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: Disgusted by the team already and I haven´t played the game yet.
Riiiight, which is exactly why they completely stopped selling cosmetics, made the cheapest access to the game (outside of initial kickstarter) and then made it even cheaper by bundling both betas and a month of gameplay to that new cheap pricethey think they will make more money from selling the stuff around the game than the game itself, definitely getting the feeling of DOA.
Ohh, such a great successful spam. It's even more successful when you see that they're spending way too much money on keeping servers up for 4-5days every week and, for some unknown reason, keep paying devs to develop the game.
I'd call this the most successful scam in the world! Ponzi? Pfft, amateur! Bitconeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeect? Child's play! Trump Coin? He wishes he was as smart as Steven's decision to dump his own money into a pithole that is making an mmo!
I agree with your sarcasm here.
The game won't be DoA, it will take 2 or 3 years to die.
Noaani
1
Re: 🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Gatherable Spawning System
-What aspects of the current gathering system DO you like?
My Mage level is 16, Mining level is 35, and Lumberjack is 22, so I gather a lot.
And boy I have feedback for you...
I like that Mining and Lumberjack are simple, go on an adventure wherever you like, navigate mobs, at-risk always being alone, danger because you're hauling valuables back to town - again alone - run around harvest rocks/trees with one button click, and hang on every inventory drop delay, like you just pulled the lever on a slot machine. The sounds are good, the ambient sounds are good, the experience is great.
What aspects of the current gathering system to you NOT like?
Static rarity is awful, get it out of the game now. Do not replace it with random static rarity either, get rid of it!
That system is literally an anti-game loop, people run around until they find something, harvest it, and log out. They are no longer playing the game, they are watching Youtube until the node is ready again. Since only they know the timer, it doesn't exist for other players.
Survey Pylons telling players what will be spawning - and when - does not solve this problem either. And NO, being able to "Triangulate" potential spawns and times with a Survey Pylon - doesn't solve this either.
There are also people - including RMT's who log in the instant servers are up - not when you announce they're up - the instant they're up - they have multiple characters with the fastest mounts to camp with, who log in, harvest, and log off again in seconds. They know all the potential spawn points, and everything is mapped out. The Legendary nodes are gone for 24 hours, in seconds! The only nodes you DO find hours later, are the nodes which are NOT valuable...
This is why your static rarity concept fails, and why your "updated" rare-nodes-move concept will fail too.
This concept of gathering makes a dead-end game loop for the rest of the player base. The average joe simply cannot compete, so there is quite literally NO incentive to ever go out Gathering at all, when you already know beforehand that you'll find no - and I mean NO - resources of Legendary quality no matter how many triple-Journeyman-bag bursting runs you make that day.
Right now, your Gathering reward is vendoring grays, and repair bills.
Greens, Blues, and Yellows are only used for leveling crafting because of the bonus XP.
People only buy Epic and Legendary from the market, which you'll never find, or be able to afford.
You should consider applying your "The unknown is exciting" concept that you use with PvP health bars, with Gathering. Hitting Granite, and Basalt with a chance to get "bonus goodies" feels really good.
But, people ride past all the Basalt and Granite, to the obviously valuable shiny nodes you can see from a mile away. I like they way these look, but they should only be visible by the correct rank Gatherer, specced into the applicable passives. No survey pylon needed either.
When you're gathering, every swing should be a pull on the slot machine, luck increased by your Rank, and your Tools, Gear, Harvesting, Rarity, and Quantity thresholds.
Survey Pylon Triangulation should ONLY be used to identify when, and where a Weekly Harvesting Event might take place. I don't care if this was in Star Wars, you need to learn from their mistakes and only use the best parts! And Survey Pylons was NOT one of the good parts!
Survey Pylons should be limited to scouting for upcoming Harvesting Events only!
For Skill Trees, I really only want passive abilities, I DO NOT WANT TO PLAY THE PIANO JUST TO HARVEST! Maybe give us one active button press ability I can spec points into that grants me Camouflage for a short time so I can harvest a single Node without getting murdered by mean ol' bear!
Gathering and Processing need to be activities the average joe can do, that don't have added "friction and conflict" forced into them just for the sake of it. That is not a gameplay feature anyone wants, so don't do it.
Same with Farming, there will be enough risk trying to raise the 100 Gold to buy a Freehold lot. Everyone agrees that there is nothing to be gained by having people get murdered while gathering eggs or processing materials on their Freehold. Nobody wants this in the game, so don't do it.
There will be enough risk in just transporting these Farmed Goods, and Processed Materials FROM the Freehold TO the Market! You'll never be able to safely do this alone, because you need to remember that invisible Rogue networks will be reporting all activity from these Freeholds!
Also, before I forget!
Every 10 levels, there should be a Goblin quest chain to upgrade only your Sanctus Resource bag size. So players can have one assorted storage slot that stacks to 20, but with the grid size of a Master gathering bag. Just one bag though. It would be a fun nod to the Goblin "Gobbie Bag" upgrade in Final Fantasy eleven!
-What makes a gatherable system fun for you?
Needs to be simple and rewarding, with great sounds and animations.
Scurrying about being a rock hound is fun activity to do when you don't have time to XP Party.
Passive Skill Tree should be able to be specialized towards what you like to do most. I do not want to play the piano to Gather, and I want to be able to swap out my Mining/Logging Clothing sets with one button press. Pulling up windows and hunting for items that all look the same to equip is very annoying.
-What kind of scenarios would you like to see encouraged through the system?
(ex. finding a high-level Surveyor to party with, or a party to lock down a nearby cave gatherables.)
Survey Pylons and Gathering Parties should be reserved for weekly Gathering Events only.
I do not want Surveying and Party gathering shoved into daily gathering just because, otherwise it loses meaning.
Your ONE Survey Pylon needs to have a LONG cooldown!
Like the spamming Node Wars, all this "Event stuff" needs to happen randomly once a week - so it remains meaningful. Because if you force it onto people, everyone will just log out until the event is over - just like they're doing right now because of the Node War spam.
Use your Siege sign-up sheets for Node Wars too, so the first ~150 people who want to go fight, can - and the rest of the citizens can keep doing citizen things.
If not, these will just become more anti-game loops, where people are logging out to avoid them instead of playing the game.
-Are there gatherable systems in other games that you enjoy? What about those mechanics do you find fun?
Any of the other Gathering systems that are simple, and don't require me to play the piano to do.
Running up and hitting F is good, don't make it more complicated than that.
-Which of the upcoming gathering-related changes excites or intrigues you the most, and why?
None of them, you're completely off the mark with all your upcoming changes, you need to listen to the players instead. You are trying to shove "friction and conflict" into areas that do not need any more than already exists.
Just do what I outlined above, and all your Gatherers will be very happy.
My Mage level is 16, Mining level is 35, and Lumberjack is 22, so I gather a lot.
And boy I have feedback for you...
I like that Mining and Lumberjack are simple, go on an adventure wherever you like, navigate mobs, at-risk always being alone, danger because you're hauling valuables back to town - again alone - run around harvest rocks/trees with one button click, and hang on every inventory drop delay, like you just pulled the lever on a slot machine. The sounds are good, the ambient sounds are good, the experience is great.
What aspects of the current gathering system to you NOT like?
Static rarity is awful, get it out of the game now. Do not replace it with random static rarity either, get rid of it!
That system is literally an anti-game loop, people run around until they find something, harvest it, and log out. They are no longer playing the game, they are watching Youtube until the node is ready again. Since only they know the timer, it doesn't exist for other players.
Survey Pylons telling players what will be spawning - and when - does not solve this problem either. And NO, being able to "Triangulate" potential spawns and times with a Survey Pylon - doesn't solve this either.
There are also people - including RMT's who log in the instant servers are up - not when you announce they're up - the instant they're up - they have multiple characters with the fastest mounts to camp with, who log in, harvest, and log off again in seconds. They know all the potential spawn points, and everything is mapped out. The Legendary nodes are gone for 24 hours, in seconds! The only nodes you DO find hours later, are the nodes which are NOT valuable...
This is why your static rarity concept fails, and why your "updated" rare-nodes-move concept will fail too.
This concept of gathering makes a dead-end game loop for the rest of the player base. The average joe simply cannot compete, so there is quite literally NO incentive to ever go out Gathering at all, when you already know beforehand that you'll find no - and I mean NO - resources of Legendary quality no matter how many triple-Journeyman-bag bursting runs you make that day.
Right now, your Gathering reward is vendoring grays, and repair bills.
Greens, Blues, and Yellows are only used for leveling crafting because of the bonus XP.
People only buy Epic and Legendary from the market, which you'll never find, or be able to afford.
You should consider applying your "The unknown is exciting" concept that you use with PvP health bars, with Gathering. Hitting Granite, and Basalt with a chance to get "bonus goodies" feels really good.
But, people ride past all the Basalt and Granite, to the obviously valuable shiny nodes you can see from a mile away. I like they way these look, but they should only be visible by the correct rank Gatherer, specced into the applicable passives. No survey pylon needed either.
When you're gathering, every swing should be a pull on the slot machine, luck increased by your Rank, and your Tools, Gear, Harvesting, Rarity, and Quantity thresholds.
Survey Pylon Triangulation should ONLY be used to identify when, and where a Weekly Harvesting Event might take place. I don't care if this was in Star Wars, you need to learn from their mistakes and only use the best parts! And Survey Pylons was NOT one of the good parts!
Survey Pylons should be limited to scouting for upcoming Harvesting Events only!
For Skill Trees, I really only want passive abilities, I DO NOT WANT TO PLAY THE PIANO JUST TO HARVEST! Maybe give us one active button press ability I can spec points into that grants me Camouflage for a short time so I can harvest a single Node without getting murdered by mean ol' bear!
Gathering and Processing need to be activities the average joe can do, that don't have added "friction and conflict" forced into them just for the sake of it. That is not a gameplay feature anyone wants, so don't do it.
Same with Farming, there will be enough risk trying to raise the 100 Gold to buy a Freehold lot. Everyone agrees that there is nothing to be gained by having people get murdered while gathering eggs or processing materials on their Freehold. Nobody wants this in the game, so don't do it.
There will be enough risk in just transporting these Farmed Goods, and Processed Materials FROM the Freehold TO the Market! You'll never be able to safely do this alone, because you need to remember that invisible Rogue networks will be reporting all activity from these Freeholds!
Also, before I forget!
Every 10 levels, there should be a Goblin quest chain to upgrade only your Sanctus Resource bag size. So players can have one assorted storage slot that stacks to 20, but with the grid size of a Master gathering bag. Just one bag though. It would be a fun nod to the Goblin "Gobbie Bag" upgrade in Final Fantasy eleven!
-What makes a gatherable system fun for you?
Needs to be simple and rewarding, with great sounds and animations.
Scurrying about being a rock hound is fun activity to do when you don't have time to XP Party.
Passive Skill Tree should be able to be specialized towards what you like to do most. I do not want to play the piano to Gather, and I want to be able to swap out my Mining/Logging Clothing sets with one button press. Pulling up windows and hunting for items that all look the same to equip is very annoying.
-What kind of scenarios would you like to see encouraged through the system?
(ex. finding a high-level Surveyor to party with, or a party to lock down a nearby cave gatherables.)
Survey Pylons and Gathering Parties should be reserved for weekly Gathering Events only.
I do not want Surveying and Party gathering shoved into daily gathering just because, otherwise it loses meaning.
Your ONE Survey Pylon needs to have a LONG cooldown!
Like the spamming Node Wars, all this "Event stuff" needs to happen randomly once a week - so it remains meaningful. Because if you force it onto people, everyone will just log out until the event is over - just like they're doing right now because of the Node War spam.
Use your Siege sign-up sheets for Node Wars too, so the first ~150 people who want to go fight, can - and the rest of the citizens can keep doing citizen things.
If not, these will just become more anti-game loops, where people are logging out to avoid them instead of playing the game.
-Are there gatherable systems in other games that you enjoy? What about those mechanics do you find fun?
Any of the other Gathering systems that are simple, and don't require me to play the piano to do.
Running up and hitting F is good, don't make it more complicated than that.
-Which of the upcoming gathering-related changes excites or intrigues you the most, and why?
None of them, you're completely off the mark with all your upcoming changes, you need to listen to the players instead. You are trying to shove "friction and conflict" into areas that do not need any more than already exists.
Just do what I outlined above, and all your Gatherers will be very happy.
Re: A simple fix for the TTK (Time To Kill) problem
Honestly as long as gear progression is all about pure power creep we will keep running into balance issues. On other hand stuff like +Armour, +HP, +mana, Evasion or lifeleech gear is mostly useless.
Enchanting has too many levels, that's one.
Enchanting provides NO playstyle variety.
Enchanting allows you to apply a straightforward power multiplier to your character phys/magic power. Even if stats like STR and INT only gave 1 power growth instead of as it is now 3, we would eventually run into those issues, just at higher level gear.
What concerns me also is that Phase1 power "fix" just made a lot of stats on gear and a lot of gear redundant. You "love" seeing Rare+ gear with 20+ extra HP or mana points, or other stats which do no benefit the player in a meaningful way. This makes a lot of gear obsolete / dead on arrival before people even get access to it. The whole stat system makes little sense and that affects the gear also. This is another way how Intrepid so far FAILs to address playstyle variety, just after a lot of one-dimensional archetypes with no build variety. We can only hope they intend to address those issues, otherwise the game will be far more shallow than it should be for a game with replaybility value.
I would prefer if Enchanting allowed you to swap stats on gear for your preferred stats, and provided some playstyle variety on the top of archetype customisation. There should be nothing stopping me from building a 2 handed evasion or parry based tank, high armour / HP fighter, or lifeleeching mage, if I swapped sufficient amount of stats on my gear.
I would prefer if stats on gear were rebalanced, so non power related stats provided a meaningful benefit.
I would prefer if stats in general had aggressive diminishing returns applied to them, so combat is balanced around archetypes and player "skill" level AND not gear stat sticks.
Enchanting has too many levels, that's one.
Enchanting provides NO playstyle variety.
Enchanting allows you to apply a straightforward power multiplier to your character phys/magic power. Even if stats like STR and INT only gave 1 power growth instead of as it is now 3, we would eventually run into those issues, just at higher level gear.
What concerns me also is that Phase1 power "fix" just made a lot of stats on gear and a lot of gear redundant. You "love" seeing Rare+ gear with 20+ extra HP or mana points, or other stats which do no benefit the player in a meaningful way. This makes a lot of gear obsolete / dead on arrival before people even get access to it. The whole stat system makes little sense and that affects the gear also. This is another way how Intrepid so far FAILs to address playstyle variety, just after a lot of one-dimensional archetypes with no build variety. We can only hope they intend to address those issues, otherwise the game will be far more shallow than it should be for a game with replaybility value.
I would prefer if Enchanting allowed you to swap stats on gear for your preferred stats, and provided some playstyle variety on the top of archetype customisation. There should be nothing stopping me from building a 2 handed evasion or parry based tank, high armour / HP fighter, or lifeleeching mage, if I swapped sufficient amount of stats on my gear.
I would prefer if stats on gear were rebalanced, so non power related stats provided a meaningful benefit.
I would prefer if stats in general had aggressive diminishing returns applied to them, so combat is balanced around archetypes and player "skill" level AND not gear stat sticks.
Re: High quality AoC memes
We shall fight in times of burnout, we shall fight on laggy and buggy servers, we shall fight against negativity and bad faith , we shall fight in a purely Alpha development environment, we shall never surrender!
Re: 🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Gatherable Spawning System
Gathering trees, rocks, and flowers are okay but there is little randomness. Meaning just go and get the gathering map to find where the Legendary Braidwood is. Come back in about 4 hours to get it again. Camp the site, rinse and repeat for 12 hours or more. No thank you give me true randomness. Have the location change between all of the gatherables and change the rarity. There has been a lot of spawns either in the ground, rocks or under the earth. Fixing this would help getting some things back like Emeralds that are next to impossible to find right now. Get rid of the copper spawning with from other rocks, ores. From what I have seen this is too rare and takes away a harvestable I was expecting to get when I mined the resource in the first place. Same with coal. Just have it spawn.
Hunting. Good place holder but needs major overhaul. Petting a mob to death is not it. Idea. You target a mob. You can attack or you can try to tame. If you attack and kill you should have a chance to get a useable hide that you can break down, or bones that can drop instead or in addition to the hide. Also, a chance for nothing to drop. If you chose to tame say a raven for instance you need to do some research to learn that it can only be tamed with shiny metal fragments of some kind. You click on the raven and the bits with a chance of taming it. Or it goes badly, and you fight. This could be done with other mobs where you have to go on quests to find out what foods or items it takes to tame them. The higher the tier of mob the more research is needed and the harder to tame the mob. This could be used in animal husbandry also. Animal husbandry is a money sink right now. Get about 300 to 400 gold and you can have every mount out there as a ride or beast of Burden. I get you need money sinks, but I think you can get a bit more creative than this.
Fishing right now is a placeholder and rather boring. Stand in one place, set to fish and come back in 30 minutes to check on status. Rinse and repeat. The hardest part is getting the newest fishing rod. Yawn. Where is the risk and reward?
Legendary seems to be easier to get than say epic in some cases like Braidwood. Few people want the other rarities of Braidwood. Want to harvest it and willow just hang out around Lionshold. Now if you are working on harvesting animals for tailoring and animal fat. Then Legendary is truly Legendary. I have not seen any in the game. Nor have I seen any animal fat of the rare, heroic, epic versions. let alone Legendary.
Because I harvest lots of ore, minerals I have gotten a lot of Jewelry, and leatherworkers' recipes but few recipes for stonemasonry, Armor smithing, Metalsmithing, Weapon smithing. Why is this? I am an apprentice in Metal smithing and Armor Smithing. Level 7 in Weapon smithing. Which is taking twice as long to level as Armor smithing because it takes 4 times as much copper to make a shield then the 2 zinc for Boots. I checked the stats on the shields. The Rarity doesn't change the stats enough to worry about. Bug report the epic copper shield can't be made as it defaults to rare. No difference in stats.
To many quests are broken. But I suspect that is on purpose. Problem is few are doing the quests. Instead, everyone power levels and works on PVP because there is nothing else to do. That is the way many players see this game right now.
Rant off.
Hunting. Good place holder but needs major overhaul. Petting a mob to death is not it. Idea. You target a mob. You can attack or you can try to tame. If you attack and kill you should have a chance to get a useable hide that you can break down, or bones that can drop instead or in addition to the hide. Also, a chance for nothing to drop. If you chose to tame say a raven for instance you need to do some research to learn that it can only be tamed with shiny metal fragments of some kind. You click on the raven and the bits with a chance of taming it. Or it goes badly, and you fight. This could be done with other mobs where you have to go on quests to find out what foods or items it takes to tame them. The higher the tier of mob the more research is needed and the harder to tame the mob. This could be used in animal husbandry also. Animal husbandry is a money sink right now. Get about 300 to 400 gold and you can have every mount out there as a ride or beast of Burden. I get you need money sinks, but I think you can get a bit more creative than this.
Fishing right now is a placeholder and rather boring. Stand in one place, set to fish and come back in 30 minutes to check on status. Rinse and repeat. The hardest part is getting the newest fishing rod. Yawn. Where is the risk and reward?
Legendary seems to be easier to get than say epic in some cases like Braidwood. Few people want the other rarities of Braidwood. Want to harvest it and willow just hang out around Lionshold. Now if you are working on harvesting animals for tailoring and animal fat. Then Legendary is truly Legendary. I have not seen any in the game. Nor have I seen any animal fat of the rare, heroic, epic versions. let alone Legendary.
Because I harvest lots of ore, minerals I have gotten a lot of Jewelry, and leatherworkers' recipes but few recipes for stonemasonry, Armor smithing, Metalsmithing, Weapon smithing. Why is this? I am an apprentice in Metal smithing and Armor Smithing. Level 7 in Weapon smithing. Which is taking twice as long to level as Armor smithing because it takes 4 times as much copper to make a shield then the 2 zinc for Boots. I checked the stats on the shields. The Rarity doesn't change the stats enough to worry about. Bug report the epic copper shield can't be made as it defaults to rare. No difference in stats.
To many quests are broken. But I suspect that is on purpose. Problem is few are doing the quests. Instead, everyone power levels and works on PVP because there is nothing else to do. That is the way many players see this game right now.
Rant off.
Liftted
3
Re: 🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Gatherable Spawning System
I would like to see some sort of system that increases a resource node's quality modifier over time after it spawns. That way the resources that are off the beaten path and are easily passed by are the ones that give the best results.
I also think it would be good to modify a resource node's respawn rate based on how often it is harvested. If the same trees keep getting cut down 10 minutes after they spawn in, then they should take longer to spawn in.
Also, I like how the trees grow from adolescent to adult over time and increase their yield. I would like to see other resources do that same thing.
I also think it would be good to modify a resource node's respawn rate based on how often it is harvested. If the same trees keep getting cut down 10 minutes after they spawn in, then they should take longer to spawn in.
Also, I like how the trees grow from adolescent to adult over time and increase their yield. I would like to see other resources do that same thing.
Hevel
1
Re: 🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Gatherable Spawning System
The entire idea is awful. And it's the one, biggest problem this game is now promoting. Please reconsider a better path that gives EVERYONE an opportunity at achieving better tools and items.
It sucks... It is a quit point for many people. Gathering is supposed to be a core part of the game.
Where is @Dygz?!?!?! Ashes is supposed to be dynamic, not static!
More systems where the rich get exponentially richer and poor fall futher behind. Great for player retention, really...
Xeeg
1
Re: CRITICAL FEEDBACK: Intrepid Please fix PvP - TTK test video demonstration
Did he say 10-15s upward of 30s !?
thats still terrible , 30-60 seconds is what they should of stayed with , dunno why they kept making decisions that changed the game to worse during the last year
Re: 🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Gatherable Spawning System
Game doesn't need anymore things pushing people to conflict. The static legendary resources is a hard no for me. I'm not adjusting my life schedule around the server reboots. That's some trash game level shit. Probably time to stop keeping up with Ashes for me...
Volgaris
1
Re: Merch idea
Once the game's finished, for sure. No point in making it yet while so much can still change.
