Yo! With the latest alpha in full swing, many questions new and old have been coming up about the game. The last Q&A I saw was about the current alpha with City Management and the Talent Tree, but it didn't cover a lot of things that many of the newer players along with veterens are asking about from fast travel, the misty Vale of Shadows, PVP, bosses, enchanting, social interactions and much more!

Although Dynamighty are working with all hands on deck, is now a good time to review the first few days of the alpha with patches, reinforce the interest of the players and set out some of the magic still to come - YES! All through the eyes-on-the-prize with Oxfurd!

There are some pain points for newcomers: no easy way to get unstuck from those impossible situations, unwarranted deaths from starvation and then respawning miles away and losing all your loot, those damn wisps, enchanting not working then working again and pain changing to pleasure with the new items that can be crafted with hints of customisation. A lot of things are working and more things are getting patched to work as bugs get squashed, so how can we keep up the momentum to keep the community engaged?

What does the future alpha hold for us? Tell us MOAR!

Yo! With the latest alpha in full swing, many questions new and old have been coming up about the game. The last Q&A I saw was about the current alpha with City Management and the Talent Tree, but it didn't cover a lot of things that many of the newer players along with veterens are asking about from fast travel, the misty Vale of Shadows, PVP, bosses, enchanting, social interactions and much more!

Although Dynamighty are working with all hands on deck, is now a good time to review the first few days of the alpha with patches, reinforce the interest of the players and set out some of the magic still to come - YES! All through the eyes-on-the-prize with Oxfurd!

There are some pain points for newcomers: no easy way to get unstuck from those impossible situations, unwarranted deaths from starvation and then respawning miles away and losing all your loot, those damn wisps, enchanting not working then working again and pain changing to pleasure with the new items that can be crafted with hints of customisation. A lot of things are working and more things are getting patched to work as bugs get squashed, so how can we keep up the momentum to keep the community engaged?

What does the future alpha hold for us? Tell us MOAR!

In the previous test, I had no problem kiting in PVE as a mage, although some of the changes for this test will change how that works.

The DEX -> Speed increase for this test will also change how the PVP and PVE mechanics work, so we will just have to try them out and see how they impact our playstyles.

The combat was reasonable in the last playtest for the current state of the game - alpha. As for stutter stepping staggering (are you talking about interrupts?), I didn't notice that as a mechanic and it didn't affect how I kited. The only good interrupts I used were killing the mob or using Power Word: Stun, at opportune moments. There are a lot more stun type skills and also slows, both should help if you want to kite more effectively.

I didn't encounter any skill ceiling at all.

Overall, combat was probably too easy for PVE which is why we have seen a number of changes in the upcoming playtest to balance it out for both PVE and PVP.

I want a really engaging open game. If I want to PVE, I can roam around and explore new places, kill some mobs, craft some potions, stitch together some armour and bang some iron on anvils for an hour or two. If I want to poke someone in the eye, I can find some not-so-nice people somewhere to stab repeatedly... and hopefully do all these things with a bunch of peeps who want to do some similar things.

Give me some solid, reliable and permanent systems then sprinkle some variance and randomness in there so that we can all experience a feeling of pseudo-change to ourselves and our environment.

TL;DR: Make crafting great again!

@Tuoni rgr, that makes sense.

Initially, I still think the main market will be for plain vanilla non-enchanted gear (if you do happen to die in a strange and lonely place far from respawn or when PVP full loot is implemented) but it is likely to be always cheap because it is quite easy to make by everyone. At this stage, the more interesting market will be the always useful top tier enchants and enchanted gear which is likely to be where the money is made for now if at all.

I still think the gearing will be very limited in this test (because we are testing city management), but I also hope to see how the economy forms and transforms through the test. I made all my gear last test and tried all the variations and many enchants but I didn't really see a market opportunity as everyone either made their own gear or prolly had a friend or guildie make it for them - gear was easy to gather mats for and make. I am not sure what the design intent is for the economy or when the economy is scheduled to make an official appearance, but having something like a auction house or player vendors might help get things started (don't remember either in the last test) along with resource scarcity (wargs were the hardest to source for me in terms of gathered mats) and regional resources (if you check out the proposed resource map) could all help kickstart the economy... that, and PVP full loot when that gets introduced.

TL;DR: Death gives life to the economy... but we're testing city stuff

@Tuoni said in Death and what it entails:

@KairosVal First, to be honest, this is very cheap way to handle the gear progression, I get it, it is easy from development point of view when you have only few different gear pieces and you just gamble with the passive stats. Moreover, this creates a situation where there is as much different enchanted gear pieces as much there is enchanters. This can easily lead to situation that the supply does not meet with the demand because there will not be gear pieces available people actually want. Albion Online had (in one point of development) a gear system where the abilities and passives where selected during the crafting. This caused that the markets were filled with products that did not sell. SBI had to change the system so players can freely select the abilities and passives they want to use. I can see that this similar problem will come ahead also in Fractured.

You don't have to "gamble" at all with passive enchants for your gear, you can get the exact passives you want if you can find the right combination of enchanting mats as well as the inherent passives from the base materials (for armour at least.) I think you can also change the enchants at any enchanting table iirc, so it is the base item that you need (sword, staff, armour, etc) and the required enchanting mats to produce your shiny new enchanted item. Even if I remember that wrong, making new items was easy enough. During the last alpha, only some "primitive" weapons and armour were available, so there is quite a broad scope for new weapons and armour along with enchanting mats for T3 enchants to allow for variance when combined with stat distributions.

If the problem is certain items not selling and flooding the markets, that would be a supply issue from the in-game users and could be rectified by them - stop listing stuff that doesn't sell - no need for design input from Dynamighty. I actually see a permanent market for all the base items (unenchanted) and also a market for premium enchanted items (best in slot) as well as enchanting services at this time because only a handful of peeps can do pure enchants, although the enchanting-as-a-service market should decrease as more peeps take the time to experiment and research top-tier pure enchants.

In the PVE vs PVP planning, @Freas did equally well against tanks, assassins and mage builds with his observation skills, in-game skill rosters and natural skills to kill anyone and everyone (I think.) He only had one set of armour that I remember and focused on a couple of weapons - he had 100% magic resist and high frost resist as well as something close to 100% fire resist on his armour with high base+melee+crit damage on some armour and his weapons. Obviously he was OP and many of those factors have been nerfed for the upcoming test (thanks for finding the OP bits @Freas ) but that test phase was successful in uncovering some of the issues presented.

The whole gear crafting as of last alpha fully encapsulated the "horizontal progression" system that Fractured has advertised. Come in as a new player, pick up a weapon and throw some armour on, go and be competitive without being gated by gear. New players still need to do some achievements to get some flashier skills, but that isn't a huge barrier as you can go thump some monsters. The only advantage a long time player would have is more unlocked skills to choose from (but still limited to x skills per rest), more experience with the in-game system (that new players would also accumulate over time) and possibly some enchanted gear (which could be made available to new players if they were part of a guild or if they purchased some.)

Hopefully we can craft a few more weapons or some heavy armour this time around, but the test is aimed at town and city management so that might not be the case.

As for "Death and what it entails...", I think the last test worked well except some of the respawn locations made getting back to your corpse a long and involved run.

TL;DR: Death worked well last test, please make the respawn locations work correctly for this test

Are these enchants for a T1 Armor Magic Resistance? Most don't seem to add up to 5 across the board which is required for T2 enchants.

Awesome how you can automate all of this as enchants are a great addition to increase survivability and stabbiness!

Yes please! Currently playing the open test and having fun!