Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
What I fear is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleE
For those who don't want to watch, it's about 7 mins long and is an ARS Technica interview with Richard Garriott explaining how months of work in creating and balancing an ecology was overrun by players seconds after launch. I'm pretty sure I've a similar one somewhere about how the closed player run economic system failed.
Some people just want to watch the world burn ...or smash face ....same thing
I think a part of the problem is that there are conflicting goals in some areas. You want to have meaningful PvP, but you don't want people just killing anyone? How do you allow people to kill and prevent them from killing? You want to have a closed economy, but you want everyone to feel like they're not getting cheated on loot? Doesn't every closed economy eventually wind up with haves and have-nots and a lot more have-nots? Does the world actually have room for tens of thousands of player made housing? Or does the wilderness just turn into a maze of house after house after house? Should every craftsman be special and be able to make the rare magic uber gear?
Conflicting goals.
Bullshit mega guilds controlling whole servers, murdering anyone with their 57th alt with 9999999 bounty but nobody cant touch them becuase they controll everything.
unnecessary expensive gear, enchants and items because of free economy system and player dependence on crafter. Crafters will be able to overprice exactly everything which will promote gold buying, resulting in useless economy. This can only be solved with hard caps for prices.
Useless class balancing because there are too many combinations. This means either the classes will be almost the same, or some will be ridiculously overpowered. This probably can't be solved in any way since MMO creators usually have 0 knowledge about math. An example of this is designing an Archer to do a maximum of 1000 Damage per second if played perfectly. Then, designing a meele fighter to also deal 1000 Damage per second. This instantly makes the archer more overpowered because the Archer can attack from range. Designing abilities like Charge (fighter) Stun (Fighter) to compensate does not work since this forces rangers to get Vault back (Archer) or Evasion (Archer) and once again you get imbalance. If they decide to "Balance" everything the game will feel extremly stale.
Economy becoming more important than general gameplay. The game forcing you to grind materials for 7 hours a day to afford end game gear.
Not being able to earn currency by doing PVE/PVP (Getting paid for each arena, Battleground or siege etc. Getting paid to kill bosses. This is important because some people do not give a flying fuck about picking flowers in a game.
(Not really fair since they have not focused on it yet) the combat feels very sluggish and unnatural. Movements look like your ice skating. Combat feels extremly repetitive based on alpha. Extremly few abiltiies.
Right now I'm at the point where I am just coming in from time to time to see whats going on. Only time will tell.
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My one big concern is Cash Shop and that will hold true for any game I play or don't play. I tend to avoid games with cash shops these days which is not easy cause seems like most games have them most of them are FTP tho. Not crazy about paying a subscription and having a cash shop in game even if it is just Cosmetics. But i'm still gonna wait and see how that unfolds as well if done right might not be so bad but I'm never gonna like the idea of it, just a matter of will I tolerate it or not if I love a game enough and if a company doesn't go overboard with it. Normally I would have been long gone at the mention of Cash Shops but Steve seems pretty genuine so for that and a lot of interesting new Ideas I will wait to see what happens. Make my decision at that time.
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For those that are worried about what they are seeing in the Early footages need to look up what Pre Alpha and alpha means in aspect to development. It's to soon to judge how a game will be based on those footages.
For those that are worried the game is being released too soon if they stay on tract I would be lying if I said that shouldn't be a concern as games should never be rushed out and in terms of how long games like these take normally this game has a shorter time table than most but they also had a good budget to start in comparison as well as some very skilled people from the business on the team from start as well as well as sole focus on one game. So too many variables to say if it will be bad or not only time will tell on this as well as well as seeing how the game is in late beta stages. But I will agree if things are taking longer than anticipated I would rather have a later deadline than a game released too soon.
Will there be a way to backtrack your skills if a class and 2nd class aren't quite what we expected?
Also, government and politics!! I think a lot of us play and don't want have to deal with that topic in game. what next pvp = party vs party.
Ashes of Creation - May 4th, 2018 LIVE STREAM demonstrates them testing raid mechanics:
I have high hopes for ashes and every time I see an update and Steven or the crew talk Im Impressed.
Yeah they did a great job testing and showing what can be done with UE4 and explaining things a bit.
Yeah I think as they progress more and show the progress they make more people will start believing in it.
Yeah I been a away for a long time it's gruesome trying to keep daily tabs on a game you want that is far from completion. I plan to pop in on occasion catch up take a little active roll before I take a break in between. Makes it easier and rewarding when you see a few months of progress all at once.
Cheers.
Still hope everything pans out but yeah I'm not as confident about everything like I was when I first started following. Time will tell one way or another.
I'm worried they won't add past cosmetics into the cash shop or into the game as rare drops.
I'm worried that they will focus mainly on PvP and every quest will be kill this and collect that.
Among other worries.