided in segments, each segment connect 2 villages or town (at their end point a wooden sign will show the road segment. The two cities connected can improve that road segment increasing the road rank
But how it work? A city send a request to the other one to start the improvement project, if it accept both cities have to load stones into the wood signs (the sum is equally divided indipendently by the rank of towns), so if 40 stones needed, each city have to place 20 stones. When placed, road rank up becoming a lastricated road (or marbled road name is just an example). This road have a travel speed increased by 100% (so the double respect the normal road). Road need maintenance, this maintenance is the half of the build cost (in this case 20 stones), whoever can help to upkeep road, maintenance is weekly (not daily), if requirement is not satisfied, road rank down to normal one.
BUT WHY? because a faster road attract more travelers, improve the commerce and force involuntarly people to move there instead other roads.
But how much cost a rank up of the road? it is directly proportioned to the distance (about 1-2 stone per tile, so very long road will cost really high (even 70-80 stones) and upkeep even is high but travels will be greatly improved.

AUTO TRADE

Each city at a certain rank (not at begin), can release a carovan (a wagon) that will go sell or buy something decided by governor into his tradepost in another city. Carovan will start from the governor tradepost and move only on roads until the tradepost of destination, do the deal and come back.
why this? no time waste, faster grow, time safer. Risks? carovan can be raided during travel, because player killers can patrol choke points and raid carovan stealing all. Well this could happen even if u decide to move carovan on your own with a personal trade, but in this case you can choose to travel out of road avoiding pirates.

At high ranks Cities will unlock Militians which will guard town by raiders, but even a governor can decide to link militians at guard of carovans, but if this will give more safety to the carovan, reduce the defence of the city itself (hard to decide, raider could notice militians going out of town and raid city...beware governors lol.

STONE CITIES

Since i have a stone city and i love it, Both stone and fertile grounds got a really bad appeal on players. Stone cities simply have no advantage, it produce a reasource all players can get everywhere, sure more than others but it is not enough.
I suggest Stone cities have a quarry where citizen can dig Boulders, these boulders can be disgregate into 8-10 stones or can be used to build advanced building in highest rank in cities (an end game resource for biggest cities)
Meantime i wish Fertile grounds can produce more crops than others, not in quantity but even in variety (those crops have a better effect on city upkeep or another end game resource)