Best posts made by Alexian

Alliances will exist in Fractured and apparently feature in-game UI options.

Nothing necessarily wrong with that, of course, but I wonder what challenges and obstacles the devs will put in place for guild alliances?

In Albion Online, alliances are a major political component... but often chilled content. Mega-alliances dominate the land and there's no disadvantage associated with them.

For example, alliances in AO lack friendly fire, so invasion day battles often become giant zerg fests for territory, since there's no challenge or difficulty in just throwing bodies at the enemy and spamming AOE attacks.

Additionally, though AO advertises itself as a hardcore game of subterfuge and diplomacy, there's no effective way to betray alliances - no Red Wedding style assassinations can occur, since in order to pull it off you'd have to drop out of the alliance UI in the first place and telegraph your attack.

This is, of course, an ongoing chain of thought from my other thread about guilds. I ardently believe Fractured should avoid AO's many, many pitfalls when it comes to guilds and alliances.

So what obstacles/challenges should alliances be forced to face in Fractured?

Meridian is eagerly anticipating Wednesday's upcoming test. We're still accepting itinerant guilds and solo players into our capital if they need a home with a strong community.

Meridian is looking forward to Wednesday's upcoming test with everyone.

Any guild or solo player needing a place to hang their hat during this upcoming test should consider becoming a resident of our capital, Zenith.

@Roccandil said in What challenges should guild alliances face?:

Dude, I feel like you're crediting the Albion alliance system with far too much innovation. I really don't understand your fixation with it!

Because Albion is the most immediate and relevant reference for the kind of system I’d like to avoid. I never claimed they invented it.

To me, the basic functionality of a game-supported alliance is the following:

• You can't attack allies

Additional functionality would be:

• Ally NPC guards will support you
• You can enter alliance-controlled areas
• You gain access to a central alliance chat

Nothing innovative or complicated there, and that's basically how alliances in Wurm Online worked, for instance. No limit I ever found on alliances, either; Wurm Online simply didn't have enough population to create the problems Albion Online has faced.

Albion’s system, among other problems, has enabled a painfully small handful of organizations to rigidly control the game since it launched in July 2017.

This is indisputably bad. It’s not good. It doesn’t promote a dynamic and exciting political culture for aspiring guilds and alliances. It is the very definition of, “you can’t beat ‘em, better join ‘em!”

It suggests to ambitious but smaller guilds that they need to join the problem rather than fight it in order to, borrowing your phrase, “experience endgame content.”

No guild or alliance or coalition should ever be so powerful or secure that devs have to impose GvG seasons and territory resets to wipe the board clean every month, or double the size of conquerable land and create hideouts for smaller guilds specifically to allow smaller guilds a chance for glory.

That’s what happened with AO lol. I’m not sure why you refuse to acknowledge the problems and the desperate corrective efforts that SBI has gone through to try to fix things.

The irony is that if AO were truly that unpopular, the alliance system wouldn't be a problem. AO is a victim of its own success; I suspect its alliance system would do just fine with a significantly lower population. I see it as a scaling issue, not a fundamental flaw.

In short, "No one plays Albion Online any more, it's too crowded!"

Respectfully, that’s a spurious argument!

Albion Online saw major freefalls in player population multiple times throughout its 2 year run. It went F2P in April in order to bolster an exceedingly low player population.

The fact that the game is relatively populated now doesn’t refute the fact that its alliance system is highly criticized by many players and guild leaders, is a subject of two major threads in the developer statements subforum, and has prompted many conciliatory gestures by SBI.

So again I reiterate: alliances in a Fractured should be difficult to maintain. There should always be the viable threat of betrayal and intrigue and deception. Conquering and maintaining sweeping territory should be exceedingly difficult and grueling and prompt major considerations by alliance leaders, “is this worth it?”

That’s what happened with empires and coalitions in the real world and so should it be here. It should be virtually impossible for zerg guilds and alliances to rule the game as they do in AO.

Zenith, capital of Meridian, has officially been claimed for the Spring 2021 Alpha!

• It includes three major resources stone, iron, and tin deposits
• Its soil is moderately fertile
• It is strategically defensible with respect to sieges
• It is reasonably close to various points of interest, including Goblin Hills and the Vale of Shadows

Zenith and Meridian are both open to solo players and other guilds who don't want the hassle of maintaining their own city.

@PeachMcD said in Meridian:

@Alexian - @Razvan escorted me to the Vale today and tanked for me so I could kill a buncha mobs and get some skills. It was like 3AM in Romania Can't thank him enough.

As we've discussed, though @Razvan is a notorious deviant who's been repeatedly spotted standing outside @Kirkuz's house without pants on, he's quite knowledgeable and dedicated to helping his fellow guild mates.

It is for this very reason we tolerate his pantsless conduct.

@Roccandil said in What challenges should guild alliances face?:

They already can. Leaving the alliance at a critical time will do exactly that.

That shouldn't be your only recourse and requires the presence of someone with the UI permissions to drop out of the alliance at the appointed time.

Imagine, if you will, at the Red Wedding - arguably the ultimate betrayal/false flag in contemporary fiction - Walder Frey had to put "The Rains of Castamere" on loop because he had to unfriend Robb Stark from Facebook, change his banners, and get written permission to shank him first.

No, the whole point about alliances is that they should be tenuous if you don't put in the work and that even then there's no guarantee of anything.

The problem I see is that you're thinking tactically, not strategically, about friendly fire and betrayal.

How so?

Maintain, I can see that, negotiate, definitely not. That is, negotiation should be entirely up to the players; the game shouldn't intrude on that process. Once an alliance has been agreed upon, however, I want the game to enforce it (include any appropriate maintenance).

Yes, that's precisely what I mean: the players should be able to negotiate the style and nature of the alliance. AO treats "alliances" like one-size-fits-all empires with lord-vassal relationships.

I agree.

You say that... and yet disabling friendly fire will make it much, much easier for alliances to gain and retain control. They won't have to worry much about battlefield tactics and positioning; critical betrayals by allies will be telegraphed and much harder to pull off.

Absolutely. Disabling friendly fire in no way hurts that. Again, the kind of friendly fire you're talking about is minor, and suited mostly for griefing.

Not at all. Enabled friendly fire will compel guild and alliance military leaders to consider positioning and tactics much more carefully than OMG SWARM 'EM AND DROP AOEs HAHAHAHAHAHA KEEP CLICKIN TIL THEY'RE DEAD. They'll also have to wonder if their ostensible allies can and will betray them at a crucial point in the battle.

It would hurt -far- more if I were depending on Ally A to guard my back from Enemy B in a protracted war while I fought Enemy A on a different front, and Ally A decided to join my enemies. Friendly fire is entirely irrelevant to that level of betrayal.

They dovetail.

In your scenario, imagine Ally A has the option to actively attack you during the battle because of secret negotiations and arrangements with Enemy A. But, irony of ironies, unbeknownst to them you have negotiated a clandestine truce with Enemy B, who's tired of Enemy A's shenanigans, and they come to your defense when you're betrayed by Ally A!

And lo, no one has to pause to drop out of an alliance UI and telegraph the damn thing in advance. My suggestion only enhances your scenario.

I started with F2P, and my journey through Albion thus far has been quite interesting. I haven't felt choked at all by the alliance system, and I've seen all kinds of dynamic and exciting political culture.

I started when the game launched in July 2017.

And you may not be choked because your philosophy has been, by your own admission, to join bigger alliances for endgame content.

Speaking of...

I don't have a problem with smaller guilds joining alliances to experience endgame content. I actually like how easy Albion's system makes it for a new guild to get in on the action and start learning.

I don't have a problem with that either. But smaller guilds shouldn't feel compelled to do so because it's impossible to dislodge the "big dogs" due to the game's mechanics.

You do understand that that's how TBI, our mutual alliance, was formed, correct? Members of SUN, one of the most powerful guilds in AO, specifically formed a guild and alliance because it wasn't really feasible for most guilds to get a taste of endgame content under the extant system. TBI was sponsored and patronized by SUN's leader, Franksinatra, until the others got it up and running.

And even then, they had to pay a mercenary GvG team to gain any traction. When that team bounced, TBI was screwed.

I see this as the developers attempting to improve the game, while keeping accessibility to large alliances intact for players and guilds. That's their decision, and I can understand it.

That's a heck of a spin!

These updates occurred because AO's system made it virtually impossible to challenge and dislodge big alliances. Per AO's own staff:

The Future of Guilds, Alliances and Outlands
The most universal feedback we received focussed on limiting the influence of large alliances and the ability of new guilds to compete in the territory ownership gameplay in the Outlands.

Hope everyone is well; Meridian looks forward to the Fall 2021 test!

As a reminder, solo players and other guilds who don't want the hassle of trying to claim a city of their own are welcome to become Zenith citizens and residents.

@Hawks282 Hi Hawks! Thanks for the DM; check your inbox for my response.

Hope everyone is doing well this weekend. Meridian is looking forward to the next test!

@Roccandil said in What challenges should guild alliances face?:

That's an all-or-nothing argument, but this is a question of risk management. Friendly fire and collisions represent mechanics at high risk for griefing in an MMO.

Personally, I don't believe the cost is worth any benefit they might provide.

It’s not an “all or nothing argument” lol. It’s merely a fact.

There is absolutely no way to completely prevent griefing as long as Fractured is multiplayer and includes PvP content.

So any player has to accept the fact that griefing is inevitable. Two questions follow. First: how much griefing is tolerable? Second: what systems and mechanics can the devs program into the game to deter untrammeled griefing?

Those are valid questions worth asking and worth debating. But the premise, that griefing is inevitable, is beyond dispute.

You’re free to disagree, challenge, or improve upon the suggestions I and others have made, of course.

Now, as regards your spat with @Gothix, I’m sorry to say he’s right: no one on OUR side of the debate has insisted that their “rules” apply to all three planets. I share his respect for various play styles and also don’t want to impose my views of PvP onto Arboreus.

The other side of the debate, however....

@Gothix said in Partnering with humble bundle:

The biggest role of publisher for an indie company is international players support.

Small companies dont have enough resources to, on their own, adapt their game to rules and laws of each specific country, to offer player support to all nationalities and handle all issues that can arise, legal and otherwise.

That's where publisher comes in, with their already developed global network and experience handling finances, laws and global player support in exchange for portion of profits.

Problem are those greedy publishers that additionally want rights to change game and/or its cash shop, to squeeze out over time the most cash from players.

Those developers care not about longevity of the game, they just pick publishing of game after game, do money grab and move to another game when old one fails.

This is why it is CRUCIAL for devs to pick good rep, established publisher if they don't want their game failing to quickly.

Publisher will just move on to another game instantly. What will devs do? Another 4 years of new game development?

Sadly, this is what decent part of developers don't understand well enough.

Thanks for the insight on this relationship between developer and publisher! So, basically, DMS will need the services of a good publisher and should they get a bad one, the game could be severely compromised?

Though many of us disagree with some of the proposed mechanics, the upshot is that we all seem to be in consensus that it should be very difficult for guilds, alliances, and other orgs to project and maintain power and that the devs should do as much as possible to avoid the boring, crippling status quo that plagues other games like Albion Online most recently.

Excellent work @Bardikens!

Glad to see the suggestion doc is ready for release and discussion.

In addition to the stuff we already discussed, I wish to say again I support your call for a guild audit log that allows officers to track who has joined and left the guild within a reasonable timeframe so Discord permissions and such can be adjusted accordingly.

@Bardikens said in Bardikens' Compendium of Suggestions Part 2: Logistics/Economy:

As mentioned in the first part, which can be found in @Alexian 's Alliance thread, I will be breaking my compendium of suggestions into different groupings of talking points. Last time we looked at Guilds and Alliances. This time we will change gears a bit and look at Logistics and Economies in Sandboxes and how I feel they should play out in Fractured. Please note that I'm not an expert in economics and as such I will be attacking this topic from a more... perhaps ideal lens. Feel free to contradict me, but I ask that the discussion be lively and productive.

(As usual, you can find the whole document here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qrD2MwlirFeuFF3U88XVUcvPa3yVbbslkbImYow0XJk/edit?usp=sharing)

I think it's fantastic that you decided to proceed with this. There are a lot of great suggestions and insightful commentary in this compendium, folks!

Logistics in a Sandbox MMO

What is logistics in a sandbox?

This is another area of a sandbox that is far more unique than most games. While most themeparks require logistics in the form of raid prep, pvp practice, and gearing, the sandbox goes a step further by requiring the movement of items and gear and the creation of said gear usually being a part played by the player.

The movement of these items are often done via tedious, though rewarding, activities such as hauling them across the world, or by organizing them within storage areas akin to warehouses. Some games choose to make this process less tedious by allowing fast travel, carry limits that are absurdly high, or by linking auction houses so that you can obtain the same resources without the opportunity cost of moving them. I think these are the wrong way to go about logistics in a sandbox.

Completely agreed here. I'm happy that Fractured is employing a relatively realistic system for large item movement and transportation. It is, as you say, "tedious but rewarding."

What should logistics look like in Fractured:

Logistics in Fractured needs to exploit the large mass of land provided in game. Since the worlds are so big, consideration should be taken when having to move goods across it. Whether it be through hiring third party groups who specialize in caravans, or through moving your own goods across the world, it should take time, effort, and be open to exploitation by people who are looking to disrupt your logistical flow.

Logistics, therefore, should be a niche that someone with acuity for organization should be able to fill while having a fulfilling time playing the game running these networks, much like fighting appeals to some people and governing to others.

• Trade caravans should be necessary for the movement of mass amounts of resources across the continents/planets. They should be able to be intra-guild or hopefully niches will exist for people to carry out these caravans and be paid for doing so, taking the place of auction houses by actually BEING in game, rather than magicked away.

• When passing through friendly territory, perhaps there should be some way to hire NPC guards (as well as players), who will be paid upon completion of a contract automatically (similar to quests in other games and beacons in something like Star Citizen).

• Moving resources to attack another power should also thusly be difficult. If you need to siege a town, you should either have to carry the tools to do so, or scavenge them from the area.

• Trade should NOT be conducive to fast travel, with the exception of moving between planets.

Why?

The point of having almost everything exist in the game and be exploited by groups in the game is to allow for complex interactions to take place between players who want to fill niches other than the ones provided by standard games. Someone should want to be a caravaneer and should be encouraged to set up contracts and quests. People who want to protect these guys should want to go along and escort in order to receive a bit of money through, hopefully, little effort. Ultimately what this does is encourages different niches for players of different abilities to fill. Not everyone wants to play the no-nonsense warrior out to kill every foe. Some people might want to be tradesmen, merchants, or mail carriers. This would help them live their dreams and could also spawn guilds that aren’t focused on being land-owning empires so much as merchant republics, artisan guilds, or even mercenaries for hire.

Logistics should be difficult and should be thought out and properly organized by the people wishing to take advantage of the game mechanics. It doesn’t have to be 1:1 real life, but there should be an incentive for people to play these roles too.

100% agreed here. Fractured's vision for gathering, construction, trade, and logistics will hopefully be so realistic that it will inspire some guilds and groups to pursue filling this niche.

I'd love to see a group of traders come together and, instead of wasting time trying to claim territory and build up their own cities, organize into a merchant guild that purchases or rents chapter houses/offices in other cities. You could also have mercenary groups who specialize as hired security forces for trade caravans.

Fractured should not simply be comprised of guilds striving to be conquerors and empires. We should see guilds of various types across all three planets that serve a particular and lucrative niche. This is something that distinguishes Fractured's vision from games like Albion Online, where such things are possible but not encouraged and far from necessary.

Part 5: The Economy in a Sandbox

What does the economy of a sandbox mmo look like?

The hallmark of sandbox games are their dynamic economies. Items and gold go into the economy mostly via the player and they also leave the economy via the player through taxes, item degradation and destruction, and costs associated with utilizing NPC features of the game. The difference between a sandbox and a themepark in regards to economy usually stems from the removal of items from the game, thereby hopefully limiting inflation. Themeparks usually utilize higher commodity fees and taxes to stem inflation, but over time it still usually happens as quests give higher rewards and there are fewer penalties for making certain mistakes (WoW being a good example of inflation).

What should the economy look like in Fractured?

I won't depart from most hardcore sandbox games in this regard as there is no perfect solution and often these things must be adjust over time.

I personally think the economy of Fractured should consist of money coming in via various tasks (or by giving dynamic value to goods that can then be bartered in lieu of coinage) as normal. As more money enters the economy, there will need to be outlets that make money leave the economy.

On top of this, I agree with most hardcore games that markets should spring up around the player as much as possible, so banks, markets, and player markets should all be local to the area they are in.

• Purchases can contain small fees that delete a small percentage of currency from the game per transaction. These should be done via player stores AND npc stores, however trading and the like would be exempt as normal.

• Auction houses should be player ran as much as possible and tied to local towns only. This gives incentive for there to be a niche that can be filled and these players must also carry and move stock and inventory.
  If that isn't feasible, then local auction houses should be built and paid for by the town with an upkeep that deletes money from the economy.

• Towns should have job boards that can be posted on that hold money in escrow until tasks are accepted and (within a time limit) completed at which time the person who completes it will be paid.

• Job boards should also allow people to post buy orders for quantities of resources and goods and keep these separated from the auction house (see quests).

• Items should have a chance to be permanently lost on death or after too many repairs.

• Item degradation should slowly deteriorate a weapon's maximum durability over time (with horizontal gear, this shouldn't be too awful). This will also play into crafting later.

Why?

Economies in games are one of the signs of the health of the game itself and this is doubly so regarding hardcore sandboxes where the economy of the game stems directly from player input and output, far more so than themeparks, where npc content often adds more to the economy outside of cash flow and resources they can be obtained elsewhere.

It is a precarious balance that always has to be maintained. When new items enter the game, when new cash flows are introduced, something has to become a cash sink or item sink so that inflation isn't out of hand.

There’s probably a lot more that I could say on economy, but I am no expert here for sure.

Economics isn't my forte.

That said, I'm pleased that Fractured plans to have job boards/notice boards. Hopefully, in conjunction with player quests, this will facilitate your suggestion.

@Gothix said in Effect from Taming on mainly PvP:

I would guess, if you can tame an animal and she can fight with you, then it will be available everywhere where you can fight anything.

A nice option would be, you can tell it to stay in your house, if you wish walk around alone, your tamed animal could stay in your home like a pet, resting under a tree or something.

Perhaps even guarding your home from potential intruders?

@GamerSeuss said in Markets and Merchant Guilds - A Reimagining of the Current System:

@Alexian Just because I don't interpret what you say directly how you mean it doesn't mean I don't read it.

When your "interpretation" of my words differs wildly from the plain meaning of them, the most charitable conclusion I can offer you is that you didn't read my words in the first place.

The less-charitable but perhaps more accurate conclusion is that you're deliberately misrepresenting my words in bad faith.

For any kind of charter system to work, they would need to limit the number of charters a city would have available. That's just a fact of the matter. Otherwise, every city would try to sign up everyone they could. Now, granted, in your interpretation, it is the Guild/Group that is limited on how many they can accept, and that would create some competition for charters, with the Cities trying to sign the biggest and most prolific guilds out there before anyone else fills up their quota. Again, ,Solo'ists would become an afterthought. They would get the few remaining places, maybe, but would have a hard time to compete.That is if they can even get a response in from the city Governors so focused on landing the big guilds.

The bold, italicized text is crucial. I'm delighted after many days' worth of exchanges, you finally decided to acknowledge the plain reading of mine and @Bardikens' words. It's about damn time, frankly.

He proposed and I endorsed a cap for city charters to merchants so merchants/groups of merchants/merchant empires would be effectively unable to monopolize continental economies and foster competition. Cities themselves may indeed need to be capped as well, but merchant caps and city caps needn't be the same.

You could create a system that allows cities to offer more charters to merchants than individual merchant entities (e.g. solo merchants, small merchant groups, sprawling merchant empires) can themselves accept. A system where, hypothetically and for easy numbers, cities can offer up to 15 separate charters but each merchant entity may only accept 5 charters total.

This could indeed create a system where cities have room to offer merchant players their own charters without necessarily forgoing more lucrative relationships with other, bigger merchant groups, because they'd have plenty of charter room to share. And the fact that merchants of any size would be limited in the number of charters they can accept means that those entities would be unable to compete for every city's patronage.

The big thing is, this system still would incentivize Guilds. Big Guilds become so much more attractive for Cities to sign charters with. Solo'ists become afterthoughts. Sure, they can sign as many solo'ists as they want, but it really won't help them compete in that kind of market.

Those big guilds would be limited in the number of charters they could accept for cities. Meaning even if many cities sought charters with those big guilds, those big guilds would be limited in what they could accept and thus cities would have to look elsewhere to grant charters.

Solo players will never have the appeal of big guilds in any context in any sandbox MMO. But this system certainly won't make that lack of appeal worse..

@Farlander said in Tanning Tubs Are a Disaster:

Stealing is not allowed on the Beast world. So in keeping with that ruleset other players should not be allowed to steal your hides that you spent TIME and EFFORT gathering only to take them from you while they were in a tanning tub. I don't care about realism, I don't care about some fake smell that doesn't even exist. What I care about is the game not allowing other players to steal from me when I can't do anything about it. In real life I could call a cop or just shoot their asses lol. That's not possible in the game so where is the realism there?

It's a situation that needs to be addressed and I'm sure an oversight by the devs. They have alot on their plate right now with all the bugs. I offered a solution with instant tanning tools. Another would be to instance the tanning tub itself to each player so that others can not access your hides. Maybe even have security levels put on the tub to allow all, guild, friend or own to access. I can live with timers as long as the hides do not disappear after a time length because real life happens and being in a game is not the priority of life. It's supposed to be enjoyable. If it becomes a point of frustration and work then what's the point of playing. These are my opinions but I'm sure some share them and some disagree. Hopefully a good common ground can be found.

To clarify, my initial response to you in this thread was concerning the matter of timers, not the matter of people simply stealing other players' hard-earned and time-invested products.

For the sake of clarity, I completely agree with you that Fractured should implement preventative or retributive methods to deter thieving in cities, even if enforcement is left in the hands of city governors and their NPC guards. As you say, in real life there's redress for criminal conduct which often deters widespread griefing.

While I support a hardcore/"realistic" game, I also accept that without clever, immersive safeguards to help incentivize "good" behavior and deter "bad" behavior, this game will likely die out like most other sandbox MMOs do.

Again, solid feedback all around. Cities are the crown jewel of Fractured, so it's imperative we get this right.

Cities are much too small. This was my fear before the Alpha began. I appreciate the sentiment behind transforming the cities into regional capitals, but whether or not that aspect is preserved, the city's walled maximum area needs to be greatly expanded. It was reduced from 256x256m2 to 160x160m2. That's... a significant reduction.

To me, current cities too closely resemble Albion Online cities in that they're just glorified crafting stations that the local residents use when necessary and then immediately dip. In previous tests, cities were intended to be crafting hubs, processing hubs, trading hubs, political hubs, and even residential and social hubs. But now, cities feel entirely too cramped and too useless.

I also think player houses carry entirely too much utility; as others have noted, players can just cram a smelter into every empty square inch on their property; it's preposterous that mere player houses can rival or exceed the crafting utility of cities, which is impractical and unrealistic.

Additionally, Governors are too disempowered when it comes to residents outside the city. The notion that rival guilds/enemy guilds/hostiles can just set up shop right outside the city in the residential plots and that city's Governor is helpless to do anything about it is absurd. Even the proffered compromise, that Governors can have those residents killed in between their houses and the city, is insufficient. Theoretically, zerg guilds could leverage their vast numbers to camp around a potential siegeable target and that Governor would be extremely hard-pressed to do anything meaningful about it.

QOL improvements I support include a city wide chat, city-wide noticeboard for "permanent" announcements, and a city registrar that lists city residents to the Governor.

For some of us, myself included, the player cities/regions are the single most exciting and important aspect of Fractured.

Cities have transformed considerably over the course of Alpha testing, and will likely continue to do so, so there's no way to be certain what features will remain that were once originally promised.

What city-specific features/mechanics/systems do you want included in Fractured by the time of release? And why?

For example...

• Local noticeboards for announcements, updates, requisition orders, advertisements, etc. posted by the government and city residents. Discord and Guilded will always be used, but we should try to keep player eyes and attention in the game as much as possible. Including this functionality will be extremely helpful and immersive.

• NPC guards and vendors. Player citizens and residents should have to do the lion's share of the work, but NPC guards and residents would help meaningfully supplement the civic aspects of city life. The guards and vendors shouldn't be as effective as player guards and merchants, but they'll do in a pinch!

Just wanna say I'm extremely hyped about these upcoming features, which seem very nuanced and hardcore. Looking forward to see the fruits of our labor!