Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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 Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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: Just another grind fest?
Alleged goal is to not have too much grind, though so far it seems kinda doubtful that this will come to pass
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Grinding
Indeed.
I don't see how the game could have the leveling speed they want to have without having grinding as a major factor.

2
Re: Just another grind fest?
Alleged goal is to not have too much grind, though so far it seems kinda doubtful that this will come to pass
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Grinding
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Grinding

1
Re: Just another grind fest?
They are going to change it.
There will be many opportunities to get advancement in other ways, but we aren't absolutely sure that these will be Adventuring level ('normal' exp/levels).
The idea is that you will need many other aspects to have a complete functional character, probably (at least some, probably not all) such as Social standing with particular organizations, etc.
There might be some additional quests or stuff related to adventuring level that is related to those, just like how some of the best content for 'just grinding' will be available through building up your Nodes.
There will be many opportunities to get advancement in other ways, but we aren't absolutely sure that these will be Adventuring level ('normal' exp/levels).
The idea is that you will need many other aspects to have a complete functional character, probably (at least some, probably not all) such as Social standing with particular organizations, etc.
There might be some additional quests or stuff related to adventuring level that is related to those, just like how some of the best content for 'just grinding' will be available through building up your Nodes.

1
Re: Subject: Feedback on Recent Stat and TTK Changes
I probably had more power than you lol. Doesn't matter the reason, it was unskilled dogshit. I know exactly what the contested mitigation vs penetration formulae are. Now TTK, gearing and power progression are a billion times better and we have room to grow the skill ceiling more.RaspberryHeaven wrote: »I swear if I see another casual parroting "muh low TTK" I'm gonna flip. The reason TTK was low is not due to people running around with 500 power rating, it's due to the fact that you can ignore SIXTY F-ING PERCENT of enemy mitigation just by leveling a weapon to 25.
Yeah, and in any content higher than 20v20 he died before he could use the second lol. Wounds did absolutely nothing because good healers were healing for over 8K and before you could do 2 stacks of wounds you were dead lolRaspberryHeaven wrote: »Cleric has a grand total of 2 abilities capable of doing that, both are single target, have long casting times and cooldowns while enemy skills do not. Also wounds are a thing, especially in mass PvP. I guess you forgot about tank but I don't blame you. Refer to paragraph 1.
RaspberryHeaven wrote: »Okay, and? You seem to be under the impression that I am vouching for arena shooter gameplay in Ashes while I am trying to bring attention to the fact that defensive builds weren't worth squat. Ranger casually hitting a mage with a point blank Bear Mark + Snipe for 4217 damage is entirely justified because it's a crit, the mage has shit for defenses and can vaporize the ranger in the time it takes him to complete his sniping animation. What isn't okay is that same ranger hitting a tank for close to 4k damage without changing his build. You don't get to complain about scissors winning when rock is missing by design. Unless of course you are arguing in bad faith and I have been wasting keystrokes all along.
bear mark + snipe crit = 4217 LMAO, our vines were critting that. Bear mark + snipe crit were hitting over 8K. You can still kill clerics with a snipe crit + power shot crit out of camo, by the way. No player should be dying in less than 6 seconds unless he is afk or they just came out of the initial portal, and you're max level camping the gate.
RaspberryHeaven wrote: »We get it, you really like to say acumen. Doesn't make your point valid when they could have nerfed people above 400 power (or 300 if you feel really carebear-y) instead of nerfing everyone. 0.8.0 apologists will do literally anything instead of admitting the heavy-handed gear changes were pointless and could have been replaced with soft caps based on character level.
This is also Hilarious. They adjusted the power curve to reduce the power creep, nerfed healers, otherwise nobody would die as they were healing over 8K in one spell, and buffed the survivability of tanks. People who ask for a 50% damage reduction of damage in PVP are completely clueless.
The entire system was broken before. No one cared about anything other than power, strength gave both power and penetration and the str to power ratio was completely broken, making players build for a base stat, getting a shit ton of power and penetration and then enchanting that and making it even worse.
As of this patch:
1. Other stats besides power are valuable and build diversity increased. Players need to either go for pen or dex asides from str and power if they want to have high penetration and bust armor.
2. Tanks are now tanks.
3. TTK is longer, giving players a chance to react, defensive abilities still being important, and debuffs like wounds now worth using and even important (at least for smaller scale, we need to increase even further base survivability). Not to mention, it's more fun when you actually use half your spells in battle rather than jumping, pressing 1 or 2 buttons, and killing/dying.
4. Power creep has been reduced, and enchanting has been properly set up to be the end-game progression system that it should be, with big efforts for small gains.
So yes, this patch has been a godsend and absolutely in the right direction. I think they should keep going that direction, improving base survivability even for DPS and increasing defensive abilities power and availability, while increasing the strength of the debuffs used to counter those defensives to balance it.
2
Unable to demote Artisan Professions to Promote new ones
Description:
Interacting with a profession manager and demoting a profession back down to novice in order to promote another to apprentice does not appear to actually work. Crossing a server worker boundary or logging out undoes the promotion, returning you to the level of the profession at time of demotion.
Steps:
1. Find the profession manager needed to demote, such as Chef Executive near the Laboratory.
2. Demote Fishing from Apprentice to Novice.
3. Go to Laboratory, find Lab Manager.
4. Attempt to promote Alchemy from Novice to Apprentice.
5. Receive no UI feedback on promotion.
6. Cross a server boundary or logout.
7. Receive all the required XP to level Fishing back to Apprentice, and restore Apprentice rank to Fishing upon crossing boundary or logging back in.
Tested with: Lumberjack from Journeyman to Novice, Fishing from Apprentice to Novice. Crossing a boundary with Lumberjack reduced to Novice from Journeyman 21 resulted in almost 140k XP awarded and Journeyman restored.
Expected Result:
That chosen profession remains at Novice, and ability to raise a new profession into one of the 5 Apprentice slots.
Bug Result:
Profession lists as being Novice, but unable to raise another profession to Apprentice. Upon crossing a server worker boundary or logging out and back in restoral of all XP and rank to demoted profession.
Interacting with a profession manager and demoting a profession back down to novice in order to promote another to apprentice does not appear to actually work. Crossing a server worker boundary or logging out undoes the promotion, returning you to the level of the profession at time of demotion.
Steps:
1. Find the profession manager needed to demote, such as Chef Executive near the Laboratory.
2. Demote Fishing from Apprentice to Novice.
3. Go to Laboratory, find Lab Manager.
4. Attempt to promote Alchemy from Novice to Apprentice.
5. Receive no UI feedback on promotion.
6. Cross a server boundary or logout.
7. Receive all the required XP to level Fishing back to Apprentice, and restore Apprentice rank to Fishing upon crossing boundary or logging back in.
Tested with: Lumberjack from Journeyman to Novice, Fishing from Apprentice to Novice. Crossing a boundary with Lumberjack reduced to Novice from Journeyman 21 resulted in almost 140k XP awarded and Journeyman restored.
Expected Result:
That chosen profession remains at Novice, and ability to raise a new profession into one of the 5 Apprentice slots.
Bug Result:
Profession lists as being Novice, but unable to raise another profession to Apprentice. Upon crossing a server worker boundary or logging out and back in restoral of all XP and rank to demoted profession.
1
Re: Subject: Feedback on Recent Stat and TTK Changes
RaspberryHeaven wrote: »Never been more excited for a higher TTK, more builds, more variation, higher skill ceiling and requires higher strategical and tactical acumen on all fronts.
Completely delusional. PvP has been reduced to deathballs baiting the other deathball and wiping them in one AoE root/stun. Again, you would have known that if you played the game.I've only gotten more hyped for P3 testing exactly because they released this patch.
Take a break from posting on the forums to update your client and see for yourself instead of waiting for P3.
Deathballs? There's barely anyone playing the alpha and TTK was one of the biggest complaints, try not to be hyperbolic.
TTK has been studied and there's a curve to where TTK is too low or too high, we've been currently on the low side. It has to be raised-in order to achieve waterfall stat balancing and to implement 64 varied playstyles. Its no ones fault that low TTK cultists have zero PvP acumen but their own, choosing over-powering their enemies instead being a better strategist and tactician.

1
Re: TAA - The Problem with UE5 and Modern Gaming
I just watched the Asmon video. TAA looks horrible indeed and explain why the game look the way it does. The game looked better before they introduce UE5.
Re: TAA - The Problem with UE5 and Modern Gaming
TheDarkSorcerer wrote: »I just watched the Asmon video. TAA looks horrible indeed and explain why the game look the way it does. The game looked better before they introduce UE5.
yep , the UE4 alpha looked actually better , everything clear and no blur , environment,character and world scale actually looked right unlike now too
Re: TAA - The Problem with UE5 and Modern Gaming
I agree, but it's also something that tends to be neglected in favour of other things once that state is reached, so it doesn't hurt to keep calling it out regularly. This isn't some request for content-heavy visual fidelity, it's just an engine thing for there to be a clean, performant AA solution.This area does need work but these kind of things normally take a back seat till all systems are added to the game. You will see this type of thing getting fixed during the polish phase.
I played ESO without AA despite being in 1080p because of how blurry their low res AA was.
There are PS2 games that look crisp at 480p compared to this modern bullshit, it needs to stop, it's just embarrassing, considering how much performance we have in trash-end cards and processors these days.