First Impressions
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Having played for a couple hours, I feel qualified to offer my thoughts about the new (never even heard of Fractured until today) player experience.
The tutorial could use a bit more of a callout. If it weren't for more experienced players mocking other new players for not having followed it, who knows how long it would have taken me to find it.
As a "you can click these buttons to do these things" tutorial, it was decent. Some of the concepts, like memorizing spells, could do with a more detailed explanation. Guess and test did work eventually though.
As a "this is how you progress in Fractured" tutorial, it was quite poor. I wondered off into the wilderness only to flee for my life from encounter to encounter learning just how powerless a whelp I truly am. The problem is, I have absolutely no idea how to become more powerful.
There is a lot of harvestable junk lying around. Like, a lot. I filled my inventory and had no idea what was useful so I just started chucking things alphabetically.
Talents felt like a major letdown. I was very excited when I bought my first talent as I assumed it would be a character defining moment. Instead, it was a 2.5% cooldown reduction. Literally shaved my latency off the cooldown. That was quite the downer. Big enough that I wondered out of town for a bit and just logged off
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@Sepoy hello there,
Talents felt like a major letdown. I was very excited when I bought my first talent as I assumed it would be a character defining moment. Instead, it was a 2.5% cooldown reduction. Literally shaved my latency off the cooldown. That was quite the downer. Big enough that I wondered out of town for a bit and just logged off
there is several post about this issue. some players, like me, thinks that the game in its current state have no progression, and without that the game is just boring and unfun, like you just logging of.
and some players think this is how the should be.
thanks for giving your feedback.
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@grofire There is tons of progression.
My char for example has 50/60 Talents, I am WAY stronger than somebody who doesnt have any talents.
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@Sepoy Few responses:
The tutorial is not a How to play Guide, instead, it is a What to do first, Quest guide in order to guide you on figuring out these things first. A BIG part of Fractured is learning by trying and exploring. They don't want an actual tutorial, and they don't want to spoon feed you everything. Instead, they plop you down in the world, and then give you just a couple starter quests to guide you on what you should learn before really leaving the starter town.
As to harvesting, they want new inexperienced players especially, to harvest everything. Initially, of course to get the KP for each new harvest, but then after that, because you never know what you will need later in the game, before you discover what all you can do.
Many of the things you harvest are just food items. Other things are generally building blocks for gear, or reagents for imbuing gems, to add to some gear.
Talents are a subject of note. Initially, many of those of us who backed the game came in because of the promise that this game would be one that didn't focus on Vertical progression. More and More power is not the goal of Fractured. Some backers didn't care about this part, but for a lot of us, we like the fact that one of their examples from the beginning concepts was that a brand new player, and a 2 year veteran, both with the same gear, could travel and be equally effective together in a raid or battle. No more leveling out of your friend groups to where you needed to powerlevel your buddy in order to get them into playing with you right away.
This being the case, Talents, and everything having to do with the KP progression system should be more focused on giving more options for variety instead of more numerical power. Small bumps in power are fine, and even some synergy, but power builds should be a thing not of Fractured.
Previous iterations of the Talent tree did tend to scale up power though, and this is the first test that has gone the other way, and tried out some talents with more special effects and smaller buffs instead of big numerical jumps to stats and damage.
The only real way that power should scale up in Fractured is through the acquisition of Gear. Gear can give you distinct advantages, BUT gear has a durability score that cannot be repaired, AND gear is 100% player made, not found treasure.
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As someone has already reiterated and many more will for the rest of this game's existence. There is progression, however it really is not completely black and white or what most players may be used to. Their form of progression is through talents, gear acquisition, and ability acquisition. Gear acquisition alone is a process and is the only thing close to vertical scaling. Another thing to note is that the developers desire players to have multiple ability/talent presets to fill different rolls for each toon. With all this is mind, it is important to note that for new players who may be reading this thread or for those who are unaware, the developers have reiterated many times that this game's focus is horizontal scaling, not vertical. I personally like the talent tree as it compliments the horizontal process well. Someone with a more complete tree will be more powerful than someone without a complete tree, however the differences won't be as extreme nor will it be difficult to acquire.
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@Sepoy said in First Impressions:
As a "this is how you progress in Fractured" tutorial, it was quite poor. I wondered off into the wilderness only to flee for my life from encounter to encounter learning just how powerless a whelp I truly am. The problem is, I have absolutely no idea how to become more powerful.
Thanks for the feedback Sepoy. The game is indeed very much lacking when it comes to telling you what to do after the tutorial is over. Most new players feel lost like you because they don't know how character progression works in practice, even though you are taught how to learn new abilities in the tutorial. We've got a long way to go and we're going to improve on that before the start of the next test
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I appreciate the insight, Prometheus (and all). As a non-backer ignorant random internet gamer, obviously take my feedback with as much salt as needed. As a developer (non-gaming) myself I know that customer feedback can make or break things so I always try to share.
I hope I didn't give the impression that I hated the experience, that was not my intent. It simply did not line up with my blind expectations. Obviously this is an alpha build and there are tons of things left to do but one thing I would strongly recommend is more direct messaging about progression, especially when doing these open to all events. I did hear some of the phrasing around progression but made the assumption "horizontal" meant "not an eternally growing treadmill" rather than the more accurate "not vertical".
If very shallow vertical progression is the goal, I would strongly recommend an equivalently shallow ramp of NPC difficulty around the starting areas. I believe that horizontal progression requires experimentation and exploration to feel right. My radius of relatively safe exploration was quite small, strongly implying that there should be equally steep paths to vertical power gain.
I heard similar "there isn't supposed to be a tutorial" or "there's no spoon feeding here" comments from experienced players when they were responding to other new player's questions. I would strongly recommend changing that thought process and language.
There must be a tutorial. The tutorial is a game's hook as well as a how to guide for playing. When I first step into a game, I am not at all invested in the world. I literally do not care about the game yet, I'm simply interested in seeing if I might be. That interest needs to be nurtured until it is strong enough to support "spend some time playing around with things, there's a lot to learn."
The first thing new players see should never be "get gud" or phrases like "no spoon feeding" which trigger similar negative emotional reactions. Well, at least not if the goal is to broaden the community. Again I, or anyone else seeing Fractured for the first time, have no skin in the game. If the community is off-putting right out of the gate? That's just encouraging me to walk away.
Ignorance is not the new player's fault, it is the necessary beginning of their journey. Rather than "there's no spoon feeding" or the like, I strongly recommend a concerted effort by the community to speak to this ignorance as a positive. "I remember when I first started, having to learn all of the systems about how things worked - I miss the rush of figuring everything out for the first time. I'm happy to help with some of the basics but I don't want to rob you of that feeling. It's a big part of the Fractured experience."
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@Sepoy I don't see the last sentence you wrote as ignorance, it is actually a thing.
Now to you whole comment.
There is a tutorial in the game, or your whole meaning of tutorial is actually get you through all the game for you to understand?
The tutorial teaches you about gathering, about crafting, about killing mobs and gaining skills from them, making presets and memorizing them and then the tutorial even sends you to a place with the lowest tier mobs, to start your journey.
There isn't more than that, that the game tutorial can teach you.
The fact that there are people that are struggling with the game after the tutorial, just shows how ignorant and how people are not willing to even think for themselves or anything just trying to know everything from the get go.
I will give an example of what I mean, for example in a game "X" there is a hard quest that you have to actually read the quest and figure out where you should go, and what you have to do next or a maze or whatever.
Most of the people will not want to figure out the quest, the will just write the name of the quest in google, go to the forums or wiki and just check how to complete the quest, and when they are done with all of these, they will say " the game is boring, the quests are boring and shallow".
The same thing here, the tutorial gives you the basic, and even it gives you a lot more than your typical sandbox will give you, the rest you will understand and will figure out as you go.
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I'm glad to hear that last sentence is the intended message. It hasn't been the received one. Text is a funny thing. It doesn't convey emotion very well. Most of the time people bring whatever good or bad baggage they have with them when reading. Because of that, I'm hoping, Munch your message was very off-putting for me. It's actually a good example of the kind of messaging I believe will really harm the growth of Fractured's community.
I'm going to unpack that a little to help illustrate why in hopes that you might alter your messaging a bit. You are obviously passionate about this game; I doubt you are actively intending to sabotage it.
You have indicated that using google/wiki's to solve quests is only something that people who do not think for themselves do and that it is a bad way to enjoy video games. You've implied that I might be that type of gamer and asked me to declare one way or the other based on whether I think a tutorial should play the game for me or not. And in so doing you have invited me to exit the community if I disagree.
That messaging isn't going to build a large, or healthy, community.
When responding to people, especially new members of the community, look for ways to make them feel good about their decision to be a part of the community. Focus on the things you liked, ask them what they enjoyed, maybe sound out some specifics of what they didn't like. Imagine ways that things might have been better for them, ask them what they think of those ideas. If you are discussing a specific feature, explain what you like and what you don't like about how things currently are. No feature will ever be perfect. Acknowledging that by example will make healthy discussions about it much easier and far more valuable to the devs working to improve things in the background.
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@Sepoy
I don't know what made you think that i am in some way owe you something, but the fact that my comment is off putting to you, doesn't really affect me in the slightest.I don't really care about if you are here day one, or you have been in this "community" or whatever you wanna call it, for years, all i do is respond to ideas.
I am not part of any community that i am aware of, i am just a player who likes the game, and will respond to players who want to change core system and core mechanics in the game and will be local about the fact that i don't like it.And the fact that you come here, and demand some kind of different "language" or "change of attitude" towards you is entitlement in a level i've never seen before.
If you have a bad idea, i will make you know about it.
If you had a good idea, i would make you know it as well by supporting it.And about you saying that i implied that you might be this type of gamer or whatever, I've never implied that, You chose to believe that, and you chose to be offended by it.
