After playing for 10 days and getting a feeling of the decay rate of item and of the general impact that these new changes had on the players, I would like to offer the following feedback.

First of all, a summary of the current situation:

• The game right now has an itemization based on 3 levels for armors (primitive, non primitive, set) and 2 levels for weapons (primitive and non primitive).

• We have 3 levels of enchantments. Respectively called tier 1, 2 and 3.

• Durability is set as follows: all primitive items have 200 durability. Non primitive bows, wooden shields, wooden weapons and mage weapons have 300, metal weapons and metal shields have 400, Non primitive armors have 200 durability on cloth, 250 on leather, 300 on hide, 350 on metal. Set armors have 50 more durability over the non primitive version.

• Masteries in crafting go from 0 to 4. Each mastery increases the durability of the items crafted by 50%.

• Good and neutral players drop no gear on death. Red players drop almost always all the gear

Now let's see how easy or hard it is to achieve that (note: this post will not talk about the recipes which are already discussed in many other places, I will assume that the recipes are available):

• Crafting any primitive item is trivial

• Crafting a non primitive hide or cloth armor is easy with common materials, but requires some effort if you want to get some rare material.

• The same is true for leather armors, with the caveat that you have to tan the leather first, which adds a bit more effort to the total.

• Crafting a non primitive metal armor takes a lot of time and resources

• Crafting non primitive wooden weapons or shields is trivial, even when using rare woods.

• Crafting non primitive metal weapons takes some effort but is easy enough.

• Crafting set armors is like crafting a non set version but with the addition of some PvE drop which can be extremely hard in some cases, like the 5 dragon souls of an hunter set.

• Enchanting at t1 level is much harder than in the previous tests due to a "nerf" of the properties of the reagents, but still reasonably doable for anyone (and as a personal note: quite fun)

• Enchanting at t2 level requires some very specific reagent combinations which usually are not common. Doable but not something you do on throw away items.

• Enchanting at t3 is mostly a guild level effort

Now let's see how much this stuff will last:

• A weapon used regularly (archer or warrior) loses around 40 durability per day.

• A weapon used by a caster class will mostly not lose durability

• An armor used by a ranged class will mostly not lose durability

• An armor used by a melee class will lose around 10 per day.

• Gear drop rules have some impact on this, but mostly negligible. Items which require effort only change hands, don't get destroyed.

Finally, before going into the discussion of this, let's see which was the reaction of players to this system:

• Having a sort of gear progression which requires a certain amount of effort has been very well received by mostly all players.

• The non gear drop for good and neutral was very badly received by red players.

• The increased durability of items was well received by many players, but there is an underlying fear of how the economy will shape out.

With all that said, these are my thoughts on it, what I like and what I don't like:

My first reaction to this system was very negative. No gear drops and progress through gear definitely did not felt like this they aligned with how I expected this game to be. By playing and talking with other players though, I cannot ignore the fact that some of those changes were very well received. In particular the new gear system. Players like to have to work toward obtaining a certain gear and not having to replace it every other day due to it breaking, and honestly Arboreus would not really work without mechanics like this. Additionally, I feel that this amount of progress is mild enough that you can definitely perceive it, but it doesn't turn the game into a gear check or a world of "have" and "have not". You can still run in mostly primitive gear and achieve about the same stuff, just harder. As such, I'm willing to accept this as a part of Fractured. It doesn't 100% align with what I had in mind but it's not a deal breaker, and since the majority likes it, I could be fine with it too. It can be a fine compromise.

Talking about the gear drops though, this isn't really working well. Having items which require this level of effort to obtain automatically prevents any form of full gear drop in the game. While this may fine on a world like Arboreus, this warps some underlying mechanics and interaction on which Syndesia is based. Syndesia is a PvX world. PvP is half of it, and reds are part of this PvP system. They are meant to be a niche, to have disadvantages, and that the good guys should not be bothered too much by them. But this system has now gone too far in that direction. Playing a red in this system is impossibly punishing. What should the red penalties achieve? Those penalties ideally should prevent the creation of any large red figthing group, due to imposing them severe logistic restrictions, which makes them act more as solo robbers of carts and lone predators of PvE hotspots.
The current level of such restrictions do indeed manage that, but they manage to be so punishing that even solo actions are carried out only through petty tricks or borderline exploits which allows reds to act safely, because the level of risk is simply unbearable otherwise. Also, stuff like this should NEVER exist https://forum.fracturedmmo.com/topic/15019/player-spawn-locations-during-pvp-combat-is-a-big-issue . Player throwing themselves at the enemy knowing that they risk nothing is bad, no matter how you look at it. There must be some form of penalty at all times.
At the same time though, it is having very positive impacts too. Trades have picked up, acquiring an item is a safer investment. Players form groups to go around and look for rare resources. This is nice, and I would like this to continue, so scrapping this new system altogether would be a step in the wrong direction. Despite my initial reaction I believe that this system is proving to have better potential than the old one, so I would like to tune and find the right compromises on this one, rather than going back to the previous one.

Talking about durability instead, I honestly smell a disaster incoming. The economy will collapse. I would like everyone to understand that this game economy can work only if every week the amount of resources destroyed through durability is exactly equal to the amount of resources gathered. With the current durability this will simply not happen, and one of the the curprit of this are the masteries.

Like with the item progression, I do not like having a craft progression through grind and repetition, but I do understand that many like it, so I will accept that part too. In their current incarnation though, masteries are a terrible element of the game. While in this system gear progression players in different levels of gear can coexist, fight with and against each other with the same rules and varying degrees of advantage/disadvantage, this does not happen with masteries. A player with 4/4 in an item and one with 1/4 simply cannot coexist in the same economy.
This is a difficult concept to grasp, but durability is a very important stat. Many frown upon masteries because they "only increase durability, but no stats", but durability in a system where you can't repair and can't be looted is a HUGE element of value.
Even if enchantments were not in the game, a sword made with someone in 0/4 would be worth only 1/3 of one one built by someone in 4/4, because the latter has 3 times the durability. It will give me the advantages of that item for 3 times longer, so it is worth 3 times as much. Simple as that. These 2 items are made from the same materials, and simply cannot co exist. There is no competition on town position or price which can bridge that gap of value.
This is made even worse by the cost of enchants. Since higher level enchants have an high cost associated, the value of an item with higher durability is further incremented by being a better recipe for higher enchants. Enchants put on a higher durability item offer a bigger return of investment for the same resources. In the end the item from a 4/4 is impossibly more valuable than a 0/4. This means that you are either 4/4 or you don't craft, because the price of raw materials will be based on a 4/4 craft. This will 100% require a change.

The second critical flaw of this system is that as highlighted previously, some items simply do not degrade. The armor and jewels of any ranged character is almost eternal. The weapons of mages too. This is not good. Items have to get destroyed for all the economic system of Fractured to work.

In summary, the issues I currently perceive with the game are:

• Too heavy penalties for Red
• Not enough penalties for good and neutral
• Excessive progression of item value granted by masteries
• Items not breaking often enough to have a good economy
• Wood items are too easy to make

Based on that, I would propose the following changes:

Should we bring back gear drop for good players?
I'm mostly convinced that the answer is NO.
Not having them drop gear has had too many good impacts on the game. That should stay, and we should look elsewhere for a solution.

So, how we give them penalties for dying? How we rebalance a bit the huge disadvantage of red toward good players?
I would say that we should look back to the last time the system worked. For that we look at the last alpha, were we had goods drop 2, neutral drop 4, red drop all. This was also with an average value of the items which was drastically lower. So I guess that we can start just by rescaling this.

The items have an higher value, so to inflict the same value of penalty you need less gear to drop. I like zero drops on good players, so let's move from there. Good zero, neutral one, reds 1-2 depending on Karma. Reds should drop 1 when under -2000 (killing is -2500, so this red only stole a cart or similar levels of crime), 2 when under this value (they killed someone). Dropping all items is too much of a penalty. Losing only 2 I feel is bearable.
Why not zero on neutral? Hmm, I'm in doubt between zero and one. Because neutral players are the core of the PvP of Syndesia and they must feel confident in engaging in as much as activity as they want. After all any possible target is willingly participating. But at the same time it feels wrong... I feel like one would be better.

So, how would this solve the fact that blue are actually unaffected by any penalty for dying and can charge head first into a fight while risking only bandages? I would tie this with our current issue with durability, and simply apply this:

Every time you get purple health, you suffer an amount of durability damage on all your items equal to the 2/3 of the percentage of health lost. When you get executed, it counts as suffering all the remaining red health as purple health. What this translates to, is a 10 durability damage on your items when you get knocked down, and a total of 66 when you get killed, no matter how many times you were knocked down before that. You can get knocked once and lose 10 then be executed for the remaining 55, or get knocked 6 times for 6 and then be executed for 6.
In the end a full life lost is always 66.
This is a good deterrent to throwing away your life, and introduces a decent degrade on items, which affects even those which normally wouldn't suffer damage.
This though would not introduce a "reward" for reds killing them. And I think that it is fine. On Syndesia reds should go after good players to rob them of their loot and their carts, not to take their equipment. It would be too severe of an impact.

With this system, blue will most of the times go around with their best or close to best equipment, which is what most of them want. Reds will be able to run around in non primitive gear with t1 and t2 enchants, because it is reasonably possible to replace them if you lose only one or two. Neutral players too will mostly fight in non primitive t2 enchanted and bring out the sets only for the best occasions. This is a decently fair fight. You can fight against good equip using t1/t2 non primitive gear, and imposes that gear disadvantage on reds which is what is expected for Syndesia.

This should in my opinion solve the issue of reds, blue and item degradation.

Next issue, masteries. The +50% per level has to go. I would prefer an increase of stats to it, and many players would consider it more natural. So I propose that the 4 mastery levels become: first level +5% durability, second level +5% damage/armor, third level +5% durability, fourth level +5% damage/armor. This is more natural and gives someone at 4/4 a significant advantage of 10% in stats and 10% in durability over someone in 0/4. This is a big advantage but not big enough to completely put anyone else out of business.

Last issue, wood items. Currently with one yew tree you can make something like 10 yew bows. Definitely too easy. Wooden items will never have a value like this. They would have to require something like 10 times the current logs to give them a worth. Personally the best solution would be to give wooden item creation a bit more depth, introducing the kilns, long time curing like leather and so on. This though would require a major effort from the devs, which right now look very busy with that roadmap. So I would say that for now the easiest solution is that high quality trees only drop 1 log of their specific material, and all the other logs that they produce are simply light wood and hard wood. After all only some specific parts of a tree are good for crafting.

With that said, this was my wall of text and I would like everyone to drop in and contribute to finding the right compromise.

Link to the recorded Q&A: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1236981888

List of questions with timestamp:

00:12:07 - What does the partnership between Dynamight and Gamigo mean for the vision of Fractured?

00:13:10 - Will Dynamight retain the property of Fractured if it proves to be not profitable?

00:13:45 - Can the community expect a faster release of Fractured with the Gamigo's partnership?

00:15:09 - Does Dynamight possess creative control and specifically monetization control?

00:16:55 - What does Gamigo gain out of this partnership?

00:17:52 - The press release from Gamigo says that they have worldwide IP right, does it mean that Gamigo owns the Fractured IP?

00:18:29 - What is the support from Gamigo, does it permit seeking outside funding?

00:19:14 - What is Gamigo's plan if Fractured doesn't meet profit expectations?

00:21:02 - Will Fractured be region locked? What languages will it be translated into?

00:21:37 - Will Dynamight ever support a plan for F2P or P2W features?

00:22:45 - If we have purchased a founder pack already, will we receive the same content after the partnership with Gamigo?

00:23:59 - Why choose Gamigo as Fractured Publisher?

00:27:10 - What does Gamigo announcement mean for Fractured playerbase?

00:30:12 - Has it helped registrations and new accounts?

00:31:20 - What is Gamigo's long term vision for Fractured?

00:32:06 - How can players be confident that Dynamights retains control over Fractured's directions and monetization?

00:32:55 - When can we expect alpha, beta and launch to happen?

00:34:55 - Will there be more servers in the upcoming test to handle the influx of new players?

00:36:33 - Will Fractured still be released on Steam? Will it use the Glyph launcher? Or any other launcher?

00:37:40 - How will redunds request be handled?
00:40:11 - Will we see more of Michele's art?

00:42:00 - Will a console version be released for Fractured?

00:42:30 - Will Gamigo intervene negatively with the translation of Fractured in other languages?

00:43:45 - When do we get steam keys?

00:45:45 - What is the strategy for the imminent loss of players that will affect Fractured due to the partnership with Gamigo?

00:47:13 - Discussion around the fact that Gamigo is supporting a game under development, which is contrary to everything they did before.

00:48:19 - Can we have more persistent test phases where we don't have start everything from zero?

00:51:20 - Has Wes had a chance to play Fractured? What are his favourite skill sets?

00:52:35 - Is there a roadmap somewhere?

00:54:25 - Another question about the launcher

00:56:25 - Has Gamigo any experience with a project which is not F2P? Does it have a plan for a monetization model which makes the game progress and not disappear?

00:57:20 - What features is Wes looking to? What would he change currently?

00:58:55 - Can we see the demons in the next test?

01:00:23 - When will fishing be added?

01:01:15 - Will we get the implementation that the spells interact with the environment?

01:01:40 - Will we get dual daggers?

01:02:35 - How long will the contract with the publisher last?

01:03:35 - When do we get the new builds on Glyph? Accounts need to be transferred?

01:04:15 - How long will Gamigo financial support last after release?

01:05:15 - What is Gamigo's plan to publicize Fractured?

Since the creation of the enchanting system, many combinations have come and gone and what we have today is a subset of the initial set of possible enchants. When they were first created, the enchant recipes covered reasonably well all the existing aspects, but with the removal of many of those, today this is no longer true.
In the current situation there are some aspects which are over used, and some that have literally zero recipes tied to them.

To be more specific, this is the current situation for each aspect in how many combinations it is used:

Primal Aspects:

Mind: 7
Body 14
Soul: 8

This here is the first issue. For those that didn't notice, all combinations have always one and exactly one aspect from the 3 primal ones. Now, here there isn't a real imbalance, because Body contains all the Resist X enchants, which we may consider as a single enchant type.

Manipulation:

Transform: 11
Negate: 8
Create: 7
Destroy: 0 !!!
Transfer: 2

Same concept as the primal aspects. All combinations have one and exactly one manipulation aspect from these 5. In here we can notice that all combinations that originally used destroy, are no longer existent. Most of the ones using transfer have gone as well. Right now, destroy on a reagent is completely useless. Negate contains mostly all the resistances, while transform and create contain almost all the combinations.

Universal:

Air: 3
Earth: 1
Water: 2
Fire: 2
Chaos: 10
Time: 4
Death: 2
Life: 3
Order: 10
Energy: 14!!!
Knowledge: 6

The other 2 aspects of the enchants come from the universal list, and here too we notice some serious imbalance. Most of the elemental aspects are almost not used (especially important now that we have legendary reagents coming from elementals). Similar for death and life. At the same time, chaos order and energy are grossly overused.

Luckily, rebalancing them isn't that difficult, because you do it separately from Primal, Manipulation and Universal aspects. At the same time though, the aspects have been clearly combined to provide a reasonable combination for that effect, and I would like to preserve that as much as possible. You also need to avoid duplicating combinations. In particular, I would propose the following changes:

For Primal:

No changes needed here

For Manipulation:

Accuracy, Critical Chance from Transform to Destroy
Cooldown Reduction from Transform to Transfer
Critical damage from Create to Destroy

This would give a bit of value to Destroy, and a little more use to Transfer. It would leave us with Transform having mostly all the stat bonuses and evasion. Negate would have all resistances, willpower and fortitude. Create would have many of the niche ones like lockpick, stealth and detection, plus 2 more generically used like mana and endurance. Destroy would have 3 generically used ones and transfer too. They would have around the same weight in total.

For Universal:

We clearly need to knock down a bit the value of Energy while giving to elemental aspects. I would move Bonus Endurance, Strength and Health Regen from Energy to Earth. Cooldown Reduction and Luck from Energy to Death.Dexterity from Energy to Air. Willpower from Energy to Water.
Bonus mana from Order to Life.
Critical chance from Chaos to Fire and Critical Damage from Order to Fire.
Lower Mana Cost from Order to Water.
Detection from Chaos to Air.

WIth these changes, Energy Chaos and Order would still be the most important universal aspects, but at least some dignity would be given to air, fire, water earth, life and death.

Q: Regarding the new continent, can you tell us a bit more about its features? Is it possible to start on it or the starting areas will be limited to Myr? Will the extreme environment of the area limit the food production capabilities of the cities there? - 09:15

A: You can start on Aerhen. Environment is not implemented yet, but when it does the cold will influence food production

Q: How often can we expect updates? Will we have events like city sieges? 10:08

A:Monthly updates are planned. There will be more events like the Dark Convergence

Q: Are all races and planets going to be in at the start of the beta? 11:35

A: Only humans and Syndesia are in at the moment, the other ones will be introduced with the updates.

Q: Is it possible for someone who dislikes pvp, even more open world, to enjoy the game? 12:06

A: Yes, it is possible. Especially with Wildfolk.

Q: Will penguins be in the new continent? 12:48

A: Unknown

Q: Will Aerhenn be mainly snow? 12:55

A: No

Q: Do we get a roadmap? 13:15

A: Should be shared soon

Q: Are there any implemented changes for unimplemented talents? 13:35

A: The talent tree has been redesigned. The first 2 circles are generic abilities not tiered to any specific gameplay. The third and outer circle instead contains more specific effects.

Q: Will Vegetables be implemented at the start of the beta? 14:35

A: Not yet

Q: Will Alchemy be implemented at the start? 15:05

A: No

Q: Will we get bigger carts? Higher cost/bigger volume 15:15

A: No

Q: Is the first tier of gems going to be cheaper to socket? 15:35

A: Gems are no longer needed. Just reagents.

Q: Are the cannons and the superior human technology coming? 16:15

A: Not scrapped, but not yet currently in.

Q: There are plans for short term competitive environments? 16:40

A: There are plans to implement Asteroids, informations will come at a later date.

Q: Are there plans to improve the chat and community interface? 17:23

A: There are plans for the chat but not for the community interface like cities.

Q: Are there going to be updates to the audio? 18:05

A: There have been many updates to the audio of many effects, but not yet on the ambience sounds.

Q: What time do the servers come up? 18:53

A: 4PM CET, 7 AM Pacific, 10AM Eastern

Q: Is the beta going to be stable enough to be playable when you live in places like Australia? 19:20

A: It is not easy to provide a stable game in Oceania, but there are a few compensations that should alleviate the ping issue.

Q: Will the repair mechanic be implemented or be considered in the future? 20:19

A: No it will not be considered, but the durability has been increased and the master crafters will be able to craft items with higher durability

Q: Is there going to be a rags meta? People going around in basic equipment to avoid resources losses and thus affecting the game economy? 21:16

A: We don't expect that. Consider also that good and neutral players will no longer drop equip, only inventory. Red players will drop equipment based on their karma.

Q: Will the existing packets keep their benefits after the changes to the founder packs? Will the tutorials be skipable? 22:05

A: Yes, eternal VIP included. There have been many updates to the tutorial, please send feedback.

Q: Pretty much the same question 23:05

A: Same answer. Kickstarter packs apply too.

Q: Will the store and website work before the start of the beta?: 23:32

A: Should be fixed, retry. If you have still issues, please send feedback.

Q: Plese detail the current VIP perks: 24:30

A: Unchanged from the website and FAQ (and from the wiki!!! https://fractured.fandom.com/wiki/Fractured#VIP_membership ~ Spoletta). More details will follow on possible additional benefits.

Q: In the past tests we had many different systems for ranking up cities, in particular one which required a minimum number of residents for each rank and one which didn't. What is the model that will be applied for this test? 25:10

A: No minimum number of residents. Just resources.

Q: Will harbor towns get half of the cost of going inbetween continents? 25:45

A: Half sink. 1 quarter to departing town. 1 quarter to destination town.

Q: Are we going to get a more in depth crafting system with progression? 26:30

A: Yes, you will unlock new sets and recipes.

Q: Will there be any fast travel besides harbors? 27:39

A: No

Q: Will farming work the same on Aerhenn and Myr? 28:06

A: Yes

Q: Can we transport carts between continents? 28:24

A: Yes

Q: Will the Community managers place cities so that we can test sieges without antogonizing each other? 28:59

A: It will be considered.

Q: Will the backdoor to Shadowvale be opened? 29:26

A: Not yet, still a mistery!

Q: Are you thinking about new options for loot sharing? 29:43

A: Not in closed beta

Q: Is the game still using the deprecated SpatialOS Unity GDK for the backend or was it migrated to IMS zeuz? Are you allowed to selfhost? Who's the entity that owns the server (physically and legally) Gamigo or DS? 29:54

A: The infrastructure is managed by Gamigo. The plan is to upgrade from SpatialOS in the next months. It is part of the tests of this beta.

Q: The Gamigo data transfer news implies that gamigo US inc. is now hosting and managing the website and forum. I was told by a moderator that's not true and it's still DS for both. Could you clarify the physical and legal ownership of the server for the website/forum and who's in charge for configuration/maintenance of the server and who's in charge for updates on the code? 30:47

A: Migration is under way. The infrastructure will be managed by Gamigo, code and development by DS.

High atop an hill, three figures were hastily recapping their nefarious plan. The moon was clearly visible in the sky, casting a pale light and long shadows all over their improvised camp.

“That’s it everyone, the time has almost come. Stick to the plan and tomorrow at this hour we will be filthy rich.” Her low barking voice easily identified her as one of the Udoadra, wolf like people rarely seen on Syndesia. They were famed to be strong, noble and natural leaders.
This particular Udoadra went under the name of Rala and she did show the typical traits of her people… minus the noble part.
Indeed she would be more easily described as a scoundrel, always looking around for the next fool who could be easily detached from his belongings.

One week ago she had been approached by an old acquaintance of her, a bald man of an impossible to define age. He bore on his face the marks of a life spent over the sea, and the labyrinth of scars on his face told of more than enough swords.
Everyone referred to him as the “Ol’ man” to the point that many had started mistaking Olman for his real name, Rala included.

Rala knew that he had his own ways to catch the last news before the others, and that he always made sure to profit on his leads. Plenty of coins had found their way into Rala’s pocket thanks to this man, so when she approached her with this new lead, she knew that he could be thrusted, even if the information itself had been hard to believe.
"
Settlers had come to Myr
"
Those were his words..
Myr, a continent brimming with gold, silver and untapped resources, was the dream of a few and the nightmare of many.
Goblins, ogres and bandits roamed the fertile lands while the deserts were plagued by hordes of undead and by foul spider like creatures puked by the gods during a bad hangover. Any previous attempt of conquering those lands had been met with a quick and gory demise.

Yet, this group was trying to settle in there, and according to the Ol’man they already managed to establish the first cities. Too busy facing the unlimited dangers of that place, they were still unaware that their kin could be their worst enemy. In other words, the perfect target. Even more interesting was the fact that they had been organizing themselves around “banks”. Big chests left in the middle of the city, without any kind of lock or protection, where the settlers had been observed putting any kind of item. Including gold. A lot of gold.

Now, after having sailed to Myr from their island, they had been observing their target for a whole day from atop their hill. The newly founded city of Promolonia, and its “bank” were right there in plain sight.

With the help of a lit candle, Ol’ man opened his notes and started recounting the results of their observations with his high pitched and nasal voice.
“According to what we saw from here, the contents of that chest amount to:

• 1150 Animal pelts
• 85 Ingots of still undefined material
• Around 300 hundred stones. Small ones.
• 41 horses…”
  Ol’ man paused for a second, still disturbed by the sight of all those horses being taken in and out of that chest. Then he resumed his reading.
  “…
• Undefined amounts of plant samples and anatomical parts of goblins. Probably tongues.
• At least 20.000 gold coins
• And... “More than my fingers” wood planks. Thank you Trixie for your useful contribution.
  “
  That last sarcastic comment was directed at the third member of this unlikely group. If Rala was a rare sight on Syndesia, the creature knows as Trixie was exceedingly unique.
  Trixie was a Demon. An Hellfire Demon, known to be strong as a mountain and dumb as a rock.
  His real name was Trikel’raxat’kartala and even among his peers he had never been a particularly bright one.
  Rala had met him during her travels, and in an impressive feat even for the extremely social Udoadra, she had managed to befriend him. She had full thrust in her skills, and knew that a cunning plan was the best plan.
  She also knew though that violence made for an excellent plan B, so she hauled around this huge mass of muscles and ferocity wherever she went.
  She was also the one to call him Trixie, lamenting the fact that his name was impossible to pronounce and that someone should really institute a character limit for names. Convincing this huge demon that Trixie was an apt name for a terrifying warrior, had also been a surprisingly fun activity.

Truth to be told, the demon had been close to realizing that he had been tricked and that he should be very very angry at this weirdly chatty dog. Luckily for the 2 other members of the group, such realization had to give way to an intense craving for honey pastries while traversing through his fourth (out of five) synapse. Since no such pastries had ever been in sight, said realization had been stuck in a neural traffic jam ever since that day, and an untimely rampage from the demon had been so far avoided.

“Thank you for the detailed report” Rala cut short her two companions before they could start arguing, and then continued “The plan is easy. Shortly before the dawn there is a small activity of settlers leading their carts in and out of the city, most of them are stopping in front of the bank. We will disguise between them with our own cart, using the darkness to avoid being recognized. We approach the bank, grab everything that is easy the grab, gold coins first and then we disappear in the night before the dawn. Take only what looks like it could be worth its weight.”

A few minutes later, following the plan they had put together all three of them were slowly walking toward the city of Promolonia.

There were a few figures moving in the night. Each of them was busy with his own matters and hardly interested in meddling in the affair of others. Even less so when one of those “others” was hauling a cart which would have normally required a good horse.
“Are you sure that it was a good idea to leave the cart to him? I fear that we may be a little too conspicuous like this.” Ol’man voiced his concern, looking at the demon barely covered with the biggest cape they could find, effortlessly dragging the cart.
“We need the cart, and we don’t have an horse. This is the best option we have, as long as you don’t want to try hauling it yourself.” Was the quick answer from a very annoyed Rala.

With the help of a bit of luck and a of striking sense of dread in all those who met Trixie on the road, the trio finally entered the streets of their target. The bank was there in plain sight, without a single guard taking watch.
“Ok, quick now, grab whatever we can!” Rala issued the order with a whisper in the night.
The three of them jumped on that lone ornated chest sitting under a solid stone roof, almost in contrast with the poor state of the rest of the buildings in the city.

They all started rummaging through that chest, taking out all the gold coins they found and anything that looked expensive. No matter how much they took, there was always more. It seemed impossible for such a chest to hold all that stuff.
“Oh, these two could be useful!” Rala took out from the chest two very surprised horses and attached them to the cart.
“Wow, look at these gems in here, they are so… flawless! These must be worth a lot! Hey Trixie, would you stop eating everything you find and give us an hand?” Ol’man looked in the direction of the demon.

Trixie was standing there, immobile. He was staring into the void in front of him, apparently lost in thought. There was something ominous in the air around him.

“… not warrior name.” these words finally came out of his mouth.

They were softly spoken as if he was speaking with himself, and yet they sounded like fiery boiling rage.

“Eh?” Ol’man couldn’t hear well those words, but his instincts had just put him on full alert.

“TRIXIE NOT WARRIOR NAME! ME KILLS BAD DOG!” Trixie stared daggers at Rala.
“… seriously? After all these years you notice it NOW? When we are this close to getting awfully rich? Have you ever heard of bad timing you bird brained muscle head?” Rala looked more surprised by the surreal situation they were in, more than worried for their imminent fate.
Ol’man sidestepped closer to Rala, while keeping his eyes on the demon, which looked ready to jump on them at any moment.. “Please, tell me that we have a plan B ready.”
“Oh yes, we got a plan B! It is right there! Looking at us and trying to decide if he can eat both of us right now, or if he prefers to keep a bit of me as a late breakfast!”
“Excellent. So what exactly do we do now?” Ol’man kept staring the demon which was slowly advancing toward them.
“We run. NOW!”

---

Many hours later, in the afternoon following that hectic night, a bored guard was inventorying the results of the night assault.
A man clad in a dirty chain armor moved toward him. “So, did you found everything in the end?”
“Ah yes Sheriff, we got almost anything.”
“Almost? What is missing?”
“Oh sir you see, this is very weird, we found almost everything except for a few belongings of Jeremy, the cook. He swears that he had put there a stock of raw bear meat and a few trays of his baked products.”
“Baked products? What kind of baked products?”
“Honey pastries, sir.”

Yes, but with a clause.

Only in the starter towns if you are not a citizien (for the new players).

Only in your city for the citiziens (because we are actually feeding them already!).

Day 7 of the test.
To my knowledge, none of the cities has developed the market place technology.
The economy of this game is based around the concept that no one can be self sufficient because each area has only a specific set of resources and you need resources from far away places to properly prosperate.
Regions in the far north and far south sorely need someone to supply them with iron, while regions in the center have no coal.
Regions from the north provide all the reagents and skins from the trolls, regions from the south most of the dead oak and so on...
Not to mention that a city can't develop all techs, so they are forced to rely on other cities for some of the crafts.

So, why isn't this working? What has gone wrong? Why are all cities trying to be as self sufficient as possible?

I would like everyone (and especially governors) to share their opinions on why things turned out like this and what could be changed to generate more trading between cities.

I will start with my opinions on the matter and possible solutions:

1. Tech points are few and precious. Having to use one on a tech which to work needs the cooperation of other cities, feels risky.
2. Gold doesn't really hold value right now. We needed it at the beginning of the test for all those houses and city upgrades, but what use does it have now? The idea of separating from our resources and items in exchange for gold, doesn't sound very good.
3. We have a deep distrust between cities.
4. We don't have enough non citizien residents. The marketplace is an item exchange point even inside the same region, but since all cities have mostly made all the residents citiziens and tipically guilded them, we are already organized on that front.

Put all this together, and we have the current situation where we prefer hauling carts over half a continent.

So, what do I think that it should be done to improve the situation?

Personally I would go with the following solution.
I think that we all agree that if it didn't require a tech, we would all build one in our cities. But then you remove options from the tech tree, and having multiple choices is good. So I think that the marketplace tech should remain. It could just be an upgrade though. Something that you do to get a bonus in a city which is focusing its efforts in being a trading hub.

As such, I would make the market place a default building that you don't require any tech to build, but rewards to the city coffers only half of the usual income from the marketplace. The overcost is still payed, but half of it is simply gold sinked. You can then select the market place tech (rename it to trading hub) to gain that other half of the income AND the marketplace starts to generate prestige proportionally to the volume of the trades happening in it.

So, what are your opinions and possible solutions on the matter?

Hi,
this an old bug which presents itself randomly on some graphic cards (usually the old ones).
I'm afraid to say that so far no one managed to solve it.

This is an often discussed point.
While I did enjoy the classic crafting system, which is the one you described, I would invite you to analyze a bit more what is the Fractured approach.

It is indeed a problem of supply and demand, as you correctly explained, but you are underselling a lot the value of "time", and you are not considering the value of "scarcity". Fractured is heavily based on those 2.

In UO, mining and crafting something if you had the skill was literally a five minutes job. In Fractured, crafting a suit of armor takes a lot of work and a lot of hours.

The economy of UO in fact was not really solid and had a lot of issues. Many shards imposed a limitation of one single char per account to patch this issue. That kind of supply system which was limited by the existance of dedicated characters, crumbled when pocket workers got into the picture. If you had the skill, you no longer had a need.

In the current system of Fractured, everyone has the skill to be a "dedicated worker", but not everyone plays a dedicated worker. Being a worker in Fractured isn't a matter of what you have, but of what you do with your playing time. It is not an investment of character skills, but an investment of personal play time.

Items have a value because they require play time (and facility time) to be crafted.

To this, you have to add the scarcity of resources. Ore nodes are very limited and with long respawn times. Trees are everywhere, but the good ones not so much and have a 12 hour respawn time. Good quality hides are probably the easier to access, but they weight a lot and those that hunt those mobs rarely get more than a few.
Gathering isn't something that you can do while doing other activies "Oh look a Yew tree! Let's chop it down!", because the heavy item system prevents that. Only those that are going around actually gathering will get the resources to craft. This is very important.

Now, we never had a chance to test how good this works in the practice, so we can only look at it on paper. We never had a test which lasted long enough or with enough players to really see if the economy shapes up or not. A month into the beta, we may have something more solid to discuss.

From user "Vyrgil" on Discord (he cannot access the forum):

A nice change, instead of changing the resource cost of equipment, could be to improve the amount of ingots acquired from forges. Both leather, fabric and wood are always in the proportion of 1 raw resource for 1 refined resource, but ore is the only one that works in reverse, requiring 5 raw resources for 1 refined resource in addition to the extra resource that would be coal .

The time invested for the return of ingots is very disproportionate in relation to the other resources, my suggestion would be to also put in the ratio of 1 raw resource to 1 refined resource and increase the duration time in the forge from 4 hours to 20 hours or put that every 5 ores generates 2 ingots and increases the duration from 4 hours to 8 hours.

Making these changes would not have the need to change the amount of resources used on equipment and would help for tier 2 equipment

Short recap of the current durability situation for those who joined us only after Early Access.

During the first beta, we had big issues with the durability system, with crafting mastery levels that gave huge amounts of extra durability to items and no durability loss on knockdown/Death. This led to a quick saturation of the market and death of the economy. Ranged characters in particular had eternal equipments.

To address this, the devs have correctly applied 2 changes in this new Beta:

• Halved the bonuses to durability granted by mastery levels.
• 5% durability loss on knockdown, and another 5% if you get executed.

With these 2 changes, the equipment has now again a limited life, and what matters the most, pvp finally causes an effective durability loss, while previously it was a pve only thing.

As many have experienced in these first days of Beta, the life of an equipment can now be as short as a 2 days if you really go at it. Also, the coming raids will be impressive durability grinders.

In my personal opinion this is a fine situation, it is an improvement over the previous system, and adds to the depth of the game. It doesn't come without issues though, and the elephant in the room are clearly the poor t1 warrior equipments.
It was already a VERY harsh experience for warrior, discovering that to get a metal armor he had to take days of work between mining and smelting. The fact that he is now likely to lose that armor in 2-3 days has been the cause of some rage quitting from the game.

In fact, I believe that for this system to work, there must be some rebalancing of materials needed for the crafts, and in particular for the craft of t1 metal equipment.

I would propose the following:

• Chain armor 5 ingots (2 -1 - 1 -1 )
• Plate armor 5 ingots (2 -1 - 1 -1 )
  They are t1 equipments that don't even require a recipe, they can't require the concerted effort of a city to be made!
• Leather/Hide armor 50 hides. No changes.
• Common clothes 50 fibers. No changes.
  The crafting effort for these t1 armors is the correct one given their low durability.
• Scholar/Assassin 125 fibers. (50-25-25-25)
• Rogue/Warlock/Ranger/Hunter 125 hides. (50-25-25-25)
  The T2 cloth and leather armors have always had a frankly risible cost in base materials. Since we are talking about rebalancing crafting efforts, I believe that they should be addressed too.
• BattleMage/Cleric 15 ingots. No changes.
• Slayer/Knight 20 ingots. No changes.
  The crafting effor for these t2 metal armors is already considerably high.

As for the weapons:

• Metal weapons. No changes.
• Wooden light shield 3 planks
• Wooden medium shield 5 planks
• Quarterstaff 5 planks
• Shortbow 5 planks
• Longbow 5 planks
• Club 5 planks
• All trees (except the ones which reward only hardwood), yield only one plank of the specific wood of that tree and the rest of the planks are hardwood.
• Remove hardwood plank as a material (hardwood logs are still usable as building materials)

The difference in difficulty between making a weapon in metal and one in wood is light and day. While metal weapons have lower durability and should be easier to make, the difference is just too much. These changes would make it still easier to craft wooden weapons, but would give at least a little bit of dignity to the wooden materials.

Hmm, yeah I remember hearing that. Don't remember the answer though.

You can duel. Set neutral and have fun outside the city gates.

There are many counters to it. Namely, every form of dispel. If death bargain is dispelled, you die.

Hmm weird, the other continent ones are working. It is probably that specific smelter. You should send the coordinates to a GM.

The owner should get the ability to destroy wagons on his plot, in the same way that currently a governor can destroy any wagon in the city.

For now though what you can do is ask a GM for help, by sending the coordinates of the plot, and a screenshot indicating which carts you want removed.

Yesterday there was the AMA session with Jacopo Galelli, CEO of Dynamight Studios, which answered many of the questions presented by the community.

I took some notes during it, so I will try to provide here a short summary.
NOTE: I may have missed details, so if you are particularly interested in one of those questions, please check the video.

So, here is the list:

Question: When will the third crop be introduced?
Answer: Third crop will have to wait a bit more. It will be part of a larger farming update which also introduces stuff like personal farming plots and effects of temperature.

Question: When will the stargates be introduced?
Answer: The team is aiming to deploy them next week.

Question: Which kind of malus will Wildfolks suffer while on Syndesia?
Answer: None, but Syndesia lacks the resources which allow them to transform, so they may came already "loaded" with a transformation but after using that they can't transform until they go back to Arboreus. They may also bring Primal crystals with them as a backup transformation battery.

Question: Will there be additional architectural styles?
Answer: One per planet.

Question: How many other wipes are planned?
Answer: Only one, at release.

Question: When will animal taming be introduced?
Answer: As with all kickstarter stretchgoals, animal taming will be introduced after the release.

Question: Will we be able to switch left and right mouse click?
Answer: The team is working on a series of QoL and UI customizations. WASD moving is not in these, but swapping left and right mouse click is. Other customizations include showing or not the nameplates, or changes to the chat, or being able to whisp or mute players.

Question: What will be done to improve the new player experience?
Answer: The current tutorial is going to be changed into the so called "Journey System". This will be a series of "Quests" which will gradually introduce the player to all the functions of the game. These can provide rewards to players, like maybe a weak mount, but the rewards will be available only once per account.

Question: Other than the current 4, are we going to get additional backgrounds?
Answer: Definitely. The aim is to have a long list of possible backgrounds. This may also include having backgrounds based on your planet/continent of origin. More backgrounds will be made available when the skill level up system will be implemented, which will allow more skill variations and so more possible starting combinations.

Question: Race specific backgrounds?
Answer: Maybe.

Question: Support for Steam Deck?
Answer: Not in the plans.

Question: Which will be the benefits of the VIP subscription?
Answer: Still not completely defined, but they will be mostly cosmetic in nature with some time saving features. Nothing which will make your character stronger. Jacopo has been very categoric on this point.

Question: Are char names going to be unique?
Answer: It was not in the plans originally, except for the ones reserved. But they are reconsidering that, and will probably make them unique.

Question: How many character slots will be available at release?
Answer: Probably 3.

Question: Are we going to see a fog of war to limit the sight range of players with wide monitors?
Answer: No.

Question: Is the early game of melee characters getting improved?
Answer: The issue of melee builds is that their initial set of skills isn't as good or easy to use as the one of the other backgrounds. This will be changed.

Question: Are Carpenter NPC contracts still in the plans?
Answer: No, since house maintenance is no longer there. These perks will be replaced with something else.

Question: Can you give us some dates for the next updates?
Answer: Not possible to give dates, but demons and dungeons are among the priorities.

Question: Are we going to see a rebalancing in the number of INT skills compared to non-INT skills?
Answer: Yes. The next skills introduced will be more non-int than int.

Question: Which games have been the inspiration for Fractured?
Answer: Ultima online for sure. But some inspiration was also taken from Shadowbane, Star Wars Galaxies and clearly Dungeons & Dragons among others.

Question: Legends are currently not available on Arboreus, will legends on Syndesia be changed to be less pvp oriented due to this?
Answer: Legends on Arboreus are coming (including a legendary giant frog!). Changes to the legend ruleset on Syndesia are being discussed.

Question: How will the team manage eventual imbalances in the population of the 3 races?
Answer: Imbalances would be the result of certain builds being too good on one side or the other. As usual, balancing patches will take care of that.

Question: Are regional servers going to be introduced?
Answer: Will depend on the population of the game. An US and an EU server are planned for release, but an Asian one is also possible.

Question: The intro is nice but we don't need to see it everytime, can we auto skip it?
Answer: It is part of the planned QoL updates.

Question: Will the items crafted keep the name of the crafter?
Answer: Not in the plans.

Question: Can we lock the doors of our houses?
Answer: Eventually yes. Not a real "lock" per se, but probably only friends to the house will be able to interact with the door.

Question: Is the current talent tree going to be expanded?
Answer: There are plans for it, but it will depend on the resources they will have post release.

Question: Are controllers going to be supported?
Answer: No.

Question: Will the game be on G-Force?
Answer: Not in the plans.

Question: When will be able to reserve our names?
Answer: A few weeks before release.

Question: Can we get more slots in the hotbar?
Answer: No.

Question: Can we use skills from the drop down menu by clicking on it?
Answer: No. Having a passive skill or buff is meant to take the place of an active skill.

Question: Are we going to get KPs for completing crafts?
Answer: Maybe. Right now KPs are not tied to crafting, but it is possible that you will get KPs for mastering crafts and recipes will cost KP to be learned.

Question: Can we add custom markers to the map?
Answer: This is part of the QoL additions.

Question: Support for Linux and Mac?
Answer: Linux no. Mac is possible.

Question: When are we going to get the next 2 wildfolk races?
Answer: In the next months.

Question: Is a degradation system for horses planned?
Answer: Yes, horses will have a "durability" so that the horse market does not get saturated.

Question: Is a degradation system for recipes planned?
Answer: This is being discussed. Maybe.

Question: Will we get an in game button to report bugs?
Answer: Definitely, this has a high priority at the moment.

Question: Will we be able to test the contents of the kickstarter packs in beta?
Answer: No, they will be available only at release.

Question: Will Frenzy skill be usable even unarmed?
Answer: Is possible. It would make sense, but unarmed skills are very based on attack speed so it could cause balance issues.

Question: Are you going to organize a dev diary and present the rest of the team?
Answer: Yes.

Question: Are you going to add more KP sources to continents?
Answer: No, to the contrary the amount of KPs around are a lot more than needed.

Question: Are we going to get female wildfolks?
Answer: Probably not. Will depend on the resources available and if the artistic team manages to make someting apt for them.

Question: Are we getting server side improvements to reduce the latency?
Answer: Yes, this is in the works.

Question: Is the quality of crafted items going to impact the stats on them or only the durability?
Answer: Only the durability, but the enchanting system (+1/+2/+3...) adopted during the alpha is coming back with some improvements.

Question: Are we going to be able to rotate the camera?
Answer: No.

Question: Will we get more items so that we don't all look the same?
Answer: Yes, more items are planned, like the tier 3. Also it is possible that dies for coloring the equipment will be added.

Question: Are we going to be able to zoom out more?
Answer: No.

Question: Will we get the possibility to roll for loot?
Answer: Not planned right now. Maybe in the future.

Question: Will we get the chance to make necklaces on Terra?
Answer: Yes, either we add those materials on Terra, or new necklaces will be made for the creatures found on Terra.

Question: Is the bug to the map that some users are experiencing going to be addressed?
Answer: The team is trying to reproduce the bug. It is not easy.

Ok, this is all from my notes.

If someone else which was following the AMA can add parts that I missed, I will edit them into this post.

Thanks.

It is a chance to stun the target for 0.5 seconds on hit.

Coal IMO is fine like this. Aerhen is supposed to be lacking coal, especially since it is a mostly Iron continent, which requires a lot of coal.

I do agree though, that the tier 1 (and only the tier 1) armors should cost less metal.