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.
Feedback Thread - August 20 Play Test
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Weapon & ability balance
I'll do this with a 5 star rating system, starting with melee weapons.
5/5:
-Bonecrusher: Hits hard with a deadly ability. I got 2 kills from beyond the grave with it.
-Thundering Mace: Low stamina cost paired with it's ability gives the most sustained DPS for melee.
4/5:
-Lifebringer: Nice wide strikes make it pretty deadly. Life steal is nice, but didn't seem to do much.
-Greatsword of Haste: Increased mobility means less stamina spent rolling.
3/5:
-The Silencer: May hit hard, but it's ability means little after they used their ability. Could it cancel abilities?
-Spiritpierce: Not sure it it's ability did much, but it was another wide reaching weapon.
-Archmage's Companion: I never used it, but its ability seems cool.
2/5:
-Stillblade: Seemed pretty generic and it always got swapped out for something else. Never tried the ability.
1/5:
-Paladin's Might: Heard it was garbage so I never used it. If you could block with it without having a block cooldown and/or reduced stamina cost for blocking, then it might be good.
0/5 (if not worse):
Bronze (starting) Axe: Having to fight with this against anything else meant you basically weren't fighting and you were given a death sentence. If it had a really fast attack speed and being highly skilled with melee could make up for its low damage to be on par with a blue weapon, that would have been fair.
Now for ranged weapons (but I'm a bad shot, so take my comments on the bows with a grain of salt):
6/5:
-Firefrost: Yup, it's that good. a red potion launcher and a bit of distance against any melee is an auto win if you get direct hits with the projectiles. I never used (or needed) the ability, but I imagine slower targets die even faster. I'd have to suggest making the potions explode sooner rather than instantly upon hitting an enemy to make it more balanced.
5/5:
-The Drifter: I haven't seen the projectiles track targets like I heard, but it's still pretty deadly at short range.
4/5:
-Wand of Light: even though it's accuracy was nerfed, it's still pretty solid at short range. I never used its ability, but I got hit with it once and it REALLY should be toned down and have a reduced duration.
3/5:
-Longbow of Miasma/Nightfall: Abilities are fairly similar and DPS is comparable. Both are solid if you have good aim.
2/5:
-Grimoire of the Fallen Sky: I found it hard to use, but it seems to inflict good damage. Seems most practical if you're on the high ground, but not nearly as much at ground level.
1/5:
-Crossbow of Revealing: Zooms in WAY too much for a rolling hills type map. Its ability, I think, should have a really short (like, 5-10 second) cooldown to be really practical.
Other ability feedback:
-Horses: Having a mount is great. You can escape danger or charge into battle with a horse. It's too bad there were so few, but becoming much more visible to other players balanced out this issue a bit.
-Gap Close Attacks: Amazing for mobility since they could also act as a double jump if aimed at an upwards angle mid-jump. It might be a bit much though, since the bigger weapons could send you pretty far upwards. I'd have to recommend considering making it usable on the ground only.
-Heroic Leap: I almost never used it since Gap Close attacking upwards or a horse was plenty of mobility in most cases. One exception would be if you had to go up a steep cliff to escape the storm. Also, it's kinda funny that the heroic leap charge up looks kind of like your character's trying really hard to go to the bathroom.
User interface
In a word, it was adequate. It would have been nice if the sub menus had a "go back" or "close" button and really nice if the abilities had a seconds countdown on their icons to show their exact cooldown durations. It also would have been nice if the "hold this button to interact" icon on chests and horses could be animated during interaction instead of on the character status bars, where it was easily missable. Having a progress bar at the lower middle of the screen is another option.
Another suggestion is to have status effect popups that say/suggest things like "you're bleeding from a bonecrusher attack, stand still to avoid damage!" Finally, as a side note, Apex Legends has a "players in queue" tracker and having one for the next public AoC beta test would be sweet to give players an idea of when the next match will start.
Client & server performance
You probably already know there was a number of crashes/freezes for people and that fixing said issue is a good top priority. I went through 3 or 4 freezes personally during the 8-10 hours I played. Other than that, I only had a few hiccups during stable gameplay overall, so performance should be pretty solid once the crashes get fixed. I only played on low graphics with my GTX 970, so I couldn't say how good high graphics are handled with the recommended specs.
Dodging and blocking seemed a little off. This partially comes from the stamina issues people are mentioning quite often, but both of these mechanics add a HUGE layer of depth to melee combat if they're executed properly.
Blocking:
- It felt good to block, but the short duration and the huge stamina consumption to hold it made it a bit awkward to use in a real fight. Additionally, you had to be angled perfectly at an attacker to block their attack. With how quickly people move around, it made it difficult to use.
- It felt like there wasn't much 'oomph' when you blocked an attack though. There was no special sound effects or noticeable visual effects, and if it weren't for the floating text, I would have no idea an attack landed as opposed to being blocked. Maybe a heavier, more metallic 'clang' sound would be good for blocking an enemy weapon? The parry sound effect from Sekiro was a little exaggerated, but it felt meaningful and powerful to do it. Could be a good inspiration to work from.
- if there is an animation for when an attack is blocked, it wasn't noticeable enough in my opinion. This could also translate well for boss monsters (big stuff that it doesn't make sense to be able to block) since blocking one of their attacks could fling you backwards and stagger you for a few moments. That would really make combat against monsters or bosses feel more immersive.
- I think the lunge distance being greatly reduced would fix this somewhat. I noticed that 2h weapons had a farther lunge distance, but you just fly so far forward that it makes it really difficult to control where you're going or to predict where an opponent will go. Also, basic attacks would lunge slightly forward to strike a fleeing opponent. Making movement as a whole a little more consistent and predictable between actions would inevitably make the block feature much more useful
- I think block should not have such a long cool down, and should drain half as much stamina per tick. HOWEVER, blocking an attack drains a certain amount of stamina. Additionally, I believe a having an attack blocked should drain some stamina (making blocking a more critical mechanic for surviving in melee as opposed to a wet noodle slapping fight). These changes would make it important to time your blocks well to protect yourself, but holding it for too long can drain your stamina somewhat quickly
Dodging:
-It does not provide any sort of protection from attacks, and drains a lot of stamina. Although I understand why it shouldn't give you complete immunity to damage for the duration (Guild wars 2 has this and it made PvP unbearable for me personally), it feels like a lackluster use of stamina as opposed to simply lunge attacking for more distance.
-I would suggest slightly lowering the stamina cost as well as the dodge distance (thus keeping melee combat a little more tight and less floaty). In exchange, I would recommend having dodge reduce damage taken by 65% for the duration. This means you're still taking damage from something that hits you, but it makes it worthwhile to use dodge as your preferred method of escaping a bad situation.
I'd love to hear what other people think about these, as they felt underused and mildly underwhelming in their current state. Translating these updates mechanics over to the MMO will make the combat feel much more than just slapping a monster and blocking whenever it attacks. Since we don't know exactly how many abilities/skills we will have during the MMO, we need to make sure that the combat fundamentals are interesting and fun.
Combat seems better than December build... arrow combat ect....
need to loosen the lock on melee combat animation a little. Only had one disconnect from a game and played around six hours...
One last thing is that when loading into the starting area I could see the base model character and everything was frozen for like 2 seconds then everything would load in and it would be fine... possibly just add a loading screen like 3 seconds longer to cover up loading assets into the game?
The Ui needs improvement though am guessing alot is place holder at this point...
Would like to see larger inventory as well and maybe objects in game that are used to repair armor like a potion instead of the F1 button.---
Good improvements from December ... adding in some little critters ect was good to see... overall graphical fidelity and improvement to textures, water and general environment was very positive... I downloaded from the website as well as am on west coast with a really good connection so possibly why i did not have any connection issues to west coast server.
- Concast grade packet loss. 'Tis a horrible company well known for shit service at extortionist prices.
- Low server tick rate. It felt like the server was working at 20Hz or less at points, leading to micro-stutters in movement and faulty hit registration. This would definitely create a feeling of jerkiness.
- Root animations. There may be some sliding in the animations or perhaps they're too snappy in movement -- these can also lead to it feeling like the PC is jerking about.
Beyond the jerkiness I also felt the first LMB attack of one-handers was far too short in forward movement. When I swing my weapon, I expect the Longsword R1 of Dark Souls: a lunging step forward followed by a half step for the followup swing. What APOC has is the inverse, the big movement is on the second swing while the first is almost stationary. In combat, it leads to me overestimating my reach on initiation and wasting stamina.Weapon abilities could stand to be activatable mid-swing, as they have no animations of their own. It feels unresponsive to only be able to activate them from idle. Else, give them activation animations so it feels right to need to activate them from idle.
Your changes to the Wand of Light are interesting. It's definitely hitscan now, which I said I detested in earlier tests on ranged weapons, but the Wand has significant firing delay and even more significant damage drop off, so I'm actually glad it's hitscan. The fire delay makes it incredibly difficult to hit enemies at range, and even if you do, the Wand deals a measly 6 damage. Meanwhile it shines up close with rapid fire and 20-30 damage per hit. May want to change the ADS function to a charged shot, one which consumes more ammo but has less drop off and maybe a projectile? Something to make the Wand viable at long range.
The Stillblade is underpowered and the Spirit Pierce is overpowered. Stillblade's slow on hit is mismatched with a short weapon, as it makes the debuff difficult to apply and also capitalize on. It would be ideal to slow the opponent and then use your weapon's superior reach and now superior mobility to stay out of harm's way. But it's a relatively short one-hander. Spirit Pierce's stamina drain is overpowering in melee combat. Stamina is used both to attack and defend, so if a Spirit Pierce user gets the initiative, the weapon ability ensures their opponent has 0 stamina while the user always has enough to attack. It's essentially a stunlock to death.
The Greatsword of Haste's ability was nerfed by the switch to root animations. You can't dance in and out of range as effectively anymore. I won't comment whether this is good or bad for the health of the game, but I can say I enjoyed dancing in and out of reach with free animations more than trading blows with root animations.
Without a hitstun animation, the root animations feel lacking. They are nice in isolation, but when colliding with another player, it becomes even more weightless than previous because the rooting forces rapid trading. I think I prefer the free animation over root because of the control it affords players and the empowerment I feel from sidestepping and slicing in the same motion.
Blocking is a bit too restrictive. A 6 second cap on activation, 10 stamina drain per second, and lengthy cooldown that comes into full effect regardless of actual block activation time is too much restriction on it. I like the idea of restricting block, especially since it fully negated damage, but the cooldown should at least be adjusted according to how long block was held. ...and shown. There's no indicator on how long is left on block's cooldown. Or the horse's cooldown, for that matter. Or heroic leap.
You could go the Mordhau route on animations: the have free movement on windup, but force a forward step and restrict movement afterwards. It's a middle ground between free and root animation.
Guys, the game looks great and all, I'm sure you've got lots of work done behind the scenes for stuff like the interface and visuals, but man... man the animations need work.
Let's start with the obvious:
Mobility
Both dodges and right+left click attacks that move you feel absurdly unnatural. This is the kind of thing that destroys a game's longevity. It's as if you momentarily turn into a rocket, instead of using your own momentum. It's unrealistic and immersion-breaking.
To fix this problem, I'd recommend drastically toning down the pace of mobility. Look at rolls in games like Dark Souls, the range is MUCH lower, and the laws of conservation of momentum are NOT broken!
Combat
Oh boy, I've never played AoC before, but this was kind of shocking. I expected something smooth and natural, but instead I got absolute clunkiness. It NEEDS to feel smooth. Now it doesn't have to be BDO, but it can and should at least feel natural.
Take for instance swinging the axe; It throws you forward slightly and locks you into that animation. I have no issue with animation lock, but it makes no sense on a small axe. Again, momentum seems completely ignored. If I swing with a greatmace, I would accept a slight animation lock, but at least make the animation feel like it has to do with momentum. Instead I feel like my character freezes and creates a hitbox... And that's not very immersive.
Immersion is KEY HERE GUYS! The best advice I could give would be to try and shift more towards a Guild Wars 2 action camera style of action combat. Where you can still move (although probably not as much) but your attacks feel like they carry momentum.
Player Models
I don't think more needs to be said. Player models are really odd. They seem abnormally weak, even disproportionate at times.
Also, the running animation... Can we talk about this? I feel like a robot! Nobody (I MEAN NOBODY runs like this. This is one of the top things I dislike about ESO too. The running animations feel like you're a machine. No good!
Despite all this and server issues here and there, I have faith in you guys, don't let the community down!
Edit: Typo!
Two handed weapons with a big wind up like the 2h Great Axe, 2h Mace, and the 2h Great Sword are really weak now. The big wind up combined with the new block and the increased smoothness of the 1h weapons means that using them is just not viable. 1 single hit blocked means that they just lose the fight.
Two handed weapons without the big wind up like spiritpierce, and the quarterstaff are really strong. They have the attack speed similar to a 1h the big damage of heavier 2hs and the active abilities are really strong with the flame and the stam drain.
The ranged weapons seem more balanced now.
User interface
It looks a lot better but maybe a bit too dark
Client & server performance
I had a lot of frame drops at the start of a match and stuttering through out the game especially during fights while averaging 60-80 fps on low - medium settings. The game over all feels more unstable since the last test. Could just be my potato though XD
Sound
your foot steps sound like they are coming from behind you and it is realllllly annoying.
Looking forward to the next test!
First of all, I am truly impressed by the progress made since the beginning of the year. The entire experience already feels almost like a complete game and I had lots of fun playing yesterday!
Talking about the feedback:
* Weapon & ability balance
I feel that in current version it’s much more beneficial to have any two-handed weapon rather than to use anything else. With huge both attack range and damage, you can just jump closer to an opponent and after two swings they will be dead. You don’t really need to aim or maneuver much.
For me, It was not really easy to measure efficiency of abilities. Firstly, I didn’t really know what many of them suppose to do. And secondly, the fights are so dynamic that you can’t really see how they affect your opponent (especially in a melee battle). But visually they all look amazing
* User interface
It’s neat and quite convenient. I would probably change visualize for the armor bar when your armor is damaged. Make it different color (not simple black) or highlight it somehow. So, it will become obvious when you should fix it.
* Client & server performance
Client - I played on “epic” graphics settings and didn’t have any issues with performance (on GTX 1080 though). At all. It ran super smooth and looked just stunningly beautiful.
Server - I played probably 30 rounds, and except few server “freezing” bugs (that everyone had), didn’t experience problems. Not even during a clash with several players when everyone was shooting fireballs and other spells.
Overall, I think the Intrepid team did a great job in last several months.
Thank you very much for it. You are definitely on the right way!
Cheers!
User interface
I don't know if it was because the graphics but when we start the game we can't saw where the players are dropping from the portal, and would be great if we could see that because in this way you know where people are going and if your style is killing at the beginning you drop with the most of players otherwise drop far away from them.
About the game controls, maybe some tutorial or even let players see how the abilities of the items work before the game starts would be nice, so this way you can test and start knowing what do you want.
And the moviment with the horse is strange when you need to do curves, something need to be adjusted.
This is it, I hope I helped in some way, battle royale isn't my favorite game style, so I'm waiting for the MMO and I belive it will be a great game.
1) The game feels more like an FPS (such as Counter-Strike) rather than an RPG in the sense that you die too fast, so there isn't much room for the kind of skill required for an RPG, it's more like just initial aiming skill. Even Apex Legends has a "longer" combat. One game I think does it right is Battlerite when it comes to length of battle (requires skill but does not have one-shots).
2) Maybe it's because I didn't try every weapon, but as for the wand, the attack also seems like an FPS game, not a proper spell cast. I'm not sure if it's due to not having flashy effects or the animation itself being too fast, but something just doesn't feel right.
3) When it comes to attacks I'd also recommend keep attacking when you hold the mouse button. As it stands, I have to click multiple times for multiple attacks.
4) The camera in relation to my character seems too low. Again, I'm not sure if it's because the aim is not above my head (but rather at the same height), or if it's because the character itself is too centered (when it maybe should be positioned in the bottom half of the screen).
5) I'd like to see more complex skills for each weapon. The melee weapons are almost all the same, just two types of attacks and their skills are mostly buffs. Would be interesting to see different skills such as a jump to the air and stomp on the ground or a whirlwind spin. For caster type weapons, maybe a freeze spell, root, life steal, fear, projectile slow bubble, etc.
6) I'd also recommend for each weapon to have more skills (like more than 20). One of the reasons I like RPGs is the level of complexity and different mechanics. I still remember the days of vanilla WoW when you had to know in which situation you should use each skill.
Finally, I'd like to thank the Ashes of Creation team for attempting this huge project. The MMORPG genre has been stale for a while (since after the second WoW expansion IMHO) with none requiring too much skill (Tera does, but pvp is dead over there, maybe BDO, but too much gear dependent rather than more skill based and maybe ESO, but combat feels a little clunky and there is a soft target rather than true action combat).
Come on guys be original...
2.The weapon skills' active time's are way too long and It would be cool if missing while a skill is active would affect the skill being used for example spiritpierce's skill only lasting for 3 hits instead of a time period, it would add more diversity while making it again feel more skillful.
-Even if the alacrity buff lasted for 2-3 seconds it would be a great skill, with the dodge and the charges(plus it is the of the longer charges anyway) it so easily outruns anything and dodges projectiles much easier. Similarly, the slow debuffs are really powerful too, almost immobilizing. Movement speed makes too much of a difference to be this easy to control.
3.I love the mounts and the superjump and the gryphon redeploy, the map definitely needed a way to go around quicker.
4.The sound cues are still confusing. Also once I didn't start hearing someone far away's shot until I turned to face them randomly which I don't know if it was a bug or not.
User Interface
Client & Server Performance
Weapon and ability balance
All of the other weapons I didn't get a chance to really use. I was more focused on finite testing to see improvements due to my limited time to test.
Armor and abilities
I wish I could give more feedback and more details, but I'm afraid I'm too busy at the moment! Hopefully I'm not too late in giving the feedback.
Which made me confident it would be fixed after 7 months of downtime.
And it concerns me that nothing has been done to keybinding page at all, only how the page exactly looks.
What i would like to see changed regarding keybinding;
I'm writing up a summary for the team now, but I'm going to go ahead and leave this thread open for a bit longer if there's any additional feedback on the posted topics that you'd like to provide
Thank you again for all your support of Ashes of Creation!
Biggest issue mechanically for me is block and dodge. Having them tied to the stamina system makes them virtually useless. Blocking should create a combat advantage since I am out maneuvering my opponent. Because it drains stamina I can actually end up with less resources than my opponent. This is similarly true for dodge as I could just as easily use a weapon lunge and burn stamina as well and have more maneuverability. I believe these two abilities should have a separate resource where they share two charges. Each charge would take about 15 seconds to come back and block could be held for up to 3 seconds on a charge. I think these abilities are meant to have melee v melee feel more chess like with counter-play but as they are right now, they border on unusable. I go into more detail in the video I posted to youtube if this is an area you decide to look at more, but I think this covers the core.
As a side note, melee combat hit detection, root animation movement, and targeting reticle all felt mostly right but I consistently got the feeling that things I should have landed missed instead. I have been going back over my stream looking for examples trying to narrow down exactly what it was that felt off but so far haven't been able to quantify it. The spirit pierce felt mostly right but the wide arc swinging weapons in particular had this "janky" feel to them that I wish I could explain better. I don't know if you have a hitbox path diagram that could be shown for those attacks, but maybe that would help with understanding what was feeling off about them. I know this part probably isn't super helpful but I wanted to make note of it, because it kept coming up during the night and after talking about it, some others have expressed similar.
Anyway, great test overall, can't wait for the next one.
Personal take was that is was a little eclectic setting out+
Main screen
- missed a sense of coordinated alignment between elements,
- a collection of elements in different/unlinked / unrelated styles,
- scale between elements not consistent or related,
- no hierarchy of information,
- and high priority visually in keyboard shortcuts which once learned are a low priority not needed to be reminded on every action. No need to repeated explain in full
I would like very much for this to be moddable end game as this is a very personal preference for me and I imagine, most people. Might I suggest a community competition for ideas. May not generate the right one, but might provide some alternatives and directional assistance.
I might be in the minority, but I do think that block should be tied to stamina - however, I don't think it should drain any stamina unless you're actually blocking something. Otherwise it's just a different weapon stance.
Maybe it's a more awkward weapon stance, like holding the sword above your head, so maybe it has the same penalties as if holding down the run button to stamina?
Formerly T-Elf
I was playing on a gaming laptop and surprisingly didn't have my issues. During match map loading, my fps did drop but after I launched, it was fine. I left the graphics at the default settings.
As for combat i was able to participate in, pole-arm weapon alt attack seemed to be op, 1 hit kill in most instances. Bows seemed to never register a hit, not sure if there is a hit display or not or Im just that terrible with them XD.
For the time I was able to play, that's about all the feed back I can provide.
Be sure to keep an eye on our Announcements here or on our other social media channels to see when you can join us for upcoming tests!