Best posts made by spoletta

I think you should have also received one rank up worth of gold, so 50k.

I confirm that targeted spells like my assassinate often return a "Invalid target" or similar errors when used. I have to press 3 or 4 times for it to go off.

As @GamerSeuss explained, WASD was discussed at lenght and it is not going to be a part of Fractured.

The left and right click interactions got better with the tests (you can no longer chop tress while in combat for example), but they still need some work. There are still a few elements/plants with which you can interact even while figthing.

Secondary UI Tabs have indeed made a lot of new players confused. They should be made more obvious, or the tutorial should tell you about them.

I would love to be able to take the third slot out of the TAB rotation.

No, I think you didn't understand.
Some mobs are made to be difficult to approach in certain ways.

Wisps are immune to weapons.
Deers keep running.
Earth elementals are almost immune to arrows.
And so on.

This is a game which requires you to adapt. You are not supposed to face everything the same way every time.

That's why you can freely respec as many times as you want.

For sure the game lacks a bit of eye candies in the environment.
That's cause almost all the areas which new players accessed during this test were done long time ago. The more recent areas like bone pit and ogre city are much more detailed, so they are getting better at it.
Also, the next continent is frost themed, I expect great things there.

We all know that currently the tutorial doesn't do a particularly good job in introducing a player to the game.
This doesn't come as a surprise, since that tutorial is very old and the game changed a lot around it.
I think that the game is reaching a point where it could update the tutorial, since a few very basic elements of the game, that absolutely need to be introduced, are unlikely to change any more.
So, I think that the following topics really need to be added to the tutorial: (Note: These points were collected by following the questions asked in general chat during these 3 days).

• Purple health: What it is and how to get rid of it
• Hunger and Rest: The tutorial shows you how to make food and yet doesn't tell about the hunger. Also, as a consequence of not telling them about rest, an enormous amount of players have no idea what the tooltip in second wind means, and are surprised that they have to go back to the campfire every 2 mins.
• Fractured is a game where you have to adapt and find a way to fight the challenges. So, why there is no introduction to the resistances? I saw 3 players fruitlessly ganking on a warg by spamming magic arrows, unknowing that those things have a very high resistance to that type of damage, and many didn't even know that magic was a type of damage.
• Since a few tests, houses are a huge part of the gameplay. No one knows how to claim a plot or how the tech system worked.
• Similarly for the imbuing system. 90% of the drops in the game serve the imbuing system, and yet it isn't introduced.
• How to catch an horse.

Now, fitting this stuff in the tutorial isn't easy. Especially plots and horses. What could probably be done though, is add a section to the knowledge book, with "common knowledge" articles. The tutorial just tells you that if you are unsure on how to do something, you should consult your knowledge book. In there you find pages on how to catch horses, how the tech system works and stuff like that.
Would make the game a lot more approachable.

Last note: Please in the archer tutorial, after he makes a bow, make him also craft some arrows

Ok, this is my last feedback post, I promise!

"How can I claim a plot?" has been one of the most asked questions in this test. The tutorial should cover that, but that's for the other post. The problem here is the answer to that question.

"Find 4k gold and buy one."

4k gold to a new player is a daunting task. They want to experience that part of the game, and find it gated behing a (perceived) huge grind. Now, the old lads know that 4k isn't particularly hard, but new players can take days to get those gold, and many times get killed and lose it.

At the same time, a plot for a governor is currently worth 2k initial gold and then 500 gold of taxes per week. That's not much, and won't drive governors to attract residents.

Another point. The plots usually turn into factory backyards, and this is bad for the visuals of the game. One expects a residential area to have houses, not be a nightmare of tanning tubes.

Hence my proposal.

Lower the initial cost of the plot to 500 gold, so that a player can immediately set into one, but...
Increase the recurring cost of such a plot. In particular, make it cost based on the structures that are built on it.
An empty plot may cost only 1k gold per week, but each processing facility has an additional recurring cost tied to it. A tanning tub costs 300 per week, like a smelter. An advanced smelter costs 650 per week and so on. Crafting facilties cost nothing because using them is already taxed.

This way, a player can immediately start making his house, which is an important part of this game's experience. At the same time, the income generated by the plots becomes higher for the governor in the long term, especially if they researched techs that get used by the residents. You also add a cost to making too many processing facilities in your plots.

I think that this solution would solve many problems in one go.

Consider that the armors used by tanks (metal and hide) have higher durability, so between regular damage and KD they should degrade at the same rate.

This is most likely something that the devs want to implement but that still had no time to do so.

Also, more than a life system for horses, I would prefer a degradation system. Horses with use progressively lose stats, this is accelerated by taking damages and getting killed.

As for the stats:

STR: Speed while carring a wagon
DEX: Speed without a wagon while on a road
CON: HP
PER: Speed without a wagon while off road
INT and CHA interact with taming skills.

This way all horses have a specific application.

One good suggestion I read today is to make them into skills. "Use bandage" and "Use remedy". This way they go into the bar.

I was also thinking about a moratorium time, but for a different reason.

One of the purposes of this beta is to understand how fast a dominating faction can snowball and conquer a continent.
If there is a moratorium time (3 days indeed) during which the city cannot be used to launch conquests, it would give the defenders more time to reorganize.

Something midway? You can't make or alter presets but you can switch them at campfires?

Lower mana cost in general is not working, but cooldown reduction seems to be working fine.

Personally I would do it like this:

You can declare a siege against a city after you have successfully raided it 4 times in a row while sharing a border with it. This fills a "gauge" which then enables the siege option.

Once the siege is won, the governors and vice governors are immediately removed, but citizien are not. The conquest is fully completed 1 week later, at which point the citiziens are removed and the assaulters become the new governors. This gives 1 week time to use the city as a basis to re organize somewhere else, easing a lot the hit that a group/guild would suffer, and hopefully keeping them into the game. At the same time, removing immediately the governors prevents them from sabotaging the city before handing it to the conquerors.

In addition, to prevent excessive snowballing, there should be the following requirements:

• A nation can declare sieges only if it has no cities currently facing degradation.
• You can declare sieges from a nation border only if that border region has developed the siege technology.

This means that you have to fully occupy every city you conquer with 20 citizens in order to conquer more, and that to expand your nation you first need to develop the newly conquered cities at least to a minimum rank. The previous changes also make it so that you need 1 week from your conquest before starting to use it as yours.
This should slow down reasonably the conquering process, giving the defenders more time to reorganize and keeping the competition more dynamic.
This also should also come with durability damage on KD/Death. Waging wars should be taxing on your supplies.

There have been multiple discussions on the topic of the recipes.
Currently, they can drop from any creature of challenge rating 4 or more and once used they teach to a player how to craft that item.

As we pretty much all agree, this system cannot last like this. Before late, everyone will know all recipes and they will cease having any value. The same happened in other games which had this same exact system, and there is no reason to believe in a differen outcome.

Now, there are many ways to change this, and many players have different ideas on how to do it. One of the ideas presented is to have the recipes limited in uses. So for example with a recipe you can craft that item 10 times and then you need to find the recipe again. Since according to the last AMA, this solution is under evaluation by devs, I would like to open a discussion on it.

So, let's try to list the good and bad of this solution:

The Good:

• Gives a long term use for the recipes, the market for those cannot "Saturate" if you keep needing more.

• Since they are dropped completely at random, they create an interesting economic feedback system. The amount of recipes for each item will be grossly the same, but some recipes will be more requested than others, giving more value to those. You can't specifically grind for the recipe you want. This means that items will increase in price based on how popular the builds that use them are, rewarding those players who come out with innovative builds.

• Rewards specialising in a few crafts, which is something requested by players. While there is no hard coded limit to your masteries, if the act of crafting itself has a cost associated, then you have to decide which ones to pursue. You can't simply offer to "Craft for free Xyz, Your mats" and advance in masteries.

The Bad

• You are never done with recipes. As a crafter you will have to continously get new ones. They are no longer an "unlock" but just another material.

• It doesn't really make sense to forget a recipe because you actually practiced doing it.

• It is counter intuitive. New players may get their hands burned in the process.

• You have to carefully balance the drop rates of recipes. Too many and they are useless, too few and we go back to Jurassic Wars meta.

My opinion:

I like the limited use approach.
I think that the mistake was naming them "Recipes". It carries no sense to have a recipe drop from a Mammoth and there is no reason why you should forget a Recipe.
My idea would be to rename recipes to "Spark of Knowledge" or something like that. Generated and spread around by the God of Knowledge that watches over Syndesia. This way it makes sense that you can find them literally anywhere and that they are not permanent.

Also, since they are generated by the God of Knowledge, it makes sense that those under his favour (neutral aligned players) will have an increased chance to find them. Since recipes can be found no matter what you hunt, it gives players a good reason to want to go around in Neutral alignment, solving one of the current issues on Syndesia.

Well... you actually get better at combat by picking daisies since they reward KP...

I'm for 10 uses and increased drop rates.

The current stack system (chill, Warm, Corrosion, Shock) is based on a 1-100 basis.

Warm stacks reduce fire resistance by 4 for each stack.
Chill stacks reduce ice resistance by 2 for each stack and move speed by 0.5% for each stack.
Corrosion reduces armor by 4 per stack and every 2 seconds ticks for 2 damage per stack.
Shock stacks reduce shock resistance by 2 for each stack and everytime you gain stacks you also have a 0.4% chance per stack to be paralized.

All stacks decrease by 10 per second.

These stacks are also used for the weather system. Hot temperatures cause warm stacks, cold temperatures cause chill stacks. Future weather effects may use the corrosion and shock ones.

While in general this system is working well, there are currently a few issues with it:

1. The rate of decrease is too high. A single player has no chances to have his stacks work in a meaningful manner. This becomes very noticeable on skills like elemental touches or arrows, where the next attack arrives when the stacks inflicted by the previous one have already depleted. Ideally, the rate of decrease of stacks should be halved.

2. The hot weather inflicts a penalty which is never felt if you don't fight something which inflicts fire damage, while the chill slowing effect is something that you always suffer. Warm stacks should probably reduce the fire resistance by only 2 and then have a secondary effect, like the other ones. Possible effects could be: Increase damage received, longer cooldown reductions, reduce mana/hp regen and so on.

By the way, back on the temperature topic, I feel like the following changes would make it better:

• It currently is too punishing. 10 stack per degree is a bit too much, it should be lowered to 5 per degree. This way getting your equipment wrong by 10 degrees would result in a move penalty of 25%, which is definitely a big penalty already. Receiving a -50% penalty should be reserved for those really getting their equipment wrong, which means 20 degress under your comfort zone. This assumes that warm will receive a meaningful effect at least as penalizing as chill.

• At the same time though the insulation bonuses coming from t2 sets should not be so generous compared to the t1 ones. Ideally, they should be exactly the same. Exploring areas with extreme climates should be a matter of using the RIGHT equip not a matter of using a BETTER equip. A cloth is a cloth and fur is fur.

• The game should offer more ways to offset the temperature issues. Currently we can: change our armor type (very difficult), changing our armor material (possible), use specific skills (very difficult/possible depending on your base build). In the future we will probably get some consumables from Alchemy. I think that we should get a couple more: +5 heat or cold insulation amulets, fire/cold resist enchantments should also provide an insulation bonus.

@GamerSeuss we know from the first AMA that weather will affect farming. I would say that the effects have just not been activated yet.

I have probably missed some, but I have counted 52 skills available to everyone and 92 available to spell channeling weapons.

This huge amount of skills gated behind the spell channeling weapons makes it so that "mages" enjoy a huge range of different skills, while "non-mages" are feeling very limited in the choice.

Can the spell channeling property be converted from "Spell channeling" to "Spell channeling 1, Spell channeling 2, Spell channeling 3" (we can call them minor spell channeling, spell channeling and greater spell channeling?), so that spell channeling 1 allows all memory 1 spell channeling skills, spell channeling 2 allows memory 1 and 2 skills and spell channeling 3 all skills?

This way you greatly increase the build options and design space.

The way I see it, they should be attributed in the following way:

Spell channeling 3: Staves, maces, unarmed. (Very iconic spell casting tools)

Spell channeling 2: Dagger, Rapier, Shortbow, Scimitar, Quarterstaff. (Current spell channeling weapons)

Spell channeling 1: Long Sword, Club, Morning Star, Hand Axe, Battle Axe, Longbow (Weapons which are sometimes tied to casting archetypes)

Non Spell channeling: Spear, Warhammer, Great Axe, Great Sword, Halberd (Weapons too heavy to cast)

This way instead of having 2/3 of the skills gated behind a weapon property, the distinction is a lot more fluid.

It also becomes possible to empower a bit the memory 3 spells (which are currently a bit lacking), since they become restricted to only the most spell focused builds.