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: Alpha Two FAQ
Question: How do I access Alpha Two?
Access to Alpha Two requires a key. All players who have purchased a qualifying package or have been granted access can join the testing. If you haven’t purchased a package that includes Alpha Two and would like to participate, new options for access are available HERE.
Access to Alpha Two requires a key. All players who have purchased a qualifying package or have been granted access can join the testing. If you haven’t purchased a package that includes Alpha Two and would like to participate, new options for access are available HERE.
ItsNyx
1
Re: Alpha Two FAQ
Question: Should I expect smooth gameplay and a bug-free experience during Alpha Two?
Alpha Two is a testing phase for Ashes of Creation, and as such, it will contain bugs and technical issues that need to be resolved before the game’s official launch. Alpha Two testers play a crucial role in helping Intrepid locate bugs, test systems, and provide feedback that shapes the game’s future. If you’re looking for a complete game or an experience with minimal bugs, we encourage you to join us in a later phase of development, when Ashes of Creation will be more refined.
Alpha Two is a testing phase for Ashes of Creation, and as such, it will contain bugs and technical issues that need to be resolved before the game’s official launch. Alpha Two testers play a crucial role in helping Intrepid locate bugs, test systems, and provide feedback that shapes the game’s future. If you’re looking for a complete game or an experience with minimal bugs, we encourage you to join us in a later phase of development, when Ashes of Creation will be more refined.
ItsNyx
1
Re: Alpha Two FAQ
Question: What’s an Alpha Two ‘phase’?
Answer: Throughout Alpha Two, we’ll be testing and adding content with specific goals and expectations for testers at different times. As a result, Alpha Two is divided into three distinct phases:
Note: Dates are subject to change due to development, but we will notify everyone in advance.
Answer: Throughout Alpha Two, we’ll be testing and adding content with specific goals and expectations for testers at different times. As a result, Alpha Two is divided into three distinct phases:
- Phase I (CURRENT) - This phase began on October 25th, 2024. During this phase, the game is available for Alpha Two testers to play every Friday from 10AM PST - Sunday at 10 PM PST.
- Phase II - This phase will begin on December 20th, 2024. During this phase, you will have access to Alpha Two 5+ days of the week.
- Phase III - This phase will begin on May 1st, 2025. During this phase, you will have access to the game 24/7, and our aim will be to only have small windows of downtime for game updates.
Note: Dates are subject to change due to development, but we will notify everyone in advance.
ItsNyx
1
Re: Alpha Two FAQ
Question: I’ve purchased an Alpha Two key. When can I play?
That depends on which pre-order package you purchased! We are currently in Phase 1 of Alpha Two, which means some players already have access to the game. If you’ve purchased a Wave Bundle, your access dates are below:
That depends on which pre-order package you purchased! We are currently in Phase 1 of Alpha Two, which means some players already have access to the game. If you’ve purchased a Wave Bundle, your access dates are below:
- First Wave Bundle will allow access to our Alpha Two test, starting Friday, November 8, 2024, continuing through all subsequent test phases.
- Second Wave Bundle will allow access to our Alpha Two test, starting Friday, December 20, 2024, continuing through all subsequent test phases.
- Third Wave Bundle will allow access to our Alpha Two test, starting Thursday, May 1, 2025, continuing through all subsequent test phases
ItsNyx
1
Re: Inspection of other players
No.
If you want to know about someone's gear - ask them. If they don't tell you - then you shouldn't know that info. And if you say "then just have different viewing rights for different groups of people", the answer is simple - why overcomplicate the game with random additional features when people should simply be able to link items in chat. That feature would accomplish the same goal, on top of a multitude of other goals (which include trading and selling, that you talked about in the 2nd paragraph).
No reason for people to be able to inspect what I'm wearing.
If you want to know about someone's gear - ask them. If they don't tell you - then you shouldn't know that info. And if you say "then just have different viewing rights for different groups of people", the answer is simple - why overcomplicate the game with random additional features when people should simply be able to link items in chat. That feature would accomplish the same goal, on top of a multitude of other goals (which include trading and selling, that you talked about in the 2nd paragraph).
No reason for people to be able to inspect what I'm wearing.
Ludullu
5
Re: 🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Gatherable Spawning System
+1 more to Static Nodes are awful.
I understand the idea, but in practice, it's just not enjoyable. I'd prefer each resource node to be random after each harvesting.
Next point is about Lumberjacking. Lumberjacking is fricking horrible. There's no real difference between Novice, Apprentice, and Journeyman. As a Journeyman Lumberjack, I'm still there chopping Ash and Oak, cos there just aren't enough Willows or Braidwoods around. It just doesn't feel different enough.
Take Mining, for example. There are loads of different rocks and gems to mine at each level. Lumberjacking has a single Apprentice Tree. Mining Nodes respawn pretty quickly. Trees take bloody ages.
There's just no real difference between Novice and Journeyman Lumberjacking, cos there are so few non-Novice trees, and they take so long to respawn. It's just not fun.
It would also be nice to have some different skins for the gathered Wood, cos some of them look almost identical. I still struggle between Ash and Willow. And one of the new Desert ones is very similar, too.
Hunting feels pretty lame, at the moment. It feels like there should be a different technique to getting either Trainables or Carcasses. The idea that a trained Hunter going out for pelts would come back with a set of live animals instead, is just weird. And there don't ever seem to be any Carcass Rarities above Rare. I don't think I've seen any Legendary or Epic Carcasses, whereas other gathering types seem to drop them more frequently.
Herbalism and Mining seem ok. There are enough different items to collect to keep it interesting, and they look different enough to tell them apart.
Fishing is just an AFK thing at the moment. Something you start while you're actually doing something else. There was a quote you guys gave a few years back, where you said something like: If someone can still progress without actually playing the game, then we've done something wrong. This is that something.
It would also be nice to have a smoother way of swapping over the Artisan gear. Having the different pieces fly about the inventory trying to fill weird and wonderful slots seems unusual. If I'm swapping out an Artisan Shirt, then just replace it with the Artisan Shirt that I'm putting on. It doesn't need to try and find a new inventory space.
My final point would be that with all these things we collect, in all the different Rarities, for the different gathering branches, and then all that again for each biome type... we need more Storage. Or at least to have you make the Specialist Storage options hold more of that resource type. It would go some way towards helping if you started the cost of the new tabs off a little cheaper.
I understand the idea, but in practice, it's just not enjoyable. I'd prefer each resource node to be random after each harvesting.
Next point is about Lumberjacking. Lumberjacking is fricking horrible. There's no real difference between Novice, Apprentice, and Journeyman. As a Journeyman Lumberjack, I'm still there chopping Ash and Oak, cos there just aren't enough Willows or Braidwoods around. It just doesn't feel different enough.
Take Mining, for example. There are loads of different rocks and gems to mine at each level. Lumberjacking has a single Apprentice Tree. Mining Nodes respawn pretty quickly. Trees take bloody ages.
There's just no real difference between Novice and Journeyman Lumberjacking, cos there are so few non-Novice trees, and they take so long to respawn. It's just not fun.
It would also be nice to have some different skins for the gathered Wood, cos some of them look almost identical. I still struggle between Ash and Willow. And one of the new Desert ones is very similar, too.
Hunting feels pretty lame, at the moment. It feels like there should be a different technique to getting either Trainables or Carcasses. The idea that a trained Hunter going out for pelts would come back with a set of live animals instead, is just weird. And there don't ever seem to be any Carcass Rarities above Rare. I don't think I've seen any Legendary or Epic Carcasses, whereas other gathering types seem to drop them more frequently.
Herbalism and Mining seem ok. There are enough different items to collect to keep it interesting, and they look different enough to tell them apart.
Fishing is just an AFK thing at the moment. Something you start while you're actually doing something else. There was a quote you guys gave a few years back, where you said something like: If someone can still progress without actually playing the game, then we've done something wrong. This is that something.
It would also be nice to have a smoother way of swapping over the Artisan gear. Having the different pieces fly about the inventory trying to fill weird and wonderful slots seems unusual. If I'm swapping out an Artisan Shirt, then just replace it with the Artisan Shirt that I'm putting on. It doesn't need to try and find a new inventory space.
My final point would be that with all these things we collect, in all the different Rarities, for the different gathering branches, and then all that again for each biome type... we need more Storage. Or at least to have you make the Specialist Storage options hold more of that resource type. It would go some way towards helping if you started the cost of the new tabs off a little cheaper.
Re: 🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Gatherable Spawning System
@Vaknar So in one day there are already 3 full pages worth of responses on the forums about the intended gathering changes, reading through them here are the top 5 issues (based on how many times this issue was brought up) and how the community would change them.
1. Rarity: Do not in any way have this be static. Use random spawn times, random spawn locations, random spawn rarity with a limit set at rare (to produce heroic/epic/legendary you must have levels and gear).
2. Conflict: Not everything in the game needs to push for additional conflict between players, stop trying to force this and let it occur naturally. If you must implement something like this, do it in a lawless zone with higher rarities available there.
3. Pylons/Surveying: Increase radius to an appropriate size/area, do not show respawn times.
4. Hunting: Allow a choice to tame vs kill, additionally allow hunters to gather carcasses from killed mobs.
5. Tools: Make stats (Quantity, Speed, Rarity) on all tools actually effective and worth getting. Speed rating that lowers time to collect by 0.03 seconds is pointless, Quantity ratng proc'ing 1 in 300 collections and only giving a single extra resource is also bad.
Bonus Item...
Inventory/Storage: With 6 rarities per gathering item bags and storage need more available slots.
Great summary. This needs to be thumbed up and reviewed over and over.
Re: can someone help me understand how to get access to this game/pricing
brettapuss wrote: »Hi so i really wanna give this game a try but i dont understand the payment system at all. I see the games early access is and extortionate $100 but when i look online it says "Ashes of Creation will be a subscription game with no box fee". I dont know about anyone else but $100 upfront kinda sounds like a box fee to me, in fact that about the price of two box fees depending on the game.
So is there a subscription on top of that $100 or are they no asking for subscritions right now due to the fact its still in development and thats why its $100 upfront?
If anyone could help clarify this for me i'd appreciate it thank you.
Hope this helps!
thank you this helped a lot!!!
Re: Let's TheoryRaid #7: Lightning Dynamism (and Player Expectations?)
Yeah, that's why I asked about the holes. Maybe the debris could be huge and instead flown into the cave through the entrance during the flooding? So instead of small pieces of wood it would be more like a few huge ship-deck-sized spots and it'd take some time for the boss to destroy them. Could be closer to a "boss stage" mechanic than a pure "keep jumping to avoid death" one.GrandSerpent wrote: »It's a cool idea, but I feel like that might be too much mechanical complexity for an open-world boss. There could potentially be a hundred players all getting into each other's way trying to do a jumping puzzle while also handling all of the boss's other mechanics.
Feel like that would be slightly easier for most people. And the complexity of combat during each stage could come from adds jumping onto those debris, while the boss chooses a random place to attack with a few skills of its own.While I do agree with the premise itself, I do think that there still gotta be a range of difficulty/complexity of OWBs, so this Lev could be either in the top3-5 or even the most difficult one, if its loot supports that.GrandSerpent wrote: »I think that world bosses are a pretty challenging thing to design, because they need to not be overwhelming for casual players, while still being interesting enough to not feel like a big HP bar.
Yeah but when MMO players are trying to fight an Open World Boss, the thing that is 'complexity' isn't the same. Because these bosses are by nature very HP-sponge but can also have powerful mechanics, it's just that if you kill them fast enough, you don't see those.
It basically always goes the same for the Top 3-5 world boss type. 'Untethered' DPS show up to boss, they (or anyone, really) flub some mechanics, they blame Tanks and Healers, then the Tanks and Healers get tired of being blamed and stop going, the DPS start to fail (or the game weakens the boss or boosts the playerbase).
So I'm not saying it wouldn't be a phenomenal experience, but if you go above a certain complexity level in a World Boss, you have turned it into a Guild Boss almost automatically.
As for 'do they have the technical skill to implement that', absolutely, we have tons of similar fights, they're just not Open World. My first post wasn't talking about anything on that tier tho, just 'hey the weather makes this different'.
Azherae
1
Re: can someone help me understand how to get access to this game/pricing
brettapuss wrote: »Hi so i really wanna give this game a try but i dont understand the payment system at all. I see the games early access is and extortionate $100 but when i look online it says "Ashes of Creation will be a subscription game with no box fee". I dont know about anyone else but $100 upfront kinda sounds like a box fee to me, in fact that about the price of two box fees depending on the game.
So is there a subscription on top of that $100 or are they no asking for subscritions right now due to the fact its still in development and thats why its $100 upfront?
If anyone could help clarify this for me i'd appreciate it thank you.
Hey there!
I understand the confusion surrounding *Ashes of Creation's* pricing and access. Let's break it down:
**Standard Subscription Model:**
Upon official release, *Ashes of Creation* will operate on a subscription-based model without any upfront box cost. Players will simply pay a monthly fee of $14.99 to access the game. This approach ensures that there are no additional costs beyond the subscription, and expansions or DLCs are included in this fee.
**Alpha 2 Access and Pricing:**
Currently, the game is in its Alpha 2 testing phase. Access to this phase is available through specific bundles offered by Intrepid Studios. These bundles not only grant Alpha 2 access but also include other benefits such as Beta access, game time, and in-game currency. The pricing for these bundles is as follows:
- **First Wave Bundle – $120:** Grants access to all three phases of Alpha 2, starting from November 8, 2024.
- **Second Wave Bundle – $110:** Provides access to phases 2 and 3 of Alpha 2, beginning December 20, 2024.
- **Third Wave Bundle – $100:** Offers access to phase 3 of Alpha 2, starting May 1, 2025.
Each bundle includes:
- Access to the specified Alpha 2 phases
- Access to Beta 1 and Beta 2
- One month of game time (valued at $15)
- $15 in Embers (in-game marketplace credits)
**Clarification on Costs:**
The $100 (or higher) upfront cost is specifically for early access to the game's testing phases and is not indicative of a standard "box fee." This payment is a one-time charge for those who wish to participate in the Alpha and Beta testing phases. Once the game officially launches, only the monthly subscription fee of $14.99 will be required to play, with no additional upfront purchase necessary.
**Conclusion:**
Participating in the current Alpha 2 phase requires purchasing one of the access bundles mentioned above. However, if you prefer to wait, you can access the full game upon its official release by simply subscribing for $14.99 per month, without any additional upfront costs.
Please note that all this information is based on current plans and is subject to change as development progresses.
Hope this helps!
REHOC
2