Posts made by Roccandil

Why were recipes introduced? Was tying higher-level recipes to city research not working?

I've noticed that the mage armor spell will turn off for no apparent reason. When that happens, I have to activate it twice to get it back on, as if the toggle still thinks it's running (hence a full off/on cycle), while the animation and stat code thinks it isn't.

@GamerSeuss said in Alternative to crafting and enchanting RNG headache.:

@Roccandil Actually, to serious players, neither Chess nor Go are considered games, they are considered Strategic Thought Exercises. They get sold/marketed as games, for sure, but their lack of any Random element pretty much precludes them from being real games so much.

The Word 'Game' does include a lot of subsets, including puzzles, activities, and simulations, but when you really come down to it, an actual game needs an element of chance.

LOL. How was your latest tactical culinary exercise?

@GamerSeuss said in Alternative to crafting and enchanting RNG headache.:

@BlueGoblin actually, RNG is pretty much what makes most games, GAMES, as opposed to just activities or puzzles. Boardgames have dice, Cardgames have the shuffle, Skill games have the regular chance of failure in any skill-based activity. Success means very little if there is no chance of failure, and thus, RNG is what makes a Game a GAME!

Chess and Go would like to chat...

RNG may be a game for some people, but not everyone (and most certainly not me!). I like games that are built on simple, deterministic rulesets, that allow emergent outcomes.

For me, RNG is just a form of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, looking for a different outcome, and I don't enjoy that. It makes thinking far less relevant.

@GamerSeuss said in Alternative to crafting and enchanting RNG headache.:

Won't happen!

Games, especially MMORPGs, rely on situations such as you describe in order to drive their in-game economy. RNG fickle results are part and parcel of the MMORPG experience and it is highly doubtful that any MMORPG developer would shoot themselves in the foot metaphorically speaking by removing the RNG aspect of the game for increasing resource costs. Yes, to the individual player/crafter, it might seem like a win-win situation, but for overall game longevity, such a move would produce a death knell.

This is not to say that Fractured won't adjust the RNG variables, and keep refining their RNG seed engine to get more randomized results, it just means you'll never see the system you propose taken up by any MMORPG wishing to have a chance at long-term success on the market.

RNG is a crutch, and thus an opportunity for an MMORPG to attract customers by replacing it with a better system.

Furthermore, RNG is not required to provide resource sinks: that's a fallacy. Over the long haul, RNG averages out; all RNG really does is cause some crafters to fail more and others less.

And since humans remember failures more than successes, that inserts a kind of poison into the gameplay that builds up over time, eventually causing players like me to leave (I've seen this pattern in myself, and I'd be surprised if I were one-of-a-kind).

I much prefer deterministic crafting.

On harbors, what if you could select slow travel, at a much cheaper cost? That way you could move a lot of goods efficiently (which is historically and realistically accurate), but not instantly (which isn't).

The way I see it working, you cart/wagon your stuff to the harbor, select slow travel, and then you get an in-transit timer on the toon (maybe in the hours, depending on how far it is).

Since we all get more than one toon, at that point you just switch to playing on a different toon while you wait for the voyage to finish.

@MeruemVBP

I agree; there's too much decay/chores in the game.

Albion's system works very well: items have a chance to be destroyed when you die in full-loot PvP. I like that, because those who died in full-loot PvP don't care that some of their stuff trashed, and the looter is happy to get something. That economy works very well for crafters!

Gear still takes damage (generally from a PvE knockdown), but can be repaired in cities with currency, so it acts as a short-term punishment for too many PvE knockdowns (eventually you have to go home, unless you brought a repair table, which are expensive and a risk in PvP areas). Again, that balance works really well, and is a constant currency sink.

I wish we could repair gear with gold in cities: would be a good gold sink!

Hmm. Instead of buffing warriors, you nerfed mages. Sigh.

That's the second death knell of the game for me (the first being city upkeep). I don't see myself going through the pain to make gear that will decay anyhow, just so I can play for a bit.

The entire game is increasingly failing my risk/reward calculation.

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.

@Vaiduoklis

I agree with your point, if only because character creation presents new players with choices that can't yet be meaningful to them.

I think it's much better game design to present the choices after the player has had the opportunity to understand those choices in-game (and not expect the player to read a wiki first). That's good game pacing.

As a lesser alternative, allow the player to easily redo the character creation choices once they have in-game experience.

Yeah, I've ditched those as well.

@Kazzier said in Ranged damage feels too high.:

If anything, I would like fights and battles to last longer than they are currently.

I like this, and would like to see it be a design principle. Since Fractured has so much territory, I'd like to see PvP be more about controlling parts of the map than getting kills.

Bounty hunters and jails sound cool!

@spoletta said in Damage bonus: it could be so easy:

You can't make it a fixed number of skills, since some skills are more powerful than others and balanced by the fact that they cost more points.

There are other ways to balance powerful skills (longer cooldowns, higher cost, etc.), and I think it's worth it to have a fixed number of skills.

Regarding old school games, I remember the first time I sat down to play Baldur's Gate II. I was overwhelmed during character creation by the sheer number of choices for which I had no meaningful information.

For me at least, that requires a test playthrough to find out what I really want, then a restart to spec everything my way. I don't like that.

I'd rather see a few meaningful choices presented over time than a plethora of meaningless choices presented all at once, and if a game has to present choices for which I can't yet make an informed decision, the game allows me to revisit those choices, with a minimum of repetition.

If I were the developer, I'd do the following:

• Make base stats part of the knowledge system, so that players can easily experiment with changing them.

That would tend to increase the number of unique builds and the number of hidden, good builds that players keep to themselves, while removing the pressure for new players to find an existing popular build (since they won't be locked in to any particular build, other than what's appropriate for their selected race).

That would also allow players more flexibility to play the roles needed for their party, which will tend to increase overall party activity on the map (you won't have to be waiting around in town for a healer, for example).

While I'm at it, I'd also remove the intelligence effect on memorization, so you could always select X skills (probably 8).

I'll add that stun, as implemented, breaks the interface (everything stops working), and temporarily removes the player from the game.

I consider that clumsy design for both PvE and PvP.

@MorganReed said in Stuns should give stun immunity:

Maybe have it to a major slow instead.

I agree. If it were me, I'd at most slow/daze the player, so their speed, stats, and saving throws are lowered, but they can still move, attack, and use abilities.

That way the player can stay engaged, the interface doesn't suddenly stop working, but there's still a consequence for being stunned/dazed.

While I'm at it, I'll say that I got bored of stun-based PvP in Albion, and the stun mechanic in Fractured breaks PvP for me; I'm planning to participate as little as possible.

@Blectorn

I agree! I'd even go so far as to remove stun entirely. Stun tends to result in the following open-world, zerg PvP style, as typified by Albion Online:

• Tanks stun a cluster of enemies
• DPS drop AoE on the cluster
• Hit defensive abilities and retreat until CDs reset
• Repeat

I really dislike that gameplay, if only because the time-to-live for players on the losing side is so short.

In contrast, a PvP game like World of Tanks does not have that mechanic, and at least in my experience, the average time-to-live for players is much higher.

In an open-world game like Fractured, I'd expect stun removal or minimization to result in much longer PvP fights, in which control of territory (winning the field) becomes the victory condition, not racking up quick kills from stun + AoE.

This also means more interesting fights for everyone, which will pull more players into the battles. Maneuver warfare might even be a thing.

@Kralith said in Fix Health / Death penalty:

@Roccandil you think easy mode let people stick around?
Easy mode games will get "played through" fast and people will leave it after short time, because it isn't challenging, boring and without a soul.
Did you ever thought about, that people are here, because it was promised not to be an easy mode game, as we have countless and countless out there?

That's a thoughtless answer, with a predictable insult. It isn't about easy content, it's about efficient content. It's logistics, not tactics.

For example, Albion Online has perhaps the most balanced handling of PvE "death" I've ever seen. It's a significant penalty to get knocked down while fighting a mob pull in PvE, and can ultimately mean failure to bring down a hard boss. It does not, however, break up the party, and it's thus a content-efficient solution.

Is Albion Online "easy mode"?

For many people who don't have hours to spend on game sessions, this is the problem:

• Getting a PvE party together can be significant overhead
• Getting to the content in Fractured is also significant overhead
• Once in the actual content, location loss from PvE death interrupts the content and puts folks back into overhead mode

I don't see many people putting up with that for long, no matter how many clueless "easy-mode" insults are thrown their way. Our time is valuable, and the more inefficient Fractured's content is, the easier it will be to find another game to provide better content.

As far as I can tell, Fractured is well on its way to being a small, niche game, with a mostly empty world.

You too!

@Kralith said in Fix Health / Death penalty:

That is not a bug, thats intended.

And it's bad design. The content in the game is already inefficient; PvE death compounds it. Fractured is pushing away potential customers who don't have long sessions to spend playing Fractured.

That increases the likelihood that the Fractured world won't be well-populated, which in turn will lead to less content, and even fewer people sticking around: a death spiral.