Posts made by OlivePit

1: yes, more so if working in groups.
2: Karma system affects how much loot you drop on death, if you are a criminal or a sheriff, time spent in prison (or size of bail) if a sheriff kills you (a criminal), no stat loss, no rogue state. Some towns may be pvp friendly allowing criminals to use the the towns crafting stations, while the default is that you cant. However if you are a citizen or resident of the town, at which point your karma is irrelevant for that purpose.

The justice system punishes criminals by them getting locked into prison for up to 48 real world hours or having to pay 10k? -I am not sure- to be released. Note that when you are released you only have the equipment that did not drop on death (and if you are criminal, all of it does), and you are released inside the town that built the prison (hostile territory). Oh and you can only pay the bail yourself if you have that much in the global wallet, which can only be added to via a bank or market when someone buys what you put up for sale. Otherwise your friend has to travel to the town and bail you out in person.
Simple attrition will destroy the marauding gank squad, limit them to regions with criminal towns, or make the act unprofitable without significant investment in gear/skills/talents.
The amount of loot a character can carry is very limited, thus requiring the building and use of town banks or private homes and chests. You are limited to one house plot per account. This means having to transport your loot to a drop point safely. If it becomes known the plot is used as a bolt hole for criminals you can bet it will get the attention of the sheriffs. This means having to transport your loot to a drop point safely while under pressure.
Town banks are only accessible by criminal players if the town is criminal friendly... presumably rare...Or you are a citizen of the town. Town leaders are probably going to be picky on who to allow citizenship, especially as it is not necessary.

The starting skills are not anything to sneeze at but are certainly not competitive. It would take a weekend to get the skills for a modest build and there could still be weaknesses. Not to mention that equipment is a major component of any human build.

The horizontal progression is not quick. Unless you have some outside feeder source, it takes well over 40 hours to get the equipment necessary to be effective. Not to mention that skills and talents can easily take longer and are not transferable between characters on the same account. Groups help, but there are also AOE powers (only really obtainable through moderate work) and a person in a -good- build can take on 3 with shitty '2 hr builds'.

Due to equipment decay, no repair, and a constant flow of goods, the griefer groups will not be able to make any lasting damage to the players they victimize and bring lots of attention to them from the sheriffs.

The fact that there is very limited fast travel (from port to port) which is also expensive also greatly reduces the affect and range of griefers. Even at its worst two alphas ago, the cry of 'reds at XXXXX' would see anyone feeling vulnerable in that area log off and on to an alt elsewhere, while all near by sheriffs converged like hunting dogs for the kill, chase, or to patrol incase the reds came back. The griefing was also heavily localized to 1/4 of the island area. I myself lost three sets of gear to griefers, but it barely set me back at all since I had the economic weight of a week of materials generated by my guild and town, and I know that two of those times the griefers were hunted down by eager sheriffs. Being grieffed was more of a -sigh- event than a rage quit one. In the last two weeks of that test griefing was practically unheard of as was the case of practically the whole of the last alpha. -to my knowledge-

While there are many ways a grifer could use alts to avoid the pain of prison, it would still be a massive amount of time spent -not- progressing. In the world of the red queens race (better equipment synergy, skill sets, talent synergy, group cohesion), you would just loose in the end.

It is totally possible that an organized group of thieves would create a criminal city and make raids on near by points of interest while hoping to make it back with the loot before being caught. The counter is to just play somewhere else. Each island is big, travel is slow, and most of a characters assets are in very safe places. If the raider group want to move to where an established group is in order to prey on them, they are fighting an uphill battle the whole way.

It has been stated that a maurading group of players -could- raid a town and seize assets from the towns coffers if victorious. However this takes 3 days notification, a timed event, and if you do not have access to catapults then practically impossible vs a town with wood palisades.

Hopefully this helps some.

Sadly we really know nothing. Nothing has been officially announced and nothing has been tested.

the original artist is now the director of art and has no time to do art XD so they have new people doing the new art.

I back Spolettas perspective as well.
80 points is far too restrictive for making decent or sensible builds for non humans. The math is just really messy.
We have no idea how powerful the inherent abilities for each non-human race will be which makes theory crafting much harder. Even so we know that they will be far more specialized than humans due to these special abilities which will encourage them to min/max into those specialties even more as to do otherwise would be to spurn the inherent stat cap and special bonus advantages that each have.
Giving them even 11 more points would go a long way to making them feel less like glass cannons and more like rounded characters, even with their specializations.
As shown in my sample stat blocks the affinity bonus would not be very useable and get very lopsided builds -but- it would be very good for making comparable builds to humans (the 18,18,9,9,9,9) where they would be -slightly- weaker humans but with all the special powers and features of non-human, putting the balance of power in their favor.
Again, Very hard to balance the point build with the non-human powers as they have not been tested for balance at all.
I agree with Spoletta in that humans should be incentivized to have balanced stat blocks and specialize with equipment.
However this equipment will inevitably be used by the other races which will again tip the balance heavily in their favor.
I would suggest a compromise of giving demons 90 points which would allow them to get use out of their affinity stat and still have a modest spread like 20,18,10,10,8,8. And giving humans 110 allowing them to have flat builds of 15,15,15,15,10 or slightly skewed builds of 18,18,15,10,10,10 which would keep their flexibility in switching builds with skills and equipment their primary focus instead of worrying about stat optimization and niches.
The problem of equipment variety still needs to be addressed, but as Spoletta pointed out, hope remains in the resources of other worlds filling in the gaps... Tho that would still be a hell of a handicaps for beginning light armor users.

with 100 point human build or 80 point non human build you can get these stat blocks:
Realize that having 10's in all stats still costs 60 of your 100 points!

@BCAnimus
There was a BS upgrade gambling system ! It got thrown out due to some people showing how it was BS thankfully.

IF the +/- that each race gets only effects the cap and not the final stat, then here is a set of example stat blocks. The non human races get one stat at an affinity discount in addition to their special abilities. Note that humans had a min stat of 8 which I use, but that we have no info on non human min stats so I assumed the +/- affected those as well. Some stat blocks are awkward due to the affinity costs having lots of odd numbers while normal costs are mostly even numbers, thus harder to make a build that dosent waste a point somewhere.

Really not happy to have the point build now officially reduced by 20 points across the board.
This is especially harsh on archetypes that have stat gated ability effects, like minor heal, or poison, whos effect is dependent on hitting the arbitrary minimum stat numbers to get a better effect. Want 4 charges of heal/dash? want a poison that actually hurts before the other uses a herbal remedy out of their inventory? gotta have that 24 int stat !

100 points is really restrictive and gives more power of effect to metal armor which has far more choice and options that provide stat boosts while cloth and leather users are left to suffer.

Unless the point is to cripple humans without major investment into equipment and give beasts/demons a huge advantage with their affinity discounts and cap increases -=In Addition=- to any equipment they have... I really dont understand why the change was made. And feel the change is too harsh.

We all were playing with the 100 point build with the understanding that we were being baseline with humans getting a boost of 20 points and demons/beasts getting a boost from their affinity bonusses. This really feels like having the rug pulled from under us AND 120 vs 100 is not the same as 100 vs 80, ESPECIALLY when considering the power of affinity bonusses !

The result is likely to be that human players feel overly restricted where they were supposed to have the most flexibility while beast and demon players have much more ability to get good stat/skill blocks since they have multiple classes to choose from to get that nice combination and reach those high stats needed.

If this change is going to be in any way balanceable then a lot more equipment stat options are going to be needed made available to the human players where currently there is a very unbalanced variety of equipment options with the most flexibility and effect given to metal armors and arms while cloth/leather/wood arms and armor have far fewer options and less flexibility forcing them into spending more of their stat points to shore up the lack of equipment support. The current lack of equipment support is exemplified in how a medium or heavy metal armor user can obtain a +6 bonus to their power stat of choice (str, con, int, cha), while leather light armor users are restricted to str and dex, and cloth armor users are restricted to only perception ! This is despite the fact that anyone using cloth armor is doing so because their mage like abilities require it and they all scale off of INT and yet they have no equipment that would aid them in this (other than necklaces which everyone has). This requires mages, and archers to some extent, to invest heavily into their power stats to get moderate effects while melee archetypes are free to rely on their equipment to obtain good stats and only need to focus their stat points into their power stats if they want to have extremely high effect in that area, talking 28 strength or con !

Please reconsider the point buy reductions, or provide suitable equipment support to the humans while also reducing the demon/beast points to balance their affinities.

TL:DR - Point buy changes not good, why the change without testing? equipment disparity needs to be addressed, abilities and races re balanced.

@spoletta @LordGorgeous
Getting well off topic there... but..
Tanning is balanced by the fact that you have to hunt, fight, and kill the mobs to get the skin, while ore is just gotten via 'whack a node'.

True, regular animal skin is really common and really easy. Some adjustment there is probably warranted.
Perhaps you would have to tan the hides with some other component not used much, like planks or bile or some plant, to function like coal as another fuel for the process.

There is also the multiplier of advanced smelters, while tanning tubs are a tech point by themselves, there is no basic tanning and you have to wait until rank 6/7? to even start making them while smelting can be done at rank 1 ! Yes you have to wait till rank 10/11 for alloys and the advanced smelters, but again there is no tailor/leather equivalent so that is just another thing that tips the scales in metals favor again.

Personally I like being able to stock some tanning tubs and forget about it for the night and have them ready in the morning, I find the 4 hour clock for smelting too short and would rather 12 hours with 15 ore in and 3 ingots out return.

As spoletta says; cant repair items and getting good items is not grindy.
Specifically, lets say you are part of a rank 10 town and you need new plate armor, sword, bow, and shield. The real time it would take to go from nothing to done would be 4 trips of 30 min for harvesting and transporting ore, 4 hours smelting the ore afk (starting a new one after each trip), 15 min to cut and transport the wood, and 16 hours waiting on leather to tan. At that point you have the ingots and tanned leather and can make all the equipment instantly. You are now ready to take on most of the game content ! (cant solo the medium or hard world bosses).
If you buy or just have ingots and tanned leather on hand then the time is even shorter.
If you have extra thousands of gold coins on hand (not likely) you can enchant your equipment for 25% buff per level.
This equipment should last you a week or two of pve game play, plenty of time to passively recoup the coins and many of the materials needed for your next set. (in pvp armor wears out faster due to more damage)
This means there is a steady demand for all the materials in the game which gives reason to be hunting mobs, and trading between towns.
With this demand comes supply from players who would rather mine ore than compete in the pve fields. The only coin of the land in markets is the gold coin, which can only be gotten from fighting mobs. As such the harvesting/crafting players need to produce and sell to the pve players for them to get the coins needed to pay rent, taxes (if any), and buy materials not available locally.
Paired with the availability of resources this means that prices are reasonable for the pve only players to be able to afford crafted ingots for their equipment needs.
As we have seen in the last few alphas this trading happens and obtaining good gear that will last a week or two takes no longer than a few hours of harvesting and a good nights rest.
No need to grind quests to get that one item drop you want, or to personally discover crafting recipes.

@BCAnimus
unless there are fewer than 20 people on a continent there will be at least one city. Here is the tech tree from last alpha for three of the basic goods.

As you can see the first rank would get you access to metal smelting and forging, or one of the other starting technologies. This can be done by one person hunting animals for meat and easier if more join them.
The time it takes to get to the next rank of a starting city is not much of a burden up to rank 5 when you hit the village level and things get more expensive, but specialization also gives access to new options, like plate armor or enchanters clothing.
By the time you get to rank 5 the city has unlocked all of the basic options available to them or has banked some of the tech points for the next stages which can quickly eat points.

Remember that each town -=needs=- more people to join it in order to rank up. In past tests this got to the point of high bribes and even pvp black mail by some groups.
But in general this means that getting access to a developing city's tech is easy as they are needing and wanting the people more than what gold they might get from taxes.

And again, 1-2 hours of coin farming would net you enough to buy a property for a week and get access to all the tech without paying any taxes.

A well off city who has made it to rank 10 could easily unlock all of the quality of life options available to them at the 1 or 2 level. This usually takes a week or two as getting food becomes more of a burden and high yield crops are time locked. But can be expected.

The taxes only really becomes a factor when towns start getting into the 10+ ranks (the town collumn), which are very expensive to reach and maintain and give fewer tech points. At the rank 3 or 4 enchanting levels of each item class expect there to only be one or two cities in the whole island to have that level unlocked and expect them to keep it for their members -as a perk of joining them- or charging a high tax.

Again remember that enchantment levels 1-4 are all nice power boosts (about double effect at rank 4), but not -=necessary=- to play the game or achieve all of the content, and are very expensive (like 10,000 gold coins) even without taxes. The idea that someone would be walking around with all top tier rank 4 enchanted equipment is just Ludacris! That stuff wears out, cannot be repaired, and may not work with their new skill build ! not to mention that they are just as likely to loose it in in pvp or ganking situations unless they are with a group.

Last alpha was low population and low activity. Even so there were multiple rank 13+ cities and getting access to assassins' armor or plate was not a chore. It will likely not be a chore in any of the future tests either. (well maybe on Tartarus , but that's a whole different can of worms)

It wont be.
The model is buy once to play.
Keys may be given out for various reasons, but no plan for general free to play.

@grofire
I was specifically responding to your claim that the game forces you to use taxes and that you are forced "to big cities".
Both claims are false for the reasons and examples I gave.
I even pointed out the way to bypass city taxes, if they were implemented by a city whos tech you wanted to use.

@grofire said in Taxes?:

yes, there is player controlled taxes. and the worst is, that the game force you to use it, you are forced to big cities, and can't go high tier items without using cities taxes.

False !
It is up to the rulers of the city to have a tax at all. The game does not force you to do it. You have the option and can set different levels of tax for the service based on the level of the characters membership who is using the service.
So the rulers could have no tax on anyone and open access to all crafting stations within the city.
or
specific taxation on each level of player - transient, resident, citizen, leader.
or
use of crafting stations totally locked for anyone not a citizen or leader.
or
any other combinations.

Expect the taxation to vary depending on the town/guilds goals and value system.
Expect more active players that pay into the health of the town/guild to get access to citizen / leader status and get better deals.

Remember that resident means that you bought a plot of land next to the town, giving you -free- access to all the tech of the town once you build your own crafting station on your plot of land (currently possible to build one of each in your plot). The town gets your weekly/monthly rent (set by Devs). You are safe from pvp on your plot and the towns permission is not needed for you to buy that plot. (They need residents to meet a threshold for increasing the towns level and so are very unlikely to object in any but a few extreme cases, like you using the spot to attack the citizens/transients from)
-BUT- you can only own one plot per account !
while you can be given access to others plots and stations.
So a team of 5 players could easily build one house adjacent to cities that have specialized in one of the 5 techs, share access to your own plots with each other, and get access to the techs without paying taxes (just the static rent set by the devs which has so far been the equivalent of an hour or two of coin farming every week... which you would probably be doing anyways)
And these Residents could also help anyone else bypass the taxes, just pay them for access and not the town. The only issue being having to be in the same place and time to do the trade.

Every test so far has had at least 1, and usually more, cities that either gave citizen access to everyone who asked or had virtually no taxes (5gp for single use as an example)

And then shove gold into the item to level it up at cities which have specialized in that item type.
Not a perfect (or great) system, but they are defiantly working on it as shown in the different implementations used the last few tests.

The only 'leg up' your alts will have is access to the equipment your primary is able to source. This will make a big difference (up to 100% effectiveness) and help with doing the knowledge process all over again. But the only way to make the whole trip shorter is to do the VIP subscription.... which is kinda the point.
The key is that you only really need to go and learn 8 skills to complete a build, so there is no need to learn 'everything' again for an alt.
in the end it will be far easier to just complete a quest to respec your stats (once a month) instead of rolling a new character.
The only reason to have an alt is to experience a different world or if you want a dedicated homebody to tend the smelters.
The skill, talent, and equipment systems are flexible enough that you can basically hot swap archetypes so long as your stats do not pidgin hole you.

Getting to the end of the talent paths still give game play altering abilities. The path there is less empowering than before is all. I would like to give more specific examples but I did not take notes on the new tree and the wiki still has the old talents listed XD.

Agreed. You could easily focus an entire build around the synergy of two skills you just picked up.
Talents may have a bigger factor than 15% in my opinion, but they are also the easiest to switch around, followed by equipment and skills last only because you have to go out and learn each skill from mobs and can take a moderate amount of time, especially if you are going to some 'optimal' combination you saw posted somewhere.
Once learned skills are as easy to swap around as talents and then the most time is spent on equipment changes.

Heheheh, there are many different flavors of 'mage' in fractured. Each would have very different enchantments on their different favored equipment pieces and would be used in different specific situations.
Are you going;
single target build? aoe? bounce?
Auto attack focused or spell focused?
Melee? medium range? long range?
high mana cost burst? sustained moderate mana cost? low mana cost?
High mobility? low mobility?
Crit build? high min damage? High max damage?
Battle field shaping/ debuffer ? Team buffer? Taunter ? Healer? Tank? Glass cannon?
High defense ? high evasion? high sustain?
Which elemental focus? Arcane? Electrical? Acid? Fire? Cold? Poison?
Remember that you have to fight mobs (or trade) to get gold coins to upgrade equipment, have to harvest materials to make equipment, have to wait for crops to grow, hides to tan, metal to smelt for all of that.
And have to repeat the process every 40? hours of game play (not pvp, it wears stuff out faster) to replace the equipment.
How do you plan on getting the materials for that? use your good equipment? some specialized mob hunting equipment? or run around naked armed with just your spells? (patched, not so possible now)
As you progress and find new skills and talents your preferred or 'optimal' play style will change and your equipment will have to change to fit.
In all of the tests I played in I rarely actually wore out a piece of equipment. I was far more likely to phase it out as my build grew and expanded.
In many ways mages are blessed and cursed with choices compared with archers and melee (for now). Presumably each archetype will have as much variability and choice as each other and -some how- balanced (good luck DM's!)
So the only static build in game will be the one that you decide to settle on while ignoring all the other possibilities. Happy in your rut with your specialized build against your specialized target, happily farming away on them for the materials (which is totally valid and possible, one guild of 10 ppl did this and were hugely successful, in their niche) but not venturing far from the familiar.

they are moving databases and what not, may be buggy until the first week of febuary.