Greetings, glorious adventurers! If you're joining in our Alpha One spot testing, please follow the steps here to see all the latest test info on our forums and Discord!
Options
Get these right and we're off to the races!
Hypnotistu
Member
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.
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.
0
Comments
-> 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"
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.
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.