Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
3 things from the New World Preview that I want to see in Ashes
ShadonSol
Moderator, Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
So, I played the preview of New World for a few hours and discovered some things I really want to see implemented in AOC.
1. The sound design
The sound design is one of the most impressive features New World has to offer. I would even say it has the best sound design I have heard in any game in a long time.
It sounds "full", "clear", and simply realistic.
You hear every pickaxe blow from other players on a stone and every tree that is cut down. It's just incredible.
2. The feeling of impact / heavy combat
Another point that I like very much are the fights. And with that I don't mean directly the fighting system itself, but how the individual attacks feel.
They are "heavy", but not slow. You feel the "impact" of each of your attacks.
I think the impression is given by the following design elements:
-> Your character emits a short scream each time he attacks. If he suffers damage, he groans and makes you aware that he is in pain.
-> Each hit is confirmed with a short, rather dark sound. The pitch changes slightly with each attack, so that no monotony is created.
-> If an attack is successful, a red hit marker is displayed on the Crosshair.
3. Adaptive UI
It's a small thing, but I love it. As an example I made two screenshots:
No weapon drawn. The UI is reduced to a minimum, so I can enjoy the world to the fullest.
Only as soon as I draw my weapon, the skill bar is displayed.
As I said, it's a small feature, but it increases the immersion immensely. Especially for people like me, who like to get lost in the beautiful world, it's nice not having to look at the full UI all the time.
And that's it! Sure, New World (Preview) has some other features that I like, but these were the 3 most important ones for me.
1. The sound design
The sound design is one of the most impressive features New World has to offer. I would even say it has the best sound design I have heard in any game in a long time.
It sounds "full", "clear", and simply realistic.
You hear every pickaxe blow from other players on a stone and every tree that is cut down. It's just incredible.
2. The feeling of impact / heavy combat
Another point that I like very much are the fights. And with that I don't mean directly the fighting system itself, but how the individual attacks feel.
They are "heavy", but not slow. You feel the "impact" of each of your attacks.
I think the impression is given by the following design elements:
-> Your character emits a short scream each time he attacks. If he suffers damage, he groans and makes you aware that he is in pain.
-> Each hit is confirmed with a short, rather dark sound. The pitch changes slightly with each attack, so that no monotony is created.
-> If an attack is successful, a red hit marker is displayed on the Crosshair.
3. Adaptive UI
It's a small thing, but I love it. As an example I made two screenshots:
No weapon drawn. The UI is reduced to a minimum, so I can enjoy the world to the fullest.
Only as soon as I draw my weapon, the skill bar is displayed.
As I said, it's a small feature, but it increases the immersion immensely. Especially for people like me, who like to get lost in the beautiful world, it's nice not having to look at the full UI all the time.
And that's it! Sure, New World (Preview) has some other features that I like, but these were the 3 most important ones for me.
9
Comments
I think the current direction w/ the sound and animation team is very promising.
I do agree w/ the adaptive UI and would love to also see it shift depending on where you are...if you're in a Tavern maybe hide your combat oriented abilities and display the social ones?
If my character were to groan every time I get hit as a tank......I would absolutely hate it. I've played games where your character makes sounds on attacks and when getting hit and it is quite frankly, garbage. I understand your immersion perspective but this would be terrible. I'm sure they will have some sort of reticle impact when you switch to that mode and connect skill shots.
The adaptive UI I can do without personally. I like seeing a lot of the land and visuals too. From what we have seen, the UI will be customizable and already doesn't look overbearing but I don't see the need for it to pop up and disappear depending on what we are doing. I think this one really boils down to each persons personal preference. To me this has nothing to do with how immersive a game is just because I see my abilities on screen while looking at the view.
NW comes across as trying too hard and it's not impressive. Some parts were enjoyable but the overall feel of NW for me at least was forgettable.
1. Action combat
2. Less bar buttons. (probably way to few lol)
I dont like any game with a ridiculous amount of button choices. It just dumbs down combat to having access to any skill for any situation at any time.
Limited button choices creates more skillful gameplay by having to selectively choose what abilities you run around with and not having an easy answer to every dungeon and every person you pvp against.
Also it creates a need for diversifying gear sets and abilities to compliment your combat style and setup you choose. Meaning a larger diversity of sets and class combos will be used with less chances of metas being overly dominant since they cant have an ability answer for every situation.
Creates complexity and fun diversity
In my opinion there are two reasons for this:
- The sound of the impact
- And the a animation and effects of both the attacker AND the target
Both very simple reasons and can be easily done. I think that on today's stream what is most lacked of those is the animation of the target while receiving an attack but I suppose that it will be done in the future.
I think BDO did a GREAT job in this, maybe Intrepid can get inspiration from them.
3. Adaptive UI
I was about to open a threat about that. Not about the whole UI but a little must.
Anyway again we can take a look at BDO and we will see that they don't even have a skill bar. I enjoyed BDO combat without a skill bar and a lot of skills and spells so I don't think that having a bunch of them has to be a problem. Maybe personally I prefer to see the skills I have in a bar but is not a big problem if not.
The BIG problem for me, is having to look at the the bar at the bottom of the screen to check my own skills/spells cooldown timers, specially while in a pvp combat.
I was so concerned that I talked about it with Jahlon, because I'm a little dyslexic and in WoW I become a total mess if I don't have an addon that shows me the cooldowns easily visible at the side of my character (again like BDO). So since I know AoC are not allowing addons, at least I expect that they can provide that, what is not so hard to do.
New world sucks, i regret spending money on it.
You obviously havent played enough games if you're impressed with the sound, and combat.
The combat is extremely slow, and not suited for mmorpg.
Well, everyone has their own preferences.
I think you can't really compare the New World combat system to other MMOs (except maybe BDO) because it is purely action-based. Since Ashes will also have Action Combat to some extent, I wanted to include it here.
As I said, everyone has their own preferences and it is not surprising that New World does not please some people as much as others. But it will be the same with Ashes.
Right, now that I think about it, the animations have a great influence on the overall feeling of the fight. Thanks for adding that!
Honestly if I think back to other MMOs, it's typically the starting zone or menu music that gets me sucked into the game initially. The world ambience is what builds the nostalgia moments for me later down the road. I still keep a SWG ambience loop on my mp3 player along with ambience from most other MMOs.
Player impact is neat but not that important to me if it doesn't make it in. It would be neat to only feel it on specific hits rather than every hit or attack. Perhaps on crits or something along those lines. I haven't experienced New World yet though so maybe it's done really well.
The adaptive UI is a really great idea imo. Hide it away until the player smashes an attack or gets aggroed. Everyone knows they can press 1 to initiate combat so why not hide the UI and pop it into play during combat. I'm all for freeing up more screen real-estate providing the gameplay or systems don't suffer.
Limited button choices create more skillfull gameplay??? How is that, if we take it to an extreme and say every player only has 1 skill, then there is basicly 0 skill involved since you only have 1 option. The more skills you have the more options in a fight -> more variables -> higher skill cap.
Also can only agree on
I don't like it but lets be honest,
the action combat thing is personal preference
I prefer tab targeting by far but lets be happy that both systems will be present in Ashes.
Good Im glad. Those two things will make it extraordinarily easy for me to decide on a game alone.
Instantly easy for me to decide based on wether my character is just a colorful stationary blob with one button mindset with key binds doing all your gameplay, or if there is actual real fluid movement and combat with actual attention span involved.
Its very simple
I mean you could just read what I wrote since it answers your question why I think it creates more skilled gameplay.
But hell, here I'll just repost it.
Why are limited choices buttons better?
read below on how I see it
"Limited button choices creates more skillful gameplay by having to selectively choose what abilities you run around with and not having an easy answer to every dungeon and every person you pvp against at any given moment.
Also it creates a need for diversifying gear sets and abilities to compliment your combat style and setup you choose. Meaning a larger diversity of sets and class combos will be used with less chances of metas being overly dominant since they cant have an ability answer for every situation."- Me
Thats just how I feels to me in every game I've played. Its another reason I abandoned WoW the first opprotunity I had when other games started to have real combat action
If you have 30 buttons at all times that gives you access to any buff/debuff/execute/dot/heal and everything you could possibly want at any moment, how does that NOT simplify your gameplay?
Based on your button selections alone you'll eliminate the need for any requirement to think or make meaningful choices in your setups. You'll have an answer for any situation and any player at all times. All you'll need is high damage and gear.
Limited buttons have a domino effect on making you get creative with builds since you'll actually have to make sacrifices how you build and optimize your character rather than your massive button selection having the answer for you.
Smedley has nothing to do with New World. He's running a separate studio under the Amazon Games umbrella in some other city on some unnamed game project of his own.