What's the point of Apocalypse?

Drednyte

I've noticed players are dying pretty much within seconds of landing or a max of 1-2 minutes. How exactly are you supposed to test the game and provide feedback? You need to open it to PvE so players can actually play the game and provide feedback. If this is the "test" phase i'm pretty sure this is going to be a very ugly release with a ton of issues.

Shadow Phoenix

I agree. I am aware that they mentioned this is to test the combat portion of it and bug check some of the mechanics.

So far though, the game feels very basic. Ranged feels very sub-par (it is way too easy to close the distance with melee, where as attempting to put distance is quite the opposite) and melee just feels clunky atm.

syl

Like has bee said multiple times, APOC is for testing purposes, primarily the basic systems. We still have Alpha-1, Alpha-2, Beta-1 and Beta-2. While APOC is mainly used for server testing, bug fixing and combat testing, the alphas and betas will be more fledged out.

Professor Posh

Its okay if the BR sucks. We don't really want to attract too much attention to the BR anyways. That said, it actually runs pretty well and has improved a lot since the last BR testing phase. Now, I feel even more excited for the MMO.

Wandering Mist

APOC is more about stress-testing the servers and the overall performance rather than balance or gameplay design. Those things will come later.

missbanjo

To die because it's stupid PVP.

Shoklen

My experience is that each match has 2 or 3 players that just murder the rest of the players..

That's fine.. Like your saying here, it's for testing and the MMO is far more important.

Dayuhan

They had to perform an overhaul of the combat system since the last BR, so their were bound to be a lot of bugs in its first trial-by-fire. How the combat system handles character-death is just as important as how it handles the actual in-game combat. So even if your character was dieing a lot the circumstances of the death still provides valuable feedback for the devs. So if you really want to help then find new and unusual ways to kill a character as these kinds of deaths are the ones that often escape detection in the normal play-testing.

syl

Dayuhan wrote: »

(...)

Exactly! Every bit of information can be of value, especially in these early stages.

lagz

I would think the point of it is a bunch of reasons honestly.. And not everyone dies early. But mainly I think it would be to stress test the game servers and how the game performs. Also to see how they handle a small release, like apoc.. Plus finding bugs and combat issues, and testing the combat over all to see what needs to be improved. And many more things.

But personally im not sold on the idea that its not a waste of time, at least in the sense that they could have waited til after launch to do APOC and focused more on the actual mmo and having the public test certain parts of the game. No one expected or asked for a BR and while I do enjoy it, and testing in general for issues for the bigger picture, I personally think the focus should have always been on the mmo. Apoc seems like something you would throw in after as another source of pvp.

Warkov

Honestly this is one of the major gripes for me about APOC. Want a continuous enclosed testing ground for the mmo? Great! Want to use the BR play-style to accomplish that? No problem! Need player feedback so you can make changes accordingly? Sure.......well, hold up a second.....

Like one poster already stated, most players die within seconds to minutes of spawning. This does absolutely nothing for letting players actually test. Especially with some longer queue times. This is the only real flaw of a BR style test environment.

It's also a recipe for very poor feedback overall. Ultimately you are relying on the feedback from the handful of winners/long game survivors, because those players that only lasted 2 minutes can't really tell you much about the play-ability or mechanics of the game. You don't get any real feedback from them on what is frustrating, broken, or troublesome to the basic player that would be huge issues in the actual MMO environment. Those top tier players have also shown that they just adapt better/quicker to the given design DESPITE your actual design and major potential flaws, and not necessarily because of your design prowess.

You need to come up with a better way to keep players alive and testing during test periods. If this means quick respawn timers, or some other mechanic, then so be it. I know it's hard to fit that into BR, but something has to change.

thexman

I thought the BR was pretty funny. And the combat somewhat rewarding. Even though personally I didn't have any problem with survival. It would have made much more sense as a testing ground to increase the HP of players/decrease the damage much more than it was, since melee/close combat battles would end after mere seconds, not really ideal from a testing standpoint.

Selo

BR is a really bad way to "test" combat systems imo.
BR is a totally different kind of game, fights are more based on jumping around and spamming rather than combat you see in mmorpgs.
I REALLY dont want that in AoC the mmorpg.
Spamming left mousebutton while ciclejumping is for other games, not mmorpgs.

Amist

The reason why people tend to die within the first minute or two is cause A. It's a BR and B. People don't seem to be aware that you can press spacebar to glide down on the gryphon, thus everyone lands at the same spot at the end, when the gryphons automatically activate and let you glide.

Persason

Selo wrote: »

BR is a really bad way to "test" combat systems imo.
BR is a totally different kind of game, fights are more based on jumping around and spamming rather than combat you see in mmorpgs.
I REALLY dont want that in AoC the mmorpg.
Spamming left mousebutton while ciclejumping is for other games, not mmorpgs.

I disagree. PvP in mmos have lots of jumping around. You are correct in that this in no way simulates PvE. As a PvP player I don't mind the testing grounds though.

However they should increase the HP pool of people. The length of the fights are too short for an MMO.

NewPlayer

The combat in Apocalypse is so bad in so many ways... I really do hope this is not what we get in the real AoC.

I usually do not agree with statements just because a lot of people state it but in this case it's an accurate statement and the combat is bad. Even tho a lot of reviews are bad because of connection issues and stuff, there are still a lot regarding the combat system.

The review for AoCA (69% negative) is so much worse than for BDO (33% negative) or even Bless it's insane. Even a full p2w version of Arche Age has more positive reviews (51% positive) than AoCA, that just tells you how bad the combat is. Of course I do know it's for testing purposes and it's fine but if there are not gonna be any HUGE improvement then the game is already dead.

Link.

KingRizen

NewPlayer wrote: »

The combat in Apocalypse is so bad in so many ways... I really do hope this is not what we get in the real AoC.

I usually do not agree with statements just because a lot of people state it but in this case it's an accurate statement and the combat is bad. Even tho a lot of reviews are bad because of connection issues and stuff, there are still a lot regarding the combat system.

The review for AoCA (69% negative) is so much worse than for BDO (33% negative) or even Bless it's insane. Even a full p2w version of Arche Age has more positive reviews (51% positive) than AoCA, that just tells you how bad the combat is. Of course I do know it's for testing purposes and it's fine but if there are not gonna be any HUGE improvement then the game is already dead.

Link.

I would say the combat is good, its just requires lots of tweaks. Stats could be reworked to easily make the matches last longer for better testing as well as just better fights in general. Stamina needs a huge rework, as thee is nothing worse than fighting one guy only to be completely out of stam when the next guy jumps in to finish you. Its pretty, its fast, and its unbalanced.

NewPlayer

KingRizen wrote: »

I would say the combat is good, its just requires lots of tweaks. Stats could be reworked to easily make the matches last longer for better testing as well as just better fights in general. Stamina needs a huge rework, as thee is nothing worse than fighting one guy only to be completely out of stam when the next guy jumps in to finish you. Its pretty, its fast, and its unbalanced.

I mean you say the combat is good but at the same time you give examples why it's not Weapons are absolutely disbalanced (mana potion launcher vs bow/crossbow is just one example) and the ressource "balancing" is horrible.
Almost everything regarding the combat needs a rework if you think about it^^

KingRizen

Yes but all those are easily ironed out. They can be changed with a simple number change. The actual combat system works and is fast paced, and punishing for missing like an FPS. This just the start of the number tweaking which will likely be debated till the game ends. How much health is too much too little? How much do you increase health or do you decrease damage to increase ttk. How much stam is too much and what should it cost for each thing that uses it. How much damage difference between levels of items and their usefulness? How many spells whould one person have? All these ironed out around Beta 2 phase after everything else works. Collisions seemed fine, camera seemed fine, not sure about hit boxes as I didnt have anyone to test it with. Potion launcher OP. Some tweaks that I could give opinions on for days. But ya not a bad start.

NewPlayer

KingRizen wrote: »

Yes but all those are easily ironed out. They can be changed with a simple number change. The actual combat system works and is fast paced, and punishing for missing like an FPS. This just the start of the number tweaking which will likely be debated till the game ends. How much health is too much too little? How much do you increase health or do you decrease damage to increase ttk. How much stam is too much and what should it cost for each thing that uses it. How much damage difference between levels of items and their usefulness? How many spells whould one person have? All these ironed out around Beta 2 phase after everything else works. Collisions seemed fine, camera seemed fine, not sure about hit boxes as I didnt have anyone to test it with. Potion launcher OP. Some tweaks that I could give opinions on for days. But ya not a bad start.

Ye, exactly. So basically what we have now are moving objects who can auto attack and have one single ressource, that's it^^
The devs wanted to actually release this year but they delayed and now we all can see why, they did not even start working on the combat system. What we have in AoCA is pretty much just a raw sample of a combat system (at least I hope that, otherwise I'd cry). There is so much more work to do... range weapons are nowhere balanced for this kind of combat yet, then there are gonna be actual magic spells later in AoC, combos etc...

Idk if you played BDO, if you did then you know the input of the combos and the mechanics like super armor, iframe, frontal guard, dashes, evasive skills etc... we have nothing really similar to that in AoCA now, we do have stamina as ressource and this "torpedo jump attack" that consumes 30 stamina. We have no idea how combos (especially combined with movement and/or CCs) are supposed to look like because all we see in AoCA is pretty much a raw sample of left clicking to move the weapon left and right or shot a projectile.

I am curious how the castle siege and other PvP will look like in the test phase. If that's gonna be similar "combat" like AoCA then it's over

Rem_

APOC is meant to test things for the MMORPG. Mainly at the moment they're focusing on the servers because they have to do a whole entire rework on their backend from the feedback of last test. This is the hidden beauty behind APOC ~ ! Without the last test, they could have gone on and just made the mmorpg. It would have been released and the backend would have been so bad it could have taken years to fix it at the stage of alphas and betas 1 and 2 . Lots of people have problems with APOC and I can understand them, but it does have it's upsides. I hear people talking about why would they monetize it but Intrepid is a company. No company can just run something completely 100% free while draining resources and time on it. Cosmetics are only sold and I think that's completely fair since it's optional.

APOC is used to test more than just the backend, the combat as well. For now though I think their main focus is the servers since they've recently just redone the whole entire thing ~ !