My Ideal Fractured Experience

[Masochist]

Hi guys, started typing and it turned into a book. facepalm
Sorry! Truth is, I love this game for lots of reasons just like many of you. I believe the game will continue to slowly move in the right direction and gain traction along the way. These are some of my general philosophies concerning this type of game.

My Ideal Fractured Experience:

• GPM (gold per minute) should increase substantially with CR (Challenge Rating)
  o Encourages farming mobs of appropriate difficulty – not AFK farming high-density, low CR mobs.
  o Players should never look to less challenging content for increased profit.
   Target farming resources is fine, but at the cost of GPM.
  o It should feel rewarding to achieve the player skill/character power/preparation/coordination (whatever it took) required to move to the next level of CR.
• Divine Rewards should be accessible by all players no matter the playstyle, including gatherers and crafters.
  o PvE – Kill mobs, chance at appropriate level of divine rewards. Live server feels good except for some outliers (summoned legends/ultimates).
   Divine rewards should be earned at a constant rate across all mob types/difficulties/mob density/etc. (live server already does this well)
  • Avoids being spammed by rewards when killing skeletons or never seeing one when farming dragons.
  • Leave the balancing to the level of divine reward and its loot table.
  • Allows newer/less powerful/etc. players to feel the same excitement of opening the rewards across a similar play time.
  o Gankers – Kill PvE players, take what they earned. This is why we play these games…. Please don’t get hung up here, it only results in argument. I will have some suggestions further down.
  o PvP – (the real kind, jk lol, but no really) Maybe this is the exception??
   Sieges already have huge implications, not sure divine rewards matter.
   Sheriffs vs Reds – maybe? But would probably just be exploited.
   Perhaps in future PvP content.
  o Gatherer – collect node, chance at divine reward appropriate for area.
  o Crafter – craft item, chance at divine reward. Level of divine reward may be based on materials required to craft? Just something to prevent spamming primitive crafts... it should be a nice bonus, but never crafting just to fish for a reward.
• Solo vs Group content – It is an MMO, so there should be plenty of group play, but also there’s not always a friend online to play with. While both should be effective, group play needs to be rewarded more.
  o Currently, when you group, divine reward drops rates are divided by number of players in the group. This seems fine at first glance... the group of 2 just needs to kill twice the number of mobs in the same amount of time and its fine – but that isn’t all there is to it. Meeting, partying, looting substantially more mobs, splitting the loot, trusting the other player to split honestly, hoping the spawn can keep up with the increased kill rate, all require additional effort.
   Supplement the drop rates for groups. For example, allow groups to receive +20% normal droprate split evenly among the players in the group. As always, there will need to be a system in place to prevent exploiting. This is specifically for solo content, while grouped.
   Content designed/balanced for a group (summoned legends/ultimates) should be rewarding enough that when split among the participants, each of their GPM should be a level up from CR7-9 (This is certainly not the case on live)
• Population balance – everyone agrees neither world should feel dead (my gut tells me we should never have split the population to begin with, but I digress)
  o Use divine reward drop rates to seduce players to the low pop world (note it would buff Terra too should the scales tip in the other direction) – but instead of the current 25% increase, make it dynamic. And don’t be afraid to go to the extreme.
   This buff should be visible to players, and players should expect this to be dynamic, and factor it into their decision of which world to spend their time on for each gaming session.
   The bonus should change depending on real-time population distribution across worlds, the more reactive the better. (Not sure what kind of system limitations may be in place to prevent this without system restarts/etc.)
  • Take precautions to avoid exploits/manipulation of the system. Players that are parked somewhere doing nothing shouldn’t count in calculations.
   Be aggressive if necessary. It shouldn’t matter if this must be the current 25%, or 50%, double, triple, whatever it takes to balance the population.
  • Depending where it lands, it may have some impact on the economy.
  o If so, keep the overall drops the same, and do a simultaneous buff/nerf combo: ex. Level 1 population correction 10% buff to low pop world/10% nerf to high pop world, Level 2 population correction 20% buff/20% nerf, etc.
  o Since the whole point is to use loot to seduce players to the low pop world, we want to ensure that they are the ones benefiting from the increased drops, not Red players.
   Options:
  • Each divine reward has a chance to be un-lootable.
  • The divine rewards that dropped as a direct result of the buff are un-lootable. More complicated, but my favorite since it leaves Red players unaffected and provides feedback to the player that the buff is working for them.
• Red vs Blue - Only the best Red players should be able to sustain themselves from ganking only. Most Reds should have to supplement with an alt PvE character/crafter/gatherer/etc.
  o If the average Red can sustain themselves from ganking, then the best are going to be TOO rich. It’s quite fun ganking people and breaking even, no need to reward it excessively. If you are tired of losing your sets and posting bail, then considering being a Sheriff.
  o When Red players are too successful, it makes it more difficult to balance the population.
   On live server, I believe Red player ganks are too successful. There are many ways to address this, and we will all argue which is best until we are blue in the face. But, I believe the less talked about issue is how easily you can dismount another player. If a player is mounted, spec’d for defense and mobility, and actively running away from the fight, it should be near impossible to kill them. I would achieve this by reducing or eliminating CC to horses and possibly buffing their health as well. Successful ganks should primarily be limited to a Red player finding a Blue player while dismounted (fighting mobs, gathering materials, etc) OR when multiple reds are coordinated in their effort to dismount the Blue player OR when a blue player decides to fight.
  o Many Red players complain how Sheriffs are back in the fight too quickly after being killed and executed without much consequence other than some durability loss. I’m inclined to agree. Maybe Sheriffs should incur a fee to regain their badge after death. Red players stand to gain more than Sheriffs, so obviously it must be less taxing to be a Sheriff than a Red.

[Masochist]

Formatting was lost in the copy/paste. My apologies.

[Wargfoot]

As long as I can imbue I don't mind the low drop rate for rewards as it provides a very long term goal.