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
RMT has started - where’s the action?
RMT has already started in the alpha. There are a number of players on Vyra alone who are there to farm and sell gold, mostly by taking advantage of static gathering respawns. If you check the major RMT services from other games you’ll see Ashes listed there.
It’s insane to me that MMO communities are so fundamentally broken that we’re here already. Obviously it’s alpha so who cares, but at the same time it’d be nice to see Intrepid sit up and take immediate notice and be heavyhanded about this. Your game population will never be smaller, so it should hopefully be easy to track this down and ban for it. If you don’t establish a strict code of conduct early it’s just going to get worse and quickly.
It’s insane to me that MMO communities are so fundamentally broken that we’re here already. Obviously it’s alpha so who cares, but at the same time it’d be nice to see Intrepid sit up and take immediate notice and be heavyhanded about this. Your game population will never be smaller, so it should hopefully be easy to track this down and ban for it. If you don’t establish a strict code of conduct early it’s just going to get worse and quickly.
kerrai
2
Enable Auto-Attack without toggle
As was available a few months ago in the combat settings, please reinstate the option to enable auto-attack with the weapon attack keybind WITHOUT toggling it on and off. Basically, that option can only activate the auto-attack, not disable it. Forcing toggle is pretty bad for certain situations, such as switching targets and wanting to start with weapon attacks (with toggle, you just disable it instead).
Thank you
Thank you
Shinjeez
2
Re: Warehouse Storage for Others to Obtain
I don't even mean delayed mail, simply X players have Y package waiting for them to claim it.
That is a good point. There could easily be a resource or total quantity limit, a maximum listing limit, and listing it may even have a fee--10% of the vendor sell value maybe? I just as much see this used between players as for players moving stuff between their characters, which is fine because it won't overcome the logistics that your main and alt (or whomever) still have to visit the same node to claim it.
this system would likely be abused for free storage. but it does sound great. the crates should expire after a time to prevent unlimited storage in a town though.
That is a good point. There could easily be a resource or total quantity limit, a maximum listing limit, and listing it may even have a fee--10% of the vendor sell value maybe? I just as much see this used between players as for players moving stuff between their characters, which is fine because it won't overcome the logistics that your main and alt (or whomever) still have to visit the same node to claim it.
Re: 🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Gatherable Spawning System
Just bear in mind that we are missing an entire system that is causing issues with both aspects of this.
However, I can't say as much because I know that the recent information doesn't convey all that well, that we should be expecting that system to change things.
Right now, the weather system of Ashes isn't far enough along yet, for us to get a good feeling of what the gathering experience is supposed to be like.
So, while legendary X might not need to be obtainable normally in the world, it's different if that Legendary X spawns or upgrades some time after a specific weather event. In which case, it being 'static, and based on a timer', would be the expected and 'correct' initial implementation step.
If the weather is the thing that disrupts the 'quality timer', sometimes it would be more correct to have the spawn stay static, as it does in Throne and Liberty now (and of course FF11 and other games that have dabbled in weather, I think even BDO had something at some point).
So, my contribution is that I don't mind if normally it's impossible to get Legendary X out in the world, but you need to leave some room for 'true 'Thunderstruck Trees' or 'this Marble node got exposed by rain causing a mudslide'.
Those could be in the same physical space, while achieving all the team's goals and making all the things they have said, make sense in context.
I feel more and more lately as if most people who still play Ashes didn't play games with this design type and obv are here instead of delving into TL, but as usual I speak in 'defense' of the devs here, reminding that not only does some of their work need to be taken in terms of a huge context we don't see all of, but also as 'a person who has seen these systems designed and helped design some'.
(forgive me if this seems unrelated or a hijack, I originally wrote it as a response to another thread but then felt it was better here)
However, I can't say as much because I know that the recent information doesn't convey all that well, that we should be expecting that system to change things.
Right now, the weather system of Ashes isn't far enough along yet, for us to get a good feeling of what the gathering experience is supposed to be like.
So, while legendary X might not need to be obtainable normally in the world, it's different if that Legendary X spawns or upgrades some time after a specific weather event. In which case, it being 'static, and based on a timer', would be the expected and 'correct' initial implementation step.
If the weather is the thing that disrupts the 'quality timer', sometimes it would be more correct to have the spawn stay static, as it does in Throne and Liberty now (and of course FF11 and other games that have dabbled in weather, I think even BDO had something at some point).
So, my contribution is that I don't mind if normally it's impossible to get Legendary X out in the world, but you need to leave some room for 'true 'Thunderstruck Trees' or 'this Marble node got exposed by rain causing a mudslide'.
Those could be in the same physical space, while achieving all the team's goals and making all the things they have said, make sense in context.
I feel more and more lately as if most people who still play Ashes didn't play games with this design type and obv are here instead of delving into TL, but as usual I speak in 'defense' of the devs here, reminding that not only does some of their work need to be taken in terms of a huge context we don't see all of, but also as 'a person who has seen these systems designed and helped design some'.
(forgive me if this seems unrelated or a hijack, I originally wrote it as a response to another thread but then felt it was better here)
Azherae
1
Re: CRITICAL FEEDBACK: Intrepid Please fix PvP - TTK test video demonstration
I'm curious whether they've tested the practical application of ttk, that we've seen on A2. I've heard PTR testers say "ttk feels nice when everyone's wearing the same rare gear", but obviously that's not what the game will ever be, as much as I'd want the gear scaling balance to make it be.The only explanation we got back when it was changed from Steven is that it 'felt better', but at the time none of the non-PI testers were able to give any feedback on it so I assume it was that PI and whoever else was able to play, prefers this gameplay type.
And so, if PIs tested the same situation of everyone wearing the same lvl of power - of course their supposed ttk of 10-15s would feel ok. And considering what we've seen from those very PI testers in terms of general behavior - I think they saw that short ttk means that they can dominate weaker players with just a bit of effort, so of course they'd want exactly that. And now we've got what we've got.
Around the same time, we had the Node War stream, which, if you don't do a bunch of deep analytics on it, does look fairly okay.
I don't remember if I only discussed the analytics I did within my own group or if I posted them somewhere, I guess I'll check the parser archives, but I do know that I didn't bother too much since the sentiment at the time was 'oh, this is what they want, ok'.
I think the response at the time to @GrilledCheeseMojito's criticism of the emerging system was generally met with the usual 'you don't know that it won't be good/what you're talking about, it'll still be strategic'.
And to be fair, that could have been the responses from the exact sorts of people who are having fun and supportive of the current concept, meaning that there are definitely people out there enjoying this for what it is.
But that's always true for nearly any aspect of a game in isolation.
There was a lot to unpack in that Node War stream though, if you really looked.
Azherae
1
Re: Disgusted by the team already and I haven´t played the game yet.
Redberet76 wrote: »Orym, TY for the descent answer, some here can learn from that.
Sure, I can choose to pay the pre release, but as you do not build anything and won´t keep your character, it ain´t interesting for me to pay for. Just saying that marketing should be more client friendly. If people have pre-paid already months/years ago, they should at least give them a glimpse of the game to keep them "warm".
But you almost certainly don't want to actually get in game right now.
It's mostly unpleasant, it's literally better to avoid developing the sort of negative sentiment that most people would build up by poking their heads into the current build.
This is a true Alpha, but not just an Alpha, a Development Alpha, so it isn't even one of those cases where 'the Devs already have a whole plan for walking players through different iterations' (honestly for an MMO 90% of time this would just go live as 'the release').
It's grueling, punishing, unbalanced and buggy. You'd be 'kept warm' only in the sense that sometimes it feels like everything is on fire.
Azherae
3
Re: CRITICAL FEEDBACK: Intrepid Please fix PvP - TTK test video demonstration
My entire understanding is that Intrepid/Steven actually felt that lower TTK is the solution to the power gap issue, especially in terms of durability vs offense power. Did I totally misunderstand that?
If that's true that would be insane. It's like "If everyone dies in 1~2 hits then power gap is meaningless" and while that's true, that would make for an awful combat system. It's basically "If we remove everything that makes fighting fun we can soften the blow of gear progression". It's using a nuke to kill a cockroach. It might do the job but turn everything else into a wasteland in the process.
Meanwhile, we have the tried and true methods of old-school design. Long TTK coupled with a saturated power curve can create a good feeling of progression while simultaneously curbing that feeling of unfairness in unbalanced fights with gear and level disparities.
Most of us started following ashes because it was a promise of going back to what worked in older games with a necessary modernization on the things that were limited by tech back in the day. We had for the longest time the intended design of 30~60 seconds TTK, which was even a little short for some older game standards, but definitely a lot longer than modern MMOs.
Now this design has changed and we're being promised a jousting combat system that destroys any semblance of strategy, teamplay, and coordination in modern MMOs. It appeals to the modern philosophy of simplification and dumbification of systems.
I can only assume that this change was brought on by devs who never experienced older MMOs designs and are basing their combat philosophy on these modern MMOs which manage to alienate casuals and sweaties alike when it comes to pvp.
There would be no reason to build the base of the combat this way if they wanted the type of skill where TTK matters, to be important.
I'd argue it's exactly the opposite. They have long cast times and channels, they have long cooldowns, and they have a weapon basic attack combo that adds procs. They have this incredible debuff system where you need to proc one debuff based on another debuff previously applied. You have relatively weak defensive abilities.
To me, this all spells out a combat system designed for longer fights rather than quick duels. I have the feeling that they were well in the way of designing a combat system around long TTK, and for some reason, they decided last minute to dramatically shorten it by reducing the HP/damage ratio and buffing healing.
I wonder why that was. Did they fail to account for all the mobility they introduced in the game and it caused a weird situation? Did they struggle with creating a system that appealed to both PvP and PvE encounters? Was it a lack of skill on the dev team and internal testers to effectively use the combat system they developed? Are devs TikTok and shorts generation that think 60-second fights are long?
I'm not trying to be mean or offensive to the dev team. I am genuinely stumped and wondering what happened for this change to exist. It has really made me concerned about the development direction.
Imnotkio
2
Re: Splinter Topic(?): Item Deconstruction, Where, Who, How?
My preference would be "you can only do it at a crafting station in a node". I'm fine if everyone can do it, though I could definitely see a world where only crafters can (maaaaybe even specialized crafters, i.e. leatherworkers decon light armor, etc). Middleway between the two could be "anyone can, but crafters get more/better stuff out of it".
As for the corrupted part of the question, I'd imagine that deconstruction gives materials, which means they'd just all drop on death either way. So if the PKer wanted to remove their items for some reason - they can just throw it away, which will delete them.
Now, I'd personally prefer if corrupted players simply couldn't throw away items, but my views on the entire design of the corruption system and things related to it are very fucking particular
As for the corrupted part of the question, I'd imagine that deconstruction gives materials, which means they'd just all drop on death either way. So if the PKer wanted to remove their items for some reason - they can just throw it away, which will delete them.
Now, I'd personally prefer if corrupted players simply couldn't throw away items, but my views on the entire design of the corruption system and things related to it are very fucking particular
Ludullu
1
Feedback on pvp as a whole - generic
These are my opinions on the game as it currently stands. TTK being fixed but yeah.
1. Guild wars are probably happening too often. 3AM someone decides to declare war on your guild, it happens after 2 hours pass or a lot of kills. Or if they sneak away and chop trees in the middle of nowhere outside the event circle. Currently these are used to be able to kill other people without getting corrupted, including sniping mats from trading. If you wana corrupt to steal mats, sure but 4g cost to roll the dice on human lootboxes? too low.'
2. Give us another way to pvp at world bosses other than Node wars and Guild wars. These are important rng timed resources and people have to use gimicks to make it work.
2. Shrines are too close to the pvp events. People die they run back while the fight is still going on. Eventually until you keep chasing the tail back to the shrine.
3. Node wars are happening too often. Should be like a 1 week CD or something. I believe this is going to be changed during a future update so leaving as is.
4. PVP in towns. I don't like that you can war people in towns. Its cool running through the streets, but less cool when you have someone who knows you are a crafter. And follows you around, waiting until you go to make something before declaring war to steal your mats. Or a guild declaring war on everyone on the day of a new bench coming out, etc.
Yes you can 'get good' or practice basic security. But how many thousands of new players are going to lose their goods and just decide to not play anymore? You are in a town surrounded by guards, why is killing allowed lol
5. IDK if caravans should show their hp as a #. People can judge the cargo value based off of the HP of the caravan.
6. I still don't like that caravan drivers can be killed. Give the caravans a 90% slow if they've taken damage or something else instead, idk. There is no option of 'pushing through' when you get ganked.
7. Caravan events suck to sign up for. Let the raid leader sign up everyone to a caravan. Or give us a gigavan so we don't have to have 100 events on screen.
8. Fix the non-combatants being affected by CC issue. People use it to troll, or get other groups killed, etc. many scenarios.
9. Overall there aren't really rewards for doing PVP other than caravans. I'd also like to not invalidate half the economy with rewards either.
10. You want people to pvp over static nodes? make epic + legendary nodes a mandatory flagging zone. And show it on the map if you are close enough.
11. Increase the render range of nameplates. I can't see if a person is an enemy until they are already in range to hit them basically. Show me HP bars clearer.
12. Markers need to be more visible. They flicker in and out, bug out, or I just can't see them. I need to be able to see a marker on an ally from 50m away. Also make them more distinct if you can.
13. Let us lock a 'focus' or an 'ally' target. Defensive targeting is nice but I just want it to focus on one person.
14. Fix the Target of Target - targeting keybind. Shift Q so it works
15. Longbow's extra range is 'disruptive' as a pvp weapon compared to everything else. IDK what you wana do about it if anything.
16. Dodging interrupting AA chains is a PITA. Let AA chains remember where you were after dodging. I can't use shortbow in PVP if within the first 3s of every fight I have to dodge -> so i can't get arrowstorm from auto attacking.
17. Ally VS enemy AOE's needs to be distinguished at some point. Which roots are mine VS theirs?
18. Clarity of buffs and debuffs. I need to know when I am silenced, not just greying out action bars. (which is the same as being out of range).
More class specific stuff for pvp as a whole -
18. Gravity jump from bard is fun and opens up options - but it makes the game bad for melee I assume.
19. Tank walls should be longer (imo)
20. Tanks don't feel like they have much group utility in a raid. They can protect a target to soak and plop an aoe shield and wall but thats it? idk. We never get extra tanks in the raid and think 'now we have a really good frontline'.
21. Bard nimble needs more clarity on purges
22. Fire dot lasts too long.
23. Vines needs more clarity. both in effect and during cast so people can play around it.
24. Tank aoe shield pulse is too bright.
Theres more stuff but this is the basics for now. When classes get their reworks I imagine stuff will get looked at.
Overall pvp is fun, but no rewards? Render distance is horrible, along with desync / lag when its 100+ people. A lot of us are still kind of waiting for that magic patch that fixes the lag so we can really go all-in on pvp. You can't even coordinate with markers cause they don't render in. I would also like abilities to feel more responsive / snappier to use. The game feels ok to play but it doesn't have that good good feel of wasd or pressing buttons to do damage still totally
1. Guild wars are probably happening too often. 3AM someone decides to declare war on your guild, it happens after 2 hours pass or a lot of kills. Or if they sneak away and chop trees in the middle of nowhere outside the event circle. Currently these are used to be able to kill other people without getting corrupted, including sniping mats from trading. If you wana corrupt to steal mats, sure but 4g cost to roll the dice on human lootboxes? too low.'
2. Give us another way to pvp at world bosses other than Node wars and Guild wars. These are important rng timed resources and people have to use gimicks to make it work.
2. Shrines are too close to the pvp events. People die they run back while the fight is still going on. Eventually until you keep chasing the tail back to the shrine.
3. Node wars are happening too often. Should be like a 1 week CD or something. I believe this is going to be changed during a future update so leaving as is.
4. PVP in towns. I don't like that you can war people in towns. Its cool running through the streets, but less cool when you have someone who knows you are a crafter. And follows you around, waiting until you go to make something before declaring war to steal your mats. Or a guild declaring war on everyone on the day of a new bench coming out, etc.
Yes you can 'get good' or practice basic security. But how many thousands of new players are going to lose their goods and just decide to not play anymore? You are in a town surrounded by guards, why is killing allowed lol
5. IDK if caravans should show their hp as a #. People can judge the cargo value based off of the HP of the caravan.
6. I still don't like that caravan drivers can be killed. Give the caravans a 90% slow if they've taken damage or something else instead, idk. There is no option of 'pushing through' when you get ganked.
7. Caravan events suck to sign up for. Let the raid leader sign up everyone to a caravan. Or give us a gigavan so we don't have to have 100 events on screen.
8. Fix the non-combatants being affected by CC issue. People use it to troll, or get other groups killed, etc. many scenarios.
9. Overall there aren't really rewards for doing PVP other than caravans. I'd also like to not invalidate half the economy with rewards either.
10. You want people to pvp over static nodes? make epic + legendary nodes a mandatory flagging zone. And show it on the map if you are close enough.
11. Increase the render range of nameplates. I can't see if a person is an enemy until they are already in range to hit them basically. Show me HP bars clearer.
12. Markers need to be more visible. They flicker in and out, bug out, or I just can't see them. I need to be able to see a marker on an ally from 50m away. Also make them more distinct if you can.
13. Let us lock a 'focus' or an 'ally' target. Defensive targeting is nice but I just want it to focus on one person.
14. Fix the Target of Target - targeting keybind. Shift Q so it works
15. Longbow's extra range is 'disruptive' as a pvp weapon compared to everything else. IDK what you wana do about it if anything.
16. Dodging interrupting AA chains is a PITA. Let AA chains remember where you were after dodging. I can't use shortbow in PVP if within the first 3s of every fight I have to dodge -> so i can't get arrowstorm from auto attacking.
17. Ally VS enemy AOE's needs to be distinguished at some point. Which roots are mine VS theirs?
18. Clarity of buffs and debuffs. I need to know when I am silenced, not just greying out action bars. (which is the same as being out of range).
More class specific stuff for pvp as a whole -
18. Gravity jump from bard is fun and opens up options - but it makes the game bad for melee I assume.
19. Tank walls should be longer (imo)
20. Tanks don't feel like they have much group utility in a raid. They can protect a target to soak and plop an aoe shield and wall but thats it? idk. We never get extra tanks in the raid and think 'now we have a really good frontline'.
21. Bard nimble needs more clarity on purges
22. Fire dot lasts too long.
23. Vines needs more clarity. both in effect and during cast so people can play around it.
24. Tank aoe shield pulse is too bright.
Theres more stuff but this is the basics for now. When classes get their reworks I imagine stuff will get looked at.
Overall pvp is fun, but no rewards? Render distance is horrible, along with desync / lag when its 100+ people. A lot of us are still kind of waiting for that magic patch that fixes the lag so we can really go all-in on pvp. You can't even coordinate with markers cause they don't render in. I would also like abilities to feel more responsive / snappier to use. The game feels ok to play but it doesn't have that good good feel of wasd or pressing buttons to do damage still totally
Re: I dont see myself subscribing, if the current trend of grind and character power continues
remember when the game was supposed to have good TTK and other stuff . like 30-60 seconds TTK , 60-70% player skills and 30-40% gear power that would matter for pvp..and many other stuff that got changed for some unknown reasons not so long ago. tho i do have a hunch it all started to change when they started only listening to the few whale sweats they use for testing on ptr in the year before the alpha started 
