Hello guys,
I am playing fractured since this fall alpha was release, and I can say that for a mining town as any other town, the values of 4 to 8 protein sacks were ok up to rank 4 which was the first to require cereal. That would be specially true and fair for a small group of players who's starting out in the game and want to play more casually.
But, after this patch and after reading all the changes to the city systems that towns will have in place in regards to how the Upkeep fee will increase and work for a possible full release in the future, I can assure you that not many towns will be able to survive on the game. At least not having a requiment of cereal right out of the gate. The first iteration tho, where you would only need cereal at rank 4 was totally fine and totally duable, and its was not an issue at all for a small group of players to keep up with the protein requirements. Sometimes playing solo and trying to keep up with the protein requirements, I was even able to come up with the amount everyday, not doing anything else other than going around and obtaining meat for the up keep. That alone would take hours do get done tho, and I am assuming that not many people would like to do that everyday, but in other hand, a town is not ment to be ran by a solo player so they would have to find a way to balance things out and make sure that it would NOT be possible for a solo player t hold a town for too long and strain the rest of the server on not having a chance on trading with that Town for the resources that the town in question would hold.
For a small group of players, 4 to 8 players, keeping up with a town would be a constant of ranking up to 4, not paying ceral, downgrading to 3 and keeping up only with protein and paying the outstanding amount of cereal everytime they reach that, or even just not posting their protein to the board and having the rank stuck between 2 and 3 everyday. Thats totally possible to keep up and fine (if the amount of protein stays between 4 (rank1), 5-6 (rank2) and 6-8 (rank3). Which would related into NOT being so easy and possibly too boring for a solo player to keep up and they would eventually give on the town and allowing others to take it from them, which would be good for the economy of the game as a whole.
Having the chance of testing all the City Systems and being playing for about 3 weeks now, I would say that a regular player would NOT have to own a town, or even being part of a town but ONLY IF, there was some way of obtaining the Metal Armor and Weapons from the Towns by traiding or doing some sort of reward system where the town would have a "Request Board", that i've described on my review. I will post it here for you guys to see how it would work.
18. Town Bulleting Board: Proposal
This is a proposal for a system that will allow players (citizen of a town) or governor/vice, to create a request for something they need. For example, a Town in need of specific consumables, such as meet, wheat, reagents, herbal medicine, etc… or weapons and armor pieces, could post a request, that can be picked up by other players from other town, and be filled up, receiving a reward on completion. This would create another level of demanda for items in remote places or towns that would be starting out or towns that will have a huge need for specific kinds of items. Also would create a good system to entice players to be roaming around, visiting different towns, looking for these orders to be filled up, and regular players would able to get on hold of items they would not be able to otherwise, such as Heavy Armor, Metal Weapons etc.
I will do my best to try do describe this system bellow:
- A citizen finds out that he needs a weapon made, but his town does not have any material or even a blacksmith or a woodshop to make it for him.
- Citizen A posts a request for that item paying a certain amount of Gold, or effering some items in exchange for that.
- Citizen B visits the town and see the order, accept it and go his way to complete it.
Once the Citizen A post the order, all the items that would be used as a reward for that would should be in the Citizen’s A inventory and will be taken away from him, holding them as the reward that will be paid to the player who will fullfill it. - Citizen B brings back the item/items to the town and make a delivery on the Bulleting Board, receiving the reward that he agreed upon.
- The order will then be removed from the Bulleting Board, and only Citizen A will be able to see it later.
- Citizen A come back to the Bulleting Board and collect this item, removing the order from the bulleting board completely.
So with this sort of system in place would be possible for any player in game to obtain what they want and look for towns in need of the resources to upkeep their towns, and count with regular/more casual players to help them in doing so, while the town itself would then produce items for other players (not their citizens only) and it would increase the interest of players as a whole to enjoy the game and play was they see fit.
I think the Town system is very well implemented and the fees for upkeep will be in constant adjustments until it gets to a point of finding the perfect amount of resources needed to make it fair for large and small group of players, as well as taking into account that this game can become a very hardcore game, or a more friendly casual/having fun with friends kind of game.
The way that the game is right now does not reflect how it will be in the future, and I believe that all the feedback will be very important to the devs in order to archieve everybody's reality when it comes to how much time people will realisticaly invest on the game everyday.
We cant forget also that most of us had invested a whole lot of time at the first couple of days, some investing an unrealistic amount of hours into the game just to be able to test and see everything, but it will not be like that in the future, nor when the game launches. The hype is a big factor that we have to also consider at any launch and we will have a lot of more experienced players from previous alphas trying to get towns as soon as possible to retain resources and start working towards crafting the best gear as soon as possible, and in most cases, we will see what we are seeing now, having towns abandoned and not being able to keep up with their upkeep, which in my opinion is very good and needed in order to allow other players to take those towns and build them from scratch again, allowing them to enjoy the game as much as others had enjoyed at the beggining of this alpha test.
I appreciate all the devs work and congrats boys, you are doing a great job! This was an amazing experience for me and I am looking forward to see what will be happening in the future. Keep it up!