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: Why Exclusive Flying Mounts Will Destroy a PvP-Driven Game Long Term
On the entire server. And 20 is only when someone got lucky and dropped a few from the world bosses.20 flying mounts in every guild? In every node? across the whole server? Wanna provide some actual information? These make huge differences.
Birqa literally gave the source and the quotes already.
While I admit I did not see Birqa's post, I think you may have missed the point of my post.
Zeric
1
Re: Great Concept, But a Terrible First Impression
That is probably because you have no idea about game development.
The way movement feels is literally a last minute adjustment. It could be made between the beta servers going down and the head start servers going live.
While it is a last minute thing, it can't (or shouldnt) be made until literally every aspect of all character models has been created, polished and finalized. It is literally the last thing to be done in regards to characters.
An alpha test is less about how movement feels, and more about "does your character actually move around the game world?".
This is why your expectations are so out of whack.
Noaani
1
Re: Great Concept, But a Terrible First Impression
But you did not talk about mechanics in your Initial post, but animations. And polishing existing animations at a stage when your focus is to design new animations for archetypes, races, monsters, weapons, etc. which are under active development and need to be released for testing wouldn't make much sense.
Polishing starts when the foundation has been layed, and animations are either way not of any mechanical significance at this stage of development. I would starting to get concerned if I got the impression that Intrepid is pleased with the current state of the character animations - or even character design, which looks horrible (the faces!) - but I don't have that impression, because we're still so early in development, despite the game being under active development for quite some time.
Re: Mobs and bosses should not drop completed gear
A large part of the mmo genre is the joy of getting a gear drop. I'd hate for that to go away entirely. I agree it should be rare on non named mobs but it's a large part of why I play.
Butkus
1
Re: Disable Evasion Rating (Physical/Magical Disable Evasion Rating)???
Blaspherian wrote: »I can't wrap my head around how devs/gamers can think this adds to competitive integrity or fun gameplay.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/50899/crowd-control-should-not-be-based-on-rng
There was also some interesting stuff in:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/50615/try-to-limit-the-amount-of-braindead-and-anti-fun-cc-that-is-stuns-there-are-better-alternatives
(I'm not really asking nor suggesting you actually read through any of these, this post has a slightly different true purpose so...)
Azherae
1
Re: Great Concept, But a Terrible First Impression
I couldn't agree more with you. I'm even starting to doubt whether the character motion designer of this game is really qualify to create the character motion animations for this game.
dkshaw
3
Re: Great Concept, But a Terrible First Impression
And that is the most backwards belief when it comes to this kind of test phase. There's literally no point in polishing anything right now, because all of that stuff can change several times before its final form.I believe that when developing any game, it makes sense to polish the core mechanics first — and only after that, start working on things like "caravan heists"
But getting proper base-lvl mechanics and features working is waaaay more important, because THAT is what people play.
If you can't separate a proper alpha from the release presentation, then treat Ashes as you would the release version of No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk 2077. Both games were utter shit on release, but fixed themselves in a few years. Ashes is in the worst state it'll ever be. And its main playerbase will be built on release (or right before it), rather than during an alpha test with no promotion, no ads, no huge twitch streamers (well, one, who, I bet, repeats over and over and over that this is a true test) and no proper presentation of the game to players.
The fraction of a fraction of people, who think that the current version of the game is the stopping point of development and will keep that as their entire opinion on the game, is nothing compared to what the game can (and hopefully will) garner closer to release.
If you go and tell your friends "yeaaah, this totally not an alpha test looks totally like not a full release game" - that's on you, not on Intrepid.
I agree that many things you said will change in the future. However, the core content of an MMO, that is, a smooth and silky combat experience, is something that will never change. This is also the purpose of them inviting us to participate in the testing: to identify the flaws and assist them in improving the game, instead of taking it for granted that all the flaws are acceptable just because it's in the internal testing stage and not actively reporting the bugs you've found.
The so-called internal testing means that we, from the perspective of players, discover the problems that the game development team can't detect, so as to help them make improvements.
I believe that a smooth and silky combat experience is the core of the core of an MMO, and significant efforts should be devoted to perfecting it first. It's like the skeletal structure of our human body. Once we have it in place, filling in other game content will make the testing process much easier. A smooth combat experience is also the first thing that new players can feel when they start playing the game.
These experiences will provide players with a great initial experience, which will encourage them to actively test the more in-depth game content, rather than coming in, feeling that the combat experience is terrible, and then leaving the game.
please remember smooth and silky combat experience is the everything in MMO Game !!!
dkshaw
4
Re: Linux Tips, Tweaks and Troubleshooting Thread
Due to Flatpak network namespaces, the custom launch command did not work with Flatpak Steam and Bottles.
In Flatseal add the following:
Now add AOCClient.exe to Steam, force compat to Proton Experimental, and adjust the launch options to the following:
In Flatseal add the following:
Now add AOCClient.exe to Steam, force compat to Proton Experimental, and adjust the launch options to the following:
eval $(%command% LauncherTetherPort=$(flatpak-spawn --host ss -ulpn | grep wineserv | awk '{split($4, a , ":"); print a[2]}') -NOSPLASH -USEEOS=0)
zopsi
1
Salve material cost is too high
It feels like the cost for salves from alchemy is too high. Spindlevine is used in so many other things, and the bolts require wood as well, which definitely isn't worth it over the immediate potion effect. I would recommend changing it to something that's less used like gloomy pross, and maybe making it a thread instead of a bolt as a material cost if it needs to have an added material. I know I would never make them with the way they currently are, but I would like to make them at some point.
Re: Power Scaling / TTK / Enchanting & Tinkering
I disagree with the OP
While I do agree with the issue of crafting becoming irrelevant, to me its a completely different cause. Increasing power creep and removing diminishing returns and decreasing TTK doesn't fix any of it. To me the solution is:
1. Remove blue or under gear from mob drops past level 10 gear. That way, the node progression will soft lock the gear progression and players will craft level 10 gear while level 20 gear is not available
2. Epic/Legendary lvl 10 gear should be better than uncommon/rare lvl 20 gear. That way, if you decide to go for level 10 epic/legendary gear, you can keep it until you upgrade it to heroic level 20 gear instead of your gear becoming irrelevant once level 20 gear unlocks.
You are looking for % upgrades in a simplistic way, looking for upgrades in the power stat that you already stacked way past the effective soft cap. If you build it properly, you can still gain 8% power upgrade enchanting all your gear to +10, maintain the same power stat while increasing other stats like accuracy, penetration, crit, attack speed, evasion, mitigation, etc. There is now opportunity for build diversity because of the diminishing returns. Power is not the only stat that matters anymore. The same goes for tinkering
While I do agree that of course, bringing more players gives you a better chance to win things, I think the difference between a small skilled well coordinated group and a big uncoordinated zerg of bad players is way bigger now. You can outplay bigger groups by skill and coordination now, instead of how it was before (beating big groups by just attacking first, which realistically, it didn't happen other than ganking and surprise scenarios). Of course, if the groups have the same level of power, skill and coordination, then numbers will be the main determinant as it should be because why would a smaller group with no advantages over the other group win?
While I do agree with the issue of crafting becoming irrelevant, to me its a completely different cause. Increasing power creep and removing diminishing returns and decreasing TTK doesn't fix any of it. To me the solution is:
1. Remove blue or under gear from mob drops past level 10 gear. That way, the node progression will soft lock the gear progression and players will craft level 10 gear while level 20 gear is not available
2. Epic/Legendary lvl 10 gear should be better than uncommon/rare lvl 20 gear. That way, if you decide to go for level 10 epic/legendary gear, you can keep it until you upgrade it to heroic level 20 gear instead of your gear becoming irrelevant once level 20 gear unlocks.
You are looking for % upgrades in a simplistic way, looking for upgrades in the power stat that you already stacked way past the effective soft cap. If you build it properly, you can still gain 8% power upgrade enchanting all your gear to +10, maintain the same power stat while increasing other stats like accuracy, penetration, crit, attack speed, evasion, mitigation, etc. There is now opportunity for build diversity because of the diminishing returns. Power is not the only stat that matters anymore. The same goes for tinkering
While I do agree that of course, bringing more players gives you a better chance to win things, I think the difference between a small skilled well coordinated group and a big uncoordinated zerg of bad players is way bigger now. You can outplay bigger groups by skill and coordination now, instead of how it was before (beating big groups by just attacking first, which realistically, it didn't happen other than ganking and surprise scenarios). Of course, if the groups have the same level of power, skill and coordination, then numbers will be the main determinant as it should be because why would a smaller group with no advantages over the other group win?
Imnotkio
2