Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about 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 Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about 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.
Lessons Learned
So if you guys have surfing around on the inter-webs, you would of heard of a certain MMO that was hyped but isn't going to well. I won't say its name that would be uncalled for. I do however think it's a BLESSing in disguise that this is happening from a developers point of view. It shows how quickly a hype can go south with in just a day. They even had selected content creators as the emissaries for the game. Those few selected people felt BLESSed, but many are not holding back on reviews and some are just ruthless. On the good side it really gives a true perspective of what players consider unacceptable, and is not covered by sugar hype coating. This is the reason our community needs to really work with the DEV's on giving input and not letting things slip from hype. Let's work hard and make this game really shine.
0
Comments
Also beta phases?
Regardless of when some people get into Ashes they will blast if for every minute flaw, everything that they wanted that is not present, everything they were told was going to be (even if not by the dev team) that is not yet (or ever) implemented, and not being more PvP or PvE or having P2W options.
Some people will just suck and be ruthless because they suck. Some people will be honest, even if the review is scathing, and they are the voices that matter. So are all the peeps that will be happy and give glowing reviews because it did what they thought, and not just because they are fan bois.
If the devs tell us what they want to do, and it's not what we want, and then they do that thing they said they would and we play, we can't complain about what they didn't do. That's like buying a new economy 4-cylinder hatch back, taking it home, and being mad at the manufacturer that is't not an 8-cylinder sports car.
Either way, I'm still saving my time and money until the Alpha 1 phase is released (since I doubt I'll get in to alpha 0 at this point, even though I'm still hopeful).
Yet some will rationalize it by saying "I'm having fun though, so money well spent". Cool, what ever floats your boat, you do you. Not everyone has good taste. This explains why light beer exists.
But games and Devs like Bless/NeoWiz are why AoC and Intrepid have such an uphill battle. Both companies stated there would be "no pay to win" yet Bless had things like paid-by-cash teleportation.
Like teenage girls every where, I can't even.
So what players learn is Devs tell lies, especially about "P2W". And then we get 40 Youtube videos on how AoC is a cash grab, which ruffles the feathers of the same people saying how good Bless is on Discord.
By defending and supporting Bless, you're shitting in what Ashes is supposed to stand for.
But hey, it's your money, do what you want.
I'll just be over here laughing at you and crying for us all.
But games and Devs like Bless/NeoWiz are why AoC and Intrepid have such an uphill battle. Both companies stated there would be "no pay to win" yet Bless had things like paid-by-cash teleportation."
People who opt to play or pay for games such as Bless KNOWING how it's development has been and it's long history of failure should not complain. But it's like everything else. Some just need to act like spoiled brats and complain.
Yes, Steven and Ashes have an uphill battle due to the ENTIRE present state of gaming. This P2W and so called F2P ( which we know better) have been around for many years now and it's something we know that has dragged good games away.
But It's also because of games and Devs like Bless/NeoWiz that AoC and Steven have a great chance of making it. Because, he and we know what has gone wrong in the past, We, the old school players also will help Ashes along.
Steven is sharing his dreams with us. Dreams he is acting upon and it can't get any better then that when he has the means to develop Ashes with our input help.
Bless and the like will be a bad memory when Ashes releases!
its ironic because thats exactly what Alpha 0 (mainly) is - just testing the technical side via servers ( and other things )
- Because competition likes to try to push each other. As evident of all the failed WoW clones MMOs
Ashes of Creation & Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen should compete with one another - that'll lead the MMO industry in the right direction . As opposed to the P2W crap thats going on.... And since the Console market is trying to basically copy that same-said P2W bullcrap ( just in a slightly different manner ) from MMOs ... Ashes of Creation & Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen will - essentially - lead the charge
But i guess its only fitting because ... well PCs came 1st before Consoles
#PCMasterRace
EDIT: But the best part is ... Pantheon & Ashes are not trying to compete against one another - they're just doing their own thing. And its working. They'll attract a (slightly) different audience.
Yeah, I know. I was making a slightly exaggerated comment that would only slow the roll of trolls.
The Good:
[+] Server side stability has been reasonably decent for the launch period, and has crashed occasionally compared to dumpster fires in the past (see: Star Wars Galaxies).
[+++] Lots of communication time was spent on talking about combat revamp. Compared to Bless JP, Bless on Steam's tab target combat is a very interesting take on the tab target paradigm. Some may complain it robs players the freedom of coming up with their own rotations, but let's be real: players will eventually form their own meta and cookie-cutter rotations and builds. Using this semi-restrictive method of placing combos in their own categories presents a very structured web of options for players, and it's also easier to tweak combat balance. Very likely devs in the industry will study how this is implemented.
[+] If a player crashes or has to close their client for any reason, there is a good chance their spot is reserved in the server so they don't need to rejoin the server queue.
[+] Once players use the proper tweaks in Config INI files, framerate performance is decent. But doing this requires curiosity and some level of courage in fooling around with INI files which most players don't venture into.
The Bad:
[-] From Launch Zero Hour until 10 hours later, CTD (Crash to Desktop) was very frequent and highly reproduced in a significant proportion of users.
[-] The "Splash Screen bug" which many users were stuck at had nothing to do with the splash screen, and everything to do with Steam and Bless Launcher authentication servers having problems in talking to each other. Bless Launcher was getting slammed with high levels of traffic and couldn't handle it, so users had to restart the handshaking process repeatedly by closing and opening the client again and again to "fix" the problem.
[-] Localization looked like an act of feeding all native Korean text into Google Translate and Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. Many players were stuck post-character creation in the "tutorial" where they had no idea what the game was trying to tell them to do.
[--] PVP immunity items which look like they can be bought using ingame currency. Why promote the game as a PVP hotspot when people can use get out of jail free cards at will?
[----------] Poor planning from Neowiz led to only one realm available at launch, causing most of the highly engaged players to flood that one server (Tanara). There are multiple realms now, but it causes communities to be split by download speed since the first two servers have character creation locked at frequent times. As of this writing, character creation was just unlocked but the damage has been done to many communities.
[-] Related to the slot reservation above: queue counter can be frustrating as they can go down rapidly because many people crash, and the queue counter goes up again because slot reservation means those crashed users log back in immediately.
[--------] Related to framerate performance and Config INI files above. The default settings only allowed for 1 CPU core(!!), around 1GB of GPU VRAM(!!!!) and only 10MB VRAM set aside for texture streaming(??!!!!). It looks like stock settings meant for the first Gears of War game, not a MMO with hardware in 2018. Most people would not touch the INI files, run Bless, look at Task Manager and wonder why the game has such low FPS and GPU is only utilized at 20%.
[-] Unreal Engine 3 means the more recent resolutions like 1440p and 4K may not be fully supported
My Giant Red Flags
- Warnings upon purchase claiming that it's "impossible to refund", and more warnings after claiming your ingame preorder package that refunds are impossible, dissuading the average user from even thinking about refunding.
- Planning endgame content 2 weeks after launch, which locks users in from being able to refund at all.
The above red flags alone were enough to make me do this:I'm very tolerant about problems in The Bad, because I'm the first in line to empathize that game dev is hard. But shady business practices are things which I refuse to support and condone.
LMAO, that video had me rolling
Great story. Fun exploration.
Perfect game for casual challenge folk just looking to chill.
Most of that list of bads was about getting into the game day one?? Especially day one of head start??
That's to be expected.
I think I've only had one crash in 20+ hours of play.
The Launcher bug seemed to go away after closing and restarting the game.
I waited, like, maybe two minutes tops the first time. And then restarted the game and got in. And that worked instantly every other time that bug has appeared for me.
Also, awesome that I got 2.5K Lumena for the headstart issues when I was not expecting any.
Hopefully, the Ashes world will be as immersive.
Leveling will have to be more in depth and more of a hardcore challenge.
But, Bless Online is a great game for casual challenge folk.
- why tf would i play an Open World PvP MMORPG ... when you can buy a cash shop item that allows you to be excluded from all that ?
They're going to make more of a profit with that 1 cash shop item than their B2P modelJumping into Landmark Alpha 4 years ago prepped me for what day one launch of Early Access is likely to be. I was not expecting to spend much time playing.
I played about as much as I expected. And I saved $30 that I thought about spending just for Lumena for the next tier package and got the Lumena I wished for for free.
And, I will be getting my money's worth for the gameplay since I only got the standard pack and I'm enjoying exploring the world.
It's fresh for me. And I'm having fun.
About half of the streams I've randomly watched are with people also having fun.
But, those people having fun are all casual and chill.
Now, Landmark/EQNext development was all kinds of shady.
IF you really want to talk about shady.
People who hate the game get to hate the game.
Don't play games you don't like.
Server performance, optimization, infrastructure.
Bless was an example of what happens when it sucks to high hell.
This in a nutshell is why what Stephen and crew are focusing on now matters so much. It may not be the prettiest thing to show off or the most flash, but its absolutely VITAL to any MMO's success. I don't care what you design, if it's built on a house of cards (crappy infrastructure, network) it's going to come tumbling down and all those other systems no longer matter.