Best posts made by Alexian

@Jetah said in [Poll] City Reputation System:

@Alexian said in [Poll] City Reputation System:

Interesting suggestion, @Gothix! It would definitely serve as a social mechanic that incentivizes skill and a positive reputation. (Which should help deter ganking, if karma is involved.)

@Jetah said in [Poll] City Reputation System:

i thought they said there were limited NPCs and no grinding. wouldn't rep require NPCs and grinding?

How so?

how do you get your reputation increased with a town/npc if there's no grinding advertised? if we have little quantity of npcs, how does one get a discount with an npc if the game advertises a "player economy"?

I may have misunderstood, but I don't think @Gothix's proposal ties reputation to attributes/knowledge points/talents per se.

His post mentions that a player's reputation is particular to each city and could be influenced by karma, whether or not he's a member of the ruling guild, whether or not he's an actual registered citizen of the city, etc.

I imagine local politics and favor with the city's Governor would also have the means to positively or negatively impact a person's reputation.

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

Thanks!

You're welcome!

And that's okay so long as there are rewards. Look what people do in other games.

What other games do you have in mind as a reference?

Hopefully we see the growth and development of many different types of guilds that will work with one another in some way, shape or form. If a guild wants to be a trading guild, perhaps they should have a presence in many areas inside of other people's guild towns.

Yep, I propose chapter houses or some such. Why bother with claiming, building, expanding, and maintaining a town when your niche/purpose isn't to be a city-state or nation-state?

I think they go hand in hand and provide that much more for players and leaders alike to do.

Agreed.

@Bardikens @PeachMcD

It’s important to remember that for these ideas to come to fruition, the developers have to provide the mechanics and tools, but players have to utilize them. Too often modern gamers take the path of least resistance and are lazy, taking every available convenience and demanding more. I hope DMS avoids that trap!

@DevilsDog said in People who buy a founders pack today get more than yesterday:

@Xzoviac unlike Albion Online Bastards. regret supporting those buttonhole,
I dont want my ice-cold heart broken twice.
I would love to see this game become a next WOW or equivalent ( in terms of how long it will last).

Buttonhole, ha! Love it.

Albion Online seems to be Fractured's primary reference point and they intend to do pretty much everything a hell of a lot differently than AO has. If they stick to their vision, Fractured will be a much more hardcore, nuanced, and intricate game than AO could ever be.

City management. Fractured's promised political/territory system is innovative and more intricate than any I've previously encountered in an MMORPG.

This test will be the first strong indicator as to whether the devs will follow through with their ambitious promises.

Here's to hoping!

My biggest want is that Fractured be substantively different from contemporary sandpark games like Albion Online and instead is more of a spiritual successor to games like Tibia and Ultima.

That's a big ask and it's risky for the developers to honor since gamers in general are quite different than they once were. But all in all, I hope the game is a bit hardcore and inconvenient and incentivizes social interaction, a dynamic political climate, and generally avoids the features that might otherwise make it resemble a superficial MOBA you can just phone it in on when you play.

@Razvan Agreed. I appreciate there being more than a handful of towns, but if the town density on Myr will reflect the end result for every continent on every planet... yikes. The numbers should be trimmed a bit.

As we discussed, I freakin' love this idea and I look forward to the feedback from the community.

@GamerSeuss I know @Bardikens responded to you at length and I don't wanna dogpile you, but I believe you misunderstood aspects of his proposal:

• Bardikens is an outspoken opponent of global markets and global wallets. The new mechanics that will be introduced in the Fall 2021 Alpha will allow users of local marketplaces to view wares on a global scale; Bardikens' proposal will dramatically reduce that feature by only allowing chartered merchant organizations to view wares on a higher scale... and even then, only in other markets where they share that charter.

• Solo players will still have the means and opportunity to avoid interacting with chartered merchant organizations if they wish. But they'll be [rightly] at certain disadvantages: they'll have to dedicate more effort of selling or purchasing their wares as well as accruing the risks of transportation.

• Fractured is a game that should allow solo players paths to success, but it doesn't (and shouldn't) "even the playing field" between a solo player and a community. A community should almost always have a decisive advantage over a solo player and the game should incentivize solo players to get at least peripherally involved with a community. If a solo player wants free reign of a game without challenges or comparative disadvantages, they should play a single player RPG instead of a massively-multiplayer one.

@spoletta The foremost reason that trading didn't work during the previous test (IMO) was because resources were untethered from cities/regions. This allowed guilds/players/cities to simply go out and collect the resources they desired without the need to trade or interact with other guilds/players/cities.

However, in the test before that, trade was comparatively quite active and vibrant despite the various bugs and primitive marketplaces because resource nodes were locked to specific cities/regions, systemically compelling people to trade with one another.

This generation of MMO gamer is relatively unsocial and min-maxy. If you give them the means to get the things they want completely independently, they will do so, even if it takes more time and effort.

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

No, during that test, there was very little trading actually happening.
Only minerals were being traded.
Minerals are only a small part of the intended trades, so that wasn't a working example.

I said "trade was comparatively quite active and vibrant"... which it was. The previous test had virtually no trade; the test before it, by comparison, had robust trade. This is a fact.

The additional fact that trade could/should have been even more robust does not change the fact that trade was discernibly better in the test before last than in the last test.

The actual reasons why trading didn't work in the previous test are multiple:

1. No one developed a market because they wanted the tech points of other techs. Now the marketplace is available by default.
2. Gold was mostly useless. Gold is now in high demand due to all the new gold sinks.
3. Cities were able to become almost self sufficient, and unlock all important techs. New tech tree prevents cities from having it all, they MUST trade to get all kinds of equip.
4. Enchants could not be traded. Now thanks to the imbuing system they can be traded.
5. Gems had no value except for rituals. Gems are now a really important resource.

I said "the foremost reason" trading didn't work during the previous test was because resource nodes were untethered from their regions, allowing anybody to come in and take them. You citing additional, perfectly valid reasons also doesn't change that fact.

As you can see, this test is aiming at removing all reasons for tradings not happening. It is very PVE/Crafting oriented.
I too do have many ideas on possible changes for the trading, but until I see how this set of rules shapes up, I'm keeping them for myself, since I know that I will necessarily miss something important.

Yes, this test is attempting to rectify the mistakes of the previous test which killed virtually all trading. I respect that and look forward to seeing how it works. However, I think @Bardikens was just throwing out a suggestion for long-term niche activity that would incentivize merchant players. Nothing wrong with that.

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

Also, one thing the Devs said they definitely don't want to do, is allow players to bypass the exploration aspect of the game. Even if you want to primarily be a merchant or a city builder, they want you to have to go out and explore, killing some mobs, and gathering some resources, if for nothing else but to fill up your knowledge points. This means they aren't going to want to put in a system that generally allows a player to bypass exploration, especially when they are already having a hard time coming up with End-Game content to keep everyone interested.

At this point, my suspicion is you're not actually reading my posts, since yours address strawmen. Nowhere in this thread or in any other have @Bardikens or I advocated for system mechanics that would discourage, let alone prevent, merchant-minded players from engaging in gameplay exploration.

The only thing Bardikens' proposed system would do is incentivize and reward a gameplay niche for those players who want to spend more time merchanting and directly engaging in economic activities than in other gameplay aspects; this would not allow players to bypass exploration.

I am definitely with @spoletta in that I think we should see how the current system works before we try to fix it. I'm not a huge fan of the Global Wallet, and I'm not 100% on searching other markets (although I would chalk that up to hanging at a marketplace and listening to the merchants gossip about where they've been kinda information from a RP standpoint)

Then revisit this thread after the test?

As to the concept of "if you don't want to participate in community stuff, go play a non-MMO/singleplayer game...that's not the point at all. There's a reason solo'ists want to play in MMOs, and it is not just to complain about Guildies. MMOs were always meant for both types of players. Players want the real world possibility of running into a friend in game. They want the chance, on rare occasions to go on a big raid, or group up, but don't want to be locked into having to do it. There is a difference. CHOICE. I've been playing MMOs since they came out too, and MUDs, MUCKs, MUSHes, and MOOs before that. The games have Multiplayer in their title because of the possibility, not the mandate that you should play in groups and join guilds. Guilds are an option. Some want it, some don't, but the Devs have said they want to try to level the playing field between Solos and Guilders all along.

This is yet another strawman. I said that solo players should be at a comparative disadvantage to communities in an MMO, not that they should be barred from solo play if that's what they choose.

Systems should be created that incentivize and reward communities, be it small groups, guilds, or sprawling empires. To what extent a solo player wishes to engage with these variously scaled communities is entirely up to them, but they may very well (and indeed should) find that total disengagement results in certain inconveniences and disadvantages.

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

@Alexian But Solo'ists should NOT be at a comparative disadvantage. The only disadvantages they should get are those that naturally come from grouping over solo'ing. Solo'ists can't take on the larger mobs, Guilds/Groups can. Solo'ists have no-one watching their backs, Guilds/Groups do. You do not need, and really shouldn't add any extra advantages for Guilds/Groups that widen that already reasonable gap.

Those are indeed the advantages to which I refer. Have you considered reading mine and @Bardikens' posts in their entirety before responding?

Merchants, if anything, is a niche that I think should be mostly filled with Solo'ists. It won't be, but that's the fact of the matter. Solo'ists could come together to form caravans for long treks and safety in numbers, and hire guards, but each merchant should for the most part be a free agent, going where the whims of trade take them.

And such players could be eligible for a city charter as well.

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

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

And such players could be eligible for a city charter as well.

Mayhaps eligible for one, but hardly likely to be offered one. It was talked about limiting the number of charters that a town can have. With that being the case (and it pretty much would have to be for the system to work) any town would be insane to offer charters to solo'ists over groups. Groups give them several merchants to partner with for only 1 charter slot, as opposed to a 1 for 1 exchange with a solo'ist. This, thus, incentivizes Guilds/Groups over Solo'ists again, over and above the natural advantages they already have.

You say below you always read every post before commenting on it... and yet...

The only limits/caps that have been suggested have been for merchant guilds/companies, not cities.

Read it again. Carefully.

Additional perks/systems that favor Guilds are not needed. What would work better is to come up with a couple perks that would favor the Solo'ist. I, however, can already hear the outcry if the Merchant Charters were only made available to Solo'ists, and not to Guilds.

Governors of cities would have the discretion to award charters to whomever they please. A skilled solo merchant, a small group of merchants, a sprawling commercial empire? Charters to each? Up to the Governor.

[Edit]I always read every word of a post before commenting on it. You never know if there might be a kernel of worth in even the worst posts, or a phrase that invalidates some good idea, so you have to take them in, in their entirety.

Evidently not.

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

@BitterLoD Exactly. I've been a Solo player 99.9% of the time since the late 90s when MMOs came out, and if anything, that's the main draw that keeps getting handicapped by MMOs as new expansions and games came out.

I was a member of a Guild in EverQuest with one of my characters. They were fun folks, and from all over the globe...shoot, we even met up in Florida for a Camp-out and picnic experience one weekend with people coming from as far away as Germany. That being said, that is more like the exception to my experience, not the be all, end all of it.

To be very clear in case there's any confusion, no one in this thread is advocating for a system that requires or compels you to join a guild. That would be lazy and unimaginative.

Rather, what we're advocating is a system that compels participation in a community... even peripherally. Solo players should have to interact to some degree with local cities, local markets, and local politics in order to thrive in the game. A solo player should not be able to essentially be a One-Man-Civilization unto himself.

I do not expect nor do I want everyone to have to sign up for a guild and sit in that guild's Discord server when they'd rather explore the world by themselves and only come into town when they need to purchase or sell their wares or participate in that town's defense.

Fractured has already taken great steps in this respect by decoupling cities from guilds. A player can be a guild member or not, a city resident or not, a city citizen or not, or any combination thereof. You don't have to own, lead, or be part of a guild to claim or conquer a city. It's a nuanced system with potential for even more nuance.

It is precisely because I want to avoid the boring, stagnant dynamic of GUILDS ONLY that I endorse the mechanic @Bardikens has proposed here. It adds another layer to the socioeconomic and political onion by distinguishing the standard citizen and group from merchants. As a bonus, it would allow Fractured to actually employ the term "guild" as it is correctly defined if merchants wished to band together.

Without systems to incentivize actual merchanting, actual merchants effectively won't exist.

(And to clarify, when I say "merchant," I don't mean someone who is merely a purchaser or seller of goods (as all or most players would qualify). I refer to someone whose primary role in the game is to peddle wares and make purchases of scale to further the economy. A niche roleplay loop.)

Speed buffs for paved roads and the eventual implementations of mounts should help ameliorate some of these issues.

@Bardikens, among others, recommended scattered inns/taverns along major roads that could be NPC or player run to serve as spawn points for players during arduous, cross-country travels.

On the other hand, teleportation or global banking are suggestions that would totally undermine the hardcore element of the game. Journeys and long distance travels (even for mob grinding) should be inconvenient, arduous, and prompt players to think twice before making them.

@Farlander said in Tanning Tubs Are a Disaster:

Grow? Um that refers to guilds growing not crops.

Yes, but that's only one of the many adjectives I emphasized from the description you provided and contributes to an overall theme: in Fractured, endeavors require player effort and time.

I can emphasize "jump right in" to apply to everything in the game if you like and that trumps anything else you can say about putting effort into it.

Not really, no, since the rest of the description that you provided describes the "fray" into which you may "jump right into."

Considering the description's emphasis on deliberate, methodical action, it's pretty clear that Fractured is referring to an emphasis on player skill and effort over vertical levels/attributes and gear progression.

I understand gathering resources need timers because otherwise someone could just sit at a spot and gather all they need on a macro. I'm talking about timers put on crafting tools. That is mobile game to the core. I fully agree that the game should have ""work" otherwise you don't feel accomplishment for completing a goal. I'm pretty sure this thread was about timers being put upon tools you used to process your raw ingredients for crating. I'm a firm no on having those. I feel tanning tubs should instantly process your hides.

The reason time constraints are imposed on various mechanics is because Fractured is clearly not a game concerned with instant gratification. Time and effort involved in the gathering and manufacturing of goods will directly contribute to the value and scarcity of those goods, which will help shape various local economies and the consumer psychology of players in the game. Do they spend this time and effort by crafting these goods themselves or do they purchase/trade what they need from vendors? If the latter, where do they go? What towns do they join? Do they join a guild? If so, which guilds? There's rich content opportunity that derives from making gathering/crafting inconvenient.

It's perfectly reasonable to dislike the length of time or to even lobby for a shorter window. And as I said, you're perfectly free to lobby for instant gratification with respect to tanning or any other aspect of the game. I simply respectfully disagree with it and believe you'll find it difficult to advocate for these changes successfully since they seem to contrast sharply with the very conceit of the game.

Also, please @ me in future responses so I don't miss your replies.

@Rife said in Bounty Hunting & Jails - Official Feedback Thread:

Let's first talk about why the criminal system is too punishing. I think it's obvious that people who have 0 karma or a really low amount of negative karma shouldn't be punished too harshly, the minimum gold shouldn't be 2k, it should definitely be lower since some people have negative karma just from knocking down players without even executing them.

Completely agreed here. When merely flagging up triggers a bounty, the system is too punitive, too quickly.

But while that's a definite point to fix, it's not the main crux of the issue. The issue is that we're locking people out of the game. We should never lock people out of the game for playing a certain playstyle. You only lock people out of the game when they exploit/cheat. This is basically lumping the ganking/criminal playstyle as the same as cheaters/exploiters, which is a huge no no.

There are distinctions to be made between gankers/griefers and cheaters/exploiters, but the former can kill a game as surely as the latter can. Many sandbox MMOs have been killed by widespread griefing and ganking.

Wanting to constrain that playstyle through mechanical means and systemic deterrences doesn't require you to vilify "criminals"; it just requires recognition that, if left to their own devices unchecked, they will drive away players if history is any indication.

Like I mentioned in previous posts, just make them farm the gold if they cant pay, this way, they can still enjoy other content while essentially being locked out of all forms of PvP content until they pay their bail. Mind you, they can already do this with the current system, we're just now making it so that they have the option to do PvE content for gold if they don't have enough to pay their current bail, instead of just locking them out so that they'd play on their alts, or quit playing the game, till the bail time is over. This way we can also easily balance how strict the system is based on the bounty price. Obviously, when inflation happens and people start to hold more gold, the bounty system's prices should be adjusted accordingly.

I'm open to this, as I support the most minimally-stringent method to constrain widespread ganking and griefing on Syndesia. If the bail is prohibitively expensive and the effort involved is enough to keep the "criminal" population a relative minority, then I'm happy to ditch player jail-time.

But as I said previously, I don't think this will work because I don't believe it will be prohibitively difficult to raise the bail personally, call for bail payment from allies/friends/guildmates, or logging into an alt to wait out the time.

Not to mention that your proposal allows the ganker/griefer in question to actively play the game; what makes you think that making the character farm the gold will be so unpleasant as to deter future misconduct?

So that solves the "too punishing" side of things. Now let's discuss why it's not "punishing enough". I think here @LonelyCookie raised a point, whereby the system only happens when a criminal is caught after the deed. There is nothing being done for the victim. This is why good-aligned players want a stricter system, because they feel like the only way they are protected is if the criminal system has an insane punishment system. This shouldn't actually be the case.

The problem right now relies on the bounty hunter system. We call it a bounty hunter system, but people who sign up for bounty hunters are actually called sheriffs. Sheriffs are not the same as bounty hunters. One is basically hunting criminals for personal gain, while the other is actually there to protect those who need protection. What good aligned players need is a protection system. So we don't need bounty hunters, we really just need sheriffs.

Basically what we need is a new tab on Socials that allow players to find Sheriffs to protect them when they are farming. Basically a tab that lists active Sheriffs who are online, and players can message Sheriffs asking for protection in return for a percentage of the loot they make for example.

This is a win-win situation for all. Players now get protection. Sheriffs and Criminals both get to PvP and have things more exciting.

Tl;DR : Criminal system is both too punishing and not giving enough protection. Solutions :

• Abolish jail time, make criminals farm for bail if they cant bail/dont have friends to bail them while being locked out of all pvp content
• Protection system that allows players to easily get in touch with Sheriffs to protect them while farming in return for some compensation if they so choose.

Respectfully, I don't agree with this at all.

Your proposal here is essentially that people who don't want to be griefed or ganked or killed should simply spam help requests in game chat and rely on Good Samaritans to keep the "criminal" element in check.

I'm not aware of a single meaningful example where this sort've system has ever worked. In my personal experience, the Good Samaritan to Criminal ratio is always heavily lopsided in favor of criminals because people generally are (1) self-interested and (2) more inclined to engage in escapist "bad behavior" in a video game as opposed to committing time, effort, and energy to working as some sort've pre-emptive bodyguard/mall cop.

"Pre-emptive" security for people should come in the form of allies/friends/guild mates. Bounty hunters should exist for goal-oriented, financially-motivated player-killers after the fact.

@Rife I support "criminals" being bounty hunters/hitmen/whatever; contracts should not be an inherently noble function. I should be able to play as a scheming politician who hires a notorious PKer to gank a merchant caravan or some such; there should be a market for such things.

@Harleyyelrah said in [Suggestion] Make cities unable to be self sufficient:

If the point of the game is to have interdependent cities, then these proposals may work. Perhaps that may be useful for inter-city interaction on Arboreus.

Personally, I've always interpreted Fractured's intent as systematically-enforcing cities/regions and guilds to have relationships with one another for commerce, diplomacy, and politics. Otherwise every region/city would have access to the same variety and volume of resources. The fact that resources are disparate in composition and quantity was, to me, clearly intended to deter regions/cities and guilds from trying to be literally self-sufficient. These features seem to drive regions/cities and guilds to interact with other regions/cities and guilds to meet all their needs.

However, I don't think that inter-city cooperation is exactly the intent for Syndesia or Tartaros, especially when city sieges are a main feature. I can say that the PvP groups started this alpha test with the intent to build up their own cities, seeing each other as "enemies" and therefore trying to be as self sufficient as possible is part of the game.

I think Syndesia, in particular, is meant to be a nexus of city cooperation and competition. They're not mutually exclusive on Syndesia, much like the real world. States both rely on other states to meet specific needs for commerce and resources while also seeking to conquer or dominate other states for various reasons. It makes sense that PvP groups would want to be as self-reliant as possible and, if given that option, I think all cities/regions will aggressively pursue that path of least resistance because that's just how people are.

However, if Fractured systematically ensures that no city can meet all of its internal needs as an isolationist state, it will force them to interact with others via commerce or conquest and that's a good thing IMO.

Forcing inter-city reliance would likely just lead to huge guilds absorbing smaller guilds and claiming multiple cities for themselves rather than any cooperation.

Only if Fractured fails to make city management extremely complex and time consuming. If cities run on auto pilot like in Albion Online, then it will definitely incentivize guilds to roll over as much territory as possible. Hopefully, city management will be so challenging and intricate that it will deter most groups from trying to directly conquer the world.