Posts made by GorethMolier

@kryshael We're still alive and kicking!

Welcome both of you. To get ready for the launch I would suggest checking out the wiki and some of the content players have created. Things are still in flux and some of the videos and guides may be out of date, but you can get the basic ideas of the game. You will want to know about crafting, guilds, enchanting, imbuing, and how to gain Knowledge Point (KP), and talents. Specifics have and will change as we go forward, but starting off day one knowing a bit about the basics will go a long way.

Check out the various guilds as they can be a great way to socialize and get help. Look at some of the maps and you can get an idea where to go to start. Having 2-3 friends start with you is a great way to get into the game, but there are several new player friends guilds out there.

Also, do you like or loath PvP? Decide where you want to start is important as that will flavor your start. The Wildfolk have no PvP on their planet, while the Humans have PvP in both individual terms and town vs. town.

Feel free to ask questions here and I'll do my best to answer them.

And make sure your browser isn't blocking popups by default.

Another idea to go along with the original post:

Allow crafters to pick a bonus as they go up in tier. Each tier may have a set of 4-5 bonus options to choose from. The crafter would choose which bonus they put on that type of item and cannot change it later. This prevents the idea of a guild crafter, which Spoletta seems to hate, and creates a variety of item types.

the down side of this is that there is usually a meta in game. Most crafters will pick the meta at the time and would become useless as the meta changes. This means the latest generation of crafters would always be the in-demand crowd and discard the veteran crafters. However, if the coices are balanced, you could end up with people creating items for a particular play style, with defensive vs. attack or even a specific type of elemental protection.

Another option (and granted a much more complicated option to implement) would be to allow players to create their own allows/material combinations. This has been done on other games whereas you choose a slider or set of sliders to determine how items are combined. This creates a much wider set of options when crafting and leads to a great deal of experimentation. If a crafter hits a really good set of options they could keep such a combination a secret and be in high demand until someone else replicates it.

@spoletta While this does solve some of the issues, there is still no way to craft lesser tier items and no reason to do so anyway. This means you eventually get limited to 1 item a day. Considering how long it takes to get there, and this would slow the progression down even more, you are looking at months before the first tier 2 can be produced. And since there are much fewer crafters out there, there would be a shortage of anything over green, and again, once you hit a higher tier, you cannot go back and "fill in" with lower tier items.

It's a step in the right direction, but needs to be adjusted for population. You also don't need to make gathering items so difficult if you artificially cap crafting.

https://discord.gg/wSsBC9Eav4

@Yalah The idea of city tech defining what can be crafted has not been something the devs are willing to budge on yet, so I was working within some of the dev defined requirements. I agree that the materials affecting the outcome is actually a good idea, but there needs to be more variety. We also see a ton of craft and dumps happening just to be able to craft better items. This makes crafting just a grind and not fun. The idea of making each level useful at some point is a compromise. Complex systems need to have a reason and not simply being complex to slow down the game or complexity for the sake of complexity. It is a game and needs to have that fun factor. You need some way to give the player a sense of achievement.

One can use economics to decide how tech works as well. By making an upkeep cost for each tech that is purchased, you can limit power while growing an economy. But, there must be a system in place for towns to make money, be it taxes of selling materials. This has to be more than begging players to help keep the town running so such a system would have to be implemented along with the tech.

The trophy idea was that players could find a rare trophy as some form of drop. Most likely from Legends, but it really doesn't matter. The trophies could be places in a crafter's house and apply a bonus to certain things crafted in that house. Limited trophies could be put up at one time, limiting its power.

I know many players asked for more intricate crafting, but the current setup seems complex for the sake of complexity.There is also a huge leap between tier 1 and tier 2. There also isn't much difference between white, green, blue, purple, and gold. I get that there is enhanced durability, but it feels bad. There is also no reason/way to create lower tier versions. Eventually the only thing to buy is gold, making it hard for new crafters to get involved and it makes all items a commodity. The commodity aspect leads to a race to the bottom in pricing once the game spins up and people can farm equipment. The only way to avoid that is to make the items so hard to get that it isn't worth it. This is the direction we saw in the last test.

I would like to propose a few changes. Most of these work together so it would be hard to take a single item out and implement it to get the effect, but take what you will.

First, make the various colors mean something other than a step up in durability. First, the crafter must be able to choose the crafting level of the item, so they can choose to create a green, even if they can make a gold. To do this, we must make a reason for them to do so. More on that later.

Make each level require the previous level and an additional item and/or process. For example, a grey bow can be made from sticks and fiber, but a green bow requires a grey bow and some oil made from an easy to obtain item like animal fat. The blue may require a green and molded wood. To make the molded wood you take a log from a tree split with an axe, creating bark. This bark is used to help shape the bow. Each step has a new item/step. You would mirror this idea with tier 2/3 but with much harder to obtain items. This would mean a green bow would do just fine if you don't want to go through the process/time to upgrade to blue. Town tech can go hand in hand with this and you may need certain tech to do this for tier 2 items (I think restricting tier 1 items to tech would frustrate players).

There needs to benefit to doing this as well. Since it appears the idea of increasing the stats is a no-go, how about having slots for enhancements. So a white/grey item could not be enchanted or upgraded, but a green one may has one slot to upgrade. Blue would have 2, etc. Each type of enhancement would be a slot. Level of enhancement could also be worked in; so a level 2 imbuing could take up 2 slots.

Adding in my previous idea of special enhancements individual crafters could make via a trophy systems, you have a system that encourages a large variety of items and combinations. The variety and complexity (useful complexity and not complexity for the sake of complexity) creates a stronger economy and makes players makes choices about costs, benefits, and time. Adding "created by" would help foster a crafting environment as it helps boost the crafter's ego and tell people who to talk to for more items.

You should probably offer occasional limited-time keys to kickstarter people. You could offer 2-4 weeks so the players can cause a viral effects of getting people they know to play. People are more likely to stay if they know people playing.

Iron Bank has been a large presence in Fractured since the beginning. We are organized yet relaxed and welcome all types of play styles. Join us at Braavos on EA launch.

@TehGrief The wipes are normal in development. There are so many things that have changed that it would be impossible to test bugs/balance without starting over for some things.

Plus, the start is a very different game from later. This gives you an opportunity to get in and direct how the game will progress. This is actually an issue I see whereas players who are at the start get a much more rich experience in the game than someone who comes later. As such I think the wipes have helped people understand what is at the root of the game and get a better idea of how it works. I know it was announced that there are not planned wipes for EA, but I expect if the devs pull through with all of the added content and changes then a wipe may be beneficial to gameplay. I real issues with the wipes were the short play tests since there is a good deal of spinup time to get the game going, with building towns, advancing tech, gathering resources etc. Iron Bank has dome this every test so far, but even we had a hard time getting things going in time for the previous test. A longer test process will give the players more time to flesh it out and get a feel for how things operate.

@OlivePit said in Steam Relaunch Day Revealed:

Where is the 3rd crop jacopo?

You really hate me...

@spoletta said in Orb & School proficiencies gains from items dont stack:

Right now the general feeling is the opposite.
People find that this system makes orbs not useful, since it is too easy to get to max rank using only imbues.

In fact, I would go over a mixed approach. I would let them stack with each other, so that new players have a use for those orbs, which otherwise don't feel like a particular achievement.
At the same time though, I would not allow imbued proficiencies to contribute past rank 6, so that you need the orbs to reach higher values. This is to make sure that orbs keep being a sought after end game reward.

I can actually agree with you for once. I think they should be stacked, but up to a point. This is a good compromise.

One of the things that bothers me is that all items are commodities. Crafters cannot do anything to make their stuff unique, and therefore it is just a matter of waiting until you get gold borders and buy the cheapest version. I would like to suggest something that has been stolen from a few sources.

Legends would have a small chance to drop a trophy. Crafters could put up, up to three trophies in their house (using stand they must build). Each trophy gives them a slight buff to something crafted. This could be to all items, or a nice buff to particular items. This only applies to things made in their house. Towns could get additional unique buffs as season rewards (limited to season) that would stack on top of house rewards. This would make each crafted item unique in its own way without becoming over powered. It would also lead to more crafters rather than simply boosting a single guild person.

Another city idea. Stables to breed horses. Would be nice to be able to give out (or sell horses) without having to track them down.

One more thing about cities. There needs to be a way to reclaim house plots if a player stops playing or is just no longer welcome. Requiring that a player remain a citizen of a town would be one way to do it. Give the player a week or so to move things before it is reclaimed by the city so they don't just lose everything to a dictator. The lack of control over housing plots could cause problems as the game progresses and new, active players, have no way to be embraced by the city while older, dead players cannot be pruned.

There should be a way to convert charcoal to coal. Right now there is TONS of charcoal because you need lots of oil to make planks. Even if the conversion is time gated and 10:1 it would mean you don't need to simply dump the charcoal. The other option is to greatly reduce the amount of oil needed or increase the amount produced. I would still like to see a conversion process so that one could produce coal, even at a slow rate.

Crafting/building options. It might be nice to allows skills that enhance/speed up crafting and/or building. Many people focus on this and I have a dedicated character for city development. It would be nice if one could get skills that enhance this piece of the game play. Just about every other aspect has a skill or skill to work with, why not crafting and building?

@LordSkykal We'll see about that! Ok boys! Bring in the siege equipment. We'll take Dynamight headquarters and demand they reinstate the contest!! Muhahahaha!

@spoletta There are so many other issues with cities/houses/skills/crafting that will probably change that this idea might be doa if any adjustments are made. I see where you are going, but I'm not sure if this should be a priority since the balance will most likely change going forward. I would also ask, what are you trying to limit here? What mechanic would this fix?