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: What are we testing now?
We are in an Alpha 2 and this means we need to help DEV to test stuff out and help them see how the game runs. We try handing them all kinds of suggestions, positive and negative feedback and hope they use it to make the game better....so far so good.
But what do we test now?
MY first suggestion is to upgrade the xp and cash we earn with a kill massively. Why you want to bore alpha 2 players who help testing with endless grinding is pointless.
Questing is bad...to be honest. Its the same system New World got and they got flamed. After first month almost 80% of the players left that game and never return. AoC is heading same direction doing this.
people only want to repeat the same quest a few times before they decide watching grass grow is more fun. I hope they add waaaay more and different quests.
Grinding is tested to the max. Every one needs to do it...and i guess they see that it works.The only down side is that even now some spots are so heavy crowded people fight over who gets to kill what mob.
Grief system works...and what i hear one side enjoys it...stealing from your fellow players is something they like. The rest hate it. Stealing in pvp i could understand...but in pve and high levels who steal from lower levels cause its easy money is bad.
They could put in a timer...lets say 5 minutes that you can get your stuff back or so...but then the idiots start to camp corpses to over and over kill the lower players. THIS is why most games dont do this. Its bad for the game and normal players will say bye bye pretty soon.
PvP not seen at all. Caravans i see and join never get attacked. Everyone ignores it. The one time we got attacked it was by the one guild that does pvp.
No keep attacks. No town attacks. Nothing. The only thing we see are the loot stealing players who attack much lower level players to farm them. 25 years of pvp and this is what we see. I hope it gets better.
Players who are new to pvp get no option to learn how it works.Make some battlegrounds where they can learn it. make it level restricted so lets say first one lvl 10 to 15...second 16 to 20 etc.
Have the different types of pvp the end game will have in it so by the time they reach it they know how it works. This also ad another dimension to the game.
Crafting is fun....but could be a lot better. Its way to complicated and if you not familiar with any off it i wish you good luck.
Also some connections are odd.
If you train a wolf or so you have to chop lumber to Fuel ?????? the beast so you ca ride him...well 50% of the time . You might get a pointless mount for most who is for the caravans. bye bye cash, times and the wood you chopped.
Bosses that are never up. For weeks now i try to kill Ted...well Ted is always on vacation. IF you are lucky and he is here and someone kills him..better delete the quest cause he will not return. Same with many other bosses.
Drag mobs trough other players to get them killed. Works like a charm. We see players do this to wipe a group...then steal the loot off their corpses and take over the spot...but mostly run off before getting caught.
Grief in ultimo style and your not marked pvp before you kill the entire group...by the time they are back after the butchering...you took off with all the loot.
This can easy be fixed if its not suppose to do it.
So AoC tell us what you aim for next...what you want us to test and what is going to change.
Testing how much BS you'll put up with before you stop "playing" in a test environment. This is valuable data, it'll show them how much tolerance you have, so they'll know what they can get away with in the future.
I jest... i hope... but who knows... that's why i stopped. Nothing else to test. Phase 2 is basically the same as Phase 1. Maybe Phase 3 will bring some worth while changes. I will be checking out the rogue when it's out. Until then I'll be playing games that are actually playable. Actual test is real work, and we ain't getting paid, we paid to do it, so if you stop having fun and/or run out things to actually test, just put it on pause.
Great question and great points!
Volgaris
2
Re: Downtime for updates
No matter what time they do it, it will be less then ideal for someone.
Re: Broken on all ultra/super widescreen monitors; FIX FOR DEVS INCLUDED
Giving this a bump. The thread has had less attention as there's a workaround but this really and seriously needs fixed ASAP. It's absolutely critical to 6% of your playerbase. It can be fixed in 2 minutes which was proven effective. Please address this and take it out of the backlog!
paratua
1
Re: Marketplace
The over arching issue here is the amount of "placeholder" systems. How many man hours are they going to waste refactoring code before they have one of the systems in a state we can test. I shutter to think about the amount of code that will get thrown out with each rework, as they chase the communities ever changing desire. They need to have a vision and build it, as it stands now it doesn't seem like they had a vision for many of the systems in the game currently. And the retort is 'they're placeholders', that's valid to a point, but there just seems to be so many placeholders.
Volgaris
1
Re: Suggestion: Short Timer on PVE death ashes being lootable by others
Players have adapted to the change in aggro by simply dragging mobs into other player's AoEs.
Since this is just cowardly BS and IS has already signaled that it isn't intended I have a suggestion:
On PVE death, put a 5 minute timer on the ashes before they can be looted by another player.
I was in a group of 15-17s at Seph and a lvl 25 player, SlytlyTwystyd (might have the vowels messed up) of Neurotic Savages was dragging mobs on us after we engaged groups.
He would run in on his gator and park right on us, and of course we instantly got aggro because every other ability is an aoe.
He got us the first time because he brought a few mobs that cast the red death mist, and he was waiting in the wings to swoop in for the ashes.
We pulled through the second time when he brought a big boy.
I chased after him a little just to get his name but quickly went back to help my group. We were going to flag up the next time he came, even though it would have been futile.
I called him out on global and and a few minutes later saw some other lvl 25 players running around flagged up. I'm sure he ran away like the you know what he is.
You are trying to make this game too fluffy. This is a PVX game where Steven has repeatedly stated that he wants people to feel the failure of death so giving someone a lengthy 5 minute timer to pick up dropped loot works against this.
Aggro and leashing changes have been made and steven stated before this, if someone pulled the aggro after these changes, he would not consider it griefing.
Just like before the change, take measures not to die such as better situational awareness and not putting damage out when you see someone running toward you (cancel with dodge if you have to) and be proactive and try to move out of the way before they get there. The first time it happens might be rough (but have done it many times, even in pug groups) but the 2nd or 3rd time is pretty much on you as I have been in random groups where players had time to callout in party chat when they saw the player doing this return. We literally have re-positioned our party to have a better view of the route this person was taking so be proactive in preventing it.
I am not sure why you suggested flagging up after this happened once would be futile? You see the guy running toward you for the 3rd time with mobs on his ass, flag up and CC him before he gets to you and let the mobs do their job in killing him and take turns CCing if needed until he dies.
Regarding your timer, I do not believe in coddling players giving them a 5 min advantage over others of picking up their death penalty losses. However, I think placing a one minute timer on the death pile before someone else can loot would give the respawned player a chance to get close enough to that someone that took it that is now flagged, might still be in the area. This would give the respawned player a better chance to find the person that looted them and chance to get a portion of their loot back, as well as some of the looters.
blah blah blah.
"situational awareness" is such an epic tacticool word to through around. Because you know SEALs and other elite fighting forces use that term. So awesome. You make me so jealous of your epic hardassness.
Its utterly pretentious, worn out, and irrelevant.
Seph is nothing but corners. You can't set 'lookouts', or 'spotters' because they would be getting aggro from respawns instead of helping the group.
This is a mid lvl lvling spot, this isn't 'end' game content.
You're defending bullshit. Its not pvp, its assholism. Main character little man syndrome., and you're one of them.
Gizban
3
Re: Tanking has no incentives, only detriments to the player
Yup. It's completely stupid. Tanks die at a rate which far, far exceeds any other class in normal PvE play. So there is a loop of death, loss of exp, loss of money, higher repair cost. This all leads to significantly lower reward per hour played compared with the other classes.
If a farming group goes well, you still get less of everything than everyone else, but it's tolerable. If things go poorly its really discouraging.
This is well documented and well understood. I would assumes devs will change something. Otherwise it's down to group members handing glint to the tank when the PVE ends and hoping he gets to town without dying. It should be said this is a terrible solution to the problem.
If a farming group goes well, you still get less of everything than everyone else, but it's tolerable. If things go poorly its really discouraging.
This is well documented and well understood. I would assumes devs will change something. Otherwise it's down to group members handing glint to the tank when the PVE ends and hoping he gets to town without dying. It should be said this is a terrible solution to the problem.
faylaen
3
Re: Linux Tips, Tweaks and Troubleshooting Thread
ashesofbutt wrote: »mercfredis, see my Ubuntu instructions a few posts up. I'd imagine they also work for Debian.
Ahh, didn't see that, thanks... been running Linux since '93 and I see people saying "YOU HAVE TO DITCH DEBIAN-BASED DISTROS!" which can't possibly be correct... so I was looking for any details and then prove them wrong. :-) Thanks for the notes, I'll check it out.
Re: Iron Aura reduced from 10% reduced damage to 2% ?
If u check the buffs bellow ur hp, still 10%.
if you check your character stats sheet its 2%. So it's actually currently 2% to the stats.
Grit is also 8% (not 10%). which makes it identical to Mark of the Bear except that Mark of the Bear doesn't reduce attack damage.
Re: Iron Aura reduced from 10% reduced damage to 2% ?
I am not sure if this is intended or an error. If you mouse over the actual ability, it says 2% reduction. But if you mouse over the buff as its applied, it still says 10%. I think that damage reduction brings a huge benefit to a group for PvE and PvP. To nerf it to 2% seems a bit of an extreme swing, but its hard to say what is implemented as of this last weekend with the conflicting info sheets.
PvP Experience is a big minus - I don't understand the design goals there
PvP in these types of games is niche. It's not Fortnite or Call of Duty. When you look at very successful MMOs the PvP has very tight controls on them, generally speaking, and those that don't typically have a significantly lower share of the market/subscriber base and so forth.
It may well be that Intrepid is ok with that as that's more of a business decision, but since it's so baked in and fundamental at this point, it would be difficult to about face. I think of Wildstar's old school raiding (huge mistake/alienating of community), and EQ2s "you must have a full group to do any kind of meaningful content" prior to launch, also a huge mistake a rolled back. It will be interesting to see how this goes.
That all aside, given that PvP is very much here to stay and a core feature of the game, here are a couple of misgivings from someone who is a complete lowbie with very little game time.
I struggle to understand, on any level, the fun factor of getting continuously looted at the ripe old age of level 4,5,6 a mere few hours into the game. After the quest sends me off into the middle of nowhere with my old swayback, I found myself slowly gathering bits of glint, and other odds and ends. There wasn't really anywhere to sell it, the main city was a long, long ways off. After about 5 hours of game time I ended up with just about what I started with - close to nothing. I watched as players looted my dead body, I returned to my dead body to find it gone, and I watch as other players hovered, waiting for the mobs to finally get me, so they can loot me. Not really amazing for community building!
My question is, who is this fun for? You can say cry more newb or git gud or whatever and that's fine, but when the design sessions are occurring, is there fervent agreement, and inspiration when we talk about the newb who's just barely learning to game getting his pittance of loot snagged for the 10th time as a great design decision? This feeds back to my comment above - who is your player base? Who enjoys that? I mean, surely the looters, but when they push out the casuals... well, you have your niche market share.
If that's what you want, then ok it just needs to be understood. If not, then why is it like this?
Here's where design/dev/tiny "community" testing of PvP fails on a fundamental level. When you're having your caravan run and oh no there's some players going to try and take us out - it's a blast! But... you're playing with you peers, your co-workers, your boss and your subordinates. They are people you know and have a relationship with. That DOES sound like fun! But that is not the reality of your player base
To truly test your systems you need the trolls. The people who don't care about the consequence (if they are at all meaningful which, at the moment, they don't seem to be). The people whose game fun/experience comes from ruining yours. The people who are anonymous tea-baggers who shout cry more newb and will camp you and/or generally exploit the system as much as possible to grief you. That's who you need testing, not your friends or people you pay, but those people.
If your systems can withstand that and remain enjoyable, congratulations you figured it out! If not, expect a small niche player base and a level of success associated with that. Again, perhaps that's your goal - I'm sure Pantheon of the Fallen isn't trying to be the next WoW and that's ok.
Now pardon me while I offer my newb corpse and the pittance of loot it holds to the leets out there that actually know what they're doing!
It may well be that Intrepid is ok with that as that's more of a business decision, but since it's so baked in and fundamental at this point, it would be difficult to about face. I think of Wildstar's old school raiding (huge mistake/alienating of community), and EQ2s "you must have a full group to do any kind of meaningful content" prior to launch, also a huge mistake a rolled back. It will be interesting to see how this goes.
That all aside, given that PvP is very much here to stay and a core feature of the game, here are a couple of misgivings from someone who is a complete lowbie with very little game time.
I struggle to understand, on any level, the fun factor of getting continuously looted at the ripe old age of level 4,5,6 a mere few hours into the game. After the quest sends me off into the middle of nowhere with my old swayback, I found myself slowly gathering bits of glint, and other odds and ends. There wasn't really anywhere to sell it, the main city was a long, long ways off. After about 5 hours of game time I ended up with just about what I started with - close to nothing. I watched as players looted my dead body, I returned to my dead body to find it gone, and I watch as other players hovered, waiting for the mobs to finally get me, so they can loot me. Not really amazing for community building!
My question is, who is this fun for? You can say cry more newb or git gud or whatever and that's fine, but when the design sessions are occurring, is there fervent agreement, and inspiration when we talk about the newb who's just barely learning to game getting his pittance of loot snagged for the 10th time as a great design decision? This feeds back to my comment above - who is your player base? Who enjoys that? I mean, surely the looters, but when they push out the casuals... well, you have your niche market share.
If that's what you want, then ok it just needs to be understood. If not, then why is it like this?
Here's where design/dev/tiny "community" testing of PvP fails on a fundamental level. When you're having your caravan run and oh no there's some players going to try and take us out - it's a blast! But... you're playing with you peers, your co-workers, your boss and your subordinates. They are people you know and have a relationship with. That DOES sound like fun! But that is not the reality of your player base
To truly test your systems you need the trolls. The people who don't care about the consequence (if they are at all meaningful which, at the moment, they don't seem to be). The people whose game fun/experience comes from ruining yours. The people who are anonymous tea-baggers who shout cry more newb and will camp you and/or generally exploit the system as much as possible to grief you. That's who you need testing, not your friends or people you pay, but those people.
If your systems can withstand that and remain enjoyable, congratulations you figured it out! If not, expect a small niche player base and a level of success associated with that. Again, perhaps that's your goal - I'm sure Pantheon of the Fallen isn't trying to be the next WoW and that's ok.
Now pardon me while I offer my newb corpse and the pittance of loot it holds to the leets out there that actually know what they're doing!
kelvar
2