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: Serious concerns! Need Leadership communication!!
+1 to the requestion agent concerns. I rarely have fish to turn in with whatever resource it is paired with. I have a ton of resources waiting on the construction foreman to appear so I can dump them there if needed.
+10 complexity... I am almost to JM Tailor (lv. 19) which I have obtained by ONLY making tier 1 footwear because the mat requirements for ANY apprentice level falls into the bottlenecks mentioned by op. What there is to be found on the marketplace is overpriced due to scarcity.
Solution for hides - Make them a random drop off of appropriate mobs or make all animal mobs "skinnable" by a hunter.
Weeping Willow - these are needed by EVERYTHING, which is bad and feels bad considering how scarce these are currently. When someone is commissioning an apprentice level crafting/gathering/processing shirt, I have to let them know that each bolt requires a weeping willow board. So not only do these bolts require flowers/thread but a board (1 weeping willow) per bolt. So, the shirts take 10 bolts... that's 10 weeping willow pieces, minimum. Not to mention the weeping willow chips required for tanning the hides.
Spread the love and have some recipes use something different. We can't all be beholden to the willow.
Crafting required mats - I can't see why Apprentice items ONLY use apprentice tier mats. This makes the lower-level mats almost obsolete eventually as the general population levels up. Apprentice recipes should use apprentice mats for the mats needing quality with Novice tier secondary mats so that they do not just become storage space takers. JM would use Apprentice/Novice secondary, Master uses JM, Apprentice, Novice, etc.
Market UI - the search is horrible. I've been considering a poll/survey of my guildmates to find out how they search for items to make sure my 50 characters contains the correct keywords. The items listed should be what is searched for rather than keywords in the description.
Crafting XP Grind - I don't mind the grind, let me say that top off. However, there should be a way to "practice" so as to not generate 100s of an item that you know you will NEVER be able to sell all of. Maybe a handful here and there, but all 100s? Plus, there isn't enough item storage space for all of that. How about a checkbox on the UI that we can check to "practice". It still uses resources, just doesn't create the item. By making it a toggle, we can choose when we want to practice vs. when we want actual items crafted.
Let me end this by saying, I 100% am in support of Ashes and so far, am loving the game in general. As this is an Alpha, I felt the need to add my concerns to Leathal's post.
Sincerely,
Kadrian
+10 complexity... I am almost to JM Tailor (lv. 19) which I have obtained by ONLY making tier 1 footwear because the mat requirements for ANY apprentice level falls into the bottlenecks mentioned by op. What there is to be found on the marketplace is overpriced due to scarcity.
Solution for hides - Make them a random drop off of appropriate mobs or make all animal mobs "skinnable" by a hunter.
Weeping Willow - these are needed by EVERYTHING, which is bad and feels bad considering how scarce these are currently. When someone is commissioning an apprentice level crafting/gathering/processing shirt, I have to let them know that each bolt requires a weeping willow board. So not only do these bolts require flowers/thread but a board (1 weeping willow) per bolt. So, the shirts take 10 bolts... that's 10 weeping willow pieces, minimum. Not to mention the weeping willow chips required for tanning the hides.
Spread the love and have some recipes use something different. We can't all be beholden to the willow.
Crafting required mats - I can't see why Apprentice items ONLY use apprentice tier mats. This makes the lower-level mats almost obsolete eventually as the general population levels up. Apprentice recipes should use apprentice mats for the mats needing quality with Novice tier secondary mats so that they do not just become storage space takers. JM would use Apprentice/Novice secondary, Master uses JM, Apprentice, Novice, etc.
Market UI - the search is horrible. I've been considering a poll/survey of my guildmates to find out how they search for items to make sure my 50 characters contains the correct keywords. The items listed should be what is searched for rather than keywords in the description.
Crafting XP Grind - I don't mind the grind, let me say that top off. However, there should be a way to "practice" so as to not generate 100s of an item that you know you will NEVER be able to sell all of. Maybe a handful here and there, but all 100s? Plus, there isn't enough item storage space for all of that. How about a checkbox on the UI that we can check to "practice". It still uses resources, just doesn't create the item. By making it a toggle, we can choose when we want to practice vs. when we want actual items crafted.
Let me end this by saying, I 100% am in support of Ashes and so far, am loving the game in general. As this is an Alpha, I felt the need to add my concerns to Leathal's post.
Sincerely,
Kadrian
kadrian
5
Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating
L2's entire open world pvp design was built mostly on guild wars and a few PKs here and there. You'd see guildless parties fighting each other for spots from time to time as well, but even that would mostly happen on private servers where 1 party was enough of a unit to do most of the content.However, read what you typed with a critical mind. You are saying Ashes is an open world PvP game, but where open world PvP is curtailed to the point where the game may as well not be an open world PvP game.
And L2 had a ton of owpvp. If Ashes manages to design its wars well enough - it'll have a ton of owpvp as well. And it'll potentially have even more event-less pvp, due to lowered penalties for being flagged.
I have no doubt that L2 used to be like this, with players from 20 years ago, with the mindset from 20 years ago, with the other options people had 20 years ago.
Read the room though - that isn't how things are today.
Noaani
2
Re: Servers still not working 3 weeks into Phase 2
I’m sorry this is happening to you, but at this point I’ve made like 10 characters and this hasn’t happened yet
RonDog98
1
Re: What are we testing now?
You are testing anything available in game.
If your character has issues with movement or combat, report it. If you see a tree in the middle of the road, report it. If you see mobs not attacks after engaged, report it. If you see a node that cannot be gathered. report it. If you see terrain that is not complete, report it. If you find a quest that does not work, report it. If you find an issue crafting, report it. If you see an issue with pvp, flagging or corruption, report it.
I could go on with a thousand examples, but it really is not needed as your post is not structured in a way that you want guidance, it is more of a complaining post.
As a tester, I have things to report constantly in this alpha so the fact that you have to ask concerns me a bit.
If your character has issues with movement or combat, report it. If you see a tree in the middle of the road, report it. If you see mobs not attacks after engaged, report it. If you see a node that cannot be gathered. report it. If you see terrain that is not complete, report it. If you find a quest that does not work, report it. If you find an issue crafting, report it. If you see an issue with pvp, flagging or corruption, report it.
I could go on with a thousand examples, but it really is not needed as your post is not structured in a way that you want guidance, it is more of a complaining post.
As a tester, I have things to report constantly in this alpha so the fact that you have to ask concerns me a bit.
Its_Me
1
Mindful crafting & looking forward - Requesting a list of common crafting recipes.
While doing my artisans over the weekend (farming, alchemy, and cooking), I found myself crafting various recipes but I had no idea if I should keep these components for future recipes or not. Since you unlock new common recipes with each higher tier building and all of these crafting recipes will be widely available on various wikis, codexs, and crafting calculators on the internet; can Intrepid provide these recipes to the player ahead of time?
For example, with a keybind you can open the 'artisans journal' in which it will show all the components needed for apprentice, journeyman, and master common recipes (not recipes that need to be found in the world through exploration). That way crafters can mindfully craft various recipes and save the components if we need to use them later on for higher level crafting.
For example, with a keybind you can open the 'artisans journal' in which it will show all the components needed for apprentice, journeyman, and master common recipes (not recipes that need to be found in the world through exploration). That way crafters can mindfully craft various recipes and save the components if we need to use them later on for higher level crafting.
Aquinas
1
Re: Solutions for Steven - Identify Problem, then give solution
You did the maths so dirty, I'll have to go shower after this. Your statistics are disregarding overlap between the categories. For every group that's heavily encompassed by another (and thus creates a disproportionate relationship between the percentage the categories represent within each other compared to what they represent of the entire world) you'd have to nearly disregard those overlapping factors in your calculations, because those people are already nearly encompassed by the previous factor.AirborneBerserker wrote: »You understand that 35K is less then 70k right, also your including a completely different genre of game. Also, also your skipping over the other 5 niches it's not just open world PvP.Ashes of Creation is not meant to be a game for everyone; it's meant to cater to a specific audience that appreciates it's unique mechanics and philosophy."-Steven
The niche isn’t as small as you make it out to be.
"Lineage 2: Reborn," a private server for a game in the genre you claim only has 70k players worldwide, launched a new server right when Alpha 2 Phase 1 started a few months ago. It’s sustaining 12k concurrent players.
That means over a seventh of your estimated global total of people who enjoy "OWPvP" are currently spending their time playing a game from 2003—a game notorious for having some of the worst controls in MMORPG history.
Let me just check EVE Online... Oh, look at that—23k people on the Tranquility server right now. Dead game, huh?
What’s most baffling about your perspective, @AirborneBerserker, is your refusal to acknowledge that it’s okay for Intrepid to take a risk on a niche market.
As players, the most we risk is the cost of some keys and cosmetics. For Steven and Intrepid, the stakes are far higher, and they’ve consistently shown their commitment to seeing this vision through. If Ashes fails, it could have a lasting negative impact on everyone’s careers at Intrepid.
They’re fine with taking that risk. So why do you care what they do, especially if you clearly don’t like Ashes as it’s intended?
Know what I'm just going to break it down for you there are an estimated 3.32 billion people that play games.
MMORPGs account for 3% of the total number of gamers
Hardcore (dropping items on death) account of 5-10% of players
Hard Core (investing large amounts of time) accounts for 10-20%
PvP accounts for 20-30%
Sand box 20-30%
Fantasy accounts for (over) 70%
Guild focused Players account for 50-70%
((3.32x10^9) x .03 x .1 x .2 x .3 x.3 x .7 x .7 = 87,847
That is including all PvPers not open world PvPers. so the number should be smaller. Lets do a quick check though. Since Eve Online is basically the only Sci-Fi OWPvP game there is we can take the number of players multiply it by 3.33 and we should get around 87,847.
23,000 x 3.33 = 76,590
What was it you said? Oh, look at that. Exactly what you would expect the numbers to be since Eve Online probably has 90% of the people interested in a Sci-Fi OWPvP game.
That's especially crucial in the 0.1 and 0.2 factor, at least the higher of which might be nearly eliminated by this overlap. That's nearly an extra 400% on top of your result just from this one cleanup, and if the same applies to several of the other factors to varying degrees (keep in mind this cleanup applies multiplicatively just like the factors in your original calculation), that might be the difference between 100k players and 10 million players.
In other words, these calculations are completely meaningless. You can't use statistics like this. It's not much more meaningful than if I were to say that only 1% of the population are healthcare professionals and only 0.1% of the population have medical college degrees, therefore only 0.001% work as doctors (simplified fake numbers for the sake of simplicity of the example)...
(I'm a little shocked Noaani didn't point this out; feel like this should be his forte. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn't read it.)
Part of which is because WoW has tainted the public image of the market and not allowed it to grow into something other than its stereotype. You can't exclude the possibility that another percent or two might simply open up for a new successful game with a different hype and deeper game mechanics. Ashes might not deliver on that, but it shouldn't lead you to forget about the possibility, because otherwise there's no point in ever trying anything new, and you could just go play WoW or forget about the genre.MMORPGs account for 3% of the total number of gamers
Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating
The weak don't - yes. The strong persevere. L2 had deleveling and people would lose weeks, if not months of progress after a massive pvp fight for a boss or a certain goal. People still played and fought each other.This isn't good game design. It literally makes for a game where no one is challenging themselves.
And yes, I know your usual repsonse of "people will just go play other games these days".
That's probably because L2 was fun within its niche at the time.
Ashes suffers from the identity crisis of (originally) marketing itself as a game for many types of player to enjoy.
We all know how this part happened, but in the end, that whole 'the strong persevere' thing only happenswhen there is not any other accessible game offering similar experiences while still also giving the 'weak' a place.
I guess you can lmk if you just don't put any stock in the observations of behaviours of competitive players from other genres, but if you do, we now have literal decades of data about it. MMORPGs were the genre 'most lacking' that data because they 'played it safe' for a decade.
Of course there will always be people who push, there are still hundreds of people playing Mortal Online 2 right now.
But Ashes completely lacks the incentive structures required to be terribly different from MO2 at this time, so you will obviously get a lot of people saying 'we should have a less challenging game since you are't actually incentivizing the challenges'.
By this, I mean simply that the strong can easily absorb the strain and challenge associated with exp debt, while the weak suffer disproportionately for trying to get stronger without receiving handouts/pity from them. And that isn't something people like as much. No matter what you remember from the good days, remember that this is not L2, the suffering involved in being weaker is definitively greater.
Azherae
1
Re: Steven handing out the best mounts in the game on stream feels bad
The mounts have this.Norththemage wrote: »Put timers on the mounts then- let it be cool, let the mount not give a permanent advantage.
They will disapear when the server is wiped.
Noaani
1
Re: Solutions for Steven - Identify Problem, then give solution
They’re fine with taking that risk. So why do you care what they do, especially if you clearly don’t like Ashes as it’s intended?
Not wanting to speak for them, but imo this;
AirborneBerserker wrote: »I am 100% fine with people being hopeful and excited about getting a game that caters to them. What I am not okay with is delusions that this game is going to do anything other then crash and burn when 2-4 million people get the game and 99.99% of them leave in the first 3 months.
Is kind of what they are saying.
Translated to looking at it from Intrepids perspective - them taking that risk is fine. People pretending this game is going to be something it absolutely is never going to be, that is not fine.
This is a statement I agree with. People need to be realistic about what Ashes is. It is a game that has promised regional servers it absolutely will not be able to populate. It is a game that has a real chance of collapsing months after launch (I don't personally think it will, but the risk is real). It is a game that is aimed at a very small segment of people, yet is being designed in a way that needs a large population per server. It is a game based on open world PvP as being where the risk comes from, yet discourages open world PvP. It is a game that has a solo friendly end game, yet requires a group to get there in any reasonable amount of time.
I could go on for a while, but the point is thst this game has many flaws - flaws are baked in to the very core of the game. We shouldn't pretend they don't exist. That doesn't help anyone.
Noaani
2