I would personally hate a mechanic that stops the player from moving while casting a spell. Staying still should be a user decision, as would cancelling the spell via movement. Just imagine how bad it would be in PvP if you could accidentally hit a skill then be unable to move. Currently to cast a spell and finish it, just make sure you don't press your movement keys while casting? Less options for the user is always worse IMO.
The game is current in the alpha stage, and most of the structure of the game hasn't been developed yet. There is a test coming up soon though, and when it goes live (tests are not always on), you can check out the game (technically, it's not really a game right now) in its current state! Keep in mind that each alpha test is only designed to test out a section of the game, and most of the mechanics currently in game will probably be changed by the time we get to launch.
@Ostaff said in Death Penalty of losing all gear and inventory: WORST IDEA EVER!!!:
The tutorial system is not what you think it is. It is merely missions for you to do if you choose to. The missions will teach you the basics of the game. You are not obligate to start or complete the tutorial. There is no time line for the tutorial missions to be completed, and you are actually playing the game while on the tutorial missions.
So, if the last mission was to go defeat a dragon.. you would just not do it (if ever) until you were able to defeat a dragon with friends or solo.
Currently the 'missions' as they are probably won't even exist in the final game. In EVE Online in the early days, you used to be given just a starter ship, and then you were thrown out into the world with not a clue as what you were supposed to do. Eventually they made a tutorial system (for multiple different professions, such as combat, mining, exploration, trading and etc), which had a mission that included you getting blown up and losing your ship, while the tutorial NPC told your player character how dying was nothing to be afraid of, and how you'd lose everything you were flying at the time. I believe new player retention increased a great deal after the tutorial missions were released.
@TrueCrimsonFTW said in Death Penalty of losing all gear and inventory: WORST IDEA EVER!!!:
@Basileus Yeah but saying "bad" gear is relative. To a new player everything is good.
Not really, you spawn with some default gear right? If you spend 20 minutes gathering mats, craft, and then die, the experience learned from dying is more than worth the gear itself. Far better than someone grinding materials in a safe zone for weeks, finally leaving it, then immediately dying and losing 3 weeks worth of grind in under 30 seconds. The more you protect new players, the more you harm them in the long run. Besides, any good organization will just throw low level gear at new players for free, and just lead them around to try and find fun fights to engage in.
EDIT: What would be great though IMO, is to have a tutorial mission give you some really good gear, then force you into a fight where you will 100% die, and lose all your gear with no chance of getting it back. That sort of thing generally teaches players the consequence of death without actually costing them anything. Plus they will of course get some sort of reward upon completion of said tutorial.
@TrueCrimsonFTW said in Death Penalty of losing all gear and inventory: WORST IDEA EVER!!!:
I am more going off, no new player likes to constantly regrind and be bullied by other players if they are new. I think this provides a safety net. Again just my opinion.
Well the idea is that it's a harsh world, and it's better that new players learn early to not get attached to any of their gear, rather than later in the game where they craft really expensive gear, and then finally lose it. You can't really set an arbitary cutoff for "new player" vs "veteran". In EVE, usually the earlier a new player dies and loses all their gear, the better (as they learn an important lesson of not flying what they can't afford to lose). Early on dying might only be losing an hour worth of grind, but if they avoid death for a long while, they will eventually die in some ridiculously badly fit ship (in Fractured, this will be the equivalent of bad armor + weapon + skill synergy), and end up as laughing stocks of the community. Vets aren't attached to their ships, and treat them like they're already dead the moment you undock.
This also rewards organizations that have good supply chains, logistics, and is great for the economy as a whole. Because everyone is losing their gear constantly, materials will always have value, and crafters will always have jobs as a result.
EDIT: Also, newbies will have the advantage of numbers, and any organization worth anything will herd them into a large group, and just PvP with 30 newbies vs one or two people with decent gear, kill and loot them. Even if some newbies die, they can just die in horrible gear that can be given out to them for free. I imagine newbies with support skills will be quite useful even if they have no gear at all.
@TrueCrimsonFTW said in Death Penalty of losing all gear and inventory: WORST IDEA EVER!!!:
I do think it should be level based thought. That way new people don't lose stuff right off the start but after a certain level you should suffer!
In EVE, a general rule that every new player learns quickly is to pretend everything you fly is already dead, so don't fly what you cannot afford to lose. In fractured, I imagine it'll be the same for any player who isn't in a large organization that can quickly resupply them with standardized gear, just don't wear what you can't afford to lose.
Full loss is actually great for the game, especially in terms of in game economy. It means that there will always be a need for materials to make gear, which means new players will always have a reliable income stream. Inflation is countered by gear destruction, and large organizations with skilled logistics teams will gain a massive advantage in war (by resupplying their members with gear whenever they die, and they prepare them to die en mass for strategic objectives). If you want a good example of that in an MMO, look no further than EVE Online. There's a great book out there called "Empires of EVE" that details the stories from that game; my hope is that someday Fractured will also offer a similar experience, but in a fantasy setting.
@d3Sync I don't understand why anyone who wants more color wouldn't use digital vibrance. It's basically a free way to change the color however you want. Some people do actually like less intense colors, so that's a purely subjective thing that can't be "improved" per se.
And as for people not wanting 'drastically improved' graphics, I'm saying that even small improvements can make a massive difference in both cost and FPS. For example, in Valorant, there's an "Improve Clarity" setting that basically doesn't change too much aside from making colors a little more intense, but in exchange you lose 15% of your total FPS. Meanwhile, changing Digital Vibrance to 100% costs you 0 fps, and is easily doable by just changing a single slider value.
Ultimately, there's a reason why games like Counterstrike have more players and larger impact on the market than any CoD game, despite the giant graphical discrepancy in favour of CoD. If the opportunity cost of time and money is spent on making graphics better instead of better gameplay, the game will fail (remember this is an indie company with super limited resources, a lot of their textures and art are basically pulled from templates that you can buy so that they can save time). No matter how much you improve the graphics, you aren't going to draw in the Crysis style crowd, but if you focus on gameplay and good netcode, you can easily draw in the more competitive minded players who will be staying around for a long time.
Graphics just costs a lot in terms of development time and monetary resources, and doesn't do much for gameplay. There's a reason why more recent games with high tech graphics just don't have the content in them compared to a really old game with lower grade graphics. Besides, if we expect to have large scale PvP battles eventually, keeping high FPS on most computers will ensure that more people can play the game. In more multiplayer oriented games like League of Legends or Valorant for instance, you can see how the developers deliberately chose a graphical style that allowed a large amount of people to play the game even on bad computers, while still looking good to the human eye.
EDIT: And if you want more colour in the game, just turn up Nvidia's Digital Vibrance.
I'd love to take part, and see how PvP works in Fractured! I'd also be pretty interested in trying to setup a necromancy build or something, assuming it exists right now.
Sounds interesting, I'll sign up! I'm a bit sad that I didn't see this earlier, but I'll do my best to write something decent! I already have an adept key, but I'd be willing to give it a shot for the ultimate prize anyway :D.
I'm actually very happy that they stopped making new design journals. They already laid out their roadmap and what they want to achieve, and they haven't fully implemented it yet, but are making good progress with every test. If they kept on adding features (like a lot of kickstarters that will remain un-named by me), then I would be concerned, as feature creep is usually the main reason why a project will fail to launch.
@Bekos I've read that all three planets have unique resources that can't be gotten elsewhere. So yeah, I suppose there'd be a good reason to go raid the other planets for those resources. Would be nice if it was also more than that though (as trading could simply remove the demand to raid if raids were only for resources).
I think PvP could be incredible in this game, given how there's lot of incentive to go and seize territory. Would be interested to see what Demons can get materially out of raiding humans too! (Maybe you just need to kill human/beastmen players to unlock new skills?)
I just see all the foundation gold as a nice freebie. I probably won't spend mine at launch (since usually the better cosmetics will come out after a game has been launched for a while!)
I really don't get what the problem is with using pre-made assets. I'd rather the focus be on the actual gameplay mechanics, rather than trying to make some fancy UI when a good one already exists. Opportunity cost is a thing after all.
Honestly, the really exciting tests will be during Beta. Right now a lot of mechanics are still in the prototype stages.
I highly recommend that people sitting on the sidelines to just continue sitting there till release, because then we will have a full picture of what the game will look like. I pre-ordered because I liked the idea and wanted it to succeed, plus the devs look like they understand development processes and aren't prone to feature creep.