Right now the ingredient drops of animal mobs are quite random, and oddly so (how come most rabbits I kill don't have feet?)

I'd love to see the following system:

• You kill an animal
• You skin/butcher an animal, if you have the right tool
• Your loot results are determined by your knowledge of the animal (and perhaps the quality/type of tool)
• RNG has no part!

The animal knowledge trees would thus have ingredient unlocks as well as abilities, which would make it even more interesting to get knowledge for creatures without abilities (like rabbits!).

So, at rabbit knowledge level x%, you unlock the ability to always loot a rabbit foot.

As to humanoid mobs like goblins, this system could still work, but only for ingredients that are innate to their bodies, like tongues (and not simply something they might be carrying).

Talents

I really enjoyed the talent system! Gave me a good reason to go out doing everything different I could. I also felt like with talents, I was powerful enough to solo more content (notably wisps).

Suggestions on talents/knowledge:

• Sixty talent points seem too few somehow!
• Would be cool if crafting also provided knowledge.
• I wish the base attributes were set via the talent system.

Roads

I enjoyed the paved road system, especially since I wound up running through a bunch of town centers simply because it was beneficial to do so.

The ninety degree turns in the middle of nowhere felt odd, but I'm assuming all of those were in potentially claimable town locations.

Player-made stone roads need the speed bonus!

Cities

The bank, tavern, and town hall are cool. I also liked the wood stacking system for the carpenter.

I'm not entirely sure, however, I like how much crafting content is gated to cities (even though it will pressure players to join cities, which will help me out as a governor).

As a neutral point, I didn't notice any difference between large and small towns, other than the number of possible house plots. City status descriptions were somewhat confusing.

The worst part for me may have been laying claim blueprints: they often didn't work, for no apparent reason, even when the color said they were placeable.

Suggestions on towns (obvious permission problems aside):

• Would be very nice to have multiple bank tabs!
• Quarries: we need a quarry building for mass stone block production!
• Tree farms would also be a nice addition
• When mass-placing claims (or anything else, like tubs), would be awesome if I could check a "repeat" box, so I didn't have to navigate the crafting interface just to select the same thing again
• Are there going to be 5x5 or bigger house claims, so we can build the biggest houses?
• Would love a way for citizens to leave messages for me in the Town Hall

Other pros

I liked seeing the endurance bar become prominent.

Gripes

I don't enjoy the randomness inherent to the enchanting system. I tolerate it, but it feels like a good concept dragged down.

Target selection is frustrating. The best spells for me are those that don't require a target, simply because I can reliably use them in a fight.

Mob sniping/stealing shouldn't be possible. If party A gets a mob down to 1% health, lone player B shouldn't be able to take the last hit and get all the knowledge and loot. A system that weighs the damage done by varying parties involved to determine who gets the kill would be very nice.

I don't enjoy gear permanently wearing out. Would be nice if we could at least repair it.

I don't enjoy the amount of hard CC in the game (even in PvE). CC basically takes me out of the game, and I've never found that enjoyable.

We really need party icons on the map!

I'd love to be able to build a wizard tower on a wilderness plot! Specifically:

• Multiple interior stories (at least three!)
• Ability to place the crafting stations for weaving, staff creation, and item enchanting (as well as a real fireplace/bed for memorization)
• Outdoor herb garden plots and animal pens (in the eight tiles around the central tile)
• No upkeep; just up-front upgrade/build costs
• Customizations for my Aristocrat pack! (I'd trade existing bonuses for this.)

I could see other themes as well:

• Hunter's Lodge (allows placing of woodworking and leatherworking stations/tubs)
• Outlaw Camp (blacksmithing stations)

That would provide more options than just which city to join.

@Medic

Some big differences:

• Albion has vertical progression, but Fractured has horizontal progression, as implemented by the knowledge system.
• Albion is based on NPC PvE-only cities. In Fractured, as far as I know, all cities will be player-built. This will likely make the Fractured world far more immersive (more like EVE Online).
• Albion has many small maps. Fractured has a few much bigger ones (entire continents, at this point). The single Fractured continent in Alpha feels huge compared to AO's world. Also, I get the impression there will be much less teleporting around.
• Albion's endgame is PvP only, basically. Fractured will have a planet devoted mostly to PvE (Arboreus), although it can still be invaded to an extent.
• Fractured has RNG in combat (Albion, as far as I know, does not).
• Fractured characters will be combat-ready quickly, due to the starting attribute system, whereas in Albion, you are simply what gear you wear.

I was in the test, but I couldn't play it, since it's not supported on Win 8.1 I'm not going to upgrade my system (and potentially my hardware) just for New World, so we'll see if they make it any more backward compatible in future test.

If not, I'll be waiting a while. I did notice that the game didn't seem to have a lot of new concepts, just old ones bolted together.

This was one of my suggestions for a next-gen open world MMO, and I think it largely applies to Fractured too:

Been thinking about this more, and here’s a more in-depth example of what a next-gen MMO could do:

Dynamic Wildlife Biomes

In my experience, MMOs usually have static mob spawners that do little more than replace mobs at static intervals.

Instead, what if wildlife were dynamic, changing in the world and changing the world? Here’s one possible implementation:

• Boar mobs are configured to seek out forest biomes
• A core boar spawner is placed in a forest biome, adding X boars over Y interval
• If the active boar population in the area reaches Z, then level up the spawner

The leveled spawner can now do several new things:

• Send squads of boars to investigate nearby territory for expansion
• Spawn higher-level boars, tougher, of course, and with better possible ingredients if killed
• Spawn a Boar dungeon in the heart of the forest, with (naturally) a nasty boar boss. If players complete this dungeon too many times, the spawner is considered subdued, and loses a level, ultimately reverting back to core and despawning the dungeon

The boars will thus seek to expand their territory within specific biomes (and not human-recognized territories, of course), going to war with the current wildlife in those biomes if needed. If successful, the boars will place an auxiliary boar spawner in the conquered biome, that works in all ways like the core spawner, except it can be destroyed.

At the same time, any predator that considers boars to be prey will find the increased population of boars a tasty, tasty treat! They may attempt to move in to the forest biome, and thus place an auxiliary spawner of their own kind within the boar biome (since the boars themselves are a biome to the predator).

Note how this makes “kill X mob” missions more interesting. A faction may not want boars to increase in its area, and thus will post meaningful “kill X mob” quests to control the boar population.

Or, a faction may want to prevent an enemy faction from reaping the benefits of higher-level boar ingredients, and thus post PvP boar-poaching missions, or PvP missions to complete a boar dungeon in enemy territory.

Note also how this makes world dungeons more interesting. Their appearance is dependent on more subtle world conditions, defeating them can have subtle world effects, and leaving them alone can also have subtle world effects.

Finally, the Corruption mechanic could tie right into this dynamic wildlife, by (what else) corrupting it. Corruption could send its tendrils into that boar dungeon, and it might start spawning corrupted boars in the area: tougher and more aggressive, desiring to spread Corruption as far as possible.

Furthermore, a corrupted dungeon within X distance of a faction town could have innate negative effects on the town, thus spawning more meaningful faction missions.

Again, I think the above framework transcends PvE or PvP, and provides a means to make both more meaningful.

At least in the open world, am hoping for ecosystems, with cause and effect (kill the apex predators, and the bunnies go wild, etc.).

Would be cool to see lairs that only spawn if certain conditions are met (too many bunnies? a killer rabbit dungeon spawns! ).

The more I play Alpha, the more the attribute system feels out of place (for reasons already described here). I'd consider the following:

• Use Albion's "you are what you wear" system, such that all gear innately provides attributes.
• Varying races get an innate multiplier to certain attributes, or just flat bonuses or penalties.
• Merge attributes into the talent tree system. Maybe even have unique racial talent trees (my favorite option! ).

Mainly hoping to be part of a good sandbox MMO from the start, and Fractured sounded very interesting.

Horizontal progression: very curious to see how that works in practice.

@Whisper

Good question! If I had to solve the problem, I'd look at the following:

• Logistics. Make it hard to project power, and easy to defend the home/town/castle (which has the advantage of being true to RL).
• As others have pointed out, limit guild and alliance sizes: or make them progressively more costly to maintain (again, representing a kind of logistics).

Continuing the above thread, one inherent aspect of MMOs that's foisted on developers is instant communications across the MMO world: it's like FTL comms everywhere. In RL medieval settings, the communication lag across massive distances would make unification far more difficult.

Representing that by hugely increasing maintenance costs for bigger guilds/alliances seems reasonable: "bigger" meaning more members and/or more territory controlled. (You don't meet your payments, your alliance disbands!)

@Prometheus said in Engame Changer - Objectives Preview:

After Endgame Changer: drink potions and catch new mounts with revamped mounts stats (the best are very rare!). Each type has a unique ability, but they all must be replaced when they die of old age (RIP mount).

I'd rather have the existing mounts that never die, than shiny ones that decay like everything else.

If it's just going to vanish over time, I don't care about rare anything.

Relocate was a lot of fun in PvE. I really wish Terra had a separate rules system, so that our builds and playstyles weren't constantly being wrecked by PvP rebalancing.

Yes, please! One of my biggest gripes with the interface is that when my toon gets affected by stun, confused, etc., I have no way to tell by looking at my character.

To find out, I have to look away from the action, to the upper left, which is really bad in a fight.

Another issue is the nerf to solo play. If you want people to play in groups, better support for it would help, including and especially loot splits.

I note that if killing Ogres in groups were more gold-efficient per player than solo, you wouldn't need to do a solo nerf.

Divine Reward drops are now 25% higher for players of Neutral alignment on Aerhen (e.g. 8% becomes 10%).

Why not consider making Neutrals the only players who can participate in faction-v-faction warfare, or at a minimum prevent good players from participating?

Seems like FvF should be the real draw both to Aerhen and to being Neutral, not a lore-dubious bonus that diminishes PvE on Terra.

Local reds should be punished on Syndesia, since it's (ostensibly) for faction-v-faction war, not ganking.

I'd go so far as to punish any city on Syndesia that has reds as citizens. From a faction perspective, that's like a nation harboring pirates, bandits, or terrorists.

So, I'd consider things like the following for cities with too many "Red" points on Syndesia:

• Debuffs during sieges
• Increase upkeep/crafting gold requirements
• Divine reward drop penalties for all citizens of the city

Ideally, reds on Syndesia would be from Tartaros during invasions, not local cities, and Tartaros reds wouldn't be debuffed. If you're a peaceful Syndesian out gathering during the invasion window, your blood is on your own head....

@Wargfoot said in Review after 80 hours:

There are many PvE titles that do just fine - for decades...

How many have non-repairable gear?

As for PvP adding to the longevity of the game, you cite Albion, yet in chat many people here are former Albion players.

I'm a former Albion player, and for me, Albion was fun much longer than Fractured. If someone's looking for an MMO, and hasn't tried Albion, I'd recommend it over this one.

@Wargfoot

PvE markets are already killed, because PvE content is one-shot. Once you have all the knowledge, abilities, orbs, and legend runs you want, what else is there to do?

Forcibly introducing a "cycle" into PvE via durability may stretch out the content, but that's like watering down beer.

PvP is ultimately what drives a market in a game like this, and Albion's PvP-driven economy is far better, for several reasons:

• Gear only trashes on PvP kills. This means the player who died doesn't care if an item trashes, and the killer is happy to get any loot.
• Crafted items can be studied and consumed for more crafting exp. No glut of "training" crafted items.
• Items are crafted at player-owned crafting stations, so the currency paid to do the crafting is still part of the player economy, not siphoned off to invisible, immersion-breaking NPCs.

@PoorSoul said in Review after 80 hours:

I understand and respect that the game needs a resource sink to stabilize the economy. But this can be done without giving the player a permanent feeling to deterioration.

I agree. I liked how Albion did it, where gear was only trashed in PvP combat.

@PoorSoul said in Review after 80 hours:

Item durability is a good resource sink. But it will also make this game commercially unsuccessful. It is just a bad solution for a standard MMO problem.

I tend to agree. I've mostly ignored gear because I can't repair it, and so don't enjoy it, which locks away probably more than half the game mechanics.