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.

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Feedback Thread - August 20 Play Test

LieutenantToastLieutenantToast Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
edited August 2019 in Archived Bug Reports
This spot is reserved for our Feedback Thread heading into our August 20 play test! After you're done participating in our upcoming limited test session, please provide feedback in this thread based on the below topics:
  • Weapon & ability balance
  • User interface
  • Client & server performance

If you're looking to report a bug rather than provide feedback, please do so on the Bug Reporting section of the forums by following these helpful steps!
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Comments

  • AuronAuron Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    • User interface

    Missing a "Settings" button while patching the game. Since patch takes some time for many players, it could be useful to put it there so they can do their graphic settings and be ready when the game is finally patched.
    Auronsyg.png
  • I would love to see an ALT look function, similar to PUBG, where you hold ALT and you can move your camera while still running. Currently having to slow down and turn around is kind of annoying.
  • rumyelrumyel Member, Alpha Two
    Have a few/curiosities suggestions:

    1) When picking up a horse can we have like a load circle on the E key display rather than at the bottom of the screen? It is a pvp match I want to watch my surrounding not the ground.
    2) Is there a way to make the grass when you crouch not block your screen like make it invisible ( like in the near area not all grass ). Lots of times i wanted to hide near a bush and watch but my screen was full of foliage that blocked the view.
    3) Is this still alpha-ish for the horse animations? At the moment it feels like it has no weight when i ride it. Adding a bit of weight when you change directions would help (like it would do a little drift of sorts). I imagine this is still alpha ( and based on weapon animations changes its clear more stuff will change later).
    4) Is there a slider that affects the fogginess of the character and environment I have AA set to low as well as post-processing but my character still seems foggy/fuzzy.

    I will edit if i got more.
  • WololoWololo Member, Phoenix Initiative, Hero of the People, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Client & server performance

    when the (web downloaded)client freezes, it happened at the exact same time as 2 other ppl in the match i was playing and on voicechat with. indicating this is a problem on the server and not client side ?
  • fogovivofogovivo Member
    edited August 2019
    Developing mechanics is not efficient without defining an effective animation design. AoC needs to be beautiful before delving into programming details. People want immersion, fluidity and taste. AoC deserves better designers. Invest in it now or you will waste your time.
    https://imgur.com/a/l8QVgV2
  • fogovivofogovivo Member
    edited August 2019
    It is the quality of the animations that will determine the success of Ashes of Creation. That's the truth. Rough or robotic movements, stiff hips, dead faces and unlikely jumps will destroy any good impression of the game.
    "Aireon wrote months ago: I think there is a problem with the weight of the actions that the character takes. When they're attacking or being attacked, there are several things that don't happen that gives off the effect of there being no oompf behind the attacks, especially when the character is moving and attacking. There is no recoil in the characters torso when the crossbow is fired. There's no momentum when a sword is swung; the character just swings again no matter the position of his feet and it's unnatural. There's no reaction when a character is struck by an attack. The mage is pulling meteors to the ground with just a simple hand flick while looking at her book, it doesnt feel like she's doing something so extraordinary at all. I think that is the biggest thing which AoC lacks, and what has allowed Blade & Soul's and Black Desert's combat to be so satisfying. TL;DR: The movements in AoC look extraordinary but aren't based in reality and therefore draws away from the satisfaction of combat."

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU86nZR4kBw
  • unumunuunumunu Member
    edited August 2019
    Dodging needs tweaking, at least for mmo. Flying so far away feels very unintuitive, I'd say reduce it for around 20%. Ability to jump while crounching, or even better - depending on how long you hold space, you jump different height(for example like a channel action button, you jump while holding button, make it like 0.7s for full jump or so, you release sooner, you don't go as high and start falling), would help a lot while passing windows and stuff. (Also let crouch in air!)

    Moving mouse should not be off when having a map on.
    Same goes with dodging, while in dodge animation, you can't move camera and it feels uuuuuurgh.

    Hitboxes feel strange. Needs bit more work on it.

    Stamina - There's too little of it. Yes, I understand it's to prevent too much movement, but you could make it more interactive. Everything uses it, and after 2 actions you're dry.

    Blocking - better not to have on cooldown. It's unintuitive. Better make that it passively drains stamina PLUS blocking a hit drains a percentage of stamina. Would feel better.

    EDIT: More thoughts on stamina. Why not make it constantly regenerating? In current system you have to stop and wait for it to start regenerating. Better make it a constantly regenerating stat, where good players could grasp the rhythm (like fights usually happen). Of course you still could go rush, but after fast burst you would have to slow down and would not be able to use defenses - BALANCE.
  • Argentum401Argentum401 Member, Alpha Two
    - Client & server performance:
    The server performace was mostly okay but I got kicket out of sessions a few tunes without anny error
    notification, and sometimes I had small lags during combat which mad it a rather confusing fight for me.

    - Weapon & ability balance:
    I only testet the Game for about 3 houres but couldent really figure out whitch weapons where bustet, witch
    in my opinion is a good sign.
    Alsow I have to say that I enjoid fighting in the early time of a match way more because you didnt had
    enough stamina and damag to kill somene in one kombo which maid dodging way more important, whil in
    the late game it realy turnd out to be who was better at abushing ore prevent these ambushes.
    I would wish, that there were mor kombos with the current weapons, for examples if you timed to re-trigger
    attackmove at a specific point in the Animation to enter a different kombo chain.
  • Feedback time!
    In the ~10 games I played, I was unable to truly get a sense for the balance of the weapons and armor, other than the fact that I never saw a single person successfully do damage with a ranged weapon more than about 10 feet away from the target.
    It felt rather like there were extra steps when getting armor equipped. Weapons are just pick up and use, whereas armor have to be picked up, then equipped. Is the equipping time for realism or as a game mechanic to prevent people from hot-swapping mid-fights for functionally infinite armor?
    Potion drinking time felt FAR too long in a combat scenario. At no point mid-fight was there an opportunity to stop for a drink, since even in full 3 star armor and boots I was dead in about 5 hits from most weapons.
    The UI felt fairly intuitive, bugs notwithstanding, although it'd be fantastic if the cheat sheet you get in the loading lobby would be able to be toggled on and off in game as a reference.
    Most of the pop-up text should likely get a black border on the white letters. If users are facing a white or partially white background, some resolution on the text is lost, and it disappears pretty quick.
    Client side I didn't see much in the way of lag, (for reference, i5 / 16GB RAM / GTX 1080) however it felt like server lag was the cause of not a few of my deaths. Motion blur while turning and getting caught in a lag spike made me lose up to 10 seconds of game time regardless of graphics settings (started at max, and scaled down steadily until entirely on low to see performance differences).

    Summary: Enjoyable experience, a few tweaking points and some bugs to filter, but a good bespoke UI and some solid gameplay roots make for an enjoyable experience. Battle Royale isn't really my thing, but I look forward to testing more in the MMO space later.
    Good job, Intrepid.
  • GhostwheeIGhostwheeI Member
    edited August 2019
    First time Apocalypse tester and long time hardcore MMO player here (Played everything from Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, to WoW, Archeage etc since the 90s). After talking to a couple AoC reps (thanks Shaze and Greypelt) on Discord it seems this version is testing out the twitchy Action combat. 2017 was testing out the Tab targeting combat (what a mmo usually is). So I'll have to hold out for both together and see how it plays. Otherwise, everything seems fluid. There's no clunky movement where you're stuck in odd animations fighting. Also very little rubberbanding (due to lag). Wasn't fighting against any poor "coding" and minimal lag to fight others. It's definitely Vermintide style. Not my thing, but I do like the overall smoothness. Just not a fan of the Action combat in general(belongs in simpler MMOs or isometric styles). UI is pretty bad and everything is pretty unintuitive. Half of the buttons on the hotkey legend in game didn't seem to work. Armory says things are equipped and I clicked save(and save is always greyed out for some reason) but after asking around you don't actually get those weapons. Just access? You find them in the game world and pick them up like battle royale. So I'm not sure the point of the Armory. Also not sure of the point of the shop, adventure path, or quests. Nothings really explained. Do you keep things you buy in the shop for full release? Do you even get to use them in Apocalypse or do you have to find them and buying only allows you to equip them? Where are the quests in the game world? Anyway, just thinking out loud. Going to play a bit more and maybe update this.

    Update: There weren't any real bugs or glitches I experienced that weren't just unrefinement. Better than a Bethesda game already. A few nitpicky things I noticed -

    If you can't tab target with bows but mages can mark the ground and insta nuke you, then bows need some sort of reticle. And there was nothing telling me what range they can fire at. Can't see where the arrows were going or anything.

    Please make stealth great again :) Classic stealth where it's not timed or has some weird exception attached to it. Devs made it work in practically all the greats, you guys can too.

    No crashing but 2 drops(out of 10 or so rounds). Good performance otherwise. Steam version.

    My rig:

    i5-4690K @ 3.50GHz (4 CPUs)
    GTX 1080 6GB
    DDR3-1333 16GB

    50-60FPS.

    Take your time guys. Make this right. This game has A LOT of potential. A good MMO is worth the wait and will pay for itself in the end.
  • There is a massive problem in the input interface that keeps players from being able to change their forward movement option as part of the display covers the button
  • AudioAudio Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    The color of the arrow of our character's location on the map should be changed from white. It blends in too well and is hard to spot when on the go.
  • SayamiYukiyamaSayamiYukiyama Member, Alpha Two
    Weapon & ability balance

    After playing a good few matches and trying out a lot of different weapons and abilities, I still haven't been able to choose my favorite. Balancing doesn't seem to be an issue with me.
    Hit boxes feel a bit wonky
    I do think armor should be auto equipped (at least the first one you pick up) instead of having the extra step of opening the inventory. Feels a bit wonky having to do it the first time around.
    User interface

    The interface seems all right, but it could use some of the tweaks others have mentioned.
    Client & server performance

    I didn't have many issues with client and server performance other than being frozen and timing out of a match a couple times. After the second time I wasn't able to replicate it again so I cant say for sure why it happened.

    Overall, the game is feeling nice and I cant wait to see where it goes from here.
  • NyctaalfNyctaalf Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha Two
    I only had time to play two matches this morning (Tokyo), and overall it was essentially the same experience as February, but a bit better! I love the little Quarriors added to the lobby when everyone's waiting.

    The new screen where the armory, mounts, emotes, etc. is being improved was nice.
    I still think the UI looks not so good, but getting better! Maybe a little more pop, or dynamic movement within the UI would be cool.

    Regarding combat and fluidity, I was playing on 150 or so ping so it was a little laggy, but felt way better than in February. I will say that I still think it could be improved on (which I know you all are doing!), but my main focus was how the character felt when moving around in general and dodging. Still feels a bit light and at times odd. I know animation will get more passes, but just wanted to state that.

    Great work Intrepid. Not a huge fan of Battle Royales, so I really can't wait to test Castle Sieges, Horde Mode, and eventually the MMO.
  • TeylouneTeyloune Member, Phoenix Initiative, Hero of the People, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    edited August 2019
    After you learned the keybindings this (see image) is pretty much just taking up space on the screen and is in the way of me seeing things, it would be nice to have the option to toggle it on and off.
    Having the option to toggle it on and off would be great, because then i don't have to look at it, if i don't want to and in case i forget an important key i can just toggle it back on and take a look.
    unknown.png

    About the buttons here, i like that they are glowing and stuff to indicate if you can use something or not (showing cooldowns?) - just need to find a better spot for it on the screen, maybe let people customize their interface so they can decide where they want what on the screen.
    unknown.png

    About the Super Jump having this on holding control is not so good
    if it was holding control + space that would be better to ensure that you don't use it by accident - which happend to me quite a few times times, when i just wanted to duck/take cover behind something and suddendly i jump up into the air and get murdered cuz now everyone knows where i am at.
  • KyoukanKyoukan Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Positives:
    • Graphics look decent even on the lowest settings
    • Performance seems reasonably solid for a beta
    • No obvious bugs encountered during my session

    Feedback:
    • Experienced frame rate spikes when encountering new assets for the first time (I'm running off an NVME SSD, with 32gb RAM, and 11GB of VRAM (1080 Ti in SLI))
    • Ranged weaponry needs more visual feedback on hits/misses. Getting into fights felt like crapshoots outside of seeing damage numbers (did I overshoot, undershoot, etc)
    • Terrain traversal felt janky, like I was floating around
    • Would have liked more info on weapons/spells via tooltips (ideally real numbers, but even more generic terms like light/heavy damage would have helped some of the weapons)
    • Animations in general feel very alpha, so the combat didn't feel super satisfying
  • Hello,

    Without reiterating too much of what others have posted here, let me share my feedback. I tried to have fun with this test, but there were several persistent issues that kept leaving me more frustrated than elated. First, in the heat of combat, I found it incredibly difficult to gauge who was winning a 1-on-1 fight between myself and another player. If there is floating combat text, I honestly couldn't say that I noticed it at all. Fights are too fast, the screen moves too rapidly, and I'm already having to pay attention to my own cooldowns and stamina bar. In most situations, I was genuinely shocked when one of us died, because in the current state, at least for me, tracking my and my opponents armor / health is just too difficult given all of the other factors.

    Second is another combat issue, which others have stated. I sometimes have no idea if I have or have not hit a person. The hit boxes seem to be inconsistent, and the feedback for striking an opponent and being struck yourself is just not very noticeable. Timers on cooldowns are also not very visible, mana usage, etc. When you're playing a twitch game, you really want to focus less on having to stare at your cooldown bars, count the amount of tiny combat text you see randomly floating about, check your health armor bars individually, all the while maintaining count of your stamina to make sure you aren't trying to swing on empty. In my opinion, it's too many things to have to do and maintain manually. If you can make things more visible, have more alerts, and more action feedback, I do think that you could make the combat flow a bit more without having to change the way it works.

    Lastly, I can definitely agree that the graphics are gorgeous. Unfortunately, I was forced to use the lowest graphics settings AND play in 1080p (vs my 1440p monitor). My rig isn't new, but it isn't weak. I have a i7-4770K CPU @ 3.5GHZ, 8GB RAM, and a GTX 1080, so I can play MOST modern games at least at high or medium settings in 1440p. Despite bringing all of my settings down to low, I still was not getting more than 50-60 FPS, with 40 FPS more of the average, and many spikes down to 5-10FPS during flight and during combat. Perhaps there's a bit more optimization that needs to happen?

    Lastly,
  • If you invite your friend to a party and then leave the party it removes your friend from the friends list until you restart the game.
  • FreezmanFreezman Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    edited August 2019
    Weapons and abilities feedback
    Won't say too much about damage balance since I feel like playing for one day doesn't give you a good feel for the numbers. Abilities I will talk about.

    RANGED.

    * Wand:
    The wand's ability is too hard to see through when you get hit by it. Not only does the thin white cross-hair blend in with the bright yellow colors, it's even hard to see players in front of you. It's frustrating to deal with and lasts too long. It's basically a much better shortbow ability in terms of denying vision.

    Wand projectiles seem to be invisible.

    Something needs to be done with shooting the wand because it is still awful ever since spread was added to it. You have to be too close the enemy players to hit them with any consistency and at that point they just melee you. Maybe rolling away from attacks while using the wand in melee could be a thing but with desynch issues I don't see that happening (more on that in the performance section).

    * Everything else
    Everything else is fine, longbow has the slow reload lots of damage niche, shortbow and crossbow might be a bit too simmilair with the medium ranged + several shots before reload + utility ability niche (minus the fact that the crossbow ability isn't working for some reason). Potion launcher has the close range niche. Meteor has the long range aoe niche. All good and dandy.

    edit: shit, i forgot about the drifter. It's still garbage and only useful for it's ability in squads. The projectiles are still too slow and deal too little damage with how hard they are to hit at range. You'd think it's a weapon for people who cant aim cause it has an aoe basically, but you need to be very good at predicting enemy movement because it's so slow.

    MELEE.
    Most melee is useful and the abilities are decent.
    * Axe:
    The ability is just useless, people run around with full or close to full mana all the time, it's not even worth activating.
    * Stillblade:
    It seems like the most meh? Maybe it can be useful with some sort icy steps into still blade into run away and fire ranged combo. But why would you go through all that trouble when you can just 3-4 shot someone with a two hander?
    * Everything else:
    I'd say nothing needs immediate changes without seeing how the meta will develop once server are persistent.

    CHEST PIECES.
    * Poly:
    It's hot garbage.. The randomness and inconsistency of what you polymorph into makes this absolutely useless. My guildie transformed into grass in a house. I transformed into a rock in a house. If fixing the selection logic is too hard then maybe let us select what we poly into.
    * Darkpact:
    It's still garbage. The circles do too much damage, there is no reason to be taking hp damage to be outside of the circle for literally any period of time.
    * BULWARK:
    why would you take it?. There's enough things to hide behind in the world, the bright red glowing wall gives away your position instantly and people can be on top of you within seconds. If at the very least it completely enveloped, or lets say made quarter of a sphere to block out more than 1 direction then it could be useful. Whatever needs to be done, but with the current design there's just no reason to take it.
    * INVIS:
    It's op cause everything else is shit. . It's the only useful chest piece. Idk what else to say.

    LEG PIECES.
    Leg abilities are all decent and useful.
    _______________________________

    UI
    * Armor color rarity icon for abilities doesn't match the actual rarity of the pieces.
    eAmhwzS.jpg
    you can see in inventory the poly is yellow and arcanic is red, but above the hotbar they are reversed:
    R5c2PPt.jpg
    * Bring back names of items on the hotbar, when swapping between pieces it's hard to remember what you have all the time.
    * Bring back names on top of items in the world, there's no reason to force players to walk up to every single item, it makes looting more tedious than it has to be.
    * map during vortex is like, constantly blinking and changing opacity, during the vortex there's no need to have the map be see through, it's only a hindrance to navigation cause it's harder to see it.
    * the cursor appears when you open the map so you can't run properly with it open because you can't turn by moving the mouse.
    * the player icon on the map is white, just like all the buildings on the map, the player should stand out so we don't have to waste time looking for it.
    * in squads you dont see ready checks for your teammates, impossible to tell if you're in queue.
    * adding friends just isn't working, typed in the same names 10 times before it finally got through and was only able to friend 2 out of 3 people I sent requests to. Their requests to me were also not going through.
    _______________________________

    Performance
    * At least a 50% freeze rate per game on the steam client, game freezes and I can only close the client. (seems it got fixed by the end of the day, had several hours without freezes / crashes.)
    * It has been a while since the last tests but melee seems to feel worse. Yes, it's very vague and it's a "feel" thing, but it's there and most people who have tested before can probably say the same thing. Things just seem stiff. Hits don't connect when they should, desynch issues like this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4qqcxleOm_0&feature=youtu.be. I have 20 ms to the NA east server and my body gets teleported closer to the enemy player after his hit registers on me when I'm clearly far enough away from him on my screen to not take a hit. Frames for reference:
    wsu0jh5.png
    E9PdJFT.jpg

    _______________________________

    Other
    * the brown fog that spawns near the vortex is a hindrance when you try to land in high places like the wizzard tower and the elven tower, it blocks your view when it's near those areas and you cant navigate to windows / balconies properly.
    * there seems to be an issue where when trying to lunge the character performs a normal attack, other guildies reported a simmilair issue. no clue how what when why it happens.
    * vortex height seems to be lower than it used to be and it's a lot harder to get to the other side of the map even if you jumped out instantly, maybe the griffons are descending faster now? either way this means you can't get to where you wanna go sometimes unless you land and then run there. I think it was better before where you could land pretty much anywhere.
    * horse controls are wak, have wasd control movement and let us use mouse to look around without changing horse's running direction, no reason to have them both control where it's going. Or let us hold RMB to look around.
    * if you're playing near the storm it's impossible to see through it when the camera is behind the wall, it's just black. it used to be bad with the saturated red, now it's even worse.
    w4LPnEr.jpg
    * when crouching and using a pot, if you look up it shouldn't overwrite the healing with the heroic jump.
    * survival time is wak
    eQBWUdO.jpg
    * sometimes while catfall is active you will randomly take fall damage.
    * Some keybinds are plain missing from the client. Summon horse, summon griphon and block were all missing for me. In discord I was told they are at the very bottom but my settings just didn't scroll as far as their did. unknown.png
    * Fall damage is too sensitive. The height at which you take 1 damage is insanely small and it breaks invis. It would be better if the minimum damage was like 10 and the minimum height was idk, 3 floors.
    * Blocking needs to be changed somehow, currently it's only useful to flick a charge attack once because you win the stamina exchange that way. In every other scenario it is currently not worth using.
    * Dodge roll is kinda useless with how much stamina it requires while how little distance it provides.

    OTHER other
    * Please make jumps NOT take stamina, when you're fighting and you're out of stamina it would make for more interesting fights if you were not hindered in your movement.
    * BRING BACK CONSECUTIVE LUNGES IN THE AIR, IT WAS SO MUCH FUN
    PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
  • The most glaring issue that I am facing is FPS issues. With epic settings I am getting around 13 - 20 FPS but when I change my settings to anything else (especially low) it drops to 8 fps and just stays there.

    My computer is definitely not a high end PC but it can play games reasonable well on high settings. Usually getting around 40 - 50 fps.

    Here are my specs:
    CPU - AMD FX-8800P Radeon R7 - 4 cores - 2.10 GHZ
    RAM - 16 GB
    GPU - AMD Radeon R9 360
    DirectX version - 12.0
  • ElfcheElfche Member, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Whoever thought going straight to steam with this made a bad decision. It plays just as poorly if not worse than it did back in January/February, it's unfinished while being monetized, and there are still many people who don't understand the relation of apoc to the mmo, something that will only worsen with people who don't follow the project. Many bugs that were present and reported back in January have never been addressed and new bugs we hadn't seen last testing have appeared. As someone who religiously follows this game and sincerely hopes it will become an mmo I can play for years, I'm praying that the poor marketing, buggy gameplay, and misunderstadings regarding apoc don't seriously damage the future health of the mmo.
  • Can't even play because my cursor does not highlight anything if it is directly on it, can't even access settings to fix this issue, happens when the resolution is bigger then my screen.
  • T ElfT Elf Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    ok spent the whole time frozen in place till the corruption killed me after the new patch; also I couldn't view stats or leave the game. After I was back in lobby it wouldn't let me get the menu to quit the game. I finally had to control+alt+del to get out.
    eZC6mjP.gif
    Formerly T-Elf

  • CypherCypher Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    edited August 2019
    - User Interface AND Weapon/Ability Balance:

    1 - It occurred to me that I had the rarity tiers all wrong while playing and getting constantly obliterated by everyone I encountered. I did not realize blue was the worst level, and red was the highest. I thought something came below blue, and I also thought Yellow (which to me, being colorblind, looked Gold) was the highest. So I was content with blues, not realizing they are trash, and would try to seek out yellows, thinking they were the ultimate. Sure this is something I'd have figured out after hours of play, but there needs to be a colorblindness support, and there needs to be more clearly defined STATS on items so I could compare two swords of different colors and see which is actually better (and exactly how much better), for example.

    2 - Dodge is utterly useless. It eats a huge amount of stamina and doesn't even prevent you from being hit. The range on melee weapons and the speed of their attacks is so insane (plus they can lunge attack the SAME distance you tried to dodge) that you cannot ever dodge out of anything. It's useless. When someones on you with a melee weapon you just have to get into a swinging match and hope you have the better weapon.
  • CovfefeCatCovfefeCat Member
    edited August 2019
    Prepare for college thesis, sorry.

    -Weapon Balance

    1) 2-handed weapons feel like they do a bit too much damage, mainly Halberds. Also the amount of stamina consumption feels too high. It's very hit-or-miss-and-get-killed. You're often able to win fights in 2-3 hits with little to no counter-play so long as you get your opener. And if you don't...
    It isn't so much that I don't like the high risk high reward. It's just that sometimes even after getting a kill, you have no stamina to deal with others that may be nearby, and it is sometimes off-putting to destroy an opponent in melee combat without them noticing. In and of itself this isn't so much of a problem, until we look at the power gap between them and other melee weapons, which are often only used for skills and not their weapon arts or stamina efficiency. (Post edit: I keep forgetting that Block is now a feature, which would probably fix my entire issue if only I were to remember to use it. I would prefer block be reserved for Sword and Shield regardless)

    2) Drifter still feels like it needs some adjustments. The skill is fun but so incredibly niche that I never grab the item. There could be a major bug with it but I would never know because I have no reason to handicap myself with that weapon. Perhaps just increase the amount the projectile can curve? A lot of times your opponent can just side step the "homing missile" without even needing to waste stamina to dodge. Increasing the homing potential would make it great for forcing opponents to trade HP or use their stamina dodge rolling.

    3) A personal suggestion for wands, that perhaps we can see implemented into the MMO too. Right now wands do very little damage per hit despite being a really skill intensive weapon. Instead of buffing their damage, I would like to suggest that dealing damage with a wand apply a debuff to the target that increases the damage from subsequent wand attacks by x%. Let's say 10%, stacking up to 10 times just to be safe. The debuff can be a short (1.5-2 second) duration so that it falls off while recharging the Wand in the BR, but it would allow players who land consecutive shots to really feel rewarded for using a wand over just using a bow. The stacking debuff can be per-person or you could decide to make it universal so Squads can benefit. This would also allow the damage to ramp faster with a coordinated team both in Apoc and MMO if you plan on Wands functioning the same between the two clients.

    -Armor Balance

    1) Catfall used to be my favorite armor, but with the new Heroic Leap and being able to remount my gryphon it isn't as useful, obviously. I know you have your reasons for testing those, but I'd just like to point out over 10 hours of testing I've rarely seen Catfall being tested since we now have other (more dangerous, granted), ways of achieving similar results. As such maybe removing Catfall entirely from the drop table is a good idea, so people increased access to Blink and most notably Path of Frost, which I rarely see tested.

    2) Invisibility is not "invisible" enough. As Invisibility is now, the skill usually makes you EASIER to spot. It's almost as if your silhouette has a glow effect to it, so it is only useful in Marble buildings at a far distance. Anywhere else you tend to stick out more as your model is brighter than if you just wore dark clothing and hid in bushes or shadows. Note that I'm not suggesting true invisibility. Just reduce the silhouette a little more, or (asking for a lot here), make it so anyone outside of a certain meter radius can't see your model at all when the skill is active. Even at max view distance you can clearly see someone using invisibility (although it is effective at making headshots harder)

    3) Dark Pact might be bugged. It worked for the most part today, but I had one game where when we got down to the last 10 I was still taking 1 sometimes 2 damage per tick from the Corruption with it active. This is preferable to the 10 I would normally take, I just wanted to make sure this was intentional and not a new bug. It nullifies all corruption damage before it ramps up to 10 damage per tick, so it could be a 90% reduction for all I know.

    4) Polymorph might be bugged. Used it around 6 or 7 times today in different biomes and it always turned me into a crystal. Hoping it's just RNG at work, no one in Discord replied saying they had different results.

    -User Interface

    Nothing to add here, just want to officially note that the Hotkeys menu is currently bugged, with the top 2 sections stacking on top of each other. Has been stated in Discord but I wanted to note it here in case others do not.

    -Client and Server performance

    1) A few freezes and disconnects, the majority of which happened when I was dodge rolling inside of buildings or across what I would assume to be the "biome boundaries". Also got stuck inside of a few doors and windows while dodging/rolling and had to break my way out.
    Overall had better performance than last test, although I did see a lot of people rubber-banding and teleporting that I hadn't noticed before, although I was always watching them at-range with my bows. I suspect it has to deal with their distance from me and the server trying to cut back on the amount of "needless data" it is sending to our clients. Was that reflexive system implemented already? Just my theory, sorry to mislead you if that is not the case.

    2) Didn't have any ranged hits that I felt should have or should-not-have hit. Had a few melee hits with Lifebearer Halberd where I got the sound that I landed a hit, but then I died before the hit actually registered on the server. Possibly latency spikes, however it only happened with my melee hits and not ranged, thus suspicion.

    3) When I equipped Sword and Shield, my shield was never visible, however my sword was. Using the Arcane skin. Did not think to test other skins, apologies.

    4) My cosmetic choices would often fail to save changes, or more often would revert to Default after a game concluded.

    5) Water in the pre-game lobby (Divine Gateway) doesn't act like water. Looks and acts like a static texture instead of part of the environment.

    6) Would receive damage notifications despite never taking damage. I suspect it to be caused by someone firing in my direction with a Hit-detection weapon but terrain being in the way of myself and them.

    7) Trying to sprint while crouched should cancel crouch and let you start sprinting. Just a habit from other games where sprint always cancels it, I've gotten caught off-guard by the new Heroic Leap + remount combo because I can't reprogram myself to intentionally toggle crouch off before starting to run away or dodge roll.

    8) Couldn't find Sandal shrine. 0/10 misleading.

    Thank you for your time, and for allowing us to participate in this test. :)

    Edit: I know this doesn't follow the Bug Report rules. I will slowly try to add them one by one to bug report, but it's late and easier to post here than reading through all the current bug reports and going 1 by 1 to make sure I'm not making duplicate threads. Apologies.
  • One last bug (for now). If you start moving right after interacting with a Horse, it fails to add the horse to your Hotbar despite de-spawning it. Have to stand still for a second or two til the light changes so you know you are safe.
  • DawgersDawgers Member, Alpha Two
    Ok, so I've played enough to feel that I can give constructive and informative feedback

    Weapons -
    They all feel solid and in the right hands they are all deadly, they give a good variety of gameplay and none feel more overpowered than the other.

    Client Performance -
    I played around a little and found with my current Rig that running on Epic is butter smooth. but if I run on lower settings it starts to become a stuttering mess. There might be something I was missing though.But otherwise a very solid client that holds up to all the fx and rendering required.

    Server Performance -
    Now this is a tough topic as I live in New Zealand and I am used to 200+ ping servers. But every now and then when you have a fair fight and then lag kicks in it feels like a right kick up the bum as to where you live. As of this test Singapore had 250 ping, NA East 230 ping and EU at 310 ping. Being excited to see any big game have Sydney servers has always been in my dreams. But as I do not know the current plans for the ANZ community we can all across New Zealand and Australia wish to have a dedicated Sydney server

    Thanks for allowing us to wreak havoc on the servers and hope all goes well :)
  • Just a couple nit picks
    Visually I feel a lot of the lighting effects like weapons, fire and lighting in general are quite bright. I tried to adjust brightness to see if it helped but it didnt do much.
    The map lags when in the first travel form before jumping out of the orb thingy
    The keybinding disappear`s for the horse once collected.
    The combat still feels a little clunky I cant tell if its because of the stamina capping

    Overall I have to say I am happy with what the team has came up with and this makes me very excited for the MMO I love the little details put into making this such a beautiful game (The animation for wand reloading <3 )
  • rozzersrozzers Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    From my first game session a few improvements definitely need to be made.

    1. In the shop, the player avatar rotation needs to be smoother and more sensitive. I currently have to move my mouse half way through the screen before i get to see the back of my avatar.

    2. I should be able to key bind in match. I wanted to change a few key binds but was sad i could not. :(

    3. I have a GTX 970 and 16gb of ram. I can run fast action paced games at a smooth 60 fps. Unfortunately in apocalypse, even at low settings, I would drop to 10-20 fps for a moment several times in a 10 minute period.
    Optimization is needed badly in my opinion. I fear my system would stress in the MMO if these current optimizations were live.

    4. On the value for audio settings for example, I should be able to click the bar in-between the arrows to adjust. Clicking on only arrows feels like I'm in the 90s.

    Will ad more later, the more I play.
  • TalentsTalents Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha Two
    Any chance we can get treasure hunts like the Sandal Shrine in the future such as during future BR tests, alphas, or betas? Even though I wasn't the one to find it, I still had a ton of fun searching for it.
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This discussion has been closed.