The city/residential area system is completely new for this latest Alpha test, and maybe it would be easier on Prometheus if we tried to gather all the feedback in one thread instead of each individually posting a new thread. Anyway, I'm a vice governor so I'd like to make a couple points first and hopefully others like @Alexian @Shivashanti @Ostaff @Dreamcraftwd @Rife @Jahlon @Kralith @Xzait will also chime in.

My main issues with the system so far is:

• Residents are counted towards rank up, but citizens don't seem to matter at all. # of citizens should count towards prestige or something, instead of being a dead number. Cities should want to gather more citizens as well as residents.
• Residents don't risk anything at all if the city is sieged. Only the citizens who have plots within the city walls would be risking their homes. Meanwhile the residents get to enjoy all the benefits of the city's research without having to care about anything when siege comes. The extra bonus of being able to craft at city crafting stations doesn't outweigh the work of being a citizen. If a city has set permissions to both citizens and residents, then the citizens don't get any extra bonus at all and meanwhile have all the work of having to care about city upkeep and defense.
• The city squares are TOO small! xD
• Prestige is currently "broken"
• We need a little bit more control over residential areas/being able to log residents.
• Having some type of citizen & residents communication board or chat would be ideal.
• The tech tree- is it intended to only begin getting 1 research point instead of 2 at the village level? Of course this will lead to cities specializing in certain things, but then having the market locked behind research as well discourages cities from wanting to spend those precious points on it.
• Some type of symbol indicator (like the militia symbol status or the young player status) to tell resident accounts apart from random players. I say accounts because often we don't even know the outside residents at all and then can end up attacking them or their alts.

Okay I'm done for now someone else add their feedback =P

I'm sure the News on the forums will be updated to include this, but just throwing this here for now to help!

Specter put an update in the News section of the Fractured Discord. July, not June

Join the community discord if you haven't yet! - https://discord.gg/7u7GbU4

Hello, this is in response to the Winter Alpha 2021 Spotlight #2: City Overhaul

While I understand that changes were made to "make solo play more viable," in the end, Fractured is supposed to be a sandbox MMO. Group work and group effort should be rewarded.

Having the crafting stations for cities be open to use by anyone is too drastic of a change. It takes away the accomplishment of building up a city, because now when you build it up, then everyone around you benefits instead of only the people who actually worked on ranking up the city.

I suggest that Dynamight lets the governors decide whether their city will be "open" or "citizens-only" when they claim a city. This solves the issues in several ways.

A city that chooses to be citizens-only needs to make sure that they continuously work on their city's upkeep in order to enjoy the benefits of ranking up. If they do not have the required amount of citizens (and people don't want to settle in their residential areas because they are unfriendly), then it is their own choice. They would have to recruit more players in order to rank up their city. But then they would also be able to feel more secure and accomplished in their city, because they are the ones directly benefitting from their own work/efforts. They know that they are responsible for the defending of their cities against siege/raids as well.

If a governor chooses to be an open city, then they can also choose to be welcoming to all and try to build up a good environment in their territory, so that "solo" players will want to settle near them and contribute to their territory. Since the outer residential areas aren't affected by city conquest, what incentive is there for an outside resident to help protect their nearby city? If the controlling governor is the one who sets whether the city is open or closed, then this would also lead to the "solo players" having an interest in helping to protect this territory, since it is a governor who supports the playstyle they want. If the governor changes the permissions on them, the residents should be able to leave and go elsewhere.

This is something that should be up to the players, not something set by the devs. Please take this feedback into account. I have loved playing Fractured so far, and I feel that the decision to make the crafting stations like the Forge, etc, open to all without having an option to choose not to do so, would kill a huge part of interaction in the game.

The minimum punishments need to be reduced. As it currently stands, as soon as someone flags evil, they hit 0 karma, and then if they get killed by a bounty hunter they get sent straight to jail for at least 24hours or have to pay 2k gold. This is a ridiculously large amount as a MINIMUM punishment. For example, someone can flag as evil, then walk out of town, get killed and then instantly need 2k gold or their character gets locked for 24 hours in jail. They don't even need to have initiated any attack. If someone flagged as evil to try to steal a cart and then got killed, they would already have too severe of a sentence. Keep in mind, I am not talking about the max negative karma players who are running around killing others. I'm talking about the MINIMUM sentence, not the max.

At least in terms of temporarily for the testing period, the minimum sentence needs to be reduced!!! The alpha test sessions are limited time, being jailed for 24 hours during a 30 day test is brutal. Gold sink would make more sense when servers are up forever, but right now they are not.

Someone at 0 karma should have a much lighter sentence than someone at -6000 karma. This also provides more incentive for the really high level hostile players to want to engage in risky PVE as well. They will need to try to kill mobs to lessen their negative karma, or else risk the maximum sentence. I think that provides more intriguing gameplay instead of just high level hostile players jumping out at new players to kill them and then disappearing without a trace.

Keeping my own personal preferred playstyle out of this one xD this is my specific feedback for the current law system. I'm waiting also to see how interesting it will be that you cannot be a bounty hunter and in a militia at the same time. How many will join a militia to pvp then?

[Edit] I plan to do a more in-detail critique later on after testing more.

@Jetah Don't know what you're talking about here, I feel like you're just grumpy and trying to turn this into some political statement that has nothing to do with Fractured or the Fractured team.

Wow i am super late to the party going on in this thread

Actually... this thread has branched off into so many different topics it's quite hard to try to reply to all the big points at once, but I want to contribute to the discussions as well.

If each city gets to control 1 (possibly more than 1 in the future) resource nodes, then the important information would be:

• How the resource node is managed (Does the governor control it? Will there be a "log" of which citizen took what?) - I believe Specter already answered this earlier in this thread confirming that Governors will be able to decide who can harvest the resources, which is GREAT news!
• Will there be ways to collect the same resource but from a much more limited source that is NOT controlled by any city? (Example: City A controls a Yew Tree Forest, but would there be 1 or 2 random Yew Trees in the wild that can be cut down by anyone on Syndesia that are in PvP areas? I know Arboreus brings a whole other picture, but I am trying to ask specifically about areas that will allow for PVP)

What @Nekrage is saying here is that the implementation of the city resources features is extremely important to the long-term health of the game, which I believe we can all agree on. I'm sure the developers also know this and have brainstormed a few ideas, we as regular players just don't know what they have in store yet so some concerns are being voiced. I just hope that after we do get to see what's planned, that we can continue giving valuable feedback to the developers and that they will continue to acknowledge any potential issues.

Fractured's most unique vision is the implementation of the three planets, three playstyles, and so with the appeal to all those different playstyles we get quite a mix of a crowd here on the forums.

For those who are planning to purely play on Arboreus, the "one resource node per city" feature is great because it will promote trading between cities and goodwill across the continent. For those on Syndesia and Tartaros, however, this is a feature that HAS to be carefully implemented, especially due to PVP playstyles! The biggest difference is the city sieges. If we can only siege cities that are directly connected to us on the road, we will be er.. fighting our neighbors quite often! My experience with human nature is that if two groups are at war, they will not be working nicely to promote trade with each other Which means... there will have to be other ways provided by the developers to possibly obtain the resources either through PvP/conquest/city raiding.. OR unfortunately players will try things like backstabbing each other to steal from each other's cities via spying or "secret second accounts to steal resources". Yes I know, to the players who are more in tune with the Beastmen/Angels playstyle this is terrible, but all full-loot PvP types of games will invite more "demonic" communities where people will try to gain the upper hand by unsavory means. Don't underestimate how crazy the hardcore player mentality will be as they try to play to be the very best! That is why the developers must plan ahead and curb the potential for that unsavory conduct by providing better alternatives in-game. Since Tartaros is for that type of community and Syndesia is somewhat partial to it as well, all the different feature implementations of Fractured have to be fully considered for all the different rulesets, not just for one of the rulesets.

In this matter, I think Nekrage and I both agree that bringing issues like this to the attention of the developers is in favor of having a healthy, long-term game. We don't want Fractured to be ruined by something that might have been overlooked or unintended.

I am looking forward to see how this will be implemented. Governors getting to decide who will harvest the resources is a big step in the right direction!

Some people in this thread have gotten way off track. Let's bring it back to discussion about the actual Bounty/Jail system.

First off, just like @Kralith and @Alexian and some others have been saying. This is a system ONLY for Syndesia. Yes, it's true that most of the PvP community that cares enough about the game to post feedback on here actually plan to play on Tartaros, so when FULLY IMPLEMENTED, this system will not affect them. The PvP community is giving feedback based on a pvp point of view, telling what they see as flaws for the bounty/jail system. Attacking @Nekrage here when he's trying to give feedback on a system that ultimately won't affect his playstyle on Tartaros is completely immature and missing the whole point of the thread. He's not trying to ruin Syndesia and turn it into Tartaros. He's trying to give you feedback on this system from a pvp player's point of view.

Likewise for the Arboreus players, they hate any type of PvP, whether it's "ganking newbies" OR "legitimate PvP", so their disdain for pvp content shows in what they have to say about the bounty/jail system too, yet it won't affect them either if they are planning to stay on Arboreus on release.

However since both extreme groups are stuck on Syndesia for the time being, this is why it's such a hot debate.

I propose that we try to split our feedback into two different section (if possible.)

1. Feedback on the Bounty Hunting/Jail system in terms of the alpha test.

2. Feedback on the Bounty Hunting/Jail system in terms of an actual feature on release.

3. My feedback on the bounty hunting/jail system in terms of this alpha test:
   This was not a good time to implement that feature, because we are also getting more pvp focused communities into the alpha test. People who WANT to focus on pvp would align to evil JUST FOR THE OPTION OF BEING ABLE TO FIGHT ANYONE THEY COME ACROSS. I am not talking about the few who are intent on griefing/ganking/making others miserable. I am talking about the players who do actually enjoy pvp to the fullest and will go the extra mile to help test things like pvp balance, etc. Not all PVP players = evil gankers who only want to ruin the game for new players. PLEASE KEEP THIS IN MIND. If Fractured is trying to get feedback and reach out to the pvp communities, it does not help to have a system implemented at the moment that would punish new testers who are merely looking for as much pvp as they can get. Yes, I know there is the militia system, but that is completely overlooked and there is no incentive for pvp guilds to join a militia on the hope that other pvp guilds join a different militia. As of now the militia system in the test only leads to an artificial pvp environment. Which leads the pvp-loving players to go and flag evil so that they will have more pvp opportunities.

Maybe the militia feature needs to be reworked into a more viable option, so that the bounty hunting/jail system feedback isn't all mixed up. I do understand that the pvp community needs to see that the bounty hunting/jail system is supposed to be a system to protect Syndesia. It's actually not really supposed to be a large scale pvp system at all. It's not supposed to be what pvp guilds are using as war against each other. xD
But right now, the militias is not a viable option, so the bigger pvp groups ARE using this system as a type of war when it shouldn't be. And that probably mixes up the feedback a bit.

1. My feedback on the Bounty Hunting/Jail system in terms of an actual feature on release:

• The minimum sentence needs to be reduced. It needs to be based on the actual amount of negative karma the player has accrued. A minimum of 24 hrs/2k gold just for flagging evil and dying is ridiculous.
• The prison system needs to be tweaked. I'm not exactly sure how yet, but there are a few good suggestions in this thread. For example the idea to make being a bounty hunter an attractive pvp status incentive. Etc.
• There should be a reason to keep the "punished" player in game. Like @Nekrage said, time spent out of a game is actually bad for the game's longevity. There's a reason why games try to be more addicting! This is more from a marketing type of view than from any moral "oh he did a bad thing so he needs to be punished" type of view. Maybe some type of "community service" punishment that can be done that also lessens the jailed time if completed, so they can choose between paying the bail or serving the time or do community service? Possibly even a way that they could "escape" the confines of the actual jail cell but then still walk around being unable to use abilities and unable to interact with objects until the end of their sentence? I'm not sure.

This is just what I can think of in the moment. Just my efforts to try to keep this thread on track. Now back to the game.

@Kralith You bring up very good points here!

I would also like to add, that the development time for an MMORPG is substantially longer than for other types of games just due to the large design and features meant for the game world. If you look at all the "big name" upcoming MMOs that have been announced in the last 3-7 years, none of them are even at the playable point yet. Examples would be Star Citizen, Crowfall, Pantheon, Camelot Unchained, Ashes of Creation, New World.... none actually close to releasing! In fact, if we consider amount of time between first announcement and a playable test phase, Fractured actually wins!

Solo players can have the option of going solo, that is their right as a player. But if you go solo you should not expect to have all the privileges that a citizen would enjoy as part of a city. There is a reason why eventually taxes WILL be implemented in the game, it's because the city/governor are supposed to have a continuous relationship of working together to build towards the good of the group.

The current setup with the crafting stations being centered around cities works for both solo and group players. Group players did the work together and built the city, so they should enjoy the privileges of citizenship. Solo players can TRADE with city players for those mats/items that they need, leading to economy and interaction.

Again, if you are expecting to be able to do everything in your house by yourself, then we'd just be playing Minecraft instead of a dynamic player-driven MMO.

The Alpha test will be a minimum length of a month long, and some people just don't have the time to put in a ton of hours into a test phase that will be wiped. However, the more people testing, the better the feedback!

So keeping this in mind...

The Oran'Thul wants to help those who have not had a chance to test the city technology upgrades and also give players a glimpse of how teamwork in Fractured can be! Both our city and our guild are open to all in-game for the duration of this Spring Alpha test without you having to make any long term commitments! If you decide to join on a more permanent basis, we can work something out as well!

Contact me (Harley) here or via the Fractured discord if interested!

Happy testing!

Nothing new to discuss, we're now all waiting for the next test session to be announced. Players play the test, give feedback, test ends, wait for next test. Some people do the daily postings for the Foundation points, but it's kind of hard to have something to talk about if we already talked about it all and are now waiting for the next news. It would be kind of strange actually to expect more posts right now... what would we even talk about? o_o

@Prometheus Ah I'm sorry I missed the replies to this post. By "bonus to quality" I meant the ability to craft an Exceptional piece. The crafting tables inside the workshop building can only craft Fine/Good, while the specialized shop ones are able to craft Good/Exceptional.

I'm guessing that means I was asking about the "shop" bonus? In that case I see it is meant to work that way. Originally, I thought that any crafting table within the city buildings would get the same amount of bonus to quality, with the specialized shops being meant for prestige purposes, which is why I was confused. Thanks for clearing that up!

Ah I see!

By the way, is it intended that only the leader of a group of settlers can declare a siege? I understand the need for having settlers to become new citizens in case of the attackers' conquest, but the way this system is currently set up means that a current governor will never be able to declare a siege, since they cannot make a settlers' group due to already being a governor. Would it be possible to change the system so that a governor can declare siege from the town hall after a settlers' group has also been formed at the town hall? It seems weird that currently only a vice-governor would be able to make a settlers' group and then declare siege from the town hall.

(Of course the situation is different with guilds declaring siege on hamlets, but my question was specifically about the town hall siege declarations)

@OlivePit Actually, a governor cannot do it, it has to be a vice-governor!

@Prometheus said in Siege Bugs:

Thanks a lot for the report!

1. The siege tent and banners should be visible to all attackers and defenders. Are you sure they're visible only to the guild leader, who by the way wasn't the person who declared the siege?

The siege tent and banners are visible, but it is the siege tent map icon that seems to be bugged. My character declared the siege and placed the tent, but nothing shows on the world map for me, meanwhile when Nekrage opens his map then the siege tent icon shows on the location. The siege tent icon on the MINI-MAP shows for me, but not on the world map.

Thanks for the prompt response!

The problem isn't "trying to block new players from content," the actual problem is that with that function, it becomes very easy for players with young player status to exploit getting the lore tablets with no risk.

You are all decent people who are thinking of players with young player status as completely new players trying to learn the game. You are not thinking of experienced players making new accounts just to have characters that are intentionally being kept as "young players" to take advantage of the young player status.

Have "experienced players" gather all the mats, trade to 1 person with a "young player status character" then that player can hold all the summon mats with no risk, run to the altars, summon, then either solo the easy legendaries or have a group with them to kill adds(so that they don't get too much knowledge points to kick them out of young status), legend dies, the group trades the pages to the safe status player, and then the player can carry it all back to a safe spot without risk of losing them to any pvp, and then trade them to the accounts that want the knowledge gain.

Too easy to exploit if someone is trying to do so.

Possible fixes? I'm not sure. Make legends unsolo-able completely, or make successful summons kick players out of young status, or something. Still not a 100% fix, but better than the current situation. The same issue happens with young status players being able to mine for hours without risk, since the status got extended to 40 hours playtime, If someone is solely using the time to mine/transport resources, that's still a while.

I hate that this type of behavior exists. But never underestimate what people will try to do to gain the upper hand. But, maybe this is all just more of a concern due to it being testing phases where free keys are being given out.

@OlivePit Well, for the tables on residential plots, that is intended because they are only supposed to be able to craft the higher quality in the city. But I'm not sure if it is intended for the tables inside the city Workshop Building, since those are already inside the city.

This is still an issue in this current alpha test, from last test til now. Still have an option to create metal arrowheads, but no option to craft them into metal arrows. This can be extremely frustrating to new players who spent the time to mine, smelt an ingot, crafted metal arrowheads, and then realized there is no way to make metal arrows.

https://i.imgur.com/lPV192f.png

Not sure if this is intended or a bug. Crafting tables built inside the "Workshop" building do NOT get the bonus to quality applied from the city research tree. The crafting tables only get the bonus when placed inside their specific buildings. If that's intended, I'm unsure why we would even get an option to build and place the Workshop building.

You need 50,000 KP before you can flag as evil.