In playing this last alpha I and many others were happy to help numerious new players with their questions in general chat.
Of the many questions there were two that really could use some more help from the tutorial section; What a fleshing beam looks like and how to change the resource in the crafting station.
Here are my 'give me a sec' versions.

A tutorial for catching a horse would also be good as that was another very high frequency question. Really just giving the players a link to the video in which Prometheus shows us would go a long way to helping the new players.

I fervently disagree.
It is an ability just like the healing herbs and has huge advantages over other abilities as it is not restricted by mana, knowledge points, or having to farm monsters to learn how to make, and the bandages have a very low cool down. The only balancing mechanism is to require it to be in the hot bar and take up one of the 8 slots.

Any solo or small group can seek out a city with the tech they want and join it to get access to that tech by simply buying a residential plot outside of the city.
Valhalla, Duath, sproketon, were all large successfull cities made up of solo or small groups.
Right now there is no activity or player presence which is what you are runing into.

Valhalla was specifically created by a number of small groups who decided to join together into a larger group just for the purpouse of claiming a city for small groups like them.
They got one of the first 4? city spots on the map and by many scales, the best one for conducting pve activity in the shadow vale while also being very close to one of the starting locations.

Oh and something needs to change with chests and crop stacking...
A large chest has 45 slots. Grain/beans/meat stack to 100. So you can put 4500 into one chest. That is 225 bags.
Meanwhile a warehouse holds 192 bags.
So a single large chest can hold more (potential) bags of grain/beans/meat than a warehouse.

I believe that the desire to make higher quality equipment rarer and more costly can be done without RGN and with more resource sink and player satisfaction.
The current system has 3 RNG levels for crafting.

Basic is 80fine/20good, and stays there for residents despite tech.

Craftmanship+ specialty shop:
80good/20 exceptional
This roughly means that every third item will be exceptional

Engineering + specialty shop:
40good/60 exceptional
This roughly means that every other item will be exceptional

All these odds are fine and appear fair.
But because of RNG it is entirely possible to have a run of 15 items with none being exceptional.
(I have experience with this from making hundreds of cotton cloth armor)
This is quite frustrating and produces lots of worthless unwanted good equipment which floods the market with little demand when exceptional goods are also available.

My suggestion is to switch from RNG to resource costs.
Instead of one craft button you have two.
One with the base resource costs that produces the lower quality option.
The other with twice (for the 40/60 ratio) or three times (for the 80/20 ratio) base resource cost that produces the higher quality option.

So with Engineering and a tailors shop you would have two buttons-
One that will cost 5 cotton cloth and produce a good quality cloth armor piece.
Another button that will cost 10 cotton cloth and produce a exceptional quality cloth armor piece.

This maintains the over all odds of getting a piece while increasing the resource sink but letting the crafter know what they will get instead of having them roll the dice to see if they are lucky or not.
This reduces the issue of crafting unwanted good items and prevents the market being flooded. In addition with a reliable way to get exceptional items it is more likely to see them for sale in the market instead of hoarded as rare event pieces.

This same base idea can be extended to enchanting.
In the enchanting case the first enchant on an item requires one of each reagent, the second requires two of each reagent, the third requires four of each.
Even if you keep the RNG odds of loosing an item the loss is quantifiable in its cost to replace without having to worry about more cumulative RNG gambling.

Looking at most of the builds posted and watching some videos of the playtests I noticed that pretty much without exception an Int of 16 if not 18 was used by all if just for the memorization points.
I also acknowledge that the magic abilities are the most varied and useful of all avalible in the game and a high int helps with that.
But I fear that Int has become a required stat, thus reducing the real options for players to customize their character. If all characters have high Int as the standard then something is unbalanced.
Thus if all the characters have high int then that means that any spells or effects resisted by high int will be less useful in game.
So you -have- to take a high int to be able to make useful hot bars and you -shouldn't- use many spells with status effects as they are easily resisted by the fact that -everyone- has high int.

If others feel the same way I would encourage the Devs to distance memory points from int and instead make them something you can buy with knowledge points, perhaps scaling cost too.
Best case people start with a few memory points but can buy up as they need and magical soft CC status effects are again effective against most of the population who are not mages.
Worst case some players have a huge number of memory points due to their grind and drive and are able to memorize all the abilities, but still can only switch them out when not in combat and still restricted by equipment. They no longer have to reset at fires but it cost them a lot of knowledge points.

In addition the main counter to a high strength and constitution fighter, would be magic statuses, but this dose not happen because even a melee fighter needs a high int for the memory points.

Charisma is also a potential sticky point as the words of power only effect those with lower charisma than you... and considering how effective the power words stun and kill were people may start seeing a high charisma as a necessary cost at player creation to protect against the power words.

Hopefully more abilities will come out giving players other ways to reduce the effect of magic CC or damage other than needing a high int or charisma.

I did not get to play in the last alpha and only have other peoples videos and the information in the forum to go off of, so let me know if I am way off on the reality of the situation.

I understand the concerns of naked griefers and mid-end game pvp.
But if you want to combat the naked griefer issue then just make mana directly connected to equipment and not stats. Give mage equipment, like, 200 mana per item, leather 100, chain 50, plate 25... or something. That way a naked player has no mana to cast spells with and is not an issue.

But this patch forgot about the players who click on the mage starter package and join in the game.
Before, the experience of starting a new mage lived up to the warning on the tin "medium". It was not easy to kill mobs and an errant ice spike might get the attention of two or three baby black widows and you would get knocked down, ok. Moving on to the goblin camp it was again hard, but not impossible to take on one goblin and maybe a wolf.

This is no longer the case.

And when comparing the struggles of playing a mage at start with playing a melee? It is obscene.

I am building a larger argument and comparison to illustrate how this patch caused more harm than it could have possibly alleviated in the realm of low to mid pvp and pve which is where all players get their first experiences and impressions of the game, not late game with full city tech, numerous unlocked abilities, 40+ talent points, and enchants.

The bottom line was gutted.

This is my opinion from personal experience trying a new mage in solo pve content, and from having a T3 kitted mage with T2 enchants and numerous talent points.

I admit that I may be in the minority... but believe that it is not the case.

I personally see no point in playing a mage when we are simply easy targets for any melee pvp player and emaciated pve farmers. We cant even jump down a cliff to run away.

I will go to melee until a patch comes to remedy the situation.

I have faith, for now, that the developers will correct this. I just hope it does not continue into the next alpha.

@Razvan
Thanks for all the input !
It is information like that I cant get just watching videos and looking at builds or the wiki.
I look forward to playing and seeing the free form class developments.

and some of us are un happy about that ability and think the cost is way too low. XD

2: yes you can farm materials if not a citizen, just lower concentration and spawn rate of nodes.

@Farlander
Why not just encourage other players who like trading to do so by giving them your excess in exchange for a cut?
Or even better, have them be part of your guild and have the resources be divided to those who need it with excess getting traded by the players that like to do that? That way when you need a reagent or material it might be on hand as another guild mate donated it, or you just add it to the 'want' list and when the traders make their rounds to the neighboring markets, they keep an eye out for that material and get it for you.
Trading is an aspect of games that is valued and enjoyed by many players - see any truck driver simulator concept or econ trading sim-
It is simpler and healthier for the game to allow these players to have their fun and provide their support than to create whole AI systems to cut them out.
Bonus- because the markets are not linked and require physical presence to place or collect orders, and items take up limited space, there is little concern of some one manipulating the markets for their homogentisic and capitalistic ends.

token made to the lost summer alpha.

@grofire yes that is a good resource but very wide and deep, I was being more specific to concerns raised but thanks for reminding everyone of it !

https://fracturedmmo.com/feature-spotlight-2-universe-planets-travels/
"The prime way to travel to other planets, Stargates require a great deal of group effort to be summoned and don’t last for long. After crossing one, the time you’re allowed to stay on the new planet is limited and varies according to your race, your alignment and your destination. Demons are a notable exception to this rule, having been gifted by Babilis the ability to travel to other worlds more easily to bring terror to the other much hated races. However, the penalties they’ll be subject to are no smaller than those suffered by the other races… and sometimes, actually worse."

"eclipses, recurring events that have a huge impact on the lives of Demons and Humans. " -not beast men!

https://fracturedmmo.com/feature-spotlight-6-pvp-alignment-crime/
"f you flag yourself as Good, you are not allowed to perform hostile actions against any other Good or Neutral player. There are several ways this restriction is applied – some common cases being:

You can’t use basic attacks and targeted spells against Good or Neutral players.
Your AOE abilities cause no damage or negative side effects to Good or Neutral players.
You can’t loot the corpse of a dead Good or Neutral player.
Giving the killing blow to a knocked-out Good or Neutral player is not possible.
You can’t take possession of bounty that doesn’t belong to you.
On the contrary, all the hostile actions listed above are permitted against Evil players – and even encouraged by Karma gains!

Since all Beastmen have a default Good alignment that can’t be changed on Arboreus, it is literally impossible for them to hurt each other. This also lessens the need for them to form a Party, making grouping easier.

As a Good player, you’re sure to inspire confidence to everyone you meet."

"Arboreus is designed to be the ideal home of PvE lovers. It features large areas accessible only by Beastmen and characters with Good alignment, and a great degree of protection from hostile PvP in the rest of the world. How great is such protection? Let’s go through that together.

First and foremost, travelling to Arboreus is no small feat for a Human or Demon character. It requires good planning and is generally expected to be a group effort. Moreover, and more importantly, things get exponentially more difficult for players of Neutral and Evil alignment, who not only have to work harder to gain access to the planet, but also find it harder to stay.

Indeed, only Humans with Good alignment are allowed to walk the lands of Arboreus for a considerable amount of time – 20/40 real-world hours, thus being able to explore a good portion of the world at once, collecting resources and acquiring knowledge.

If you’re a Human with Neutral alignment, you can also stay for a while – around 5/10 hours, penalized only by a slight stat debuff. However, if you get flagged as Aggressive, you are immediately treated as Evil, suffering all the penalties explained below.

If your character has an Evil alignment and you manage to enter Arboreus, well, now you’re in trouble! The planet itself, pervaded by the primal energy of Elysium, immediately starts fighting to repel you. You become heavily debuffed, and normally pacific creatures turn aggressive against you, seeking you out to rip you apart. Even worse, you are only allowed to stay on Arboreus for half an hour at once, and you are quickly drained of all vital energies if you step into a Good-only area.

TL;DR

If you play as a Beastman on Arboreus, you’ll often wander zones completely devoid of hostile PvP – particularly as a new player, and you’re unlikely to be the victim of an aggression from other races in the rest of the world as well. If you’re Evil and looking to travel to Arboreus to go on a killing spree, you won’t succeed – you’d rather have a clear PvE / gathering objective in mind and complete it as fast as you can!"

Thank you to the devs and simple news system which made looking up these quotes so easy and quick for me to do.
Read more of the news posts to get a better idea of what they are aiming for instead of making assumptions.

@Farlander
The devs have said that demons could visit other worlds but also said that the cost to do so would be high and that the further from their natural environment they go (evil > neutral>good) the higher the penalties they would have in any pvp they choose to engage in. A demon visiting the animal planet would be like a shark discovering they are chum, they would have to be very careful to avoid any detection or suffer... and they could only even be there for a matter of minutes before being rubberbanded back to Tartarus.

@r6G4596Y7G9AwD0TzJTxFSZx
As of this past spring alpha you can achieve 100% mob knowledge and even clear easy to mid bosses totally without pvp and solo (with moderate effort and tweaking of builds). There was even one or two players that set out to solo some of the hard bosses.
As such it is currently totally possible to learn every skill, max out the talent tree, and equip your self with max tier equipment (with 3 T3 enchantments) without ever seeking out pvp. It will not be quick, easy, or cheep (tho the switch to imbuing may reduce the high cost of T3 enchantments through item loss).

You can even visit the other worlds (but will be at high risk while doing so).

The only thing you might be missing out on is the experience of playing the pvp world (Tartarus) character types. And even then you -could- make alts there to try it out. As a comparison I would wonder how many WoW players had characters on both the horde and alliance side and played each of the character types. I would wager that the vast majority fiddled around, found their happy place, and stuck there without worrying much about the other potential content they were choosing to not engage in.

I would be very surprised if there were many players who liked each world and character sets enough to level up each to max. Most likely people will try each of them and find their happy place and then fully enjoy that play style while maintaining the ability to make alts or visit the other worlds and experience some of that playstyle which they deemed not to their tastes.

I also maintain that the human world is not going to be one where 'unwilling victim' is going to be the standard. Even in the worst griefing phase of the last alpha I only got ganked 3 times and lost mediocre equipment which was easily replaced. It was simple for me to identify the high activity areas and avoid them when support populations (sheriffs) were not online and instead worked on farming skills and materials from the other 80% of the island and mobs which did not have pvp activity.

I suspected as much but thanks for the confirmation Prometheus !

@GamerSeuss
I could be happy with RNG -=IF=- there were some associated skill or stat or what not that you could improve to reduce poor outcomes- just like real life and other games- . However there is no such thing in the game and as such I applaud the shift away from RNG.

@Prometheus said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:

@OlivePit said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:

Interesting shift with alignment, but I am concerned that by restricting 'lawful' cities -but no benefit- in comparison to 'lawless' cities the vast majority of the cities will just default to 'lawless' as they have nothing to loose

They have a ton to lose, Olive You can be attacked in your own city while crafting, banking, building, or just chilling... and no one will use your marketplace. We think almost no one will go lawless really.

I hope you are right, however I just do not see guilds with high population -like blue army, spider, oranthull, etc...- to see in town pvp as a potential loss but instead as a perk. As a lawless town they can use their population and activity to keep the area hostile enough that any enemies approaching or entering the city are simply brining them free resources, instead of being raiders. If they were lawfull cities then they would have no recourse to stop a good alt of a evil player from accessing their city market or other buildings, however if they are a lawless city then they can more effectively restrict and control their town and resources. I hope you are right, but it does not mesh with what I saw during the spring alpha.

@OlivePit said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:

I feel this substitution removes the excellent system of hunting for enchanting reagents all over for a much more boring, and isolate, money grind.

I think you've misunderstood the post The old enchanting system has just been renamed to imbuing, with the only difference being that you need to imbue a gem first, then socket it into an item, instead of adding properties to items directly The new system to increase the power level of equipment is a replacement of the old quality system.

My mistake, allow me to clarify- The system for crafting and enchanting in the spring alpha both revolved around resource costs (enchanting reagents or equipment materials) and RNG to produce desired results. At tier 3 equipment crafting you had a 20%/80% chance of getting excellent / good equipment and at tier 4 you had a 60%/40%. this meant that at max crafting level a piece of excellent equipment that might cost 5 ingots if you were lucky, could easily cost 15 if you were not, or 8 on average as the approximate value of the piece. The proposed change calls crafting enchanting and implies that instead of this RNG system for getting excellent gear (now +4) you would instead, presumably, pay the base cost of the item, say 5 ingots, and then a nominal amount of gold coins to guarantee a excellent result. If true this shifts the valuable resource away from base materials and towards gold coins. This reduces the value of the work of miners and smelters while increasing the value of activities that generate gold coins -namely mob camping and pvp-. To get the different ores and quality fuel to alloy them a player had to travel or trade between distant parts of the map (a great feature and mechanic I feel) which was an adventure in of itself and added to the value of the resulting gear and did not negatively impact the game play of other players other than by creating potential scarcity for a few hours. If the costs had stayed resources but just lost the RNG nature then the result would be similar game play quality but with craft persons more confident in their costs and resulting product. Instead the proposed system replaces the variable RNG resource cost with a gold coin cost which shifts player activity away, some amount, away from harvesting, moving, and refining and towards mob farming and pvp for coins. An increase of incentive for pvp is something others can discuss, I am more concerned with the shift away from resource management and towards mob farming. Mobs have many values - KP, skills, imbuing reagents, crafting materials (like hides), and gold coins- I argue that the gold coin value of a mob is the least important of all these values and that this new system increases the value of the coins above that of many of the other values, which -I feel- is detrimental to the player experience. If a mob or camp is being farmed exclusively for their high gold coin drop ratio which is used to feed the new enchanting (old crafting) system, which I feel is very likely, then that makes the mob inaccessible to other players who desire to hunt the mob for the other values it provides -I am thinking of new players primarily, but imbuers (enchanters) and enchanters (craft persons) also- . Thus a system that only had to deal with competition from other miners now is forced to also compete with all the different people trying to farm mobs which greatly complicates and frustrates the once simple and satisfying process. It tells players that they cannot enjoy the game safe outside of the Mob madness.

Yes my examples use the ore and fuel resources and not the hide or cloth resources which did require some Mob hunting while ore and fuel did not. I did that for the contrast and because metal armor was by far the most prevalent and popular armor used because of its stats and -I contest- because it did not require hunting hides or silk which were more trouble and less reliable than mining because of the inclusion of the Mob competition and pvp elements. I never got attacked by players when mining ore but was attacked while getting Mob resources precisely because pvp players knew that hunting mob hunters was more beneficial than hunting miners. To hunt Mobs efficiently one needs good gear and collects valuable resources, all of which a pvp player can take. To gather ore and fuel you just need a hammer, horse, and axe; all of which are cheep and easily replaced. The only thing of value to steal is the ore which is in a wagon, slow to transport, cant be taken with you when you log off (disadvantage for pvp ers), and can be relatively easily recovered by catching up to the wagon thief.
You may think that by changing the scaling resource from the base resource to gold coins you will be making the game easier for craft persons but I contest that it will be making it harder due to increased pressures on an already very competitive Mob centric game system.
Please reconsider the ramifications of your proposed change and keep the cost of quality goods in resources, not coins.

There was also a similar (not same, just similar) for enchanting, which is now imbuing, and I have no preconceptions about that and look forward to it.

@Tajger
I, for one, greatly appreciated the previous enchanting system which you created a wonderful tool for.
I believe that this proposed system will be not as interactive, interesting, or rewarding.
As such I think you should not loose hope or scrap your great tool.

This is alpha, things swing widely back and fourth before finally settling.

I think your tool and the enchanting reagents system will come back into favor.