hmmmm.... 
this @Nekrage person runs a guild dedicated to EVIL 
and yet...
their recruiting thread is full of the GOOD & HELPFUL deeds done by their guild in other games and...
now they have a generous prize for CONTRIBUTIONS made to the game??? 
methinks their alignment is in jeopardy!! 
I've had trouble getting into the game during this test ("Loading World" issue) but when I've been able to get in, my interactions in chat have been uniformly positive. I say this not to contradict @Oxfurd but to say that the chat's not ALL toxic, even if folks there have been less constructive than we normally are in this forum.
My take: There's a lot of toxicity abroad in the world nowadays. The petulance and aggrieved whinging of privilege has been given free rein and a VERY powerful firgurehead, and many better examples have been silenced or marginalized.
We have an opportunity here to model constructive and open-minded critique of a game in progress, but many of us have zero idea how that works because the models have been missing for US.
Perhaps the best we can do is hope that @Prometheus & the devs will prioritize the 'mute'/'block' feature in Global chat for next test, so the trolls can be more easily ignored. But we can all do our part in THIS test by steadfastly refusing to be baited.
+1 +1 to @Razvan's point.
It's great to have a variety of content providers interested in the game, but making players dependent on any platform OUTSIDE of the official game website/forum seems like a seriously debilitating choice.
Yep, @Razvan! I am doing my darndest to make all my worst mistakes NOW. There are SO MANY I want to make before the 'real build' happens, and I don't even know what they ARE yet!
I'll say it again here, for those who missed it other places I said this: I bought in w $$ I probably should not have spent during a night of much bourbon. I did it bc I was SO tickled about the idea of a game with a whole world of PvE and no P2W.
I have, since, gotten more than my $$'s worth of fun out of Fractured - both in playing the game and in the online community gathered to 'test it'. So, everything from here on out is gravy for me. #FTW
@Mirgannel12 said
Hi!
Your post makes a couple of really important points about early progression - leaving the starter town w/o decent gear can be fatal, but getting decent gear without a smelter or an enchanting table is hard to do. Whether those are planned for the starter cities in the finished game is not known (at least by me) at this point.
The tutorial is so very basic right now! I'm hoping that by launch, there will be some re-working that gives a newbie a little more direction & some small rewards for completing quests/challenges. Those rewards might include an enchanted weapon or item of gear, to enable them to more easily get to the city of their chosen guild and make themselves a really good set.
But my point is, you have to find them, which means you need to use the global messaging system and ask people(see my post on the value of information)
Finding a guild in-game is not how I would recommend going about it, tbh. The forum Recruitment thread is better, and the discord server's guild recruitment thread probably the best for up-to-date info about active guilds.
Perhaps the starter cities could have a message board (do they already? i've never looked) where guild masters can leave directions for prospective members, and governors could leave directions for their cities.
I certainly hope that this is a planned feature! Problem is that right now, there's a lone, volunteer moderator for all the chats, and no way to mute/ignore trolls and d-bags. Until that situation changes (which I hope, please please @Prometheus, will be soon) adding another place for d-bags to make jerques of themselves probably isn't a good idea. 
@GamerSeuss said
and then there's Syndesia, the Human planet. Syndesia is meant to be the middle ground between the two extremes of playstyles. PvX we'll call it. Sometimes you want to participate in PvP action, sometimes you want to focus in on your skilling, gathering, or just taking down mobs. This middle ground needs to hold an equal appeal for all types of players, as this will also obviously be the meeting place where all playstyles collide.
What would you like to see changed to make Syndesia more appealing as a middleground. The planet is obviously the best place to bring about the kind of play that will allow these two divergent playstyles to interact on the same world. How can we make it better, for YOU?
I so appreciate @GamerSeuss's constructive framing here that I just wanted to point it out and say, WELL DONE.
I see lots of flaming, griping, and arguments about what's wrong or good about things as they're shaping up, but I see far fewer constructive suggestions, so it's important to me to highlight it when that occurs. In this case, it's a constructively framed invitation to constructive suggestions. Even rarer, imo.
I see the devs striving to create a 'lawful' but free PvP planet, and I see a lot of arguments about what amount of punishment is fair for those who break the 'laws'. I don't personally have a dog in that fight, since I'm doing my best to avoid having to kill or be killed as I travel in search of knowledge and gold.
I haven't seen many 'militia' tags, so I don't know whether folks are doing that at all this test, but that was a good way for folks looking for a fight to know who else was. Keeping some form of that system on Syndesia seems like a good idea to me.
I also hope that, eventually, there will be an 'arena' where quasi-even match-ups can occur. I'm not sure how those would be determined - someone more experienced than I am at mmorpg sandbox games may have suggestions?
@Kurbbie It is possible to win an alpha key by spreading the world about Fractured in soc med & posting in This Thread
If you have friends who you honestly think would enjoy this game, it's not spamming to let them know, right? It's how I got my key, and I have around 15 recruits.
One thing I've decided to do, personally, is re-set my home's fireplace availability to 'PUBLIC' so anyone who passes by can rest up and cook their dinner. It's zero skin off my nose, and will help visitors from other parts of the map. Feel free to do the same! My little toons will be most grateful for any homey fires they find open to them in their travels 
Happy trails, y'all! 
@Recoil - I'm actually enjoying the realism of having to work to get someplace on foot instead of just teleporting, but devs have promised mounts in the finished game, so things will feel 'closer' on the back of a horse/worg
My m.o when I have a ways to travel is to pick a reagent or two that my pc needs to do an enchantment she wants on her gear. So I'll run a ways and then look around for a rabbit or some mandrake, then run a ways further. I'm enjoying the exploration, and sometimes running into the odd direwolf 
This is where having a Very Helpful Demon comes in handy! Seeing the exploit in advance & warning about the possible uses of that exploit instead of just... EXPLOITING. Kinda angelic, actually....
Once again, @Nekrage, I'm forced to wonder whether you're pretending to be a demon when you're actually an angel doing cosplay. 
Interesting idea. My original hope was to be a sort of caravan guide for travelers in Arboreus, so this would make a real difference in my 'profession'
But now that I'm playing and I imagine what that might be like in practice, I'm wondering how that would work if the caravan came under attack.
It's annoying to be riding along and have to dismount bc your horsie is getting munched by random wolves or spiders, but it's realistic and keeps traveling from getting too boring. If I were the only player online and I were leading a caravan - protecting/guiding several other players who were afk - this would be really tricky.
@Nekrage - help me visualize how your idea works in this scenario, ok?
I liked it, but noted in vid comments that there are several spells you have pulled from the wiki that haven't been implemented yet.
Showing the excellent potential is a good idea, but raising expectations of folks who are considering a purchase could backfire if they don't have all the information.
I really appreciate the responses and encouragement. I've played some other games with active forum communities, but my take on them was that the most frequent posters were 'whales' who spent TONS on the game and felt as though that gave them the right to dictate parameters 
The Foundation quests, like the Fractured game system itself, give the less 'rabid' of us a chance to enjoy this community and do well in the game. Looking forward to getting to know y'all better.
@Alexian sd "Interesting... how strong are the buffs/debuffs"
The title buffs in Rise of Kingdoms are 3-5% and are on things like Attack (for the Warlord), Training Speed (Counselor), Build Speed... how that would translate to Fractured's universe is totally up to the devs, just wanted this out there as an idea.
There are altars/circles in RoK that carry varying buffs for the alliances that can occupy and defend them - again, things like attack, march speed for armies, healing rate for wounded troops, training speed for new troops. But RoK is a RTS war game so I'd hope that the devs would be creative about translating this idea to a world where PvP isn't everything.
Reading posts from the Alpha testers, I'll bet that Crafting Speed and Resource Spotting buffs would be popular for Arboreus; on Sydesia, a PC might covet a 'Bling Buff' that (to thow out suggestions) improved their exchange rate on trades or made their wares appear more attractive to buyers.
An altar (or item) on Tartarus held by a guild of demons would be appropriate for attack buffs, but an Arborean shrine to (or relic of) Tyros wouldn't, right? For those, a Warding Sign might protect from the attacks of demons or offer temporary invisibility in their presence to enable escape. It would be very appropriate if (just as in D&D) a PC whose alignment differed radically from that of the shrine (object) would be DE-buffed on those metrics by proximity to the place/item.
All these ideas would add to the immersion factor by creating incentives & measurable outcomes for alignment and for devotion to a particular deity. Hope this helps!
Obv not enough women on the dev team LOL
NO woman would forget a button to allow them to move the furniture.
I speak as a cis-bi female and y'all can feel free to disagree - but mostly it's funny bc it's true.
@Alexian said in What challenges should guild alliances face?:
Albion’s system, among other problems, has enabled a painfully small handful of organizations to rigidly control the game since it launched in July 2017.
This is indisputably bad. It’s not good. It doesn’t promote a dynamic and exciting political culture for aspiring guilds and alliances. It is the very definition of, “you can’t beat ‘em, better join ‘em!”
I stopped playing freemium RTS games because they all seem to devolve into 2 or 3 mega-alliances running everything, each of which is run by uberarrogant players with tonz'o'bux$ and little else to do.
Game of Thrones Ascent, a RPG/builder game, put caps on alliance size but because it was 'freemium' the whales found it easy to migrate en masse as mercenaries and/or form a 'burner alliance' for AvA phases, so simply imposing a cap didn't solve that problem.
I'm looking for Fractured to be different because players will not be able to buy power(s). I'm hoping that paying up front for the whole game and having $$ only for cosmetic frills will make a huge difference.
I trust that devs who are framing their game to avoid $$=power will listen carefully to community ideas, watch outcomes closely, and not be afraid to tweak whatever is not working even when the inevitable wail goes up from the folks whose game fun consists of exploiting whatever system devs set up in order to aggregate goods/control for themselves.
