Get these right and we're off to the races!

Phases deadline

I know it's difficult to assess these during this Covid crisis, but gets more eyeballs and wallets interested in this game. Or at least give a guestimation for the beta phase 2, since most players will opt for the $75 package anyway.

Servers

One of the concerns for any mmo release with a huge concurrent player potential is server stability at release. It would be embarrasing to have server queues or straight up failure to log in during launch, especially for founders/backers.

Combat

Whether hitting things up close or spamming spells from a distance, make these skills punchy. I checked out the latest alpha stream and I loved the particle effects but I wonder how other color-blind players (such as I) perceive the explosion of effects...

Combat goes hand in hand with a fixed camera angle, the one used in the latest alpha footage is floaty and nauseous, it's like a default camera imported in Unity or UE4.

There was a question regarding mobility of skills being used. I'm actively testing the NewWorld alpha client and I can tell you the skills are totally brain-dead fixed. Character stays in position (crouched or standing) and shoots the staff projectile or the bow arrows, without the possibility of movement or skill cancelling. The only movement is angle of shot, but once you release, the character is stuck in the animation for the entire duration, which destroys any pve or pvp encounter, making characters sitting ducks to any enemy attacks.

Please focus on adding skill cancelling, either by moving to a side or straight up jumping. Skill queuing is a popular technique used by other mmos, but if you can't fake-cast something, where's the fun?

Also, the mana issue was evident in the footage, I couldn't bare seeing the mage character go melee some mobs waiting for the mana to slowly regenerate.

AI pathing

This goes hand-in-hand with the player pathing (if using auto-walk, a feature that should exist in any game). Don't ignore this!
Enemy AI needs to prioritize the correct targets (aggro meters/range if you please) and not get stuck in textures or go brain-dead if no pathing is available to attack the player. Getting the correct pathing also helps the auto-walk feature, if you decide to include this for mounts. Also, if the devs boasted some of the mounts will be huge, pathing would be the least of concerns, I'm talking clipping through textures or even falling through them.

Unstuck

This shouldn't be important, but with character/housing clipping all over the place, players will certainly have this issue. Get this done right, without item or durability loss, and players will love it.

Spam filters/reporting

Any new mmo will eventually be populated by bots and gold sellers, it's a popularity mark. So get a proper mute/report system, or chat channels that can be moderated by the leaders of the area, just like the town is run by a mayor. If two or more people report and mute a gold seller spamming chat, mute is region wide, no more spamming.

I have more things in my mind, but I'll leave you with these suggestions.

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Comments

Ventharien

All great suggestions. Their stance on the deadlines is that they won't give dates till they are 100% sure they can meet them.

Jahlon

Steven isn't worried about wallets, nor should he be. They aren't going to give any estimates until they are 100% sure they can meet or exceed them, so you won't be getting a date for A2 or Beta any time soon

-> Please focus on adding skill cancelling, either by moving to a side or straight up jumping. Skill queuing is a popular technique used by other mmos, but if you can't fake-cast something, where's the fun?

If you mean animation cancelling then no. If you mean actually skill cancelling then yeah. Skill queing is only use for games that have horrible lag, and you really don't want it as it tends to pile on all the damage as a burst, especially when you are attacked by someone with horrible lag

As far as getting combat right, yeah that's the point of APOC and Alpha 1 and 2.

AI pathing is something that they are working on, and was originally planned for Horde mode to be the time and place for that testing.

Unstuck...this is a given

Spam/Fiters... honestly your suggestions address the symptoms not the disease. They plan on lopping off gold sellers and bots early on. Bots especially. What you don't realize is sometimes they allow the plague of gold sellers so they can track the currency through the accounts and ban both gold buyers and sellers. FFXI (not XIV) did this with tremendous success and you'd hear about people whinning they lost their account because they "bought a little bit of gold"

Flashman

People say, "Servers always crash in every new game!" as if it's shocking. It's not. Unless a game is set up 'megaserver' style (and even megaservers can have issues if you suddenly have a zillion people trying to log on simultaneously), then there's always a limit to how many people can get on. And at launch, "everyone" wants to get on, and has their heart set on being on a server with a certain name, etc, but simple math comes into play.

The best way games can address this comes in the form of name reservations, staggered start dates, and even pre-planning what accounts will go on what server ahead of time. Of course, devs never want to be too prescriptive and be seen as forcing people what to do... but at the same time, they don't want to have some massive infrastructure set-up that isn't required after the first three months, either. It's a balancing act. I look forward to seeing what the AoC guys and gals do... but you can be sure there'll be some hiccup at launch.

OdynStar

All great points! I am not to worried about a date at this time. Rushed work shows especially in MMO's.

Wandering Mist

While a lot of things in the OP are important, at the end of the day gameplay is the most important aspect. If the majority of players don't like the gameplay, the game will fail.

BlackBrony

Please don't forget about Customer Service and easy access to it.
Also, a comprehensive FAQ, that answer most questions.
Since you're launching on Windows, keep in mind some people might also use W7, and take into consideration Driver issues.

I'm mostly worried about CS. Lots of people always complain about "waiting a week" and things like that.

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