The devs appear to have the following goals:

• Diminish or eliminate grinding
• Allow new toons to be nearly as capable as veteran toons

It seems like a bad idea to give new players the daunting task of selecting a mostly-permanent set of attributes without any experiential knowledge of gameplay mechanics, but the normal solution of giving everyone the same starting point, and having them grind to get attributes, doesn't seem to fit the dev goals.

With that in mind, I wonder about giving new toons the same base attributes (perhaps fitted to race, as suggested), and then including attribute augments with skills.

So, if enabled, skill A would add N to attribute Z. That means if you redid your skill build, you'd also redo your attribute augments. Any attribute customization would thus be handled organically by the skill customization mechanic.

Could make selecting a skill build even more interesting. (I'm assuming you get a starter set of skills that wouldn't be too far off the power of the best skills.)

@gothix said in Importance of attributes triggering repetition?:

@Roccandil by your logic, then you should fill every wish that players have, or else you will have unhappy player base which is bad for business...

And if that's the case, then I definitely will not wish to play that game, because it will be designed to fit the gaming preferences of an average Joe (because an average Joe is the majority of player population). It will be a mediocre game with very little challenge.

I am looking for a game that is built to be difficult, and then players strive to reach their goals, but not all goals are designed to get reached, some should never be reached, they should be there for players to keep trying, and striving.

I want game to put limits on players, some sense of permanency, some limits on your character that makes your character unique, and not to be able to get copied by everyone out there who will "respec to become you" at a moments notice.

I want a game that will not go ahead and fill up every average Joes wish...
...If I wanted that, I would stick with WOW.

I could quibble with a lot of this, but the core of your argument seems to be a desire for uniqueness. I can agree with that in principle, but your implementation relies on forcing people to be unique, by punishing them for respeccing.

Long run, that's no good. Punishment discourages participation.

Instead, I'd look at it from this perspective: could build diversity be encouraged via rewards?

@gothix said in Importance of attributes triggering repetition?:

If people get to change their attributes, Fractured becomes just one more mainstream MMO where people read web, search cookie cutter builds, and change them as they wish. You have a zerg of clones of players running around all wielding same stuff.
I certainly do not want that, and permanent attribute points is one thing that will prevent this. That is one thing i loved about Fractured when I read about this. If attributes will be changeable, Fractured just drops a huge deal in my eyes, and if more things in game get changed along like that whenever players desire so and ask for it, I already see what the game will become, and my wish to play it will just get extinguished.

I respect that you have your own gameplay preferences. That doesn't mean someone else who prefers something else is somehow wrong or "crying".

In this case, however, (as I keep pointing out), the developers have made a specific point of advertising that they are against grinding. Permanent attributes contradict that philosophy, and I don't see that as a question of taste. It's simply reality.

Now as to cookie-cutter builds, which seems to be the meat of your argument, if you have to use permanent attributes to prevent them, you're doing it wrong. The real issue isn't cookie-cutter builds, it's game balance. If one build is what everyone wants, you've got a broken game.

In your case, instead of actually balancing the game and making many playstyles interesting and desirable (and thus putting the burden of fixing the problem on developers, where it belongs), you're masking the problem by putting the burden on your customer base. They want unbalanced build X because the game encourages it (and that's not their fault), but you're forcing them through the frustrating and boring process of regrinding toons to get it.

That's bad business and bad customer service, and in the long run, all you've done is limit your player base to the subset of the gaming population who are willing to regrind toons to get unbalanced build X.

(I might add, if you then nerf build X, you're going to piss off a significant portion of that subset who spent time rerolling toons. Enter unbalanced build Y, and you've got a death spiral.)

@gothix said in Importance of attributes triggering repetition?:

@roccandil said in Importance of attributes triggering repetition?:

I see this attitude a lot, and don't understand it. Customer service matters, and a good business exists to serve the customer, not the other way around.

Yes, but not to serve a particular customer (or part of customers) in such way that screws up other part of customers.

Good company serves ALL the players, and not just part of players that cry about things.

By serving those that cry (by nerfing stuff), company effectively screws up all the rest of players that want to play somewhat challenging game.

And yet every company, one after another, keep listening to crying players on forums and then continually nerf things in game, giving those crying players protections, instant gratifications, etc.

In this way, players that want to have a challenging game get screwed up over and over, and thus I consider all companies that do this (listen to crying players demands) an utter shit companies.

Correcting problems for customers who never report them is difficult, while at the same time it's easy to dismiss customer complaints with which you don't agree as "crying".

In this case, repetition != challenge (and is, in fact, much the opposite). The developers' apparent recognition of that is what attracted me to this game in the first place.

The question here is not instant gratification, but the grind of repeating content while rerolling characters. Forcing players to do so to respec is, as far as I'm concerned, disrespectful to customers who have already invested time and money in the game, constitutes abuse of the players by the game, and will inevitably result in a smaller player base (and less revenue).

Punish participation, and you will get less of it.

@gothix said in Importance of attributes triggering repetition?:

For once I would like some company not to care about players crying. To see devs just let people cry and then laugh at them for sucking at gaming.

This company would win my heart instantly.

I see this attitude a lot, and don't understand it. Customer service matters, and a good business exists to serve the customer, not the other way around.

At any rate, in this case, I get the impression a key developer design philosophy is to mitigate or eliminate the repetition commonly known as grinding (and I'm intrigued simply to see their implementation).

Inasmuch, however, as the stat mechanic promotes rerolling toons, it would appear to contradict that.

Certainly, the developers don't have to design the game to allow respeccing stats, but it's the apparent conflict with their own philosophy that triggered my question in the first place.

Thanks for the welcome, everyone!

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but in reading up on Fractured, I've noticed the following:

• Attributes are absolutely critical to good builds;
• Attributes cannot be reset (though I see something about possibly a few free respecs).

In my RPG experience, I never get the attributes right for my playstyle the first time. So, I'm wondering if my experience in Fractured will be starting a new character, playing for a while, realizing I screwed up the attributes, and starting a brand-new character.

For playing alpha/beta where the worlds will be zeroed anyhow, not a big deal, but if I were coming into a released game, I'd be worried about burning out after realizing my stat selections sucked.

Hey, everyone. I'm currently a Wurm Online player, but found the mechanics described for Fractured very interesting, and am looking forward to seeing how it works out!