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.
Comments
I just played WoW with a Mage from Dec through April. I don't recognize the audio of a Frostbolt.
I don't think I recognize the audio of any WoW abilities as a telegraph. And, I think I recognize the effects when they are activated. I don't recognize a casting telegraph.
Ashes casting telegraphs in the Archetype Previews are obvious.
In the Alpha One Preview, I definitely recognized Javelin and Onslaught when I saw them.
You don't need to explicitly pay attention, your brain extracts information implicitly. Even if you think it doesn't though, numbers also play an important role on impact and feel of combat. The way a big crit # pops up at you when you hit something can be very satisfying.[/quote]
No. I recognize that red numbers are happening for damage and blue numbers are happening for health.
But, I don't need to pay attention to what those numbers are. The health bars give more useful info.
Crit is nice, but I also don't need to know what the Crit number is.
Again, the health bars and mana bar give more useful info.
And...I am not paying any attention at all to my own floaty damage numbers.
I can generally tell by the camera if I'm standing in fire or something is attacking me from behind.
In SWG we had huge battles but the chaos factor was minimal. Even when we had 50 Jedi and 50 Sith on each side, we could still marshal the momentum and fight with control and efficiency. The problem right now is even the physical classes have particle effects, which, if you are a Jedi I would expect, but if you are not a Jedi just adds into the chaos. The issue is prevalent in BDO too due to the particle effects but that is even in small scale let alone the sieges.
Again, they don't just provide information and if you don't like them then turn them off. It's not an argument against improving how the numbers are presented since they will almost certainly be in the game (at least the damage you receive). In a chaotic large scale PvP battle, it may be hard to see all the ground effects or if you're getting hit by AoE or a direct targeted damage spell. And if you're not arguing against my proposed changes then cool, no comment then.
As always, I'm very confused about what point(s) you're trying to get across or if you're just conversing with no point in mind.
You're saying we will have "god knows how many" abilities, but, since the devs don't want us to have "god knows how many" hotbars, I don't think we will have tons of abilities compared to previous MMORPGs.
Pretty sure I said that can already recognize the unique casting animations in Ashes.
I said I don't recognize WoW audio casting telegraphs.
You are the one who says you don't like the scrolling numbers.
I'm saying the scrolling numbers are mostly irrelevant in Ashes...so far.
I'm just saying that the speed of those scrolling numbers will be irrelevant. Especially in a chaotic large scale battle. The health bars give better info. And it's better to improve ability sfx than it is to improve scrolling damage number speed. Effects should always be better than numbers.
That is an observation. I am not always commenting as an argument against or support for a change.
Sometimes, I'm just sharing an observation.
The fact that you feel the need to spell everything out as if I am uncapable of understanding the thought process that goes into designing the VFX for a spell is pretty obnoxious tbh. As this was the reason for the creation of the thread?
I will address your 5 points.
I would say that my last post fulfilled every point:
1. If it's a yellow/gold "bubble". It's clearly an AoE beneficial spell. Hence why simplifying the current iteration actually helps in this regard.
2. It would still cut through the clutter of war without the rainbow and the shimmer effect. It's a giant AoE bubble. Pretty visible I would say.
3. If it was made transparent without any distortion and a rainbow border it blocks less of the close quarter/midrange combat than it does currently. This point is literally ?? What? Again by simplifying it and keeping it transparent without the shimmer effect you should be able to see even more clearly through the VFX of the ability. All it needs is an outline and you're off.
4. What I suggested meaning that your allies see the bubble as yellow/gold (friendly) and your enemies see red. Perfectly addresses which is friendly and which is foe. Again ?? This would be up to the designers at Intrepid to decide if it needs further visual cues. The important part is that at one glance you can tell the difference. Which again we touched on in my previous post.
5. So a gold AoE bubble that is transparent and looks holy. Using the same asthetic design just without the rainbow and shimmer somehow will no longer fit the asthetic?
But both would have a rainbow above it. And since you are implying that a rainbow is a positive effect. That at a glance is confusing. As now you will have yellow/gold bubbles with rainbows above them alongside red bubbles with rainbows above them...
Imagine if you were a new player just starting out in PvP or not familiar with a Clerics spells if you don't play it. They are gonna be like ??
Now add in the point I made about colourblind players. Keeping in mind there are many different types of colourblind you need to be aware of. A few examples:
Red-Green
Blue-Yellow
Complete colourblindness
By using a rainbow which is using all the colours and in this case as a border makes it much harder to adapt it to colourblind mode setting. As you would have a bubble that has a really weird colour border confusing them.
Well if we went with my suggestion above, sticking to one colour and adding an outline means when the devs implement a mode for this purpose it's much simpler as it avoids this problem entirely.
My suggestion will save them future work unless you believe they won't be adding a colourblind mode?
I spotted a potential problem and raised concerns.
Just shows that a comment tongue in cheek as a joke was taken seriously by you.
Just said that rainbows are not scary are they? Didn't say removing it made it any more scary smh.
I think the main issue here is that my suggestions and feedback have been deemed not good enough in your book. And by your response I can see that this has gone from a discussion into you making assumptions at my intelligence and you trying to "win" instead of a healthy chat.
That is not what I created the thread to accomplish.
Thus my feedback is declared as "not proper feedback". Why? Because you disagree?
Mmhm okay. Well if that's how you treat others feedback why should I not do the same with yours?
At this point all the feedback I wanted to provide is pointed out above. The game is in Alpha, and Intrepid in every stream each month keeps encouraging us to provide feedback. And after the siege stream I felt inclined to start this thread.
Hopefully someone finds it helpful.
But don't expect me to continue spending time replying to you JustVine if all you have to add is picking my post apart and telling me I don't understand things. Really exhausting talking on a forum in 2021.
<Insert too old for this **** meme>
Questioning what I expected when I had this bright idea.
I like the idea of having a visual difference between ally Hallowed Ground and opponent Hallowed Ground, but I'm not sure how well that will work once we add augments to that ability.
Could be enough if the ground effect has a different color ally v opponent, while the bubble reflects the School (Holy, Shadow, Nature, etc.).
I know what it's like to feel talked down to. I'll bow out for now.
Yes this would also be one of my concerns.
But I am sure they have a plan for that
We will have to wait and see.
Keep in mind that this is alpha, and it's the first pass.
It's very common to have quickly-made particle effects that are just there to serve the purpose of testing functionality.
I hate that this has to be repeated constantly due to people's ignorance of how development process works, but don't take any current animations or particle effects as the final product.
The fireball animation debacle should attest to this.
If you see spell effects with the "explosions of tiny colored squares" or as so many people in video comments and stream chats refer to them, "sparkles", it's because the tiny colored square is the simplest type of particle effect to make. A white square is usually the default particle effect, which can be easily recolored and given velocities and such.
That being said, the rainbow effect itself (just the rainbow) is more complex to implement and probably required some effort, so that part of the effect will probably remain in some fashion. Even if maybe it's alpha value is just lowered to a much more manageable amount.
As someone who's created hundreds of particle effects, I fully expect them to go back over every current spell and drastically change/tweak them.
I think everyone knows that it's alpha as they are very particular of quoting this on every single stream AoC has done. Steven himself have never failed to put that fact across EVERYWHERE! Haha
The difference is we are providing feedback. This is alpha and it's the time for feedback. If people do not like the direction of a particular spell effect and have feedback to provide. I see no reason why they shouldn't voice them at this stage.
If they voice them at a later stage it's much harder to make changes.
You mentioned the fireball animation changes. Well they went through this same process.
I don't believe anyone is ignorant here, other than it seems you believing others are ignorant because they wish to voice concerns at this stage.
Have some faith in others dude.
I personally despise the fact that people can't voice something on a video game forum anymore without someone telling them they do not understand and need to be enlightened by another forum user.
Until someone actually says something that shows they are misinformed theres really no need for such assumptions to be made.
However having feedback threads derailed by other forum users who pick out on things to attack on other forum users write, means the entire thread becomes useless. Plus it's a waste of everyone's energy who participate.
Steven's words himself:
"Keep up the feedback."
Ok yes, everything you're saying is correct and things I agree with, but not at all what I was talking about in my response to Dygz saying "The developers love particle effects". This is definitely a case of you seeing one line of my comment that you decided to bounce off and go on about instead of seeing the whole context.
All I was saying is that Dygz's comment was unwarranted. That's all. That's it.
Definitely get the impression you didn't actually read my comment and just saw it as something you had to debate against?
About everyone knowing it's alpha and first pass, the reason why they have to constantly say it is because not everyone DOES realize this, or they hear the words but do not understand what "alpha" and "first pass" actually mean. People have become used to seeing "alpha" as "early access", and not "development alpha status".
It's why every other day you get people on this forum complaining about how combat looks and particle effects even though they state CONSTANTLY that none of this is final and will be redone.
In fact, they said in the livestream that the combat rework isn't in the video yet. However EVERYONE is complaining about the current state of combat even though it's a version of combat that's about to be completely replaced.
Edit: If anything you're the one who derailed the thread by jumping in to suddenly say my topic relevant and clarifying response is somehow derailing.
They discuss what they are shown, and provide feedback on it and make their voices heard.
I see nothing wrong with that. They can't discuss what it will look like based on future changes until they see them. But they can voice current concerns. It's completely relevant.
Besides the fact Steven himself took the time to remind everyone in the thread it's alpha and WIP. Why do you feel the need to do it a second time?
Unless his response was not enough for you in some way?
I think someone made a comment you didn't like and you just HAD to defend the game.
If you do not agree with someones feedback that is perfectly acceptable. But please do not derail the thread by tearing it apart and making assumptions at others level of involvement in the project.
This thread is not about the combat. It's about the visual effects.
And I think everyone in here would love to hear if you have anything to add on this topic?
Why are you telling me to stop doing what you're doing lol
You're coming off very hypocritical right now.
My response to Dygz was topic relevant.
All I did was respond to him saying the "the devs love sparkles" by explaining why that may seem to be the case because I've done plenty of particle system creation and have relevant knowledge and experience.
Calm down, I honestly don't know why this triggered you so much.
All I can guess is you saw the first line of my original comment and ignored the rest.
If you are not providing any feedback. Please stop with the personal statements aimed at others.
You might telling the wrong person that as Dygz is the one doing such in multiple threads.
Read the comic here!
But you're the one who derailed it lmao
If you're done trying to get in the final word I would appreciate focusing on the subject at hand. Thank you.
Back on topic:
My issue mainly stems from the fact the battle size was only around 100 players. And now imagine scaling that up to 250v250.
I would be interested to see how this particular ability changes with future updates.
Hopefully we get some more voices in here. Maybe if anyone can think of anything from other MMORPG's that use similar abilities for inspiration. That would be great.
I mean, yes?! If someone slanders you you'd defend yourself too