Posts made by Basileus

@grofire

The bodies staying around is a good idea, but as we still do not know how exactly the looting system works (do you have to actively search the enemy player's inventory etc), or the TTK, it is too early to determine the length of the log off timer. It also doesn't solve the stealth player issue could exist (sit in stealth, gank someone, stealth, alt-f4 before people find you). I would err on the side of a long log off timer, as this is always fair; plus encouraging people to log of in safe zones is always a good thing. A short log off timer is game destroying (see games like DayZ, where people log off all the time to try and avoid dying, and often succeed), and a long log off timer is pretty much always fine (see EVE Online). I would hope that the game devs would not sacrifice fair PvP at the altar of convenience for those people who do not plan ahead and want to log off in a dangerous zone.

Besides, in a looting game like this one, people should get used to the idea that all their gear and items are just consumables, you will lose it all eventually except for your knowledge, and any recipes you've learned for crafting (unless you play permanently in safe zones as a beast of course, in which case that is part of the core gameplay and I consider it perfectly fine. Even then however, there is a tiny chance that you could be looted by a gang of demons who finds you and kills you in the safe zone before the debuff kills them).

@grofire TTK in EVE varies heavily, you can kill a top tier ship in seconds if you bring enough people and catch them with their pants down, or you could shoot a mid tier ship with a beginner ship solo and you will never kill it as the regen will outstrip your damage.

As for AO, it is not a good model to follow, considering it is a dead game now. We do not know how long it takes to kill people in fractured, nor do we know how easy/hard it is to look through someone's inventory and take the items we want.

I will say this however: say you die, and your body lingers on the ground for 1 minute (you can imagine if log off timers were 1 minute, and respawn time was greater than 1 minute, people would just log off on death asap; if respawn time was less than 1 minute, that's even worse for this scenario). Imagine a 100 vs 100 fight. You would have people trying to loot people as you kill them instead of focusing on the fight! This would cause chaos in a coordinated fight. Making people choose between looting quickly before the body magically disappears or fighting properly is just bad game design. In games like this, it would be best for everyone to be 100% focused on the fight and winning it, and then afterwards focusing on the loot. A 15 minute logoff timer ensures that you will have a chance to loot something after you 100% win a fight, and not reward those bad players who would prefer to loot something in mid fight rather than ensure that the fight is won instead.

@grofire Have a read on how the EVE online system works: https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/203208932-Weapon-and-Logoff-Timers

I will personally be disappointed if you can hit someone, then have a tiny 1 minute logoff timer. Will open a lot of room for abuse by stealth classes (and I personally plan as playing as a demon). IMO, it should even be a 1 minute timer to enter the safezone (resets if you attack someone again), in order to prevent gankers from going out of a safezone, killing someone, immediately going back into the safe zone, heal up, repeat etc.

At any rate, when in doubt, one should follow successful methods, and EVE Online is the gold standard for sandbox MMOs at present!

EDIT: And of course, if you are under attack and log off, the timer should reset every time you are hit, just like EVE Online, until you are dead or your attack stops attacking you and the timer runs out.

@grofire Yes, that is the industry standard for fair PvP, without pulling plugs or alt-f4ing for advantages :). EVE Online is one of the most successful sandbox MMOs in history, and I hope Fractured will be able to achieve similar levels of success! If you want to log out safely, do it in safe areas (in EVE this was a docked ship in a safe zone) or you can take a small risk and log out when nobody is around. If you log out in the middle of a war zone and die, that is 100% your fault.

I would love to have a game where the logout timers are actually significant (around 10 minutes is great for me) as I've played too many games where logging out mid combat to avoid dying was a thing. If you want your instant logouts, do it in a safe zone! I feel like this is the best compromise between ease of use and fair, balanced PvP where the loser can't just press a magic button to 'stalemate'.

P.S I have played other games where the timer is 1 minute, and this is still easily exploitable (particularly if stealth is in the game). One should not be able to stealth, and then try to exit the game before people find you. If you stealth in a dangerous area, the goal should be to get to a safe spot as soon as possible without being found, rather than just hitting alt-f4. Bottom line, I strongly believe that safe logouts should only be available in safe zones.

I would want the game to focus on the core design principle and not fall victim to feature creep, else we could be stuck in development hell. Programming advance behaviors like reproduction is going to take a ton of development time, and would only be a fringe mechanic at best. As for player settlements coming under attack, that's exactly what demons and eclipses are for!

Here is a pretty vague concept. You could click the news button on the homepage, go to the older pages and read the spotlights!

I would think that minions would probably just be stat blocks with an autoattack(read and watch the ability spotlight, specifically the part with the Necromancer). However, it would be interesting if you could directly command them to attack a target of your desire. Having minions with their own abilities would turn into a lot of calculations rather quickly, unless they only ever used their ability once (i.e got close to an enemy, then exploded for massive damage).

@tulukaruk I do not consider it a weakness. If you have played League of Legends, you will know that stutter step (moving, attacking, moving very quickly again to cancel the attack animation as soon as you have attacked), is a very high skill cap mechanic. High skill cap games are always good! If it was just WASD plus a fire button in the area where you are aimed at, you will remove a ton of skill expression and make it far more arcade like.

I was thinking a relatively good way to implement it in this game is to use a fog of war system, like in Starcraft 2. You can still see the terrain around you, it's just that you have no idea if there's enemies in it or not. Of course it would be super cool to have the fog of war completely black and you actually can't see anything, not even terrain, but some players might get lost easily (though to be fair, that's exactly what happens if you're human and you explore in the dark forest with no light source)! Naturally Demon's night vision would give them better vision range than humans even with torches, and same with Beastmen (though it would not be as relevant it's pretty much always going to be safe when they stay in their 'good' zones).

That might be true for most isometric games, but the Devs did specifically state that one's appearance will change if one becomes an Angel/Abomination. This would hint at the fact that appearences do indeed matter (even if you stay a demon!) Besides, different character appearances is a great way to sell cosmetics, and isometric based games like LoL have tons of different appearance selections to make your playable character more unique.

As for the demon-human interaction, read Spotlight #1, the human part, specifically the lore text. Maybe it's hinting towards a possible mechanic?

It could be that the pledge King/Queen title is just a figurehead, whereas you could have an actual position with power called Scion of War/Voice of the Earth/The Grand Dox, which is a title that is actually fought over by their various factions. That way we can have the best of both worlds!

Personally, I would love this idea; I found this game through an ad on the Camelot Unchained reddit, and they plan to have darkness as an actual game mechanic. If certain races like Demons have excellent night vision, while humans have horrible night vision and require items like torches to increase visibility (and also making themselves easier to spot in the process), then it could create a really interesting PvP dynamic at night. Of course, we would need to give humans incentives to go out at night, but I'm sure this could be done quite easily (special events, knowledge that can only be gained at night, demon deals to gain more power etc). The much harder part would be implementing all of the mechanics with nighttime, and that is something the devs will have to decide whether it's worth the time investment or not.

IMO, the foundation system is still great for keeping players interacting in positive ways, plus a brilliant marketing strategy that doesn't require huge amounts of cash to be sunk into it. Therefore, I'd be up to it being open indefinitely personally; I don't see the need to gain any exclusive rewards (and as we all know, only about 1% of a game's community actually talks on forums anyway, so it's pretty damn exclusive already).

Thanks for all the responses! Currently I'm not looking for new races, just wondering what the existing races would look like in character creation and in game. On a side note, I've been reading up all the spotlights, and was particularly curious about the lore segment that describes a human betraying the town in order to be bitten by a blood demon (and we'll assume that they will gain great benefits from this). If this is actually possible as part of the gameplay (i.e humans switching factions via betrayal), it would create a level of dynamic similar to how spies are a core part of EvE gameplay. If so, I'm beginning to be increasingly hyped about the possible level of player made stories!

Yes thank you, I read about the PvP/PvE split, but mostly I'm just interested in the art direction for now (as I'm sure game concepts will become more and more fleshed out during the development process). From the concept art, it seems like the Blood Demon sub faction would be the most human like demonic faction, but of course it's hard to tell with just one picture which isn't rendered in engine at present.

Hey everyone, I just saw a promoted post on reddit about this, and now I'm here! I'm a player that's naturally drawn to the Demon faction the most, but just had a few questions on their art direction. Humans and Beastmen seem pretty straightforward art-wise, but what about Demons? Will we have more anthropomorphic demons such as Desire Demons from the Dragon Age series? Or will they look more monstrous like the Balrog from Lord of the Rings? Personally I prefer having anthropomorphic demons, as they always seemed more insidious that way!

I noticed the current demon art is close to the ancient Egyptian gods style of having half human bodies with animal heads, but is that just one type of model possible, or the default type for all Demons?

One last question, I've read that your appearance will also change based on the decisions you make as a player, and this sounds like a fascinating concept. Would it be a simple colour change however (light side/dark side alignment from SWTOR), or would your entire model morph somehow?