Progression in MMORPGs is one of those things where we all tend to have a favorite type. While level-based systems have been standard for a long time, skill-based systems and other systems of progression offer a different take on how to make your character feel like they're growing in the world. Fractured Online is taking a different approach with what the Dynamight Studios team calls the Knowledge system. Today, they’re giving us a preview of character progression and how it works.
Fractured Online won’t have either a level or a skill-based system. The Knowledge system begins in character creation when you define your character’s strengths and weaknesses and also set your attributes. These won’t increase, though you can respec once if you really mess up what you want. While the game will include equipment progression, your character growth will come from becoming more knowledgeable.
Your build will be based on how you earn and use Knowledge points. Knowledge points aren't something you just grind out, you earn them by playing the game in a varied way. The system intends to get you to explore the world and engage with all of the different ways you can play to help your characters grow. Some of the ways you can earn Knowledge points include exploration, defeating or interacting with creatures and jotting down your knowledge in the bestiary, discovering and harvesting resources, or obtaining Lost Tales, a rare drop from defeating world bosses.
Then you apply those points by earning talents through spending those Knowledge points for talent points. You can earn up to 60 Talent points and allocate them in different nodes of the talent tree to create your build. You’ll be able to freely respec your talent points, so you'll be able to experiment and find out how you really want to play.
Finally, learning abilities is also done a little differently. You'll be able to learn abilities by finding creatures in the world and hunting them down. They have secrets they can teach you, in the form of abilities. When you do that you'll have different abilities ready to learn and when that happens, you'll need to spend knowledge points to study the abilities.
For the full in-depth preview, head over to Fractured Online.