2025 Announcement - Discord copy

[Chocbomb]

Originally posted by Jacopo (Prometheus) — Today (3/1/2025):

Hi @everyone,

happy new year to you all, and my deepest apologies for not sending out an update for so long. Both me and the company are going through a hard time. Let me give you a recap of what's going on.

The full release in the summer and the F2P transition in November have performed way below expectations. I will elaborate more on the whys later on, but in a nutshell: we barely had any budget to spend on marketing, and we've faced some serious competition this fall.

Because of this, we've had to scale down the team to just me, Andrea and Michele (the three founders) since the end of December. So yes, there are now only 3 people working full time on the game instead of 7. We cover all the game needs (design, development and art), but there's a limit to how quickly 3 people are able to deliver content.

The 3 of us are working unpaid, as we've been for the last 2 years, since all the game revenues were needed to pay the rest of the team (and they were barely enough for that). That doesn't make it any easier, but development of Fractured Online moves on. Luckily the backend is stable, so we can focus on new features, and revenues are enough to pay for servers, taxes, and a little for ourselves.

Now, to my personal situation. Between the state of the company and other things that happened in my life, I went into a... mini burnout? I just couldn't work anymore. It's been 3 weeks now, and it's getting better. In a few days I'll be able to resume working, I think, and give you a recap of the progress on dungeons, and a roadmap.

Please also note that I've been trying, and I'll keep trying, to secure new investment for the company. This is also really hard, as the whole gaming industry is not in a healthy state these days.

Feel free to leave questions in the chat. Game masters will forward them to me and I'll reply as soon as I can.

Thank you for being with us through these very hard times. Your support means everything to us.

Best,
Jacopo

This is quoted directly from discord.

You know somethings wrong when you don't introduce the group first..
Things like "The team and I" or "The company and Me" or "Andrea, Michele and Myself"
Examples:

• Both me and the company
  
• we've had to scale down the team to just me, Andrea and Michele
  
• I went into a... mini burnout? I just couldn't work anymore. It's been 3 weeks now

I'm not sure how securing a new investment will work out if it's written like this.
Especially when the Marketing that FO did do.. showed where the game lacks and is ignored yet again.. this is years of ignorance at this point.

• "we barely had any budget to spend on marketing,"

They hired multiple streamers for 5 hours a pop, who quit the game when dealing with housing and imbuing mechanics, they are not fun player friendly/entertaining things and keep getting ignored.

1 streamer quit because repairs are a joke, he spent his weekend farming mats for crafting gear and imbues only to downgrade on his first repair at 6% chance to downgrade..
6%...
Literally this --> https://imgur.com/a/repairs-fractured-online-6-uqxFXdI
(multiple downgrades at low % chance, the last thing he said on stream about FO was "What a waste of time")

So recap:

• 4 people quit the staff.
  
• 3 people working on the game.
  
• 1 of those 3 people is burnt out, and done nothing for 3 weeks. (maybe more, who knows if he's telling the truth, the staff have lied to players in the past and has been over 2 months since his last announcement.. 8 weeks)
  
• 2 remaining staff are the only people working on the game and no information on what they are doing, still probably putting all their eggs in the dungeon while other problems persist.
  
• There will be less content in a longer time frame and if player numbers dip further the game will be officially dead.
  
• Roadmap is getting an overhaul, because less staff now and the previous roadmap had things removed from it retroactively.
  
• The game industry gets blamed for the devs not paying attention to their own games player feedback and poor mechanics that are meant to be entertaining, it may be a job for the staff.. not for the player, but it's somehow everyone else's fault.
  
• They are working on the game full time, but it's unpaid... something not adding up.
  
• No one wants to invest in the company because the problems are being ignored and the future looks bleak with it's management so far from the "Founding Staff Members, Andrea, Michele and Jacopo", it's like they're trying to sell it off and get out first chance they get.

The state of the game:

The game has had so many nerfs it's a shadow of it's original concept, quick and easy took the place of quality and immersion, things were rushed so hard they were still selling BETA access after Official release, most of the crafting tooltips had weird <placeholder> strings and some of the spells were poorly translated or were incorrect.
It's what we should have expected from the devs that would use dumb reasons to resist player feedback.. like being able to reset your stats for example.. the devs had a really bad system for that originally which stopped players from testing the game during the testing phase..smh.. while restricting character creation slots for $50 ontop of buying the game.. there was arguments in Discord for suggesting a better way which upset the devs and their Discord Knights which caused players to quit because of how the staff were interacting so negatively with the players just for suggesting a better way.. when there was 3 players left playing it eventually went through multiple different stages of weird changes that eventually resulted in the system you have today.. Although the character slot restrictions is still there.. its like they knew this was going Free2Play way back then.
And now most of the staff have quit and 1 other is burnt-out with 2 other devs left doing who knows what..
I seen with my own eyes the moderators chastise a new player because he posted some feedback of him playing the game, they insulted him and questioning his credibility and ignored the feedback, they created an abusive environment, Axolotl would create a poll later asking if people wanted him removed because he would always cause trouble.. then 100's of players no one had ever seen before reacted to the poll.. it was rigged.
https://imgur.com/a/ax-fmjjd13

• There are more emote reactions to the Discord Announcement than there are players.
  
• Devs always apologise, it always feels like they need to say sorry because there is more bad news every time they talk.
  
• Constant petty resistance to all player feedback from the staff.
  
• Content Creator Discord purple role is for the Staffs favourite pet players, these people don't create content.
  
• Gathering resources like logs, ore, stone is still 1 by 1, logs still do the bouncing bug that has existed for years without fix.
  
• Picking up resources to Craft houses is still done 1 by 1.. this still blows my mind that the devs intentionally wanted people to play the game like this.. only intoxicated or special people will find this entertaining.
  
• Still can't move your house, you need alt accounts to leap-frog your stuff to another house you had to build.
  
• No fixes to poor gameplay mechanics and basically no improvements since F2P launch. (They added slow pets.. that was it)
  
• They added a "loot all" button later.. this is 2+ years of feedback & development to make that.
  
• The same bugs are still active and zones can still crash and lock your character in limbo for forever that needs GameMaster intervention.. which is now 2.5 people total for the whole game.
  
• The game now has seasons.. with boring loot as rewards.. the gameplay remains unchanged.. you just get a loot box at the end of the season. (4 seasons per year, every 3 months the game calculates what your worth in score)
  
• Guild discords have been scrambling to keep their Towns, many have collapsed because low player population.
  
• New player towns still don't let you use their processing workstations, the devs disabled them because the resources were designed to be stolen.. literally designed to steal from new players.. and they wonder why other games are "serious competition".
  
• No group finder.
  
• No guild finder.
  
• No cosmetics or systems to change how you look.
  
• Still only a handful of Animal helmets, with way more enemies you could make helmets with but for some reason don't.
  
• Character creation still restricting stat points per race and poorly explaining stat benefits and how important stats are.
  
• One of the Demons races character creation uses incorrect stat wording.
  
• The Demon world still not happening, the original selling point of demons is long gone, with no needing mounts and running on all 4's etc.. whatever is quick and easy from these devs.
  
• Demons look like humans with horns, and they have demon horses.. it's like they were designed quick & cheap.
  
• The playable Animal races are still outdated.
  
• The market menus and buttons are still tiny.
  
• The market limit is still aggressive, people resort to making Market mule accounts, it's like the devs didn't think any of it through.
  
• Lockpicking gameplay is still boring asf, way too many low level garbage chests.
  
• No Line Of Sight fixes, the game still lets players and monsters attack through most walls.
  
• Some talents are useless with how many points needed to invest with almost no reward if any at all.
  
• Wisdom and Intelligence colors are inverted in the Talent tree and Spell tooltips.
  
• Gameplay mechanics get further outdated with no hope of Quality of Life updates.
  
• No Imbuement improvements, everyone still has a google doc with their discoveries, it comes down to who can hoard the most stuff and figure out how to use them on an outdated caveman designed system, the discord moderators were handing out screenshots of imbues when FracturedBase went down and they still haven't made it better.. screenshots of janky game mechanics vs a quality reworked game mechanic.. they chose janky and whatever is easier without talking to the players.. because they know everyone would want it updated.. except those 5 people whispering in the devs ear calling it "brave" to design something so silly for a video game.
  
• Most limitations of the game were created on purpose to make a subscription worth it, originally they tried to sell founder packs that unlocked most of the restrictions ontop of buying the game.
  
• People leaving characters online to pad the steam stats.
  
• FO Staff don't seem to understand entertainment and constantly throw dumb negative issues into gameplay as a form of content and and then close their eyes to the player feedback.
  
• Pet builds are still slow and boring, the ultimate pets from large talent investment is still horrible, they only have a bit more health than some pets but remain slow and boring to use, all pets act like slugs with no impactful abilities.. also it still has a bug that if you tell your pet to attack something it will then go on rampage and attack everything nearby after that first target dies.. still not fixed.. and has been active since the pets were added, so expect the staff to not rework or fix problems anymore with less staff, it's basically down hill from here.
  
• The game was released with no END-GAME PVE, it is a hoarder simulator, dungeons are meant to be PVE only if they ever come.. but the game has issues with line of sight, enemies attacking through walls and general threat & tanking mechanics that don't work, i also have my own doubts about the dungeon content with how the devs consider entertainment and what they deem worthwhile loot after they removed the crafting blueprints from chests and how they double-down on bad systems because they don't want to think about fixing things.
  
• PVP is still mostly just large gank squads killing newbies in trials.
  
• Skill orbs are the only objective, and even that mechanic sux once you get to the point they start doubling the amount of skill orbs needed which increases with each doubling to the point you're a walking skill orb in a dumb game that doesn't have the imagination to make a good system for skill orbs, in other games your skill will increase as you use it or level up, but in FO you have to hope for RANDOM DROPS FROM DIVINES.. like god is in the skill orbs, smh, level ups only increase your orb limit.. why it was limited.. who knows.. alot of this games mechanics feel like the devs are not enjoying their work.
  
• Buy an Ultra-wide monitor to see more of the game, it's literally designed to be played in Ultra-wide because 1920x1080 is far too zoomed in still, no improvements to the resolution.
  example --> https://imgur.com/a/fo-ultrawide-vs-normal-w4Hb2vW
  
• Taming is still in BETA form, throw a net, click tame 2 times and repeat.. it's some of the worst taming mechanics i'v ever seen a game attempt.
  
• Phrases like "Missed Opportunity" or "It has potential" are common phrases said about FO still because it misses the mark everytime with every chance people give them like "maybe this time they will have made it better" but in 2-4 weeks you're uninstalling again or trapped having to login to save your house from deleting.

[Creature of Nature]

Thanks for posting this.

I played this game for years and had a blast. If the Genesis server with my years of progress was live during FTP/Season launch they would've at least had 2 lifetime supporter purchases from my household. We re-rolled on Elysium but 1 year+ progress in an MMO completely erased is hard to ignore/forget.

There were always certain feature decisions that had me scratching my head cause the chance for X feature to be great seemed to always be missing b/c of their desire to push PVP. I guess their game so their right to do as they please but man all those missed opportunities.

[TheHellman013]

You forgot to include that unsympathetic, arrogant lead game master “ Fürst Axolotl” on your list of negatives.

I agree with you on all points. Especially since the developers have already made the same mistakes with LinkRealm. Nothing learned.

[Chocbomb]

Originally posted by TheHellman013:

You forgot to include that unsympathetic, arrogant lead game master “ Fürst Axolotl” on your list of negatives.

I agree with you on all points. Especially since the developers have already made the same mistakes with LinkRealm. Nothing learned.

I made mention of him in the paragraph under "the state of the game", with a screenshot of how he talks to people as a GameMaster.
Everyone who has played this game long enough knows who he is and why we all view him poorly.
For that reason i didn't want to talk about him, but i had to say something because he is part of the state of the game.

[Last Dark Emperor]

Why couldnt prometheus make Linkrealms 2 instead of this to ambitious project,unreal.

[TheHellman013]

The GM Fürst Axolotl is a complete disaster. He has no idea about community management and urgently needs to be replaced.
He is part of the problem and I know several players who have left the game just because of him.

But the DEVs do nothing.

[Mu la la]

New discord post said they got financial support

[Chocbomb]

Originally posted by Mula:

New discord post said they got financial support

The list of people that care what they say anymore is getting smaller each month.
They have announced teasers for so many insignificant things that it's lost all meaning..

The remaining players are a handful of people who spent way more than they care to admit on their Dyanmite crypto coin cash shop, and are clinging to their investment, but also a few people from brazil.
(not including their 5 loyal players that have the same grammar as the moderators)

They are looking for financial help from all other sources because the game cannot be supported by the dwindling player-base.
It only lasts a few months before people leave in waves.
They don't bother fixing the parts that people have complained about.. they also talked smack & belittled the people that gave feedback on the things that are constantly being complained about.

They literally watched their streamers quit the game mid-way through building a house and dealing with the loading & unloading the cart 1 by 1, and the other people quit when trying to figure out the imbue system.. and that's not even the first time people quit over that.. remember when FracturedBase went down? they still have an official discord channel with screenshots of their google doc combinations.. smh

Benefit of the doubt..
i hope they find something that they will accept help from, because this year has some big games being launched.
FO is still missing heaps of races and a whole planet.. it's crazy to think they officially launched it like this, and that they maintain hope that people will listen to them.

[Chocbomb]

Originally posted by mortveiare:

Honestly.
Uh, biased towards your point of view. My view is biased towards it being a great game with lots of potential. Bias plays a big role. But they are designing the game for the player base they intend, and sometimes that means there are players that won't enjoy it. That doesn't mean that it's a bad game, it means that it's not YOUR game. Which is fine.

Overall they want everyone to have a good experience and are working towards trying to go through and provide a way for everyone to play their own playstyle their own way for most content. They are also working on expanding game play and content and depth, so that there are more things to do.

Right now this reads like a rip at them based upon it not being your type of game, or it not being a wow level game without the same funding.

Bias and Ignorance are 2 different things.

When the lead-dev vanishes for months and stops replying to everyones messages.. then comes back and says he's burnt out.. you can't tell me that's some cultural thing that creates a great game.
He is the "going to the store for smokes" meme.

When the staff are looking for outside sources of financial aid.. when the game cannot support itself.. you can't tell me that it has lots of potential..

You can't tell me it's "not my game" just because im talking about all of the issues others and myself have experienced from playing the game we bought.

I never said anything about being German or their culture, but being German doesn't give you a free card to act like a jerk towards other people, and i won't bring up a world war that proved that point.

I literally watched them chastise people in discord.. turning fans against the game.
A new player gave feedback and they picked on him like bullies.. saying demeaning things about his credibility.
When the game went F2P.. the GameMasters were encouraging new players to build houses without telling them any facts about moving the house, they literally upset people because they spent all that boring time building a house only to find out that the whole system was basically a BETA raw version.

There were Twitch streamers that quit mid-stream while building their houses and learning about how to Imbue..
NONE of the hired Streamers hung around to play more of the game after their time was up.. they all uninstalled.

If you want to look at my messages like a RIP on them.. and not see any valid points that the Devs could build upon and make something good out of all the bad.. then that's on you.
You maintain the "learn nothing" attitude.. while summarising all feedback as negativity.
It's the old "you might be a red neck" if you don't like those kind of people round here.

You can like the game, im not picking on you for doing that, im not saying you're a bad person for it.
But don't pretend that's not what you're doing, otherwise you would have talked about all the points of the game that you do like.. you offer nothing for your POV, you only chastise others

[Chocbomb]

Originally posted by mortveiare:

That's one of the issues with your tone. If someone disagrees with you, you call them stupid. They don't have to see things your way in order to be intelligent. You're not interested in intelligent discussion, you're interested in it only being done the way you see it being done.

But, you are ignorant in your perception of culture. Ignorant as in uneducated in it. Different cultures and languages operate differently. What you consider rude from you said is at time just that the other side is to direct based upon your perception. But, to others of their culture, they aren't. And this isn't sensitivity school. That's part of your issue.

However, your topic on "a world war that proved the point" shows that you're very biased towards YOUR view of how people should be. Again, it's a very direct statement from your point of view that shows everyone that reads it that it's not unbiased, and that you're more upset that it doesn't reach your level of expectation, then it being a bad game.

TTFN

Again, you offer no points about the game, and keep trying to twist the things i say.
I guess this is one of your cultural differences.

Still waiting to hear about all these things you love about the game to prove me wrong.
Maybe you enjoy the broken line of sight, and being able to shoot projectiles through walls.

[TheHellman013]

This has nothing to do with cultural differences!
The GM “Fürst A” is simply an unpleasant person. He talks far too much garbage and just lives out his ego.

[Chocbomb]

@mortveiare I noticed you are not in any other discussion trying to help new players like the rest of us have over the years..
You only exist in the negative space like a vampire.
You don't give feedback or anything about the game.

Majority of the time feedback is given to help improve the game, but not in your eyes.. you see all feedback as evil and somehow an insult to the devs and you.

Too many times you have made this clear, it doesn't matter what evidence or information is provided to you, you will find a way to twist the words to make it sound like an insult, like a victim complex.

Originally posted by mortveiare:

That's one of the issues with your tone.
you call them stupid.
They don't have to see things your way in order to be intelligent.
You're not interested in intelligent discussion,
you're interested in it only being done the way you see it being done.

you are ignorant in your perception of culture.
Ignorant as in uneducated in it.
Different cultures and languages operate differently.

you're very biased towards YOUR view of how people should be.
it's a very direct statement from your point of view
you're more upset that it doesn't reach your level of expectation,
then it being a bad game.

These are your points about the game to change my mind.. ?
You say nothing about the game.. but you keep coming after me.. twisting my words.

There are so many other discussions in this Steam forum, and you ignore them all and come here to talk nonsense.

These are the many points that you missed:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1426050/discussions/0/4692280570914309617/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1426050/discussions/0/4355620764343585897/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1426050/discussions/0/4134934813434237905/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1426050/discussions/0/3954784199551965125/?ctp=8#c596261865553696115

Originally posted by mortveiare:

I covered that in expectations of a blizzard level studio
I also covered culture and how people talk and act differently
your bright idea was to bring up WWII and the part Germany played
it's an indication that your bias
It's not twisting or mincing words.
I am just making it painfully clear for people.

Oh yeah, it is painfully clear what your agenda is.

I am still waiting on your points on anything related to the game.
All you have done is prove my point.
Please keep telling me the flaws of people.. instead of the game..

I asked in my previous reply if you like the Line of Sight bugs that let everyone shoot projectiles through walls.. and you ignored it to focus on twisting words about intelligence.

In your eyes.. somehow.. the game is perfect.. and it's everyone else that is the problem..
We have another meme..
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3428335125

[Chocbomb]

Originally posted by mortveiare:

I haven't missed them. I get tired of all the toxicity from a select few so I typically don't surf the forums, and keep an eye on discord but rarely respond.

Most of the complaints are based around censor ship when breaking rules or cultural differences that players don't see because it doesn't fit the way that they feel things should be.

There's also a ton of false narratives. Though there is also some truths as well. I've never said that every complaint or criticism isn't valid, either.

I understand that.
Being exposed to negativity on both sides can wear people down, especially if you're looking for it.

I rarely see positive comments about the game anymore.
I get annoyed when i see a teaser for something that isn't a big deal, when so many other things about the game are being neglected.
Any good opportunities are always hijacked with other stuff that distract from making the game good, and alot of the official announcements have apologies and talk about wanting more money.

If you look at the quote in my first post in here, there's literally 1 of the smaller paragraphs with positivity then 6 paragraphs that make you feel uneasy about the games state.

[Chocbomb]

Originally posted by mortveiare:

it's ok to be annoyed. Everyone is annoyed at the development pace. We all get that. We don't need it to spin into constant negativity or not seeing both sides though. With how often it happens, that's why I don't post or help or message on discord, even though I am now one of the oldest vets that still follows (one of, not the).

It spins because it remains broken though..
There are problems from the beta that are still active and they don't fix it, and having to bring it up multiple times will get annoying for both sides.
But the only option the players have is to tell the devs about it until it's fixed, and if it is ignored it will fester like cancer.

You see people say "it has potential" but the potential to improve things gets ignored, and the only things that changes are the bottlenecks for resources..

• Feedback is ridiculed.
  
• Talking about bugs is ridiculed.
  
• Things have been repeated so much at this point that it comes across as the devs being petty, doing nothing about it for so long.
  
• The moderators are having to read the same things over and over that they no longer care what the people are talking about and just want them to shutup.

There are games older than Fractured Online that are still improving on their base gameplay systems.
Examples:

• Ultima Online has a ClassicUO client.. that smooths the gameplay and improves many gameplay options. (they also have private servers with modding tools and macro tools)
  
• Dransik has remade their client from scratch and added a bunch of new things.
  
• Ethyrial changed their staff and is reworking everything.
  
• Swtor is even working on new stuff and overhauling their graphics.

FO has only just released to F2P and is already outdated with things that remain broken from beta.

How many players need to repeat the same feedback for the devs to understand the entertainment value of having their spare time respected with quality of life improvements for the players and the game, that isn't just more funnel mechanics for the PVP distraction.

We watched Twitch streamers during the F2P launch.. uninstall the game on stream because of the monotony of the house building mechanics.
A streamer named Tony struggled to understand the Imbue system for an entire weekend, where he should have been having fun playing the game.. in the end he gave up.. with 300+ viewers watching him, and none of his viewers wanted to play the game after watching him build a house and struggle with imbues, it became a joke in his chat channel.
But somehow the devs don't see this stuff.. and bringing it to their attention is toxic somehow.

The staff wonder why the game performed way below expectations at the F2P launch.. but they have made it part of their job to ignore what's best for the people playing their game.
It's a little mind blowing that they expect new players to constantly Flow in and ignore the issues like the devs are.

We go round and round in circles.. they will blame toxicity as the reason the devs don't fix the game, and why feedback is consistently about the same things.
Even the resource processing workstations in the new player towns are a silly thing, having them intentionally designed so other players can steal from new players using them.. it's so bad..
To think a developer cannot see how to enable their new players to thrive in the game without forcing them into a PVP scenario or Fully build a house to be able to craft basic things.

I saw a guy post a suggestion about automated mechanics for the Cart when gathering and when the Cart is on your Home plot..

• If a Cart is within your home area then the Carts storage could be viewed in the crafting workstations.
  
• or Carts could be plugged into structures like a phone charger, and it automatically could build structures like Fire Pits or Houses, without needing to manually haul items 1 by 1..
  
• Could you imagine having some form of Cart automation for collecting resources, like picking up the nearby wood you just chopped down, or the Stones/Ores, it's next level QoL.

Meanwhile modders from ARK:Survival Evolved created a mod that lets crafting workstations see inside other storage containers and it's one of their most downloaded private server mods, because they understood the "GAME" part of it.

[Maeriss]

I would probably give it a try again, if they could ever get my 3 accounts to actually work. The number of times that I have had to transfer my accounts due to different publishers/owners now is ridiculous, an the customer support never got it fixed. Jacopo had to literally jury rig something to add to the DB in order for me to play. Sad to see my $75 gone, but between steam and the non steam launcher, I guess that i got my 300 hours in.