Please feel free to correct any mistaken or incomplete information here.

Prometheus refused to answer any questions fixated too closely to Sieges and "field battles".

Prometheus also had a slightly better microphone than yesterday.

Forum questions

• NPCs such as guards will move into a City as its Prestige rises and will "have value".
• There are three sizes of City Zone, which affects the number of citizens (player with houses in the City) needed for a Hamlet to become a Town:
  • 5 for a small City Zone
  • 10 for a medium City Zone
  • 20 for a large City Zone
• Houses are built and decorated in the following steps:
  • Selecting a blueprint
  • Selecting a material that's valid for that blueprint
  • Retrieving materials from the area and physically constructing the house
• If booted from a City in which you have a house, you will be sent an email and will have 24 hours to move your things somewhere else.
• A player's House offers a respawn point, a secure inventory, and lockable doors.
• Building a house is not related to any form of "money". You just have to be given a lot by the City (or claim somewhere in a Free Zone) and drag the mats over to build the thing.
• (While refusing to mention Sieges), the only way to reliably combat a corrupt Governor of a Guild City, other than griefing him until he does what you want, is to abandon the City entirely. The Fractured team fully expect for unhappy Citizens to get another guild to come Siege a Guild Town.
• Any Town that loses enough Prestige will revert to a Hamlet and remove any Governor in place. It will also unlink from its owner Guild.
• The generated game world has clear "paths" leading between City Zones, so that players can find cities more easily. Roads can be paved along these pathways. Walking on a paved road increases movement speed compared to grass.
• Citizens earn personal Prestige through any positive interaction with the City, from building or repairing buildings to patronizing the NPC shops. Earning and losing it is "a bit slow". (We already know that Governor elections occur roughly once a month, so Prestige gains will likely match this timescale.)
• A player can only have one personal home at a time. If you claim another City lot or claim a new spot in a Free Zone, the old one will start a countdown timer. During this timer, you can give the house to somebody else.
• Governors can assign tasks and powers to Citizens (delegates).
• Blueprints are in early development and no "final" method to acquire them has been planned. In early alphas, expect all player to begin with most or all blueprints. They are "unlocks" that cannot be traded, similarly to knowledge or cosmetics. Some Blueprints will be bought in the premium store.
• Village, Town, City, and Metropolis are just titles for a town based on its size and prestige level. This does not unlock or limit features in any way.
• You are free to build "social spots" like inns, taverns, campfires. These are not specially coded buildings; you can use whatever you want like it was a tavern.
• Your house cannot be destroyed or looted.
• There is a town board to place messages, tasks, arguments, etc.
• Any kind of monsters may be "haunting" a ruined or abandoned town. You just have to clear all monster from the area to start a Hamlet.
• Once a Hamlet becomes a City, it can build things other than player houses.
• The game world does not have a 'linear progression' where PVP-enabled areas are 'later game'.
• NPC shops et al do not count as player houses.
• NPCs respond to any hostile act against the town, against Citizens of the town, or against members of the guild controlling a Guild Town.
• A single player can only control one Town.
• There is no coded system for a single player or guild to control more than one Town.
• Houses cannot be "upgraded" after initial building.
• Temples are a planned City building. (This is how you pray to gods.)
• [Governor building]
• Houses cannot have basements.
• Kickstarter Governors...
• Altars as furniture inside of a player house are NOT currently planned. Religious quests currently revolve around full-fledged temples inside of Cities.
• Houses cannot have teleport portals.
• [I missed the question after teleport portals]
• There are differences in a house made of a different material, but it's not significant.
• Humans gain access to "steampunk buildings" in very high-prestige Towns. (Not sure if this is dependent on being on Syndesia or having a Human governor.)
• Building a house does not take very long or very many resources.
• (Arguable relevance) You can sell or trade domesticated animals.
• Houses can have farming plots. A Governor can also dedicate an entire plot to a farm for a specific crop, or a ranch for a specific animal.
• The Fractured team expects farms to be placed on the outside of the City, and outside of any city walls that exist.
• Guild members can respawn in their Guild Town.
• [I missed the question after Guild Town respawn]

Questions in chat

• There will be exclusive decorations for [...]
• Towns have no hard-coded restrictions on alignment or race (other than those of the planet.) Governors may be as bigoted as they like about accepting citizens.
• Some Blueprints can only be used on certain planets or in certain biomes.
• The advantage of living in a Free Area is that no Governor can kick you out and you're not obligated to participate in a community. Of course, you may be that crazy old coot who comes down from the mountains into town time to time.
• Prometheus starts working at 9 AM like most people, but often does not stop until the following 2~3 AM.
• You can change the decorations of houses after they've been built. (This was asked earlier.) Some items have a personal space and can't be placed too close together.
• There may be limited or event-only decorations.
• Upgrades may exist for specific buildings such as a mage tower. These upgrades may use crystals. None of this is planned or guaranteed.
• You can have as many "sneaky evil people-eaters" as you want.
• If a Governor quits the game or becomes inactive, you will be able to elect a new one in a Free City. A Guild Master of a Guild City can forcefully replace the Governor at any time.
• Prometheus foresees the risk of a strong bias in favor of Guild Towns and unfair punishment for Free Towns. He has no idea what will happen. The team will be watching these trends in the alpha.
• More art for the races is coming soon.
• Natural disasters are not currently planned.
• It is not planned to be able to excavate caves or mines in a City.
• It is not specifically planned for lotuses to be a garden plant.
• Kickstarter Governors do not have a magic "give me my town back" button if they lose the town they start with. They have to do the same thing everybody else does to claim a town. Governors who will be inactive for a month or two are encouraged to assign delegates to run the town in their absence, or just tell everyone they'll be gone and ask for their position back when they return.

Final words

• The on-site store will open soon after the Kickstarter campaign concludes.
• There will be a void of activity ("vacation time") lasting one or two weeks and starting within the next few days.

I think it's amazing how people actually won't pledge to a Kickstarter if they don't think it'll get the funding.

Not only is that why it won't get the funding, but you get all of your money back if it doesn't meet it, so you have absolutely nothing to lose, lol

Fractured is almost the exact inverse / opposite of Albion Online.

• Albion is heavily gear-dependent. Your skills come from your gear and each material is a linear upgrade over the previous in a sequence. Fractured is not; your skills belong to your character, and all materials are equal in power with different stat spreads.
• Albion has a linear "order of risk" for difficulty regardless of playstyle (e.g. fighter vs. crafter). Low level is no PVP, mid level is semi-PVP, high level is badlands PVP. Fractured has three entirely separate planets with full content at all levels of play for PVE, "lawful" PVP, and badlands PVP. Nobody who prefers one planet will ever "need" to go to another one for basic progression.
• Albion has a clear gradient of "tier" moving from "starter zones" to tier 8 zones. Fractured does not; relative difficulty of areas will be peppered pseudo-randomly and may change dynamically depending on player activity. Of course, the game does not have strict tiers to begin with.
• Albion has an explicit gate between all game zones. Fractured has no transitions or loading screens between any game zones, except possibly if you were to move from one planet to another or otherwise teleport.
• Albion scams you with premium items (e.g. vanity items) that are actual items thus they 1. affect gameplay 2. don't let you pick the stats of one item and the appearance of another and 3. can be lost, stolen, deleted, etc. All Fractured premium items are floating account-wide unlocks that are not items and cannot be lost (as they should be.)
  • In the case of premium furniture, I presume that you must disassemble the furniture back to its crafting mats to move it, and only a premium user has the blueprint to make it again, thus a non-premium character can't pick up a copy and take it.
• Fractured has no other scammy pay to win features such as personal islands only premium users can purchase or upgrade (and that are necessary for guilds to function.) Cities behave identically for all players with the sole exception that players who purchase a Governor pack will be the Governor of a City at launch.

So many misconceptions and completely idiotic questions (e.g. "do Governors get a magic give me my town back button if we lose our town???") about Fractured clearly stem from being used to Albion's broken scammy p2w gameplay like a Stockholm Syndrome victim.

Please check everything you know about Albion at the door; Fractured is unlike it in any way except its camera angle, and God bless that.

I presume, and may be wrong, that vaping was developed as a transitional activity to help tobacco smokers quit - the mechanics of this being a complex subject I feel is best for for another topic.

For that purpose I think it's a wonderful invention.

However, because of its perceived relative safety, it's reignited the "it's kool to do it" nonsense among children and immature adults that tobacco smoking originally did, and that's just stupid.

@sparky said in Now think Clearly Here:

@greenfox It's funny how you think beastman can't be killed on their own planet by humans, demons, and even other beastman. Since, you thinking the beastman's planet is a safezone when it isn't

See, it's completely ignorant stuff like this that makes me think your guild will quit the game within a month (if not a week) because you can't be a talentless parasite like that.

Not only are Good-aligned players unable to attack other Good-aligned players - and every Beastman is Good by default - but you don't even know that Arboreus is literally untouchable by Evil-aligned characters? All of the noob zones will instantly destroy any Evil player who enters, and the non-noob zones have a debuff and time limit similar to (but far more debilitating than) the limitations on Demons during Eclipses on Syndesia.

A scrub like you won't be able to perform any remotely efficient PKing on Arboreus, or probably anywhere else really. On your way out, don't let the tree hit you where the +3 elite dire wolf shoulda bit you.

(There was a topic about future races before, but the link has died, so I'm making this.)

Hello peeps!

There's a possibility that as the game goes on, we might see more kinds of Beastman. The following are our starters:

• Bear (Nheedra)
• Hart (Erwydra)
• Tiger (Chadra)
• Wolf (Udoadra)

They will all be available in male and female variations.

BUT I WANT MORE!! (Surprise surprise the damn furry wants more Beastmen.)

Suggest more kinds of Beastmans here and I may add them to the Want List below! (If I can keep up.) I'm starting the topic with only the one that I really want (Rabbit); the rest of you can just go crazy, we'll see how it goes. x_x

After this initial mindstorm, I'll work on identifying the most popular races while the game enters a more stable development state, and then somewhere down the yellow brick road we'll see about petitioning the team to add one. (Maybe they'll run a Kickstarter for it. DOOOH HO HO HO HO)

Limitations

Beastmen can swap to a "primal" animal form. Every form has a gimmick, e.g.

• Tiger: Pursuit-based agility
• Wolf: Party buffs
• Bear: Becomes juggernaut
• Hart: Escape-based agility

Consequently, the animal you pick needs to work in both forms and, most likely, not be too different from the four we've got. Because of this...

• Really big animals might be a problem (e.g. elephant, giraffe)
• Really small animals might be a problem (e.g. rabbit, mouse)
• Flying animals might be a problem (e.g. bat, bird)
• Aquatic-only animals are most likely right out (e.g. dolphin, whale)
• Fantasy animals are most likely right out (e.g. dragon, unicorn)
• Bugs are probably not allowed?? Not sure
• If you can, include the basic traits of your race as I've done with Rabbit

The Want List

Legend

• (S) means this animal might be too small
• (B) means this animal might be too big
• (D) means this animal might be too different, e.g. is mythological, doesn't "walk", is not "an animal" like a bug, etc.

List

• (D) Bird / Eagle / Owl / Crow / Magpie (by @Kralith )
  • Kralith hypothesized a "sub-sub-race" system, but in the very rare event we got multiple birds, I think they should just be different families to begin with
  • Exploration- or scouting-focused stats
  • Owl has night vision? Magpie is sneaky thief?
  • FibS's conjecture: Birds of prey often only excel in 1v1 or ganking
  • FibS's note: Although birds "fly", these would only fly along the ground, of course
• Lizard (by @Genobee )
  • Improved health regeneration / incoming healing
  • Tail attack? Poisonous? Camoflauge powers?
  • Likely leans towards solo play
• Monkey / Gorilla (by @KingExodus )
  • Strong, intelligent
  • Leaping ability?? Stat boost when with other Monkeys??
  • (FibS conjecture) Possible spike damager / ganker
• (S) Rabbit (by FibS)
  • Speedy, delicate, physical
  • Escape powers similar to Hart
  • Leans towards archer or rogue
• (S) Rat (by @Kralith )
  • Fast, intelligent
  • Improved hiding ability; rogueish?
  • Group support for raids??
• Rhino (by @KingExodus )
  • High physical defense, but not magical
  • Charge can bowl enemies over
  • Bruiser-type
• (S) Squirrel (by @FibS )
  • Fast, viciously aggressive when provoked
  • Powerful ability to evade / parry and counter attacks
  • Good rogue or fencer
• Turtle (by @Dragomok )
  • Slow, durable
  • Can retreat into shell
  • Probably a facetanker

@Vortech said in What elevates Fractured above similar games like Albion Online?:

Sorry to say, this is biased and pretty misleading. I get it, this isn't an AO safe space.. but it's pretty over the top.

I could have made that post a bit more professionally, I suppose.

But while I do indeed absolutely hate that completely awful, unforgivably exploitative game and will viciously attack it at any chance I get, everything I said about Albion was factually true.

I don't consider it to be a game. It's an insidiously clever scheme.

You know how at the start of Albion you go out and hunt little rabbits and foxes to get mats?

We're rabbits too.

The elite 10% of players (i.e. the ones spending the most money on the pay2win mechanics) are the only ones the game actually cares about; everybody else is basically a player-controlled rabbit or fox they pop to get loot. The rest of us only exist to enrich their game experience, the same way that NPC enemies and resource nodes do.

That's disgusting.

I'm tired of "games" that are just races to spend the most money. When I made that post, I was seeing so many people insult Fractured by comparing them, and it was absolutely infuriating

Albion Online is garbage, and I hope Fractured is nothing like it beyond the superficial.

In my experience with Albion, I found it to be a fake game. It's a clever trap that separates players into two groups, deriving from asymmetrical gameplay (which is normally stuff like "one player is the monster and everybody else is the survivors".)

The richest 10% of players, who are the most willing to pay to win, are the only players that really matter. The game is designed so that all "high-level" play requires PVP and is therefore subject to pay to win, thus drawing whales as the primary desired demographic.

The other 90% of players are not actually players. They're just like the foxes and the ores - sources of materials, elements to enrich the experience for the elite.

Many PC or console MMOs have ascribed to a similar elitist model, and it has not helped the long-standing criticism against the genre.

Even without the elitist system, we still have the problem that Albion is linearly designed - all "endgame" content is necessarily open world PVP. Fractured will not have this flaw.

@kairosval said in Will there be a way to change your Attributes?:

However, the overall point of attribute distributions is that they're supposed to be permanent to make your character your character. The attribute distribution should be a decision that has consequences - because in the absence of consequences, the decision is kind of meaningless.

Okay, stop right there. This is a pitfall that has killed a lot of games for me and I'd rather not see it happen here too. That pitfall is when the game is self-contradictory for the sake of some fallacious conceit or another.

The philosophy you just gave us is directly contradicted by every single element of the game that is not the raw character attributes as well as by common sense. Do your Talents not matter because you can respec them easily? Does your gear not matter because you can change your clothes? Does the planet you're on not matter because you can go to another planet more-or-less freely depending on your race and alignment?

Of course that isn't how it works, and it doesn't apply to character attributes either.

The romantic concept of "yours tailored to you" is defined by adjustment over time. Nobody is born out of the womb the exact person they want to be as an adult, and many people make mistakes, scrap ideas and make big changes to their plans.

I guarantee you the attributes I first pick for any character are not going to be the ones I want to keep even if I'm still making new characters years after the game's release, just like the Talents I first pick aren't going to be what I want to go with. It is absolutely necessary that players are able to change their stats just like they can change their Talents, for all of the exact same reasons.

And just like Talents have a limitation on how quick you can learn them, when you can respec, and when you can swap hotbar slots, stats should also have a limitation on when and how they can change so that players aren't ever-shifting slime-demon Mary Sues. But "basically never at all" is completely stupid and bluntly contrary to every other aspect of not only this game's explicit design but good game design in general.

@jetah said in What unusual weapon types would you like to see?:

As I read the comments I just wondered "why can't we use anything as a weapon?" if you're out hunting and your weapon breaks, grab a branch. a group wants to raid your villa, grab a cattle prod. you're in the field planting potatoes an someone wants to sneak you, use the Sai as a weapon or the hoe if you were tilling the soil.

I like the idea of improvised weapons, especially given how environmental the game design is. Maybe these improvised weapons can be used as bases to create more permanent armament.

This would also help with "my character can't beat this dungeon" concerns by adding environmental weapons specifically designed to turn useless characters into mediocre characters in the context of the dungeon. For instance, a character with no fire damage would be able to pick up torches, but an actual fire mage would still have higher damage output.

In the final game, there will be an entire planet without any PVP to begin with; all characters on that planet will have this same protection status.

As such, I don't see how it matters that the patched-in placeholder PVP system, which is likely to remain similar on final Syndesia with respect to legendary monsters, has this problem. Nobody will bother with it once they can just use Arboreus.

In the fundraising stage, funding was a stretch goal. That goal was met, so they'll have some kind of taming - but it will likely be underwhelming as they don't want it to be very relevant to their ideal core gameplay.

• Make a low-quality video about a trending new thing with a clickbait title and pop music
• Post it everywhere you can find
• ????
• Get a solid gold Youtube Play Button

@GamerSeuss said in Int and Cha required stats? = Unbalanced?:

@FibS And I didn't say 1 Skill builds, I said 1 skill to focus their style around.

So it was a wishy-washy non-statement you can backpedal on at will. Got it.

Every character still gets the same 8 hot button spots on their character, and even with minimal INT, you can fill all of those slots

With what? Literally random low-end garbage you never use, mostly because they all do magic damage and you have no INT?

You simply have to balance your memory points around the 1 or 2 skills you really focus on in a build.

And get your ass stomped not only by every 2nd and 3rd mob, but also by every objectively better character with more options, yes. That's the problem.

Yes, other advantages to high INT do exist, like higher resistances and bigger effects from some skills/spells, but that doesn't mean a Fighter type out there running with a 10 or 12 INT will automatically be suboptimal.

I like the part where you claim that low INT is not disadvantageous to a fighter but also passively accept that 10 INT is the bare minimum.

10 INT is not low. 10 INT is exactly the average. The game is designed around everything being calculated as a plus or malus from a stat of 10.

You can, technically, drop INT all the way to 4. The problem is that going under 10 will make any character unusable.

In fact, just about any stat you put lower than 10 will horribly cripple your character.

That's the problem: the game's stat system is an unbalanced, self-conflicting mess, and INT is the worst offender.

It would be better to have no stats at all!

I've never understood the Min/maxers anyway. It is generally more fun to go around and play a build that is fun and interesting [...]

Cut the crap. You know what isn't fun or interesting? A character who sucks so bad they're not playable. Especially characters with less than 10 INT, as they can only spam their auto-attack move and Shockwave over and over, and are therefore the definition of boring and monotonous.

Now, granted, I don't tend to play PvP, and the outlook for those who focus on PvP might be much more specialized to the point where having 3-5 of the heavier cost skills, as well as the higher resistances is vital for your survival, but I do know that clever fighters with the right timing when using abilities can often surprise 'powerhouse' opponents when they least expect it.

This is a mod-skirting way to insult players who "theorycraft" by implying they're stupid and relying on a powerful character to compensate for it.

... which is also admitting that high-INT characters are universally more powerful than low-INT characters, or else you'd have no reason to bring that up.

This vaporous blowharding about "be clever" this and "right timing" that is straight out of a Bruce Lee movie and is completely removed from reality. The truth is that any opponent who sees you only have 1 or 2 reliable moves will easily predict when and how you'll attack and swiftly murder you at a much higher rate than luck and randomness would permit for opponents on equal footing.

CPU mobs will be nowhere near as responsive, but this game follows theme park design. Your low-INT build can only specialize against one enemy type at a time while 2 or 3 very different ones coexist in each biome. High-INT characters can take them all on at once because they can kit for all of them at once.

"Clever fighters" bring more than one trick to begin with, and limiting the player's "cleverness" by the character's INT score is lame.

Almost as lame as whinging about "min/maxing" and pretending that being bad at a game = fun and being good at one = not fun.

@GamerSeuss There will be precisely zero one-skill builds that will be consistently better than contemporary many-skill builds outside of specialized circumstances. A tank especially will be better with more skills, as damage is not the point of a tank unless damage is part of threat calculation, they will have responses to a wider variety of enemies simultaneously, and more INT will also make their self-heals and some other buffs better.

Limiting Memory to INT, with the high cost of worthwhile skills, mandates players to take INT. This undermines the point of letting you choose whether to take INT or not as nobody in their right mind will drop it lower than ~10 unless they are intentionally handicapping themselves.

This is not correct. What planet you're on determines the PVP rules.

• Arboreus is PVE-only.
• Syndesia has open PVP with a criminal justice system.
• Tartaros has lawless PVP with no justice system except that devised by players.

Beastmen start on Arboreus, but they can go to Syndesia. They can also (briefly) visit Tartaros, but they get sick because Tartaros hates Good-aligned characters.

Humans start on Syndesia, but they can go to Arboreus and Tartaros.

Demons start on Tartaros. They are quickly repelled from Syndesia except during an Eclipse. They are quickly repelled from Arboreus at all times.

Beastmen who turn Evil and become Abominations become indistinct from Demons under these rules.

Demons who turn Good and become Angels... it isn't certain, except that they will be able to stay on Syndesia permanently.

I'm so tired of seeing heated arguments between hostile babies over trifles like who gets to make a game all about them.

"Playing solo" in an MMO is not the same thing as playing a single player game. It simply means that players are not obligated into contracts or duties to a party or guild. They absolutely retain the option of selectively trading with or otherwise engaging other players and this should always be encouraged (not enforced) or else it isn't an MMO.

There is not one single reason that any player should be forced to persistently play in a group in an MMO, especially one that limits its gameplay for the sake of lore or immersion like Fractured. It is unrealistic that every single person has to be in a group to accomplish the slightest thing and there should never be an invisible ghost barring you from doing basic things like "Sorry, you can't put this crafting station in your solo house, only in a city."

Solo players are already inherently punished by the nature of playing solo. Groups drastically cut the time taken for build projects or resource farming, and are able to specialize each member to produce a flawless team. They can also have someone on in a wide set of time zones. Solo players on the other hand require hours to build anything permanent, are only available in one time zone, and (unless the game is a scrub game) can only be good at one thing with glaring weaknesses. Of course, if a hostile group finds a solo player, they will easily floor them assuming all characters are roughly equal in strength, as Fractured fancies itself to promote.

That said, it is ridiculous to force all player cities to be usable by all players. That simply doesn't make any sense from either a gameplay or a logical standpoint. As brought up earlier in the thread, it lessens the reward from building or controlling a city (which is a large investment) and can even benefit enemies. Besides, if cities are meant to be guild-controlled city-states, why would they inherently be available to the general public? Would this apply to Tartaros as well, where there is no global society and everyone is everyone's enemy?

This problem could be rendered moot by simply allowing solo players to do full crafting in their own solo homes, rather than forcing them to do it in a city for no apparent reason. Otherwise, there is no point to solo homes, as they are objectively wastes of time and resources since you can't convert any of it to a city.

Fractured is too concerned with looking like it's different from other MMOs and not concerned enough with a solid design and good experience. If it works, do it. If it doesn't, don't.

EDIT: Apparently, solo players can build any crafting station in their homes that their closest city has researched. This makes no sense, but okay.

Well, you can play as (most) races on any world... it's just each race starts on a particular world and has a lot of trouble moving to any other. You'd absolutely be able to take a Human to Arboreus or Tartaros, so far as I know.

The main limitation is that Demons are innately Evil and can only make long visits to Syndesia during an Eclipse. They can't visit most of Arboreus at all and are expelled from the few areas they can reach within an hour. They would have to become Good, which implies they would become an Angel, a different race entirely.

Beastmen are innately Good and, in order to persist on Tartaros, will need to become Evil / Abominations.

@GamerSeuss said in End game?:

The main deficit that the newb will have in the battles is a lack of combat options, as they will only have unlocked the starting skills for their archetype in this scenario, and they will not have increased their Talent Tree abilities at all yet. Both of these things are nice, but neither by themselves is gamebreakingly going to set a character above the others in a Raid Group.

No, either is a colossal disadvantage. It won't turn the tide of a group fight, but it will decide which characters make up the casualties.

Talents not only can add to stats (which have exponential effects, especially past 20), but include perks such as complete immunity to poison. Talents combined with gear define leagues.

The starter skills are completely laughable. Veterans will shrug them off with the myriad of heals and buffs available, especially in a group full of specialists. Words of Power are disproportionately strong and the only fresh character who can take them on is a tank build... which Fractured intentionally makes expensive and newbie-unfriendly.

Progression is inherently vertical; what has "no vertical progression" has no progression. Knowledge Points are just experience points with non-static level ups.

Don't get rid of all chat. Get rid of wide chat - no global chat, no "zone chat". There's no faster way to destroy a fantasy game world than to include Twitter in it.

Because that's what it is. Why else is my character able to hear every petty thing that every other character in the game ever says? Either I've got Twitter on my cellphone or everybody is yelling really, really loud like all the time.

Wide chats are centralized and centralized = exploitable. That's why global and zone chats are full of 12yo trolls and spam bots. You don't see anywhere near as many of them when you remove wide chat, because they have to go to the 1 or 2 most populous spots to run their mouths. Fewer of them will do that because it isn't efficient, those that do can be easily avoided, and it's easy to moderate when you only need to check a few predetermined places rather than scour the chaotic storm of a global chat or scour the entire game looking for bad boys.

Guild chat is acceptable for practical purposes, but it isn't strictly necessary, because any guild that would need it will be using out-of-game chats like Teamspeak or Discord anyway.