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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.
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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.
Verbal NDA lifted - Discussion thread
Asgerr
Member, Alpha Two
As Steven just announced he released testers from their verbal NDA (still no images)
Feel free to post your verbal descriptions of things and general impressions of the core systems
Feel free to post your verbal descriptions of things and general impressions of the core systems
1
Comments
Played mage and cleric. I flagged a lot AOE farming.
Spear is the best!
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Please tell me more about the SPEAR!!
As a wannabe Dragoon I need to know how it plays
I agree! Had tons of fun. The core is definitely there. I can see their vision and I'm excited.
I played cleric and tank, also tons of AOE farming, but didn't PvP as much as I would have liked.
Spear is the best!
Can you explain how weapons function? Like are they just auto attackers or can you skill it up and use more abilities in addition to your class kit?
Spear is a beat stick with a few feet of range and a wide arc so far. Reminds me of lineage 2 spear, but you click to swing instead of auto attack. That is about it so far. I tried all of the weapons on my cleric and I liked spear the most.
No crazy dragoon stuff yet. It just felt good to pick up whatever weapon I want and try it in a game again.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
As of now they're just stat-stick auto attackers. The only 'skill ups' present this weekend were for class abilities.
Overall was a awesome testing experience this past weekend, and previously we've a great group of testers that care about this project very deeply and are very excited to share it with the public.
Aren't we all sinners?
Weapons are press Q each time for basic attack, rather than auto-attack.
We had three skill trees for attack:
Passive | Active | Weapon
Only the Active skill tree was available. That has the Archetype abilities.
The other two skill trees are work in progress and were disabled.
I am curious to see if the Weapon skill tree changes based on the weapon that's equipped.
The world feels great, they're on a Alpha 1 map that is basically 1/5 I think of the size the world will actually be, that being said it still takes some time to get to 1 end of the map to the other. They've some teleporters to make it easier at some locations.
The Node leveling was very exicitng, seeing nothing, and then going to where you can sell some of your essences and materials, to when you finanally pop it and go to village, and then caravan merchant, Freehold housing, Alchemy merchant, stable master all appear. There was many mounts you could by some for 80g, most were 550g for the good ones.
You need a freehold to become a citizen which cost 1500g, we had 4 people who were citizens and we had a Mayoral vote and everyone voted for themself so I believe it then randomly chose him. To my knowledge he had the ability to constuct some buildings which required stone, lumber and so on.
Our carvan system was having some issues Steven had already mentioned so we will try that another day, but seeing a Mayor was super cool. Very excited to see the future upgrades.
But, it's early days, so those should both improve.
Right now, the mini-map is mostly cluttered with mobs. There are icons on the mini-map intended to show flagged quest targets but they are too difficult to see in the sea of mob markers and distance is misleading - like you kinda see the edge of a quest target marker at the edge of the mini-map - which kinda gives an idea of direction (when it doesn't disappear for some reason), but you have no clue of distance. And opening the main map generally had no associated marker to cross-check.
Again, I expect that will improve significantly by Beta.
Was there dual wielding?
Nice Love FFXIV Players! Hope you enjoy this new world when the NDA is lifted.
No Rangers or Rogues, so, I'm not surprised.
Also, Alpha, so very basic combat.
Other than rubberbanding in crowded areas, I think performance was generally OK.
The thing that stood out to me the most is the node progression and the dynamic world that is already present. Nodes can be levelled up to level 3 and the world does visually change from it, with new roads and bridges appearing once the nodes are levelled.
Yes the system is still in its infancy right now but the core concept is there and it's great.
There were no shields in the game this weekend, so realistically your guess is as good as mine. Would be super cool though! I've always been a fan of shield builds too.
I kept going back and forth in the weapons, and armor selections in Winstead hoping to see a shield myself.
The game said I was a cleric, but I was sure as hell trying to build myself to be a paladin.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I think there was 6ish nodes on the map. I was able to stay in one and see it advance to a town. Over the weekend I seen some other nodes progress. I actually toured the map on both Saturday and Sunday on my mount, and did notice progress in the nodes I was not helping in.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Awesome.
As a follow-up question, did you see any specific benefits to upgrading certain nodes? I ask because I am curious how nodes will be balanced so that not every node at the sea will be maxed out and the inland ones wouldn't be considered.
I did take the time to look for any differences in the nodes. I was specifically looking at vendor selection. I did not notice anything there I was mostly focused on plate though. The quests were similar between nodes, but different. There was just so much I wanted to do it was hard to take stock of everything.
I could have easily spent a week testing every little thing in the starting area, but sadly the servers were only up during the day. Maybe that is a good thing though because I got a lot of sleep this weekend. Something I was not expecting. The feels when you use sleep to time warp...
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
It would be hard for me to talk about combat since it was obvious the system was not in place for this test. One thing I did enjoy was the feel of character movement. It did not feel floaty, your character felt like it had real weight. That was another worry I had and it was assuaged.
I was skeptical about character collision being active in this game, but it actually seemed to add a realistic feel to large groups.
So far, so good. The game looks like it is taking shape to be exactly what was advertised. Now we just need to see, then break, then fix, then shatter, then repair the combat and crafting systems.
Wonder what systems they will have to keep large toxic groups from surrounding a player so they can’t move anywhere 🤔