Posts made by KairosVal

@Phial said in VIP - Details?:

@Razvan said in VIP - Details?:

VIP membership is a monthly subscription planned to be priced around $10/month. It provides the following perks:

Discounts on Store items
Unique cosmetic rewards for accumulated VIP time
Other vanity rewards we might think of in the future
Additional study slots
Increased Knowledge Point gains

source

Wouldn't "increased knowledge point gains" be considered a pay 2 win since you'll have an advantage on the points you can attribute faster than others?

The short version is: VIP does give an advantage in power level. But it's short lived and not massive. It'll give the VIP an edge, but not neccesarily an overwhelming advantage.

I wanted to give a little more detail on top of what other people have discussed.

Suppose four players: Alice, Bob, Charlotte, and Daniel. All three have the same race and attributes. For simiplicity, lets assume they have the same gear, and they are all pursuing the same "standard loadout" build of skills and talents that their characters will use in the game.

Alice has done enough in-world exploration to unlock many skills. She has earned just enough knowledge points to learn a full loadout of skills and talents that she wants for her "standard" character loadout, but no more. Let's assume this happens at 10,000 KP for the sake of the example. Alice has also unlocked more skills though exploration than she's got the knowledge points to learn.

Bob hasn't played the game as much as Alice. He's only explored enough to unlock a sub-set of the skills Alice has learned. He also only has 5,000 KP to learn the skills he has unlocked. He hasn't gotten to the point yet that he can complete a full loadout of abilities.

Charlotte has played the game just as much as Alice, but is also a VIP. Charlotte has unlocked all the same skills as Alice through exploration, but because of her VIP she has earned (again, just inventing the numbers) 15,000 KP. Charlotte can learn more skills and talents than Alice. However: Charlotte cannot equip more skills than Alice at any one time, because Charlotte and Alice have the same number of memory points, so they have the same ceiling for the number of skills and talents that can be memorized at any one time.

Daniel has played the game just as much as Bob has, but is also a VIP. Daniel has explored enough to unlock only a sub-set of the skills that Alice and Charlotte have unlocked. He has more KP that Bob at 7,500, and he can learn a few more skills and talents than Bob can. But still not enough to complete an entire character loadout.

In that scenario, the power levels regarding the "standard loadout" are:

• Charlotte (VIP) and Alice (non-VIP) are equal in power for their "standard loadout".
• Charlotte has a flexibility advantage over Alice in the form of an alternate loadout she can select if she chooses to do so.
• Alice (non-VIP) is stronger than both Daniel (VIP) and Bob (non-VIP) for their "standard loadout".
• Daniel (VIP) is a little stronger than Bob (non-VIP) for their "standard loadout".

Charlotte's only advantage over Alice is that Charlotte can, during rest, choose to memorize a "non-standard loadout" of skills and talents that may be more situationally useful. For example, the "standard loadout" may not have a fire resist spell - but when doing PvE against enemies that deal fire damage, it may be useful for Charlotte to run away, rest, then equip a different loadout that trades off a combat closer skill from the standard loadout for a fire resistance skill instead.

So it's not exactly true that VIP doesn't give a power advantage, because Charlotte does enjoy the power that comes from greater flexibility in her choices. But it doesn't give Charlotte a higher power ceiling than Alice - they each cap out at the same power level. So if the "standard build" is an optimal PvP build, Charlotte has no advantage over Alice in a PvP setting, but she may have an advantage in that she can optimize for a wider range of PvE settings.

It should be noted that Daniel (VIP) does have a raw power advantage over Bob (non-VIP) though. But that advantage will be short-lived. Once Daniel and Bob have each done the same amount of exploration as Alice, and once they have earned the same amount of base KP as Alice, then Daniel and Bob will be indistinguishable from Charlotte and Alice.

So if you got through that Huge Wall Of Text then congratulations! The takeaway here is that, yes, the VIP system does give an advantage, both in terms of flexibility and in terms of raw power comparisons. The flexibility advantage is real. A VIP will have access to more options than a non-VIP for the same investment of time and player skill, which will let them optimize loadouts for a wider range of scenarios. However, the raw power advantage is only in play for as long as it takes for a non-VIP player to complete their first loadout. Once that's done, the non-VIP is equivalent to a VIP with the same race, attributes, gear, and skill/talent loadouts.

Now: Even with all that in place? It needs to be acknowledged that VIPs may still get access to increased power level in the same loadout due to their greater flexibility. Skills will be upgradeable twice (so three levels of skill) through exploration. So if a VIP has an easier time exploring due to their flexibility, that could give them an easier time unlocking higher levels of the skills in the "standard loadout" being compared. That would translate to an increase in power level. But it's a very nonlinear form of power advantage, it only lasts as long as it takes for the non-VIP to unlock up to the same levels, and it still requires the exact same investment in terms of the actual exploration requirements themselves from all players. Again, that is an advantage, but not an overwhelming one.

@Tuoni said in Death and what it entails:

@Farlander said in Death and what it entails:

I thought it was said there would be durability since we have been told upon death gear is damaged. That would indicate gear is going to degrade. No repairing and damage upon death means gear will rotate alot. If gear is horizontal as characters are then there would be no such thing as epic gear nor would that mean that gear degrades in stats. So I'm not seeing how improving your crafting ability really really "improves" your character as a crafter. From all I can rationalize "improving" in knowledge just opens up new options. Not necessarily better or more powerful just different.

So what am I getting at? If everyone is able to craft the same quality of gear right out of the box then I don't see much of a player run market. Everyone will basically be able to supply themselves since basic mats are probably going to be readily available. That said the only good vendors are just going to be the ones that actually supply goods. There's no competition in quality of goods.

Well said. This is my fear as well, and regarding to current information, crafting can be very underwhelming activity and because of that markets may end up to be quite poor as well.

Right now, the quality of an enchantment comes in tiers. In the state of the game as of the last playtest, we didn't have enough variety of reagents to unlock all the tiers of enchantments. The Tier II intelligence boost was a bit tricky to sort out. You can check out the enchanting guide here for examples.

There's also the quality of the materials that go into making an item. Exotic hides need to be converted to cured leather, and so on.

Pretty sure that what this means is that the key thing driving a lot of this will be getting the raw materials that best suit the desired loadout. So if you're going up against something that deals fire damage from spells, you'll want hide that gives magic resistance with enchantments that give fire resistance, that sort of thing. Getting all of that to the highest tier will take rare materials to construct and rare reagents to enchant, and will need access to advanced crafting stations in towns.

So with all that in place, the expectation is that not everyone is going to be able to have access to all of those at the same time. Everyone should be able to make the basic stuff. But if you want the best stuff, you need more. A single person could do it, but it's going to be very time consuming and will probably need a lot of travel to get to where all the rare reagents are - and I fully expect that there will be some reagents that only exist in specific contents, specific worlds, or asteroids.

With all that, I do think that there'll be room for trade. It feels like the game design right now implements the "dedicated crafter" archetype as players that have the time, player-knowledge and connections to pull on all of those resources to produce bespoke items at a profit.

Not sure if we're going to have the ability to unlock recipies for the kind of gear we can construct, but if we do then that would give the dedicated crafters a form or horizontal progression too.

That still may not be satisfying to people who want to be able to double-down in progression to make the "best stuff" - but given how limited the vertical progression is, and how wide the various scenarios you may need to equip for are, the notion of "best stuff" is a little bit context-dependent in Fractured anyway.

Just my 2c.

Right back atcha you glorious animal!

@Phylosophys said in Death and what it entails:

Hi @dj35 and all others that commented before,

About death, you can read the last announcement on this matter in the Roadmap to Alpha 2 – Test 3. As precised by the Devs, first you are knocked down when you reach endurance 0, after some time you come back up at the cost of Life points. If you reach Endurance 0 and Life 0, you are dead and you respaw either at your house or (for the time being) at the last tavern you rested in. You are asked to choose.
Consequence of being knocked down includes:

• Players can stole from your bag. The theft will have different consequences depending on the planet you are.
• Non evil monsters will stop attacking you.
• Someone can use a recovery/revive spell to help you.
• Evil monsters and players may keep attacking you, what will make you lose Life points, when you reach zero you are dead.

Consequence of dying includes:

• You respaw at a determined place, as explained above.
• You become full-lootable, meaning that players can loot everything you have on you.
• Before you corpse decompose you can come back to retrieve your items or give permission to party members to retrieve them for you.

That is what I got so far, more or less.

Hope it's not too big a derail: Do we know if that distinction between bag looting and full looting is really locked in? If so, have any planned mechanics been discussed around logging out or breaking connection as an escape mechanism?

I don't think it will. Adds a lot of complexity while (arguably) not actually making the game more fun to play.

That said, I'm in the group of players where I would prefer it if food was perishable so it was something else we had to trade off and play around with. But I just really like survival elements in games and not-so-secretly want every game to be a RimWorld clone. That's probably the wrong instinct here.

I just like it if things like, say, grain was perishable, but the rate of perishing went down if it was in a grain silo, and went to zero if that grain silo had a 'cats' upgrade to stop loss to mice. Makes cities more important for long term food storage, that sort of thing.

But pretty sure it wouldn't be fun for most other players, so no biggie.

Late, but eventually.

I've got a lot of confidence that this game will see both beta and release.

I think something really big and external to Dynamight would have to go badly wrong to stop this game from moving forward to beta and release.

Worth noting that we're going through something really big and external to Dynamight right now. So far the pandemic hasn't seemed to slow them down too much. But if something comes out of left field - such as Improbable's capex spending on Spatial OS drying up - then things could slam to a halt without any fault on Dynamight's part. I don't think that's likely at this point - but a pandemic in the modern economy is uncharted territory, so don't rule it out.

In terms of the internal risks that Dynamight does have control over? I'm not a game dev, but I've worked on really large business dev projects. With a bit of experience you learn how to smell pie-in-the-sky-software-bullshit. I've been consistently impressed with how grounded and realistic Dynamight's plans and timeframes have been to date. They've got the balance between ambition and what-we-can-actually-achieve exactly right.

Expect timeframes to slip: It's softwrae, timeframes always slip. But everything I've seen from Dynamight passes the smell test so far, and their community outreach has been above and beyond the call of duty relative to the size of their team.

I see no reason for pessimism and a lot of reasons for optimism.

@Tuoni said in Concerns related to the attributes:

Perhaps the human-readable part can be camouflaged behind skins, but if we have option to inspect then it does not really matter.

Still reckon there's a big difference between seeing it at a glance and having to click open an inspection menu then move it out of the way of combat then read it all while fighting and trying not to die.

Not sure if an inspection option is planned, but if implemented, would be interesting if the level of information revealed was linked to the perception attribute.

@Zidroc said in EVE Online players here?:

I've seen it on steam, never tried it. It sounds fun, but definitely seems like you need a group of friends to play with. I read that ganking is huge

The entire server is essentially a PvP server. In high security space there are police NPCs that will punish people who break the law, but they are there to punish criminals, not protect the innocent.

There's an ongoing back-and-forth on the EVE community forums around people who like PvE complaining about getting killed, and pretty much everyone else who thinks they're crybabies. Hence, carebears.

I'm a particularly odd strain of (former) EVE player in that I liked the PvE side of it, but I just accepted that ganking was a part of the game so adjusted my ships, fits and playstyle accordingly. And it was fine. Plenty of other hisec players who didn't do that and presented way more tempting targets. The trick is that you don't have to outplay the gankers, you just have to out play the other PvE players so the gankers go to them and leave you be.

@Tuoni said in Concerns related to the attributes:

@Gothix If gear is human readable or we can inspect other players, then you cannot keep anything as a secret. Furthermore, the streaming and video culture what we have in games nowadays also takes care of that everything can be analyzed afterwards. So someone needs to fight once against the team #1 and all the builds are revealed.

Armor skins are a thing in the Foundation, and will probably exist as cosmetic purchase items in the store.

I prefer human-readable armor, weapons and magical assets, but there's a tradeoff here between human-readability and a revenue stream to keep the servers running. Cashflow matters if we want the game to persist. It is what it is.

Something a little bit like that kind of "virtual ecology" has been done in a historic verison of Ultima Online. It did not go well.

It'd be interesting if wolves attacked deer and such, but at the same time I think that the typical player isn't going to stop to notice that kind of thing. I'm expecting that the typical player is probably just going to run around killing everything that moves, because players gonna player.

Also, the idea is that while demons will get an edge in the ease of travelling between worlds, particularly during eclipses, travelling for the other races is meant to be something that requires planning and investment.

My expectation is that travelling between worlds will be expensive enough to act as a significant money and resource sink, but that's just an educated guess on my part.

@Tuoni said in Concerns related to the attributes:

I was also wondering, that could those attribute points just cost 1 point each? That would make the theorycrafting much more easier and would take away that change you will end up to have one point left which you can not use. At the moment the first two levels costs 3 points, then it decreases to 2 points and after level 15 it raises again to 3 points and eventually to 4 points. Could this system be more straightforward?

If they followed this request it would wreck the game for me, identity and balance wise.

The current system imposes and rewards meaningful tradeoffs. Having the highest base strength (or whatever) possible in the game is a big advantage in a way that isn't obvious if you think of things in a linear way. The real benefits of very high level attributes in a competitive sense grow exponentially. So too should the costs and tradeoffs, in my view.

The politics system will be really impactful here - and that's the topic for the next Q and A.

I'm not planning to be a governor. Not enough free time.

But if I were, my concern with letting a guild move in would be: Could the guild consolidate a voting block with the numbers to vote me out of power?

If the answer is 'yes' then I'd be opening the town up to having the governor replaced with a guild member, then having every Jon-guild member kicked out of the town. Real Guiding Hand Social Club stuff.

Roadmap's looking good! Perfect balance between ambitious development, but keeping it realistically deliverable in the timeframe.

Looking forward to June!

Plan is for each world to have three continents. We've only got one continent from one world so far, and many points of interest are incomplete.

So yeah. A bit early for theorycrafting just yet.

@NeroulGB said in So, what is the plan for "fun"?:

i want to bring a level of peace to a couple of city owning guilds on tartaros send out ambassadors to the human world to find power hungry guilds with/without a town if they aint evil they will be have them trade materials/assistance in gaining knowledge of the human world in exchange for hitting there enemies when the eclipse of tartaros happens and semi safe passage to key locations to upgrade abilities on tartaros, once both parties are able to make use of the varied materials and knowledge that we have over our competitors we will create a hell on earth for the demons to travel to with little worry of human opposition as the rulers of that area will be in leauge with the demons giving them the opportunity for demons to gate into their area somewhere from our personal portal in the city if anyone dares attack our human slaves also if you can bottle blood we will be able to steroid our blood demons more often than others if not we can always demand sacrifice before battle either our corruption will spread gaining more followers on human world desperate for our power in the quest for an immortal empire or we will be beaten back for a time if the humans and the beastmen team up to beat us back

I find your ideas interesting and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Welcome!

I have to admit, I was planning to try a warrior alt before this, but having set up my house on the edges of Heartwood I've been putting it off a bit.

After the inevitable wipe I reckon I'll be a tad more selective on the next version of the world.

I wonder if this causes any server issues on the Spatial OS side, and if so whether or not Dynamite saw it coming as a use case.