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.
Feedback Thread - Alpha One Testing
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Comments
I had an older version installed and the download and install did not work well and would hang up. So I ended up uninstalling and deleting the old version. Then once I did this the download and install went good.
Client & Server performance
Several times I would get an inspection window pop up from looking in your bag however the bag was closed. It was easy to get rid of simply by moving my courser over the tool bar. But it popped up frequently and was an annoyance.
Sometimes when there was a larger amount of NPC/Mobs on the screen there would be some video lag on the creatures themselves. Not on the rest of the screen just the NPC's.
Once in a while when traveling longer distance there would be a bit of a lag where it felt like it was trying to load the next set of environment/mobs. It never was long. I would say less than a second however long enough that it was noticeable.
1 - The patcher had some issues. Several times for no apparent reason the update would simply stop and I had to restart the download.
2 - I was playing on a GTX 980. For the most part in the open world I didn't have any real issues on the high settings, EXCEPT, enemies at times were invisible or not loading until I was right on them, which lead to a few deaths.
3 - During last nights Siege frames were not great but overall it was playable (not accounting for the bugs..).
For me launcher was disconnecting time to time and download felt really slow.
Only Issue was the patching getting "stuck", but then the restore option had a finite time to patch. Making sure inside the patcher the options are communicated to the user would save the CM team a lot of questions.
Client performance
I felt that the client was where I expected it to be in Alpha. My FPS would tank when there were a lot of folks around, but never to the point where I couldn't move, even in the siege. Being able to effectively fight is a different story, but I could still move about. I would see "jumpiness" of players when they were moving at the edge of my render distance, and some NPCs would also move in stop motion.
Server performance
I did not notice much in the way of rubber banding. The combo of server and client was where I had the most issues.
First, about half the time I'd login, I'd fall through the world. I like the way you put water underneath so I don't die right away, and instead of hitting Ctl+T I could just swim to where the land met the water and I'd pop back on top of the mesh.
Second, mobs would not spawn in around me. This happened most when I was on a mount and sprinting, but happened sometimes when I was sprinting and even a couple of times when running normally. This was difficult when trying to collect resources, but made it easy to get from place to place.
I'll drop my other feedback in appropriate threads. I felt the alpha was quite smooth, and your Discord support team did a FANTASTIC job of making folks feel heard and keeping their composure for the entire weekend. Thanks for making the testing process fun!
AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Six Core 3.4G
MSI X470 G+ MoBo
32G Memory
NVIDIA RTX 2070 8G
1.gathering resources
The issue with gathering resources is that there basically non existent in an area with lots of players, I played on a low server with like six people and found that, the resources were quite common a little work and you could find them, even at the store, there were a couple of issues with obscure materials, such as a material called hard leather which seemed nonexistent, I looked in the store and hunted animals and could not find it
2.leveling up
while it did take a bit of time to get used to, I think leveling is decent, if you try to farm certain mobs that are weaker then you your gonna hit a wall, this is especially true if you try to farm the same mob over and over, eventually it gets weaker and your exp gain becomes static as you level up, there are three different mob types that show how useful they are to you
*Blue
blue enemy's mean that you can handle them pretty easy, with the right attacks
*Grey
Grey means you should be cautious of them when in battle
*Red
red means their tough enemy's that do a lot of damage, and that taking them on is a risk, but high reward
when fighting enemies for exp the type of enemies you want to go for are the grey ones, there decent to handle while giving a decent reward, and if your up for it go for the red ones too, also be sure to look at the numbers next to their enemy name that indicates there level
3.Player Crowding
if your having issues with players gathering in one location, its either your pc cant handle it, meaning you need an upgrade, or the game itself in bug in a way that it cant handle that many people
My framerate was fine when in the open world (between 40 - 80 fps), with groups of players here and there. Every now and then my frames would tank to 5 fps for seemingly no reason... and if I waited for a minute or so it would go away. Not sure if that is a client or server-related issue... but I was watching a streamer who was on the server with me and I didn't notice it happen to him.
My framerate was between 5 - 20 fps during 20 or 40 man raids/dungeons... but only when we got in fights. I could usually get 30 fps if we were just walking around.
The siege obviously had the worst performance. As far as my rig was concerned, I couldn't really do much during sieges if large groups formed up. I was getting between 5 - 15 fps, but I was also getting some stuttering where the screen would freeze for a solid 3 - 5 seconds before resuming. So for most PvP fights, I would catch a few frames here and there, but it was basically the equivalent of still images. Again, not sure if that is server or client-related, or maybe a bit of both.
specs:
AMD Ryzen 2700X 8 core 3700 Mhz
X470 Gaming Plus Mother Board
16 GB RAM
SSD
AMD 5700XT GPU
Download and Installation process:.
After finding the download link on discord, the process was fairly straight forward with no issues. The update process could take a while and sometimes was faster just to restore / reinstall the game.
Client and Server Performance:
After playing several hours a day for the last three days and on three separate servers, the only time I ran into issues was during Siege Times. As the player base exploded, my FPS tanked hard, and I am running a 5900x and a 3080 which dipped in low 20s. Getting into the actual was Siege was ridiculous, cumbersome, and the server struggled throughout the process.
Actual game play on these servers was great, and I never experienced much issue. I ran several raids with groups including the Red Dragon, the Twins, and the Broodmother and the servers handled these well. My FPS also stayed in a reasonable area, but there is area for improvement.
At different times, when I logged in to the server, my character was floating in an ocean below the terrain, and I had to create another one. One idea, that in my opinion, you should create an "Unstuck button", so the character should be moved to one of the respawn points that already exist in the game.
The roads should be safe. There is a lot of monsters on the roads and their agro is spontaneous. This is a problem, consider you want to finish a quest on another node, and the mobs on that region have a level higher than yours. You don't have this safe path to move across the world, even if you just want to explore it.
The evade action actually does not evade. It may be a problem of response due to the ping, but every time I used "Ctrl" to try to evade this weekend, I always got hit, even if I was more distant from the mob than their attack range.
Still got some delayed actions, more than normal. They weren't constant and weren't linked to a specific action of mine, but I just noted it during fights with mobs (there was no teleport back or something like it).
Talking about the craft, I was just excited to try but got stuck at the very first quest. The blacksmith asked me to collect 24 logs and 8 stones. After more than 3 hours I had only 3 stones and 8 logs. Is not the number of materials that bothers me, it's the difficulty to find them. There were just a few threes that we can cut down, and not all threes give us the materials that we need. Besides that, the time to a specific three to respawn so we could cut down again was too long. In my opinion, you should improve the number of gathering spots or makes it better, like cutting one three you get 3-4 logs (maybe even more if you have better gathering equipment).
I know the node system will be improved, but one of my concerns is if the people will be the same in all nodes. I pick one quest in with Lieutenant Fiona in the southeast node of the original island. I have completed the quest with the same Lieutenant Fiona in the northeast node of the original island. So, she wasn't the NPC that gave me the quest but had the same codes. Besides that, the chiefdom Clerk is the leader on every node.
You told about the architectural aspects of some nodes be different, but my question at the moment is: every western European node will have the same NPCs? Of course, the blacksmith (for example) should be the same, but I think the quest givers and some cameos should be slightly different, to give more identity to the node.
I think you guys are doing a great job, and I already see the progression you made in server stability and fixings visual bugs.
I can't recall a single client crash through the whole weekend, though I was using top end hardware that would have been able to brute force through any excessive RAM/VRAM usage.
I did notice 'SW' instances doing their jobs of isolating performance problems between regions, as I found myself briefly unable to loot mobs in one SW, while things worked fine if I took a few steps into a neighboring SW. I suspect that issues with transitioning from one SW to another (especially while mounted) might be contributing to odd behavior like mobs aggroing you as you approach them (but before you're anywhere near them), but overall it's made impressive progress for how complicated the tech behind it must be.
I know gameplay related feedback isn't being asked for because everything is in a primitive placeholder state right now, but I think it'll be important to flesh out the core gameplay loop of leveling and gearing up just enough that people are motivated to keep grinding and progressing their characters, or you simply won't have enough people stressing the servers throughout the upcoming 1 month test.
First, having early quests listed as level 7 in the log, but rewarding gear you can't use until level 12 is just mind boggling, and I've never seen an MMO that frequently gives early quest rewards you can't immediately use. A lot of that green gear didn't even have good stats, so the high level requirement came across as silly.
Most of the crafted gear being impossible to make because of unobtainable components like hardened leather meant that the only options for upgrades are the white NPC gear that often had worse stats than the starting gear, or the siege gear that takes about 3000 kills worth of loot for a single piece. The only meaningful upgrade I bought over the whole weekend was a new weapon. Previous tests had some decent green gear on the vendors that made for a modest but clear upgrade, and I think that should be brought back to keep players engaged for more than a couple days if the crafting system isn't going to be in a workable state.
I started on sunday and it went fine. No issues
Client performance
During my playtime i didnt encounter any crashes. Had some stuttering with players in the distant.
Server performance
Seemed stable but i didnt encouter a lot of people together.
Client performance: Not sure if this is tied to the client or there was a lot of people attempting to log in, but after I created my character and clicked play, the game froze and had to be restarted.
Server performance: Overall, the server seemed stable even when we did the dragon with 150+ people, I was actually surprised that we weren't rubber banding like crazy! I'm sure this has been echoed, but when on a mount, creatures seem to take longer than normal to render in. There was some stuttering with the walking animations of creatures like the gryphons and smaller dragons. Also, when knocking down creatures, the animations were there about half of the time, not sure if that is tied to server performance or not though.
Overall, the play test went very smoothly as far as lag and connection goes. Thanks for all the hard work so far!
When I would walk my mount into the water I could "swim" to the other side, but once I came out of the water I was not allowed to dismount. It kept telling me I could not do that because I was swimming. The first time I did it I logged out and everything was fine when I logged back in. The second time when I logged in I was in the "underworld" I had a flat grassland to walk on, but I could see the real terrain above me, like clouds, eventually I found a riverbank that allowed me to climb out of the underworld...
As far as performance it was 99% good, there was a couple times logging in took a bit of time to draw the world. I did run into a couple mobs that I could not damage, even though they were my level, not sure if that was a lag issue or just a bug.
I had no issues with this process and it ran in a timely fashion!
Client performance:
The only client side lag I experienced was when I was entering a stage 3 node. The client never crashed and I didn't receive any crazy fps drops out of nowhere. The character selection screen would freeze for a few seconds when I clicked the login button but it always let me login.
Server performance:
I noticed server lag or rubberbanding was when one of the nodes advanced to stage 3. Also, when running on a mount, damage received from enemies would register late and sometimes it would take a few seconds to load entities onto my screen, so a place would look empty but 4 seconds later I would be surrounded by mobs. I never experienced a server crash though!
I started patching Friday night after work, and the download went VERY slow. I'm on a gig fiber connection btw. I left after about 30 minutes and the download progress at 25-ish%. I came back a couple of hours later and the launcher updating had crashed and thrown an error. I restarted the launcher, and apparently it had downloaded the entire time without updating it in the GUI, because the time from restart of the launcher to being in-game was only a couple of minutes.
That's all the feedback I have really right now. Only played for 30 minutes or so, and everything was mostly smooth in-game. Had one spawn in that first cave behind the wall, but didn't get around to bug reporting it.
My Computer:
i7-8700K CPU @ OC 5ghz
GTX 1080 Ti
Cosair RAM 32gb 3200mhz
Samsung 860 EVO 1TB M.2
Download/installation process
No issue other than download seemed slow relative to Steam.
Client performance
I set everything to ultra and mostly stayed around 50-60 FPS. It was a very functional experience.
Server performance
Mobs would load in suddenly and seemed pretty inconsistent on when this would happen.
This may have been user error but I'll note it anyway. The otters (I can't remember their name they are near the traitor's node.) have an ability that knocks the player down but after I get up I was having trouble getting my spells to cast.
Spells would cast but animation wouldn't go off dealing damage but the ability would still appear as if not on cooldown.
After playing for sometime my character was moving really slowly but going back to the character menu and loading back in resolved it.
No disconnects or rubberbanding.
Download was quick and easy.
Client performance
Game client ran at about 70 fps on Ultra / 100 fps on Low and was smooth for the most part. When traveling across the world i would get a 1 second freeze frame while it loaded new areas. A good example of this is when sieging and jumping down from the spawn I freeze for 1 second.
Server performance
Servers ran very well 95% of the time. Had some desync with tank dash knocking down players and they would still continue to move around while on the ground.
Specs:
AMD Ryzen 3800X
X570 Aorus Elite
32 GB RAM
SSD
AMD RX 6800 16gb
Ridiculously slow patcher. No problems once patched and updated.
Client performance:
FPS drops galore. More bugged quests than I've ever seen. Hitting Ctrl+T to get unstuck sometimes sent me to a far-off place (I was in Na'la and found myself east of Winstead very confused).
Server performance:
A lot of unknown issues tossed me to a loading screen. As much as I enjoy that splash page it got really annoying while in the middle of combat or a task.
Feedback:
Please, for the love of Steven make a streamer-only server. Nothing was less fun this weekend than huge groups of sycophants zerg rushing areas and destroying your play. This will get much much worse as the game progresses if not addressed.
Class balance as it stands is just wrong. Played all three to level 12+, and the tank is underwhelming in every aspect. Mage feels better than it did months ago. The cleric is still OP and virtually unkillable.
The music and ambient sounds were wonderful.
Thank you for adding more gatherable spawns, though wood is still ridiculously scarce.
Can't wait to see crafting actually work.
Joinaxiom.com
Client process- no issues actually logging in and out.
Server performance-. Server seemed to lag loading noc monsters until I too of them. Mostly happened while on horseback.
While riding horses, after going through water the game still thinks swimming and can't do anything but Ctrl+T to reset. Easy fix is would be to auto dismount when enterering deep water.
Monsters off in a distance seem to stutter alot, better the closer you get. I checked settings to see if there was a render distance but none found.
Broken quests......
Cpu AMD 3750
Gpu Radeon 6800xt
32gb ramm
Ran on ultra settings
Overall very impressed with her this far and look to get back in and advance more to check out other areas!
The crafting seems wrong where you need to cut down 24 trees to make a wand, I dont really need it to be 24 trees long. Also harvest nodes are too rare considering how many people could potentially be harvesting.
The creatures felt like western mmo grind mobs standing around waiting to be killed so I hope they move around and have turf wars come live.
Client : ultra graphics lags tremendously but high is playable.
Server : it feels like there's no lag compensation, resulting in action combat that doesn't feel meaningfully action. It seems like the simulation is run locally, so you can't really observe any lag until you interact with something, but when it happens it's pretty disorienting. I think there should be some icon displaying connection health.
Overall I was thrilled with the stability of the test. I was admittedly pretty concerned after the couple days tests before it came up for the weekend, but you guys nailed it. It was also nice having someone in the discord 24 hours a day helping people out and answering questing, big props to Margaret and Toast for that.
I understand that there is a new combat system incoming at some point in the future, but in the mean time I think that a simple action queuing system that would insert skill activation into the Q stream would be an amazing improvement. I have had a lot of times throughout the testing where I let off Q to use a skill and honestly get impatient waiting for the skill to start activating as I spam until it activates instead of just tapping it once and knowing that it will cast.
It would be nice, but not really necessary (since we currently have access to the node information in pg up) to have a visual indication on the map about node borders.
My pinky pleas with you: get rid of the shoowshy sprint lines and make sprint the default out of combat run speed. There are far more valuable things for a shift key to do =P
This darn bad word filter needs a class on change. Or as that would appear in game "This **** bad word filter needs a cl*** on c****e."
I'd like it see a /played or /age type function in game so you could easily track progress on tests. This isn't huge, but I think it would be a nice thing to have.
Oh, last minute thought, please make the chat window resizable and movable, it is almost always in the way for me, but i don't like to close it =/
The server eu was not bad, the moster load a bit too much slowly, and there is some fps drop.
CLICCA QUI PER UNIRTI ALL'ORDINE
No issues.
[*] Client performance
No issues with the client in ~5 hrs of running around doing all kinds of quests.
[*] Server performance
No issues at all.
On the siege server in the end some minor lags, probably because of so many bears circling in heaven
Client performance: My PC is definitely showing it's age, and I noticed the FPS drop others have mentioned. I mentioned before the minimum requirements should probably be updated a bit to reflect a functional game experience. I'll have better feedback for client when my upgraded PC arrives in a week or so.
Server performance: The server optimization has been pretty great to see. I saw some other comments saying this area still needs work, but I just want to take the time to say the work everyone has already done has been noticed and greatly appreciated!
General: Thank you for the changes to character control, particularly character rotation. As someone on the low end of the PC hardware spectrum the tab target combat feels much better. The weapon pull animations are still a struggle to control, and they feel worse with heavy weapons. Steven said the full body animation was used to make combat feel impactful; maybe having the animation move in the direction of the target rather than straight line would be a good compromise? Finally, the mob hp/immortality reset when they hit the end of their leash is a bit immersion breaking. I'm sure the AI will undergo updates, so I wanted to toss this point out while there's time to iterate on it.
Thanks so much for all your continued hard work!
EDIT: With new PC download, client, and server were great.
Of course there are plenty of things I could give feedback on in regards to the game mechanics and other things, but I will save those for when you are asking for feedback on that specific content. Thank you for allowing me to play in your alpha one test and I look forward to the next one!
1. Too frequent error preventing getting off from the horse (notification that this cannot be done while swimming, even if the character is currently on land but has previously walked through the water on a horse). After making a relog, it often lands underground in water.
2. CTRL + T does not always help to get out of the water underground. I spammed this button combination many times, moved around with my character and it still didn't help (this problem is bigger mainly in the upper continent). Sometimes you have to swim to the shore for the character to reappear on land.
3.50% of the loss of equipment on death is a bit of an exaggeration. If someone has 100 quest items and loses half, it's unfair to someone who has 10 quest items and loses half as well. The loss should apply, but not always half, only more balanced. Risk = reward (super idea, but it should be more balanced - this is my subjective opinion on this subject).
4. Not all quests work properly, some quests cannot be completed or the marker on the map is in the wrong place. This is very confusing. I propose to delete these quests since they haven't been finalized yet, or to just fine-tune them. It doesn't require a lot of work, so I hope that in a few days, after restarting the servers, all the quests that are already available (and there are only a few dozen at the moment) will work properly.
5. Launcher should be able to update without having to download again. For example, when after a few series of tests in which I did not participate, i.e. after a few months, I start the launcher, I do not have to manually download a new launcher, but everything should automatically update, always to the latest and fully working version. Some people are not aware of the need to download a new laucher and reinstall (update), they just start the old launcher with the thought that it will update itself, which automatically turns off after a certain point.
6. Empowered monsters (+) do not give much more experience than common ones, they do not drop any interesting items, so it is simply not worth killing them. When the big group of players (raid) takes part in the instance, they kill all monsters one by one, the expierience gaining is very low for each one, which is unprofitable and makes it useless to spend time in a group.
Tbh, not even the customer support was able to help out and I have tried to install the game on3 different computers - always with the same result. Would be cool if you could fix that.. I doubt I was the only one... (and despite CS claiming it's not account related, i dont get how it could have happened on three different computers) ... The logs I sent to CS didn't help either I think... Every time I provided the log it contained the same errors and the "fixes" did not do much..
Hope to play the next one!
Q should be an auto-attack so you don't have to keep it depressed or repeat hitting it over and over. Over time it is annoying.
Warrior combat underperforms Tank classes need to feel as if they can solo and contribute DPS.
character design needs correction, the Characters are disproportionate (maybe I have too much of a bend toward symmetry) have an excessively long body in comparison to the leg length. The characters also run pigeon-toed (the feet point outward excessively, animation needs to be cleaned up) which drives me crazy.
These people live in a physically harsh world and are by default from a survival point of view athletic.
Quest log needs an abbreviated view while actively playing.
Looting is vastly improved although when you finish an auto-attack and the move pushes you through the corpse you lose the target for looting.
More Map detail to help players understand zones and quest completion areas would help. In real life, if we went hunting and camping we would look at more detailed topo maps and seek knowledge before we wandered off into the unknown. I think adding a quest line although it would be linear to help people understand the world geography and zones from the beginning of the game would reduce confusion and frustration for players.
Keep up the good work and continue the polishing.