I've been meaning to write this post for a long while, but I had trouble putting it into words.

Fortunately, Steam's discovery queue came to my rescue, and provided me with a picture worth a thousand words:

...but what am I seeing?

This is why I'm here on Fractured forums instead of supporting other crowd-funded MMOs with higher profiles or bigger fanbases.

This is why I'm not playing venerable World of Warcraft, critically-acclaimed Guild Wars 2, or ever-popular Final Fantasy XIV.

This why I hate 99% of MMOs.

So what's upsetting me so much? Take a guess, I'll wait.

...

...

...

It's the mobs.
Player Character is smack in the middle of a group of mobs, beating some oup, but the rest of them... They're just sort of there. They do not help their compatriots. They do not attack on their own. They do not regroup. They do not run. They do not even pay attention.

And it gets worse in ways that the picture did not capture. They will live only on fields filled with exact copies of them and nothing else; or in mixed groups, surrounded by exact copies of their group and nothing else. They will wander eternally, exactly three steps at a time, inside a 2-meter circle. They will chase you for whole 4 meters before giving up or suddenly vanishing. They will come into existence, within an arms length from you, by either getting beamed down from SS Enterprise in a flash of bright light, or just gradually materialising out of thin air.

It's hard to tell fighting them from picking up a particularly thorny plant, or mining boulders that splinter off in heavy chunks that like to land on your toes.

Turns out, I can't enjoy an MMO without some sort of verisimilitude, and I can't get that if monsters don't feel like antagonistic actors, and not catatonic loot pinatas that oh-so-obviously spawn on a tight timer and in a very specific spot.
I want to go on a hunt, I want to run from an angry apex predator, I want to be ambushed by bandits, not just go and trim a field of passive-aggressive weeds.

It's not like I need some sort of life-like simulation requiring deep learning networks and Google's supercomputers to work, like some people like to point out.
All is needed is just care about presentation coupled with little smoke and mirrors.

• Tibia pulled it off perfectly, and that game is pushing 22 years of being developed by a tiny team of Teutons Germans.(1)
• Firefall was mismanaged to hell and back, and it managed to pull it off - nay, to knock it out of the park - in the beta in a fully 3D environment, and even managed to retain some of that after its disastrous launch.(2)

So, my question is:

Is that kind of thing also important to the dev team? To other players? To lurkers who feel on the fence about this whole Fractured thing?

Discuss.

Footnotes

(1) I'm not playing Tibia because it quickly turns from a game about adventuring in a hostile world to a game about going around with a potion-filled IV stand, almost literally crushing your enemies with bags of gold, and constantly worrying about your profit margins.

(2) I'm not playing Firefall because it lived a life of constant pain, had its soul sucked out, and its body died a slow, agonizing, humilating death, then had its shrivelled heart ripped out before the final death spiral, and is now dead. Super dead. 100% dead. DEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAD.

@althalus said in Heroes of the Storm has apparently entered a death spiral:

@dragomok said in Heroes of the Storm has apparently entered a death spiral:

You're replying in Russian about DotA 2 because it's a running joke in DotA 2 community that people keep running into Russians who only ever speak in Russian, yes?
That's... that's the perfect meta joke, well played, I couldn't have thought of a better reply.

OR maybe he is just Russian...

How dare you insinuate that muker is "maybe Russian"!

muker is not only a Very Known Russian, but also the Best Dang Visibly-Russian Russian in the whole forum, translating stuff, replying to every news article, descending upon fresh threads in Welcome to Fractured with lightning-fast speed and posting links to useful resources!

He's makes our community go round.

Ya know dis thingie, dat ya gotta use before you do all the other thingies? I mean, datthingieoverthere:

Da thingie is wrong, ded wrong, when you press da Tab thingie on your thingie with rectingular thingies. I mean, lookatit:

Dis so sad.

Da thingie shoulda do be roit and propa, when you press da Tab thingie. I mean, likeathisway:

Lovely Spaniards pls gib fix asap thx, much love in advance.

So @Lightspoon and @Eurav already addressed the part regarding Humans, so I'm going to address this one:

@miikiious said in Will humans be able to change with karma like demons and beastman?:

If demons can change into angels, will there be bonuses or special forms for demons that fulfill thier purpose and go down the road of complete evil.

I think you're missing the point here.

The way I see it, each race, and each alignment, represent a different mode of play:

• Demons and evil alignment are PvP,
• Humans and neutral alignment are mixed PvP/PvE,
• Beasts Beastfolk Beastmen and good alignment are PvE.

Therefore, turning a Demon into an Angel is all about taking a PvP-only character and converting it to PvE, while turning a Beastwoman Beastman into an Abomination is all about taking a PvE-only character and converting it to PvP.

In other words, it's all about the challenge of taking direct and deliberate actions against your default mode of play. This requires dedication, forethought and - judging by what we know so far - skill. If it didn't require that, there would be no challenge, it would give no bragging rights, and would be completely pointless.

For contrast, picking a Demon (ie. a PvP race) and "fulfilling their purpose" by "going down the road of complete evil" (ie. doing a lot of PvP) is a complete no-brainer. Giving extra rewards for doing that would either lead to them being:

• (if they were tied to non-leaderboard-dependent conditions) an obligatory reward that everyone but the people going against the grain has to earn, which would be dangerously close to obligatory grind,
• (if they were tied to leaderboards) permamently locked to top X% of players, which could lead to toxicity, as well as funneling a lot of players to try to constantly optimise for the narrow set of things that define being in top X%, which would be bad for sandbox feel of the game.

So no, I don't see that happening.

It's really simple for me.

I require something very specific from an MMO to enjoy it.
Horizontal progression, achievement-based unlocks, area of strict PvE, almost one-toon-all-classes, challenge of ascending to Angelhood - all of these features are nice bonuses. But if that something very specific is not present, I literally won't enjoy the game. Believe me, I tried to do that with many MMOs.

Prometheus said Dynamight cares about that specific thing.
This means that out of all upcoming MMOs that I have on my list, it makes Fractured the second* most likely game to deliver lifelike enjoyable active aggressive mobs. And since Dynamight seems to have a very sane and solid development plan, this is also the most likely MMO to come out (unlike EverQuest Next) and to come out the way it was promised (unlike Firefall).

And that's why I'm sticking to it.
(Plus that at the moment I have very controlled budget and little time, so I can't really laborously sieve through other MMOs right now.)

* The first being Em-8ER, which is better because it's also a successor to Firefall's beta, and also worse because the head of the project, the (in)famous visionary behind Firefall's beta, silver-tongued Mark "a film studio and a bus" Kern is already showing some small red flags. And they might or might not be indicative of bigger issues.

@eurav Ah, yes, the God of Evolutionary Psychology, where Universal Panhuman Truths are derived from your local zeitgeist, and the difference between a man and a woman is unimaginably insurmountable, while the difference between a human, a wolf and a lobster is so neglible it could not exist at all.

@Crowdac I was expecting a proposal that missed @FibS's thread about other Beastmen races, but found a shitpost.
I'm not disappointed, I'm not mad, I'm not impressed - I'm just surprised to find one so early.

Hunting, exploring, doing mercenary PvE work, and being all-around drive-by-healer.

I play MMOs solo for

Reason #1: Shitty Schedule, Tumultuous Time

For all of my life, my schedule for playing video games has been unpredictable, prone to shifts and interruptions. I didn't know when I could play, or how much time I would have.

For obvious reasons, this makes it quite difficult to synchronize with other players, which you need to do if you want to regularly play non-solo.

Reason #2: the Piñata in the room

I hop around MMOs a lot, because I literally - and I mean it - can't enjoy MMOs where mobs feel too artificial. I've played 26 MMOs so far, and only 3 feel right.

However, out of the three:

• one existed in a permament state of development hell and is now defunct,
• another is a tiny, tiny game that is filled with ganking trolls and drama,
• and the last one starts you out as an adventurer, but very quickly forces you to become a potion-addicted ultracapitalist who crushes mobs with bags of money and has to engage in some of the mind-boggling grinds to get there.

I don't have really all that high hopes for Fractured, since I have some upcoming alternatives, but it looks promising.

Reason #3: MMOs are for meeting nice people

In virtually all types of multiplayer games, other players are either sworn allies you're chained to, or sworn enemies you have to fight. In open world MMOs, however, other players are strangers and passerbys, and your relationship with them is entirely up to you to decide.

That is the most important feature that draws me to MMOs, and it's completely not affected whether I'm playing solo or not. Just a bit of kindness can make someone's day. (Gods, I miss Firefall's beta; doing drive-by healing, saving people's thumpers, reinforcing them in the last minute and pushing an event from near loss into a clear victory...)

And you can actually meet people there, too, since they are not bound by whatever goal of the match they're chasing. There is nobody to shout at them for getting distracted from doing their in-game job, or shoot at them for sweet, sweet KDR.

Reson #4: I have no social circle

Apparently there are a lot of people who drag parts of their social circle - their friends, acquaintances, colleagues, work buddies, barbers, dog groomers, frenemies, husbands, wives, secret lovers, overt lovers, "it's complicated" paramours, vicars, and fellow FLGS attendants - into multiplayer games they play.

Due to some unfortunate circumstances, I don't have a social circle. If not for my family, where noone else is interested in video games, I'd be alone as a dog.

So whenever I hear some insensitive self-appointed MMO gatekeeper say "hurr durr em-em-ohs are social games you shouldn't play them without a group and the devs should stop catering for carebear casuls like you", I get pretty salty. (Especially since, as I pointed out in Reason #3, MMOs are one of the few games where you can actually meet people.)

@Gamble - I hope you feel sufficiently smothered with reasons, mhm?

@crowdac said in Abomination races?:

I'm just inquiring about this because it might be cool to see for example an Uoadra turn into a Skaven being that both are pack oriented species.

From a practical standpoint, it doesn't seem like they are going to go for something so drastic, at least not initially.

If you look at the link @Gofrit linked:

@prometheus said in Demon Redemption:

@therippyone said in Demon Redemption:

so, that's some idea about what these transformations will be like - you'll still look vaguely like "you" but with the demonic stuff stripped out and replaced with heavenly set - bright auras, feather/halos, ancient rune masks of power, etc. XD

That's how it goes in a nutshell, yes

It genuinely looks like they're going to simply make every, er, distinguishing feature for Beastmen/Demons in two variants (normal and Abomination/Angel) and change base body texture, instead of going for a completely new model.

@sparky said in Now think Clearly Here:

@dragomok said in Now think Clearly Here:

@wolefie said in Now think Clearly Here:

I said before that I wanted to be a demon, but then didn't feel like it because I saw Exploited.

Link for convenience of future readers: eXploited, the self-proclaimed "#1 demon guild".

We're currently are the #1 ranking demon guild just look at the leaderboards. lol

So, we're not self-proclaimed at all, it's a fact.

Ohh, you are correct. Apologies, I corrected my post.

Now @WoLeFiE's worries make even more sense.

Someone removed me from Far Far Away - thank you!

I'm begging you:
please exile me (Dragomok the Fir) from the city of Far Far Away.

I honestly thought citizenship applications work as job applications:
cities hold most of the power in this relationship, and can take their sweet time to accept or reject an application, while the prospective citizens are running on starvation clock in the face of inventory clog and blockade on crafting progression. I'd thought I'd be able to accept or reject your offer, but instead I got approved (with no noticeable notification).

Please, I'm 1/4th of a continent away, I really don't want to make all that trek without being able to get a mount.

@Meiki said in Skeletons:

or even eat you as well.

Ah, so they quicken your ascension to skeletonhead by removing all that useless flesh to unveil spooky bony perfection...?

Hello, peep.

@Spastic said in Hello:

Generic Greetings!
Did this for quest~

Generic hello.

Well, I always appreciate honesty. Personally, nowadays I don't do much either, other than greeting newcomers.

Slime Rancher

This incredibly cute game is free on Epic Games Store from March 7th to March 21st.

I had it on my wishlist for sooooo long.

Hello.

@Enchantress said in Enchantress here:

Or Enchant you for a night in the wildlands. =D

Is that an invitation of a friendly murder-the-wildlife escapade?
A threat of spell-based thrallhood?
An offer to provide a Enchantment-as-a-service to provide you with a steady stream of revenue an enchantee with a sense of pride and accomplishment?

Hello!

@Mensmission said in Hello guys!:

Would like to konw if I will pay for 1 alfa, when will I be able to start the game? Do you know the date when 1 Alfa is begining?

We're currently in the pre-Alpha. The last wave of pre-Alpha invites will go out probably this week, so that should probably mean Alpha 1 will start in a week or two?
The last concrete estimate is at the bottom of the State of the Game article, and it says first quarter of 2019.

@EvolGrinZ said in Random Thoughts:

Whoever came up with the term “Funny Bone” must have been a masochist, because hitting it is not funny at all…

...or maybe they were a sadist?

There are some people who genuinely think comedy comes from pain of others, and quote Mel Brooks

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

over and over and over again.

Hi.

I'm glad you're hyped, but we still have to wait for quite some time before the game is in a reasonably playable state (late Beta is supposed to come around in about a year).