Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
"Because we are non-faction based, you want to grant the user the ability to either do things that are "evil" or "good", so there has to be a plethora of choice on the evil side for them to participate in." – Steven Sharif
Also I do miss the aspect of Ultima Online where it was much more flexible in a lot of aspects (skills, travel, factions, ect...) but it required a lot of work to achieve things such as get 100% in swordsmanship or blacksmith. I really enjoyed mining a ton of different minerals (private servers added even more) and you could only access them at a certain % in mining, but you could just go in a cave and mine anywhere in it. You didn't need to find specific iron veins and travel all over and fight for them. A bunch of people would just go in caves and mine. It was nice, chill, you could stay in one place, forge your stuff in peace.
You are right though that sometimes hidden mechanics can screw with game balance when they are discovered. When players in League of Legends first discovered that you could extend the range of certain abilities using the "flash" summoner spell, it completely changed the way the game was played. Suddenly champions that were rubbish became viable, and other champions became insanely OP.
Even though Intrepid have said there will be no animation cancelling in Ashes, I can almost guarantee that players will find a way to do it. When that happens, it will be up to the developers to decide what to do. They can play whack-a-mole and try to fix every unintended hidden mechanic whenever one appears, or they can do like Riot did with League of Legends and embrace these mechanics and work with them.
As for the immersion-breaking aspect, I've honestly never considered that. It's probably because I always have my character zoomed out to the maximum so that I can see as much of what is happening around me. As such I very rarely see the spell animations of my character.
Tera is another great example of animation cancelling being embraced by the developers. Lancers and Brawlers would not be able to tank the hardest dungeons without animation cancelling.
yup tho unfortunately there won't be animation cancelling in Ashes
They say that, but as I said before, players will always find a way to do it. It will happen, whether the developers intend it or not. If the speedrunning community has taught me anything it's that every game has weaknesses that players can abuse.
Most probably. I heard in December livestream that Steven usually breaks the game so it's safe to assume even after tons of testing, players will find ways to abuse mechanics
Good idea for scribes, something like scribes has scatch of map and he can put signs for point of interest that he already explored and notes than make copy and sell.
I would very much like to see some quests lines and paths to organically change such that players must play and or work together to complete.. not lookup a cheat sheet. perhaps the path of some quests are linked to the matrix of multi nodal combined status..
It is how quest gona work in aoc, dependent on node dominated race, lvl of node and types, social guild quests will change and world to.
Formerly T-Elf
And yes I know its not a feature.
I do not want to see the addition of something like unobtanium without ever knowing why. All the base real world materials I get, same with hides and such, but if there is a specific metal needed for magic items or higher level gear, I want more on why it is better.
I always liked lockboxes in WoW the require keys or a rogue to open, although I know what you mean about micro-transactions.
-I don't like daily quests that are the same thing over and over.
-The ability to join multiple guilds
-the feeling that not logging on is punished instead of logging on being rewarded. I want to be able to take a weekend off from gaming sometimes, but when it comes to daily rep grinds to have gear to be on par with the minimum on time is legit a pain in the ass.
Agreed. I want my gear to be relevant even after 3 months. Let there be limit to the effectiveness of gear and allow skill to be more relevant.
Above statement was posted in reference to automated group finder.
In my particualar case my class was made too overpowered so I only had to push few buttons. Well it was months before it got nerfed. Thought to myself well it was good while it lasted no big deal. Talking about pvp by the way.
But then something really strange happened my mind was no longer used to using every ability I had in order to win just same four or five buttons. So after my class got nerfed (justly so) I was actually a worst player than before my class got buffed. So I had to stop pvping and train on target dummy and dungeouns to get my edge back.
So like if you put a puzzle quest in WoW Their minds are not trained to do those things and most likely have a real difficult time cause they have to actually think. Their mind is in relax mode instead of problem solving mode.
So if things are overly streamlined then they have to do raids were they have pay attention then it might be difficult for them.
But if content like dungeouns have simple raid mechanics simple puzzles just things were they have to think that will prepare them for more difficult raid.
What would happen if you would put a puzzle quest like the ones in Runescape in WoW. Maybe their brains would go into shock.
An another topic would not like to see drop rated higher than 1 in 1000 in referencce to mounts. 40 man raid one percent mount drop rate is way over 1 in 4000 chance to get. Has to do with statistics one percent chance of item drop well might have do raid 163 times for it to drop not 100. 1 in 4000 chance means for every 40k players there would be ten people that get that mount if they all did the raid. Personal loot for mounts recommended but any other system would work just as well like increasing drop rate in 40 man raid.
xp buffs
energy systems -_- (why would you want to limit me playing your game...)
*Flying mounts (kills a game)
*Being able to play the game from one single city/spot (Looking at you wow)
*Meaningless grind (Have challenging, intense trials instead)
*Hardest content in the form of open World bosses and dungeons (Never worked, cant work)
*Teleportation, please, make us use meaningful forms of transportation. Boats, Caravans etc. No stupid fast travel portals.
*Dailies, please, if you want repetable content, make it meaningful and weekly, but dont make it mandatory or necessary.
*No autowalk button
*All high level content focused on 10+ player Groups. Please have some stuff to do for smaller Groups.
While I don't think the mini-map should be class-locked or completely removed, I think their is a germ of an idea here. Everyone having a very limited mini-map to begin with, "what our Cartographers could see from Sanctuary" type of map. Then when characters arrive their map is updated with greater detail as they explore. Perhaps even a Mapping skill, or the ability for the character to "make maps" which can be auctioned in-game. Another character could then purchase the map and have their mini-map updated with features of that area found by the mapping character.
Mindless overland ESO style, where at max (and even low) levels, you can afk a few minutes near enemies and you have good odds to still be alive when you get back.
The tedium of FFXIV crafting, being forced to pull from almost every single craft line in order to advance in your own focused one. A little community reliance is nice, not so much when you need it for every damn thing.
Related crafting no-no: complete and utter selfsufficiency where you don’t ever have to interact with another human being
“Stealth” that pretends all NPC are deaf, blind, and have the memory of a goldfish. If we’re loitering around a building crouched by the window, there should be guards coming to investigate.
The only way I can think of doing this different is to have a way that you can lose gear.. If not it will come a point were the game needs new content and if the new content gives the same item level or powers then there ain't any meaning in doing it.
Or that the new content gives a small upgrade, that way the older gear is still good, but not the best.
Didnt Steven already say that daily quest aint going to be thing?
If it is a thing Im not sure how it can be done right in ashes. Because there are different towns and cities with different stages to them. Then the dailies most be the same in all towns meaning it will be boring quest.
Like kill 20 rats and bring 10 lizard heads...
If they are going to make different daily quest to all of the towns and cities then it will be an insane amount you can do each day. That will again feel more like a job then something fun..
Will they be dailies? No they won't be in the sense of what we've experienced dailies in the past where you feel so obligated to log in and like you'll miss these things. It's more gonna be focused around like how the world is changing and how the changes in the world relate to your opportunities; and then you know if your location's gonna matter because fast travel is not a thing, where you're located at is going to determine your you know the risk versus reward opportunities that are present; and then depending on the time that those occur. – Steven Sharif