Glorious Alpha Two Testers!

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Best Of

Gathering and storage management remain a miserable experience.

I maintain the opinion that resource respawn rates, and especially their static respawn timers should change, as the current situation leads to feast or famine issues, and easy resource cluster camping by people with knowledge of the current respawn timer.

The main frustration I'm experiencing now after leaving the miserable < 10 mining lvl bracket (so I can finally mine most of the stuff I encounter) is the storage management. Storage stacks are way too small (max 20 items), and storage fills up really quickly, unlike apprentice bags which stack much higher. I suppose a good problem to have? Items in the warehouse should stack much higher than 20 per stack. Even if that means buying better quality storage upgrades from a carpenter or tailor. We are getting tired of trying to align with people from our guild to transfer unprocessed or processed goods, and lack of storage space hinders the whole in-guild economy.

More importantly the current storage system does not offer any guild storage, or tools which would allow you to log information about who put or taken out what from the guild warehouse. For obvious reasons you cannot also give people a storage role such as gatherer, processor, crafter, officer etc. All those roles should come with at least pre-set permissions such as ability to put certain items into the guild storage, or take them out. So for example a miner should be allowed to put mining resources in, but nothing else, and should not be allowed to take anything out. A stonemason could be allowed to take out un-processed stones of certain quality and level, and put processed stones back in. but nothing else. All those actions should be logged and viewable by the GM and officers in a format which is easy to review. The current process is far more streamlined.

Furthermore, maybe the caravan NPC should offer an option to transfer goods from one node storage to another for a price in silver, so we don't have to travel the whole map to put items in any overflow storage.

SmileGurney

So Disappointed

Just wanted to say that phase 2 has completely destroyed any hope i had for AOC . a number of reason but just to point a few out that concern me the most.

1. Steven you need to step away from this in terms of being involved in development and just be a company owner . do not get involved in any online discussions or drama like you have been. Your attitude and the way you react to criticism is that of a 12-year-old being told he can't do something. Unfortunately games will not suit everyone and ppl will criticise this does not mean your right or wrong it just means they have a difference of opinion to you. You need to respect that and not react when that opinion does not fit in line with your own. Since the Christmas break there seems to have been a huge change in your attitude and the way you have reacted to certain ppl in the community. Unfortunately this has had a negative impact on the game as far as i can see from actually being in the game and playing it. There is definitely a large drop-off in the player base although I'm 100% sure you guys will deny this.
2. Seems to me that phase 2 was full of false promises there is a huge and i mean huge lack of content for a phase you planned to last for 5 months. granted there will be updates and patches to add things in as we go but so much is already missing it is clearly evident that you did not have a lot of the content promised even ready and are probably still months behind . this was clearly evident in a comment you made regarding the timescale you are now expecting this game to hit launch . not more than 10 days ago did you suggest this was going to be ready in a year which you should never of said in the first place as for those of us who are experienced gamers can easily tell purely from the state of the game this was a huge overstatement. But now only a few days ago you backtracked and are now talking about another 2-3 years IE making yourself look like a complete fool and that there clearly is a communication breakdown between yourself and those working for you . as experienced players we know and can tell from testing your creation it is miles away yet we are not stupid and we do not appreciate the false promise's and over exaggerated comments dont try to pull the wool over our eyes you will gain much more respect from just being straight up honest and truthful with us. not just steven but as a company. as previously mentioned steven just needs to step away and let Margret do her job as a community lead and manage all the communication.
3.Lack of action against exploiters cheats and grief players. yeh i know your going to say such and such has been punished de leveled blah blah blah. but come on whole guild and i mean whole guilds are guilty of these things . Your golden boys Enveus are one of the worst for it . many of us have seen the screenshots videos of them in places we apparently should not be able to get to . using broken tiles in walls to pull mobs to where they cant get hit because they are in a wall and many others . sol deus , Havoc , and many more guilds I won't name here due to not wanting to cause drama who have had numerous members using the same exploits . why are these guilds still running around on your servers?? those of us with half a brain wont fall for the attempt of appeasing the mass's by selectively picking out a few named ppl those who may have a bit of a platform and punishing them or calling them out as an example. if your going to do it then do it consistently and properly to all those who have used these exploits / cheats . i would start by looking at every single person who was lvl 25 within 72 hours of phase 2 release because i can pretty much guarantee everyone of them used exploits to level. fi you do not commit to this and punish ppl correctly then your game is going to fail because all you will have come phase 3 is a server full of exploiters and cheats because all the genuine players will just not bother.
And btw de levelling is not really a punishment if you leave them with all the gear and gold they had and still able to use all their ability's / skills like i said do your job properly this was just a lazy quick attempt to try and appease the mass's pathetic really what you should of done was actually delete the char and all its assets and made them restart fresh with nothing. and then actually monitored their activity and levelling

Ok so yeh im going to get a load of backlash and shit from ppl for this post but u know what i dont know you in real you dont know me so i really couldn't give 2 monkeys. people will say show proof where the evidence Honestly if you haven't seen or know about all the exploits ect that certain guilds ppl have been using then your probably not a real genuine tester and have had your head under a rock or your one of those who will try to have a pop at my post because you yourself are one of those exploiters. either way as mentioned makes no odds to me

all the above is of course just my take and opinion on things some of you may agree or disagree and that's fine . but i do hope AOC gets itself sorted and back on track because i have followed this game for the last 5 years and put a good few quid into it and would hate to see it fail .

Xzanobia

Re: server request timeout code 32

After some testing I may have found a solution to this.
Run cmd.exe and type ipconfig, it will display your current active connections.
Type the following command lines:
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /renew
This seemed to work for me as It released the DNS resolver cache.
Restart your internet adapter / connection after this process.

danizagga

Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating

My main issues with XP debit is all of you would still play and love the game if it were gone, but there are an unknown number of potential players who won’t play the game because of it.

This game needs to attract a healthy full player base, and XP offers nothing positive and only negative.

It is an objective negative for this game to implement it.

RonDog98

Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating

Azherae wrote: »

Ludullu wrote: »

High risk pushes people towards better mitigation of it.

You keep dying in pugs? Find yourself a guild with a constant party.

You keep losing mats because you're trying to gather in a dangerous location? Ask people to protect/help you.

Truly dificult pve usually requires constant repetition to beat it, hence why the games that have that kind of pve just let you respawn right back at the mob and attempt it again. Ashes, so far, has not shown pve with that kind of difficulty, so, instead of spending your time on repeating the mob over and over, the penalty for potential failure comes from material loss and timer requirements for coming back to the same spot.

Also, respawning super close to the same spot would kinda destroy the pvp part of the game, because when your enemy can just endlessly respawn right where you killed them - what's the point in killing them? Even now, the respawn points are waaaaay to close to POIs imo.

Psychologically, this genre has been around long enough for those people to already be looking for their game, and we are getting these posts because Ashes is not for everyone.

Ashes' problem doesn't come from its design, it comes from the way it was 'marketed' to people so far (and perhaps an overly ambitious concept of the playerbase that will play the game as apparently intended).

Source: The Fighting Game Community (Response to Street Fighter V launch)

Removing XP Debt and changing it so that you can recover all your loot if you make it back in time doesn’t affect the core principles of this game.

RonDog98

Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating

lukedawuke wrote: »

wasting a players time? youre a tester bro lol

What a useless comment. As a tester I’m giving feedback on a core part of the game I disagree with.

That’s the literal purpose of these forums.

RonDog98

Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating

Ludullu wrote: »

High risk pushes people towards better mitigation of it.

You keep dying in pugs? Find yourself a guild with a constant party.

You keep losing mats because you're trying to gather in a dangerous location? Ask people to protect/help you.

Truly dificult pve usually requires constant repetition to beat it, hence why the games that have that kind of pve just let you respawn right back at the mob and attempt it again. Ashes, so far, has not shown pve with that kind of difficulty, so, instead of spending your time on repeating the mob over and over, the penalty for potential failure comes from material loss and timer requirements for coming back to the same spot.

Also, respawning super close to the same spot would kinda destroy the pvp part of the game, because when your enemy can just endlessly respawn right where you killed them - what's the point in killing them? Even now, the respawn points are waaaaay to close to POIs imo.

Again, I like the run time I think it’s necessary and fine.

I’m even saying dropping some materials is okay, but I think they should all be recoverable if you make it back in time.

XP debt is bad design and should be gone, especially given everything else in AoC meant to punish you.

RonDog98

Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating

Its_Me wrote: »

RonDog98 wrote: »

Let’s start with this:

Life is finite and free time is evermore finite. There is NOTHING more punishing/frustrating than wasting a players time.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I finally decided to make a post after watching this JoshStrifeHayes video.
https://youtu.be/5H16ixwysA0?si=C0AlTVPCSIGhfdW8

Ash’s is al about risk reward and making the journey meaningful in a way that MMOs haven’t been in a while, but in attempting to do that they’ve overshot by a long ways.

Ash’s is a game with XP debt
At least 25% material loss on death
And some of the most insane travel time in any game.

First one is objectively bad game design

Second one, in my opinion, should be tweaked so that you either don’t lose materials on PVE death or make it so you can recover 100% of dropped materials.

I’m a actually a fan of long travel, but it has a compounding affect with the first two.

Again, there is NOTHING more punishing than wasting a players time.

There’s a reason challenging games have moved away from long run back times and XP Debt and have chosen to focus on enjoyable difficultly like a bosses individual mechanics.

Spending 5+ minutes to run back to a corpse or 20+ minutes to get from point A to Point B is already an obstacle in and of itself, there’s no reason to add insult or injury and give the player XP Debt and have them lose materials as well.

I do not feel having a death penalty or lack of fast travel wastes my time.

I do think we will see more emberstones but I find that may be problematic as well.

The primary issue I see with a 5 minute run back to a body is that the pvp timer for someone that looted you will be off and they will likely be gone. As loot was once not a pvp flag, perhaps they could make a death pile unlootable for the first minute or so and pvp timer extended to 3 min or so for anyone looting.

The death penalty gives that risk vs reward feeling Steven strives for and is one of the core features of the game he is trying to build. Steven has repeatedly stated that he wants to produce a feeling of loss on failure and the death penalty certain accomplishes this. If you remove the items frustrating someone (like xp loss or running back), you are essentially reducing the risk. With that said, this is test so some deaths are going to result from things outside our control like server crashes, people exploiting bugs, overtuned corruption system that has bugs and missing mechanics, server performance issues, players training mobs ect that will produce a higher level of frustration but we are all aware of these sort of issues when signing up for an alpha test and frankly, the xp debt is pretty easy to work off.

As far as fast travel, I believe the primary reason this exists is to not only mimic the feel of some of the older style games, but to also make it more difficult for zerg groups to zerg. In fact, I am sort of concerned for family travel and the potential abuse of it when it is implemented down the road.

I think the real issue is that there are many more participation trophy players in our society now that demand games be tailored around them. People get upset when Steven states that this game might not be for everyone but in reality, the guy sunk over 50 million of his own money into it, so he has a right to build any type of game he wants. Now, if that means there will be less players than if he build around the wishes of everyone else, well, we have seen this play out with the majority of the games over the last decade and most of them crashed and burned quickly when straying from their vision and trying to please everyone else so......

I’m not saying any one of these is bad in a vacuum, I’m saying that all three together suck and will discourage a large number of players.
Also, there’s a difference between “participation trophy players” and players who don’t want their time to wasted.

XP debt is an outdated mechanic and there’s a reason that almost no games utilize it. It is not a rewarding type of difficulty and it psychologically not fun.

Also, nothing about removing XP debt goes against any of the core pillars of this game.

Hell, I think making all your materials recoverable on death also doesn’t go against it.

RonDog98

Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating

Ludullu wrote: »

You keep losing mats because you're trying to gather in a dangerous location? Ask people to protect/help you

I do see this point, but currently - the final version of Ashes might be an entirely different story, but we can only discuss the current state of the game - there is little reward available. To be more precise: There are lots of games that follow in a similar fashion a "risk vs. reward"-approach, e.g. run-based games such as Rogue-likes where you constantly have to decide if you continue a run, possibly gaining more rewards, or abort it to save what you've got so far. Or games with very difficult but optional boss fights and the potential of XP-loss, such as Elden Ring and such.

However, so far the stakes in Ashes are very low and the challenges themselves are not designed in a transparent fashion, nor are there any valuable rewards corresponding to the risk. What I mean by that is, that currently there are various ways to die in the game which are more 'obscure' in nature than actually 'challenging', e.g.

You're gathering materials and a high level player feels like one-shotting you
You're farming some lowbie mobs and another trains them on you
You attempt a dungeon for the first time as a tank and - as you had no change to learn the mechanics yet - die
You're AFK for a brief moment because you follow nature's call and a player kills you

None of these activities are based on 'risk vs. reward' because these scenarios don't include any reward - you're just playing the basic gameplay loop. Regarding your point, if you keep losing mats in a dangerous location - e.g. because of players killing you - it surely matters if we're talking about a lvl 5 player who just wants to find some most basic mats for his profession, or if we're talking about a designated dangerous area well-known for precious but rare mats. If the later, 'risk vs. reward' does apply: You can get some rewards worth your time, but there's a risk attached to it. If we're talking about the first however, I don't think that just playing the game as a lowbie - or simply being logged into the game and minding your own business - can be considered a 'reward' that's worth the 'risk'.

If everything is high risk - even just mining basic stuff like copper - then nothing truly is. I mean, there are reasons the first mobs in Ashes don't one-shot you. It sure would be high risk to even leave the starting building, but it wouldn't be any fun.

Terranigma1

AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating

Let’s start with this:

Life is finite and free time is evermore finite. There is NOTHING more punishing/frustrating than wasting a players time.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I finally decided to make a post after watching this JoshStrifeHayes video.

https://youtu.be/5H16ixwysA0?si=C0AlTVPCSIGhfdW8

Ash’s is al about risk reward and making the journey meaningful in a way that MMOs haven’t been in a while, but in attempting to do that they’ve overshot by a long ways.

Ash’s is a game with XP debt
At least 25% material loss on death
And some of the most insane travel time in any game.

First one is objectively bad game design

Second one, in my opinion, should be tweaked so that you either don’t lose materials on PVE death or make it so you can recover 100% of dropped materials.

I’m a actually a fan of long travel, but it has a compounding affect with the first two.

Again, there is NOTHING more punishing than wasting a players time.

There’s a reason challenging games have moved away from long run back times and XP Debt and have chosen to focus on enjoyable difficultly like a bosses individual mechanics.

Spending 5+ minutes to run back to a corpse or 20+ minutes to get from point A to Point B is already an obstacle in and of itself, there’s no reason to add insult or injury and give the player XP Debt and have them lose materials as well.

RonDog98