Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Best Of
Re: Weekly Feedback Request - 02/27/2025
Alpha Two Phase II Feedback
Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
1- Testing the Final Features
2-Crafting & Economy Testing Still Incomplete
3-Armor, Stats, and Gameplay Balance Issues
4-Weapon branches feel uninspired
everyone can use everything, and spell variety is minimal. No class or build truly stands out.
If new weapons are just being added for aesthetic purposes, without major customization options, then the feature lacks meaningful depth.
Final Thoughts
I know my feedback may seem harsh, but I am speaking both in your interest as developers and in ours as players. May 1st is approaching fast, and I have already seen my guild lose most of its members due to these issues—just as the servers themselves have been emptying.
I worry that Phase 3 will face the same fate:
Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
- 1- Mounts still freezing.
- 2 -Characters losing their hair when changing head models.
- 3- Mobs still capable of one-shotting players despite high-level gear (level 20+ with mitigation-enhancing jewelry). I'm receiving 9k critical hits while having over 5k HP in leather armor.
1- Testing the Final Features
- It's time to start testing the final features. Comparing the roadmap and the promises made about the game, I feel like I'm not playing the same game that was initially described. Since Alpha 2 Phase 2 launched on December 20, very few features have been introduced. While I acknowledge that the desert area has seen significant progress, the rest feels underwhelming.
- The vassalization system, for instance, has been pushed to Phase 3. In its final version, the game’s regions aren't supposed to have all nodes occupied—there should be a hierarchical system with a main city, vassal nodes, and upgraded POIs. This system is going to require significant balancing work. Looking at the Riverlands, for example, at a level 4 node, only one level 3 node would evolve, meaning that out of 5 nodes, only 2 will grow, while others remain at level 1 or 2.
- This raises important questions: Which zones will develop? Which will be abandoned? Is this system truly viable for launch? If it won't be ready for Phase 3, it will cause issues, especially when dealing with the player rush. Such a system can only be properly tested under high server population conditions, which are necessary to evaluate its limits and advantages.
2-Crafting & Economy Testing Still Incomplete
- Phase 2 was supposed to focus on economy and crafting, yet we have seen very little of it. Instead, crafting feels long, tedious, and incomplete—there are no true professions in place. How are we supposed to test and give feedback on a system that is barely functional?
- Resource gathering is inconsistent—animals rarely drop materials, and crafting level 10-20 armor is excessively difficult. According to your vision, players should be progressing through level brackets by crafting their own gear, but currently, this does not work at all.
3-Armor, Stats, and Gameplay Balance Issues
- The "glass cannon" meta is too dominant. Armor stats feel random and unbalanced, rather than being part of a well-thought-out system. This shouldn’t require constant adjustments and reworks—it should have a solid foundation from the start.
- A major update is scheduled for late March, yet many core Alpha 2 features remain unaddressed:
- The +1 enchantment system is a complete disaster in its current state, turning the game into "One-Shot Land." Once again, this feature was implemented without proper testing, and now that we see how broken it is, it remains unchanged instead of being reworked or removed for redesign.
- The core issue is that DPS classes benefit from +1 to all offensive and defensive stats, but the stat scaling is completely flawed.
For example, a +1 to Strength, Dexterity, etc., also grants +1 to armor, which is completely incoherent. - This results in fights where whoever attacks first wins, leading to tanks with 5k+ HP getting instantly one-shot.
- Yes, this is an Alpha, but basic stat balance is pure math—this should have been properly designed before implementation, not treated as a balancing issue after the fact.
- This lack of systemic balance is further compounded by stacking effects:
- +1 enchantment bonuses
- DPS weapon stat lines
- Armor color variations
- Upcoming passive stat revisions
- All these layered buffs create an overloaded system that simply doesn’t work, when in reality, the game is much more enjoyable when gear is balanced without all these excessive bonuses.
4-Weapon branches feel uninspired
everyone can use everything, and spell variety is minimal. No class or build truly stands out.
If new weapons are just being added for aesthetic purposes, without major customization options, then the feature lacks meaningful depth.
Final Thoughts
I know my feedback may seem harsh, but I am speaking both in your interest as developers and in ours as players. May 1st is approaching fast, and I have already seen my guild lose most of its members due to these issues—just as the servers themselves have been emptying.
I worry that Phase 3 will face the same fate:
- A server wipe with a fresh start,
- Yet no essential systems fully implemented,
- Leading to growing imbalances and a rapid decline in player retention.
Imanek
2
Re: Why make everything so punishing??
I tend to agree, the other issue is, even with it being exhaustingly punishing, none of the systems are even fun, like straight up deleting 25% of resources on death could be removed as it's extremely rare you will ever make it back to your corpse to loot it anyway
Add to that the XP debt you get from death, no idea what it's adding to the game.
Shabooey
2
Re: Suggestion: Looking For Group
Vyra in P1 fought back against the newcoming toxic players. Several guilds on the server immediately came together to show that the server is not about shitty behavior and pointless toxicity.but Ashes will 'always' have that problem where the 'calmer' servers can be disrupted rapidly by the 'hostile' player subgroup, because Intrepid intentionally doesn't give us any tools to deal with that.
And sometimes, the basic nature of the game goes against it. I think this is one of those times.
Now, obviously this was on a relatively small scale, compared to what we might get on release, but I still think that the game does let us address this issue. And will only give us more tools once pvp systems are implemented correctly.
Yeah, I was there, but that didn't last, and merging servers into the size required for the game to function...
It's just speculation/bias based on past (and I guess recent) experiences.
My group's TL server got worse and worse relative to our preferences, and after the merge and realizing that they weren't going to get 'balanced out' (it got worse technically), we transferred to another and it's Night and Day, as they say.
But in Ashes, server transfers aren't that simple, and if they were even temporarily, you'd get some effects that I think are worse.
That said, P1 was pretty 'not representative of Ashes', we didn't even know about static respawns then, and there were no "Marketplaces" so you could lock out unwanted players.
Azherae
1
Suggestion for guild XP commodity
Should have this item cost gold not glint, since glint is untradeable this allows guild member to pass gold to guild leader to buy the commodities and load themn up on his own caravan and then the rest of the guild can defend it instead of runnign there own caravans of like 1-2 XP emblem things each.
Would also add a gold sink aswell which is an extra bonus imo with how current economy is going
Would also add a gold sink aswell which is an extra bonus imo with how current economy is going
Veeshan
1
Re: Suggestion: Looking For Group
Obviously could be tied to discord as well, but that's more about whether Intrepid would want their app to be tied to other 3rd party stuff or not.
This part doesn't matter much unless you mean them 'banning' it.
The pipeline from 'a thing that can be visually seen on a screen by a player' to 'basically any other site or utility' is 3-6 days of 'work' at best, someone will do it just for community purposes.
Exactly how it gets used will depend on game/server culture, but unless Intrepid tries to 'ban' it (and there's almost no way to) adding this is basically adding party finder (relative to what most non-instanced party finders do).
Azherae
1
Re: Suggestion: Looking For Group
I believe that global chat is polluted. This is a real problem.
And we can find a simple solution without losing social interaction.
Agreed.
I dont see why the act of spamming "LFG" in general chat is considered "social". If anything it is anti-social. It disrupts conversations people are having in general chat.
Not only that, but when looking for group, you are sitting spamming general chat, and looking at the general chat box scanning for replies. How is this fun? How is this "social"?
To me the social part starts AFTER u form the group. Then you can chat with teamates, talk about what you want to fight etc.
The current PUG formation is terrible and frustrating. They are trying to funnel people to either join guilds or play a diff game, not a smart decision matrix for player retention.
Xeeg
1
Re: Voyager Plus
We're all Members at that tier at present. We're all lumped together with the other tiers currently on offer. I don't know if the situation will change. Personally, I prefer the anonymity but we can't post on the forums without a Handel and a tag lol.
Re: 🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Gatherable Spawning System
This is actually a deal breaker for me (word on the forums is this is how it's supposed to be.). Because everything you said. Too much revolves around it to allow a few no lifers to lock it down like this. I've no lifed games to do stupid shit like this, it's not fun. The advantage they get by doing this is massive and it will effect you as a player, because you have to compete with it. I'm not competing in a game of "who can login after reboots fastest". This is trash design, no side of it is actual fun.
Volgaris
6
Re: Why make everything so punishing??
I tend to agree, the other issue is, even with it being exhaustingly punishing, none of the systems are even fun, like straight up deleting 25% of resources on death could be removed as it's extremely rare you will ever make it back to your corpse to loot it anyway
Corruption is way over tuned
Gathering is boring, lackluster and not engaging at all
Level 1 crafting requirements are extremely over the top
It sort of feels like Intrepid have this idea that every single system in the game needs to be a 250 hour grind or its to easy
The other issue and I think this is a big one, intrepid so NOT play their game, even if they hide some alts in random guilds they are not actively engaging with the systems they created, they are spawning fully crafted legendary gear that removes any aspect of seeing how bad these systems are
Corruption is way over tuned
Gathering is boring, lackluster and not engaging at all
Level 1 crafting requirements are extremely over the top
It sort of feels like Intrepid have this idea that every single system in the game needs to be a 250 hour grind or its to easy
The other issue and I think this is a big one, intrepid so NOT play their game, even if they hide some alts in random guilds they are not actively engaging with the systems they created, they are spawning fully crafted legendary gear that removes any aspect of seeing how bad these systems are
Chicago
7
