Best posts made by Roccandil

The drawings seem like a good solution to potential accusations of favoritism, and I like them better than the "daily post" mechanic.

Rewarding quality, thoughtful posts over sheer volume seems preferable.

I'd like to see pseudo-random dungeons, that spawn when open-world conditions are met. For instance, spawn a dire bear dungeon when X number of bears are killed.

@Gothix said in The End of most Sandbox PVP Games-The losing side.:

@Roccandil said in The End of most Sandbox PVP Games-The losing side.:

If one bully takes everyone else's toys

...then others should organize, plan a tactic (use some brain work and logistics) to take the toys back.

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Btw. someone is not a "bully" simply because he played smarter from others and managed to acquire those toys (resources). The main aim of this game (Fractured) is not to share the resources, but to compete for them...

This is why you can not ask for mechanical limitations that would force the sharing and equality... this is not such game...

It's not a question of forcing equality, but of preventing long-term exclusion of content.

Albion Online is in that situation: new guilds have almost no chance to break in to own territory, even though the developers are trying to make that possible. The massive 8000+ member alliances easily dominate, and the only practical way to experience endgame content is to join them.

That's -not- a good thing if you want to keep new people playing (and blaming new players/guilds for not being good enough is shortsighted, and bad for business).

@Gothix said in The End of most Sandbox PVP Games-The losing side.:

Example 1:

• make the logistical cost of owning multiple cities high and not easy to maintain
• but do not limit how many cities is guild allowed to own (if they succeed being geniouses at logistics)

Example 2:

• give smaller guilds a nice GUI to easily form alliances in need, when attacked by large guild, and make an alliance GUI to help communication between smaller guilds helping them organize easier
• but do not forcibly impose small guild member limit so larger gaming communities can not play together

Example 3:

• impose taxes on profit, and make logistics of larger enterprises more demanding, and those of small crafts less demanding
• but do not limit how large enterprise one can grow, and how much he is allowed to earn (if successful)

Example 4:

• make movement of larger groups more visible (NPCs around the world will see them and spread the word, a large army never moves around undetected), this will help the cities become aware of possible invasions in advance
• but do not prevent the large invasions all together by limiting them by game mechanics somehow

Example 5:

• let players have some hiding skills and tools, so small groups can outsmart larger groups sometimes (guerilla fighting)
• but do not mechanically give extra strength and power to smaller groups, simply because they are smaller

Example 6:

• let players have a lots of options for where to find resources
• but do not mechanically prevent a larger group of people owning and controlling a certain world area if they organize well

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People should be told that they are required to work (and compete) for resources, and not expect for game mechanics to simply hand them over, because, hey, they "do not have the mood to compete".

I like what you say here, but if I were a developer, I'd want to keep the hard limits available if I needed them to prevent new players from being squeezed out.

So, I'd avoid artificial limitations as much as I could, but I wouldn't rule them out.

Maintenance could be something like a continuing mana reserve, or even HP (in the case perhaps of undead/demon pets).

So, a player with many pets might have much less mana to spend on spells/abilities, and be more vulnerable to attack.

@Canterbury said in What albion did wrong- not a bash thread:

I hated the maps in Albion. All really small and tricksy pathing. None of it felt like a big world where I could go anywhere. It felt really really really annoying to get around after the first hour or two.

I've gotten used to traveling around Albion, but due to portals, you're never really more than two/three maps away from a city (at least, I've never felt like I'm way out in the wilds, not even in the black zones).

The Fractured map for the single Syndesia continent, on the hand, feels huge. No gates between maps, far fewer obvious choke points to camp, with a general feeling of the player being quite small.

I'm hoping that the map becomes more diverse (as opposed to the false hugeness of infinite uniformity), and handles high population well.

I definitely wouldn't like a twitch-based or RNG-based minigame, but I could see something like this:

• In the game code there exists a perfect recipe for potion X;
• That recipe requires extremely precise quantities of the proper ingredients, developed in an extremely precise, complicated process (heated to temperature A.AAA, after interval B.BBB add C.CCC units of finely ground ingredient D , invoke spell E when potion turns deep purple, let cool to F.FFF and stir G times, clockwise, and so on! );
• Early tools and easily-gatherable ingredients will be unable to come anywhere close to that level of precision or potency, but even so, you'll still be able to craft a very low quality version of the potion;
• Once you have the right tools and the best ingredients, however (which should be a significant logistical challenge of its own), you'll still need to do an incredible amount of trial and error and scientific recording to hone in on the perfect recipe.

I think that would be awesome. No RNG, no AFK crafting, just good old scientific method.

Anything but chores! I don't want to see items decaying unless they're being used.

@PeachMcD

I think it's more important that the world of Fractured be true to its own rules (whatever those rules are), not ours. I assume, for instance, that Beastmen call themselves Beastmen for their own historical reasons.

@PeachMcD

Sounds like the old question of whether developers create the game they want, or try to please as many people as possible (except themselves).

I'm quite curious to see the world the developers want to create. I may not like how it turns out, but I'd rather it was theirs.

Attempting to please the crowd is the road to uniformity, not diversity.

I see the world exactly the opposite: rules are a map, that allow you to explore places you couldn't otherwise reach.

Perhaps that comes from my study of Bach: without rules, music is a mess, but once you start creating rules, you get emergent order that you couldn't have imagined (like fugues!).

@Xzoviac said in Opinion on Monsters after the alpha:

If the game does not have some things to grind when the game is finished we will all run out of content very quickly- on the PVE side

I've felt that Fractured's long-term content will be player-generated (conflict, rise and falls of empires, etc.), and you're right, there doesn't seem to be as much room for that on Arboreus.

On the other hand, to me, grind equals repetition, and repetition is "fluffy" content. It pretends to be content, but really isn't.

One possible solution is economics: if Arboreus winds up being the Lend-Lease world to power the wars of empires in Syndesia, then a player-driven economy may well be the player-generated endgame content on Arboreus. I think I'd like that!

In that vein, gathering rare resources may well become a competition. Both Albion Online and Wurm Online have players racing to gather rare resources in PvE, fueled by demand from PvP.

One other mechanic I'd love to see would be scientific-method-based research: of the world, fauna, flora, ecosystems, resources, magic, crafting, etc. That wouldn't be grinding per se, as you would always be doing something a little bit different to actually progress (and that fits more with the parallel progression of the knowledge system).

Perhaps it comes down to how much we can do with the knowledge system; how many unique goals will we have to explore, and will the reward be worth it?

I'm very much in favor of attribute resets. If there is any depth to Fractured at all, the attribute system will front-load a massive amount of gameplay choice for which a new player cannot possibly have the in-game experience to understand for themselves.

I would thus expect many new players to start off with a template build, and then figure out through actual gameplay experience that they would have much preferred X build optimization.

Thus not allowing resets would be frustrating for many people.

@Whisper said in Enchanting table Guide - Basic Mechanics - How to:

@Gothix said in Enchanting table Guide - Basic Mechanics - How to:

Excelent post!

I also hate RNG. I prefer no RNG completely if that would be possible, but if not then i at least hope RNG will be minimal.

I'm not playing gambling games. I tried ArcheAge armor upgrading. That's not for me.

I would say it is minimal. There are items that have high numbers on certain categories and super small numbers on the others. As more monsters/creatures/items enter the game we will have even more options.

I feel like the game needs the RNG a little bit. Once you got the skills and knowledge for killing a certain creature there is little to no other reason to ever touch it again. If we are allowed to choose among the choices we get then no one would ever touch the majority of creatures in the game. They would get their skills/knowledge and then farm only the very best area and pick the perfect enchant every time.

The way the system works now it would be wise to get a wide assortment of items so you can mix and match as needed. People from certain areas might even trade with people across the map for regents, and trade with people from other planets and so on. It promotes exploring the world, and trading I count that as a huge win in my book.

We'll still figure out the best recipes that remove the most RNG, and farm only those ingredients. All the RNG does is increase repetition and frustration, and waste players' time.

For me, that's a huge loss.

The enchanting system looks so good I don't think it needs to rely on RNG to provide an illusion of depth and complexity. It really is complex.

@PeachMcD

I could certainly see anatomical knowledge (based on studying the creature dead) and behavioral knowledge (based on studying the creature alive) being very different things, providing different benefits.

Also, if the world ecosystem was robust enough that predators could hunt other animals independently of the players, you might be able to find carcasses to study (if you can scare away the predators).

Maybe all that could be part of taming.

@Zori said in Bartle's Taxonomy and this game.:

@Stacy555

You might want to put a context on your response next time, but I suppose articulation doesn't come naturally for all of us, hence why education is highly encouraged.

You can feel insulted as much as you'd like, doesn't change the fact that things are more than just... "I'm only here to have fun" after 50 years? of gaming.

and if your only credential is your age, then hell you must be an expert at stone tools.

Games -are- about fun. Developers who forget or ignore that are either incompetent or exploitative.

Incidentally, credentialism is bullying. I respect vocational individuals who earn their living in reality far more than those who have learned through an insulated environment to parrot knowledge they did not discover, and use their credentials as a club against the non-credentialed.

One test of a truly learned individual is the ability to recognize and provide the next step of knowledge to someone else, and more importantly, the humility to accept the blame if they cannot transfer that knowledge.

It also helps to understand that we live in a universe so diversity dense it takes an army of specialists to begin to describe it. We may therefore assume everyone we meet has direct experiential knowledge of something we do not.

I've found that that point of view makes meeting new people interesting, especially since people in general like to talk about themselves.

If there were a parallel Arboreus PvE continent in the test, I wouldn't have a problem with making Syndesia's rules be PvP-oriented.

@SmithyJones

I do feel like the game pushes me to not enchant, craft, or ultimately use any decent gear. The benefit simply isn't worth the cost.

In the MMOs I've played, I can't say I've ever enjoyed the mechanics that actively promote alt spam.

My impression was that Syndesia was supposed to be the faction PvP planet, whereas Tartaros was all PvP everywhere.

My suggestion would be to restrict PvP on Syndesia to faction/city/guild warfare. Within the context of guild wars, PvP should be full loot, wide open, no holds barred. Outside, it should either not be possible, or be heavily penalized.