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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.
Feedback Thread - August 20 Play Test
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I wish more of the abilities were instant abilities like the staff instead of the buff/debuff abilities that augment your next attack.
I was really happy to see the block ability added to everyone but felt the cooldown was a little long.
I don't know if I like how you can't melee when you are out of stamina. I like how it punishes spamming and rewards patience but wish it didn't prevent me from doing my intended action. I wish the punishment was something like a slower melee animation and/or decrease in damage.
Didn't get to play much, but I dont think the camera smoothing disable did anything, it still felt like it was being smoothed.
A major issue I experienced had to do with changing the display settings. I was unable to change settings starting the game, I was unable to access the settings button in the lobby due to it being cut off, and only once I joined a game could I access the settings menu to change it. I currently have a 1280x1024 Resolution monitor if that helps.
Still will take more than 1 twelve hour test for players to adjust to the new system, I wonder how the Block ability will do me and other players get used to using it.
The only feedback I have is Catfall boots, when their Cooldown finishes and you are still in the air, if you fall you take fall damage which is kinda lame. Was hoping you make it that when you are on your last jump and Catfall has run out you still don't take fall the damage then after that, you'd take fall damage. Should be possible with a if command to check if in air then immune to fall damage until on the ground again.
The most important feedback I can give though is the tooltips. They are detailed in their descriptions but there are no numbers attached to it. I have no clue how much damage each weapon or ability does etc etc. You need numbers in your tooltips.
Incrase the time in the last 2-4 to by 50 or 100% time so we have time to find eachother and fight it out so we dont get 10-12 ppl in the last 50m circle.
We are here to test the combat system not the hiding system.
LET US HAVE FUN IN THE END
Image:
Combat: Nothing was necessarily alarming with regards to the flow of combat. I particularly ran into a lot of spots where I would end up blinking into areas I couldn't get out of (especially with the roofs of buildings at the middle of the map).
User interface: (during the game) There were multiple instances where setting up armor/weapon ability key-binds would cause those abilities to actually be cast while I am still looking at the input/key-bind menu (Doing this mid-game would obviously put that spell on cooldown and that occasionally put me in bad situations for combat)...
In addition, changing around the key-binds occasionally caused more than one ability to be cast simultaneously (for example: both chest and boots abilities being cast after I click 'e').
Also I could not find a way to hide the UI that showed the empowered jump, block, dodge etc... and it seemed obstructing. (If there was a way to just hide that UI without removing all the UI that would be dope)
Last thing, the empowered jump "CTRL" would not update after I changed it on the keybind.
Server performance (NA): Seemed decent, I loaded in kinda quick around launch so
Overall I enjoyed it a lot and I cannot wait to see how the MMO develops, you guys are awesome
First off: Traversing the non city terrain. I feels kind of unpolished. Some area's I just get stuck behind nothing. This mostly happens when traversing up hill. It seems you are hindered by something as small as a footstep and now you have to traven around it. This might just be me I am always taking the shortcuts and traveling off patch. But this should feel more fluent.
Second: The crouching animation really bothered me visually. When a human (or Humanoid) crouches to stay hidden we don't do a full but back squat movement like we need to poop. We rather go down on one knee or duck under. GREAT example for this is Aloy from Horizon zero dawn. I would really advise you to look at her way of moving in stealth. It feels natural and within limits of a way a human body should move.
Third: Weapon balance. I had a few fights where I really had fun running around trowing down spells trying to blow the enemie and everyone else up. (Didn't succeed but beyond the point). But in other instances I just got 1 or 2 shotted by a claymore from someone jumping a great distance with the LB + RB attack. I feel like casters do not get the range advantage they need In my opinion and the jump with melee weapons could be reduced in range. Also mimum of 2 hits to die would seem nice?
Spells: I didn't know if it was possible to switch spells when I binded one to my C button. I couldn't seem to overwrite it with another one. This would be nice.
Interaction: When interaction with E on objects or charging up your spel to bind it, drinking potions ect. The loading bar should be mid screen or somewhere more noticable then on the lower bar in the middle. It looked nice but it forgot its function it seems. I want to see this mid screen so I don't have to search for it.
Last: The zoom on some of the weapons is really intense and didn't feel like there was a toggle between x4 and x8. My crossbow felt like a sniper but It hindered met more than it helped me.
1.Weapon & ability balance:
1.1 Damage is way to high. Please consider reducing it by 15-35%. Players are unable to react if I lunge into them and make few hits what happens in 1-1.5sec they are already dead. Really not fun when there is no real fight but first to charge wins.
1.2 TAB blocking (parrying) stamina drain makes sense but same stamina drain on shield skill wich is ability of an item makes no sense and atleast should be reduced.
2. User interface:
2.1. No soundtrack while puting login and pass feels wierd.
2 2 Region select indication feels wierd the box gets colored but its not intuitive to understand if you enabled or disabled the region.
2 3 Graybox transitions with text when server is found and game is about to start in random place is wierd and feels very unfinished.
2.4 After equiping cosmetic having to press save feels not intuitive and sometimes progress is not saved. (Show armor option was not working ingame).
2 5 Item controls (equiping armor/boots, drinking potion) ingame feels unintuitive its wierd having to select with 12345 and then ecknowledge action with left mouse click.
2.6 After mounting a horse A and S changes from STRAFE/MOVE to left or right to ROTATE/LOOK to left and right.
2.7 Footstep sounds duplicates or not present.
2.8 Screenshake feels too strong and spikey.
2.9. Melee combat still feels floaty when fighting. In general all movement feels floaty when you look to other players from the side. Its like they move abit longer distances than their animation lets them, feels like there is no weight/connection/feedback with ground.
3.Client & server performance:
3.1 Had few crashes and freezes but overall game runs way smoother than before.
3.2 Rubberbanding is still an issue sometimes.
3.3 Graphical changes is overhelmingly amazing from last test but sometimes it feels blurry and lacks sharpness.
You guys doing amazing job, cant wait for next testing session!
Already posted about not being able to re-keybind the forward button.
I tried all visual settings to see if that line would become accessible at some point but alas.
Visual settings: when pressing cancel during the countdown timer, the ui layers stack onto each other:
I found the pickup area for objects a bit small. Had to fiddle (and waste precious time) to find the exact area where the object info would pop up (again) so i could grab it.
I liked the time that it took for me to try outrun the inferno. You can't, but it still took a while and it moved just slow enough so that i kept trying.
Even when i always play mage or healer, i felt the only 'worthy' weapons were melee, tho i did like the bows. Just wasn't that great an aimer with them.
I found it difficult to use the abilities that came with the armor, but maybe that's because of my azerty keyboard where some keys just didnt do anything.
If there was a "look behind" key, i didn't find it.
What are the rules for naming? Can't be that there were so many players that almost all names i tried were gone straight away.
All in all I was pleasantly surprised about the world, though the movement (especially uphill) still felt clunky (then again it's alpha). Tone down a bit on the shiny effects ;-).
2) a look around feature while mounted or unmounted would be great. I believe this should be locked at the natural swivel as a humans head so if I'm stalking someone I can see that they are runnign straight but also that they are looking around. obviously cant look directly behind you its physicly impossible. there should always be a blind spot!
3) I have a french azerty keyboard and was unable to use the numbers 1234 ect they represent 2 sets of symbols eg &é"' is 1234 unless I press shift or have caps lock on. even when I did press caps they still do not work.
4)issue with binding a mouse key or maybe it was just the cat boots as I couldnt use them. but had no issues with other bits.
5) NPC animals walking on air when the floors have been destroyed lol... also couldnt kill them
Games looking great I'll definately be buying
thankyou and keep up the great work
however on the enviroment side :
Sunlight angles and reflections are nice
Grass animation looks nice (overshadow not so much)
wind sounds are very well synced with gusts and area and in line with background effects
Tree Trunks need a lot of work on details (they look like something in duke3d from 1999)
Rocks need a polish and more details
hope to see the horde/mmo test sessions soon !
- Make the white circle brighter, it was impossible to see where it is when the zone is moving, is it even showing at this time?
- Change the colour of the player mark, white is hard to see on all the white structures on the map
Interface/Gameplay:
- Change the Colour of the Red Items, they can easily be confused with the red potions.
- Explanation what the orange Shield does if you hold LeftControl, none of me or my friends figured it out.
Bug Mainmenu:
- Resolution 2560:1080 : Some Buttons in the Settings are not working
All in all it was a very good test and i had much fun to play! Unfortunately the timeframe was during the night for us europe players, maybe the next one could be 24h and with Duo's & Squads of course!
the proposal in particular is more reliability with the block button. it honestly barely worked. with the block animation when it did work, the stamina use was far too high for simply holding up your weapon to block damage. the drain needs a heavy nerf to bring that more in line and allow you to continually have a chance with the combat. under the attacks, the stamina use is far too big, and standing still and waiting a couple of seconds to regen stamina isn't really an option when someone wants to hit you in the head with a mace. of course i expect the stamina use to be higher with attacks, but literally half the bar and with 2 swings of a normal attack you're exhausted is a bit excessive. light attacks, or normal attacks at this time, should use a smaller amount of stamina, the heavy attack or 2nd ability should definitely be higher but not at half the bar either, it's too excessive.
the other issue in particular is running as opposed to normal jogging. the sprint animation and speed is barely noticeable. sure we don't want usain bolt, but why sprint when you'll get there just as quickly just running normally? a small increase to the sprinting speed would be a great addition too.
most of the issues i found were stamina and speed, but i think weapon damage is too high, especially when you have to stand still to drink potions which is fair, but a bit hard in combat. one or two hits though is a bit harsh, though until stamina is adjusted down in it's use, this one can't be moved yet. to really test the flow of combat that needs to be slightly changed as well.
i still think the game has great promise and i'm seriously itching for whatever changes you do so i can see the product grow. but the speed of death, especially when i think people found a way to circumvent the teaming issue has to adjust a bit i think to get the most out of the tests and find any other corners that need a tweak. keep it up guys!
The Silencer has a too big hit radius, I got killed while standing on his side while someone jumpattacked forward.
-User interface:
The horse has no bind option in the keybindings menu, i believe. I looked for a few minutes but i could not find it.
You loose your stamina, if you crouch and drink a flask at the same time, ridiculously fast, so fast infact that you cant even drink the potion before you run out of stamina.
Rhe settings menu UI in the keybinds section, the combat title bar was overlapping with some keybinds which resulted in not being able to change them.
Keybindings are hard to adjust on Azerty keyboards, the whole settings mess up completely. The mousewheel up and down couldnt be assigned to other keys.
When trying to zoom in and aim on moving players it was impossible to land a hit unless you had some luck. There was some rubber banding and some sort of lag (stuttering or something).
FPS wise on my side the game ran good, (gtx 1080ti + ryzen 7)
My friends and I were really keen to playing the BR and help test out the combat for the MMO.
However the almost 200ms ping that we had to the AP server meant the game played horribly.
Most of our group ended up deciding not to bother finishing to install the game after seeing the first few of us lagging through games.
I wish I could give more helpful feedback but unfortunately I was barely able to play the game and so judging balance was practically impossible.
The shield is visible on your arm in a REALLY small version, it is only really shown when you activate the skill.
I had the same problem, until i saw that the armoury actually also shows the small version right next to the actual shield.
I had no performance issues what so ever, only the freezing thing with eventually got fixed.
There was also some problems with getting queued up but that solved itself fairly quickly.
Also i found the sandal shrine so I'm really happy with this test.
Didn't have enough games to test X vs Y, but overall I would prefer a longer time to kill. RPG battles are ideally epic back-and-forth duels. The battles here were almost always someone getting dunked in a second, or someone getting chased down. Actual battles were a few seconds.
A better place to test this kind of balance could be a deathmatch, where the battles are much more frequent, so it's easier to test these things.
Simplistic. Feels more "in development" than "minimalistic". I'm afraid I'm not an artist so I can't say how to improve that.
I do like the health/mana section being front and center, though. It's never nice having it hidden off in the corner somewhere.
Encountered 2 issues:
1. Random, sudden disconnect back to the main menu. There was no feedback to say what had happened.
2. Game froze up. Couldn't see any other players on-screen so i don't know if the connection broke. Particle effects and ambience sounds still flowed normally, but character froze mid-run.
General feedback
1. Please do not do another BR game upon release. I'm excited for a modern mmorpg - from the promised node system to the story of this beautiful world. Having the combat from this test would be amazing and even have BR as a pvp game mode within the world - but don't make it a seperate released game, please.
2. Please tweak the animations and sounds. It might be subtle to some but it would be prevalent throughout the whole game. Apex Legends and Fortnite both have high mobility, but Apex handles it much better because you can feel it. You know when you've been shot, when you wall ride or land from a height. Every impact is felt and it has a very consistent impact on how immersive the game is. In fortnite, when you get hit, the screen flashes a little and the health bar goes down. It's easy to not realise how often you get shot because your character's still bouncing around merily, barely any indication of getting hit and then you drop dead. I found the same in this game. There would be fighting, a few numbers would appear, but other than looking at the health bar there was very little indication from the world and my character that I was actually getting hit. Then I, or they, explode with loot. It's just not all that... satisfying. Characters are feeling just a bit too... floaty at the moment.
In any case, just to round off with some positives: It's fucking a gorgous world, animations for the attacker are pretty nice and I LOVE what you're doing with wands and magic. Never found the horse, by the gryphon was nice and I am weirdly in love with the "flying through the clouds" experience at the start of every match that is... goddamn sublime.
Regarding combat and movement, I think it’s a good start, although a lot of the animations feel very floaty, specifically the melee attacks and the lunging attack. When you are hit by or hit an enemy, there doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of impact or an attack going on. I have a feeling that this will likely be fixed naturally, as the game becomes more polished.
Movement was pretty good, although I felt like improvements like making movement more tactile (similar to how World of Warcraft’s running feels, or for rolling, trying to capture that fluid smooth motion of Dark Soul’s rolling) can benefit the game a lot.
One big edit that I think can aid the game is (forgive me if I missed this as a control) a lock-on or targeting button, perhaps the middle mouse key. Being able to lock onto an enemy could make melee duels more entertaining in my opinion, allowing for focused duels, or in team fights, focused attacks through smart targeting management. Additionally, I thought fights were too short for the battle royale. I always won fights where I ganked the person in melee range, but in all instances, it was hard to tell how well my opposition and myself were doing. I was always surprised when one of us died. I think battles could be more entertaining if all of the players had more health, blocking was made more frequent and more of a fluid timed motion. Poorly timing a block could make your block less effective, causing you to take a higher percentage of damage than you would with a well timed block or a perfect block. Perhaps a perfect block could drain your opponent’s stamina a bit or cause you take very little damage. Blocking that resembles this should be quick, but have less room for error, rewarding players who read their opponent’s attacks well enough to time their block. I’d personally rebind it to right mouse button if blocking was at this pace, but the great thing about mmos is the ability for players to configure their controls however they’d like.
You can likely tell that I’m of the opinion that an active combat system should be fluid, tactile, and well paced. The combat should be easy to learn but difficult to master, awarding players who have taken the time to hone their skills. I think you guys have a great foundation and team . There’s a lot of work to be done, but with the soul that this game already has, I have no doubt that you’ll create a great active combat system in time.
On a less negative note, I think your world design is incredible and I can’t wait to see more of it. The world is already looking great and the game is in very early stages. Additionally, I haven’t had as much fun dropping into a battle royale as I had in this game. Flying seems to have a great feeling that will likely only improve in time, I can’t wait.
Thank you guys for all of the hard work you’re putting in. Don’t get discouraged by all of the naysayers, open pre-releases always have a tendency to make people impatient and upset. I can’t wait for further news and releases.
Performance:
Very good, no fps drops @ I7 8700k + GTX1070
Ping: 140ms from Germany
Issues:
- I can not define hot key's in the settings input area, e.g I can't select the 5. Button from my mouse
- Not enough feedback in GUI for users, sometimes I just waited and nothing happend, but I was not sure if the game crashed or they was just waiting times
- the lables inside the settings gui should have an margin to the right(maybe 3px ?)
It was a very nice Apoc round! I am hyped!
_
Kroseida
I also felt two handed weapon attacks were a bit over powered. Not insanely op, just a little bit.
I couldn't hear footsteps. I had the volume all the way up and still couldn't hear any so was often surprised attacked by heavy two handed openings.
Stamina drained too fast.
I downloaded the client from ashesofcreation.com and after restarting my computer to install the Microsoft package the game would not install. Saying i need a bootstraper in order to install. However, it was fixed after i deleted the Intrepid Stuidos folder and redownloaded the game installer and ran it again.
Wasnt able to map dodge to my mouse 4.
Thank you for the opportunity to play Apoc again. Can't wait to play it again
- UI was better, at least for the BR portion. I wonder whether or not this will translate well to an MMO setting where you (hopefully) have more than just three abilities. I'm sure the UI for the inventory system will keep the same style, but look generally different when you have a full inventory of MMO stuff.
- Not sure if many people tried this, but I was able to get to some interesting spots using the Heroic Leap and a Longbow. Some people really never found me and it made for some easy kills. I might suggest toning down the height of the Leap so that you can't just fly everywhere. I know this isn't really planned to be part of the MMO, since flying mounts are supposed to be extraordinarily rare, but for the BR it might be a bit excessive.
- Combat is a bit different to get used to, with the little 'hit-stun' type thing whenever you strike someone in melee. I personally like it better than the emotionless combat from earlier. HOWEVER, with even a little bit of lowered framerate, it makes combat extremely difficult to keep track of and aim properly.
- Weapon balance seemed alright. I think people used the Potion Launcher a lot more this test, for whatever reason, but it didn't seem too strong to me.
- Once the parry/block feature was fixed after it was temporarily not working, it was FANTASTIC! It takes stamina to use over time, but each block doesn't drain any stamina or deal any damage to you. It adds another layer to combat, and I can see if being super useful in both the MMO and the BR mode. Gives it a little bit of a Blade and Soul feel, with that.
- It felt like they made the horizontal hitbox on melee weapons considerably smaller, so that took some time to get used to. Since people move around a lot, combat was sometimes just two people flailing at each other with no results.
That's what I've got! Overall, I'd rate it about an 8.5/10. For a combat-based test, it succeeded in improving the flow and feel of combat across the board. Some elements could still use a bit of polishing as they transition more into the MMO itself, since certain things don't translate quite as well to PvE combat.
Question though, simply because I didn't get the opportunity to test this myself: Are you able to use one weapon's ability, switch to another weapon mid-combat, and use that new weapon's ability as well? That's something I didn't find myself trying since combat could get pretty hectic.
The animations are unpredictable, some lunge forward some stay where you are. You also can't really aim your direction at all like you can with your first melee attack. I'm suggesting we get rid of locking or make each animation similar in its impact so you can control your attacks still when you are in the animation lock.
Also maybe reduce the stamina cost for animation locked attack. If the first attack costs the same stamina as the animation lock attacks, what is the point of using animation locks attacks considering the first attack gives you far more mobility?
Also in the hotkeys, I could not find Horse to custom bind. Don't remember seeing any of the new commands actually in my hotkeys.
Yes you can but kinda dangerous while you are in melee.
Problem 1: Stamina (as it was in the test) was highly annoying. It felt like one could barely do anything.
Problem 2: Ranged fights had a decent duration / "thrill of the hunt" but melee fights felt very much like "who first gets 1-2 lucky swings in wins" or "armor seems to not do anything" (even though of course it does).
Problem 3: Hard to get into mechanics/hit boxes etc for first time players. I guess the tutorial function will take care of that in the future but maybe also some graphical elements (e.g. light-trail after swords etct to better see range) might also be an option
Desync/Freezes were rampant for me, but you are aware of that issue anyhow.
Nice to have would be: Smoother fight animations, more balancing of skill power, a way to e.g. "climb" over chest-hight or a little higher obstacles, faster horses, action combat key combinations ;-)