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.
Comments
Developers, I can't remember the last time I enjoyed an MMO so much! It's been well over a decade and with this being your alpha product, you have something already amazing and I can't wait to see more!
Discord support staff, your time spent helping this community is awesome! You guys continue to do do great work!
To the rest of the Intrepid staff, I love all of you! I look forward to seeing the continued efforts from everyone involved with this awesome game!
The art and environment teams have done an amazing job creating a world I want to explore, and considering the current combat is pending a revamp I am eager to see the improvements.
I want to thank the whole team at Intrepid, not just for their work on Ashes, but for getting me excited about gaming again.
I am unable to write words to compensate for what you've all sacrificed to bring Ashes to life. The late nights, the debugging etc. But I can offer my unyielding support.
Thank you.
Thanks for the long hours this weekend! Looking forward to participate in the future with every chance I get.
You all should know those who had access...it is the first time I have heard "this game is beyond anything out there". "This game will set a whole new standard for everyone to follow". "These guys actually care what the players say". "LOOK AT THE DETAIL!!!".
All your hard work is greatly appreciated by all of us and your enthusiasm, and drive to deliver is without equal. Keep pushing hard and know the entire AOC gaming community is behind you completely. Not one of us regrets buying into what will clearly be the future highbar in the MMO community.
Always take a breath, and thanks!
Aleran
And to the whole Intrepid Studios team, the game is in great shape, and it ran pretty well when the conditions were optimal. I had fun making a tank named "Explore" and jamming North right out of the gate with no quests to look for all things cool and broken. I did pretty well punching above my weight class, but fights were pretty easy to avoid by being careful. To put things to the "show me" test, I checked out a high peak not far from the starting area, and it was great to see as far as the eye could see in all directions, no fog or draw cutoff, from the ocean across the land in all directions. Well done IS team!
sincerely yours, TheWeiner
I thank you for this oppertunity to voice my feedback on your project.
Let me prephase this feedback summary by saying that I first discovered your project a few weeks ago, and have not played the game prior to this weekend. Second, while I have seen a fair amount of content creators videos, I am not up to date on Intrepids planned scope for the game as a whole. For this reason, some of my comments may be more or less relevant as feedback.
Positive
Constructive feedback
PvP and PvE combat
Time to kill in pvp seem directly impacted by the lack of cooldown between skill use. I noticed the same thing in regular combat; I could spam several damaging abilities without a "lockout" time.
With a longer time to kill in pvp engagements, players would have had a chance to react with defencive skills and counter attacks. When I got "jumped" by other players, the combat was over in a second (or less). This is probably somewhat related to equipement (see comment below), however with the current lack of "global cooldown", the problem will persist.
A second note on same topic, the high damage granted both by certain skills (and specific weapons), combat experience rendered questing less rewarding. As a level 5 cleric, I could easily grind level 12-15 monsters for high experience gain and rapid leveling. Coming from Everquest and actually enjoying static monster camp grinding, I was happy to see this as a viable option, but this may be less engaging for other players who prefer quest grinding. Maybe balance for both options would be an ideal solution?
Resources
With harvestable resources only located in one node area (as far as I could identify), it was less interessting to progress tradeskilling considering how tempting it was to explore the whole world. This was probably done by design to encourage players to develop a specific node, but it seemed somewhat forced, and impacted the experience as a whole.
Character progression
The skill system was keeping me engaged, and the ease of reallocation of skills made sense during the testing, but long term, skill reset should probably require jumping through some hoops to avoid instant "heal to dps spec" for certain classes where this would provide unfair advantages.
Example: Playing as a cleric, I never bothered investing into ressurection, as I could easily just move skill points if needed.
A second note on same topic, the items available at the merchant seemed incomplete. One weapon in particular (spear) was a massive step above the rest in combat performance, rendering even combat abilities somewhat irrelevant.
Monster loot table
I assume the current loot table is a placeholde for future monster loot. Personally, I find great enjoyment in finding upgrades from defeated monsters. While beasts should not drop loot (only spawn a harvestable node once killed, such as meat and fur), humanoid creatures should have a chance to drop the equipment they are actually using, such as weapons, armour etc.
All in all, job well done on the game so far, and I am looking forward to the continuation of the project.
I have already met more awesome people in the AoC community, than I did in all of 2020 (before I found out about AoC). Am super grateful to be a part of our community, and hope to continue to be a part of its development!
Thank you,
-Ben
Right of the bat, the biome/landscape and creature designs, they look amazing, and it was a very pleasant experience just exploring, looking at it all.
Was fortunate enough to see most of the current aspects of the game, and outside nitpicking everything seems very well put together.
Keep up the amazing work, I'm super excited to see how the game is progressing.
Wonderful job on the game so far! You can confidently say you all put together a phenomenal preview alpha build whose quality is already far above to how games release in this day and age. Can't wait to see how you guys pour more of your love and affection for making games into this and then get to play the result!
Keep up the great work!